JL's House of Madness

First Attack

2004-08-31T20:27:00.000+08:00

Well, after weeks of anticipation, someone finally releases First Attack, otherwise known as the EA's initial attack on Orb, which incidently killed off Shin's family.

To think that the main character of Gundam SEED Destiny is there simply because he went to pick up his sister's handphone ^^;

Here it is

, in its entirety. Quality isn't really good, but at least we get to see even more as compared to Zero Attack.

One thing's for certain, at least Cagalli will survive the first episode >_>

Teachers' Day

2004-08-31T11:33:00.000+08:00

...is a day of fond rememberance.

...is a time where you try your very best to thank all those who have guided through your short life.

...is an occassion where we celebrate the selflessness of some of the greatest human beings on the planet.

To you, Mr. Ranjit Singh, thank you for all that you've taught me when I was 12.
To you, Ms. Chua, despite our differences, my little dream I wrote when I was 14 turned into reality.
To you, Mr. (******), for putting me down, and allowing me to prove everyone wrong that I could never make it as a serious person.

And lastly, to you, Mrs. Rosemary Fong, one of the brightest lights of my life, even with all the negative publicity that you've been facing from your collegues. Without you overshadowing you in the first 6 years of my educational life, I would never have the confidence to do whatever I wanted to do. Not now, not ever.

Thank you all, and have a Happy Teachers' Day ^_^

More OG2, Destiny and Wangan stuff

2004-08-24T12:01:00.000+08:00

First off, stores in Japan have begun airing intro commercials on Original Generation 2. Naturally, the usual fans taped it down and posted the whole set up for the rest of the world to savour.

This link

is working for now, get it as soon as you can, before they decide to take it off!

Next up is Gundam SEED Destiny Zero Attack. This new version shows more of Shin's angst (as if we haven't had enough of it), but the real action is in seeing the remaining Gundams in their transformation phases.

Zero Attack ver.2

Lastly, managed to clear Wangan using the Celsior last night. After losing to Pac-man twice on Saturday, I was convinced that the final straight was utter madness. What didn't help was that I hit a car, and by the time I got out of the mess I was more than 500m behind Blinky. The long catch-up began, and I finally managed to pass both of them just as we were entering the tunnel in the final straight. Lucky too, since the other van was on the opposide side of the road, allowing me to just shoot past it and block it all the way to the end.

Followed that up immediately by trying out the second secret car, the Z31 (the car Akio uses in the very first stage). It handles great, and though it's the first time I tried a 5-gear car, managed to have a pretty good feel with it after a couple of races. Perfect so far, after 13 stages...

Matsuri

2004-08-23T11:28:00.000+08:00

Yup, 2 days removed, I'm still suffering from a little tiredness after the fun Matsuri night. Went with Jonah, my collegue, and met tons of people there. Michael was there, Boon Long, along with most of the SGgamers crew, and Danny!

Basically it was the same old stuff, with stalls where we played some games, food stalls, and the lone goods stall. Well there was another, but that stall sold biscuits, so it wasn't much of a selection. Didn't buy anything this year since the toys stall had basic stuff you can find in the real world outside, unlike those plastic yoyos I got for my class last year.

Some of the pictures from the Matsuri -

Enjoying my Chicken Curry Rice. One of the few Main Dishes we paid an extra $4 for...

Michael's Matsuri T-shirt. XL size, the largest, was way too small for me T-T. I want that Pikachu fan >_<

Me, Michael and Boon Long

AvP? NO, it's AvPUI!

2004-08-20T00:15:00.000+08:00

I, for one, never believe in reviews, nor do I ever believe what others tell me about any item/game/movie and stuff. Why? Simple. Personal perspective =/= others' perspective, especially when it comes to popular stuff. What works for others may be utter crap to me, and vice versa.

It was with this thought (and the tons of Rotten Tomatoes) that I went into the theatre last night for the 1-day preview of Alien vs Predator. The opening wasn't too bad I guess, introducing the various human characters, then moving on to the subject at hand. What ticked me off was the pretty large human group, and large human groups means tons of fodder.

Fodder indeed. The humans soon get into the (lame) conflict between just-hatched aliens and....3 predators, two of which get offed pretty early on too. To make it worse, the loads of humans soon fall like crushed ants in the faces of the handful of aliens and predators.

The movie then turns gives us the HUGE UNEXPECTED PLOT TWIST! By explaining the back story of this conflict. In other words, the whole story told in 5 minutes, when we wasted 1 hour of our life trying to make any sense out of the human bodies.

Which then leads to some little action, a lot of atmosphere, and once the dying stopped due to the earlier carnage, it's all nothing but cheesy running scenes and the final 1 on 1 on 1 battle. Bleh.

The sad thing about it all? I played Wangan for a couple of rounds while waiting for the movie to start. Played 5, won 2 lost 3. Sickening AI. 3rd round is hard......

Sundays are supposed to be for rest, yes?

2004-08-16T10:50:00.000+08:00

Well, so I thought. Usually Saturdays are the most draining, what with work from 7am to 1+, followed by running around the island collecting stuff like magazines, games and general meeting up with guys, and of course evenings with DDR + Taikoing at Jurong Point.

Somehow or other that didn't come off that well last Saturday night. When something draws my attention (and it always is not related to work :P) I tend to follow it through, and my attention levels is always high up. Any variation of SRW always does that to me, that's why I promise myself never to play an SRW late at night during weekdays.

This time, however, it's Babylon 5. Went in the afternoon to Blue Max to buy season 2, ordered seasons 3-5 as well. After the long day and night (got home aroudn 12+), watched Boro and Newcastle draw themselves, then settled down for some B5.

And carried on watching till 8am, when my brother woke up and joined me watching it. By then I was already at disc 3, episode 10. In fact, I watched through the whole night, and through the entire morning as well. Plowed through 15 1/2 episodes before my body finally gave up on me, and it was ko all the way till 8. Yup, missed the Fireworks festival again -_-.

Basically, if you have been counting the time, my eyes have been on the TV for something in excess of 10+ hours. Not a bad feat, but definately detrimental to health. Last night was a massive blur, only thing I can coherently remember is laughing at the US version of Tales of Symphonia, where they cut out Starry Heavens and the skits were not voiced, according to my IRC friends who asked me about the Japanese version.

Let me say again: US VERSIONS SUCK!!!!!!!

Mwa.

Oh, btw, #spoon finally got their Fullmetal Alchemist ep. 41 subbed and out. Once their 42 is out as well, I can at least catch up to date, which is 44. Long wait still, but as we near the end of this series, another big one will follow up.

Yes, Gundam SEED Destiny.

I spoke too soon...

2004-08-13T11:48:00.000+08:00

I really did, well

here

it is...the full-length SEED Destiny promo.

Not subbed, mind you.

