Tag: steins gate

[Review] Steins;Gate 0 (PS Vita)

Platform: Playstation Vita
Developer: 5pb
Release: Dec 10, 2015 (for Vita)
Price: $40 USD

Steins;Gate 0 is the sequel to the acclaimed Steins;Gate made by 5pb, it’s a sci-fi visual novel that involves time travel, conspiracy theories and mind control. 0 adds another technology that is significant to the story – Artificial Intelligence. It is out on numerous platforms but I am reviewing the Vita version I originally played.

Plot: The story continues from just before the ending of Steins;Gate and takes place in the alpha attractor field timeline, as opposed to the beta attractor field timeline the previous game took place in. In this timeline, SERN is not as much of a threat and Mayuri survives.. but now Kurisu dies instead. This timeline instead converges to WWIII. The protagonist Okabe’s mind is pushed to the brink between the deaths of two of the people he cared about the most. Two main subplots in this timeline involve Suzuha searching for a child who she had lost when time traveling, Kagari, and Rintaro testing out the Artificial Intelligence system Amadeus, which contains a copy of Kurisu’s memories.

Sending text messages (D-Line) is key part of the gameplay just like in the previous game’s D-mail system

Gameplay:The main gameplay element, besides reading text, is checking your phone at the right times and responding (or not responding) to the correct messages, which alter the timeline of events. It’s a simple but effective means of branching the storyline.

Characters:

Maho and Leskinen are two major additions to the cast

Steins;Gate 0 contains most of the previous game’s cast along with a few new additions:

-Okabe Rintaro: the protagonist of Steins;Gate who is a self described mad genius, who comes across as both eccentric and self-loathing at times. In 0, he also suffers from PTSD due to witnessing Mayuri and Kurisu’s traumatic deaths numerous times. He is also considerably more serious in this game, no longer using his mad scientist facade anymore.

-Daru: Okabe’s closest male friend, a pervert and a prodigal programmer and hacker who can bypass almost any security system.

-Kurisu Makise: the heroine of the series, a tsundere, a scientific teenage genius who Okabe has a love-hate relationship with. In 0, she exists mostly as an artificial intelligence system nicknamed Amadeus, as an machine copy of the original Kurisu (who is dead in this timeline).

-Mayuri Shiina: Okabe’s closest female friend, cute, innocent, a bit ditzy but always there in need for her friends. As a result of the attractor field shifting, Mayuri is alive and well in this timeline.

-Suzuha Amane: A time traveler from the future who works as a part time worker for Mr Braun (Okabe’s landlord). In this timeline, she is less joyful and even more serious due to the worldline converging to an even more destructive future with WWIII.

-Faris NyanNyan: A cosplaying catgirl who comes from a well to do background and owner of a popular maid cafe.

-Luka Urushiba: Biologically a male, but always appears and acts very feminine, leading many to mistake his gender. He’s one of Mayuri’s close friends.

-Moeka Kiryu: Nicknamed ‘Shining Finger’ for her preference for and speed at texting, a very introverted girl with sneaky intentions. In this timeline, she is not a ‘Rounder’ and is not a threat to Okabe anymore.

-Maho Hiyajo: Kurisu’s friend and research partner at the same university; she helped out with Kurisu’s research and introduced Amadeus to Okabe. She is also plagued by feelings of jealousy and insecurity due to feeling that she will never match up to Kurisu’s genius.

-Alexis Leskinen: Professor and chief researcher of the Brain Institute at Kurisu and Maho’s university and serves as their mentor. He is one of the main minds behind Amadeus and seems to harbor darker desires for the project.

-Judy Reyes: A colleague of Leskinen and fellow research professor at the university.

-Yuki Amane: Suzuha’s mother and Daru’s wife. Most of her involvement is limited to Suzhuha making sure that Daru’s doesn’t mess things up and that he ends up together with Yuki.

-Fubuki Nakase and Kaede Kurushima: Along with Yuki they are Mayuri’s cosplayer friends.

-Kagari Shiina: A war orphan and the adopted daughter of future Mayuri. She escapes with Suzuha in the time machine and got lost somewhere in time. A big suplot of the game is locating Kagari and helping her regain her lost memories.

