After a 6 day hiatus spent playing Baldur's Gate II, Throne of Bhaal and grappling with Civilization III, in a spurt of energy, I have finished the last 58 pages of the 2000 RGS Yearbook!

It is now up for viewing.

http://rgsyb.tripod.com/



Very good. Jiekai sent me one of those horoscope things - you write numbers in a column, fill in song titles and people's names, and beside "YOU MUST TELL (THE NUMBER IN SPACE 2) PEOPLE ABOUT THIS GAME", I had down 4000.

Hmm. Just realized my last post might not have been greeted with full enthusiasm. Avert your eyes if you're easily offended.

Andrew
http://www.geocities.com/marshmall0w/

Go to Andrew's Moonlight Masquerade- For your reading pleasure, Observations below. Will upload photos.

Hope this makes for interesting reading. Since it is generally of a complimentary nature, nobody should be offended/put off by them.

Rika Tandean the Chio Prom Queen in an ivory-white gown.
Sarah Lin as Lady of the dance; scarlet chinoserie number. Attitude sia!
Stephanie Young Ming looking positively Wicked with her eye make-up and red-hot gown.
Rong Ying in a smashing black cocktail dress
Zoe in a black dress with crystals in front spelling "PORN STAR"
On the same table, Dayna Chia with most of her black hair falling straight down, hair on the crown of her head dyed a reddish brown and swept to one side. Also, a girl with a backless black number, and a dragon tattoo adorned with glitter on her back (I assume it's temporary).
Bare-midriffs: Yvonne in a peach tube-top and skirt ensemble that brought out her glowing complexion, Nau'shil in an ethnic-inspired blue wraparound two-piece, Melissa Chong in golde-thread skin-colour lar zhar .
Mint quoted as saying "With or without make-up, I look absolutely the same ..." Beg to differ.
Lynette Foo very sophisticated and elegant in her dress and accessories- lovely earrings. She also had her wavy hair rebonded for the occasion, leaving the ends wavy- completing the look.
Fat Lian Troupe in red/black numbers (names witheld to protect the seemingly innocent), a member of which discovered to her horror, in the middle of a photo shoot, that the front of her gown had been dipping down to reveal more and more cleavage. In public view, she liberally thrust one hand in and adjusted the fabric with the other hand so as to restore the original positioning.
Qingzhi's gorgeous hair done in an updo with glitter (and suspected numerous hairpins).
Gillian's expression on having her feet (clad in impressive silver sandals) trodden on for the umpteenth time (once by me).

I've been terribly negligent Re: the yearbook project, my webpage and this blog, thanks to Civ III and Baldur's Gate II, Throne Of Bhaal (completed today after shameless cheating). I am presently trying to engage Yaoi Girl and Xephyris to help me pad the last.

I actually haven't been playing games much since I got Cable. In fact, only good old Alpha Centauri, since last November.

Points about Civ III:
They hid many commands, from the toolbar at the screen's bottom, that were incredibly useful in Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri (SMAC). Like Ctrl + R, to build Road to a place. In fact, much has been dumbed down since SMAC. Less customisation is possible.

I keep forgetting you need fresh water to irrigate lands. !@#$%^&*(). 2 badly placed cities, 1 on a continent I spent some time sending Settlers to.

The split between Settlers and Workers a la Master of Magic (MOM) is an interesting concept.

Chieftain level is no longer ridiculously easy.

And 1024 x 768 gives me a headache. Then when I exit back to Windows, 800 x 640 looks horrible. Why must they force us to play at such a high resolution?



Prom post:

NB: Julian has sent me the pictures which I ran around taking with his new SCV-subsidised digital camera, unobtrusively and surreptitiously or otherwise. Many of them are rotten (with chopped off heads, blurry images and such), but I did get some good pictures. A few of the Named people, yes. Of course, I will keep these for my personal use.

Apologies to those whom I wanted to take photographs with but didn't (Yes, I did bring a camera unlike on Farewell Assembly!). I wasn't zealous enough in running around looking for you lot :)



Post proper:

Because I am lazy, the following post is not guaranteed to flow very well.

Security was ridiculous, and we all were stamped ignominiously on our hands, with the words "RJC Graduation Night" (I took a picture with Julian's digital, but it didn't come out right).

