While it's always exciting to follow the WWDC to see what's coming in the next iOS, we always forget how we're then set up for another long wait for the actual iOS to be available.
And after 6 iOS versions with the same UI, we can't wait for the fresh new look. We do agree that the UI is polarising, given the colour scheme, but overall what the new UI means for us is the amount of time we'll spend Macturbating once more. From the photobox-like parallax effect, to browsing moments and collections in the Photo app (although, given that memory space is still limited, those photos won't be permanently on the iPhone), to rearranging apps into different pages in a folder...hoo yeah, iOS 7 should keep us occupied until next year when iOS 8 will come out.
It's a shame iOS 7 still doesn't allow us to manually place app icons anywhere on the grid but still auto-arranges it from top to bottom, left to right. Personalisation still not fully there yet.
After the initial excitement at the iOS 7 video and the brand new 'pop'-ish look, what are we looking forward to in the new iOS? When iOS 2 came out, we happily paid up USD10 to upgrade our iPod Touch and have a look through the App Store - although we held out from paying for any apps for a long time. When iOS 3 came out, there was cut, copy, paste, video recording and MMS to finally made the iPhone a decent phone to consider (when compared to the Nokias then that already had all these features...).
iOS 4 had multitasking and folders (woo less home screen pages!) and iOS 5 brought the Notification Centre (finally), iCloud and iMessage. Stuff that we would definitely use every day on the iPhone.
With iOS 6...probably the only thing we were really interested in was Facebook integration. Not Maps - we don't use the Maps feature every day. What's more, Flyover wasn't a global feature, only for select places (and even then, we can expect Singapore and Bangkok to get those features first, like Street View on Google Maps or even 3D buildings). And Facebook integration - well, the only plus point really was being able to see birthdays from the Notification Centre. Otherwise it pretty much screwed up our Contact List by renaming them to their Facebook profile names (and this after we spend time unifying facebook contacts to those in our address book) even though we specifically chose the Address Book name to be displayed instead. There was also an instance when, instead of texting a contact, an email was sent to his Facebook email instead.
Gave up on Facebook integration (at least, integration with our contacts). And with MAS the only app using Passbook...pfft.
For us, iOS 6 didn't have that 'standout feature' to get us excited to upgrade immediately (not to mention, many held off upgrading because of Google Maps which weren't available in the Malaysian App Store).
So. iOS 7! Control Centre is definitely welcomed (Android!). The new look of the Photos app is great, too - finally some sort of organised look to all the photos! New look to multitasking (WebOS!) and an easier 'flick to close' gesture. AirDrop...well, until everyone uses an iPhone 5, we'll still be sending this via iMessage or email (and capped at 5 photos per email still?) while others go around the room bumping their phones with others. Don't think we'll be making use of iTunes Radio (data and battery life!) much if at all, too.
So...really, we guess the feature we'd be looking out for most of all in iOS 7? The new look and feel. That's it, heh. Simple expectations.
Thursday, June 20, 2013
Sunday, June 09, 2013
iOS Boredgaming
Given how we've not been able to join the friday night board game group much (if at all), we've been eyeing the App Store for games that have managed to make the transition to digital form. And there's been quite a fair few, much to our surprise actually!
We think one of the first board games based on a physical version we ever came across in the App Store would be Zooloretto. Visuals-wise, this looked better with animal sprites instead of tiles and lots of animal noises. That time we'd only an iPod Touch (no iPhone yet and the iPad hasn't existed) and it was a good start. AI was decent and we spent a fair amount of time playing that (among other iOS games, of course).
Then we got our iPhone, and Carcassone was announced. Carcassone was the first board game we actually bought too, and the introductory price of $4.99 was tempting (and turns out to be a good thing too, the price of the game never dropped from the usual $9.99 as far as we know!). Another plus point? Universal app. Looks great on both iPhone and iPad and still a mainstay on both devices (although to be honest we only play this as a multiplayer with the Chief occasionally).
Bang! was announced, we tried the Lite version featuring the founding fathers but somehow Bang! in essence is still best played in person (how else can one lie to the Sheriff?).
When Ascension was announced, we tried the lite version and was soon hooked. Couldn't bring ourself to shell out $9.99, though, not until they updated the app to include the expansions. Then we basically threw our money, buying the expansions. It's still one of our most-played iOS games, even though we rarely go online for multiplayer games.
Hey, That's My Fish! is a great game for introducing friends to board games when played on the iPad, although we suppose they'll assume it's just an iOS game instead of being a digital version of the board game. Come to think of it we wouldn't actually want to buy the physical version of Hey, That's My Fish! We'd go crazy setting up the tiles after a while!
Bought Neuroshima Hex, but we're not to keen on the setting of the game, hence after a game or two we tend to leave the game aside.
Ticket To Ride initially was announced for the iPad, but we were already spoilt by iOS app pricing and somehow can't bring ourself to pay for the app. Then Ticket To Ride Pocket for the iPhone was announced at 99¢ and we snapped that up immediately. It's a great game, the small screen might take a bit of getting used to but we're ok with that.
Caylus came out and it was an impulse buy for us...only to be stung a few days later when the game went on sale. But now we finally get to figure out how the mid-game and late-game works. When the board game first came out, we understood what to do for the early game but somehow lost our way by the mid-game. We figure this was because we never bothered much with checking the costs of the expensive buildings that earn lots of victory points. Amazing how the game works on the iPhone decently too with a bit of scrolling.
Le Havre we bought when it was on sale, and while its an interesting game we honestly did not want to spend the time learning the functions of the different buildings. It does have an Agricola-ish feel, though.
Magic: The Gathering - Duels Of The Planeswalker 2013 was announced with iPad support and we were rather excited for that, because we got Duels 2012 when it was on sale on Steam and we found it to satisfy our MtG itch quite well. Even though the decks are limited to the theme decks, it's still good enough and way cheaper than spending on the actual card game. Duels 2013 even had expansion decks based on the Ravnican guilds (without their guild mechanics, sadly, but the decks were themed appropriately still) and while we paid for the first expansion, we're holding off from buying the rest just yet (who knows, they may drop the price when Duels 2014 comes out, hur hur).
We bought Puerto Rico earlier this year, honestly for the only reason that we were on a trip, we were craving to play PR and we had no access to the PR Evolver Excel file where we've always been playing. We weren't really keen to get PR because it was only for the iPad (with the exception of Duels 2013, every other game could be played on the iPhone), but now that we've got it on the iPad, gameplay is ok. We still get our quick fixes using the excel file, but the upside of the app compared to the excel file is that we can randomise the starting position of players.
So.
Lately we had the itch for some quick game to play on our phone. Ascension's still our default when we have a few minutes but a game takes some 5-10 minutes, while we were looking for something shorter. Granted, there're plenty of iOS games out there, we could play Bejewelled Blitz (not Tetris Blitz though, the game was spoiled with all the in-your-face power ups pop-ups that the game try to get you to spend with the in-game currency that we lost interest in playing "one more time") or a level of Angry Birds but we wanted something that was short but didn't have us racing against a timer, didn't require us to focus too much on sliding our finger on the screen like Ticket To Ride Pocket (in case our attention was divided elsewhere), or replaying the stage (as we do with Angry Birds until we nail that 3 stars!).
And so we ended up getting Lost Cities yesterday. Verdict? Good choice. The game is short, the rules understood within a game, and there's replayability!
Actually, heck, for all our reasons we might have just wanted to BUY an app for the sake of retail therapy. At least it's a game that we're happy with!
Next, we wait for Agricola to finally be released. It's been delayed, we hear.
Friday, June 07, 2013
Social Tedium
It's been ages (again) since we've last looked to Blogger. What with all the various forms of social media and the fact that typing on a mobile device is no walk in the park (we're using the iPad for this as we don't think our thumbs are ready to type out a full post...but then again what is a full post), we've pretty much left this blog like a diary stuck in a drawer in the attic.
While posting on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram is far quicker and easier, well...it's certainly not a great way to remember things that happen.
Navigate Facebook's timeline? Very much dependant on our Internet connection, as if we're trying to search for something that happened vaguely in the second or third quarter of either 2010 or 2009, we'd have to click on the month and start scrolling down to the older posts (and hope that our connection doesn't drop and stop Facebook from further loading old posts).
Let's not even bother looking for old stuff on Twitter.
OK we've actually stopped typing out this post on the iPad, and have actually switched over to typing on the PC because why the hell are we using the iPad to do this when we have a proper keyboard to hammer on in the first place, we have no idea. Probably to prevent ourself from going on a typing diarrhoea.
So. If we're going to maintain this blog, shall we further integrate it with the rest of our social media? We can just imagine it now, using a photo post as an example:
1. Take photo.
2. Edit as necessary using Instagram.
3. Type out quick post, add in whatever hashtags as we see fit.
4. Copy text of said post.
5. Get Instagram to post to Facebook, and probably Tumblr.
6. Go to either our Photos or the Twitter app, and draft same post. Edit text to fit 160 character limitation if necessary. Post.
7. Go to the Google+ app, repeat process.
8. Go to the Blogger app, repeat process. Elaborate text as we see fit.
Facepalm. But we think what we'll do is to wait for the new iPad Mini, then get a Logitech Ultrathin Keyboard Cover for that...that is, if we still blog by the time the new iPad Mini launches.
Let's not even bother looking for old stuff on Twitter.
OK we've actually stopped typing out this post on the iPad, and have actually switched over to typing on the PC because why the hell are we using the iPad to do this when we have a proper keyboard to hammer on in the first place, we have no idea. Probably to prevent ourself from going on a typing diarrhoea.
So. If we're going to maintain this blog, shall we further integrate it with the rest of our social media? We can just imagine it now, using a photo post as an example:
1. Take photo.
2. Edit as necessary using Instagram.
3. Type out quick post, add in whatever hashtags as we see fit.
4. Copy text of said post.
5. Get Instagram to post to Facebook, and probably Tumblr.
6. Go to either our Photos or the Twitter app, and draft same post. Edit text to fit 160 character limitation if necessary. Post.
7. Go to the Google+ app, repeat process.
8. Go to the Blogger app, repeat process. Elaborate text as we see fit.
Facepalm. But we think what we'll do is to wait for the new iPad Mini, then get a Logitech Ultrathin Keyboard Cover for that...that is, if we still blog by the time the new iPad Mini launches.
Friday, November 09, 2012
Boardgame Cafe: Crude Oil
So tonight we ended up back at Boardgame Cafe as we were free tonight and there were new games from Essen to try out.
First up tonight: Crude Oil, with sinbadwolf, Khim, angxj and yours truly.
It's a dice-throwing game where players take turns throwing dices to activate assets they've built on their quadrant of the board (we kept thinking of Battleship).
You throw the dices, activate buildings that land on the coordinate lines (harvesting crude oil, refining crude oil to gasoline and selling said gasoline if possible), and buying/selling assets as the player sees fit according to the market forces.
The game starts with everyone having $200mil, and gameplay progresses until a player gets $750mil, then there's a final turn for all players (except the player that triggered the endgame step).
Pretty much looks like a quick game of throw-dice, get oil, buy-sell, and hopefully don't get screwed by the market.
Jack208 said the game would take around an hour or so to complete. Our game went from...late 9.30pm all the way till 1am. We're thinking this was due to dice rolls and inventory hoarding. The game began with everyone going roughly for the same strategy (a refinery to convert crude oil to gasoline, a couple of gas stations to sell gasoline to customers, and as many oil drills to dig for oil), with angxj going for more oil drills concentrated in a certain area of his quardrant.
Somewhere in our first round itself we were hit by taxes when angxj and us rolled double 1s, bleeding our funds dry when we had to pay tax for every barrel of crude oil and gasoline we owned - angxj was first to have to decide which of his assets he had to sell to pay off taxes. It didn't help when the economic state went on the rise, pushing prices of refineries/drills/stations up.
