Psychotic and Psychotic Comedy

After blowing off some steam in my last post I decided to post about somethign equally psychotic that could be in Adventure games :)

Two of most distinguish gems to be mention here are Sam & Max and Sanitarium.

Sam & Max was first a comic book with unique style of clean cut dark comedy. Here is one of the example.
In the game version, the makers fully utilize the author's sense of humour and style making it one of a kind in the genre. I was lucky enough to have found both the diskette versions (8 MB) and the CD version (100s MB) The Cd version was worth looking for if you can :) The voice talents was perfect (I think it might be the same people from the animation version of the comic).

On A sidenote. LucasArts had annouce and was producing Sam & Max 2 and later cancelled it citing their marketing department that the game "will not sell well" Despite the fact that almost every game magazine were eagerly awaiting this game as well as the fans world wide. The news of the cancel cause wide uproars among adventure games community and resentment toward LucasArts. Personally I think LA should have fired their marketing department instead of cancelling the game. It was the job of the marketers to make the game sellable not saying we can't marketted this game. God knows they had it easy selling the crabby Star Wars games for several years and when a good challenge coming by they just chicken out!!!

Sanitarium: One of the scariest Advanture games I had ever played. And it was not because of the gore nor the scary image but the overall looks were rather disturbing... The synosis at Underdogs said it all:

"Doubtless one of the very best "serious"advanture games ever made. In this psychological rollercoaster ride, you find yourself a patient in a strange sanitarium, with no memory of who you are. Slowly but surely, as the game progresses, you gather clues and insights into the past that give you the whole picture. I don't want to ruin your enjoyment of the game, but in general, each new chapter represents another step in Max's search for his sanity. A true classic, and must-have for every adventure gamer, especially fans of psychological thrillers.?"

This game is also one of it's kind. I had first played the CD-rip version from Underdogs (the original game were in 3 CDs and the maker of this CD-rip version had cleverly use clip from the video cutscene to make the cutscene in this one thus drastically reduce the size) and I love it. When I heard from Justadventures that the game has been reproduce in jewelcase version I ask my friend in NY to buy it for me and it was worth the Money!! Each CDs were beautifully printed and the cinematic cutscenes were all there including the ending radio broadcast which will tell you how thing were concluded in the end.

D*A*M*N IT!!!

I got offical warning from my supervisor regarding my mistake. I must admit I am a bit surprise that I get this since afterall I did not make a habit of making this type of mistake. Like I mention in my last post, people seems to focus on when you make mistake rather than when you are not. The supervisor use the work 'again and again' when if I recalled correctly this mistake did not happen for at least a year!! And he mention that other people have to come into office to do the rollback, well that is Their jobs as well. The same way that I have to came into office in unusual hours because the new patch need to be tested. Things happen and we deal with it the way they came.

With the kind of job that I have, a routine processing kind which means I am pretty much doing the same thing every times I came to work, there will be mistake every once in a while. I am only human afterall. I guess I am being quite defensive but hey one times out of 178 days (the total working day more or less in one year) is still less than one percent! cut me some slack please!

Now should I reply the warning asking the supervisor nicely to remind me when was the last times that this kind of mistake happen? I can assure you guys that it was at least a year ago. Or should I just do nothing and just say Ok to this??

Somewhat eventful night at work...

Just when I thought I have nothing to blog about it is almost like Fraudian thing that leads my brain toward how it goes last night...

I made mistake in my work... Which did not happen for about two years now... The darnest thing is that I have to call people up to fix this mistake since the easiest way, for this case, is to rollback the system.

In retrospect, I was lucky that it happen on that particular day since:
-It was Friday night, so there was no real rush to fix it since the system will not have a lot of workload on Saturday morning.
-The database is tied to accounting and as they will began to clear the report at the end of month I would rather that it happen on this week than next week *shudder*
-The building was fumigating, not by my company but by the building's maintenance, so I was not eager to stay long... Although they did not fumigating on my floor but they did most of the upper floors and the fume did goes downward. I was not keen to sit at my table and breath in insecticide until the job is complete...

Still I was not keen that it happen. Afterall, this will not look good on my record. Eventhough there was no record of me per say but people, especially those that looking over my shoulder type (supervisor and manager,) tend to focus on how you screw up things rather than when u you do it right. I suppose we were all like that... We take it for granted when things goes smoothly and then go bend out of shape when hit the bump. I guess I am entitled to say this again, Darn IT!!!

Sitcom and Sit-Com

The title represent two of the activities that I like quite a lot which are Sitcom series and Sitting in front of Computer.

