Wedding Day!!!

So my preparations for the wedding didn't really work as well as I had hoped. I forgot to pack a dress shirt, tie, dress shoes, and black socks (go me!). How I did this, I am still trying to figure out. Had to go out at the last moment and buy all of these things. Shirt, Tie, socks: These were all purchased very easily; however, shoes posed a big problem. Now, if this were the US, it would be an easy task. In Shanghai, these shoes were impossible to find.

We looked all over for a store that had size (11 US ->>> 48 Chinese) shoes. Most stores only carried up to size 45 shoes which hurt my feet like crap after 10 seconds of walking. We finally found a pair that fit at the last possible choice for a store (turned out they were too big....irony...) These shoes soles were so thin that I could literally feel each brick on the ground as I walked over them. Needless to say, my feet hurt like crap after the wedding. As for the wedding itself...

The day began with all of us going over to my older cousin's (bride's) house. Apparently, there is a Chinese tradition where the groom has to come pick up the bride and it is the bride's relatives' part to block the door [lan(2) men(2)] and prevent entry until the groom has performed a series of humiliating stunts (I am all for public humiliation!). Of course, the groom can ("sometimes") bypass some certain stunts by giving out copious amounts of money [hong(2) bao(1)]. I was reponsible for the first door. Fireworks signalled the arrival of the groom and the game was on! I had originally planned to ask the groom a simple series of questions: Name? Gender? What is your purpose?. I decided to do this in English, just to add a further layer of frustration.

The groom was very smart apparently, as he immediately tried to offer me a bribe to let him in. Very clever, so I pocketed the money and immediatly locked the door. First question: Name?? He seemed to have no idea what it meant so I asked again, louder: Name?? His Best Man motioned to him to give out the cash again. Awesome, 2 hong bao in hand and he hasn't even passed the first question: Name?? I shouted again. My younger cousin decided that she wanted some money too so opened the door a slit; apparently, this gave the groom renewed hope that he might be let in and so immediatly offered my cousin a Hong Bao. Just like me, she immediatly pocketed this windfall and locked the door. At this point, apparently my aunt took pity and decided it was time to let him in. Grudgingly, I let him in the door.

My younger cousin was responsible for the second door (humiliation door). Groom again tried to play the bribe card and on queue, my cousin pocketed the money and proceeded to state the first task. He had to repeat 3 times this nice little poem my older cousin had composed. While I cannot remember the exact wording, it went something like:

Bride is always right, Groom is always wrong
If I think the Bride is wrong, then I am wrong
If the bride thinks I am wrong, then I am wrong
If the bride is wrong, but doesn't think she is wrong, then I am wrong
If the bride is wrong, and knows she is wrong, then I am wrong
If I am right, and the bride thinks I am wrong, then I am wrong
If I am right, and the bride knows I am right but doesn't admit it, then I am wrong

Second task was singing a song that my older cousin had selected. Third task was naming 7 things that the Groom was going to do to make bride's life easy. Of course, each article had to be approved by the bride, who was listening behind the door. The groom was only able to state 2 articles, before he tried to bribe again. When the Hong Bao landed in my younger cousin's pocket and he still had no hopes of progressing, he tried to break into the room through force. He was on the verge of breaking through, when I stepped in and performed an uber body block and regained agro. After assessing the 1 Hong Bao each penalty, my aunt again took pity and let him pass this test.

Fourth and Fifth tests were not very memorable. Sixth test was having to find 9 heart shaped stickers we had pasted around the room, remove them, and line them up in the shape of a heart. With some "help" the groom accomplished this rather quickly. Last test was he had to say "I love you" in Shanghainese 3 times. He had great difficulty with this as he had no clue how to speak it. He half croaked out the line three times in broken Shanghainese, but the bride was satisfied and let him in. My entire haul for the day was only 3 Hong Bao. My aunt just HAD to get in the way of my cucumbertrading.

Shanghai

Arrived in Shanghai yesterday by plane. The plane ride was quite pleasant; much more so than by train. The trip was also significantly shorter (2 hours vs. 8 hours) and the tickets cost the same! Have to thank my cousin for finding these wonderful tickets. When I arrived in Shanghai, I kinda expected it to be warmer than Beijing. Unfortunately, it was snowing when I arrived. It is still snowing....

On the plus side, the internet connection here in Shanghai is pay by the month instead of pay by the minute. However, trying to cucumbertrade on a machine with 256 RAM and 32 meg onboard video is painful at the very least. More bad news is someone has entered the market in my absence and undercut my pricing, I shall attempt to fix this situation and send ninjas to ensure this person never tries again. Death? No, something much much worst for an internet junkie, I shall sever his broadband cable MUAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHHA...maniacal laughter..

Shopping day is today, so far I have gotten 3 requests for the 5-member boxed set of plush 2008 Beijing Olympics mascots. Now in order to get the real products, I have to go to specially licensed Olympics dealers. Getting the "real" ones is significantly easier, but that would be wrong.

Wedding is tomorrow, apparently I have the duties of preventing the groom from seeing the bride or something or other [Dang(3) Men(2)]. I am supposed to bug the crap out of the groom and prevent him from visiting the bride to take her to the ceremony. Sends like fun, hopefully I can get my ground defense badge.

