I’m so jumpy I can’t sit still.

Leaving for China in about 16 hours and making use of the remaining time to clear outstanding work and admin matters, prepare all my gadgets for the trip, pack and clean my room (I like coming home to a clean room).

I have five gadgets to charge. Two phones, iPad, laptop and camera.

That should be enough to keep me entertained (and connected).

I may be away but I’ll still be “home” with my gadgets. I’m only sad I can’t bring my PC. It’s a lot more efficient to blog on my PC.

I have a list of “To do before flying”. But I keep flitting from task to task randomly. I can’t sit still.

You know what I’m most looking forward to for this trip? Lazing around in the hotel, watching Naruto and playing Plants vs. Zombies on my iPad.

I am freaking excited about it.

You probably think I’m nuts to fly all the way to China just to play on my iPad.

But I love lazing around in hotel beds because the sheets are so soft and the pillows are so big and fluffy. (I thought of buying hotel-quality sheets once, but then found they cost more than $1,000 for just the bedsheet and two pillow cases. T_T)

And, since you’re on a holiday, you don’t feel so guilty lazing around as opposed to lazing around at home on your not-so-soft-and-fluffy bedding.

We’re getting a nice big suite for three nights in Changping, Dongguan. At least that’s what the Goonfather said he booked.

Then another three nights in Zhuhai. Maybe not a suite because Zhuhai hotels are a little more expensive. But we’ll see, because we haven’t booked the Zhuhai one yet, lol.

I can’t wait to play Plants vs Zombies in China!!!

I just finished the adventure mode. Looking forward to checking out the mini games exclusive to the iPad version.

The iPad rocks!! The battery is so long-lasting it’s amazing.

The fingerprints are also amazing. I never knew I had such dirty fingers.

So, I bought these travel-size wet screen wipes for my iPad and iPhone 4 (which seems to attract more fingerprints than the iPhone 3). It’s like $22.90 for 20 pieces. So expensive. I think I got ripped off.

(Update: I forgot that there’s also a micro-chamois polishing cloth and a micro-fiber polishing cloth inside the pack. So maybe it’s a reasonable price after all? I don’t know.)

Anyway, the main purpose of our coming trip is to eat peaches. It’s the peach season!

China peaches are unbelievably sweet and juicy. I’ve tried them in Singapore, so I want to try them there. Next year, I hope to visit Beijing because I hear the peaches are even better in Northen China.

Yum, peach! IT’S SO FLUFFY!!

(Photo from here. Doesn’t it look amazing?)

I’ll also be visiting a few theme parks and doing a lot of eating all round. That’s about it. Won’t be doing too much shopping. Saving it for Korea next month!

I’ll still be blogging as usual. Nothing will really change, I think. I’ll still be doing the same things I do every day. Eat, sleep, get online, blog, have some fun. Haha.

My mind is a little flighty today. It’s always like that just before a trip. The stress of trying to finish everything on time combined with the excitement of going away shorts my internal wiring.

Ohmygosh I can watch Naruto on the plane on my iPad. I think I’m about to die of happiness.

I would like to be a professional anime watcher.

I think I shall go kick the Goonfather’s butt a bit and make him become a billionaire so I can be a tai-tai and stay home and watch anime all day long! :D

Hmm, but do tai-tais watch anime?

Anyway, no tai-tai-ness for now. We’re taking budget air. But Naruto and PvZ should be sufficient to distract me from the cramped and claustrophobic sitting arrangements.

Yay!

Oh noes I can’t keep still. Okay I shall go clean my room now.

Byebyes!

After a somewhat mysterious disappearance, Gamer Girl Friday seems to have returned. That is just like her to pull a stunt like that. We think she deserves to be smacked by a rather big fish.

But not too hard. She still needs some of her brains in order to play games.

(Hidden message there: Gamers are smart because they have to use their brains to play games.)

Now that we’ve gotten the introduction out of the way, let’s switch to first-person because writing in third-person is rather idiotic if you’re writing about yourself, although that never seems to stop me.

Okay.

I stopped publishing Gamer Girl Friday because:

(Choose one of the following:)

1. It’s very time-consuming.
2. It was less popular than my other blogs.
3. It wasn’t giving me much income.
4. I went back to EverQuest II and stopped playing other games.
5. All of the above.

The answer is, of course, 6. Nobody cares.

So, why am I bringing GGF back?

I just felt like it. I suddenly found myself missing it.

It’s probably like if you have a child who drives you nuts on a daily basis and you can’t wait for him to move out when he’s 18 so when he finally ups and leaves, you breathe a sigh of relief for five seconds, and then you start missing him already.

Except it took me a considerably longer time to miss GGF.

(And that is an example of a rather bad analogy because I probably don’t have many readers who actually have 18-year-old children so they won’t be able to empathise.)

I don’t have to have a logical reason to do anything, anyway. My philosophy is: Just Do It.

