2012 Greetings

Happy New Year!

2012 is upon us and what was better than getting sick mere days before the new year, rather than getting sick BECAUSE of the new year. So somehow, from somewhere, I caught a serious stomach flu the last Thursday of December, leaving me bedridden the Friday, to only recover enough to celebrate a mild new years eve Saturday playing extremely old Wii party games and enjoy some good drinks.

Due to the timing of things, I finally managed to check in with a walk-in doctor the day after new years. I walked away with some advice and a mission to get it thoroughly checked at a lab to see if it's a bacteria that will require some more serious attention. Fortunately I already took a day off that week to chauffeur my mom to and from her visit to the hospital for a minor surgery appointment. I've yet to get a response from the doctor about my report but no news is good news. I still don't feel like I've recovered completely as _too_ much food still upsets my stomach and leaves me with a rather unpleasant feeling... and it's not exactly the usual ugh-I-ate-too-damn-much feeling.

Sickness aside, it IS the new year and I'm still working where I'm working. I haven't had much luck in the job hunting department and from how things are going now, the workload at work has been lessening quite an amount as of late. It IS also still early into the month so time will ultimately tell how the rest of this job's contract will pan out.

So 2012. My main new years resolution is to settle down on a GOOD long term job. Preferably something that sets me up for a clearer route for the many years to come (assuming 2012 doesn't end as a certain calendar says it will). There aren't too many major plans this year other than the usual traverses to the usual places.

Thinking back on 2011... it wasn't a particularly exciting year on this side of the world or even personally. Natural disasters hit a number of places around the world and devastated my life-changing chance to go to Japan. Things were pretty low-key until I was laid off at my previous job and it was only then life started to get interesting again. Then the year ended abruptly when a flu storm tackled me unexpectedly and now the mundane work life has returned... (but for how much longer?)

Nonetheless, I be looking forward to what 2012 has to offer... (other than D3, ME3, AX, PAX, etcetc.)

Diversions and Breaks

As I'm diligently working away at this giant candy cane (as thick as my thumb all the way through), Merry Christmas! This year's Christmas is yet another wet and cloudy one.

It has been a stressful last two months (since my last post) but I'm extremely glad the winter holidays have finally arrived. I've been grateful for all the pleasant diversions from the monotonous work life.

We had a Halloween event at work where my team "carved" a hamburger and ate samosas in the cold.

[insert embarrassing canvas of a certain rabbit's head :V]

Checked out Raw Canvas and painted stuff. I clearly had no idea what to paint but not having painted in such a long time, it was really fun. Oh yeah, I painted a certain rabbit's head.

There was a Poutine Festival which failed to life up to its name. Held in a room in a community centre, the 'all you an eat' poutine was unable to deliver its promise as an AYCE. People waited ages for food that had to be fought over. Entertainment consisted of a guy who didn't sing really well and bad 80's rainbow/flashing lighting effects.

My company had their Christmas party at the Fairmont Hotel where we indulged in buffet food. Our department had our own little party in one of the hotel rooms we rented for the night where we mainly had wine and... chips.

As much as I wouldn't like to think that I'm overstressed (although my mom has been telling me how tired I look), I unexpectedly fainted earlier in the week. The location wasn't ideal as I hit the side of a counter table going down. Fortunately I don't think there was any brain damage though. My doctor wasn't able to figure anything out and I've also been unable to get myself checked up at a test lab due to the timing of the holidays. I think this break will do me some good though.

Life aside, Skyrim: I'm surprised I'm not at all obsessing over the game as much as I would imagine myself to be.

As it'll only be a short-lived break week, here's hoping I'll be able to squeeze in as much productivity as possible. (Productivity = Sleeping)

Wob Wob Wob.

The end of the year approaches and I'm still not where I expected myself to be. Taking what I can get, I started a temp contract job at my university classmate's workplace as a publishing technician. As fancy as that sounds, my job involves editing, preparing, converting, parsing, formatting content and material mainly for print (with some forms of electronic). Definitely not something I had in mind at all, considering I am not one to particularly enjoy the print side of things, but hey, my skill set fits and I've had no luck with other places thus far. Speaking of which, I did come close to a number of opportunities but timing and the lack of experience (in years and/or months) has put me in a disadvantage. Although this job is relatively brain dead work, there's more to be desired in the work environment. Other than the music playing through my headphones, it's pretty dead quiet in the office. In my area, other than my classmate, everyone is rather old (= with kids) so casual conversation is little to none.  Those around our age are on the other side of the floor and they seem too cool to mingle with. The keyword "games" is blocked at work and that makes me super sadface during my breaks. Computer activity is also monitored it seems and, although I have nothing to hide, it's still feels rather uncomfortable surfing/checking mail. Rants out and done with, hopefully I'll land something more promising in the near future.


