I am back!

It had been a rather interesting month in China. I had some plan of narrating for you guys my adventure, but that will have to wait. I wanted to write it down while on my 10 hour flight back to Chicago but forgot to get a few sheets of paper. I'll list a summary instead. I'll probably write up a 30 day adventure some time in the future.

For some that are wondering, I forgot my Southperry password (I had my desktop and laptop that were logged in, at home), so I can't lurk the Funhouse while I was away nor could I log on to post. Tried sending for the password; it never came. /QQ

Chicago to China
-Volcanic activity delayed our flight by about 2-3 hours. Got compensated with $50 worth of food coupons.
-Flew on ANA, a Japanese plane. I dunno why people complain about airline food. The meals there were pretty tasty. Also, cute food containers.
-The delay caused us to miss our next plane by 2 hours. RAAAGE. We got compensated with one night at the Crown Plaza hotel in Narita.
-God damn, Japanese workers are so polite and respectful. I'll be missing that.
-Took a 3ish hour flight from there, to Beijing.

Week 1: Beijing
-PEOPLE THERE SPEAK MANDARIN. CAN'T COMMUNICATE. :|
-Met with my 2nd "Kow Goang", or uncle as well as my "Kow Po'. For a 75 year old person, he is very lively. Took us sight seeing. Saw the Forbidden City (Emperor's Palace), 4 different parks, Bird's Nest stadium (where 2008 Olympics were hosted), and saw the Great Wall.
-Damn steps at the Great Wall was so tiny and uneven. Only me and my little sister were brave enough to climb the steps. My sister had fun. I was freaking exhausted tightening my leg muscles to stabilize myself because I'm so big and was paranoid of tumbling down and taking with me everyone else that is trying to climb up. Went up to the first tower (~300-400 meters), and hated coming down.
-I spent the first few days just adjusting to the humidity and temperature.
-I considered Beijing my most exhaustive week because of all the sightseeing we did. I think I actually built some calf muscles from all the walking.
-YOU MUST CARRY YOUR OWN TOILET PAPER. ALSO, THERE ARE RARELY AMERICAN TOILETS. JUST SQUATTERS AND AT REALLY POOR PLACES, A DITCH.
-Food here was mediocre. It's more about eating yourself full than eating delicious stuff. Speaking of food, KFC's here were was common was McDonalds in the US.
-Apparently some cartoon character that looks like chibi sheep/goats (called Pleasant Goat) are pretty dang popular here. This remained consistent for the rest of my stay in China. Seeing little kid's shirts or book bags with that cartoon character was not uncommon.
-I already missed drinking ice cold water. Of course, I'd rather not drink the tap water here unless I want to come down with a case of the runs.

-Off to Chao Zhou!

Week 2 Chao Zhou
-Another Mandarin speaking place. Baw.
-Also, there's no such thing as normal milk. It's either sweet milk, or sour milk. BAAAAAW. I am a sweet tooth, but sweet milk is something I hated to drink.
-Met with one of my uncle's younger brother (father's sister's husband's younger brother). Damn he sure sounds like my uncle and nearly looks like him too. The only person who spoke Cantonese there. :^|
-It didn't help I couldn't really speak with my dad's old friends and family. That changed next week.
-Chao Zhou was mostly meeting up friends and family on my dad's side.
-At the hotel we stayed at, the room my dad and I was sleeping in had a sink pipe explode at 2:30 AM in the morning. Thank god I was up reading TV Tropes and lurking Southperry to tell my dad of the pipe. We changed rooms after wards. Best hotel in Chao Zhou, my ass.
-You'd think there were tons of bikes all over. There are. MOTOR bikes that is. About 50-60% of the vehicles on the streets were motorcycles or scooters of some sort. Also, in China, THEY BRAKE FOR NO ONE. You either run across the street, or people will be honking at you from left and right.
-Food here was pure awesome. It helps that tons of their ingredients are fresh. Probably the best food I had eaten in China.
-Saw tons of dogs and cats/kittens as pets everywhere. D'aw.
-Many vendors everywhere. Even at night you can expect the streets to have someone selling something to eat.
-Dates printed on Chinese drinks are when they were MADE, not when they expire. That scared me for a bit when I thought I was drinking a 3 month expired beverage.
-Off to Tai Shan!

