I hope y’all had a great Valentine’s Day.

The Goonfather and I had a Non-Valentine’s Day, in keeping with tradition.

We had more of a Geeks R’ Us day, in fact.

I woke up bright and early and got dressed.

To go to work.

At a stuffy old office.

In a sad lonely cubicle.

(Where one can camwhore in relative privacy when one’s boss isn’t looking.)

The day passed (really slowly and laboriously because I didn’t have enough sleep the night before).

And then it was 6 pm.

Time to get out of the office and head for the mall.

A geek mall, if ever there was one.

Funan the IT Mall.

Where GAMESCORE, my favourite games shop, resides.

I had to sneak off work early to buy a present for the Goonfather.

(We tend to be more pragmatic than romantic so we usually avoid getting suckered into the commercialism of Valentine’s Day, but we love buying presents for each other.)

But I gotta stop doing things last minute.

I won’t say what I bought, yet. But you can tell it’s some geeky thing.

Next stop: Eastpoint Mall, to meet up with the Geekfather, who decided that Valentine’s Day was the perfect day on which to run errands.

He picked last night, of all nights, to get his phone serviced.

And to pay his parking fine.

And to drool over data cables and geeky peripherals at Challenger.

The geekmeter shooteth up.

And then the highlight of the night: Dinner!

Dinner was fast food because we wanted to be done with it quickly so we could rush home to play games.

(Actually, that was more my idea.)

Yes.

We have both become PotBS addicts, although I’m a sorry sort of addict, having not enough time in which to encourage the addiction. Which explains why I’m only level 7 while Kell Jade Dragon is level 17 (plus he has a Level 8 alt!!!! wtf). And we both got the game on the same day.

(Kell Jade Dragon is Elyxia‘s boyfriend, whom we sometimes lovingly address as Unker Kell.)

The Goonfather is level 13. He has more time to play than I do because he spends his lunch hour playing and he doesn’t blog. But he obviously has less time than Unker Kell because Unker Kell plays games for a living. Sort of. Plus his bonnie lies o’er the ocean, so he has a lot of time alone, poor bloke.

But I digress.

Dinner was at Long John Silver, my favourite fast food joint.

I love fast food. The Goonfather hates. But he allowed me to drag him to LJS last night because:

1. Fast food restaurants don’t have ridiculous inflated V Day prices.
2. He tries to be accommodating on “special days”.
3. Long John Silver is a pirate so it fits in very nicely with his PotBS addiction.

We tried to rush through dinner so we could be home as early as possible to play PotBS.

But it was really hard to rush through a feast.

I don’t know what the GoonFather was thinking when he ordered all this food…

For two people.

Honestly!

Amazingly, though, we finished most of the food.

And then it was home to let the Geekfather have his presents.

I received my Valentine’s Day present early this year. It was Pirates of the Burning Sea (including unlimited subscription, wahoo). The Goonfather is very fond of giving me advance presents.

Like he gave me my birthday present (a Wii) in May when my birthday was in July. When July rolled around, he had to buy me another present (a DS Lite) because I insisted that May was too far away to be counted. Haha.

Anyway, in return for my PotBS, I got him a DMC4 for the PS3.

He had been slavering at it for yonks (even before it was officially released) but just haven’t bought it because he’s been too busy with PotBS.

Oh, I also got him a bonus present.

It’s a Goomba!

More accurately, it’s a Goomba mini bolster cushion whatever.

You do know what Goombas are, don’t you? From Super Mario Bros. They’re so cute!

The Goomfather loves Super Mario Bros characters. He has a Koopa Troopa shell for a keychain.

Our night ended with PotBS, as planned.

I bought a new graphics card finally. Better graphics now?

This was supposed to be an amazing picture because there was a beautiful view of the rising sun. But just as I remembered to tap my screenshot button, this hill rose up to hide the sun.

As you can see, I didn’t even have time to get rid of my UI.

Then I got too busy to bother with screenshots because I was set upon by pirates. (It’s a pirate eat pirate world.)

And now I have to rush off to work because I sacrificed my morning to write this blog, so I’m going to have to make up for it by doing OT tonight. Zzzz.

TGIF!

(Funny to be saying TGIF when one has to OT.)

(Funny that one never appreciates weekends until one has a regular day job.)

Happy weekend!

A few days ago, Princess from the Cowboy Bar said to me, “Can you please quit your temp job?!”

“Why?” I asked.

“Your blogs were better when you weren’t busy!”

…

Well, I can’t help that. Who’s going to feed me if I quit my day job? And don’t say the Goonfather because it’s almost impossible to feed two people on one salary these days. Not if you want to live pretty comfortably, that is.

Anyway, the reason I took up the temp job was because I forsaw a slow year for acting. So I thought I’d better pad up my bank account while I can, in order that I may sustain a longer period of time without acting income.

