Bugged

Saturday night me and Ling spent the evening at my place watching whatever was on TV. We were originally going to watch Shark's Tale on HBO, but I screwed up the date and the movie was actually on Sunday. So we channel surfed and came accross this interesting Chinese movie called "Bug Me Not", about a girl who discovers she has the ability to speak to insects, who were all cartoonishly CG animated. Her abilities draw the attention of a group of teens who also have "ultra-powers" like x-ray vision and telepathy, but she's not interested to join but rather tries to hit on this guy in her neighbourhood who for some reason has a phobia of being touched by people! A good fun natured comedy, even if it did look a little like it catered more to children.

Sunday evening we went jogging, which we hadn't done in a long while due to conflicting work schedules and such. It was a good run, though I obviously still need to work on my conditioning and my legs where pretty stiff and sore after.

Right now I'm looking forward to the big 4-day weekend that's coming up thanks to the Gawai holidays. Hopefully it will be 5-days if the Agong's birthday is pushed forward to Monday since it falls on Saturday. I intend to take the time to get through the vast collection of puroresu shows I've compiled over the past few months but didn't have the time to watch since I find myself watching a whole load of anime now. I managed to watch the first Dragon Gate PPV of 2006 last night, and I intend on hopefully getting through my DG collection first before moving on to the other stuff.
Speaking of anime, check out my new anime blog. It's nothing much yet, but I hope to post some reviews soon since I've been watching so many shows recently. So stay tuned.

Idol Moment

OK I'll admit I'm not a big fan of American Idol, and even the ridiculousness of some contestants during the audition phase of the show is enough to make me hurl, but there was one moment on yesterday's finale that really stood out and I actually enjoyed watching, no, not that Taylor Hicks won, but when Clay Eiken made his grand appearance behind this punk kid that was impersonating him and even claimed he would be the next Clay during the auditions but didn't make it. The kid won an Idol award for best impersonator of the season, and was asked to sing live on stage. Little did he know that while he was singing the real Clay came out from behind him and took over the song as the shocked kid looked on! The look on his face was priceless as he came face to face with the person who's shoes he thought he was going to fill this season. I really got to hand it to the producers for coming up with that spot.

Other things TV-wise, I'll admit as big of a CSI fan as I am, there really hasn't been much to get excited over this season, but that's all going to change in two weeks when CSI: Miami and CSI: New York do a 2-episode cross-over special! I haven't kept up with either series in a while, but I definately will not be missing this one!

28 And Still Going Strong!

Yup, it's my birthday today. 28 years old and still going strong.
You could probably say the birthday celebrations started on Saturday. Sure I spent the day lounging at home as usual before going out in the evening with Ling. We had a simple chicken-rice dinner before heading to the Boulevard shopping complex where she went window shopping while I killed some time at the arcade. I was looking to play Garou: Mark of the Wolves, but I couldn't find the machine anywhere. I suddenly came upon 3 new machines which boasted having 200 games in each, and after figuring out how to switch games, I was pleasently surprised to find a whole lot of classic Neo Geo fighters in them machines, from every game in the King of Fighters series to the Art of Fighting series, and even the Saturday Night Slam Masters! Needless to say I enjoyed my time playing those classics before meeting up with Ling again and moving on. I bought a few PS2 games before we stopped for some ice cream and I then sent Ling home.

My birthday is officially today, but me and Ling decided to celebrate it early yesterday instead cause we didn't want to rush today since Trish was working until 6pm. We had dinner at Shiki, the same Japanese restaurant we went to last year. I had me some unagi sushi and a big bowl of beef ramen, which was surprisingly filling and we finished our meal rather early. We decided to head to the cineplex to see if anything good was on. We were expecting to watch Mission Impossible III, but instead we found we had come just in time to catch the Dreamworks CG animated movie Over the Hedge, and we decided to watch that instead and it was a great entertaining and funny movie. I'll gladly take that over Tom Cruise any day.
We both enjoyed the movie and after which I sent Ling home as she had to work today. I also managed to finish Shadow Hearts: From the New World today too, which was an awesome game even if it wasn't as long as the previous installment in the series.

