Thoughts in Strife An anthology of the incomprehensible thoughts of Strife

Hello 1Utama!

HELLO WORLD! This is Strife reporting in, after months of contemplating starting a blog to post my thoughts and reviews on whatever, I finally found the catalyst to push me forward in the Go.Esc Mass Blogger Review Competition. Thus, here is my entry, detailing my second day (but the fourth day for the Digital Delirium Xpo).

The sight that greeted me as I arrived at the concourse area in the Highstreet section of 1 Utama wasn't completely unexpected. It seems that the CS players were off to an early start, with the Open tournament aiming to wrap up just after lunch.

The island of PCs were mainly being used ala Free Play for anyone wanting to give the games available a try, and some comptetitors were using them to get in some last minute practice. I was one of them too

A view from the spectators area. While it was mostly used by players taking a break in between their matches, there were loads of on-off viewers from the other floors watching the action, with some help from the shoutcaster from GameStah, DeathAdder. We'll see him in one of the later pictures

Digi was also around, promoting their wireless broadband deals. With no contractual obligations, and a discount, it looked like quite a steal. Although, after 12months you don't get any more discounts, and since I already had Streamyx (the quality of which, or lack thereof  is quite well known), I personally didn't have the need to apply for it. Maybe next time, Digi

The busy organizers, keeping the goodness flowing. Towards the end of the day, you could see the strain the entire event was putting on them, as they could be seen running from one end (the Highstreet concourse) to the other (Studio V, in the Rainforest area), busily getting things running smoothly. All I can say is, good work guys.

Me at lunch, while Chapree decided to take his leave with my (sic, Sue's ) camera. He took a few more shots, but this was probably the most flattering one of the lot. I have to admit, I tend to look a little weird on film. Need more sleep lol.

The Trackmania guys battling it out. I managed to get ahead of the pack early on, and was exempt from the rest of the matches while the others went on with the qualifiers.

YeaHan85 took the second spot, while in the picture above we can see the 3 guys (from left to right; TPK, DeathAdder, Moots and Chapree). It was a close fight, right to the wire with the guys battling it out in a 3 way dogfight. Ultimately TPK took the win when Moots and Chapree made some critical mistakes. All in all, very exciting stuff all around. And I'm not just saying that cause I play the game

After some tiring but fun gaming, a number of the Trackmania guys and myself took up the Mass Blogger Review Competition. We chose to go to Baskin Robbins to try out their Chocolate Sundae, and the gang was somewhat looking forward to their forthcoming sugar high.

Since the cone was to be chocolate coated, I adopted an approach to try to balance it out with some smoother flavours like the Hokey Pokey above.

The final result of my ingenious choices Hokey Pokey with Strawberry Cheesecake, covered in Pineapple. The Hokey Pokey was quite interesting with the honey combs popping up at opportune moments. The Strawberry Cheesecake went quite well with the chocolated coated cone. My mistake however was going with the pineapple instead of something more conventional like chocolate (which was mainly because I thought I had enough chocolate already ). The soury flavour of the pineapples was quite overwhelming, so I had to be careful when scooping in order to isolate the flavour.

Our collection of Sundaes compiled with a nice backshot of the outlet. Sadly there wasn't much place to sit, as it was a full house at Baskin Robbins. Guess a lot of people love their ice cream

One satisfied customer

The gang! Moots, YeaHan85 and TPK.

Another satisfied customer

Baskin Robbins attracts customers from all over, even as far as the Galactic Republic. Now we know what Clone Troopers do on their days off

After our culinary outing, we decided to head out to Studio V to check the Music section of the Indie Youth Fest. It was a pretty small locale, but that didn't stop the people and performers there from enjoying themselves.

T-shirts of the bands on sale. The band performing at the time we were there was An Honest Mistake, and apparently their shirts were completely sold out. Pretty awesome for an indie band.

An Honest Mistake carefully setting up, making sure things are up to snuff. However, looks like the acoustic guitarist caught me shooting them

Now THAT is an awesome piece of equipment. Definitely out my Korg's league QQ Oh well, I'm not a professional musician anyway. Maybe I'll try the Doppelganger Open Mic next year

A shot of the band (duh ).

While the instrument players were warming up, the other vocalist was busy texting Got ya!

The band doing some feng-tau style headbanging. They obviously like to move, which they did mention later on.

The youngest member of the audience not exactly enjoying the show. The rock parts were too much for her at the time.

As I mentioned, the size of the locale didn't stop the crowd from filling up the studio to hear the bands play.

Awww. Looks like she's taken with the band now. Maybe it had something to do with that sticker in her hand

Last shot of the bassist getting on his knees to do some heavy bassing. The sounds were awesome.

After we left Studio V, we headed back to the Digital section, where we hung out and chilled out. TPK and myself had a Spotgamers meeting to attend later, so we spent some time playing and watching the matches, before retiring with the Spotgamers team for dinner at Nando's.

Dinner was fine, except for the simple fact that the service at the 1 Utama Nando's outlet outright sucks. Getting seated took more than 5 minutes (without ANYONE even coming to tell us to hold on; they just looked at us and continued with their work as if they weren't happy for us to be patronizing their restaurant >=( ). Getting our order taken, and even getting our refills took forever. Finally we got out stuff, and after finishing up dinner, we decided to retire for the night.

Thats when my next adventure begun. My parking fees were RM11, and the machine didn't take RM50 notes. This was something that just completely escaped my attention, and I had to walk into the now closing mall frantically searching for a shop with change for RM50. The shopkeepers were helpful in that while they didn't have change (most had already closed their registers), they did direct me to the information counter, where I got RM20 in RM10 notes, and RM30 in RM1 notes. Looked as if I was readying up to go to a strip club or something >:3

And that was pretty much my Saturday at the Delirium Digital Xpo. The event could have been better, but all in all it was an awesome effort by the Go International team, giving the gamers a platform to prove their love for the lifestyle.

Strife, signing out