Confession of a Gaming Addict

Playing games has been a big part of my childhood, from old school handheld Nintendo Game & Watch series like Octopus and Donkey Kong (not forgetting Egg, Fire, Parachute, Popeye) to the Casio Game's iconic Western Bar & Kungfu to Pacman on Mac to game consoles like Atari, Nintendo, Super Nintendo, Famicom, Sega, Playstation and PS2.

If you played similar games I mentioned above, you would definitely have to visit Super Potato in Akihabara, Tokyo, Japan. They sell used games and consoles and it will definitely bring back sweet memories (it did for me).

Game addiction is also part and parcel of my life. I remember the most extreme was during secondary school holidays when I was deeply hooked by the Final Fantasy Series by Square Enix. The RPG series with strong storylines and amazing graphics kept me playing throughout my school holidays. I think my record (from what I can remember) was 58 hours in three days with about 4 hours sleep per day and meals in between long game animations. If only there were Cyber Olympics during my time. My parents have been nagging that I play too much computer games right to the day I moved out to my own place (then my wife takes over, ha).

The previous addiction started when I moved to my new place and found my neighbour Alan with similar (or should I say stronger) interest in gadgets and gaming. He got me hooked onto WOW (World of Warcraft) which was a first as I have never believed in paying a monthly subscription to play a game. But the game was so well developed that I was addicted to it and even felt the monthly subscription was worth it. The reason was the constant update to the game and the fact that the developers are very committed to making it one of the best game in history (who wouldn't if you got over 11 million gamers paying you a monthly subscription of USD14.99. That's about USD164.89mil per month mind you).

I worked hard on my character (a beautiful female blood elf warlock), raided with a guild call Stasis and had great fun for 1.5 years till the arrival of Xavier forced my "retirement". I no longer could afford the time non had the energy to raid and that took the fun off WOW.

Given Xavier has random calls for attention and with the need to help out with the daily chores, I have resorted to facebook games like Bejeweled Blitz since they are usually short games which you can stop anytime. However during my recent MTA, I got addicted to a another facebook game - Mafia Wars.

Mafia Wars is a mob style "text based" game that involves leveling your character, earning money and joining forces with your friends to fight other facebook players. I guess with the fact that you can have an alter ego in cyberspace doing all the "bad" things while not actually harming anyone appeals to a lot of people.

If you have been flooded with heaps of announces on your news feed in facebook about Mafia Wars, do pardon me. If you are keen to join me in the game, do give me a shout. I might probably do a post on the game mechanics for those who are interested.

Cheers.

Xavier's New Ride

Wow look at that shiny new ride.

I'm gonna slowly creep in and sit beside it.

Now if I put my hand over it and nobody says anything, means it's mine right?

Ok it's MINE!

This car seems squeezy. But than again, all sports car are squeezy. I just need to take a deep breathe and I should be able to fit in.

Hmm, my tummy is still in the way...

Ok I'm ready.

Wait a minute, where's the car key? What? I have to move it around like they do in Flintstones? You're kidding right?

Xavier's Seven Month Old!

Today Xavier is Seven Month old. And he seems to be right on track going by the Hokkien saying for baby progression, 7-Sit, 8-Crawl, 9-Teething. He is now able to sit upright without support.

Will try to get a photo of him in that position on this weekend.

I hate the #%&*!@ ERP!

Man I hate ERPs! They are the stupidest money sucking idea ever. You pay so much and yet the expressways are still jam.

I have super hatred for ERPs today. I just crossed the damn gantry at ECP at exactly 7.24pm! And that bloody cost me $2.00 for nothing. The ECP is still jam with vehicles. Just 1 silly minute more and it would have only cost me S1.30 and another 6 minutes more it would be only $0.50. And I had to cross it at 7.24pm!

As if to rub salt into wound, Yes 93.3FM played 阿杜 - 差一點 right after I pass the gantry. Anyway I found the funny edited version of that song at youtube and it sort of made me laugh and lessen the pain.

Had a bad day, come laugh it away with the video below for "Tomorrow will be better!"

Back to work...

Haven't felt such terrible Monday blues for a long long time. You see, I was on 2 weeks leave and after not working for two weeks, the thought of returning to work made me feel abit down today. As to why I took 2 weeks? Well in a common practice if you are working in a bank, you are required to take either a 1 week or 2 weeks (depending on which bank) mandatory leave. I guess it's a sort of measure to detect of that employee is up to something fishy. I mean if you are not allowed into office during that period of time, you would not be able to cover your traces of any wrongdoing, right?

Anway I had plans to do many stuff during the past two weeks. However, I can't help but felt my leave being shortchanged for sickness. The last week of my leave Xavier, Lilian and myself took turns to fall sick and hence I couldn't do most of the stuff I had planned to do during the last week.

But I did some do some stuff which I enjoyed during the 1st week, like going to the photo workshop with Hart from Tomato Photo, tagging along to a food tasting session at Tetsu with Julia, shopping at Uniqlo and buy quite a number of stuff (haven't shopped for clothes since CNY in Feb).

Guess I should look forward to Monday instead of sulking about it. For if Monday do not come, there will be no Friday to look forward to.