23 August 2004

I just bought two computer games last weekend: Mafia and CSI: Dark Motives. I needed a game that is mentally stimulating (I'm plain sick and tired of playing Text Twist and Mummy Maze, and I haven't played any decent interactive games since The Watchmaker, which was an absolute DISASTER); at the same time, being frustrated at not being able to play Hitman 3: Contracts because Paladin is too low-end to support it, I needed a game where I could vent my aggression in the form of visceral violence and carnage. The idea was to exercise my mind with CSI, and to use Mafia for therapy; however, I have been obsessively playing the latter for the past week. Ace of a game! - although Mission 5: Fairplay (Before the Race) has pretty much driven me up the proverbial wall.

Lessons learnt from Mafia:

1. I'm an incredibly hopeless driver, with no hope of redemption;
2. I have no sense of direction, and cannot read maps;
3. Car horns are mankind's greatest invention since the wheel; and
4. I should consider a career as a cabbie in New York.

9 August 2004

MORE NEW BOOKS ON THE SHELF: Why I Am Not A Christian (Bertrand Russell), A Devil's Chaplain (Richard Dawkins), Catch as Catch Can (Joseph Heller), The Golden Ratio (Mario Livio), five Orson Scott Card books (The Memory of Earth, The Call of Earth, The Ships of Earth, Ender's Game, Shadow Puppets).

In case you're wondering just how I came to be in possession of a random pile of Orson Card books (notice: three of them are from 'Homecoming', one from 'Ender', and another from 'Shadow saga'), it's because a HitmanForum regular, Nephus, highly recommended 'Ender's Game'. Well, I found it at the library, read it at one sitting - and loved it so much that I wanted all the Orson Card books I could get my hands on. And then I remembered that Book One (at my hostel) was having a book sale, and that I'd seen a couple of Card titles there.... Hey, they were going for about USD 2.50!

Anyway... our brass quintet made its debut at the Times Square hotel last month (on the 3rd and 4th of July). Well, the performance'll never be nominated for a Grammy, but as far as things went, it didn't go too badly. We started off on shaky ground on the 3rd because we were playing inside the exhibition hall itself, and well, it was like being under a microscope. Fared considerably better the next day because we decided to move our act to outside the convention hall.

Oh, and by the way, I've got a new trombone! Woohoo! Click HERE to read more about Gordon, my new love.

25 June 2004

NEW BOOKS ON THE SHELF: Different Seasons (Stephen King), A Tale of Two Cities (Charles Dickens), Cradle (AC Clarke & Stephen Baxter), Science: A History (John Gribbin), Good Omens (Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett), The Man in the High Castle (Philip K Dick), the Dark Materials trilogy (Philip Pullman), Java Man (Garniss Curtis), The Lives of Christopher Chant (Diana Wynne Jones), Supertoys Last All Summer Long (Brian Aldiss).

Yes, I've been terribly bad this week - I've gone for book sales at both Book One (at my hostel) and the Times Warehouse Sale, hence the weeping pockets and new books jostling each other on my bookshelf.

22 June 2004

The Count Basie Orchestra - LIVE!!!! Wooo hooo!

I had the incredible foresight to buy the tickets when the MPO season started last year (imagine that!); I'm the one who has the last laugh now!

Well, anyway, all I can say about the performance was - excellent! My first live swing band experience, and certainly not my last. Piece after piece of incredible swing that you just wanted to dance to (or at least tap your feet), 19 awesome players, and hell, just a generally great time. The trumpet guy Mike Williams was playing notes normally reserved for pre-pubescent bats; their drummer Butch Miles looked like he was having the time of his life. (Why is it that no matter what a band is like, their drummer always looks manically happy?).

All in all, I had a fabulous time - although I suspect that I'd have enjoyed it even more had I not been sitting seven rows from the stage, and had all the horns - and the speakers! - aimed in my direction.

6 June 2004

I had my parents hands waxed over the weekend. LOL.

Seriously though, there's this fad going around Peking? Beijing - creating wax models of people's hands. The fad just hit our shores; I'm not sure if it's reached the Western world. I was walking around the mall with Sir Mouldy a couple of weeks ago when we stumbled upon this booth selling these wax figurines of hands. Out of curiosity, I approached the booth and asked about the thing. The chirpy guy manning the booth showed me how it was done with my finger - by first dipping my finger into a tub of ice water, and then into a vat of hot wax, then dipping it into the ice water again to solidify the thin layer of wax, and then applying another layer, and another. When the layer was thick enough, the 'shell' could be slipped off with a bit of wiggling. And voila! You have the wax model of... er, my finger.

Anyway, I had the bright idea of getting a wax model of my hand done, and sending it to my dad for Fathers' Day; however, somewhere along the line, the mischievous little imp in me got the better of the saint, and I found myself thinking how cool - and hilarious! - it would be to drag my parents to the place when they came over on vacation, and have a model done of their hands.