.....I gotta learn how to get the formatting correct so that links don't automatically skip to the next line. Meh.

On a side note, went for some Wangan last night, clared the main game using the Celsior. Lost the final race the first time, again that stupid final turn that robbed me of victory, managed to do it on the second try.

2nd round was horrible. Because of the lack of power, it's a big chase all the way. Shorter courses are only nothing but cause for trouble, since the AI can do the turns like no one's business. Or that I suck at racing games anyway...

More Wangan tomorrow! And more drooling for Destiny!

While I probably will not be able to see the SEED Destiny advertisment...

2004-08-11T12:07:00.000+08:00

...here are some screenies that I found:

Lacus~sama!

Assorted others

Gaia Gundam and its SEEDling pilotress

Luna's sister, aka Milly mk. II

We miss the druggies, so here are their clones/10

S.S.H. rules man

2004-08-09T08:01:00.000+08:00

First off...

It'll appear at the links area after today, and it's just a bit of service I can provide for the SRW community. Check it out man, nicely updated, and with flash and music to boot!

Now, back to SSH. Found the site, and found some very interesting remixes. SRW remixes aside, he also does for many other games like Final Fantasy, Guilty Gear, Ys, along with some of his own original tracks. They're up there, free mp3s for download, nothing illegal about these, luckily. All very nice guitar riffs, most very fast, with some slow tunes to make up for them.

Where it is, you might ask? Well, either Google it, or just follow this:

S.S.H.

.

Back to Wangan. After clearing the first round in my poor dented Evo VIII, I switched to the 4-gear secret car, the Toyota Celsior, on Saturday. Ran perfect races until Stage 10, where a stupid car blocked me from victory. Bleh. Perfect record blemished. Yesterday went back to JP with Boon Leong for MORE Wangan (yes, I'm liking it a lot, as well as paying a hell lot for it...), and successfully cut off all AI challangers.

The main problem I see with the Celsior is that it is very hard to power it up. As it only has 4 gears, the 4th gear requires a long time to hit max speed, and usually the AI cars can catch up without any problem, especially at the long straight section of the race course.

Boon Leong, ever the enthuiest, tried his hand at the game as well, and promptly lost on the second stage. Told him that driving a racing game is different from driving a normal car, the amount of steering you have to do is very much lessened. He also chose the Celsior, for some weird reason.

Went to Darren's new band performance at Zombie's. Great loud music, though I'm not really a fan of heavy metal. Too loud and senseless to me :P

Told Michael about the Celsior, and HE also wanted a piece of it --". Well, at least I can comfort myself in the sense that I have my Metallic Purple version as compared to the starting (and fixed) Green variation.

Boon Leong very nicely sent me home (it was way too late) and I tried to play some Paper Mario RPG. That was when I started feeling a little sick, and I still feel a little sick. Flu is catching up on me for sure even as I type this, my throat feels clogged >_<

Long Days that don't make much sense...

2004-08-06T23:26:00.000+08:00

So I woke up at 3am after falling asleep at the computer. Doing last-minute work seems to have that effect on me...

Had to keep awake for the rest of the morning, then went off to school. National Day observation parade, followed by yours truly being the host of the talentime competition conducted by the school for the upper primary students. Fun while it lasted, but tiring afterwards.

Tried to mark some books, fell asleep >_<. Got woken up by some ex-pupils who came back to visit. Seeing them change from little P6s to the street-wise Sec 1s feels like I'm growing older by the day. Depressing.

Handed in what I needed to hand in, went to Jurong Point to clear off the final Wangan stage. Luckily I chose JP too. Failed the first two times in the 1-on-1 with Tetsuya (that bloody fricking final turn got to be twice!), and cleared the game on the first try at the second battle. The AI helped me a lot too, as I let Tetsuya crawl back while I chased Akio, and the cars actually collided with each other, letting me pass through and coast along the final 3k straight to clear.

...I still don't know how to do the sharp turns. Managed to turn once perfectly, didn't know how exactly I did it --"

Anyway, I believe that clearing the first round is the best that I can really do in racing games. Lost the first battle in the second round, and realised that I can never match up to those little children (some no older than P4!) who can drive expertly and turn without too much problems.

$6 flew away just like that.......

Went home, ko'ed. Woken up rather forcefully by my father, saying that we had to go celebrate my mother's birthday....tired dinner really. The food was alright, but expensive...not my type definately.

Basketball coming up in a while, hopefully the day will remain clear. DDR tonight I guess? Or more Taiko? ^_^

More Wangan madness

2004-08-06T02:53:00.000+08:00

Needed to vent a bit of anger this evening, so went on a Wangan rampage through the A+ rank rivals.

Needless to say, I really had to drive near-perfectly to have any chance of winning them.

Still no idea on how to turn sharp corners...so crashed a couple of times...lost to Reika at Stage 19 due to crashing into a car at the final bend...damned unlucky. $2 down the drain that way...

Oh well, only 1 last stage, 2 last races to go before my first round is complete. Should be trying it out tomorrow...

The rumours were loud, and the rumours have been confirmed.

2004-08-04T21:55:00.000+08:00

The next SRWs (Super Robot Wars for the uninitiated) have been revealed, thanks to Famitsu.

While I don't order the magazine, nor am I living in Japan, but the news has been spreading around like wildfire since the scans came out this afternoon.

Without further ado, here they are. Drool if you wish, sneer if you want to, but seeing these scans, plus the amount of new (a.k.a. returning) originals has left me speechless.

Enemies this time? Einst, DC stragglers (as seen from the T-Link Knuckle cut-in pic) and probably Shadow Mirror?

Let the madness begin!

So DOOM 3 is out

2004-08-03T21:28:00.000+08:00

Legally that is -_-"

Anyway, like any rabid Doomie out there since it came out on shareware, I rushed straight after work to purchase the long-awaited 5th (6th?) sequel of the game, which promised (or delivered?) better graphics, great lighting, and fun gameplay.

Well, hell began for me.

Hell, Level 1 - Realised that the jewel case that came along with the game was pretty badly packed. The "teeth" of the CD case that holds the discs together were broken, leaving me with loose discs. Dangerous, but I had my PS2 casings to help relieve that headaches.

Hell, Level 2 - After the installation, I was faced with crap on the screen. Anyone with a half-decent mind would instantly realise what was wrong, but I had to scrutinise through the Helpme file for around 10 minutes before realising that I had to update by graphics card driver. And so I did.

Hell, Level 3 - I have a 14" monitor. The main menu was perfect. Loaded the game, was faced with the world's best case of choppy screen. Figured that I had turned video quality a bit too low, so switch to highest quality, screen size 800x600 I did.

