Sue Zann Toh

I’ve got a backlog of stuff to write about video games, that must be why I’ve been lazy and not posted any of them. I know it’s one of the downfalls of blogging, when you’ve got so much to say and just can’t be arsed saying it, then the list of things to talk about just grows and grows and before you know it, you’ve got this huge backlog and the thought about going through it makes you want to roll over and fall back asleep.

I wanted to share some thoughts on a couple of the games I’ve played and loved recently, most notably, Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter and Oblivion, both on Microsoft’s Xbox 360 console, but that will be another day. For today, I wanted to quickly report on my short experience with Saints Row.

I played the demo of Saints Row on the Xbox 360, which was downloaded through Xbox Live Marketplace. I have to say, one thing Microsoft got right is Xbox Live and the marketplace for demos and game videos. I couldn’t care less about the movie preview videos, if I wanted to watch previews I’d just wait until some TV ad blasts it in my face, I’d rather not waste bandwidth downloading the preview. And theme packs and gamer pictures aren’t much use to me either. Call me cheap, I can’t bring myself to pay for gamer pictures or theme packs when there’s nothing wrong with the ones I already have. I know, I know, it’s only a couple of dollars, but still…

Anyway, back onto what we’re suppose to be talking about, Saints Row. It’s not released in Australia yet, it should be here at the end of August 2006 (31 August 2006 to be exact). I honestly can’t wait. Saints Row is much like Grand Theft Auto, another game that I absolutely loved, in terms of game play and in some respects, the theme of the game. In particular, it’s quite similar to the first part of GTA: San Andreas, where you, a gang member, run around trying to take over neighbourhoods by killing rival gangs.

In Saints Row, you run around as a newly recruited Saints Row gang member doing a similar thing in GTA: San Andreas. You kill rival gang members and take over their neighbourhood. That’s about as much as I saw from the demo. It’s an open world, meaning you can pretty much run around to any part of the “world” and do pretty much anything you please. There are missions of course. One mission I undertook was to recruit “hos” for a pimp and another was to take over a neighbourhood by killing a particular person. Every time you complete a mission, you get money and your reputation meter grows a little.

A pretty cool aspect I thought was the ability to customise your dude. You can select from a Caucasian, Asian, Hispanic or African American man and then tweak the face until you get a dude you’re happy looking at. This is a little reminiscent of Oblivion, but much easier, and therefore less, to customise. I was a little disappointed you couldn’t choose the gender, would’ve loved to run around as a chick.

The look of Saints Row is very next generation. It looks much better than GTA, but then again, you’d expect that from the Xbox 360. There’s a longer draw distance, but unfortunately, there’s still some pop ups. Most notably, there were pop up trees. Other than that, the graphics were less cartoon like than GTA and the environments are well done to give you that real life street quality. What I particularly liked was the seamless transitions between indoors and outdoors. There’s no opening of doors then waiting for the indoors environment to be loaded.

The violence in Saints Row is pretty extreme. The beginning cut scene was very graphic. Much more than any movie I’ve seen, it even made me cringe a bit, which is pretty hard to do. Put it this way, if I had kids, I wouldn’t let my 16 year old play it. If I could help it, I wouldn’t let mt 18 year old play it! The language is also pretty extreme for video games, it seemed like every second sentence in the cut scenes had the word “mother-f*ckers” in it.

The learning curve for Saints Row is pretty low. If you’ve played GTA before, you’ll find many of the buttons do the same actions. The one thing I haven’t found yet is the handbrake, which is useful to make sharp turns to get away from the cops when they’re chasing you. I must be blind or something, because I swear I simply couldn’t figure out the handbrake.

Hmmm.. that’s quite a bit of an entry for a quick report on Saints Row. If you can manage the ~1 GB demo download, and you don’t mind a lot of violence and bad language in your video games, then I would definitely recommend checking out Saints Row.

More reads:

• Saints Row on Wikipedia
• Official Saints Row Web site
• Saints Row at Gamespot.com (Reviews, news, movies, images etc)

Where to get it

• Buy it at Play-Asia.com
• Bid on it at eBay.com.au (aff. link)

18 months ago, I upgraded to GirlFriend 1.0 from DrinkingMates 4.2, which I had used for years without any trouble. However, there are apparently conflicts between these two products and the only solution was to try and run GirlFriend 1.0 with the sound turned off. To make matters worse, GirlFriend 1.0 is incompatible with several other applications, such as LadsNightOut 3.1, Football 4.5, and Playboy 6.9.