Soon everyone got a feel for the flow of the game, and worked towards his own strategy: angxj kept up with trying to build oil wells to generate crude oil, Khim aimed more on selling gasoline via gas stations, sinbadwolf had a balanced game, and we decided on buying crude oil from the domestic/foreign market, concentrating on refineries to convert them and stations to sell them to customers while keeping a minimal number of buildings.
In our game run, the economic state of the game kept switching from recessions, depressions, downturns and recoveries, keeping the customer market for selling gasoline low (although buying buildings were also cheap). We've only ever hit a economic state of prosperity twice, so trying to make money from selling gasoline wasn't lucrative enough. Even selling to the domestic/foreign market fared only slightly better.
angxj and sinbadwolf hoarded crude oil produced by their oil wells, and when it came to a point where we were all locked out from buying crude oil from the foreign market, the rest of us suffered as prices for crude oil went on the rise, from less than 10mil to 10-15mil per barrel. It didn't help Khim and us that angxj and sinbadwolf only sold a few barrels back to the market, and customer demand for gasoline remained low.
In the end Khim had to rid himself of his oil well to finance his other assets, angxj utilised his entire territory with an orderly arrangement of oil drills and wells, stations and refineries, sinbadwolf and us were trying to get more wells. Then came a point where angxj, having stocked up enough barrels of crude oil and gas, decided to sell everything to trigger the end game.
End score:
sinbadwolf: 820
Khim: 741
angxj: 1169
us: 714
First up tonight: Crude Oil, with sinbadwolf, Khim, angxj and yours truly.
It's a dice-throwing game where players take turns throwing dices to activate assets they've built on their quadrant of the board (we kept thinking of Battleship).
You throw the dices, activate buildings that land on the coordinate lines (harvesting crude oil, refining crude oil to gasoline and selling said gasoline if possible), and buying/selling assets as the player sees fit according to the market forces.
The game starts with everyone having $200mil, and gameplay progresses until a player gets $750mil, then there's a final turn for all players (except the player that triggered the endgame step).
Pretty much looks like a quick game of throw-dice, get oil, buy-sell, and hopefully don't get screwed by the market.
Jack208 said the game would take around an hour or so to complete. Our game went from...late 9.30pm all the way till 1am. We're thinking this was due to dice rolls and inventory hoarding. The game began with everyone going roughly for the same strategy (a refinery to convert crude oil to gasoline, a couple of gas stations to sell gasoline to customers, and as many oil drills to dig for oil), with angxj going for more oil drills concentrated in a certain area of his quardrant.
Somewhere in our first round itself we were hit by taxes when angxj and us rolled double 1s, bleeding our funds dry when we had to pay tax for every barrel of crude oil and gasoline we owned - angxj was first to have to decide which of his assets he had to sell to pay off taxes. It didn't help when the economic state went on the rise, pushing prices of refineries/drills/stations up.
Soon everyone got a feel for the flow of the game, and worked towards his own strategy: angxj kept up with trying to build oil wells to generate crude oil, Khim aimed more on selling gasoline via gas stations, sinbadwolf had a balanced game, and we decided on buying crude oil from the domestic/foreign market, concentrating on refineries to convert them and stations to sell them to customers while keeping a minimal number of buildings.
In our game run, the economic state of the game kept switching from recessions, depressions, downturns and recoveries, keeping the customer market for selling gasoline low (although buying buildings were also cheap). We've only ever hit a economic state of prosperity twice, so trying to make money from selling gasoline wasn't lucrative enough. Even selling to the domestic/foreign market fared only slightly better.
angxj and sinbadwolf hoarded crude oil produced by their oil wells, and when it came to a point where we were all locked out from buying crude oil from the foreign market, the rest of us suffered as prices for crude oil went on the rise, from less than 10mil to 10-15mil per barrel. It didn't help Khim and us that angxj and sinbadwolf only sold a few barrels back to the market, and customer demand for gasoline remained low.
In the end Khim had to rid himself of his oil well to finance his other assets, angxj utilised his entire territory with an orderly arrangement of oil drills and wells, stations and refineries, sinbadwolf and us were trying to get more wells. Then came a point where angxj, having stocked up enough barrels of crude oil and gas, decided to sell everything to trigger the end game.
End score:
sinbadwolf: 820
Khim: 741
angxj: 1169
us: 714
Saturday, March 10, 2012
Mobile Gaming
1. Why don't you Draw Something?
2. A classic Prince of Persia.
3. Jeng jeng Jenga.
4. Come on, join the Jetpack Joyride.
So over the years, as our desktop of now nearly 10 years declined into obsolescence (actually it was already in that state some 5 years ago) we've replaced it with our Nintendo DS and our iPod Touch for all our gaming needs.
True, there are some games that just can't be replaced by mobile gaming, but then again there were the occasional cybercafe jaunts too. The ageing desktop was relegated to other matters like syncing our iDevices with iTunes, converting our CDs to sync onto our iDevices, blogging, storing our photos, converting movies to sync with our iDevices (which usually is an overnight job for JUST ONE MOVIE)...and perhaps for some gaming. That is, games from the pre-2000 era.
Otherwise, until 2009, our most-used gadget (and best investment) was our Nintendo 3D because we've been gaming on it like crazy. The Mario games, the Zelda games, the Castlevanias, Nintendogs...
Even when we got our iPhone 3GS in Dec 2008, our iDevices wasn't heavily used for gaming as the App Store was still relatively new and we were still careful about buying apps (much has changed then).
Gosh. Come to think of it. When the App Store was still new we could afford to check it weekly and probably go through most of the new apps for something free/worthy. Now there's just too many to bother.
Now our iDevices take up more than half the time while we wait for more 3DS games to appear (and seeing how we can't buy anything from the Nintendo eShop unless it's free).
So let's talk about gaming on the iDevice. Specifically on the iPhone for now.
Just recently everyone's caught the Draw Something bug. And we think it's been done rather well, although we're rather wary of playing this via mobile 3G. You add a friend, choose a word depending on the difficulty, you draw it out in whatever colours are available to you, and send!
The immediate problems? Battery life playing on the 3GS, for one. If you're playing with a lot of people, you may find that as soon as you've played a round starting from person A to person Z, it's time to play with person A again.
And while the game is available as both a free and paid app, we don't think it's worth paying because somehow we have this feeling that by a week's time this game will lose momentum and in under a month quite a lot of people will stop playing.
Just a feeling.
Meanwhile, we're trying to hold out from buying Prince Of Persia Classic that has reappeared on the App Store. Funny. They actually launched the app on the App Store December last year as an universal app at 99¢, which we automatically bought.
Or, would have bought. We couldn't, as a pop-up notified us that the game needed a front-facing camera. It could have probably meant that it was for the iPhone 4 onwards (although we don't see why so), but it was a bummer that we didn't manage to download it then. Then not long after that, it got pulled off from the App Store.
And now it's back, at USD1.99. While the iPad version is at USD2.99. Whatever happened to it being an universal app?!
It's still Prince Of Persia 1, all dressed up in nice fancy graphics (and from what we've seen on YouTube) minus the violence of being sliced in half or impaled on spikes.
We still remember one of our most shocking moments playing Prince Of Persia 2: The Shadow And The Flame was when the Prince was running down a corridor when suddenly out of nowhere he violently split in half with blood splattering everywhere - our introduction to the wall blade trap.
So...not buying Prince Of Persia Classic yet.
Jenga was free recently and we've downloaded it and gave it a quick try. The first impression? I still rather my actual physical Jenga set with friends, and all the crazy rules and setups we come up with. It's worth the trouble of setting up the pieces to play, really!
And prior to Draw Something most of our casual gaming was on Jetpack Joyride. A free endless running game that's gotten the mix of power-ups and objectives just right. Unlike other endless runners, with Jetpack Joyride we're more focused on completing objectives rather than "getting the furthest distance".
We'll probably only stop playing this once we've bought out all the costumes and jetpacks - but there's an update for this game coming and who knows what new content will be available then!
Still, too many games, too little time, and the urge to get more games!
2. A classic Prince of Persia.
3. Jeng jeng Jenga.
4. Come on, join the Jetpack Joyride.
So over the years, as our desktop of now nearly 10 years declined into obsolescence (actually it was already in that state some 5 years ago) we've replaced it with our Nintendo DS and our iPod Touch for all our gaming needs.
True, there are some games that just can't be replaced by mobile gaming, but then again there were the occasional cybercafe jaunts too. The ageing desktop was relegated to other matters like syncing our iDevices with iTunes, converting our CDs to sync onto our iDevices, blogging, storing our photos, converting movies to sync with our iDevices (which usually is an overnight job for JUST ONE MOVIE)...and perhaps for some gaming. That is, games from the pre-2000 era.
Otherwise, until 2009, our most-used gadget (and best investment) was our Nintendo 3D because we've been gaming on it like crazy. The Mario games, the Zelda games, the Castlevanias, Nintendogs...
Even when we got our iPhone 3GS in Dec 2008, our iDevices wasn't heavily used for gaming as the App Store was still relatively new and we were still careful about buying apps (much has changed then).
Gosh. Come to think of it. When the App Store was still new we could afford to check it weekly and probably go through most of the new apps for something free/worthy. Now there's just too many to bother.
Now our iDevices take up more than half the time while we wait for more 3DS games to appear (and seeing how we can't buy anything from the Nintendo eShop unless it's free).
So let's talk about gaming on the iDevice. Specifically on the iPhone for now.
Just recently everyone's caught the Draw Something bug. And we think it's been done rather well, although we're rather wary of playing this via mobile 3G. You add a friend, choose a word depending on the difficulty, you draw it out in whatever colours are available to you, and send!
The immediate problems? Battery life playing on the 3GS, for one. If you're playing with a lot of people, you may find that as soon as you've played a round starting from person A to person Z, it's time to play with person A again.
And while the game is available as both a free and paid app, we don't think it's worth paying because somehow we have this feeling that by a week's time this game will lose momentum and in under a month quite a lot of people will stop playing.
Just a feeling.
Meanwhile, we're trying to hold out from buying Prince Of Persia Classic that has reappeared on the App Store. Funny. They actually launched the app on the App Store December last year as an universal app at 99¢, which we automatically bought.
Or, would have bought. We couldn't, as a pop-up notified us that the game needed a front-facing camera. It could have probably meant that it was for the iPhone 4 onwards (although we don't see why so), but it was a bummer that we didn't manage to download it then. Then not long after that, it got pulled off from the App Store.
And now it's back, at USD1.99. While the iPad version is at USD2.99. Whatever happened to it being an universal app?!
It's still Prince Of Persia 1, all dressed up in nice fancy graphics (and from what we've seen on YouTube) minus the violence of being sliced in half or impaled on spikes.
We still remember one of our most shocking moments playing Prince Of Persia 2: The Shadow And The Flame was when the Prince was running down a corridor when suddenly out of nowhere he violently split in half with blood splattering everywhere - our introduction to the wall blade trap.
So...not buying Prince Of Persia Classic yet.
Jenga was free recently and we've downloaded it and gave it a quick try. The first impression? I still rather my actual physical Jenga set with friends, and all the crazy rules and setups we come up with. It's worth the trouble of setting up the pieces to play, really!
And prior to Draw Something most of our casual gaming was on Jetpack Joyride. A free endless running game that's gotten the mix of power-ups and objectives just right. Unlike other endless runners, with Jetpack Joyride we're more focused on completing objectives rather than "getting the furthest distance".
We'll probably only stop playing this once we've bought out all the costumes and jetpacks - but there's an update for this game coming and who knows what new content will be available then!
