Karma Killed my Xbox (?)

My Xbox 360 just died on me yesterday.



Normally, I would just accept the fact that it died a natural death but it happened when I was playing Fable II. That poorly-coded, bug-infested, laggy piece of crap. I am beginning to think it is not a mere coincidence that so many X360s died when the game was released. Whether that is true or not, I will never know but I just had to blame it on something rather than let it remain a mystery. hehe.

At the same time, I couldn't help but feel that my Xbox's demise was the result of karma. A few hours before it happened, I yelled at my mother to get out of my room as she was pestering me and disturbing my peaceful nightly gaming routine. Maybe it's divine punishment being metted out for sons who are rude to their mothers.

As the weekends approach, I feel depressed thinking how am I going to survive an entire week until next Friday when my replacement is ready. I am actually addicted to my Xbox in the same way I was addicted to WoW. I wonder if I may be tempted to get another X360 to play (maybe a 60gb one this time).

X08 Recollections (Part 2): Fan Night

After attending the X08 press event, it was time for Fan Night. It was an Xbox Live Goldsubscribers-only event. I went to register and collect my goodie bag. I think most of the people there got a pleasant surprise when we found 2 free games inside the goodie bag. Sure, they may be old 2006/2007 titles but it was something that probably no one expected. Free games are always good. haha. Another nice touch was that they gave us all a name tag to wear. It really helped in identifying each other that night. It felt like an online-meets-RL kinda thing when I started recognizing people based on their Gamertags. haha.

I met up with Raccon & friends for dinner at Kenny Rogers. (I didn't take any photos, though so I'll have to wait for someone to put up theirs...).

After dinner, we walked around and waited until the Fan Night events began at 8 pm. It started off the same as the press event; speech by Alan Chou and then Alison Carroll doing her 'performance' again.

The hightlight of the night came when it was time to vote for the new Xbox Xpert. The four of them went on-stage to give a little speech. I knew 3 of the guys from online forums; all of them are pretty cool people. Then the M.C. announced that they were all going to play a 'surprise game'. To everyone's surprise, the game was Street Fighter IV and there was a lot of cheering from the crowd. Sadly, it was not head-to-head so we only got to watch them play against the CPU. Zzz.





After the little SFIV show, we were all told to cast our votes by dropping them into bags held up by the booth babes standing aound. While waiting for the votes to be tallied, they got members of the crowd to play Street Fighter IV. The condition being that they had to dress up as the character they played using the one of the four costumes provided. haha. So yeah, there were E-Hondas, Sagats and Ryus on stage. Someone tried to fit into the Chun Li costume but failed (wardrobe malfunction?!).




This was followed by a short Guitar Hero: World Tour demo, and then the results of the votes were out. Merdeka came up victorious with a 2-vote lead. By now, it was close to 10 pm and I was very tired so I left in a hurry.

I initially planned to attend all 3 days of the X08 but seeing that all the major events were on Friday itself, there was nothing much left to see for the other two days. This means I can stay at home and enjoy the super-long weekend!

So whoever is reading this... Happy Deepavali. Enjoy your long weekend!

X08 Recollections (Part 1): Press Event

I took half day's leave on Friday for the X08 at Marina Square. The fan night is actually at 6:00 pm but Angelo managed to win some press event passes from Sheylara's blog so he asked me along. Wee.

I arrived at around 4:00 pm and went to look around. The X08 was at the Marina Atrium so it is actually pretty small. Plenty of demo stations and booths set up. The games on display were all the new upcoming titles. There was even an M18 room. I went him to catch a glimpse of Gears of War 2 and Call of Duty 5. Sadly, it was like the GCA all over again; Singaporeans are generally idiots who like hogging demo stations.

When it was almost time, I collected my press pass. Angelo arrived and we went to the stage area. Lots of journalists and reporters were there. While they all had big fancy cameras, I was armed with my little Sony CyberShot. hehe. I was actually surprised to see a lot of familiar faces at the press event, including the game shop owners from GameScore, Mega-MultiMedia, etc (I was hoping to see Chriz or anyone from FunZ but no one was there).


When the press event started, Xbox Regional Manager Alan Chou came on stage armed with the Chainsaw Gun from Gears of War. He spoke about the general developments of the Xbox 360 in Asia. I actually felt his speech was quite powerful and it actually made me feel 'important' and appreciated that I am part of the growing Xbox Live community.



After that, the M.C. introduced the upcoming Tomb Raider Underworld along with Alison Carroll who plays Lara Croft. I won't lie; Alison Carroll is dead sexy. I feel guilty staring at her and I don't want to think what is going through the minds of those people on the 2nd floor staring down at her. She even put on a little show for the audience, performing a lot of action poses, backflips, headstands. She even went on all fours. She darted all around the area and bounced around as the cameras followed her. It was quite hard to snap her cos' she was moving so quickly (this was the only action shot I got when she ran pass me). When it was all over, she was panting quite heavily.



