From Far Away....

That's actually the title of a manga I'm reading right now. It's published by Viz, but they don't have a link for it yet. It's an excellent story, and the art is quite nice. Bishounens are quite tasty, and the girls are cute. Story centers around Noriko, a student who somehow gets transported to another world and meets a young man, Izark, who saves her. She's prophesied to be the trigger that can destroy the world, and Izark also has special abilities that has some dark origins. Sounds pretty typical right? The difference in this manga, versus something like Fushigi Yuugi, is that Noriko actually thinks about what she does. Noriko can't magically understand their language, so she has to actively work to learn it which leads to some funny moments but is also very natural. Additionally she knows that if there's a dangerous situation, she should hide or run away, not rush into it or stand there screaming like a ninny waiting for some guy to rescue her. Izark also isn't instantly smitten w/ her, and actually ponders killing her even after they've been together for several months b/c of what she could be. Noriko does develop a special ability later on, but the key word is "developing". Nothing worse than characters that seems to gain a skill or something after 1 panel. I only have up to Vol 4 right now, but it's been really good.

Crap, I just realized I vacuumed up one of Wolfwood's pistols. I have a Nicholas Wolfwood figure, and he fell over, and the back of the hand that allows him hold onto his cross-machinegun/missile launcher/pistol armory (I don't know else to call it) fell off, so I was going to try and reattach it, again, and totally forgot that he was holding a pistol in his other hand for the pose I put him in. DAMMIT!!

My throat's completely shot. I have to breathe really shallow or else I go into a coughing fit. And then I taste blood and something else. I went to J's house yesterday to RPG w/ our friend's C and M. J has a cat called Harvey, who's really cute and fluffy. Unfortunately a little too hairy, and I'm allergic to cats. So for the first hour I was just blowing my noise, then after about 3 hours, I start coughing. But the end of the night, I was wheezing. I could barely sleep last night my throat hurt so much, and I had to put a heavy cream on my nose b/c it was so rough from all the blowing. I think I finished a box of tissue. They really need to develop something for us pet lovers w/ allergies. Some kinda shot or something.

Anyways, I got the presents to C and M. They didn't seem too miffed that I missed their party the other weekend. Of course it's hard to miss something when you were't told it existed. Although when M brought his PS2 and found out the PS1 controllers don't work w/ the game and I told him, "you shoulda told me you were going to bring it so I could bring my controllers", he was like "Meh". I don't think I like the YuYu Hakusho fighting game. It just doesn't seem responsive to commands.

Also from far away, actually Korea, my friend H has gotten access to the Internet, so now all of us can read what she's been up to. I know she's been in Los Angeles, but she sounds more overwhelmed by the sheer scale of Seoul. The language barrier doesn't help either. She was mentioning how a lot of the Koreans thought their English sucked so they won't use it, even though it's very good. I know that was how I felt w/ my Chinese when I went back to HK and visited my relatives. But when I spoke to strangers, they didn't notice anything. But I've basically more or less actively tried to delete my Chinese from my vocabulary b/c I usually only get lectured or screamed at in Chinese by my Dad, and when I was w/ my relatives they basically pointed out how poor my comprehension was, so it's like fine, whatever.