I had planned to reactivate my World of Warcraft account last week, after meeting up with some long-time gamer friends. I even bought The Burning Crusade (WoW expansion pack).

But installing the game killed my computer. For a few frightful hours, I wasn’t able to boot up Windows. I thought the end had come.

Fortunately, the Goonfather managed to save my PC, which is now still usable, but barely. I have to buy myself a new machine soon because this 4-year-old junkheap seems bound to meet its maker in scrapyard heaven just about any time without notice.

So, I’m buying my new computer next weekend. In the meantime, I can’t play WoW. =(

But I can play Facebook!

A little background:

Last week, I attended a Singtel Moblog focus group where we generally discussed what we liked and didn’t like about blogging platforms and other Web 2.0 gizmos.

There was a point during which everyone shared which communities they belonged to. Like Friendster, MySpace, Facebook, and so on.

I told everyone I have long been resisting Facebook, even though it seems to be one of the most popular sites now, even though I keep getting invites from friends to join them in there.

Today, I finally decided to get an account because not being able to play WoW is making me hyperventilate and I have to do something to take my mind off my restlessness. Also, the Cowboybar crazies have been waxing lyrical over Facebook, so much so that it became like a mystery I had to solve: Why the hell is everyone and his grandmother in Facebook? So good meh?

I’d been assuming that Facebook is just a more classy Friendster. I already have Friendster, which I find boring, so I don’t need more rubbish like that in my life.

Was I ever wrong.

Facebook blew my mind when I signed up today.

People should be more communicative, you know. I mean, I’ve been getting rubbish template e-mails like, “Hey, Sassy Wong added you as a friend in Facebook! Join her!”

Who the hell wants to join anything with a lousy message like that?

The e-mails should be more like, “Throw a cow (or a fish, or a chicken) at your friend, Sassy Wong, in Facebook! After you’re done doing that, have a refreshing cocktail while you deface her profile with graffiti! What are you waiting for? Come in now and get free gummi bears to spit at your friends!”

Really, if I had gotten an e-mail like that early on, I would have been a Facebook member on the outset.

As it happened, I didn’t find out that such a cool thing existed until today. And I spent the entire afternoon and a good part of the evening exploring the third-party applications in Facebook and throwing cows at friends.

It’s surprisingly fun!

Anyway, if you’re in Facebook, add me ok? Search for my name: Shen Qiaoyun. Shouldn’t be hard to find because there aren’t many Qiaoyuns around. If you add me, and you have some funny name I won’t recognise, please identify yourself or I won’t add you back if I don’t know who you are!

See you in there!

Once in a while, a fun acting job comes along. It’s a frivolous sort of acting job really, but, hey, a job’s a job.

Microsoft is launching Halo 3 for the Xbox 360 on September 25th. As part of an ongoing publicity campaign that started in early August, 15 actors were engaged to appear as Halo 3 characters at roadshows during the weekends leading up to the launch.

I’m a marine officer and this is my costume.

Hahaha.

It’s not exactly a brilliant costume and my friends have complained that it looks nothing like anything you’d see in Halo. But I guess I’m quite okay with it. As you all know, I like wearing weirdass stuff anyway.

This was on the day of our first roadshow. Three of us girls were waiting at this back passageway in Cineleisure for the show to start. Two other girls were doing last-minute shopping somewhere in Orchard Road because they had failed to acquire fish net stockings beforehand, as we’d been instructed to do.

So, three girls stuck in a grungy space with nothing to do means camwhoring time.

When we were finally allowed to get out of this claustrophobic passageway to get ready for showtime, we were reunited with the rest of the cast and crew. The stylist took one look at us girls and promptly had a conniption.

“Aiyoh!!” he fussed, “Girls, your hair is all wrong! Sticking out here and there! You are officers ok!! Please tuck all your hair into your beret and behind your ears! No fringe, no hair in face!”

I suppose he had a point. We should all look like clones.

I still prefer my fringe and side ponytails.

But I guess this isn’t too bad.

The only bad thing about this is that it gives me very severe flattened hat hair after a few hours.

Actually, this isn’t even an acting job.

The guys get to act because they’ve got a little skit to perform.

[Rehearsal picture]

The girls are there merely to give out Halo freebies and sweet-talk people into giving Microsoft their names and email addresses so they can enjoy being recipients of Xbox e-mail updates.

Which is quite disappointing.

But it’s fun, all the same, to be part of this action. I think it’s really quite cool and game publishers should do this kinda events more often so I get to have this kinda fun more often.

Check this out: Master Chief costume!

The actor playing Master Chief is the only guy who gets a genuine Halo 3 costume. I guess this costume kinda saves the event from being a laughing stock, in terms of costumes.

