And so another year begins

Finally summer is over and school at USC has started up again. I had a fun filled summer experience. For those of you that don't know I had the opportunity to volunteer abroad over this summer in Uganda. It was quite an amazing experience. But before that I had a 3-day vacation in Dubai prior to arriving in Uganda. I met Chris, Kristina, and Nicolette on the way to Dubai and we were the four brave souls to step into Dubai and come out alive (with all our money).

Dubai is Dubai, and there really isn't that much to talk about. I am sad I didn't make a travel blog due to my laziness, but sometime in the future I will re-write my journal entries. Here is a video I took of the AGYA house in UGANDA




Anyway after Uganda I had to prepare for Evo and shortly after school started. I am excited for the next big tournament though which is West Coast Warzone. Everyone should attend whether you like street fighter or not.

I'm Back

After a long break from updating my blog, I think it is time that I start this up again. I will update things within the next few weeks of my adventures over the past few months. Includes: Lots of SF4, Dubai, Uganda, and Evo!

Slowly improving

I can only visit the arcades during the weekends because of school and so every weekend when I start playing I am a bit rusty. But I am slowly improving my game in TvC and SFIV. I am starting to get the hang of being patient and turtling with Ken even though most people would probably find it annoying, but it is a style that works for me. As for TvC, I am finally getting used to that game and I find it more enjoyable than SFIV. I may perhaps make it the main game I play and my main team right now is Hurrican Polymar/Morrigan. There is some good competition at Super and I got owned a few times by some pros. Anyway I got some good games in this weekend. My schedule goes like this: Friday I get off class at 12, head to super, then to AI, then to Vid94. A full day of gaming in. On Saturdays I go study at Starbucks a bit then head to super for the rest of the day and then possibly to AI and then Vid94. On Sundays if I don't have meetings I will head to super at night until it closes then head back to USC. So only three days in the week I get to practice some moves, not bad.

So with school starting to pick up, I may be limited on some of these weekends since midterms are coming soon and I will have to sacrifice a weekend or two to get some studying in. I am determined to get the best grades this semester since I suffered greatly last semester. Some good news though is that I will be going to Uganda this summer on a volunteer project through the volunteer center here at USC and so that will be a short break from gaming. I plan to go to Evo2k9 and this will be my first time going to Evo. I am really excited that the lineup is finally out and that it will be hosted at the Rio from July 17-19. Hopefully I can get better by then and be a formidable opponent for the pros.

Anyways ggs to the guys at super, ai, and vid94 this weekend. Hopefully I will be able to put a challenge in the near future, especially with SFIV coming out in two weeks. I will definitely be practicing throughout the week!

Eventful Week

So after the first week of the semester I decided I would hit up UCLA on Thursday night and stay there for Friday. So I headed over to UCLA stayed at Serena's place for the night since the arcade on campus doesn't open til 8 AM or something. So I stayed up the whole night watching videos and stuff on youtube and took a 15- minute nap. When Serena woke up we finally headed to campus and she had to head for her virology class. I walked her to class and I saw Jenn on the way there, that was pretty cool, she was confused at first, but I told her I was just visiting campus. Anyway I headed to Ackerman soon after and hit up the arcade for some quick SFIV play time. I had good practice that day as it was one of the times where I can keep constantly playing without waiting for eight other people in front of me. Anyway after a day of SFIV I went to a potluck with Serena and some of her friends, it was pretty cool. Serena kept kicking my ass at Tetris Attack, and so now I am back into Tetris Attack and will practice to get some revenge.

Saturday was good as well. Got to go snowboarding with Serena, Evelina, Jeanny, and Julie. Yeah I was the only guy, how awesome is that. Anyway it was a good day of snowboarding except for the icy snow. I fell hard for the first time and I felt like I destroyed my knees so I had to call it a day an hour early, so I chilled at the lodge for an hour until everyone else finished up. I can't wait to snowboard again, it is so much more fun and fulfilling when you can carve down the mountain. Sooner or later it would be time to conquer the jumps!

Sunday is usually my relax and do homework day, but since it was a long weekend I decided to hang out at the arcade. Hit up Super arcade in the afternoon and stayed there for a while. There was a new game there called Tatsunoko vs Capcom and it looks hella fun. I've decided that I will start getting into that game when I get the basics down. But for the time being I just played SFIV all day! Got some good practice in and I can finally connect some of Ken's combos such as lk, lp, lk, mk, ex-hurricane and mix it up a bit. There were a bunch of scrubs playing for their first times or something and I was able to get a 16 win streak going. For some reason everyone who is new to the game either uses Ken or Ryu. Oh well, that was fun while it lasted. Someone who eventually knew how to play came and beat me with Zangief. I hate Zangief because he is so monstrous and intimidating that I really can't do much to him, so I was just grabbed to hell. Anyway after that I headed to Olive Garden with the guys and had a good dinner.

