Chatter Of The Squirrel

My Birthday Presents

Bought myself my most extravagant birthday present ever. I had meant to buy the big lot of camera and accessories and then recoup some of the expenditure by selling off some of the accessories.

The Dicain Vertical Shutter Grip, I thought was rather unnecessary. Yet it sells for quite a goodly sum on eBay. But… indisputably, the grip DOES make the camera look 5x better. Aesthetically. Although it adds bulk, it adds a lot of comfort and stability. It’s really well designed and I have come to love it a lot.

The Sigma Flash EF-500, I figured will be the easiest to sell off. Good external flashes are really pricey, and second hands will sell well. But I know for a fact that if I sell off this flash unit, I’ll never get another one to replace it. I’ld never spend RM700-800 on a flash unit alone. Thus, without the flash, my photography will forever be somewhat ‘gimped’. With such a hefty investment in this hobby already, I may as well go further and make an honest effort to refine my photography skills and learn the craft proper.

So. Yeah. Falling in love with the accessories that came with my birthday present, and rationalising why I should keep them.

I also got a birthday present from my sister. It’s a Polar watch

Polar heart rate monitors are the best of its breed. Timex, Casio and even Nike came up with HRM watches before but often with mixed reviews. Skipped beats & inaccuracies, or ridiculous battery replacement policies (Nike), etc. I’ve wanted a Polar for quite some time already, and hopefully this will get me back in the saddle again. With an HRM, I could monitor the progress of my fitness. And such feedbacks are useful to motivate me to stay on course.

Cartoon: Iron Man Armored Adventures

Another week with no Family Guy to download. So I noted this random new cartoon pilot and took a look.

There are numerous quality animation these days, so I can’t be blamed for having certain expectations.

I can also understand that it’s a kid friendly cartoon. Teen Titans and Ben 10 are also kid friendly. And decent.

But Iron Man fell far short of any comparison to any one of its peers.

The animation is 3D. It’s got more polygons than Virtua Fighter, but the texture rendering is still Tomb Raider 1. And the background detail of a Garfield comic.

That’s the most ridiculous thing! Far too often, the characters will be talking / walking down the street or a school corridor and the background is completely bare. It looked as if Daffy Duck had walked out of the animation cel.

The camera does all these meaningless panning so you can see the character walk… with the same fluidity as Lara Croft. And in real life, have you ever seen anyone’s pupil *pan* from one corner of the eye to the other? The characters’ eyes move like airport security cameras, and it just draws attention to the inexperience of the director and animation team.

And this is just the animation gripe.

The premise of the series, is an alternate timeline where Tony Stark’s genius budded much earlier, and he has already developed his Ironman suit at 16yrs old. Obediah has killed his dad. And Tony goes to school with Pepper and Rhodes. They have adventures like the Hardy Boys. Only with bigger toys and a huge secret underground lab.

Very plausible. Hey, I want to see a highschool version of Batman and Robin too. That’ll be just RAD!

The script and the flow of the story? Is what I imagine Cicak-Man and Cicak-Man 2 is like. Simple. Cliched. Stupid. And almost satirical, except that the irony will be lost on the show’s target audience!

And here’s the best thing. Here’s the kicker. This is really good. And here it comes…

Ironman has a SailorMoon transformation sequence (refered to as the In The Name Of The Moon TV trope), but without the ultra-mini skirts.

I have nothing positive to say about this cartoon. Except to thank its existence, for this rant’s existence.

Manic Sunday

Went to church cos there’s no Kempo.

There’s no Kempo cos everyone was off at a training camp at Pahang.

I didn’t join the camp cos of the wedding yesterday.

There was a combined service with the Setapak church cos Anne was being ordained.

At the end of the service, I heard a somewhat familiar giggle, and saw an unexpected face… The HumanPet that I watched Madagascar with. The same one whose sister I owe a debt of favour for my EEEPC.

She was following her cousin to church. And her cousin goes to the Setapak church. And only this celestial convergence of events brought her to my church instead.

What a coincidence.

Too bad I didn’t have time to stay and chat after church. Instead, ran off to show Moses my new toy, and to copy Boston Legal & Stargate Atlantis from his harddisk. Before heading to Wolf’s for an afternoon of Monsterpocalypse.

Where there was an 8 man person tournament playing for the Limited Edition Cthugrosh, which was eBaying for around USD100. I scrubed out of the fight by round 2.

But there hasn’t been such a big day of gaming for a long while now. And this pre-painted collectible miniatures game has surprisingly captured everyone’s imagination. Our local hardcore anti-collectible, anti-prepainted old veteran miniature hobby elitist was actually the first to plunge head-long into the game. It’s a bigger success than anyone could have imagined.

What’s Monsterpocalypse? Look at the background. Voltron fighting Red King… or something like that. It’s Kaiju, and it’s suddenly cool… And lucrative.

After the tourney, a game of Agricola.

Then dinner.

Then a round of amusing stories of how Malaysia’s gaming scene came to be. A tale of how a vindictive chinaman from Pan-Global tried to carve out an empire cos he didn’t get a discount on a boardgame a few years ago.

Good times.

Unrehearsed Wedding

A gamer got married. I was nearly the best man, but I managed to weasel out of it. Heck, wouldn’t know what to do as best man… And I don’t want to bear the burden of guilt for his stag party last night. Apparently, no booze was involved. He was calling up a number of people, without success, to join him for a night of Rock Band on his Wii…

So he was all awake and sober for the ceremony at St Francis Xavier. But the bride might be less so…

During the reading of the vows, she read out loud, “And I, Marcus,…” before realising that she was reading the wrong one. Or maybe it was the priest that was less than sober and gave her the wrong vows.

I had an aisle seat, with my new toy, but couldn’t take any decent pic of the ceremony. Every auntie / uncle with a digital camera felt they had the mandate to photograph the event. Line of sight to the couple is frequently obscured by upper middle-aged butts. This made for some very humourous pictures…

The fun continued to the lunch reception at Oriental Pearl at Kiara Country Club.

There’s no guest list.

And one working pen to share around for signing the… that big fancy book where guests write their best wishes.

We found a random table, and some minutes later a lady approached a guest at our table and said, “Your wife just volunteered you to be MC.” And that’s how the lunch started.

The karaoke machine was also broken, so the MC recruited random people to go up to sing acapella. They tried a few times to get Wolf to sing, but he declined cos he only sings angry songs. It would’ve been funny to see what song in his repertoire is fitting for the occassion.

There was a low-keyness and an on-the-fly-ness quality of this wedding that made it especially charming.

Also I shared a table with two anti-sharksfin protestors and two Iranians. So I probably had 5-6 bowls of the soup. Couldn’t keep count. So I certainly enjoyed myself.

More Agricola

Had dinner with some ex-classmates. One of them is now working down south where the grass is greener.

Pay and opportunity for training is very much better down south. But the patients are more demanding and ‘intelligent’.

It’s funny comparing Malaysia and Singapore. Over here, administrative staff does little to no work. Over there, they do too much and micro-manage everything with KPIs. Eventually, it becomes a game where every player tries to maximise KPIs, and at the same time making every effort to avoid that red hotel on Mayfair.

Patients are also learning the game. When they’re beginning to feel better, they become more alert to staff ‘mistakes’. Just any little thing that they can make a complaint about. Then use the threat of filing a complaint, to leverage for a discount in the hospital bill.

Sounds like fun…

But I’ld rather play games where I can pick the company that I play with.

And after the dinner, I met up with friends at Mage Cafe for ANOTHER game of Agricola.