Successive versions of GirlFriend proved no better. I tried a shareware program, Slapper 2.1, but it had many bugs and left a virus in my system, forcing me to shut down completely for several weeks.

Eventually, I tried to run GirlFriend 1.2 and Girlfriend 1.0 at the same time, only to discover that when these two systems detected each other they caused severe damage to my hardware.

I eventually upgraded to Fiancée 1.0, only to discover that this product soon had to be upgraded further to Wife 1.0. While Wife 1.0 tends to use up all my available resources, it does come bundled with FreeSexPlus and CleanHouse2005. Shortly after this upgrade, however, I found that Wife 1.0 could be very unstable and costly to run. Any mistakes I made were automatically stored in Wife 1.0’s memory and could not be deleted. They then resurfaced months later when I had forgotten about them.

Wife 1.0 also has an automatic Diary, Explorer and E-mail filter, and can, without warning, launch TurboStrop and Multi-Whinge. These latter products have no Help files, and I have to try to guess what the problem is. Additional problems are that Wife 1.0 needs updating regularly, requiring ShoeShop Browser for new attachments and Hairstyle Express which needs to be reinstalled every other week. Also, when Wife 1.0 attaches itself to my Saab 93 Convertible hard drive, it often crashes.

Wife 1.0 also comes with an irritating pop-up called MotherInLaw, which can’t be turned off. Recently I’ve been tempted to install Mistress 2003, but there could be problems. A friend of mine has alerted me to the fact that if Wife 1.0 detects Mistress 2003, it tends to delete all of your Money before uninstalling itself.

A tasty warm dessert perfect for a cold winter’s day. The hardest part of this dessert is peeling and cutting the pineapple, the second hardest is sharing with family and friends.

This baked pineapple recipe serves 4 as dessert.

Ingredients

• 600 g pineapple
• 2 cinnamon sticks
• 2 teaspoon brown sugar
• ½ cup water
• 4 tablespoons vanilla yoghurt or ice cream

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 220°C (425°F).
2. Peel and cut pineapple into chunks.
3. In a baking dish, add the cinnamon sticks and water and top with the pineapple chunks, then sprinkle the brown sugar on top.
4. Cover the baking dish with foil and bake for 30 minutes.
5. Remove foil from baking dish and continue baking for another 15 minutes.
6. Serve with 1 generous tablespoon of vanilla yoghurt or ice cream topped with fresh mint.

This potato salad recipe has been one of my family’s favourite for over 10 years. It’s a really basic recipe that’s simple to make, keeps well in the fridge, and perfect for a summer barbeque.

This recipe is enough to feed 6-8 people as a side dish or 4-6 people as a lunch salad or small meal.

Not sure what type of potato to use? I recommend Western Potatoes’ which potato to use as a guide in choosing the right potato for the right recipe. My favourite potato is the Royal Blue potato, the most versatile potato for any dish.

Ingredients

• 1 kg potatoes
• 150 g bacon
• 3 eggs
• 1 small white onion
• 200 g mayonnaise
• ½ tsp paprika (optional)

Instructions

1. Dice the 1 kg potatoes and place in a large saucepan, cover with cold water and bring to boil, then reduce heat to simmer for 8-10 minutes.
2. Hard boil the 3 eggs.
3. Chop the bacon and saute in a hot frypan/skillet with a little olive oil for 3-5 minutes.
4. Dice the white onion.
5. Gently combine all ingredients in a large mixing bowl. Season with salt and pepper.
6. Chill in the refrigerator prior to serving.

Tips and Suggestions

My most significant suggestion is, experiment. Potato salads are hard to get wrong because they work well with varying amounts of ingredients. If you like bacon, add more bacon, if you don’t like egg, leave it out completely! There are no hard and fast rules with potato salad.

For a healthier version, use low fat bacon and mayonnaise.

Although paprika is an optional ingredient, it’s highly recommended to add it as it adds another dimension to the potato salad.

