God answered my prayer all of a sudden. When we heard that Time-Out, the arcade that had Ez2Dancer in the Megamall, was closing on the 27th, that meant the Ez2Dancer machine was under threat of being moved out of our reach. I quietly asked God for a Pump It Up machine in the Megamall. To be honest, I would've been alright even if God hadn't answered that prayer, because He gave us the Ez2Dancer machine for almost 4 months, which is more than enough already. But God decided to show His grace, and He gave us TWO Pump It Up machines, both owned by World of Fun. They positioned one in the hallway, which is perfect for me.

We found them last Sunday. We went out with Cat, Jess and Alan as sort of a goodbye party for the Ez2Dancer machine. We were waiting for them to show up in front of the WoF arcade, and at the time we didn't know there was a PIU machine there. I was waiting in line to play DDR, when I turned around and saw a sign "New Arrival" and a giant X2. I immediately realized it was a PIU machine, and I yelled to Abby while pointing at it, "DOOD!" (That's how she said it would be spelled, the way I said it.)

I didn't know at all how to thank God for this gift. I feel even smaller now, that even though I haven't been the perfect person, God still showers me with blessings out of His own love. And thus, I look to serve God even more. I'm hoping I can somehow use the PIU machine to be able to share the Gospel to people I meet as I play.

As I'm typing this, I'm talking to Abby about signing up for Friendster. Heheh. I said before that I wouldn't sign up for Friendster for just anything, and it's true. But I want to find people, particularly freestylers, that play PIU, so I can call them to create routines with me. When we went out last Sunday, I spoke to Alan, who himself said that he was willing to do some streetdance and simple breakdance for a routine. So if/when we get the time, we can work on a routine for ourselves. Man I'm so excited. Now all we need is the mp3s for the game versions of the other songs, so we can practice at home.

My knees are bruised and beaten. From the excitement last Sunday, I made the mistake of dancing without any warm-ups. Even worse, I got overexcited and I knelt a little heavy, hurting my knees. Aside from that, my forearms are aching a little, because I've been practicing handstands and flips, which requires a lot of forearm strength. I still look like crap, but I'll practice hard at it.

Other than that there isn't much news.

Geh. I know it's only been less than a day since my last post, but I gotta mention these other things I forgot.

Apparently, Level-Up Games has opened R.O.S.E. Online as p.R.O.S.E. for beta testing, starting June 30th. LUG is the same company that brought us the frighteningly overpopulated Philippine Ragnarok Online. In itself, there's nothing wrong with what they're doing with R.O.S.E. But what's sad is that I was a beta tester for R.O.S.E. online back when it first came out to the international public earlier this year (I think first week of January). And I played it for several weeks until I got tired of the patching problems and just decided to quit. Mikko was with me then. Mikko got to beta test p.R.O.S.E., and he tells me that it's changed a whole lot since then (in fact, almost nothing is the same anymore), and not necessarily in a good way (such as making Dealers extremely weak, says Mikko)... That to me is just disappointing news, because I always thought of R.O.S.E. as such a cute game. I remember describing it as a "candy game" back then, in fact. I was actually thinking before this that I would play R.O.S.E. just because it's cute, but after hearing the report, I'd rather not now.

Tomorrow we'll be out all day I think. Dawn Watch at 6 AM, so we'll be out by 5:30 AM, then we'll hang around until the Megamall opens at 10 AM, because we have some shopping for stuff we need/want to do, including but not limited to, a new pair of pants for me, because I feel currently limited to the number of pants I wear. o_o *cough* Yeah. And I'm also hoping I might find fingerless leather gloves. <_< Or something cool like that.

I had a creepy dream as I took a nap earlier today. It was a long, three or four hour nap, probably because I was exhausted from yesterday. But anyway, my dream was a nightmare. No I didn't have a nightmare... I had a dream about a nightmare. A Nightmare Terror to be exact. If you didn't know, a Nightmare Terror is a monster from the game Ragnarok Online, and is primarily found in the Magma Dungeon. That's not what made it creepy. What made it creepy was that I recognized the creatures despite looking a large lot different from in the game. Let me describe the dream.

I find myself in the ground, looking up, as if I had been digging out of a grave. The room I'm looking into looks like a cave with a somewhat-low roof, or so it seemed. The cave was backlit as if the floors were made of magma, but it was dark otherwise. As I looked on, four black, translucent horse-like creatures were staring at me, each with their own dark glow. That's the last I saw, because in a flash I was somewhere else.

I next see myself in a house, which was different from the house I live in now. I can't describe the house anymore because the details have left me. But what's important is that in that house, our dog, Rexie, was there. I remember thinking it weird, because Rexie has been dead for several years (maybe 7 or 8, or more). I remember looking to the sky and there was something frightening or at least disturbing going on, but I couldn't remember what it is now, because much of my attention was still on the Nightmares I saw.

