AFA 2013

It was an amazing weekend at suntec city singapore this weekend, hordes of anime lovers swarmed the convention centre to scour for an assortment of anime goodies at asia's biggest annual anime event, Anime Festival Asia!

It was pandemonium early in the morning, people had been queuing up to get into the convention halls hours before it even opened, some of the earliest had been queuing since before the sun had even rose. This was not an unusual sight, for the past few years which AFA had been held, there had always been people queuing up early just to be amongst the first few in line, so as to be able to buy the limited edition goodies that were on sale, in fact it is almost compulsory for anyone who wanted a share of these limited edition merchandise to queue up early, for these items ran out very very quickly, it was known that within the first hour or so , the entire event had probably sold out on all of it's limited edition merchandise.

Even without the limited edition merchandise on sale, people continued to enter the convention halls throughout the day, many of them in full costume, or rather "cosplay" a term used to describe people who dress up as anime/manga/Japanese characters. Each and every year, AFA holds a cosplay event to find the best cosplayers in the region, this event attracts cosplayers from around the world to attend, and naturally, many locals are also inspired by these first generation cosplayers to cosplay and ever since then, the number of cosplayers have been rising steadily, year after year.!

AFA has created a wonderful event where anime lovers from around the region can gather and collect anime merchandise that came directly from japan and from local artists, it also provides a platform for anime lovers to express their love for anime through cosplay, anyone and attend the event, provided they purchase the basic entrance ticket at $10, anime lovers get to see their favourite anime characters get brought to life by cosplay, indulge in delicious japanese food, purchase unique merchandise and even hear their favourite anime tunes in the IloveAniSong Concert!. This is one annual event that every anime lover has marked on their calenders, one that is certainly not to be missed. So, mark your calenders everyone for next year's AFA!

{Photo credits, AFA, Danny Choo,Amin}

Singapore's Haze Fiesta.

Over the course of the last few days, Singapore experienced the thickest haze in it's history since its independence. The Haze was not a surprise to most of the residents of Singapore. What surprised Singaporeans was the severity of the haze. In recent days, the haze has spiked upwards to an astounding value of 401 PSI (Pollutant Standard Index), with many speculating that the actual value should have been upwards of 500, some even claim that the government may be playing down the numbers to prevent widespread panic. One should note that the previous highest recorded PSI in Singapore was 250 in 1997s. Thus this haze was rather unexpected and it caused quite the uproar among citizens, many of which going online to vent their frustrations.

The Haze caught everyone off guard, everyone knew that there would be haze at around this time of the year, caused mainly by indonesian farmers engaging in the "slash & burn" practice to clear their lands and prepare for the next season of plantation. Thus, every year, without fail, in this season of slash & burn, haze would be blown over to singapore from indonesia, blanketing our little island in haze and polluting our airspace for weeks.

Every year, the haze would come and go, without much hooha , aside from the occasional complainer.
But not this year. people felt the thick haze affecting their face, throat and eyes. People started wearing masks, few at first, but more and more people started wearing masks and soon, everywhere you looked, dozens were wearing masks. Things were really bad then, visibility dropped below 1km. The government finally stepped in, they made a haze committee of sorts, told everyone to avoid "strenuous physical activity" particularly the young and elderly and advised the people to only buy and use N95 mas filters 95% of airborne particulates )  The problem was, the market was not ready for the sudden demand, and within hours, many shops were out of these N95 masks, thus leaving many.. without a mask.  
ks. (

Because of this shortage of masks, many stayed at home, hiding out from the haze, those who had masks had to deal with going about their daily lives with a new accessory on their faces. The lives of singaporeans were truly
affected negatively by the haze. 

In light of singapore's troubles, the ones whom the haze originated from do not seem to be doing anything at all the help stop this haze. instead they made statements like this. "It's called sharing, you go through good times together, don't make noise to the world when things go bad. It's just like husband and wife, don't take your quarrel outside," Personally, i think such a statement is totally inappropriate and unprofessional. i mean, if obama were to say such a thing i'd think he would lose a lot of support.

Here's another golden quote. "Let me remind our friends from Malaysia, Singapore, don't just because of the haze, tell stories to the world,"  courtesy of the indonesian  Energy and Mineral Resources Minister Jero Wacik .

i think the statements speak for themselves. 

inspite of all that talk,, he said, that the indonesian government was also doing its utmost to put out the fires. so hopefully he'd stick to this words and stop this haze once and for all. 
credits: http://www.straitstimes.com/breaking-news/se-asia/story/haze-update-malaysia-singapore-should-know-themselves-says-indonesian-mi

