9 posts tagged “smalltalk”

I got peed on by the skies today. It came without warning, too; that was what irked me the most. I wouldn't have minded if I knew it was going to rain (or if it was raining already) so that I could have braced myself for the wet walk ahead. I ended up walking through and standing in the rain for a good thirty minutes before I caught a ride home, and then another thirty minutes before actually getting here and taking a shower.

I've got the sniffles already. Oh wait, isn't that mucus dripping from my nose? Yeah. I'm sick.

Oh, and if anybody who hasn't already given me their mobile numbers is reading this, gimme. My phone lost all its data yesterday, including contacts.

    Well, it's raining again. Has been for the past week. We're getting hit by storm after storm here, and mother nature's not pulling any punches. In all the years I've lived here, I don't recall having such persistent precipitation.

    I doubt Tibet had the same kind of weather problems we suffer from here in the tropics. Their rain freezes before it hits the ground, as I recall. I'm not exactly sure of the exact climate situations they have there, but I'm more interested in their history; I've got a group report due on that country, and it's going to come even if it has to walk through rain, sleet, or snow.

    The apostles would've had that same attitude in delivering the Word of God throughout the land if, indeed, their land was bombarded from the skies by either of the three weather phenomenons. Kind of like ancient Mediterranean mail men. Yet another group report due on the call to discipleship, and this one's the reason I braved the storm to get here in the Rizal Library. Sure, Tibet has its good points that warrents it worthy of going through the same thing. But in this case, God beckons, so He comes first.

If you could get someone in your life to start a blog, who would it be and why?

    A friend of mine, Naj. She and I don't talk much anymore. I guess I'd like her to blog so I can know how she's doing in spite of that fact.

    Wow. For my first QotD post, that was pretty straightforward. I expected myself to be going into verbose detail on my QotD posts, since they're there to help people who have nothing to say share their thoughts anyway. Ah  well.

   My apologies for the week without posts. See, I acquired a new (well, 2003-ish) computer game that plays a lot like Jagged Alliance, and it's sucked me in completely. "Silent Storm," a turn-based World War II Strategy/RPG by Nival Interactive, is all I've been doing for the past few days. It's gotten to the point where I sleep at around 2-3 in the morning because of playing all night long, and usually I sleep pretty early. Not good for my health, I admit. I'll try to post gameplay screenies in a bit.

    Aside from that, not much has happened since the last post. I got 1st place on Time Crisis 4 in the Shang arcade last Friday, with a final score of 3,815,540 points. Not anything ground-breaking, that's for sure, but it did put me at more than a couple hundred-thousand points above second place. I'll have to talk to the GameFAQs arcade crew to see if that's a respectable score, and for tips on how to score bigger next time.

    Just remembered: The Turks got together for a long-overdue roleplaying session last Saturday. We started Bobby's new Legends of the 5 Rings campaign, making new characters and killing new baddies. While mine isn't anything flashy like my previous Tsuruchi Bounty Hunter, I did make a rather competant Yoritomo Bushi; he's capable of incapacitating at least two equally-ranked samurai in one turn. And the best part about him is that he's a pirate, yarr. Christa went back to the Scorpion clan for her character, I think it was a Shosuro Infiltrator or something of the sort. Brian made another weird character; a Hand of Osano-Wo Monk. Marc also stepped into the shadows with a Scorpion, a Bayushi Bushi. I can't wait for the next session; we found out that day that my old character (the bounty hunter previously mentioned) is alive and kicking (our asses, specifically).

    Also, watched the Discovery Channel/Animal Planet special, "Dragons: A Fantasy Made Real" last night. 3-years in the making, this is AP's biggest special yet, made in a similar fashion of the "Walking with Dinosaurs" specials. It's a what-if type of documentary, telling the story of how dragons may have existed, and explaining how it is biologically possible for dragons to have walked this earth. An entertaining watch if you're into that sort of stuff; I found it fascinating.

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Arcade Statistics:
    Saturday's Spendings: P500
    Total Spendings (PowerStation): P5,240
    Total Spendings (TimeZone): ~P500 (lost track of this, don't have a VIP card)
    Overall amount of money wasted spent on arcade games: ~P5,740

Aurora mALX

Buy this.

