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No doubt it is getting more and more difficult to upkeep the tradition of Chinese New Year. People give blessing to each other with “Happy Chinese New Year”. But how can “Gong Xi Fa Cai” – the original Chinese blessing be replaced by “Happy Chinese New Year”? In fact, I can’t even translate “Gong Xi Fa Cai” into English. There are elements of celebration, happiness, and prosperity – definitely different from “Happy Chinese New Year”.

Woke up at 3pm because I was gaming till 9 in the morning. First meal of the Chinese New Year has to be a vegetarian dish so I cooked – green vegetable, canned Chinese vegetarian food, and fresh Chinese mushroom. Not too bad although I am not a big fan of vegetarian food. Dinner with the same vegetable dish, steamed chicken, and Chinese sausage. Cooking is fun; cleaning up the dishes is horrendous.

I looked around my home and hardly see any element of Chinese New Year.

Anyway, Gong Xi Fa Ca to all of you.

As I am writing this blog, the two events seems so far apart. I jammed with Jason and I tried player-versus-player (PvP) first time in my life. Is that the alcohol effect? There seems to be a gap between the two events – one light and one dark one; one with someone real and one with someone on the other side of the Internet.

I remember that the jamming session was fun. We tried some new pieces and I believe that Jason and I have built some kind of vibe together. Even for the unfamiliar songs that I wrote, we were able to jam the pieces decently. Ah, not to forget we did one cover version – Nobody Knows by Tony Rich Project – upon my request. A very special song to me it is. We went to the extend that you can hear Jason’s guitar radiating pain and towards the end of the song, there were tears in my eyes. An emotional piece.

15th jamming session, Jason mentioned that it is indeed one of our milestone. I agree. Looking back, we have been through quite a fair bit. And I still keep the CD recording of each session. It is a reminiscence of our journey – a journey towards our dreams. By that I mean Jason’s dream, Cynthia’s dream, and my dream.

Hope that this New Year – Year of the Chicken – will bring forth new dimension to our band No Eye Candy and hope that by then, my vocal will be adequate for the band.

The server for the online game Dark Age of Camelot was down till 1.30am. My friend and I was anxiously waiting for the server to be up and we were lost, did not know what to do. Addiction.

Tonight, I tried player-versus-player meaning our group remotely teams up with the group from our realm tries to take out the groups from the other two realms. I have got to say as a novice, there was awfully a lot of running around the battlefield. Whenever we see enemies from the other realm – real persons and not just a computer generated monster – we whacked. More often than not, we got whacked, outnumbered, and perish.

Just another aspect of online gaming.

Having a whole set of songs’ instrumental tracks recorded gives forth a new challenge to me when recording the vocal tracks. First and foremost is the rhythm. When playing the guitar and singing at the same time, I am in control of the rhythm. So, unconsciously (or unskillfully) I may slow down some bars especially during the short filler bars. Now that the instrumental piece is more or less in a regular tempo throughout the song, singing to that consistent tempo is yet another challenge.

But then, the beauty of this is that I can focus very much on the vocal track itself. Having memorizing the song lyrics helps a great deal. This time round, I was in no hurry to record the entire nine songs in one night. Took my time and listened to the result after each recording. Very enjoyable.

My online gaming took a new height. Before I continue, let me impress upon you all how much fun MMORPG (massively multiplayer online role playing game) is. Computer games used to be a solo gaming experience. You set your own pace, your own goal, and play as and when you like it. Pretty much a game you lock yourself into a room, draw the curtain, and oblivious to the world passes by.

Sort of, not quite so. You still can sleep any time you like, eat any time you like, and do something else any time you like.

With MMORGP, it is no longer a solo game. To me, it is more so a sport. A complex sport indeed. Each player chooses one’s character and with a diverse set of classes, that makes the characters unique enough that when teaming up with others, the team can achieve a lot more than just on oneself. Got it?

Some classes are better in fighting, some classes are better in defense, and some classes can cast spells. Lots of bashing, healing, and when things get rough, a spell of resurrection won’t harm.

So what are we gaming for? For experience points that enable us to gain levels that in turn with training gives us better and more abilities.

During the last session, I was made a leader of a group of seven simply because my character was the highest level amongst all. As I was choosing my battle that the group can work on, as I was looking at each one’s eyes while they were resting from a long and hard battle, there was a certain kind of responsibility. Death always comes with a penalty on experience points and resurrection can be quite messy. Nothing saddens me more than seeing my entire group perish because of one leadership mistake.

The fun of it all? Teamwork and able to chat with people all around the world in between and during fights.

Priceless!

