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Vignettes On a Sunday
It is an ordinary Sunday.
~
When we leave the house for the market, there is a tart bite in the air. Dragonflies dance upon the air, darting over the obsidian lily pads that are our heads. There will be rain later, but for now, the weather is docile, perfect.
~
The tawny cat with amber eyes which stalks our area is missing: she has been for weeks. There are times when she’ll curl herself up by the stairs or sun herself on the grass or stare at me only to stalk away in feline suspicion (disdain?). The stairs are empty now, an unrelieved stretch of gray. The grass patch is green, unfettered. Incomplete.
~
The stores near the market are mostly vacant. We walk into Fairprice instead. The air-conditioned efficiency, coupled with economies of scale and substantial corporate funds, makes it hard for old-time provision store owners to compete. They mostly wind up their businesses or move away, victims to inventorying systems, value chains, point-of-sales efficiency, most of all, change.
~
A rotund woman laughs at me, jingling the coins in her open palm. Instinctively, I look down and count them. One twenty cent coin and a ten cent coin – thirty cents in total. I look at her in confusion. She laughs and jingles them again, this time pointing to a package of yellow noodles with her free hand. Puay kak, I tell her. Eighty cents. She laughs again and shows me her coins. Belatedly, I realize that she is asking for money, so that she can buy her packet of yellow noodles. I mentally wince – not just because she has to ask for money, but because I am without a farthing at the moment. Rather then have her believe I’m lying about not having money, I lie instead and fake a bewildered frown. Shrug and walk away, with triple spears of pity, guilt and embarrassment. That is the sort of person I am.
~
My mother walks into my room in the afternoon, aghast at its hurricane-swept look. She picks at my bags and peers into randomly strewn shopping bags. She yells at some of my unpractical purchases, scolds me for not hanging the four pictures I was itching to have two weeks ago, nags at the general untidiness. It is mortifying, and I tune her out with a stony look on my face. But I am my mother’s son and she knows, that I know she does and yet persist. Her voice escalates. I want to sigh, tell her that yes, I am tired of her yelling but no, I am not trying to drive her to her grave. But I hold my tongue, because I know she does it out of love. Against the silent barricades of parental love, one has little room for dissent.
~
A chaithimse an Domhnach.
~
It is an ordinary Sunday.
Filed under: Personal, Musings
~
When we leave the house for the market, there is a tart bite in the air. Dragonflies dance upon the air, darting over the obsidian lily pads that are our heads. There will be rain later, but for now, the weather is docile, perfect.
~
The tawny cat with amber eyes which stalks our area is missing: she has been for weeks. There are times when she’ll curl herself up by the stairs or sun herself on the grass or stare at me only to stalk away in feline suspicion (disdain?). The stairs are empty now, an unrelieved stretch of gray. The grass patch is green, unfettered. Incomplete.
~
The stores near the market are mostly vacant. We walk into Fairprice instead. The air-conditioned efficiency, coupled with economies of scale and substantial corporate funds, makes it hard for old-time provision store owners to compete. They mostly wind up their businesses or move away, victims to inventorying systems, value chains, point-of-sales efficiency, most of all, change.
~
A rotund woman laughs at me, jingling the coins in her open palm. Instinctively, I look down and count them. One twenty cent coin and a ten cent coin – thirty cents in total. I look at her in confusion. She laughs and jingles them again, this time pointing to a package of yellow noodles with her free hand. Puay kak, I tell her. Eighty cents. She laughs again and shows me her coins. Belatedly, I realize that she is asking for money, so that she can buy her packet of yellow noodles. I mentally wince – not just because she has to ask for money, but because I am without a farthing at the moment. Rather then have her believe I’m lying about not having money, I lie instead and fake a bewildered frown. Shrug and walk away, with triple spears of pity, guilt and embarrassment. That is the sort of person I am.
~
My mother walks into my room in the afternoon, aghast at its hurricane-swept look. She picks at my bags and peers into randomly strewn shopping bags. She yells at some of my unpractical purchases, scolds me for not hanging the four pictures I was itching to have two weeks ago, nags at the general untidiness. It is mortifying, and I tune her out with a stony look on my face. But I am my mother’s son and she knows, that I know she does and yet persist. Her voice escalates. I want to sigh, tell her that yes, I am tired of her yelling but no, I am not trying to drive her to her grave. But I hold my tongue, because I know she does it out of love. Against the silent barricades of parental love, one has little room for dissent.
