Xbox is Go!

At last! Our PAL to NTSC converter finally arrived and now we can play Xbox in all it's glorious color! Yay, bliss!!!

So we've just plugged it in and Sameer is now playing Gears of War online and in color and he's still getting his ass kicked by nine year olds. You just hear them going "Oh man, Warlock!" every time he gets killed. :P

If I play online I'm going to need a new title. I think Elliot Slade sounds too badass. I don't want to raise expectations.

After watching Joe play Oblivion that day and being such a backseat player I realized once again how much I like that game and even though I didn't think I'd get to play it for a long while, I suddenly was like Ohmygod I must play Oblivion! So we bought a second hand Game of the Year edition which means it's two disks, and both the original Oblivion as well as the two add ons, the Shivering Isles and Knights of the Nine. Guess I'll be taking over the Xbox from Sameer now. :)

New York trip booked

We've just finished booking our next trip. We depart Chicago, late afternoon April 18 and arrive New York that evening. Staying at the Days Inn (sort of like a Holiday Inn thing) in North Bergen which is not on the island coz everything on the island, including hostels are so frakkin' expensive I don't know how you could possibly afford it! As soon as we started looking for places off the island, the prices dropped by over 50%.

We decided to go that weekend so that we could attend the New York Comic Convention on the Saturday. In true geekly fashion, we're totally stoked about that. :) Then we hope to do some general New York sightseeing on the Sunday, Monday and Tuesday morning. And then trek back to the airport Tuesday afternoon, so Sameer can be back in Chicago to prep for his classes.


Our biggest regret in the planning stages was that we couldn't get tickets to go see Conan O'Brien. Unfortunately, his show is booked out six months in advance. We could potentially have queued early in the morning to get some of the tickets they reserve to give away on the day but they don't shoot the show on a Monday, only Tuesdays through Thursday, and even if we could get last minute tickets we're leaving too early on Tuesday to attend the taping that day. :(

Sunny becoming overcast

My day today started off good and then went downhill and has now evened out. I woke up at the crack of dawn. Okay, it was a quarter to seven but that is way too early for any unemployed person to wake up! Not sure why I woke up that early. Mayhap it was because I could feel a thudding through our too thin walls. Sameer was still fast asleep probably because he couldn't sleep last night and was pacing up and down til all hours. Anyway, I grabbed the laptop and started doing Google searches for Disney related things. The reason for this? Well, just before I woke up, I dreamed that I was looking at a Google Map of the Orlando area in Florida and hotels around Disney World. So my waking thought was "I wonder if my mind actually filled in all those details in the left hand panel in a realistic way..." It was very strange. Sameer eventually woke up and was all groggy and wot and I was peer pressured into showering. *sigh*

He also cunningly requested that I walk into town with him as we were going the same way. He was going to Millenium Station to catch the train to campus and I was supposed to be going to Randolph Street - the theater district - to see about tickets to see Wicked (the musical) and to get a travel guide from Borders. And I know this is a ploy, like him offering me coffee when I don't want to wake up from a nap but have assignments to do, or making me breakfast to get me out of bed. I'm sure he thought that if he didn't get me out of the apartment right then I would be googling things until he came back home. Well, I can't blame him. He's probably right.

So we started walking and he mentions that, in future, he's thinking of taking a bus to campus coz it would drop him off right "There". We look over and there's the bus that will take him to campus. So I'm like "Well, why don't you just take it now? Then you don't have to rush for the train." Epiphany moment for Parker. So I walk him to the bus and say my goodbyes and then, all grown up and independent, start walking up Madison. Then I realize I've forgotten which corner the bookshop I'm looking for is on. Ah well. Street names and directions were never my forte. Follow my nose is what I do. And I figured I'd recognize the right street name when I saw it, so off I went.

Well, I did recognize the street and managed to find Randolph, so yay for me. I was feeling pretty good. The sun was out and it was warm (you know you've been away from home a long time when 9 degrees is warm) and I was feeling good. I decided to walk into odd looking building that I was passing and was I glad I did. It's called the James R. Thompson Center and it's even more interesting looking on the inside than on the outside. It's got all sorts of red girders and glass panels and exposed elevators and is basically a huge atrium. It's very nifty. There's a food court on the lower floor, shops on the ground floor, and government and business offices on the sixteen floors above.

There was a budget shoeshop inside and at first I was looking for boots but then realized that the season for that is over here. Ah well. I found some soft, sneaker type thingies with velcro straps the I really liked and it turned out they were on sale. So I got my foot measured for the US size (I'm a 6.5/7) and looked for the right one but it turned out they didn't have any in my size left and then I was just sad.

On to Borders Books to look for a Lets Go USA, which I eventually found but then decided not to buy. I want to check on Amazon to see if I can get it cheaper. If not I can always go back. But I guess I must have been wandering around for too long in my oversized coat because suddenly all the sales assistants started staring at me and asking if I needed help and I practically felt hounded out of there. And that was when I started to feel a bit irritable.

Then I went back to the theater (which only opened after ten) to find out about Wicked tickets. The guy behind the desk couldn't understand what I was saying and I kept having to repeat myself. Maybe it's my accent but I also think it was the three inch glass between us. I felt like I was going deaf. I couldn't hear him and he couldn't understand/hear me. Eventually it turned out that they have a daily lottery for Wicked tickets but you can only enter at 2pm and then you have to be there at 5pm for the actual draw. (As if.) And the cheapest full price tickets, which get you seats in the last row of the balcony above, cost $35 each! So I left empty handed.

By this time it had become cold and overcast and I was feeling a bit miserable. I wanted a Panda Bowl for lunch but didn't think my moodiness justified the $5. So I decided to go to the market downstairs and get mixa-pancakes and maple syrup using the rationale "This will make at least five servings, and cover both lunch and breakfast tomorrow." I also finally gave in to my temptation to buy chocolate milk. You see, us Third World peeps have to get our milk, get our Nesquick, and spoons, and do a pouring and stirring thing. But here in the US of A, they charge you 49c for a pint (235ml) of premixed chocolate milk. And guess what? It tastes just like Nesquick. Needless to say, I was very disappointed. I was expecting a much smoother, more chocolaty flavour. Well, now I know.

The mystery of the curious fridge contents

So in search of munchies, I opened the fridge, not expecting much except week old, leftover blueberries, crushed garlic, milk, and an assortment of condiments. Instead, I was surprised to find this curious cooking implement.


Sameer has taken the 5th.

Madly in love with BSG... again

I've been watching episodes on end and also rewatching that awesome intro I posted earlier. It is so beyond cool. :)

S, I cannot believe that you fast forward through that! It's the one TV series intro I never get sick of because it's different every week (you've noticed that, right?) and because the music is so great.

I love the clips of the destruction of Caprica, the swearing in of Roslin, and the surviving humans fleeing from the Cylons. It gives me goosebumps every time.

Here are two pictures that I think demonstrate how the BSG writers try to draw their audience in by subtly tapping into our underlying consciousness of world events. The first is of the swearing in of Lyndon B. Johnson after the assassination of John F. Kennedy. The second is the swearing in of Laura Roslin after the destruction of the twelve colonies. That scene is so poignant that you just couldn't "make this stuff up". The show's writers deliberately scripted it this way. Similarly, the memorial hallway on Galactica recalls the photo memorials put up by family and friends of lost ones in the days following 9/11. And of course, I probably don't have to remind any South Africans BSG viewers about the references to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.




Ooh, now that we have broadband I'm dying to listen in on the podcasts of the writer's meetings that are posted on the official website.