Project X

I felt like a secret service agent on a mission at work today - I was assigned to a due diligence team and prior to starting our work, we were given the usual routine brief not to divulge any information of our work and presence at the client's office (if anyone should ask) Interestingly enough, we've been told to inform the security guards at the client's office that we're there for "Project XXXX" to gain clearance into the client's office (and we cannot divulge any further information about our identity or where we're from!) Upon arriving at the client's office this morning, we had to sign in on an attendance list, but not to reveal our names - so we each had to sign in using a code number (call me Agent 3663 haha!) I've done numerous due diligence exercise, but never as secretive as this one!

The art of war

After a really intense bid war, this Mayday 小太陽 [Little Sun] promo CD is finally mine!! ^.^ Whoever it was trying hard to outbid me (someone with the user ID "bluesea02262****" - why does Yahoo keep their identity confidential these days?) – tough luck mate, I won haha.

五月天 小太陽 單曲CD

Along with the Mayday CD, I’ve also picked up a couple of other promos as they were going cheap (with prices from RM4): Kenji Wu's 將軍令 (for suda51) & 吳克群, Alan Kuo's 零 and Shin's Run 2008

Ke You Lun

the other Shin - not to be confused with Mayday's Ashin LOL

2 Kenji CDs (hmm.. people might start to think I'm a big fan...)

Harvest Moon turns 10

I had no idea the Harvest Moon franchise was this old! Harvest Moon is turning 10 soon and to commemorate the occasion, Natsume is releasing two new Harvest Moon games on the DS and Wii. More news and info can be found here.

Judging from the preview screenshots, the new game looks nothing like the old one and the DS version is finally in 3-D! If you ask me, I think the graphic in the old version look rather dated. In the new version, players can opt to play either the male or female protagonist - I'm guessing there will be more eligible bachelors in the new edition LOL

Harvest Moon: Island of Happiness

And with that, this blog's reading level is once again GENIUS

Genius no more

Last Christmas I ran a Blog Readability Test on this blog and scored a genius level.. but today when I revisited the site I only fared a College (Postgrad) level :( A notch down. Sigh.. it looks like the quality of my blog entries have somewhat deteriorated.

This site really works - try checking your blog readability level after each update and you'll see

JUMP DVD review

I watched the Mayday JUMP live DVD last night (finally! I picked it up last month in HK and it was sitting on my shelf for the longest time)

JUMP DVD on sale in HMV HK

(I managed a quick shot of this when the HMV staff weren't looking LOL)

I can't even begin to complain how bad the quality of the DVD is. I'm appalled by the flawed picture and sound. It was almost like watching a 20 year old concert on VCD :P The picture quality is anything but sharp (occasionally grainy) and the colour is BAD!! The colour looked washed out in places - it reminded me of Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan where Spielberg had purposefully create a "washed out" colour effect, giving the feel of amateur photography and realism to a war film. I do not think the flawed picture quality on the Mayday DVD is intentional [though they do share the same war theme as Saving Private Ryan] but rather it reflects the poor quality transfer by B'in Music. Shame on them for putting out such a subpar DVD!! In comparison, the picture quality on Leehom's Heroes of Earth concert DVD was razor sharp - hence it's availability on Blu-ray format.

The audio quality was also poor which isn't much of a surprise given the fact that their previous concert discs featured rather poor soundtrack so I didn't expect this to be any better. Would have been nice if it had DTS. Sigh.. Sometime ago dad told me that Rock Records put out very poor quality DVDs when he saw me watching a Mayday DVD (dad is an audiophile and has a massive collection of movie and concert DVDs)

All I can say is.. forget the DVD.. go watch them live - this disc does not justify their power live performance.

Another thank you gift

I received yet another thank you gift today from a Korean client who’s a fren of one of the partner in my office. Both her files fell through but I managed to recover a handsome sum of liquidated damages for her. When she came by this morning to pick up her cheque, she brought me a handbag from her own boutique at Bangsar Shopping Complex

Taiwan Beer Festival

Do you love beer?

Do you live in southern Taiwan?

Do you enjoy live music?

Have no plans for the weekend?

Head on over to the Third Annual Southern Beer Festival in Pingdong this weekend. It's gonna be a beer filled music festival with performances by Mayday, Aska Yang and Kenji Wu. Beer+Mayday+live music sounds like my kind of festival.. now if only I lived a little closer to Pingdong :) I hope Monster don't get drunk before the show.. it'd be funny if he falls off the stage playing while drunk haha. Mayday fans can rest assured that their lead singer does not indulge in alcohol binging cos he can't drink :)

I am reminded of a really funny pic that Baby J sent me of Xiao Wen looking "lost".. after one too many drinks haha.. what is that on his head?

Thank you cake

I helped a fellow office mate on her brother’s banking matter a couple of months back. It was one of those standard file that she could easily run on her own but she needed a lawyer to basically oversee the entire file and sign her letters. The file took a little longer than usual to complete but eventually we closed it sometime last month. Yesterday, as a token of her appreciation, she bought me a walnut carrot cake from Suanson. Much to my surprise - I have to admit that I was pretty touched by her kind gesture - I have handled many files for friends and relatives of office mates and bosses and more often than not I don't get anything more than a thank you note from them.

It just goes to show that a little gesture goes a long way

Thank you Janice for the lovely cake =]

Back to the ranch

This blog is starting to resemble a casual gaming blog

Since finishing Professor Layton, I had planned to jump back into some good ol court room action in Phoenix Wright 3 cos I am lagging far behind in that series. Having said that, I found myself back in Mineral Town harvesting crops. Yup, it’s back to Harvest Moon. This time I am playing the newly released Harvest Moon Cute – which has the exact same gameplay as the previous Harvest Moon I played.. except I now play a female protagonist. Which is cute and all but the lazy folks at Natsume kept the exact same Mineral Town characters from the previous game .. leaving our poor female protagonist in a town full of cute chicks.. with hardly any decent eligible bachelor.. (am still contemplating if I should court the old git bartender who’s old enough to be her dad or the cute floppy fringed blondie at the beach :P)

The last time I played Harvest Moon I managed to progress fairly far (this is one of those never ending game that seems to go on and on and on with the end nowhere in sight) When the old R4 became corrupted, there went my saved game :( Well, that’s what you get for playing downloaded games.

This is one game that require a lot of patience and time. It’s also highly tedious – with 1001 work and chores to attend to..

...and June becomes July

July officially marks the beginning of the second half of 2008. Time to stop and reflect on the first half of 2008 and the resolutions you've made in beginning of the year...

July is also the title of an OCS [Ocean Colour Scene] tune which was featured in the flick "Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels" - anyone remember that? It was such an awful film that I have almost no recollection of watching it.

"...and June becomes July"

This isn't my fave OCS song - but definitely one of their better track - this one features a really great riff at the start of the song :) My personal fave is "The Riverboat Song" [yes that song with the really memorable opening riff] made popular by Chris Evans on his program TFI Friday [Thank Fuck It's Friday lol] And speaking of Chris Evans (no - not the Fantastic Four human torch Chris Evans!), I came across news in the papers just last month that he bought a vintage Ferrari for a cool $11 MILLION !!!! News seem to suggest that the $11 Million was merely pocket change to him... FYI, it's officially recorded as the most expensive car EVER sold. Gosh I had no idea he was so filthy loaded! I thought he was just an ugly radio personality :P