More Games

Ok, so I am almost, but not quite, done with my DungeonQuest task. I have 90 more pieces to put together. That sounds like a lot, however, the game contains over 364 pieces! I will be done with the construction soon.

If I like the game, I will build the expansion sets for it. I hope it is fun, after all of this work!

Today on Tanga there is a deal that I would love. The world of warcraft board game plus two expansion sets.

I know Siew'll be like "WHAT!?" when she reads this. I am not going to buy it. I cannot. However, I would LIKE to. That's different.

Here in Malaysia the base WoW game costs almost 400 Ringgit. The expansion included in that deal would cost 200 each, or more. The converted price for that deal is 195 Ringgit. . . That's an eighth or so of the price that I'd have to pay here.

What a deal.

Oh well, I can keep dreaming. It's not like I have anyone to play those games with me at home at the moment. :-)

Board/bored games

Recently, since coming to Malaysia basically, I have been wanting to play boardgames. I think part of this is a lack of social interaction in my life. Anyway, I usually drive Siew nuts wanting to look at boardgames.

I have seen some awesome looking boardgames at a few different stores, with some not so awesome prices.

Games like Doom, Runebound, Runewars, Starcraft, Warcraft, Claustrophobia, AT-43, Warhammer, Heroscape, and etc..

These games all range in price from 140 to 400 ringgit. . . that's a lot of money for a game!

To help counter this, I can, and have, print games out on the laser printer, mount them to cardboard, cut them out and tape the edges. This is a time consuming process. Very time consuming in some cases.

Example: Dungeonquest



This game seems interesting. You can have up to four players who compete to get to the dragon's treasure, steal some, and get out of the dungeon alive. From what I have read, this is a tough game.

I am currently building this game. I have completed several parts of the game, but not all of it. There are over 350 pieces to get ready for this, without the expansions.

Some people have been kind enough to put up really damned good scans of the tiles used in the game on BGG. This game, in this incarnation, is out of print. There is a newer one by Fantasy Flight games, but I have read not much good about it, and it is not available here.

It has taken weeks of working on pieces in my spare time at work to get about half-way done with the base set of this game. It is actually a lot of fun for me to think of ways to put things together to make them durable and attractive. It has become something of a hobby for me to construct board games.

Later, I will take a picture of the completed game and post it up here.

I also, bad of me, bought Heroscape: Battle for the Underdark recently. I had never tried Heroscape before. I like the idea of having a bunch of tiles to configure into different maps. It's kind of like Legos meets wargaming-light. There are nice looking miniatures included that will make for some fun play, solo or with a friend, if I had one that is.

Later Felix and I will have a lot of fun playing games. Siew can sometimes be persuaded to play, but she is not into games as much as I am.

Monster!

Today we went to Sunway Giza to meet a couple of friends of Siew's. We met them there and had some food at a place called Full House.

There were two friends of Siew's there. One has met Felix before. The other had not met him. She was very eager to make his acquaintance.

She had a lot of fun talking to him and holding him. She gave him a pair of small shoes and a bib that has something funny written on it:

"Handsome: like my daddy"

Later, I took Felix to walk around and look at a few things so Siew and her friends could have a nice time chatting.

I found that I needed to use the toilet. I took Felix back to Siew and then found a toilet. After that, I went back to the group. They were getting ready to leave so we all left. Siew and I walked around a bit and I found a great deal on some vitamins that I usually take. Then, in Village Market, I found something really amazing:



I have not seen American energy drinks in more than 2 years! I was so shocked. I was more shocked by the price. Each of the items here are 9.90 Ringgit! That's a lot for this type of thing. But, I have really been wanting to drink energy drinks, real ones, not the crappy types they sell here! I bought 2.

Here are 2 pictures of one of the drinks. I managed to drop the other can so it is very mangled, but I am going to save the nice can just for the hell of it.






It was nice to have this, but this is not something that is going to become a habit. Not at that price. Granted, it is cheaper then Starbucks or Coffee Bean, other places I pretty much never go to as well! Maybe, MAYBE, if they keep stock, I will indulge myself in a Monster one or two times per year.

One-at-a-Time

When I was in Penang I learned about an exercise called a pistol. I tried to do it, but was unable to do so.

A pistol is a one-legged squat. They work a huge range of muscles for one, relatively, simple movement. You need to have a combination of strength, balance, flexibility, etc. in order to pull it off.

Additionally, during that time, I learned about one-arm push-ups. Again, I was unable to do it.

I gave on both of these for a long time.

After we moved to K.L. I tried to do a pistol
again at a later date. . . and was able to do it. Without having done anything to build up to doing pistols I was able to do them.

I attribute this to stairs. We live in a place that has no elevator, fifth floor, so we have to walk up and down anytime we leave or arrive. At work I never use the elevator either, fourth floor. I am not a fan of elevators, my own legs are just fine. I have to assume the stairs strengthened my legs enough to enable me to be able to pistols.

While I was in Penang I had started to work on getting to a point that I could do one hundred push-ups. I found that following this exercise plan hurt my neck, severely, so I stopped. I had also been doing a lot of pushups in my classes. I had a rule that if anyone, including myself, was late, they had to do pushups. I was not often late, but was challenged to pushup competitions a few times.

There was one time that the students challenged me. I had to match, and beat, three people, adults, at pushups. I knew that one guy was better at pushups than the others, and tried to get him to go first, but he did not. Instead, another guy went first, then I matched his count. Then the next, and I matched his count again. The third went and did a lot of pushups, so I tried to match his count. I did it, but I had to cheat a little and take short breaks before continuing. After I matched his, I did one more just to be "better" than their total score. That day I did over one hundred pushups. It was very painful for many days after that!

Pushups have never been my strong point. My legs and abdomen, especially my abdomen, have always been my strengths. But, thanks to the Army, I am better attuned to pushups than most people.

The catch on this is that my left wrist has problems and pushups tend to hurt my wrist. Using pushup handles helps a lot, however.

Yesterday, some of my students asked me if I can do one-arm push-ups. I had not tried that in a long time, so I gave it a shot. . . and found that I can do them now.

I was shocked. I have not been exercising at all recently. Felix takes up too much time and I have been pretty lazy. I do not even go to Bujinkan classes at the moment!

So, what happened. The only thing I can think of is what Siew suggested is the solution. Chores.

You see, I help out around the house quite a bit. Including washing clothes, by hand. We do not have a washing machine, and have decided not to purchase one at this time either.

I knew my hand strength was increasing from washing, but I did not think my arm strength had improved. But, apparently, it has because I can do one-arm push-ups now.

I am so 1337 it hurts!

A friend of mine and I used to write messages on scraps of paper at our work place in Leet code. We had lots of fun making our versions as complicated as possible. I got to be pretty good at that.

I can even type in Leet pretty fast. Here is an example:

J00 4r3 |\|0|/\| r34di|\|g 4|\| 3><4|\/|p13 0p|-| |\/|j p3r50|\|41 \/3r5i0|\| 0p|-| 1337!

Translation for those of you who cannot, yet, read Leet:

You are now reading an example of my personal version of Leet!

What makes me suddenly write about this? Well, when I looked at my Gmail account today I saw the following information at the bottom of the page:

You are currently using 1337 MB (17%) of your 7494 MB.

So, I am using Leet megabytes! I am so bad-ass!

Note: This may not be amusing to everyone, some of you may not understand what the hell I am talking about and why. Please go here and read to learn what Leet means.

Note 2: Here is another definition of Leet. . . in Leet. (this made me laugh when I read it).

Note 3: This is my 200th blog post!