A woman got on a bus holding a baby. The busdriver said, “That’s the ugliest baby I’ve ever seen.” In a huff, the woman slammed her fare into the fare box and took an aisle seat near the rear of the bus. The man seated next to her sensed that she was agitated and asked her what was wrong.

“The bus driver insulted me” she fumed.

The man sympathized and said, “Why, he’s a public servant and shouldn’t say things to insult passengers.”

“You’re right” she said. “I think I’ll go back up there and give him a piece of my mind.”

“That’s a good idea” the man said. “Here, let me hold your monkey.”

One evening last week, my girlfriend and I were getting into bed.

Well, the passion starts to heat up, and she eventually says “I don’t feel like it, I just want you to hold me.”

I said “WHAT????!!! What was that?!”

So she says the words that every boyfriend on the planet dreads to hear… “You’re just not in touch with my emotional needs as a woman enough for me to satisfy your physical needs as a man.”

She responded to my puzzled look by saying, “Can’t you just love me for who I am and not what I do for you in the bedroom?”

Realising that nothing was going to happen that night, I went to sleep. The very next day I opted to take the day off of work to spend time with her. We went out to a nice lunch and then went shopping at a big, big unnamed department store. I walked around with her while she tried on several different very expensive outfits. She couldn’t decide which one to take so I told her we’ll just buy them all. She wanted new shoes to compliment her new clothes, so I said lets get a pair for each outfit.

We went onto the jewellery department where she picked out a pair of diamond earrings.

Let me tell you… she was so excited. She must have thought I was one wave short of a shipwreck. I started to think she was testing me because she asked for a tennis bracelet when she doesn’t even know how to play tennis.

I think I threw her for a loop when I said, “That’s fine, honey.” She was almost nearing sexual satisfaction from all of the excitement. Smiling with excited anticipation she finally said, “I think this is all dear, let’s go to the cashier.” I could hardly contain myself when I blurted out, “No honey, I don’t feel like it.”

Her face just went completely blank as her jaw dropped with a baffled “WHAT???!!!” I then said, “Really honey! I just want you to HOLD this stuff for a while. You’re just not in touch with my financial needs as a man enough for me to satisfy your shopping needs as a woman.” And just when she had this look like she was going to kill me, I added, “Why can’t you just love me for who I am and not for the things I buy you?”

Apparently I’m not having sex tonight either.

The last day of my birthday holiday. We had to check out by 10:00 am, so we woke up at about 8:00 am. You guessed it, we went for another dip in the jacuzzi. We didn’t stay in long because we were hungry for breakfast.

We checked out early and headed into the town center. Breakfast at Sail’s restaurant again, but this time we had our holiday favourite, bacon, eggs, toast, mushrooms, sausages and roasted tomatoes. The stuff heart attacks are made of.

After breakfast, we decided we had enough time for one more attraction in Margaret River before heading back to the “real” world. We went to the Eagle’s Heritage Raptor & Wildlife Center with the intention of attending the Free-flight display at 11:00 am.

We were about an hour early, plenty of time to walk around the park to see the raptors, eagles and other birds of prey. They were really incredible animals, beautiful and dangerous looking at the same time.

The Free-flight display was as much an educational talk as an awesome display of these birds. They are nature’s way of keeping the ecosystm free of sick and injured animals, but they are so misunderstood that they are hunted and killed instead of being protected. It’s sad to think that Western Australia is one of the few places in the world that doesn’t classify raptors and eagles as protected species.

After the introduction to the birds, for those in the audience who wanted to, they could head up and have the black kite sit on their hand. I was the first to volunteer. I was a little apprehensive, since the talons of these creatures could crush your hand if they wanted to, and yet, when they sit on your hand, they’re so gentle with their claws. They were also surprisingly light! I think the glove you had to wear was heavier than the bird itself. M also had his turn with the raptor on his hand. It was kind of cute, he was looking at the bird, and the bird was looking straight back.

We left for home after that. A 4 hour non-stop drive north back up to Perth.

More photos of our holiday can be found in the Birthday Holiday 2006 gallery.