The Sitcom that I like are:
A. Golden Girls. I really love the offensive lines of Estelle Getty :)
B. Will & Grace. A must for every gay man I think...
C. The Nanny. Classic storylines delivered with crazy glamour dresses and unforgettable voice by Fran Drescher :D
D. Whose Lines is it anyway? I saw the one with Drew Carey as the host and boy was it hillarious...
E. Murphy Brown. The name said it all :)
F. Ally McBeal. I know it's not a sitcom but one-hour drama but I still love it anyhow :) I like the way the musics seems to be the additional mood setters throughout the show. I did have some tears in my eyes a few times.

That's all I could think up at the moment, perhaps I would add some later.

Now, about sitting in front of computer... I must admit that it it not always *fun* times for me for various reasons... And the current one is named 'Dungeon Siege II' I tend to be addicted of sort to this type of game... The set of mind that wants to explore the quest a bit more... jsut a little more while the rest of my body is aching for rest (espeically my wrist... Darn!) or food... I guess this might be a not so good but perhaps quite effective diet method?

My Devious Past ;)

I am generally a good kids but I guess strong affection can cause things to go haywire :)

One times I told my mom that I was going to stay at my friend's place for the weekend. What I did not tell her is that the friend's *place* is in Hong Kong :ppp I have got an offer to go see Him (I will someday post the story of Him) in Hong Kong and I was crazy over him at that time, plus he pay half the airfare, so I could not say no :)

And that's conclude my devious past post :)

Fully Loaded

About once a month I will have the urge to have some grill food and the best cost-money-taste balance is a japan style bar-b-q chain restuarant called Daidomon.

When it first open in BKK it seems to position itself as a relatively high-end classy place, but after a while it seems to adapt itself and once it introduce buffet menu which is all-you-can-eat with pork, beef, chicken, squid, and various vegetables it repositioning itself to be more lower-middle class with price tag of 129 baht per person for all you can eat meal.

I would usually spend about an hour or so of seriously stuffing my face by myself :) I guess this is one advantage of being single... There is no one to distract you while eating and you do not need worried of trying to impress the person in front of you :pp

So today I went to MBK mall in Siam Square area to buy a new game after failed in my attempt to Torrent it from the net, darn my ISP for failed to fix the connection problem that happen for about a week now... After I finish buyign the game I went to Daidomon and now I am back home with full stomach ready to try my latest aquisition, Dungeon Siege II :D

The Belly Dancer

I recently saw Shakira's latest MV "La Tortura" featuring Alejandro Sanz in the MV as well and Darn that woman can Move!! The way she twirl her upper body like the way the women in rap MV's shake their bootie just make me gasp and giggle :) If I was straight I would be drooling instead that's for sure... The whole MV looks very sensual and somewhat arousing in the scene in which she was... 'attacked' by Alejandro Sanz from the behind ;). The dance scenes in the MV shows just how well she could control her body, she maybe not have the 6 pack abs like Janet Jackson but darn she can move like professional belly dancer. Her hubby must be Very Happy *wink* *wink*.

The Lovely F****** Word

The word I meant is of cause, Friends.

I have a few close friends, although not by choices but it just seems to be that way. So I would like to mention the closed ones here:

My first close friend that we still manage to keep in touch is Nordic. I met him in an IRC chat room long time ago and he is the only one from that chat room that I still be able to keep in touch. He is a nice guy and for some odd reasons, we could talk on the phone or chat online about this and that continuously for hours on end :) He used to come to Thailand every years for about 11 years before relocated here permanently. He had been burnt badly from previous serious relationship but within a few months of moving here he found another love by accident and it is his current serious relationship. Since he already moved to Bangkok he stop going online for chat since he have his group of friends as well as a boyfriend now so I did not get to see him much.

My second close friend, oddly enough, happen when I went to a gay bar for the first times :) I think I must be around 19 years old then and I have been curious about gay bar. So I ask one of my friend to show me to rope so to speak and I end up talking to this guy which I would dub Mr. American. He is older closet case gentleman who began to live his gay life once he moved to Bangkok. His story is like many others previous generations of gay men, married to women for various reason only to divorce them later because they cannot hide their true feelings. And like many others he love his kids dearly. Now he ran a business dealing with companies in America. Currently he been travelling a lot to smoothen the rough patch he is in so he is very busy. We also just happen to share the same birthday, which means we share the same sign Leo but the amazing part is that we also share the same chiense zodiac sign Snake as well :)

My third close friend is a woman of my age and probably close to being my own Grace of Will & Grace so I will call her Grace. I met her in the university, although I forget how we meet exactly she claimed that we sat in the same class one day and one of my friend who is also her friend has introduce us. She was a bit of a tom boy in her manner, short hair, quite brassy, artistic type, and talk in snazzy kinda way and was one of those christian who wants to help others by inviting them to their meetings. As a gay man, and already have a religion of my own I have no interest in such events. Although I remembered that I yielded to her request once and went to an event which I vaguely remembered that it seems to be some performance on the stage and it must be around Christmas times. Later when she tried to persuade me to go to such events again I just came out to her as to why I did not wants to go again. I do not know when exactly that she and I became closer though but during the few years of my university years we became closer. She even became curious about the gay life that she wants to visit gay bar. So I end up taking her to one and I also ask Nordic to join us as well.