But as fate would have it, after more than a month of bumming around at home, the very moment I committed to the temp job, I started getting busy in the acting arena.

Fortunately, my temp job is very flexible and I can work any kind of hours as long as I meet project deadlines, so I can schedule my temp job around my acting. The downside is that I’m killing myself in the process and my blog is suffering.

If something has to be sacrificed, it has to be the blog, since blogging doesn’t pay the bills. Not yet, anyway.

But don’t worry. I’m not killing my blog. I’ll kill it only when people get tired of reading junk and start to leave because I haven’t got time to write more quality posts. Haha.

One of the things I’m involved in right now is with NYU Tisch Asia. There’s a new module this semester on directing actors, taught by Hollywood director Rob Schmidt, who has made a few award-winning films.

I attend all the classes (six hours a week) and act for them. That is, the film students get to practise directing real actors. I love the classes! I get to learn so much while being able to play at acting, at the same time.

The campus is damn far, though. It takes me an hour to get there and another hour to get back home.

But it’s all good. No one’s ever died from being busy, so I’m sure I’ll survive.

Will update on other things when I have more time.

I deliberated for a few weeks whether to post this up.

I finally decided to do it because I’m so busy these days that I need to employ more lazy blogger tricks.

Today’s lazy post is a YouTube video. Haha.

I didn’t want to post it up at first because there are some physically-intimate shots in it involving me and it’s weird posting something like that knowing that family and relatives read my blog.

But, what the heck. I’m sure they can handle it. It’s nothing sleazy, anyway.

A quick background first.

This is one of the films I did for NYU Tisch Asia graduate film students last year. It was their very first project and shot on Super 16 mm film.

(If you were reading my blog three months ago, you’d have seen my posts about it: Flat 7-Up doesn’t taste very good and Last day is for camwhoring.)

The requirements of the project: 4 minutes, black-and-white, no dialogue, no music.

The video you’re about to watch is the director’s cut. It’s in colour and has some musicky stuff in it, but it’s otherwise the same film that was submitted.

It’s called Mara’s Playground and I play the role of Mara.

So, here it is! Hope you like understand it.

I finally managed to play Pirates of the Burning Sea last night, after four days of not being able to touch it since installing it. Well, I only had a few hours to play but I’ve got some first impressions.

There are only three things I like about it.

1. The costumes.
2. The music.
3. The poses.

That’s it. Pretty lame things to like about a game. Haha.

The costumes are pretty and authentic and very customisable, with many choices for mixing and matching, and a huge colour palette to dye your clothes.

I chose a black-and-red theme. Yes, very safe and boring, and probably the choice of colour for 80% of the Pirates population. But you can’t deny it looks good and that’s all that matters.

Meet Sheylara Scarlett, my pirate, captain of her own ship (albeit a lousy newbie ship):

I love how I can wear sexy cleavage-revealing clothes in MMORPGs.

I would have gone for a pink-and-white theme but the pastels in the game are dodgy and they all end up looking a pale dirty yellow, somehow.

The music is fantastic. You feel like you’re in your own Pirates of the Caribbean movie. There’s piratey carnival music when you’re gallivanting about town, and there’s piratey battle music when you’re battling. Cool.

And the poses. By that, I mean the way the avatar stands when it’s stationery. There are like five or so different positions which your character assumes randomly.

Other than all that, the game is more frustrating than fun. For me, at least. (There are certainly no lack of PotBS fans raving about the game.)

Some of the things I don’t like:

1. The tutorials are stupid and redundant because they don’t teach you shit.
2. You can’t jump in the game. I’m so used to jumping in MMORPGs that I feel crippled not being able to do it.
3. There’s no tailoring! I can’t make clothes! (I’m always a tailor in MMORPGs.)
4. The learning curve is very steep and the poorly-designed tutorials certainly don’t help.
5. The UI is laggy. Like when you mouseover something, the tooltip takes two seconds to appear. Or when you try to change your ship’s weapon with a right-click, your mouseover doesn’t highlight until 50 years later, by which time your ship has already been sunk by the enemy and your loot plundered and your crew raped.

The game is really very hard to excel in, with lots of strategising if you want to rule the seas.

At this point of time, I have trouble even telling the stern and the bow, or the port and the starboard, apart. I certainly don’t have time to worry about picking the right ship, picking the right weapons, choosing the right side to shoot at and shoot from, taking advantage of the wind direction to out-manoeuvre the enemy, while at the same time making sure your crew doesn’t drink up all the rum before the battle is over.

And I haven’t even started talking about the economy aspect of the game. Building warehouses and factories, harvesting raw materials to produce goods you can sell to other players for a tidy profit, doing it without getting yourself killed because you have to visit enemy ports to get stuff that you need.

OMG.

This is a game for people who have too much time on their hands.

Not me.

