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Updated as often as I can manage

Friday, May 28, 2004
Some of you might just remember my encounter with Real Madrid nine months ago here at Dragon-i in Hong Kong. Well, it happened again. AC Milan were here, and as you all know, they only trail Liverpool in my list of favoured teams. I love Milan, so being able to meet them meant more to me than seeing Real (who I also support, though their arrogance has seriously turned me off -- but that's something for another time).

Last time, I wasn't allowed to tell anyone, so Kavi and Haneal missed out. This time there were no restrictions, so I immediately called Kavi and Mukund to get ready to come out to Dragon-i to meet the team... should they decide to come out and party. What I didn't tell them was that I had a way in to an earlier "event" with the team -- possibly dinner, possibly a cocktail, possibly anything -- except that fell through when I arrived minutes too late (turns out it was a press conference/cocktails). So I was left on HK Island with nothing to do for two hours until they were supposed to arrive at Dragon-i, since all my friends were on Kowloon and Kavi was stuck at a family dinner. So I went to Dragon-i, grabbed a table, and... waited. I ordered dinner in the meantime and ate it as slowly as possible, all the while texting everyone and anyone I could to try and kill time until either Kavi, Mukund or AC Milan showed up.

The team arrived first, with a lot of random youth team players walking through with the occasional star like Abbiati, Ambrosini, Serginho or Tomasson showing up. But then came the two players EVERYONE wanted to see: Andriy Shevchenko and the great Paolo Maldini. Mind you, when I say everyone, I don't mean in the Real Madrid sense -- it was really quiet in comparison. Even later on it was more like a busier-than-average Friday night than something special. And at the beginning, it was really, really quiet.

And that's when I made my move. I saw Maldini standing almost on his own. I asked Gilbert, one of Dragon-i's owners, if he could introduce me to Maldini, which he kindly did ("one of your big fans", he said) -- and then he snapped a picture for me.

You know... meeting the Real players was very cool. Beckham, Zidane, Ronaldo, Figo, Roberto Carlos... those are great players. But Maldini is a legendary player. Whereas the likes of Zidane and Figo will be remembered as the best players of their time, Maldini is one of the greatest of ALL TIME. His achievements -- 126 caps for Italy, 7 Serie A titles and 4 European Cups with Milan -- are amazing, but they really don't tell the story of how great Maldini really is. He's been the best defender in the world for well over ten years, was Man of the Match in a World Cup Final he eventually lost, and is easily the best left-back in the history of the game. Pacy, strong, good in the air, comfortable on the ball, excellent in the tackle, and always clean: he really has no faults and no detractors, as even those who dislike the Italian defensive mentality praise Maldini for being sheer class. I honestly can't say enough about just how truly great Paolo Maldini is, so it was an incredible honour to meet him.

Kavi and Mukund turned up later and we had a great time. We bumped into a couple of ex-KGVers (including Hayley from my year, who I hadn't seen in ages), but as good as it was to see them it was all about Milan. I spoke (briefly!) to Jon Dahl Tomasson and got a picture with Massimo Ambrosini, but the only disappointment was that I couldn't get a picture or a word with Shevchenko. I've spent the last few months constantly bleating on about how Shevchenko is the best striker in the world right now, even better than Thierry Henry, so it's kinda ironic that he totally shunned me when I tried to say "hi" and was otherwise inaccessible (no matter: he's still the best striker in the world!).

Milan are playing some rubbish local team here ("Kitchee", in case you're interested) on Sunday, and after this it'll be fun to see them in action. I never thought the Real Madrid experience would be topped, but the surreal-ness aside of walking in to a quiet Dragon-i and seeing three World Players of the Year in Zidane, Ronaldo and Figo eating ten metres away, this was probably better. I have photographic evidence, for one, and I met one of the greatest players who ever lived.

Wonder which team will come down here next year...

Posted at 5:39 AM

Thursday, May 27, 2004
I know I'm supposed to wrap up my Japan trip and post the last day's diary, but there are two things I need to talk about first.

Firstly, the third season of 24 is over and I've seen all of it. I'm going to steer clear of most spoilers here and only speak in very general terms, but even then the sensitive among you (like er, myself) might want to steer clear of the next paragraph.

