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What happens when a 20-something year old man with a dirty mind and maturity level of 10-year-old gets his hands on Drawn to Life, a DS action platformer targeted towards children where the player draws his own character and a lot of the game elements? Well, let’s just say you get a game that’s a little less “E for Everyone” and a little more “AO for Adults Only”…

Not that I can say I’m any more mature. Today, I found myself randomly snickering during work when I randomly thought of Kelvin’s X-rated Drawn to Life abominations.

Because of the graphic nature of the gameplay images, you’re gonna have to click-through if you really want to see rest of the post (assuming you’re seeing this from the main page or a reader). That’s your NSFW (Not Safe For Work, for the internet not-so-savvy) warning, btw.
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This weekend was originally supposed to be another nothing weekend, but all sorts of last minute plans messed that up (including a last minute cancellation of cancellation). Ah well, it was still a good weekend.

Not really part of my weekend, but Friday afternoon, my group at work had a teambuilding get-together at Campo Di Bocce in Los Gatos. If you don’t know what bocce ball is, well, go look it up; it’s one of those leisure sport thingies, like mini-golf or bowling. I went here before for a recruitment event a long time ago, but I didn’t play any bocce ball. This time I got to play, and it was really fun! Nobody in my group plays this regularly, so we were all about equally terrible. It’s very team oriented and social; I can see why it’s so popular for corporate functions. Even tho all the sub-groups (who have the same manager) of our group got split up, it was still fun to interact with everybody. I really, really like my group (with the exception of one person. Lucky for me, he decided to (for the second time at a teambuilding company outing) RSVP saying that he’d go and subsequently not show up without telling anyone. I even ran into him as he was leaving, and he talked to me like he was heading to the event. What a dumbass.), so I’m glad I got to do this with them. My team even somehow managed to tie for first place, so we got little trophies and free movie tickets. Whee!

Friday night, I passed out from 8PM to midnight, woke up for 4 hours playing some games, and then passed out again.

Saturday was supposed to be a free day. Last Thursday was Kelvin’s niece’s 2nd birthday. We hadn’t heard of any parties for Naomi, so we assumed Keni and Susie were busy with kiddie birthday parties all weekend (them and a bunch of friends all had babies around the same time). We called Naomi to tell her happy birthday and asked Susie when would be a good time to drop off a present for her. She told us Saturday night when we were coming over for family dinner to celebrate Naomi’s b-day… oh, okay. So Saturday afternoon, we made last second trip to Toys’R'Us. We got Naomi something called Moon Sand; my manager said his almost-3-year-old was loving that stuff. As I mentioned before, I also got myself video games, more specifically Drawn to Life (DS), Rune Factory (DS), Karaoke Revolution American Idol (PS2), Picross DS, Brain Age 2 (DS), and Baten Kaitos Origins (GCN).

When we got to Susie and Keni’s, we were the first people there. Kelvin quickly busted out the Moon Sand Adventure Island set we bought for Naomi, since we were both pretty curious about the stuff ourselves (plus we didn’t even bother wrapping the present). I thought it was good to give her the nicest Moon Sand set, the one with several molds, nice case, different colored sands. More flexibility, right? Of course, there’s not much flexibility when the sand is all mixed together into one giant weird colored blob. And we thought getting the one with the case would be easy to clean up (the box even says easy to clean up). And it is… if the person using it understands to do all their handiwork above the case; Naomi isn’t quite there yet. The stuff is fun to play with, but with a 2-year-old, very messy. Thankfully, it vacuums up real good, so we weren’t permanently messing up anything in the living room. We spent the rest of the evening chatting with family and being auntie and uncle to Naomi and Sonoma. For dinner, we had random Chinese food, and for birthday cake, they served the very delicious guava delight from Aki’s. (Yay! Cake!) On the way home, we saw these silly bunnies hopping in their seats and shaking their SUV to loud rap music on San Tomas:

I could hear the girl driver shrieking, “Are they taking pictures??” Heehee, silly kids.