I have like maybe two hours a week. Just enough time to sit in the tavern and listen to the bartender wax lyrical over the new wench in town.

I suppose the game concept is pretty cool. I just don’t have time to get into the thick of things. So I’m just gonna log in when I can, try not to die too much and live off the generosity of my guildmates, assuming I get into a guild (called Society in PotBS) soonish.

In the meantime, I’m a clueless lass pretending to be a captain.

Sheylara Scarlett plays on Antigua.

This year, like last year, we welcomed the new Chinese year by counting down at Loyang Tua Pek Kong.

It was so very, very crowded.

It was so crowded we had trouble finding a spot to place our offerings.

(There were like two or three other tables like this, all full.)

It was so crowded we had trouble finding a spot to stick our candles in without burning our hands.

At first, I felt a little weird taking photographs. It’s a religious place, a place of worship, after all. But then I saw these men standing on stepladders taking photographs and I felt better about it.

The temple had its own still camera and video camera crew documenting the entire celebration.

The celebration was really huge. There were performances all through the night.

As it neared midnight, more and more devotees started flocking to the outdoor area to crowd around the stage, awaiting coundown.

A smaller motley group crowded around the God of Wealth (also called God of Prosperity and God of Fortune) but their eyes were turned towards the stage.

And then it was countdown time and then midnight and then fireworks!

Once countdown was done, everyone flocked to the God of Wealth.

Joss sticks were distributed to every person and we all stood there and waited.

I think we waited about 45 minutes or an hour, just standing there while monks chanted.

And then there was a commotion and the God of Wealth’s statue was showered with golden confetti. The lions started dancing.

And the dragon.

Apparently, the God of Wealth had arrived, but I didn’t see him.

We were then allowed into the ceremony area to stick our joss sticks into the urn, bathe ourselves in holy smoke, and throw coins at the God of Wealth’s coins.

The giant coins stood at the foot of the statue and people flocked there to toss their own coins at the coins to make awful clanging sounds.

And then it was suddenly over and everyone flocked elsewhere.

But then, just as sudden, a queue formed where my friends and I were still standing, trying to recover from the overwhelming festivities.

This is no ordinary queue. This is the longest queue you’ve ever seen.

The picture above shows the tail end of it. It covers the entire outdoor area at the back of the temple.

It snakes into the roofed compound.

Without knowing what it was for, the Goonfather joined the queue. I decided to go investigate to see where the queue ended and what it was for.

I followed it into the roofed compound.

It went right through the central compound where people do their praying and worshipping.

I had trouble taking photos in there because it was too crowded. The queue was fighting for space with other worshippers who were going about their usual business with joss sticks and offerings.

So I stuffed my camera into my pocket and tried to push my way through the congestion. I finally emerged outside, triumphant, thinking that I would finally get to see what the queue was all about.

I was mometarily blinded by floodlights outside the temple, but when my vision recovered, I saw that the queue was still extending out further than I could see.

It went out into the main road and curled around the temple’s perimeter, then snaked into the compound again through a side entrance.

Will it never end??

The queue led back indoors, back into the worshipping fray, where it nearly joined the first leg of that queue that was fighting for space with worshippers.

With my trusty camera, I followed the queue up a cute little bridge.

And then, finally, I found myself at the end of the rainbow.

So, where’s the pot of gold?

There’s no gold.

But there’s something better.

The

God

of

Wealth

himself!!!

OMG!!!

Ok, well, he’s actually human, but he’s dressed in the God of Wealth’s costume and, supposedly, he has the spirit of the god in him through ritual, or something like that.

So, once you’ve reached the end of the queue, you were able to buy a lucky golden coin ($2 only) from the “god” himself and personally shake his hand to receive his rich blessings.

How cool is that?

It took me almost ten minutes to investigate the queue and run back to the Goonfather to report my findings.

“You’re going to be stuck in the queue for 20 years,” I said. “It goes all the way outside the temple, around it, then back in again.”

He said, “Okay.”

“I’m going outside to eat ice cream.”

“Okay.”

I went outside with Elyxia and Wang Wang to get some ice cream while we waited for the guys.

Ten minutes later, the guys came out.

“You gave up?” I asked.

“We cut queue,” said the Goonfather.

“How??????????!!! Can YOu???!!!!”

“Wahahahaha,” he said.

What he did was buy this lucky package from the stalls set up inside the temple.

The package consists of two mandarin oranges, a prosperity cake, a lucky pendant and a lucky golden coin (the same coin that everyone was queueing up to buy). His package cost him $10, but he figured paying more was better than queueing up.

AND he got to shake the God of Wealth’s hand by just going up to the man-god from the side and asking, “Can I shake your hand?”

So the Goonfather got his handshake and his lucky coin without queueing up.

He was mighty pleased about it.

I was pleased with my ice cream.

Need more ice cream!