[ L o s t I n T r a n s l a t i o n ]

I have decided to shut down this blog.

Not because I'm not posting. Not because I hate MSN spaces (I do, but that's not a good reason.) If answers be what you seek, head to:

http://tehymc.livejournal.com/

For clues as to why the internet's most mysterious man has jumped ship.

Ice-skating at Oakleigh Olympic Ice Skating Centre!

When: Wednesday, 11 am (meet at station)

Where: 1080 Oakleigh Road, Oakleigh, 3187

How much: $14.50 per person

Bring: "Really long thick socks" (Lach, 2007) a jacket, and band-aids.

 

Comment if you're coming.

Yesterday I went to Chadstone after church because Van needed to buy a present for a friend of hers. The rest of us just tagged along because quite frankly we're very bored individuals who have nothing better to do. And Van's very loveable. s2

We wandered around the food court first because Bryan had a hankering for some ice-cream...we saw my cousin there and he managed to score some free ice-cream from Hungry Jack's on account of him saying "Ally sent me" to get it. I went and bothered Mel A at Ali Baba's too, it was quite fun because she's easy to gross out. But I waited until there were no customers to start talking to her, because I really hate looking unprofessional and especially making other people look unprofessional while they're on the job. But waiting until there were no customers took forever, and apparently Van and Bryan thought I was chatting her up, so they came to bother me and embarass me in front of her. Naturally all attempts to embarass me failed, because the whole point of the exercise was to embarass Mel. Win-win for me!

We got some T2 for Van's friend and we wandered around a bit in that Build-A-Bear store outside of DJ's. It would make a very good one-off present for someone, and if you get people to chip in the prices aren't too bad. Still, it comes out to $60+ if you want the full works for a bear..stuffing, clothes, acessories, etc. There are some cute costumes there for the bears if anyone cares to look.

Our quest settled, we all met up again at JB Hi-Fi. We spent a long time looking at the $2 CD bin, and everyone bought at least 2 CDs each. I got 3 - La Fabrique Presenté, Wild Swans, and Brooke (or something like that). 3 completely random titles, selected purely because of their covers. La Fabrique Presenté had the best cover, it's an anime cat walking down a street. Wild Swans had this really trippy blurry cover of a woman, and Brooke just looked like a raver's wet dream. We went to Yee's friend's place (which she was house-sitting because they were on holiday) to listen to the music.

It turned out that judging a CD by its cover reflected the quality of its music - La Fabrique totally rocked, with its crazy African Diva chillout music and its general French-Japanese style craziness, whilst Brooke was more of the same chillout stuff. Wild Swans was a mixed bag, some of its songs sounded downright bizarre while other soothing and harmonic. The funniest of the lot was one of Bryan's CDs called Easybeat. He played it in his car on the way to Yee's friend's place, and it sounded TERRIBLE. It sounded like off-key scrapings of the human vocal cords remashed with crappy recording in someone's bathroom. Bryan tried to throw it away various times in the night.

While we were listening to our mixed CDs, I stumbled upon something very interesting in Yee's friend's house...a trio of Wii games. Which lead my keen analytical mind that there was a Wii somewhere in the house. We searched for it and found it in a kid's bedroom, radiating light and goodness to all who basked in its brilliant presence. Ok, so it was a bit dusty, and the batteries for the remotes were flat, but that didn't stop us from looting it and immediately hooking it up to the TV. Before we did that though, there was a hitch. Either this kid was really really spoilt, or he was a complete genius among geniuses. Picture this: He's in grade 4, yet he had a tv in his room, a PS2, and a DS. He likes Green Day (ok, I'll admit that's not a trait I'd normally associate with intellectual superiority, but bear with me). He has a Wii. Geek, right? WRONG. He also has several baseball trophies in his room, and he has an acoustic guitar with an amp. These are cool traits that one does not normally see with a GEEK. So either he's some sort of super-kid who put the Wii deliberately in his own room, or he's just a really loved kid with extracurricular activities.

Naturally we took no chances, lest he discover our tampering with his beloved console.

We took pictures of the Wii before we moved it out of his room, as a reference to put it back exactly where we put it. We dusted our fingerprints and left no trace. If he figures out it's been moved, he's got to be a genius and deserves to catch us.

We set up with our pillage in hand, and I played the Wii for the first time. I didn't play those demo ones in shopping centres because that's a bit exhibitionist for my tastes (Kev will probably have a field day with that line). And my first impression was that it was very multiplayer-oriented and very intuitive to use despite the revolitionary technology. It was very easy for the non-gamers to get into the games, which is exactly what Nintendo envisioned with its new console. We had several hours' worth of fun playing with the WiiPlay and WiiSports games, but by the end of the night we were too tired to play with it any more. It's very physically demanding, especially if you want to be good with those minigames. We didn't try out his Zelda game, because that's only single player and I didn't want to hog all the fun. My overall impression is that like the Gamecube before it, it's a primarily multiplayer console. I rarely ever play with my gamecube single-player, and the only time I do use it is when I take it to someone else's house or I need to trade pokemon between my gameboy games. I will definitely buy a Wii for its multiplayer apps, because they are extremely fun when you've got some mates over. But I really do hope that some great single-player games become available soon, because as soon as my friends leave, my Wii will begin to collect dust.

It's been a busy Christmas; I've had dinner with my relos every night since Christmas eve, and I'm trying to find excuses to bail out of them. Ever since my mum and her sis settled things between each other, they've been spending heaps of time with each other. I've been over at their place playing gin rummy every night since Christmas eve (but you probably already knew that, wise and intrepid readers).