Week 3: Tai Shan
-Cantonese speaking place. Yay! I can communicate here.
-Turned out we had relatives from the US also here. They helped us out a lot.
-Best hotel we stayed at: Sky Hotel. For a 3 star hotel, we got a room that was as big as two floors of my house for only 400 yuan a night (400/7 is less than 70 bucks a night for a very nice room that could house 6+ people)).
-Mainly here for meeting up with old friends and family on mu mom's side.
-After visiting her village in Tai Shan (Twai San?) where she grew up in, I now declare my "family tree" to be more of a god damn family forest.
-I let two little kids there play my DS. One overwrote my Megaman ZX file with 9 hours (previously deleted a 13 hour Vent file to play a near perfect Aile file). In a fit of rage I regained everything in 4.5 hours that night. The other made a ZX Advent file and at least knew not to "save" when playing other games.
-Last 2-3 days involved heavy shopping. Bought pants and shirts worth less than 15 American dollars. Main brand bought was Samuel and Kevin. Bought quite a few cute things as well, such as a 2 feet tall Stitch plushie for 8 American dollars and a bunny puppet for a random baby back home.
-RULE OF THUMB WHEN PICKING CLOTHES FROM CHINA: ALWAYS ADD AT LEAST ONE MORE SIZE THAN WHAT YOU USUALLY WEAR.

Week 4: Coming home
-Spent 2 days to visit my grandpa's sister and her son in Shen Zhen (Mandarin speaking place). Came back to Guan Zhou after wards to pick up our suitcases.
-We spent a few days in Hong Kong; took a ship there. For some reason my 2 sisters and my dad got nauseous while my and my mom felt fine. In fact, I sort of enjoyed the choppy waves that shook the boat up and down.
-Hong Kong = predominately Cantonese. Happy.
-Doraemon seemed popular here. He mainly appeared on safety tips.
-Took plane to Tokyo for final flight back. which was next morning. Our luggage were already destined for Chicago, so I went 1 and a half days without the right face wash, as well as my contacts. We spent the night in the same hotel again because our flight was not until the next morning.
-Left for Chicago at 10ish AM, Tuesday 7/14. Arrived at Tuesday 7/14, 8:30 AM. :>
-The first thing I ate when I arrived at the O'Hare airport? I bought a triple scoop ice cream cone (chocolate, vanilla, strawberry) and ate it, at 9:11 AM in the morning. Take THAT, conservative parents.
-I R home. Time to catch up on what happened in the last month, as well as update Maple. Wheeee.




Things done during downtime:

-Found out I can watch porn on my DS (via pics), and can turn my DS into an MP3 player. =^D

-Played Dragon Quest IV on the DS. Beated the game at level 42-43. Everyone is now level 70ish to 80ish. I love Alena; she's a god damn beast, dealing more damage with Falcon Knife Earrings than my hero with a Liquid Metal Sword. She's also very crit happy, great for smacking up Metal King Slimes. Hooray for a cute princess that fights with her fists.

-Replayed Megaman ZX, twice. At first I was unhappy with a crappy Vent File, since I was missing 2 life ups, 2 sub tanks, and quite a few level 4 victories. Decided to play Aile just because I was bored of listening to a guy sounding like a girl (Vent). 9ish hours. Was overwritten due to carelessness. RAGE. That very night I regained everything back. 4 Life ups, all level 4 victories, 3 subtanks (side quest to get the forth one was too long to do), gotten model Omega Z (OX), and killed Serpent. Everything but the Serpent part took 4 and a half hours. Serpent took a good half hour to get to and defeat.

-Kirby's Superstar, Lots of mini adventures made it great to play. Still on the last level of Meta Knightmare though.

-Mario and Luigi: Partners in Time. Fun stuff, but I was getting bored in the volcano stage.

-Watched Episodes 8-40 of Shaman King. Man, Chocolove is one funny dude. Still need to finish the rest of the episodes.

