*This is an entry of me reminiscing about the days when I was a huge Pokemon enthusiast. If you think having been crazy over Pokemon is lame or talking about Pokemon when I’m almost 20 now is childish, or if you think Pokemon is demonic, evil or simply boring, I suggest that you do not proceed in reading. Thanks! =)

*Warning: Ridiculously long entry ahead. Please make sure you’re comfortably seated!

I am no longer a kid, but I realized that the sweet memories of Pokemon in my life have never faltered – it was then, it is now, and it will be forever.

During my most stressful times of my final exams period last week, I was deeply stressed-out by intensive last-minute-revisions and the burdensome preparation works for the commencement of my new business. Topped with my newly developed anxiety problem, I thought I was going to lose my mind.

Those times were so terrible that it was quite impossible to get a break without having to think of my other concerns. With mostly drug-induced sleep and heavily unbalanced diet, those times were physically weighing on me as much as they were mentally.

It was at that time of suffering, that I was blessed with the sweet reunion of one of my greatest childhood ‘friend’ - Pokemon.

I was taking a break from studying that day when I came across this guy’s videos * on Youtube. It was so heartening… He’s got the whole collection of the English Pokemon Kanto series uploaded!

When I was watching the first episode, I was overwhelmed… It all came rushing back to my mind – The times when everything in my life was about Pokemon, and nothing was more important than playing and staying away from being caught by parents – I remembered, all of them. The memories so vivid, the emotions so strong.

The feeling was strangely mixed – joy and grief - happy because those were the happiest days, sad because the times are forever gone and will never come back… At that time nostalgia struck me so hard, I felt my eyes prickle and I wanted to cry.

For a moment I couldn’t believe that in this world with all its evil and selfishness, competitions and hectic lifestyles; something so innocent, so carefree, could still have existed in my memory at that time.

I think I was 13 when I knew about Pokemon, and gradually became an unstoppable Pokemon fanatic. Video games, cartoon series VCDs, trading cards, softwares, figurines, toys, apparel, movies, comics… Almost anything related to Pokemon, I daresay, I had ‘em all.

How it all began? Oh, I can remember it as if it was only a month ago…

Well, about 7 years ago…

It all started in my school, when some of my friends started playing ‘virtual’ Pokemon games among friends, with one person being the ‘game controller’ and the other guys being ‘players’. The game controller would narrate the story of the game and the players make decisions like to look for Pokemon, battle trainers, challenge gyms, use skills etc. We used fingers to represent the HP (health point) bar, and all the captured Pokemon / items were recorded in a book that served as the ’save file’.

I knew nothing about Pokemon when I participated in these games, but they were great. Soon, the Pokemon anime series came, but there were no English dubs for sale yet in Malaysia. So we bought Cantonese-dubbed VCDs, and it became the hottest conversation topic among friends at then.

At that time, I didn’t have a Nintendo GameBoy console, on which the Pokemon video game was supposed to be played. So I used a PC emulator (a software to play GameBoy games on PCs) and played my first Pokemon Blue version with it. I still remember I got the emulator through a diskette! Hah! My current PC doesn’t even have a drive for diskettes!

Eventually, I bought a GameBoy and played the Yellow version on it. It was huge, new-found freedom! Because at that time my mum used to limit the time of me using the computer, but somehow there was no limit for playing the GameBoy!

It was crazy, many of my friends were either playing, or have already played it. It was really an unstoppable and immensely influencial trend among my peers at that time, hardly anyone I knew didn’t know about Pokemon!

After that, Gold and Silver version became very popular. That was arguably the ‘golden age’ of Pokemon in my life! I was sitting on the couch all day ‘training’ Pokemon, reading and memorising video game walkthroughs (books with detailed written strategies in playing the game), and buying an enormous range of Pokemon merchandise.

To cap it all, the Pokemon English-dubbed anime series started airing weekly on NTV7 and the first and second Pokemon movies were released. I loved absolutely everything about the characters and I used to happily watch the movies over and over again.

It was at this period that I was so obsessed with Pokemon that I seriously wished our real world had Pokemon, and we could become Pokemon trainers and capture real Pokemon!

In fact, all the Pokemon stuff were so significant in our lives that I think I wouldn’t be too surprised if I suddenly saw a Pikachu bouncing happily out from a patch of grass beside me…

*day-dreaming* I would then probably try to touch it and “Pi…ka…chhiuuuu…!!”, receive a Thunderbolt attack from it and fall to the ground with spinning eyes and smoke emitting from my hair… Awww, well… =)

Soon after, I was hooked up with the Pokemon trading card game. I think I spent a huge fortune buying decks, booster packs, individual cards, and attending tournaments. I still recall myself used to eagerly going back to my school every Saturday morning to play trading cards with all the other guys who played it.

