Melancholic Nostalgia

Have not written a new chapter for almost a year now, but I have updated my Ranma/Doctor Who crossover to chapter 15.

Now it stands at a mere 97,178 words in total, and I feel I have at least 10 more chapters to go before I finish this story, before I move on to it’s slightly more epic sequel.

That’s what 6 hours in Starbucks will do to you… That, and a large cold chocolate drink, a chicken wrap and a bottle of water.

Currently on chapter 5 of the book I plan on publishing, slow going writing your own characters, you can’t tell if they’re in character yet, because they by definition have no character because they are new.

What a Catch 22… Speaking of which I should really read that book one day…

Or so it looked like on the 8th March.

While these photos fail to do it justice, imagine a world where you leave your house, and the sky is orange/brown, and the whole landscape looks that colour.

This came from the sand from Egypt that occasionally comes over for a visit, bringing these kinds of skies.

However, this particular day was also different in that it rained mud overnight, and the cars were spattered with brown rain, like everybody had been rally driving.

Regardless, it was a scary day, kind of creepy with a sense of foreboding, which the strikes of course showcased by simply happening again, preventing me from going to work once more due to lack of public transport.

The 9th March looked nicer though, and you could see these horrid cloud running away from us at speed.

The following was taken from a tram while in motion.

They say there’s going to be another strike next week, but we’ll see what happens.

So yes, a day at home, working from home, whilst others choose to protest.

Or fight…

Being on the receiving end of tear gas isn’t a nice experience, I’ll tell you that… Your eyes water, nose runs and mouth gets dry all at once.

Even though places like the metro were closed, it doesn’t stop tonnes of people getting in for protests, though with the fuel hikes, it may be more expensive to do so!

And I was right, the anarchists turned up for some fun and games…

Hopefully, the warzone will be quieter come Monday, but more strikes are due on the 11th March, so it doesn’t seem to be ending any time soon.

New measures have been introduced to boost the currency:

Pensions freezes; Cuts in public sector pay; A increase in sales tax from 19% to 21%; Rises in taxes on fuel, cigarettes and alcohol; Rises in taxes on luxury goods.

Good news for the Euro… but this is inevitably followed by hell. 

There will be a massive strike on Friday, tomorrow, ALL public transport will be cut, huge protests in front of parliament will follow (with some anarchists naturally to smash a few windows here and there). I won’t even be able to go to work.

Despite all this madness, civil servants who think that they’re entitled to more pay despite only working until midday or 2pm, without any risk of their losing their jobs for being crap, they are angry because their pittance of a pay won’t be enough to cover their endless coffee trips.

*sighs* I’m being a bit mean, I know that they have a right to their pay, but when you see loads of people not really bothered about working, it really gets on your nerves when you try and complete a form (namely my residence permit), only to see 4 women chatting about their summer holiday, for 20 minutes without even looking at you.

Regardless, the strikes will not last long. I can even see difficult new laws, such as no more striking for one year, losing your job if you join in the strike. Of course, there are laws against this, but I feel that one small change can scare anyone into not striking or protesting:

If someone joins a strike or protest, the government will prioritise analysing that person’s finances.

Imagine this, the government checking to see how you can afford that mansion in Voula or Kifissia, when you only earn 700 euros a week? That would terrify anyone.

I hope things turn out better for the country soon, these protests just make us look like whiners…

Here’s the image of the PASOK parliament, moody lighting, a bit depressed, but still much better than the previous government:

Also, I really hate the acronym PIGS.

Not having a Playstation 3, I wandered into Public in Syntagma and saw a familiar control scheme and started playing, Heavy Rain, the new game from Quantic Dream.

2 hours later, the shop was closing and I had to leave.

All I can say was, after playing through David Cage’s previous game Fahrenheit, he has really got the emotional part down perfect, even more so than that game. I almost cried at certain bits.

Minor spoilers follow:

I played from moving an FBI agent into his office to the point the woman (forgot their names, sorry) met the man after he had a crazy drive. Around ten scenes in all.