That's all. It wasn't scary enough to affect me the whole day or anything, but scary enough for me to want to mention it. And no, it's not like I play RO so much that I'm dreaming about it. For one thing, I haven't even been to Magma Dungeon except when I was just fooling around. I don't have fond memories or any worthwhile memories for that matter. So if I were to dream about RO, why Nightmare Terrors? Why not Goats or High Orcs, which are the monsters I've spent the most time fighting so far?

Anyway that's all.

I haven't made a post in a long time. Heheh. I almost forgot about this actually. Well, not really. I keep thinking that I should make a post and update, but I keep putting it off because of other things. But anywhere here it goes.

We saw the Fantastic 4 movie last week. Was a lot of fun. Of course, being based on a comic book, a lot of things didn't make sense... but I tried not to think too much and just enjoy. It seems like there might be a sequel, the way it ended (?). Ah well, I can't talk about it much, but it was good.

Next, I spent Thursday early morning (around 2 AM - 5 AM) practicing to do some simple breakdance moves, and memorizing the Freestyle Mode steps to The Rap: Act 3 by Honey Family. Because later in the afternoon of that day, I went to SM North to play Pump It Up. Good grief there's more people now than ever before. When I got there and put in my two credits, there were 9 credits ahead of me, and soon after there added 11 more. I got to try out my freestyle routine twice. The first time I passed with a D. I was nervous for some reason, which is strange to me really, because I haven't had stage fright when it comes to dancing, freestyle or not, in years and years. And my nervousness cost me my steps which I worked so hard on the whole early morning. I couldn't do a lot of the breakdance moves I practiced. I choked and ended up failing the second time I played. But I'll get better. I'll get it right next time. If there even is a next time, the way the crowds build up there. ~_~

I'm downloading a freeware game. It's the strangest thing. It's a fighting game... based on Les Miserables. Yes, that's right. Les Miserables. I have yet to test the game and to find out if it's fun. It looks okay from the screenshots. It was made by Japanese programmers, who were clearly bored out of their minds. Until I get to play it, I'll hold my review, and even my sharing of the link to the site... You might thank me for it.

I've been downloading a few of custom simfiles for the dance simulation emulator for PC, StepMania. I came across one which is a mix of Healing Vision and Healing Vision (Angelic Mix). It was very VERY well made. The mixing of the two songs was done very well, and the steps are okay, albeit a little easy.

Man, I need more freestyle videos for Pump It Up. Pumpstreet.co.kr is already down, and from the looks of things, it has been down for a long time now. I already have all the videos from the official PIU website. Which is sad. Even the other video sites I find on Google seem to either be down, or have problems with their downloads sections. Blah.

I don't mean for this to be any sort of product placement, but last Wednesday, we ate at El Pollo Loco in the Megamall. I ordered the Pollo Bowl. The dish is already spicy in itself, and since it was hot due to being newly cooked, it became even spicier. It also came with spicy salsa, and black pepper, which I applied plentifully. I enjoyed having the dish, because the spiciness was "fun", as I put it at the time. It's not the annoying kind of spicy that goes straight to your throat and stays there, burning a hole out through your neck, as some dishes from India or Thailand might have. The salsa, black pepper, and whatever else spices they used in the Pollo Bowl just brought out the flavor, and made eating the dish a challenge. I tried to bear it with a minimum amount of drinking involved. Anyway I'm sure to eat there again one of these days.

In other news: I'm getting better at freestyling and making routines. I need more endurance and agility training though, because I get tired too quickly too often, and when I start getting even a little tired, my motions start getting clumsy. You can't have that when you're doing flips and stuff. Anyway I've got about half of The Rap: Act 3 (Freestyle Mode) down as a routine. It's intense and insane. Practicing it really takes a lot out of me. Probably only another day of practice for the second half of the song, then another day to put it all together.

Abby and I have been playing Ragnarok Online on a private LAN server for the past few days. Actually the server is running right now, as I type this. The only reason we play is because of nostalgia and curiosity for the new classes, monsters, dungeons and other features. To download the game required downloading the main game, which is 852 MB, and the Sakray client, which I'm downloading right now, which is 733 MB. Imagine doing that in only about 2 weeks on a dial-up connection. 8D

Politics has been hot and heavy here these past few weeks. Our poor little country. My main comment is that if only these people who oppose our president had put all the time, effort and resources into making the country better instead of trying to overthrow the president, our country would be even a little better at least. But no, that's obviously not what they want. What they want is to put somebody up there that is in their control. Maybe for corrupt reasons, maybe for personal goals, whatever. It's surely just not about prosperity for our country, or they would've thought of that.

Finally, Abby's working on a new lay-out for me. 8D Watch for it! It'll probably be ready by the next post, which is in a few days.