Goodbye 2019, hello 2020!

[takenoko]

Hey, so what were some of your big accomplishments in the last year?

Think my big thing was going to England. Although I also had TN members drop by my area, which was equally as cool.

Mediawise, I checked off Orphan Black off my list at last. Marathoned The Office for the first time (Office Ladies podcast is great, if you're a fan). Animewise I finally watched Madoka Magica. Netflixed She-Ra and Russian Doll. Said goodbye to Game of Thrones, Star Wars, Mr. Robot, Crazy Ex Girlfriend, and probably more I'm forgetting.

Games I've played: Control, Dragon Quest Builders 2, Iceborne, Astro Bot REscue, Death's Gambit, I Expect you To Die, Spider-man, Sekiro, Tetris Effect, Subnautica

TV-Nihonwise we finished Zi-O, Tokusatsu GAGAGA, Super Sentai Saikyou Battle, Lupin VS Pat. We even snuck some Ultraman and CMs in there too. First release was Zi-O 17 (4483 release). Last release of the year was Zi-O HBV (4629 release).

We had our first successful donation drive to offset the material cost of running the site (buying blu-rays, the subscription to Toei's streaming service, running a seedbox, etc.) Previously we had only asked for money for the server fees. This is probably why I'm not a businessman, heh!

And I was lucky enough to get 4-5 people to come to a game night I hosted at my house, which was a first for me.

Hope 2020 means new adventures, cool advances in technology, new experiences, and a new president!

[TypicalStandUser]

Critical Role: Art of Exandria exhibit: I met Marisha Ray, Matt Mercer's wife. I wanted to meet Matt but too many fans were swarming him. Also met Ashley Johnson of Last of Us in said exhibit.

Game Realms: Erika Harlacher/Ann from P5, Corina Boettger/Tatsumaki's new dub actress for One Punch Man S02, Brianna Knickerbocker/Rin from Catherine: Full Body.

Monsterpalooza 2019: Bruce Campbell!!

AX: met Erica Lindbeck AKA Black Cat from PS4!SpiderMan, Stephanie Panisello AKA new voice actress for Claire in Resident Evil 2 Remake, former JAV actress-turned-youtuber Kaho Shibuya and Moxxi's actress Brina Palencia. Tried to meet Rica Matsumoto but the line for her got too long that it had to be capped.

Hollywood: Macoto Tezka, Osamu Tezuka's son, who's currently showing a film adaptation of one of his father's works, Barbara.

Japan World Heroes 2019: Takayuki Tsubaki of Kamen Rider Blade & Stephen Sean Ford of Kamen Rider Dragon Knight.

[hiro9796]

Well, after two semesters of miserable repeatition, I finally achieved finished and graduated from UTP. Haven't given much thought about what to do next other than finding a job for a living. Not really sure that I wanted to further my studies when I don't feel like doing that. Parents of my friends who I encountered by chance was like you should pursue Master and Philosophy Doctor even when my heart and thinking objects that.
I am aware that there are millions of unemployed graduates like myself being job seekers, trying to apply jobs pretty much anywhere while hoping the payment would be decent enough to cover basic livings if the job is not within the same city or state. I hope I would get a decent job one day.
Now, what else. I do really enjoy Super Sentai Saikyou Battle, Lupin VS Pat a lot. I know its like two years gap already and why you are collecting them now and such, but I am currently collecting Lupin VS Pat toys (VS Changer, VS Vehicles, X trains in possesion) and I want them because I like it and the series itself. Sure there are flaws with VSX toys and stories but I just like them. Right now, I am looking for DX Lupin Magnum but unfortunately, since I am not yet working, I don't have a credit card to purchase from global online stores. For now, I could only hope I get a job to apply for credit cards and/or one of my country's third party seller to put them in one of the local online stores. Oh and I don't collect DX butter knifes from Kamen Rider or Super Sentai, it does not feel worth it. DX guns seems like a good size even if they are slightly smaller for an adult to hold it but not wrist changer, sword, lance, axe or bow. So, I don't think I want Ryusoulger toys at all from these aspects along with the show's below average performance. Again, I know these are kids' toys. If the 44th series Sentai toys seems decent, I'll consider if I really want them from the stories and toy reviewers.
Anyway, that is all I want to say. Wish you all a Happy New Year and stay safe wherever you are.

[takenoko]

Yeah, I don't know if graduate school is best if you're not feeling it. Plus loans and stuff would be more debt to pay back when you do get a job.

I really like collecting kid's toys, but I really have to like the series to justify it lol.

[hiro9796]

Yeah, I don't know if graduate school is best if you're not feeling it. Plus loans and stuff would be more debt to pay back when you do get a job.

Correction. Its college. But anyhow, while I am trying to find a job, my worries from apart gettinh loans would be the tax income whole thing from yield institute. The thing is I am living with my parents. Then, when they started talking about this, none of it was pretty. It's all complains. This institute's taxing so extreme that its not reasonable in more ways than one. The institute need to reach a certain profit margin annually for the country. I got that point. Second, the institute literally fabricates non-existent debts or include cleared debts as uncleared into the list to pay. Seriously, this is one thing that is so wrong. To them, you need to declare, pay in time, do it properly. One wrong step in anything, they sue you for the mistakes. Third, you don't get even the minimum required benefit like medics. As my father suggest, the poors got away free from getting donations, the richest had no problem with it but the average people suffered to no end. Again, I am still learning all this and might be overacting but I feel disappointed for the non-ending torture and ignorance for this. I mean, the institute itself did not even listen to the feedback and such. All the institute finds were excuses to charge more than they can bite. I know that's just how reality is but when will the government realised the circumstances and such. Sorry, I don't even know anymore.