Still, too many games, too little time, and the urge to get more games!
Sunday, February 26, 2012
Memories Rewatched
1. Disney's Beauty And The Beast 3D
2. Nobita's New Great Adventure Into The Underworld
So recently we've relived some old memories. Just the other day The Chief bought tickets for Beauty And The Beast 3D, which got us all excited as we weren't aware that it was screening then.
We never did get to watch The Lion King 3D that screened earlier somehow. We were aware that it was going to be out in the cinemas, but somehow we totally missed it. But for Disney's Beauty And The Beast 3D? No way.
You know, the first version of Beauty And The Beast that we ever knew of portrayed Beauty as having 2 other selfish sisters, a merchant father who got lost and found his way to a castle, stays the night and as he was leaving the following day plucks a rose from the garden for Belle only to be confronted by the Beast...
...Wikipedia has the story. Yeah, it's the same one right down to the bit where her sisters rub their eyes with onions to fake crying. There's no Gaston, no animated household furniture, no songs.
Disney changed that all right. We actually recall that we bought the cassette tape of the soundtrack even before we got to watch the movie. Knew the songs by heart. Then we borrowed the VHS tape from Randall and was wowed.
We think we had more impact from the soundtrack compared to the movie. Even after Beauty And The Beast, it was the soundtrack cassette tapes that we bought instead of the VHS tape of the movie for Aladdin and The Lion King. By the time Pocahontas came along we've made the slow switch to CDs (they weren't considered cheap then at nearly RM50 a disc!).
Gosh. The soundtrack. We'd that tape plugged into our Walkman playing so much we're surprised the tape lasted all the torture we've put it through. Fast forward. Rewind. Fast forward. Switch to side B, more fast forwarding and rewinding. We found out that the soundtrack was a stereo recording when our earphones weren't plugged in properly and we were surprised when half the townsfolk in "Belle" couldn't be heard at all, we thought there was something wrong with our tape!
Even though we've watched it again on DVD (last recollection was in Glasgow, the extended version with "Human Again" included), we always remember the scenes as though we were watching the blurry VHS version. Until we watched the 3D version.
Oh wow.
The feeling was the same as when we first made the switch to contact lenses. Everything bright and clear as we walked down Argyll Street!
The stained glass at the prelude depicting the story of the Prince transforming into the Beast!
And in 3D!
Somehow we were reminded of our 3DS, where the 3D effect was seen by a sense of depth rather than things popping out of the screen. And with such clarity. Made us want to run out and buy the 3D Blu-Ray version after the movie!
Well, so far we've resisted from buying the Blu-Ray due to the fact that we haven't a Blu-Ray player nor a 3D tv.
As for Doraemon, we admit that we had grown out of it a long time back. We admit, we used to watch the BM-dubbed cartoons (known for its high-pitch voice acting) and bought the BM-subbed comics. Asides from the short stories, there were the longer adventures that took up an entire book, featured a fair number of gadgets and had fantastic plot lines as compared to the mundane everyday setting as found in the short stories. Also perhaps we enjoyed it more because there was no "moral to the story" as found in the short stories.
The one we enjoyed most was Nobita's Great Adventure Into The Underworld, dealing with magic and demons.
So we got to watch the 2007 movie remake of that story, and we're actually surprised at ourself for not watching the original movie. Still, we remembered bits and pieces of the manga and were pleasantly surprised that the remake had great artwork and animation (like Doraemon's reactions when he sees a mouse!).
There were some changes that makes us want to get the book to read through again, just to see what they've removed and/or added.
The funny thing is, the DVD only has the cartoon in either Chinese (which we have limited comprehension) or Malay. In Malay, the translation is fine (although we're a bit puzzled at certain names like Lampu Moonlight and Bintang Devil instead of a full Malay translation), but we're somewhat disappointed by the expressions of the voice acting. Japanese anime tend to be rather extremely expressive and the voice acting here seems only half there to us. It's good, but could be better.
If we had the option we would have watched the show in Japanese with English subs. Perhaps somewhere out there there's a version of the DVD with exactly just that (we're not sure if we're ready for an English subbed version of Doraemon, though...).
Oh well. Now to wait for Disney to release The Little Mermaid in 3D!
2. Nobita's New Great Adventure Into The Underworld
So recently we've relived some old memories. Just the other day The Chief bought tickets for Beauty And The Beast 3D, which got us all excited as we weren't aware that it was screening then.
We never did get to watch The Lion King 3D that screened earlier somehow. We were aware that it was going to be out in the cinemas, but somehow we totally missed it. But for Disney's Beauty And The Beast 3D? No way.
You know, the first version of Beauty And The Beast that we ever knew of portrayed Beauty as having 2 other selfish sisters, a merchant father who got lost and found his way to a castle, stays the night and as he was leaving the following day plucks a rose from the garden for Belle only to be confronted by the Beast...
...Wikipedia has the story. Yeah, it's the same one right down to the bit where her sisters rub their eyes with onions to fake crying. There's no Gaston, no animated household furniture, no songs.
Disney changed that all right. We actually recall that we bought the cassette tape of the soundtrack even before we got to watch the movie. Knew the songs by heart. Then we borrowed the VHS tape from Randall and was wowed.
We think we had more impact from the soundtrack compared to the movie. Even after Beauty And The Beast, it was the soundtrack cassette tapes that we bought instead of the VHS tape of the movie for Aladdin and The Lion King. By the time Pocahontas came along we've made the slow switch to CDs (they weren't considered cheap then at nearly RM50 a disc!).
Gosh. The soundtrack. We'd that tape plugged into our Walkman playing so much we're surprised the tape lasted all the torture we've put it through. Fast forward. Rewind. Fast forward. Switch to side B, more fast forwarding and rewinding. We found out that the soundtrack was a stereo recording when our earphones weren't plugged in properly and we were surprised when half the townsfolk in "Belle" couldn't be heard at all, we thought there was something wrong with our tape!
Even though we've watched it again on DVD (last recollection was in Glasgow, the extended version with "Human Again" included), we always remember the scenes as though we were watching the blurry VHS version. Until we watched the 3D version.
Oh wow.
The feeling was the same as when we first made the switch to contact lenses. Everything bright and clear as we walked down Argyll Street!
The stained glass at the prelude depicting the story of the Prince transforming into the Beast!
And in 3D!
Somehow we were reminded of our 3DS, where the 3D effect was seen by a sense of depth rather than things popping out of the screen. And with such clarity. Made us want to run out and buy the 3D Blu-Ray version after the movie!
Well, so far we've resisted from buying the Blu-Ray due to the fact that we haven't a Blu-Ray player nor a 3D tv.
As for Doraemon, we admit that we had grown out of it a long time back. We admit, we used to watch the BM-dubbed cartoons (known for its high-pitch voice acting) and bought the BM-subbed comics. Asides from the short stories, there were the longer adventures that took up an entire book, featured a fair number of gadgets and had fantastic plot lines as compared to the mundane everyday setting as found in the short stories. Also perhaps we enjoyed it more because there was no "moral to the story" as found in the short stories.
The one we enjoyed most was Nobita's Great Adventure Into The Underworld, dealing with magic and demons.
So we got to watch the 2007 movie remake of that story, and we're actually surprised at ourself for not watching the original movie. Still, we remembered bits and pieces of the manga and were pleasantly surprised that the remake had great artwork and animation (like Doraemon's reactions when he sees a mouse!).
There were some changes that makes us want to get the book to read through again, just to see what they've removed and/or added.
The funny thing is, the DVD only has the cartoon in either Chinese (which we have limited comprehension) or Malay. In Malay, the translation is fine (although we're a bit puzzled at certain names like Lampu Moonlight and Bintang Devil instead of a full Malay translation), but we're somewhat disappointed by the expressions of the voice acting. Japanese anime tend to be rather extremely expressive and the voice acting here seems only half there to us. It's good, but could be better.
If we had the option we would have watched the show in Japanese with English subs. Perhaps somewhere out there there's a version of the DVD with exactly just that (we're not sure if we're ready for an English subbed version of Doraemon, though...).
Oh well. Now to wait for Disney to release The Little Mermaid in 3D!
Thursday, February 16, 2012
East VS West: Valentine
1. Chap Goh Meh Celebrations
2. Pre-Valentine Prep
3. V-Day
So if it wasn't for the Chief we wouldn't have known that Chap Goh Meh is considered the Chinese Valentine's Day. To us it was always more of a blind-date-fishing day where people throw oranges (and lately bananas...?) into the lake for other people to fish out and call the following day.
Although we can actually picture a scenario where a guy quickly snaps up oranges in a net, starts calling numbers (using a new prepaid sim card instead of his usual mobile number), checks to see which girl answers, and if he doesn't like her he'll hang up quickly and throw her orange back into the lake.
Anyways what this means for us now is that we have to prepare even more for the two days!
Interestingly for Chap Goh Meh this year it was celebrated with the Clan Chief and their friends in a big Chinese New Year dinner celebration, with the, ah, associated games to follow.
These dinners with the Clan Chief, we've never yet gotten over that stressful feeling when dining with them. Perhaps because of the language barrier. But then again we're quite thankful for that language barrier sometimes, it allows us to enforce our shy violet personality that we are.
We've also noticed since Christmas that we don't go window shopping as much as we used to. Gone are the days where we wander around spending the entire evening and night in 1U or MidValley planning out our purchases.
Thankfully (for now) there are still some gift ideas for us to get the Chief, and we've managed to prepare a small gift for Chap Goh Meh and started planning for Valentine's Day.
Yes well we place more emphasis for Valentine's and Christmas while the Chief gets more excited about Chinese New Year. Home decorating will be easy delegated once we stay together.
We've gotten the Valentine's Day card, the presents wrapped, and printed out the iTunes App Store gift (instead of emailing it), and instead of chocolates decided on cookies. We were almost late sending the card, though, but lucky for us the card arrived on the day itself! We're wondering if our postal service actually identify Valentine's Day cards, and hold them only to deliver it on Valentine's Day itself. Truth be told we were expecting The Chief to receive the card only on the 15th.
Now we feel a bit stressed, as if we now must make sure that the card always arrives on the actual day itself!
Amusingly the yearly gift-giving process (birthdays, anniversaries, Valentine's, Christmas) led The Chief to jokingly ask us if it is okay to give us angpows instead in the future.
...because it's not that The Chief doesn't know what to get for us any more, it's more that what we want is extremely expensive.
No objections from us on that statement.
Well this year there's no predetermined dinner plans at any restaurant, in fact we were supposed to have eaten at home and watched Love, Actually or some other DVD. Turns out there was no dinner at home so the both of us made for MidValley for dinner and a movie. Dinner was good without being expensive as is the common belief (we went for ramen and they had a set which worked out cheaper then ordering a la carte, not to mention we had a discount using Citibank), we watched Chronicles (there wasn't any lovey-dovey rom-com this year, no?), walked around a bit and headed back home because, well, it was a working day the following day.
Hmmm darn it we still want to do Love, Actually again one day.
2. Pre-Valentine Prep
3. V-Day
So if it wasn't for the Chief we wouldn't have known that Chap Goh Meh is considered the Chinese Valentine's Day. To us it was always more of a blind-date-fishing day where people throw oranges (and lately bananas...?) into the lake for other people to fish out and call the following day.
Although we can actually picture a scenario where a guy quickly snaps up oranges in a net, starts calling numbers (using a new prepaid sim card instead of his usual mobile number), checks to see which girl answers, and if he doesn't like her he'll hang up quickly and throw her orange back into the lake.
Anyways what this means for us now is that we have to prepare even more for the two days!
Interestingly for Chap Goh Meh this year it was celebrated with the Clan Chief and their friends in a big Chinese New Year dinner celebration, with the, ah, associated games to follow.
