wafblog v3.0

I did my first sudoku puzzle yesterday. There was a certain sense of achievement having completed it, but my initial reaction was “and so?”. I’m not entirely sure what the fuss is about or why people say they’re so addictive. Maybe my skills haven’t progresse beyond the simple ‘elimination’ tactics. I have a feeling I may have just picked an easy one. Some of the harder ones are annoying obviously as you have to sort of guess but even then you can retrace your steps if you’re not sure.

I’ve found that I’d much rather have a go at crossword puzzles. Normally I’m not very good at them, particularly the cryptic ones. However, I do enjoy the challenge of thinking about the words more than I enjoy putting numbers into a grid. I guess each to their own. I’m thinking of alternating between sudoku and crosswords each day, just to give me something to do. Hopefully I won’t get bored with them. So why am I doing puzzles? Well, I wanted something to keep my brain active beyond say work or playing computer games. I’d play chess, except it’s been ultra hard to find a decent chess game for the computer and I doubt they’ll release one for the PSP ever. Apparently the DS will be getting a card game compendium type thingy which also includes chess and Othello. That’s kind of tempting. I could probably go on Yahoo! games and play, but the players there can be annoyingly juvenile.

Wow. Comment moderation actually WORKS in Wordpress. So if your comment doesn’t automatically appear when you submit it, it’s cos I have to approve it. I think there is a way to make it appear automatically, but I’ve yet to work it out and I’m scared to do so in case I get lots of crap suddenly appearing. Anyways, keep commenting and I’ll make sure the right ones actually show up :P

I didn’t end up meeting Manda for drinks on Friday as she decided to stay home. Instead, I was invited to drinks with the first year RailCorp graduates. The undergraduate that replaced me at North Strathfield met one of the grads at a training session and he invited her, but she was too shy to go by herself LOL. Not one to turn down drinks or the chance to meet new people I went along anyways. I now know one more person in this building (his name is Moscow, which is rather unusual I think) and one of the other guys was an undergrad when I started as well. It was an enjoyable afternoon, although I felt a little out of place but it was good to test out my meagre social skills and meet more people my age working in this organisation.

Saw another movie on Saturday – “The Covenant”. Admittedly, I didn’t know anything about this movie. Mike said it was about vampires, which it isn’t. I didn’t bother to read anything about it before seeing it, as it seemed both Manda and Mike wanted to see it. Touted as being by the people who made ‘Underworld’ I figured it would be decent enough. Suffice to say, lucky it was the cheapo movie of the week. I would’ve felt really jipped if it wasn’t. The premise of the movie was decent enough, although probably more interesting to those who did ‘The Crucible’ in high school as I did (twice) but it’s not necessary to get into the story. I just found that it dragged on and on. Considering I thought it was ultra short when hearing it only went for 1.5 hours, it seemed to go on forever when we were sitting in the theatre. Too many of the scenes were just fluffy filling, and some scenes weren’t needed altogether. The best line was right at the beginning, and said by a boy that I reckon would do well as a grown-up Draco – “Harry Potter can kiss my ass!” hehe. I will have to find a decent picture of him. Ah. It was all downhill from there. So verdict? Don’t waste your time. Or your money.

We headed off to the James Squire Brewhouse for dinner after that. I was quite impressed with the food, although it was a little bit pricey. Considering it’s at King St. Wharf though, can’t expect too much. It was a shame that all the specialty beers had run out, but that couldn’t be helped I guess. Not sure if I would eat there again, but I’ve had my fill of steak now so that’s good :D Went to karaoke as well, which was amusing as always.

Hrm, currently waiting to see how much of my ‘junk’ Travis sold at Supernova… I need to pay off my credit card. Not sure what I’ll do with the stuff that didn’t sell – maybe wait till next year otherwise I’ll try to sell it on eBay I guess.

I’ve been debating on whether or not I should go to the Motorshow this year. The last time I went was two years ago, and it was really disappointing. But the ads I’ve seen for this year look promising and it seems like there’s a lot more concept cars as well. Plus there was that ad for the SAAB (I think, else it was Subaru) car where the doors and the windscreen lift up and that looked particularly awesome. But then, I’m not sure if it justifies the exorbitant entry fee and I’ll probably pick up a bunch of useless pamphlets/magazines/advertising that I don’t need either. Maybe I should just wait for the next motorcycle show to roll around and just go to that.

I’ve been pretty happy lately, which is a nice change. I don’t think I’m one of those people that can stay happy for long periods of time. Not sure if that’s because I’m overly critical or it’s just some odd personality defect. Anyways, I find that I’m pretty content at the moment. Most aspects of my life have resolved themselves or are at a stage where I can’t do anything at the moment.

Mike and I are doing well. It’s still all a bit new, I guess. Obviously there’s familiarity there – considering how long we dated before. But it’s also very different. I can see we’re both putting more effort in, and we’ve both matured a bit during the time we spent apart which makes it much easier to communicate and put things into perspective.

We went to see ‘Children of Men’ on the weekend (I LOVE Clive Owen… he’s not like uber-hot, but there’s something about his gruff voice and the accent). It was a pretty good movie. Different from most futuristic movies. I think because of the way it was shot, it felt very gritty and realistic. In one of the fighting scenes, some blood splatters on the camera lens and they keep it there whilst Clive Owen is trying to not to get killed in crossfire. I thought that was a nice touch. It was kind of obvious what was going to happen at the end, but I did think it was a different take on the future. Usually there’s some sort of view that all babies will be genetically engineered a-la ‘Gattaca’ where as this explores a world where no babies are born. Scary. I like Alfonso Cuaron, although I have seen that movie that made him famous (I will…), he is the one that directed HP: POA so I think he’s brilliant.

