Crappy Hotel Internet

=no update today. Hopefully I should get better internet tomorrow.

In Baltimore

Guh, it’s so hot here. It’s like Taiwan, but Taiwan’s usually worse ’cause it’s so much more humid. These days it’s apparently gonna be at least 100 degrees every day (Fahrenheit, we in the US still use the stupid Imperial system). Really, makes me want to do nothing at all. Thank who/whatever-it-is-you-believe-in for air conditioning.

Anyway, here for a summer camp/course thing. Engineering Innovation. For some reason, everyone I asked has no idea what it was. My parents decided we should come a few days early, see the sights around here. We arrived yesterday, but the day before that and yesterday has sort of melded together in my mind. Plane trip sucked, had to transfer once and suffer a delay due to maintenance or some shit other excuse. Tried my best to sleep on the plane, but then woke up and somehow the whole left side of my body was all fucked up not working correctly. Jaw hurt, abs hurt, my foot kept turning inwards. Not sure what position it was I slept in, but whatever it was it wasn’t good. Somewhat better now, but there’s still a bit of residual damage.

So yesterday, we walked around the Inner Harbor a bit. Not much to see, mostly just shops and restaurants. I tried to stay inside Barnes & Nobles (yeah, totally the place to visit in Baltimore) and read a volume of manga (Ultimo vol. 6, to be exact), but then my parents said it was too cold, and so I had no choice but to buy a light novel instead (Vampire Hunter D, vol. 1). Just finished the novel today, it was pretty good. Basically, D is a badass, and everyone else is just dumb, weak, or overly sexed up. After buying the novel, we went for lunch: the nearby Panera Bread. Also totally the restaurant to eat at in Baltimore. Once done, walked around a bit more along what’s apparently called the Heritage Walk. It was labeled as so with tiny plaques embedded in the ground. It was also translated into other languages, such as Korean, Arabic, and Chinese. Strangely enough, the labels were different for traditional and simplified Chinese. Traditional said “遺產散步” while simplified was “遗产走路”. Both…don’t make sense. Probably they just plugged into Google Translate and those were the first translations that popped up. My dad suggested it be replaced with “遺產步道”. Much better.

It got too hot out, so we went to get checked into our hotel. We’re staying at this small little thing called Hyatt Place. Not as good as the regular Hyatt, but at least it’s not bad enough to be called dinky. Seems fine, mostly. Internet, like all hotel internets, sucks shit is super fucking slow. If you couldn’t tell (which you can’t, right, since the bad stuff’s been removed), it really pisses me off. Can’t catch up with all the daily updates the internet makes. Hope the JHU internet is much, much, MUCH better. Fingers and toes and arms and feet and head crossed.

Then, dinner. Not a single cheap place that was halfway decent. At first, we were gonna eat at this place called “Phillip’s Seafood”, but the wait was 45 minutes. Way too long. Instead, we went to a Japanese restaurant. Yay. Really, it’s like we weren’t at home (or in Baltimore). Still super god-fucking-damn expensive. We paid upwards of $120, for one appetizer, one platter, one caffè latte, one Ramune, and one cup of hot tea. Anyway, due the price, the waitress suggested us taking some pictures, so here you go.

Smoked White Salmon…or something like that.

Party Platter. Definitely not the real name.

By the way, the waitresses were Taiwanese, as was the boss of the restaurant. Chefs were American and Mexican, I think. Yup, greatest Japanese restaurant ever. I mean, if they wore real Japanese garb, it must be legit.

So after all that, I completely crashed yesterday, which leaves it for me to catch up today. Now for today’s chronicle.

Since it was more than 100 degrees out, we visited the Baltimore Museum of Art (BMA, but I really want to refer to it as BAM!, exclamation point included). We saw only part of it, like what usually happens when we visit museums. I don’t really hate museums, but I always dislike how it takes more than a day to fully appreciate the collections. In this day and age, we don’t have the time to see everything a city has to offer in merely three days. We viewed a few collections, I liked the sculptures and the miniature rooms but I also realized just how much I disliked Matisse (a whole wing was devoted to him and his ugly (my views, doesn’t have to be yours) portrayals).  We had lunch there, also fucking expensive, then tried to see as much as we could before it was time to leave. Unfortunately, only saw a floor and a half. My dad missed out of most, since it was too cold inside for him, and he stayed outside. He said he slept, then was woken up by the heat. Me, I can’t believe he even fell asleep in the first place. Anyway, once closed we came back, and my parents just slept the afternoon away, heat wave and all. My mom really hates the AC, so she keeps turning it off, and I was like, really? You expecting that I can be baked or something? Well, you be sure at least that I was simmering, if not with the heat then with anger.

Later today, had pizza at this Italian cafe, was pretty nice, and guess what, decently cheap. Was like a regular meal for us back home, where we generally spend $30 bucks for dinner, and that’s for the comparatively expensive places. Before that place, I was expecting the whole goddamn city to only give us good food by extorting our money. After we finished, came back, and here we are now.

Whew, that was a giant chuck of text. As a side note, I wish I could take night pictures, but my phone-camera-thing isn’t good enough. Oh well.

Oh yeah, I think my dad is beginning to really hate Baltimore. List of things that have been pissing him off: the heat, the retaliating AC, the one way streets, the terrible drivers, the multitude of blacks, and the one thing that pisses him off most, Gay Street.

Here we go again…

Yeah, yeah, I was supposed to start this up a week ago, right when school ended, but then it took me forever to get caught up in all the entertainment news that I missed out on due to schoolwork. Anyway, doing a little bit of cleanup (like deleting that last post “Titin” because it was just too damn long), changing themes, organizing pages, etc. You might notice a few extra pages with a shitload of titles in it, that’s because I originally wanted to keep that massive amount hidden, but now I just don’t care anymore. Go have a look, see what an otaku I am.

Also, in an attempt to create an internet personality for myself, I went around creating accounts with the handle “justonemoargame”. Things like Gmail, WordPress, Twitter, Formspring, and YouTube were all used. Then I used that for my Facebook username. Oops. That fucked up ruined the whole thing, which I realized too late. It’s sort of a bad idea to make my private life public. After all, it’s a “private” life. So all that work went to waste, and I went and deleted all the accounts. There goes my dream of lp’ing all those games I wanted to play, the reason why I was preparing my transformation into an internet sensation (looking back on it, I’m laughing pretty hard at my own naïveté, especially since the whole thing crashed before it even took off). Like how this blog is supposed to help me with my writing skills, by doing lp’s I can improve my speaking skills, but that’s just a side effect. I just really wanted to be able to actually finish a game, instead of burning out the hour right before the ending just because developers decide to stuff in all the boring worthless shit trash at that point. Also, it would give my parents a reason for finally letting me play whenever I want, because it’ll now be “productive.”

And with that said, I got more anime stuff to get up to speed on.