We were on the road when the Goonfather suddenly exclaimed, “Hey, there’s a bumble bee riding a motorbike!”

He slowed his car down a little and the “bumble bee” came into view from behind the car.

It was a man wearing a long-sleeve yellow-and-black-striped pullover with black pants, carrying a bright orange backpack, riding a motorcycle.

I didn’t take a photo of him because I didn’t think it would be nice, so here’s an illustration for you to see what I mean.

The black strips on the sides of the backpack are backpack straps that flapped in the wind.

We chuckled for a bit, and then the Goonfather said, “All he needs to complete his outfit are antennae.”

“He has antennae sticking out his backpack,” I said.

“Those are not antennae. They’re wings.”

“Where got wings in little strips one?!”

“They’re broken wings,” explained the Goonfather, “That’s why he has to ride a motorbike.

I rolled my eyes but I laughed.

The Goonfather asked, “Do you know what happens when his bike runs out of gas?”

“He stops?”

“Nooooo! He will pee in the gas tank.”

He paused for effect, and then continued:

“Because his bike uses BP.”

All together now…

*groan*

This week’s Star Blog topic:

I look into the mirror — and what do I see?

Well, I see what I see. I see a face staring back at me. And I decide to camwhore.

I considered being all philosophical about it and talking about the stuff beyond the skin. But there’s so much stuff beyond the skin that I could write a book about it.

So I finally decided to just take a lot of photos and talk about camwhoring.

Click to read and view more photos.

The Goonfather discovered this humble eatery in Tanjong Pagar a few weeks ago when he was waiting for me to finish an audition nearby.

A search on Google revealed that this place is already well-known and reviews confirm my opinion that Qun Zhong Eating House serves the best xiao long bao in Singapore. Yes, better than Din Tai Fung.

Of course, I’m not saying that conclusively. It’s quite possible that there are better. But until I find the better ones, this is it.

The menu calls it Little Juicy Steamed Meat Dumplings. And is it ever juicy.

The key characteristics of a good xiao long bao are thin skin and juicy innards.

This XLB does not have an ideally thin skin, but it’s thin enough to not distract from the main selling point: the juicy factor.

The moment you pop it in your mouth and break the skin, your tongue is bathed in sweet meat juice, delighting your taste buds with a flavour that is almost sensuous.

There is a lot more “soup” in this XLB than any other I’ve tried. And it’s good.

This XLB comes with a price tag of $1 a piece, with a set order of seven pieces.

Be careful when you lift the XLB off the tray. Sometimes it sticks to the cloth it’s sitting on and if you yank it too hard, the skin will break and all the precious juice will flow out into nothingness. Quite painful when that happens.

I read that the owner and staff are quite surly, so don’t expect good service. It was quite okay when we visited, apart from a mild incident where the Goonfather wanted to order more food but the waitress ignored him so he got fed up and decided not to order any more.

The wait was rather long, too, even though the eatery is rather small. If I don’t remember wrongly, we waited about 30 minutes for our two sets of XLB.

But I am of the opinion that Singaporeans are veritable food whores. As long as the food is out of the world, service doesn’t matter.

I’d go back again, and soon.

Qun Zhong Eating House
21 Neil Road, Singapore 088814
Tel: 6221 3060 (Reservations not allowed)
Opening hours: 11:30 am to 3 pm / 5:30 pm to 9 pm
Close on every Wednesday

This week, the Goonfather was supposed to help me review three games because they came all at once and I didn’t have the time to play them.

What came back to me were very brief write-ups of two games (Velvet Assassin and Plants vs. Zombies), and they looked more like blurbs than reviews. I could have gotten more information from Wikipedia.

I have published one of them for your reading pleasure.

For the third game (Patapon 2), he gave the lame excuse that it can’t be reviewed because it’s the same as its predecessor, Patapon, so he has nothing to say about it.

WTF.

My life is really tough.

All these games and no time to play.

==================================================

Table of Contents

1. Velvet Assassin — Skimpy Porn Star??
2. Monopoly Deal Card Game
3. Time Wasters by Swordplay
4. The zombie horde cometh!
5. Exposed!
6. Our favourite eyeballs are back!
7. Results of last week’s contest
8. Win 2 sets of Monopoly Deal Shuffle Shaker!!

