Okay… So, after finding that I’ve earned well over 6000 for the 2009-10 financial year, and finding that I have less than what I had at the beginning of the that financial year, I got thinking… “Where the hell does my money go?!?!?” If my spending habits continue as they are at the moment… I have no idea how I’ll have enough money to go to Japan after I complete High School… So, I thought I’d begin by doing some New Financial Year Resolutions… See if they’ll work… (They probably won’t… but optimism…?)
But first, some statistics that I cry over:
Ever since I began this blog, (I started working a few months after the creation) I have earnt a good amount over $10000, of which, I only currently have a very small fraction of that amount, as hard cash. Of my total earnings;
— 50% has been spent on Consumer Electronics
|- 30% of which has been spent on imaging related products
|- 35% on audio related products (mp3s and headphones)
|- 15% on computer parts and peripherals.
— 15% on Anime, and Anime related Merchandise
|- 30% of which is on Figurines
|- 25% on Artbooks
Which leaves about 35% of my money expenditure on general crap. I’d guestimate that something only another 15% has been spent on things I can physically prove are mine…
Anyway, onto the plans!
What WILL be bought this financial year:
Kanon DVD Set – $60
Domain Name Renewal – $100+
A new phone – $800 thereabouts. (Looking at Windows Mobile 7 Phone options, namely, the Dell Lighting, but it’s early days)
A laptop that I actually want – $1200 thereabouts. (A tablet convertible would be nice)
What is LIKELY to be bought:
Zune HD – $260~
An un-metered amount of Anime merch – $100~ per month…???
Sound Card – $100-200
Graphics Card – $100-200
New Processor of some sort – $300+
In addition to who knows what I might take an interest to in the future…
What am I going to do about it?
The idea is, I’ll be enforcing various ‘rules’, requiring me to follow certain conditions before I make the decision to purchase something… (I’ve been pressing “Checkout” and “Confirm Order” a few too many times…) These “rules” will be:
1. At least 25% of each weeks earnings will go towards the Trip to Japan fund, as well as a general sort of “better future” fund.
2. A maximum expenditure of $10 per week on general expenses. (i.e. Junk foods and such)
3. No purchases over $100 until I’ve spent at least a week to confirm the necessity of such purchase. (Pre-orders excluded)
4. No purchases of items totaling value of $100 or more unless I have at least $500 as (excluding the Trip to Japan fund)
Those are my current ‘rules’… Not sure how well they’ll be followed… But they don’t sound overly restricting do they…? And it doesn’t really, actually help me save my money/reduce my general expenditure…
Okay, so before I begin my actual content, I thought I’d do a bit of a ramble… It’ll be short I promise!
So, now, I’d like you to take a good look at a photo of my desk, and I’d like you to identify, what is wrong in this picture.
Can you spot it? Well… I don’t know what you think is wrong, but I’ll tell you what I think is wrong with the photo. Take a close look a close look at the two bottles on the desk. Actually, I’ll show you a close up of the one I’m talking about in particular.
zomg… I really can’t believe it… At work, during my tea break, I went and visited one of my local Asian stores for a drink, and inside the fridge, I see a bottle of Ice Tea, with an image of Haruhi Suzumiya on it… Damn it…
Anyway… I’d normally I’d ramble on about it a little more, but who’s going to read it? Well, who reads my blog anyway? But a lot has happened recently, and I haven’t been able to update my blog accordingly, so, a brief-ish look into my holidays so far?
What can I say? Work is fun? Haha, unlikely… Well, at least I’m getting money out of it… But so my first few days of the holdiays involved working, and so not much interesting-ness came out of it… Tuesday, My food tech group + Bevan went down to the city to enjoy “Up” in 3D. Since you have to wear those special 3D glasses, wearing two pairs wasn’t as annoying as I thought it would have been, however made my eyes rather sore, my guess is that I was unknowingly straining them the whole time. But you know, afterwards, Bevan, Martin and I paid a quick bail trip to Kinokuniya, and I considered buying me a $27 Pacer (Mechanical Pencil)… It was nice… I might get it…
Thursday, I bailed my house to explore some of the many Dick Smiths, Tandys and JB Hi-Fis of Sydney. Reason? Whatelse than to hunt down another Creative ZEN Stone?! THOSE THINGS HAUNT MY DREAMS!!! Bloody hell… If I didn’t lose them!!! Ah well… And to no success… Though I did manage to find out some interesting facts.
