• So, NWN2

    Yah, so, I’ve been playing a lot of Neverwinter Nights 2 lately. It rained for a few days there and now Colin is (fingers crossed) getting his Kiteboarding on. I’d say I was disappointed in the game, but I hadn’t really got my hopes up that high. The main problem is I dislike the D&D system; I don’t like seeing and thinking about numbers all the time since it kind of detracts from the immersion in an RPG. You know, detracts from the role… playing.

    Wikked Neeshka fanart on Deviantart
    The spunky half-demon whose
    (miscredited) voice won my heart
    I did play the hell out of the first NWN but felt the same way. To be clear – I’m talking about the single player campaign in both cases here. I never had much interest in trying a human-DMed game, and couldn’t now anyway (satellite connection). I understand it’s a pretty unique feature and I hope people are taking advantage of it. Any game that ships with the toolset is good stuff, and NWN is practically the other way around; it shipped with a demo campaign that is good enough for your money’s worth.

    Compared to the first Neverwinter, I’m not sure much has changed. Seems like they tweaked the interface a bit and wrote a new campaign very much like the original. Very much like all the Bioware games. They did a good job on the NPCs though; I like some of the voices and there is a lot of spoken dialogue. I’m reminded of Baldur’s Gate which may have been Bioware’s best; although the Star Wars universe in KOTOR made it my favorite.

    Interesting: 1up posted a very negative review of NWN2 then removed it with apology. Penny Arcade has a copy of it, which mostly I agree with, except maybe about the acting. A few of the voices are really bad, but it sure beats first season Babylon 5 which Colin is now suffering through. “Don’t touch me unless you mean it” – now who could screw that kind of amazing dialogue up?

  • Pon

    Taken by PonSo I haven’t mentioned this but the island has been sending me emails since I got here.

    It’s cute. They write in broken english in all caps. I think it’s Barrett because it seems like his kind of game. But when the first one was sent (from gmail) both Andy and Ryan where online at the time. So they where first targets. Pete has god speak in all caps in his book (which I still haven’t read, sorry Pete I’m a bad person!) so that implicates him. And the most recent bit feels a little ‘Yes Man’ which I know Alan has read, and I think he’s read Pete’s book as well. So he’s on the list. Anyway all the emails come out at extremely late hours thai-time when any respecting Island would be asleep. Listen here: I expect the next one to be sent at 3 in the morning your time or I will not be impressed!

    The first few where all like ‘justify your existance on the island’ (kind of red dwarf style, which I know Alan has seen, and Ryan has recently made other refrences to). But then I put them on the defensive for a while (more easily than expected which leans against Pete and Alan who, being younger brothers, are masters of the rhetorical argument). The most recent one has, in a clumbsy attempt to regain the upper hand, sent me on a quest. To Wat somethingorother. I don’t remember the name and as I write this the intertubes are clogged (probably with online gambling and too many internets). A Wat on the island that features on only one of the six maps we have checked of the island.

    So OK, if the emails are going to be interesting I figure I might as well play along. The Island asked me for photographic proof that I had visited the Wat and I was tempted to just drive out to the high-school or something and click a picture there knowing that whoever was behind this would be none the wiser but what the hell.

    So I set off alone (Sarah wasn’t so into the random task, or should I call it an odd job?). I have been down the road that the Wat is supposed to be on. It’s the road to the Phaeng Waterfalls that are so lack-luster (a middle-aged couple from campbell river we met earlier in the day and then again in the falls parking-lot agreed). I didn’t remember passing any temples last time we where on the road.

    Angry DragonSo I dutifully drive out there, along a cross road I have never been on before through some very nice palm plantations. And get to the falls having seen nothing like a Wat. I drive up and down the stretch of road it’s supposed to be on a couple of times to no avail. I end up just taking a picture of this big house on the road, deciding to claim that was the Wat. I could have photoshopped in some monks or something after the fact. So I had plan B under my belt but I wasn’t going to give up the search that easily. I rode back along the road very slowly peering through the jungle/palm plantaions and just managed to pick out a rocky spire 100 meters off the road. So I parked my bike and hiked through the jungle/palm plantation towards the spire. I got a decent view of it from the other side of a barbed wire fence. And snapped a picture. Which I’m sure would have saisified whoever, but as long as I’m here I might as well check the place out. So I walked along the barbed wire fence figuring hopping the fence into the place of Buddhist medatation in a 90% Buddhist country was a bad idea. Lukily through someone’s back yeard I found a gap.