Hell, Level 4 - Thus the Shadows came. Near-total darkness, even with the gamma rating up to max. At first I really went "WTF?!", but upon further messing around with the graphic settings, realised that what was causing the lighting differences was the fact that a bigger screen size encompassed more colours, hence the darker screen. My poor 14" isn't LCD, thus it wasn't able to take in everything. (Note to self: Time to buy a 17" LCD within next 2 months...). Switched back to 640 I did.

Hell, Level 5 - Brighter, but choppier. Everything's chopslack. A simple turn required 4 seconds for the system to register, and then more chopla. Finally gave up on these choppins and exited the game for good today.

Hell, Level 6 - It dosen't end there. Apparently the game takes some time to remove itself from my system, and the whole PC was running like a 486 for around 3-4 minutes before everything turned back to normal.

For now.

Hell on Earth?

Nope, Hell, in Redhill. BLARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGH.

Babylon 5 = old memories

2004-08-03T00:42:00.000+08:00

Just finished watching Episode 20 of Season 1. That was a great reminder of how it drew me into the series totally. I missed most of Season 1, followed through some of Season 2, and sat through the entire Season 3 (when it was shown on TV of course ^^;). The buildup to the Shadow War was the longest ever, yet every episode had its own meaning, plus the immense drawback to the first season on 2 episodes.

Sadly, I missed the war in its entirety due to National Service commitments, and that royally sucked. The only consolation I got was watching the final episode of the entire series (thus, getting to know the ending ^^;) while I was on duty.

B5 was a different type of series. Granted, it was generally more opera than sci-fi adventure, but the reason I was tuned in to it was the fact that they hinted of the main storyline little by little, while building up the characters, their daily problems, and forceful solutions brought about by themselves. Every major character goes through a major change in their lives in their 5 years on (or off, for one very important person) the station.

After watching through most of season 1 on the DVD collection, I realised how nice the series, using a sci-fi concept, ties in with current affairs. The major cultures, the internal inter-racial conflicts, even dock worker strikes that reflect what some countries are facing.

But that's just the way I think of things. Not many people will agree to that, but not many people really care either -_-". After all, making money to survive is already a problem for some, why burden themselves more with the problem of others?

Events aplenty

2004-08-02T00:46:00.000+08:00

Finally got the call that my Rockman X Command Mission arrived. 10 days late. Not much trust in Singapore importers anymore, can't really seem to get ANYTHING these days.

Realise this.

NO Gradius V
NO Paper Mario RPG
worst of all, NO Final Fantasy I.II Advance

And Gensou Suikoden IV is coming along in 2 weeks' time. Chances of getting it on time is as usual since this year started: Slim to none -_-"

Morning was a revelation. I had literally slept for the past 14 hours (I think I woke up some time in the night), with my Xbox on all the while. Was attempting to watch an episode of Babylon 5, guess it didn't work out at all with my totally tired body. The short nap on 198 from Clementi West to Jurong Point wasn't a good nap probably. But that's yesterday...

Got the game, detoured to Kino Liang Court to get this month's Dengeki PS2, went home, started the game. The playing feel is pretty good on the onset, twisting standard side scrolling into a singular 3D path works better than I anticipated. The RPG feel isn't really there, even with the levelling and stuff. Blasting enemies turn by turn is fun until you get to bosses ^^;

Rockman X8 demo is also included in the game. Required me to get a key item to actually unlock it, but no biggies there, since it appears very early on. Basically, IT SUCKS. The characters take up at least 1/5 of the whole screen, which leaves very little space for enemies to appear. X is basically X, no change, Axl's shots are angled at only 8 directions (the intro stage is side-scrolling), Zero is slow as ever. A new feature is Double Attack, where you can have 2 characters attack at the same time (something like a super attack) destroying all in sight.

Problem is, you can only activate it when there are 3 enemies or more around.

I went WTF when Elis asked me to defeat the boss using Double Attack, but I wasn't able to activate it at all...

Game Over screen has Sigma at the back. Duh.

Switched off the game in frustration, loaded the Dengeki disc. Now I was treated to power.

Snake Eater demo. Never watched previous ones before, so this was probably the first since E3. Long demo, showed Snake's (Big Boss?) fated meeting with Revolver and a female I don't recognise. Dosen't matter though. This game is so going to be sold in Japan and everywhere else in the world.

Then I tried the Gensou Suikoden IV demo. Pretty short, but Konami has definately redeemed themsevles after the travesty of III, which had the world's crappiest battle system and music. They used back the old instant fighting system, reduced to 4 from 6, probably due to space. The demo caps us to Lv 20, and gives characters that don't really exist so early on. Not much of the game is really shown, but the camera view in battles isn't really excellent. Well, I won't expect them to work around that, since it's probably all packed and ready to send...but buy it I will.

Finally proceeded to have some fun with GT3. Got enough credits to splurge on an Evo VII, then raced it, upgraded it, turboed it, and wasted around 30+ races (losing some of them to that blasted Evo VI Rally car at the turns), but finally tuned it enough to last the Super Speedway endurance.

Split the race into parts actually. Everytime I went to the pits (once every 20-odd turns) I paused and watched an episode of Babylon 5 instead. Resting my thumb and waking my brain certainly worked, for I got the F1 car on the first try, 8 laps ahead of the second car. Saved, and here I am...

...with 6 hours of beauty sleep left. Still can't find a way to sleep early unless I'm totally exhausted...

I hate my big toe

2004-07-31T07:03:00.000+08:00

Lost my left big toenail in JC1 when I had an ingrown nail for 5 months unknowningly. After the operation half the nail never grew back after all this while. So it looks very weird to many people.

Well, recently my RIGHT big toe decided that the nail should go straight in as well. Probably a bad cutting the last time round, but my toe really hurt for the past 2 weeks. Spent 2 hours slowly carving into the nail and getting the sharpened stake out. The painful process (unsteralised, don't try this at home unless you have a death wish like me) of using rudimentary equipment, consisiting of: 1 set of plastic model cutters, 1 ear digger. Digging out with the ear digger, cutting with the pliers. Wiping off excess blood with a shirt. Definately not the way to do stuff ^^;

Since it was around 3+ by the time I was done, and the pain relieved, I dared not sleep due to the fact that when I sleep, I really knock out, and that would be seriously detrimental to today's orals. Thus out came my Babylon 5 season 1 DVD box, and went through 3 episodes before moving out...

Thank Goodness It's Friday

2004-07-31T00:35:00.000+08:00

Looooong day -_-"

Started off early in the morning conducting the Primary 5 Maths Games Day activities. What was supposed to be a pretty decent Maths Trail ended up being a bit of a mess, but nevertheless, everyone did their part to the best of their ability. My station was nicely plonked under the sun, as students were to count percentage of shots in via 5 basketball shots from 3 metres out.

At the end of it all, only 3 students managed a perfect 100%, and one poor girl ended up with 0/5 ^^;

Thankfully the classes were staggered nicely, so our stations weren't too crowded. Mine had a decent queue, and one which involved water madness was pretty choked. Expected though, and the initial plan to stagger the classes turned out to be a lifesaver, since timing was very tight.