1. My Ultimate Ears Super.Fi 5 Extended Bass are the real models. (Actually, I already knew that… And my source doesn’t exactly confirm that they were real… They were just the same…)
2. Throughout the whole tour, I only saw one place that still sold the ZEN Stone, and has been for a long time at full RRP.
3. There is less and less Creative everyhere I go.
4. The Samsung ST550 camera (has two LCD screens) is cheaper direct from Samsung, than to buy in a store.
5. The Olympus Mju 9000 is getting price cuts
6. Samsung is no longer manufacturing mp3 players for Australia. (HUGE DISSAPOINTMENT!!!)
7. The strong winds down Eddy Avenue between Pitt and George Streets on that Thursday meant that crossing the road took twice as long as it normally would have, and was a pain to try and walk in.
Okay, enough of that… Now… Friday… A day of Semi-fail… But yes… Friday, was the day we Geoff, Hursh and I trekked out, to uncover the mysteries that lie inside the house that is known to be the residence of Will… It’s a long story, and really, you need access to my Facebook account in order to know what happened. But long story short. We failed to gain entry into his house. Though we uncovered a few things, and we did ask at his door if we could enter, it still gets branded as a form of fail… And once again, I do apologise to everyone who went to Shannon’s house for not being able to go! Sorry!
Now, there are many things till yet to do these holidays… A poker day… A day in the city with my good friends Hursh and Hugh… A possible second poker day. A day of Anime marathon-ing… Doing my Graphics Tech drawings… Picking up my maths… Quite a bit, and too little time to try and sqeeze all that into… Ah well… I’ll keep my blog a little more up to date for a while now, as the following week has less work to do…
Haruhi just can’t help but haunt me even in real life huh…?
Yay, so, they’ve arrived. The spring holidays, and that can only mean one thing. Money goes *poof*! If I take into consideration that a Zii EGG may be on my way, I can already assume that I’m going to be down $500 already, and who knows what ever expenses will occur over the duration of the holidays? If the EGG does arrive, I’d say, I’d be expecting a damage bill of over $700? I mean, I also plan on getting me a new monitor, keyboard, mouse and printer… so… yeah, If I do get all that’s planned there, I’m definitely going to be down a lot. (Where does this money come from?)
Outings wise, I’ve got a few planned, but so far, none of them have been confirmed at all. If things go accordingly, I only see 2 trips to the city, with an additional 2 possible, as well as one perhaps very unsure about day of poker? (There’s a very big and large question mark in regards to that.) But the biggest highlight, Hursh, Geoffery and I (possibly Chris too) look set to be making our 2nd/3rd attempt, at setting foot inside that still very mysterious dwelling that is said to be the realm of Will’s… The long mystery will hopefully be solved this holidays, as long as none of them come down sick like last time… (I guess the tension/scariniess of it all/anticipation/nervousisity eventually got them sick?)
But yeah, so far, none of that is guaranteed, and I also have to try and squeese all that in between days I’m working and all that which shall be fun… Movie wise, “Up” is definately on my watchlist and I will not go through the holidays without seeing it. As for anything else, that remains up in the air… Stupid people can’t even properly organise a day of poker?! Ah well… If I get invited/informed of the plans, I’m definitely coming along for that. Anyway, I’m looking forward to some sleep though! =D
It’s good that I’ve got most of the annoying tests and stuffs for school over and done with. I can’t say I’m overjoyed by my results (for one, I haven’t got all of them back just yet…) as well as I don’t believe I did too well in most of them. Although that was a result of over procrastination, and so whatever mark I get, I guess is what I deserve… But work wise for the holidays, I’ll try and do some maths revision and stuffs so I do have a better idea of what I am actually doing. I also have quite a few drawings for Graphics Tech to do, and I’ll be missing out on the lessons at school for the first week as some of my year (including me) will be off to Bendigo because we are just that awesome.
Rain is lovely!
So, with my Summer of Anime finished, and the Spring season to begin, I thought I’d post what I thought about the series that were shown during the Summer. I can easily say that everything that I watched this summer was generally positive. There were some let downs here and there, but overall, there was very little to complain about, and I’m happy about that. These will not be full reviews, but more of a quick little evaluation, getting as straight to the point as possible. I’ll begin with what least impressed me, leaving the series that most impressed me, at the end.
