Category Archives: miscellaneous

Wednesday Night...

Nothing special. Just a random Wednesday night in the hood... My sundappled kitchen, in all its messy glory. The hood... I have no idea who painted this building, but......

Painting with Light

Thank you all for your kind wishes in the last post. I really appreciate it! ...So I took the LSAT on Sunday. In short, I don't think I did as well as I did on the practice exams, but all is not lost. I was scoring quite high on the practice exams so even if the score I get on the actual test is a few points lower than what I'm used to, it should...

Sick Panda

So after making it through almost an entire year without getting sick, of course now - NOW - one week before the LSAT...! - I have to get struck down by a terrible cold and fever the likes of which I haven't experienced in quite some time. I was passed out, fevered and unable to even feed myself - let alone study - for the past few days. Nice. This is a picture of me...

What a panda eats

Did you ever wonder what pandas eat in a day? Okay, probably not. But I haven't updated in about 10 days, and the only pictures I've taken recently are of food, so I guess that's today's post topic. Breakfast Kiwi and Blue Cheese Bruschetta on Vanilla Sponge I wish I could take credit for this recipe, but this incredibly tasty and delicious meal comes courteously of Bron Marshall and her gorgeously photographed blog. This was...

Top of the Morning

It seems like such a shame to spend 30 minutes dressing up nice and getting ready for work in the morning just to head out the door and have it all ruined by the combination of wind, rain and heat which conspires to turn one into a wet, tussled, sweaty mess in a matter of moments. Even if one does miraculously manage to avoid all three of the above and make it to work unscathed,...

Vainpanda

So the lovely Miss YJ sent me this equally lovely cashmere scarf out of the blue last month and I promised I would send her a picture of myself vamping deliciously for the camera with it. And now, since I haven't finished processing the pictures from last few weeks' worth of adventures, I am going to post it and pretend it counts as a blog update. Oh deliciously vain sun-dappled panda. What a silly way...

Unnecessary Automation

Sorry, there are not many interesting pictures in this entry, namely because people tend to freak out when you start taking snapping photographs in public bathrooms (you'll see what I mean if you read this entry) But don't fear! If you want pictures, check the entry right above this one, which I posted like 5 seconds after this despite the dates being different. Good morning ladies and gentlemen. Well, not really a good morning....

Panda Strap

Alas, it's been a busy week so I've not had a chance to write a post yet. Maybe this weekend? That is, after I decide whether or not to apply to law school next year. A deadline that is literally penciled into my planner for Saturday: "-take out recyclables -decide about law school -buy windex*". *(my bathroom mirrors are kinda grungy) Bethann's mother, of all people, randomly made this supar dupar supar cuet beaded panda...

Happy New Year 2008

Happy New Year 2008 everyone! It's the year of the Mouse, for whatever that's worth, so umm, I hope you all have a great mouse-themed year and don't get too sloshed with the bubbly tonight ;) I'm in a good mood at the moment - it's the goyo osame end of the work year period so I'm off until next week. I'm trying to use the time to study, redesign the website and just generally...

Nekobukuro Kitty Kats

There have actually been some very disturbing things happening here in Japan land (not to me personally, but at the political/civil liberties level) that have put me in a severely depressed mood recently and are making me seriously - like, seriously - think about leaving next year, or possibly sooner. Shit, to put it nicely, is about to get a lot more oppressive is you're unfortunate enough to have the wrong skin colour and you...

Tatami Nap Panda

Mmmmm.... I could nap in this spot of sun forever. I'm going to Nekobukuro later on today for the hell of it, so I figured I might as well get my practice in cat-napping before I depart. What a beautiful Autumn day! And here's what's currently playing, if you want to recreate this incredibly lazy and relaxing Sunday in your own home: Neutral Milk Hotel - Holland, 1945 (03'14" :: 160kbp vbr .mp3)...

To all the Rooms Ive loved before

So the other day I was flipping through one of my old boxes of letters and and pictures from years past (which reminds me that there are still some of you who owe me letters from the Great Michaelpanda Spring Letter Exchange 2007 *wink*) and I ran across some pictures of an old apartment I used to live in. This is my current apartment... read on for old ones This got me to thinking -...

The Time Travelers Panda

Thank you all for the supar kind birthday wishes! :) An update is coming soon, just as soon as I finish up this busy week. And by "busy week" I mean watching nonstop zombie and/or vampire movies (seriously, I've watched 6 this week and it's only Wednesday). The thing about zombie/vampire movies is that they have so much promise as a genre, but more often than not, the end Hollywood result is mind numbingly stupid....

Birthday Scarf Panda

There's still a part three to the Great Tohoku Road Trip 2007 (parts I and II can be found here and here, respectively). But it's taking me a while to get to it since I've been kinda down recently, and busy at work to boot. It was my birthday last week, the big 28, which means I've spent nearly a fifth of my life here in Japan. Kind of scary when you think about it...