This Irish beef stew recipe was modified from the recipe found at Elise.com’s Simply Recipes. Being a bit of a calorie counter, I couldn’t bear to use amounts such as “1/4 cup of olive oil” just to brown the beef! Just so you know, a quarter cup of olive oil has about 477 calories, or 1995 kilojoules.

So my own version of the recipe has been developed based on Elise.com’s recipe. Some other differences, other than the amount of fats used in the recipe, are that my version of the recipe has more beef and less potatoes.

Ingredients

• 3 tablespoons olive oil
• 6 large garlic cloves, minced
• 1 kg stew beef, cut into 1-inch pieces
• 2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley
• Salt and pepper to taste

Gravy Ingredients:

• 6 cups (1.5L) beef stock
• 1 cup of Guinness beer
• 1 cup of red wine
• 2 tablespoons tomato paste
• 1 tablespoon dried thyme
• 1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
• 2 bay leaves

Vegetables:

• 1 kg potatoes, peeled, cut into 1/2-inch pieces
• 1 large onion, chopped
• 2 cups carrots, 1/2-inch pieces peeled

Instructions

1. Heat 2 tablespoons olive oil in heavy large casserole/crock-pot over medium-high heat.
2. Add garlic and saute for 1 minute.
3. Add beef in 3 to 4 batches and saute until brown on all sides, about 5 minutes for each batch.
4. Add the Gravy Ingredients, ie, beef stock, Guinness beer, red wine, tomato paste, dried thyme, Worcestershire sauce and bay leaves.
5. Stir to combine. Bring mixture to boil then reduce heat to medium-low. Cover and simmer 1 hour, stirring occasionally.
6. While the meat and gravy stock are simmering, heat 1 tablespoon olive oil in another large pot over medium heat.
7. Add Vegetables (potatoes, onion and carrots) and saute until golden, about 20 minutes.
8. Add vegetables to beef stew and simmer uncovered until vegetables and beef are very tender, about 40 minutes.
9. Discard bay leaves. Add salt and pepper to taste.
10. Transfer stew to serving bowl, sprinkle with parsley and serve.

Suggestions

As with many stews, casseroles and curries, they taste better as left overs, so make a big pot and refrigerate the left overs for an extra tasty stew.

I had the intention to practice yoga on our beautiful deck in the morning. I planned to do this ever since we decided to go on this holiday. Well, as things don’t always go according to plan, I didn’t get any practice in during this weekend away. After the exhausting first day with the drive down south, horse riding and great food at Ze Arc of Iris, I couldn’t bring myself to crawl out of bed at the crack of dawn to practice. Instead, I had a nice sleep in before getting up for our next adventure, mountain bike riding.

Dirty Detours MTB Adventures were our hosts for this adventure. We were going mountain bike riding through the Boranup forest. We’ve been to the Boranup forest twice before by car, the first time was with the encounter with emus and the second time was during an extended a trip in 2005 (I still haven’t finished posting about that trip! There’s a lot to write!).

We were taking the easy ride, since neither my partner and I had gone “real” mountain bike riding, we thought it would be better to classify ourselves as beginners. We did some street riding over the summer, going out for an hour at a time and sometimes more, but this mountain bike riding was serious stuff.

We didn’t want to eat too much before the ride, we had a light breakfast at our favourite breakfast spot, Sails, then made our way to the Settlers Tavern, our meeting point with Dirty Detours.

Our guide drove us to the Boranup forest from the town center, about 20 to 30 minutes drive. The weather didn’t look too good, it was overcast, cloudy and cold. It rained pretty heavily on the way there, and we were worried about getting soaking wet. In the end, I was actually thankful that it was on the cooler side. We got gently drizzled on during the ride and it was quite nice, refreshing and cooling.

Once in the forest, we were armed with a mountain bike each, riding gloves, hydration pack, our own helmets (we’re fussy about helmets!) and a quick mountain bike riding lesson 101, then off we went. I felt like an utter spastic most of the time on a mountain bike! The guide kept trying to give me tips, and as my brain would have it, I would do the complete opposite of what she was telling me! Not on purpose, I’m just a spastic sometimes.