Portal 2 inspired, perhaps?
The eight hours of menial work a day aside, some friends and I went to a... rave-thing? the other weekend. It wasn't quite a rave, nor was it a concert - it was a giant mosh-pit. Well, Skrillex made a stop at our city and added an extra day to his tour here. We originally got tickets for the first show but changed to the second showing to see another artist as well. Pretty amazing show (especially his set designer - insane!) but not so amazing crowd. The second show was all ages (what.) so the mob was unpleasant, to say the least. Still don't know how to dance to dubstep. Let's leave it at that. Speaking of dubstep, it's been sneaking into my Touhoes as of late. Why.

Literally a week before work though, I got whisked away on a cruise headed to Las Vegas (to fill an empty spot). It wasn't as enjoyable as it could've been if I didn't know that I started work the week I returned and that another interview was waiting for me. It wasn't all bad since food was aplenty (maybe too much). Shopping wasn't as exciting, been unemployed for the two months prior so money wasn't exactly exploding out of my wallet. Didn't help that my travel companions (aunts n uncles) weren't of the opinionated bunch.

Then there's this unnecessary drama which isn't so much affecting me as much as it is affecting my aunt and uncle. My uncle was diagnosed with leukemia recently and it's now when some of my distant relatives' true colours begin to show. Really makes you wonder what's going on in their heads. Only wished I can do more for them and their situation.

Hope this weather doesn't get any colder. I fear for snow.

PAX Prime 2011 Report: Part 2

 

Saturday - Aug 27: Disappointments.

• Star Wars: The Old Republic - We played the story option rather than the PvP/Capture the flagball. Eh, it's an MMORPG and I /dance'd.
• Torchlight II - Tried the Berserker this time around and had fun following the big crew of people going around, destroying mobs and things.
• Path of Exile - A point and click game that's free to play. Definitely disappointed, especially after Lester recommended it saying it was like Diablo. Very bland graphics and clunky gameplay...
• Wildstar - A bit underwhelming. A brightly coloured MMORPG that featured rather generic classes and character designs.
• Dead Island - The trailer gave off a different idea of how the protagonist and story would've been like. In the actual game, you're a drunkard who gets kicked out of the club for being a dick. Lovely.
• Rusty Hearts - Insanely confusing controls but the pretty up your character feature is definitely there.
• Dragon Quest Monster Joker 2 - K I originally played this for the swag but it was actually fun.

And the real disappointments:

• The 18-letter Word to your Moogle was missing a letter Sty left back at Garret's. Great. They ended up finding another person with the same letter and handed in the word.
• We were in a group of 4 at one point (with IonFONE and friend) and could've went to get our hands on a free T at the Ratchet & Clank: All 4 One booth but Sty forgot her head. They ran out of T's the next day.
• The Skyrim food truck ran out of food and drinks about half way through its one and only session. Extremely disappointed that they'd underestimate their fanbase.

The food we never got. :((

After another busy day on the show floor, we headed to the Square-Enix panel where Quantum Conundrum was introduced and demoed. The visual style features a cartoony style which would remind you of Team Fortress and the gameplay is very much Portal plus some new features like changing the state of the room on the fly.

I decided to skip the Weekend Confirmed panel since it was right smack between the previous and the Dragon Age panel. The DA panel itself gave us a general outlook of the series and a vague idea of what to expect. Felicia Day showed up and they played a new trailer of the Retribution web series.

By 10:30pm, we were finally ready for some food. We managed to get ourselves a nice, roomy table at the Taphouse where we devoured drinks and happy hour appys for the rest of the night.

Sunday - Aug 28: The last stretch cut short
We got all our stuff packed and ready in the car for our trip back before heading to the convention one last time. We established a plan to follow so we left at a reasonable time to make it back to whatever that was left of the wedding.  Unfortunately things didn't work out that way when some people decided not to follow through with it.

Anyway, the final game I wanted to get my hands on was Resistance 3 and that's exactly what I went straight for when the hall opened. Luckily there was still some space left when I got there. The game felt very reminiscent to R2 but its visuals were definitely tweaked. It was a short but sweet 5 mins of killing which I somehow still ended up 2nd place.

Things got complicated after this but long story short, we managed to regroup to check out Halo Fest and I was pleasantly surprised with the displays.

 

Chief-sama!

Before we left for good, we stopped by to get some cheesecake. <3

On our way up we also had some cheap McDix chicken nuggets.

The haul looked more or less like this:

 

• Favourite Game: ???
• Favourite Swag: Resistance 3 or DOM2 T-shirt
• Missed: Might & Magic Heroes, Borderlands 2, Orcs Might Die!, Wil Wheaton's panel ;<
• Forgot: Heroes of Ruin
• Underdog: El Shaddai
• What happened?: Firefall
• WHERE ARE YOU BAMCO?

