Catria's Basement

iphone　じゃありませんよ

2007-12-10T11:45:00.001-06:00

さいごのPost

2007-12-10T00:40:00.001-06:00

あしたはさいごのにほんごのクラスですね。このクラスに、わたしはにほんごをたくさんならいました。今私は日本語のアニメがもうすごしわかります。日本語のクラスはちょおとむずかしかったですが、とてもたのしかったです。　わたしはPod-cast ガすきでした、楽しいProjectです。

Video Game Marching Band Show

2007-12-07T00:54:00.000-06:00

^^ lets see how many games can be named

thanksgiving

2007-11-28T22:37:00.000-06:00

せんしゅうはThanksGivingです、わたしはかれとははのともたちのうちへいきました。ははのともたちがLong Island にいます。そのうちはちょっととおいです。ここからでんしゃでにじかんかがります。私は彼と午後一時半に駅で会いました。そしていっしょにでんしゃでいきました。それから母の友たちとLongIslandのえきであいました。
ははのともたちはりょりがとてもじょうずです。わたしはTurkeyとちゅうかりょうりをたべました。おいしかったです。

last midterm

2007-11-13T11:42:00.000-06:00

My last midterm will be taking place today from 4:10 to 5:25. This officially marks the countdown to the end to the semester. This certainly have been an interesting semester. First of all I finally got my acts together and took a class in Japanese. Although with my Non-Tech elective credits filled by IB-Mandarin, and the billion class requirements for FE major, i probably cannot afford another 5 credits in Japanese. But something tells me as long as I love watching anime, my study of Japanese is not ending here.
The most interesting portion of this semester's got to be my long habit of getting lower marks in easier classes. Between the three Math classes I'm taking this semester (Linear Algebra, Calc III and Probability ) Calc III is no doubt the easiest course being that it is a pre-requirement for the other two.Yet even without this pre-requirement, my performance in the other two classes have been acceptable; However calc III.. being my easiest class this semester by far, is definitely dragging down my grades.
Extracurricular wise, I'm very proud of Table Tennis team's achievement this semesters, especially proud of my own improvement. This is my first college level tournament and so far I've maintained a no-lose streak out of 4 games (2 singles 2 doubles). The likelihood of this result being maintained next semester is non-zero but infinitesimally small though. With the women team's captain graduating this semester, it'll entirely be up to the 4 sub 2000 (stiga ratings) member to at least obtain second place in the upcoming tournament next semester. Hopefully I'll manage to get some training in this winter.

Speaking of, Turns out that most people that are here in columbia from Vancouver ended up booking the same flight, yet again. 21st night Cathay Pacific $400 special, who could pass up on that =p.

MicroSoft puzzle Challenge Blunders

2007-11-11T22:14:00.000-06:00

きのう　MicroSoft puzzle Challenge　をしました。この　event はとてもあのしいです、わたしの　ｔeam　はあまじょずじゃありません。

http://www.collegepuzzlechallenge.com/Default.aspx

Microsoft Puzzle Challenge, also known as College Puzzle Challenge hosted by Microsoft is held in colleges all around US (with the exception of University of Toronto). On this one Saturday, students gather to solve interesting (and obscure) puzzles for 12 hours.

Being our first time, my team did not perform as well as other teams, nevertheless everyone had fun. Here are some clippets from the event.

10:00 am, 2 hour prior to the event. myself, being the captain of the team, calls Vanck to ensure that we have the proper equipments for the event (namingly scissor, colorpencil..etc)

11:30 am, at check-in

Vanck: hey viv, did you bring the scissors?

11:45am, during opening presentation, a cup of strategically placed orange juice by my other teammate:Eric, managed to find its way onto my pants. eliminating me from the auditorium.

12:15am, after a brief studder with the juice accident I returned to our designated room (Computer Science Lounge) only to realize that it is now the weekend and I did not have the proper security clearance to enter the computer science building.

12:25am, while waiting for my teammates to open up the CS building doors, I checked the univesial standing for the competition only to find that serveral MIT teams managed to solve 5-6 puzzles within the first 20 minutes.

1:00 am, finally settled down in our lounge and began to play with the scrabble puzzle.
Vanck: (playing with the crossword puzzle) gee I wonder why to solve this puzzle you only need the first 10 clues.
Eric & I: vanck, you are reading the wrong set of numbers!

2:00 am, the last member of our team managed to arrive on scene. Just in time to point out the various copying mistakes that Vanck was making and solve the puzzle. First answer sumbitted

2:30 am, someone finally decided to take a break and pick up our lunch.