Sunday afternoon, Kelvin and I dropped off an old TV and some old computer stuffs to Earth Care Recycling for my mother. Sunday evening, we had dinner with Andrew at the Olive Garden, who happen to have their Never Ending Pasta Bowl dealio again. Andrew gave us our own copies of Redeath, Fanboy Bebop, and Nescaflowne; he got a light scribe, so the DVDs look really awesome. Of course, I totally forgot to bring the CD of Daft Punk photos and videos I made for him. I even had it out on my desk so I would remember! Phooey. Next time I guess…

New thing I learned today: The little silver ball (the target ball) in bocce ball is called a pallino.

I’d blog about my weekend, but I’m heavily distracted by my DS at the moment. More specifically Picross DS and Fire Emblem: Sacred Stones (GBA).

I got Sacred Stones a long time ago, but I never got around to it because I wanted to finish/complete the first Fire Emblem for GBA. After a long hiatus from the game, I got back into Fire Emblem. Of course, since I make everything I play seem SO much more appealing, Kelvin stole the cartridge from me, and he’s been playing it nonstop all week/weekend. To satiate my Fire Emblem craving, I started Sacred Stones. It’s identical to the first Fire Emblem in terms of game play and presentation (identical sprites and music), but it’s got different people, setting, story (similar to how the Final Fantasy games differ). Because it’s almost the same, I’m loving it as much as the first Fire Emblem. So if someone could see us at home this weekend, they’d see two dorks either on the couch or in bed, both playing DS’s, both with the same music and level up sounds and DS resetting. If you haven’t played Fire Emblem, it’s a strategy RPG. You get a buncha players to customize and level up through a campaign of mission. One of the twists in this series is that if a character dies… it DIES. Like, it doesn’t come back EVER again. So if you spent all this time making this one person buff and he gets killed, he’s never coming back. And you can only save between missions, so if a person dies, you have to restart the mission if you want him back. Major pain in the ass, but it somehow adds to what makes the game fun.

What’s not so fun is losing all your data when you’re near the end. If you heard a little whimper about half an hour ago, it was probably Kelvin coming to the horrible realization that he just erased all his progress in Fire Emblem. During one of the last missions (the very last one, I think), he had to restart. But somehow his button presses were off in the starting screen (restarting the game becomes really habitual), and he ended up accidentally erasing his save file. When he told me his game was erased, I felt horrible for him after seeing him play it and listening to him talk about how awesome his pegasus knight Florina was all weekend. I was almost gonna cry. Kelvin looked a little teary when he was freaking out at me for not remembering what happens at the end (I haven’t played in like forever! I really don’t remember! It’s a generic ending!). Of course, he had to accidentally erase the game during one of the few times he’s actually paying attention to the storyline. *sigh* Anyways, despite all this, Kelvin is starting over again. Crazy. Florina will probably be even more invincible this time around.

Toys’R'Us was having a buy 2, get 1 free sale on video games (the sale might still be on, not sure… I’d be surprised that they still have it during Halo 3 week) last week. Despite not planning to get anything at all this time around, I was at TRU yesterday buying Naomi’s very last minute b-day gift, and of course I buy 6 games :P I can’t control myself. One of the games I got is Picross DS. Picross is like Sudoku, but with pixels. It’s insanely addicting (like Sudoku), so I’ve been taking extended breaks from Sacred Stones to play Picross.

Anyways, just wanted to explain why I’ve been slacking on my blogging (and I was doing so good a couple weeks ago!) and get all this video game rambling out of my system before I start talking about my weekend. Back to gaming…

New thing I learned today: A vulnerary is a remedy for healing wounds. It could be a mixture, plants, drugs, etc.

The potion that heals you in Fire Emblem is called a “vulnerary”. Personally, I like “potion” better.

Saturday afternoon, I was grinding through Pokemon (literally grinding… my Pokemon were too weak for the final battles). It came to be too boring for me, so I think I surfed internet for the rest of the day until Chris called me randomly and asked if I was free to hang out. Obviously I was, but he was only 5-10 minutes away when he called, so there was a mad rush to get the apartment to a not-so-embarrassing state. Chris suggested Indian food for dinner, so we went to Rangoli India Restaurant, a place near work I’d been curious about because I pass by it everyday and it has a nice sign. I’m apprehensive about Indian food, but I suppose it was a good time as ever to see if I was being paranoid.

