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Day: 153(Saturday, 18th May 2002)
Status: On call (I have a feeling I won’t be working at Shakrahari anymore)
Days without PS2: 2 days
Listening to: Boyz II Men - End Of The Road
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First heard "End Of The Road" at my Form 2 class party. Hrmm, has it been that long ago? Woke up at about 1.30 pm.

Received an email from Sybil. Strange. She seldom emails me....and what's even weirder is that her email consisted of 2 lines. Wonder what's up....

It's been crazy for the past 2 days. Aching muscles for the past 2 days. Groceries were too heavy. 3 litre bottel of OJ, 3 packets of milk, 1.1 kg pack of Cocoa Pops among other purchases. Might have over-exerted myself walking home from Safeway. I guess its about the only excercise I get these days. Abit of weight training plus walking as cardiovascular excercises. Not bad!

Managed to watch Star Wars Episode 2: Attack Of The Clones on Thursday night. I thought it would be a quiet night because we were going for the last show at 11.30 pm at Crown. I thought since it was still a work day/ class day the next day, I thought there wouldn't be that many people. How wrong I was. The area was crowded, all waiting before they were allowed to enter. We got Screen 5, which was packed as far as I could tell. It was full house I think. The audience consisted of mostly youngsters, teens to those in their late twenties. What a noisy group it was. I guess its alright, not that I'm complaining much. It's an experience to watch it in a group. They all clapped and cheered when the studio's name and the green Lucasfilm logo came up on screen. They laughed everytime Anakin Skywalker was alone with Padme Amidala, trying to express his feelings for her. They laughed and cheered when Jedi Master Yoda appeared at the end and challenged Count Dooku to the light sabre duel. Ooops...that should be marked as a *SPOILER* there.

It was a 2 and a half hour show. Got home, was online for awhile until about 3.30 am then went off to sleep. Another exciting day ahead. Set the alarm for 8 am but I got up twice before the alarm rang, once earlier..and after that, at 7.59 am, just before the alarm went off. I woke up, showered and then headed out. Reached the city around 9.15 am. Headed to Toys R Us straight away to collect my GameCube. Was *thisclose* to getting Final Fantasy X as well. It was $ 99. Even took it to the counter but I thought that it could wait. To my surprise, Luigi's Mansion and Star Wars: Rogue Leader were only $89 instead of $99. I picked up Star Wars for $ 79 with the $ 10 discount voucher I used *4 more remaining*. The Jet Black controller has sold out at Toys R Us! There were none left on the shelf.

I went to Myer across the street to see what was going on and to check out the prices as well. Luigi and Star Wars going for $ 99. HAHAHAHA SUCKERS! They had lots of stock for the Jet controllers. Who knows when I might need one. I checked out the PS2 section and NO FFX. I saw an empty box at the demo unit of the PS2 which had a sticker stating "Release date 31st May". What the?? It's already available everywhere else! I bought some Parmesan Nuts and some "kacang putih" stuff from the Ground Floor of Myer before heading off home.

Got home, looked through my purchases, admired the manuals etc. Then got some sleep. Watched "Pleasantville" on DVD with the girls while having lunch. Started testing out my brand,new Cube after the movie. Played all the way through to dinnertime. DT asked us to go meet him in the city for dinner but all of us didn't feel like going out. In the end, I went for dinner with the girls at La Porschetta. I had the usual Chicken Bosciaola which was chicken breast in a creamy sauce with white wine, ham and mushrooms with a side order of chips.

The girls decided to stop at Dan Murphy's for awhile, I went home, got changed....started spending time with my new baby again. Till DT wanted to watch "The Score" starring Robert De Niro and Edward Norton. It was a new release and had to be returned today (Saturday). Haven't touched it since last night.

I can't believed that my Cube froze once while playing Star Wars at the Hoth Level. I've read about it in discussion forums but I wish it didn't have to happen but it did. I replayed that stage, managed to pass it without incident. So far it was the only time. I hope its just a random occurance. Nothing happened playing Luigi's Mansion. Decided to start all over again. Failed to catch one of the damned Boos and I searched everywhere and I still can't find it.

