It’s been a very long while since I’ve updated my music, so here goes.

土岐麻子 (Toki Asako) became one of my favorite artists immediately after I heard some of her songs. I came across one of her on a shared iTunes library at school. Apparently it was some Japanese person near my apartment. The song I heard was “Rain Song” back in her days with the jazz band, Cymbals. Now she’s doing her little solo bit, still jazz of course. If Jpop is getting a little too weird for you, give it a listen.

Toki Asako – ウィークエンドの手品 (Magic of Weekends) Careful if you want to google that song title, it’s my own translation. Best translation I could think of. 3rd song off her album, Debut.

One of my ultimate chill songs! And it’s in English! Not that that means I can understand it much more than my foreign songs… Mandalay is always meant for a more, err, passive listening experience. Much thanks to Kim for first introducing me to Mandalay, one of the big names in TripHop. This song is off their album, Empathy, which was mistakenly released somewhere as a Portishead album, Pearl. Not sure how that happened, but I’m quite certain it is Mandalay and not Portishead. You can’t mistake such a beautiful voice!

Mandalay – Another One of my triphop faves. It’s off their album, Empathy. (often mistaken as the album, Pearl by Portishead)

As usual, all my songs are up for grabs under the “Me wants it” link.

So what turns out to be a motherboard problem was actually a processor problem. All due to a miss diagnosis based on well, more than one problem. Occam doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Stuff happens.

Anyhow, after attending some midnight magic and queing up for less than an hour, I finally got my copy of Deathly Hallows, and I am proud to say I remained unspoiled to the end! After a good maybe 10 hours of reading, Harry Potter finally comes to a close. I enjoyed it throughly. I got my Snape redemption, and all is well.

So I decided to have another go at the blog thing. It’s the middle of summer and I’m wearing my long pajama pants and socks. Why? Because I was freaking RAPED by mosquitoes last night and I find it itches less if I can cover up the bites. I thought I was safe when I killed one this morning, but apparently it had friends or family or something. So, the pj’s and socks stay on.

In the meantime, I’m doing without my computer right now. Not by choice of course. It seems my touch of death has struck my motherboard. Again. No hamster, fish, plant, or hardware is safe. Tin has kindly hunted down and paid for a new mb for me though. Apparently they don’t make the particular kind I need anymore, so that was real good of him to find it.

Just less than three days until Harry Potter releases and I’ve already started my usual pre-Potter release rituals. Well, I call it a ritual, but I really just search mugglenet for the latest crazy theories that have been piling up since the last release. There’s a big hubbub over a copy that’s been put up online. Apparently someone got a hold of one and painstakingly took a pic of each page. I’ve found it of course, but I’ll wait. Christina, Dennis, and I are planning to attend the Midnight Magic party at the B&N on Plano and Montfort if you care to join us. It probably won’t be super cool, but hey, you get your copy at midnight! My biggest disappointment? Snape just turns out to be another bad guy. He’s too cool to be that boring. I really don’t care whether Harry dies or not. I’m sure it’d be good either way.