Following that, Alan Chou returned and the M.C. invited all the major sponsors onstage for them to talk a little about their products. When it was all said and done, it was time for the official opening ceremony. Everyone placed their hands on the huge Xbox Power Button on-screen (insert "red ring" joke here) to 'switch it on'. A video montage played, highlightning new and old Xbox 360 games. And that was it. The X08 is now open.



I will continue with part 2 in my next entry.

X08 and Other Weekly Updates

Been playing games as usual. The X08 is next week!

http://www.xbox.com/zh-SG/community/events/X08

It's Singapore's upcoming Xbox 360 games convention to showcase new and upcoming releases. I may be going on all 3 days if I have the time. haha.

Also, time for a quick update of stuff that happened to me last week.

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Unscrupulous People Asking for Donations

I was at City Hall MRT station on a weekday to sell some of my used games. As I was about to leave, I was approached by a lady who was asking me for a $10 donation for some organization to help low-income families. Since I just sold my games, I was not ready to part with my money so quickly. I was about to refuse when a man (possibly her colleague) approached me and tried to persuade me with all those nice words. Those people are probably trained to soften people up so... I gave in and donated $10.

At this point in time, the guy turned to the girl and said, "You $4, I $6" and he reached into his bag and passed me 3 super-small cards with pictures on them. The lady passed me 2 as well. I looked at them and saw that they each had a Thank You note with the label $2 printed on it.

Holy shit? $2? If they asked for $2, I would've donated it to them without hesitation out of goodwill. But the greedy *toots* only had eyes for $10??? And the guy had to balls to split the loot with the lady in front of me? That's class A entrepreneurship (or conman) skills there.

This ticked me off a lot so I am going to think twice before making any more donations in future.

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Moblization at Tanjong Gul Camp

I was mobilized on Saturday for recall manning. The phonecall came at around 1:10 pm. I had my stuff ready so I left home at around 2:30 pm. My mother gave me a ride to Tanjong Gul camp which is all the way to the west pass Boon Lay. The journey took an hour. *sigh* I arrived at around 3:30 pm and in-processed. My arrival time was tagged as M+2.

I went to the holding area which was just a block designated for us to wait around. I realized that they were releasing people by the hour. So if someone arrive at 3:01 pm, he had to wait till 4:00 pm for the briefing before they can out-process. And those who arrived at 3:59 pm would get a pleasant surprise. haha. I learn something new every time.

That's probably all the army commitments for this year. And how time flies, it's already close to November.

Listen All of Y'All, It's a Sabotage!

Last week was so terrible. Let me count the ways how so many things can go wrong.

One.

My mother saw my modem cable running across the floor. For reasons that probably only God knows, she decided to give it a good pull and yanked my SingNet modem off the table. It crashed onto the floor and scared the hell out of me. I exploded and angrily told her off because this was NOT an accident.

The modem's outer shell popped out on several sides. I kinda snapped a few sides in except for the front which now juts out a little and exposes the innards a bit. Amazingly, it still works though now I am a little worried about how long it will last.

Up till now, I can never figure out what was going through her mind when she decided to tug at the cable. Must be a case of 'itchy hands'.

Two.

The petty cash and some money that I was holding at work was stolen. I always keep the cash it in a little black box inside my cabinet. Somehow, I just checked it one day and all the notes were gone. The thief only left the coins behind.

I suspect that one of the cleaners or building personnel had taken it. They are always coming into my room to empty the bins, vacuum the floor, clean the windows and so on. They do it several times a day so they are probably wise to my daily routine. Unfortunately, the loss of the money is not covered by business insurance since there were no real signs of actual theft and they say it is due to our own negligence (LoL @ insurance not working when you actually need it).

I got a little scolding by my boss who then helped by contributing half of the $200 that was lost. I feel very bad because the money was under my care and some idiot took it. I don't think I can look at the cleaners in the same way again.

Three.

I had an outbreak of rashes after lunch one day. I was a little scared, thinking that some insect had crawled up my shirt and is stinging me all over. My skin was all red and I was itching like mad. I endured through the day and even went for RT like this.

When I got home, my mother said it might have been that the maid didn't wash the clothes properly and left some detergent residue behind. But then the rashes didn't go away even into the night. I couldn't sleep properly that way.

Then it occurred to me that it must've been something I eaten. I knew I got rashes when I consume way too much alcohol. But the only out-of-the-ordinary thing I did that day was eat at the new noodle stall with my colleague. So the day at work, I asked my colleague about it and he thought about it for a while. Then he recalled that the soup tasted of prawn and seafood.

So it was the seafood!!! Meh.

But thankfully...

The thing that is stopping me from going mad is the fact that it had been a short week for me (M.C. on Monday, Hari Raya Puasa on Wednesday, RT on Tuesday & Thursday). So it has been pretty bearable.

And Yes!!!! My RT is finally over!!!!!!