The morning session came and went, and the afternoon session was soon to be the real test. Comprising of the entire Primary 6 level, I had to go about setting up the stations, and making sure that everything was going to run smoothly. In all fairness I wasn't supposed to do anything for that, since I still have my class to attend to (and a very interesting {......} lesson involving cup noodles...), but since the collegue who was supposed to set up was on MC, being one of the main organisers, I had to step up and make sure things went smoothly.

It went a bit too smoothly. Maybe it's because the stations for the afternoon group were more team-based, and required less manual manipulation (2 of the 6 stations could be completed within less than a minute!). The challenge was to accomadate the moving about of something in excess of 220-odd students in the allocated 2 hour time period. The students were very enthusiastic about it, even if they gave a pretty muted "no" when we asked if they enjoyed themselves ^^;

Felt burnt out by then though. Luckily I had only a period and half left with my class. Couldn't do much really, since my brain by then was in auto-fried mode.

At that mode, I went to to the TB arcade for a couple of rounds of Wangan. Bad choice. Won the next 2 races pretty easily, since I was getting used to the stiff controls (not really...), nearly won the 3rd, but just had to bang into a car right at the final bend. My hands certainly at that point couldn't communicate with my brain anymore.

So what do I do? Go home to restart GT3.

And cleared the License tests up to International A and Rally. Took 3 hours to acutually plow through all of them. Rusty. S license is just too much for me though, rust or no. Now comes the tedium of using the Trueno to earn cash, bit by bit...

...need to be up at 6 though. Second day of orals for P6s later this morning......

Moving around is tiring...

2004-07-29T21:56:00.000+08:00

While "Home" is a nice song, the primary school choir version sorta rubs me the wrong way. No offense meant, since it takes good guts to actually perform at such a young age (hmm....), but because they can't raise their voices too much, the whole song feels....flat. Plus the fact that it's noisy with so many layers of voices cutting into each other...

*shrugs*

Rushed all the way to Tampines to get the set of Ys games from Koh Leifoh. Ys I & II Eternal, Ys VI normal, and Ys VI special version, which also contained Ys Complete Works.

Power.

Problem cropped up because I'm missing something, and that something is that XP dosen't seem to want to install Language Packs, thus I can't see what the problem is, where the game can't seem to load. No time to see what's the problem tonight, tomorrow night maybe.

First though, sleep. Need sleep. Running around on 4 hours' sleep daily is starting to strain me. Badly.....

This is WAR!

2004-07-29T01:48:00.000+08:00

Bloody spyware.

If attempting to infect my computer isn't bad enough, they acutally had the nerve to actually hide themselves and disable IE so much so that I was practically on the verge of reformatting my computer.

Luckily, my friends over at IRC convinced me to use Spybot (which had actually been dormant for the past couple of months), and WHAM, bloody fucking Shop At Home eradicated forever from the inner reaches of my HD.

...sorry for cursing, but the past 2 hours have really riled me up. Not one bit of work done, nothing but headaches for me and Michael. The feeling of hopelessness sucks. I suppose I can call myself lucky, since every other online application aside from IE was workign perfectly, thus I could still find out the solution in IRC.

Thanks Deli, thanks Echo. Owe you guys one.

Back to happier stuff, 2 rounds of Wangan today. 2 races cleared, Rank C cleared. Note that I'm still in the newbie stage, but I'm pretty much getting used to my Mitsubishi Evo VIII. It definately FEELS differently from a normal Evo, but I'm not complaining. Other than the fact that the wheels really lock up when you just oversteer a little...

Asked Michael to remix A Place in My Heart, now featuring all 4 languages, for the upcoming Talentime competition for my class. Wonder if it'll work with the judges...then again, yours sincerely was a judge last year, so maybe this year's judges may go against me...? Consipracy theories abound......>_>

Wangan Midnight Racing

2004-07-27T15:55:00.000+08:00

First off, taking time off for stuff to do is getting on my own free time. Free time, in other words, is very hard to come by these days.

After seeing so many people being an expert on Wangan Midnight Racing (the Initial D clone from Namco), I tried it out myself on Saturday night. Scraped through the first race after banging myself time after time. Used a Lancer, so that could be my problem as drifting is it's forte, and I'm not a good racer, maybe I need to get back my R: Racing Evolution to get the hang of drifting. After all, GT4 Prologue isn't a good choice for playing out drifting aside from the sole dirt track.

Since then, played it once a day, so I've managed to clear the first 3 races without much problem. Maybe it's because I'm on the starting level anyway, and the final straights are speed boost mania. The AI is nice enough to allow us to catch up (thanks to the weird game engine where trailing cars get extra engine power), so managed to clear the first 3 races by last-gasp chasing. -_-"

Replayed SRW 3 after hibernating for so long. Followed my standard Scenario 1 plan by convincing and offing Char before moving on to Garuma. Managed to shave the timing down to 9 turns from the usual 10. Aiming for Ragnarok this time, hopefully can make it.

Tuesday.

No Gradius V
No Paper Mario RPG
No Rockman X Command Mission

...will I get Final Fantasy I.II Advance on Thursday...?

Dyslexia, full blast, day 1

2004-07-01T19:48:00.000+08:00

First things first. PORTUGAL ARE IN THE FINAL! WE LOVE FIGOOOOooooooo~~

*cough*

...to this day I have no idea how I got nominated for this, but nevermind that for now...

Anyway, this course is very interesting, to say the least. What we had last month was barely the surface of what we were given today. Lots of dryness, lots of stress, and lots of laughter. Gleaned lots of things too today. Here are a couple of pointers that some of you might find useful, or a little bit of refresher if you've been/seen/heard of them before. Of all people, met Eng Chuan there too. We seem to be able to find each other somehow or another. Especially when I ran into him around 11 at the Tiong Bahru bus stop last night, him after a night of fun, me after a night of Spiderman 2. But I digress......

We started off with Ms. Lian describing what dyslexia is, what students with dyslexia are seeing/reading/facing. Pretty much the same thing we've done last month, but she went a little deeper by using the Filing Cabinet analogy to make us feel really uncomfortable (cue: Guilt ^^;).

Basically, pupils with dyslexia problems, just like most other students with varying learning difficulties, face problems in all 3 stages of the Filing Cabinet, the Imput phase, the Elaboration phase and the Output phase. While most normal students are more than capable of seeing/heaing a problem and working it out direct, pupils with learning difficulties have to first make sense of what the problem is, by taking the sentence apart and finding focus with every single word, then putting it back together to make a meaningful sentence. Facing language/phonological processing difficulties would make it all the harder since they may not even be able to determine what a word is talking about.

