Boo It’s been a while

So anyhow, my team lost the final a few weeks ago. Total slaughter, didn’t win a set, won’t go into the details. Bah.

In the midst of exams now, so worried about failing, yet at the same time the more I think about it, the more I want to have time off university. So I suppose if I fail any units this semester I will pull out of next semester. I just have no motivation and I always procrastinate and I don’t feel this is what I want to do at current. I know I’d love to graduate one day, but I really feel like time off. ~_~

Anyhow what’s new with music? Hum, I discovered a vocal group called BRIGHT. I was pleasantly surprised with their debut single Sora Iro, and bought it. There are 4 girls. MI-MI is short and has disgusting teeth (but apparently Japanese people find crooked teeth cute? braces DO cost a fortune in Japan) and one of the main vocalists. MEG is the youngest but tallest, has really nice long legs, she is the treble vocalist. She gets bagged for her nasal voice though, I LOVE it. NANAKA is probably the prettiest, and has a voice like BoA, and is the other main vocalist. Lastly, is my favourite, NAGI!! She is the bass vocalist. She totally reminds me of those nerdy asian girls from high school that try to be hot. Fo Sho! All of them are from Osaka except for NAGI who is from a small town close to Osaka.

Girl groups tend to be crap and manufactured, and while BRIGHT are manufactured, they are great performers with great voices, harmonise very well together and their live singing is great.

Oh right, my favourite singer Otsuka Ai released a new single, Rocket Sneaker/One x Time. It’s a good single overall, but the best track by far is Sora to Kujira, which is the b-side. Ai’s songs haven’t given me a feeling like this b-side since Kumuriuta. Too bad the sales are terrible! Oh well, as long as she charts in the top 10 for a week at least, and the music is good. Though I really think she needs a song like Cherish or 5:09am as a single!

Miliyah has two more dates for her TOKYO STAR tour. I think a DVD of this tour will be my second most anticipated DVD after LOVE PiECE tour DVD. I know she opens with TOKYO STAR. Other songs on the setlist are Saigo no I LOVE YOU, Kiss, Love Is…, Sayonara, I WILL. She also does LALALA & FUTURECHECKA and all the featuring artists are on the road with her, that is superb in my opinion. Wakadanna from Shonnanokaze isn’t a nobody so for him to devote his time to Miliyah’s tour is great. I visited Miliyah’s brog today and I realised she updates her blog ~5 times a day even if they are short messages. Good gyaru! ^_^

More on tours, well as I said I really anticipate TOKYO STAR and LOVE PiECE tour. But there are english artist tours that I want to go to as well. Shock horror. As much as I dislike Hard Candy, it’d be great to see old fart Madonna so I can “see [her] booty get down like” saggy tits. But she’s snubbing Australia again on her Sticky & Sweet tour. Oh well, Janet Jackson expressing interest in coming to Australia for her Rock Witchu tour more than makes up for it. I assume it will be early next year as she starts touring North America in September. I hope there’s lots of 20 Y.O. material on it, the tour for that album was scrapped. Bastards.

Mm last Thursday I went to see a play called Boeing Boeing. When I saw Shaun Micallef was playing the lead I really wanted to go see it, that guy’s so funny. I got 5th row seats and the play was very funny. Even the ending where all his three air hostess of mistresses met, was not cliched or what I expected it might have turned out like. And I LOVED the uniforms on the girls. Gabriella who works for Air Italia had the best clothes, that type of blue is just gorgeous! Gretchen was the very eccentric and passionate German, the crowd favourite for sure. Gloria was the American who was least appealing in my opinion, for one thing she liked to eat pancakes with tomato sauce. Ew.

Eh back to studying I suppose. Bye bye.

Tennis: Onto the finals!

My tennis team had semi-finals tonight. It wasn’t that hard to make it into the semis. There are 6 groups in the whole tournament, and the top 4 make it in. =P

We placed third and would play the second team on the ladder. They were called The Unpredictables and we’ve played them at least twice. I think we won the first meet and they won the second one. Anyhow, I thought we’d be in for a tough tie until I saw a person on their team who I knew was really weak, I was surprised he was playing at all tonight! Nevertheless, seeing him on their team gave me some confidence.

I had a hit with my brother a few hours before going and I played pretty terribly, he actually beat me in a short match, and that would have been the first time he’s beaten me all year, so I wasn’t feeling thaaaaaat great.