These dinners with the Clan Chief, we've never yet gotten over that stressful feeling when dining with them. Perhaps because of the language barrier. But then again we're quite thankful for that language barrier sometimes, it allows us to enforce our shy violet personality that we are.
We've also noticed since Christmas that we don't go window shopping as much as we used to. Gone are the days where we wander around spending the entire evening and night in 1U or MidValley planning out our purchases.
Thankfully (for now) there are still some gift ideas for us to get the Chief, and we've managed to prepare a small gift for Chap Goh Meh and started planning for Valentine's Day.
Yes well we place more emphasis for Valentine's and Christmas while the Chief gets more excited about Chinese New Year. Home decorating will be easy delegated once we stay together.
We've gotten the Valentine's Day card, the presents wrapped, and printed out the iTunes App Store gift (instead of emailing it), and instead of chocolates decided on cookies. We were almost late sending the card, though, but lucky for us the card arrived on the day itself! We're wondering if our postal service actually identify Valentine's Day cards, and hold them only to deliver it on Valentine's Day itself. Truth be told we were expecting The Chief to receive the card only on the 15th.
Now we feel a bit stressed, as if we now must make sure that the card always arrives on the actual day itself!
Amusingly the yearly gift-giving process (birthdays, anniversaries, Valentine's, Christmas) led The Chief to jokingly ask us if it is okay to give us angpows instead in the future.
...because it's not that The Chief doesn't know what to get for us any more, it's more that what we want is extremely expensive.
No objections from us on that statement.
Well this year there's no predetermined dinner plans at any restaurant, in fact we were supposed to have eaten at home and watched Love, Actually or some other DVD. Turns out there was no dinner at home so the both of us made for MidValley for dinner and a movie. Dinner was good without being expensive as is the common belief (we went for ramen and they had a set which worked out cheaper then ordering a la carte, not to mention we had a discount using Citibank), we watched Chronicles (there wasn't any lovey-dovey rom-com this year, no?), walked around a bit and headed back home because, well, it was a working day the following day.
Hmmm darn it we still want to do Love, Actually again one day.
Saturday, February 11, 2012
A Change Would Do You Good
1. And now, for something different.
2. The Subway Challenge comes to a finish.
3. Resolution 2012
So there's this app called Memiary (that started from a website if we're not wrong) that haves you jot down five things that happened every day. A good way for a quick diary entry and to remember things, for sure, although there are days when you certainly won't find five things to jot down.
So we're going to try something different over here.
We're going to try out putting up three entries per post instead. Hopefully this doesn't take longer than an hour to do (somehow we always end up taking ages to blog, never under an hour) but hey, who are we kidding. Even now we're using Blogger on the iPhone to type this out and two-thumb typing isn't better compared to having a physical keyboard to piano our way through a paragraph.
So just this Wednesday we'd somehow come up with the idea to try a diet of Subway sandwiches in replacement of our main meals (lunch, dinner, supper). Goodness knows why, perhaps the image of a tapering figure, like a carrot, came to mind. In any case since Wednesday's Sub-Of-The-Day was Meatball Marinara (if Subway hadn't come up with the SotD specials we wouldn't have even considered this, yes), we didn't see the harm of trying it out till Friday (we don't think we could comply with this diet on the weekends when we're out with the Chief, who may strongly object to having to follow suit just because we had a fancy and were not strictly dieting).
Wednesday started well with us having a late sub lunch, although by gym time in the evening we were aware that a 6-inch sub for lunch will not sustain us during our workout. Had our dinner sub after that and, yes, the supper sub turned out essential (and not too filling, it seemed!).
Thursday we only had two Roast Turkey subs (brunch and late lunch) because we'd promised mum we'd be home for dinner (there was Ipoh salted chicken, how could we resist?).
By Friday...we were thinking of Thai green curry chicken. There was a Secret Recipe near the workplace, we're sure they would have that. We were sick of just having Subway already, far faster than the time McDonalds had the special edition Coke Can glass and we'd ended up eating like crazy to collect...24 glasses.
Anyways we'd our Chicken Slice for lunch and before we headed off for our workout, and the final sub post-workout. And with that experiment done, we got ourself something else for supper.
Ramly Burger, how we've missed you. It's been so long that the price of a daging double special has gone up from RM4 to RM4.80 and we never knew.
And now, resolutions. After two drinking sessions since the start of this year, we've woken up with thankfully no painful hangovers but with that feeling that there's alcohol still inside our stomach that wanted out one way or another. And that nauseating feeling really is a crappy way to start the day, especially worse when on one occasion we were suppose to follow the Chief out early for a bunch of stuff.
The Wrath of Chief, thankfully avoided when we opted to tapau breakfast back to our house instead of eating at the coffeeshop, so we had a little more time to recuperate without losing half the day.
Incidentally the second session resulted from 3 pints of Blackthorn cider. Amazing how our tolerance has gone down the drain. And upon retrospect, we'd neglected to eat something or drink more fluids after we got home, which was probably why we woke up feeling terrible.
So we're making this year's resolution not to have more than 1 pint of beer or not more than 2 units of alcohol. And even this resolution, after being made, was already broken less than a week later. Sigh. Maybe we have to avoid such social gatherings altogether then.
But learning from our past experiences, we'd gone for prawn noodles (with pork intestines! Yum!) after the drinking session, and next morning we woke up feeling fine!
So let's see how well we'll hold on to this resolution before we begin amending the quantity.
2. The Subway Challenge comes to a finish.
3. Resolution 2012
So there's this app called Memiary (that started from a website if we're not wrong) that haves you jot down five things that happened every day. A good way for a quick diary entry and to remember things, for sure, although there are days when you certainly won't find five things to jot down.
So we're going to try something different over here.
We're going to try out putting up three entries per post instead. Hopefully this doesn't take longer than an hour to do (somehow we always end up taking ages to blog, never under an hour) but hey, who are we kidding. Even now we're using Blogger on the iPhone to type this out and two-thumb typing isn't better compared to having a physical keyboard to piano our way through a paragraph.
So just this Wednesday we'd somehow come up with the idea to try a diet of Subway sandwiches in replacement of our main meals (lunch, dinner, supper). Goodness knows why, perhaps the image of a tapering figure, like a carrot, came to mind. In any case since Wednesday's Sub-Of-The-Day was Meatball Marinara (if Subway hadn't come up with the SotD specials we wouldn't have even considered this, yes), we didn't see the harm of trying it out till Friday (we don't think we could comply with this diet on the weekends when we're out with the Chief, who may strongly object to having to follow suit just because we had a fancy and were not strictly dieting).
Wednesday started well with us having a late sub lunch, although by gym time in the evening we were aware that a 6-inch sub for lunch will not sustain us during our workout. Had our dinner sub after that and, yes, the supper sub turned out essential (and not too filling, it seemed!).
Thursday we only had two Roast Turkey subs (brunch and late lunch) because we'd promised mum we'd be home for dinner (there was Ipoh salted chicken, how could we resist?).
By Friday...we were thinking of Thai green curry chicken. There was a Secret Recipe near the workplace, we're sure they would have that. We were sick of just having Subway already, far faster than the time McDonalds had the special edition Coke Can glass and we'd ended up eating like crazy to collect...24 glasses.
Anyways we'd our Chicken Slice for lunch and before we headed off for our workout, and the final sub post-workout. And with that experiment done, we got ourself something else for supper.
Ramly Burger, how we've missed you. It's been so long that the price of a daging double special has gone up from RM4 to RM4.80 and we never knew.
And now, resolutions. After two drinking sessions since the start of this year, we've woken up with thankfully no painful hangovers but with that feeling that there's alcohol still inside our stomach that wanted out one way or another. And that nauseating feeling really is a crappy way to start the day, especially worse when on one occasion we were suppose to follow the Chief out early for a bunch of stuff.
The Wrath of Chief, thankfully avoided when we opted to tapau breakfast back to our house instead of eating at the coffeeshop, so we had a little more time to recuperate without losing half the day.
Incidentally the second session resulted from 3 pints of Blackthorn cider. Amazing how our tolerance has gone down the drain. And upon retrospect, we'd neglected to eat something or drink more fluids after we got home, which was probably why we woke up feeling terrible.
So we're making this year's resolution not to have more than 1 pint of beer or not more than 2 units of alcohol. And even this resolution, after being made, was already broken less than a week later. Sigh. Maybe we have to avoid such social gatherings altogether then.
But learning from our past experiences, we'd gone for prawn noodles (with pork intestines! Yum!) after the drinking session, and next morning we woke up feeling fine!
So let's see how well we'll hold on to this resolution before we begin amending the quantity.
Monday, October 17, 2011
Lunch with the Chief at Manhattan Fish Market one day:
Chief: Ok, I'd enough. The rest is all yours.
Janvier: No lah, you can eat some more one, you just say that because you think I don't eat enough...
Chief: No. It's all yours.
The Chief then pushes all the remaining rice, chips, prawns, squid and fish over to our side of the large square pan.
We push some of the rice and fish back over to The Chief's side.
The Chief pushes some of it back to us.
We push the chips to form a line right in the middle of the pan.
The Chief gives us a look, and then proceeds to use the chips to make an arrow pointing directly at us.
We rearrange the chips to make the Chinese word, 'no'.
The Chief shoves all the chips back to us and say, "You eat."
And that was that.
So we did finish everything but given the amount of food we've been eating the last few days we had to take a quick siesta at the restaurant while the Chief played games on the iPhone.
Thursday, October 06, 2011
Saturday, September 24, 2011
Crafter's Block
We're having crafter's block. It's like writer's block except that this is in the context of our making birthday cards for the Chief's upcoming birthday celebrations.
Sidenote: attempts to plan the Chief's birthday party early has been met by uncertain RSVPs (ie "wah so early ask, I'm not sure free yet or not") so in the end it all ended up going back to the usual last minute emails, postponing and swapping of dates with different groups.
And now, we haven't a clue what to design for the Chief's birthday card. Well actually just as we started typing this we thought of something, but it's gonna need some thinking out how to get it done as we done have the proper resources to do it...
We've been doing this every year now but we're wondering if we can keep the card themes fresh without resembling something already done (except for certain recurring things like space for the group photo and an area for everyone to sign the card).
Actually, it's possible, just that we need to dump in more money getting more embellishments, and perhaps diversify into stamping or embossing, and more time to learn how to properly do so.
For now, we've got to finish this card tonight!
Sidenote: attempts to plan the Chief's birthday party early has been met by uncertain RSVPs (ie "wah so early ask, I'm not sure free yet or not") so in the end it all ended up going back to the usual last minute emails, postponing and swapping of dates with different groups.
And now, we haven't a clue what to design for the Chief's birthday card. Well actually just as we started typing this we thought of something, but it's gonna need some thinking out how to get it done as we done have the proper resources to do it...
We've been doing this every year now but we're wondering if we can keep the card themes fresh without resembling something already done (except for certain recurring things like space for the group photo and an area for everyone to sign the card).
Actually, it's possible, just that we need to dump in more money getting more embellishments, and perhaps diversify into stamping or embossing, and more time to learn how to properly do so.
For now, we've got to finish this card tonight!
Wednesday, September 21, 2011
Buzz Buzz Buzz
You know, if this was perhaps a few years back, we would have probably did a sort of timestamp post, e.g.:
1.27am: Welcome to our waiting room!
1.28am: Welcome to our waiting room!
1.30am: BUZZ BUZZ BUZZ
1.30am: Janvier: Fuck you.
But after going through this experience a couple of times, we're trying to be more patient about this. Also, we'll try to multitask to distract ourself from pulling out our hair when we finally get in only to be foiled halfway when something goes wrong even before we'd even filled in the flight guest details.