The Great Tohoku Road Trip - Interlude

Yes, yes I know, you all want to know (omg hi2u mistar presumptious panda!) what happened next after we left the stinky sulfurous gates of hell. I'm working on part II but at the moment have writers block and a busy week at work that has left me too exhausted to write anything. But here's some foreshadowing for you: it involves mummies. In the interim, a picture from us tearing up the road, purple eldar-berry...

Mos Burger Update

So I promised an update this week and here, so as technically not to break my promise, is a poast that I guess qualifies as an update. I'm currently sitting in my friend's apartment up in Ishikawa prefecture, a little peninusula sticking up into the Sea of Japan in the middle part of Honshu. She's off at work trying to earn a living and I'm currently eating up all the food in her refrigerator, including...

Still alive... and at the beach

Yeah, I know it's been 15 days without an update. I am still alive. I just had an intensely fun but seriously sleep deprived weekend (3 hours in 3 days or so). I need to sleep now. More pictures and stuffs later on this week ("yeah right, we've heard that before!!"). But for now, enjoy panda surveying all the territory over which he rules supreme. Update soon, I promise folks....

Morning Tea

A bit too busy to write a full length post today, but one will be forthcoming soon. In the interim, a picture of some creepy half-naked Kewpie Mayo Babies that suddenly appeared on my breakfast table the other day. And of course, I would be remiss if I didn't post a random picture of my less-than-healthy breakfast of champions earlier this week. Speaking of which, it's like 7:40 am on Saturday morning and I have...

Mongolia Panda

So one of my lovely Kiwi readers (have I told yow how sexy I think the New Zealand accent is?) from the Land of the Long White Cloud left the following comment on my previous blog poast: this isn't really related, but can you post some more pics of your panda collection? the ones in the first photo of the post are soo cute :) Well, I've always been one to please the people, so...

Lindsay, the Telemarket-stalker

What is this book, you might be asking yourself? Well, let's look at the cover: The Complete Fake History of a Bunch of People Who Don't Actually Exist I'd like to think of it as the first entry in a series of books entitled "Hey, so I heard you've got a stalker - the Michaelpanda Stalker Prevention Series". What am I going on about? Allow me to explain. You see, while it may be hard...

Picture Poast

Thus dear readers, I am afraid I shall have to tempt you with the tease shot of the mystery book above: The Complete Fake History of a Bunch of People Who Don't Actually Exist, and then segue into the rest of this post, which I am afraid will consist solely of pictures that have nothing to do with the one directly above or below. But as soon as I get back from this meeting - provided I survive - I promise I will tell you all about my telemarketer stalker, touch on my real-estate stalker (sigh) and expound in great detail about my almost pathological inability to say no to people to their faces that lands me in these convoluted situations in the first place.

Panda and the Eau de Gooch

...this person - and I've had a lot of time to think about this and what metaphors to use here - is surrounded by an odoriferous vapour cloud of doom so horrible, so vomit gag inducing, it's like the stank of a sweaty salt ham stuck inside a pile of old wet moldy hard cover books....! I mean... it gets you.... gets you right in the back of the throat - it's like... as if... I dunno - like.... a thousand stanky gooches simultaneously rubbed themselves all up and down your tonsils...!

Dining Table, what what!

Table cloths, placemats and varnish - these things are artificial filters that barricade the connection between us and the immediacy of the moment. Naught but the trappings of pretension, they defy the purpose of buying furniture in the first place - to use it and to let it serve its purpose. I don't want to stop to think to put down a coaster, or spend hours trying to lay down the perfect streak-free coat of varnish and stain - I just want to kick off my shoes, set down a plain white ceramic bowl filled with a simple food on the table, open my computer, or tear off a sheet of paper and just be. When the future is uncertain - when my future is uncertain - it is comforting to have this reminder of the my connection to the solace of an immediacy of moments spent in comfortable surroundings, in my little house right here in my little corner of my little city in this little chunk of this little island floating all along and bobbling in the wide vast swath green blue oceans of the uncertain scary world...

Panda vs. The Bathtub

Okay so here's the deal. I am not a very smart person. This is a humbling admission to make, but my track record: driving on the wrong side of the road, going into creepy buildings with strangers, blindly wandering into dark cavernous pits without pause, etc. sadly proves it to be true. And really, it's not such a bad thing. Yes, on the one hand, I'm openly admitting I'm dumb. But on the other hand,...

No Chicken, No Life

Sign spotted outside a downtown Izakaya (Japanese-style bar). Hard to argue with this sentiment I suppose! Speaking of chickens everlasting - (actually, this has nothing to do with eterna chickans, that was a horrible transition) - I am planning on taking my new pretty baby out and about this weekend to take some pictures. Originally, I had planned to head over to Narita-san temple in Narita (town next to the international airport) to get some...

