Few Bad Eggs

Well, I've given up on Skyrim. Chasing the dragon was getting a bit addictive...see what I did there? That's-that's a joke...yeah it's not funny.

***

Cooking is sometimes the most productive activity of your life and also the bane of your existence (oxymoron anyone?). Well there are times when you find an awesome recipe on the internets which uses up all the ingredients you already have and still manages to stand out from your usual crappy cooking which feels great and you end up asking your roommate about how it tastes and feel like a puppy getting a backrub when he says it's good. And there are other times when you wake up after an exhausting dream involving threeways with hollywood actress(es) and the only thing on your mind is "Gee, wouldn't it be great if I had some spicy biriyani and some sweet lassi to wash it down?" and all there is to eat is some stale leftover rice from last night. And then you realize what you used to have in your life that you don't have now. Or, as in my case, you still have but it's too far away to solve the problem at hand. And upon this realization, you draw a conclusion that dawns upon you only now though it had been staring at you for quite a while.

"I miss my mommy".

Happy mothers day.

***

Recently I read news of a car crash involving a wealthy chinese immigrant and a local cab driver. The chinese guy drove a Ferrari and was probably drunk when the incident happened. He tried to run a red light and ended up crashing on a taxi. The crash video is available on youtube and it's not a pretty sight - the Ferrari decimated the taxi. Both the taxi driver and the Ferrari driver died. And this added fuel to the flame that's slowly starting to spread like wildfire - the Singaporean public is not happy with the country's immigration policies and it blames the immigrants for making their buses crowded, living costly and life in general, crappy. Being an immigrant myself, I'm gonna play the devil's advocate and say that it is partially true. But how far is it contributed by the immigrants? 

In Singapore, being a small city, news like this is rare and spreads pretty fast. Road accidents are few and far. Imagine a country like India where trains are perpetually late and the mass transit is, in general, bad and that's being kind in my criticism. But they get away with it. No one is really bothered about it. But in SG, SMRT (Singapore's metro service) services disrupted several times over the past few months and people went batshit crazy. This leads to the conclusion that when the area is small, small problems become large.

Lets draw another parallel with Singapore and India, and this time, we'll compare the immigration problem. India doesn't have an immigration problem with an influx of foreigners. But there is an immigration problem within the states of India. Shiv Sena, the prominent Maharashtrian party, ardently opposes workers from other states from entering Mumbain and the rest of their state shouting "They took our jobs!". Part of this opposition involves a property damage amounting to 80 crores in property damage last year during their protests.

Singapore faces a similar problem. Singapore is like a frustrated housewife - it doesn't feel appreciated. Foreign students bad mouth it in twitter and facebook. Foreign students occupy seats that should be taken by Singaporeans. And there is the they-took-our-jobs problem. But there are no protests in Singapore (mainly because the police never allow it) and people just curse under their breath and move on. Some articles say that this is one of the reasons the PAP is losing is support from the public.

What I don't get is, eventhough everyone knows that Singapore needs foreigners to grow, or to even stay the way it already is, what's with all the whining? Foreign talent is necessary for Singaporean industries, and I guess a major part of Singapore's tourism and services based industry is composed of foreigners. Being meritocratic and all, Singapore cannot expect every employee in every company in Singapore to be a citizen because, lets justs face it, not every Singaporean is the best guy for a given job. Sometimes foreigners are just better. Singapore's economy runs on a lot of foreign investment, many companies in Singapore are MNCs based in other countries. To quote a very crappy saying, Singapore wants to have its cake and eat it too. 

For my part, I whine whenever I see a job posting for which only Singaporeans and PRs are allowed to apply. Be happy that you still have that  Singapore, because, back in India, that kind of discrimination doesn't exist because, even Indians don't wanna work in India.

Singapore's problem with immigration is not due to a problem with its immigration system. It's just a case of a few bad eggs. Drunk people have poor judgement in common. Beer goggles works on all nationalities. If any laws or policies need to made stricter, it should be the laws relating to driving.

Ciao

Thane of Whiterun

Oh the joys of playing RPGs. And what better game than Skyrim to experience it?

In my opinion actually, there are a lot of other RPGs that must be better because in my opinion Syrim rarely does offer a great moments when it comes to combat. And that is very important for a hack-and-slash type game fan like me.

If you don't know about Skyrim, you probably use internet only to check your emails, because the last few months, many a website have been plagued by the attack of the Skyrim memes, mainly "arrow to the knee". I'm not gonna explain what arrow to the knee means or even what a meme is. If you're that interested, Google is your friend.