Sigh. Even as we're typing this we just lost some good tickets as the promotion price just disappeared due to some bloody error.
Patience.
So instead of just clinging onto the laptop waiting on AirAsia's bogged-down website, we just let it load on the iPad while we work on our other projects.
The experience is almost similar.
Probably the only difference is that we can't multitask on the iPad (ie surf other websites, YouTube) but we've more table space to work with now!
1.27am: Welcome to our waiting room!
1.28am: Welcome to our waiting room!
1.30am: BUZZ BUZZ BUZZ
1.30am: Janvier: Fuck you.
But after going through this experience a couple of times, we're trying to be more patient about this. Also, we'll try to multitask to distract ourself from pulling out our hair when we finally get in only to be foiled halfway when something goes wrong even before we'd even filled in the flight guest details.
Sigh. Even as we're typing this we just lost some good tickets as the promotion price just disappeared due to some bloody error.
Patience.
So instead of just clinging onto the laptop waiting on AirAsia's bogged-down website, we just let it load on the iPad while we work on our other projects.
The experience is almost similar.
Probably the only difference is that we can't multitask on the iPad (ie surf other websites, YouTube) but we've more table space to work with now!
Thursday, September 08, 2011
Final Final Destination?
We guess we were expecting a fair bit from Final Destination 5.
S'been such a long time since the previous Final Destination aka "The Final Destination", which we recall was in 3D (and yes we watched that in 3D), and honestly the show is so formulaic that we never realized that this is the sixth Final Destination movie, actually (and we watched this in 2D).
Only the first movie actually made any impression on us - because of the sinister way everyone died (they actually highlighted that there was a sinister force at work leading to the deaths rather than it being totally coincidental!) and the way the cast tried to figure out who's the next victim etc. The other movies in the series...well, just before the end credits of Final Destination 5, they showed snippets from all the previous movies, and that helped jog our memory.
In Final Destination 5, it starts out the same: the main hero gets a vision of impending doom where everyone dies graphically, panics and creates a scene, then he and some others escape and cheats death, only to mysteriously die one by one later on.
The death of the first survivor, that was a treat. The way it focused on so many hazards really had us wondering just how the victim would die! The way the victim died, though, had us scratching our head as we can't really see it happening in real life - it was rather Happy Tree Friends. The second victim received similar treatment, focusing on different hazards that had us all guessing.
After that...everything seemed a blur as if the movie couldn't kill the victims fast enough.
Anyways, somewhere near the end of the movie we had an aha moment (let's not spoil it). What further made it an aha moment was when we realized something else that caught our attention just before the first survivor/victim died.
This aha moment was further reinforced at the end of the movie, but it's such that not everyone would realize why. So we felt like checking up to see if we were correct regarding our aha moment.
Hence when we got back home, the Chief and us started watching Final Destination 1. It turned out the Chief couldn't remember watching the movie so we watched the beginning till the point when the plane exploded, and onwards for a couple of creative deaths before calling it a night.
And yes, our aha moment turned out to be correct. And we're hoping this means that there will be no more Final Destination movies!
Tuesday, September 06, 2011
I WANNA GO SOMEWHERE FOR RAYA
So says the subject of the email thread that was initiated by lad last month in preparation for the long weekend.
So in the email discussions throughout August it was planned for a hike to Chiling Falls (at least we think it was Chiling...we opted out off as we already went hiking with them a couple of months earlier and didn't feel like going hiking again so soon), a day for lunch at Coliseum and boardgaming, a barbeque and potluck dinner and a trip to Sunway Lagoon!
Gosh.
We didn't even need to pack or get stuck in any sort of traffic jam.
So for us the holidays started with a trip to Coliseum for their Chateaubriand Steak. It's been a while since we've been to Coliseum, and fortunately for us the place was opened on the first day of Raya itself! A good start to the day with steak and beer.
After that it was over to esteban's house for some boardgames - we tried this game called Wits And Wagers, where players try to answer American trivia and then bet on the answers they feel closest to the actual answer. All the answers were number based and you'd to bet on the nearest answer without going higher than the actual answer. Mechanic-wise the game was okay, being short with only 7 questions, but American trivia can be a tad limiting for us over here.
After Wits And Wagers, we moved on to That's Life! It's been quite a long time since we've played this game and somehow there wasn't that sense of analysis paralysis as we used to remember from our early games...
After That's Life!, lad decided to start his test-run cooking of siew yoke for the upcoming BBQ. Lad paid RM60 for two large chunks of raw pork from Tesco, and rightly so wanted to test out the recipe he found first. After an hour of roasting in the oven, with some airing now and then and lots of getting rid of the oil that seeped out, lad had a winner recipe! It was absolutely crunchy and yummy! So good, that before anyone thought to take a photo the entire piece was cut up and finished in minutes.
Barbeque night was another night of fun! This time it was decided that everyone had to make something for the potluck - no one was to bring along take outs. We suppose quite a number of people were adverse to KFC. Still, there was quite a lot to expect! There's the chicken wings, sausages and meatballs provided by otousan, the host, lemon provided a carton of beer, the Chief made soya cincau and a jelly dessert, NJAPF brought a salad with chicken in her special secret sauce, 'Vin brought borsch soup, Puddy made nanchos with melted cheese, Stewardess Sal and her Banker Boi supplied lemang with beef and chicken rendang, lad brought more siew yoke, esteban made ravioli, and Stewardess Sue and her friend made a banoffee pie. Us? We scrounged Tesco, MBG and Cold Storage for assorted fruits to go with some Tip Top ice cream.
The verdict by the end of the party?
1. Everyone bringing something tends to lead to a LOT of food. So much that some force feeding may be required.
2. 'Vin says NO MORE SOUP. This because the previous potluck saw a pot of spinach soup left untouched and this time because 'Vin inadvertedly made two big pots of rather sweet borsch soup.
By 10pm everyone was dead tired and the party ended.
And next morning, Sunway Lagoon!
It's actually our first time at Sunway Lagoon. To be exact, our first time visiting the theme parks in Sunway Lagoon as opposed to going there for some event (and Sunway does well when it comes to providing food and entertainment for their events!). Only 6 of us ended up going: lad, esteban, otousan, 'Vin, lemon and us - in this case six was the optimal number: 2 lockers can fit our belongings, the Congo Ride (a water slide where you slide down on a mat) had 6 lanes, allowing us all to race each other down, not to mention an even number meant we could share tubes to ride down the Phyton Ride.
We spent the day at the wet park and at the wildlife park after that (because it was the nearest, we suppose). We wouldn't have mind spending the entire day at the wet park if they had had more rides, rather than 3 main rides. Since we weren't around the wave pool at the right time to experience the wave (instead we caught sight of couples lined up along the wall face sucking like there wasn't anyone else there) we found ourselves at the wildlife park watching the interactive wildlife show (where a macaw did tricks, a wee German girl got to hold a phyton and kissed it, and everyone wanted to touch a rather fat civet cat, including us), walked about looking at all the animals and then spending half an hour hoping to see the arapaimas being fed (we left in the end after a no-show by the fish).
Left around 4ish as everyone only had breakfast and were starving by then. Will we go back again? Not too sure. The last time everyone else went there were years ago, we're thinking it'll be years again when we would go there again, and it would probably with everyone's children by then. Lunch/Dinner was at Hartz Chicken Buffet (again, this is another place that would be visited once in a few years somehow) before everyone left for home.
On the weekend the Chief and us visited the IT Fair at MidValley (for the auctions again, and once again left empty-handed), did some looking about at Low Yat and Sungei Wang and Pavilion, watched Final Destination 5 in the cinema followed by Final Destination 1 and 4Bia back home,
Come Sunday, the Chief and us celebrated the last day of the long weekend by heading down to Klang for a bah kut teh breakfast.
Reaching home we spent the morning eating John King egg tarts and eating soya cincau ice lollies (the Chief had an extra tin of cincau and carton of soya milk!) while finishing up Final Destination, which we initially only intended to watch the beginning (we had an aha moment watching Final Destination 5 and just wanted to check something) but ended up watching the entire show.
We'd suggested tapau-ing some pork home for lunch with Nissin noodles, but decided against OD-ing on pork and so ended up with herbal salted chicken from Damansara Uptown instead. The Chief deboned the chicken first while we cooked the noodles, the Chief was the lucky one with the wishbone, and yes, there was excess chicken so we packed the remaining chicken for breakfast the next day.
And now...after almost a week on holiday, the backlash is TERRIBLE.
We didn't even need to pack or get stuck in any sort of traffic jam.
So for us the holidays started with a trip to Coliseum for their Chateaubriand Steak. It's been a while since we've been to Coliseum, and fortunately for us the place was opened on the first day of Raya itself! A good start to the day with steak and beer.
After that it was over to esteban's house for some boardgames - we tried this game called Wits And Wagers, where players try to answer American trivia and then bet on the answers they feel closest to the actual answer. All the answers were number based and you'd to bet on the nearest answer without going higher than the actual answer. Mechanic-wise the game was okay, being short with only 7 questions, but American trivia can be a tad limiting for us over here.
After Wits And Wagers, we moved on to That's Life! It's been quite a long time since we've played this game and somehow there wasn't that sense of analysis paralysis as we used to remember from our early games...
After That's Life!, lad decided to start his test-run cooking of siew yoke for the upcoming BBQ. Lad paid RM60 for two large chunks of raw pork from Tesco, and rightly so wanted to test out the recipe he found first. After an hour of roasting in the oven, with some airing now and then and lots of getting rid of the oil that seeped out, lad had a winner recipe! It was absolutely crunchy and yummy! So good, that before anyone thought to take a photo the entire piece was cut up and finished in minutes.
Barbeque night was another night of fun! This time it was decided that everyone had to make something for the potluck - no one was to bring along take outs. We suppose quite a number of people were adverse to KFC. Still, there was quite a lot to expect! There's the chicken wings, sausages and meatballs provided by otousan, the host, lemon provided a carton of beer, the Chief made soya cincau and a jelly dessert, NJAPF brought a salad with chicken in her special secret sauce, 'Vin brought borsch soup, Puddy made nanchos with melted cheese, Stewardess Sal and her Banker Boi supplied lemang with beef and chicken rendang, lad brought more siew yoke, esteban made ravioli, and Stewardess Sue and her friend made a banoffee pie. Us? We scrounged Tesco, MBG and Cold Storage for assorted fruits to go with some Tip Top ice cream.
The verdict by the end of the party?
1. Everyone bringing something tends to lead to a LOT of food. So much that some force feeding may be required.
2. 'Vin says NO MORE SOUP. This because the previous potluck saw a pot of spinach soup left untouched and this time because 'Vin inadvertedly made two big pots of rather sweet borsch soup.
By 10pm everyone was dead tired and the party ended.
And next morning, Sunway Lagoon!
It's actually our first time at Sunway Lagoon. To be exact, our first time visiting the theme parks in Sunway Lagoon as opposed to going there for some event (and Sunway does well when it comes to providing food and entertainment for their events!). Only 6 of us ended up going: lad, esteban, otousan, 'Vin, lemon and us - in this case six was the optimal number: 2 lockers can fit our belongings, the Congo Ride (a water slide where you slide down on a mat) had 6 lanes, allowing us all to race each other down, not to mention an even number meant we could share tubes to ride down the Phyton Ride.
We spent the day at the wet park and at the wildlife park after that (because it was the nearest, we suppose). We wouldn't have mind spending the entire day at the wet park if they had had more rides, rather than 3 main rides. Since we weren't around the wave pool at the right time to experience the wave (instead we caught sight of couples lined up along the wall face sucking like there wasn't anyone else there) we found ourselves at the wildlife park watching the interactive wildlife show (where a macaw did tricks, a wee German girl got to hold a phyton and kissed it, and everyone wanted to touch a rather fat civet cat, including us), walked about looking at all the animals and then spending half an hour hoping to see the arapaimas being fed (we left in the end after a no-show by the fish).