==================================================

Velvet Assassin — Skimpy Porn Star??

I received a copy of Velvet Assassin yesterday. But because I was out all day and I had Xbox duty at night, I didn’t have time to play it. So I made the Goonfather play it and write a review for me.

He was only too happy to oblige (the playing part) since it gave him a chance to test some new games on his new souped-up machine.

But the Goonfather is the kind of person who would, if he were a doctor and you came to him with a pain in the leg, suggest that you chop off the leg to get rid of the pain.

In other words, he is the sort of gamer for whom brute force is the answer to every problem in life.

Obviously, you can’t get very far using brute force in a game of espionage. And you can’t write a decent review if you can’t get very far.

Here’s the Goonfather’s review:

Velvet Assassin is a third-person shooter game which requires a lot of sneaking around to get things done. Head-on contact will most likely lead to death, unless you take a shot of morphine, which will transform you into a skimpily-dressed porn star.

While in morphine mode, you can run right up to the enemy without him noticing you and kill the ugly son of a bitch. Be careful, though. The morphine only lasts a short while.

After killing an enemy, you might want to drag the body away and hide it so that patrolling enemies won’t notice it. Otherwise, your cover will be blown and your enemies will go on alert mode.

This game is very much like Thief, except that it’s set during World War 2. If you like games like Thief and Metal Gear Solid, you might like this.

Siiiiigh.

I’ll see if I can manage to get some time to play it next week.

Velvet Assassin is a stealth action game available for Xbox 360 and PC.

[Back to Table of Contents]

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Monopoly Deal Card Game

I recently received a complimentary set of this game, which is the card game version of the classic Monopoly board game.

I don’t know if I ever said this officially, but I’m an all-round gamer. I love games of any kind (except psychological mind games, haha), so I’m thrilled to have an opportunity to review a non-video game this week.

In this card game, your goal is to be the first person to own three full sets of properties. While getting to that goal, you can steal your friends’ properties, make them pay rent or make them give you money just because.

In short, it’s a sabo game!

I played the game with my friends last weekend.

Haha… the Goonfather and I both had our netbooks up with Civony. (I’m not addicted to it. Not anymore, anyway. I just can’t stand resources and gold going to waste, or being stolen. Just like how I still collect my Neopets bank interest every day now even though I quit the game six years ago.)

I really enjoyed Monopoly Deal. Each game takes about 10-15 minutes. The rules confounded us intially but we were playing like pros by our third game.

It’s addictive, too.

Halfway through the game, the Goonfather said, “What a stupid game!”

(He has a tendency to do that when he’s losing. But he doesn’t like to win, either. In our third game, when he had a chance to win, he refused to lay down his winning card for two rounds.)

The next day, when we met up with Unker Kell for dinner, he was, like, “Dude, let’s play Monopoly Deal later.”

You can never believe his words!

The Shuffle Shaker that comes with the game is just a novelty card shuffler. You pop the cards in the box and shake it violently to shuffle the cards up.

Not really necessary.

What makes this game great is that it’s very portable. You only need one deck of cards (leave the shaker at home) and you can conveniently bring it anywhere for quick-fix entertainment.

This game has a limit of five players. If you have more players, just buy another deck of cards to add to the original deck!

Fun fun fun!

Oooh, guess what?! I have two sets of Monopoly Deal Shuffle Shaker to give away this week. Check the contest section! ;)

[Back to Table of Contents]

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Time Wasters by Swordplay

Swordplay is my pesky li’l bro who spends all his time playing time-wasting games. To make him a little bit more useful, I’m sitting on him and making him recommend one fun and simple web-based game each week.

Today’s Recommendation: Gray

Wow, today’s time waster is very deep. It’s not really even a game, but more a social commentary on humanity.

Half the people who play this will go, “Huh?”

The other half will go, “Brilliant! Let’s start a discussion.”

Which one are you?

Try the game if you have some time. It’ll take you about five minutes to get the message, if you get it at all.

[Back to Table of Contents]

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

The zombie horde cometh!

Plants vs. Zombies by PopCap Games is finally out. Remember I talked about it a couple of weeks ago?

I like the game trailer. It’s short, cute and funny!

The Goonfather got the game, so I asked him to do a review for me.

I think I’d better not ask him to do reviews ever again.