Unfortunately for me (fortunately for her of cause), Grace had found her man, a soft spoken, mild manner half Moroccan/British man (although he looks for Moroccan than British). They fell in love, he did fell head over heel for her :). She is like a raging fire while he is the mild water seems to make the dynamic of their relationship works just fine. Although the fact that he is a couple of years younger than her seems to rattle her a bit but I think love conquers all in this matter ^_^ (She had confine with me that she never thought that her husband will look like this but she still love him anyway). They ended up signing the marriage license so that it will easier for her to move to London to study, work, and be with her man. (This is a big secret, as well as the fact that her man is younger than her, to her family so not a word to anyone). So now she is in London and live with her man and too busy to use computer even to write email regularly... She did still write from time to time which is still good...

With this long post, let it be a lesson to you, Do Not Make Close Friends with People Who Were Very Different or Too Busy Than You Are. Otherwise you will end up being the one who have to initiate all contacts whether there would be phone calls, emails, or meetings. And let me tell you, men just Don't Call!!

My crazy (for Songkran) shirts

I bought these shirts when I was visiting one of the IT mall in Bangkok. It was April and Thailand was celebrating Songkran :)

I must attest that these are not my usual attire but I just could not resist these shirts. As you might have guess my favorite color is Blue, deep shiny blue :)

Usually these type of shirts will be widely available during Songkran time in Thailand. Songkran, for who those who did not know, is a traditional water festival in Thailand. From what I have been told, in the old days Songkran is also a celebration after the completion of farming in the Summer (March and April). People came out splash water over each others to cool off from the heat of Summer :)

A Fortune Teller: Me ^o^

As I was adding links and editing my sidebar (as you would notice.) Adding this particular site remind of my highschool times when I was a Tarot reader :)

It all began from a program that I saw on TV about the local famous tarot reader who has publish a guidebook of how to do tarot reading (the book went on to became the most reprints book I ever saw, 35 times when I saw it last.) I was intrigue by it and eventually buy that book and memorize the meaning of the cards in a week or so. And then came the read practise.

My classmates (I used this terms because although I am friendly with them I am not by anymeans very close) were kind enough to let me practise on them. After awhile it is been know among my class and several others that I will carried a deck of tarot cards in my backpack and would be hapy to do the fortune telling when times permit.

Two interesting read that I still remembers were the lovers compatibility test that I had seen from TV. By having the lovers shuffle the cards, split the deck once by each of them. Then each will select five cards one at a times to be pairing with each other (5 cards on top of 5 cards). If there are a lot of minor cards matching each other it would means that the lovers were a good match, unless it's the sword cards which means the lovers were not a good match. I had ask 2 couples to try this. Couple A: Been couple for quite a long time and it seems that they would be those highschool sweetheart that if they can survive university together they would get married. And Couple B: At that time they alraedy split but agreed to do the test as a favor to me. And the results?

Couple A: Each have a few (if I am not mistaken) wand cards, which means hardworkers, and the interesting part is that the girl have King of Wand while the boy have Queen of Wand. When I mention this to a few friends they agreed that the girl is more of the alpha Female of the relationship while the boy is more docile and quite content on the backseat :)

Couple B: Each for a few sword cards and I think it match on a couple of pair and of coz since they already split ups this is not a surprise.

I tried to continue doing tarot reading in university but it did not last long. Mainly because I got different people in each class and I might seems as a weirdo if I offer to do tarot reading with them often...

But that still did not stop me from getting inspired when I saw wonderous tarot card designs though ;) Again check out this site :) And no I did not know the artist nor I am the artist myself :PP If I could paint that well I would not be a homebodyfor sure...

Part 2: Becoming Mr. Night Owl

I suppose I should be honest here in elaborating that the "incident" I mention in my previous post is caused by yours truly. I was in college and perform poorly that I have only two options left which are re-enter or retire. By re-enter, it means I would enroll in the college again as a freshman with new student ID and start again with a clean records. And I do not think I need to explain what does retire means...