Video of Tatsunoko vs Capcom!

Schools starting

So school started on Monday. I am taking Marketing, Corporate Finance, Business Statistics, Science of Human Performance, and Advertising. The business classes simply all suck, but on the bright side I do not have any classes on Wednesday! Today was club fair day and there wasn't anything interesting...again. I have been deprived of playing SFIV being stuck at this school so this Friday I'm headed to UCLA to get some playing time in! I think that is the closest arcade to me with SFIV. I heard there is an arcade in Little Tokyo and I might go and check it out someday. Just about a month before SFIV comes out on consoles and then its time to practice my Ken all day long. I ordered a PS2 -> PS3 converter for my fight stick and it is on its way from Korea. I won't slack off this semester like I did last semester though because I will have a hobby this time. I usually do bad when I have absolutely nothing to do and just waste time. All the years I have done well in school seemed to have involved me gaming or hanging out all day, how strange huh? I really wish there was an arcade on campus like they do at UCLA. Hopefully when the student center place gets built we can get one!

Anyway snowboarding this weekend, I am excited! Got my goggles back from Riley and I have my USC beanie to sport!

One of my favorite matches!

College Football Bowl Games

Most of you know I love college football. It is probably my favorite sport and I follow it religiously. This year I totally owned at my picks. I went 28-6 in straight picks which is tied for FIRST place among 5 other people on EPSN. But confidence picks are where you truly have to shine and I broke the top 100 this year. I'm ranked 89th out of everyone on EPSN that participated. Woot!

SFIV Practice

So throughout my winter break I have been playing Street Fighter IV on and off. There was this one night where I was playing at Arcade Infinity and it was the night before a big tournament there. I was playing Ken as usual and I don't think I ever won a match. I was playing this guy who was really damn good with Balrog and the next day my friend told me he was called gootecks and he was really good. Turns out he won the tournament and I didn't feel too bad losing so many times to him the night before. Ken seems to suck and I can barely win with him. I might reconsider using a new character, but I am not sure yet. I pre-ordered the game at EBGames after trading in some DS games and I plan to trade in some of my Wii and PS3 games to put toward Street Fighter IV. The collectors edition of the game is $79.99 and I am also planning on getting the tournament fighting stick which is $149.99.

This is the collectors edition of the game!



This is what the fighting stick looks like!

Rose Bowl!

Some of you know that I was lucky enough to win the student lottery to purchase Rose Bowl tickets. And it was damn well worth it. We played the mighty Nittany Lions of Penn St. and we totally rolled over them. I was at a New Years party the night before so I did not sleep and went to the Rose Bowl game with my friend Matt who picked me up early in the morning. When we got there we parked in that golf course and it was just a mess looking at it. We walked a long way to the stadium and had a lot of time to kill. We waited outside the Rose Bowl waiting for the teams to come on the bus and I got to see the team come in the very first row. I got a short video of it and it's posted on my facebook. When we got in we got food before the game and walked around for a while. Penn St. fans kept cheering "We Are! Penn State!" I would chime in with "SUCKS!" everytime they said "Penn State!" haha. Anyway when we got to our seats, they were great. I was dead center right behind the field goal post in the 7th row. Very nice seats for $145. The game was great as most of you know USC totally rolled over Penn St. The USC Trojans are the true champions in my heart!

Go USC! Fight On!

Tahoe!

Couple of updates coming since it's been a while. So as some of you know I went up to Tahoe a few weekends ago with my good friends Evelina and Serena and some of their high school friends. Tahoe was a long ass drive up and Serena used my car to drive all the way up and back down. What a trooper. Anyway we didn't make any real stops along the way up other than to fill gas and to go to a Savemart to buy Heavenly lift tickets. It cost $70 a day for snowboard at heavenly but it was totally worth it. Anyway when we all got to the cabin, it was nice and I claimed my sofa as my bed. We decided to just order delivery pizza for the first night since we were all tired from the drive and we set up my PS3 and played some Guitar Hero 3, Rock Band 2, and Buzz Quiz TV. Everyone loved Buzz Quiz and it can get quite competitive and dirty but it was fun.