-Tortured my sisters with puns. My worst offenders?
"So a tree says, 'Let's get twiggy with it.'"
"We're eating this fish because it lost the gills to live."
"Don't egg her on" (My first sister is born the year of the Rooster. ie she is a chicken)

A special section for Megaman ZX Advent:
-Overall, I found the game not bad. There's more of a story than in ZX, but some of the voices were annoying, especially Model A's voice. The huge variety of bosses made it interesting, but the Pseudoroids were gimmicky at best, and I didn't like having nerfed Biometals.
-The bosses were easier than in ZX, but I absolutely hated some of the stages. Know what's more frustrating than avoiding spikes? Avoiding a spiked ceiling from landing on your face after you just pulled down a switch to open up said ceiling, or the final stage where every other third block or so was a spiked REGENERATING block. In other words, you can destroy the block, but it'll come back in a couple seconds.
-I don't know why you found Argoyle and Urgoyle so hard to beat, Khoi. They were the most enjoyable boss fight I had in ZX Advent, and they drop really fast the way I killed them.

Step 1: When both are present on the screen, GIGA CRUSH. Two Psudoroids mean double the damage.
Step 2: Model ZX!
Step 3: SPIN SLASH JUMP! This did a monstrous amount of damage to both robot cats. Want to know how fast they died? I had 2 full subtanks for that boss fight and only 24 unites of life (2 life ups). I finished the fight with only half life gone; no sub tanks used. Personally, I found Hedgeshock a bigger pain to not die to.

-The final boss was disappointingly easy. I only died to his first form once because I took damage before, and I didn't know where to hit. I didn't even die at all to Albert's final form.

For Hydra form:
Step 1: Model FX. I noticed it didn't have a life bar; that meant it was open up to rapid fire damage. Model FX is king of dealing really high damage to enemies with no boss/life bar.
Step 2: Get close up to it's belly
Step 3: Mashing main and sub weapon in an alternating fashion =
MUDA MUDA MUDA MUDA MUDA MUDA MUDA! I didn't care about any damage taken. The hydra died really fast.

For God form, it was surprisingly easy. Alternating between Model A and model ZX, Albert kicked the bucket before I even used up my emergency E-tank.




As I said, this is not all that happened. I'd like to write up a detailed telling, but that will happen when I feel like it, and when I sort through the hundreds of pictures that were taken. :zzz: If anything sounds weird or doesn't flow logically, I apologize. 12-13 hour jet lag probably rattled my brain a bit.

tl;dr

You never played Castlevania?

Wow... never played that game.... That was the best Nintendo game ever.

I can't speak to you anymore.

and lol @ watching porn on ur DS. Epic.

It's nice to see you back! Sounds like you had an interesting trip.

As I said, this is not all that happened. I'd like to write up a detailed telling, but that will happen when I feel like it, and when I sort through the hundreds of pictures that were taken. :zzz: If anything sounds weird or doesn't flow logically, I apologize. 12-13 hour jet lag probably rattled my brain a bit.

Please do share some of those pictures with us.

I actually read all that. Cool story bro.

You never played Castlevania?

Wow... never played that game.... That was the best Nintendo game ever.

I can't speak to you anymore.

and lol @ watching porn on ur DS. Epic.

Aw you guys, I can only have done so much in my free time. Please don't hate me for that.

(called Pleasant Goat)

are you sure its not little sheep?

-Found out I can watch porn on my DS (via pics),

HOW.

are you sure its not little sheep?



HOW.

No, that's what it's called.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pleasant_Go...g_Big_Wolf



Use an M3. Move said porn to M3. Fiddle around with the Multimedia. That's all I'm gonna say.

Use an M3. Move said porn to M3. Fiddle around with the Multimedia. That's all I'm gonna say.

And that's why you should buy a PSP.

Aw you guys, I can only have done so much in my free time. Please don't hate me for that.

You beat Megaman. Twice. Don't give me that.

That Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf thing is freaky. In a demented sort of way. >_> Here I am in Taiwan, dwadling away my time with just my GBASP. >:[ I broke my freaking R button while playing through MMZ4 on Hard mode.

Argoyle and Ugoyle were also pretty easy. I just Giga Crushed whenever possible, and instead of using ZX's spin slash (I'd seen enough of that with the Rolling Chip in MMZ4) I just targeted both with the Homing Shot and prayed that they would hit their weak points. For Albert Form 1 (Dammit, it makes me feel weird everytime I type my own name) I would just use Chrono's Time thing and then just slash with ZX and refresh everytime the Time thing ran out.

And what the hell are the level victories for in ZX? I never figured that out... >_>

You beat Megaman. Twice. Don't give me that.