Overall, this season DEFINITELY wasn't as good as the first two. It had some absolutely brilliant stand-out moments, yes, but it also had some awful ones (including the dumbest subplot since Teri's Amnesia). It wasn't balanced too well, starting off so-so, getting steadily worse, then suddenly kicking into high gear and staying good right through to the end, which redeemed what was looking like an awful season at one point. My problem is that they don't seem to know what to do anymore. The season wasn't balanced properly in that plots and threads were all over the place, and the ending seemed rushed (good, but rushed). There were also too many twists -- yeah, 24's all about twists, but like Metal Gear Solid 2... you can only be tricked so many times before you stop taking it seriously. And here, there were just a few too many twists like that. My biggest problem though was that whereas Seasons 1 and 2 were closely tied together, Season 3 has very little to do with Season 2, which will surprise anyone who saw the ending to Season 2. Still, the last 8 or so episodes in the season were awesome, and they had a lot of good plots and some great moments. At the end of the day, I'd say it's like the Simpsons just after their peak: Not as good as the peak, but still good, and though the overall quality is down, you still get moments that remind you why you love the show.

The second thing is that I finally played Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow online with Mukund, and it's awesome. I'll try to explain it quickly, because it's a fairly complex game. Basically, it's 2 on 2, except each side plays the game in a totally different way. What I mean is that one team are the Spies, and the others the Guards. The Spies play the game pretty much like normal Splinter Cell: You're controlling an agile spy that can climb over walls and set traps and sneak around in the dark, and you have to accomplish goals like stealing items or hacking into a system. The other team, the Guards, have to stop you. Unlike the spies, they play the game in a first-person view (like a normal shooter, basically) and also unlike the non-lethal spies, they have access to a ton of weaponry.

It's cool because it's really well balanced. Each side only has specific items -- the guards for example have motion detectors, but the spies have thermal detectors. The guards have frag grenades, the spies have remote cameras. And the levels are also tailored for both, with lots of crawlspaces and climbing routes for the flexible spies to play around with, but also a lot of security doors that only the guards can go through.

This all leads to some awesome gameplay scenarios. In the Museum stage, the spies can clamber on to the ceiling panels and sneak silently above the guards' heads -- except if they walk a little too fast, the guards can hear and track them. And even though in general the spies are non-lethal (most of the time the worst they can do is put a guard to sleep), if they sneak up behind a guard they can snap his neck -- and brilliantly, once you have someone in a choke-hold you can speak to them!

And you can't hate a game where you can do that. In the Cinema stage, I just escaped from Mukund the Guard's clutches by running into a vent. At the top, I saw a pipe running horizontally along the ceiling of the main lobby, leading to another cinema on the far side. So I got up, put my feet up, and shimmied across the pipe. Half-way across, I spotted Mukund searching for me way below. I stopped in case he had a motion detector on. He kept searching. He couldn't see me! So then I unhooked my legs to hang from the pipe... dropped down to the carpet... crept up behind him... and snapped his neck. He later said that not once in the seven minutes we played did he see me. Which is just really, really cool.

PS: If you're wondering where the comments are, Blogger's just introduced its own (better!) comments system, and I'm still trying to figure out how to activate them. Should be up by the next time I post.

Posted at 5:31 AM

Tuesday, May 25, 2004
Liverpool sacked their first manager in almost 50 years when they got rid of Gerard Houllier yesterday.

Now, there's a lot to be said about his bad transfer dealings, or his style of play, or any of the other downsides to his reign, but I'd rather pay tribute to Houllier because I honestly believe his reign will be remembered as a good one -- after all, he's won more than Roy Evans and Graeme Souness combined.

I haven't been supporting Liverpool for all that long really -- about ten years or so? -- but Houllier's reign has easily been the most successful. There's something to be said about how much fun Roy Evans' crazy teams (with Fowler, Redknapp and McManaman in full flow) were, but those teams were also painful to watch. Yeah, we'd win games 4-3 and 4-2, and we'd often beat big teams like Newcastle and Arsenal, but we'd also lose 1-0 to the likes of Coventry. Ultimately, as flashy and complete as that Liverpool team looked, it simply didn't have the right stuff to even contend for the title -- let alone win it. No matter how awesome we'd look in taking some teams apart, we had fundamental flaws that Manchester United in particular would ruthlessly expose and destroy us (David James and Brad Friedel made Liverpool-career-ending mistakes against them, and I'll never forget Pallister strolling in past our awfully weak aerial defence to head home two goals at Anfield). And no championship team loses 1-0s to Coventry. Championship teams grind out results even when doing badly. We couldn't do that.

Houllier came in, made his mark on the team and cleared out a lot of my favourite players -- including Robbie Fowler, my all-time favourite. And he replaced them with a bunch of players that I personally didn't like and were much maligned in general (like Smicer and Heskey). But you know what? He made it work. Heskey chipped in with 22 goals in his first full season, and after only hitting one in his first Smicer fired in almost ten in the next. We had a certain toughness about us. We were solid at the back, we were brilliant on the counter, and we started to develop that ability to grind out results.