The guys' outfits were boring. Variations on black, and almost everyone had a suit or jacket (except me, Edwin and assorted others). Many borrowed their fathers', and it showed, as I ran around asking people, "Is that your father's?". For me, the utility of not wearing a tie and jacket more than outweighed the disutility of any discomfit I may or may not have suffered. Julian conned me - he said he was going in geeky clothes - white shirt and khakis. In the end he went in a Mao-esque long sleeved blue shirt and black pants. Chin Xiang didn't realise that his earring on the right ear meant that he was gay. Pity, for his homophobia.

As predicted, 99.5% of the girls wore skirts or gowns. I couldn't recognise a lot of people (Probably Francesca and Felicia looked the most different), and Tong [whose skirt I kept stepping on and who poked me until I realised] and Felicia looked especially different. The girl that Shawn calls "Man Mountain" was wearing a crumpled (like mine) long sleeved white shirt and pants. Natalie Morris also was wearing pants, as were about 4 other girls. That is 394 of about 400, which works out to 98.5% of girls who wore skirts/dresses/gowns. Wow, below average!


This PRC girl was wearing a bathrobe-type outfit (of which I have a picture of the backview).

It was very amusing to see all the white lines on people's backs. They should either wear less, or much more. A lot of people took the opportunity to imprint tattoos on their skin, as well as the various star shapes and such, traced out with crystal or stones.

Lots of people had glitter in their hair. Erk.

Chris (Lin) was wearing one of the outfits with a black suit and a coloured shirt inside, opened wide. He shaved his chest hair!

Almost everyone looked quite different (except for me), even Engineer (who informed me that He2 Gu3 Zhong1 Xue2 aka Li Hua Secondary School has no Prom Night, not even a "Graduation Night") and Huihui.

The waiters were quite young, some were even our age.

I'd thought I saw Foreign Blood, but on closer inspection, it turned out to be Mrs Olivia Ang. Ah well. Even Ms Ho Poh Fun was there, and she had quite a fresh look (though she still had her bun, to...).

This A03-ish (and if I remember correctly, A03) girl had a tiara on top of her dyed hair. Perhaps a not-so-subtle assertion that she should have been nominated for Prom Queen?

2 or 3 girls were wearing outifts that reminded me of a wedding dress. Hrm.

Michael on the J1 Councillor whom I think looks like a horse (though not as bad as Horse herself) - 'a bit'.

They got us to clap for the first course, which arrived complete with a laser show, loud music and dry ice.

As with the RGS Alma Mater Night 2001, "Masquerade", I only saw 1 person with a mask - Minhui.

#5 won the "Xena" award. Yeh! She was in a gown too.

Most people were running around taking photographs, so many of the lucky draw winners forfeited their prizes. Julian's sharksfin got taken away. Oh well.

This person, Zoe, had "Pornstar" spelled out on her chest with crystals. Julian took a photo, but it didn't come out well (It was too far away).

The Principal Mr Hodge asked me to "take care" in Slavery. How sweet of him :)

Trust the Council to come up with awards like Ms Wheatie, Master Maize & The Messenger. Maybe it's because they have a bad sense of humour (read: corny) too. See what Orientation comes out as every year? One Red team, one Blue team, the former with a Lion as the symbol and the latter with the Eagle as a mascot, with a corny skit, which both unite towards the end. David Liew gave out the first 2 awards - how appropriate.

Dumb questions they wrote for the Prom King/Queen nominees - the worst was "If you were walking down the road and a duck bit your toes, what would you do?". And the stupid answers given - "What do you like most about yourself and why ?". Answer - "I like my height because I'm tall".

Suggested requirements for MCs:
Ability to tell dumb, unfunny and corny jokes. An irritating and loud voice. A lack of a sense of shame. A love of shouting into the mic.

"We have not 1, not 2 but *3* DJs" - The MC. Too many cooks spoil the broth. Why on earth do we need 3 DJs?.

Looking at the pictures with me inside, I notice that I have a tendency to narrow my eyes while I smile my dumb smile. Bleah.

Most of the people who were nominated for the awards were Engin people (if my estimations are correct). "Only Engin people are bored enough [to fill out the forms]" - Eugene Ng (I believe).

One of the lucky draw prizes was a Coffee Maker with 10 kg of Coffee Beans. How helpful of them - I wonder if the poor person lugged them home himself.

All 3 nominees for Lady of the Dance were in Flesh Parade, but only 1 of the 3 for Lord of the Dance was.

Walking around after the Dinner ended, taking frivolous pictures with Julian's digital camera, I realised that Red Jacket looks uncannily like... Zhuomin. Gasp. And he wasn't wearing a Red Jacket. I tried to stalk him and get a good shot, but he escaped me.

