Spring festival.

It's the time of the year again. The Chinese Lunar New Year! It's also time for traveling again. Going back to Kota Bharu, Kelantan again this year. A five hour ride. Driving thru highways, kampung roads and over a man made lake. Wonderful driving trip. Hehe!! Will be using the Wira again. Already been 2 years since I had it. Besides the normal break downs like busted spark plug cables, self disintegrating air condition, punctured tires, ill mannered reverse sensors, nasty yogurt spillage, misleading fuel gauges, squeaky absorbers etc..it works fine...hehe!! National car mah!

Anyway happy chinese new year to all readers out there.

Photos

Time to show you guys some photos I've taken. Hehe!

1. Clouds/sky in Ipoh.

2. Christmas Tree in church (1)


3. Christmas Tree picture (2)


4. Picture of church in doors.

5. Bonfire of candles!


6. Silent night, holy night!


7. Headstart Ipoh 07/08 - Christine B'day Party, 31/10/07


8. Headstart Ipoh 07/08 - Christmas Party cum Steven B'day Party, 13/12/07
*note: Everyone had their gift. Hehe!!!

9. Headstart Ipoh 07/08 - Nalini and Dorcus B'day Party, 7/1/08
That's all for today.

C-Games!

Computer games! Now that's something I enjoy playing quite a bit. Last year there were a few that caught my attention for quite a long time. And here they are.

1. Command and Conquer 3 : Tiberium Wars.Fantastic triquel of the original series. With ultra baddie Kane back and also a new faction of aliens called scrin. Interesting some of their units share some similarities with Starcraft 2's Protoss units. Hmm....i wonder. Good news to all is that C&C3 cut scenes are now acted out by real actors. Most of them we would recognize including Michael Ironside (Top Gun, Starship Troopers), Grace Park (New Battlestar Galactica), Jennifer Morrison (House MD), Billy Dee (Star Wars: Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi). Good looking ladies again, woohoo!! The campaign game for the GDI is quite easy but playing NOD is quite a pain. Can't wait for the expansion to this game to be released sometime this year. Mammoth Tank rocks! Yeah!!


2. Supreme Commander
If you want to watch beautifully animated cut scenes, play with dozens of units, manage hundreds of robots, battle with division size armies and sleep for you is an option, then this is your game. The cut scenes are totally awesome and the units have such great variety that you are spoiled for choice. From the quick rush to the mega army strategist, this game caters for all. This is a totally amazing sequel to original Total Annihilation. The qualities of the original has been passed down to this sequel. But the learning curve is pretty steep and the AI won't hesitate to take you out if you let your guard down. Not recommended for players new to RTS. Hehe! Took me more than 20 hours just to reach the final stage on easy mode. And I didn't even finish the game. Don't say I didn't warn you. Hehe!


3. World In Conflict
New RTS on the block. Uses a totally different style of resource management....which is NONE! Great because we can get straight to the fighting! Hehe! Using the premise that in 1989 the Russians, instead of giving up communism because of bankruptcy decides to do a Saddam, ie, invade your neighbour and enrich yourself. The commies take war to Europe and CONUS. Utterly incredible game. Playing with units of this era makes it even more fun. Using Apaches to rip enemy armour up. Summon B52s to carpet bomb stubborn enemy positions. Just total coolness. Quite an easy game to play but tedious because you have to make sure you keep your units alive. No war factory to build blown up M1A1s. But not difficult to finish the missions. At the 10 hour mark I already finish about 75% of game. This game challenges logistic and unit deployment skills. All terrain have impact.


4. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare.
The quadquel of the amazing Call of Duty series. The first 3 was on World War 2 playing the roles of American, British and Russian soldiers fighting in the ETO(European Theatre of Operations). This one is focussed on the War on Terrorism of today, where battlefields have no boundaries. This time you get to play the roles of a SAS operative, a USMC grunt and a small role as USAF SO AC130 gunship gunner. Hehe! Got you drooling yet? Most interesting part I like about the game was the sniper missions. This is where stealth matters more than killing. This is a surprisingly easy game to play. At easy it took me about 4 hours to finish the game, normal about 5 hours + and veteran about 7+. This games is mighty addictive. Even after finishing the game three times I wouldn't mind playing it a few more times. Yes, the route are planned and you can't stray much from the game but the execution can be as different as you wish. You can go at it Rambo style or like a real soldier who works with his squad. HUAH!

