So yeah, okay, blog post mentioning the World Cup. My wall on Facebook is filled with RWC-related hate and excitement, and it was abuzz about it even before the opening ceremony had started. I saw bits of the fireworks on television last night - they looked really amazing and I wish I was there to see it live. I did, however, catch the game against Tonga and luckily, started watching just before the hakas began. I've never seen the country this patriotic before, and you can definitely feel the hype in the air as you walk through town. I think the atmosphere will be amazing if we win - and I really hope we do.

In slightly related news, Sidhe's Rugby Challenge game hit the stores a few weeks ago and we've topped the New Zealand games charts. I wasn't on the development team for it, but I did make this nifty database exporter tool that they used. Yay. We had a launch party celebrating its release last week, with many of my ex-colleagues turning up for what was a fantastic night, and on Thursday, we got our own Rugby Challenge t-shirts. The Latin phrase "durum candidumque domi ludit" is written on the front, and it means "playing hard and fair at home".

Work has been tough for me lately. I spent a few late nights last week trying to wrap up some features and bugs. The end is in sight though, and I think we can make next Friday's deadline, though it depends on whether the company that we're doing this for can get their act together and deliver the final bits of information to us. The game will be our first social game on iOS and I'll be the first to let you know when you can download it.

Badminton time!

Happy Wellington Anniversary.

My injuries have been healing well and the swelling and bruising in my right eye has greatly decreased. The ophthamologist said I didn't have to take so many eye drops as well, and that's awesome because eye drops cause me so much agony. I got my replacement glasses from OPSM too so I'm pretty much back on track with my life.

Work has been going well. Last Friday, we farewelled our iPhone producer and bid him the best for architecture school. We shared our "last" drinks with him at Southern Cross, which was unfortunately right across the road from that incident, so I was extra careful when heading home. Fortunately, I made it back without any problems, this time.

Saturday was pretty uneventful, save for some badminton in the morning. Jono (Dall) and Dave came over to watch a movie with Charlotte in the evening, but we played Dominion while waiting for the DVD to burn. Sunday was just pouring with rain so I tried to stay indoors as much as possible. We did go for Laser Strike for Jono's (Dixon) birthday then to Cha for dinner afterwards, and finally back to their flat for some board games including Sunni's newest acquisition, Carcassonne. Those Germans really know how to make board games, huh?

Today, Jono, Char, Dave, Beth and I bundled into my car and we roadtripped up to Lindale Park on the Kapiti Coast. There's a cafe there and some specialty shops for Kapiti-branded cheese, ice cream, wine and honey, as well as a farm with lots of adorable animals like bunnies, chickens, calves, goats, donkeys, alpacas, guinea pigs and several ducks and geese on site. We drove a bit further north and lazed about on Waikanae beach for a while before heading back to Wellington.

I'm tired.

Edit: I've just received a text from my brother-in-law and I am an uncle to a baby boy, weighing 8 pounds, 12 ounces! Mother (my sister) is exhausted but doing well. Squee!!

Wanted to play badminton after church on Sunday but I guess because it's a public holiday, the courts were locked up so we ended up going to Matt's house nearby and playing Rock Band, Raiden 3, and even Boggle.

I went over to Richard's house on Monday to try out his new board game - Agricola. The silly game took us four hours to complete, but it was kinda fun nevertheless. Maybe we'll be faster when we get better. I also snuck in some table tennis with Hsin Yao and of course the family pool and also the piano were well used that day. I led everyone in a rousing chorus of "The Tide is High"...

The next day, the rain came.

Despite the wet conditions, I met up with my workmates at Sun World in Newmarket for a delicious yum char. The place was absolutely packed and for good reason too; the food was tasty and the variety was fantastic, and all for a very reasonable $19. Jono and Charlotte went their separate ways but the Sidhe crew met up again at Bryce's house where we played Dominion and Cranium! Fun times.

It's December already and it is slowly hitting me that yet another year has almost gone by. Things are already starting to wrap up for Christmas, with farewell parties for people "leaving" work and a few birthday celebrations here and there. I still have photos dating back to Guy Fawke's night, I really should upload them sometime soon... Lately, I've been at Siem Reap (Friday dinner with workmates), Cha (End of year homegroup on Wednesday), Hede (Tyler's farewell), New Kor + Karaoke (Mike's farewell). I feel like going back to sleep but apparently there's some fundraising food at the Indonesian Embassy so I'll be going to that with Surya and Andrew.

Badminton is still going strong with some punishing games today; I've never felt so knackered in my life, and I don't suppose my current state of health helped at all. Even on Thursday, I had chronic hiccups which drove me insane (and probably all the people around me as well). All seems to be on the road to recovery now, so I'll sit tight and take more drugs. Bleh.

I've been to two birthday dinners this week, and boy am I stuffed. First was at Cinta with Charlotte, second at the Flying Burrito Bros with Ritu, both with lots of people and food and delicious moist cake. Ritu's cake was from Cha, which surprised me because I heard the Cha cakes were traps, but apparently not. The cream does taste rather artificial though, so as long as it's in moderation, it's okay.

I'll be burning off all that food at the badminton court tomorrow anyway.