5:00pm, with the Runaround puzzle solved, our team entered a roll of answer submition 4 puzzles were solved within the hour. realilzing that the colorful blocks on each page are going to be important, I began to cut them out.

5:15pm,
Vanck: Hey guys, I think those colorful blocks that appear on every page is the meta puzzle!
Me: that would be precisely why they are all cutted out.

10:00pm after a 4 hour deadlock with only one answer solved, we managed to answer 4 more questions during this hour.

11:40pm, last minute problem solving began

11:55pm, after a long day of struggle, Vanck finally was able to solve his first puzzle entirely by himself.

12:00am, closing event.

Go Columbia!

2007-11-06T17:19:00.000-06:00

Been a while since my last post,with all the mid-terms going on and all last few weeks have been fairly hectic. Anyhow, せんしゅうのにちようびにFashion Institute of Technology へいきましだ。Table Tennis のTournament をしましだ。This is the regional College Table Tennis tournament for New York area and both Columbia's Women and Co-ed team finished first place in this event. Giving both team a very good shot at nationals next year.
Columbia's co-ed table tennis team placed 3rd in the nationals last year, womens team also made it to the nationals, however due to a certain player on the team being a visiting student, the team was unfortunately disqualified.
Hopefully we'll perform just as well during next semester's regionals and attend nationals with both teams this year.

加油！！

In celebration of our game, I'll attach the following very interesting exhibition video

コロンビア大学がすきです

2007-10-18T11:45:00.000-05:00

去年、私はコロンビア大学へきましだ。コロンビア大学はニューヨークの大学です。有名な大学です。そしでこの大学のcampusはとてもきれいです。でも、私の寮はきれいじゃありません、ちょっと古いです。毎日私はじゅうにじからごごはちじまでクラスへいきます。私のクラスは難しくないです、でもわたしはいつもいそがしいです。クラスへいきます、しゅうくだいをします、ともたちとあいます、classmate とべんきょします。。。
大学生のせいかつはとてもたのしいです。

podcast

2007-10-15T23:21:00.001-05:00

So, for today's entry, we are asked to comment on what constitute a good podcast.

honestly, I've never downloaded any podcasts, however as a medium of expression, criteria for the content of a good podcast should be somewhat similar to the criteria for a good blog entry. The difference is that for the podcast project we are given a very specific topic to follow, so besides being interesting and creative the content has to address the topic at hand.
the other aspect that affect the quality of podcast is specific to the presentation medium. If video is chosen, is the video well edited? camera nicely handled? graphic to acceptable resolution? clear audio?
and for audio presentation and the speakers speaking clearly? negligible noise from equipment?

週末よ！

2007-10-13T00:32:00.000-05:00

もう金曜日です、週末を始めます。今週、私はProbablityの試験をしました, ちょっと難しいです。来週もう一試験をします、日本語の試験です。ベクマンさん、この日曜日もいっしょに勉強しませんか？
えーと、明日は土曜日ですね。私はChinatownへいきます、Dimsumを食べたいから。

じゃ今もう午前二時です（もう土曜日ですね。。）、そしで今日はここまで、わたしはちょっと眠たい。

おやすみなさい。

Fate/Stay night as promised

2007-10-12T00:45:00.001-05:00

Genre: Fantasy, Magic
Plot Summary from Anime News Network: Shirou Emiya lost his parents in a fire when he was young and was later adopted by a sorceror by the name of Kiritsugu Emiya. Although he was full of admiration for his adopted father and yearns to become an ally of justice, Shirou has limited powers and was unable to become a strong sorceror like his father. That is until one fateful day, he was drawn into the Holy Grail War and had to summon a female "Servant" known as Saber in order to protect himself. It turns out that the Holy Grail War involves a series of battles among powerful sorcerors to fight for the possession of a relic that will grant one's wishes, the Holy Grail. There are altogether seven "Masters" who can summon their respective "Servants" from different classes known as Saber, Archer, Rider, Berserker, Lancer, Caster and Assasin. These "Servants" have to hide their names in order not to reveal their weaknesses to the enemies. The story revolves around Shirou and his entanglement in the Holy Grail War.

Commentary:
If graphic quality is your primary concern when choosing an anime to watch, then you've found the right show. Originally an adult game (graphical novel) by Typemoon has beed modified into a PG friendly 24 episode TV series, while maintaining the graphic quality of the game.
The story is somewhat strange yet the first three episodes makes a pretty good attempt at summarizing the key points. I do have some complaints in the attempt to establish character relationships. Because of this, the story seemed choppy and jumpy at points, and the viewer is left to guess the motives for the characters' actions.

