I’m an old hat at recession survival. Five years ago, I went into a self-imposed recession.

It was the year 2003. I had dropped out of the rat race to live the bohemian life, convinced that a regular desk-bound career was killing me slowly.

With hardly any savings, no grand master plan, no contacts and no external help, I plunged into a world of uncertainty to pursue a career in acting.

Continue reading…

By camwhoring — and I have to explain since this word has been distorted beyond recognition — I mean taking photos of yourself yourself.

Like so.

It’s fun because you never know what’s going to develop in the photo.

For instance, you don’t normally expect a monkey to trespass your frame and make funny faces behind you.

Try camwhoring today.

Especially if you have bored and nutty friends.

I can’t write today! I’m very excited! I’ve been busy with a cool project involving videos!!

And although it’s not exactly game related, it’s a lot of fun! You’ll be able to see the fruits of my labour next week!!

But that means I didn’t have time to play any games this week, so I don’t have any game reviews for you today. Awww. :(

And because I’m too excited to write, today will be Pictorial Day.

Well, okay, I’ll write some. I have a lot of nonsense in my head which I need to dispel daily or my brains will turn to mush from the toxicity of my nonsense.

It’s kinda like slow poisoning by melamine, only worse.

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Table of Contents

1. The Goonfather tries to be a movie star
2. The search for the COG Tag
3. New Xbox Experience
4. Sheylara and Lara Croft
5. Results of last week’s contest
6. Win a 1GB Imation Nano Flash Drive!

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The Goonfather tries to be a movie star

I received this game a few days ago from the good Xbox people. I love them to bits!

I was really busy this week, so I just left it lying around instead of tearing open the box right away.

The Goonfather couldn’t resist it. He was, like, “CAN I OPEN THE BOX OMG!!”

I said, “But I want to take a photo of it before opening it but I have no time to take a photo of it.”

“Okay, I take for you,” he said, “Where’s your camera?”

“In my bag.”

He opened up my infamous Nike bag, stared silently for two seconds, and repeated, “Where’s your camera?”

“In the camera pouch lah.”

“YOU HAVE A ZILLION CAMERA POUCHES IN THERE LAH!”

Unfortunately, he was right.

Note that my bag never looks so neat. I arranged everything nicely for the purpose of this photo.

So, anyway, he found the camera and took ONE lousy photo of the game box (pictured above) before ripping it open.

The game is pretty cool. It makes you do funny actions, like look angry or do a hula dance. You see an instant feedback of yourself on your TV screen (via the Xbox LIVE Vision Camera included in the box).

Afterwards, the game will take all the actions it recorded you doing, put in backgrounds and edit it into a movie for you.

The problem is, the Goonfather lost patience with it after the second action, so I never got to witness his completeed movie. (He never does have any patience to follow instructions).

Idiot. CMI!!

Anyway, this game can take up to four players, so you can be in the movies with your friends!! OOOH BOY I GOTTA TRY IT WITH MY FRIENDS!

Hopefully, I’ll have a video to show you next week! ;)

You’re In The Movies is an Xbox 360 exclusive game.

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The search for the COG Tag

This is strictly for Gears of War fans but it’s still cool enough to just know about it if you’re a gamer.

Epic Games released 1,000 COG Tags into the world for GOW fans to find and there’s one hidden somewhere in Singapore.

Merdeka and I have been releasing clues to its whereabouts in our Xperts.com.sg blogs. Today is the fifth day already and the tag still hasn’t been found yet!

Find out more about this contest here!

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New Xbox Experience

Launched two days ago, the new Xbox dashboard features cool, customisable avatars! Yay!

Okay, it’s no trailblazer, but it’s still cool. Here’s my avatar!

I have a pink heart tattoo on my left cheek! Gotta get a real life one!! Hehe.

You can change your clothes and features at any time.

I wish I could change my features at any time in real life, too.

I love the way you see your friends as avatars in a virtual room now, instead of just a list of text names.

If you see a bunch of friends in a group, it means they’re either having a LIVE voice or video chat party, or playing an online game together. Some of these parties are joinable!

If the avatar is sleeping, it means the friend is offline.

I love it!!

These guys were having a Call of Duty: World at War party but I don’t have the game, so I couldn’t join them.

So I joined a Gears of War 2 party, instead!

As usual, I got thrashed the hell out of.

My avatar posing:

My avatar acting cute:

I got a shock when I saw Merdeka’s avatar. I don’t know what he was thinking!!

That guy is nuts! Haha!

Anyway…

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Sheylara and Lara Croft

I feel malnourished standing beside her…

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Results of last week’s contest

We have many winners today! Congratulations, you all!!

This beautiful copy of Virtua Fighter 5 for the PS3 goes to ahtiong for his 1337 bootlicking skillz!!

Woot!!

ahtiong says:

I think Lion Rafale is quite similar to the Goonfather. Seeing that both are rich and have some connection with thugs, like Lion’s father’s illegal dealings with terrorists, and the Goonfather being a goon, and his photos, give me the impression of a mafia head. 老大！

For the record, the Goonfather is neither rich nor has any connection with thugs.

But well done, anyway!

Next!!

Congratulations to Yoi, ahtiong and Fort Adesso for each winning a 90-day Gamepath account!!

I know you’re all probably stuck to your WLKs now, so I’ll be nice and e-mail you your redemption codes.

GAME ON!!!

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Win a 1GB Imation Nano Flash Drive!