The downside of the riding was that M’s bike broke something just about 30 minutes into the ride. We were really starting to get into it when this happened. After spending close to an hour trying to fix the damn thing (Our guide wasn’t afraid of getting her hands dirty! Hence Dirty Detours, I suppose), we ended up getting it in a usable condition and moved on.

Our guide took us to the most awe-inspiring spot in the forest. You really feel small and insignificant among the huge karri trees. There were a few baby drops and really narrow paths, but nothing very difficult or scary. When something looked a little too much for me, I’d just get off and carry the bike over (or under) the obstacle.

I was afraid I wasn’t going to be fit enough for this ride, but I held up ok. In the end, the biggest learning for me was “Look where you DON’T want to crash”. The body has a funny way of following where your eyes are looking. I fell/crashed off the bike a total of half a dozen times or so and got scratched up and knocked about a bit. You can probably guess that I enjoyed our jacuzzi after that adventure!

After our relative short mountain bike riding experience, we headed back to Margaret River’s town center and had a nice, long, leisurely lunch at VAT 107, another one of our favourite restaurants in Margaret River.

After our long lunch, we headed back to our villa at Losari Retreat and sat in our outdoors jacuzzi for a few hours. The jacuzzi was fantastic and just what I needed after all that riding around in the forest. We pretty much didn’t leave the jacuzzi until we got ravenously hungry for dinner and headed back to the town center.

Our dinner spot was Goodfella’s Cafe. I use to remember their food as being quite good, but this time, it was really quite inedible. I had some sort of chili pizza thing, which sounded good, but I couldn’t eat more than one slice because it would burn my mouth. Now, I can eat some pretty hot and spicy foods, but this was ridiculous! I ended up forcing down 3 slices before giving up and having a sticky date pudding dessert.

No surprise, after dinner we were back at our villa… in the jacuzzi… again.

Many are probably not familiar with this, unless you’re Chinese. Kayang is a Chinese version of jam primarily made of coconut milk and a tonne of sugar. It’s spread over toast or any other bread and enjoyed just like jam, only tastier, that’s my opinion, but then again, I was brought up on the stuff so it might be an acquired taste thing.

I’ve never found Kayang at the groceries stores in Australia so if we ever wanted Kayang, we had to make it at home. Spurred on by a recent batch of Kayang from my folks, I decided to share our recipe.

Ingredients

• 1 can of coconut milk
• 1 can of eggs (ie enough egg to fill the coconut milk can)
• 2 cans of sugar (ie enough sugar to fill the coconut milk can twice)

Optional Ingredients

• 2 tablespoons sugar
• 1 tablespoon salt (or to taste)
• 2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
• 2 pandan leaves (available from Chinese grocery stores)

Instructions

These are the full instructions and will include the use of all the optional ingredients.

1. In a large casserole pot, caramalise the 2 tablespoons sugar.
2. Once the sugar is caramalised, turn off the heat and allow to cool.
3. As the caramalised sugar is cooling, beat the 1 can of eggs lightly until well combined but not frothy.
4. Strain the beaten egg into a large bowl, don’t skip this step or you’ll end up with lumpy Kayang! (see below)
5. Add the rest of the ingredients to the large bowl and mix, that is:
   • 1 can coconut milk
   • 2 cans sugar
   • 1 tablespoon salt
   • 2 tablespoon lemon juice
   • 2 pandan leaves
6. Add the mixture from the large bowl to the large casserole pot with the cooled caramalised sugar
7. Put the large casserole pot over low heat and cook the mixture with continuous stirring for about 30 mintues, or until cooked. You’ll know that it’s cooked because the consistency will turn to honey.

Tips and Hints

The amounts of each main ingredients is not so important, it’s more important that the ratio of ingredients are maintained, which is 1:1:2 (milk:egg:sugar).

This is a rather easy recipe, but the trick to making great Kayang lies in the ability to avoid lumpiness. Kayang becomes lumpy when the egg in the recipe is instantly cooked. You need a lot of patience with this recipe if you want to end up with a good batch. Here’s some important tips and hints for smooth kayang:

• Don’t skip the straining of the beaten eggs
• Don’t be tempted to use medium or high heat to speed up the cooking process
• Don’t add the mixture in the large bowl to warm or hot caramalised sugar, this will instantly cook the egg and give you lumpy Kayang