To be Free

Cos the morning/noon rush is finally over.

Woke up rather late this morning... 10:30am, or almost 11? So I stumbled out of bed and went right to my computer... For some reason I didn't start playing games and stuff on my phone in bed... Maybe cos it was late enough already and I'd laid in bed for long enough.

And the first thing I saw? A link to some news about Are You Happy DVD in Japanese... There was something about Japonism Arena too and I was like, what? They released both at the same time? Crap I don't have enough $$$ left???

Turns out that Japonism came with the LE of AYH DVD. So I ordered the LE in blu-ray... and since I'm broke I'll have to wait for my pay to come before I can order the RE in DVD - since the bonus content is the same in DVD for both versions...

So yeah... Then I scrambled to put together my Nihongo Manabu post. My second post in two days thanks to Arashi news... Haven't done a review for that site in like three weeks >< 

Then after putting a basic post together... It was time to pimp the links on FB and stuff... After that I opted to have some lunch before continuing to add information to the post... Then I made the news post to storm_freaks ... Together with the jweb updates... And finally I processed some membership applications for SF - both on LJ and DW. And now... I'm done. Kinda. Still have to add more pre-order links to the NM post. But yeah... What a crazy, hectic morning.


The DVD. It's crazy. The sort of bonus it comes with. The LE is basically like... Buy one concert, get one concert free. Only that it's definitely NOT free because the LE is way more expensive than the RE. And the RE? Comes with documentary of the AYH concert... From the time when they were still conceptualizing the concert right till the very end. I heard they filmed rehearsals and all too. GOSH. Rehearsals! Precious precious footage. Must have it... Yes... Need to wait for my pay to come cos I'm broke. Gosh.... I'm totally forced to buy both versions this time... It'll be the first time I'm buying both editions....

Sigh. Second and last week left of my vacation... 

That's all for now I guess... 

Gosh.

Feels like such a busy day online today.

Fans are totally spamming the AFPM whatsapp group. And the SF mods group on LINE is pretty noisy too. And then of course... there's facebook. And then I have sky_fish7 chatting me up on LINE too, thanks dear! Happy New Year! And people posting new year FB status greetings... and other people sending (ok, and me sending too) new year greetings from all over...

( A cut, because I'm long winded as usual. )

That's all for this super long, and very spaced out post. 

Got to watch the encore of the BLAST concert yesterday. Yes, it's in Disc 2. No wonder I felt something was wrong when watching the concert last time lololol. I was really tired by the time I finished watching the concert so yeah, it didn't occur to me that in the DVD the concert part might spill over to disc 2 because of the storage size differences between bluray and DVD.

The lazy me finally finished translating their ending speeches too. Well, basically I just slacked the whole weekend again. No surprise there. Slacked, slept, and read Fairy Tail. Now finished reading all the currently available chapters of Fairy Tail... and reading Hunter x Hunter next. Lololol.

Anyway, was directed to this very insightful post on tumblr from aibaka. This detective has pointed out the songs from day 1 and day 2 footage. Apparently it was a mixture. I'd never ever spot such details. Esp after starting subbing. All I pay attention to is the talk. I don't even hear the BGM at times. I just concentrate on the talk! Like the news clip about Aiba's new drama. I wasn't paying attention to the BGM at all, I was listening attentively to their talk. After watching the video I was like... 'wait, you mean they played AoKimi? Oh right that's why you asked me to watch that clip in the first place...'

Like the Zero G PV making too. I didn't see the broken tile AT ALL because I was just all focused on listening. Straining my ears to hear their talk and what not... I'm using my ears more than my eyes.

Did a bunch of BLAST today. NCBI BLAST. What a coincidence that I just finished Hawaii BLAST yesterday lolol! Took me a while to remember what blasting was about when she asked me today lol. Only after a while did I realise that, I certainly should not have forgotten because that was what I did all day long for my freaking FYP. tblastn. And the NCBI website was pissing me off today. It just kept going back to the homepage when I was submitting my query. Wtf? I don't remember having that problem before. Last time it was just slow. Really slow. I had to wait over a minute sometimes for the query to be processed. (And that sucks because we were doing hundreds, maybe thousands of queries... pretty much the whole project was on that) At least it didn't keep sending me back to the homepage. Querying was much faster today, provided it actually starts querying and not sending me back to the freaking homepage. Lololol.

Oh wells. At least I finished with my experiments for the day. Well... loads of failures this week. Repeated 3 times yesterday... but it still failed anyway. Lol. At least now I can be sure that it's the reaction and not me. Yeah.

Rights... shall head home... soon? Till next time!

Woots. For once! I finally have some bit of free time today... well it's actually already after working hours so... at least I'm not ending late today! Anyway I'd like to post an update on BLAST DVD.

As I said in my previous post... I came home last night to a big box on my desk! My DVD had arrived! Yatta! Opened the box together with my sis XD Well it was a 'sitting down together and going gaga over the box thing' (for one I wasn't even sitting down). I was darn freaking hot (weather is really hot in sg now) after just returning home, tired and we were trying to figure out how to open the damn box (they taped it really well).

