Most other times when I say “I’ve been really busy and havne’t updated because of this.” has always been mostly true. I’m not going to lie when I also say that I usually have every intention of updating I just haven’t. Well THIS TIME I’ve been really busy and I’ve got a damn good excuse! I’ve been in CHINA! Like where they invented Chinese Food! I’ve been to China twice so far and its a pretty awesome place. I’ve been going out there because of work. I was out there in April and I just got back from the second time on the 21st of this month. The place where I’ve been at is 50 miles from the Epicenter of the big ass earthquake they had in China. I wasn’t there for the earthquake (thank God). However on my last trip I talked with this guy from Austria whose plane was coming in to land during the earthquake. They missed it by 7 minutes and the plane had to be redirected to somewhere else. On the first trip it was pretty cool. I got to stay a day in Shanghai and walk around for a bit before my flight out to my final destination. Its a really cool city…strange though. I mean, being a tattooed pierced up white guy I stick out like a sore thumb so there are all of these guys that will walk up to you and offer to sell you things. Like a New watch, shoes, jacket, shirt, DVD (Yes they actually say DVD). A good chunk of it is in broken english and they’re pretty persistent. Even after I show them that I have shoes, and a watch and a shirt that I’m currently wearing they really want me to buy DVD. In the beginning I would just say “no” but then as more and more of them wanted to sell me things I found that I started to get frustrated and yell at them to get a real job, or something like that. The Architecture there is pretty cool too. So on the one hand you’ve got all these huge buildings like you’d see in any city, but then there are all of these european buildings I’m guessing from a time the Europes were there doing things. Then, you’ll turn a corner and it’ll be like you stepped into Blade Runner. Stands where people are selling all kinds of weird shit that people are eating…or little cages with bunnies or turtles in them. I’m guessing not as pets. Then when you’re in that Blade Runner land the architecture changes and its all old school chinese with dragons everywhere and monks and such.
The people there are super nice and even if they don’t speak english very well they’re really helpful. After I left Shanghai I was off to the final destination. This was a much smaller city and it had a much more “local” feel (as I was told by the guys we were working with). The place I was in is in the Sichuan province. So if you’ve ever had Sichuan food in the states or where ever isn’t in the Sichuan province you’ve been screwed! Their food is AMAZING! Crazy spicy. So let me explain the spice thing there…Ok so you know how we have “stars” for how spicey something is..1 star being not spicy and 5 stars melting your face (well in theory). Ok so our 5 stars is their 3 stars. The way that they off set the spice is through this pepper corn. It literally numbs your mouth. Like Novicane almost, but the thing is that it dosn’t hamper any of the flavor. In fact it actually brings out more flavors. I ate all kinds of weird shit that I can tell you in the States just wouldn’t fly as a menu item for a standard night out. What I mean by that is…Duck Tongue, Goose intestine, scrambled duck eggs, and…my personal favorite…Rabbits Brain. You wouldn’t think it was very good but man…not too bad. One of the guys that was there with us said that he and his friends would get like 30 rabbits heads and go through them over some beers…Not unlike what you’d expect in the states with Chicken wings. Past that it was a pretty nice trip, got to see China a little bit and eat some damn good food. In addition to that I was able to go see a Taoist temple and also a panda sanctuary, I saw about 25 pandas.
So this last time it was a real busy trip, I actually planned my trip on a monday and was on my way to China that saturday. One good thing about going out that way is that I get to fly Buisness Class, which is nice. I mean you’re flying for 13 hours (give or take) and being able to recline the chair back and sleep is pretty sweet. But I want to pause here for a minute and tell you that I really like the new Airbus planes over the Boeing 747-500s. Ok so the seats on the new Airbus’ are totally automated and they have 5 or 6 buttons on the chair that will recline it or sit it up depending on what you want to be doing. So there is a “sleep” button and the chair (all Jetson’s style) moves back into a really comfortable position in about 20 seconds….its dinner time? Click the dinner time button and the chair sits up to a real nice position for eating teh foodz. The chairs were super comfortable and you get your own video screen that you can watch movies on. So sure on other international flights they’ll have those screens, but the difference I found between the Airbus plane I was on and the Boeing planes I was on this last time is that the Airbus ones allow you to pick whatever movie you want and start it and stop it on the fly. Whereas with Boeing they have some VHS tapes or some shit running in the back of the plane and as soon as they start they just keep going. So the result is that once one movie is ending on the Boeing plane generally all the others are as well then you have to wait until whatever long ass stupid film is still going to finish so 10 minutes later the loop can start again. Ok so the chairs on the Boeing side had these dodgy hydrolics I’d have to fidget with to get the chair in any comfortable position. Even then the hydrolics or whatever would sag or not be cooperative. Sure maybe I was just on an older plane and the 777 or whatever the dream liner is will be super cool but for now…I’m going to make sure I’m on one of those newer planes…just a nicer experience.
Ok so on the game front, I’ve been all about The World Ends With You for the DS. Its been nice for the flights to have it to play. I was playing Crisis Core, but I forgot to charge my PSP before I left, so TWEWY was the game I opted to play. I can just say that if you have a DS you should get this game. Its a Square-enix game and Its good times. In a nutshell…there are these “pins” you have…like a button you’d wear on a jacket. Well each pin has a different ability tied to it. So you put together these decks of (up to) 6 pins. As you use the pins they get stronger and could evolve into new pins. I guess there’s something like 300+ pins. The pins can all get experience through combat, but there are two other ways that pins can get experience. Through either “Mingling” or through “shutting down”. Some pins will only evolve through shut down experience. So what that means is you put all your pins you want to get Shut down XP into a deck, you save the game and you turn off the DS and leave it off. The longer you leave it off the more experience the pins get. The other way is through Mingling. I was explaining Mingling to some friends at work and they said that effectively the game becomes a packet sniffer. What happens in mingle mode is you have your pins that you want to get mingle xp in a deck, you click on the “mingle”. Once its in mingle mode you can close the lid and the DS then looks for 3 different things.
1. Other DS’ (You get 20 xp for each DS it “sees”)
2. Other people playing TWEWY (those are worth 60) In addition to that each other person the DS finds becomes a “friend”. You can access your Friends list in the main menu and once you do you can go into a shop which is made up of the pins they have and other items. Which you can buy. The other cool part in that is they can buy your pins. If you mingle with them again you will get all the money they spent in your store.
3. Alien Signals (worth 100 XP) I’m not exactly sure what constitutes an Alien signal. Through talking to people the idea is that its any random wireless signal. I’m not sure if that could count as your wireless printer or what….
So what i’ve been doing is leaving it on mingle mode all the time…like when I’m driving to work, or at work, or at home. I usually get 3 to 4 alien signals at home and I’ve got a few alien hits driving to work. My hope is to get some more players…but man…listen. If you’re playing the game put it on Mingle mode! I crave the pins you have!
Ok so there’s alot there for you, Hopefully it’ll make up for all of the non-updating I’ve been doing as of late. Oh yeah so I’m going to be on Platform Biased here soon. I’m talking about breaking into the games industry and such, most of the stuff I’ve been talking about for years at PAX. Which is SOON! You should make an effort to go this year! There is a hook…and PAX is totally going to be off of it!