Rangoli India Restaurant is at the end of a random little strip mall. The windows are covered, so you can’t really see inside. The sign sticks out with its nice font, but the red/green color scheme makes me think pizza joint, so I was expecting this place to be a low-end Indian restaurant. Walking into Rangoli, it was way more fancy looking than I had originally thought it would be. It was really dark inside, with candles everywhere providing much of the lighting. The customers seemed older and more refined than us. I certainly felt underdressed in my Cheapassgamer T-shirt (which was on backwards! I remember thinking… gee, I hope they won’t be insulted by my CAG shirt *looking down at chest* where’s the design? Oh crap! Maybe I shouldn’t change from my jammies so quickly. Anyways, I eventually fixed my shirt.) and baggy jeans. We were seated fairly quickly (though the waiter took the long way, so we could see how fancy their joint is) and given fancy looking menus and a wine list to look at. I liked the decor: very modern fused with Indian touches.

Entrees ranged between $13-$17, so it wasn’t too bad. As starters, Chris and I got mango lassi(s) which is some sort of yogurt drink, and those were pretty good. I got Tandoori Tikka Kabob, which was surprisingly moist and not overwhelmingly spiced. Very tasty. (My issue with Indian food is that the spices and combination of flavors is too much for me. Anybody who knows me knows I can’t stand curry unless it’s the super mild coconut milk curry in Thai food. Actually, there was a Chinese restaurant in Boston that had a regular spicy curry chicken that I LOVED and ordered all the time. That’s the only time I’ve ever liked regular curry… and I still can’t figure out why I liked it so much.) Kelvin got the Lamb Korma, and Chris got the Chicken Tikka Masala (I think). Those were way too strong for me (but I think in terms of Indian food, they were good). Kelvin said the Lamb Korma is kinda plain with the rice, but great with the naan. Chris said the Tikka Masala had stronger flavors than what he’s used to, but that he liked it. I wasn’t a fan of the Garlic Naan, particularly by itself. However, Kelvin was right in that the Garlic Naan was very complimentary to the curries (almost tolerable). The rice was good, firm and fluffy at the same time. Presentation was nice; all our entrees were served on very different containers.

After having a waitress very nicely describe all of the desserts, we got 3 out of the 4 desserts they had: Pistachio Kulfi, Gulab Jamun, and Rice Pudding. The kulfi had a weird texture, but only because I kept expecting it to be like ice cream (it’s not ice cream). It was very pistachio-y as the name implies. The Gulab Jamun was very sweet, but not heavy. The Rice Pudding reminded me of oatmeal in terms of its milkiness; the rosewater gave it an interesting sweetness.

The entire time we sat there, the waiters and waitress were super friendly and fairly quick; I was very happy with the service. Rangoli even has nice patrons! While we were staring at the this basket of powdered stuff, an elderly Indian came over and explained to us what it is (some after dinner treat). When he talked it about, it seemed like he was reminiscing to a time when he enjoyed it as a child. It was a very good dining experience overall. I’m still not a fan of Indian food, but I’m glad I gave it a shot at Rangoli. I give it an 8/10 (probably would be higher if I liked Indian food and if it wasn’t a bit on the pricier side for Indian food).

For those interested in checking it out (btw, they have a $10 lunch buffet that’s very popular with the Yelpers):

New thing I learned today: Gulab Jamun is a traditional Indian treat that is made by frying little balls of dough mostly made of milk. They look like donut holes, and they are served in syrup. “Gulab” translates to “rose” in Hindi, and “Jamun” is a dark purple fruit found in South Asia.

We just finished watching this episode, and I can’t get over how totally stupid it was. Honestly, it might not be the lamest episode; I didn’t watch the filler turd that was churned out for over a year and a half between Naruto and Naruto Shippuuden. And there were some pretty bad episodes outside of that filler period (i.e. Kakashi’s Mask episode), but those were dumb on purpose.

While I guess this post technically has spoilers, the events in this episode are pretty minor compared to the main story. During this arc, there’s three battles going on concurrently, and the battle this episode focuses on is the least important. In fact, the entire battle is pretty much a waste of time, both in terms of what’s happening in the story and television airtime. If you’re concerned about spoilers, you’d be doing yourself a bigger disservice by watching the next-episode previews at the end of each episode (insanely spoiler-ific this season) than reading the rest of this post.

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