It culminated in that magnificent couple of years when we managed to win five trophies, then genuinely challenged for both the league and European Cup. Michael Owen was European Footballer of the Year, then followed it up with World Soccer's Player of the Year to go alongside Houllier's Manager of the Year and Liverpool's Team of the Year. Yeah, it was on the basis of winning "second-rate" competitions like the FA Cup and UEFA Cup (the league and Champions League being the real prizes), but the expectation was that it would be the first in a string of successes -- the warning shot across the bows of the winning clubs.

Except it never came. For whatever reason, Houllier was never able to build on what he'd already achieved, and instead we fell and so he had to go.. But like I said, I'm not going to get into all that. I'm going to go over the good times instead. After all, he actually made us contenders. He brought us that much closer to being able to win the big prizes, and for that I thank him.

And I also thank Houllier for the great memories from his time at Anfield. There were his three victories at Old Trafford (all 1-0, all Danny Murphy), not to mention some great performances at home against the old enemy; Gary McAllister's incredible free-kick to seal a vital 3-2 victory over Everton; the unreal 5-4 UEFA Cup Final win over Alaves; Michael Owen's winner against Arsenal in the FA Cup Final; his emotional return in "that" game against Roma in the Champions League; 4-0 against Arsenal... there were an awful lot of great moments. And again, it's not a singular moment, but just knowing we were contenders again.

So, thanks for all the memories Gerard. It might not seem like it right now, but we do appreciate it.

Posted at 4:48 AM

Saturday, May 22, 2004
Ugh, this is just... retarded. I'm sitting in Narita Airport now and after an hour, I finally got on the Internet. Cathay's lounge was closed thanks to the renovation in the south wing of Terminal 1, so Cathay gave me a ¥2000 meal coupon (uh, thanks, but not only did I have tonkatsu in Roppongi Hills but I bought fresh cheesebread too). Since I got here two hours early, I decided to make it my mission to get on the Net. I spent forever looking for a wireless hotspot despite seeing so many listed on the web that I never bothered to bring the list -- I figured I'd just find it. Except I didn't. So I literally started walking through the entire terminal with my Clie in front of me, hitting "Scan..." every few minutes.

Eventually, I saw the Intel Centrino sign (Centrino being their Wi-Fi solution), and I was about to say THANK GOD FOR INTEL when I sat down and tried to use it. Seems it doesn't work with my Palm. I had to whip out the iBook and start it up (which is really no small feat, it takes forever) just to get on, only to find that the problem was their Login splash page. It just won't load on NetFront on my Clie, which normally has no trouble handling similar pages in HK but just can't deal with this one. So stupid. So annoying.

At least the Lakers beat the Timberwolves in Game 1 of the Western Conference Finals... sweep! Sweep!

Posted at 4:24 PM

Thursday, May 20, 2004
I'm now in Tokyo. Hurrah! If you're wondering about the post times and dates... I'm writing this well after the fact, but adjusting the post dates and times so they're filed under the correct date. So even though the last two posts were written at the same time as this one, since they're covering specific dates I've listed them under those dates.

I went off to Yokohama today. We have a flat in Yokohama, so I used to spend a LOT of time there as a kid (I'm not staying in the flat because I don't want to deal with cleaning it -- and I doubt my grandfather would give me the keys anyway). I had heard that there was a new subway there, ending close to my house in Motomachi... but I didn't realise how close until I got out. It's literally two minutes walk from my house, between the Chinatown gate and Meidi-Ya by Yamashita Park. I got out, stood and gaped for a bit. I couldn't believe it. I even chanced the rain and whipped out my camera for a few shots. Pity though that the camera couldn't capture the weirdness inside the station: You know the beeping noise escalators make periodically when you get off at the end? The ones in Yokohama don't beep, they let off seagull noises. Weird.

After that, I walked through Chinatown to Motomachi (Chinatown naturally holds little of interest to someone from Hong Kong, though I was amused to see what looked like bauhinias -- our national symbol -- planted there). Down in Motomachi there's an awesome bakery called Pompadour there, and they serve something we've feasted on forever... cheesebread. It's just a loaf of French bread with bits of cheese inside, and it's absolutely delicious.

