An eye-opening realisation

Only go to college with a very, very firm plan. No going to school 'to discover myself.' An unpaid internship to confirm your desired career track is more profitable than a part-time job. Job-shadowing is also a good strategy.

Discover your aptitude(s.)
Identify occupations where being naturally good at [that] is valued.
Pick one that seems most interesting.
Find the fastest, cheapest way to obtain credentials/knowledge needed for entry.
Be among the top 5-10% of those in that programme.
College is a JOB. Pity the fools who think it's a party.

This isn't rocket science. Where it gets difficult is when we consider that large numbers of people don't really have (or cultivate) worthwhile attributes. Not everyone can be an engineer, so stick to what comes naturally to you.

What do I intend to tell my grandkids? Do. Not. Waste. Time. As early as you can, learn to make the most of every minute. Learn to play an instrument as a kid/teen, because you'll hopefully get 75 years to enjoy it. Read, study, lift weights (boys) or take dance classes (girls) and realise that the more you make of you, the more you attract good things. Be polite, engage with others but realise that you are aiming high, and few people will want to take that journey themselves.

I'm not that old but already I feel the frost of being 'out of time.' I look back and painfully realise the value of every minute I pissed away doing non-value-added things. There are two paths we can walk, the Path of Least Resistance and the Path of Least Regrets. They have nothing in common.

Chew Chew Baby

A man and his sidekick are driving through a safari in africa, lost in contemplation of the exotic scenary. They pull up in front of a bevy of pigmies and find the diminutive folk quite cute, while one distinct speciman starts daydreaming about cooking the tourist alive in a cauldron. While our plucky man asks for the pigmy to pose for a photograph, the audience gets the first glimpse that something is amiss: the pigmy flashes a disturbing set of pointy teeth, resembling the jaws of a tropical fish. Later safely ensconced in his home, the man throws a slide presentation depicting highlights of his recent trip to a loose collection of acquaintances when a knock is heard from the front door. In comes the meanest thing under 4 feet tall: the same pigmy that was being shown on the slide exhibition stands before one very astounded man, but he is still unsuspecting of this tiny stranger's motivation.

We immediately cut to both going to sleep, when the titular foe's stomach starts growling in a most audible manner. Without a second thought, he sets out to lunge at his sleeping host, when the latter wakes up just before having his arm chomped off. He assumes that the pigmy has a toothache and takes him to a dentist. The little man eyes up the dental care professional with gleeful enthusiasm and once both are alone behind a closed door, a loud chomping sound is heard from outside and the pigmy exits the room with a pleasant expression on his face, like a cat that just got the cream. The shot of the dentist's office even has the gall to show an overhead tube dangling above the patient's chair, indicating that a terrible struggle just took place.

The next scenes are nothing but a succession of the following pigmy's victims being disposed off in gruesome fashion. There is somethinhg intrinsically terrifying about not being aware that one's life is in danger until it's too late, and this cartoon gets it down to a T.

It isn't until one of our hero's childhood friends is gulped down that he wises up to the pigmy's murderous intent. With little decorum he takes off running, with the demonic goblin in hot pursuit. At first, nothing seems to stop his blood-thirsty onrush and our good character seems to be running out of places to hide when he's run down by a motor vehicle. The cannibal beast prepares for one final assault at his coveted prey when an ambulance intervenes in the nick of time and the paramedic gets immediately busy to do an impromptu blood transfusion by getting the tiny man beast as the donour. Before long, our good-hearted man devolves into a ravenous beast and takes off after a desperate foreign midget. The hunter slowly catches up to his fleeing prey and a slash of the former's jaws ends the cartoon, complete with a violent shake of the end card.