I have always wanted to be a writer and throughout the day, I dreamt nothing but became a writer. I have this wonderful idea back when I was in Bandung, Indonesia, during Easter and I have determined to put that in words. Hence I picked up Italo Calvino’s Six Memos for the New Millennium. Hopefully I get the essence before writing my story.

I plan to write the story in my website first and look for a publisher later. Perhaps the title of the story is A Saga of [something].

Woke up with a neck pain, probably because of last night’s online gaming till seven in the morning. So tired, have to forget about vocal recording again. Well, I have practice one session again to help me memorizing my songs and that was all.

Back when I played Sims 2, I found it intriguing that Sims with high neatness and dedication enjoy housework. And that, I can relate. When my place is dirty, I am allergic to the dust and all. While I am cleaning up my place, I actually feel better and better. Perhaps that is just me.

Two hours I spent cleaning up the place, two hours.

After finishing the housework at four, I had my tea time and since I want to return to my calling as a writer, I picked up Italo Calvino’s Six Memos for the Next Millennium. If there was only one writer I moan about his death, that would be Italo Calvino. I have read many of his novels – lost count indeed – I love all of them. In his Memos, he talked about the values that were closed to his heart as a literature writer. I have much to learn from him. Planned to finish the book in one day – a thin one indeed – but it was too heavy for me. I will probably have a separate posting one of these days.

Two hours has passed since I have read Italo Calvin’s book.

Online gaming can be very addictive. First of all, you will never know who you will be grouping with. Instead of those people from the Internet whom you don’t know of, I guess online gaming is a lot safer than online chatting. At least, the group has a common goal – kill the monsters and gain experience.

It was fun to group with many only to see all of us perish one after another; it was fun to see how the group pulls through adversity; it was fun to see how some of us fight back to the dungeon only to resurrect our team-mates who died along the way. Online gaming is fun, real fun.

Although I have decided to hibernate during Chinese New Year, there are a couple of things I cannot do without: a sumptuous New Year Eve dinner, 1st New Year Meal (vegetarian is a must), and a sumptuous New Year dinner (steam chicken is a must). Also, I gather most of the Chinese dinning place may be closed during the new year period and besides, can’t see myself dinning alone in this festival period, a visit to NTUC is a must.

I drove to NTUC – the supermarket – before noon hoping to beat the crowd (some people do work in Saturday, no?). The queues to the car park were the longest I have seen. When I reached the supermarket, most of the trolleys were gone. In fact, I took the last one. It was so crowded inside the supermarket that I kept on bumped onto and getting bumped by people. It was as though people all came out to shop for food during CNY. Strange!

As I was busy grabbing the food and vegetables, I was pleasantly surprised that there were so much fresh vegetables around. Even those that I seldom able to buy during weekends, I saw plenty of stock. I even bought two packets of spring onion – a rare commodity in any even weekends. And I have not seen so many (dead) chickens in NTUC before!

Strange indeed! You mean all the Chinese just decided to cook on New Year period? NTUC should consider stocking up fresh food every hour or so and not just for the New Year.

I was about to grab one of the corn chicken egg packets when one of the NTUC staffs anxiously stopped me and told me that new stocks were coming in 5 minutes. Yet another surprise – I mean I didn’t think that the “old” stock was any less fresh than the new ones. I guess the staffs are just being helpful.

My friend Mark told me that weekend afternoon is the best time for online gaming because all the Americans are in it. So right after my grocery shopping, I went online to play Dark Age of Camelot. This type of game can be quite addictive to me because ever since I was in the University, I spent much time “mudding”. Pretty much like nowadays’ Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game (MMORPG) but was all in characters. So you’ve got to see the perimeter of the dungeon in characters and got to see the monsters in characters such as @. Mark and I managed to team up with someone new and we did have much fun.

After dinner, I have decided to record the classic guitar track for all my nine new songs. I was wondering if I should record the practice session as usual but I didn’t think my voice can make it. I woke up with a soar throat and feeling weak the whole day.

Little would I know that recording the classical track for all nine songs can take that long. Since all tracks were one-take, any mistake along the way I would need to restart the entire recording again. I didn’t know that so much concentration of the mind was required. The moment my mind drifted to somewhere else, I made a mistake. At the end of the recording session, my fingers from my left hand were numb and so were the muscles of my right hand for all those heavy strumming. I gather the recording session was no less than four hours but I was both physically and mentally exhausted.

Nowadays, feel like I don’t have much control over time. Time just runs on its own. The experience is actually quite interesting because it is as though observing time in a third person point of view. Letting go of time is not easy because believe it or not, we want very much in control what is going to happen next. Letting go of time, in my experience, is a way to control time.

How come?

I think by letting go of time of on lesser important items do I able to control time on the more crucial items. No plan is the best plan seems like too much of an extreme. I will say, plan for the crucial things in our lives.

The rest? Just take it easy.