I then took a cab to the new part of Yokohama, Minato Mirai, built up in the last 10-15 years out of old docklands. The Queen's Mall there has what is easily the most RETARDED layout in history. There are "blocks" of shops called "At! 1st" etc, each with different floor listings. Which might imply that they're in seperate buildings, or seperate sections of the mall. Instead they're all right next to each other on the same floors. And some escalators go to some stores and not others, and one restaurant literally had no visible means of entrance. Ridiculous. What WAS cool though was that alongside picking up some neat things for the kids from the World Sports Store (no Nakata shirts for me though... and a crazy over-emphasis on Matsui over Ichiro) there was a Harry Potter Collection store on the bottom floor. The store itself was really high-end -- lots of Harry Potter art, vases, crystals etc -- but what was awesome was that the store was way down in the third basement, and if you look down on the roof of the store from the floors above you can see a Quidditch pitch up there! It's about as cool as the giant inflatable Snoopy marking the entrance to Snoopy Town, which I avoided because I knew I'd blow my entire budget there (though I feel really bad about not going now, because... it's Snoopy...).

The last thing I needed to do in Yokohama was eat tonkatsu at Katsuretsu. Now, this was really starting to bug me, because the usual Katsuretsu we go to is in a rather anonymous location (naturally, once I relayed this to my family they shouted at how easy it was and proceeded to give me proper directions... which is all good, but it'd have been nice if they told me all that YESTERDAY) which I'd never find on my own. But I do remember there being one somewhere in the massive underground mall near Yokohama Station. Where exactly, I didn't know. And to make matters worse, there were TWO giant underground malls, and both rang familiar bells in my head: Lumina and Diamond. Unlike yesterday, I guessed correctly, because I picked Diamond and it was there. So good. So, so good. For the uninitiated, tonkatsu is a fried breaded pork cutlet. It's fairly common outside Japan, but the difference between tonkatsu outside Japan and inside is apparent the instant you bite into it, because this literally MELTS in your mouth. So nice that I had two, and have absolutely no regrets.

Then it was off to have a few drinks with the Tokyopia crew at their regular Thursday gathering. My relationship with Tokyopia is a really weird one. I think I was the only member of the site that actually wasn't living in Tokyo when it was founded, and though people have moved out to LA now, I'm still one of the few who's a regular member of the "community"... but one who's actually never met 90% of the current crew. I swap emails with them every day, I've played with them on Xbox Live... but never met them until now. It was really good to finally match faces to names, especially since they were all awesome people and I had a great time there. I took a few pictures too, but there were so many cameras being waved around that I had no worries about a lack of pictures from the night!

Last note from today: Yesterday I said it rained like mad. For the most part, it was a drizzle today. But then at around 2am I decided to head off to the convenience store for a few Cokes, and it was like the apocalypse or something, POURING with rain and windy. It definitely looked like a typhoon was upon us, which I'd heard before but never really believed. It's not a strong one by the feel of it so far, but my fear is that it'll be close enough to give me a turbulent take-off. I'm seriously worried about this and I really hope it veers away as soon as possible...

Posted at 2:44 AM

Wednesday, May 19, 2004
In Forrest Gump, when he goes off to war his beloved Lieutenant Dan (Gary Sinise) gives him one bit of advice: Bring a fresh pair of socks.

I now realise the wisdom in that advice.

See, it's been raining today. All day. Sometimes heavy, sometimes almost drizzly, but it's constant. It keeps coming at you. It comes sideways, it comes from awnings, it comes from behind, and it comes from below as it rebounds off the ground.

Helping the rain was also my decision to wear my adidas ClimaCool shoes -- the ones that let air in easily to cool your feet. My reasoning was that this means they'll dry easily. Of course, this means I'll get wet easier, but I figured it was a fair tradeoff considering how hard it can be to dry truly soaked shoes. By the end of the day I swear I was in the beginning stages of trench rot. It was DISGUSTING.

Anyway, I got up late thanks to last night's exertions, and figured I'd head to Roppongi Hills for a quick bite before shopping in Akihabara and Ginza. I leave the hotel in a light drizzle -- light enough that I figure I can get by without an umbrella. But halfway to the Hills I realise that I forgot the hotel's name cards, which are utterly INVALUABLE in telling (or showing) taxi drivers where the hotel is. I turned back. By the time I nabbed them and walked out again... I figured I'd get soaked. So I tried to take the subway to Roppongi Hills, except despite being literally a stop away, the walking involved in changing lines pretty much meant that it was probably quicker to walk there. And then when I got out of the station... hrm, this didn't look like Roppongi Hills. Must be around here somewhere. Should I go left or right? Let's go right. Must be around here somewhere...

See, generally I have a very good sense of direction. Unlike the rest of my family I'm also great with maps. And being an Internet and gadgety sort of guy, I downloaded tons of maps off the net and pictures of locations for comparison's sake and stuffed them on my PDA. I figured I was set. Even though Tokyo's streets are somewhat nonsensical and windy and poorly marked, those maps augmented by my sense of direction would allow me to get the better of Tokyo's streets. Well, it didn't. In fact, Tokyo's streets rather kicked my arse. For a start, the rain meant my expensive PDA had to stay well protected in my pocket, killing my main advantage. That just softened me up for Tokyo's winding nonsensical streets to knock me out with. You'd think finding Tokyo's tallest building would be easy, but it took me a good 20 minutes walking in circles to find the Mori Building... and naturally, if I had just turned left from the station I'd have found it within two minutes.