But I will tell you what the game is about. Its about a guy/girl (all RPGs give you the option of building up your character from scratch, including gender, appearance, powers etc., hence your character can be either guy or a girl) who appears out of nowhere in the middle of nowhere and ends up becoming the man/woman who determines the fate of the fair city of Skyrim when a dragon comes out of nowhere and you kill it and absorb its power, revealing that you are the fabled Dragonborn (and you possibly just killed your mom or dad and absorbed its power).

Skyrim was released last year and it has won several awards including game of the year award from several review websites. Which is all the more reason for you to try it out, and also my main motivation to give it a try as well.

I tried playing but gave up the first two times because in the first time, it just didn't make sense. It shoves too much information at your face. There are no tutorials and you are left to figure out everything by yourself (there's a help section which is as big as Wikipedia which makes it not-so-much-of-a-help section). If you are new to RPGs, you're gonna get annoyed often as you don't know how to manage your inventory, you don't know which items are going to be useful and which aren't, which powers/weapons are gonna be useful etc. The second time I gave it up because it was just too boring. Until you own a horse, you gotta get everywhere by foot and you'll spend as much time in the game travelling as you would if you travel the same distance in real life. Realism at that depth is just...boring.

Also when you wanna get new weapons and you don't have any serious dough on you, you gotta collect some metal ingots, get to a weaponsmith and YOU FORGE YOUR OWN WEAPONS. Like you gotta get some leather pelts by killing some wolves, cure it to make leather strips, buy/steal some metal ingots and you literally forge it. And then you can improve it with your "fine smithing" skills. This is one of the reasons I finished Mass Effect 3 first (its ending sucked by the way) before getting to Skyrim. 

About a week ago, I gave Skyrim one last shot, and this time I finally figured it out...and I still don't like this game. Travelling is boring, though you regularly come across wolves and trolls and giants and mammoths who try to keep it lively. You can either sneak past them or you can just kill them with your might. Its not easy as it sounds because you giants can hit you so hard you literally end up flying in the sky. Mammoths are sturdy and they'll trample you to death. Managing your inventory is annoying as you can carry only upto a specified weight and you come across so many items that you can't make up your mind about what you wanna take and what you wanna leave.

And the fighting system - pardon my french but its a clusterf**k. It is clever and stupid at the same time. It allows you to dual weild, and there are many varieties of weapons. You can battle with magic too. But the problem is, you gotta figure it out all by yourself. The level up system is not straightforward - it has too many options and confuses you with percentages and numbers. There is no tutorial for fighting or using magic, and you gotta go to a college to train in magic. No, literally. There is an actual in-game college of magic where you go to learn magic skills. 

B*tch please, I already have and engineering degree and I will get another one in a couple of months.

Your character is pretty dumb while fighting. You end up swinging your weapons at the same direction even when your traget has moved away. There are better fighting systems the latest games like in the Assassin's Creed series which makes this one look like its a game from the 90s. You don't know that you can use magic until you figure it out yourself. Switching weapons is slow and dragons turn you into grilled chicken before you switch your weapon to block its fire breath.

So what is good about Skyrim then? Everything else. The evironment is detailed, looks great and rich with minute details. Non-playable characters are intelligent and there are rarely and bugs with enemy AI. The story is also pretty good, and there are plenty of side-missions to keep the completionist in you pretty busy. To complete every mission in the game it should take you a several months atleast. 

 So, yes, I am going to continue playing this game, to see how the story plays out. And maybe, just maybe, when I finish it, I will make an arrow to the knee joke.

Fus Ro Dah!

Sabbatical

You do know that this is only a phase I am going through. I'd probably write a couple of more posts and then forget about the existence of this blog even though it stares me in my favourites toolbar of my browser every single day. I am adept in ignoring things that once used to matter to me.

Lets get this over with. It should be obvious from the title of this post and the date stamps from the last post, that it has been almost a year since I blogged last time. During this period of time I have been busy doing some actual stuff, which really didn't require me to abandon my blog but I'm gonna try to justify it anyway.

I relocated to a new country called Singapore, got myself enrolled for a masters degree in something to do with lasers (not the Star Wars kind) and diamonds (not the De Beers kind) and chips (not the Lays kind) which I miraculously finished in one year. Normal people tend to take about a year and half to two years to complete a masters degree but there is a reason for the studious-Indian/Asian-kid stereotype to exist.