Anyway I did watch disc 1 last night... My lappy asked me to change my dvd drive region to region 2... (I'm from region 3), and I did. 4 more changes left for me... only later did I google and find out that you can bypass the change by using vlc or another player.... dunnoe. Too late. I might have problem playing the Arashi DVD reprints I got from Taiwan/msia next time though... those should be region 3...? Didn't get asked to change regions before this. Pffft. Oh wells. Besides Arashi stuff I don't watch/buy other DVDs. (And even then, not often, I'm trying not to make a habit out of this)

Anyway, I think I have a new allergy...

Yes. Allergy.

To bad subs.

Bad subs again? You ask.

Yes. Again. And this time, it's really freaking vomiting blood kind of bad. And it's 'official' subs at that. Goodness. Like. Seriously.

JE hire me please?

I though not very good jweb translations were bad enough... but bad DVD subs! And it's Hawaii BLAST at that! Arashi! Of all their artists! And 15th year anniversary! In Hawaii! How many overseas fans will be watching the DVD and reading the subs and 1) believing the wrong thing, 2) wondering what the hell is going on with the bad English.

So yeah.

Sadly I didn't enjoy the concert much last night.

Not that the concert wasn't good. But just many other things that contributed to me not being able to enjoy myself properly while watching it.

1) I was tired.

2) I've been really busy at work, and I stayed till pretty late (by my standards) at work last night to finish an experiment... and the results showed that I the monster experiment I did last week just failed miserably. And it was at a step that shouldn't have any problems too. Just usual pipetting, which I'm really good at. I can't possibly mess that up. Honest! So yeah... Not in a particularly joyful mood yesterday. Have been too busy to even be excited about BLAST DVD leaks/release so...

(Side note on the experiment: I think it's the protocol not being optimised, and not a mistake on my part. Phew.)

3) I was really, really pissed at the bad subs. Well the subs goes like this... they let you pick with you want to watch with or without subtitles. Of course I picked the with option. And then there's all their song lyrics, the 'aloha' and what not...

Then there are video inserts, if you read the set list, or concert reports you'll know that they showed videos of Arashi going to visit the harbour, to see the boat they debut in... and visit some road they went to 15 years ago. Those parts are English subbed. (Japanese subs are there too.) I guess they subbed it for the actual live concert so that overseas fans can understand. Only that it's badly subbed. All the hallmarks of a bad subbed video! Missing lines, wrong meaning, bad grammar... If it's for the actual concert... ok, it's rushed (but still, I could have done a way better job in a single day)... but for the DVD? Couldn't they at least get someone to vet and edit it? Even the English is off! That's just... arghs seriously!

There's also parts where they asked each member for their thoughts. I guess this was filmed way in advance, the subs were of better quality. Still spotted a few wrongly translated things though. Including a really ridiculous one. Subs say that Aiba said: so we are really putting great fire.

He was talking about the concerts... putting great fire? Huh?! Like what? Suddenly talking about them playing with fire? Or the fire ball effects? o.O

Actually, he said 気合い入れて, and in the context it meant to give it their all. And this is really elementary Japanese too...

No seriously JE? I'm sure good translators in Japan are dime a dozen. Can you hire a good translator? At least for 'important' things like the DVD? If not, just don't include any subs?

Heck, even I can do a way better job than that! And that's really ridiculous!

4) No MC parts. AGAIN. Freaking JE. WHY WHY WHY WHY WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY
MCs are seriously my favourite part. WHY NO MC!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I'm crying now cos of that. I don't think it's in disc 2 either?

5) No ending speech either. WTH? They used day 1 footage... where Ohno cried in his ending speech... if you don't want to show the crying parts then... at least cut in the day 2 ending speech for us? T.T Or will this be in the documentary?

6) Day 1 footage. No raining scene. I heard that it's in disc 2 though! That's great. I really hope that it's in disc 2. I wanna see!!!

So yeah... overall I didn't enjoy myself much while watching it yesterday. I think my mood had a lot to do with why I didn't enjoy it last night though. And I've not watched disc 2 so I hope some of the missing parts are in disc 2.

Woots it's so late already hahaha!

Ok! Photos! Then I'm heading HOME!

( Photos! Loads of them! )

Rights.

That's all for now! Hope you'll get your copy of the DVD/Bluray soon too! (if you ordered that is :P)

CDJapan servers are dying... from the flood of Arashi fans trying to pre-order Arashi BLAST DVD. Ok. And I was one of the crazy ones. I pre-ordered my first ever Arashi item. And I think... that'll be the only Arashi good I'll buy this year. I've been spending like crazy and that's really no good. Not just on Arashi... but my books, on food... it's like... the pandora's box from being overly controlled last year still has not been closed. It's about time to stop huh? After buying Arashi waku waku goods last year... I still bought Digitalian... and recently I got some magazines and more Japanese storybooks. Gah.

But the pre-ordering. The site loaded slower and slower... I thought the pre-order won't go through! Or that it will run out of stock before I manage to get it. I didn't even see the final confirmation page after payment processing! It was only till I got the email notification that I knew my order went through! Crazy! Second time I'm ordering from CDJapan, but the first time the goods wasn't for myself :P So this is really just the first time!

Anyway, so screencaps from the English Jweb about the release!