That was just the first in a long, long string of bad decisions. Literally whenever I had a choice to make, I seemed to make the wrong one. For example, I decided to buy an umbrella from the station. Instead of one of the big ones, I picked a small one, reasoning that this would be easier to carry and less unwieldy. Except a small umbrella couldn't cover my feet (shoes soaking aargh), bag AND me at the same time -- so I had to kind of clutch my shoulder back at my front to avoid soaking my GBA/digicam/iPod. Speaking of which, looking for pictures? No dice. Rained too much, and I'm not getting that thing wet.

Roppongi Hills is pretty cool, though it's almost over-landscaped and over-developed to the point where it feels like another part of Disneyland. There's a lot of striking structures and architecture there, from the unique little stone mall with what looks like a craggy crack splitting it in half to the glass domes. But the problem was they (for some odd reason) rather liked the idea of, every so often, having the roof split to let the rain in. Just not clever.

I didn't find anything to pick up for a quick bite to eat at Roppongi Hills though, since it's generally fancy sit-down restaurants that I didn't have time for (and even the Starbucks sucked -- no tea frappucinos?!). I figured I'd skip lunch and head straight to Akihabara to snack on Mister Donut there. Except Mister Donut burnt down in a fire a few months ago. So for my first meal on my first full day in Japan... I had to go to McDonald's. The McChicken was really good but... that's not why I'm here!

One thing I WAS there for was to shop. And I had a great time walking through all the electronics stores. For the most part, things were more expensive than Hong Kong, though there were bargains here and there and crucially a lot of items you can't get at home. Among the neat things I snagged was a lot of classic Famicom stuff (memorial DVD, etc) and one of those nonsensical Japanese t-shirts that said "I AM AC ADAPTER MAN". I also bought a big present for the kids (no hints as to what it is!). Still, I'd be happy just walking and looking, and I saw some cool stuff there. There was a US import store there, and they had neat things like Super Monkey Ball figures and even Majora's Mask figurines. I also saw Sony's new ebook, the Libré. It looked really cool, and I'm starting to think that these things might take off soon. It's small and light, and the screen is REALLY sharp (apparently the resolution is that of newspaper) and easy on the eyes. The cool twist with this ebook is that it uses "e-ink" instead of a traditional screen. What this means is it only uses power to change what's on screen -- so the only time it's actually draining the battery is when you're "turning the page". While you're reading it, it's effectively off. It's awesome. Someday soon, we'll see the "iPod" of ebooks, and we'll wonder why we kept lugging around tons of paperbacks when we could keep it all in one unit...

After Akihabara, I went to Ginza for one more store: The Apple Store, Ginza. It's so purdy. I really wish I had pictures of THIS. The entire building is clad in grey metal, looking a lot like a Power Mac G5, especially with the glowing white Apple logo on the side. What was REALLY cool though was that right across the street, the Matsuya building was decked out in a weird plasticy white surface with a glass covering... basically, if the Apple Store was a G5, it looked like an iPod or iBook, that sort of white reflective finish. Really good combination.

The night was finished off by meeting up with Jason Cha (chaj of #vidgames fame) for dinner at Torigen, another of my Tokyo favourites. Torigen serves a unique dish known as "kamameshi", which is basically kettle-cooked rice. It might not sound or look too appetising, but it's really tasty and as I said it's not something you find in restaurants outside Japan.

Overall, I have to say it was a good day... which was really rather remarkable considering just how amazingly bad all my decisions were. Seriously, if you could pick one day for everything to go wrong...

Posted at 4:03 AM

Tuesday, May 18, 2004
I hate turbulence. I can't stand it. I know some people find it fun, and I know that in general turbulence is harmless, but man... nothing freaks me out like turbulence. It's not a vomiting thing, just a heart thing. Turbulence makes my heart go absolutely nuts, and no matter how much I try to relax I can't.

I say this because the latter half of my flight was extremely turbulent. The first half was super-smooth, but suddenly it got a bit bumpy. For the most part, I kept calm and cool. Concerned, but calm. What unnerved me though was that it was the sort of turbulence that normally warrants the Fasten Seatbelt sign, but the captain didn't activate it. Was he too busy fighting it? Or was it not strong enough for him? Either way, I said that I didn't want to know what it would take for him to switch the light on. Naturally, the light then blinked on, and it got a LOT worse. We went every which way, left, right, up, down... look out the windows, and it's all thick cloud. Just unreal. It was pretty bad as we descended too, but thankfully they were high clouds only so it cut off around 3000 metres. If not, it might have rivalled Stockholm for my Worst Landing Ever...

