音時雨 ～Regentropfen～

Some nonsense first…

MY GOOGLE TALK IS DEAD!!!! orz
It happened for a few times before, though I solved that by logging in with another g-account. But this time, it just didn't work. I have completely no idea what's going on. I can login, but I can't see anyone there. I can't search for any of my contacts either. Even weird, since its death, I logged in with another account and I could see my dead account is online – with the status keeping changing!!!

The problem must be caused by the foobar plugin to display your current track in gtalk. I've deleted that plugin, never use it again.

So, PLZ GIVE MY GOOGLE TALK BACK!!!!! T__T

Back to my topic…

I received my copy of Akiko Shikata's newest mini-album "Utau oka ~Ar=Ciel Ar=Dor~". In the very beginning, this mini-album was a bypass stuff together with KOKIA's "Musique a la Carte", because to buy two albums, I can save the shipment fee… lol However, I do love Akiko's music, and I was very satisfied by my pre-ordering of this mini-album.

This album is an image album for legends come from the world of Ar Tonelico. To be honest, I've never played the game, and I've never got much of interest to read more about the game itself. What I know about A.T. are all from Akiko and others' Hymmnos albums. Actually, it was also Akiko got me close to the A.T. world, through her "Utau oka ~ EXEC_HARVESTASYA/.~" At that time, I was even looking for the world "Harvestasya" without knowing that's a name… ^^;

Anyway, I love this new mini-album, even though I'm still confused by the world and other settings. I just love the music and the stories. But… well, just see the stories as regular legend without the effect of A.T…. ^^; Although the basic story line can be get from the lyrics, there are much more details in each story…

So…
You know what I'm gonna do~ :P

↑ "Afezeria HARVESTASYA." my favorite

謳う丘 ～Ar=Ciel Ar=Dor～
A perfect opening song, describing the birth of the world. The cover image is about "the creation of the world" in praise of the gods. Every living beings are blessed equally, and being in the heavenly light. Then, pieces of grounds are created, gathering, and finally form in a planet. In the song, the sound effects are very nice. There are the sound of thunder, and the noise of life, with the familiar "utau oka" motif, Shikata's telling of A.T. stories begins.

This song is the most powerful song out of all others. The entire feeling is a well done, but for me, this song just lacks the typical Shikata element. I mean, it does not sound like other Shikata songs in terms of melody and arrangement, which you may recognize immediately. However, this song is good, and I love the chorus very much.

The story was about Sieryek, the son of God Listea, was born in EL=NEMESYS, under the task to help the emperor of EL=DUEL to erase EL=NEMESYS. But until 15, he did not realized his fate and fell in love with Liarsha, the third princess of EL=NEMESYS. Sieryek became the chancellor afterwards, and he found a chance to kill the emperor of EL=NEMESYS. The country was thus taken by EL=DUEL, but Sieryek was killed by Liarsha, who he did not erase on that night. Liarsha holded Sieryek's body, and jump out of their place of memory, an octagon-building. The two could finally stay together, in an ever peace.

This song used to be my favorite before I changed my mind. I like melody, which is very Shikata-like. Just from the introduction, I could feel something similar to her other non-A.T.-related albums. Very folksy, full of the happiness of being alive.

The story is very warm too: In a forest, there was a grandma used to take care of all plants, and she especially loved a dianthus. But the grandma passed away during a forest-fire, because she was protecting the dianthus. Shelanoir, the goddess of forest, was touched and thus decided to protect that dianthus. Under her care, the dianthus grew so well that people thought the flowers could give them the ever-life. For preventing people ruin the flower, Shelanoir grew a large area of thorns around the flower. One day, a young man called Ryugg overcame the thorns, and saw Shelanoir. They began a peaceful period to take care of the forest together. However, people finally burned the forest. Shelanoir thus lost her energy. Ryugg was taking care of her firstly, but one day, he said he was going to find something and never being back again. Shelanoir's worry grew another area of thorns again, until the day of Ryugg's back, with another dianthus in his hands.

Here, eventually I can recognize that I know a similar story! In this song, there are lots of familiar motifs from other hymmnos albums, and the entire song has a good atmosphere about the end of the world – which is what I like to see, to feel… ^^; There are different versions about Rhaplanca's story, and this song is the final one, a sad one.

Rhaplanca was always born at the time when the world is toward the end, trying to do something helping people. In her last life, she was forced to marry to Maoh, but she was still keeping her activity to help others. She never smiled to Maoh until one day Maoh tried to go with her and help the poor people. Maoh was surprised and wanted to help those poor people more, but he eventually did not keep because he wanted Rhaplanca to smile only toward himself. Rhaplanca thus was limited to go outside and got the message from heaven that the world was going to the end. Rhaplanca needed to introduce people who were chosen by heaven to the new world. But she could not receive it; she wanted to help more people. The world began to collapse, the only connection between the ground and the floating ground – the new world – was the huge tree of life, Implanta. People were in a rush to go to the tree, struggling to climb toward the floating ground, but the tree was already nearly dead, and could not supporting itself and people on it anymore. By praying to heaven, Rhaplanca became a huge store to support the tree. Just before her last second being alive, she told Maoh to help more people, if he really loved her.

