Appudaito!

Righty-ho, as promised this will be a mammoth update!

Career

As most of you have known for a while, I have left Kalamazoo for greener pastures at Volksvagen. I will be a marketing assistant as of Tuesday and have been promised to have a lot more responsibility. Apparently, they’ll be sending me to the Volkswagen factory in Wolfsburg, Germany as part of my new employee orientation!

I attended a second interview for a position with the Apple store a few days ago which was really good but very different from the norm (as expected of Apple I suppose). I met some really cool guys who were also in attendance, one of which has since added me on Facebook where we just chat about Apple. It’s really weird actually because I seem to have one set of friends who gush over Apple, and my other group of friends from my Handsworth days seem to really hate them, based on a rather drunken conversation in a bar last night. Anywho, if all went well then I may be doing some part-time hours for Apple at the weekend. People have called me insane for wanting to do a 7 day week but I figured that I spend most of my money at Apple anyway, why not work there and get a discount too?

Gaming

During my rather brief stint of unemployment, boy did I play a helluvalotta games! I beat Halo 3 on Legendary and unlocked most of the achievements with around 180 points left to go. Been playing loads of online games, maybe about an hour each day. I’ve experienced what gamers around the world have referred to as dumbass Americans spoiling the game for everyone; I was in a social match and some guy randomly says “I’m gonna find your mom and fuck her up the ass” to another guy during the match. I had to mute my mic due to my own laughter. Later whilst waiting in the lobby, I heard one guy say “I’m gonna play some Halo!” with another guy shouting “Haloooo!” afterwards. This has now become mine and Khang’s adopted, but still mocking, battlecry whenever we play Halo now. I have played some fantastic random team matches too, especially one where a guy had to go shut his dog up because it was barking at some Jehovahs witnesses that turned up at his door. He left for about 5 minutes, returned to pair up with me and we still won the match! He was duly added to my friends list and my preferred players list.

I’ve beaten Gears of War on hardcore which was still as enjoyable the second time. The difficulty spike is a little cruel in places, where it was down to pure luck which got me through. General Raam at the end didn’t seem anymore difficult than the first time through on normal. I’m convinced the achievements system is broken in the game though; I have the recognition on each individual level on hardcore but not the collective achievement you should get at the end. Sort it out, Epic!

Eternal Sonata became a bit of a sleeper hit for me. I knew very little about the game other than it was a Japanese RPG based on music. I didn’t realise that it was also loosely based on Chopin’s last few hours of his life. It’s a wonderful game which had me glued to my 360 for pretty much 3 days straight but the ending left me cold, turning into a weird preachy spiel about morality. No thank you. The achievements are also borked since you get more points alone for doing one side quest/dungeon than you do for beating the entire game once! Having said that, it still doesn’t detract from the game’s biggest selling point which is the cel-shaded anime art style which has to be the best implementation I have ever seen. It looks glorious in HD and the demo on Live really has to be checked out.

Aber visit

Went to visit Aber for a long weekend where I stayed with James and Keiko. They have a lovely place next to the uni which looks to be a good deal given the facilities. Visited AnimeSoc where I caught up with Gérard and Ste and visited a few locales around the town. Nothing has changed though I couldn’t shake off the feeling that it wasn’t the same town as the one I had left. Many of the people I associate with Aber are no longer there and after this year, there will be virtually nobody there anymore that I’ll know.

Sammy-boy and Mr C.

Sam and Andy (no, I’m not speaking about myself in the third person, this is an Andy I know) paid a visit to Brum yesterday where we all had a good catchup. Sam and I tried out a new Japanese bento restaurant in the Bullring which was lovely; best miso soup I’ve ever had and I’ve had a fair bit in my time! I realy do miss these guys since most of my third year was spent loitering at their house not doing much, chatting over a cup of tea or coffee.

And that’s pretty much it in terms of updates. Expect more Apple related goodness since the iPhone launches on Friday.