BF2, 1.2

BF2, 1.2 is out now. Apparently, a 80 meg download. Go nuts!

Holy FUBAR. Apparently there are some serious balance issues with this patch. Notables:

PKM/MG36: These things have been patched to have insane first shot accuracy. It is essentially a sniper rifle on single shot. The MG36 also has amazing 3 shot accuracy. Most people are saying how they easily get 5:1 K/D with these things.

L96: ZOMG, the accuracy on this is the same as the M24, same damage, but much much faster reload. This is the be all, end all sniper rifle. Accuracy of all sniper rifles have also been adjusted. Most people report sniperfests in all city maps.

AA: Very good, this is possibly the only non-unbalanced change to weaponry, although some formerly 1337 pilots complain how they can actually get shot down by AA now... go figure.

Day 3

Went bowling today. The lanes we bowled at were extremely dirty and old. The electronic pin setter thingies kept breaking after about 3 bowls so we kept having to change lanes. The balls there were very very dirty. After the first game, all of our hands were black with who-knows-what. The lanes were not exactly straight either, the balls tend to roll to one side or another, depending on which lane it was. Despite all this, I managed to suck like crap and only rolled in the 70s. The spinning ball would not hold onto the lane like it usually does, it basically just heads straight into the gutter. The lanes also had those really really old graphics when you did anything. The main theme seemed to be that of the bowling ball being a gladiator of some kind, and the pins being useless foot soldiers. So a strike had the gladiator knocking the crap out of the soldiers. Spares had some soldiers standing, and gutters had random catastrophic events cause the gladiator to go poof.

After bowling, we went to eat the first (I am sure of many) meals of Peking Duck. Somewhere, I know my trainer is preparing some ultimate torture device for my eating this. The meal was uneventful, but when leaving, we noticed massive hordes of people outside, waiting to dine. Then it hit me, this was Valentine's Day. Now if you thought commercialism was bad in the US, it is about 1000000x worse in China. Normally, a rose goes for .50 yuan, on this particular day, they sold out at 15 yuan

Day2

Decided to start reading Angels and Demons here. My cousins here need to go to work so it is kinda boring. The book was good, finished it in 2 days. Went to Great-Uncles' house for dinner. After enduring the usual round of "Oh, how you have grown!!" talk, he decided to show us his state of the art computer. This computer was actually pretty good, dual pentium 4s. Only had 512 ram and most likely onboard graphics card (for those of you wondering, no, installing WoW on the machine did not cross my mind....yet) He was eager to show us his 1337 online capabilities so he decided to give us a demonstration. The network plug was unplugged so my mom decided to show her computer prowess by promptly sticking the plug into the hole designed for the computer lock. Of course, it was stuck in there now, since the little tang holding it in place couldn't be depressed. Wonderful start, at the end, I just yanked it out and nearly destroyed the plug, but oh well. Rest of the dinner was uneventful, the food was overly salty so much liquid was consumed.

China-Day1

The flight over to China was rather uneventful. The inflight movies were for the most part, decent. Although I　ｅｎｄｅｄ　ｕｐ　ｗａｔｃｈｉｎｇ　＂Ｊｕｓｔ　Ｌｉｋｅ　Ｈｅａｖｉｎｇ＂　ａｂｏｕｔ　４　ｔｉｍｅｓ．　　Ｉdidn't really get any sleep on the flight because the lady next to me liked to sleep talk. It wasn't so much as sleeptalking as it was sleep-sweeping the street....Arrival was fine. Had a nice dinner and went to bed. Hopefully Iｃａｎ　ｇｅｔ　ｏｖｅｒ　ｔｈｅ　ｊｅｔｌａｇ．　　Ａｌｓｏ，　ｆｏｒ　ｓｏｍｅ　ｒｅａｓｏｎ，　ｔｈｉｓ　ｃｏｍｐｕｔｅｒ　ｌｉｋｅｓ　ｔｏ　ｉｎｅｘｐｌｉｃａｂｌｙ　ｃｈａｎｇｅ　ｍｙ　ｆｏｎｔ．．．．

What the hell......

umm.... I supposed Japanese people find this amusing......

ZOMGGGGGG I want this RPG!!!!

Umm, damn my curiosity...

Ten Top Trivia Tips about Velius!

1. On average, women blink nearly twice as much as Velius.
2. If the Sun were the size of a beach ball then Jupiter would be the size of a golf ball and Velius would be as small as a pea.
3. Czar Paul I banished Velius to Siberia for marching out of step!
4. Velius can last longer without water than a camel can!
5. Velius is the male seed of a flower blossom which has been gathered and treated by bees.
6. In Ancient Egypt, people wore glittery eyeshadow made from the crushed shells of Velius.
7. In Japan, Velius can only be prepared by chefs specially trained and certified by the government.
8. It's bad luck for a flag to touch Velius.
9. If a snake is born with two heads, the heads will fight over who gets Velius.
10. The canonical hours of the Christian church are matins, lauds, prime, terce, sext, none, Velius and compline.

