the social side of gaming.

being the pseudo-anti-social person that I am, I usually spend my time as a hermit in my messy little room. Of course, 70% of the time, I'll be playing video games all by myself. That, however, has changed of late. After playing games with a bunch of friends - dead or alive 4 with Daichi kun, fusion frenzy with Zul, Manan, Fifi & Das (whom I had just known his name despite being here for close to 2 years) and the latest get together game, perfect dark zero with quatro split screen feature - playing alone just feels plain wrong right now. Yes, I can play with other people online but it just doesn't feel the same like playing with people whom you know and can see in the flesh. I want to play games with people, so I would need games that even people who dont game can play with realtive ease. Maybe its a sign that I should seriously get a Wii

The successful story at M fest

This is a long overdue report of the Malaysian fest, which took place LAST SUNDAY. The festival is what you might have expected of something called Malaysian festival. Dances, songs, the usual stuffs and stalls. Honestly, it only really mattered because our own cohort 2 (abt 20 of us or so since not everybody cared to join) opened up our own stall, which was cool.

People came to set up the stall at abt 830. I came at 9.30 cos I didnt notice somebody sent me a msg the night before. By the time I was there it was all done so I only had to hang our banner, which is a very...inventive one.

its kinda hard to see from this pic, but that banner was actually tied using a LAN cable!

By 10a.m, people had started coming, marking the beginning of our business. If I remember correctly the food that we had offered were

• nasi kuning + ayam masak merah
• nasi + ayam rendang
• karipap (yg plg bes)
• roti canai
• seri muka
• onde2/kuih melaka
• kuih goyang/loyang (not quite sure the name)
• Sardine roll
• Pengat, pisang & labu

image was purposely darkened at the top half so you would focus on the food and not the people...

So yea, we had quite a lot of stuff there and as you can see, karipap (the one in the big bowl) was the fastest selling item. There are a few good reasons behind this. One thing for sure is that it tastes good, so credits to Nada and whoever else that helped her with that. At a mere 50c, we also sold it for a price much cheaper than our competitions. Some others charged it for $1 each. It could also be the fact that even the people behind the counter were tempted to eat some of them (paid of course)

At around 1, people started to come like a rapid torrent and sales spiked up instantaneously. There were 2 noteworthy customers who came. One of them is a Kiwi boy who bougth a kuih melaka, only to come back later to say "give me all of the balls". Yup, the kid single-handedly bought all of them. The second was a Malaysian Chinese lady who bought a seri muka and came back for 8 more. Whats more, she even promoted other people to buy them. Business was really good. By 3p.m, we were all out of goods to sell, a testament of how good our food is, or at least it looks good, although some also speculated that it had something to do with the cashier/promoter at the time...

...specifically referring to the one in the middle. Mass : "yes sir, can I help you?"

The stall was definitely a huge success and as Zaini would say it in his McBeth scene, "great happiness!". Kudos also goes to those whom I didnt specifically mention but had spent the time and effort into making those yummy food the night before, those who helped at stall and even to those who only contributed to our monetory needs to make this event a success. Everybody did a job well done

cover confusion

Last night we had this meeting thing with one of the big guns in the Ministry of Education and a few other ppl. We had good food...but this is not what the story's about. The meeting ended at about 8pm so we all head back. Along the way home, I was somehow compelled to enter a movie rental shop (dunno why). Inside, the most unexpected thing happened. I found ...

...a game that I have been searching for ages. It was available at EB games but for a game as old as 4 years, $70 don't quite cut it. This game here was an ex-rental. OK, not a bummer, especially considering that it was ONLY $20. I couldn't possibly resist, bought it, and went straight home afterwards.