*It was at this point that I realised that the same could be applied to my Sunshines, but I'll leave those thoughts for later :P*

Evaluation phase is a matter of putting words into pictures, and visualising out their answers. LD students face the huge barrier of planning (sequencing of question/essay) and recall (due to short-term visual/auditory capabilities), since words that make sense one day may not seem to be that way the next, and they get all lost again. Once they finally make sense of the answer, however, they face the hardest task yet.

The Output phase requires them to use what they deem to be the answer and word it out. Given the fact that students with dyslexia are already facing spelling/wording difficulties, hampered by poor visual and motor coordination, they will struggle with simple explanation, either in verbal or written responses.

*We had an activity at this point of attempting to trace out letters by only looking a mirror, needless to say, it wasn't easy. Eng Chuan seemed to get the hang of it pretty quickly >_>. Lian used another pretty good example of how we ask a normal student a question, answered correctly, ask a student with dyslexia a follow-up question, and get the previous response. It was just to show that the thought processes were still there, just that the student was too engrossed trying to solve the first question that (s)he didn't hear the second one at all.*

After the break, Fiona made a surprise appearance *we were told after she left that it was actually planned, but heck*, stressed us by being, in her own words, "the witch" *I could have sworn that she used...nah, nevermind*. Started off by being all stuffy and serious, giving us super-short timed events of trying to copy down words, then immediately followed up by drawing 3 various symbols. She stopped a while to take a couple of our works to flash them out, trying to unbalance us by asking whether the pictures were really drawn correctly, and finally pointing out that the paper wasn't done correctly as we didn't do the first part.

More fun ensured when she gave us a comprehension passage, and expected us to finish as fast as possible, replying to those who have completed the tasks. Next task *BTW we were only around 10 minutes in at that time, I was pointing out that we were doing things at EM1 speed ^^;* was to write a 50-word essay, but our paper was filled with mad instructions that were pretty hard to follow.

That ended her "demon" session when she explained that our comprehension passages were actually dual, where one group (us) had a perfectly normal passage, the other had sentences which did not make sense. Similarily, one group had a perfectly normal essay requirement, whilst ours were filled with nonsensical instructions.

What were our feelings? Angry, stressed, hectic. All of which were what a child with learning difficulty would be facing. The emotional trauma of trying to complete work while the teacher was going at break-neck speed which would lead to Frustration, Anxiety and Tension *or F.A.T. for short, yay for more acronyms -_-"*. The explanation session included one interesting section about "masks" pupils with dyslexia wear. According to the trainers, there were 4 basic masks to which pupils would don.

1. Passive Paul - where the student basically gives up;
2. Sick Sam - child becomes sickly, basically detests going to school;
3. Perfectionistic Pearl - knowing his/her weakness, decides to cover up by being the best (s)he can be in other areas;
4. Joker Jack - turning oneself into a clown, giving stupid answers so as to make teacher ignore him/her.

We ended that session with a video clip where a professor uses a test group to make them feel how pupils with learning difficulties face. Armed with those knowledge, we were then asked to write out which the dyslexia-friendly and dyslexia-unfriendly environments.

After the lunch break was a *very* dry overview session on how to support pupils with dyslexia, using 7 broad guidelines. The main focus was differentiation, where the teacher would have to allow the student to take his/her time to produce his output.

*My feeling at that point was pretty mixed. Granted, we have to allow them to take their time, but the same analogy could be applied to the lower ability students in my class. Taking Irfan for example, while the psychologist has cleared him of being dyslexic, he still shows traces of being so in class, with rubbish for work if I push him, and giving me perfect answers one hour later, struggling with phonetics when it comes to spelling words he had learnt wrongly, or spelling words in a way (since last year) that made me suspect that he was dyslexic. However, once I take my eyes off him, he wouldn't even bother doing his work, what with his very untidy bag. ...speaking of untidy...^^;*

Yes, we know all about differentiated learning, we know about the animal school, we know that we must use direct and explicit instruction in order to make sure they understand clearly what we wish them to do. One emphasis was on Overlearning, where we should have planned repetition and revision to ensure retention of what has been learnt. *Oddly enough, I was thinking of the exact same thing last week when I was looking at what I had covered during the first semester...and how to make them remember what had gone on before, along with the new deluge of information they have to take in this term and the next ^^;*

The last 2 sections of the day were the most interesting (IMO). In fact, they were so interesting that I am berating myself for not even thinking of such simple strategies to help the group of students in my class that have a very low level of word recognition in English. I'm sure that most of you have done this before, so in my n00bness, I'm sorry if the following would sound silly.

The first section focused on reading. While phonics still confuse the hell out of me, one particular point raised made me realise what an idiot I was for expecting too little out of my students. As students with dyslexia have a problem with word recognition *same goes for the group of 15-odd pupils in my class*, some names, when mispronounced, will confuse them, especially when it comes to comprehension. An example raised was "Mr. Robertson blah blah yada yada. However, Mr Robsen lalala...", when the student had actually read the name correctly the first time round, but was confused on the second name, thus creating conflict within his/her understanding.

Phonetic Awareness was raised as an issue to allow students to know about phonics before we actually moved on to them, but I couldn't understand much of it. So much for an A1 in English, B3 in GP and B (or was it C?) in Linguistics...

One method raised to improved upon a child's word recognition ability was Precision Teaching. This is one of the two methods that will certainly help my students when I get to try it out with them. As I mentioned earlier, most of you would know what that is, but this is something new to me, so please bear with it ^^;

Basically, Precision Teaching is to place a set of 5 words in a row for the student to read. The general idea is to use at least 4 words from the Dolch list, and add in one word the student would struggle with. The student should have no problem with the first 4 words, but will struggle on the fifth. The teacher would use whatever method that suits him/her to teach the invocation of the word to the child, allowing him/her to repeat. The next line of 5 words would then be revealed to the child. It's actually the same 5 words as the first line, but the words would have been reshuffled into different positions. So on and so forth, for about 10 times. According to the trainers, the child should be able to grasp the pronunciation of the word by the sixth or seventh line.

The process would then be repeated the next day, until the child is able to read out the word with no problems. Students with dyslexia might have greater problems than low ability students on this aspect, as what they see shift in positions every time, but I believe that this method wi...might work wonders for the sunshines.

*Crossworlds is on, damn*

The last speaker of the day, M(r?)s. Sugadha Anadan, focused on spelling. Loved her. She said that 80% of students learn spelling via self-taught phonics, and I agree with her totally >_>. She gave me one of the most interesting styles of learning letters ever. Apparently, it's Indian tradition for children to learn letters by tracing them on rice, with their fingers led by an adult, then given a blessing before they are tucked off to school. Now if that's not fun, I don't know what that is ^_^;

*Tulips and Strawberries...looks delicious...but eating flowers isn't my forte for now...*

Anyways, she had a couple of strategies of teaching spelling to pupils with dyslexia, and I felt could be used on my students who have absolutely no practice at home. One was Trace, Copy and Recall, where the student would first trace the word, then copy the word 3 times, before attempting to recall the word. Repeated practice would allow them to remember how to spell the word out. *I basically practice a variation of this style for multiplication tables, but that's for my Outreach group, students would be able to learn independently with me checking at time*.