Snapping happily away, I ran out of batteries, and missed a shot of 2A01A! #1-#7 (or #6, I think #7 might not have been there), as well the other Named ones.



Post Prom:

Lucky for us, we got upgraded, so we got nice big rooms. There was an attempt to segregate the 2 rooms by gender, but it didn't work out since by the time the majority returned from their pubbing, the "Loser Crowd" of Katie, Luther, Me, Julian, Chin Xiang, Minrui and Wang Shuo [who was asleep the whole time next door] which had stayed behind since we didn't dance or drink, having moved to the "girl" room because it was cooler, was sleeping (rather, pretending to). We had a view of Raffles Guys School (RGS) from our windows. Nice stained glass.

Apparently the girls were jumping on their beds prior to the Prom, but Luther and I were discouraged from doing likewise. So much for female maturity (I'd actually have a picture of Shuyu and Tong hitting each other with files in 1-10 the Thursday before Promos, but it didn't come out because the Flash was off).

Julian and Chin Xiang fulfilled their fantasies of prancing around in Japanese bathrobes ("Yukata"). I actually have 2 "uprobe" pictures, but they're totally dark, and anyway they were wearing pants underneath. The latter fulfilled yet another desire by trying Felicia's Mother's Red Shoes, and found out firsthand the joys of female footwear.

I realised, when Julian took his glasses off, that from an angle, he looks a bit like a Joel Koh with more pimples!

Luther was the first to pretend to sleep, and Katie was on the bed beside him, but they looked like a divorced couple because they kept facing opposite directions.

Somehow everyone was amused when I hid underneath the comforter, remarking that I'd "gunnysacked" myself, and people started whacking me with pillows.

Further showing how sad we were, we started watching nature documentaries, switching from the Discovery Channel to Vision 4. Ligers to Deer rescue ("The World's Greatest Animal Rescues"?!, with a deer being pulled from a swamp and slipping. And slipping. And slipping again.) to Lions to Sharks (with a mad Gordon guy swimming with them), with intermittent checks on RTM2 to check on their 3 hour praying marathon.

Since the room was occupied already, the Disco group was forced to all crowd into the other room, together with the people watching the English Premier League. Muaha. There was some jostling for sleeping positions, with Katie and Luther one one bed, me on another, Minrui on the floor and Julian on the big chair, with Chin Xiang coming in intermittently saying "I'm bored".

In the end, I held out till 5 am. Ah well, not bad for someone who doesn't play cards.

Amalgamation of few days of stuff (yes, been negligent Re: here, main homepage and scanning project, which has 59 pages left):

On the arrest of "Tommy" Suharto:
Police said they had known about Tommy's whereabouts since Monday but did not move in until the team of detectives consulted a psychic, who told them that Wednesday would be Tommy's 'unlucky day'.
Isn't this forbidden in Islam?

I've figured out the main reason why Doraemon is so badly dubbed. It's done by Singaporeans (if you see the job even the more experienced ones do on TCS 8, you'll know just how bad Singaporeans are at it), and they let their Singaporean accents creep in.

The show, "Ripley's Believe It Or Not", which is being advertised on TV, does not seem AT ALL like "Ripley's Believe It Or Not", but rather looks more like "Faces of Death" or "Grossed out or not". Probably an attempt to pander to the masses. The original "Believe it or not", as seen in newspaper syndication, is hardly like the one seen in the trailers, with worms going up people's noses, spikes driven into people's skin and such, being filled with TRIVIA, and not things like "Do you know that someone can have 100 hooks driven into his skin and still survive?". Bah.

I want to see Sentai. Somehow, Sentai doesn't have the stigma in Japan that MMPR has elsewhere, at least that I know of. The plot loopholes will probably be much smaller, and the quirks that result from splicing footage from another show will be resolved (like many Japanese people running around in "Angel Grove").

Monday:
I saw 2 girls sitting on the MRT floor (beside the doors), but there were plenty seats. Maybe they wanted to defile their school skirts.

I had to go to Jade again, and Peter was sitting in the unit next door (the one he'd bought over a year or two ago) which had a sign - "Toptronics master" on top. Apparently Jade has been renamed.

And my purity has been lost. I took my first Neoprint/Photo sticker.

Ahh. Was playing Baldur's Gate II : Throne of Bhaal (Yes, my CD drive works gain! Stupid temperamental jumpers...). Cheated shamelessly.

Swedish Chef!

My box feels old.

