Monday, September 29, 2008

two weeks in tianjin!

HAAAAAAYYYYYYYYY This is Rin Fangying Lepolting flom Tianjin... in honol of the wondelfur Engrish I have encounteled so fal in my few houls in China I sharr use "L"s in prace of "R"s and "R"s in prace of "L"s. Because it's just herra fun.

Upon allivar the tempelatule is gleat at 19 deglees cersius but the ail is shittingry porruted so you can't see shit. And needress to say the ail smerrs bad. Vely, vely, vely, vely, vely bad. So smerry untir I armost got knocked out when I reft the ailpolt buirding and took a whiff of the ail.

TEDA is the prace whele my fathel cullentry rives and wolks. Appalentry it's not as lemote as I thought it wourd be. Thele's Tesco, lestaulants, cafés, hoters, palks and a vely pink sex shop. My fathel wolks in this buirding that rooks rike a UFO (Unidentified Frying Object) on a pedestar.

Hele I sharr plovide a grossaly of commonry-used Engrish wolds in Tianjin.

AIRPRANE - A frying object peopre tlaver in flom countly to countly.
TEWBEWRENCE - Viorent ol unsteady movement of ail.
FAYSEN EURR SEETBERLTS - A command used by ail stewaldesses to make you stlap youlserf to the seats of the abovementioned frying object, especiarry when the second-mentioned cilcumstance happens. Which does happen arot, in case you ale wondeling.
HAVE A PREASEN JARNEE - A vely crichéd phlase used aftel evely singre announcement on the airprane. Even aftel youl joulney has ended.
DESING SCHOOL - A vely speciar type of Design Schoor that onry exists in TEDA.

(Rist is exhaustive, wirr keep updating.)

ROR!

Wednesday, September 24, 2008

witchcraft bitchcraft

Hi.


Here's Madison Gallagher the Infallibly Good Witch.


And here's Madison's sister, Ali Gallagher the Atrociously Evil Witch.

And today, they're gonna give you a sneak preview of witchcraft in The Sims 2 Apartment Life.


But before you cast any spells you need to make various reagents, namely Eye of Newt, Dragon Scales, Essence of Light (mostly for good spells), Essence of Viper (mostly for evil spells), Crystallized Moonbeams and Mystic Dust. So Maddie goes off and makes some Mystic Dust, which is essential for lots of the spells in the game.

So now that everyone's got enough reagents in their Inventories and some Magic skill on hand, they can do lots of stuff... like...


Make it rain like shit (complete with cockroaches)...


Or make it nice and sunny...

And even...

Travel from the bathroom...


... to the curb. Just in time for school.

MOAR LATAR

Friday, September 19, 2008

Its a dark and dreary night
Seems like nothing's going right
Wont you tell me honey how can I go on here without you?

Yes I'm down and feeling blue
And I don't know what to do, oh-oh

Ring, ring, why don't you give me a call?
Ring, ring, the happiest sound of them all
Ring, ring, I stare at the phone on the wall
And I sit all alone impatiently
Won't you please understand the need in me

So, ring, ring, why don't you give me a call?

"And I sit all alone impatiently
Wont you please understand the need in me
So, ring, ring, why don't you give me a call?
So, ring, ring, why don't you give me a call?"

- Ring Ring by ABBA

... sorry, that's my current obsession.

Perhaps it does reflect my mood a little.

Except there's no real target, just the feeling of emptiness I'm so darn familiar with.

Sometimes, I wonder if someone's quietly stealing away my opportunities and my guts, turning me into the person I am today, no guts, no glory.

Obviously, if that was how I thought of my own life, I might well be delusional because, hey, I'm almost solely responsible for turning myself into the human I am today. (Perhaps I'm just being very responsible, or being the unwilling scapegoat of fate.)

My life isn't nearly messed up; it's not messed up. Or maybe it is in a very subliminal way. Or it's not my life that's messed up, but it's me that's messed up. No matter what it is, no matter how much I can't see how I am the cause of everything that goes wrong (maybe it's not so wrong after all but whatever, as long as it doesn't sit right with my intuition it's wrong), it's always my problem because I'm the only one who sees this, and nobody else understands my viewpoint, or if they did, necessarily think it's valid.