For Christmas I got the book "The Harshness of the Heron", the third book in the Nightingale series by Liam Hearn. I really have to find time to read it. I also got a Cookie Monster doll from Ray (thanks buddy) which is really cool, because it came flat in a vacuum sealed bag. To make it "three-dimensional" you have to take it out and fluff it up. I got a nice bracelet from my parents and lastly...the mother of all starships, a really kickass lego star destroyer. Jordan's lego will never be safe again! It's massive, about 45cm in length. It took me about 3 and a half hours to build, and is really really really cool. I saw it at work for $130, but it ran out of stock before I had a chance to get my grubby little hands (and staff discount) onto it.

Work has been alright this holiday season, I got a shift during Christmas eve, but it was during the morning, so it wasn't too busy. It's not so much busy as it is constant, and it really sucks when your manager's telling you to get stuff restocked and there are a zillion people waiting in line to buy electronics. But oh well, at least I'm getting paid. 

I had this really funny lady come into work the other day - she had come in about 2 weeks prior to ask for a Pokemon game, and being the resident Pokemon master that I am, I told her all about how it was really hard to find. I told her the only place she was likely to find it was the JB Hi-Fi in Nunawading. She had the same problem I had when I bought that particular Pokemon game - the internal battery ran out after a year and it deleted all the data. I was very angry when that happened. Anyway, she came in last week and said "Oh, you probably don't remember me, but we had this conversation about a Pokemon game. I found it in the JB Hi-Fi in here! I was going to come and tell you about it, but I haven't had the time recently." xD That really made my day, because that's very sweet of her to say so. I thanked her for the tip and I am preparing to buy it.

Boxing Day sales have been crazzzzy. There were a bazillion people at Chadstone yesterday, I went with Ray, Nat, Abe, Cat, and Yee. I got there at about 12pm, and by the time we all finished there, there was barely any decent stock left, in any store. I scored a blue wooly vest that was 50% down from $90. Mmmmmmm....savings. Today I went with my mum to Knox to mop up whatever was left over from the chaos of Boxing Day. I was looking for pants, vests and other random accessories currently. Shirts and T-Shirts were secondary targets compared to these, because I've got too many of those already. Naturally, there was an abundance of Shirts and T-shirts, but few pants and other nick-knacks to my liking. I saw a nice set of shiny jeans from Tarocash, but they were out of my size and there it wasn't on sale. I ended up buying a $30 green and pink striped shirt by JenkiUrban (typo on purpose, in-joke for those in the know ;). I also bought two DVDs from JB - this HK Triad movie called Election (because I loooove gangster movies) and this really funky movie called Strings. It was on SBS on Christmas Eve, but because of a party I was at I couldn't watch it. It's a fantasy movie in the Lord of the Rings mould done entirely with marionettes - which is used in a very aesthetically pleasing fashion, and very arthouse. For example, when a character is killed, another puppet kills it by cutting its strings, and the puppet falls lifelessly to the ground. So very cool.

I'll leave you now with this fascinating picture courtesy of Rick.

Hey hey hey!

I went up to Mt. Dandenong last Sunday night to celebrate my cousin's birthday. We went to the Cuckoo restaurant - it's a Swiss-themed buffet restaurant that boasts some interesting decor and some pretty nice food. There are 3 different buffet 'rooms' - 2 above and one below - each with their own entertainment while you eat. That means that they have to run 3 different shows. I wonder how they managed to staff all those shows. Anyway, the entertainment was quite good. The guys had some pretty funny jokes and slapstick comedy, nothing too obscene or crude, which is what I like. The guys there have a sharp wit and are great showmen, they know how to work the audience up and interact with them in a funny yet non-demeaning way. The yodelling was also excellent. ;) I think going to the Cuckoo would be preferable to Tivoli's (from what I hear from the rest of you guys!). The food was pretty standard (I don't mean that it was average tasting, just that there was the usual types of food with few special exceptions) - roast beef, seafood, fried stuff, salads...there was this one pastry thingo that caught my attention because it was a bit different. It was a round pastry with no roof, and inside were mushrooms in a cheesy sauce. That was quite nice! The deserts were also presented very well - I had one round of real food and made a beeline straight for those. It was a pity that I wasn't too hungry, as I somehow didn't hear my mum say that it was a buffet. Coupled with a late lunch, I was at less than half strength coming into the restaurant. I tried my best, but at the end of the night I was disappointed with my performance. Anyway, I've added some videos of the performance and the few pictures that I took of the place with my phone.

 

(Right click and press save as to download to your chomp)

The first one is where the man did a bit of yodeling - http://h1.ripway.com/Mango/Video001.3gp
The second one is where the man handed a bunch of cowbells out to the audience, and then played a song by pointing to audience members to shake their cowbells at the right moment. Very skillful if you ask me! - http://h1.ripside.net/Mango/Video001.3gp

In other news, we watched Casino Royale on Monday night in celebration of Ravi's birthday. I was expecting a lot from the film as I sat down, and I have to say that I was thoroughly impressed by the way the new James Bond is shaping up to be. Daniel Craig portrayed Bond in a great new way - gritty, yet manly at the same time. Even though he might not look the part of a James Bond, I think his ability to act more than compensates for his lack of physical presence. In my opinion, he's right up there with Connery and Brosnan on the Bond-o-meter.
It was also a good film; no crazy gadgets, stupid Halle Berries, or Korean guys pretending to be white dudes to fill up the screen with nonsensical padding, just great story and great stunts all throughout.

After we watched the movie, we went to Princes in Mish's really cool 3-door Barina. I was just as impressed by her manual driving as I was with Daniel Craig, so kudos to you! We played some table tennis, but we were too good to use the table properly and we just did crazy shots. After a while we decided to play downball between the four squares, which was quite entertaining. We were dropped back home by Mish at about 1am. I was the last to be dropped off, and as I waved goodbye as Mish reversed, she stalled. Nice. ;0