Weekend activities and the un-entertaining thought of having to go through Monday’s work routine

Okay, I failed to meet the weekend targets although I had been careful not to overaim. I didn’t send my car for service, and I have only reviewed one game of Shusaku, the Go master of the Edo period ( 1600 – 1868 ). Nevertheless, I would not be too hard to myself to consider the weekend had been wasted. I did achieve a few things afterall.

Firstly, I managed to install Windows 7 Ultimate on my nearly 4 year old laptop. I kept the old Windows XP operating system though by installing Windows 7 on different hard disk partition. So, now I could boot with either one, XP or Windows 7 although I dont really know what to do with the latter. I mean, XP serves me well already. But I have not played with Windows 7 long enough to even have a glimpse of its real power.

At first, the sound card would not work, so I downloaded the Realtek driver and it worked well, despite the warning saying that the driver was not compatible with the system. I like the new feel of the taskbar but not so much the Start Menu and how cluttered it is with so many things. But of course, I know they are customizable to meet whatever my preference is.

Ooops, a cockroach just drop dead suddenly in my room. Weird, but won’t waste brain cells over it.

Regarding Go, the league had started again. This time, I will try to play as many league games as earliest possible, because last time I had to forfeit deposit RM50 for not finishing my games. Alex, the tournament director, sure knows how to do business 🙂 But this time, the league will be much harder for stronger player because the handicap system is applied. At the moment, I have two wins against Song Sang and Wynes, and 1 loss against Ho.

I played a lot, which left me less time to meet my other Go target which was to review 3 games of Shusaku. As I said, I only managed one review. Sure, Shusaku was a genius, but like Shakespeare, one might fall asleep while going over his masterpiece.

Also, just now I was in the cinema watching Angels and Demons. It was superb! I love it a lot, especially the suspense, the plot and how the whole story concluded. My sister didn’t rate it too highly though, saying that the movie did not follow the book and missed one key character, the CERN director. Well, I completed the book too but I dont mind the minor changes.

I hope other books from Dan Brown, Deception Point and Digital Fortress will also be made into movies.

It’s already half-past midnight and I should retire to bed anytime soon. I’m delaying that, because weekend would end as soon as I close my eyes 😦 And Monday with all dullness that it brings will instantly begin!

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Dragonball Evolution

My head is still dizzy from spending a large portion of yesternight playing Metal Gear Solid 4, so I chose to have a quiet lunch today at San Francisco Coffee. I grabbed a copy of Malaysian Today (a newsletter, not Raja Petra’s newsportal), and came across a review of Dragonball Evolution.

The MT reviewer rated it 3 stars, but I would give 3.5 (out of 5). The movie was pleasant, and I dont find the fact that Goku went to high school to be annoying, as the MT reviewer had found it. Come on, where else would Goku meet Chi Chi then? Somewhere near a burning castle as in the original storyline? I guess I prefer the high school version.

All characters were played well, especially Bulma and Master Roshi. But I expect more action and acrobat from Goku, but the movie does not have many more moves than those shown in the trailer. The fight against Picolo was also too short, just like the whole movie itself.

In brief, the following are things I would have liked to see in the movie:

1. More world destruction from Picolo before he’s terminated
2. More fighting from Master Roshi (Chow Yun Fat). Instead the movie showed too much of Bulma and Chi Chi fighting, which did not interest me at all.
3. Goku to beat up those high school bullies. Who cares about his pledge not to fight in school. That would be real fun 🙂
4. Harsher training for Goku. The training shown in the movie is not even 1/100 of what was in the real manga.

Well, that should be enough. Still, I would recommend this movie, because it’s fun, cute and reminds me of old times where I spent days after days reading manga 🙂

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Underworld : Rise of the Lycans

We all know that Vampires suck. Well, this movie is full of them. To be fair, the werewolves suck too, non-literally.

I miss Kate Beckinsale.

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Rotten Rotten Tomatoes

If Malaysian politic is a movie, now is the time to be saying “arghh .. it’s so draggy”. So many people complain about it, saying that the interest of people are being overlooked. Well the bright side is, I am finding myself less and less interested in visiting political blogs and Malaysia Today website. So draggy ..

Talking about draggy, I watched Hellboy II : The Golden Army recently.

I only got bad things to say about this movie. It started slow, very slow and the characters presentation were badly designed, especially if you are used to Lord of the Rings’ quality of exotic creatures. There was also some suspense of whether Hellboy will stray to the darkside or not, but since he remained in the good side all the way, that was pretty much useless. Maybe the movie was trying to get the audience ready for Hellboy III when he might go against the Earth, but that was probably all. Getting people anticipating for Hellboy III.

Not suprisingly, the movie is highly rated in Rotten Tomato. I wonder why, I always find myself disagreeing with it. Maybe those critics there try to be different and do not want to acknowledge the obvious? That the great movies are great and bad movies are bad? I dont know. Anyway I find suggestions and reviews from close friends to be more reliable.

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