Month: March 2006

Um yeah don’t mind the ramble below.

One part of the Kinokuniya story I didn’t mention was buying the first volume of MegaTokyo, a web-comic that’s broken out into paper. There’s always an element of satisfaction to be had by reading in hand as opposed to on the screen, and I suppose that’s why I preferred to pick up the paper form, as opposed to reading online – I knew it’d make me like it more. It’s totally backwards from an economic perspective, since I was putting down cash for something untested, but some days you just feel like jumping.

Now a week later I’ve finished reading through all eight hundred and thirty something comics… oh dear.

It’s a manga, basically, and I’ve read it at exactly the same pace I did some of my favourite manga (Bleach, Love Hina, Kare Kano… list goes on -_-). It’s Love Hina with gamers & l33tsp34k. It’s almost devillishly designed to hit exactly that spot with the nerds and otaku of society that makes you go all gooey inside. I suppose it’s a good thing I’m up to the latest, in a way, since I won’t spend my brain-fade moments at work reading it (as opposed to reading tech-like sites which look less time-wasting). It’s a bad thing in that now I don’t have any buffer and the pace will now be throttled back to what everyone else is reading at.

It’s a good thing in that I’ve found some renewal of faith in good writing. The drawing is good – not brilliant, some odd moments – but the writing is excellent. Or rather it is getting better as it goes – the plot is starting to get more complex, the characters are beginning to get more depth, and things are getting far closer to what you might call sanity, or perhaps consistency. It’s still a nuts-to-reality story, but it’s consistent. It’s slow like hell, but consistent.

It’s also reminded me that I need to go back and edit my NaNoWriMo effort, and perhaps actually get to some more story writing. I’ve only had 2 fiction peices since Pushing the Sky started, and while I can blame that to some extent on work, it’s really lacking by my personal measures. So hopefully I’ll make the effort and ramp up to writing one story a week. There’s no better way to work on something than pushing a schedule. Keep an eye out =)

A few things I thought of over the weekend:

– There are 793 billionaires in the world. So if we take into account the mafioso and the drug barons who wouldn’t be on that list, let’s say there was a round figure of roughly a 1000. That’s… 0.0000166..7% of the world’s population. One billionaire per 6 million people, give or take. I want to be in that “club”. Seriously. That’s a bloody exclusive club. Millionaire doesn’t mean anything any more, dammit.

– I guess I’m a fairly regular airplane traveller now. Security check etc are practically automatic, as is checking in and everything. I remember the days when I’d go in with a nervous grin, but now it’s far more standard – I’m almost frustrated now at the people who don’t fly regularly and take their damn sweet time getting on and everything. I’m still astounded every time they get all those tonnes off the ground, though – I’m just waiting for them one day to charge down the runway, slow down half way and go “No, sorry people, we were just kidding. You didn’t seriously believe we’d get this monstrosity in the air did you?”

– Oh My God the Cricket – Australia score 434, sit back and wait for the inevitable win. South Africa, however, are reading their own script… and score 438 with a ball and a wicket to spare. Cue disbelief. Want replay, highlights.