There has been a lot of new going around about the DPRK and a potential occurance of World War III lately. I don’t know much about North Korea aside from jokes on the internet about Kim Jong Un like this one:

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I was very curious about the situation there now, but I never actually bothered to research anything about the country. Heck, there isn’t that much information available about the DPRK anyway. But anyway, today when I went to the friendly bay where all the pirates chill, they had a YouTube video on their homepage. The video was about the DRPK. Apparently this guy from the USA went there for holiday and got “permission” to film and take pictures there, but under very very very strict conditions. But he still managed to pull off an amazing documentary of his trip and raise the curtain a little bit for us westerners who want to find out more about that closed country.

Being born right after the fall of the Soviet Union, I did not get to experience this kind of thing first hand, but have heard multiple stories from my grandparents and parents who lived their whole lives in that regime. I can say that North Korea is exactly what I picture the USSR to be like back in the day. In a way I wish I could have experienced that for at least a little bit, but truth be told, living now is much much easier then it was during those days.

Here is the video:

Remember when I first blogged about how I got to see Wolf Children Ame and Yuki in Osaka in July? Well After that Madman had a screening of Wolf children in Sydney, sometime in September, I think, and thats when most of my friends from the anime club went to watch it together. Of course I was with them, and I can say that I cried more the second time I watched it, then the first. Anyway, fast forward to today and here we are again, at a madman screening of Wolf Children. But it is no ordinary screening when you just get to watch the movie.

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This time the director - Mamoru Hosoda came to Sydney and did a Q&A session with the audience, and then he was signing posters (which were only given to the first 20 people who lined up, and for some reason cause I was first I did not get one…) and DVDs of his works. Well naturally I had be different and instead of just getting a copy of The Girl Who Leaped Through Time or Summer Wars, which are available on both DVD and BD in Australia, I needed to get the BD of Wolf Children, which only got released in Japan 2 weeks ago. So a week before the film, I ordered the BD from AmiAmi with express shipping. Here is what the box looks like and everything that is inside:

So today after watching the movie for the third time in the cinema, I got the box signed, so I am gonna keep it forever and ever! Also almost all of my friends got a poster and Mamoru Hosoda signed it for them too. You can read my friend Sebastians blog about it here.

And without further adieu, here is my signed BD copy of Wolf Children:

You thought that Gangnam Style died and that no one will ever remember PSY again? Well think again! His new hit - Gentleman. Over 22 million views on YouTube in a day… woah… Lets see if it can reach a billion like GS did.  Also apparently this song has been featured on the news and radio, so its mainstream now and we should all stop listening to it.

Here at urbanest Quay Street we have 4 and 6 bedroom apartments where everyone gets their own en-suit room and you share the kitchen and living room area with your flatmates. Book now we only have a few rooms left!!! …

NOooooooooooooT! We are full! And have been for a while. And this is all thanks to our amazing team, who put a lot of effort into making bookings and filling up the building. But of course no good deed goes unrewarded. So we are all going KAYAKING together!

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It was raining the whole week in Sydney, but specially just for today the weather cleared up and it was a nice and sunny day for us to enjoy our BBQ and kayaking (it did rain a bit though, but it stopped after 10 minutes). We had a lot of good food cooked on the BBQ (barby) and some pavlova cake for desert. After filling our tummies with delicious food, it was finally time to hit the waves! (in a way)

Kayaking was a lot of fun, but also very tiring (yea I am weak, I know). I don’t know how much of a distance we covered, but it felt like a lot. I think we were in the water for about 2 hours or so. But I would love to do it again!

Link to photo album:

The Internet… Its such a magnificent thing! I can not imagine living without it. Everything I do during the day revolves around using the internet in one way or another. May it be Skyping with my parents back home, or checking into a restaurant on Foursquare, or simply checking my Twitter feed and replying to chat messages in Line. Its amazing how much we can do on the web these days, and it makes our lives just a bit more colorful. But you know what annoys me more than anything? SLOW CONNECTION SPEED AND LOW BANDWIDTH!

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I am from Latvia where ever since childhood we had unlimited internet with blazing fast speeds (like 4MB/s on torrents, 5 years ago). And then I arrive in Australia, where I have to live in home-stay, and guess what?!… I only got 1GB of internet usage PER MONTH… I did not understand what these words meant when I heard them. How can this be possible? How will I survive? And there was no answer for it. There just wasn’t.

After spending the first month in utter depression, I somehow managed to befriend my landlord and she upped up my usage to 10GB per month. But still I was surviving on internet at INSEARCH and the Apple Store. Then I moved to urbanest where I got 30GB per month (and now have 40), but I still felt limited… Now that I kinda got used to this lifestyle I kinda stopped complaining, but I still remember the good old days back home when downloading an iOS update took 1 minute instead of 2 hours…

So a few days ago my parents upgraded the internet back home. So now instead of having a fiber optic cable run to our house and then a copper cable from the basement to our flat (we live in an apartment complex where there are like 200 flats in the building), we have a fiber optic cable running right through our flat and connected to a modem which then goes to my router and lovely PC. So now instead of paying Ls15 (~$30) per month for both cable TV, landline and internet my parents will have to pay Ls20 which is 34 Australian dollars per month. (Ls is the currency in Latvia - Latvian Lats) And you know what they are getting for this price? I don’t think you guys can even imagine…

Sydney – Australia	Riga – Latvia

The question I ask myself now is: why did I come to Australia again? WHYYY?

This is Хорошо это программа которая обозревает вирусние видео на YouTube. Я на TiX наткнулся когда выходил еще 20й выпуск (сейчас уже вышел 203й), и мне сразу понравилось то что кто-то в рунете занимается этим (в английском интернете этим занимается Ray William Johnson со своей программой =3). Ребята молодцы! Продолжайте в том-же духе, и пусть у вас будет все больше и больше подписчиков.

I was reading 9to5mac this morning when I saw a rather interesting article about a golden colored iPhone. I checked out the website, and WOW was I amazed! Those colors look so pretty on both the iPhones and iPad Minis, its just amazing.

How they do it is: they actually anodize the metal making it colorful. Its much more high quality then just simple paint or stickers and therefore the price is much higher as well. The price is 249$ which includes the fee for anodizing and the shipment of the phone to the US and back. 9to5mac is also offering a 50$ discount for the service if you enter their promo code.

To be honest, I AM SO TEMPTED to get this. It will make my iPhone so pretty and colorful! And you all obviously know what color I will go if I get this:

Here is the link to the site if you guys want to check it out and if anyone has already done this, let me know how it went in the comments.

Last thing I fully watched was Tokyo Magnitude 8.0 so I decided to write up a small review about it. I was warned that it is that kind of series that will make you feel very emotional for the characters. I can say one thing… IT WAS!

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Basically what happens is, there are these 2 kids (brother Yuuki and sister Mirai) who go to a robotics show in Odaiba when tokyo gets hit by a massive 8.0 magnitude earthquake. Now that Tokyo is in ruins they need to find their way home to their parents.

This whole story is very touchy and you can really feel what the characters have to go through in every episode. Honestly it made me cry at least 4-5 times during these 11eps.

I highly recommend everyone to watch it. There are not many anime which make us feel so deeply for the characters.

8/10