Characters:
Tosaka Rin: The first picture on this page shows a chibi version of Rin. She is definitely my favorite character in this show, I just love her hair ^^~.

Archer: Rin's servant. See if you can figure out his real identity by the end of the show w/o wiki.

Emiya Shirou: Main character of the show. Having little to no magical abilities, he gets a good amount of teasing from Rin.

Saber: Shirou's servant, probably the most confusing character once her identity is revealed.

Music:

The two notable music theme are the first opening and closing theme. the ending theme is posted in my last blog entry. The opening theme "disillusion" by Sachi Tainaka is a very nice remix of the game theme (See music video at the end of the blog entry)

Overall:

honestly, the only thing that kept me watching until the last episode was the amazing graphic of this anime. Plot is somewhat mediocre, lack of real emotional peak moments (or rather lack of build up to them).

P.S. あの人は男じゃありません，女ですよ。名前は　Saber です。

Random

2007-10-08T22:13:00.000-05:00

hmm, seems like my computer doesn't like Japanese too much, the Japanese typing system wont output Japanese for me. So until that problem is fixed, I'll be typing in English I guess. Omedetou to Talor-san for getting last week's Brain Teaser. The trick the the problem is rather easy:

1
one 1 (hence 11)
two 1 (hence 21)
one 2 one 1 (hence 1211)

e
t
c
.

yup just read the numbers out.

anyways, This week's question (requiring a little more mathematical knowledge): can the average of two consecutive primes be prime?

Furthermore I'll be writing an entry on Fate/Stay Night later this week, and as a sneak peak to that, here's the ending theme of the series.stay tuned!

はじめましで。。。again

2007-10-03T11:42:00.000-05:00

はじめましで。わたしはヴィヴィアン　ワンです。カナダからきました。わたしはコロンビアだいがくのにねんせいです。じゅうきゅうさいです。どうぞよろしくおねがいします。

Silly me

2007-10-02T23:55:00.000-05:00

so in an attempt to install a new template for the blog (I get bored of layouts pretty quick) I managed to do the silliest thing possible--delete my blog. Thank goodness to by bad habit of leaving all my windows open during a browsing session, I was able t retrieve all my previous blogs. Unfortunately the comments did not survive this accident.

apologies to everyone that left comments on my blog.

sumimasen!

Brain Teaser

2007-10-02T23:35:00.000-05:00

seems like I'm posting here every day now. If thats the case might as well make the content a little more interesting to read.

Following question was given to me during highschool. A hint: it does not involve any form of complicated mathematic, and by that I mean highschool algebra.

write the next two lines:
1
11
21
1221
112211

update: answer will be posted with the next brain teaser entry ^^~

JHU president mid autum festival speech

2007-10-01T23:34:00.000-05:00

Since we all just had an exam in a non-native language, thought this might cheer everyone up a bit

wow, wish we could do something like that at CUCSSA's lunar new year celebration event. I wonder whats his background with Chinese, nevertheless, it takes some admirable courage to stand in front of a Chinese audience and make a speech in Chinese, or any other second language.

Random tibits: Excel Fails Math Test

2007-09-28T23:33:00.000-05:00

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21033161/

Quote

"In a blog post, Microsoft employee David Gainer said that when computer users tried to get Excel 2007 to multiply some pairs of numbers and the result was 65,535, Excel would incorrectly display 100,000 as the answer.

Gainer said Excel makes mistakes multiplying 77.1 by 850, 10.2 by 6,425 and 20.4 by 3,212.5, but the program appears to be able to handle 16,383.75 times 4."

Comments:

lmao, how old exactly is excel? Way to go microsoft! thanks for redefining the term "upgrade". Appearantly the bug only exist in office 2007 but not previous versions.

Anime Recommandation: Gundam Seed

2007-09-28T23:28:00.000-05:00

Genre: mecha

Plot Summary: (from Anime News Network) Heliopolis, a so-called neutral space colony was holding a top-secret weapons research facility, producing Gundams for the Earth Alliance. ZAFT, which is composed of Coordinators (genetically modified/upgraded humans), attacks Heliopolis, stealing 4 out of the Alliance's 5 Gundams. In the battlefield, civilian Kira Yamato stumbles upon the Strike, the last remaining Gundam of the alliance, and is forced to pilot it. In the midst of battle he encounters his best friend, Athrun Zala, as one of the hijackers of the 5 Gundams, who sides with ZAFT. Being a Coordinator, he is the only one who can pilot the Gundam. But Kira is not with ZAFT, even though they're his own kind, nor the Alliance. Since the Alliance is the only place he could turn to at the time, he sides with them. He pilots the Gundam to protect his friends, and to fight his best friend, which pains both of them. It's a war between individual beliefs.