Steins Gate has a distinctive visual style that uses pastel style anime art

Graphics: Steins;Gate 0 uses the same pastel style graphics as the previous game and it’s a very visually distinctive style that people either love or hate. I find it very unique and while it won’t fit every game, it seems to work well with this series.

Music:I’ve always loved Steins;Gate’s music, and here is much the same; the composer definitely did a good job matching the background track with the mood of the scene and the environment.

Conclusion: 9/10. Steins;Gate 0 is a noticeably darker game and takes place in a timeline with even higher stakes. While Steins;Gate started off on a lighthearted note and only started getting darker towards the midpoint of the game, 0 starts off right off the bat with dark sombre tones and doesn’t really let up the whole game. There are light hearted moments, but Okabe for the most part remains much more serious in this game compared to the previous one. He no longer uses his ‘Kyouma’ mad scientist shenanigans anymore, and is more focused on his main goal of saving Kurisu, saving Mayuri and reaching the fabled Steins Gate timeline. Overall it’s a great sequel for Steins;Gate fans and a fitting conclusion for the series, and those who are into time travel, sci-fi, psychology etc will definitely be interested in this game, the only reason I gave this game a slightly lower score is because there are moments where some scenes seemed unnecessary to me in order to prolong the game’s length. This game is quite lengthy to get to the true ending, and there isn’t as many open ended routes in this game as the first one. The different endings in this game are often required in order to achieve the true ending, compared to the multiple possible endings of the first game.
That said, it’s still a highly recommended game for me – just be sure to play the first game before you play this one as this game is a true sequel and builds off of the first game!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2B3fjNx1x64

January 30, 2023
[Review] Steins;Gate Elite (Nintendo Switch)

Platform: Nintendo Switch
Developer: 5pb
Release: Feb 19, 2019 (for Switch)
Price: $60 USD

Steins;Gate Elite is an enhanced version of the original sci-fi visual novel classic Steins;Gate that was released originally in 2009, but now updated with scenes from the anime show to synchronize with the lines.

Plot: You are Okabe Rintaro, a self described ‘mad scientist’ – or a rather delusional loser who can barely make his rent payments living on top of a shop that sells CRT TVs (owned by a Mr Braun that constantly threatens Okabe with increasing his rent). Okabe recruits his friends to be ‘Lab Members’ in order for him to test out his experiments and inventions. Most of his inventions don’t really do anything useful, except for the ‘Phonewave’ device. Okabe, along with his genius ‘supa’ hacker friend Daru, eventually find out that the Phonewave can alter the timeline by sending himself messages (called ‘D-mail’) to the past, and thus change future events. The plot eventually centers on stopping the evil organization SERN (obv a play off of CERN) from taking over the world.

Gameplay: The main gameplay element, besides reading text, is checking your phone at the right times and responding (or not responding) to the correct messages, which alter the timeline of events. It’s a simple but effective means of branching the storyline.

the main gameplay element is just reading text

Characters:

Steins;Gate has fairly memorable characters

Okabe with a few lab members here

-Okabe Rintaro: the protagonist of Steins;Gate who is a self described mad genius, who comes across as both eccentric and self-loathing at times.

-Daru: Okabe’s closest male friend, a pervert and a prodigal programmer and hacker who can bypass almost any security system.

-Kurisu Makise: the heroine of the series, a tsundere, a scientific teenage genius who Okabe has a love-hate relationship with

-Mayuri Shiina: Okabe’s closest female friend, cute, innocent, a bit ditzy but always there in need for her friends.

-Suzuha Amane: A time traveler from the future who works as a part time worker for Mr Braun (Okabe’s landlord)

-Faris NyanNyan: A cosplaying catgirl who comes from a well to do background and owner of a popular maid cafe.

-Luka Urushiba: Biologically a male, but always appears and acts very feminine, leading many to mistake his gender. He’s one of Mayuri’s close friends.

-Moeka Kiryu: Nicknamed ‘Shining Finger’ for her preference for and speed at texting, a very introverted girl with sneaky intentions.

