8:16:00 AM
listening to: lee ritenour - a little dolphin dreamin'

I seemed to write less and less as the months went by. To be honest, I missed doing it regularly like before: expressing my thoughts, activities, and whatnot that have been accumulated in my mind. It's not easy trying to gather them again as the days went by, but I must put them into writing before everything is forgotten.
Thus I inscribe, in no particular order...

Summer has come to an end, and so has the jazz season. I was very fortunate for having the chance to come to jazz concerts around the Los Angeles area. Even though I wish I could have seen many more, here they are:
July 12 : David Benoit, The Rippingtons, and Eric Marienthal at Humphrey's By The Bay, San Diego, CA.
July 19 : Lee Ritenour at Hyatt Newporter, Newport Beach, CA.
August 8 : Eric Marienthal & Jeff Lorber at Long Beach Museum of Art, Long Beach, CA.
September 7 : Eric Marienthal & Lee Ritenour at Spaghettini Italian Grill, Seal Beach, CA.

All of them were fabulous. Simply perfect. I definitely will go to a lot more jazz concerts next summer!
I was also very fortunate to be able to see The Phantom of the Opera two days before the tour ended last August 25th at Orange County Performing Arts Center, Costa Mesa, CA. That was my third time seeing the musical, the first one being in Singapore and the second one in Broadway (NYC) a few years ago. If Phantom should come again next year or the following, I'll surely see it again. And again. That's how much I love the musical :3

As my love for musical, theater, and opera grows, and the opportunity to see them seems to be widely open (due to where I live), I have decided to see as many as possible in the months to come. There will be Beauty and the Beast, Fosse, Miss Saigon, Les Miserables, Cats,.... I sure hope I can see all of them. The hardest thing is to keep track of the dates.

On August 31st, I saw Blast, an ensemble of dancers, musicians, and specialty talent which employs elements of drum corps, parades, military bands, and stadium pagentry. The show was held at Royce Hall, UCLA. I loved the show so much that I wanted to learn playing the drum. They were amazing, those dancers and musicians!

Ah yes, I almost forgot. Interesting fact this past summer: I have been to Los Angeles International Airport for no less than 10 times since June! Various people had arrived to visit yours truly: mom, dad, brother, friends, mom again, brother again, mom again... you get the idea =P

Since my family came here numerous times, I'd had the chance to ask them to bring Indonesian-translated manga (manga is Japanese comic, if you haven't already known). And so my collection has grown quite a lot, not to mention the English-translated manga I bought here. I have instantly fallen in love with Rurouni Kenshin, Paradise Kiss, Kindaichi Case Files, Lin3, Mars, Cowboy Bebop. On the contrary, I don't really like Yasha. Also, Throbbing Tonight was pretty good in the beginning, but it starts to get weirder and weirder as the volumes go up.

I will hopefully be able to get my hands on more Indonesian-translated manga next month. I'm planning to go back to Indonesia for more than a month on October :D Cannot wait, cannot wait. It's going to be a vacation, for I might go to Japan as well :) I haven't gone back to Indonesia for almost 2 years, and I've never been to Japan. You see how excited I am! The initial purpose of going back is, actually, to apply for a student's visa. Yes, I'm going back to school on January. I'm going to take Professional Level Program in Interior Design at UCLA Extension. It's going to be a dream come true. After all, I have always wanted to be an interior designer since I was in junior high school, but I changed the course of study before I went to Penn State. Now I'll be able to pursue my original interest. Wonderful, don't you think?

Little tidbit before I go to sleep: the tool I currently most love from Adobe Photoshop is the blur tool. It makes my life easier, especially when editing photos.