One funny note for anyone who knows about Tokyo's Narita Airport: We were stuck for an hour in immigration, and as we waited a woman behind me said "Oh dear, this line is so long we might have to take a taxi to get into town on time." Taking a taxi from Narita is murder. There is absolutely no advantage to it. It's INCREDIBLY expensive (?20,000?), you get caught up in traffic, and it takes longer anyway. I took the Narita Express train with my uncle and sped into Tokyo Station within an hour or so. We went to his office first before they checked me into my hotel, the Villa Fontaine in Roppongi. It's basically a business travellers' hotel, so it's pretty comfy and bare-bones at the same time. For instance, there's a big bed, massage chair and free broadband access... but there's literally room for nothing else in here and the room service menu consists of a Domino's menu and a list of what you can get in the vending machine (including "Japanese Hotchpotch" and "Hash and Rice"). Still, I'm not exactly going to spend all my time in here, and the bathroom is at least pretty good, so no complaints really.

We went for yakitori dinner and a few drinks after I checked in, but otherwise it was pretty quiet. Roppongi itself seems pretty seedy, but I'm thankfully in a decent area not too far from the big new Roppongi Hills complex. I'm planning to check it out tomorrow, and will report back then!

Posted at 3:48 AM

Sunday, May 16, 2004
I'm heading for Tokyo in the morning, and will blog accordingly (I have my laptop, an Ethernet connection in the room, and a list of Tokyo's free Wi-Fi hotspots!). Until then, two things on my mind...

Firstly, Sony's PSP versus Nintendo's DS. Naturally, this is not the perspective of someone who was at the show and played with the product, but an outside (albeit an outsider who watched both press conferences live thanks to GameSpot's wonderfully stable T1 stream!). I have to say I was rather let down by both handhelds -- and at the same time I was totally surprised by both.

The PSP was shown first, so let me go over that first. It is MUCH more powerful than I thought it'd be. I really didn't think it would approach the PS2 in power, but it did. It looks fantastic, the screen is huge, and it has a big lineup of games, some of which look like direct PS2 ports. But that's the main problem: I'm excited about playing all my PS2 games on the go... but it's still all your PS2 games...on the go. I've played these before. Except now I get to play them on the go. Which is cool and all, but nothing spectacularly new and innovative. What really bugged me was that there was word of some "connectivity" between PSP and PS2, along the lines of transferring your game so you can continue playing on the go (for instance, racing in GT4 Mobile... then uploading the results and prize money to GT4 on PS2). Nintendo brought this up years ago with their GameCube to Game Boy link, but the difference in power between the systems meant it wasn't workable. It is now with PSP and PS2, but we didn't hear anything of it. My other PSP concern is battery life -- which Sony themselves didn't help by saying it'll last for anywhere between 2 to 10 hours (uh, thanks). Look, I know I won't use it for 10 hours at a time (I NEVER hit the iPod's 8 hour limit, and I listen to music more than I play with handheld systems), but anything under 4-5 hours is just unacceptable. Still, it'll have Winning Eleven, so I'm buying it.

The DS, on the other hand, surprised me with its power (N64-level) and with the cool uses for the touchscreen, as well as Wi-Fi (which PSP has too). But the biggest selling point of the DS is, naturally, the dual screens. When Nintendo announced it, I figured they'd have tons of great uses for it that they were keeping under wraps (their initial example was... "two angles of a tackle in a soccer game", which is retarded). Guess what? They didn't show a SINGLE game that showed off a good use for two screens. Not a single one. Sorry, but I don't consider a map a good use of a second screen -- especially when it's a bare-bones vector map like in Metroid Prime Hunters (which otherwise looked great, graphically anyway). I also have reservations about the specific ergonomics of the stylus: Yes, PDAs use a stylus, but you're never pecking at the screen while holding the d-pad on one side of the unit, so it seems like it might be a bit hard to grip. Still, like the PSP I'm definitely buying it (for Wario Ware/Made in Wario and Mario Kart at the very least, though whatever New Super Mario Bros and Super Mario 64x4 are they look cool).