I took the day off work today and got up early this morning to catch the live airing of the WWE Judgment Day PPV, and luckilly for me it was an enjoyable show overall, unlike Backlash a few weeks back. I spent the afternoon playing Driver: Parallel Lines and in the evening I went out with Ling again. We had dinner at McDonalds before going around Bintang Plaza for a bit before I sent her home again. And here I am now updating my blog while watching the Judgment Day replay. It may not sound like much, but this was actually one of the better birthday celebrations I've ever had.

Hippie Power!

So I watched the finale of the Amazing Race, and it was a great show with a great close finish! And the best part was, my picks to win the race, BJ & Tyler, pulled through in the end and walked away with the million dollar prize! The final leg of the race saw the 3 remaining teams go from Bangkok to Tokyo to Alaska to Colorado, and the most fun part was when they were all in Tokyo. The line of the night coming from the hippies: "Hen no gaijin-desu! Gomen nasai!" Which in terms of what has going on roughly translates to "Weird foreignors coming through!"

It was a close race as BJ & Tyler went from first to last, and than overtook their closest competitors, who were also the most dominant players throughout the race, at the very last obstacle to win the million. Hats off to them, and a great finale to another fun season of the Amazing Race.

Sinking Feeling

Last night me and Ling went to watch the remake of the classic movie Poseidon. It was a good remake, but also felt kind of depressing the way some of the key characters you expect to make it to the end end up dying. But at least for all the haters of the Black Eyed Peas, you get to see Stacy Ferguson die a horrible death. I vaguely remember the original movie, but I do remember enough to know that they changed the ending in this remake. I think I preferred the original ending better.

Catching up with other things going on in my life, I'm glad to say there's finally some good shows to watch on TV these days. There's Supernatural, about 2 brothers who are demon-hunters to say the least as they try to track down their father as well as the demon that killed their mom while they were kids.
There's the Scholar, a reality TV contest about a group of brainy kids battling it out for a chance at a college scholarship. I found it surprising that there are some questions I know the answers to that these big brain straight-A students couldn't answer. Hey, here's a concept for a reality show, instead of giving out scholarships to brainy students, how about giving the average kid a chance at higher education?
There's also the (not so) latest season of The Apprentice. Highly anticipating this one as the Donald gets so fed up with one of the teams on one of the tasks that he fires a whole group of them in one shot! It's still interesting to see also how these self-made business people can be rather dense when it come to their social skills with each other.
And tonight there's the 2-hour finale of the latest Amazing Race. I'm really rooting for the hippie team of BJ & Tyler since they've been the most entertaining team to follow.

I've also been watching a lot of anime lately. My interest rekindled by shows like Fate~Stay Night and the Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya. I used to be only into more action oriented anime, but I recently find myself now sticking to the comedies and dramas, and it doesn't hurt if there are a bunch of cute chicks involved either.

Gaming-wise, I'm really close to completing Shadow Hearts: From the New World. I could have finished it days ago, but I'm trying my luck at completing all the sidequests before finally beating the game. When that is done, I hope to get started on Kingdom Hearts 2. Check out my video games blog for a few reviews of what I've been playing recently too.

Upgrade Complete

Being sick for most of the week is no fun. It's also pretty boring to sit home all day with a headache and your body is sweating like a pig due to the really hot humidity. The only plus side I guess is that I got to skip work for a few days, even when Friday was a public holiday. I'm a lot better now after doping up on painkillers, but I still got a bit of a sore throat and dry cough.

Anyways, remember the new hard disc I picked up for my PC? Well, I didn't really know the difference between IDE and SATA connections, and the one I bought was a SATA connection and my PC was had an IDE connection. So on Thursday, with my head throbbing, I managed to drive myself to the PC shop to switch the hard disc for a IDE one, unfortunately they didn't have one, so I plopped down another 38 bucks and switched it for an even bigger 250gig hard disc! More money to spend, but I guess I can now cut down on buying DVDRs to save all my stuff to to save on hard disc space. After making the switch, I went to the pharmacy where Ling worked to pick up some pain killers for my headache. Why didn't I go to a doctor? Cause I know they would have given me pain killers anyway. And guess what? They WORKED.

