Girls Band Party 2022

 Back again to blog after 2 years, and this time it is about BanG Dream again. The concert that was postponed in May 2020 which I briefly mentioned in my previous post finally happened and I was able to attend it. Grateful that Japan's borders finally opened to tourist without much restriction. I had been balloting for every concert that Popipa was involved in to eventually be disappointed because I wasn't able to enter the country. 

Oh boy, what an amazing experience it was and to finally see Popipa in real life, it was an emotional experience for me. That 3-year long wait to see my favourite band. Aimi crying during Live Beyond!! and during the encore speech at the end adds the stab to the heart. In addition, I FINALLY HEARD KIZUNA MUSIC LIVE!!! My all time favourite song! Ahhh!!! The whole experience was almost perfect if it wasn't for the absence of Amita and the restriction to cheer out loud.

As a bonus this time around, my supposedly short solo trip was extended to a week as my family decided to come along. It really has been a long time since I had a family trip overseas.

Anyway, I am not done with BanG Dream concert yet. I await the day where I can attend a Popipa solo concert with cheering allowed. Hopefully by next year.

Being a BanG Dreamer

    It started casually in September 2018 with me finding an anime song mobile rhythm game to play. BanG Dream was one of the games that appeared in my Play store search. The song “Butterfly” and “Secret Base” from the game screenshot is enough to convince me to download the game and give it a try. Initially, I did not bother about the game story and characters as I was skipping through them. My only intention was just playing the game. Soon, I found out the game also has an anime. This started my fall into the fandom, it made me interested with their characters. I started to pay more attention to the characters and stories in game, and original songs began growing onto me. Then I discovered some of the in-game bands are also real-life bands with the voice actresses (hereinafter referred to as “seiyuu”, the Japanese word for voice actor) representing their characters in real-life performing live. I then watched some of their live performance videos from previous concerts; It looked so hyped and so much fun, so I told myself I must attend their concert one day.

    Half a year later, I found the community Discord group and this essentially sealed my soul in this fandom especially on the real-world side. I learned so much more regarding the franchise and the seiyuus. My appreciation for the seiyuus grew tremendously. Somehow, they have the time to voice record, practise their instrument, rehearse, appear on programmes related to the franchise and allocate time for work in other series. Within slightly over a year since I started, I attended my first concert from the BanG Dream franchise in November 2019. This was a joint concert from two bands in the franchise namely Roselia and Raise A Sullen (RAS), able to see two bands perform in one concert is a good deal for me, killing two birds with one stone.

    I was supposed to return to Japan this year for another BanG Dream concert in May but Covid-19 happened and that event was postponed indefinitely. And just when I thought I could finally see my favourite band from the franchise Poppin' Party (Popipa) live next month, the country borders are still closed. 2020 be killing my hopes and dreams. I am not going to give up and will continue trying to attend a Popipa concert hopefully in 2021.

    This month marks my 2nd anniversary with BanG Dream. This is the second mobile game that managed to keep me playing for two years. My playtime now is lesser than the first year but for the franchise as a whole, I am still very devoted to it especially to Popipa. I really love them. This is the first time I am actively part of the local fan community. Currently, a moderator for the local franchise Discord server, MYANDORI. Met so many great people there. I am uncertain for how long more will my love and support stay in this franchise, but while I am still into it, I will enjoy this journey and make memories.

Poppin' Party in real live

Poppin' Party in the game/anime

My Decade Highlights

- Entered university and graduated with a degree
- Organising Chairperson for a camp
- Saw Arsenal play live 
- Started a new (and niche) hobby
- Started a full-time job
- Joined an international fandom community and meeting some of them
- Visited Japan (one of my wishlist) and eventually flying there just for a concert

For the next decade, I really should be focusing on finding a life partner and eventually starting a family. At the same time, continue to progress in my career.

2016 update

It is time for a way overdue updates. It has been more than a year since my last post. Will make this post short (since I am bad in writing long stuff anyway). This blog is practically for my own reference only.

Ok, I will just put in point form on whatever I can remember and what took place since my last post.

• Started my full-time job in a small ISP doing internet installation and support, after that changed department into data center for IT support. 
• After a short stint with the company, I am now with an IT MNC doing network support. Reason for the company change; I want to have a more network specialised job scope and currently what I am doing is on path with my career goal. 
• Recently bought a new phone. Had been surviving with a Windows Phone for the pass 2.5 years. Honestly, it is a very good phone but due to lack of popular app I took the jump to Android. Another main reason is I want to play Pokemon Go. The hype is real! Currently using Huawei P8, pretty good phone with an affordable price for a flagship. 
• I am still into figure collecting, if you are interested to see what I own, this is my MFC profile

Basically, that is about it. Nothing major happened besides building my career. Till next time.

P.S: 

What happened to all my previous post photos? All images are corrupted and I really don't want to trouble myself and find back those photos and put a working image link. Besides, I can't remember what are the exact photos for some of it.

A New Adventure

Hello, Happy New Year 2015! 2014 for me was general a more negative than positive year for me. Nevertheless, I thank God for those positive moments and will put negative moments behind me at the same time learn from it.

Hoping for a more positive 2015 and so far so good. Managed to let go of a burden that I had been carrying for more than 6 months. lol. Tomorrow I begin my first day into a full time job. I pray that I can find passion in what I do.

My Internship, Final Part

On November 28, I completed my 6 and a half month internship with HP. It has been a great learning experience and a good exposure to the IT industry. Oh how I realised that what I learned in uni is lacking behind the industry. Can't blame the uni for that, the IT industry changes too fast. I have to learn almost everything from 0 for all the works I did in HP but in the end, I still managed to deliver what is suppose to be done.

