Down The Rabbit Hole

I had dinner at the Manhattan Fish Market at Sunway Pyramid today. At the back of the restaurant they have a big screen where they projected an interesting documentary-thingy on fish. It consisted of short videos of different types of fish. Now I suppose this would be pretty normal if it was just that, but the videos showed these different types of fishes eating one another. If it wasn’t a fish eating a smaller fish, it was a fish chomping on a lobster, or a squild sucking up a crab (that was pretty fascinating actually, since I have never seen a squid eat before). Don’t get me wrong, I find documentaries on animals very fun and interesting to watch. But I found myself wondering, who the hell would want to watch their dinner devour each other while waiting for their dinner (umm, fish?) to be served?

I scarfed my meal down like a gluttonous pig anyway.

One day in college one of my lecturers got angry at my class. There was a miscommunication between him and a student that disrupted our studies, and he was furious. He shouted at us so loudly that the classes adjoining ours could hear every single word. All throughout the abusive lecture we sat fuming in silence, tuning it out while he ranted and raved in front of the class, save one girl. She burst into tears and yelled back at him for saying things that she felt were inappropriate.

“How can you call us stupid?” she sobbed. “Just because we all made a mistake doesn’t mean we’re stupid! How dare you call us stupid? No one has ever called me stupid before in my entire life!”

The cynic in me laughed at that statement. Yet deeper within me, I wondered – how nice would it be to grow up in a world where the people who demean you weren’t the people who were supposed to love you the most?

Woohoo, it’s payday! Let the mass shopping, expensive dining and boozing commence!

I love watching the sun set. It is so breathtakingly beautiful that I would love to do nothing else but stop and gaze in awe until the last glimmer of light disappears over the horizon. Of course, that is a very bad thing to do in traffic when you’re driving.

I usually leave my office around 6pm to 8pm, which is about the time the sun starts setting, depending on what time of the year it is and the weather. Every time I see a sunset it always look different. I love watching the last rays of the sun for the day bounce off the pattern of clouds in the sky. I love seeing the orange (sometimes red, like today) sunlight mix with the blue sky. How the trees look like a silhoutte in the impending darkess. The way the lights of a building illuminates itself against the backdrop of the sunset.

I would love to take snapshots of these sunsets every day on my way home from work, but it is rather hard to do that when your hands are on the wheel. Or supposed to be on the wheel. Every time I stare into the sky while trying not to knock into the cars around me I wonder how the picture would look like on film, and whether it’d capture the essence of that sunset. I once took photos of the sun rising from the clouds from a plane. Perhaps fittingly, I was on my first trip to The Land of the Rising Sun. I had trouble sleeping on the plane (it was a night flight) and by the time I got sleepy enough to sleep I forced myself not to because I wanted to look at the sunrise from a plane and take photos. The pictures came out beautifully, though I suppose anyone awake enough would have looked at me and wondered what in the name of God I was doing. I should probably scan them in and post them up sometime. But until then, I’ll be left gazing into the sky thinking about how I could capture that moment of wonder.

It should be a death penalty for people to slow down and gape/take photos/wrtie down 4D numbers at accidents on the road. As if it isn’t bad enough that the accident will cut off at least one lane on the road, people just HAVE TO slow down and take a better look, nevermind that nothing major happened. Thank you for making my usual 30 minute journey home from work stretch to MORE THAN A GODDAMN HOUR.

I entered my name into http://jobpredictor.com/, and this is what I got:

Boon Ying Ong, Your ideal job is a Anything except what you’re doing now.

Wow, now that does wonders for self-esteem.

For those not in the know, Katamari Damacy is a quirky Japanese game by Namco (who are apparently famous for coming up with this sort of nonsense) in which you play a tiny green alien-ish guy named Prince of All Cosmos who rolls around this big ball called a katamari.

Basically the wacky backstory is this: One day, your father, the King of All Cosmos, gets drunk and accidentally destroys all the stars in the universe. Morning afterwards, he wakes up and realizes what’s happened, and that people wouldn’t be too happy to find out that all their stars are missing, so he sends his son (you) down to Earth to roll up stuff on the katamari so he can launch them into space to make new stars. Why doesn’t he go himself? I don’t know, but the king being really mean to his son probably has something to do with it.

It’s a very simple game, each stage you’re supposed to roll the katamari to a certain size. There are also some special levels where you have to roll up certain things, like crabs, eggs, or twins (pairs of everything). Presents are scattered on Earth as well, and if you find them then you can make the Prince wear it afterwards.

However, I think it’s the game’s sense of scale, as well as physics that make the game so much fun to play. You start out with a very small katamari, maybe the size of a beachball, and it grows bigger and bigger the more things you roll onto it. You’ll be rolling up houses, ships and trees before you know it. When that happens, you’ll be looking at the screen and going “HOLY SHIT!!” at the change in your surroundings. And when you roll up oddly shaped items like pencils and arrows that stick out at an angle of the katamari, the way the ball rolls will actually correspond to that, and it’d be a slower, bumpier ride until it evens out.

So anyway, I had in my hands the sequel to this game. I played it yesterday, and wow is it fun. It hasn’t changed much from the original, sure, but it has added in a few new features. Like a 2 player mode where each player controls one side of the katamari. New levels that involve rolling the katamari around underwater and in space. And you find out why the King of All Cosmos is such a meanie to his son. Not sure what else is new, as I haven’t spent too much time on it yet. Not to mention that the copy I have is in Japanese and I don’t understand a word.

But what I would really really like to say about this game is….

I LOVE KATAMARI DAMACY!!

Na~ na na na~ na na na na~ na Katamari Damacy!

The sequel is out (albeit in Japanese), and anyone who owns a PS2 should go get the game It is the best game ever!

Last Saturday I went out shopping at Mid Valley Megamall with a good friend of mine.While we were there we stopped by Diamond Platinum to admire the shiny, pretty things being displayed in the shop window, and the ever helpful assistant handed us a brochure. In it, among other things, were pretty rings, in matching sets of his and hers. Since my friend didn’t want the brochure, I took it home with me.

When my boyfriend came over later, I showed the brochure to him. Look, I said. Such pretty rings.

He looked at me suspisciously and said,”Are you hinting something?”

“Of course not!,” was my very indignant reply.

Well, that was a lie. I was trying to hint that in case you ever want to surprise me with one of these in the future, pretty please let it be one that is simple,elegant and understated in nature so that I may wear it out and happily coo about it to my friends and family without having to worry about getting robbed due to the size of the rock on my finger. Not to mention that it would show how much you understand me, and knowing that is worth so much more than the biggest precious rock money can buy.

Oh, and it would also help if the rings fits.

One thing I learned from The Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy:

Slartibartfast = Slutty butt fest

*whistles innocently*