300

Man, I saw this movie on the weekend and let me tell you, it's a freakin' good bloody movie (no pun intended). The action, the storytelling, the cinematography all added up to one hell of an action flick. I mean, if you loved Gladiator and Troy (like I did), you'll definitely enjoy 300 as well.

It's based on the graphic novel of the same name by Frank Miller, and since Sin City was based on another of his works, I was expecting a great flick and I wasn't disappointed. Awesome, awesome, awesome!! Go and watch if you're into action flicks, or just good movies in general.

Well, I'm looking forward to more good movies this year. Can't wait for Pirates of the Caribbean 3 and Spiderman 3 to come out!

Cats & Dogs

... that's what it's raining here in Fiji at the moment. Torrential downpour here in Suva right now, and a tropical depression around 400km NW of Nadi that's likely to develop into a cyclone. The West isn't getting spared either, with the bad weather actually hitting them first. Well, we can expect more floods to hit various spots in the country. Just hope people are taking appropriate precautions and watching their kids.

On another note, some sad news to tell. There's this old gentleman that brings morning tea and lunches to different offices around Suva to sell, and his wit and humour always started our day off well. Yesterday however, we heard some news over the radio that his house had caught fire and everyone inside had perished, his wife, daughter and a relatives' son he was looking after, and today it was confirmed in the papers. It was really sad and horrible news. I'm sure most of the office people around Suva knew (or knew of) him because of his food deliveries or personal connections, and it was really sad to hear about the death of such a hardworking and likeable man and his family. Even at 69 years of age, he was as spritely as a young man. Apparently they had been working early in the morning to prepare food for the day when a gas tank exploded and their wooden house caught fire, and spread too fast for them to evacuate. So if you knew the guy, please say a short prayer for him and his family.

Have a safe weekend all.

Wikipedia

Apart from games, I love reading. In fact, if I weren't spending time playing games, I'd be reading. If I'm in the mood, nothing beats lying down in bed with a good book (well, there's a couple of other things, but they're not open for discussion). Especially if it's a cold, rainy day out and you're nice and warm in bed and feeling lazy!

I'm mainly into the sci-fi/fantasy genre, and I rate Richard E. Feist, Isaac Asimov, Tolkien, and Anne McCaffrey among my favourite authors. But I also enjoy books by Agatha Christie and Michael Crichton, among others. So, I'm not really limited in my range of reading, it's just that I prefer sticking to reading something I know I'll enjoy.

But what if you're not in the mood for gaming, and there's nothing around to read? Well, if I'm online I normally go to Wikipedia and do a search on whatever tickles my fancy at that point in time. Anything from WW2 to army ants goes. I can even check what a certain movie is about if I don't mind reading the spoilers, or find out what a particular tv series is about or what episodes have been aired.

In short, I use Wikipedia to find out info on almost anything of interest that I think of. Sure, it's not perfect and probably will never will be, but I don't mind. It sure beats trawling the net searching for info on something when it'll likely be in Wikipedia.

Games

Friends of mine know that I just luurve playing PC games. I think the very first one was back at my friend Ron's place, where he had the Warcraft 2 demo loaded on his PC. Without a manual or any idea what the game was about, we managed to figure out how to go about gathering resources (wood & gold), using them to buy foot soldiers, and going forth to slay savage orcs. And what did I do when I finally got the full version of the game? I used cheats to maximise my gold... what I didn't realise was that the computer opponent would also get his gold maximised, and I kept wondering how come he was able to pump out units as fast as I could! LoL.

Well, that was my first taste of an RTS (real-time strategy) game. I was introduced to the FPS (first-person shooter) genre when Kim gave me a copy of Unreal Tournament. Jeez, I was so bad at it when I started off. I couldn't shoot straight and kept getting my ass kicked by the computer in the single player tourney, and that was only in round two! Then I finally got my sights straightened and became enough of a good player to regularly win Quake 2 deathmatches at our work LAN. No, we never played Q3 coz our work PCs had this tiny chip called the 'Intel integrated graphics chip' that was very Q2-friendly but absolutely crap at full-screen games. Yeah, we played our Q2 matches at res' less than 640x480. It was a hassle, but well worth it if it meant not getting caught by the bosses! These days we don't play though, as after a while gaming fell out of favour.

Right now? I've just finished Marvel Ultimate Alliance. It's a pretty good game filled choc-a-bloc with action and a fantastic range of heroes to choose from. There's also Company of Heroes, which uses the Warhammer 40,000 game engine to create an RTS feel to the war in France after the assault on Normandy. The graphics in this game are absolutely incredible! Even when zoomed up close, units never lose their detail.

Hmm... maybe I oughta start reviewing games in detail from now :)

Guh... sooo full from dinner

Phew... had such a large dinner tonight. Between 3 people (myself, my wife Har, and one of her friends from uni), we had about 6 dishes at this Chinese restaurant and in the end, we couldn't finish it all. Had to split the takeaway between her friend and us, and I'll have our share for lunch tomorrow :)

Anyways, there's something else I wanted to mention. Here in Fiji, we just have one telco company, Telecom Fiji, and like all monopolies, they really charge high when they want to. For example, international calls cost around $1 a minute to most countries, so in just half an hour you can spend up to almost $30 or more talking to someone overseas. Thank goodness for VoIP then. My good friend Kim mentioned this site, www.iconnecthere.com, which offer some good VoIP packages, one of which he subscribes to. Well, my wife and I took up one of them which costs US$15/month, and includes 400 free mins to call US/Canada, and 400 free mins to the rest of the world. Har was really excited coz she's got lots of friends & family overseas, but now that our first month of subscription is almost up, she's now realised that she can't finish the 400 mins... LOL.

That's it for tonight... gotta have my bath now. Goodnight!

It's ALIVEEE!!

So... here's me, finally getting a chance to publish my brilliant ideas on how to solve the world's biggest problems. Or, letting people finally see the crazed, insane maniac lurking inside my head :)

Whatever the case, hopefully I'll be posting here regularly on what's the latest in my life or thoughts that I've... thought up. Yeah.

So expect new stuff soon! :)