Steins;Gate Elite uses the anime cutscenes for graphics

Graphics: Steins;Gate has a distinctive graphical style with pastel-looking backgrounds and characters, but in the Elite version you get cutscenes from the anime.

Music: I’ve always loved Steins;Gate’s music, the composer definitely did a good job matching the background track with the mood of the scene and the environment.

Conclusion: 10/10. The original Steins;Gate got the same score from me. This is just an enhanced version using the anime cutscenes instead so my score is not going to change. Steins;Gate is one of the most popular and well known sci-fi visual novels for a reason. It mixes geeky sci-fi/tech talk like Time travel, Kerr Black Holes, Wormholes, IBM 5100s with conspiracy theories like John Titor, with charming graphics and a thrilling storyline involving an eccentric protagonist trying to save the world. It’s a classic and for those of you who haven’t checked it out, the Elite is a good place to start.

https://youtu.be/YYrBAZZ0DJk

January 29, 2023
[Review] Steins;Gate: My Darling’s Embrace (Nintendo Switch)

Platform: Nintendo Switch
Developer: 5pb
Release: Dec 10, 2019 (for Western markets)
Price: $40 USD

Steins;Gate: My Darling’s Embrace is a spin-off of the popular Steins;Gate series of visual novels. This spin-off in particular, focuses on pure dating sim / romantic comedy elements and takes the Steins;Gate universe in a very light-hearted direction, so be warned that if you are looking for the same sort of tension that you usually found in Steins;Gate then this spin-off is not for you. Also, it is highly advised that you play either Steins;Gate or Steins;Gate 0 before going into this spinoff, just to get a better introduction and background to most of the characters. There’s no true bad endings or game overs in this game.

Kurisu invites Rintaro over…

Plot: The main protagonist, Okabe Rintaro, has found himself in a new Delta attractor field, which seemingly does not have any world shattering consequences like the Alpha or Beta attractor fields do. This is a relatively peaceful attractor field, and several new gadgets have been made by the Lab members. There’s notably a gadget that cuffs two lovers together, zaps them if they argue or try to get away and will only let them break free if they have the same thoughts together. Another gadget displays the thoughts of a person and transmits it to a video display, and yet another gadget broadcasts video publicly for the whole world to see. Clearly, all these gadgets work together to much embarrassing effect for the Lab members. In particular Rintaro finds himself with one of 6 possible Lab members to be in romantic subplot with.

In this Delta timeline, Moe’s the lead singer of the Lab’s band

Gameplay: Like other Steins;Gate games, it uses the D-Mail system. So the different routes are affected by when (or if) you open your phone at certain times, which people you contact, and which emails you send (or don’t send). The rest is standard visual novel reading as this series is not point and click or investigative in nature.

Faris and Mayuri with their typical cafe greeting

Characters: Steins;Gate has fairly memorable characters, and all of them are represented here with no new additions.

-Okabe Rintaro: the protagonist of Steins;Gate who is a self described mad genius, who comes across as both eccentric and self-loathing at times.

-Daru: Okabe’s closest male friend, a pervert and a prodigal programmer and hacker who can bypass almost any security system.

-Kurisu Makise: the heroine of the original series, a tsundere, a scientific prodigy, and canonically Okabe’s main lover. Of course, she is presented as a romantic option here.

-Mayuri Shiina: Okabe’s closest female friend, cute, innocent, a bit ditzy but always there in need for her friends. Another romantic option here.

-Suzuha Amane: A time traveler from the future, usually a very serious personality from the other series, she’s a bit more light hearted here, and thus appears as another romantic option here.

-Faris NyanNyan: A cosplaying catgirl who comes from a well to do background and owner of a popular maid cafe. Available as another romantic option here.

-Luka Urushiba: Biologically a male, but always appears and acts very feminine, leading many to mistake his gender. He’s one of Mayuri’s close friends, and – despite his gender – also available as a romantic option in this game 😉

-Moeka Kiryu: Nicknamed ‘Shining Finger’ for her preference for and speed at texting, a very introverted girl who – unlike the original series – does not pose any kind of threat in this game, and thus is available as another romantic option.