Continue reading Summer Anime of 2009 – Evaluations
 Ah, I love good strong character development! It’s what made Elfen Lied great in my opinion, and made me love Higurashi Kai! So, in the second episode of the third arc, we further develop the characters, and discover what is a somewhat surprising past for Beatrice, as well as some very interesting character development of some more of the Ushiromiya family!
Continue reading Umineko no naku koro ni – Episode III-II – Gambit
I don’t really know what it is I am supposed to be writing about at the moment, but things in my head have been very messed and crazy the past week or so for a whole lot of reasons (some important, some very unimportant) and I am somewhat surprised at how I haven’t been stranger or more agitated or something than normal… I hope that made some sort of sense… I find that these things haven’t really been making all that much sense to me lately… It all seems rather unsensical and all that… But yeah, spontaneity is awesome… So, what’s been going on in my head the past week? We’ll start off with the more “important” then we’ll see how the rest of this blog post goes eh??? I’m also trialing how this whole “Bold” font works…
FACEBOOK LIES! I may let you yell out “blasphemy!” but give me a chance to explain the very important reason as to why “Facebook Lies”… Okay, it’s not really “Facebook”, but the “Fortune Teller Genius” App that lies… I got 16 out of 20 for an English essay, of which the year average was about 9 or so. So, pleasantly surprised… But that’s where Facebook’s Genie app lies! I asked this ‘all knowing genie’ about that assessment, and he said I’d fail… And as you can see, obviously, I haven’t… But what’s worse now, is that when I asked the genie about my maths test that I did yesterday, about whether I’d fail, he said “No”… And I’m worrried at the moment, as I’ve lost about 44 marks (out of a possible 100) by leaving those answers blank… So, chances, are, Facebook’s genie lies again!!!
On the not of psychics, “The Menatlist” has begun airing it’s new season… As well as “How I Met Your Mother“. And the openning eps of both seasons has been great! I’m excited to see how the BarneyXRobin relationship goes, and what kind of trouble Jane will get the CBI into! Already some rather interesting character relations have been built up, setting us up for what hopefully will be another fun filled season! As for the newer series, I’ll take a look at “Flashforward” and the new spin-off series of the Stargate franchise “Stargate Universe“… I question how that’ll go…
Moving on, I’ve been having a lot of troubles falling asleep the past few nights, once again in the midst of a “how should I spend my money?/which new mp3 player/phone should I get?”… And so, in order to solve my sleeping issues, I guess I had to make some form of decision. The toss up was a) iPod Touch b) Creative Zii EGG c) Samsung i8190 HD Icon or d) Hold out and wait for the newer super-special-awesome gadgets to be announced at CES 2010… As a result of unable to sleep well, I mangaed to come to the decision of taking a risk, and smuggle me a Creative Zii EGG with thanks to Sam and his “contact”, which will hopefully arrive sometime during my holidays. I could go into a long ramble about why I did so, but who’s going to read it right?
Oh yeah, I met up with Matt yesterday, one of my old primary school friends. As he works at McDonalds, I got the opportunity to somewhat willingly buy a Grand Angus burger. (The ads just got me overly curious…) I mean, from my last McDonalds experience, it wasn’t something I uberly wanted to try… But I was shocked when I actually ate it! It really does taste good!! Oh, his dad works for Qantas btw… hmm… … … … … … … … … …
It’s annoying now that I have several more tests coming up very soon, including Food Tech, Maths, Science and English! All in the last week of term? Cooru janai desu ne… *dislike* Maybe I should ask the all knowing Facebook Genie whether or not I’ll fail them? I’m sure he’s right! Ah well…
Yeah, this’ll be my last paragraph. I’d have written more but reason behind this is as follows: I haven’t been able to keep up my planned schedule of anime watching, and thus, I’ll be using this opportunity to do a little bit of catch-up… So, you all have fun!!!
Mmm… So, some more procrastination here and there, as I fail to come up with anything creative… I mean, hey, “thecornypaper” is far from a ‘good’ alias in terms of creativity, and whenever people ask me for my e-mail address… I really don’t like saying “corny underscore paper”… It’s just lame… really lame if you ask me… I mean, because I lack creativity to come up with something original or new, I just stuck with it, and couldn’t be bothered coming up with something better… But now, as thoughts of getting my own domain name are stronger than ever, I feel the need to change my alias!
