Neon Genesis Evangelion (or 新世紀エヴァンゲリオン) is an anime series I've just finished watching in its entirety of 26 episodes and one alternative ending (actually, there's a little more but I'm probably going to stop here). As before, watching anime always makes me want to learn a little more Japanese because it just sounds wicked cool. Over the course of 26 episodes in one week, I did end up learning some not-exactly-that-handy Japanese expressions such as the verbs "to understand" in its affirmative and negative present tense as well as in its casual and respectful forms (Japanese, being a language with many strictly defined standards for honorifics, has about four different ways of saying the same thing depending on your social standing relative to the person you're talking to and the persons you're talking about). I also learnt the verbs "to know" and "to hate", as well as the phrase "Are you stupid?!" I also learnt counting backwards from 8 to 1. These are all listed below, with the exception of the numbers:

1. Wakatta (解った) and wakarimasu (解ります) - Understand (casual and respectful)
2. Wakaranai (解らない) and wakarimasen (解りません) - Do not understand (casual and respectful)
3. Shiranai (知らない) - Do not know (casual)
4. Kirai 嫌い - Hate
5. Anata baka?! あなた馬鹿？！  Are you stupid?!

Labels: English

Finally, a relief from the push and pull of college life. At least, until Monday.

I got to go visit my brother and go Black Friday shopping after two years. Black Friday shopping, which, most non-Americans and even some Americans, are unaware of, is this one day (the Friday after Thanksgiving Day, which is on a Thursday by definition) that is the largest shopping event of the entire year. On this one day, nearly all large stores have magnificent discounts on nearly everything. Also, they tend to open doors egregiously early, from about 3am onwards, and, 7am is what is considered to be an unacceptably late opening time on this particular day. The most avid of shoppers (称 "doorbusters") tend to line-up outside the store which carries their favourite offer many hours before it opens, which, in some circumstances happens to be the previous night. These are the people who manage to get away with things like 42" LCD televisions for $500 and not-too-indecent Sony VAIO laptops for $100 a pop. Then there are the not-exactly-crazy shoppers like myself who get to these stores at around 5.30-6am and although the 500GB $100 hard drives run out by then, we can still get the 500GB $120 hard drives and $7.99 cellphones.

There are also those parties which do not share as much of the Black Friday spirit as others. For example, there are the regular shoppers who'll wander in at regular times like 11am and avail of the more regular offers, such as 25% off a pair of gloves, or $10 off on a necktie. There are also many stores which similarly do not have the Thanksgiving spirit and offer pathetic discounts like $20 off a wireless router - an excellent example of such patheticness is the Apple Stores. See, if you can't give customers a discount that'll actually make them feel good about getting up before the sun and driving to the mall, there's no point in it. No one's going to be crossing the line between buying and not buying thanks to a $20 off on a $180 device and you might as well keep the $20. Proof of this is the fact that not only was there a complete absence of any kind of queue outside the Apple Store in the wee hours of the morning, but also that when I did stroll into the store to find out if they had any good offers, it was pretty much devoid of shoppers. You might as well not wake up your employees from their hangovers of yesterevening and open at 10.30am like you normally do. There's really no need to have a "pretend sale"; instead, be completely non-American like Armani and ignore the event altogether.

Labels: English