His review didn’t give a clue as to whether the game is fun or worth playing or whether he liked it the slightest.

He is the most infuriating person in the whole wide world. He will NEVER give you an opinion if you ask for it. But if you’re sitting there quietly by yourself, he will come over and browbeat you with one of his countless conspiracy theories.

Anyway, Plants vs. Zombies is a tower defence game with Magic: The Gathering elements. Sounds interesting, no? Read the interview with game designer George Fan.

[Back to Table of Contents]

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Exposed

Chong sent me this link. He’s in love with these x-ray photos of game system and controller innards.

Ooh, kinky.

This x-ray technician sicked his x-ray machine on all his unsuspecting gaming equipment. How very awesome for us.

Hmm, I don’t know. What do you think?

[Back to Table of Contents]

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Our favourite eyeballs are back!

I can’t imagine anyone not liking Patapon. Even a brute force guy like the Goonfather likes it. In fact, he was playing it on Wednesday night while we were having dinner in a Japanese restaurant, and I was, at the same time, Star Blog chatting.

It’s called Geek Multitask Dating.

Continuing the story of Patapon, our cute eyeball heroes have set sail for new lands, only to be attacked by a monstrous kraken and tossed into a strange land where they find an enemy tribe they have to defeat.

If you have not ever played Patapon, OMG.

Please go now to the Patapon official site to play the mini flash game.

The game is so cute I could curl up and die. I love when you press a wrong combo and the patapons go, “Huh?”

While playing Patapon 2, the Goonfather alerted me that one of his Patapons got angry, threw down his spear and threatened to go home if he didn’t buck up and play the game properly.

How cute is that?!

New stuff in Patapon 2:

• Powerful hero attacks.
• New mobs, units and classes.
• New drum commands.
• Mutiplayer co-op via PSP WiFi (up to four players).
• More indepth customisation in levelling and equipment.

Patapon 2 is a PSP exclusive title.

[Back to Table of Contents]

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Results of last week’s contest

And this poster…

… goes to…

PATA PATA PATA PON!

Oh, wait. Wrong channel.

Hur hur.

And the winner is…

SpiritAngelo! =)

PATA PATA PATA PON!

Please e-mail me, thank you.

[Back to Table of Contents]

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Win 2 sets of Monopoly Deal Shuffle Shaker!!

Hasbro Singapore has kindly sponsored two sets of Monopoly Deal Shuffle Shaker, each worth $21.90, for this week’s contest.

So, I’m looking for two winners. Just post a comment saying something, anything, about Monopoly (can be the classic board game). Winners will be picked by random.

Please note that this prize will require self-collection (in a central area) because it’s a biggish package.

Closing date is May 14, 2009, 11:59 pm.

Good luck! =)

[Back to Table of Contents]

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

I think I have mentioned this before somewhere, although I can’t remember where.

My cousin and I were Monopoly freaks when we were kids and, between us, we owned four different versions. One day, we invented Quadruple Monopoly, which is playing the game on four boards put together.

We dealt ourselves four times the amount of money, and we jumped from board to board via switched Chance cards. After four hours, we haven’t even gotten close to having a clear winner. (It was just the two of us playing.)

I miss the days when we spent whole afternoons playing board games and Nintendo games together. This cousin of mine just started a blog, too. Check it out! =)

An SMS conversation between my personal trainer and me:

Sheylara: Quick question. Is laughing during resistance training bad? I mean, like, could people hurt themselves?

Eric Goh: Only if you laugh at your trainer. If both trainer and client laugh, no problem.

Sheylara: What…

Eric Goh: Because if you laugh at your trainer, angry trainer will train you harder.

Sheylara: …

Why, oh why, oh why???????????!!!!

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

For the record, Eric eventually gave me the correct answer.

It’s not advisable to laugh during weight training because it makes you stop breathing regularly and raises your blood pressure.

But it’s good to laugh as a workout because laughing works the abs.

Eric has been working my abs a lot because he’s a funny sort of fellow. And he makes me laugh while I’m working on my abs, which makes them cramp up so much that I want to crawl into the locker room and hide in the sauna.

Well, not really.

Laughing is fun and I’m enjoying my workouts despite having a sadistic trainer.

I’m laughing my way to sexy abs.

Random irrelevant photo.