End of the CNY Holidays :(

The CNY holidays has come and gone so quickly! I feel as though I didn't get enough rest. It's Tuesday evening already and I feel a little sad that tomorrow will be a regular work day. There won't be another holiday for months to come. :(

Here was how I spent my CNY long weekend.

Sunday

Went to watch Inkheart with Kyo, Akira and Yonghao in the afternoon. We were accompanied by 2 rarespawns, Mango and Michael (this is the first time in years I saw FunZ close early). The night before, we were voting on which movie to watch; too bad not Chandi Chowk to China was met with objection. :(

Inkheart wasn't quite what I expected. I initally thought it was about a guy who got sucked into a book. It was pretty okay but the plot seems very rushed; I am guessing they just removed all the 'unecessary bits' from the novel and squeezed it into one super-abridged movie.

After the movie, everyone went for their reunion dinner. My family don't really celebrate it so I went over to Michael's house for dinner and Rock Band 2 with Mango. The game is amazing and the drum kit is a shining example of what a quality plastic instrument should be like. It makes the GHWT drums look like a cheap toy. I really hope they localize the Xbox 360 version soon.


Oops, Mango is off-camera.

Monday

I woke up early to prepare for house visits. This year, my mother's side has er, escaped to Genting so we have one less place to visit. We went straight to my father's side. This year was pretty peaceful for me. No one probed on my job, whether I had found a girlfriend, etc.

Someone rented Ip Man on DVD so I just saw there and watched it for the duration of the visit. The movie was really good! Now I wish I caught it at the cinemas. I didn't get to finish it as we left after an hour.

I went straight home cos' Miya was dropping by in the afternoon. I feel a bit sad that I didn't spend time to clean up my room at all. We played Xbox all through the day. Mainly SF2 HDRemix, Castle Crashers, and the usual music games. I hope Miya picks up his Xbox 360 soon. haha.

Lips Insanity

I picked up Lips last week. It's a new singing game by INIS (Ou-En-Daaan!). This game wasn't initially on my radar but I picked it up after seeing it in action.

To get the gripes out of the way first, Lips is a bare-bones karaoke party game disguised as a music game. It is lacking a lot of features which are a given in hardcore music titles (such as a career mode, unlockables, leaderboards, etc). Despite its shortcomings, I found myself addicted, even waking up at 2 in the morning to power it up to sing myself to sleep. haha.

The music engine is pretty decent. The scoring system is unique, requiring you to fulfill 6 bonus criteria (i.e. medals) to boost your score.

One of the medals is obtained by singing a lot in vibrato throughout the song. Even with the power of Google, I still haven't really figure out how to simulate a natural vibrato with my voice. haha. Below is a video of my semi-terrible high-pitched singing.

The song is Virtual Insanity by Jamiroquai which has become one of my favourites. I grew to like it because it is very catchy. The music video is pretty awesome with mind-boggling 'camera tricks' happening onscreen in a simple white room. It has even won multiple nominations & awards at 1997's MTV awards so do check it out.

Lips - Virtual Insanity
***Video removed cos' a recent patch changed the way the game tracks scoring/vibrato, making my totally off-key singing pointless!***

Little Plastic Men

I have no idea how I got 'poisoned' but, over the past few months, I had a sudden interest in collecting McFarlane's Halo 3 action figures. Whenever I see them sitting on the store shelves, they seem to cry out to the inner child in me, begging to be taken home.

This all probably started during the AFA '08 where I found myself surrounded by tons of plastic figures, model kits and whatnot. Many weeks later, thanks to more impulse purchases and an unexpected find on Ebay Singapore (I waited for the auction to expire before contacting the seller directly), I now have four little 6-inch plastic men sitting on top of my shelf.


(Yup, it's this shelf again. It gets photographed a lot.)

I simply love The Arbiter which is why there are two of him. haha.

As usual, they are all still in their packages. Now I even feel like buying a proper shelf or display case to house them before I take them out (recommendations will be most appreciated). And no, they are not toys.

Tiring Back-to-Work Week

The past week was very tiring for me as I was finally back to work after so many public holidays and leaves. Was still in the holiday mood. I thought I could try to slowly ease myself back into my duties and make myself comfortable. Too bad it couldn't be that way because what I had before me was a mountain of work (or maybe 10 mountains). Looks like it's time I did something about them.

Also, my lunch buddy and admin-next-door, Jiehui, is currently away on reservist so my meals have been pretty boring as well. I find myself making lunch trips to Paya Lebar (which I haven't done so in like 6 months) just to burn time. It actually made me realize how much I miss all that fast food.

Somehow, all that fatigue from work stuck with me and followed me home. I even started sleeping promptly at 1 am every night. When the weekends finally came, I was very much relieved. I went to shop around with YongHao on Saturday and watched Red Cliff II with Akira & Max on Sunday. I still feel very tired, though. haha. Looks like I am having problems readjusting. Though that doesn't stop me from looking forward to the CNY holidays.

I hope things will go back to normal soon.

BoB Chalet @ Aloha Resorts

I went for the gaming chalet organized by the BoB forums on Friday. I arrived at around 3:30 pm at the Changi Aloha Resorts with Rhyfe. The chalet was actually very spacious with 4 rooms on the 2nd storey.



A number of the 'advance party' were there already and we started setting up the equipment. New Era (!) even sponsored 2 console kiosks plus several games for the chalet.



Once everything was set up, we started off with the usual Rock Band, GH: World Tour and tried out LIPS. As more people arrived, I got to play some Gears of War 2 and even good old splitscreen Halo 3 on a projector screen.



I had fun catching up with friends since our previous outing and getting to know more people.

At first I thought I didn't need to sleep but I ended up crashing on a bed at around 4 am. I got up again at 6 am and helped myself to the New Era kiosk. A number of people had snuck home through the night so only some remained.


The overnight warriors.

At around 10 am on Saturday morning, we started packing up. Once the chalet staff came to inspect our 'area cleaning' and gave us the green light, we were allowed to go. Raccon gave me & Rhyfe a ride to White Sands where we had McDonald's breakfast before going home. I reached home at around 1 pm. I was totally drained and slept for the rest of the day.

*Note: 90% of the photos here were not taken by me because I was in them.

2009 New Year Holidays

It's the year 2009. I will be kicking off the year by clearing leave again which means yet another long break from Thursday to Monday. Woopie! Though I get the feeling that I am going to be very, very cranky when I finally go back to work on Tuesday.

On New Year's Day, I met up with Kyo, Miya, Akira and YongHao for dinner at Dhoby Ghaut. I thought it was a good time to ask people out but it turned out that almost everyone is stuck with New Year duty in camp. I hope their New Year went by okay. hehe.



I initially thought of trying out Billy Bombers but Miya recommended Astons instead. I actually heard about it before, but for the past 3 times that I came with friends, there was always a super long queue. It was no differen that day but I guess we had nothing to do so we went ahead and queue up.

While queueing, we chatted and took a look at the menu. Apart from the $69 steak (which sounded like it could feed a family of 10), the prices were very good. It was an hour before we finally got in. After having our meal there, I finally knew why the place keeps getting long queues. Good Western food, big servings, good value for money, no GST. And there was still a long queue even as we left the place.

Thanks to everyone for the wonderful dinner. I forgot to take photos though. I think I am slowly becoming the sort that like to take photos. (Note: NOT a camwhore.)

Oh yah, you may have noticed the cute little penguin on my sidebar. It's a leftover picture from my failed attempt to redesign my blog. I'll probably work on a new design again several months later when I am free. Zzz