[decade368990]

I finally quit my job on May 2019. March 25th was supposed to be my last day at work since I handed in my resignation letter on Feb. But my boss told me it was peak season, I was forced to delay a few months longer in order to make guidelines, train a newbie, and do an annual report. I reluctantly did it. Now I am free from work.

After the resignation day, I spent quite a lot of money to improvise myself. I bought a 27 inches iMac, Mac version of Adobe CC, and a 5TB hard-drive to make myself more comfortable, efficiency, and convenient working on the wiki.

Around middle of June, I worked the GoRanger to Fiveman main pages of our wiki on Takenoko's request since those pages were emptied for years. For the navigation headers, I cropped the background of the GoRanger title logo via Photoshop. Days later, I found the result was rather dissatisfied. So I thought it would be better if I retrace the logo on Illustrator and I found the result far better than cropping background in Photoshop.

I am unemployed since June and people call me lazy without a job. Actually no, I have been laying low, retracing all Showa Sentai title logo, except Liveman. Now I am also doing the Earth Defense Organization logo for the Ultraman series as well. I have a few published on our wiki, I am still tweaking the rest.

[Catastrophe]

Graduate school can be an aggressive waste of time depending on the field. I was in academia for years before I changed to industry and in hindsight could have avoided getting my PhD and just got a job earlier.

[takenoko]

Correction. Its college. But anyhow, while I am trying to find a job, my worries from apart gettinh loans would be the tax income whole thing from yield institute.

Oh I see. Yeah, it's a tough crossroads. I went to college, but I don't think it's the right path for everyone. And I certainly wasn't ready for college right out of high school, like my mind was just not mature enough yet.

I finally quit my job on May 2019. After the resignation day, I spent quite a lot of money to improvise myself. I bought a 27 inches iMac, Mac version of Adobe CC, and a 5TB hard-drive to make myself more comfortable, efficiency, and convenient working on the wiki.

Oh dang, I hope you didn't quit your job just to work on our wiki. I really appreciate the help with the maintenance, but work life balance is important too. Maybe can spin the skills you gain working with us into your next job?

[decade368990]

Oh dang, I hope you didn't quit your job just to work on our wiki. I really appreciate the help with the maintenance, but work life balance is important too. Maybe can spin the skills you gain working with us into your next job?

I worked at a printing company for 3 years. There were occasion of my colleagues leaving their positions to do something else. I was forced to take over their jobs without guidelines and clues. I had to figure out the little steps and rebuild notes from scratch. For some tasks, I had no idea of how to do it and my boss was pushing me so hard to guess things in a fast way. So, I ended up staying up late at work until 12:00am occasionally.

Some of my colleagues were lucky to have their peak season only August to November every year. My peak season every year was from March to November.

I quit my job not just because I want to spend more time working on our wiki. It just things took the toll and I was exhausted from repeatedly going through such experience.

[XIII]

Dang, only just spotted this, so big accomplishments of last year...

Ran 4 half marathons, set 2 new PB's at the distance, now standing at 1:51:10
Ran several 10k races and dropped my PB to 48 mins
Dropped my parkrun PB to 23:08
Visited San Fran and LA and got to hang with Trips and Noko. Almost scuttled when Thomas Cook collapsed, but made it work mostly on the rebooking. I did finally get the refund mid-december. Put early plans in place for another meet up in 2021 in Vegas
Visited Gothernburg for midsummer festival (completly by chance I booked for the same weekend), interesting food and drink choices there.
Dublin was also good fun at the end of the year.

Didnt really do much in the way TV and Movies as most of the time I wasnt working or running or traveling, I was relaxing to music. Did watch back through Taskmaster, and that always amuses.

A busy year generally and I am going to be pushing a fair bit this year, and I started on that once I got back from LA and took on a running coach to get me to a marathon distance. Im up to 16 miles in a long run now and not overtly feeling bad, aside from burning off 2500+ calories on the runs, much case of "feed me".

Trips wise, I am off to Iceland in Feb to take part in some new activities (snowmobiling, horse riding and snorkling between tectonic plates), Prague in March for a half marathon that attracts 11,500 runners (will be the biggest event I have taken part in). Early plans in montion to go to Tomin Solvenia for Metaldays, Copenhagen for maybe another half marathon and a possibly a relaxing trip to Berlin.

Come November, itll be time to start planning Vegas for November 2021.

[takenoko]

Trips wise, I am off to Iceland in Feb to take part in some new activities (snowmobiling, horse riding and snorkling between tectonic plates), Prague in March for a half marathon that attracts 11,500 runners (will be the biggest event I have taken part in). Early plans in montion to go to Tomin Solvenia for Metaldays, Copenhagen for maybe another half marathon and a possibly a relaxing trip to Berlin.

Come November, itll be time to start planning Vegas for November 2021.

Man that sounds really cool. Kick ass!