People think that my ability to see both sides of most situations is valuable, but every trait in your personality cripples something the same way it boosts something else.

For instance, I really have no stand in most situations. All I ever wanted to do was do things in the most humane and beneficial for one and all. All I ever wanted was to laugh with the whole world and have the whole world laugh with me. All I ever wanted was for people to take off those masks and take a good look: does that face not have eyes, a nose, a mouth and ears like you do? If that sounds specieist, then let me put it this way - every single sentient being you see walking the earth, flying in the skies, swimming in the ocean, river and lake... just put aside your differences and you'll see they're not that different at all.

That's all.

Monday, September 15, 2008

a little joke about politics.

Here's a nice one from MATY:

Son: "Dad, I have to do a special report for my Political Science course. Can I ask you a question?"

Dad: "Sure son, what's the question?

Son: "What is politics?" My professor says that it has something to do with a pillow."

Dad: "Well, I am not sure what your instructor means, but let's take our home as an example. I am the wage earner, so let's call me Management. Your mother is the administrator of the money, so we'll call her Government. We take care of you and your needs, so let's call you The People. We'll call the maid The Working Class and your baby brother we'll call The Future. Do you understand?

Son: "I'm not really sure Dad, I'll have to think about it."

That night, awakened by his baby brother's crying, the boy went to see what was wrong. Discovering the baby had seriously soiled his diaper, the son went to his parent's room and found his mother sound asleep. He went to the maid's room where, peeking through the keyhole, he saw his father in bed with the maid. The boy's knocking went totally unheard by his father and the maid, so the boy returned to his room and went back to sleep.
The next morning:

Son: "Dad, now I think I understand politics."

Dad: "That's great son, explain it to me in your own words."

Son: "Well, Dad, it is like this...

While Management is screwing The Working Class, the Government is sound asleep. The People are being completely ignored, and The Future is full of crap."

Saturday, September 13, 2008

sunshine, daisies, butter mellow

Current music: Dancing Queen by ABBA.

Aackkkk! I had the best dream in a long while last night. I dreamt that I was LONGBOARDING! AAAARRRGGHH how cool is that... too bad it's just a dream!!

It's supposed to be a period of freedom... now it's all just week after week of repression, what for? Why am I repressing myself? I don't think I am, I'm feeling repressed still, then who is the one holding me back? What is holding me back?

Is it my emotional attachment to my family? Is it a bad thing? I really hate the fact that to keep the equilibrium I have to forgo so many things I want to do right now. For those you who've known me for quite some time, you'll know there are many things I really really really want to do but always can't fulfill them. I know based on the way things are done in my family it takes rebellion to accomplish the things I wish to do, but is that rebellion necessary? I choose to not think so. I want to keep on believing that there's always a workaround for these things.

Maybe I should stop seeing emotions, blood ties, passions and interests as interrelated entities. They are separate. They are not related. Especially emotions. I now find it utterly useless and paralysing, especially in times when you need to get things right.

great, now what?

Some notes-to-self sorta things:

1. Drink more water, take Panadol Cold, steal grandma's super-powerful cough lozenges.

2. Sleep. Soon. Really soon. Like now... or a bit later,

3. after I test the SimCloner I just downloaded from MTS2.

4. Which works pretty well.

5. Which means I'm supposed to sleep now?

6. NO!!! There's more!

7. I need to build more apartments.

8. Trashed ones as well as normal ones.

9. I'm too lazy to build expensive ones. Besides rich Sims are boring.

10. Alright, alright, I'm outta here.

Thursday, September 11, 2008

how's life been so far?

For those you asking that question, my answer to you is "...good, good. I guess."

Loada things been happening at home. The domestic helper who's been working for my family for 3 or 4 years decided to leave, and we had a replacement maid for a week. She's supposed to be here till we get a new permanent maid but erm. Apparently she's pretty awful. Other than the usual hair-in-the-vegetables, lizards-in-the-cupboard incidents, we found out for real what exactly is wrong with her: she's been stealing our food rations. It's not like a cracker or two every three days, more like an entire 20-sachet-pack of Cadbury's hot chocolate missing in a day and packets of Oreos missing in a matter of hours. We're not nitpicking or what, but it's not like we'd reject if she'd asked. And even that aside, she hasn't been doing a good job. Not doing a good job and bootlicking. So my mom fired her. From then till we finally get a new, permanent, competent domestic helper, the chores are being handled by my grandma, my mom and me.

