Summer in Buffalo

Hi guys! :)

Greetings from the girl of the crew haha
Unfortunately I am located in Buffalo for the rest of the season. Working and finishing off my session of classes. Next week are finals and then I will be heading down for a few days to pick up my siblings to stay with me for the summer.

(So I will probably be sending a mass text to see who can briefly meet with me.)

The weather has been on and off- between teasing peeks of sun and the summer thunderstorms.
I feel like a city person though; I go to work for several hours, hit the gym, go to class, and keep myself busy with homework, job stuff or play games into the wee hours of 4am? 5am?

I miss you all very much- will, be nice no need to throw things into jeff's crotch lol even if it is your birthday LOL
be good boys! hope to see you when I go down for a bit.

June Birthday Shoutout(...s)!

So aside from my own little brother's 16th birthday less than two weeks back, here's another birthday shoutout. This time it's to my brother-from-another-mother, Mr...

Dubya-Eye-El-El... En-Gee! Will Ng!

Happy 20th birthday, dude, too bad Sule and I failed to go through with our plans to celebrate. Wait until next year, man. If we fail next year, we fail life.

Edit [June 19, 2009 approx. 4:30PM]
So Sule, Will, and I decided to chill anyway for Will's birthday. After spending fifteen, twenty minutes playing catch, I had the honor of taking a rough curveball from Will right in the crotch. Damn your late break. Happy birthday, buddy.

High School Concerts and Birthdays

Talents never disappear forever.

Regardless of how educated kids are today, there is one thing that will remain constant: each person is good at something.

I've already been to Newfield High School's first Spring Concert late least week. To be honest, I knew the students could have done far better then. However, the students for the concert that I just attended were exceptional.

Jazz Choir

As always, the concerts feature choral groups as well as instrumentals. The jazz choir happened to be one of the varieties. My brother Jeremy played the piano as an accompanist earlier in the year, but decided to quit after claiming the members were unideal for him. Whoa, now...

Philharmonic Orchestra - Cello Section

Philharmonic Orchestra - Bassist Section

Philharmonic Orchestra - Violin Section (Go Jenny on the left!)

Of course, when I saw Philharmonic Orchestra on the program, the first thing that came to mind was, "Really, classical stuff?" It's most likely because of personal experiences when listening to such orchestras I'm usually presented with classical music. But even without playing a drop of classical music, the orchestra sounded just fine. Here's an example, collaborating with the school's wind ensemble:

"Scene From the Wild West" ft. Newfield Wind Ensemble

Jeremy should be somewhere in the right hand side smacking his vibraphone and other percussion instruments... Anyway, unfortunately, my poor Sony Cybershot ran out of batteries when the wind ensemble and combined chorus group were due to perform. Well, I did get one blurry photo of him on standby next to the vibraphone and one blurry photo of the emsemble on standby.

Wind Ensemble

Really, really unfortunate that my camera ran out of batteries. One of the pieces performed was unusually long (estimated around seven minutes), but was unique in sound.

After the concert was over, which lasted for nearly three hours, the family and I were homeward bound. June 8th happens to be Jeremy's birthday, so cake was necessary.

Happy 16th birthday, kid.

That's right, stab it harder!

An enjoyable school concert - albeit somewhat lengthy, ice cream cake, jotting thoughts down up to these upcoming sentences... it was a worthwhile day. Now I just need to sleep. Maybe I'll hit the sack after another midnight snack.

Exhausted

It's physically emotionally and mentally draining being here...

things aren't going well at home and I don't know... I don't think I can take it anymore. so stressed... very much frustrated with the dad if you can even call him that.

sorry for writing this here I needed a little release outlet..

Chocolate Coated Black Sesame Mochi

Yes, that is exactly what it is. Chocolate coated mochi with black sesame at the core. Sounds like an odd combination, I know. When I first saw it, I thought, "What kind of psychopath does this kind of thing?" Plus, it doesn't look too appetizing, but it's actually quite delectable.

And then I realized, the chocolate is quite nice mixed with the chewy rice treat. Also, these guys are smart. The chocolate coating keeps the mochi from drying out, allowing it to stay in its chewiest form.

Yum. Sadly, if I eat any more I'll probably get indigestion.

More Movies

I tend to be one of the easy movie watchers who seems to be satisfied with anything other than plotless and shapeless narrative structures. Examples of completely plotless and shapeless narratives would be parody films like Scary Movie, Epic Movie, Date Movie, and the related. Yes, I have watched the first two Scary Movie installments, but after that, each subsequent scene that ticked past made me want to bash my head straight into a brick wall. Epic Movie and Date Movie are, by far, much worse.

Instead of criticizing films I do not like, here are two that I watched recently that are not the best, but provided me with some decent entertainment for the one, two or so hours.

Marley & Me

Both my parents read the semi-autobiographical book before watching the movie, which sort of surprised me since I'm usually the one doing the reading. So they go, "Jeff, did you get a copy of Marley & Me yet?" and off I go hunting for the movie.

I think this film hits current or previous dog owners much harder than standard dog lovers. Well, that was a rhetorical statement, of course, since SPOILER WARNING: the eventual death of Marley towards the end of the book and movie brings up memories of my own dog ...Highlight that if you dare.

Cute, funny, touching. I would say those three words sum up the film. In my opinion, they focus a bit too much on Owen Wilson and Jennifer Aniston (playing the couple who owns Marley) in the first half of the film. At first I thought the film should have been titled "My Wife and Me... and My Dog on the Side," but fortunately it improved towards the latter half.

Vexille: 2077 The Isolation of Japan

This one's a CGI animated film directed by Fumihiko Sori (who directed the Japanese Ping Pong film, which I don't know how many people are familiar with). Although the plot is easy to follow - Japan withdraws from the U.N., goes into a decade long isolation, technological advances skyrocket, androids are everywhere, threat to global peace, etc. - I expected a CGI film to have better visuals. Instead of liking the character designs and special effects, I was more interested in the backgrounds.

With a budget of $10,000,000 (no wonder), compared to many other CGI animated films (usually in the nine-digit zone), I guess whatever they happened to produce was whatever they were capable of managing. Watch it if you like sci-fi, fantasy stuff in general.