Now I live in an apartment with 3 other dudes, and I was forced to have learnt to cook and clean up after myself. I had classes for 3 hours on all weekdays in the evenings only. I spend my days gaming, feeding myself and doing other unproductive things and go to classes in the evenings. That's the life of a "full time" student.

A couple of days ago I finished my last exam and I had an overwhelming feeling of finishing something extremely menial. Being a student for almost 18 years tends to do that. Now that I have successfully finished my exams I have to get myself a job. This is supposed to be the difficult part, they say, to which I say, the exams weren't any bit easier.

You probably knew all that story already since all of you who read my blog are either my friends or a sibling. Blogger makes it a point to show it to me that I have only 6 followers and I have racked up a whopping 396 page views.  So I hope you can understand that I didn't need much of motivation to stop writing.

And what motivated me to get back to writing it again?

Nothing, I was just bored.

***

Its gonna be at least 3 more months before my graduation ceremony and I plan to post as often as possible within this time frame so as to prevent any possible brain damage due to brain inactivity. If I do not, then you need not worry, It would only be because I found something much more interesting to do...which is great for me, but I don't know how it would improve your situation. Maybe you should worry. Or maybe not. I really don't care (unless I get like a thousand followers which is highly unlikely).

I'm gonna finish this post and get back to doing something until I can come up with something worth writing about. If you want me to write about something specific, be sure to leave it in your comments. And if I decide not to write about your idea, its probably because it was either too awesome or too lame for me to write about.

Ciao.

Sunday Blues

Another father-son moment:

"You've been buying english newspapers for a week but I've never seen you read them. Are you reading them or are you wasting the money?"

"Yes dad I am reading."

"Well then go read it now. Don't watch TV all the time."

"But I've read it already!"

"Everything?"

"No I just skimmed it..."

"Then read it again, this time, in detail."

"But dad! I-"

"No buts. Go. Now. And hand over the TV remote to me."

Perfect Sunday.

***

This holiday thing is getting a bit exhausting. Then again, I'm not exactly on a holiday, there's no next semester for me, I'm technically a B.E grad once I get my provisional certificate. And then I am falling into a deep and empty void of nothing.

Seriously, will this holiday ever end?

***

In my quest to avoid boredom in the unconventional way (conventional way would be watching TV, gaming and just sitting on the couch and staring at the roof), I have been experimenting for the last few weeks. I've been trying sketching, my childhood hobby, but my nemesis, an 8 year old who claims to be my nephew is interrupting the process. I was going to make my comeback in deviantART with my drawn and inked Batman sketch, but the brat tore it off while I was sleeping and took it home to stick it in his wall. He'll probably show off to his friends that he drew it.

But I got my revenge. I've tuned out all the cartoon channels from his TV set. You don't wanna mess with the Eggman. I'm pure evil.

Next is my new found passion to read newspapers. Not that I didn't have newspapers before but now I'm buying english language newspapers and tamil activists might protest against me for not helping tamil to grow. Sorry, but tamil newspapers are marginally costlier with less content when compared to english dailies. And the editorials in The Hindu are a learning experience. Do you know that 80 crore people in our country live on Rs. 20 a day? That's less than how much we spend for a coffee at a coffee house in the city.

Then came cooking. It actually started out like this. When I try to watch TV at around 6, my mom will snatch the remote from me and watch a cooking show (somehow all channels have a cooking show around that time), and I thought 'What the hell? Does it matter what I watch, as long as I watch it in a TV?'. TV is entertaining and educational. Even Kalaignar feels that way.

Then I started coming across many cooking recipes while browsing for playboy centerfolds arts and paintings, and I took it as a sign. I cooked Paneer Shabnam and for the first time I liked something I cooked myself (except Maggi noodles). Then I tried to cook Chinese with Schezwan Noodles but I didn't get the sauce right. Its okay, baby steps.

***

This anti-corruption thing is actually gaining momentum and the only thing its missing is a skinny bearded yoga guru who can't stop blinking his left eye. Actually we do have one of those, and its name is Baba Ramdev, who is fondly called 'dhongi baba' by Mahatma Gandhi's grandson. Aptly named one would say. I don't like anyone uses religious means to a political end. Dhongi baba is making ridiculous demands half of which cannot be done overnight and the other half is too silly to even consider a possibility. You've gotta blame Congress though, for acting like a wuss with him from the very beginning. He's a yoga instructor for heavens sake! You don't send 4 cabinet ministers to make nice with a guy like him. 