I knew Sunday was going to amazing and yet we didn't get to stay for it. Gearbox panel which ended up with free Borderlands 2 codes (USA region or NOT it's still crazy), Tetris DS tourny (I missed out last year ;( ), and probably other random games you discover when you actually take your time walking on the floor.

It was definitely a very different PAX and it wasn't my most favourite. It didn't help that we were forced to leave early to head back for a wedding.  A number of the games on the floor were not entirely new (Torchlight 2, Rift, End of Nations, EVE Online, et al) and some were just not completely up my alley but I didn't mind trying them. It was also quite different walking around with my friend Sty since we don't normally talk about games together, other than the odd game she played here or there. In fact, I don't even know what she has played other than some western games. I personally skipped a number of games I probably would've stopped to try *points to Missed bullet point* but I didn't want her waiting on me. In exchange, her girl power somehow landed some really good luck in a lot of places... don't know how she does it.

I've been asked what the highlight of the trip was and, honestly, I can't seem to figure that out at all.
The trip felt incomplete but what can be done. :(
*goes off to play something*

PAX Prime 2011 Report: Part 1

 

"Mmm you look tasty little human girl, come over here."

Returned from PAX with a minor PAX/Seattle flu. Oh, why me?

Mere days before the event, Sty messages me saying she might have a ticket to the sold out event. Of course she was more than welcomed to join us but she soon found out that that ticket was no longer available. It felt that she was really looking forward to it so I decided to do some ticket hunting the night before we were to depart. I managed to secure two tickets for her and another friend from a cool local who had to give up his tickets for priorities at work. Knowing how scarce these tickets were, especially being sold and bought at cost, I definitely got lucky. So +1 to our passenger list.

Thursday - Aug 25: Yukkuri shiteitte yo!
The ride down consisted of ToFu, Sty, Lester and myself as we took two cars this time around since most of us had to return early for a wedding (ugh). We stopped in Bellingham where we had breakfast at The Daisy Cafe and followed to stop by Trader Joe's, then Walmart and gas in Tulalip, and finally arrived in Seattle for a break at Garret's. Rush hour traffic was bad going into downtown but when we got in, things were a lot smoother. We picked up badges and headed to Uwajimaya for some snacks and asian goodness.  There we met up with IonFONE for the first time, even though we always go down to Seattle for all sorts of things.

Food plans ended up being complicated since our original plans didn't work out due to the timing of things so we went to have some good old American restaurant food at The Ram. Speaking of timing, things couldn't of gotten any worse when a suicide ended up clogging up the highway we were on. A 15 or less minute ride ended up to be 1 hour, and unfortunately the other guys who were in the other car got a good look of the incident.

 
Steak sandwich pickle tower.

We returned to Garret's place after food and pulled out an extremely oversized sake bottle we got at Uwajimaya. Drinking and relaxation ensued into the late hours of the night.

Friday - Aug 26: Too little time.
A large chunk of the day consisted of being busy in the exhibition hall.

• Skyrim - Our first stop since Sty was definitely looking forward to this one. A 3 hour wait vs the content we got to play wasn't worth it, although I saw it coming. You kind of expect it from an Elder Scrolls open world game.
• Final Fantasy XIII-2 - I haven't even played the first one so why would I want to spoil myself? Unfortunately for me, the Word to your Moogle game was only accessible that way. As a complete newbie to the game, the battle system felt kinda dumbed down as you mainly got to choose the different fighting strategies. Perhaps I'll get a better idea of the game once I actually play it. But yeah, spoilers wheeeeeee~
• Bastion - I've already been recommended to play this game but I decided to try it out anyway and wow the demo really impressed me. Beautiful visuals, funny narrative and simple yet fun gameplay.
• Dragon's Dogma - Western influenced 4 player co-op, much like Monster Hunter but no fancy armor and weird monsters, but features the traditional RPG classes. Had to burn the crap out of the poor griffin. :( But it was totally owning my group so I guess it was fair.
• Lollipop Chainsaw - Oneechanbara but with chainsaws and a cheerleader.

When the floor finally closed up for the day, we met up with Markster and began seeking places to eat. Knowing most places were packed, we chose a Blarney's pub/resto which was a bit father away. We got there just missing the rush, but we still had to wait quite a bit to get the waitress' attention and get our food. Although the service was not what we would've liked, the food was really good so we were still satisfied.

We returned to the convention to catch the Giant Bomb panel (yay!). For some reason the enforcers cut their time short so it ended a half n hour earlier than expected. I met up with Neku briefly after the panel before calling it a night.

To be continued in part 2...