Games. I need more! MORE!

I’ve been splurging on games recently, most of them for my console the PS3. Yeah my PS3 slim, its quiet, doesn’t overheat even after almost ten hours of continuous play. Did I mention my PS3? It’s free to play online and it can play Blu-ray. What you don’t have a PS3? Pity…pity.

The RM20 on my bank account that was once filled with more than RM3000 had me thinking, ‘My God, how much have I bought?’ and this got me thinking further. How many original games do I have?

Lets make a tally, shall we:

PC

1. Medal of Honor: Allied Assault.
2. Counter Strike: Source
3. Team Fortress 2
4. Half-life 2 including episode two and three
5. Portal
6. Guild Wars
7. World Of Warcraft
8. Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning
9. Titan Quest
10. Crysis
11. Left 4 Dead
12. Garry’s Mod
13. Company of Heroes all three (one of which was a gift)
14. Oblivion
15. Dawn of War all three: Dark Crusade, Winter Assault and the Original (cant remember what’s it called)
16. Starwars: Battlefront
17. Torchlight
18. Street Fighter 4

PS3

1. InFamous
2. Ratchet and Clank: Tools of Destruction
3. Metal Gear Solid 4
4. Valkyria Chronicles
5. Uncharted 2
6. Killzone 2
7. Demon’s Soul
8. Fat Princess

When it’s all laid out… it doesn’t look too impressive. What would be long and hard to remember would be listing every game I finished! Alas, most of them are pirated (I have repented and now buy originals only) and my memory can only remember the awesome.

By the way, Uncharted 2 is by far the best game I’ve played. If there was a game award for: “Game of the Decade” I would vote for Uncharted 2 while screaming, ‘DRAAAAKE!’

My bank is broke but once I get some cash I’m going to be buying some more games to complete my wish list:

Dragon Age Origins

Ratchet and Clank: A Crack in Time

Grand Theft Auto 4

Little Big Planet

Batman: Arkham Asylum

Burnout Paradise

Maybe: Modern Warfare 2

Sooner or later I will buy all these games!!

Now I’m off to play the masochistically gratifying game that is Demon’s Soul. By the way, I’ll be playing that on my PS3. Did I mention that? It only does Everything.

The right to be Arrogant.

Yesterday I got a letter (e-mail) from University of Western Australia my application has been accepted; UWA is one of my ‘just-incase’ choices. As I read the letter, it finally dawned upon me that I am moving forward. Soon, I will be undertaking my bachelor’s degree, now if we follow the generic thinking of society I would almost immediately after graduating get a job. This is all in the assumption that the world is not in some huge depressing recession, a meteor hasn’t started the second ice age, world war three hasn’t occurred and I am still able to function adequately with my balls in place.

After getting a job either in foreign soil or back home and establishing a career I would most likely would want to start a family, grow old, die happy from cancer, bla bla bla. No. At my age I don’t give a fuck about a family, and for me I don’t give a fuck about relationships right now. Being nineteen has some perks, for one I have the right to be arrogant. I can push people aside and bellow, ‘Step aside, Irfan is here!’

I think being arrogant while your young and ignorant is a good thing. At this point of our life, sometimes younger, sometimes a little older, we create dreams. I’m not talking about those little dreams like getting laid before the year-end or getting that PS3 for Christmas. Big dreams, like conquering the world, owning a franchise that is valued in the billions, going back in time just to tell Hitler he’s a faggot, deflecting a comet with your bare hands, you know, big dreams.

The way I see it is if you cant dream big now, than when? Working at Coffee Bean has allowed me to witness how the bottom feeders think; they have no big aspirations other than a promotion or time off. There is no drive, no fire, and no dream. When I first spoke out of my interest to learn Japanese, my friends thought, “Yeah, it was going to happen sooner or later.”

But my co-workers they questioned. Why? Are you going to study there? You don’t need it at Australia so why? Vexed me as fuck, I answered, ‘For fun.’ And they gave me that stupid look of, why would you do if it wouldn’t benefit you money wise in the future.

They don’t understand. At my age it isn’t about money it isn’t about the future, it is about now. My point is that, life isn’t about that career, money, the future family we want, all those are way too serious to think about. At my age, life is about doing things we want just cause we can. Like learning the guitar, doing martial arts, going for baking classes, only God knows how useful these would be in a suit-choking career in some office stuck in a cubicle.

My co-workers most of them we’re adults, maybe that’s why they think I’m silly to do things which most likely wont help my ‘future career’. Sometimes when people my age talk about marriage and shit like that I go, ‘Dude what? Guys our age should be thinking about getting laid not married!’ (That’s a quote from family guy).

Final note, the reason why I got a sudden initiative to learn Japanese is because Maaya Sakamoto is the voice actor for the character Lightning in the upcoming game Final Fantasy 13. I love her work and I want to do it just ‘cause I can.

Having this much free time must be a crime.

Time.

Time. It progresses in a consistent manner – second by second. Nothing in this world can slow it down or, speed it up. We are at the mercy of this indifferent force of nature. Despite its robotic nature, time is perceived in many different ways. A thousand years is nothing to our blinding Sun. When in great pain thirty seconds feel longer than it is.

