v3 - vicissitude iii (not final version)

“Sasuke-kun, you may have the eyes to see and read my movements, but your body will not necessarily be able to keep up with my speed. Therefore, my ultimate Taijutsu is the single worst matchup for your Sharingan.”
- Rock Lee (paraphrased from memory)

Finally, I have obtained the eye. Only slightly, but I can see now. The movements, the attacks. I’m slowly clawing my way up into a higher level of play in Soul Calibur 2. Juggles are coming out more naturally now as well. Still, even as I am able to see attacks coming, I have yet to be able to react appropriately to them. The quote above is very much appropriate to my current condition. Sure, I am able to see and block attacks, but it’s an erratic thing at the moment. At best, I can dodge and block instinctively. At worst, I get owned to hell by spammers.

Well, blame the fact that while we have a handful of pro players here in Miri’s arcades (I’m thankful for that), there are much more Kilik and Ivy scrubs out there. Yes, I’m sure the real pros can handle them no problem, but during your training period, your combat effectiveness drops - immensely. It’s up to myself to identify the real pros and play them instead of the scrubs. Still, it’s fun to own noobs who spam Nightmare’s A+B nonstop.

I saw a pro SC3 Siegfried player at Boulevard yesterday. As fate would have it, I happened to have my camera with me, so I recorded a match between Mitsurugi (^_^) and Siegfried. The guy had Siegfried live up to his name of ring-out whore, that’s for one. After a very close and tight match, Mitsurugi took the game with a throw. And with that, I was reminded of something I still couldn’t see - the throw animation. Must. Learn. To. Duck.

Well, just as I do not posess the reflexes to react to attacks in Soul Calibur, my raw body speed is not that good as well. Of course, maybe I shouldn’t have tried to judge that by trying to race a bus on my bike, but still, with my ninja capabilities, this shouldn’t have been a problem. I think it’s because I had porridge right before I raced the bus. It made me feel sick. I was winning, but I think the damned bus uncle realised that I was racing him and accelerated. I was pretty sure he was going faster than 30km/h. Too bad no speedtraps were around. Damn lazy Malaysian traffic police.

So why, you ask - why am I putting in my progress on Soul Calibur in my blog? Where are all the photos of the scenery? The landscape? The PRETTY GIRLS?!?!?!! Where? WHERE?! Well, dear reader, this will all come in due time. Be glad that I’m updating. I actually biked all the way to campus so that I could blog using the labs.

Right~ Enough with the egoistic self-rantage. I’ll try to put up more interesting things in the future, but for now, bear with me. When I have broadband, my blog shall thrive. ^.^

kianbung out. (shameless Rockman imitation right there)

Here I sit, in the computer lab in G3 - after hearing the lamentations of life from ‘mature’ people. Stressed off their asses, they say. And just as things are finally starting to get comfortable. Well, if all that energy put into whining about life is put into doing something productive, I’m sure all the assignments will be done on time - plus some extra time for sleep. Some people just can’t handle reality that well. (you know, if you have someone like me saying that, you know it’s serious)

I’ve really got to stop opening my posts with depressing things. Anyway, last Saturday was really tiring - but in a good, satisfying way. I went out early morning (relatively - it was 11am) and walked around town (just the shopping malls) and took photos for my IVC photo essay.

Ironically, even if it was a serious photo shoot, I don’t really think any of the photos ended up really noteworthy. I guess trying to force inspiration is seriously not a good way to do things. The passion is not there. I’m more into ‘getting the photos taken’ than ‘I wanna take good looking photos’. Oh well.

Some good things happened though - I was walking around Boulevard when I wandered into the arcades on the top floor. I noticed something that nearly made my heart stop. We finally have Soul Calibur 3 machines! I was like zOMGBBQWTF##! Life owns.

The bad thing was that it cost 2 tokens to play. I wasn’t anywhere near prepared to get my ass owned in a game I haven’t practiced for a long time, although I did pop in two tokens just for the sake of playing it. I got my ass owned bad - as expected. Siegfried isn’t actually a good character to use if you’re damn out of practice. Still, it rocks to have an SC3 machine. Now I can actually prepare myself properly for the inevitable duel when Roey and I meet up in July.