“The Corny Paper” is a thing that has been hanging around since around 2004 I believe, and it’s just been that way since… Once I got into anime a little more, I couldn’t come up with anything creative for a new alias then, and so I just stuck with a common Japanese phrase… “Gochisosama”… But then, I became confused once I saw that it should have been spelt “Gochisousama” instead??? I dunno, but eitherway, it’s not a name that I like all that much… (I sometimes use “Gochisou” just because it’s shorter and sounds a tad… cuter?)
But anyway, main problem here, is that if I want to buy myself a domain name, what should my new name be??? (That’s more of a rhetorical question than anything else…)
But you know, that’s all just a small issue compared to more “real life” issues… Like money, and spending that money… But I think you’ve heard enough about me ramble on about mp3 players, so I’ll stop for now… But beware, as the holidays are arriving soon, and my money… begins to disappear!
Yes, so, before the holidays start, I have a few fun things to do! Two Maths tests, Food Tech Exam, Science Assignment and a Science Test… I just did a History Assessment… Which went rather “meh”-ish for me…
Meanwhile, anyone want to meet me on Omegle? =P
 With the second arc over, we’re onto the third! Thus, a few changes to the still awesome OP, and just when we thought we’ve met everyone, clearly there’s more… Once again, another interesting character development episode, and we begin the repeating events on the island of Rokkenjima, once again, to what looks like a much more promising arc!
Continue reading Umineko no naku koro ni – Episode III-I – Castling
 Ah… So, sadly, this marks the end of an era… A great anime series… Over… As Higurashi no naku koro ni Rei finishes up it’s five episode OVA, the series that is Higurashi, is over. So, how were they going to end such a wonderful series? Fan-service! (Not like girls in skimpy clothing or ecchi or any of that rediculous stuff that ruins a series.) This episode of Higurashi will be one of my favourites no doubt! Waaayyyy better than fan-service in episode One of Rei. Ah… This was a purely epic way, to conclude the series of Higurashi… They had decided to animate Higurashi Daybreak, and you can translate this to a very loose romantic comedy episode… (When I mean “loose”, I mean, not very, extremely, uberly loose…)
Continue reading Higurashi no naku koro ni Rei – Episode 5 – Daybreak Chapter
Yes, I’m still going to be on about mp3 players for a bit, but this one won’t be one of a long ramble. So, for those who live in America, those who were desperate for the Zune HD have probably already made their purchase. Unfortunately, those who live outside of the US won’t be getting an opportunity to buy an officially released Zune HD… There are quite a few videos of the new shiny out now, and many photos of the awesome product… I’d love to get me hands on one, and I’d probably buy me one right now if it weren’t for the current price on eBay/mp3outletstore.com.au…
Meanwhile, Archos, really the only company left to have announced their new products have finally come clean after many, many leaks… Archos has improved last year’s “Archos 5” and now runs Google Android! =D It’s a product that I’ll be looking forward to, and may be my solution to my dilemma of whether to get an iPod Touch, or import me a Zune HD, or see if I have any contacts that may be able to send me a Zii EGG…
Meanwhile… My money continues to disappear thanks to some expensive Japanese Anime imports. (It costs about $15AUD to import a CD single!) So I’ll be down a quite a bit again… But no where near as much as what I spent on audioware… If I take into account that I’ll be buying me a new uber-mp3 player, as well as future expenditure, I’d still be stuck with the same amount of money I have now… So that kinda fails… Anyway…
So, Homework… Yes… I have two maths tests coming up very soon… As well as my final Food Tech exam, a History assessment and Science stuffs I need to work on… That shall be fun for the next few weeks eh? But on those notes, we did recently finish our novel study on “Brave New World”… Haven’t even read through all of it… I’m a slow reader, and thus… I don’t read books… The last book I read entirely would have been the one I had to read last year for English… No, I don’t read books, and thus, I don’t care all that much about Dan Brown’s recent release either… But yeah… not too sure how well I did for the essay we had to write about the book… =P
Okay, so that’s all from me at the moment… I’ve been trying to squeeze in a lot of things in here and there recently, and so it’s been a hard time for me to keep my blogs and twitter etc up to date… Even though I know not many of you care/read my blog anyway… (I got a lot of spam comments recently…)
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