Alrighty. First things first. Good news is that last Saturday, the first week of elimination for the Shake Ur Booty PIU dance contest was held. And we won heheh. So we don't have to worry about it anymore, and we have like 3 weeks of rest until the semi-finals (yes they rescheduled, because they want at least 4 semi-finalists). We got P500 worth of gift certificates, which translates into free tokens. :D

So now we can start working on a new routine. Currently the plan is Funky Tonight. We already have a plot. Yeah, the routine has a story. We're working out the details. But it'll be cool. Mikey has to study because his finals are on the 2nd week of October, so I'll work on thinking up the routine while he studies.

My shoulder is okay-ish now. I'd say at about 90-95% functionality already. It only hurts when I turn it some ways, like trying to reach my back (to scratch). But it doesn't hurt with weight or anything, so I figure I'm fine.

Last Sunday on our way to Church, we got caught in nasty strong rain. It was so strong that you'd get wet even if you were in an umbrella, what with the wind and all. It's the kind of rain where the drops are so heavy they kinda hurt when they hit your skin. So when we got into the building, which was air conditioned, we were pretty cold. My left foot was wet, because I stepped in a puddle. I don't remember if I stepped in it accidentally or what, but it got my sock wet, which was very uncomfortable. Some time after we got into the building though, the rain stopped. Hmm.

Currently practicing a new stunt, which according to Mikey should be one of the "easier" breakdance moves. But I tried to do it last night and I couldn't even begin! I'll keep trying later. I'm hoping to get it right within this week.

I saw some previews of Ragnarok Online 2. It looks very promising really. A lot of nice features. Also saw more previews of Soul Calibur 3, which I so want right now. Finally, I also read that there's already a Suikoden V... Honestly, though there are high hopes for this one after the relative failure of Suikoden IV, I think they're releasing Suikoden games too fast now. Maybe they're rushing too much. I dunno. I just hope this one doesn't suck, or else I'll lose my appetite for the series.

Interesting thing happened last Tuesday. So I went to SM North (A.K.A. SM West)to play Pump It Up, and to interview the WoF there to see how the tournament has been going for them so far. I'll tell you about that later. While dancing, at the start of my First Love routine, where I'm supposed to do a one-handed handstand, my left hand (I'm a lefty when it comes to these things) slipped, much like it did some 9 days prior to this, except that this time it didn't get a sprain. It popped out of its socket. I dislocated my shoulder. It went numb almost immediately. I didn't feel my arm, and I tried to move it and I couldn't. I reached with my right hand and popped it in before anybody else noticed what had happened. Popping it in was an interesting feeling. It kinda hurt but felt good at the same time. Ultimately, it didn't really hurt except for some minor pains expected from such an experience. It hurt a bit the next morning, but it's pretty good now. It only hurts when my arm is positioned some ways, so I try not to put too much strain on my arm or shoulder for now, until it feels all good.

The lesson learned: always wear the leather glove for the left hand at least. That thing is pretty much non-slip, even when wet or when the surface it's on is dusty.

Okay, about the contestants from SM North. Apparently, no Koreans have signed up yet there. I saw a couple of the freestylers there. Both of them are naturally steppers, as in, they only learned to freestyle for the tournament, but without it, would otherwise always be playing speed mode songs. One of them is a polite high school kid named Christian. He's okay but he's obviously very new to stunts and such. And nobody seems to take him or his practice seriously so he doesn't progress as much as I think he should anyway. Also, because he seems to be the only one that really wants it, his partner(s) ended up being pretty much filler characters. Chrsitian does like 90% of the work, including most if not all of the stunts. The other guys are just there to fill the duo requirement of the tournament. Anyway they won already (last Saturday), so they're guaranteed to be in the semi-finals. The other is some guy who is probably a dancer already. He had some nice stunts, impressing me a bit, though I didn't see his duo-routine.

