At The End Of The Day

Today's song is due to some Orzhovish influence.

[THE POOR]
At the end of the day you're another day older
And that's all you can say for the life of the poor
It's a struggle, it's a war
And there's nothing that anyone's giving
One more day standing about, what is it for?
One day less to be living.

At the end of the day you're another day colder
And the shirt on your back doesn't keep out the chill
And the righteous hurry past
They don't hear the little ones crying
And the winter is coming on fast, ready to kill
One day nearer to dying!

At the end of the day there's another day dawning
And the sun in the morning is waiting to rise
Like the waves crash on the sand
Like a storm that'll break any second
There's a hunger in the land
There's a reckoning still to be reckoned and
There's gonna be hell to pay
At the end of the day!

[FOREMAN]
At the end of the day you get nothing for nothing
Sitting flat on your butt doesn't buy any bread

[WORKER ONE]
There are children back at home

[WORKERS ONE AND TWO]
And the children have got to be fed

[WORKER TWO]
And you're lucky to be in a job

[WOMAN]
And in a bed!

[WORKERS]
And we're counting our blessings!

Taken from Les Miserables, the musical.

Funny how the situation doesn't really change much then and now. When we come out into the working world, it's:

Lovely quote by OPL.

Of course, that's how the world works, hor? If no one works, we won't have our char kuey teow or our nasi lemak, our garbage cans will overflow, there'll be nothing to watch on telly, radio got nothing to listen...and this is on the everyday small things level.

If only work was fun, and was rewarding. Yeah sometimes it's fun, sometimes it's rewarding. But not all times. I went for a company dinner, and they had this bit to acknowledge staff that has stayed with the company for donkey years (well, actually over ten years). What did they get? Cash? Pittance. A nice plaque. Back to work, now.

We're not gonna spend our entire life seeing other people making profits out of our work and us only getting a bite of it. We wanna see ourself in a place where we work when we want to and enjoy it without suffering. And we're not talking about doing anything like be a lovely lady.

So:

Who will join in our crusade?
Who will be strong and stand with me?

Quick aside.

Our iPod is really now part of our life man. Mebbe we should get it engraved. But what to say?

Gaming marathons

Boardgame sessions in Klang, while fun and engaging, tend to be rather vampiric, energy-sapping sessions. Generally we start from 9pm onwards, and go game after game after game until the wee hours of the morning where everyone emerges pale, glassy-eyed and in a zombie-like trance.

A good meetup will see about 7 of us at Cynic's, where he has a (sort of) game room for all our boardgame/piano/Osim massage chair needs. Since the various boardgames we have vary in sizes we normally use the floor. Very practical when it comes to games like Carcassonne, Twilight Imperium, House on Haunted Hill and Railroad Tycoon. When there's a large crowd and a board game can't support all available players, you gotta entertain yourself (and the others) right? That Osim chair, man it does wonders.

Only thing with most of these games, they tend to be cerebral. How to tell leh? Firstly, even to set up the game you'd probably need 1/2-hour. And if no one knows how to play the game? Mebbe need an hour to explain the rules and run a quick demo.



Twilight Imperium, interesting space game with many alien races. Build, wage war, trade etc. Very diverse and time/energy/brain/life-engaging. Takes an hour to set up the entire board and pieces.

After the first two boardgames everybody's definitely opting for lighter no-need-to-think-so-much games. Brain has fizzled out whatwith thinking of strategies to win the game, what to buy, who to sabotage etc. After all for the most of us we only play these games during these boardgame sessions, not all the time.

So when last night Cynic called to say there's a marathon, a tingle of fear and excitement went through my spine. The last time we had a marathon it started at 9pm and went all the way till 7am, and I had to work in the afternoon. Ended up just three of us, though. Cynic, Ivan and me. One was busy with football and another wanted to spend quality time with Heroes of Might & Magic V. In the case of the latter I totally understood and didn't bug him about it (one...more...turn...).

Surprisingly we managed an average of and hour a game, 4 games in all: Puerto Rico, Carcassonne, Railroad Tycoon and Hotel. Everyone's pretty quick with Puerto Rico now except for finding that perfect strategy against a certain someone who practises using an Excel program of the game. Carcassone is simple fun. Railroad Tycoon...man, now this game should have been played first instead. It so happened that instead of playing Ticket To Ride we voted for 'the other train game' instead. Thankfully everyone already had a rough inkling how to play the game, (Cynic of course knew the game best having to teach everyone else how to play the game at different occasions) so we could jump-start into the game fairly quickly. Hotel's a faster version of Monopoly and thankfully doesn't require much thinking.

