Completely Pointless Update on Rachel's Uninteresting Life
Today was spent mostly phoning more schools up, and was not entirely without reward. I'm off to have a chat with the headteacher of a nearby school on Friday, and I might be able to go off on a school trip to the British Museum with my mother's Year Fives in December.
I am quite looking forward to December. My youngest sister will be back in the country - how hard she will find the gloomy English climate when she's been sunning herself in California all this time - and there will be the usual roasted Christmas food. Finally, I will be allowed to eat carbs once more! A pox on Ria and mother's evil diet!
Also, Scarf-tan agreed to come down to London and see a show with me in December. Needless to say, this pleases me greatly. Because I am a way-too optimistic loser, mostly, but eh.
Apropos Scarf-tan, I was up in that part of the world last weekend. It was a weekend of fireworks and castles! Scarf-tan, Heike and I went up to Warwick Castle and charged about like excitable and mooncalf children rather than respectable qualified teachers. Warwick Castle is pretty sweet. It's actually the first time I'd been there, since the few times I'd been at a school (as both student and teacher) there had been a trip there I was precluded from going.
Anyway. Warwick Castle. Peacock Garden. Ah, peacocks. The peacock garden explained why I once encountered a peacock on my way to school when I was on teaching placement in Warwick. It was also a good opportunity to watch Scarf-tan being scared to death. Warwick Castle provided many good opportunities for watching Scarf-tan being scared to death. The Ghost Tower show - which basically consisted of whited-up actors leaping out of darkened corners at people - was my favourite bit. Heike managed to get slightly lost in there, which was impressive, since there were only three rooms.
In other news which doesn't involve me gallivanting off with retardedly cute Devonshire girls and anglophile Germans, Persona 3: FES. I can't remember why I was so determined I had to play P3, but I do remember not being able to find a copy. Then the shiny extended FES version came out, and GAME decided that I actually had managed to acrue enough points on my card to let me have it for cheap. The rest, as they say, is history.
Or, more accurately, the rest is Rachel spent every waking moment when there was no-one else around playing the game.
Seriously. It is fiendishly adictive. Or rather, it's fiendishly addictive if you happen to think that the bastard love-child of FFVIII and Pokémon with a soupçon of Shadow Hearts sounds like a good idea. And that's just the battle system. When you're not trawling through a tower full of evil in the middle of the night, the main character is a Japanese high-school student. I actually broke with standard Rachel-playing-an-RPG-convention and did not name the main character Rachel. (...although, as I called him 'Rei', that probably doesn't count for much.)
The fun part is that your character's ability to create 'Personas' - the de facto magic attacks - are based on your social links to the people you interact with in school and outside of it. How you respond to other students affects how they perceive you which in turn affects your stats or the strength of the Persona corresponding to that social link. I encourage the Disciplinary Committee Chairman to be a complete dick so that he likes me more so that my Emperor Arcana Persona are more powerful. XD
It's hideously geeky. It's also great fun. Especially when class teachers randomly pick on my character to answer questions that, presumably, would be standard general knowledge/trivia to a Japanese kidult, but occasionally flummox me. Or have been adapted into Americanised English, thus causing me to get the wrong answers. In Rei's English lessons. Honestly! I am a teacher of languages! I know my subordinate clauses! The comma doesn't go there in English English, you stupid NPC!
Uh, anyway. P3. It threatened to swallow my life. I am only on hiatus from playing it at the moment, because the living room is being drastically altered now, and I cannot sit there and save the world from the shadows whilst David the Wallpaper Boy is making a mess.
...ja, anyway. I have nothing else very constructive to do right now, so I might go and eat something. How exciting it is to be me!
I am quite looking forward to December. My youngest sister will be back in the country - how hard she will find the gloomy English climate when she's been sunning herself in California all this time - and there will be the usual roasted Christmas food. Finally, I will be allowed to eat carbs once more! A pox on Ria and mother's evil diet!
Also, Scarf-tan agreed to come down to London and see a show with me in December. Needless to say, this pleases me greatly. Because I am a way-too optimistic loser, mostly, but eh.
Apropos Scarf-tan, I was up in that part of the world last weekend. It was a weekend of fireworks and castles! Scarf-tan, Heike and I went up to Warwick Castle and charged about like excitable and mooncalf children rather than respectable qualified teachers. Warwick Castle is pretty sweet. It's actually the first time I'd been there, since the few times I'd been at a school (as both student and teacher) there had been a trip there I was precluded from going.
Anyway. Warwick Castle. Peacock Garden. Ah, peacocks. The peacock garden explained why I once encountered a peacock on my way to school when I was on teaching placement in Warwick. It was also a good opportunity to watch Scarf-tan being scared to death. Warwick Castle provided many good opportunities for watching Scarf-tan being scared to death. The Ghost Tower show - which basically consisted of whited-up actors leaping out of darkened corners at people - was my favourite bit. Heike managed to get slightly lost in there, which was impressive, since there were only three rooms.
In other news which doesn't involve me gallivanting off with retardedly cute Devonshire girls and anglophile Germans, Persona 3: FES. I can't remember why I was so determined I had to play P3, but I do remember not being able to find a copy. Then the shiny extended FES version came out, and GAME decided that I actually had managed to acrue enough points on my card to let me have it for cheap. The rest, as they say, is history.
Or, more accurately, the rest is Rachel spent every waking moment when there was no-one else around playing the game.
Seriously. It is fiendishly adictive. Or rather, it's fiendishly addictive if you happen to think that the bastard love-child of FFVIII and Pokémon with a soupçon of Shadow Hearts sounds like a good idea. And that's just the battle system. When you're not trawling through a tower full of evil in the middle of the night, the main character is a Japanese high-school student. I actually broke with standard Rachel-playing-an-RPG-convention and did not name the main character Rachel. (...although, as I called him 'Rei', that probably doesn't count for much.)
The fun part is that your character's ability to create 'Personas' - the de facto magic attacks - are based on your social links to the people you interact with in school and outside of it. How you respond to other students affects how they perceive you which in turn affects your stats or the strength of the Persona corresponding to that social link. I encourage the Disciplinary Committee Chairman to be a complete dick so that he likes me more so that my Emperor Arcana Persona are more powerful. XD
It's hideously geeky. It's also great fun. Especially when class teachers randomly pick on my character to answer questions that, presumably, would be standard general knowledge/trivia to a Japanese kidult, but occasionally flummox me. Or have been adapted into Americanised English, thus causing me to get the wrong answers. In Rei's English lessons. Honestly! I am a teacher of languages! I know my subordinate clauses! The comma doesn't go there in English English, you stupid NPC!
Uh, anyway. P3. It threatened to swallow my life. I am only on hiatus from playing it at the moment, because the living room is being drastically altered now, and I cannot sit there and save the world from the shadows whilst David the Wallpaper Boy is making a mess.
...ja, anyway. I have nothing else very constructive to do right now, so I might go and eat something. How exciting it is to be me!