Work’s pretty ok at the moment too. I’m still worried that I will become disenchanted with the rat race and after 5 years of slogging it out I’ll just quit and move to the country. Except I can’t move to the country because everywhere is drought affected. Anyways, work is alright. Nothing to complain about as such and I am looking forward to next year as much as I dread it being too challenging.

Parents have been pretty good lately too. It’s been good since I finished uni. I think they’re just relieved that I’ve finished and I’m now on my way to having a career and all that sort of thing. They can sort of sit back and relax. Which they are, as they’re planning for retirement now. (Gosh, retirement seems like a lifetime away from here…) I think they’ll start berating me to clean my room, play violin, go for more driving lessons.. etc etc soon but I kind of accept now that they’re just like that and there’s nothing I can do about it.

Met up with Manda for a coffee on Monday. Felt like a yuppie, but neither of us really felt like drinking. Or maybe that was just me. It was definitely great to see her though, catch up, check out her short hair :o and see how well she survived Animania. I was a bit worried things would change, but they haven’t and we easily just slipped back into our usual chat-chat-chat. Going for drinks tonight at the Arthouse so that should be fun too.

I thought I would really miss LJ, e-mail, ICQ and the like while I was away. Which I did, but I’ve found that since coming back I haven’t really felt the urge to go online much. It’s kind of odd. Like, I’ll go online to check my mail but I don’t read any of the groups that I’ve joined and I skim alot of the community posts on my friends page. I don’t think that I’m losing interest in them or anything, I’m still as avid a fan of x, y and z as before just that reading fanfic for hours on end isn’t very appealing at the moment. Maybe I just need a break from all the fanbitching and fanboying. In any case, once I get back into VM, GA and OTH we’ll see if I go scouring for stuff. I also have to make time to watch the ORIGINAL SW trilogy, cos the DVDs arrived while I was away. I have already recruited Mike to watch them with me, but maybe I’ll see if I can convince people to come and watch a marathon of all six.

I’ve decided that Tekken: Dark Resurrection is the best game on PSP. I haven’t played it since I got back but I was playing it religiously in HK. Unlocked a few bonus games like Tekken Bowl (ten-pin bowling with your Tekken character) which is rather hilarious. Trying to only work on one or two characters, and become proficient in them, before trying others. It’s too hard to remember all the combinations otherwise. Also finding it hard to use the directional keypad in fighting, but I don’t like the analog stick on the PSP, it’s too small and in an awkward position for my thumb. Plus my thumb muscles hurt a lot if I use it for too long. Current fave character is Steve Fox. He’s a boxer, so he can’t kick, but he’s amazingly fast at repetitive punching. It’s cool that you can buy different clothes and things for him with the points you accumulate.

Went to the gym yesterday. I’m not particularly unhealthy after my trip, although my legs seem to have lost some strength. That or they’re not used to being stretch the way my trainer stretched them. I was doing some lunges (2nd set) when my right leg caved in. It was a bit scary trying to walk down the stairs at Central station, cos I kept feeling like my knee would buckle and I’d fall down but I managed to get home in one piece so that’s ok.

The categories on here are very easy to use, so in the next few weeks I might be adding a few more just to make it easier to tag my entries. We’ll see. I don’t want to add too many though as it might become unmanageable.

I’d like to welcome a new member to the tylandrian family. After discovering that Palchan has (finally!) set up his own blog and that it was being censored, I offered him a subdomain here. Which means there’s now another active member of tylandrian (:

You can find his new site here: http://palchan.tylandrian.net 

It should be up and running very soon. I think that completes the major changes to both my blog and tylandrian.

I arrived back to Sydney in one piece on Friday morning. I think when you go overseas you’re all bright-eyed and excited, and everything’s awesome (which it is) but then you find that you miss the little things about home. It was a really eye-opening experience to see all these different cities that have been around for so long. The history is just there, part of the atmosphere and the locals will walk past it everyday like it’s normal. Coming from a country where something 100 years old is considered historic, it’s hard to imagine walking on cobblestones that have been around for 1800+ years.

Then there’s things like, the number of people. It makes sense that going to a touristy area that you’d see heaps of people, but to be honest, you never get those sorts of numbers in Sydney. The only time I ever experience such crowds is at the Easter Show. A lot of services are much more easily available as well, and they’re very accomodating of tourists. So speaking English is fine and you never feel too out of depth. The only real time it’s a hinderance not to speak the local language is when you’re in the hotel room flicking through the TV channels to find something to watch and the only channels you can understand are CNN and Eurosport. It is kind of funny to watch things you already know in another language though. I managed to catch The O.C., Con Air, Cold Case and something else I’ve now forgotten in foreign languages and was thoroughly amused.

Of course, my first day back to work was met with delays on my train line due to some overhead wiring problem or something. And I was standing at the platform thinking ‘Now I know I really am home’. Then, last night I was woken up at 3:20am because a moth was flying erratically around my room. Idiot. I couldn’t catch it so I opened my door and turned on the light outside. I hope it’s flown out and died.

Well, I’m back – and I will be posting about my trip with lots of photos to boot. Once I’ve finished migrating my blog to Wordpress.

That’s right. Wordpress. Those of you that frequent my blog (yep, all three of you) will certainly appreciate this I think as it should cut down the spam comment problem and thus leave me without posts that have 89 gibberish comments selling x-rated whatever.

It should also make it easier for me to incorporate photos and links and possibly a photo gallery into my site. So yeap, give it about a week and everything should be running smoothly. Till then (=