Now, my FAVORITE song! From the beginning to the end, I love every note of this song. It is so happy and blessed, and the arrangement enforces this feeling. The melody is also extremely beautiful, so as Shikata's singing and chorus. The prettiest part is the melody since 2:15. I can't describe it exactly, but this kind of melody is just in my favorite list. About the story, before I read it, I just thought this might be another version of Harvestasya's story only from the lyrics. But … I think this one must be a continued story of the one in "RAKA". In RAKA version, Harvestasya went to west to find a way to heal Myu's eyes, and this was mentioned in the story!!! So it must be a continued story of the RAKA version! Ahh, finally I felt how excellent it is to encounter the same legend from different albums!!!!!

(After Harvestasya's success of healing Myu's eyes, and Myu finally chose her and they were in the wedding. But it was broken by the goddess of love. The goddess took Myu to her palace, which was in east. To save Myu, Harvestasya went again. There, she finally broke the curse of the goddess, and got the blessing from God Lere. The black goddess disappeared, and with the wings from Lere, Harvestasya and Myu were back to their home.

I have no more to say, but this is a good conclusion song… ^^;

Not be lazy anymore, I have to write something about the game I am currently addicted to!!!

- Preface -
As you might have known, I have been playing the Korean online game "Dragon Nest" for several weeks. I do love it. Actually, it is my first large game – before, I only play minesweeper, FeedingFrenzy, dx-ball, and some other GAL games, orz…

Anyway, for the reason, hmmm… I have no idea how many times I should thank KOKIA for her EPIC song "Road to Glory~for Dragon Nest". For the first time, I knew the existence of this game. However, I would not know more if I did not read KOKIA's blog. She wrote a lot there about her game playing: her character is a warrior called "kokio", which is more like a male name, etc, etc… I had no hesitance to order her mini-album "long journey" when I realized the online-store can ship items world-widely (for free!!). I need to emphasis that, at that time, I know little about the game itself.

And then, I got my copy, limited version, with a trail version of Dragon Nest, Japanese version. I tried to play it for several times, and thought I would love to play it. So I followed the link that redirected you to the Japanese official website of DN. Then… tragically, I could not play that game because my IP was outside of Japan!!! orz…

I browsed online, and found that the Chinese version is not blocking people from outside of China. Oh, superb! I installed the CN version happily and thus began my own long journey.

- Luminora -
Luminora, my first character, a sorceress.

To be honest, I was thinking on if I should use names of characters from my own snail-paced writing story. Maybe I should not. But I was not willing to think a new name, and just used this one. I love this name. You may see something from this name: luminous – light.

It may just be my fate to be a sorceress – I chose the sorceress when playing the Japanese trail version too! I love fantasy stories, and I love people with magic power. I also read about the skill of sorceress online, and knew that she can get an advanced job being either an element lord or a force user – force user… after reading the skills, ohh, that's pretty cool! I chose this class without any other thinking.

Following the story line, I made her became a force user. Yet, I did not know much about the sp, and sadly I mis-used lots of sp so my sorceress could not learn enough new skills for being a good force user…

After a lot of thinking, I deleted this character on last Sunday, when she was at level 22…

Bye-bye, Luminora.

- Wanna Live Longer? -
Before I deleted my first sorceress, I created all other classes cause I wanted to see what kind of skills they have, and play another story line (there are two towns for beginners [lv1-9], archer and warrior are from the same town, whereas sorceress and cleric are from the other). For warrior, I would have to say I have no sense about this character (I KNOW KOKIA IS PLAYING THIS CHARACTER!!! PLZ FORGIVE ME!!!!! orz)… for archer, no much of sense either, but the character design of archer is very cute!

Now, I will introduce my new dear child: Elefseja, a cleric.

There was a side story for me to name my cleric like this. In the story line for sorceress and cleric, there is a NPC-cleric who has the same name as a friend of mine, which gave me much of fun. When I created the cleric character, I could not stop thinking using his name for mine as well. But it would be way too weird if I did so. As a result, I used his last.fm account name, which was taken from a SH story character. xDD

When played a bit with the cleric, I realized how powerful/strong this class is. As my previous experience, a sorceress can lose her blood faster and thus can be killed if your playing skill is not very good. But, oh man, my cleric can not be killed that easily! His first death was at lv13, when we were playing in abyss (the hardest) mode. Cool, cleric! (also, seriously, cleric is the most handsome character among all four classes lol)

I have changed my last.fm profile avatar to my cleric, after he got his advanced job for being a priest. And my friend (who has the same name as the NPC I mentioned before) said, it's so strange to see a GUY on your avatar!