This is hardly a boring cartoon, though it's clearly not recommended to young children. In many ways, it resembles a very short horror movie: there's no background music and the pervading foreboding atomosphere is enough to set off warning klaxons early on. It's also not animated in a conventional manner, it's jerky and simplistic, but definitely not in a cute childlike way. In addition, the scene transition has that famous fadeout effect, akin to real movies, which further distances it from the usual trappings and puerile appeal that a regular cartoon should offer. The final quarter of the show features a chase sequence, and any new viewer would do well to not try to anticipate what will transpire. It's already enough of a twist to have real people picked off one by one, so there's no way to predict a happy ending. Instead, a cliffhanger wraps up the sequence of horror killings, leaving it up to the viewer to interpret our hero's descent to madness and cannibalistic vices.

Chuukan Kanriroku Tonegawa Episode 24

I first learned about the chairman's obsessions with unusual forms of entertainment when he assigned Tonegawa the task of coming up with Restricted Rock-Paper-Scissors. This time, the chairman makes things more simple by outright telling Tonegawa to get on with implementing "Human Derby", a new gamble involving debtors, prepared only for the moneyed leader's amusement. The actual gamble isn't shown so as not to rob the show of its light-hearted feel, but anyone acquainted with Kaiji already knows what it is. One of the gambles of Kaiji season 1, it takes place at night in front of a huge bourgeois crowd, but Yamazaki is off enjoying an evening reserved all for himself. When he first received updates of this mysterious event, he immediately thought, "I have got to see this." I mean, how can you go wrong with a gamble specifically thought up by the chairman? Well, in some respects, his ideas sometimes fall short of sensible expectations. Yamazaki eventually does come close to finding out what it is, but his cell phone runs out of battery millisecond before his coworkers can tell him and the suspense continues.

A group of black suits has gathered for one of their peer's wedding. Tonegawa is present as well, but it's soon revealed that predictabe wedding parties are the bane of his wits. The guests do as they please, including showing a short movie about the groom's past, revealing unknown information about his origins, much to Tonegawa's surprise. He sets out to stick around longer, until the wedding photo shoot starts. In a fateful turn of events, two unpredicatble things happen. One is that the black suits elicit some coordenated action with their arms and legs, suggesting that they had planned in advance to form a flash mob. The other is Tonegawa's misjudging the effect of their efforts after noticing that the remainder of the crowd is warming up to it. Tonegawa acts defeated at first, but soon resigns to the overall cheerful mood and surprises everyone by walking away as if to retreat from the scene, only to moonwalk back to join the fun.

The very act of trying to relate an otherwise somber series like Kaiji with the upbeat tone of Chuukan Kanriroku Tonegawa would normally be taken as an exercise in futility. When Nobuyuki Fukumotto decided to do it anyway, i knew that i was in for some treat. All that was left was to check to see what he would come up with. At first I couldn't imagine how this could ever be reconciled with the bitter and tragic tone permeating all over Kaiji season 1. And it still can't, that's what season 2 was for, to smoothen out the edges and make the series more relatable by giving it a more human side. Chuukan Kanriroku Tonegawa is just the perfect touch to connect some loose ends about Tonegawa's background with the main story featured in the series. The end result is an artful production, which will have me coming back to rewatch it time and again. Just like the first two seasons of Kaiji.

Chuukan Kanriroku Tonegawa Episode 23

I thought that this episode was going to be about Tonegawa just attending a high school reunion, getting some insights from his encounter with his former class mates, and rushing back home to implement the ideas that he concocted in his head after being inspired by the event. Well, it's not. This episode delves into Tonegawa's past, where he used to be mildly tormented by a couple of silly kids out to have fun. Turns out that they haven't changed much, which causes Tonegawa to become frustrated. He honestly expected grown-up people to behave quietly and demure. Instead, the same boisterous bunch prove themselves to still have it in them to be loud and playful. Tonegawa chalks it up to successful people being usually quiet while people who didn't make it big tend to still be immature, as if they still have something to prove. In a way, this has kind of been my observation as well. When you're in your late thirties and with a family, you don't feel the need to be overly extroverted and expansive as when you were twenty five. Our hero suddenly has a realisation, taking time off to reminisce about a girl making advances towards him and how he just jilted her in a way that most people wouldn't like to disclose. In the end, all is well though. The school reunion ends with the students taking part in a choir, with Tonegawa deftly tickling the ivories as his contribution to the nostalgic evening.