Currently taking a short break at the same time looking for a job in the network or system field. Want to develop my career from there. Software development isn't my cup of tea.

The End of Another Life Chapter

14th November 2014, the day of my convocation and officially the end of my undergraduate life. 4 years of study and finally got to that day. All glory to God. My greatest gratitude to my parents for their unending love and support. 

These past 4 years in INTI indeed had been a really amazing journey of learning, growth and discovery. Filled with ups and downs, unforgettable memories and great friendship. I am glad I got to experience an awesome campus life. University life will be one the highlight of my life, an experience I will truly treasure. 

THANK YOU INTI INTERNATIONAL UNIVERSITY!

No Facebook 2

Back in August I deactivated by FB for more than a week to test how it feels like not using FB for a period. That post can be found after this post. Haha, shows that I have not post a blog post since August.

This time, I did the same thing again and it has been more than a month since I last logged into FB. I deactivated my account again on 7th October. Honestly speak, this time around it is much easier. Previously I accidentally opened the FB page several times throughout that 7 days and this time I think I only opened it once or twice. I seriously am in the lost of what is going on in the social media world but it doesn't really bothers me. However, there are a few minor stuff that is bothering me. There are some photos I would want to share/upload but I can't because 90% of my photos are shared on FB and some websites or contest required FB access which is another annoying thing. Perhaps I might start an Instagram account soon since it is purely for sharing photo. xD

P.S: There had been 3 relatives death this year. Not a very good 2014 :/

P.P.S: Last month of my internship

A week without Facebook experiment

There were a few articles on Linkedin about people quitting Facebook recently. I'd realised that I too spent a lot of time on that social networking site and decided to try and see for myself what does it feels like not logging in to Facebook. Therefore, I decided to deactivate my fb account for at least a week starting today and deactivated it yesterday night before I went to sleep. I had tried 3 days without internet during my cruise trip and I had no problem with it. I guess no fb for a week shouldn't be much of a problem too.

I would like to blog about my experience here and this post will be updated daily for a week.

Day 1 - It's been 24 hours since I deactivated my account. So far, I have no desire to reactivate it and I don't feel I am missing out on anything. Only accidentally open fb login page as I am so used to opening Facebook when I start my browser.

Day 2 - It is a weekend therefore I am having more free time in front of the computer. Using those free time to read. Currently I am still having no problem with it. I doubt I am missing anything important anyway.

Day 3 - Accidentally opened Facebook login page twice today. Looks like subconsciously, I still can't get rid of that habit yet.

Day 4 - Again, I accidentally opened Facebook login page once today. I am starting to miss checking out my of my close friends latest update. It won't be a big deal I guess, could always ask them about their life when I meet them in person.

Day 5 - It has been more than half a week. I might miss some things on fb but I honestly think I can survive without fb. I am not feeling any compulsion or urgency yet to reactivate my account. Is it because my mind is only thinking that one week is a very short time? Since I am feeling good so far, I will most likely continue my deactivation period after Day 7.

Day 6 - I usually depend on fb for updates about stuff I am interested in such as Nintendo, anime and new figure release. Without fb, I now have some extra work by regularly checking forums or their website for news and update. It is a bit inconvenient but still manageable.

Day 7 - Woot! I made it, 7 days without logging in to fb. It was a very easy experiment. Did not suffer from any withdrawal syndrome except the occasional accident of opening the login page. (>_<)

Through this 7 days, I got to spend more time reading book (currently reading A Game of Thrones) and also reading different articles on LinkedIn. The last 7 days also did help me on my spiritual development. I realised that fb is mostly just a source of entertainment for me and only a little on reconnecting me with friends as I can always reach them through whatsapp or text message. I believe I am definitely, missing a lot of stupid stuff on fb, therefore laughing less frequently from those troll posts. However, it isn't really a big lost. I am able to carry out more beneficial activities with those extra free time I have instead of staring blankly into fb and waiting for some interesting post to pop out.

My account will continue staying deactivated for now. I shall try to reach the one month milestone now and perhaps blog about it when the time comes.

---Update---

Unfortunately, I had some unfinished business on FB during that time and reactivated back my account few days later. I shall try again one month without FB soon.

My Internship, Part 3

Another blog post regarding internship. Seems like the only interesting thing going on with my life is my internship. My engagement with my previous manager somehow ended prematurely, it was suppose to last until end of the month but I got reassigned to a new manager yesterday. I guess this is because it is easier to join together with the new batch of interns as they all got assigned to different managers yesterday.

I now moved from mobility team to database team. I was in the mobility team for one and a half month but the things I got to learn within this short time is just staggering. Within that one and a half month alone, I learned to program with Sails js and Handlebars, learned the basic of NoSQL through Mongodb, configured application, web and database servers. I felt that the amount of stuff I did and learned in one and half month is more than what I got to learn in university for one long semester. Even though it was fun, I did not see my career path as a developer, therefore I did not intend to stay with the team and decided to explore another area when my manager asked me on my decision to stay with the team.

Now, I don't think I will have the chance to change team as I am permanently assigned to this team until the end of my internship. Well, I hope I can find passion in what I will do and I am really thankful for that one and a half month trial period in the mobility team as most interns are permanently attached to a single manager. Another great learning experience in mobility team after that memorable experience I had doing the mini project. I believe there will be a lot more learning to come as I will be doing something on Sharepoint soon. Another technology which I have 0 experience on and I am eager to see what I can learn from it.