A rare visual of Moeka

Graphics: Steins;Gate has always had a signature graphical style with pastel-looking backgrounds and characters and if you enjoyed that style, then nothing changes here. I personally do like this style as well.

Music: Again, I’ve always enjoyed Steins;Gate’s background music which I think have always matched the mood of the scene. In this game since it’s so lighthearted it’s mostly that kind of music as well, which is fine by me.

Conclusion: 7/10. It’s definitely not as engrossing as the original Steins;Gate (10/10) or Steins;Gate 0 (9/10) for me, since it focuses mostly on romantic comedy here, which is a tried and true genre for visual novels. Since I reference Muv-Luv a lot (a great visual novel series for those of you who haven’t played it), I’ll continue with the analogy that if Steins;Gate and Steins;Gate 0 were the Muv-Luv Unlimited/Alternative then this spin off must be the Muv-Luv Extra of Steins;Gate. I.e it’s really light-hearted, relatively short, and if you are just looking for a visual novel to lighten up your mood then this will do it. If you’ve always wondered what the Steins;Gate universe could be like if the characters didn’t have to deal with the impending doom or SERN/WWIII/Mayuri/Kurisu’s death and wanted a more light hearted ‘fun’ take on the universe, or maybe wanted to ship Rintaro with one of the main cast, then this one is it. Otherwise I consider this one a fairly average visual novel; it’s not a must get or anything, but it will help you unwind after a long day at work.

https://youtu.be/1JPj3Gx9XXM

September 27, 2020
Back to boring everyday living again…

These days trying to save up as much money as I can to help purchase a place in Vancouver hopefully next year.. ideally I want to 1) get my mortgage down to $200k 2) leverage my current SF home to get a home equity loan of at least $310k and 3) save up at least $60k this year in cash.
I want to take advantage of the US dollar strength because $310k + $60k = $370k which equals roughly $500k CAD which is just enough to get a decent 1 bedroom condo in a decent location in Vancouver. Of course, I want to purchase a home back in Canada for several reasons.

One is that the US is not particularly friendly to immigrants and especially so since Trump took office, and I get harassed every time I go across the border, since I am not a green card holder, and the TN visa is not a dual intent visa which means I cannot apply for a green card on that visa. Furthermore, recent changes to the H1B, the only dual intent working visa, have made it more difficult for programmers / software engineers to obtain. This means that my time in the US is likely limited.
Two is that Canada is the place that I want to start a family and retire anyways. I have often said before after all my travels, is that America is the best place for working due to the high salary and low taxes and low cost of goods; China and Europe are the best places to travel due to all the history and natural beauty; Korea is the best place for nightlife and having fun; and Canada is the best place to start a family and actually live, since it has a combination of European and American culture, the tuition fees are lower, the healthcare costs are lower etc. And Vancouver is unique as the warmest city in Canada as well as being on the lovely West Coast, and having lots of Koreans (Long term workers not just students) there doesn’t hurt my future plans either.
Three is I want to finally be able to purchase my own place with my own money. I always felt like my SF home is kind of my parents home, since they helped out with 40% of the cash. I want to finally purchase a place all with my own cash and call it my own.

So I’m trying to save a lot of money, but of course this being myself I do buy some things still… among the things I purchased recently is the Milkman Amp 1 Watt Plus model. This is a Class A Tube Amplifier that was handmade in San Francisco so I thought I might support a local shop here. But don’t I already have a Class A hand-wired tube amp? Yes I do, the Swart Atomic Jr. But this one has more wattage (10W vs 5W), 12″ Alnico Blue speaker (vs the 8″ Ceramic in the Swart), built in attenuator (goes from 0.5W to 10W) and is better for traveling due to the tubes being covered (the Swart has uncovered tubes which makes it risky to travel with it, despite being lighter).