I won my first match 8-4. My partner Stan was old, which worried me at first, but he had a very reliable serve which is always handy. We were pretty level at the start, 4-all, before we broke away for the win. I believe I played well, I didn’t go for too much on serves, I actually held back a lot on my serving. I had to do lots of volleys and smashes, and I actually didn’t miss many at all which is a nice change! Smashing used to be so daunting because I’d hit it into the net almost all the time. There were some good rallys, and fun exploitation of unshielded tram lines.

Second match was even better, I won 8-1. Once again, had to volley and smash more than usual, I always ran to the other side of the court just so I could smash it. At around 4 -1, the other team started bickering and getting annoyed at each other for not doing what they were supposed to. I actually felt really bad that it was going on, in the end it’s just a meaningless tournament! Having said that I was really serious the whole time and played with intensity, it’s so fun like that, Dokic is just a goddess with it. There was a point where I was at the baseline and I had to scramble from side to side, and in the end I did a cross-court passing shot from the ad court to the deuce court, definitely my shot of the night. =D

Thanks to my team mates, after four matches were completed out of a total of six, we had already won the tie, even if we lost the next two matches 8-0! I guess this made me feel relaxed, however I think I took them too easily. In the final match I won 8-6, but it wasn’t easy. First off we went down 0-3, after having two games where were 40-0  up! We finally levelled at 3-all, and continued until we got a break to lead 6-5, but immediately got broken back. Thankfully we won the next 2 games to win the match. My serve really failed me this time. I double-faulted more than once in some games. I overhit, and started to miss volleys, my mind just wasn’t in the match at the start. Add to that I was HUNGRY LIKE THE CHICKEN after not eating anything since 1pm (it’s now 9pm).

Next week it’s the finals, hopefully  we can win, but one of our better team members cant play and we may have to call one of our weaker ones…. *worried*

Oh and it’s time for Roland Garros now. I hope Serena or Jelena Jankovic can capture grand slam glory!

Sophie Ellis-Bextor’s making a new album!

I’ve been so out of the loop with this wonderful and pretty British singer. She has confirmed on her website that she has scrapped the idea of a Greatest Hits because she had so much new material, that she is pressing on with a fourth studio album!
<(^_^)<       ^(^_^)^       >(^_^)>        ^(^_^)^         <(^_^)<         ^(^_^)^           >(^_^)>

The past year she’s just been mixing up what she’s doing and such and it seems finally, something will materialise. She released her third album “Trip The Light Fantastic” around May last year  (FIERCE album), and then announced a tour for it in September. However, Take That, a big band in the UK, asked Sophie to support them on their stadium tour, which was at the same time as her tour was meant to be, so Sophie decided she couldn’t pass up on touring with Take That and postponed tour until March-ish 2008, but was eventually cancelled.

A month later she writes that she won’t tour Trip The Light Fantastic, and would do a Greatest Hits instead to be released in around September ‘07 with a new song or two. Then this supposed greatest hits gets pushed to March 2008. The greatest hits did not materialise in the end. Thank goodness!

Last month she announced they had around 4-5 new tracks and would concentrate on a new album to be released in around September this year. She’s been working with many people as usual, most noticeably Calvin Harris and Groove Armada.

Sophie stated she wanted to do a fourth album and then a greatest hits, and then “change her musical direction.” People would know Sophie does dancey pop stuff, and I guess at age 29=>30, she would want to mature musically. If anything, I reckon her most recent single (but not recent by any means) “Today The Sun’s On Us” from TTLF would shed some light of what she means by changing her musical direction.

Anyhow, since a greatest hits would get a 2009 release, I REALLY hope she does a world tour to end her dance music era. It’s so sad because both her planned tours for her previous TWO albums have been cancelled. =.= And if she doesn’t come to Australia on the next tour, she better make a DVD! I’m just so happy we will get some new music finally, Trip The Light Fantastic was wonderful.

Farty Pants twenty4-7

These past few days I’ve been passing some pretty filthy gas, I don’t know why, must be something I ate. Brother Simon and Sister Sally always run for their lives when I silently pass gas around them, but today, something happened on the tram I just had to share with you guys (whom are non existent because I get next to no viewers, but I digress).

So I was on tram 19, on my way to university, when I, surprise surprise, do a silent fart. It is foul and wretched, as per usual. After a few seconds, the schoolboy opposite me covers his nose. A few seconds more the girl (who I found out goes to my uni) next to said schoolboy covers her nose. A few seconds more and the woman next to me wraps her scarf around her nose. By now I am trying OH SO HARD to not laugh. I cover my mouth and nose in a lame attempt to deflect the blame on myself, but the two people across me still give me funny stares as I hold myself from bursting out laughing.

It’s been a day and I still laugh at it, seriously it’s so funny. Yeah I’m really weird like this. But goodness you should have been there, they covered their mouths one by one and stared at me. LMAO.

