Life

Firstly, an update on a couple of things from last week. My small box of CDs arrived, quite far ahead of schedule, so that was nice. Suruga-ya, the online storefront for second-hand goods that I get my Japanese CDs from when they have free shipping promotions, only has a DHL shipping option now (and this was true the last time I ordered from them too) — the EMS delivery option does not seem to be an option they offer any longer. This is too bad because DHL will always charge me a ludicrous customs fee that the EMS, which ships via Canada Post within Canada, usually does not, essentially nullifying the free shipping savings. Something to the tune of $22 or so for 7 CDs in a big box. I wonder what happens if I just order 1 CD.

I might try that at some point from their store as a mild form of revenge because one of the CD cases they sent me in a previous package was actually missing one of the two CDs that it was supposed to have come with, and I haven’t gotten around to replacing that yet. They aren’t as worth it now as the first few times that I bought from them, since the price markup on the international site compared to the regular Japanese site has risen, shipping has gotten worse, and the interest rate is less favourable now as well, but I still do check back from time to time to see if anything on my wishlist ends up there for cheap. Shipping was really quick though, which I suppose justified the price — it only took 4-5 days to arrive, and that includes the time the store needed to gather and package up the CDs.

And when the DHL delivery person finally arrived with the box on Thursday, I was cooking soup in the kitchen when I met him at the door and he mentioned that the smell wafting out the door was very nice, haha. I think it was the Sazon Goya spice packets that I bought back in July that he smelled.

I also decided on a new chair this week, and I ended up purchasing a one from Wayfair that ticked all my boxes and seemed good enough for my liking, this Leasure Side Chair (local). It’s cheap enough, clocking in at a little over $165 after GST, although one thing that does worry me is that they also had an identical chair on sale on their website, under a different model name, that was $100 more expensive. I even compared the furniture specifications and everything. By the time I came back two days later to try to find the link for it though, it was gone and the page only redirected to the $150 one.

The other problem with the chair is that although it comes with free shipping, and has already been shipped, it’s slated to arrive between Sep 28 and Oct 02, which clashes with the dates that I might potentially be away at my parents’ place. Oh well, we’ll see. I have hopes that it will come earlier than that. I’m using a backup kitchen chair now but it’s stiff and hurts my butt.

I did talk to my parents and siblings this week though, and after further discussion, it looks like there isn’t much of a point for me to go down to my parents’ place and stay overnight or anything like that while Jon is overseas and Mom is recovering from her upcoming heart surgery. However, I’ll definitely be making visits during the week down to the hospital while Mom‘s there rehabbing, and then probably on weekends to the house once she’s back home so that Dad can go out and do errands and such.

I used a fake A1A 1A1 postal code for that local screenshot copy above, but when I looked it up on a map out of sheer curiosity, it apparently actually maps to a real location in St John‘s, NL, over on the east side of Canada.

Interesting. It’s doubly interesting because that Terry Fox memorial located just to the west of the highlighted region allows me to segue into my next weekly note — I had a second set of random door-to-door visitors this week in the early evening just after closing hours — two women were knocking on doors and trying to solicit donations for the Terry Fox Foundation. They didn’t push the issue and left when I said that I was not interested. This is still technically illegal — they’re trespassing in an area with no soliciting signs and had to have tailgated someone to get through the front security doors, but it’s still interesting to see people do it, and both the times I’ve seen solicitors now they have come by just after office closing time so no one’s about to hear any complaints from the residents, haha. It’s also interesting because I lived 12 years in the Edmonton 205 apartment and never ever had anyone come solicit me for donations there as far as I remember. Now there’s been two here in about 4 months.

That Polish shop that I had bought the toothpastes from back in July actually did refund me my purchase in full this week — I did lose out on about $1 CAD after the conversions back and forth and Paypal’s fee, but I had paid out $17.02 USD ($24.35 CAD) back in July and received back $17.02 USD ($23.03 CAD) this week. Good enough!

I somehow managed to snap my front door key in half this week. I don’t want to talk about it. As Jon said before he came over with the spare key that my family holds on to: Box 1, Key 0. I was going to attach a picture of it but I realized that people could probably reverse engineer a key from the picture… so no. Jon came by on Saturday with that spare key and some snacks from Mom though, so I made a small profit from it all, assuming I don’t have to pay too much for the key replacement.

I recently added a new tea to the Great tier on Tigey‘s Tea-Testers Guild Report — this one is called S.O.D. Anti-Acid Tea, from a brand called Red Sun, and it was something I bought in Singapore and have not seen anywhere else. It’s great though. I especially like making a flask of it at once with my Takeya Iced Tea Maker that I wrote about elsewhere in the same blog post. Anyway I wanted to capture a picture of the tea as well for when I don’t have the box anymore in the future:

There was a fire alarm in the building this week, and I went outside again along with like maybe 33% of the residents in the building, everyone else didn’t seem to care and just stayed in, looking down at the commotion from their balconies. I did get a picture of a neighbour’s cat from outside though:

The firemen, when they came, were so unconcerned that they took the elevator UP to the fire alarm that was going off to check out the siren, before coming back down to turn it off. So much for not using elevators during an emergency. But we get a fair number of false alarms, I guess. The alarms went off a second time later in the week but this time only lasted for 30 seconds or so, and I hadn’t even made it out of the door yet before it ended. And then, on Saturday, it went off for a THIRD time — this time we all rushed out again, and got to chill with a rabbit while the usual group of firemen came.

