Month: November 2009

I got to see the queen again, today – she drove past me in her royal car. I went into town to meet up for lunch with some friends today. We planned to eat at a small restaurant on King’s Parade but it turned out that the queen was having lunch at King’s College right opposite. So, the entire street was blocked off from traffic. Well, I got to see the Queen as her car drove past everyone else on the way to King’s. I got the video to prove it too! The first time I got to meet the queen was in my first year at Cambridge. Since the road was so busy, we adjourned elsewhere for lunch.

It was nice to get to meet up with some of my favourite friends at Cambridge – these two in particular, are in my good books. I do so wish that we could spend more than just an hour or so catching up. There are so many interesting things that are happening in everyone’s lives. Well, some of my friends will be coming back to Malaysia to work after they graduate. I do hope that I’ll be able to catch up with them more often at home. I am such a busy-body, trying to know how people get on with their lives.

I also managed to get my copy of Burnout Paradise (non-ultimate) swapped with a Burnout Paradise Ultimate for the same price. All is well in this world.

PS: I hope to get a good rest tonight but I kinda think that it will be difficult. I do hope that I will be alert and thinking on my feet tomorrow.

I need to draw a line at some-point when it comes to bluray purchases. This was particularly true as I had the option of getting some movies and also tv series on bluray instead of DVD. However, it would be slightly more expensive. I deliberated this a bit and decided to draw a line.

I would continue to purchase DVDs for films that were shot prior to the HD era. There are a number of old classics being re-mastered into bluray. There is no reason to purchase these in bluray because they were not shot and made for HD. In essence, the originals are just being up-sampled to a higher resolution. A PS3 can already handle the up-sampling fairly decently by adding an oil-canvas feel to the images instead of noise.

I would also continue to purchase DVDs for sets that I already have parts of in DVD. It would not make sense to re-build my entire collection in bluray just because they were there. For example, I already have Spiderman 1 and 2 on DVD and it would not make sense for me to get Spidey 3 on bluray. Ditto for Battlestar Galactica. I already have everything except the last two seasons on DVD. It would not make sense for me to get the entire series again on bluray.

However, I made no qualms about getting the new Star Trek on bluray. I am actually looking forward to watching it on my PS3 in full-HD glory on my television. I think that I will probably organise a small gathering with some friends of mine to watch Star Trek on bluray after I get back. It’s supposed to be region free and it does not state a region on the cover. I just hope that it plays on my PS3!

Today, I dropped by the engineering department and met an old friend of mine from Beijing. We reminisced on how fast time flies and then a hot Chinese girl walked past – he turned to address her while I didn’t even realise that she was there until he talked to her. Something is terribly wrong with my radar – must be the jet lag. We can still both remember turning up at Cambridge as bright-eyed fresh students but now we look like a couple of old men. We are both of the same age and were working in the same division. I took a walk about the entire engineering department today – looking to see if there was anyone else I would recognise. I went to the DPO, the EIETL and library (common places to find students) but did not meet anyone else I knew. That just goes to show how old I am.

Then, I met up with another friend of mine for lunch. It was nice catching up with close friends. Then, I did the last of my shopping at HMV and bought as much as I could carry with me. I do hope that my luggage is not over-weight. I will try to keep my hand-luggage empty so that I can move some stuff out if necessary. Anyway, I am of the opinion that long haul flights are terrible as they mess around with my body. I am hoping to stay up as long as possible tonight so that I am so tired out that I get knocked out and gain a good nights sleep. I sure hope that this plan works.

My circadian rhythm is seriously out of whack. For the last few nights, I have been waking up at 3am and then just lying in bed unable to sleep until the sun comes up. Everything that I try to do does not work. I cannot sleep and this is worrying because I have an important date with destiny on Friday, which I need to be very alert for.

GAME blows. I went shopping today for some of my PS3 games and visited the GAME outlet on Fitzroy Street. There, I saw Burnout Paradise Ultimate on offer at £9.99 with any other purchase in store. So, I bought another game along with this one. I handed my order over to a lady at the counter, let’s call her C. She had to go to the back to get my other game so she handed the other game to a colleague, let’s call him B.