On another note, twenty4-7’s debut album “Life” is fantastic. They are a RnB duo on Rhythm Zone and their music is so nice. If you enjoy BENNIE K I reckon you will enjoy twenty4-7 as well.

Good night! <(^_^)>

The one day I play well, our team loses!

Well as you may not know, I’m quite the tennis enthusiast and earlier on in the year, a joined a competition on Monday night. Though I’ve been playing tennis for a few years (following for ages), this was my first taste of any form of competition.

The format is, you have 4 members on your team playing one  night playing against another team of 4. Each person partners everyone else to play a pro-set (8 game set).

I’m the type that’s inconsistent and match play does not reflect from in practice, but hey, when does it ever? Anyhow, I play really well. I didn’t go for too much and used my mind a bit more than usual, and I did a few nice drop shots, even if one or two of them were mishits. :p

I won all my matches comfortably, 8-3, 8-2, 8-4, but we still lost the whole tie by 3 games 33-30 because my teammates lost almost all their matches 8-1. I can’t say I’m not annoyed, but at least it was close and I played well. I don’t really care about how the team does as long as we are in the top half of the ladder… It’s my first season with this guys and also my last. I think next year I’ll try WDTA on saturdays.]

In other news, I fear Mirrorcle World won’t reach 200k. =( Last week it sold 3.3k to bring it’s total to 181k. It’ll outsell Startin’ (188k) but 200k looks so close yet so far away. Bummer really. TOKYO STAR will reach 200k I assume, if only just. Miliyah sold 7k last week and stands at a total of 171k. The sales for TOKYO STAR have been rather steady and good so I hope Miliyah can do it. Something also tells me 60s70s80s by  Namie “Black Diamond poacher” Amuro has a great shot at 300k. And funny Madonna, she has broken so many records worldwide and stuff, well her latest one has got to be, lowest selling album in Japanese music history to top the weekly album charts. She sold a total of 33k, as if last weeks chart topping effort of 55k wasn’t bad enough!

hdfb Double A Side: Introduction / Best J-Pop (May ‘08)

Hello everyone. I’m starting a blog, I guess mainly because it’s nice to rant and my boyfriend just has one. >_> Mmm, my name is Jerry and I’m 19 years old and I live in the eastern suburbs of Melbourne. I love tennis with a passion and music, mainly J-Pop. hdfb stands for HilaryDuffFanBoy. I’m a big fan of hers and eventually I realised 16 letters was too much to type everytime so I made it an acronym. ^o^/~ “Ariehen” means “That’s Impossible” in Osaka-ben. My iPod is called Ariehen as well. =D

Well to start off with I guess I’ll post an orderned list of my favourite albums and singles of 2008. It was so hard to choose between the top five of albums and singles…. Don’t be surprised if next time I update it the old ranks switch around. o.O

Shinguru

1. 19 Memories, 加藤ミリヤ

2. 60s70s80s, 安室奈美恵

3. Mirrorcle World, 浜崎あゆみ

4. HEART STATION / Stay Gold, 宇多田ヒカル

5. 翼を広げて / 愛は暗闇の中で – ZARD

6. モノクローム – BENNIE K

7. 砂 – 奥村初音

8. 泣きたいなら – 島谷ひとみ

9. Yes Forever, MISIA

10. そばにいるね (feat. SoulJa) -青山テルマ

11. キャンバス / 君はス・テ・キ♡ -平井堅

12. DRINK IT DOWN – L’Arc~en~Ciel

13. Namidairo, YUI

14. SAKURA ~花霞~ -中島美嘉

15. doll – Lia

16. Ring A Bell – BONNIE PINK

17. anytime, 倖田來未

18. 一緒に, 高杉さと美

19. be with you., BoA

20. 羞恥心 -羞恥心

Album

1. GUILTY, 浜崎あゆみ

2. TOKYO STAR, 加藤ミリヤ

3. EIGHTH WORLD, MISIA

4. HEART STATION, 宇多田ヒカル

5. ステファニー -ステファニー

6. DOLCE, 鈴木あみ

7. FAKIN’ POP – 平井堅

8. I LOVED YESTERDAY, YUI

9. ayu-mi-x -SILVER- – 浜崎あゆみ

10. Award SuperNova -Lovers Best- - m-flo

11. Kingdom, 倖田來未

12. DIARY -青山テルマ

13. garden, 高杉さと美

14. ayu-mi-x -GOLD- – 浜崎あゆみ

15. BLACK LIST – ACID BLACK CHERRY

16. THE FACE, BoA

17. WISH, 伊藤由奈