Left around 4ish as everyone only had breakfast and were starving by then. Will we go back again? Not too sure. The last time everyone else went there were years ago, we're thinking it'll be years again when we would go there again, and it would probably with everyone's children by then. Lunch/Dinner was at Hartz Chicken Buffet (again, this is another place that would be visited once in a few years somehow) before everyone left for home.
On the weekend the Chief and us visited the IT Fair at MidValley (for the auctions again, and once again left empty-handed), did some looking about at Low Yat and Sungei Wang and Pavilion, watched Final Destination 5 in the cinema followed by Final Destination 1 and 4Bia back home,
Come Sunday, the Chief and us celebrated the last day of the long weekend by heading down to Klang for a bah kut teh breakfast.
Reaching home we spent the morning eating John King egg tarts and eating soya cincau ice lollies (the Chief had an extra tin of cincau and carton of soya milk!) while finishing up Final Destination, which we initially only intended to watch the beginning (we had an aha moment watching Final Destination 5 and just wanted to check something) but ended up watching the entire show.
We'd suggested tapau-ing some pork home for lunch with Nissin noodles, but decided against OD-ing on pork and so ended up with herbal salted chicken from Damansara Uptown instead. The Chief deboned the chicken first while we cooked the noodles, the Chief was the lucky one with the wishbone, and yes, there was excess chicken so we packed the remaining chicken for breakfast the next day.
And now...after almost a week on holiday, the backlash is TERRIBLE.
Tuesday, August 23, 2011
Office Communications
Colleague: Hello, [company].
Janvier (mechanical voice): [Colleague], zhao an!
Colleague: Shi me zhao an? Shi wan an!
Janvier (still mechanical voice): Ah! Dui bu qi! [Colleague], wan an!
Colleague: Wan an!
Janvier: Ni hao bu hao?!
Colleague: Wo hen hao? Ni le?
Janvier: Wo ye hen hao!
Colleague: Hen hao hen hao!
Janvier: Wo yao wen ta ni...
Colleague: Ah, shi me?
Janvier (normal voice): It's about the end of this year, when are the dates that we're supposed to be coming down...
Yes well we told our colleague we'd have to use Google Translate if we wanted to speak in Mandarin any further.
Janvier (mechanical voice): [Colleague], zhao an!
Colleague: Shi me zhao an? Shi wan an!
Janvier (still mechanical voice): Ah! Dui bu qi! [Colleague], wan an!
Colleague: Wan an!
Janvier: Ni hao bu hao?!
Colleague: Wo hen hao? Ni le?
Janvier: Wo ye hen hao!
Colleague: Hen hao hen hao!
Janvier: Wo yao wen ta ni...
Colleague: Ah, shi me?
Janvier (normal voice): It's about the end of this year, when are the dates that we're supposed to be coming down...
Yes well we told our colleague we'd have to use Google Translate if we wanted to speak in Mandarin any further.
Wednesday, August 10, 2011
Road Rage
Right this has to be jotted down before we procrastinate any further.
So yesterday we decided to break the routine and head to FF 1 Mont Kiara instead for Klevin's Pump instead of the usual cardio classes, and on our way there we had a rather unpleasant encounter with what would be a road bully. Unpleasant in that, after a day of nothing but good things and laughter thanks to Foxtrot and The Japanese Tradition YouTubes, this one bit soured up the rest of the day.
Start with us heading down Jalan Dato Abu Bakar towards the T-junction where one would turn left to Phileo Damansara or right towards Bangsar and Hartamas. Along the way, this white Mitsubishi on the right lane makes a good show of showing that he's the kind of driver that drives aggressively, cuts into other people's lane without signaling and cutting it real fine short of causing scraped bumpers and blares his horn at you for signaling to move into the left lane just because he's currently in said lane and speeding his arse off to beat the traffic lights.
Oh well since this is Malaysia, it's quite likely that many people may have started off as good, safe drivers, but given how aggressive the drivers are over here anyone who didn't learn to drive aggressively as a form of defense against other aggressive drivers would end up spending hours on the road due to giving way to callous drivers cutting into their lanes, forcing them to drive oh so very slowly, and waiting ages in a long queue as others instead choose to drive as close to the bottleneck before cutting back into the already congested lane...
So anyways this road bully started off at us by trying to cut into our lane when he drew level, or was perhaps just a couple of inches ahead of our car. You know, that kind of cutting-into-other-people's-lane-by-edging-in-slowly-and-forcing-the-other-car-to-slow-down-or-move-into-the-next-lane-or-else-get-into-an-accident method. Soon enough he realizes that he wouldn't be able to cut in that way and so he cuts in behind us.
That kind of overtaking could be expected on the road, really.
Then later on as we arrived at the traffic lights at said T-junction, we were on the leftmost lane, just slightly ahead of the left exit to Phileo Damansara. Said road bully so happens to be behind us and wants to take the exit.
Instead of waiting for a green light, so that we could move ahead and he could head his own way, he decided that he couldn't wait and honked for us to move forward and make space for him to squeeze into the exit lane.
(We understand that this description is not easy to picture unless one is rather familiar with said location.)
Anyways. Fellow honks us to move forward. We can't move forward unless we want to knock the bumper of the car in front of us, so we didn't budge. Fellow honks again and for longer.
And the next thing you know said road bully decides to go ahead and squeeze in, and somehow manages to squeeze between the curb and our car...
...And proceeds to wind down his window and hammer on our front passenger window, before driving off down Phileo Damansara.
Whoa. That's a first.
Since he had to squeeze his way through, we had enough time to whip out our iPhone and jot down his car plate number. We then proceeded on to 1 Mont Kiara, and after a quick chat with the Chief (via Whatsapp) and a gym friend, it was agreed upon that this would count as road bully behaviour. However, we weren't sure just what we could achieve by reporting this incident as we weren't hurt and Aidan wasn't damaged (save for the road bully's oily smudge of his knuckles on the window).
So after gym and dinner, we headed off to our nearby police station and made a report. We thought it best to give ourself a measure of protection - if we should cross paths with him again and things took a turn for the worse, we would have a report to back us up. Also it would be good to help others - we're thinking that if someone else falls victim to him then our report might confirm his behaviour.
Armed with his car plate number, we walked into the station to make our report. Sitting at the counter, the officer took our statement, we showed her using our iPhone Maps where the incident took place, and then proceeded to open Notes to show the information we took down.
Before she looked at the note, the officer wanted to see the location again (she probably wasn't too familiar with the area), hence we switched back to Maps. The iPhone was on the table facing her. Once she was done, we switched back to Notes - only we had accidentally touched the screen somehow and was about to send the note as an email - the draft screen appeared.
We wanted to cancel the draft, and at the pop-up asking us if we wanted to delete the draft we tapped the red 'Delete Draft' button...
...only...
...our note seemed to have disappeared as well. Somehow the note got deleted as well. And we couldn't remember the car plate number save for a couple of letters (which was why we wrote the note in the first place).
The disappointment, despair and embarrassment we suffered at such misfortune! To be let down at the last minute!
In the end the officer did continue on to finish the report, and then provided us with the station's telephone number in case of anything. So we guess, this is the best there is for now.
At least we're thankful that it didn't lead to any fights nor damage to our car!
So yesterday we decided to break the routine and head to FF 1 Mont Kiara instead for Klevin's Pump instead of the usual cardio classes, and on our way there we had a rather unpleasant encounter with what would be a road bully. Unpleasant in that, after a day of nothing but good things and laughter thanks to Foxtrot and The Japanese Tradition YouTubes, this one bit soured up the rest of the day.
Start with us heading down Jalan Dato Abu Bakar towards the T-junction where one would turn left to Phileo Damansara or right towards Bangsar and Hartamas. Along the way, this white Mitsubishi on the right lane makes a good show of showing that he's the kind of driver that drives aggressively, cuts into other people's lane without signaling and cutting it real fine short of causing scraped bumpers and blares his horn at you for signaling to move into the left lane just because he's currently in said lane and speeding his arse off to beat the traffic lights.
Oh well since this is Malaysia, it's quite likely that many people may have started off as good, safe drivers, but given how aggressive the drivers are over here anyone who didn't learn to drive aggressively as a form of defense against other aggressive drivers would end up spending hours on the road due to giving way to callous drivers cutting into their lanes, forcing them to drive oh so very slowly, and waiting ages in a long queue as others instead choose to drive as close to the bottleneck before cutting back into the already congested lane...
So anyways this road bully started off at us by trying to cut into our lane when he drew level, or was perhaps just a couple of inches ahead of our car. You know, that kind of cutting-into-other-people's-lane-by-edging-in-slowly-and-forcing-the-other-car-to-slow-down-or-move-into-the-next-lane-or-else-get-into-an-accident method. Soon enough he realizes that he wouldn't be able to cut in that way and so he cuts in behind us.
That kind of overtaking could be expected on the road, really.
Then later on as we arrived at the traffic lights at said T-junction, we were on the leftmost lane, just slightly ahead of the left exit to Phileo Damansara. Said road bully so happens to be behind us and wants to take the exit.
Instead of waiting for a green light, so that we could move ahead and he could head his own way, he decided that he couldn't wait and honked for us to move forward and make space for him to squeeze into the exit lane.
(We understand that this description is not easy to picture unless one is rather familiar with said location.)
Anyways. Fellow honks us to move forward. We can't move forward unless we want to knock the bumper of the car in front of us, so we didn't budge. Fellow honks again and for longer.
And the next thing you know said road bully decides to go ahead and squeeze in, and somehow manages to squeeze between the curb and our car...
...And proceeds to wind down his window and hammer on our front passenger window, before driving off down Phileo Damansara.
Whoa. That's a first.
Since he had to squeeze his way through, we had enough time to whip out our iPhone and jot down his car plate number. We then proceeded on to 1 Mont Kiara, and after a quick chat with the Chief (via Whatsapp) and a gym friend, it was agreed upon that this would count as road bully behaviour. However, we weren't sure just what we could achieve by reporting this incident as we weren't hurt and Aidan wasn't damaged (save for the road bully's oily smudge of his knuckles on the window).
So after gym and dinner, we headed off to our nearby police station and made a report. We thought it best to give ourself a measure of protection - if we should cross paths with him again and things took a turn for the worse, we would have a report to back us up. Also it would be good to help others - we're thinking that if someone else falls victim to him then our report might confirm his behaviour.
Armed with his car plate number, we walked into the station to make our report. Sitting at the counter, the officer took our statement, we showed her using our iPhone Maps where the incident took place, and then proceeded to open Notes to show the information we took down.
Before she looked at the note, the officer wanted to see the location again (she probably wasn't too familiar with the area), hence we switched back to Maps. The iPhone was on the table facing her. Once she was done, we switched back to Notes - only we had accidentally touched the screen somehow and was about to send the note as an email - the draft screen appeared.
We wanted to cancel the draft, and at the pop-up asking us if we wanted to delete the draft we tapped the red 'Delete Draft' button...
...only...
...our note seemed to have disappeared as well. Somehow the note got deleted as well. And we couldn't remember the car plate number save for a couple of letters (which was why we wrote the note in the first place).
The disappointment, despair and embarrassment we suffered at such misfortune! To be let down at the last minute!
In the end the officer did continue on to finish the report, and then provided us with the station's telephone number in case of anything. So we guess, this is the best there is for now.
At least we're thankful that it didn't lead to any fights nor damage to our car!
Tuesday, July 26, 2011
Parents vs Grandparents
We've heard it said that parents discipline their kids while grandparents spoil their grandchildren. Something like that.