Here are some quick descriptions of my 2 new games:

Star Wars: Rogue Leader (Rogue Squadron II)

This is a sequel of sorts. The first one being on the Nintendo 64 which I never had the opportunity to see, let alone try out. The N64 came out during the time when I lost touch with console games for awhile. Rogue Leader (RL) is basically an action/shoot em up/flight simulator. More action-shoot em up than flight sim, if anything else. The game puts you in control of Luke Skywalker or Wedge Antilles in their pilot duties for the Rebels. The plot of the game consists of all the flight missions from Star Wars: A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, and some extras not seen in the movie. If you've seen a ship/starship/starfighter in any one of those movies, its in here in the game. It's a mission-based game with varying missions every stage ranging from destroying enemy TIE fighters or protecting transport ships or even bases. The basis of the game is to play the missions and at the end, you're awarded Gold,Silver,Bronze or no medals depending on performance. Everything is taken into account from lives lost, friendly ships destroyed, firing accuracy to the use of your ships targetting computer. Additional ships can be unlocked to give you a choice in missions for getting better performance results as well as hidden missions to be unlocked throughout.

Some really good graphics from what I've seen so far. Impressive stuff. RL makes use of the GameCube's internal clock. There is a training mission available at the start. This is one of the stages I've seen so far that makes use of the GC's internal clock. Play it in the day and the training mission will be on Tattooine during the day with the blistering sun. Play the training mission at night, you'll be flying around at night with thousands of stars in the night sky. Firing lasers from your ship will send flashes of light that will light up the surroundings if you're close to the ground or in a confined space. Lasers that hit the sand or walls leave blackened laser burns.

Music and Sound effects are true to the movies as well. This is, after all, a Lucasarts game. I'm currently stuck on this particular level where I have to protect some prisoners. Keep getting destroyed or the prisoners are getting killed.

Luigi's Mansion

Luigi wins a mansion in a contest that he didn't even enter. Mario goes to the mention and disappears. Luigi has to go rescue Mario.
This is a cartoony Ghostbusters-like game. Replace the proton packs with a vacuum cleaner named "Poltergust 3000" and the real Ghostbusters with the coward Luigi. Luigi has to go from room to room to suck up the ghosts with his vacuum cleaner to reveal keys for other rooms in the mansion. Each of the ghosts have a HP counter that decreases the longer you have it in your range. Sucking ghosts are not as simple as holding down the R trigger button. The ghosts try to escape by flying around the room and you have to push the control stick in the opposite direction of the ghost while holding the R button until its HP is reduced to 0. For simplicity's sake, the best way to describe it is like a tug-of-war.

Graphical effects are quite good. Ghosts are transparent but some of them show their existence through shadows. How can ghosts have shadows??? Luigi's breath condenses as he breathes out heavily. His flashlight shows dust particles he kicks up floating in the beam of light and slowly settling down back on the ground.

It might be abit kiddy to some but I've had fun with it so far. There are ghost bosses to catch as well. I've had to reset and start all over again because I didn't manage to completely vacuum a Boo (one of the ghosts that's behind the disappearance of Mario) . I've checked all the rooms that are unlocked and still haven't found it. Boos are the smarter ghosts that go through walls and wait for you in the next room. I just gave up looking for this one, #7 out of 50 that I have to catch. # 51 is King Boo which is bigger from what I saw when I released them. Hey, its part of the plot progression of the game ok? If you don't release them, the story doesn't go on. I'd keep them locked up and save myself the trouble if I could.

OK, so that's it. Waiting for Super Smash Brothers Melee end of the month. Of course I can't wait for Resident Evil 1. Some other good games set to be coming out for the Cube. Mostly 1 player adventure games though. Resident Evil 0, Resident Evil 4, Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem, Starfox Adventures..hopefully Zelda will be good as well.

It's Saturday which means WWE Smackdown is on later tonight. Yes - its no longer WWF. They lost a legal case with the World Wildlife Foundation. They have a new slogan which is "Get the F... Out!" to signify the name change.

Think this is all for today's update. Take care, you all.