Weekly Wallpaper(s) /Anime Facts

It’s that time of the week again! This time i’ve decided to go with an anime theme… aaaaaand with more than 1 wallpaper WOOO!

These wallpapers are taken from one of my absolute favourite anime of all time.

It’s called My Neighbour Totoro, and if you have not seen it or never heard of it just go buy it /download it right now.

It’s by Hayao Miyazaki, and it’s the best anime he’s ever made  in my opinion. Miyazaki drew a lot of famous anime’s in the 80’s/90’s including Heidi, and some Lupin episodes.

He became mostly known worldwide after releasing  “Howl’s Moving Castle“, another fantastic anime of his.

With any of his works, he manages to make me feel like i’m a child again, and makes my imagination run wild. Probably why he is loved by so many fans of the genre.

I also think that miyazaki has an interesting face:

Hayao Miyazaki

In fact, i’ll even give you a few links for info/downloading! YOU HAVE TO WATCH IT!

IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0096283/

TORRENT ITA: http://www.mininova.org/tor/1268058

TORRENT ENG/JAP: http://www.mininova.org/tor/667395

USENET: https://nzbmatrix.com/nzb-details.php?id=407806&hit=1

Download high quality here

Download “high” quality here

Download high quality here

Or ofcourse, you could just go buy it like i did 😀 it’s well worth the money!

Enjoy!

o/

Advertisements

Weekends and Nuclear Bunkers

Weird title i know, but everything will be explained.

On Sunday, i went to visit my sister, in her new appartment. She lives in Switzerland where she works (Switzerland is just an hour away from where I live).
She found a very nice little home, literally 100m from lake Lugano.
It was a beautiful day and we had lunch and then went for a walk around the lake. Should really have made pictures so i could’ve posted them!

Anyway, while conversating with my sis, she tells me that her cellar is actually a nuclear bunker! WHAT!?!?!?
Yes that’s right! In Switzerland, companies that build appartments had to include a nuclear bunker in the building by law!!! I don’t know if that’s still the case, but the building is pretty new so i guess the law still stands.

I beg her to show me her cellar, so we take the elevator.
I was really curious to be honest because i’d never seen a nuclear bunker in my life, and suddenly there it was! A 50 inch thick metal/concrete door, with huge handles and swivels underneath a 5 storey building! Haha!
It was pretty amazing. That door weighed like 6 tons, it was incredible. I’ll upload a picture as soon as my sis sends me one.
She says she always runs in and out of it quickly when she needs something in it because she’s scared she’ll be locked inside forever!
Inside the “vault” there’s also some smaller doors that look like you can crawl inside that lead towards the mountain? maybe a bigger vault? Maybe vents? Who knows! Love these things haha!

Funnily enough, it reminded my geek soul that i still had not given Fallout 3 a shot, so as soon as i got back home i started playing, and finally… I have realised what an amazing game it is. Really really enjoying it.

Today was also my first day at work without my boss, and me taking up most of his duties. It was actually quite stressful, and i had a few problems but i managed to solve them quite easily. First day is gone and we’ll se how the rest develops.
Luckily, Chiara (my mentor that left last friday), said she will come help us next week as there’s only 3 of us working there atm and we need any help we can get. It was very nice of her to offer and I can’t wait for her to arrive and lend us a hand.

Right, time to stuff some food in my face and then go to training.
Over and out.

Oh my sister sent me photos woo! Here they are:

Riqz’s Official Saturday Weigh-in

I’ve been trying to lower my weight a little recently.

To sum it all up, my week is composed like this:

Monday:Rest
Tuesday: Muay Thai training
Wednesday:Rest
Thursday:Muay Thai training
Friday: Rest
Saturday: Around 40km cycling
Sunday: Long walk in the woods/mountain with the dog

So how much weight am i aiming at?

To be honest I don’t really know. I just feel somewhat heavy at the moment even though i’m really not. I’m 1m85cm tall (6.07 foot) and used to weigh 90kg (14.1 stone) after 2 years of no sport whatsoever because of my hernia operation.

After starting muay thai with the above training regime i went down to 85-88kg (13.38-13.85 stone).

This is when i feel a little heavier than i’d really want. So since last week i started thinking about my diet.

I have stopped eating carbs at dinner, which includes pasta, potates etc. But most of all… i realised something i ate constantly without even realising.

During my usual work day my sister made me realise that i drink quite a few coffee’s, like 4-5 max. “So what” i said? “Well how much sugar do you put in every cup?” she asked me! I facepalmed and realised that i usually put like 2-3 teaspoons of sugar in each cofee which in the end adds up to A LOT of sugar.

So since cutting my sugar-in-coffee breaks just one week ago, and my carbs two weeks ago, i have weighed myself this morning aaaaaaaand the official weigh-in comes toooooo… (imagine Bruce Buffer saying that phrase):

84.2 KG – 13.26 stone

Real satisfied with the results 😀

Promotion?!?Not really.