Another style is Reverse Chaining by letter, where after spelling a word, one letter at a time is taken out from the last letter *much like a Reverse Dingo song*. The last style is the Simultaneous Oral Spelling (S.O.S., yes another acronym >_<) method, similar to Tracing, but the child reads the word and spells it orally (3x), spelling the word letter by letter in the air (3x), finally penning it down on paper (3x).

Each of these 3 processes wouldn't guarentee instant success for sure, but if it's even possible to get students with dyslexia or learning disabilities to learn a couple of vocabulary words without always scratching their heads, it'll be a good start.

Fruitful day for so much information, Amsterdam inclusive :P. Even if I don't have any dyslexia cases for this year, the strategies I've learned today (and there is one booklet full of them!) will definately come to use for my class. If you've managed to read it to this point (what? Could that be possible?!?!), maybe it can help you too. Never mind all the mind and grind, never mind that most of the processes can only be done during the pre/post curriculum periods, now that I have new ways of helping what I (moronically) termed "anchored" students, I am ready!

*feels poisoned-tipped stares at his back*

Ok, ok, backlog clearance first.....

Xenosaga Episode II clear, personal thoughts...

2004-06-29T10:31:00.000+08:00

Well, managed to finish it in under 30 hours, that, with lots of dragging my foot around, standing there looking like an idiot, and mileage covered by clearing a couple of G2s. Still, the last few hours passed by pretty quickly. Remembered switching on the PS2 around 7.30pm, felt hungry after a while, but by the time I went to eat my dinner, which was when I finally cleared the game and saved the Clear Data, it was actually 1am ^^;

When you're really engrossed, nothing moves :P

BTW, the timing for battles suck majorly. I fought the last boss for a good 45 minutes, but the timer stood at 21 minutes....

Anyway, back to my thoughts over the sequel.

GRAPHICS

For starters, the main characters' models were changed slightly/greatly. Shion looks a whole lot more mature as compared to Ep. I (despite the time lag of a couple of days between the two games), KOS-MOS has a complete makeover halfway through the game. MOMO looks a whole lot older than before (Realians grow?), Jr. is more mature too, with a new coat change for keeps. The bad point? Well, they still have blocks for hands, with the sole exception of Albedo (he had fingers before too...), and the amount of facial exrpessions can be counted with one hand -_-". Shion basically has 2 looks, her normal look, and her angry look, where her eyebrows just close up in a frown. MOMO has a couple more, and KOS-MOS and Ziggy remain as impassionate as ever. Jin has one stoid face throughout the game...

In terms of environment, the old areas look exactly the same as before, the new areas are pretty nice too, espcially the city areas. Sadly, because they look the same as before, you wouldn't see any major graphical changes, nor would you find floating clouds and blinking sunlight. Granted, they upped the ante for the water effects, but most people wouldn't even notice it.

Battle graphics have been given a facelift. Enemies animate quite a lot, and each of them have different varying attack patterns. Nothing we haven't seen before however. Ethers are still bland, and Dual Techs don't have the "oomph" factor that make them so fascinating, so much so that they were pretty much forgotten by me other than the only time we were forced to try it out.

GAMEPLAY

Aside from the standard long-length cinametics, movement from area to area is exactly the same as before. The map movement requires you to run from point to point, and within each point there are at least 2 sectors of movement. NPCs have 2 different lines of text when you speak to them ^^;

In lieu of crappy minigames, Ep. II brings in the Get Global Campaign, otherwise known as the G2 Campaign. In this huge side-event, you are expected to solve problems citizens of the Xenosaga world are facing. Not all of them will tell to all characters, some are activated via specific people/sex/age. Not all of them appear at once too. The good thing is, once you've managed to clear their requests, you'll almost always get something good, from Secret Keys to unlock skills (see a little below), Segment Door Decoders, or general high-level healing items. Some of the requests are brainless (kill rats, clear puzzle), some are annoying (sticking posters at correct locations, meaning lots of wall hugging while pressing the circle button), some are highly irritating (walking around a dungeon following hints of specific spots). It IS a side event, however, and you can pass it up, but the skills you get for doing them may be a good enough lure to start clocking those game hours of tedium...

They did a pretty weird makeover of skills as well. This time round, EVERYONE has s fixed set of skills to learn from. However, to learn skills, you have to understand the Class Point (CP) and Skill Point (SP) systems. Each Skill level has 8 Classes of skills to learn (except Lv 4, which has only 4 Classes), and within each Class are 4 skills, be they Ether, Automatic or Equippable skills. You need to spend CPs to unlock the classes, then spend SPs to learn the skills. Luckily, enemies give SPs when you defeat them, and boss characters give CPs. Skills, especially Automatic and Equippable skills, can, and will, change the tide of battles later on, though there are other ways to win, they will ease your pain a little. This way, you can customise anyone to be anything that you want to be, a healer, Ether burner, or Jack of all Trades. It all depends on how you spend the CPs and SPs. Speaking of which, only characters that are in the battle screen (and alive) at the end of battles will earn the CPs and SPs. Reserves do not earn anything except reduced experience points.

On to battles. The first thing one will note when entering battles is the utterly HORRIBLE silence as the game jerkily loads EACH CHARCTER AND ENEMY. After around 10 seconds (or more if there are 4 enemies) of loading, the music finally starts and you can start attacking/get whacked. To make battles more fun this time round, Monolithsoft actually managed to speed up the attacks, use a party-based Boost system to create more strategic fun. The bonus rotation system makes things even more fun, but the enemies are nowhere near fun. The enemy AI is pretty good when it wishes to be (usually near death...), and they will hit hard. The implementation of Break Combos (where you break the defence of an enemy with a certain combination), coupled with Boosts, allow you to strategically clear off enemies, and effects like Air combos or Ground combos only serve to create bigger damage bonuses.

Each character's fighting style differs, and most characters have weapons that have elements attached to them (eg. Shion is Lightning/Beam, chaos is Aura) and enemies throught the game will be weak to at least one of the varying characters, which is a good way for us to remember using everyone, and not just dump MOMO into reserve healing duty ^^;

E.S., which replaces the old A.G.W.S., are a completely different thing altogether. With only 2 basic attacks (punch or ranged), the beauty of ES comes in the techs, once you have charged them up. ES battles are pretty boring though, not because you can only deploy 2 out of the 3 you use in this game, but that enemies are few and far between, and the damage factors usually run up to the thousands. Not that bad, considering that your units have in excess of 10k-ish HP. MOVING around in the ES makes me want to sleep. They don't run, they don't fly, they AMBLE. Or float like a snail. While the concept of moving an ES around, mixing the dungeon with ES + human puzzle factors are good, the side draw of the ES, especially when one sees Kos-Mos wiping a FLEET in such a cool way, makes me want to cringe and strangle the person who designed the movement speed. Realistic, yes, but not to the extent of making us sleep? Even Gundams had boosters to make them move faster...