Well, guess what?

I have another one of these awesome things to give away!

Will wonders never cease!

To win this, you need to prove to everyone that you have a superhero power like in Heroes or X-Men!!!

I’m just joking, of course.

Just tell me what superhero power you would like to have if you could choose ONE. And then give yourself a superhero name. If you want, you can even describe your superhero costume.

I will award the prize to my favourite entry!

Closing date is Thursday, Nov 27, 11:59 pm.

GO FOR IT!!

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And now, the end is near,
And so I face the final curtain.

My friend, I’ll say it clear,
I’ll state my case, of which I’m certain.

I’ve lived a life that’s full,
I traveled each and every highway.

And more, much more than this,
I did it my way.

The following post first appeared on Sheylara.com on April 23, 2004.

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Going to an audition is like taking an ecstasy pill and then not being allowed to party and dance.

I told this to Chong last night over ICQ and he said, “Like taking Viagra and not being able to have sex?”

I suppose that analogy works, too.

Auditions are very much like drugs. There are good ones and there are bad ones. Good ones make you feel good and crave more. Bad ones just make you sick. (If you’re cheapo and buy cheap drugs from dodgy suppliers, you might get fake or diluted ones which can make you physically sick.)

Mind you, I don’t actually do drugs and I don’t encourage anyone to. I just know a bit about them because there was a chapter on recreational drugs in my college Psychology course.

I had to add that disclaimer because I don’t want any gahmen bodies shutting down my site. So, here’s another disclaimer for good measure:

RECREATIONAL DRUGS ARE EVIL! They make you impotent and eat your brain cells and kill your kidneys and make your parents sad.

I am such a model citizen.

Now, back to auditions.

What happens at an audition is that, depending on what I’m asked to do, varying amounts of adrenaline will course through my body and my brain’s serotonin factory will work overtime.

The result is that my creative energy is up and I’m on a high and I want to dance and jump around and do all sorts of crazy things.

But auditions are short-lived. They make you do fun things and get you all excited. They let you show off for a while, and then they say thank you, now bugger off because I have 6,355 more applicants to see.

See what I mean? It’s like being invited to a rave party (keeping in mind that my knowledge of rave parties is purely academic), and they give you a party drug, but the moment the drug starts kicking in, they shoo you off home.

Can anything be more anti-climatic?

And then, there are bad auditions. Which is when you’re made to do things you’re not that good at or you’re feeling especially nervous because Najip Ali is the casting director (yes, that happened once).

So you do a lousy job and you feel like a fool because you’re sure that everyone thinks you suck because they’re staring at you like you have a piece of lettuce stuck between your teeth and you think the best solution to all your problems in life is to go home and lock the doors and board up all the windows and never emerge from the house again.

In any case, I don’t like the feeling I get after an audition. It’s like, I don’t know what to do with myself and I have all this energy to release but nowhere to release it to. And I’m trembling because my nerves are all fired up and I feel like I’m going to spontaneously combust.

AUDITIONS ARE EVIL!

But some are fun. I was at one of those last night.

I was given a monologue to learn on the spot and I did a crying scene and I had to do it TWICE because three phones started ringing in succession while I was in the midst of weeping tragically.

After that, the director played me a piece of music and told me to perform a mime to that music. I decided to act as a seed at crossroads because that was what the music made me feel like.

I told my boyfriend about it after the audition and he was, like, “How can you act as a seed? It’s an inanimate object!”

Boyfriends just don’t get it, do they?

Of course seeds can move. How else do they turn into trees and plants?

And if Garfield can talk and walk around on his hind legs, I don’t see why seeds can’t sing and dance and do income tax returns.

Anyway, that’s the great thing about being an actress. You can justify just about any shit and you can be anything or anyone you want.

But auditions are still evil.

SO ARE PARTY DRUGS!! OK??

When I first bought my MSI Wind, I had envisoned myself relaxing at some cool coffee joint, like maybe TCC, on a leisurely afternoon, sipping coffee while blogging on my pink cutie in air-conditioned comfort.

I never imagined I would be blogging in a coffeeshop in Hougang while eating rojak off a paper plate and drinking strawberry smoothie off a plastic cup.

Very tak glam.

I had a photoshoot nearby, earlier. It was over by 4:30pm, and I had two hours to kill before meeting the Goonfather for dinner.

I called the Goonfather to ask him whether I should go home first or just hang around and wait for him because his office is also nearby.

He said, “Taking a bus home will take you an hour. Why don’t you walk over to Heartland Mall? You can hang out in the Hong Kong cafe there and do your blog stuff or whatever.”

I said, “Okay, you pick me up at Heartland Mall later.”

I had made the call to him while sitting at this coffeeshop. (I had sat down because my shoe lace had come off while walking towards the road, initially planning to just hail a cab and go home.)

After I hung up the phone, I went to order a plate of rojak.

*lol*

I decided to stay put because the weather is nice out, it’s an airy and quiet coffeeshop, and I really like the rojak here.

I just feel a little out of place because I’m surrounded by uncles. There are about 15 customers I can see from my position and they are all uncles. I’m the only female customer.

But they’re okay, just minding their own business and not regarding me with suspicion or anything.

This isn’t the first time I’m blogging at a HDB coffeeshop.

It probably won’t be the last time, either.

But I think I’d better stop now. The zhi char stall beside me is beginning to cook stuff and Fluffy is starting to feel oily.