Withdrawal Symptoms

So I've just realised that I've gone a month and a half without playing any computer games.

Not being able to play them is really frustrating, because a back-catalogue of stuff I really want to play is building up, and the longer I spend without the means to play these games, the more I'm going to miss.  Console games are okay, because you can pick them up whenever and wherever, but PC games are harder to play, especially online, past their selling date because fewer people play them, and no one stocks them for long.  PC gaming is in decline for sure, and aside from league of legends, around four games have come out that I can no longer find legitimate outlets for (and the illegitimate outlets won't serve them forever) and I'm gutted!  I've only just realised this because I haven't had time to sit down and do nothing lately.  What with my diseases and illnesses, I've realised that I need to get a computer (which I knew I needed anyway, in the long term) quite quickly, just for my own peace of mind, and for something to do in the interminable nights when I'm not going to the gym, or playing american football, or playing basketball... Oh wait - I don't have any time when I'm not doing something.

Anyway...  I need a computer.

In other news, my cold/man flu is getting  better, and I feel that tomorrow will herald the end of it.  Luckily the gym is closed tomorrow, so I can't do what I normally would, and thrash out the kinks in the gym - and make myself ill the very next day.

An extra day of doing not a lot squared.

Woop.

If I'm not completely cured by Monday I will give up and let the viruses win.

In entirely unrelated news; a friend of mine came up with an acronym for his workplace which is pretty cool (he's a game developer): JSTS - Just Ship That Shit - the wikipedia page will define it as meaning, 'to rush unpolished and underdeveloped software for the purpose of making money.'  Contributions welcome.

Korea Versus Argentina Then

So Korea lost against Argentina today.  I didn't preface this with a spoiler warning, because it was already a foregone conclusion.  Korea are not good at football, and they will never be.  I went down to a bar with a couple of colleagues of my own volition, (twenty minutes into the game) and also came home of my own volition, twenty minutes before the game ended.  There is no game of football in the world that can hold my interest for the full period of play.  Highlights are good, but nothing more than five minutes please.

The interesting thing was that I didn't realise it would be a worker style event, with most of the office turning up.  I wasn't going to drink anyway, on account of my myriad diseases and me badly wanting to play american football next week; but after seeing all the people you work with, at what amounts to an enforced gathering - that'll knock the party atmosphere out of anyone.

There is a Korean woman in the office who everyone, to a man, flirts with.  (I call her everyones favourite because I don't know her name yet - eg. 'Has everyones favourite been in this morning?')  They finally (after much cajoling and mild, playful, disgusting and flirtatious threatening/coercion) convinced her to watch the game with them and wouldn't you know it, another (far less attractive, (I'm tempted to say fat, but by western standards nowhere near) bitchy and obnoxious) woman joined the party somehow, and they all immediately forgot about everyones favourite, and focused their attention on the 'kind of fat but not really,' girl.  If I were everyones favourite, I would be pretty devastated and would, frankly speaking, ignore the lot of us tomorrow.

But that's not the Asian way, she will come in tomorrow and smile, laugh at the terrible jokes the five guys in the office try to make simultaneously, and enjoy being the centre of attention.  I would feel sorry for her, but I guess humanity is a fickle cauldron, and it takes all sorts of desperation to make people what we are.

On a side-note, my coughing has begun, which is good news because this is the last phase of my disease.  The guy I caught it from said this was the last part of it for him, and within two days he was completely illness free, which is cool.  What's not cool is him giving it to me in the first place, but we play basketball together, so I guess it couldn't be helped.  On a further side note, the kids are starting to get sick now, as are a couple more in the office.  You might hear about us on the news in a couple of months; I hereby name the next flu pandemic, De Roeck flu.

(It's insanely humid here, just for your information.)

(Oh and my electric bill for this month was Four pounds.  4 pounds.  4GBP)

Seoul Again

So I thought I would give Seoul another go, as my last attempt was surely not indicative of the city (I reasoned).  Luckily I was correct, and this time around was a lot more fun.

The pictures are low quality, get over it.

This is an electronics mall.  You know we have department stores for clothes, knick-nacks and wares seemingly no-one would need?  They have them for electronics too.  This was taken from floor four of ten, but I missed the opportunity to take a shot illustrating the scale of the place.  It's quite vast, and has some of the most incredible electronics stores I've ever seen.  The whole place is like an indoor market, with each seller having an open booth.  The effect is cool, because you can see from one side of your floor to the other.  There's one floor that houses all the computer based electronics,  and there are guys who sell legacy hardware, I saw graphics cards from ten years ago, it was a cool blast from the past.

A couple of stores had my camera on display, but wouldn't let me touch it.  It's not like Japan at all...

The Saturday was the day of Korea vs Greece, and they had a big screen set up for everyone to watch it on.

Red is the national colour of Korea.

Yeah that's a neon hot air balloon on the ceiling, this place is also an indoor theme park.

This is the cool screen they set up.  The first thing I thought when I saw  this was, 'I wonder if you could hook a PC up to this?'

Then I thought, 'You'd need a dozen graphics cards to power a display of this resolution.'

Yeah I'm a geek.

Bitchin' panda chocolate cake.  I actually ate two cakes while I was there.  This was the tastier of the two however, and is, frankly, an amazingly tasty cake.  As something of a connoisseur of cakes, I can safely say that Korean cake making abilities rank far higher than their other baking abilities.

I did however find a baguette in the shop earlier that is amazing, it's crunchy, soft and delicious, just like the real thing.  It cost 1.50, but for my first taste of real bread in a couple of months, it's worth it I feel.

Here's a bit of free advertising for them; they deserve it for making a couple of extremely delicious cakes.

The people behind the till also deserve a standing ovation, for not laughing when they saw me enter the shop for the second time in one day.





On a side note, I'm extremely ill at the moment.  My fever is extremely high, I can't stop sweating, I have a chesty, infected phlegmtastic cough, and everything aches.  My finger is still broken too.  Stupid girls making me sick.