I saw the MVs of Pierrot (Lee Hyun-do), Funky Tonight (CLON) and Hot (1Tym). All of those gave me good ideas for steps. When we get through this Saturday, given we win, we'll start working on Funky Tonight, for the semi-finals, and if we win and have time, we'll do Hot for the Finals.

Y!M 7 sucks. It would've been good, but it freezes my PC inexplicably whenever I try to run it. No error messages, not even ctrl+alt+del works. I have to hard-reset the machine, then I wouldn't find out what was wrong. So I gave up and downloaded Trillian, which supports all the IM programs I use (or used to use). This is long overdue, because I got lazy to reinstall AIM when I uninstalled it like several months ago. So now I can get back in touch with my AIM buddies. One of the best features of Trillian IMO would be the cute smilies. Yahoo's smilies have been horrible since about 2001, when they switched from the cute little round buttons of smiles to the bigger, more unecessarily-detailed smilies. But Y!M is still different. So when they make an update or fix (there are a lot of other problems that everybody has, including display images, webcam support, etc.), I'll try to use Y!M again.

We spent our time from Monday afternoon to around noon on Wednesday at the Linden Suites. It was fun, but I felt a little overcrowded. I couldn't get any real sleep because I slept on their short couch, so my legs were always bent. But I enjoyed the use of their gym, and on the last day we got to enjoy the pool for about an hour lol. Next time we'll use the pool a lot longer.

My shoulder is a lot better now. I barely feel it anymore. It was at its most painful on Monday, on Tuesday it was starting to feel a little better, and on Wednesday I could actually move it painlessly already, except that it seemed to take so much more effort to move. Today it's as if it didn't get sprained, but there's a faint little pain when pressure is applied to my shoulder. Oh well.

Leaving early today (Saturday) because we have to help the Designing Arts ministry put up the things we made for the Step It Up dance concert, which is today. Between the setting up part and going to the concert, we'll be at the Megamall, hoping for the other rules adjustments we suggested yesterday (Friday). It turns out that there is a total of zero other entries in the Megamall branch of World of Fun, for the PIU tournament. The other people that we heard about couldn't enter, because they were only solo acts, which is inadmissible by the current rules. So we're pushing for them to allow solo acts. Because it's true, what we said. It's friggen hard to find dance partners for a fairly new and barely popular game, much less during schooldays when almost nobody has time to practice as a duo. The guy who drafted the original mechanics for the whole tournament knows nothing about how tournaments should look, even after supposedly having seen freestyle videos from the PIU official website...

Ahaha. I just have to mention this. We tried playing Canon in crazy mode, and it was insane. This song was once described as humanly impossible, and I'm inclined to agree. Good grief. They have like 32nd and 64th beat steps...

Anyway I finally seem to have bagged Solitary. I've made several consecutive A-rank scores in freestyle mode, though I haven't been able to do everything I wanted... But still it's better than failing or a D. o_o

Hmm. Other news, I hurt myself pretty bad. >_< style="font-weight: bold;">Linden Suites. Ain't that a hoot? Actually I'm really excited for it, because I've heard some great things about their services. Like free use of the pool, gym, spa, etc. I look forward to enjoying myself and relaxing.

Dance concert on Saturday. The concert is entitled Step It Up, interestingly similar to Pump It Up, eh? Well I had nothing to do with it. Gary Valenciano will be there, and from reports of previous dance concerts, it's pretty exciting. Also looking forward to that.

Finally, on the same Saturday will be the first elimination round day for the Shake Ur Booty dance competition, held by World of Fun. Mikey and I have been hard at work with our routine for the elimination round, giving every day that he isn't busy to practice. We look okay-ish now, but that won't matter if our opponents are hundreds of times better than us lol. x_X I heard that a bunch of Korean guys signed up, and that scares me a little, because Korean guys around here are pretty notorious for freestyling too, or at least I think they are. You can never tell anymore. Also, a pair of girls also signed up. If Mikey's right, they're pretty good too, so we better watch ourselves, and do our best.