Time has this dirty trick of creeping up on people, me in particular. Its already October, I’ve been out of college for four months and yet, it feels like only yesterday I was walking into its gates for the first time. It feels like only yesterday, I was experiencing my first day of school in Primary School, or the day where I pushed that bully into a storm drain (don’t worry he lives) or the bus ride back home after winning the Kawad competition, or the first time I met my younger sister right after she was born. All these significant days, feel like yesterday. They aren’t all good days, but most are. I’ve been fortunate enough to be born without a rusty spoon in my mouth, although not silver, it is still fortunate.

I’m nineteen today. When a birthday arrives its hard not to think of two things: one, is this what I wanted to be last year. Two, what will change next year. Many things have changed, and when I think about it I wonder how these changes took place. As a child, I was meek. Today, I’m not meek anymore. In fact, I now hate the meek. They are just so meek.

I could go on rambling about the things that I should have done in the past or worst, ramble about the things I will do. No, that would be boring and self-indulgent instead, this post ends here.

My next project is called gaming fasting. I will try to not play video games in any form for as long as I can.

By the light of the MOOOOOOOOOOON! POOF!

Mr. Slay3r has logged out.

Coffee Bean.

As I've written before I recently have embarked on journey, employment.

*shivers

Damn. Now I only took this job because I had to make a deal with, my Father for a Playstation 3. Its been two weeks since I've started working part-time in Coffee bean. To sum up what we do is simple: Cooking, cleaning, brewing, blending, servicing, its all the same. There is no specialisation, a job that needs to be done can be done by anyone. Except for the managers they spend their time sitting on their ass doing paper work, while us 'baristas' or peons do most of the cleaning, brewing, blending, practically everything. This job, I was not suppose to be here. I was suppose to be in Subway!! Making sandwiches, who the fuck would have thought working in Coffee Bean would be such a huge pain in the ass.

From the moment I clock in, there is no sitting. Your always doing something and closing time is a bitch. Literally everything needs to be cleaned from the counter to the damned grease trap, the floor is mopped daily, and what makes matters worst is that we're given officially only thirty minutes to close up. Of course we try to start early, about three hours before closing but than the customers start to pour in at 9.30pm. If things don't get done, we work overtime. In the end, we still get paid peanuts. There is absolutely no bang for buck in this job. And if the district manager happens to come around and discovers our early initiative to clean he bones us. If we work too much overtime, they question us. All this shit, its pretty fucked especially for someone like me who reluctantly took the job, and the only reason I took it was because I was desperate for a PS3.

Most likely, I will quit. The reason for quitting is not because its too hard. Honest to God, the job is pretty easy to pick up. But repetition really kills it for me. Every night, its the same shit. Clock in, do some servicing, do some dishes, make some drinks all till 8PM. 8PM start cleaning, clean up the gourmet section, clean up the fucking toaster, all while still making drinks, servicing, and cleaning dishes. At the very end of the night, I stack the chairs, sweep the floor, and mop it later on. Now this is only my job. There are only two people doing closing excluding the manager who needs no count the money, do inventory, etc. Maybe working in Coffee Bean wouldn't be such a pain in the ass if it weren't so fucking understaffed.

Now the problem with all this Coffee bean (and most likely every other franchise in the world) is that everything, EVERYTHING is shipped in. From the pastries to the spaghetti everything is shipped in. When I mentioned cooking, I lied - its more like microwaving with a little presentation skills at hand.

Well anyway I'm trying to do some video gaming shenanigans. None of that reviewing crap though. Look forward to it, whoever you are.

Popularity.

Before, I never thought that popularity in school was anything serious, let alone real. It was something I thought only Western schools had. Well, I was wrong. The best part of it all was that I never knew about the struggles of popularity till now – two years after high school, and I heard it from someone else.

I don’t want to stretch on the details. So instead of writing about what someone told me, this article is going to be about…. stuff.

Popularity meant nothing to me. Not than, not now, and most likely not ever. In high school, what I can remember, apart from studying (what little I did) and extra curriculum activities was just watching anime, reading manga, playing games, and talking about all this with my friends. Thinking back I can only remember those sweet happy-go-lucky days – tomorrow was always a day away, today was always a carefree day. The far future was so far ahead it was irrelevant. Seeing my friend’s everyday, the world didn’t go beyond our own. Of course, today it’s different, but that’s another story.

Two years after high school I have become even more oblivious about popularity and face vale. The opinion of others meant little before, now they mean nothing to me. Here’s my philosophy, we are what we choose to be. No one can say otherwise. If someone demoralizes you, you bite, chew, swallow, and shit it out; or, you tell the bastard to go fuck himself. Both reactions are for two distinctly different groups of people; the first is for people you can learn from. The second is for the assholes that think they know better.

My belief is that the public is an uncaring piece of stone. What you do, what you say, it wont bother them, there will be no reaction. Unless, what you do happens to collide with the victim’s interest.

Till this day, from ten years ago (I hope I’m not exaggerating) I still remember what my good friend Arif once said – We we’re at McDonalds having lunch. I got tomato sauce on my shirt. I became embarrassed and tried very hard to get it off, after awhile, the movie we bought tickets for was about to show and I was still trying to scrub the stain off my white shirt. Than my friend Arif told me in a jovial manner, “Forget about it! No one is going to point and laugh. Nobody cares.” And so we went for the movie, and the tomato sauce was still there. The point is, nobody cares.

Those two words became my creed. And as I got older, these words just seem to grow stronger. Nobody cares. But wait – than should I not care as well? That’s an argument for another day. Just because nobody cares, should I do the same?