And in the case of our niece, this is proving to be slightly true. Not that her parents are strict on her (goodness for parents to be strict disciplinarians to a wee toddler?) but with her grandparents the dotage is far more obvious (in addition to the usual attention babies get!).
For in addition to her usual meals, she's getting McDonald's soft serve ice cream to snack on while her dinner's cooking and Cupcake Chic cupcakes for tea time. Her grandmum even had us searching at three Starbucks branches for eclairs for her next day breakfast. When we told our sister about our hunting for eclairs, she commented that bread and butter would have sufficed for her breakfast.
Of course, the reason for our hunting for eclairs was because there wasn't any bread in the house...
Anyways it's probably a good thing that our niece is still too young to fully appreciate that she's being pampered loads by the grandparents, otherwise our niece's parents will have a heck of a time when they get their daughter back!
And in the case of our niece, this is proving to be slightly true. Not that her parents are strict on her (goodness for parents to be strict disciplinarians to a wee toddler?) but with her grandparents the dotage is far more obvious (in addition to the usual attention babies get!).
For in addition to her usual meals, she's getting McDonald's soft serve ice cream to snack on while her dinner's cooking and Cupcake Chic cupcakes for tea time. Her grandmum even had us searching at three Starbucks branches for eclairs for her next day breakfast. When we told our sister about our hunting for eclairs, she commented that bread and butter would have sufficed for her breakfast.
Of course, the reason for our hunting for eclairs was because there wasn't any bread in the house...
Anyways it's probably a good thing that our niece is still too young to fully appreciate that she's being pampered loads by the grandparents, otherwise our niece's parents will have a heck of a time when they get their daughter back!
Friday, July 22, 2011
Spa-cation
Now during the last MATTA Fair, the Chief and us spent a bit of time getting some vouchers. This inlcuded vouchers for Lavender Spa in Sri Petaling, which we decided to use on a day where we'd nothing planned.
Now, our expectations of the place were rather, frankly, that it was of the kind that you might see in the Hong Kong TV serials (of the rich family / business tycoon variety) where the actors would at some point be meeting at a spa and the scene would be at the jacuzzi area, only in our case we wouldn't expect the spa to be posh to the extent that there won't be anyone else.
No way would we expect a Balinese haven where the entire day would be spent in some flower scented hot tub or milk bath followed by a 2 hour aromatherapy massage, facials and other such delights.
Hence, we were rather impressed that Lavender Spa's setup was far more, well, modern and well-maintained than we gave it credit for (we're rather cynical of photographs - half the time they never turn out as shown). It did well to allay our concerns of spending the entire day in a run-down dingy spa.
The lockers were secured using not one but two keycards (one assigned to us and another by the locker supervisor), although the downside of it is that it's a bit more of a hassle to access the locker whenever we wanted to. We'd to change into some oversized robe and shorts that could definitely look better, comfortable as it may have been. It certainly put us in mind of hospitals and prisons in a way.
The entire place was clean, there were massage chairs each fitted with a tv screen and headphones, the cafeteria for free food (although they state that they would charge us for any excess food left unfinished), a sort of AV room for movies, a massage area, and even a hair salon. Oh and let's not forget the jacuzzi, steam room, sauna, and some sort of hydrotherapy pool where you can be blasted by jets of water far harder than the regular jacuzzi.
Occassionally the staff would come up and ask everyone if they were interested in getting their hair washed and blown, or for the massage.
Our vouchers included a massage and a hair wash, and well, we won't say our experience of the massage was good. Not because the Chinese lady didn't know how to give a good massage (meh) but because she spent most of the time lamenting the fact that we didn't understand Mandarin. Since we could still doze off and since we didn't need to pay anything extra, we tuned her out and left her to get on with it.
As for the rest of the day...
Eat (and watch Animal Planet).
Play Tiny Towers (the game was just released not long ago then and we'd just downloaded it befoe heading to the spa).
Watch Animal Planet while lounging on the massage chair.
Eat (and watch Animal Planet).
Watch Animal Planet while once more lounging on the massage chair.
Use the jacuzzi and hydrotherapy thingamabob (and watch Animal Planet).
Shower.
Eat and play Tiny Tower (while taking a break from Animal Planet).
Have our hair washed while our phone charges on one of the power points usually meant for the hairdryer (because Tiny Tower is one hell of a battery sink).
Overall, it was an ok experience that didn't have us raving to go back for more, and if we didn't have our iPhone and didn't bring any other form of entertainment we would have been stuck watching Animal Planet the entire day. Waitaminute, we almost did spend the entire day watching Animal Planet (not that that's a bad thing, AP's actually rather interesting).
In some way it was like taking a little break without having to go far or spending a lot, unlike our other trips. And we certainly did manage to just chill for the entire day. Chalk it up to having to spend the entire day cut off from the outside world.
Of course we could also almost experience the same thing (to a lesser degree) by spending the entire day at The Curve - we can chill at Starbucks at Borders in a sofa with any book we want, we could take a shower at the gym, and head to iKea and chill even more in the concept rooms. Only thing missing would be the free flow of food, though...
Now, our expectations of the place were rather, frankly, that it was of the kind that you might see in the Hong Kong TV serials (of the rich family / business tycoon variety) where the actors would at some point be meeting at a spa and the scene would be at the jacuzzi area, only in our case we wouldn't expect the spa to be posh to the extent that there won't be anyone else.
No way would we expect a Balinese haven where the entire day would be spent in some flower scented hot tub or milk bath followed by a 2 hour aromatherapy massage, facials and other such delights.
Hence, we were rather impressed that Lavender Spa's setup was far more, well, modern and well-maintained than we gave it credit for (we're rather cynical of photographs - half the time they never turn out as shown). It did well to allay our concerns of spending the entire day in a run-down dingy spa.
The lockers were secured using not one but two keycards (one assigned to us and another by the locker supervisor), although the downside of it is that it's a bit more of a hassle to access the locker whenever we wanted to. We'd to change into some oversized robe and shorts that could definitely look better, comfortable as it may have been. It certainly put us in mind of hospitals and prisons in a way.
The entire place was clean, there were massage chairs each fitted with a tv screen and headphones, the cafeteria for free food (although they state that they would charge us for any excess food left unfinished), a sort of AV room for movies, a massage area, and even a hair salon. Oh and let's not forget the jacuzzi, steam room, sauna, and some sort of hydrotherapy pool where you can be blasted by jets of water far harder than the regular jacuzzi.
Occassionally the staff would come up and ask everyone if they were interested in getting their hair washed and blown, or for the massage.
Our vouchers included a massage and a hair wash, and well, we won't say our experience of the massage was good. Not because the Chinese lady didn't know how to give a good massage (meh) but because she spent most of the time lamenting the fact that we didn't understand Mandarin. Since we could still doze off and since we didn't need to pay anything extra, we tuned her out and left her to get on with it.
As for the rest of the day...
Eat (and watch Animal Planet).
Play Tiny Towers (the game was just released not long ago then and we'd just downloaded it befoe heading to the spa).
Watch Animal Planet while lounging on the massage chair.
Eat (and watch Animal Planet).
Watch Animal Planet while once more lounging on the massage chair.
Use the jacuzzi and hydrotherapy thingamabob (and watch Animal Planet).
Shower.
Eat and play Tiny Tower (while taking a break from Animal Planet).
Have our hair washed while our phone charges on one of the power points usually meant for the hairdryer (because Tiny Tower is one hell of a battery sink).
Overall, it was an ok experience that didn't have us raving to go back for more, and if we didn't have our iPhone and didn't bring any other form of entertainment we would have been stuck watching Animal Planet the entire day. Waitaminute, we almost did spend the entire day watching Animal Planet (not that that's a bad thing, AP's actually rather interesting).
In some way it was like taking a little break without having to go far or spending a lot, unlike our other trips. And we certainly did manage to just chill for the entire day. Chalk it up to having to spend the entire day cut off from the outside world.
Of course we could also almost experience the same thing (to a lesser degree) by spending the entire day at The Curve - we can chill at Starbucks at Borders in a sofa with any book we want, we could take a shower at the gym, and head to iKea and chill even more in the concept rooms. Only thing missing would be the free flow of food, though...
Friday, June 24, 2011
Buyer's Remorse
'Tis a term we learnt only a couple of months back but something which we are familiar with.
And so it happened that when the iPad 2 was finally launched here we sort of found ourself arriving at MidValley at 9am to queue up together with NaanBleu.
Now, there are some things in life that we think we should experience at least once before we find ourself unable to do so. Bungee jumping is still someone on that list, we think that we'll only be able to experience such when our wallet is as elastic as the bungee rope.
Queueing up to get a hyped-up item is another. But we do draw the line at queueing up for over a day (we were tempted to start queueing up at 11pm the day before, though, as we were driving past MidValley around the time...) but we don't see how we can actually stay in a non-moving line for over half a day, really. What if you need to answer the call of nature? Will others in the queue be good-natured enough to let you keep your spot? What about meals?
Anyways we opted to try arriving at 9am - thankfully parking was still plentiful and the queue, well, the queue was only halfway around the corridor.
Joining the queue, we realized we made one mistake: while we pretty much reminded ourself to bring along a fan, we ended up leaving it in the car. And central air-conditioning in MidValley doesn't start till after 10am. Thankfully we arrived before NaanBleu so we texted her to bring a fan for us, else we'd be sweating like mad the entire morning.
Before the store opened, staff from Machines were walking down the queue, asking everyone in line how many iPad 2s were they looking to buy (a maximum of two) and for which model and colour. Overall, we think they did this quite well, it was well organized. They had cards corresponding to the number of iPads of each model and colour, so once they'd run out of cards for a particular type it meant that said type was sold out.
Well we admit throughout the entire time we were queueing and before the fellows from Machines got to us, we were still in two minds as to whether we wanted to get an iPad 2 or not. We could pretty much justify our purchase one way or another (the Chief had, in a moment of exasperation after trying to disassuade us from getting one during the days prior to the launch, accurately observed, "If you really want it you will find all sorts of reasons to get it.". Mind you, the Chief was probably using reverse psychology but it wouldn't have affected us, we were still undecided about it till launch day...)
Even when it was finally our turn to decide on a model (which was easy: white 16GB wifi-only), during the entire time queueing up till we reached the cashier we were already facing buyer's remorse.
It's interesting. Feeling buyer's remorse when we haven't even paid for the iPad 2 and could have asked anyone else in the line if they were interested in having ours.
But be damned if we would give away the iPad 2 after queueing up for it! So buyer's remorse it was.
The queue progressed fairly slowly, even once when we were at the entrance of Machines. It's a good thing we came with NaanBleu for this, we kept each other company and occasionally chatted with others in the queue, asking others if they were going to get casings as well, or data plans, etc. We even bumped into Caipifruta's Awesomeville Aaron who was there with his dad, the lucky bugger - his dad was getting him a white 64GB (can't recall if it was the 3G or wifi model)!
Once at the entrance they had staff acting as bouncers, slowly letting the line trickle through, and when we got in we realized why...
...there was another queue once inside Machines! By this time it was nearly 1pm and our feet and legs were letting us know that they've been holding our weight for some 4 hours now.
And soon it was all over. We paid up, got the iPad 2 in a big Machines plastic bag, made our way out and started window shopping for casings while NaanBleu bought screen protectors and had the staff fix it on for her. We had ours activated within the store, and after that we headed off to McDonalds for brunch and to get off our feet.
Now this, we found the experience to be slightly tiring but it wasn't all that bad. Machines had it pretty well organized, even though with 4 cashiers payment was still terriby slow but we'd say that there weren't any bad moments to the entire experience. Would we do it again? Probably not, haha, but you can never tell so far with Apple and their magical revolutionary marketing.