It definitely has more headroom than the Swart does. I’ve also finalized my pedal board! My pedalboard contains 10 pedals. I’ve gone through tens of different pedals in my career, and I’ve finally settled on this configuration (for now): (from first to last in the chain)
BBE Wah -> Boss Waza Tuner -> Dunlop EP101 Preamp -> Wampler Euphoria -> RambleFX Marvel Drive -> Keeley Magnetic Echo -> Xotic SP Compressor -> BBE Sonic Stomp Mini -> Hermida Reverb -> Boss RC3 Looper
Retired my Maxon TBO9 (served me well) and the Keeley Oxblood Germanium (might use as backup to the Euphoria), and had to get the Hermida Reverb due to the Milkman amp not having onboard reverb. It was a compromise I had to make, the bigger Half Pint model had onboard reverb, but it was also 5lbs heavier.

And I want to get rid of my Gretsch White Penguin and Traynor Amps, even though the Gretsch is a great guitar, it has intonation problems, and is still a bit heavy for my tastes. It’s definitely the best looking out of all my guitars though. So ideally I want to keep the custom Partscaster that I built (Fender Telecaster Thinline ’72 deluxe with Filtertron/WRH pickups) as my main jazz/blues guitar, with the Fender Stratocaster doing rock and blues as well, and the Martin OMJM as my acoustic doing mostly pop tunes.

I’m doing a lot of jazz guitar these days. I love it! Playing a lot of Larry Carlton and George Benson these days. And I also love that John Mayer’s new album (Search for Everything) has great funky jazz-type riffs like ‘Moving on and Getting over’ and ‘Still feel like your man’. That man is a genius. Best album for me since Battle Studies (Continuum obviously still everyone’s favorite). Here is my ranking of John Mayer albums btw (from best to worst) as well as my favorite songs from each album.

1. Continuum (blues/pop masterpiece) – Best song: Slow Dancing in a Burning Room
2. Room for Squares (great acoustic pop) – Best song: St. Patrick’s Day
3. Try! (his best guitar album, great blues/rock songs) – Best song: Gravity
4. Battle Studies (more great guitar-pop) – Best song: Friends, Lovers or Nothing
5. The Search for Everything (blends all his previous styles + adds funk/jazz) – Best song: Moving on and getting over
6. Born and Raised (acoustic-folk pop) – Best song: Walt Grace’s Submarine Test 1967
7. Inside Wants Out (like Room for Squares but more raw) – Best song: Victoria
8. Heavier Things (some songs are great, others not so much) – Best song: New Deep
9. Paradise Valley (not many songs I liked from this album) – Best song: Who you love

In other news I’ve also been playing games with my friend, being bored a lot at home these days makes you do that. We still play Far Cry 4 a lot despite it being a 3 year old game just because of how amazing the co-op experience is. I think I have like 30 videos on Youtube of our play sessions together. I even made my own map and published it!

Other games I’ve been playing are the fantastic JRPGs Persona 5 and Yakuza 0. I’ve loved both these series (wayyy more interesting than Final Fantasy XV for me) so that’s no surprise. Also finished Root Letter (it was alright, but the ending was unsatisfying), and both Blazblue Central Fiction (love that series) and Steins Gate 0 (also love that series as well). Also bought Ghost Recon: Wildlands and Mass Effect: Andromeda mainly because both of them have co-op but both of them were letdowns for me. And of course still playing Hearthstone, which just released a new expansion (Journey to UnGoro).

Also looking forward to: Fire Emblem Echoes (3DS).. Akiba’s Beat (Vita).. Agents of Mayhem (PS4).. Quake Champions (PC).. Super Mario Odyssey (Switch)

And that’s the state of my life right now.. everyday work, go home and play games, and save money. Boring existence. When’s my next trip to Korea?

April 7, 2017
Basketball videos and 3DS vs Vita in retrospect

I’ve been on a basketball video roll recently, making some rants worthy of being an ESPN analyst.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x0gIg3rBJy8

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5O2C3d8U2A

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KhBVddXTTXM

In these videos, I give my commentary on the ESPN greatest players rank, which I felt ranked older players too low, and modern players too high. As well as my thoughts on the most underrated players of all time (50s players and ABA players), debate about Russell/Wilt, talk about the next 20 players that should be part of the NBA anniversary team, and the All-NBA players I would choose for each decade (1950s to 2010s).

