Ginger

Last night, me and Zurin went for an "International buffet". I'm proud to say that the buffet turned out to be more patriotic than we were led to believe, which is actually kinda sad, come to think of it. At least half, (closer to 70% actually) of the food was of the local variety.

So while we were expecting some goodies like maybe some sashimi, a bit of pasta here and there, God forbid even a taco, we were presented with a nice spread of... rice and noodles. Don't get me wrong, there was other stuff there too, but it seemed to me that main attraction was your everyday food which you can actually grab heaps of and not fork out tons of money for at your nearest food stall (even with the rising price of food!).

Barring that, go visit your grandma or a close relative who likes to cook...

Although I would understand the appeal for our foreign guests, it's a bit unfair to label the buffet international and not have the inter part play much of a role. And there weren't many (any?) foreign guests (and food!) yesterday that I could see.

That being typed though, I do have a hard time understanding people who come to a buffet and immediately attack the rice dishes instead of sampling the other foods first. There's nothing wrong with rice, but at a buffet, that fills you up faster than a Shell petrol pump (seriously, those things have like a pump accelerator or something) which means you either quit eating early, or soldier on at the cost of your stomach lining and dignity.

See, I get that certain foods will taste better when prepared at establishments. Steak? Check, a restaurant will do it better, probably. Pasta? Depending on the type, a restaurant would probably do it better, or at least have more variety. But rice? With lauk? Your mom, grandma, granddad, cousin who loves cooking and your pet turtle will always trump any establishment when it comes to cooking rice and lauk.

But, having typed that, I must say one thing in the defense of my fellow buffeters last night. They weren't exactly spoiled for choice :(

Squeak

A few weeks back, my darling wife hooked me onto a game. This may have been in return for me hooking her into various franchises (Left 4 Dead, Mass Effect, Alice), but nonetheless, I got drawn in, so to speak. The game is Draw My Thing on Facebook (also Draw Free and Draw Something on various other platforms).

Yes, I was not joking about making lame jokes.

Moving forward, the game was good old fashioned fun, like if Pictionary was played with computers and accompanied by the sound of silly giggles and random guesses, and the occassional "How the heck is THAT a tree??". Thus far, we've only had games with my sister in law, female cousin and female friend. Myself being a charming, cultured specimen of a man, what this means is that our games have lacked drawings of penises.

Then, while browsing around at work, I came across something that seemed revolutionary. It's called a finger mouse. Go Google it up if you haven't heard of it, and disregard that one link about a mouse shaped like a human finger. This is a mouse which straps onto your finger, allowing you to guide its course with finer control than moving your entire palm. Genius!

You strap it onto your pointy finger, grip the other side with your angry (middle) finger, and do clicks with your thumb. It looked like the perfect mouse for the game!

Ignoring this nagging feeling in the back of my head (How fine would the controls be? Can we calibrate the DPI? If it's so good, how come you don't see it around more often? Have they refilled the cookies in the cafeteria?), I went to get cookies in the cafeteria, came back to my computer, and placed an order for the mouse.

It arrived a couple of days later. I shoved it into the laptop with an evil laugh (girly giggle), looked at my wife, and proceeded to show her how a pro with the proper equipment draws a cat.

Once I was done, there seemed to be this silent understanding between me and Zurin. The kind of understanding that only comes after years of marriage and going through thick and thin together, sharing food, lame jokes, good and bad movies, and chocolate milk.

If ever the cat which I drew were somehow to make it into this plane of reality, it would be the beginning of the Endtimes. Fire would fall from the sky. Water would burst forth from fireplaces. Mountains would be made of tornadoes, and people would fart bricks. I had drawn Armageddon.

In any case, the mouse is crap, don't buy it.

Love!

So, as mentioned before, I'm not a music person. I studied TESL (Teaching English as a Second Language) and minored in Literature, so I'm more of a language person I suppose... That being said, I tend to be very conscious of the lyrics in a piece of music (which probably contributes to the fact that I dislike most of what comes on air nowadays).

One thing that always peeved me though, was love. In lyrics. I stopped being peeved by love as a concept a few years back when I met my lovely wife :P

In any case, how many times have you heard "love" coming at the end of a sentence in a song and rolled your eyes thinking, "oh gee, I wonder how the next sentence is gonna end, 'stars/skies above'?", and yes, true enough, it IS "stars/skies above". Or the reverse, whatever.