Now we are into the Otsuki part. He's again on another 1-day furlough with his trusted companion -Numakawa. It seems like that they will just go about their carefully planned day without anything in the way. But then it happens. Our foreman came down with a cold, advising Numakawa to go on without him and he needs to take care of his status ailment. He puts into action a curious plan: first he gathers a bunch of ingredients at a nearby food mart, rents a furnished flat and gets down to prepare a meal specifically deisgned to help him get over. The repast is enough to send him into mirthful fits, and he proceeds to eat more than originally planned. To wrap up such a successful meal, he goes to bed with some sort of comfort blanket, employing his own special technique to make the most of it and send the agents of his illness packing: The Otsuki Roll. This consists of him grabbing both edges of the blanket and slowly rolling from side to side to wrap himself in. Thus suitably rolled up, he finally allows himself to drift into sleep, the comfort and preparations for his night's rest taking care of the rest. Nobody, not even a petty strain of virus, is going to stop Otsuki from enjoying his 1-day excursions, which means that he still manages to catch up with Numakawa and spend time with him as promised.

Otsuki may be a bit too concerned about his health, but it's understandable once you understand the nature of his 1-day furloughs: to enjoy to the max the brief reprieve from work that he obtained from all his hard work (and profits from his side business and underground chinchirorin). Being ill at a time like this is akin to coming down with a serious illness on your holidays. Otsuki manages to successfully handle this mishap while simulataneously have a ball of a time thanks to his culinary skills and homemaking skills. Now i have to try the Otsuki roll technique to get more cosy and warm on cold nights.

Chuukan Kanriroku Tonegawa Episode 22

This episode picks up where the previous one left off, though it features first Otsuki. This may be on account of people being more curious about the honcho than Tonegawa overall (though we're just as much enthusiastic about our charismatic executive). Otsuki tries to strike a deal with Odagiri, but the latter is suspicious of his plump peer's ulterior motivations. Seems that Odagiri is onto Otsuki trying to pry into his movie exhibition business, but Otsuki's intentions aren't so obvious at this point. He tries to win Odagiri over with a dinner complete with alcoholic beverages to allay his suspicions and make him more cooperative to his proposal. It's never revealed what it actually, but the audience can gather that it's related to a part of the profits yielded from Odagiri's sideways undertaking. Either that or outright deception. The money-hungry foreman is on the brink of cementing the deal, even getting their black-suited overseer as the witness to their joint partnership, but falls just short when it comes to light that he had never watched "Once upon a time in America". His unsuspecting partner insists that he watch this NOW, conveniently showing that on his tablet computer. The only problem is that the feature is longer than their remaining time on the surface. The future of their deal is left uncertain as both are driven back to their old familiar world.

As for Tonegawa, he manages to get ahold of a crucial piece of evidence when one of his trusted men notices a picture of a cell phone on one of the past posts. Using photoshop cs6, the brightnness of the image is increased until the reflection on the mobile screen is clear enough to be discerned by all onlookers. Turns out it has been Ebitani all along, and Tonegawa conveniently happens to spot him just outside their headquarters. Tonegawa and his team quickly descend to where the lone wolf is standing, and proceed to confront him about his spiteful actions. In true Phoenix Wright fashion, Ebitami confesses his misdeed along with his motivation in an effusion of perceived slights. This is all for nought though as Tonegawa has him sedated right away and locked up. However, he isn't taken to a regular cell, it's more like a studio apartment outfitted with all the wonders of modern technology: a plasm tv set, a blu-ray player, a computer etc. All part of Tonegawa's design to allow for the stray sheep to amend his ways and start tweeting for Teiai instead of his selfish purposes, the condition for his parole being the threshold of 100000 followers. In the end, we see him exiting his comfort prison, presumably successful in his duty.