~
A chaithimse an Domhnach.
~
It is an ordinary Sunday.
Filed under: Personal, Musings
Saturday, December 17, 2005
The World of Warcraft Disappointment
Having recently given in to the persuasive power of my brother's 10001 Reasons To Buy Warcraft Battlechest, I landed my hands on the World of Warcraft trial included in the package. What began as a pleasant surprise ended up in disappointment however.
The problems began almost immediately. Half an hour into installation, there was a fatal error. Restarting the process and subsequently completing the installation required almost 2 hours on my 3.2 GHz, 1 gig RAM machine. Registering the trial account required my credit card number, which I am always loathe to give out online, in case I forget it's an opt-out service. Blizzard claims that trial account holders will not be charged under any circumstances, so why the need for credit card account numbers?
Updating the game was another huge obstacle. Unlike Guild Wars, where the updating process is blazingly quick even when you update from the very beginning, the World of Warcraft update file measured over 200 mb. Even worse, the default mechanism of receiving update files is via a proprietary P2P connection, which recognized but did not trigger the rule-learning system of my firewall. As a defense against the slow download speed, and also partly due to my reluctance to search for manual firewall settings for a temporary game, I had to totally shut my firewall down. You'd think such a drastic action would satisfy the update downloader. Instead, it continued to protest against a now non-existent firewall while it laboured sluggishly, all the while claiming innocently that the download will complete in 2 hours. Blizzard says that the traditional way of downloading updates (via http) exists. Nonetheless, they have it well-hidden enough such that a first-time gamer like me had a tough time finding it. Total time taken to download the update? 5 whopping hours.
Aggravating installation and update issues aside, the gameplay of World of Warcraft did little to dazzle me. From what I've seen, combat at the lower levels is mostly comprised of repetitive button mashing. Little strategy is involved: one simply avoids creeps which are higher levels than yourself and press a series of keys to deliver your moves. The initial questing is also typical of many MMORPGs: kill some creatures, find someone, deliver a package etc. The gameworld is not instanced, meaning you share it with all other players. Since players of a similar race start off in one region, you'll be seeing plenty of clones of yourself at the beginning. In fact, you can almost count on having identical skill sets and appearance with players who've selected the same race and class as you, up until the mid levels at least. In my few hours of play, World of Warcraft did little to differentiate itself in terms of gameplay from the legions of MMORPGs out there today. Things might get better later in the game, but it could be a case of too little too late.
Where World of Warcraft performed exceedingly well however, is the game environment. My Night Elf started off in a lush forest populated by the obligatory wandering creeps and soon journeyed to a dark and dank cave. The level of detail is breathtaking most of the times. The gameworld is huge and a trip from one to another is often a beautiful journey. You'll see upclose the architectural design of Warcraft III as well as many familiar buildings like moon wells, which should be a real treat for fans of the game.
Ultimately, this less than sterling experience has dispelled any notions I had of getting the game and shelling out the high subscription month after month. While production values are noticeably excellent, the gameplay simply doesn't compel this gamer enough.
Filed under: Gaming
The problems began almost immediately. Half an hour into installation, there was a fatal error. Restarting the process and subsequently completing the installation required almost 2 hours on my 3.2 GHz, 1 gig RAM machine. Registering the trial account required my credit card number, which I am always loathe to give out online, in case I forget it's an opt-out service. Blizzard claims that trial account holders will not be charged under any circumstances, so why the need for credit card account numbers?