Yeah, then I walked around some more, snapped a few more photos, hurt my left shoulder after trying to play Robin Hood for too long (archery range), and then ended up owning ass in the arcades at Parkson. Apparently the real hardcore players frequent Boulevard top floor, while to noobs take the floor below in Boulevard. Parkson has a good mix of good and bad players, so it’s a good place to stakeout. Still, I can’t get my mind over being juggle-raped by Mitsurugi.

Even with all those assignments piling up, I ended up playing Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter almost the whole day with my housemates. We even set up a Teamspeak server so that we can coordinate ourselves properly - that, and use the server as a personal karaoke machine. The latter got screams and complaints in response.

Okay, so it wasn’t that much of a photoshoot weekend. Photoshoot Saturday, maybe. But definitely not photoshoot weekend. But damn it, who cares. It’s my blog, I call it whatever I want. It’s called Relative Logic - what I do is always right, and what everyone else does that is against my will is wrong. And based on this law, you know that this rule in life is right.

Oh, and I almost forgot to mention the word ninja.

I was a zombie for almost the whole day today. Was trying frantically to grasp onto consciousness during Critical Reading Class, although I’m pretty sure I didn’t miss much. At least I think I didn’t. And now I’m stuck here arguing with people who have absolutely the wrong idea why we are in university over an inane assignment. If only every day was like yesterday… Or at least last night.

There was this barbeque going on at Lonie’s house last night. Seven people and two freeloaders. We had overburnt chicken and half charred hot dogs, and also fishballs coated with carbon. It was pure unhealthy goodness right there. I liked it a lot. No worries about assignments, no cares in the world… Except for the chicken that was getting charred. And the mosquitoes sexually assaulting everyone. Well, they were assaulting me - apparently they didn’t attack anyone else. I think it’s the ’still fresh’ Brunei blood in me.

After consuming all there was to consume, we went on to play games. And not normal stuff like video games or stuff like that. We played games that we used to play when we were seven. Stuff that ranges from Twister to Turtle to Wooden Man. Of course there were card games and the such, but heck - they were insignificant compared to the fun children games we played. Someone even suggested Ice and Water, but the space was too small and there were too many hazards for us to safely run around. Glass furniture are certainly not the safest things in the world.

We played up until 2.30am - then Lency’s mom called and we were forced to retreat back home as soon as possible. I then played Oblivion for a while after we got home. Seriously, that game is more addictive than drugs. And hence I turned into a zombie after only 5 hours of sleep. I’ve had worse, but for less significant reasons. Continue reading ‘Barbeque’

Yesterday, 11th May 2006 - was a historic day for Curtin University of Technology, Sarawak. Or so they say. Many people gathered - important old people, students, photographers, people who were there for the food, people who were there for the free T-shirts, and all sorts of other freeloaders - all there to watch an old man dig a hole in the ground.

Supposedly this whole thing was for ‘groundbreaking’ aka ‘digging a hole in the ground’. Turns out that most of the time was spent watching old people talking on stage. You know it’s a bad thing when photographers start looking for a seat. And it’s a worse thing when even I went off to the cafeteria to get away from the droning.

Here we have the old men finally walking on the red carpet to the place where they are going to dig a hole in the ground. I still don’t really see how ‘historic’ this can be. My dad’s Indian labourers dig holes in the ground almost every day and you don’t see photographers, freeloaders, and people pretending to clap their hands there pretending to be interested… O.o

And here we have the old people (mostly old men) walking up to the digging machine thing. Y’know, I think half the people there hoped that some way or the other the old men would actually screw up with the machine controls and do something funny or dangerous. It didn’t happen, sadly. The whole thing would’ve been so much more exciting then. =_=”

The sad part is, while almost an hour was spent on meaningless droning, the whole groundbreaking thing took less than five minutes. And that’s including walking up to the machine and taking photographs.

And finally we move on to the very most important part of the entire event - the food. Don’t lie people - I know you’re all there for the free food and/or the free T-shirts. It’s too bad I didn’t get a free T-shirt. Nobody gave it to me. T-T

The little chicken frank bread things there on the bottom of the last picture were really nice though. Scott told me they’re sausage rolls, but I still like the name little chicken frank bread things better - so whatever la. At least I managed to ninja one before the bus left.

I never did get my free T-shirt.