Left Klang at 5am stiff and starving. There's gonna be a bigger session come end of the month. Need to prep!

Movies galore

This week has been a good one for movies. Although I didn't expect there to be a theme (can you spot it?):

First movie was The Omen on Tuesday, 6th June 2006. Yeah, so it was a marketting gimmick but hey, I'm a movie buff and I do like scary movies (including Scary Movies). Looking through the papers we found that we could catch the 11.25pm show at Cathay Cineleisure so we did just that. Cathay's good points: lotsa roomy legspace and 90% of their popcorn were perfectly coated caramel crunchy popcorn, not cardboard! Cathay's bad points? Straight-back seats that doesn't allow you to lean back and enjoy.

Oh yes. The Omen.

I never realised that Terry Pratchett's and Neil Gaiman's book, Good Omen was a parody of The Omen! In a way, the book was a good introduction/synopsis for the movie. The movie had a totally unlovable child playing Damien, black dogs, witchy nannys, slowly-getting-mad mother (think Devil's Advocate?), pictures of how people will die (think The Ring and Final Destination), graveyards...Not really that spooky la tho. But it did spark my curiousity as to the original Omen, and Omen 2 and 3 too. And if Scary Movie 5 ever comes out, surely The Omen's gonna be in it!

Next up, Saint-Ange. Since I wasn't working on Thursday I thought I'd try and catch a French Festival movie. Initially planned for Le Coeur Des Hommes at 12.15pm, but whatwith mum and a contractor locking horns till past half-twelve, I decided to catch Saint-Ange at 2.30pm instead. Mana tahu this turned out to be a horror flick, and mainly in English! In a cinema with only a couple and another dude! Had a better spook factor compared to The Omen tho, I must admit.

Finally, Saturday night. Initial plan, bowling at happy hour.

1 hour, 2 people, 3 games. Worth it? Worth it.

As we walked past GSC, the lure of a near-nonexistant queue compelled us (Lemon and me) to take a look at what's showing. What show did we get tickets for? Black Night. This was a spontaneous buy, and for this show we thought there should be plenty of seats. The whole cinema turned out to be full! There were only three separate seats left, thankfully two of them near the back. We assumed it to be an Asian horror flick but wasn't sure if it was Chinese, Japanese or Thai.

It turned out to be all three: three short stories in Cantonese/Mandarin, Japanese and Thai. Two things all three stories had in common: vengeful spirits and water. It seems that once someone dies, it's always bent on killing you after suitable scaring the shyte out of you. And their ghosts are either immersed in water, or have water flowing all over their skin, or disappear only to leave a big big puddle...

Am waiting for Scary Movie 4 now.

One more turn...

Civilization popularized it, Civ IV uses it as their tagline.

But we're using that line for Heroes V. Like Heroes III, it's always, "One more turn," or "After the outcome of the battle," or "Let me build this structure in the next round first," or "Let's see what the AI does first," but essentially its:

One more turn.

Move heroes, build up town, collect resources, recruit army, fight enemies, conquer territory, end of day. AI players take their turns. Day ends for all players.

One more turn la. Move heroes, build up town, collect resources, recruit army, fight enemies, conquer territory, end of day. AI players take their turns. Day ends for all players.

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..
...

One more turn la. Recruit high-level army of frightening dragons, archangels, archdevils, titans, chase and slaughter other players' armies, seige their towns, cast impressive spells like chain-lightning, meteor shower and armageddon, claim town for own...

One more turn la, wanna see what that town's magic guild has in terms of spells and probably recruit their high-level creature. Ooo! More dragons!

Let's go hunt roaming creatures to try the bigger army/new spells on. Conquer more territory, capture more resources, end of day. AI players take their turns. Ooo! Enemy hero wandered within our sights! Must chase! Day ends for all players.

One more turn. Gotta chase that hero before he becomes a threat.

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One more turn.

One more turn.

One more turn.

Look at the time! Gotta save! Sleep! Sleep! Okay, after the next turn.