Updating the game was another huge obstacle. Unlike Guild Wars, where the updating process is blazingly quick even when you update from the very beginning, the World of Warcraft update file measured over 200 mb. Even worse, the default mechanism of receiving update files is via a proprietary P2P connection, which recognized but did not trigger the rule-learning system of my firewall. As a defense against the slow download speed, and also partly due to my reluctance to search for manual firewall settings for a temporary game, I had to totally shut my firewall down. You'd think such a drastic action would satisfy the update downloader. Instead, it continued to protest against a now non-existent firewall while it laboured sluggishly, all the while claiming innocently that the download will complete in 2 hours. Blizzard says that the traditional way of downloading updates (via http) exists. Nonetheless, they have it well-hidden enough such that a first-time gamer like me had a tough time finding it. Total time taken to download the update? 5 whopping hours.
Aggravating installation and update issues aside, the gameplay of World of Warcraft did little to dazzle me. From what I've seen, combat at the lower levels is mostly comprised of repetitive button mashing. Little strategy is involved: one simply avoids creeps which are higher levels than yourself and press a series of keys to deliver your moves. The initial questing is also typical of many MMORPGs: kill some creatures, find someone, deliver a package etc. The gameworld is not instanced, meaning you share it with all other players. Since players of a similar race start off in one region, you'll be seeing plenty of clones of yourself at the beginning. In fact, you can almost count on having identical skill sets and appearance with players who've selected the same race and class as you, up until the mid levels at least. In my few hours of play, World of Warcraft did little to differentiate itself in terms of gameplay from the legions of MMORPGs out there today. Things might get better later in the game, but it could be a case of too little too late.
Where World of Warcraft performed exceedingly well however, is the game environment. My Night Elf started off in a lush forest populated by the obligatory wandering creeps and soon journeyed to a dark and dank cave. The level of detail is breathtaking most of the times. The gameworld is huge and a trip from one to another is often a beautiful journey. You'll see upclose the architectural design of Warcraft III as well as many familiar buildings like moon wells, which should be a real treat for fans of the game.
Ultimately, this less than sterling experience has dispelled any notions I had of getting the game and shelling out the high subscription month after month. While production values are noticeably excellent, the gameplay simply doesn't compel this gamer enough.
Filed under: Gaming
Thursday, December 08, 2005
Creative's anti-Apple Ad
Wednesday, December 07, 2005
Irritating Ads
I caught Zathura at GV yesterday, and was treated to the usual deluge of advertisements before the movie (Zathura's pretty decent by the way, if you (a) are not watching with a 6 year old who may proceed to call his brother "a dick"/ "a biatch" after the movie (b) ignore the poorly executed time travel loop in the last part of the movie (c) don't have to explain to kids the concept of incest and why it's wrong).
The most irritating ads were:
1) Visa Platinum, featuring Richard Gere and Poor Indian Girl. Poor Indian Girl is in a hurry to buy pigeons for her brother, who's flying overseas. In her haste, she bumps into Richard Gere (aka Rich White Man). The latter goes to her aid when she only has enough money to buy one sad little pigeon for her brother (setting pigeons free is supposed to bring luck). Gere proceeds to whip out his shiny platinum card, which results in countless Indian merchants freeing countless white pigeons fo Poor Indian Girl and her brother. One could almost submit this as course materials for colonialism and Western commercialization. No doubt PETA can also have a field day protesting the support of capturing birds for the sole purpose of freeing them, if they manage to tear themselves away from the very adult act of slinging pies at celebrities who wear fur.
2) DHL - No one knows Asia like we do, featuring Amy. (No, Amy's not that intelligent ape from Crichton's Congo.) She's most likely a New Yorker, for whom an entire chain of workers in Asia toil so that she can buy her pink top. From China to Thailand to India, Asians work their butts off (with a smile on their face, no less) so that Amy can get her dress in New York. Isn't that sweet. I guess the Asia that DHL knows is pretty different from the Asia I know. But if what DHL wanted to bring across was that the American dollar all but drives Asian retailing industry, then the advertisement is a rousing success.
3) Please switch off your mobile phones and pagers, featuring Chicken Little. I swear I'm gonna deck the next person who hums "Mai A Hi, Mai A Hu " or "Numa Numa Lei". And that scrawny and annoying Chicken Little better watch out for KFC. Any moment now...