    There are definitely perks to the camera. I feel pretty confortable wandering around anywhere. If someone stops me and asks me why the hell I’m wandering through their back-yard I figure I can just hold up the camera and be like I’m taking pictures of birds or something. Plus I have learned that people really enjoy having their picture taken so if your next move is pointing at them with the international ‘can I take your picture’ motion then your out of any trouble you were in and well on your way to getting a lift back into town.

    So noone asked my I was in their back-yard or their jungle/palm plantation so my occasional half-hearted show of taking pictures of plants was unecessary.

    Yes so wandering into the Wat complex I noticed the big stone building, the temple proper, a nice fancy bell, and some out-buildings. All seemed abandoned. I took some pictures of some very pretty stuff and was walking along the side of the temple and woke up a monk sleeping on the balcony of a little wooden bungalow. I said Sawat Dee Krap and he offered my a drink of water and a place to sit on the balcony. Well you don’t say no to that!

    Wat Matharu WoranaramSo my afternoon was pretty cool. I ended up talking to Pon for quite a while. He’s a really cool guy, monk. He used to be quite the hell-raiser. He lived on Koh Tao working for a restaurant. But on the side he sold Marajuana, Mushrooms, Opium (!) and a few other things I can’t remember. He says it’s a good thing he became a monk or he’d probably be dead from drinking or fighting. It was a good conversation. We laughed alot. He broke down the pricing structure of mushrooms and marajuana on the various islands in southern thailand (information I will not be availing myself of due to a proper upbringing… and draconian thai drug laws).

    He has a girldfriend in Germany named Anna but a monkey ate his sim card so he hasn’t been able to call her. This distresses him greatly. He showed me the 1/2 eaten sim card and asked if I thought someone in an office somewhere could get her number off of it. I said I doubted it. Although if Anna from Munich kept a blog of her trip to Koh Phangan I might be able to find her. Worth a try when the tubes are clear again.

    You know monks here can’t eat after 10 am? Good god. Pon says it’s hard for the first three months. He also says it’s no good to have a fat monk.

    Apparently alot of people spend a year or two as a monk. Pon is doing two because ‘he needs it’. He says he isn’t going to go back to selling and boozing. He’s going to rent a nice big plot of land from his family and put up a bungalo.

    PonFun time. I am also pleased to say that the third cigarete I have ever smoked was offered my by a Buddhist monk (hand rolled by a Buddhist monk in coconut bark, take that cuban maiden’s thigh!)

    On the way back I was feeling pretty pleased with the world. I even managed to help some lost french tourists on the way back home. And used french for the first time ever talking to a french person: ‘bon chance’.

    What I can’t figure out though is if the quest means I should become a Buddhist monk or I should take up smoking.

  • Full Moon – not!

    As Colin mentioned, we skipped out on the Full Moon Party this month. Actually we were going to go, but consulted an out of date calendar and ended up down there a day early. The moon was technically full but it was also the King’s birthday, a national holiday, with one of the observations being to not drink or serve alcohol. Naturally the party was delayed one night, so instead we got to see what Haad Rin looked like the day before FMP.

    The shops there are more expensive but have rarer stuff so we did some shopping, and watched a couple movies over dinner. Most of the bars there were showing movies; some even had cams of Borat and Casino Royale but we passed on those. Two, not twenty feet from each other, were playing Friends episodes all day. Every day I imagine.

    Haad Rin does have a beautiful beach, and we snagged some choice spots to watch the moon reflecting on the ocean and the surf and have a few drinks (not everyone was witholding booze, just some places). We met a few fellow Canucks down there, but in general everyone was just chilling and conserving their energy.

    So then the real party rolled around last night and it was still coming down hard after a day of steady rain, so we said fuck it and were asleep before the taxis we would have taken even came by.