OOOOO you got me there. I never played a Castlevania game before yet I played just about every Megaman game, so for me Megaman got priority over Castlevania.

Castlevania shall be something to do for the next two months when I'm not mapling.

And that's why you should buy a PSP.

Fuck PSPs. They don't have early enough good games to justify me getting one.

That Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf thing is freaky. In a demented sort of way. >_> Here I am in Taiwan, dwadling away my time with just my GBASP. >:[ I broke my freaking R button while playing through MMZ4 on Hard mode.

Argoyle and Ugoyle were also pretty easy. I just Giga Crushed whenever possible, and instead of using ZX's spin slash (I'd seen enough of that with the Rolling Chip in MMZ4) I just targeted both with the Homing Shot and prayed that they would hit their weak points. For Albert Form 1 (Dammit, it makes me feel weird everytime I type my own name) I would just use Chrono's Time thing and then just slash with ZX and refresh everytime the Time thing ran out.

And what the hell are the level victories for in ZX? I never figured that out... >_>

I don't get why do people use Chronoforce's Time Stop when you have to be a sitting duck until you slow down time.

Level victories in ZX are where you kill a Pseudoroid without every hitting it's weakspot. The logical reason is that hitting the weakspot damages the Biometal, and in that game the amount of weapon energy you get for each Biometal form is linked with how little you attack the weakpoint. For example, a level 4 victory gives me 16 units of weapon energy for said Biometal form. Two Pseudoroids per Biometal form = 32 units of weapon energy. You CAN increase the weapon energy of a damaged Biometal form by taking it to Guardian HQ and pay ECs to repair it, but you don't get a nice little plushie of the Pseudoroid for killing it like a ninja. If getting a nigh perfect game is easily doable in a game, I go for perfection.

It's nice to see you back! Sounds like you had an interesting trip.



Please do share some of those pictures with us.

As I said, I'll try to write up a huge journal of my trip when I get the time. It was rather interesting indeed. For example, during my stay in Tai Shan me and a dozen other family memers had to climb up a forested mountain because some of my ancestors were buried up there. The terrain sucked, because there wasn't really any clear paths. That means you need someone with a machete in the front to clear the way. The slopes were annoying steep, and it didn't help I needed to watch out for spider webs. You think your puny house spiders are dangerous? These pineappleing things are the size of a medium apple. Here's a kicker, two of the people going up with us were carrying a whole barbecued PIG up the mountain with nothing more than a bamboo pole over their shoulders and some rope tying up the pig. How do you think they felt?

I hated Argoyle and Urgoyle. Hated. They weren't hard. They were annoying. You know who was really annoying? That one boss with the guitar... I never used Model-A 'too much', only for the very couple first stages of the game to middle of the game. Near mid-end, I used Model-ZX the most, as well as Model-H.

Model-A + Giga Crush @ Argoyle+Urgoyle = Rape. I know, I just prefer using Model-ZX or Model-L on them. As soon as they hop down from the platforms, I change to Model-L and just jump up and slash them below. ZX's Upwards RollingSlash did more damage, but I take damage as I descend at times. =(

The final boss was very EASY, if you didn't know, Model-P takes it down in less than 20 seconds. With Model-F, I've never tried this, but I believe he takes a bit longer. I preferred Model-P over any other models except for Model-ZX in most situations. A couple stars is all I need to annihilate everything. If you spam Model-P's stars with both buttons, he takes the Hydra form down in about 20-25 seconds, I'm not even joking, and this is assuming you don't bother to dodge Hydra's attacks. If you do, maybe 30 seconds into it.


EDIT: As for MegaMan ZX, it bored me to NO end, quick. I loved ZXA, I just didn't enjoyed ZX as much. Maybe because I had to run around way too much, I don't know. Some day when a DECENT emulator comes out, with a DECENT zooming software, I will make a:

"Lets Play 'MegaMan ZXA' with Khoi"

series, seriously. LOL.

China sounds pretty cool unless you say bad things about the government. And yeah, I've heard very good things about Japanese customer service across the board.

Welcome home.

Also, would like to mention... on MegaMan ZX Expert Mode, I believe it's called.. you can only obtain and use 1 Sub-tank throughout the entire game. The AI is smarter, stronger, and they get newer techniques, so I've heard. I haven't had time to try this, so let me know if you manage to beat this mode, hehe.