As said in previous posts, my office has changed quite a lot in these weeks since i started out. My “mentor” is leaving for another job, in another place…always at the same bank, just in another town. My ex boss now works for another office, and now they sent this new guy that doesn’t really want to either be our boss nor actually be there at all.

At 16:30 we stopped working for a bit to have a small refreshment to say goodbye to Chiara (my “mentor”), and to tell her good luck for her new job.

My boss calls me and suddenly just tells me that he’ll be going on holiday for 2 weeks and that he needs to tell me what needs to be done.

He starts giving me all his work, including stuff i’ve never done before. He gives me so much stuff that i actually had to take a full page of notes.

Now… I’m 23 years old, getting paid 1200€ a month, my contract ends the 31st of July (and no word on if it will be renewed or not) and my new boss asks me to be his Second in command all of a sudden? Shit man…

I guess it’s time to show everyone what i’ve got. It’s gonna be 2 weeks of hell.

On sadder news, my girlfriend’s grandma died today. She had a heart operation 1 month ago and never really managed to get back to health. She’s gone to a better place now.

Tata non ti preoccupare andrà tutto bene. Sono sempre vicino a te e ai tuoi parenti. Condoglianze a tutta la tua famiglia. Ti amo piccola mia.

o/

Wallpaper weekly

I was thinking of doing something similar to Sofi’s (www.yarrkarping.com) Pirate/Carp of the week, but instead i’d post one of my many wallpapers for others to enjoy too!

I’m quite a collector of wallpapers, varying from dark, to happy, to gruelly depressing, to happy go lucky, to alice in wonderland on drugs type of wallpapers.

So here’s my first one.

I’m pretty sure Sofi will like it! It’s happy psychedelic!

Click here for full quality download!

Job & Leisure

My job… I work as a Junior Credit Analyst for a bank here in Italy. It is as boring as it sounds. I have been doing it for a year and a half now, and my contract is ending the 31st of July. I really don’t know what to hope for. I mean, if they tell me i have to keep doing the same job i’m doing right now, i doubt i’ll stay because it really is getting very very monotonous. It involves me making a small analysis of a firm or person and give my opinion on if we should lend him/her money.

I really am starting to hate it. The problem also arises because recently, my boss got sent to another office and she was really nice to me. She taught me everything i know today! She got replaced by this middle aged man, that has to drive 150miles every morning to get to work (which means he’s angry already at 8 am), and he doesn’t like the fact that the bank sent him so far away. Obviously they wanted to get rid of him…

That’s enough about my shitty job. I just hope they either move me or fire me.

As for leisure, I practice Muay Thai since January 2009. I have now decided that I want to step up this september when training starts up again. I  want to start fighting for real! So i’m going to start with some Thai Light fights, which means I wear a small boxing helmet and shin pads for protection. Thai light fights are a little like sparring sessions, because knockout punches/kicks are not allowed. You get disqualified if you punch or kick or knee an opponent too hard. These fights are practically pure technique, spread out in three 1:30 minute rounds.

It should be great fun. It’s the right place to start and who knows, if I really enjoy it I might as well end up fighting in a full contact fight some day!

Gotta go to the last training session with my first Thai teacher (Davide)today! I have really grown to respect Davide and even the slightest compliment from him makes me fill up with pride. It’s a strange feeling between pupil and teacher…It’s pretty unexplainable. It’s made up of respect mostly, but also friendship and near total devotion.

Unfortunately, Davide”s going to move to London in September so we’ll have to go to another trainer in September (He’s just as goodhopefully, but most importantly he is from the same combat team: Team Procopio).

Off to training now o/

Riqz’s Blog is LIVE!

Okay. I have decided to start a new blog. I used to blog a year or two ago then i stopped.

Recently been reading some of my friends’ blogs and find they keep me entertained through my work days so I decided to dish out some entertainment myself!

Here’s a filler to start off with. It’s from my old “Dreams Blog” where i used to write down my dreams as soon as i woke up so i would not forget them!

I was driving this very expensive silver luxurious car, maybe a Mercedes or a BMW, but I soon realised that the brakes were not working very well. You could press as hard as you wanted but the brakes seemed to work only until a certain threshold and then they wouldn’t brake any harder. I end up hitting a lamppost, not like crashing, I just came to rest on it. I then reach a self service refuelling station and suddenly (don’t ask me how), I find myself on a yellow dune buggy (you know the ones that people use to go on the beach, they look really stupid). The thing is that it does not run on petrol. Instead I find myself pouring this transparent liquid from a big yellow petrol can with a sticker on it saying BANANA.

This was a very strange dream. I found out later, after explaining this dream to a friend of mine that she read that someone created a car that could run on banana peels. It was still strange because I had never heard of this invention! Maybe the reason for the car not braking is because I had been playing this train simulator, and trains do not have normal brakes like cars, they have various levels of braking, they are not pressure sensitive. Yeah i’m a geek