The second thing on my mind is football, but not Liverpool this time. Instead, my favourite player of all time, Roberto Baggio, has officially retired from the game. Baggio's had both an amazing and unfortunate career. On the one hand, he's scored more World Cup goals than any other Italian (9 in 3 seperate World Cups, another record), played for Italy's three biggest clubs (Juventus, AC Milan and Inter Milan), and became only the fifth player to hit more than 200 Serie A goals. On the other hand, he's been blighted by severe injuries and fell out of favour with many Italian coaches, who see his type of "fantasy player" (ie, all attack and no defence) as a luxury in the modern game... and at what should have been his greatest triumph -- the 1994 World Cup, where he came in as European and World Footballer of the year and fired five goals that took Italy to the final -- he missed the deciding penalty in the final and sealed most foreigners' enduring image of him. To Italians though he was legendary. I think what sealed THAT for Italians was when he dropped down to lesser clubs like Bologna and Brescia and became even better. In 2002 he made a late run at the World Cup squad by starting the season scoring 8 goals from 8 games before suffering a "season-ending" injury. He was back within two months. Then with two months to go, he had ANOTHER "career-threatening" injury. He made it back with three weeks to spare AND scored in his comeback game. In the end, Trapattoni decided not to take him to Japan, and not surprisingly it was a very unpopular decision...

Incidentally: I had my hair cut today by the same woman who used to cut Steven Gerrard's hair. Gerrard!

Posted at 9:41 AM

Saturday, May 15, 2004
TONS of stuff to cover, and oh-so-little time. So:

- I'M ON HOLIDAY! Yes, I've actually officially taken the next week off, so as of right now I'm on vacation. I'll be going to Tokyo on Tuesday, coming back on Saturday, and I can't wait to go. It'll be the first time I'm going anywhere on my own, so it should be great. And yes, I WILL be blogging from Tokyo!

- THE INCREDIBLES TRAILER IS OUT: See it at Apple here. The Incredibles is the new Pixar film directed by Brad Bird of The Iron Giant and Simpsons fame. It looks awesome, and will likely sweep all before it when it comes out on November 5th. SAVE THE DAY!

- The Lakers pulled off an insane victory. It's hard to state how important this is. LA tied the series at 2-2 going into last night's Game 5 in San Antonio, in a building they've never won in, knowing that whoever grabs a 3-2 lead will have an incredible opportunity to win the series. Kobe hit a great shot with 11 seconds left to put the Lakers up 72-71. Then Tim Duncan, being smothered so effectively by Shaquille O'Neal that he couldn't even SEE the hoop, tossed up a prayer... and incredibly, made it to put the Spurs up 73-72 with 0.04 seconds left (that's FOUR TENTHS of a second). They ran off in celebration like they'd won the game -- and 99% of the time, that shot WOULD have won the game. The Lakers had one last shot, and Phil Jackson drew up a play for Kobe to be the winner. Except Kobe was being double-teamed. Shaq was Plan B. He was being double-teamed. Then Gary Payton continued on his path to redemption by instead giving it to Derek Fisher ("the fifth Laker"), who managed to catch, swivel, jump and fire a shot away in less than 0.04 seconds, hear the buzzer sound, and watch the ball drop into the hoop. Lakers win, 74-73. LA can now knock the Spurs out with a win at home on Saturday. You'd think they would, because this is an awful way to lose a game... but the way the Lakers are, you can see them thinking they've won it and thus relax a little too much, allowing the Spurs to take control. It shouldn't come to that, but this season's been so wild it could so easily happen.

- In other sports news, Thailand's Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra has been trying to buy into Liverpool. I can't stand Thaksin in general (I REALLY think he's totally full of himself), but his behaviour in this has just been appalling. For a start, not only is he considering using Thailand's public funds to buy a 30% stake in Liverpool (yes, PUBLIC MONEY from a poverty-stricken nation), but he hasn't actually revealed what money he's using. Believe it or not, he actually said that he'll say where he got the money AFTER he buys Liverpool. How ridiculous is that?

- Lastly, tons of happenings at E3. I'll give you my take on that some other time. Possibly tomorrow. Yes, tomorrow.

- Oh, and one more thing... my new camera (pictures taken by the old one, naturally):

Posted at 5:56 AM

Tuesday, May 11, 2004
The Nintendo DS has been unveiled. Click here for what is apparently the first ever picture of a DS. It looks slightly render-ish and the game on it is a GameCube title, but... the picture is credited to Nintendo, and Steven Kent is a very reputable source. So, behold:

Posted at 11:38 PM

Monday, May 10, 2004
More frustration today, even though the Lakers won in impressive fashion. Seems my iDisk is a bit broken, so I can't upload any pictures or pages -- so my new digicam will have to wait a bit before I can show it off.