Every Saturday, the school canteen was unanimously agreed and understood as the arena for trading card games. Although I didn’t really liked school, I was always looking forward to going to school on Saturdays because those times were really fun!

We spent a great deal of time, err… in class, tirelessly thinking and building up different decks and card strategies on papers. I used to have many note books dedicated for deck building. Every now and then, an ‘invincible’ deck building strategy was created, but only to be replaced by another ‘more invincible’ idea created later.

Because our school banned its students from bringing trading cards to school, we used to create our own decks in school by cutting paper into card-shaped pieces, drawing imitations of the real cards on them, and playing them as if they were real!

Many not-so-happy things happened in school as well: Cards being stolen, decks being confiscated, people being conned into buying /selling cards at unreasonable prices, playing truants, and even some cases of students stealing money from parents/other students to buy the cards!

These things did happen, but not that regularly. Come on, there’ll always be something bad happening behind almost everything that’s good, won’t there?=)

Despite all these things happening, Pokemon typically promotes a very healthy, innocent, and good-natured personality. The entire Pokemon story plot promotes good values such as friendship, sincerity, determination, loyalty and trust.

The Pokemon franchise may be highly addictive to kids and younger teens, but I daresay it’s a healthier thing to be addicted to compared to other much worse, but more typical, alternatives.

Slowly after that period, the Pokemon craze started to fade for teens of my age; and my friends, including myself, started idolizing computer games. =)

So for the record: I stopped playing after the Gold/Silver version of the Pokemon video games, the “Neo Destiny” set of the trading card game, stopped watching after “Johto League Champions” series of the anime and the 3rd – “Spell of the Unown” of the Pokemon movies. All of which I started from the very first version/set/episode.

As for now, I’m rewatching the episodes of the first season from the Youtube address I stated earlier. (My VCDs are in my hometown) I’m also playing the Emerald version of the video game, attempting to catch up from where I left 7 years ago. Wow, what an experience!

It’s pleasant and quite shocking to discover that Pokemon is now over 11 years old and still a multi-billion Dollar worldwide franchise. Continuing after the Gold & Sliver version where I left off, the video games have developed into Ruby & Sapphire, and even the latest Diamond & Pearl versions!

The anime series is still very popular with 2 new main series “Pokemon Advanced Generation” and “Pokemon Diamond & Pearl series”, each with their own different sub series. And there are currently eight Pokemon Movies released! OMG!

The trading cards are even more well-developed. With a whole bunch of new sets that I couldn’t possible list all, I am so left out! I’m still keeping my last modified “haymaker” deck though! Anyone wanna challenge me? ^^

Strangely, the Pokemon phenomenon in Malaysia seems to be diminishing in influence, when it is still enormously huge in the US and some other countries! Why is our country not that hooked up anymore? Sigh…

Anyway, I know I won’t be as fanatic as I was before – now that I’m a university student, I have work to do and everything… But whenever I return to the Pokemon video games or anime, it’s always a tranquil experience to enter a world of innocence and dreams that no longer exist in our current lives.

Sometimes I really wonder why some people label Pokemon as ‘demonic‘, ‘evil’ or ‘Satanic’. I mean, it’s wierd enough to say that Harry Potter is ‘demonic’, but uh… Pokemon?

I don’t know whether the critics have actually took the time to know more in detail about Pokemon, because if they did, I don’t think they’ll find much demonic things perhaps except for a couple of Houndooms and Gengars.

Pokemon may be nothing more than a collection of fictional characters and an imaginative story plot, but it has been with me for many years, accompanying me through many joyful events and precious memories. Although the years are quite long past, they are still so dearly remembered.

I’m not being childish and I’m not being lame. If a person thinks that reminiscing about childhood events is lame and childish, pardon me then, I pity his childhood.

We all have our own childhood story to tell, don’t we? Yours could be much more interesting than mine!

Finally, I really want to say this:

Thanks, Mr. Satoshi Tajiri, for creating Pokemon; Nintendo, for bringing us into the Pokemon world; 4Kids Entertainment, for bringing Pokemon to life in English-dubbed animation; Wizards of the Coast, for the trading card game experiences.

and above all…

Thanks, Pokémon, for keeping my childhood alive in me.

*(Update 03/06/2007) Sadly, the Pokemon episodes on the Youtube account that I mentioned is no longer watchable. A great amount of episodes have been taken down by Youtube due to, err, you know… copyright infringement.