I didn’t see which alarm went off the second time, but the first and third one were the same alarm — Alarm 001 on the 8th floor. Very rude.

Next, sky pictures from the week. I have some lovelies this week — there was so much beautiful colour. To start off with, some pictures from last Sunday evening, so September 15th at 7:32 pm:

And 7:44 pm soon after:

There was rain at a medium distance, but not right where I was (though it came by later), and not in the far horizon, and it made for a wildly beautiful sunset, with the sun engulfed in the mist of the falling rain.

Monday, September 16’s sunset looked like this at 7:22 pm:

And then at 8:01 pm:

Beautiful windswept skies. There was even an aurora that night, although with the naked eye it just looked like white mist. When I used my camera though it looked like this:

Quite faint, but I live in a very bright area of the city so I was happy that I could see it at all.

Tuesday the 17th’s sunset, circa 7:44 pm or so, looked like this:

There was a large harvest moon that night but I did not catch a glimpse of it from my balcony, though I took a picture of it the next morning at 7:35 am on Wednesday:

The next evening, on Thursday the 19th at 7:24 pm, dark clouds started to move in in force from the south as sunset approached:

And then on Friday the 20th, at 7:20 pm, there was this cool sight that looked like there was a UFO hiding together with the sun in the clouds, capturing things via an alien sunbeam shining down in the distance through a hole in the clouds.

Also on Friday night, there was someone in a nearby neighbourhood who was firing off probably-illegal fireworks. I could actually see them from my balcony:

Cool. And Saturday at 7:31 pm gave this:

And finally, about the quote I led the diary entry off with. If my dreams don’t scare me, they aren’t big enough. After last week’s post, where I mused about creative ways to harness my love for travelling and writing, I found a seed of an idea that I want to try to nurture.

To preface this, I doubt it will ever work out, but I’m used to having extremely long-term goals and big, big plans that don’t always work out. For example, my gender transition took 15 years to come to fruition from when I realized I was transgendered, and 6 years since I first actually was in a position to reach out for help and start the ball rolling, to when I finally finished the process and found that happiness in my life. And then my project of reaching out to the Singaporean authorities to fix my National Service status after that took 4.5 years before I was able to freely walk in and out of Changi Airport customs and immigration at my leisure, and along the way I earned being able to revisit my old school and connect with a lot of my old friends again.

Similarly, my struggle to go to Japan and study there, while only partially successful (though arguably this was the best outcome in the end), took about 4 years as well, and I earned a bunch of sweet successes along the way, like learning a modicum of Japanese, and visiting the country three times along the way, including going to Ritsumeikan for their RSJP and meeting Zian there.

I think that having these sorts of large goals gives me a focus in life, even though I already have an overarching signpost in life (to archive everything for future generations). This blog is part of that, though it’s more a vehicle than a goal in and of itself, and building a computer game someday is also a goal off in the distance that I may or may not ever reach. And the point of a lot of these goals is that they encompass a long path leading toward a big dream that will provide (or force me to find) ways to improve and enrich my life in multiple ways along the journey. I might fail to achieve the ultimate goal in the end, or if the original goal shifts to something else as I meander around in life then I might take a detour to that other destination instead, and all that is okay because there will be a lot of smaller sub-goals along the way that I will have achieved, and hopefully loved.

So, I now have a new goal, and I thought for quite a bit about how to phrase this one, but I’m just going to start with the equivalent of shooting the moon, the ultimate golden trophy prize that I will probably never achieve, and then dial it back and explore all the other things that might come out of that. So, the foremost, ultimate form of my newest goal right now is to join the English branch of hololive, the current largest/best female VTuber agency, as a VTuber and streamer. That’s the furthest possible destination along this path I can see from here.

For various reasons, I know this will never happen. My voice range isn’t great, my accent is a mess, I have no streaming experience, I’m not glib enough and can’t think on my feet, I’m probably a real life generation older than the youngsters they’re surely aiming to recruit, I’m not even more than passingly familiar with any of them, there’s the whole transgendered thing, the whole juggling my job at the same time while staying “anonymous” (and how this blog intersects with that), not knowing how to be particularly entertaining, and so on and so forth. They also get tens of thousands of applications, apparently, to the point even successful applicants often have to apply many multiple times first, and they would never take a second glance at mine since I don’t have unique skillsets.

