Jaded Perspectives

That's the way, Hata! It should be ALL NAGI ALL THE TIME! Synopsis: Chiharu: Woo! So this is the Grand Canyon, sugoi! And I'mma say something inconsequential. -Ok, so gotta find that 10,000 (10 million?) yen here... -This be teh last game! -This thing is huge! It's like an open world game! -Anyway, gotta start! -Where the FU....~! -Friggin Kananiwa san said this game is all about psychological warfare but... Flashback Kananiwa: This is a game of tactics desu! The field is large so you can try finding the gold coins on your own or try finding them together (or somethin) Chiharu: That's what she said! But this field is HUUUGE! I might never meet with anyone before the psychological warfare begins. I won't even meet an enemy or anything here in this is is Sh*tty game! Chiharu: Screw this! I'm retiring! (presses completer) Eh? WTF! This thing's not working now? Oh wait... this place is huge, so maybe help won't come immediately. But I dun have my smar

Old... Chiharu looks old. Synopsis: Lemme give ya the quick version.   Nagi and Hayate are doing a little souvenir/window shopping in Vegas. Everyone is enjoying their time in Vegas now since the competition is over. Anywayz, Hina is contemplating her next move coz she has sooo NOT given up on Hayate-kun just yet. For her, the debt is gone, but with Hayate still being a butler, the status quo hasn't changed... no! This is her chance to act! This is what she wished for isn't it? What should she doooooo? At least I'm not the only one who thinks Kananiwa is cute. Definitely NOT Dolly. Meanwhile it seems the last portion of the trip will be at the grand canyon, but it was supposed to be part of the orientation. Anyway, things happen and Kananiwa proposes one more game at the grand canyon and Yukiji asks Kananiwa for one more chance at this game and everyone sort of agrees. Hayate's worried that he might lose the prize money coz of this. Nagi sa

Synopsis: Kananiwa ain't so bad after all and Hayate returns the King's Jewel to her. That only leaves him and Nagi left in the competition. Nagi is still asleep and she's reflecting on her feelings for Hayate in her sleep -- as expected, she is still deeply in love with him (told ya).  It breaks my heart to know that Hayate is about to break her heart. Anyway, there's lots of awesome moments of reflection for Nagi and she finally wakes up and realizes that the completer is down to 2. She rushes over to Hayate and Hina thinks that Nagi is now going to win, but instead, Hayate presses Nagi's completer -- but it's not so bad. He declares that she is more important and that he will continue being her butler even though he has more or less paid off his debt now. Nagi takes this as a sign that he is definitely in love with her, but the narration implies something else -- apparently, there is a bomb between them and the Royal Garden will be opened by an exp

The last day of our vacation in Manila was quite colorful... unexpectedly. The day began with free breakfast at the hotel as usual. Check-out is at 12:00 PM, so we had already decided to go back to the room after breakfast, finish packing up our stuff and then check out early. We could still leave our luggage with the hotel staff for security and we had time to visit at least one more mall before we had to leave for the airport to catch our flight at 6:45 PM... or so it said on the ticket. The check-out process went pretty smoothly. We gave some of the surplus small snack items we'd procured for our stay in the hotel to the hotel staff who always cleaned our rooms and he seemed genuinely thankful. The earring looks pretty good on me, I'd say :) Anyway, we took a taxi to Market! Market! because I wanted to check out a few things there. We stopped by the costume jewelry stalls for a bit and I bought an earring which my mother haggled from 100 pesos down to 50 pesos (one USD

Well, my sore throat is gone and my mother seems to feel better as well. This just reinforces my belief that the irritation was most likely caused by the pollution in this city. So, this happens to be the penultimate day of our vacation here. We leave at 6:45 PM tomorrow. Today, my Aunt came early to our hotel room and after breakfast, we immediately took a taxi to the Greenhills Shopping center where my mother planned to buy some cheap bling-blings. I love this place and I always make sure to visit it every time I'm in manila because inside one of the interconnected malls, there's a small wing with nothing but otaku and hobbyist-related shops -- not that I planned to buy anything unless I saw a Nagi figure that I didn't already have. Unfortunately, they only had a whole bunch of Love Live figures and tons of expensive Miku ones. Anyway, I split up with my mother and aunt and went window shopping a bit. There were several other otaku hobbyists browsing the stores

My mother caught a bit of a cold today. She was already complaining about a slight sore throat yesterday. Anyway, my throat also feels a bit sore. I blame the pollution and congestion in this city. Also, the super-crowded, hot and stuffy MRT train cars. Anyway, the day started with free breakfast at the hotel as usual, then we had to head to the drugstore to purchase some a throat gargle and some lozenges. Fortunately, it's just sitting right next to the hotel. We had breakfast at about 9:10 AM. After breakfast, we got ready to go malling again and departed at about 10:00 AM for SM Mall of Asia. It's just a short jeepney ride away and the terminal is literally right at the side of the hotel. We arrived at the mall at about 10:40. I was actually pretty familiar with the place be cause it has a really simple layout. It's one of the la rgest malls in the Philippines, but it only has two floor s and three buildings -- one central building and two wings on each side. The ce

So... day 2 of our vacation was a bit uneventful. We started the day with free breakfast at the hotel. Then we went back to the hotel room to rest up a bit before going out. Our first stop was to see what the new SM Aura mall is all about since it still wasn't here when I was living here about 2-3 years ago. We had to navigate our way to Bonifacio Global City via one train ride and one bus ride. The place has really become well-developed with tons of new commercial buildings since I was last here. Anyway, the bus ride took about an hour at least, but was relatively peaceful. We alighted at one of my favorite shopping malls, Market! Market! I knew that SM Aura was somewhere near it but I didn't realize that it was just literally facing the Market  area of said Market! Market! mall. My mother in front of SM Aura So it was about 2:20 when we arrived at SM Aura, mostly due to the heavy traffic. The place was very nice and was designed in a linear fashion sort of like the Rockw

So I'm on vacation right now in Manila. It's just a local trip, but it is one plane trip away from my city. This isn't my first time here... heck, I lived here for two months back when I was reviewing for the bar exams (which I failed, before you ask) The trip started out on the wrong foot, really... and ironically, the first mishap would set the tone for the other untoward incidents for the remainder of the day -- that of unprofessionalism. Our flight was scheduled for an 11:15 AM departure today, so we had called a local taxi business called "Light of Glory" a day before the flight to hire one of their taxis to take us to the airport by 8:30 AM so that we'd have plenty of time to get things in order at the airport. Come at 8:15, the taxi service hadn't called nor had their taxi arrived. We had to call the ourselves and guess what? The operator said that there were no available units at this moment but they'd have one fetch us within 3-5 minutes. So