Last night at 1am, the couple in the apartment above me decided it would be the opportune moment to have a domestic argument, firing F-Bombs every second word for a good 30 minutes or so. Being in the semi-conscious state I was, my first thought was "oh geez I hope I don't have to call the cops" followed by anxiously waiting for gunshot sounds. Sigh.

My horrendously bad Starcraft II streak continues. FML. I'm pretty sure I'm the worst player at work :(!

The weather has taken a turn for the worse, with bitterly cold wind and rain attacking the city for most of the week. Today was the first day I had to wear my polyprops. I have to say, the awesome jacket and gloves I bought from Hong Kong have definitely come in handy! I don't know how I survived last winter without something as snuggly and warm.

I just downloaded and watched the youth skit that the Ignite crew put on for the service on May 16th 2010. Great job guys! I felt compelled to share that with you.

I'm tired. I just got home from badminton. Whee~!

Portal is on Steam for free until May 24th, so I took the opportunity to download all 3.8GB of it. I'm still somewhere in the test chambers, but it's a very interesting (yet creepy) game.

Also on the gaming front, I finally gathered enough courage to play my first placement match in Starcraft II. I did a quick build for a banshee, got one out with a few more on the way, and took out all my opponent's SCVs with my lone banshee. When he realised what was happening, he sent some marines over but I had cloaked it and pretty soon after he quit. Victory was mine!

Yesterday I barely spent any time at home. It was an early start with badminton for an hour with Surya, Tyler and Leighton, a quick lunch at home, then the Wellington Food Show at Westpac Stadium with Mel and John. There was a lot of tasty things to sample, including oils, vinaigrettes, pesto, sun-dried tomatoes, cheese, pizza, bacon, sausages, smoked chicken, clams, mussels, ice cream, wine, fruit cider, cocktail mixes... We spent around three hours there, tasting and taking pictures, before heading out and going for dinner at this pub on Tinakori Road. Yum!

I am the proud owner of one of these delicious babies, which I bought at a BARGAIN (under $450 NZD), AND it kills two birds with one stone (I needed new speakers...). So the hard part is finding out how to take one of these back to New Zealand...

Summary of the past few days: went for tom yum, met up with Sunni, ate some good old Malaysian kueh, walked pasar malam, had roadside durian, tried cold longan tau foo fah, had mango milk tea, played badminton and bought dinner for my extended family.

I have to go home soon! T_T

Thanks to a speedy recovery from the food poisoning and all the other FML items, I was pretty much 100% yesterday - good enough to have a very good appetite and also play 3 hours of badminton.

Anyway I've been doing a bit of site work (zomg!) so that it's easier for people to contact me. I only just realised that the contacts page doesn't work so that needs to be fixed first and foremost. I also merged the Websites and Programs sections into my Portfolio to save room on the menu.

Edit: And the Contact Me page is now up and running again.

Some things I forgot to mention last week: I saw Hamish Carter, Olympian, Gold Medallist and Auckland Grammar old boy, at the BNZ Food Court. He was buying sushi. I wanted to say hi to him but I was too shy and he was talking to someone else and it would have been cool to get a picture with him in retrospect but there were so many people around I would have looked really stupid and touristy and Azn.

Speaking of Azn, I got interviewed by some Azn magazine so if you see my mug somewhere, you'll know why. She asked me if the Government should be spending more money on the defense force.

Anyway, it has been a pretty bad start to the week. Yesterday I spent the whole day battling with freaking Metrowerksfail over some stupid access paths problem. Apparently, if you have two files of the same name but in different directories, and each of the directories are in your access paths, they are treated as duplicates. What a load of fail.

Following that, I played pretty badly at badminton. I was just smashing the shuttlecock in anger most of the time :p

Today I was just fixing some stupid sound problem and it boiled down to nothing to do with sound, but rather the directories in which the resources were located. Blah.

Yes I have strung those random words together purposefully.

I've been pretty busy this whole week - been out late every day except Wednesday when I was on cooking for the flat. Monday was badminton as usual, and that was great because one of my workmates joined me and Sunni for that. The weather was cold and miserable, but I had the car so that was sweet.

Our favourite oboist, Alex, was down from Auckland with the New Zealand Youth Orchestra, so we enjoyed a night of classical harmonies and a touch of opera. Quite cultured, indubitably.



Epic fail on Thursday as our team gathered to submit our game to Sony. The requirements are eight authoring-quality DVDs, which means disks are $25 and burning takes up to two hours on a 1x speed burner. We were five disks through when we realised they didn't boot, and that we had some extra files on there that we shouldn't have. So that was a good $125 down the drain, thanks to my epic fail, and so I stayed late at work to help finish the disks. On the brightside, they were eventually completed and we couriered our precious cargo to Sony. Phew.

Also, I finally finished Braid - the best puzzle game I have ever played. It is an incredibly well thought-out game, with extremely clever puzzles and mechanics that will explode your mind. Braid is available on Xbox Live Arcade, and I highly recommend it for dedicated gamers who live for the satisfaction of solving intense problems.

Oh, by finished, I mean I got the 60 puzzle pieces as well as the Closure Achievement. I didn't get the stars or do a speed run ¬.¬