To cut a long story short, my parents came over last week, and I made sure that that mall was on our list of 'places to go'. Told them I wanted to get them a wedding anniversary present, but that it would require their FULL CO-OPERATION, and no, I couldn't tell them beforehand (and certainly not before extracting a promise from them that they'd be sporting!!!) what it would all be about. After something like five minutes of wheedling, cajoling, emotional blackmail and eyelash-batting, my parents hesitantly acquiesced -- all the while convinced that I was going to subject them to some horrendous form of public humiliation.

Imagine the look on their faces when I dragged them to the booth and declared, with an insanely perverse grin on my face, that they were going to spend the next ten minutes holding hands and having them waxed together!!!

Well... it took more than that, really. It took them something like five minutes to decide on the positioning of their hands, and two more for the booth guy to position the hands properly. The first cast went badly; dad moved, thus breaking the wax layer. By then they'd attracted a rather large crowd of very curious, very interested shoppers, and were on their way from being merely pink to turning bright beet red in embarrassment. It probably didn't help that by that time, I was laughing hysterically at the sidelines. If dirty looks were laser beams...

Thankfully for them, the second cast went well, and they were finally separated after having been forced to hold hands for the last fifteen minutes or so. I decided to have the thing filled with wax so that it would be more durable, and to have it mounted. My parents were rather delighted with the end result (and are probably going to display it proudly in the living room).... but something tells me that they're not likely to trust me with unconditional promises again anytime soon!

Click here for the picture.

30 May 2004

An amazing thing happened at quintet practice today. Jeffrey had just arranged a horn trio for lower brass (French horn, trombone and tuba), and we were testing it out. Now I noticed, to my utter consternation, that the piece was littered with high Gs, which I have immense difficulty playing when I'm tired. But to my amazement, I had absolutely no difficulty hitting them yesterday. And I wasn't even tired; in fact, I had more than enough stamina left over to play 'All I Ask of You'. No problem at all. I'm more than just a little elated!

23 May 2004

I spent last Thursday and Friday at the ITEK convention with my best friend Tycho. On Friday, after the convention, Tycho decided to hang around until Myn came to meet me for dinner; then arrived at home to find house broken into and burgled. A considerable sum of Australian and local money stolen, as quite a bit of gold jewellery from Tycho's mother's bedroom. I'm feeling terrible about it because I find myself wondering if the burglary would have happened had Tycho gone straight home instead of linger about the bookstore with me.

20 May 2004

A friend of mine from Asheville had been teasing me about locating his address, and had been sending me dead links to blind corners, so I had decided to take the initiative to trawl about the internet and look for clues on my own. I visited the Asheville community site, when I saw the following headline: Asheville Native and Memphis Belle Pilot, Robert Morgan, Dies. With my mouth dry and my heart thumping in my ribcage, I followed the link. O grief, Bob Morgan is dead! He had apparently fallen from a staircase at the Asheville Regional Airport on 21 April and had been admitted to hospital. He came down with pneumonia on 10 May, which turned into a massive raging infection - and he lost his final combat on 15 May 2004.

I've written to the H2G2 Editorial Feedback with an update for my Memphis Belle article; as a big fan of the Belle and Bob Morgan, I felt that I should do the re-write on the last few paragraphs myself.

Requiescat in pacem, Bob.

LINK: Asheville Native and Memphis Belle Pilot, Robert Morgan, Dies

19 May 2004

We were playing Wagner's hunting song last night, which Jeffrey had arranged for French horn, trombone and tuba, and it has a number of rather quick passages involving slightly odd slide positions. So anyway, they were kidding me about doing a Lindberg and Jeffrey said how it would be perfect if only they could get hold of a trigger trombone for me.

Anyway, at suppertime, he called up the quintet's ex-trombonist Devlan to arrange for the guy to bring down his Xeno (professional) Yamaha trombone (I'm not sure when though). Apparently the guy bought the instrument, and then found out that it wasn't quite for him and thus went back to his old instrument. Jeffrey felt there was no harm in my trying it out (despite our discussion two weeks ago about whether or not I should think about investing in a professional instrument; we both agreed that it would be more important getting my skills up to par first), and if I was comfortable with it, I could always buy it off Delvan. So.....!!!! I get to test out a professional instrument!!!

18 May 2004

Oh joy! I snagged myself a copy of Hitman: Contracts last Saturday! I'd pretty much been going crazy ever since the bloody game was released on 21 April, scouring all the stores in this city in vain and tearing my hair out. And then I just happened to pop into this tiny games store that sells a little bit of everything..... and what should I see in the display cabinet but Contracts!

(Probably gave the store guy a bit of a nasty shock as well. Ham went to ask the guy, 'Could you please take Hitman out?' The guy probably expected Ham to ask for a pirated copy too. Imagine his bewilderment when it was Ham's bouncy little friend seizing the game box from his hands - and yes, they wanted to buy the original game! LOL)

At any rate, I haven't had time to play it yet - and I'm not even sure if Paladin's graphics card can even support it. I'll just have to wait 'til I have the time to actually sit down and enjoy.

But bwahaha! At least I've gotten my filthy paws on the game!