Now, the Bon Odori, the idea of having to head out to get all sweaty isn't putting smiles on our face (even though it was a fun experience) but the Chief has not been to the Bon Odori before, and, well, it's almost 5 years since our last Bon Odori...
And so it happened that when the iPad 2 was finally launched here we sort of found ourself arriving at MidValley at 9am to queue up together with NaanBleu.
Now, there are some things in life that we think we should experience at least once before we find ourself unable to do so. Bungee jumping is still someone on that list, we think that we'll only be able to experience such when our wallet is as elastic as the bungee rope.
Queueing up to get a hyped-up item is another. But we do draw the line at queueing up for over a day (we were tempted to start queueing up at 11pm the day before, though, as we were driving past MidValley around the time...) but we don't see how we can actually stay in a non-moving line for over half a day, really. What if you need to answer the call of nature? Will others in the queue be good-natured enough to let you keep your spot? What about meals?
Anyways we opted to try arriving at 9am - thankfully parking was still plentiful and the queue, well, the queue was only halfway around the corridor.
Joining the queue, we realized we made one mistake: while we pretty much reminded ourself to bring along a fan, we ended up leaving it in the car. And central air-conditioning in MidValley doesn't start till after 10am. Thankfully we arrived before NaanBleu so we texted her to bring a fan for us, else we'd be sweating like mad the entire morning.Before the store opened, staff from Machines were walking down the queue, asking everyone in line how many iPad 2s were they looking to buy (a maximum of two) and for which model and colour. Overall, we think they did this quite well, it was well organized. They had cards corresponding to the number of iPads of each model and colour, so once they'd run out of cards for a particular type it meant that said type was sold out.
Well we admit throughout the entire time we were queueing and before the fellows from Machines got to us, we were still in two minds as to whether we wanted to get an iPad 2 or not. We could pretty much justify our purchase one way or another (the Chief had, in a moment of exasperation after trying to disassuade us from getting one during the days prior to the launch, accurately observed, "If you really want it you will find all sorts of reasons to get it.". Mind you, the Chief was probably using reverse psychology but it wouldn't have affected us, we were still undecided about it till launch day...)
Even when it was finally our turn to decide on a model (which was easy: white 16GB wifi-only), during the entire time queueing up till we reached the cashier we were already facing buyer's remorse.It's interesting. Feeling buyer's remorse when we haven't even paid for the iPad 2 and could have asked anyone else in the line if they were interested in having ours.
But be damned if we would give away the iPad 2 after queueing up for it! So buyer's remorse it was.The queue progressed fairly slowly, even once when we were at the entrance of Machines. It's a good thing we came with NaanBleu for this, we kept each other company and occasionally chatted with others in the queue, asking others if they were going to get casings as well, or data plans, etc. We even bumped into Caipifruta's Awesomeville Aaron who was there with his dad, the lucky bugger - his dad was getting him a white 64GB (can't recall if it was the 3G or wifi model)!
Once at the entrance they had staff acting as bouncers, slowly letting the line trickle through, and when we got in we realized why...
...there was another queue once inside Machines! By this time it was nearly 1pm and our feet and legs were letting us know that they've been holding our weight for some 4 hours now.
And soon it was all over. We paid up, got the iPad 2 in a big Machines plastic bag, made our way out and started window shopping for casings while NaanBleu bought screen protectors and had the staff fix it on for her. We had ours activated within the store, and after that we headed off to McDonalds for brunch and to get off our feet.
Now this, we found the experience to be slightly tiring but it wasn't all that bad. Machines had it pretty well organized, even though with 4 cashiers payment was still terriby slow but we'd say that there weren't any bad moments to the entire experience. Would we do it again? Probably not, haha, but you can never tell so far with Apple and their magical revolutionary marketing.Now, the Bon Odori, the idea of having to head out to get all sweaty isn't putting smiles on our face (even though it was a fun experience) but the Chief has not been to the Bon Odori before, and, well, it's almost 5 years since our last Bon Odori...
Thursday, June 16, 2011
Spring Cleaning 2011
Perhaps more like Summer Cleaning by the time we write about this. Basically this was what got us thinking about how much of a hoarder we are.
And it all started with just one drawer.
From the beginning we had designated a drawer for electronics - old music players, chargers, cables. And in the beginning, the drawer managed to fit everything in with no problem. This was, of course, some 7 years ago. We could dump in everything and still have plenty of room.
Fast forward to the now, and that drawer is full to the brim. If we only kept cables and electronics that we rarely use in there, then we wouldn't bother about it so much. But as we keep our chargers in there too, we dip into the drawer almost every night (given just how often we Whatsapp and check our Facebook/email/feeds, we actually need to charge our iPhone 3GS twice a day).
So sometimes, things get tangled up in there. And there are cables that we're not too sure of their origins, whether they are mini-USB cables that came with our Canon iXus or with our Sony Minidisc player, that kind of thing.
So, we thought, it's time we tried to organize things.
We admit that we sometimes get rather lofty ambitions sometimes (like trying to get our bathroom to look like one of those rather posh hotel bathrooms, not possible but is something we kinda like to dream could be achieved without any sort of renovation...). We blame iKea for this.
But with just one single drawer we pretty much had a practical idea what to do about it: go get some plastic baggies to organize the stuff nicely.
Now this goal is rather straightforward and ought to take not more than an hour, really...
Step 1: Get a fair number of bags from Daiso.
Step 2: Empty out content of drawer.
Step 3: Organize stuff into bags.
Step 4: Neatly pack bags back into drawer.
Except in our case, we also had a few other stuff in said electronics drawer. Some of it, we are well aware of like our collection of playing cards, but we then came across a traveller's pouch that had some old stuff like a confirmation letter and receipt from a B&B that we stayed at in the Lake Gardens District, not to mention a receipt from the old Malaysian Embassy in London, and oddly enough, Sporeland coins. Also, we find a wee envelope of old passport photos.
So we basically emptied out almost everything from the drawer, and started sorting it all out...
And quite likely because of that traveller's pouch we started looking for where some of the contents of said pouch should go. Starting with the coins.
That got us looking in our wardrobe for a couple of camera film containers we know were somewhere in there, because we thought we kept some coins in them. We couldn't remember what currency, though.
And the search for that began our spring cleaning essentially - as certain things were left untouched for a long while now and have not only built up a layer of dust, but have also herded in a bunch of dust bunnies as pets too.
Generally most our spring cleaning tends to happen in the middle of the night - and at a time when we don't really expect to be doing spring cleaning. We'll pick up an object, note the heavy layer of dust, get a tissue and make it wet, wipe said object clean and trash the now-dirty tissue.
Then, we find that said object (in this case the film containers) we just cleaned isn't really what we were looking for, and now we try another object (this time, a large plastic container with more assorted coins in it).
Repeat cleaning process with a couple more tissues.
And find out now that we have souvenir pressed-penny coins from the US and UK in those containers, mixed together with coins from all over, and it should all be more organized.
Sigh. Now remove all Sporeland coins from both film and plastic containers, and try the coin pouch. Dump all Sporeland coins into coin pouch, and when that is full, the overflow to go into the Sporeland wallet as quick accessible change.
Once this is done, we notice that certain stuff we've not touched in ages have dust all over, hey, that Swatch iRony should go back into its box since we're not wearing it, rather than collecting dust...
More cleaning, more dusting, more taking out old stuff and rearranging things within the wardrobe.
Hey, we've sort of abandoned our organizing of the electronics drawer now.
OK, there's still those receipts et cetera from UK, those should go into the box of UK Memorabilia, bring that out, and then we're reminded of birthday cards over the last couple of years that we wanted to file away in the bigger box of General Memorabilia. Start on that, now...
And it's probably some 4 hours later when we've finally organizing the electronics drawer. Some things made it into the trash can all right but most would have survived for another day...
We didn't make more space, but then again the aim for the baggies was to make it easier to pull out the bag containing all our Apple cables and power adapters!
And it all started with just one drawer.
From the beginning we had designated a drawer for electronics - old music players, chargers, cables. And in the beginning, the drawer managed to fit everything in with no problem. This was, of course, some 7 years ago. We could dump in everything and still have plenty of room.
Fast forward to the now, and that drawer is full to the brim. If we only kept cables and electronics that we rarely use in there, then we wouldn't bother about it so much. But as we keep our chargers in there too, we dip into the drawer almost every night (given just how often we Whatsapp and check our Facebook/email/feeds, we actually need to charge our iPhone 3GS twice a day).
So sometimes, things get tangled up in there. And there are cables that we're not too sure of their origins, whether they are mini-USB cables that came with our Canon iXus or with our Sony Minidisc player, that kind of thing.
So, we thought, it's time we tried to organize things.
We admit that we sometimes get rather lofty ambitions sometimes (like trying to get our bathroom to look like one of those rather posh hotel bathrooms, not possible but is something we kinda like to dream could be achieved without any sort of renovation...). We blame iKea for this.
But with just one single drawer we pretty much had a practical idea what to do about it: go get some plastic baggies to organize the stuff nicely.
Now this goal is rather straightforward and ought to take not more than an hour, really...
Step 1: Get a fair number of bags from Daiso.
Step 2: Empty out content of drawer.
Step 3: Organize stuff into bags.
Step 4: Neatly pack bags back into drawer.
Except in our case, we also had a few other stuff in said electronics drawer. Some of it, we are well aware of like our collection of playing cards, but we then came across a traveller's pouch that had some old stuff like a confirmation letter and receipt from a B&B that we stayed at in the Lake Gardens District, not to mention a receipt from the old Malaysian Embassy in London, and oddly enough, Sporeland coins. Also, we find a wee envelope of old passport photos.
So we basically emptied out almost everything from the drawer, and started sorting it all out...
And quite likely because of that traveller's pouch we started looking for where some of the contents of said pouch should go. Starting with the coins.
That got us looking in our wardrobe for a couple of camera film containers we know were somewhere in there, because we thought we kept some coins in them. We couldn't remember what currency, though.
And the search for that began our spring cleaning essentially - as certain things were left untouched for a long while now and have not only built up a layer of dust, but have also herded in a bunch of dust bunnies as pets too.
Generally most our spring cleaning tends to happen in the middle of the night - and at a time when we don't really expect to be doing spring cleaning. We'll pick up an object, note the heavy layer of dust, get a tissue and make it wet, wipe said object clean and trash the now-dirty tissue.
Then, we find that said object (in this case the film containers) we just cleaned isn't really what we were looking for, and now we try another object (this time, a large plastic container with more assorted coins in it).
Repeat cleaning process with a couple more tissues.
And find out now that we have souvenir pressed-penny coins from the US and UK in those containers, mixed together with coins from all over, and it should all be more organized.
Sigh. Now remove all Sporeland coins from both film and plastic containers, and try the coin pouch. Dump all Sporeland coins into coin pouch, and when that is full, the overflow to go into the Sporeland wallet as quick accessible change.
Once this is done, we notice that certain stuff we've not touched in ages have dust all over, hey, that Swatch iRony should go back into its box since we're not wearing it, rather than collecting dust...
More cleaning, more dusting, more taking out old stuff and rearranging things within the wardrobe.
Hey, we've sort of abandoned our organizing of the electronics drawer now.
OK, there's still those receipts et cetera from UK, those should go into the box of UK Memorabilia, bring that out, and then we're reminded of birthday cards over the last couple of years that we wanted to file away in the bigger box of General Memorabilia. Start on that, now...
And it's probably some 4 hours later when we've finally organizing the electronics drawer. Some things made it into the trash can all right but most would have survived for another day...
We didn't make more space, but then again the aim for the baggies was to make it easier to pull out the bag containing all our Apple cables and power adapters!
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