Oh, wait. I think someone has already trademarked that. But it’s a good philosophy, is it not?

The new GGF will have a slightly different style in order to preserve my sanity. No more newsletter-style and weekly contests (because people were cheating by posting multiple entries which is annoying).

It will just be a random “If I have something to talk about, I will” thing.

I would have talked about Rappelz but then I’ve already talked about it so I will end today’s post with a mention of a newish iPhone game that I tried.

It’s called Fastar! (Exclamation mark included.) It’s short for Fight Angry Squares: The Action RPG, although it’s not really an RPG. It’s more like an action game that parodies RPGs.

I downloaded it for USD0.99 without knowing much about it because the screenshots in iTunes sold me the game right away. I love the humour.

It has deliberate bad spelling, deliberate childish language (“You got 103 money!” is just so funny) and cute graphics.

Well, the game was fun for 20 minutes but after that, it was pretty much the same thing even though there are 24 game modes because the aim is roughly the same — to get to the end as fast as possible and rise to the top of the leaderboards.

But I still think it was worth my USD0.99 for that 20 minutes. After all, when we go to the arcade centre, we put down $1-$2 for a game that lasts anything from 20 seconds (if we really suck) to, I dunno, 20 minutes, depending on the game.

I’m sure gamers who like action games and beating high scores will get a lot more game time out of it. It has rave reviews all over the place.

Okay, that’s all for today! But before I zip off, Gamer Girl Friday would like to wish Nanny Wen a very happy fulfilling birthday because today is her birthday!

Happy Birthday to you,
Happy Birthday to you!
Happy Birthday to Nanny Wen,
Happy Birthday to youuuuuu!

It was that huge statue in a cheap suit of armor that first got us curious about The King Louis Grill & Bar at VivoCity.

The statue was standing in a rather prominent spot in VivoCity, holding a sword and accompany a large poster detailing the merits of the restaurant it was endorsing.

The food in the pictures looked really good. Meat. Thick slabs of juicy, tantalising meat. Loads of meat.

And there was a 3-for-2 beer promo which decided the boys.

So up we went to The King Louis.

It is supposedly a restaurant serving medieval English royalty cuisine.

The menu looks good enough. There are royal banquet sets for knights and queens, as well as individual ala carte items.

But I’m sure medieval royalty had dishes a lot more creative than what we saw on the menu. They probably had dishes along the lines of Honey-coated Roast Rabbit Stuffed With Exotic Pear and Aged Cheese.

Still, I am generally quite happy sticking to commoner dishes like Just A Regular Rib-Eye Steak, so it didn’t bother me too much that The King Louis didn’t quite deliver its promise of feeding us like medieval royalty.

The decor is a little cheesy if you want my opinion. The furniture looks more Western Cowboy Tavern than Medieval England Court to me. The only things that vaguely pass off as medieval are the fake knights wearing plates of cheap, hammered steel.

And there are TV monitors surrounding the restaurant.

“Oh, look! Medieval TV!” said Unker Kell.

He pointed at one particular TV in a corner. The screen was doing funny stuff, alternating between colourful fuzz and techno-funk lines performing synchronised dance.

Impressive.

But despite questionable decor and misleading advertisements, we found the food pretty decent. Three of us shared a Knight’s Banquet at a reasonable price of $45.90.

For an additional $10, we could receive two soups, two drinks and dessert.

I mean, the meats weren’t to-die-for or anything, but they were tasty enough that I wouldn’t mind going back there again. I love mixed platters where you get all kinds of meat.

Only the pork was disappointing because it was overcooked, too tough and dry. The beef and chicken were reasonably good. The potato wedges were crispy and tasty. The pineapple and apple slices were inedible, being quite bland. All their juices must have seeped out during the cooking.

The meal was just enough for the three of us.

I particularly liked the very large fork that come sitting on the platter.

When it was time for us to receive our dessert, I was excited to discover what “King Louis Assorted Pastries” we were going to get.

Turned out it was this:

I asked our server, “THIS is assorted pastries?”

She smiled without any hint of irony and said brightly, “Yes.”

Oh, well, at least the staff was cheerful and friendly.

The staff was made up of young ladies dressed in black t-shirts and black pants with very common-looking aprons and — get this — wearing cheap tiaras on their heads with their hair unceremoniously tied up.

It was wrong on two counts.

Firstly, tiaras should go with gowns, not lousy tshirts and pants with cheap aprons.

Secondly, tiaras are supposed to belong on princesses, and princesses are not waitresses, period.

It would be a better experience for diners if the waitresses are dressed like medieval serving wenches. You can easily get these costumes at costume shops.

Although you’d have to dirty them up a bit to make them look more realistic. I mean the dresses, not the wenches. Although I can imagine serving wenches being quite grimy after hours of serving food.