B proceeded to retrieve the Burnout Paradise Ultimate from their drawer and placed it on their shelve. After a while, C returned with my other game and proceeded to ring the cashier. Then, another guy, let’s call him A, came out and told me that they no longer have Burnout Paradise Ultimate. I asked him about the game that B had already taken out of the drawer and he told me that it was another one. Seeing that there is another Burnout Paradise (non-ultimate) I left it at that and left the store.

A few minutes later, I decided to go find out the price of the non-ultimate version and so went back into the store. I approached C and asked her which one did they have in the drawer. She looked in and produced Burnout Paradise Ultimate! They lied to me! So, I asked her to ring it up for me at £9.99 with another purchase but she was unable to as the system would not take it. So, she had to call out her manager.

The manager told me that the offer had expired yesterday and that they were supposed to remove the offer from the shelve this morning. I pointed out that he had to honour the price on the shelf but he said that legally speaking, he does not need to sell me anything as long as money has not changed hands. So, he was legally right to refuse to sell me the game at £9.99.

Then, there is the issue of his staff lying to me. I proceeded to explain the situation to the manager since he was not present at the time. As for the staff, they ended up covering for each other. C claimed that she was at the back looking for my other game and so, was not privy to the whole affair, which was fair enough. B claimed that he took out the game but had some problem with it and asked A for help. A claimed that he did not see the game that B took out and assumed that it was the other version.

The manager put it down to a communications problem. Everyone is right, nobody is at fault and the customer gets screwed. Needless to say, I returned one of the other games that I got from them and took my money elsewhere. I had only picked up that game because I felt that £9.99 was cheap for Ultimate. So, I bought another £9.99 game in return. But I’m so never going back to GAME.

PS: I ended up getting the non-ultimate Ultimate one from Argos instead for £12.50. At least, they honour the prices in their catalogue!

My first day of shopping here has been rather fortuitous. While I did not actually buy much, I did survey the prices of various items of interest and boy are they quite cheap. I will probably be getting a bunch of PS3 games for an average of about RM85 each. My only gripe on the PS3 games is that I cannot find a couple of solid titles like Uncharted and Metal Gear Solid for new. I might end up getting them pre-owned instead.

As for Bluray movies, I will probably be stocking up on a bunch, averaging about RM36 per disk. However, this does present a slight dilemma. In certain cases, I already have a bunch of movies on DVD. So, I would have to choose whether to get them on Bluray or not. For example, I have Batman Begins on DVD but I can get The Dark Knight for really cheap here on Bluray. The same would go for the Spiderman trilogy – I already have the first two on DVD.

The only draw-back about the Bluray would be – that I can only play it on my PS3 and not my PC. However, seeing that HD will be the wave of the future, I don’t see why I should not start stocking up on Blurays – considering the fact that they only cost slightly more than the DVDs. I think that I would probably get some of the more recent special effects movies on Bluray – such as Star Trek. There is really no reason to get old-movies nor anime on them.

I hate long haul flights. Thankfully for the A380, it had a wide selection of in-flight movies. So, I spent most of my flight watching films – 500 Days of Summer, State of Play, Time Traveler’s Wife, The Host (Kr), Laughing Gor (Cn). Now, I am kind of worried about my flight home. The good thing is that I will be flying home on a Boeing 777. Hopefully, they have a different selection of films on it. Otherwise, I might have to find something else to keep myself occupied with.

The flight was extremely uneventful. The food was decent, not great. One thing that I noticed about the A380 flight though, there are a lot of senior flight stewards and stewardesses on board – some of them look old enough to be grand parents. I don’t get to see them much so I assume that they are on board, doing some other tasks instead of serving the guests. After breathing cabin air for more than 12 hours, my nose starts to hurt. The on landing, my head started to hurt because my sinuses were slightly blocked (due to the bad cabin air).

Good thing that it did not last long.