It took them about 20 minutes to get him into his armour the first time because there were so many pieces to figure out and strap on.

We took the opportunity to camwhore with Master Chief during the rehearsal.

This was when our toy guns hadn’t been painted black yet.

Well, I think the first event went pretty smoothly. Check out the event report from Games Xtreme League.

The next event will be held this Saturday at Funan the IT Mall (2 pm) and Bishan Junction 8 (5 pm). Click here for more details on the Halo 3 campaign.

This video is almost painful to watch. But people are intrinsically quite evil and sadistic and masochistic, which is why there are countless versions of this little clip in YouTube and millions have watched it.

My long-time gamer friend Swordplay sent me the link today and I responded with a “lol” after watching it.

It’s a 48-second clip of Miss Teen USA South Carolina answering a question at the pageant. And it’s an answer that will make your eyebrows twitch uncontrollably and make you go “huh?”.

Now, I feel quite evil perpetuating this girl’s misery by posting it on my blog, but you have to admit it’s quite funny.

It’s also painful, because she reminds me of me.

I’ve taken part in many beauty pageants and talent contests in the past and I’m sure I’ve said my share of bimbotic, senseless, incoherent words. I’m sure I’ve appeared totally idiotic during screen tests and screen interviews.

There have been countless times when I’ve gone “WTF did I just say/do??” and hit myself on the head repeatedly after an audition.

So, while I laugh at this unfortunate beauty queen, I’m also laughing at myself. Sometimes, I’m thankful that I’m not famous because if I ever am, I’m sure all my embarrassing past mistakes will start popping up in blogs, in YouTube, everywhere, because people are, intrinsically, evil and like to laugh at other people.

Saturday, woke up at 6.50 am for nothing because my brain was messed up and I showed up for a shoot one day early.

Sunday, woke up at 7.20 am because the Goonfather said he’d drive me to work, meaning I could wake up later because I wouldn’t have to factor in “getting lost time”.

I arrived at 8:50 am, 10 minutes early. But I ended up having to wait 4.5 hours for my turn because they took forever to film the first scene. I was supposed to have finished work by 12:30 pm, but I didn’t get to start work until 1:30 pm.

It’s not normally a big deal because Singapore productions are mostly never on time so I’ve gotten used to long waits. In fact, 4.5 hours is not the longest I’ve had to wait.

But it sucks to wake up early two days in a row for nothing. Waking up early is a big deal because insomnia keeps me awake in the nights.

So I staged a protest today by waking up at 12:08 pm. Yay! Self-indulgent, lazy, sleep-in days for the win.

I am such an idiot. I went for a shoot one day early.

• I woke up at 6.50 am for the shoot, after only four hours of sleep.
• I wasted a lot of petrol getting lost because the location’s in the stupidest town ever built in Singapore.
• I tore out $3 worth of parking coupons.

All that for naught because when I showed up at the location, NO ONE WAS THERE.

I was about to make a phone call when something made me whip out my callsheet to have another look. It said 26 August. I remember tearing out 25 August on the parking coupons.

So, I kinda gaped stupidly for a while as my mind went blank and my eyes widened into a sleepy stoned stare.

I checked my callsheet again. 26 August. Checked my organiser. I had marked the shoot for 26 August in my organiser. Checked my phone for today’s date. 25 August.

I must be going senile.

I think it’s a combination of several factors that made my brain cross-wire.

• Too many shoots/jobs happening concurrently these two months.
• Too many last minute date and time changes for shoots, jobs and appointments.
• Stress resulting from my computer conking out two days ago.
• Desire to have this 4-month-long shoot over and done with.
• Last minute audition call.

After realising that I had turned up on the wrong day, I went back to my car and sat in there for 10 minutes, trying to figure out how I could have done this incomprehensibly moronic thing.

I’ve known for a week that the shoot was on Sunday but my mind kept telling me Saturday. I even went into a panic yesterday because I thought I only had yesterday left to finish learning my lines.

Early this week, I had even mentally mapped out my weekend.

Saturday: Collect runners’ kit for Run For Hope race, then go check out Odex burning event.
Sunday: Go for shoot.

But, yesterday, three things happened.

• I received an e-mail informing me that the shoot time has changed from 1 pm to 9 am. (But in all such correspondence, only the date and not the day is mentioned, and I’m not very good with numbers, usually.)
• I received an e-mail informing me that the runners’ kit collection is postponed to next week.
• I received a phone call asking me to attend an audition on Saturday.

I think my brain cross-wired everything and elevated my shoot to Saturday because a void was created by the postponement of the kit collection. And the audition call came in and confused everything.

I need to get a new computer and clean up my desk.

All this clutter and dysfunction is shorting my brain.

Maybe I need a new brain, too.

Daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaamn!!