That's all for last year's games that really pulled me back into gaming. Also reminded me the need for computer upgrade soon. What game to expect this year? The one and only Starcraft 2. After watching all the previews I'm already planning as to when I should upgrade my comp. Driving me nuts this gaming stuff. Hehe! Well, hope you've enjoyed reading today's post. Hope to input more regularly this year too. Hehe! Till next time. Excelsior.

Why? Why not?

Why so crazy about cars? I've been asked that question quite a number of times. Very often I ask back why not? It's like how modern art people think that Picasso's stuff is beautiful. Me? I don't get Picasso at all. Cars. Now that's something much easier to understand. It's got to have the looks, power, torque, speed, acceleration, balance, control, madness, speed..oops! Did I already mention speed? My mistake. Hehe!

Just caught up with some reading today on the new Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution X. Yup! 10th in the series. Now, if you are like me and have seen a whole lot of movies this year, you'll find a whole lot of really bad sequels(mostly triquels actually!) this year. Disappointing is being too nice for those movies! But this one, the new Evo, is still the same monster that it was with the 1st series. Quick on it's tyres and bursting with confidence at its control. It is not a car of elegance, more like a car you can drive fast and cut corners like butter. It's meant to be driven hard and fast. Forget about interior aesthetics, noise free cabins, carpets and seats with matching colours. That's not what a guy wants in his fast car. He wants to hear the music of the revs. He wants his seats to hold him upright when he takes the corner. He wants just the basic buttons to get the car going coz he won't have anytime to do anything else besides driving. Hehe!

Anyways, aside from cars, I do on occasion watch football too. Like the one that happened this weekend which my team, Liverpool, lost. -,-""" Watched it with my current headstart members. Even had a Christmas dinner with them last week. Will post photo later, with their permission 1st. Hehe!! Anyways, it's good that we meet up for more than just our usual once a month meetings. Get to know and also encourage each other more. Let us also practice our oft forgotten skills of listening. Hehe!

Well, speaking of Christmas, it's just around the corner and this year I sorta feel like I'm in limboland on the present buying part. Haha!! At least that'll save me loads for this year! Haha!! Anyways, to all my fellow readers. Wishing you a blessed Christmas and wonderful New Year. And don't overstuff yourselves. Hohoho!!

Return of the GRAY.....

I'm back!

I was actually put off because my wordpress blog site had so much trouble and super slow download time that i was put off blogging for quite a while. Well, quite a good excuse huh? Hahaha!!

Well, this year's been quite an exciting year for cars. In Malaysia, we have the release of Viva and Persona on the local front. The Mitsubishi Lancer GT 2.0 was also released. Internationally, we have the new Civic Type R, Audi R8, Aston Martin DBS(yeah, the James Bond one), Bugatti Veyron, Ford Mustang 500, Lamborghini Reventon(pronounced rebenton) etc...

Seems like the industry is going for bigger engines CCs and more power and better electronics and more safety. All the stuff that makes the cars heavier and consume more petrol. Hmm.....wondering how the Kyoto thing will work if car companies keep giving us big cars. Haha! Biodiesel? How are people gonna afford it with the price of palm oil being so high? Best part of it hybrid engines have worse consumption than the current normal engine cars. And last I heard rechargeable lithium batteries still weigh tonnes and not really viable for commercial cars. NGV? Well, I'm sure you all have read bout the recent explosion in the NGV pump in KL.

The way I see it, I don't think the industry is willing to really invest in alternative energy for cars yet. It might interest you to know that the new Nissan GTR is a massive 3.6L engine with 500bhp. Even Japanese cars are getting bigger. Way I see it, it'll probably be another decade or 2 before they will actually get serious about it. Signing out!