In the meantime, check this out. You might think that it's boring, but you need to delve a little deeper. It's the website for a flashy new supercomplex of apartments in Hong Kong called Caribbean Coast. Click through the flash stuff a bit. It's just so insanely excessive it's ridiculous. There are FIVE clubhouses named after Caribbean Isles, each for a "different taste" -- though a quick inspection of the facilities on offer shows that taste actually means "price bracket". This is evidenced by "Bermuda" effectively consisting of a jogging track, putting green, kid's play area and lawn... while "Jamaica" has a waterfall, sauna, rock climbing, beach volleyball, jacuzzi, 30 metre classical Roman indoor swimming pool, "teenage adventure playground" (translation: teenage smoker's area), all arranged around a 120 meter artificial "beach pool".

What makes it even MORE fun is when you check out the showflats (including some with "three bedrooms with ensuite bedroom" -- um?), all of which are ridiculously tiny and absolutely abysmally decorated. One (Flat B) is literally Hello Kitty's Flat, with EVERY INCH of the apartment covered in various Hello Kitty goods. Another has what is obviously a boy's bedroom dominated by what appears to be a full-sized F1 car hanging on the wall. Worst of all: Some of the flats boast what they call a "Maid Storeroom"... not a "Maid's Storeroom", but a "Maid Storeroom", which will make an awful lot of sense to anyone reading this from Hong Kong.

It might not be outright hilarious, but I really got a kick out of the stupidity of the entire thing.

Posted at 5:49 AM

Sunday, May 09, 2004
I really need to post more. Quick updates:

- I got a new digicam! Thanks to Pat, who bought it here and thus told me how CHEAP it was, I blew all my birthday money on a Sony Cybershot T1... in black. The black one is so much cooler than the silver one, which in itself is hideously cool. Will post debut pics tomorrow!

- Liverpool won and are now in pole position to grab that last Champions League place. Of course, it still all hinges on our game at home against Newcastle on the last day of the season... but Newcastle have two matches to play before then, and they can throw it away beforehand and leave us with the last spot. Go on... you know you want to capitulate...

- And lastly, I bought another new iTune: Oh Yeah by Yello. Never heard of it? It's from Ferris Bueller's Day Off. Trust me, once you hear it you'll remember it...

Posted at 7:30 AM

Wednesday, May 05, 2004
"You are currently using 15 MB (2%) of your 1000 MB."

Muahahahaha, I love Gmail!

Posted at 3:37 AM

Monday, May 03, 2004
Sometimes I amaze myself with my ingenuity. You all know how much I love the Lakers. You might also know that I haven't been able to watch them over the past few years, partially because they didn't show ANY NBA game on ANY channel in the UK, and partially because the few they show in HK are at Ravi-unfriendly hours. The opening game of the Lakers-Spurs series, however, was at 3:30am... which is a very Ravi-friendly hour. Except it wasn't on.

So then I had one of those EUREKA! moments. I messaged fellow Laker fan Leo, who I knew had to be watching the game, asked him to turn his Apple iSight webcam towards the TV and start an iChat video conference with me. Which he did. The quality wasn't the best, naturally -- the TV's colours were all washed out, so the white-clad Spurs virtually blended into the court, and it was kinda blocky -- but it was better than nothing and CERTAINLY better than the SI.com Box Score updates that I've been using to keep track of the Lakers over the past four years. And it's a really cool use of the iSight.

Alas, it was all for nothing, because the Lakers lost the first game.

Posted at 6:30 AM

Saturday, May 01, 2004
I hate it when I forget my camera. There was a Prada party at the old Marine Police Station in Tsim Sha Tsui on Friday night and it was quite a sight. See, Hong Kong is almost totally built up with gleaming new skyscrapers, but the Marine Police Station is a bit of an anomaly -- not only is it an old building surviving RIGHT in the centre of modern Hong Kong (seriously, it's between Star Ferry and the Peninsula Hotel), but it's accompanied by spacious grounds set on a little wooded hill. It's really a bizarre and unique sight, even moreso because it was effectively abandoned, and is less a curious oddity and more something people just totally ignore.

So the setting was pretty cool, and it was worth a few photos. Inside... so-so. It was pretty much just the grounds outside, a dancing area inside, and another "hardcore" dancefloor further inside. There was a cool area on the balcony straddling both the outside and the inside with more laid-back music playing and a neat little colonial bar next to it, but for some reason security decided to confiscate the chairs there and rather killed that area. Um... the food was also good. The drinks were alright, but they ran out of glasses pretty early on so you had to either keep toting your own or risk not having anything to drink at all.

Towards the end I was hanging out with Mrs. Prada and Milla Jovovich, apparently, but I honestly had no idea where she was. Everyone kept telling me afterwards that she was right next to me, but I just couldn't see her. So I guess she wasn't all that impressive then, eh?

Posted at 5:49 AM