    I feel bad for wanting to get the Alienware Aurora mALX so soon after acquiring ENKO, but Jesus Christ that laptop is sexy! It's dubbed the "Elite Assassin," and rightfully so; I'm dying just by looking at it. Why, God, why did I ever stumble across that link that brought me to this holy grail of mobile computing goodness? I won't be able to sleep tonight, because I'll be thinking about this mechanical monster.

    In other news, it looks like I spoke too soon about the sun in my previous post. Yet another storm is headed our way, and it's been raining on and off all of last night. Even right now, the I can see nothing but clouds when I look up. Ah well, nothing can be done about the weather. Bring on the rain.

[Edit: 4:37 PM]    I came back from the arcade a while ago. Time Crisis 4 again; this time I set a high score. 3rd place with around 3.6 million points, which is okay. The average player's score in TC4 would be about 2.8-3 million points, according to the arcade junkies at GFAQs. I'm a little miffed, because I missed out on the first place title by less than 200,000 points.

    I also saw former-Computer-Science-blockmate Bjorn at the arcade. Interesting encounter; it turns out he and his family come to Ortigas weekly, and I never noticed. I'll have someone to 2P with from now on, I hope. And if that wasn't coincidence enough, I ran into yet-another-former-CS-blockie Maddy at Starbucks just before I left. Dammit, she's pretty. >_> She's also taken, apparently, which sucks for me. Ah well.

    A little something I intend to keep track of from now on: My spendings at the arcades. I took a look at the computer monitor when the employee behind the cashier topped up my card, and I saw that I spent a whopping P4,740 total at Q.PowerStation alone. That's cumulative of all my top-ups since when I got the card.

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Arcade Statistics:
    Today's Spendings: P200
    Total Spendings (PowerStation): P4,740
    Total Spendings (TimeZone): ~P500 (lost track of this, don't have a VIP card)
    Overall amount of money wasted spent on arcade games: ~P5,240

    Games Beaten (Intro to Ending):
       Time Crisis 2, 3, 4                 Dungeons & Dragons: Shadows over Mystara
       House of the Dead 2, 3, 4      The Simpsons
       Virtua Cop 3                         Wartran Troopers
       The Keisatsukan 2                 Jurassic Park
       Vampire Nights

    Games Beaten OCC (One-Credit Completion)
       Time Crisis 2: Pink Gun         Time Crisis 3: Pink Gun
       Time Crisis 2: Blue Gun

07212006.jpg

    I woke up today, and an hour later I realized why I got up so early (6:30, and my first class isn't until three hours after): The sun was up again.

    If you read the previous entry, you'd see why this morning's event matters. A couple typhoons rocked our skies for the past two weeks without interruption, and it's been raining at least a little bit every day since. I didn't catch the forecast so I can't be sure, but I think the storm's over.

    Still a little foggy out, but already I can feel the heat rising. Rain's gone and done with, so now it's the sun's turn to shine.

07192006.jpg

    The skies are still blanketed in clouds up to today, which means sunlight hasn't poured through the haze for over two weeks now. The first typhoon passed our borders a couple days ago, but it was closely followed by the current one - so says the news. So far, one and a half days of college classes have been suspended due to this weather, and it's already upset enough of my schedule to be considered a bigger nuisance than reprieve.

    The attached picture was taken today from the 3rd floor of Berchman's Hall, one of the buildings at the aforementioned college. I tried to get some of the sky, but the shot from my cameraphone doesn't look so great. That gray hue is uniform all throughout the sky, from my school to my house, and probably further. Gives the atmosphere a kind of surreal twilight feel, doesn't it?

    I should be rather used to this weather by now, one would think. Down here in the Philippines, it's like this every year. Still, there's some sort of poetry in the air that justifies a paragraph or two dedicated to this natural gloom.

    Let's see if this baby works. Drinks on me if it goes through.

Edit [19.07.2006, 4:36 PM] - Well, whaddaya know. It works. Looks like I've got quite a tab to pay.

    I applied for a vox account a couple months ago. I'm actually surprised that I got invited in so soon, compared to others who have waited much longer. I'm still wondering what I'll use this account for. Maybe I'll close down my LJ and Blogspot accounts already.