    Raining again today and I don’t have much to do but play NWN2. I should have started working on the 1st, but am still waiting for Salus to get organized. Sound familiar? In the last month I’ve gotten interview offers from some interesting companies. None would be willing to let me work from here so they’re out of the question, but Google was in there, and today, okay, this from M$:

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  • Rainy Day

    Wet PlantWe finally got a full day of rain.

    Everyone has been saying we’re going to get weeks of it but before today we’ve just had 5 minute spurts. I’m a pretty solid BC boy in terms of the rain. When a month goes by without a full day of rain things start to feel wrong. Victoria doesn’t rain enough for me in the summer either. Blue sky is dull. Nature needs to mix it up a bit to keep things interesting.

    I was hoping I’d get to go kite-boarding today because it was a little stormy but once again the wind didn’t pick up. This was the 31st straight day of not enough wind to go kite-boarding for those keeping score.

    So instead of doing something we just hung about the house and enjoyed the rain. I took a ton of pictures. Almost all of them from the deck. Although there where dry spirst where I got to sorty farther afield.

    Sarah RelaxesWe’re skipping full-moon tonight. We actually thought it was last night and went down to had-rin and everything, but it turns out it was postponed a day because the King turned 80 yesterday. Foolish us. Foolish us. Anyway we got to enjoy the beach under the full moon without the throngs. It is a beautiful beach. And we found my now favorite bar ever. It’s perched up the steep slope by the southern end of the beach. You climb up these steps leading steeply up from the beach to the place and it’s just a huge deck with low tables surrounded by mats. Up another level is the bar. No waiting staff to get in the way and no electric lights to dim the view of the moon-lit beach. It was a laid-back kind of place and Sarah and I drank Chang and cheap rum with our legs dangling into space over the side of the deck.

    That and walking along the huge and totaly empty beach with the surf riding in over our feet were wonderful. Extremely romantic.

  • I like Thailand

    Rocks in the morningJust got back from an early morning stroll. There are birds around that make an owl like hooting noise. Sarah managed to convince herself that they are the greater coucals but I was not so sure.

    Anyway I got up with the sun, or slightly before the sun, and could hear the hooting down the street. Along with the greater racket tailed drongos that make such a pretty racket in the mornings.

    Op, there’s Beeya, hold on while I go get breakfast for 20 baht…

    Back, I figured it would be a good opportunity to try to hunt down the hooting noise as well as get some pictures in the pleasent light of early morning. Momma came out with me and was generally roaming around and talking to other dogs. until we heard one of her pups squeal down the road. At which point she took off like a shot. This happens a couple of times a day. These puppies seem particularly trouble-prone to me.

    I got a few pictures I like and walked along the beach some. When I got back to the house I heard hooting down the opposite street I’d come down so I wandered off that way. Looking quite the tourist with both binoculars and a camera hanging around me.

    Anyway I walked past the law-office just a few doors down the street and started a conversation with a young Thai guy who was sleepily starting his morning. He said I looked like someone he knew.

    We started talking about the internet. He’s doing some property scouting for a guy in Denmark and was complaining that there where no internets near the office/house. He genuinely seemed under the impression that the internet should just come down to every computer of it’s own accord… I suppose he’s right really.

    Anyway I told him we get ours from the satalite dish and how much we pay. People here are extremely good at looking like they know exactly what you’re talking about when they don’t have a clue. Which makes conversations interesting but a little more circular than ususal. Serves me right for still not knowing any Thai.

    Plant in the sandSo he suggested we get a big wire and run it from our place to his and split the bill. Which is so Thai, and an idea I’m very ameanable to. Of course wireless would be easier and he’s just down the road so I went and grabbed the laptop to see if the signal would make it there.

    It did, but just. Anyway I helped him check his email and he gave me some banana’s. It was a pleasent morning.

    I realised this morning that all the damage done to my psyche in Chiang Mai is gone. I am back to loving Thailand (Koh Phangan specifically) and the people here. We really are in a wonderful little slice of paradise.

    Oh and by the way, Sarah was predictably right about the greater coucal. I caught one in the act.