KLB - Slow Days on the Blog


I'm back, sorry for the delay. I woke up in the middle of the night on Wednesday with a bad fever. It knocked me out. By morning I was shivering and sweating and it felt like a truck ran over my body. Because of how quickly it came on, I thought maybe I had food poisoning - but I didn't really feel sick to my stomach. I just had a bad fever. Man, that's the worst feeling. I kept poor Julie awake half the night. In my delirium I started ranting about all the poor people who suffer in the world and how I am such a selfish person, and then I felt guilty about my family and on and on. Phew.

All in all I missed work for two days. That's a lot in Korea - but I had Julie call so she could explain in Korean just how sick I was and to add legitimacy to it (doesn't it always feel like you're lying when you call in sick even if you aren't?) Cathy took it well. The fever actually broke on Friday morning but I was too weak to travel the long trek. Plus I probably wouldn't have been able to make it through the day. I ended up feeling weak and run down until yesterday. Now, luckily, I feel great again!

Today is Tuesday. In Korea this week is So-lar, the Chinese New Year, and we have the week off. We were going to go out to a rented house in the country but we had to cancel. I guess we're not going to be doing much as far as travelling because Julie actually has to work one day on Friday (isn't that ridiculous?). It doesn't bother me that we're not doing anything as I'm just happy to be healthy. It's amazing how quickly you can go from feeling fine to feeling like you want to die to feeling normal again. Having a fever makes you appreciate your health more.

I've downloaded, burned and tested the following games for my Xbox:

Mercenaries
Tiger Woods 2005
Prince of Persia - The Warrior Within
SSX 3 (Snowboarding)
Rocky
Rocky Legends
X-Men Legends
Fable
Star Wars KOTOR 2
The Incredibles
Baldur's Gate Dark Alliance 2
Kingdom Under Fire - The Crusaders
Ninja Gaiden
Dungeon and Dragons Heroes
Lord of the Rings - The Third Age

I can't believe it either. With DSL, E-donkey and Azureus (Bit Torrent) I got all these games within about a week. The problem I had before with them not working was because of the burning speed (you should burn them at the slowest speed possible).

I don't feel as guilty for copying games in Korea as much as I would if I lived back home. Here almost every game is over $50 because of taxes, whereas in America I could get most of them for half that. I would like to actually buy Rocky and Rocky Legends to support the maker, Ubisoft, and I promised myself I will if I see the games here. As you know, I'm a huge fan of Rocky 1 (not the sequels) and being able to train with Mickey (the chicken chase is hiliarious) and see recreated scenes from the movie, etc., is very enjoyable for me. Also, they ingeniusly icorporated the inspirational theme music "Going the Distance," which comes on just before you're about to either get knocked yourself or knock down your opponent. If you don't remember, that's the music that comes on when Rocky goes down in the 14th round against Apollo Creed, when Micky tells him to, "Stay down! Stay down!" - a quick shot to Adrian in the back as Rocky claws his way back up - ("Apollo can't believe it!")- and it's pure movie magic. That's possible the greatest scene every created in film.

Anyway, as you can see I have my hands full with all these games. My favorites so far besides Rocky are Mercenaries and Ninja Gaiden, but I haven't really had a chance to play the others much.

Another reason I haven't been blogging so much, besides the fever and now having so many games, is because I sold my camera. It's not as fun blogging with no photos. I can almost see potential readers clicking to my site and clicking away - turned off by the seeming sea of text, unknowing what a rich resource of pics lay in the archives.

I kind of regret selling it because it's not as easy to get a new camera as I planned it to be. I just have no idea what model to get and how much I should spend -whether I should get a decent one for now or hold off and get one with good video functions down the road. After buying the laptop, DVD drive, and now the Xbox I feel guilty buying anything else too. I guess it's psychological - seeing that I spent the same amount on the Xbox as I got from selling the camera and the same amount on the laptop + drive that I got from selling the PC. I haven't actually spent anything extra yet - plus the Xbox games have been free. Still, for some reason, I just feel buying a camera at this point is going over the top. Weird, isn't it?

Just in case - if any of you are going to be coming to Korea soon and have the means to pick up a camera for me from the states (they are much cheaper than here) and would let me pay you for it when you arrive, send me an e-mail. It would be nice to be able to post pics again.