So it is the equivalent of announcing that I want to perform at the Budokan or Wembley Stadium or the Sydney Opera House while having no experience whatsoever. More than likely I will stop partway along the way, reaping the rewards that I’ve gotten up to that point. Yet, that’s fine, and I wonder how far I can get. It’s a fun dream to.. dream about, and aim for, and it’s not actually about achieving that in the end — there are many possible other outcomes as well besides joining an insanely popular and competitive streamer idol supergroup at the end of the day. Or nothing at all, and that is totally fine too. I can’t see all the options from here yet, and I don’t want to list the ones I do know as I don’t like to look that far in the future, but I hope to find some nice gems and victories along the way.

The reason I set this as a goal is because I was looking at things that I could combine travel and writing with, and happened to be watching a bunch of VTubers in the past two weeks as well. And at one point I looked at their permanent audition page (local) and form (local) and also read up on the process, and wondered if I could combine the two. It’s so not going to work. But, a big chunk of it seems to be having a strong goal in mind, and it made me wonder about what ways I could find to combine my travel/writing thing with “another thing” and make it work. *hololive* probably won’t accept it, and that’s fine, but just reading the template and fleshing out my initial idea is like building a business proposal that I would be able to take to other companies too, and those opportunities are the ones that I don’t know exist yet, but hope to find in the future, inside or outside of various kinds of streaming, and THAT’S what’s important. It made me consider several aspects that I had not thought of regarding what travelling and blogging/vlogging would need to look like, despite having watched other travel vlogging streams.

Even outside of all that, knowing how to work with the technical side of streaming and/or podcasting, would be a boon for any future game I might make, and working on my voice used to be a big goal of mine (and was a reason I went to South Korea for my voice feminization surgery back in 2014 and 2015 in the first place).

I can type and write well and express myself through text at a level that I am very happy with, but voice is another matter, and even at work I tend to shy away from and refuse phone calls when possible, though I generally have no problems connecting with a client once I actually am on a call with them. Now and then I still run into people who say they can’t understand me because I inflect words weirdly or speak too quickly, and it would be nice to get rid of that quirk, or at least get it under control, while at the same time trying to expand my voice’s pitch range and strength. I also tend to shrink away from conversations in groups larger than two, and so on, and that would be nice to fix.

So, while the “shoot the moon” goal above is ridiculous, and purposely so, the more realistic and *actual* small goal is just practicing and training things to do with my voice and seeing what doors open up, for now. Hopefully streaming in the near future, but who knows. I also want to learn audio stuff in general, especially if I ever get around to learning how use musical instruments, or art doodling, both of which are other potential sub-goals, but even just for general technical knowledge. Or perhaps I have just been watching too many Twitch streamers lately. But I kinda want to reinvent myself. And so, to that end, I did a few things.

Firstly, since my bank account had more than recovered from my trip in April/May, I did some research and then purchased a microphone, the Shure MV7X, and an audio interface, the Elgato Wave, from Amazon, plus a couple other peripheral things for about $500 in total. I generally feel really nervous about making big purchases and have to fret over it before pulling the trigger, that’s just the way I am — but not for this one, I was fully confident and excited in this and made the purchase the same day that I did the research and started putting together a list of what I needed.

One of those other peripherals I bought was this microphone arm, but when I put it together I found that it seemed to be missing one of the accessories inside of it, the 3/8″ to 5/8″ adapter for the microphone to screw into, which I needed. So I contacted the product support and they refunded me half the price so that I could go get another one instead. So that was nice. Especially when I then realized afterwards that my Shure MV7X also came with a similar 3/8″ to 5/8″ adapter, so I used that one instead. I don’t think I like a mic hanging level to or above my head though, so I might try a tripod stand instead.

Secondly, I actually picked a game and started to play it while practising game commentary on it. I am only doing local recordings for now, as it is coming out pretty terribly, but it’s nice being able to practice talking and trying to avoid dead air or talking my way into a dead end like I always do where possible, while not having it streamed and thus not being judged for it. And absolutely fail at voice acting because I don’t have any variance in my voice at all, without being judged for it. On the flip side though, there’s also nothing I can react to to keep the conversation going since there’s no one to bounce conversations back and forth with. Anyway, I committed to myself to do this for one hour a day every day, and I will see if I can more or less keep this going for as long as possible. I need to listen to myself speak.

Anyway, this week I allowed myself to dream about the path that I wanted to take going forward and any potential goals that I might reach in the end. I think dreaming is healthy, and this particular dream left butterflies in my stomach pretty much for the entire week, similar to the sensation when I am getting ready to board a plane and go overseas for a vacation. It’s a sensation I like a lot. I felt like a secret princess this week.

As an amusing sidenote, it doesn’t help (or maybe, it helps immensely) as well that the current anime that we are watching for Anime Group Watch is Skip Beat!, an amazing and hilarious show about trying to break into showbiz, with inspirational lines like “To reach your dreams, you have to keep fighting, even if it means getting a bit dirty along the way.” and “I want to experience lots of new things, learning from them to broaden my world. I want to do my absolute best to discover my true self.”