So I bought Spore Galactic Adventures (which I have been anticipating for a while now) as well as the 2008 Prince of Persia three days ago. They were both fantastic games but I took Prince of Persia back to EB Games today because I know I will probably not play it very much. I have a winter music school beginning in two days and the day after that finishes, the third term of my last year at school begins. So I won't have much time to play games anyway.

Galactic Adventures is quite awesome and I have been spending some time building a (drumroll please) Spyro adventure. I created the creatures for Spyro, Cynder, Ignitus, Hunter, Bianca, Elora and Gnasty Gnorc while I downloaded a Sparx creation and a gnorc minion creation. The goal of my adventure is to defeat Gnasty Gnorc and rescue Ignitus (he has been trapped in an enclosure). It's a work in progress at the moment so it's not quite finished.

Deciding that I didn't need the games I don't play any more, I took some of them in a reasonably sized box to a games shop to trade them in. There were around fifteen items including my treasured Gamecube console (which I haven't used for about a year) I bought in 2003. The price sticker saying $149.99 is still on the box and they offered me $12.00 for a trade-in (including the controller). No deal. Also the trade-in value of my some ten console and PC games was only $50.00 for the lot. Those must have cost at least $30.00 to buy new. I traded them in anyway (not the Gamecube) because I never play them any more. I used $30.00 of the store credit I received to buy my very favourite movie, Spirited Away! (It's better to watch it in Japanese with subtitles than with English audio)

After my remaining two days of holiday are over, things are going to become extremely busy. I have the winter school, then third term (many say that third term is the most important term of year twelve) and maybe (I'm not sure) tertiary application. I am really wanting to apply for the conservatorium on music composition. I -know- that I want to be a music composer for my career (in addition to performing on piano, teaching music and conducting). I was very inspired in 2005 by John Williams (the composer of the music from Star Wars, Harry Potter I-III, Indiana Jones, Jaws, Jurassic Park, etc) to write music for film and I intend to work very hard at that.

I've been listening to the music of Australian composer Peter Sculthorpe (my mum borrowed a CD from the library) which features the didjeridu. At first I didn't really enjoy it that much but I have come to like it more and more. Peter Sculthorpe is the most well-known and respected composer in Australia and so that is yet another inspiration for me to try very hard at what I do.

I have gone on for far too long so I'll have to say "see you later".