If you think he's doing something noble, let me tell you this. The Ramlila grounds, which was used for the protest, was actually booked by the dhongi baba claiming that he was going to conduct a yoga campaign. He tried to make under the table negotiations with Congress and if Congress ministers didn't read out his letter in the press conference on the night of the hunger fast, the so called fast would've ended in a day. 

BJP thinks its right to back him, but its gradually giving its ground as the opposition party to these so called civil activists. Its one thing to support Anna Hazare, but if BJP gives support to ignorant manipulators like the baba, it will be hard to please him if/when BJP comes to power. A word of caution to Congress: an RSS backed religious leader is a loaded weapon with a hair trigger.

***

Okay I've written something about current affairs. Now will you believe that I've been reading newspapers?

Until next time.

The Eggman.

The Lesser Evil

MMMMUUUUAAAAHHHH :*


This kiss is for Mylo, my dear computer, who's SMPS was fried by TNEB's notorious voltage surge last Friday. She was finally fixed today and during the last 4-5 days during which she was knocked out cold, I missed her very much and realized how much internet is essential to us and how costly GPRS is.

***

 

This image was made when JJ became CM of Tamilnadu the 2nd time and it was actually used in the ADMK website. Who would've expected those fellas to have a sense of humour?

On the day of voting I was very much indecisive about who I should vote. No doubt ADMK is as corrupt as DMK is. But the deciding factor was that the whole of Karunanithi's family is knee deep in the muck of corruption and it seemed that it might be good to give JJ a chance and see if she has seen the error of her ways.

I am pretty sure everyone except ADMK was surprised by the fact that they actually won. Even though everyone hoped that DMK shouldn't win, they thought it was impossible since DMK has proven its mettle in rigging elections. Alas, if it wasn't for BHEL's homemade electronic ballot device, DMK might have won this election (I've always wanted to use the word 'alas' in a sentence). Kudos to the election commission for conducting this election with least noise and hindrance to the public and at the same time having 80% voter turnout. with respect to voter turnout, any number above 50% is good.

To make a list of surprises,

1. ADMK's huge majority
2. DMK's low vote share
3. TN people's nerve to stand up against corruption
4. The look on Vadivelu's face

 Actually, Vadivelu's face should be on top of the list.

***

It has become almost a common thing that all major games these days cannot be fit inside a commonly available 4.7 GB DVD. Games like  GTA 4, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, Total War Shogun 2 well exceed the 10 GB mark while most other "serious games average around 6-8 GB. However there are some games which can be fit inside a CD and still get higher ratings in comparison to these games. And I'm not talking about Super Mario and Contra. Here are the top 5 so-called casual games of the recent times that pwned the serious games.

5. Angry Birds

One of the highest selling iTunes app of all time, when Angry Birds for PC came out I found that it had the niche to bring out the person inside you who never gave up from beating the level even after seeing the game over screen so many times over and over. The objective of the game is pretty simple - knock out a bunch of funnily drawn pigs perched precariously on top of unstable structures. The difficulty ramps up pretty smoothly and you should be a master of projectile physics to get 3 stars in every level of the game.

4. Plants vs. Zombies

 Plants vs. Zombies was the first game that I've played in the tower defense genre. Brain eating zombies have taken over the planet and you have a bunch of plants that can protect you from them. You get easily hooked to this game as I found that my time was better spent playing this game than to prepare for TCS placement test (oh, that explains why I didn't get placed in TCS).

3. Anomaly: Warzone Earth

 Anomaly is a hybrid of strategy tower defense games. The alien invasion theme also follows in this game but all instead of zombies you have huge mechanical things that zap your ass to kingdom come and instead of plants you have tanks and missile launchers and people talking in British accent. This is a thinking man's game and the gorgeous visuals will protect you from your friends making fun of you for playing children's games.

2. World of Goo

Being a casual game hater for most of my younger and ignorant life as a gamer, World of Goo was the first casual game that I played because of the rave reviews it got. It was designed by 2 programmers who used to work for the gaming mogul Electronic Arts. They started a company called 2D boy and their first product was this game. The game used simple mechanics such as gravity and wind. Numerous tiny balls known as goo balls can be used to construct makeshift towers and bridges and they should be made so that they lead to a pipe's open end. Structures should be made with minimum number of goo balls because the more goo balls you save yields you more points. All this means endless hours of puzzle solving fun.

1. Super Meat Boy

Forget about everything I've said above. None of these games even come close to greatness as Super Meat Boy does. THIS IS THE SHIT.


***

Yawn. Oh so sleepy. Until next time.

Super Egg Boy.