The next day was out first day of snowboarding and it freakin' cold. The wind was also pretty vicious. We got to take the gondola to the top of th emountain and the ride up was long, but had a wonderful view.

There was one point where we went on a trail nd it was flat and was just horrible for me. Took me a while to get off of it, but when I finally did I was relieved. Anyway we had to rush to the gondola at the end of the day and they were rushing people off the mountain because a big storm was coming in. So after our first day of snowboarding we thought it was pretty good. Nice slopes and not too crowded like it is at Big Bear. We stop by the grocery Raileys and decided that we wanted to make breakfast the next day and so we bought a lot of stuff mostly for French toast and omlettes. After the grocery store run we wanted to eat out and not have to order pizza again so Evelina found an Italian restaurant we all went too called Scusa. It was pretty good and I had the salmon. After that we just went home and chilled with some PS3 and most people were tired from a day of snowboarding so some went to sleep.

The next day we all woke up early (kind of) and then cooked breakfast. Now today was the best day of snowboarding. The weather was perfect and very friendly and the slopes were amazing. I went on the same slope over and over just to try and get my carving down. By the end of the day Evelina and I can finally carve just as well as anyone else now. We were very proud of ourselves. And plus we found free parking this time when we went to the slopes. After snowboarding we had to stop by the grocery store again and buy stuff for breakfast. Half of the group wanted to go to Reno and the other half wanted to stay home and cook. So we split up.

The five brave souls that traveled to Reno were Tak, Julie, Anthony, Chris, and me. On the way there we had to take our chains on and put it on two times. The ride there took a very long time, but when we made it we were happy. Unfortunately we arrived 15 minutes too late. We got there at 9:15 PM and apparently the buffets all closed at 9:00 PM. So we walked around for a while and we went to Circus Circus and played some games. Tak beat up a buncha kids at the rolling ball camel race game and won a doll. After he won the elephant doll he asked if any of us wanted it and some random asian lady came up to us and said I want it. We ignored her and Tak gave the doll to Anthony. I played MvC2 at the arcade for a while and the others were playing air hockey. I pretty much dominated MvC2 since it was a buncha kids there playing. For some reason I was not surprised that the casinos were all filled with Asian families. Anyway after that we just decided to hit up a cafe and eat there and Tak and Chris played Keno whole eating. Tak won $10 on one game and was happy. Shortly after dinner we went and gambled. I was trying to find a multi-deck Blacjack table and finally did and bought in for $100. The table was full and started out really slow cause people in Reno did not know how to play properly. I was just going up and down for a while. After mostly everyone left, I started doing really well. I won $80 within 15 minutes of just playing with 1 other person at the table. I decided to quit because I found out that after I split I couldn't double down and I was used to that at Morongo. Tak found a table and played single- deck blackjack while we all watched. He won $100 in the end. It was a good night in Reno and now it was time to head home. Anothony drove all the way back home without having to put on any chains and it was about 4 AM when we got back home. The other half of our group apparently got really drunk and made a huge mess. So I spent the next few hours cleaning things up while everyone slept because I love to clean.


Finally on our last day we all woke up and make breakfast like before and we scrambled to clean things as we had to get out of the cabin before the next party came. Serena drove all the way back home with my car with a few stops to get food and gas. After we all made it back we all decided to eat in Alhambra and then meet at Evelina's house to figure out the cost of the trip. It was not bad at all. It was $63 for each of us to split the food at cabin and about $20 for gas for each of us in my car. The lift tickets were the most expensive things on the trip lol. It was a good weekend and I had a lot of fun and met a lot of cool people!

Street Fighter IV

So recently I started playing Street Fighter IV. I am addicted to it which is not a good thing considering that I am still in the middle of finals. Spent a good amount of money playing already, but it is really easy to pick up. It plays sort of like Street Fighter II. As of now I only use Ken just because Ken is badass. Looks like I'll be at the arcade a lot on my weekends next semester, and at UCLA as well since they have it on campus.

Snowboarding Gear

Instead of studying for the inevitable managerial accounting midterm I have later today, I am going to post my loot from Skidazzle and my snowboarding gear I bought this season.

The Board

Rossignol Imperial 2008 Snowboard. Size: 150

The Boots


Burton H.O.D. Board Boots. Size: 9

The Jacket



Burton Ronin Ro-Down Jacket. Size: Xs

The Pants

Burton Ronin Cargo Pants. Size: M

I can't wait for finals to be over so I can finally snowboard all freaking winter break.

Under Construction!

Plenty of gaming and snowboarding to come this winter!