Naruto 633

Spoiler Alert

------------------------------------ NARUTO!-----------------------

In this week's chapter, we finally see some classical Naruto action. most of the ninja fromNaruto's generation reunite here on this forsaken battlefield, to fight for their world. light gray are my ramblings.  The infamous team 7, consisting of Naruto, Sasuke and Sakura finally reunite, and it was known only just last week that sasuke was even on naruto's side. The week before , there was heavy speculation about Sasuke's allegiance. would he follow the path of vengance and darkness (that he himself created many many chapters ago) and seek an end to the world or would he be convinced by his brother's final words of advice and traverse back to the path of light? Seemingly , he's taken the latter choice and now, united with his friends he's fighting to correct his mistake and bring down the evil mastermind that is (Madara Uchiha.) and thus, this chapter showed the shinobi of konoha(and the rest of the ninja world) fighting against the greatest evil.  Ino, Chouji, and Shikamaru are shown to be executing a highly polished version of their infamous combo move. Fast forward to another scene on the battlefield, Hinata shows off her latest skill, a sixty four palm strike. , that'll be something incredible in the anime. Tons of amazing skill and teamwork are shown in this chapter, it'd be one of those chapters that the anime can drag on for 5 episodes. There's just so much content that leaves tons of space to the imagination and later on, the animators.! The anime adaptation of this part of the series is going to be awesome. 
Shortly after/ simultaneously after Hinata's cameo, Sai confers his worries about the battle but naruto sasuke and sakura blow away all worries by summoning their beasts. and thus the manga ends off on a really high note. I personally can't wait for the next chapter! Shortly after/ simultaneously after Hinata's cameo, Sai confers his worries about the battle but naruto sasuke and sakura blow away all worries by summoning their beasts. and thus the manga ends off on a really high note. I personally can't wait for the next chapter! 

this is one chapter you cannot miss!. go ahead and read it if you hadn't 

(credits: Masashi Kishimoto for the manga, Mangastream for hosting and translating it )

The Great Coca Cola

Coca cola is something that i believe we are all familiar with,after all it's available everywhere and it is rather popular.

One might think that Coca Cola rose to the top through its sheer iconic design and taste but the truth is millions upon millions of dollars are probably poured into this brand to subtly brainwash us to drink it.

Well looking at this ad, it pretty seems pretty much certain that, that is indeed the case.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=72fRuE8vmo0#!
I feel like rushing out to buy a can of it right now.. dayummm.

It has had many many ads everywhere in the world and most of em are probably at the top of their class,
there are even movie tie ins. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RDiZOnzajNU 
and there was this retro one featuring the moonwalking legend.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dyF6XmFbAxc

well those are 3 of the many remarkable ones , apparently there are 1800++ more videos where that came from. just look at the coke channel.

simply amazing.

well whatever coke's doing to make people drink it, i guess its working . it's adverts are top notch and are actually one of the few well thought out ones that i'd gladly watch and not just skip. so yeah. coke keep doing your thing.       -ZW

Flumpool & Sid

Last weekend, flumpool and SID performed lived in Singapore at Clark Quay, although i barely heard of them, i decided to head on down to the rivers to check them out, and i'm sure glad i did. If you hadn't guessed from the names yet, they are Japanese bands from Japan,( yes i know that's probably quite obvious)

Well, lets move on to the actual performance itself. Flumpool performed first,believe it or not, even before their arrival the crowd were already singing their songs.Japanese songs at that. That's the power of flumpool.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CmgRDNPW6W0

They played outstandingly, one of the best performances i've ever seen.

Sid then took the stage. they took the stage by storm, greeting fans by throwing bottles of water into the crowd, the bottles spun and spilled out all over the crowd, one would think that the crowd would be angry to get wet but in this case, caught up in the fandom, i guess no one really cared. it was glorious. 

somewhere along the line, they transformed into sparking balls of light and i've could have sworn it was a full moon that night.

Thats Flumpool btw. 

So that's pretty much their performances, watch it for a little while and enjoy it if you can, but the real thing is always better, so next time they perform , do try to catch them live, they are awesome.!

Revamp

Most of you know how google works, for those of you who don't here's a simple summary of everything. google has various algorithms that factor in what you type into the search box and brings up the most relevant information to you. thankfully, those algorithms work well, bringing us all our juiciest bits of information and some of our darkest fears. Well, and another thing, the pagerank system. Google takes into account the popularity of certain sites and this is called the "page rank". In laymen terms, that means the more popular < more view// unique clicks> the "blog" or "website" has, the higher up the search pages it will go. as of now, if you search my name, you'd see this blog on the first page! :D but as the 5th result. now i assure you, getting to #1 for something as obscure as a name is pretty easy, that is unless you're named after someone famous or your name is obama. why is it important to reach #1? well it gives your website much more visibility and ease of search, which relates to more visitors and in turn , ad revenue if your for-profit. in my case, i just want people to see that i'm the most famous one of my name. thats all, pretty clean and simple. so now lets get all of this underway. As i've talked about the page rank system before, to preserve this already amazingly high rank, i'd be doing a complete revamp of the blog and afterwards, i'd do a post a day about various interesting stuff. no more, no less, expect anime , movie, electronics and various viral news to come flying across the world to you. Catch ya later. goodbye.