And here, I'd just like to say that for those you who have domestic helpers, or have a family member dedicated to housework full-time, be very thankful they're there. It's only been two days, and though I don't find the housework tough, I do find it time-consuming, leaving me with very little time to do much else.

So these days, I break away from reality with TS2 and some good ol' 70's music. Been indulging in ABBA, Carpenters and so on. Song of the week?

I'd like to build the world a home
And furnish it with love
Grow apple trees and honey bees and snow-white turtle doves

I'd like to teach the world to sing
In perfect harmony
I'd like to hold it in my arms and keep it company
I'd like to see the world for once
All standing hand in hand
And hear them echo through the hills "Ah, peace throughout the land"

(That's the song I hear)
I'd like to teach the world to sing (that the world sings today)
In perfect harmony

Perhaps it's a bit cheesy and reeks of corporate bullshit due to its birth as a Coca-Cola advertistment jingle, it's still one of those feel-good, change-the-world sort of songs that powers my spirituality every now and then.

Sunday, September 7, 2008

why do i keep forgetting?!

I planned to do a screenshot entry on The Sims 2 Apartment Life (AL), but I just keep forgetting to do it!

Anyway. I'll try to remember.

Ditch that last disparaging post about AL. AL is turning out pretty awesome after all. Of course awesome in my opinion isn't always awesome in yours, but I'm pretty sure we are all entitled to write about what we think is awesome. So.

Some snippets here and there, unsupported due to lack of pictures:

1. Of course the expansion pack lives up to its name, and rightly so! Before this EP I already enjoyed refurbishing tiny spaces and making small dwellings efficiently livable and aesthetically pleasing. This EP takes that to the skies! The first apartment I built is a block of studio apartments, and I really had fun trying to pack a living room, a dining room, a study, a kitchen and a bedroom all in one 6X7 room (of which 2X4 is used for the bathroom). And because I'd love to turn this block into a residential area for starving artists who are just that little bit richer to get an apartment, but nothing much left to properly refurbish it, I downloaded tons of 'trashed' custom content — tiles with mildew and scum, dirty, peeling paint, tons of clutter, tiny antique TV and radio, even an old mattress made into a bed for the truly destitute and a suitcase made into a closet for those who don't have the money to buy a wardrobe or more clothes to populate one.

2. Objects, objects, objects; Simmers like me can never get enough objects for the game. I wasn't so much into the themed sets as most of them look rather exaggerated and stereotypical, but the ones I truly love and appreciate: spiral staircases, elevators (I know it already came with Open For Business EP but in AL they added two more, one of which is the very cool trashed elevator, like the sort you'd see in a super old building circa 1960), the open mic where Sims can do stand-up comedy, sing or recite poetry, the breakdancer mat, the human statue pedestal (where Sims can perform those weird silver statue things in parks) and the children's playground set, which is what I've been longing for since the base game-only era way back in 2004.
UPDATE: Here are a couple of screenshots on a new object, the mirror cabinet that lets you brush your teeth and wash your face. I personally think the groping-for-tap bit was cute.

Soaping up.

Groping for the damned tap!

Over-the-shoulder shot!

3. The new interactions are just wonderful. Not at all useless like some of those added in older EPs (University's School Cheer interaction... *rolls eyes* I can actually memorise it in Simlish by now because cheerleaders and team mascots kept gatecrashing my Sims' dorms every 3 minutes to do their stupid cheer.) Some cool AL interactions I can think of are:

The Gestures, especially the Tough Handshake and Fake Out. The Tough Handshake, in particular, reminds me of bikers, Miami Ink and rock stars so I always make my tester Sims, the Gallagher siblings, do it when they greet others. It just looks so cool.