STORY

The main draw of the game, for me, was the story. First thing you'll need to realise is that I don't read Jung. Neither do I claim to be super proficiant over biblical terminology, or Jewish terminology, most of which the series is heavily based on. While not having the main back picture may be a hinderance to my understanding of how and why things work, the game should, and in my humble opinion, must, provide normal people of enough information so as not to scratch our heads and wonder what the hell is going on, which, sadly enough, was a regular occurance in Episode 1. Enough of run-on sentences however :P

2 years ago we were left with lots of questions, and thankfully, this game answers a couple of them. The main focus of this game is the tie and rivalry between the 3 Colours, as we find out why Albedo turned into such a maniac (cue MALE body raping scene this time round XD), and his motives for seeing the Y Data within MOMO. It also brings into light a third faction, the Colony Alliance, along with the Federation troops and U-TIC, as all search to remove the U-DO malice seeking to overcome the universe.

While the main character development focuses on Jr., others are given a chance to shine in spurts. Jin has his encounter with Margulis, Shion carries on her sudden angst with her 3 Realian playmates, KOS-MOS has one little scene that makes her the star of the show again, and chaos carries on being engymatic with Nephilim. MOMO becomes the unwilling damsel in distress, and Ziggy, well, Ziggy is there to complement MOMO basically. Enemies also have their fair share of screen time, in the huge flashback sequence, or in the speech sequences. The Pope of the Colony Alliance becomes the main villian of this game, citing the suddent emergence of the dormant Ormus, while Albedo hangs around like a shadow, Margulis becomes his own master, finally you still have Wilhelm and his Testaments cameoing and doing the "great weird people talking about weirder stuff" thingy.

Basic story:

We start off 14 years ago, during the Realian uprising at Old Militia. chaos met Jin for the first time then, and some data that Jin managed to purcure was saved into a Realian Canaan. Jin fought Margulis there as well, and managed to injure him. All of them managed to get to safety before the eventual blowup which destroyed the whole city.

Back to the present. After the grand battle at the Sky Wheel, and the knowledge that Momo had the Y Data inside her, the crew head down to 2nd Militia to rest/check up on Momo. Shion turns Kos-Mos over to Vector for them to integrate her into their new weapons system, while Momo gets ready for her check. However, while attempting to extract the Y Data, a virus trap is sprung, apparently set by Albedo when he was moping inside her. While Yuri manages to save the system from total shutdown, Momo's life is in danger, and the whole group decides to go in and save her.

Jr. decides to save Momo using Sakura's memory (Sakura is the original daughter of Yuri and Jochiam who died, the Type-100 series were moulded after her likeness). What we get instead is a long flashback scene of Jr., Albedo and Gainan when they were young and still at the Institute, from their first meeting with Sakura, to Albedo's eventual descent into infected madness. Albedo's virus hadn't worked itself out totally. He manages to trap Jr. into nearly releasing his Red Dragon abilities, but Momo wakes up in time and stops him. Albedo returns back to reality inside his AGWS, and using the released Y Data, manages to recreate the Abyss containing it, with 2 black holes.

The various parties realise what has been released, thus a full-scale war breaks out to grab hold of the data. Our guys have another agenda, that is to return to Old Militia, and seek out the Original Zohar. Shion, in her dreams, is prodded by Nephilim to go to Old Militia as well, to release Faborina's two sisters. She hijacks a ship (with the help of poor Allen) and rushes towards Old Milita via the middle of the Abyss holes.

However, according to Wilhelm, nothing can be gained so easily, so an unknown group of enemies Gate Out in between the holes to stop Shion. KOS-MOS, hearing her cries (somehow or another), auto-activates, and goes off to save her. The Elas also appears near their location, everyone realising that their targets were similar.

However, before they could go on, they are intercepted by the Ormus fortress, which they eventually break free from, and are saved by the Durandal. Upon return to Foundation for repairs to the Elsa, the Abyss holes clear out, and the crew had a safe passage to Old Militia.

There, underneath the Drowned City, lay the Original Zohar, but the Pope of the Colony Alliance is there too. He apparently is one of the Ormus, a race that was able to harness the powers of the Zohar, that had been silently keeping watch over it. He attempts to awaken the U-Do pulse with Proto Omega in order to eliminate it, but KOS-MOS intervened, destroying Feborina's sisters, who were basically supporting the machine's power using their remaining bodily functions. Cue more Shion angst as she sees her two playmates killed off. It was too late, however. Proto Omega awakens, takes the Orignal Zohar's power into itself, and destroys the entire planet.

Our heroes decide to end it all by venturing into the Omega System and disrupting the Pope's attempt to bring out the U-DO pulse. They manage to weaken him, with the help of Albedo, but not enough. Before he could finish the group off, the Testaments arrive to stop his diabolical plans of control, at the same time recovering Albedo, who turns Proto Omega into U-DO.

Jr. decides to end it all, and goes solo into the pulse to have his showdown with Albedo. The latter tries to psyche Jr. out, but not enough, and in the final showdown, Jr. finally manages to weaken him to the point that he would be released from the control of the U-DO pulse, saving Albedo, freeing him from his eternal life.

With the removal of the U-DO pulse, the Original Zohar appears again, but before the Durandal could salvage it, a huge Gnosis ship appears and sbsorbs the Zohar into itself, before disappearing again. Wilhelm makes a comment about chaos, who stats that he would not shy himself away again, and stop Wilhelm from achieving his goal.

*Personal Note: The occurance of the Gnosis ship could be directly involved with chaos appearing on Durandal's bow. After all, Wilhelm is also in the vicinity, being Vector's head honcho, and no one in his right mind would want Wilhelm to get the power of the Original Zohar.*

Epilogue: Jin goes off to look for the Zohar, along with chaos and co. Ziggy decides to stay with MOMO and Yuri. Shion and KOS-MOS (and Allen ^^;) return to their normal life.

On the other hand Wilhelm carries on speaking in riddles, mostly about KOS-MOS being the key to return to Earth. Red, who should be (and would be really, based on the simliar voice) Kevin and Virgil (remember him? Purple) welcomes their new partner, White Testament....

..TO BE CONTINUED...

Well, next would be Episode III. Some 2-3 years later probably...

One Month On...

2004-06-24T13:26:00.000+08:00

Whee, almost one full month of MX madness, managed to clear through 2 rounds. Interspacing all these is of course Euro 2004, and the fact that I've been trying to keep up with the world at large.