Friday morning I set about installing my new hard disc. Now, I'm not an expert in PC repairs and installation, and I usually just learn off the top of my head by trouble shooting everything. So I received when heck of a shock when I tried creating a partition on my new hd and realized half of my memory was missing after I finished installation! I checked with my cousin, who's better at this than me, and he said that I had forgotten to declare the second drive where the memory would have been, and so now over 100 gigs of free memory was GONE! So he recommended I try looking up partition software to see if I can get back my lost memory. So I looked up the program and began downloading it. While it was downloading I looked around the comments of the said product, and one of them caught my eye as the guy mentioned that we don't really need programs like those and that any problems can be fixed through the administrative tools in our PCs. So I looked it up, and true enough, the problem really coud be fixed through there, and by that afternoon my new hard disc was completely set and ready to go.
That afternoon I went to pick up Ling from work since she was working halfday due it being a public holiday. We spent a short time at Bintang Plaza walking around window shopping before I sent her home and we got a good afternoon's rest.

Saturday I spent the day at home resting up again for most of the day and playing Shadow Hearts: From the New World and King of Fighters: Maximum Impact 2. I'm almost done with Shadow Hearts and hope to finish it in a day or two.
Last night me and Ling were all set for a quiet evening at home after having not seeing each other for almost a full week. Unfortunately our peace and tranquility was ruined when my parents called me up saying that they had locked themselves out of the car in town! So me and Ling had to rush down to send them the spare keys to open up the car.
After that we got home again and watched Blade Trinity on HBO. It was pretty good, though I'm not sure how well it compares to the two previous movies since I missed the beginning of this one. I sent her home after the movie and came home to get a good night's sleep.
Oh yeah, I almost forgot to mention that since today is Mother's Day that me and Ling had bought a cake for my mom. So happy Mother's Day to all out there.

Return of the Sick

Not sure why, but when I woke up this morning I had a bad sore throat and dry cough. I was forced to take half the day off work when I started developing a headache too, so I dropped by the pharmacy where Ling worked and bought some medicines for myself before heading home. I tried taking a nap but was sweating like a stuffed pig for most of the afternoon. What a way to start the week, huh?

I was home alone for most of last week as my parents were vacationing in Singapore to celebrate their anniversary. I won't complain cause I'm used to being on my own anyway.

There was a big PC fair going on at the indoor stadium over the weekend, and I went to check it out on Friday evening. I really wasn't impressed, as most of the vendors were pushing printers, laptops, mp3 players and sound systems. What about the PCs? I was looking for a new HD for my PC, and there were only like 2 or 3 stalls selling them. There was a stall selling PSPs, but you'd think they'd have a model on display since most people probably haven't seen in motion before.
On a personal note about the stadium, it was my first time in there and I was rather surprised at how small the place was. I seriously think a locally promoted pro-wrestling show could draw a good house there.

I spent most of saturday playing Shadow Hearts: From the New World, which is probably the best RPG game I've played since Shadow Hearts: Covenant. I spent my evening with Trish lounging at home watching TV, as well as a Pablo Francisco comedy special I had downloaded.

Sunday I picked Trish up from work in the afternoon and we went back to the PC fair at the indoor stadium where I picked up a new 160gig hard disc drive for my PC. Cost me RM320, but it was the best brand the difference between sizes and prices weren't really much. One big investment now saves me the trouble of doing it again later. Now I just need to install it, which I hope to do soon.
After I sent Trish home I then rushed to the airport to fetch my parents. We got a takeaway from KFC on the way home and I spent the rest of the evening relaxing. Doesn't explain why I got sick today though.

Tired

I don't know why been I've been exhausted for the whole week. My eyes were even sensative to light and hurt when I was out in the sun. I guess it also didn't help that it was one of the most boring work weeks ever.

Ever since Trish changed her work schedule, we've been having terrible luck trying to go out for our regular movie night as there never seems to be anything worth watching when we go on Wednesdays.
Eitherway, last night we manage to catch Alone In The Dark at the cineplex after having dinner with my parents. This was of course one of many Uwe Boll video game based movies that bombed at the box office and brought shame to the game franchise it was based on. Watching it, you could easily see a lot of plotholes in the story. If it wasn't named Alone in the Dark, it could have passed for just another B-grade movie.

Now I would be enjoying my 3-day weekend more what with tomorrow being labour day and I don't need to work, but like I said already I've just been really exhausted for some reason and I can't even take a nap properly. Hopefully I can get some proper rest tomorrow.