Current mood:

happy new year

あけおめ・ことよろ
Bye Bye Leeds.
Hello Osaka.

The last three days of our holiday in Leeds, my parents decided to forget everything bad that had happened previously and were nice as pie to us until we left. What brought on the change, I do not know, but it was nice to leave on a positive note.

I picked up a lot of my old children's books from my flat in Leeds and posted them back to Tokyo so I can read them to George as he grows up. It cost 106 quid to send 17 kgs worth of books and my old school PWEI coat I've been missing every winter. That's a lot of books though. I forgot I had some Richard Scarry books, and there's also a classic Little Black Sambo in there too - nice chance to teach the little one about racism before he can have it inflicted on him at school.

The city is yours
On the flight from London to Tokyo (I must add we got upgraded to Premium Economy for free!), I finally completed Ridge Racers. I'd been struggling with the Special Class tours for a long time, until I finally beat Angelus in the one-vs-one tour. Angelus may not be the fastest Special Class car, but it is by far the best for drifting, so I breezed through the tours after getting that, even if it was a minor miracle I even got that far.

There are a bunch of really nice unlockables - movies from Rave, Rage and R4, as well as an E3 preview of this game too. There's some unlockable car design artwork and a total of 58 cars. The 4 special cars are all pretty much novelty value only but the races you use them in are a good laugh - you either win them or lose them by miles, depending on the car you choose.

Time to pick up Lumines again and try to progress further than the 14th skin, or whatever I'm on now. I brought a bunch of GBA RPGs with me too, but haven't even touched them yet.

Muzak
While listening to the fine new Mars Volta album on the plane, I was also browsing through a copy of Mixmag. 2005 looks like being a fantastic year for choons. Aside from the above-mentioned's official release, the new Chem.Bros album is getting some great press, a new Emiliana Torrini album is due out anytime, new stuff from Underworld could drop before the end of the year along with lots more goodness!