Archive for Games
August 18, 2007 at 10:58 pm · Filed under Games, I am feeling..., Spend spend spend!
We needed games to play on our trip so before heading to shibu onsen I hit the store that has everything you need to be cool and impress your friends and found this groovy novelty jenga. “Gum avalanche” it is called and the blocks mimic packs of Lotte brand gum - Black Black, Cool Mint, and Green Gum.
Now that I have you here, I can go off about mundane things. Like my 薬 (kusuri) (medicine) buying experience tonight. On the way home from the trip, this was last Monday, I was sitting on the train, did two stretches and then something in my upper back snapped. The next morning I couldn’t lift myself from bed. Had to steamroll my body over the edge and stand up using the bed to support me. That was a hard day at work. It was getting gradually better over the week and then on Friday morning, I couldn’t get out of bed again. The pain woke me up this morning as well but for most of the day it has been okay…possibly because I have not spent too much time at a computer.
Anyway - oh…sorry…actually I didn’t intend to write six sentences on my pain. I’m going to be horrible when I’m 80. Like, posting form shots of my hunch back so you can feel how crooked I have become on your solids display.
I went to the drug counter and explained my problem and the woman recommended some medicine. I was suspicious though. It was not medicine from behind the counter and the packages surrounding it were labeled with many As and Bs and Cs and Es. Was she trying to sell me vitamins? 1750円 vitamins? Yes.
I told her I wanted something stronger. In my head I was thinking that I wanted knock-me-out medicine that I could take tonight and wake up twelve hours later with a drool stain on my pillow from which I could forecast what they will serve in the cafeteria on Monday. She recommended that I go to the hospital but I wasn’t going to buy that cause I could see shelves of possible relief behind that counter. I told her that I would like to try medicine now and if I still felt pain in a few days, I would go to the hospital. There was some more discussion and hesitancy to go for things behind the counter but then she finally realized I wanted something strong and now and she asked me if my stomach was good. Yes, it is. The hesitancy to sell stronger medicine, even when stocked, is interesting.
I walked out with a pack of Ringl. Just took one of the little turquoise capsules and thinking about how unsatisfying vitamins would be right now. Which is funny because it is not even about effectiveness - it is satisfaction. Like I need a box with warnings and an ingredient list with many words I don’t know. It is unknown territory, mystical, and I feel more satisfied because to make my pain go away, it must take magic.
August 18, 2007 at 12:11 am · Filed under Games, Travels
We went to a really old pachinko parlour and I thought that that night could have been the night but no, I am still a pachinko virgin. Five hundred yen each bought us saucers of small corks and time with the rifles, trying to shoot things off of these shelves:
I figured out that if I aimed for one of the bottom guys I could always hit a block from the middle shelf. Some of the blocks had cheesy 1970s portraits glued to them - kept going for this kid with a green shirt and shiny side-parted blond hair. Walked out of there with two trophies: a blue honey-dew melon-sized bouncy ball and a small hello kitty cloth bag.
December 29, 2006 at 7:37 am · Filed under Games, Thinking
“Yeah I’m gonna write everyday!” she said on return to Canada. Heh. No. But I could at least acknowledge some sort of anniversary of the first blog post.
My log: it is 4pm and I am sitting in my pyjamas, drinking tea and writing emails. My mind is so empty now and it feels good. I went to a yoga class (first since I left Vancouver) this morning and my bottom hurts. That feels sort of good. I had a two hour nap this afternoon. That felt really good. But I couldn’t do the yoga-nap-late pyjamas thing everyday. What makes me idle in Regina? My active youth was motivated by getting out of the house and being away from my family but now that I have grown up and realized that I love my family…there is less drive to leave home. I could sit around and enjoy their company all day (*cough* *cough* - day lengths within human abilities of course).
Oooh, I did get to try the Wii (my cousins). Zelda, tennis, and boxing. I strained my arm. I love the multi-player excitement and movement but I guess it can be too much sometimes. One Wii stick had already received a little bit of a beating during a collision between my uncle and cousin. One thing I would like to see: some way to incorporate the non-controller wielding people in the room. Probably by way of voice processing.
Ack it is getting late! Time to pick up my mother from the police station…she works there. Actually because of her I was able to get a pass for the police gym. It is small, old, and I stare at brick walls while I jog but there is something so cool about it. When I am there I pretend I am on some crime/police/CSI-like tv show and this is the workout scene where I quench all my work and relationship-drama frustrations.
Time to go!
May 23, 2006 at 9:00 am · Filed under Games
Another thing about last weekend that I forgot to mention. I won Tetris. I didn`t know you could win. I thought the goal was just to beat the high score and as for number of levels…well they just went off into infinity, getting faster and faster and then inhumanly fast. On normal days I can get to level 15 or 16. On abnormal days maybe 17 or 18. But on Saturday, I was not even paying attention to how many lines I had made…suddenly the game was over and I reached 200 lines. I was in quite the Tetris zone.
December 20, 2005 at 2:43 pm · Filed under Games
My younger brother has World of Warcraft on the computer here. He showed me how I could create my own character on his account. I did. I named her Nahgem because that’s my really imaginative fantasy character name. I played for 5 minutes when some other Night Elf came up to me and said “Wud’ up gurrl?” and then I got scared and quit.
This often happens to me when I start a new video game. One of the initial tasks or monsters intimidates me and my first reaction is to press Q and leave it for an afternoon or so. This time all it took was someone saying hello. It was weird to have this interaction - my response would be experienced by a real live human being! I was also frustrasted that I couldn’t have a “training period” where I could do my own thing away from other people. Is it maybe that I would like to play World of Warcraft but have a world all to myself? No not really. Besides the social nature of the game, their are survival benefits too (which are social in that really selfish way I guess).
After spending my day thinking, no I probably wouldn’t get into the game and that was a good thing, I crawled back to the computer last night. One more try. It was better, I was better, starting to get the hang of things. I played for an hour this morning. This time,I ended up dying in a cave surrounding by spiders. When you die in WoW, you wake up in a graveyard as a spirit and must retrieve your corpse to come back to life. I’ve tried this twice but everytime the spiders are there and they kill me again. I hate spiders.
So I’m taking this to be a sign that I shouldn’t get into WoW. It would be quite dangerous actually. (Even though I just thought of something that might get me out of the spider situation…)
January 2, 2005 at 5:04 pm · Filed under Games, I am feeling...
I am technically not snowed in. I could go out and do things, see people. The blizzard came but it left (left huge piles of snow) and the streets are finally getting cleaned up. Still, I feel like curling up in a blanket and staying inside until Tuesday when I fly back to Vancouver.
So what can I do inside? Play Harvest Moon 64 on an N64 emulator. It’s quite dangerously addictive. My left index finger will not stop aching. I highly recommend the game, but wait until you have about 150 hours of free time and read up on your ergonomics first.