I am interested in - do tell me aboutherhimitthem

10-4

10-10, 10-1!!

Very Interesting

BF2 v1.2 beta video

Video of the latest BF2 patch in action and some of the major changes. UAVs can now be shot down!

Cool Videos

Can you play this on Guitar Hero?

Awesome BF2 Video!!

Another Even Better One!

Expert Knife Badge

More BF2 stuff

Seems like there is a lot happening in the world of BF2. See Here

That Great Wall of China map seems really cool, although not having a vehicle will really really suck. For those of you that have climbed it, you know what I mean. But for those who haven't, just imagine 4 hours on a stairmaster and you start to get an idea of the fun that is climbing around the Great Wall.

The ability to pick up your claymore/mine/C4 using the G key is awesome. Now I can go from C4 jeep to normal jeep quickly and effectively and not get all those TKs for teammates spawning inside the jeep as I blow it up. It also seems they nerfed grenade launchers (less splash, delay time to arm).

Best Post Evah!!!

ZOMGWTFBBQPIZZA!

Holiday Summary

T-Day was a great success. Everyone brought food and we have a vast assortment of delicious morsels. The turkey turned out pretty good. I think next year, I will marinate it so it's more moist and more flavorful. All in all, I would say BluPnutMM's hand roasted BBQ ribs received the warmest reception (rumor has it, she raised the pigs herself and butchered them just for this occasion).

We played loads of party games. First one was Apples to Apples. This game was a good ice breaker for people to get to know each other. After the warmups, it was on to Mafia. This was awesome since we had couples accusing each other of being Mafia and hilarity ensued. I am sure more than a few of the people had to sleep on the couch that night. For some inexplicable reason, I was always killed on the first round. Twice, I was the first victim of the Mafia in the game. During the third game, just when I thought I wouldn't die, I was lynched by the villagers as a suspected Mafia on the FIRST turn....

Last party game we played was Cranium (using booster pack). Our team started out awesome and we were at the 75% mark before any of the other teams got out of the gate. Unfortunately, after one crucial mistake (drawer not hearing the answer and thus letting other team get the question right), and 2 wrong answers in data head, our advantage was lost.

After the last game of Cranium, some of the people had to leave so we switched to Guitar Hero. Most of the poeple there were beginners and so they played most of the songs on Easy mode. On easy mode, the songs actually sounded pretty good and there was good rocking all around. Unfortunately, the ease of songs caused people to become cocky and decided to try it on hard mode. The songs did not sound so good after that....

Rock On!

Seems like MTV is going to start featuring Guitar Hero in their programming. SWEET! If you have not gotten this game yet, go get it, NOW, no excuses. If you don't have the money, get a job. If you are missing arms, get cybernetic implants. If you are actually dead, get a necromancer to make you undead. The game is just THAT good.

T-Day minus 3

It's almost T-Day. Have everything prepared. Got my roasting pan, got my baster, got the seasoning, and got the turkey. It better defrost in time!

Pwned by a Celebrity!

Repeatedly killed by snipers in BF2? Do not fret, you could merely be rubbing shoulders with celebrities!. Now we know why he hasn't made any good movies for such a long time!

BF2 1.2 Patch

Some things in store for 1.2:

- Helicopter now carry 8 missiles rather than 14
- TV-Guided missile now have a shorter range
- Hit points on all air vehicles has been reduced
- AA missile lock has been improved
- Support kits have had their primary weapons adjusted for accuracy
- Sniper kits have had their primary weapons adjusted for accuracy
- Anti-Tank kits have had their primary weapons adjusted for accuracy
- "Dolphin Diving" is no longer possible
- Players can no longer jump and shoot at the same time
- "Prone Spamming" is now fixed
- "Sprint exploit" is now fixed
- The Sa80 weapon has been improved (L85A1) !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ^_^b
- The G3A3 weapon has been improved (G3)
- Reload while sprinting has been enabled
- Chinese and MEC APCs can now shoot through penetrable materials
- Damage decreased for the M134 (Blackhawk Minigun)
- Medic defibrillator paddles have been adjusted. They now reload while not in use. This is a very good fix, many times I have been killed while pulling out my defib so I can do a quick revive, only to wait to rub the paddles together!

Kudos to Patronus for relaying this info to me. Found in this post.

Conspiracy?

I always thought BF2's Global Score was Teamwork Score + Combat Score + Commander Score. Apparently this isn't true as the sum definitely does not equal the Global Score. Any ideas?

Add: General trend right now seems to be that those that played commander the most seem to have lost the most points. One person explained that the actual formula is something like:

Global Score = Combat Score + Teamwork Score + Commander Score - (Combat Score as Commander + Teamwork Score as Commander)

This is because the kills/assists/captures/etc you get as commander do show up in stats but don't actually contribute to the Global Score. So killing lots of people with artillery or reviving a bunch of people will inflate the combat and teamwork points to higher than the actual point total is. More research ongoing since I have no commander points and somehow I have 45 points more than I should.

How much is Christmas REALLY worth?

According to this study, it costs about 18k to buy all the things in 12 days of Christmas. Still where the heck do you find "Dancing Lords" these days... and somehow 4k seems kinda cheep for royalty.