What I managed to do was accidentally let a man die by not stopping an armed robbery, not killing another man when he pulled out a crucifix instead of a gun, saving a woman from commiting suicide, and changing a baby and feeding her milk.

Also, a nude shower scene and a burglary dream?

Spoilers end.

Seriously though, those few moments were enough to tug at my heart strings, the facial animations of the sadness of a lost child was just painful (in a good way) to watch.

I really hope that this makes millions, and is ported to the PC. Otherwise, this game may be the sole reason by my buying a PS3.

Even the box art gives you chills…

Going on from my previous post, there are still many problems. Despite the new austerity plans, there are other problems with getting money from Greek people.  Huge strikes in Greece (forcing a run on petrol stations because fuel trucks stopped too), other parties disagreeing (namely the Greek Communist Party), and the previous government refusing to admit their fault in the matter.

Papandreou spoke to the BBC when he was in the UK, and his accent was amazing, you could forget he was Greek entirely, not like Karamanlis. True, he’s half American, but for a foreign leader to have a good command of another language is fairly interesting.

He said the truth, that things are bad here but Greece will pay their own debts, we just need moral (not financial support, yet) from Europe and the world and the belief that we can do it. These are tough times we’re going through, small things I’ve noticed already, the price of of a 500ml coke has gone up from 1 euro to 1.20 (though it may have been just at the bakery I frequent), and pay-as-you-go mobile phones have taxes on them when you buy and load credit (11 euros purchased credit comes out to about 8.50 credit).

Despite all this, life continues as normal, as it’s days like these that make me happy to live in Greece:

This is a view of Piraeus from Edem (ΕΔΕΜ) tram station, 3rd February at 10am, a chilly wind with warm sun, the best kind of day to go to work on. If you drive by the sea every day on your way to work, somehow you’ll believe that things aren’t so bad, and that no matter what, we can make it.

As per my previous post, another site was resurrected.

Take your time and read my fanfic, think Love Hina vs Fast Zombie horde, and you get the picture.

Since connecting my old hard drives to my computer, I’ve been searching them to make room, and found my old site! I’ve uploaded my ‘Anime Info’ page, and now it’s live on the site.

Direct links to it are http://animeinfo.turbanator.co.uk or http://www.turbanator.co.uk/animeinfo, which both bring up the same page.

if you’re interested in anime or manga, and using that medium to learn just a tiny bit about Japanese culture, check it out. I apologise for the code (if you view the source, it was made in dreamweaver, and badly coded overall), but it’ll take too long to make it better these days.

New iTunes update to 9.0.3, and with it and iPod update, and, unsurprisingly, another dead iPod, much like last time…

Again, the solution was the same, use the Windows 7 partition to fix it, and it did finally.

I can’t imagine what would happen when people’s iPads begin to fail like this…

So, I finally went to see the movie, all in nice 3D at the Village Max cinema in Faliro. Overall, it was good.

I wouldn’t state excellent, as there were a few problems with pacing, I would have liked to see more of Jake trying to fit in with his Avatar when learning the Na’vi techniques, as he seemed to get the hang of it fairly quickly (though it was approximately three months later, so you do get the impression that a lot is missing).

Characters are a tad clichéd, though there were some nice surprises (the scientist who got jealous at Jake actually didn’t turn face and backstab him, he became a decent fellow).

The CGI was incredible, though I still think that Pirates of the Caribbean (Davy Jones in particular) shows what it can really do, when you think that those octopus appendages are real, when in fact he had nothing on his face at all. The Na’vi people and Pandora was beautifully animated, showing how amazing the plants move and live, even the floating mountains, vertigo-inducing, and naturally, the wildlife, which is terrifying.

I would rate this as a must see, if only for the spectacle. If I ever get round to buying a Bluray player, this movie would benefit most from it, with all the visuals, and most likely by then, 3D technology for the home.

In other news, my new computer is up and running, and able to run Mirror’s Edge at maximum quality with no slowdown whatsoever. I’m loving every second of it.