Filed under: Entertainment, Ads
The most irritating ads were:
1) Visa Platinum, featuring Richard Gere and Poor Indian Girl. Poor Indian Girl is in a hurry to buy pigeons for her brother, who's flying overseas. In her haste, she bumps into Richard Gere (aka Rich White Man). The latter goes to her aid when she only has enough money to buy one sad little pigeon for her brother (setting pigeons free is supposed to bring luck). Gere proceeds to whip out his shiny platinum card, which results in countless Indian merchants freeing countless white pigeons fo Poor Indian Girl and her brother. One could almost submit this as course materials for colonialism and Western commercialization. No doubt PETA can also have a field day protesting the support of capturing birds for the sole purpose of freeing them, if they manage to tear themselves away from the very adult act of slinging pies at celebrities who wear fur.
2) DHL - No one knows Asia like we do, featuring Amy. (No, Amy's not that intelligent ape from Crichton's Congo.) She's most likely a New Yorker, for whom an entire chain of workers in Asia toil so that she can buy her pink top. From China to Thailand to India, Asians work their butts off (with a smile on their face, no less) so that Amy can get her dress in New York. Isn't that sweet. I guess the Asia that DHL knows is pretty different from the Asia I know. But if what DHL wanted to bring across was that the American dollar all but drives Asian retailing industry, then the advertisement is a rousing success.
3) Please switch off your mobile phones and pagers, featuring Chicken Little. I swear I'm gonna deck the next person who hums "Mai A Hi, Mai A Hu " or "Numa Numa Lei". And that scrawny and annoying Chicken Little better watch out for KFC. Any moment now...
Filed under: Entertainment, Ads
Tuesday, December 06, 2005
Bandwidth Woes/ Goodbye, Putfile
It appears Google is extremely effective when it comes to indexing Blogger blogs. Despite being out of commission for the month of November, my bandwidth usage managed to hit almost 1 gb.
Which is quite ridiculous actually, when you consider how people land here:
Google Images: Jude Law
Google Images: sexy sex
Google: nfk sex movies
Google Images: pubic pants
Yahoo: smelly panty
Yahoo: ah beng underwear showing
Google Images: colin farrell pictures
MSN Search: christopher lee birthdate mediacorp
Google Images: jude law
AOL Search: idris elba
While it doesn't beat this, I still feel like I'm running a gay porn site (oh goodie, I used the p-word... that should bring my bandwidth usage beyond its limit).
I will most probably make changes to the layout to save me some grief. Remove side bar images from my own server and all that. Of course, I won't be using Putfile any longer, now that it has childishly banned users from Singapore from accessing its services, because it feels execution by hanging is barbaric (sidenote: Lethal injection need not necessarily be more humane). While I applaud Putfile making a moral stand, I can't help but feel that they're ultimately missing the forest for the trees. Banning local users from accessing their services is also a juvenile (not all locals support the death sentence, not all local users are Singapore citizens), sensationalistic and also futile.
But since Putfile is willing to cut off its nose to spite its face, so be it. May your advertisers flock away after knowing that the site can and will geographically discriminate against users. Goodbye.
Filed under: Blog
Which is quite ridiculous actually, when you consider how people land here:
Google Images: Jude Law
Google Images: sexy sex
Google: nfk sex movies
Google Images: pubic pants
Yahoo: smelly panty
Yahoo: ah beng underwear showing
Google Images: colin farrell pictures
MSN Search: christopher lee birthdate mediacorp
Google Images: jude law
AOL Search: idris elba
While it doesn't beat this, I still feel like I'm running a gay porn site (oh goodie, I used the p-word... that should bring my bandwidth usage beyond its limit).
I will most probably make changes to the layout to save me some grief. Remove side bar images from my own server and all that. Of course, I won't be using Putfile any longer, now that it has childishly banned users from Singapore from accessing its services, because it feels execution by hanging is barbaric (sidenote: Lethal injection need not necessarily be more humane). While I applaud Putfile making a moral stand, I can't help but feel that they're ultimately missing the forest for the trees. Banning local users from accessing their services is also a juvenile (not all locals support the death sentence, not all local users are Singapore citizens), sensationalistic and also futile.
But since Putfile is willing to cut off its nose to spite its face, so be it. May your advertisers flock away after knowing that the site can and will geographically discriminate against users. Goodbye.
Filed under: Blog