The Roundup

So as promised, here I am with a Roundup post to try and collect all the little tidbits of randomness that happened over the last three weeks I wasn't posting. Thus, without further ado... Banana Republic Whore There's like $50 USD worth of gift reward cards here... I've said it before, but I am a total Banana Republic Whore. In the course of about 2 years, I went from never ever setting foot in a...

From the mouths of babes...

A while back, some local first year high school students were given an assignment that required them to write a short story that started with the phrase "once upon a time" or "a long long ago". Oh, and it had to involve a baby panda. These are three of my favorites: The charm of first one is due in large part to the author's rather... unique word phrasing - it's bizarre enough to make me...

Mornings...

The view outside of KC's window at 6:30 am. The deep countryside looks so quaint, so cute, huh? You can see the bright sun, the chirping birds (well, the deathsquawks of marauding crows, but whatever), the farmers trucks as they set up for the morning market... .... and then you pan over to the left and see what appears to be the impending apocalypse bearing down on you bringing the fury and rage of the oceans from just over the other side of the mountains. *gulp* It's times like these that I wish Japanese apartments weren't made of paper and wood...

Rocking out...

If you watch the video carefully, you'll notice that several times I accidentally cross into the oncoming lane of traffic. Fortunately there weren't many cars on the road, or else I'm sure we would have died. You may also notice that we very clearly don't know the words to the song. But that doesn't stop us, since if there's one thing living in a country where karaoke is the national past time has taught us, it's that even if you don't know the lyrics to a song, as long as you sing it in a funny voice and make exaggerated gestures, people play along.

Website broken... maybe

shit, my website is broken... something bizarre is happening where it's linking to the nasty colored back end on anything besides the first few posts (i.e. anything but the front page). ARRGHH!! calendar is not working either. bear with me while i try and figure it out.... 11:45 pm...

Racing Sushi

this website is so cool, it makes me want to cry at how crappy mine is in comparison.... check out the menu in the upper left hand corner..! (need flash enabled): http://www.tokidoki.it/pages/main.html Now listening to: "Paul Van Dyk - The Politics of Dancing (CD2)" Here, stuck at work, I am most definitely not dancing... 8:18 pm...

This is freaking cool.

as an aside, this comes from http://www.hiddenhighschool.com/, which is an excellent resource if you need to sneak out from behind a firewall/net filter. 10:47 am...

Random Pictures

Thursday, May 29, 2003 Random pictures Click to get a larger image! Now listening to: "Tupac - Me against the world" With all this extra stressin The question I wonder is after death, after my last breath When will I finally get to rest? Through this supression they punish the people that's askin questions And those that possess, steal from the ones without possesions The message I stress: to make it stop study your lessons...

Xanga acting up...

xanga is acting up.... it's going to get an elbowdrop to the dome in a second... *puts on his best lucha libre face* Physics final in 4 days... cumulative, plus I'm 3 chapters behind on the new stuff. conclusion? Must bust ass. Also, just found out my poli sci final consists of 3 essays .... for a grand total of 20+ pages...! (stuff like "reinterpret the sino-american relationship in the wake of september 11th") well,...

Stuffed

Dance Floor Stereotypes

Somebody sent me this via e-mail. It's from thesite.org It's 3am: time to scan the room for that 'right' person. So who's out there? TheSite presents your guide to dance floor stereotypes. DJ wannabes - dressed like a DJ, with the attitude of a DJ... but not a DJ. Usually found hovering near the sides of the stage, nodding knowingly to another great piece of beat-mixing, or boring people senseless with made-up stories of obscure...

Dance floor stereotypes

Violin Trance

It's like trance... only with violins. Great stuff....

What do your illegal drugs look like?

Do you know what your illegal drugs look like? Now currently listening to: "Tatu: Things you said" (Bubblegummy, but cute.) 10:28 pm...

Mullets set to make comeback

In honor of Melissa's new haircut... Short on style: Mullets set to make comeback by Erin Rolfs, Louisiana State University February 11, 2003 (U-WIRE) BATON ROUGE, La. -- Some hold onto their parachute pants; for others, no movie will ever reach the creative apex that is "The Goonies," and everyone knows someone who still rocks out to Huey Lewis and the News. Letting go of the past is hard. But there is no greater...

Grocery lists

[link to grocerylists] have you ever wondered what other people go grocery shopping for? Decided I'm going to Green Bay tommorrow; I decided I just can't afford to be cooped up in this god forsaken little town any longer without some sort of respite, especially with everyone else jetting off to exotic locales for spring break. However, it's sad when in your haste to flee a small town you end up in an even...

Southern Sun