Comments: Gundam SEED not only captured all the key elements of a good mecha show, it also contain all the dynamic features of a good storyline. Those qualities along with the quality of character design and art work makes the series not only a masterpiece of Bandai's gundam series, but also equally popular amonst the male and female population (something gundam shows are not very well known for)

Drawing: I'm mostly amazed by the unique seamless integration of 3D models and 2D artwork. w/o a guide book to point out the fact that some archangel scene were done in 3D, I probably would never have guessed.

Music: well one thing that can be said about Bandai is that they don't go cheap on OP and EDs (opening and closing songs). Aside from those, couple insert songs, in particular "Shizukana yoru ni" (In a slient night) by Tanaka Rie (more well known as the voice actress for Chobits) and "Akatsuki no Kuruma" (dawn's carriage) by Fiction Junction are my personal favorites.
anyways here's a list of OPs and EDs:

Opening Theme:
#1: "Invoke" by T.M. Revolution

#2: "Moment" by Vivian or Kazuma

#3: "Believe" by Nami Tamaki

#4: "Realize" by Nami Tamaki

Ending Theme:
#1: "Anna ni Isshodattanoni (Even Though We Were Together So Much)" by See-Saw

#2: "River" by Tatsuya Ishii

#3: "Find The Way" by Mika Nakashima

more information (including links to youtube videos) can be found at :http://www.animelyrics.com/anime/gundamseed

Anyways I'll close this entry off with the video of "Akatsuki Kuruma" by Fiction Junction and Invoke by T.M. Revolution

Whats a good blog?

2007-09-25T23:27:00.000-05:00

Same question I've been trying to answer since I first started blogging on Xanga about 4 years ago. Below are a few sample criteria that I've brainstormed up or have already been stated in class, feel free to discuss and comment:

layout- can be template but with contrasting legible colors and reasonable font size.
frequency of updates - I think for this class is set at minimum 1/week?
organization - endless rambling or organized thoughts? variation in content (eg. news, opinions, class review, daily ramble...) or same throughout?
relevance - is there an excessive amount of posts unrelated to class or Japaneses cultural in general? (this is a Japaneses class blog project after all)

comments- does the blogger respond with relevant comments to other's blogs?

neways, most of these are pretty basic so feel free to add on top of them.

B-day, 2nd week , reply to past comments.. etc

2007-09-23T23:25:00.000-05:00

今日は私の誕生日です！

well technically it was yesterday.. but hey its still 22nd in Vancouver (for another 2 mins...). Anyhow, overall I'm pretty satisfied with today, went to have dinner at peking duck house with some friends and had the whole restaurant singing happy b-day. Still got half of my Hagen Daaz ice-cream cake left though.
Watched resident evil after dinner, turned out slight better than expected. Still though, for a movie that really had no plot and converted from a game, resident evil series did a good job in keeping the whole game feel to it while attaching halfly made up of a story line. The game like aspect of the movie seems to be the mainstream criticism around it, but I think there's more of a problem with the incorporation of horror which made the storyline really choppy.

neways, as for class this week, I espcially enjoyed the clips of Nodame drama. I watched the anime version of it earlier this year, and absolutely fell in love with it since the first episode (gota love torrent). I'm thinking about turning this into an Anime review blog.. if I still have time to keep up with new series.

to yukki: I loved deathnote, athough it got a bit slow after L's death. I heard the anime's awsome and stick really closely with the manga. the WB movie was a box office hit.. I heard in Japan when the first movie aired it beat Mission Impossible three in box office sales. I liked the movie's twist to the plot, the effects were cool too.. but there was just too little of Misa...

to j.taylor I'll try my best in my future postings. stay tuned =p

I'll finish this post off with a video clip of Deathnote movie trailer, hopefully I get time to finish off the re-layout of this blog sometime within the next few weeks:

First Post

2007-09-12T23:21:00.000-05:00

こんいちわ、私は　Vivian Wang　です。
I'm a Shanghainese Canadian student studying Japanese formally for the first time.
I'm currently the webmaster for Columbia University Anime Club, you can visit our website at http;//www.columbia.edu/cu/anime . I'm taking this class partly for personal interest (my father side of the family studied in Japan) and partly for me to better understand linguistic humor within anime (who wouldn't like to watch anime without reading subtitles?)

anyways, thats it for now, I'll be updating this blog weekly as a party of the first year japanese blog project.

じゃ、まった来週！