12 May 2004

I forgot - two days ago was my parents' wedding anniversary. For the first time in the history of their marriage (I think), the celebration was a closed one - just the two of them at the local private Club. I called them up at dinnertime to convey my greetings; my dad mentioned over the phone that he was going to apply for a supplementary Amex for me. I'm pretty certain that everybody in Siberia heard me scream, 'NOOOOOOOOOOOONONONONO!'

Seriously, credit cards, IMHO, are the Road to Financial Perdition. Unless you're wealthy and can afford to sign for things, credit cards are more of a liability than an asset, just like cars and houses. Too many a time I have seen friends who have just started work apply for more than one card, and then use one card to pay off another. When one has to resort to using debts to pay for debts, where does that lead you?

At any rate, it is all too easy to lose track of what you spend when the cash is not in your hands. It may make purchasing certain items easier, but it's not something that I'm likely to own - or rather, to have it own me - anytime soon.

11 May 2004

Three years ago, Douglas Adams, died suddenly following a workout at the gym, leaving behind an incredible legacy called the Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Requiescat in pace, Douglas.

24 April 2004

Aiee. Aiee. Aiee.

The trumpet guy in our brass quintet offered to get us free tickets for this weekend's orchestral concert; delighted to be presented with the opportunity to hear Brahms and Saint-Saens and Humperdinck in the same night, I impulsively accepted, and organised a little concert party for four. In retrospect, I should've asked myself why in space the Box Office people would want to give away perfectly good concert tickets.

We figured it out too late. Turned out that it was our local conductor's turn on the concert stage. Okay, okay.... I know that she's our countrywoman (and one of the few in our international orchestra) and that we should therefore support her but.... she's dreadful. Utterly awful. And it's not personal bias either, because almost everybody else I know feels the same way, and a number of the players themselves think of her as painfully superfluous.

Anyway...

The concert was really, really bad. They started with Humperdinck's Hansel & Gretel overture, which started on the wrong footing because the horns messed up the opening and the woodwinds went out of tune and all. And then they moved onto Saint-Saens' Cello Concerto in A minor, which featured a cellist who played absolutely beautifully (his instrument had a very distinct, mellow voice)... but whose performance was ruined by the intrusiveness of the orchestra. And then there was the Brahms symphony --- which was singularly the most dispassionate piece of Brahms music that we have ever heard. If you'd wanted an example of what the word 'jarring' meant, you would have had to look no further than this. The loud bits weren't half as bad as the slow lyrical bits, only everybody seemed to be playing at the same volume (which is an awful case of bad balancing).

If that had been all there had been, we might have walked out of the hall merely disgruntled. But nooo.... she had to mistake our cold reception for warm appreciation, and troop out two encores. The second wasn't too bad because it was classical; the first was nothing short of spectacularly *bad*. The moment she said, 'Here's something to lower your blood pressure', we braced ourselves for the worst. It was what seemed suspiciously like her own arrangement of a very famous, very beautiful local oldie -- only the way it was arranged, it more resembled a failed mating between the Frankenstein monster and a balrog (I know, it's an insult to the balrog, but -). Now I've played or heard at least 8 different arrangements of this piece, and so knew from the first four notes what it was. And lo it was bad! The prolonged introduction was agonisingly painful (it was a painful mix of really odd chords that didn't progress well and Arabic scales -- what the hey?), and when the theme finally came in it was no better. And when the snare drum came in right out of nowhere.....!!! I don't think people have yet invented words to describe the feeling of utter dismay and hopelessness and incredulity I felt, but let's just say that I sunk down low in my seta and sat through the piece with my eyes scrunched shut.

And lest you think I'm being overly critical, Tycho's face was frozen in a grimace; after the concert we bumped into our band conductor, who had even harsher words for it than Tycho's and mine combined.

As I type this, I'm trying to flush out all the incredulity and trauma with Glenn Miller, but it's not really working.....

9 April 2004

Anyway, I forgot to mention this while ranting last night (although I did mention it in the journal that has since been dispersed as free electrons), but I finally decided that - given my devotion for the Hitman games - I would actually dedicate one page to the game. Okay, more than one page. It has an almost complete walkthrough of Hitman 1, complete with strategy and weapons guide, which I wrote like yonks ago while I was still blasting my way through that game, as well as several Hitman 2 resources: several walkthroughs I wrote for the benefit of fellow gamers at Hitman Forum, a couple of wallpapers I did when I had nothing to do... and of course, my little avatar collection. The H2 walkthrough section is far from complete, but I'll get round to completing it... someday!

8 April 2004

I am a complete idiot. All this while I've been having a lovely little journal here, occasionally adding stuff to it to update people on the mundane goings-on of my life. And then, two days ago, what did I do? I got the username for this site mixed up with the username for my Microbiology class website, with the result that I was uploading files into this website's directory while thinking I was making changes to the latter's.

Under normal circumstances, this wouldn't have been much trouble to fix. Most unfortunately, I had stuck to my habit of naming files, and even more unfortunately, the Microbiology page also had a 'journal' file. Which, you've probably guessed by now, resulted in massive - and irretrievable - loss of precious data. Dammit!