Cuddle Under Stars is so sweet and romantic. Basically what Seth Gallagher did to his neighbour/lover Kaylynn was to take her out to the empty field downstairs of the block, and they both lie down in each others' arms and just stargaze. Too sweet. Next mission is to make a gay couple do it! That'll be even sweeter.

This one is autonomous, i.e. your Sims will do it at will and it's not for the player to command: Cuddle In Bed. No it's not the existing one in the game where they Cuddle in bed while Relaxing; they actually Cuddle before waking up together in the morning! They just sort of stir a little... look into each others' eyes... lie in each others' arms for a few good minutes before parting and waking up. It's something small and perhaps too mushy for most people's liking, but for a romance enthusiast like me... it's just love.
UPDATE:

Toddler Peek-A-Boo: Two words: Too cute.

More to be explored as I haven't played any ages other than Adult and Toddler.

4. At first I thought the clothes were of poor taste — until I realised how nice they look on Sims of other ages after some creators on MTS2 converted some meshes for other ages, or how much of an improvement it is after they modify the meshes. For instance, I was thoroughly disgusted by the heels they put in the sweater dress with leggings mesh — WORST FASHION FAUX PAS EVER. But an MTS2 creator modified the mesh and put knee-high boots in place of the heels, and now the dress looks fabulous. Others include the Adult Male rock star outfit for Teen Males and the Teen Female long sundress for Adult Females.

MOAR LATER

Wednesday, September 3, 2008

first ep i bought in ages, and i have major rants

So with much internal buzz, courtesy of my internal cerebral monologue system, and excitement, I bought The Sims 2 Apartment Life Expansion Pack (from henceforth abbreviated as AL)... and perhaps made the first wrong move of buying it only one week after a release.

You see, unlike most other games on the market, EA is incredibly SLOW (read: bold, italic, capitalise, 'slow') in releasing patches and bug fixes. It's horrible. Based on previous experiences and what other information I gathered at the official site's BBS and forums like Mod The Sims 2 (MTS2) and More Awesome Than You! (MATY), EA simply loves to release half-assed versions of the game with skins and meshes of poor taste and quality (so I hardly use them), awesome, cool, but constantly glitched gameplay, stupid object overrides and other major bork-ups discussed in this MATY thread. Then weeks or months later, after they put up a thread on the official site's BBS for people to discuss about the glitches, bugs, overrides and screw-ups in their game which they promptly don't moderate or even look at, they finally release a patch that probably only fixes a quarter of all the problems mentioned by that small percentage of all players who have internet access and lurk the boards. In between and after, modders and hackers release hacks, mods and fixes that do a much cleaner job for free than the game engineers at EA who get paid to do it. Horrible.

A few minutes into the game, I've created a blank neighbourhood, and I'm currently in Create-A-Sim (CAS). I expected poor taste in designing clothes, and true enough, one third of it looks terrible. Of the remaining two-thirds that look decent, half of them are converted meshes and recolors of skins from older EPs, all of which have already been done by the likes of cloudlessnights and migamoo on MTS2. How fashionably late, EA. Being a fan of cloudlessnights and migamoo's creations and mesh conversions I'm rather pissed off with EA for plagiarising their own users. Users infringing the rights of the game creators is one thing; the reverse is quite another! Hmmph!

And the hair meshes. Oh. My. Motherfucking. Fathersodomising. Buddha-jumping-over-the-wall. GOD. Odd meshes. Fugly artificial textures. FIVE SEPARATE HAIR FILES OF THE SAME BLOODY MESH AND THE ONLY DIFFERRENCE? The colour of the hairpin or the hairband. HOW IRRELEVANT. And as usual they don't ever have the decency and initiative to convert meshes for Teens, Children and Toddlers before the fine folk at fansites get to it.

Five minutes into the game. Not. Enjoying. Much.

Hopefully the gameplay will change my perceptions.

I didn't purposely subject myself to this sort of agony and cautiousness when I bought the game a few hours ago. I was looking forward to it.

And now I feel awful playing without any sort of up-to-date patch or bug fixes. Needless to say I feel awful playing without hacks and mods because nearly all of them aren't updated yet to work with AL. Now I sort of regret buying the game so soon. The agony of waiting for the patch!!