Also, I did a popular video on New Nintendo 3DS vs PS Vita slim comparison

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WcfZbkm_CZo

In this video I said that 3DS was favored because it had better games. Well, after owning both consoles for about a year now, I can say that both have fairly addictive games, but I’ve played my PS Vita more, due to its larger cache of Japanese RPGs and Visual Novels, which I prefer to Mario/Zelda/Pokemon/etc games. The Vita is really underrated, because it has a fair amount of good games, alot of them recent. Here’s my favorite games on each console:

New Nintendo 3DS: Codename STEAM, Fire Emblem Fates: Birthright (I love the whole Fire Emblem series, it has the best story of out any tactical RPG), Yokai Watch, Mario & Luigi Paper Jam

PS Vita: Steins;Gate (absolutely one of my favorite stories of all time), Persona 4 Dancing All Night (surprisingly good story), Digimon Cyber Sleuth, Xblaze: Code Embryo, Senran Kagura Shinovi Versus, Akiba’s trip: Dead and undressed

There’s just way more variety in the Vita games than 3DS games, which tends to stick to the usual Nintendo suspects: Mario, Zelda, Smash Bros, Pokemon, Fire Emblem, Harvest Moon (now Story of Seasons), etc

so yeah.. I might do a retrospective video, but Vita actually wins it for me. If I was forced to choose between Fire Emblem (my favorite Nintendo series) and Steins;Gate or Persona 4, it would be difficult but I would still go with Persona/Steins Gate. And yes, I know Persona Q exists on the 3DS, its just not the same as Persona 4 Golden / Dancing all night on the Vita.

February 23, 2016
Goal finally achieved – and 2015: Year in Review

First of all, some updates:

-Fallout 4, Starcraft II Legacy of the Void, and Just Cause 3 are amazing games (and Hearthstone league of explorers to a smaller extent). I beat the campaign in all of them.
-PS Vita games Persona 4 Dancing All night and Steins Gate were two of my favorite stories yet! Yeah I know right, how can a rhythm game have a good story? Well Atlus never fails to deliver. Steins Gate is probably my favorite visual novel yet, involving time travel, an old IBM computer, conspiracy theories, and John Titor. Kept me hooked throughout my Eastern Europe trip. I really enjoyed the anime too, it was fantastic!
–Yakuza 5 man, its finally out!! I played Yakuza 4 back in 2012 and it was one of my all time favorite games, so really was anticipating the Western release of Yakuza 5, unfortunately PSN only.
–Undertale, pretty cool retro RPG style game that has a lot of twists in it as well. Its one of the highest rated RPGs of all time.
-Star Wars the Force Awakens was kind of disappointing. I mean, yes it IS better than the first and second prequels, arguably better than the third one (Revenge of the sith) and/or Return of the Jedi. But for me, its not as good as them. Why? Because the plot was wayyy to similar to Episode 4 A New Hope. I mean, you have the secret plans for something being stored in another droid (BB8 instead of R2D2), Han solo playing Ben Kenobi’s role this time, Luke playing Yoda’s role, Kylo Ren playing Darth Vader’s role, Poe/Rey/Finn playing varying aspects of Luke’s role, and a third death star… yes they re-used it yet again. How the First Order managed to build it in 30 years without the New Republic knowing it, and somehow get destroyed in like a minute is really a letdown. I know they were paying homage to the old trilogy and all but – wayyyy to similar for me.
-I recently discovered the fantastic “bad movie” The Room and read The Disaster Artist which was hilarious. Glad to see they are making a movie about this weird human being known as Tommy Wiseau.
–Wilt: Larger than Life. A great biography of the great NBA player Wilt Chamberlain. It leads you to believe just how dominant Wilt was as an athlete, an absolute incredible physical specimen right up to his 50s. After watching Kareem: Minority of One as well, I am still debating over who really was the better player, but one thing is for sure, Wilt had the more outgoing personality. He was definitely the nicer more considerate guy overall, whereas Kareem tends to be more introverted and apathetic towards people. They are both arguably the GOAT, MJ notwithstanding.
-I moved to a new place. Smaller, cheaper, but simpler and cleaner. Its an “officestel” which is an old office converted into a condo type of place near Seoul university. Plus, utilities are all included, and there’s a gym as well! sweet. Heres a pic…