If you’d somehow still like to watch the Pokemon eps, you may come here. This guy has… Oh my God… ALL the episodes all the way till season 11! – that’s the season that’s being aired in the US currently… and ALL the Pokemon movies!

You’d need to add him as a friend before you can watch though, because those are private videos. =)

After swallowing 7 sleeping pills of different types over 5 consecutive days, it’s over! And I’m still alive! The final exams are over!

First of all, I must say, they sucked, totally! Not something from your average exam! Although I didn’t study all there is to study, but I did study quite a lot of them – yes, through last-minute studies you know!

But it was as if the lecturer who created the exam questions was saying:

“Ahhhh, I (somehow) know that this James Chow guy has studied these chapters and these parts, so let the final exam questions be anything other than those from these chapters and these parts, so that he dies! Muahahahaha!”

=(=(=(

I’m not entirely sure that I’m not going to miserably fail any of my subjects, but in any case, there’s still the supplementary exams, you know, just in case… =)

Now that the exams are over, I will need to replenish my power, just like in the computer games… I need to eat like a dinosaur and sleep like a pig, then go out and have a life! All these I have been greatly deprived of for the past 3 weeks…

Tonnes of exciting things are going to happen during the holidays! I’m going to move to my new house, my new business is all set to go, I’m going to Redang Island, I’m also going back to Ipoh, and… James-Chow.com is going to get a new domain name!

I am still applying for, but haven’t succeeded yet, for the domain name of www.james.com.my! Sounds great eh? If the application is successful, then I won’t have to worry about my ‘JamesDashChow.com’ problem anymore!

But then the procedures for registering a .com.my domain is far more complicated, and expensive, than registering a .com domain, so we’ll still have to see if it goes well or not… Anyway, I’m quite confident that I’m gonna get it!

I’m currently busying myself with something rather special, hehe… Something that I thought was lost until I found it during my final exams period… Will probably write about it in my next entry!

Not gonna write too much in this entry, holidays have started for me, people! See ya!

*Oh my, I sound like a nerd!*

Help! I have a ‘cannot-wake-up-in-the-morning-phobia’!!!

Whenever I have to wake up early the next morning, say 9 or 10am, I will not be able to sleep that night!

This becomes much worse when the thing that I have to do the next morning is very important or needs special attention, for example an exam or a presentation… If that’s the case, I will be doomed… Because I wouldn’t be able to sleep ALL NIGHT!

This is exactly what I’d feel and think when I go to bed in an anxiety-filled night:

“Okay, I’ll have to wake up early tomorrow morning for my XYZ presentation, so I must sleep now or I’ll screw the presentation up.”

So I’ll force myself to sleep, but fail. So I say to myself:

“OMG only 5 hours left until I have to wake up, sleeeeeeeeep plzzzzzzzz!”

This repeats for around 1 hour until I’m finally about to fall asleep, then I’ll think of something stupid like:

“Yay! Finally I’m going to fall asleep! Hope that amount of sleep is enough for the XYZ presentation tomorrow!”

By thinking that, I lose all the drowsiness I just had. And it loops back again and again, until it’s time to wake up! 9am! That’s not a joke!

Because of this problem, I attended a number of exams with a totally blank mind, did presentations like a zombie raised from the dead, and attended meetings like a panda with no bamboo sticks to eat for a month… All because I did not get ANY sleep during the previous nights of those events! Sad!=(

I consulted my doctor about the problem. Apparently, I’ve developed an anxiety problem associated with stress. As a temporary solution, I was given sleeping pills.

I take them only when I have important stuff to do the next morning, stuff that would otherwise render me sleepless for the whole night if I didn’t take the pills.

For the long term, I’ll have to try to modify my thoughts and stop worrying so much instead. I don’t know how to do that, because the extra effort that I put into not worrying is another worry by itself, huhu… =(

Anyway, my mum was really worried about me taking sleeping pills, and I don’t blame her, because nowadays sleeping pills are all associated with suicides, rapes, kidnappings and all the bad stuff. The impression is that taking sleeping pills will kill you or make your liver stop functioning or something…

Alright, back to reality.

I’M HAVING MY FINAL EXAMS STARTING TOMORROW! DIE!!DIE!!!DIE!!!!

I’m not exactly that prepared and the stress is killing me! I’ll stop blogging until my exams end and that’s if I’m still alive at then.

Wish me luck, I’ll need all the luck I can get!

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Hey, why are you still reading? Wish me luck! Come on! Plssssssss!=)