Needless to say I am in a bit if a jam since my mom told me that she won't pay for my tuition fees anymore since it seems that I do not pay enough attention in college. Back then I tried, although not my best since I am not good at reviewing the lesson by myself, but I thought it would be a bit of a breeze getting through college but then it prove me otherwise...

With that declaration from my mom, I need a job to pay for my tuition fees. So I went to see my supervisor of my summer trainee jobs (I did not work there at that time), told him of my predicament and ask him for a job, he said he will see what he can do and come back to see him in few days. He did came through and the result is the job that I have been doing for the last 8 years and still do until present time.

The job involve doing backup and execute reports on Oracle database system. I could not explain much of what I did since they did not explain much to me either and it has been imply that it is best that this is only need to know basis situations. And if u wondered why I name this post with the above title here is the explanation. The job is nightshift, which is perfect for my situation, since I could study in the day time (more like afternoon however :)) , came home for a nap and then off to work in the evening and still have enough hours of sleep.

In retrospect, if it was vice versa, work in the day and study nightshift instead, it would be a lot harder for me to cope with. Since my nighttime work is not 8 hours shift but rather depend on the amount of input data during the day which will dictate the time needed to spend on processing it the hours were somewhat varies from day to day.

The result? For five years, I tend to spend my free time sleeping or staying home and not going out much other than movie (Went alone though) and occasional bar trip (arrive 20:00-21:00 and leave around midnight) . My social life depends on the fact that I discovered internet at my college and I also found IRC which connected me to other gay people on the net and from that have got a few long lasting friends.

All in all the job has convert my time into becoming a night owl or rather an Afternoon person. And the best waking up is to wake up by myself and not by alarm clock :)

Game... Game Player

I know it's lameass titlebut hey I am a bit insomniac at the moment I need to type down a bit :)

Nope I am not that type of game player but I am definately a Computer game player. As I mention earlier I use my first comptuer to play several games... Back then I seems to be playing all types of games... Apart from platform type since I never seems to get the hang of it (think Mario and u get the ideas... Never seems to have very good hands-eyes coordination on those games) I had tried my hands on Doom II, SimCity, and Gabriel Knight: Sins of The Fathers just to name a few and boy did I waste many of my precious time as a youth on those titles :) Although my English was not good enough to understand what was going on in game story wise but I do like to play them nonetheless

And now as a older, a bit wiser, and perhaps more sophisticated game player. I have lost my interest in playing the FPS game quite entirely, even the famous Grand Theft Autos game series did not spark my interest that much (alright I had play GTA: Vice City and got seriously nauseated once that I throw up a bit after I turn of the game) It seems that as I grow older I seems to have the motion sickness symptoms?? Whatever it was I do have a hard time playing any game that have the movement like the GTA game, the sort of fix camera First person view type, which is quite a shame because it means I could not play Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines for long since that would get me sick, literally... Although I had discuss this with a some people and they said that this symptom can be avoided byplaying these game on computer with high-end graphic card. I have yet to prove this theory since those high-end cards also means high price.

I guess I could say that I am rahter lucky that I appreciated a certain type of game more than the rest and that certain type did not require too high graphic requirement nor serious button mashing movement nor mindless shoot'em up, yeap I am talking about Adventure games.

Adventure games are the more story driven and many times brain teaser type of game that were popular when the computer began to be entertaining machine. A few of classics that I love are Kyrandia series, Gabriel Knight series, Sam & Max, Beneat a steel sky, Grim Fandango. Also the more recent bests: The Longest Journey and Syberia

It seems that I get into too much details of my liking for games... That's not quite true since my main hobby is reading manga :)

PS: I will continue the part 2 sometime later... perhaps during my free time in the office tomorrow night

Part 1: Chance encounter Black and Green

When I was in 8th Grade, my school decided to replace English typewriting class with Computer class. That was my first encounter with computer. I still remember it quite well of how we learn the how to use Dos 3.20 and DBase on Monochrome (Black background with Green letter (come to think of it... that was very Matrix like :))) screen.

And when I began Highschool, we began using Windows 3.1 on colored monitor!! I seems to get the hang of it better than the rest of the class practical wise but somehow the programming lesson even of the Basic language put me to sleep (Involunteerly I might add) quite easily...

Later on I have a chance to work as User support trainee during summer break at a Big company near where I live. I had learned a lot during that time of how to do Computer maintenance, how to setup computers, and do minor tweaking of things. By then Windows 95 just began to be widely use in the company and I got to do setup for new computers, which gave me a chance to learn how to use it as well.

And then came an incident which force me to take some drastic action

The Beginning

This is my first post as a blogger... Well I don't know what to say at the moment because it's very late here... Perhaps I would do more tomorrow...

I suppose I would begin by saying how computer help/break/and save my life so far...