For a themed restaurant, overall, not enough effort has been made to stay faithful to the theme. Foodwise, it’s reasonable. The cheesecake was actually really good. Secret Recipe standard.

Just don’t order beer.

Our boys got the “3 beers for the price of 2″ promo, right? It turned out that their three beers cost $40. Each pint of Stella Artois goes for $20 there.

According to the boys, $40 is a normal price to pay for three pints of beer at most drinking places, anyway. Some promotion that was.

We’d still go back, though. We want to try the meat+seafood banquet, next. And I’m still hoping the wait staff uniforms will get better.

The King Louis Grill & Bar is at #03-07A VivoCity (beside Daiso).

Remember my CLEO magazine-Coke Zero interview and photoshoot?

I thought the photo made me look like I was actually really high up on the wall.

But I was only about one metre off the ground. Haha.

We were at SAFRA Yishun, the place where I had my first rock-climbing experience.

I was really excited about getting to climb rocks again, so I was a bit disappointed that they only needed me to climb a few steps.

What happened was that because this wall was a little challenging for me, my belayer (also a rock-climbing instructor), decided to demo the route for me. He went on the wall himself and showed me where to step on.

When he got into the position where you see me in the photo, the CLEO crew said, “That’s it! We want that position.”

So, for the next two hours, they shot me in that position endlessly, only tweaking the lighting and camera angle as well as small shifts in my body, head and expression, every so often.

Of course, I didn’t stay on the wall for two hours. After a series of shots, I got to come down and rest while the crew looked over what they’d shot to determine what they needed to change. So it was up and down, up and down.

Even though I didn’t get to climb higher, it was still fun.

Although very, very hot.

I think I tanned two shades darker after the two hours. And I had sunblock on.

To get the shine on my body, the makeup artist first rubbed some oil on. Then it was sprays of water at every break. He also had to wipe sweat off my face every so often, heh.

Did I mention it was really hot?

But I guess the sunny weather was great for lighting.

During the breaks, I chatted with Nanny Wen (who was acting as my manager and personal photographer) and my belayer (can’t remember his name). He was the one who told us about the Sport Climbing course which Nanny Wen and I eventually took up.

In that course, we learnt how to belay, use the safety equipment and climb more efficiently, so we can go climb rocks together now without having to hire belayers.

Anyway, the shoot was over way before I expected. Disappointing, as I said, cos I wanted to climb somemore. Haha.

Oh well. Here are more photos for your viewing pleasure!

Getting makeup and hair done while being interviewed:

Putting on my climbing shoes:

Gearing up for safety:

Setting up the camera:

Hooking the belay device on. Ready to climb!

Shoot starts!

Crew checking the shots:

Taking a break:

Spraying water:

End of shoot and a rewarding cold drink!

I got my iPhone 4 last night but I didn’t get a MicroSIM card. I won’t explain why because it’s a long, boring story. But I was going to have to visit a SingTel shop the next day to convert my SIM into a MicroSIM.

The Goonfather said, “Why pay $18 for the conversion? Just cut it yourself!”

I really thought he was joking. But he wasn’t. Apparently, many people do it. Just Google and you’ll see.

We were having dinner at The King Louis when Unker Kell started cutting up his SIM card with his steak knife, using his new MicroSIM as a template (his MicroSIM wasn’t activated yet.)

It worked perfectly! His newly-cut SIM card fit into his iPhone 4 and he was able to make calls and surf the net.

I wasn’t ready to cut up my card yet because I didn’t want to break out my iPhone 4 outside. So I got the Goonfather to make markings on my SIM card using Unker Kell’s MicroSIM as template.

I gave him a pen to make the marks, but he decided to use his steak knife.

What’s with boys and knives?

Once we got home, he used a pair of normal scissors and cut along the lines. One minute later, I had one perfectly functional MicroSIM card at no extra cost!

It’s not a perfect fit for the MicroSIM tray, but it still works fine.

The iPhone 4 is sooooo good to use. I couldn’t imagine anything could be smoother than the iPhone 3G, but Apple has done it.

I’ve named her Cutie Prime because my iPhone 3G was Ms Cutie. The “Prime” is from “Optimus Prime”, so used because the iPhone 4 looks more high tech.

It was Kerrendor’s idea actually. When I said I was going to name my Alienware Fluffy (because my pink MSI Wind is also named Fluffy), he said, “Why not Fluffy Prime cos you need a more high tech alien-sounding name?”

He was actually joking but I really liked the idea so I used it.

The Goonfather named his iPhone 3GS iGoon. He’s still deciding whether to get an iPhone 4.

Now I just need to think of a name for my iPad when it arrives!

Update

If you don’t have a MicroSIM to use as template, you can get one here: Print out this PDF at 100%. This website also has very detailed instructions if you need.

If, after you cut up your SIM card and decide you want it back to original size, you can buy an adapter at Sim Lim Square to fit your card in to turn it back into regular size.