Chuukan Kanriroku Tonegawa Episode 21

Tonegawa and one of his trusted companions find out that a hate twitter account has been taking jabs at Teiai and garnering a great deal of followers as a bonus. They get lost trying to understand the pattern of the passive aggressive posts and why they command such a huge amount of followers while the Teiai official twitter account has trouble drawing any attention from the outside public. Tonegawa tries his hand at this, but it turns out that people hooked on social media are only after silly and inane stuff. Tonegawa eventually happens upon a solution that hadn't been on any of his previous mind maps: after noticing how the troll account makes heavy use of anime characters and gifs of cute felines, he sets out to watch real anime episodes, making notes of their effectiveness and appeal to draw in people from a variety of backgrounds.


   While our guy is busy implementing what he's learning from his heroic decision (it's rather discomfiting for a man like Tonegawa to watch animes and look up gifs of kitties on the internet), their mysterious rival's ever increasing gaggle of followers seems to be unending, always surpassing the Teiai account's by about a ratio of 3 to 1.


 However, the latest tweet by their nemesis comes with a surprising give-away: what appears to be some minor criticism of the cafeteria miso soup ends up associating the man behind the hate account with someone actually from inside the company.....
 
In the next segment of this episode, we cut back to Otsuki and his customary quest for money (perica, the legal tender of their underground labour camp) and delicacies. The foreman of group C, Odagiri, had been pestering him for a while after dabbing in entrepreneurship and setting up a snack and drinks stand, thus threatening Otsuki's monopoly. Now he's driving his marks customers away from his infernally addictive game of underground chinchororin. Otsuki's curiosiy leads him to a room held in darkness, where scads of labourers are arranged before a small bright screen positioned on a crate some way in front of them.


 Odagiri hovers over to where Otsuki is standing, proceeding to explain that he's providing a new form of entertainment in their otherwise drab work environment: showing downloaded films on his tablet! As there isn't much else to do on labour camp thousands of feet beneath the surface, the idea quickly finds a lot of purchase, and Odagiri is willing to bank on it. Otsuki decides to do something to regain the upper hand in the underground business arena, even going so far as taking a 1-day furlough at the same time as Odagiri. The episode ends on a cliff hanger, with the next episode hopefully expounding whatever came of Tonegawa's search for the traitorous insider...

Chuukan Kanriroku Tonegawa Episode 20

A mysterious car drives through dark city streets towards an underground casino. As it turns out, the onrushing vehicle contains our beloved title character while the casino is part of the Teiai conglomerate and in charge of its inner operations is Ichijou, who is also responsible for guarding the casino's major draw card: a pachinko machine named the Bog. It should probably be explained that this episode is a nod to Kaiji season 2, which I couldn't review for personal reasons, although i did watch all the episodes. I'm thinking of doing this again now as this series has an extremely high replay value. Ichijou and his enchanted casino were also in Kaiji season 2 and were a big part of it, with Kaiji having to take both of them on in an epic contest against the Bog. Here it is again, only this time is Tonegawa who is up against it. The odds aren't as stacked up against the Teiai's executive as they were against Kaiji. Tonegawa has a very easy time handling the forest of pins, the paddle flippers and the demonic triple trays (you'd have to know the Bog yourself to know what I mean), effortlessly pushing ball after ball to the desired destination. Ichijou puts up a façade of indignation mixed with frustration, but Tonegawa easily sees through the veneer of pretense. It doesn't matter in the end as Tonegawa predictably wins the mock battle and calmly picks his way out of the caisno with its coveted prize under his belt. At least everyone can safely sleep as no harm was brought upon anyone involved (the casino was a subsidiary of Teiai after all).