See, why choose to use a word which has such limited rhyming capability?

Let's have a looksee:

A - Above (duh, the default, most artists just stop right here without going further down the list)
B - 'bove (rappers maybe?)
C - Clove (maybe if some chefs wanted to sing?)
D - Dove (animal activist songs?)
E - Eove (the word does not exist)
F - Fove (as for E)
G - Glove, Guv (either an apparel enthusiast, or some English dude)
H - Have (with a French accent)
I - ... (Yeah, I got nothing)
J - Jove ("You I love, by Jove!")
K - ... (more nothing)
L - Love (now you're just being lazy)
M - Mauve (I don't even..)
N - Enuv (a 14 year old trying to sound cool?)
O - ... (more of nothing)
P - ... (nothing more)
Q - ... (okay, practically nothing starts with Q)
R - Rove (okay, forgive me, that was racist)
S - Shove (domestic violence in songs?)
T - ... (ain't got anything here)
U - ... (or here)
V - Valve (oooh!)
W - Wuv (5 year old trying to write a song)
X - ... (nothin)
Y - ... (nothing)
Z - Zebra (haha, kidding, Zebra doesn't rhyme with love!)


See, there's a lack of potential when using the word! Why can't they use "care", "affection", "adore", etc, where the rhyming would have much more flavor to it?

So, join me in a movement to remove the usage of love from the end of a sentence in music, and replace it with one of the many synonyms which opens up a realm of possibilities!

Or to have more songs which include "valve" cause that would be some creative shit there.

Music..

Alright, so my taste in music is probably pretty horrible when you compare it against people who "know" music, whatever the heck that means. There's no particular genre I listen to, if you can classify it as music, and I like listening to it, then I'll listen to it. I have no clue what's underground or overhead.

Now that we've established that, I'm just gonna come out and say it: I'm sick of Adele.

No, not sick in the way that the majority of songs by, say, Rihanna (that's how you spell her name, right?) annoy the dickens out of me, or how any music by Justin Bieber inspires rage in anyone with functioning testicles. I'm sick of Adele because there's too much of her.

She came up with probably three songs that I enjoyed listening to for a while, even taking into consideration the impossible physics of flammable H2O. And that one song where the chorus brings to mind the strangulation of a trumpet. But fine, she's not bad as a singer.

But when the radio spams her again and again and again... There's only so much you can take in more than 17 times a day before you get utterly sick of it. With the exception of Transformers. The 1986 movie, not that Michael Bay crap. The Lion King is a close second. To the good Transformers, not that Michael Bay crap.

So anyways, the point of this post is, I absolutely hated Transformers 3.

First!

Yes, first, although all things considered, I'm rather late to this. After much persuasion/encouragement, I've decided to give blogging a serious go. Yeah, anyone who knows me is either clapping in anticipation or cringing in fear at what will spew forth. Or saying "I thought you didn't like blogging?". "Meh", I shall respond, and resume eating my sandwich. Hopefully I don't leave the blog gathering dust after two posts, but we'll see. Hopefully, also, I shall have a sandwich whenever anyone asks me a question.

So, to anyone who doesn't know me, hi. I'm Saiful. EpoL to my friends, though they tend to not bother with the capital L. I'm a husband to a beautiful wife and a father to a beautiful daughter, and I try to be good at being both (husband and father, not wife and daughter). 27 and counting, as of this post. My wife assures me that lame jokes and playing video games all day long are not latent abilities unlocked by a specific key in my genetic code, so I'm still holding on to that tiny sliver of hope that one day I will have super powers (or that lame jokes and playing video games all day long will one day be considered powers).

I enjoy long walks on the beach more than sprinting on a beach, but I prefer sitting to walking, something I'm trying to change since my love handles became a rock-climbing course. The revenue helps with the bills, but sometimes you just want some privacy, you know? Hahahaha, just kidding, I don't charge.

In any case, writing this down has taken a bit of a bite out of my gaming time, so I'm signing off to go and rescue either a galaxy or a kingdom, we'll see what I feel like after this post goes up. It might even just be a city, who knows.

Yar!