Since nothing ever happens (apart from heartbreak of the Italians crashing out of Euro, mostly of their own doing...), nothing is really needed to be said.

Oh yeah, one thing.

Xenosaga. Episode II. Today.

...or tomorrow, if I can get it by then......

Good news everywhere!

2004-05-27T10:35:00.000+08:00

1. MX, one day early! ^_^ Had fun with it. Unfortunately time was not on my side as I tried to enjoy the various BGMs, get a re-feel of the Impact system which it is based on. All round joy for now, if a tad TOO easy...it's not often that Kouji is INVINCIBLE in a crappy TFO.....

2. Congratulations to Porto FC for their devestation of Monaco in the Champion's League Final. Congratulations to the Lakers for demolishing the Timberwolves and taking a 2-1 lead too.

Well, I should be around here and there these next few days. MUST rush home tonight for nothing but MX tonight!

In the news, AGAIN >_<

2004-05-25T12:16:00.000+08:00

Yup, my mug was captured by a photographer, and subsequently published in yesterday's edition of The New Paper.

In case you haven't found out, I was part of this year's New Paper Big Walk, and it was just my luck that I got photographed enjoying my bottle of Quu.

This also marks the second time in subsequent months that I've been captured in the news without my desire to be. The last time round people saw my face, it was in the evening news during the Xbox LIVE launch, when my pal was being interviewed.

Weird. With me involved in various activities next month, chances are that I'll be making the news again in some form or manner. Watch out for it, if you really want to -_-".

Luck is strange sometimes

2004-05-24T11:37:00.000+08:00

Saturday, 22th May 2004 will be a day to remember for the rest of my life.

The one REALLY lucky day for me, where all decisions seem to turn out for the best in everything I do.

1. Woke up in time, managed to get to work exactly on time. Meeting went perfectly peaceful, and ended on time for once.

2. Had to book a couple of Learning Journeys for 2 levels. Booking was totally successful. To top it all up, received a phone call within 5 minutes of making my bookings to tell me that there was an error in the booking process (dates were taken but not reflected online).

3. Wanted to leave early, but was called to do some paper-cutting duty. Had an interesting conversation with a collegue which gave me some more insight as to how the world viewed each other (and me, and some other people whom I can't seem to click with yet).

4. Left for home around 4, but ended taking the wrong train because I was focused on my GBA. Decided not to turn around but go to Jurong Point instead.

5. Saw an old friend of mine at the arcade. Haven't met him for up to 3 years, and there he was, playing Taiko no Tatsujin. Had a good round of fun with him, chatted through his dinner, got myself a nice pair of pants too from the shop he's working in.

6. Went to Popular, met Dawn Tan, who was just there for an autograph signing session. Had a nice chat with her too. Bought her books, bought some extra assessments for my class too. My chat with her brought along some other interested viewers, so she started from being lonely to being busy ^_^.

7. Met a good friend whom I tried to call, but battery went dead. We went back to the arcade for more Taiko fun under the Donderful difficulty. Madness, but pure fun.

8. Went for dinner with my friends and introduced my two circles to each other, one of them managed to give his resume to another. Talk about being at the right place at the right time! One big sharing session on linguistics and human behaviour too. Weird.

9. Patched up my differences with someone I had a beef with during the past 2 years. One apology, and we were back to our old terms, just like that. More notes on behaviourism. Should take that up when it comes to choosing a Major in the forseeable future >_>

10. To top it all off, caught a cab at a time when there are no cabs around (11.40~midnight time), and within a minute of looking for one too.

Lucky, lucky me.

Then again, as they always say, luck tends to balance itself out over time, so either I'll be terribly unlucky the next few days, or Saturday was one balancing-out day for the rotten luck I've been having during the past few weeks......

Maybe the bad luck would be getting SRW MX late? Thursday is the day!

One final minute of silence for an old friend.

2004-05-22T13:57:00.000+08:00

To you, my mate, Chris MacDonald.

To you, your family and friends, your legion of fans, and to us, the FAQ writing community.

One final minute of silence from me.

You will be remembered. Forever.

Sashimi....and the aftertaste

2004-05-18T11:36:00.000+08:00

Had a sashimi buffet with a close friend (and his friend). In terms of conversation we started off comparing the salmon and tuna spread in front of us, then the amount of food into each serving that was then given to us. Their Katsu Don, btw, cost a mere $15 on the normal set menu, but the bowl given was so damned pathatic that it's barely enough to fill in 5 mouthfuls....

The talk about professions usually come into dinner conversations when you're sitting next to strangers. My friend's friend told me that he was a freelance wedding photographer, and I had to tell my side of the story (naturally). And when it comes to talk about education officers, talk (or to him, rumours) of disillusionment becomes the Number Uno talking topic. Is it the same everywhere?

His view was that all our dear Acting Minister was saying propraganda, the talk about discipline not becoming worse, the speech about social problems instead of economic problems, the head honchos not in sync with the field officers, etc. Well, I gave him a piece of my personal view on the field, coupled with the fact that no one is safe anymore, in case he was thinking of fighting for my porcelein rice bowl (^^;). He also commented that Singapore was way too stressful for children to live in, and that if he really married his Myanmar girlfriend, he would move north, so Changmai.

Hmm. Quitter? :P Nah, he just couldn't stand the heat. Literally. Weather's been going mad lately, which is why I'm finding ways to sit myself in the staff room for long periods of time without going out to sweat it out, rain or no rain.

The feeling of that conversation though, is that people don't really believe what the Ministers say anymore. As long as they keep saying things that no one would even believe, or are joked about, not many people would have real faith in the new government which will come in a mere matter of months.....

Meh. Tough times to live in. BTW, 9 more days to MX....

SEED...

2004-05-15T22:57:00.000+08:00

There are so many variations of SEED that we know of nautrally.

Seeds of plants, seeds of doubt, Gundam SEED, and the newest SEED in the form of education. Whoever said that education needs seeds, here is your answer.

In a gamer's point of view, the seed of revolution has but long gone. We're simply seeing games with not much interesting concepts, except the "cool graphics" factor which drives the industry forward. We've seen Ninja Gaiden setting the standards for graphics on the vastly superior PCbox, we've seen Nokia being made fun of with the graphically inferior M-Gage (standard LCD brick game machine made in China, for the uninformed), and we see SRW turning into a Combination Attack gore-fest.

Should it end up that way? No idea, but I'll try to keep track of how I'm going to play SRW, without really forcing myself on others, so as not to jam up the airwaves. After all, a blog is a blog right?

Naturally, the obligation to make another plug for something coming up in a mere 2 weeks. 2 freaking weeks.

Trial Run

2004-05-15T13:21:00.000+08:00

First ever test on a blog system. Seeing how it turns out today.