new officestel

And finally the big one…
I finally found a Korean girlfriend!! Yes, after one year of searching, and literally 2 days before I went back to Canada I found her, and finally my goal for this year has been accomplished (albeit 2 weeks before the year ends). Sweet, gentle, kind, nice, beautiful, loving, caring, I can’t say enough.. I found the perfect woman. Its a shame I had to leave her so soon, as I already booked the ticket back to see my family though :(. But wow… what a relief. I was afraid that I would have to tell my parents I failed. Now I just hope I can maintain this relationship for a while. I’m so tired of meeting people…

Now onto the review…

Highlights
-I found a gf!! yay!! finally…
-My Korean has improved to the point where I can talk to people (like my gf) entirely in Korean only
-I was able to find a new place to move to by myself
-Two of my American friends (both from California) moved to Korea around the same time as me, so I’m grateful to have them to hang out with for most of the year, although one of them moved back now.
-Eastern Europe trip was fantastic!

Lowlights
-Didn’t learn that much at work so far, wish I could’ve learned more ReactJS
-Didn’t establish alot of connection with co-workers due to remote work
-Working at nighttime still kind of sucks even though its Korea because work hours for most businesses is still 9-6ish
-I spent too much money this year on collecting useless gadgets
-going back and forth between the US, Canada and Korea all the time (4 times this year) takes a huge toll on my body and this year my body’s sleeping schedule has definitely not been normal, which affects my health.
-My stocks took a huge beating this year. My losses this year are about $3000~ in the market.
-I met ALOT of new people and Koreans at meetups due to focusing on finding a gf for much of this year, and sadly, didn’t connect with most of them. I scrolled through most of my conversations and realized most of them are pretty useless just a few texts and alot of girls who ignored me.
-I got rejected by 10+ girls this year… which sucks. I thought I would never find a girl who likes me until just a few days ago.

Summary
Didn’t feel like I made alot of progress in my life this year. The majority of it, I spent working, but didn’t learn that much at work. Met alot of new friends and alot of girls, but didn’t talk much to most of them, and most girls rejected me. Only had a lasting connection with a few friends I met this year. Until just a few days ago, I was very depressed and frustrated because I felt like I wasted alot of time this year doing nothing and getting no results.
And the more time moves away from 2012 and 2013, the more I want to go back to those times. Where I met good friends all the time, and traveled a lot, and was with my best friends in SF. Alas, I can’t go back. I realized that at the time 2013 I didn’t appreciate that year as much as I should.
In retrospect, 2013 was a great year. I went to alot of parties, met alot of friends, went to Korea for the first time which was amazing and changed my life, and of course 2012 was the year I will always hold in my heart as my favorite year of my life so far; the people I met that year I still continue to keep in contact with to this day.

I felt like I was cursed for the majority of this year not to find a girlfriend.. I did everything go to meetups, search on online websites, blind dating, use apps like Tinder and OKC, be really considerate, buy gifts, pay for them, etc nothing worked. Even when I felt like I had a really good conversation with them, I never got a second date which really depressed me.
So, now that I met my gf recently, I feel that this curse has finally been lifted, and next year, will be the year which this year should have been. This year was essentially just leading up to this moment. A year of preparation basically. But I can’t say that this year has been as good as 2012, 2013 or 2014 for me. Its more like 2011 in the sense that I moved someplace new and had to adjust. An adjustment year if you will.

Videos
Holiday cheer…

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YMwtn0j4xNk

I have DJI Phantom 3 drone now. Check out this nice video I took in Seoul at night:
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hnpvk4eRGCw

Rehashed alot of my old videos for this homage to my old California life (2011-2014). I miss my old house parties.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJIYicakwKM

I still have a bunch of videos waiting to be uploaded but I can’t due to Youtube’s ban on me from my copyright violation back in July. I have to wait until end of Jan to upload videos longer than 15min which sucks.

December 21, 2015