It may be strange, but I just love my cleric!!! :3

My new last.fm profile avatar: my handsome cleric :P

- Revive -
I have mentioned that I created all four classes after the deletion of my first character. I paused my playing with the warrior because no much of interest. I also paused my playing with the archer, because the job-changing was soooo difficult. Someone wrote that he/she passed it at the first time, but I just could not. I do not know why. I think I am just not good for being an archer. So, see you later (maybe), Erika (the name of my archer) and Akiko (the name of my warrior).

So I could pay more attention to build my brand new sorceress. I still called her "Luminora", but differently, I used Katakana instead of using the Latin letters. The same name and the same design, my sorceress was revived! I had known how to use the sp better, so this time, I must make a good force user!

I think she is, really. She had less times of death than the previous one. Oh, go go, my sorceress! :D

- Let's Dance!!!-
When you get leveled up, extra emotions will be added. Two of them are dances. For each class, they have a unique dance, and for all of them, they have the same dance #2. I guess the system wants players to dance together, thus they gave the same dance for all classes. For the first kind of dance, I have to say I like three of them but not the archer's. I tried to let my archer dance and forced her to stop because I was laughing to death!!

If you want to watch, you may youtube them, I don't wanna record mine. XD

However, the second dance is a bit funny, but still fine. Yet, the funniest experience of this dance was a few days ago, we (two warriors and another priest and I) were playing in abyss mode. Before we transferred to beat the final boss, one warrior asked us to wait for a while, because he needed to add some power. Ohh, fine, we stopped at the transfer gate and waited. But then, the other priest switched to "peace mode". Firstly I thought he might just want to sit down, like some other players usually do when they are waiting. Unexpectedly, he was dancing!!! Just before our facing of the final boss!!!!! orz… I was like "…" but it was so… LOOL

Here I must introduce you a fan-made dance. This is just awesome!
Source link: http://news.mmosite.com/content/2010-08-13/fan_made_dragon_nest_rainism_mv,1.shtml

- Back to the origin, music, music, oh dear! -
As what I said, no KOKIA's "Road to Glory", no my playing of Dragon Nest. Her "Daybreak" is also a very excellent song. For me, no matter what game I play, I just mute all system sounds and listen to my own music instead. It is the same for Dragon Nest. At first, I was looping KOKIA's "Road to Glory" and "Daybreak" while playing, but later, I switched to play classical music like mad (I have my long, long term goals on last.fm!). I actually do not mind what kind of music I listen to while playing, but it was REALLY not that matching to play such a RPG with Mozart's sweet melodies…. Oh, well… ^^;

Okay… now, I think I should probably stop. On next Monday the third chapter of the game will be available. However, I cannot enjoy it yet because it is all about over Lv32. I will just play my sorceress and cleric now, and I will probably record some battles I join and post them. Just for fun, my skill is not good at all! XD

I guess it was just in last week, we talked about sushi during lunch, and one mentioned that he had a friend used to work in a sushi restaurant – making sushi is not like what you thought: cook the rice and roll it into nori. No no no! You need to mix sugar, and some sauce with the rice, or you cannot get the unique taste of the sushi you eat in restaurants.

Ahh, I think I got the key to make sushi. Before, I used to make rice balls as well as rice rolls – well,now I have to call them rice rolls, though they were supposed to be called sushi…

But they just could not. I did not add the sauce that can make them become real sushi.

And finally I knew how to use the sushi-zu (Sushi vinegar) I bought in Asian market. Okay, why not try to make some sushi?

Thus, in this afternoon, I started my first challenge of making sushi – I would like to call it as a fighting – it really was!

Basically, you just need to cook the rice, and mix with sushi-zu. Since I had completely no idea on what to put inside the sushi – I did cook some salmon but that was not for sushi, I thought up my crab meat and fried eggs. Anyway, I believe, no matter what you put into, the most important thing was to try if the way of mixing rice and vinegar works and if I can roll with nori well. Thus I used crab meat and fried eggs.

Then it came the problem: it was my first time to roll the sushi, and… how could I put rice onto the sushi roller first instead of onto a sheet of nori? orz … So I got the roller very sticky – oh, by the way, I do not know if it is the reason, that the rice became rather stickier before I mixed it with sushi-zu. I was almost got stuck with the sticker rice; it was so hard to put them onto the nori evenly! Also, the position of putting the integrant was hard too. The nori, yes, another problem, it was too thin to remain unbroken after I rolled it… eventually, I ended up with adding another layer of nori, which was not that easy to stick onto the inside layer… However, that was not all: to cut the sushi was hard. I did not get how come the nori became that sticky to be cut easily. I firstly tried to cut one long roll into eight pieces, but if I did so, the pieces were like to be collapsed. I had to cut them into six pieces instead, which made my sushi looked very fatty! Just with it can get better in my future fighting! XD

Well, the trophy of today's fighting for making sushi!