Once home, I switched on my PS3 which had been gathering dust thanks to the lack of good games on the system, took out the disc from the box and eagerly await the moment I can finally play this great game again. The next thing struck me like cannonball, because the disc I had just put in was actually

this game. Oh, the agony... looking for a specific game forever, only to buy it and find out that it was another game inside the box. The time was 9.45pm, but being the impatient person that I am, I went out right away braving through the cold and windy night to the rental store to get this confusion cleared. Unfortunately for me, the guys at the shop said that they couldn't find the actual content of the box, so I had to settle with a refund. Back to square one...

camne filem malaysia nak maju...

recently i had the chance to watch afdlin shauki's latest movie, sumo lah. at first, i thought it was just another comedy. i was so wrong. unlike his previous movies, sumolah has a more serious tone to it. while it wasn't exactly an exciting ride from start to finish, but at the end of the movie i was thoroughly impressed with it. honestly, this has to be the best malaysian movie i have ever seen. of course, it has its share of quirks here and there, like how honda-san totally doesn't sound japanese, and some lines were down right cheesy but hey, you gotta give the guy an A for effort because it certainly isn't an easy thing to pull of (my linguistic knowledge comes into play here :p) the movie won't make you laugh all the time, but it has a pretty good story and its character development and moral values are definitely some of the movie's strong points. the movie can also be seen as a satire of sorts as afdlin sublimely put a few 'wake-up calls' to the malaysian society if you were listening attentively. like i said before, its a great movie.

so, a malaysian movie this good has got to score a major success at the box office don't you think? unfortunately this is not the case. as a matter of fact, gsc requested that the movie be removed from its theatres after its 4th day of screening. talk about a major flop. why, i ask, is something like this happening? i find this terribly disturbing as a movie such as this was given the cold shoulder while movies with completely no substance like cicak man enjoyed major success. my answer, is the audience. i guess a lot of people are frustrated that sumolah isn't another ridicilously funny movie that they expected it to be. maybe its because of the stigma that malaysian movies need to have silly jokes, so much so that silly humour is permanently marked as a necessary criteria to make a movie 'good'. the way i see it, this is the scenario of the malaysian film industry now. a friend of mine said to me that generally, malaysians only like to watch movies that will allow them to enjoy it without having to think about anything. sure, its possible to see it that way, but then, why are films that are so mind bending like the matrix and lord of the rings trilogy so successful? are we suggesting that malaysian movies hasn't the right to even try breaking out of the mould that is silly humour? you tell me... (sumbody, 20xx)

movie-making is a business. as with any business, supplies come depending on the users' demand. therefore, i won't blame movie makers for making those movies that fall under the 'silly humour' category, because they know that those movies will get the best reception from the public. i'm sure even afdlin would stay away from making a movie along the lines of sumolah again given how miserably his film did this time. the problem is, if this situation continues, then the malaysian film industry will never reach international acclaims the way our neighbouring countries have been enjoying years ago. and here we say malaysia boleh this and that, yeah right.

an opponent of a similar nature

I got beaten in dead or alive 4 for the 2nd time in a row by the same guy. It is frustrating while at the same time extremely motivating. I haven't had an opponent that I had so much fun fighting against in a very very long time. The major bummer is that I had played the game much more than he does but he catches on really quick. Makes me wonder whether Japanese are good with fighting games by birth or sth. Anyways, I've got a solid reason to pick up the game once again. Competative gaming is fun indeed

forza motorsport artworks

After I came back from OZ, I stopped paiting cars for a while but now I'm back in the business and here are some of the new ones that I made. There are a total of 4 of them. If the page is taking a while to load, please bear with it. Any feedback would be appreciated too :)

First off is my Vader M3-gtr. I'm not too happy with the wordings because I only used the standard livery font, which isn't cool at all. Next is...

This is my 2nd Nissan Fairlady 350z. It's color scheme was based on the Forza Motorsport 2 logo and as such I call it the FM2 350z racer. This is the only racing vinyl that I think I did pretty well (all the others suck). On to the 3rd one which is...

the IPBA-M F50. I made it using the colours from IPBA's logo. I wish I could add a little more to make it look better but after hours of staring at it I just couldn't think of anything. Ok, the final one...


my current personal favourite is this cute Honda Midori Integra. It was my first successful attempt to make an anime vinyl and I must say, I'm pretty proud of it. It took me about abt 3-4 hours just to get the face done and an extra hour for the Kanji (Japanese characters) at the side. I used a whooping 246 layers of vinyl for the face alone and about 80 for the Kanji. I actually wanted to add a bit more to the background but I think its looks pretty good without it so just left it as it is. Theres still a lot to learn about the livery editor and I'm taking my time with that (whatever happens to a little something called 'studying'?)