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!

Categories: Gaming Notebook
18 Comments »

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.

Categories: Gaming Notebook
13 Comments »

OMG. I’ve gone and done the unthinkable.

I just bought (or rather, the Goonfather just bought) Pirates of the Burning Sea!!

It’s a new MMORPG set in the Caribbean of 1720 where you get to be a pirate or swashbuckler or naval officer.

I’ve never even really liked pirates and piratey stuff. Well, I do adore Captain Jack Sparrow, but that’s largely because I love Johnny Depp and that’s the extent of my pirate fandom.

I’m writing this blog now while my game is patching because once the patch is done, I will never have time to do anything else anymore.

Deciding to play this game is a totally impulsive move and totally nuts. I now have a full-time temp office job, on top of which I still have auditions and shoots, on top of which I have this blog to update daily, on top of which I just joined a choir with our first public performance slated for August.

Where will I find time to play an MMORPG?

I didn’t even know of the game’s existence until like a week ago when the game launched and the Goonfather started arrrrr-ing at me like a pirate, at the oddest random moments.

“Arrrrrrrrr!!” he would say, twisting his mouth in a way that makes him look more like Popeye the Sailorman than a badass pirate captain.

And I would ask him, “What the hell?”

And he would say, “I’m a pirate! Arrrrrrrrrrrrr!”

He deliberated for a week before finally caving in and buying the game, in the process also buying a second copy for me.

Many of my friends have already started (or are thinking of) playing it, so talk has been revolving around this game, which makes me all excited for no logical reason. I’m not really excited over being a pirate and sailing my own ship and waging sea battles. I’m more excited about playing with friends.

You can’t possibly know what fun is until you play an MMORPG with real life friends.

Well… I dunno. I’ve been (and still am) really insanely busy and I have no time to play games.

But I can feel the gamer’s blood still running strong within me. I am hyperventilating with excitement over starting a new game which I don’t have much of an interest in playing!

Siao lah.

Categories: Gaming Notebook
14 Comments »

I have to stop being a glutton for punishment.

I signed up for a two-day filmmaking crash course (nine hours each day) which cost me almost $400.

That, of course, is not the story.

The story is that class started 9 o’clock this morning and I gave myself only two hours of sleep, plus a mild hangover.

Aftiel called us out of the blue (after a few years of MIA) and asked us to go drinking last night.

Cannot say no, right?

Roomful of Blues was half filled with gamers last night. Bet you didn’t know that many gamers are alcoholics.

I had a great time reminiscing the crazy times we spent in-game together. I laughed so hard all night I thought I was going burst an appendix.

It was also great meeting new people and sharing scandals about their WoW guild leader, while said guild leader sat in front of us and gave us murderous stares.

Incidentally, we discovered quite by chance that yesterday was Christina’s birthday. So Aftiel got her two flaming somethings to down, and then forced her to play five-ten with every single one of us, turn by turn, for three rounds. Loser had to drink one Aftiel-sized shot of Chivas on the rocks. We knocked down half a bottle within 20 minutes.

Christina was quite traumatised but she turned out to be quite the hustler, winning at most of the five-ten matches.

I don’t know who came up with the idea of causing death by alcohol for birthday peoples. Isn’t it oxymoronic to celebrate life by killing yourself?

So, anyway, attending a nine-hour crash course right after a drinking party is not a very good idea.

Not good at all.

Today’s class was funny and interesting, but I dozed off a few times (only for short bursts). Damn stupid lah… pay money go sleep.

But after tomorrow, I will be a certified Hollywood Film Institute graduate and boast of having Quentin Tarantino as a fellow alumni and be equipped to make a feature film and get it shown in cinemas within eight months (or so the course promises). Impressive or not??

I find it somewhat hilarious.

It’s possible, actually, but I don’t think I’ll do it. I’ll wait for the other students to do it and cast me in their films.

Today’s blog is very boring, I know. But I think I’m entitled to a self-indulgent pointless post once in a while. I’m so zombified I can’t think straight.

And I still have homework to do!! Which is to watch a Hollywood film. *lol* Some homework!

I miss WoW and EQ2 and DAoC and even SWG! Yeah, like anyone’s gonna care.

Have a great weekend, whatever’s left of it!

Categories: Acting Journal, Gaming Notebook
21 Comments »

With some sadness, I put down my twin fighting batons in EQ2…

… in order that I may take up new weaponry.

My friends groan and tremble each time I whip out my fearsome dual-wielding objects of terror.

They shiver in the cold dread of waking up one day to find themselves unwitting stars of YouTube.

Bwahahahaha!

I think I need to buy a tripod.

Categories: Gaming Notebook, Video Scrapbook
15 Comments »