An Important Lesson Xephyris has Learnt in Life:
Never swallow Listerine (intentionally or otherwise) when you gargle.
*coughchokecoughhhackhackcough*
Followup Important Lesson Xephyris has Learnt in Life:
Never drink the fruit of a citrus fruit (orange, lemon, or both mixed together) after the above event has occured.
*achkacackackack*

I've finally ordered Dark Age of Camelot - it's shipping in 3 days. I can't wait.

[Editor's note: This was the last time Xephyris posted for a loooooong time (and as of writing, 11/03/02, he still has not returned to this humble home we call Balderdash), as he retreated to play Dark Age of Camelot day and night until he was enlisted on January 7th. After his 1 week PES E BMT, he returned to indulging in the game which so fascinated him :) Send him your regards!]

There's a strange taste in my mouth.

Today, I took my SAT IIs in the Land of Hot Socks, the Buaya and the Buayee (ACJC). Actually, I think it (and the people) are overrated.

There were quite a few RJ people there, some J1s in Uniform and assorted J2s. There was some girl with green tinted hair.

Nau'shil was some way in front of me and wore her RGS jacket during the test. Kind of defeats the point of wearing skimpy clothes.

They've given in to political correctness, but sloppily - most dates in World History were in CE (Common Era) ie AD (Anno Domini) and BCE (Before Common Era) ie BC (Before Christ). Unfortunately, AD was used at least once, in one of the questions. The Chief Supervisor had terrible pronunciation. Too bad I didn't remember any quotes.

What's it with handphone covers? They don't seem to serve any purpose, except to make it harder to take your handphone out.

I later went down to Jade, meeting Mr Ong on his ex-4Kers outing. CDs are now $6 per disc, unless you buy 3 or more, whereupon they become $5 a disc. Odd, with competition (there is now another shop a few units away), prices go up. And now they don't give jewel cases anymore, just flimsy plastic holders, and the printing on the CDs is dinky - 2 that I and Kairen bought say "Magic 80min 700MB multispeed 24X". They still have that unfortunate habit of stamping the CDs, though (maybe it's meant to spoil them!)

Going home, I found that Battle Realms, Civilisation III and my original Baldur's Gate II couldn't install, so I suspect something's up with my CD drive itself.

11:11PM:
The IDE cable gave out a while ago.

Primary IDE Channel no 80 conductor cable installed
The CD Drive has disappeared from the Primary/Secondary Master/Slave display at startup after the memory check.

Well, in times of penury, there is only one thing to do - PLAY PIRATED COMPUTER GAMES
Commentary on Gabriel's new monster rig withheld in my fits of rage.

Anyway, here are the latest games I got hold of.

First, in contrast to my 18-hour binge of Metal Gear Solid 2(10 hours of which were spent watching cutscenes ... I kid you not),
I have been to the other extreme in terms of games - from the graphically cutting-edge to a game with no moving graphics:)

King of Dragon Pass, ladies - the closest I've seen to a gamebook online. FANTASTIC shit. It's based on the Runequest
RPG world of Glorantha, which will mean nothing to everyone except the most hard-core RPG people around. You command
a small clan and must lead it to glory... by allocating really cool stuff like magical power(to Destiny, Growth, Battle), managing
your herds, arranging hero quests - sounds like generic empire building? Well, this one is accompanied by brilliant
still art work, *long* epic descirptions of conversations, interactions, events...(at the end, your whole accomplishments are summarized in a saga
format that's surprisingly good to read)... and there's a real feeling that what you do in the game affects everything else that
occurs after on. And your advisers and populace have *really* good personalities. Any game that has a talking head that says
this gets my vote:

"By taking a Trickster onto our ring, the other clans expect us to sow disorder. Let us confuse them further by refusing to do
so."

Other games on my list:

Stupid Invaders - really good animation, and majorly cornball voice-overs. It's a very linear, straight-forward, Ren-and-Stimpy humour type adventure game,
just click to pick up items, look at items, interact with items.. but it's got good production values(and an artwork style that has a strangely Nickelodeon cartoon feel to it),
some very nice jazz tracks at the start of the game, and some good satire amidst all the toilet humour(a lot of farts, burps, green goo, green goo, and more green goo).

Project Eden - this one is a strange beast to review. It's got a pretty decent 3d engine and a team of elite armed cyborgs, but the fps shooting isn't the major premise of the game(or third-person rather, it uses a camera angling reminiscent of Tomb Raider - after all, it's done by the same people. Lots of puzzles, cross-character interaction(you control 4 dudes sent to the "Real Meat Factory" to investigate the disappearnce of some technicians.. ), and a fairly good engine that does lighting efects well, but is clearly meant for the PS2 with its bland textures.