I learnt Romeo’s Revenge after being quite familiar with Rubenstein’s Revenge and took to it quite easily. Like Rubenstein’s, Romeo’s Revenge requires your arms to alternate moving in a circle. The sole difference between the two is how the top hand catches the ball. Rubenstein’s has you rotate your top wrist after the throw in order to catch the ball but Romeo’s is more abrupt and requires you to swipe that arm down to claw the ball after the throw.

Have fun juggling!

*Edit* This is in response to Mark’s comment:

I’m using lacrosse balls in the video. Incidentally, they wore me out so fast I was just complaining a day or two back about how good they are at building biceps. They weigh 440g in total.

Personally, I find slightly heavier solid balls much easier to juggle than my 4-panel beanbags because you can distinctly feel the weight in your hands when the ball drops in and be aware of when to react. I might make a post one of these days about choices for balls…

Tags: Rubenstein’s Revenge, Romeo’s Revenge, juggling

Dammit. I’m supposed to be finishing an article but I got caught looking at T-shirts and shoes instead.

I’m still rather fond of this one and tried to order it but my size went out of stock.

I thought this was funny but it’s not a tee.

I’m really quite fond of Puma shoes and the new metallic Clydes look like pretty decent sneakers albeit a little on the masculine side. I have a pair of Puma Sprints that lasted me almost 4 years despite having rather thin foam soles. They’re most comfortable and are great with jeans. I like Pumas…

I’ve always wondered why Popeye’s hasn’t started a chain of franchises around the island yet because that’s one fast food outlet I will visit regularly. The fried chicken used to taste better even mere months back but for some reason, they seem to have improvised on the recipe and there are now two distinct flavors of chicken you can ask for although it is not stated anywhere on the menu. These days, counter staff would serve the Spicy version by default although it is really not spicy (and in my opinion, the paler version of the two), it is still a few notches better than the crummy ones at Kentucky Fried Chicken.

In any case, the chicken’s not the main reason why I’m a fan of the place - the buttermilk biscuits and mashed potatoes are. I’m rather easily satisfied when it comes to mashed potatoes. As long as the potatoes don’t taste instant or dry and flaky, I’m taken. I like how the potatoes here have a milky aroma to them and how there are extra bits of rice (I *think* that’s rice at least) mixed in them. I’m also rather fond of how the gravy isn’t your generic chicken stock but has herbs and spices in it. Hmm, come to think of it, maybe I should just skip the chicken and grab a whole lotta sides the next time I visit.

So we were back at That Ayam Penyat Place again on the fourth floor of Lucky Plaza (irrelevent note: I seem to be spelling ‘fourth’ as ‘forth’ regularly these days…) and ordered a whole lot more food than previously. We ordered the Gado-Gado ($4), a salad of crackers, lettuce, ketupat (rice wrapped in palm leaves), cabbage, beancurd topped with warm peanut sauce. I am personally not a fan of the dish and hence am only familiar with the more mainstream food court version which has just beancurd, lettuce and crackers with peanut sauce. The peanut sauce could have featured a little more texture to it but I’m rather taken by the novelty of the ingredients in it.

We had been talking about trying the Avocado Juice ($3) for some time now and well, its taste was most… unexpected. I had initially thought that the brown stuff along the sides of the glass was chocolate syrup to add flavor to the otherwise bland goo (have you EVER tasted avocado on its own in a drink???) but it was really gula melaka. The dessert (it’s really not a drink) blends avocado with a strong serving of coconut milk or possibly gula melaka and tastes just like a thick, rich, creamy version of chendol, possibly better.

Of course, we were there mainly for the chicken which we learnt to appreciate a whole lot more after visiting a lesser eatery on the second level just minutes earlier. Apparently there’s more than one ayam penyat place at Lucky Plaza and this one we went to was kinda… bad.

For the same price of $5.50, you get crappier presentation, less chicken and under-fried food that was hard, not crispy. While the chicken at the first place was fragrant because of a large dose of tumeric, the one at this shop seemed to have used less tumeric and had a hint of lemongrass which might actually be an interesting touch if the flavor wasn’t so faint as to be almost indiscernable.

I’m trying to lose some weight these days though and I’m not entirely sure if the fried stuff and coconut-based gravy is that good a diet plan…

You probably haven’t heard of the band and neither have I until a few weeks ago when I got another CD of theirs and got hooked. That’s hardly the point of this post though.

It’s 1am, I’m listening through this album, specifically, this song called Railroad. And I keep hearing this recurring chorus that goes

I’m singing to the worksong
With mammaries in mind

 I’m pretty damn sure that’s NOT what they’re singing.

I should have beat you
With your Birkenstock
When you set my house on fire!

- Friends Like You, Bowling for Soup

 Birkenstocks are the most obnoxiously overpriced and overrated sandals ever. They cost more than my sneakers and some look plain hideous. So, if you feel rich and want to beat up someone, here are a few good pairs to buy.

This cost $100.  That’s $99 more than its cost price.

This cost $70 and looks like the trunks of that pot-bellied fat guy at the pool who’s eyeballing your girlfriend.

$23. For the budget concious and it’s waterproof too so you can wash it and reuse it.

All that hitting might put some muscle in you and make you a REAL army guy!

Some time back, on a whim, I went out and bought some colored sculping clay to play with (because I suck at painting). So since my computer can’t seem to run Rayman Raving Rabbids, which incidentally, is the BEST PC game I’ve played in a long long long time, the next best thing to do is this.

It’s about 2 inches tall which is slightly taller than this one I did some months ago.

1) Stupid Endings - Bam! You kill the what you think is the final boss but hey, what’s this? It resurrects and is now bigger/stronger/has more health points than before but all you have to do is repeat the same ol’ crap you did with the first ‘final’ boss except for twice as long.

2)

Yeah, that.

3) Crazy Monsters - Sometimes, when a game wants to appear to be longer than it is, game designers either a) Flood the level with monsters so you chance upon them every 2 seconds or b) Give the monsters one-hit KO moves so you die every. other. second. or c) require players to spend 10 minutes or so to travel to the nearest health top-up point while ensuring that they are ALWAYS short on health.

4) Unskippable credits - So you finish the game. Yay. Now spend the next half an hour watching the credits before you an save. But wait a minute, you’ve already spend the last 1234875 hours on the game and your battery just went…. oops, flat. Oh well, guess you’ve to repeat the last few hundred boss battles again. Tough.

5) Retarded Save Points -Save Points should always be close to an impending boss battle or if the level’s hard, at the middle of it. NOT at the end of every chapter which takes 40 hours to get through. A variation which is starting to irk me these days are Save Points that only allows you to overwrite the previous saved game. So if you’re going to be screwed because your health is too low to fight the bad monster dude but you don’t know it yet and think that it’s a good idea to save first, HA.

6) Stupid Rewards - You hear of a surprise awaiting players who complete the game 23478253 times. You spend your life doing that and on your deathbed, you finally reap the rewards of your hard work - an extra health point for your character the next time you play the game. You die from the shock.

7) Huge Areas of Nothingness - Big maps to explore! claims the box art. They weren’t lying alright. You encounter a monster roughly every 2 hours and hey, you could have sworn this map looks exactly the same as the previous one except with more trees. Hmm.

8 ) Characters with No Personality - Girly Girl A can fight off the f-ugliest giant wart-like monsters but aspires to be a farmgirl who can care for The Love of Her Life all the time. Aww, ain’t that sweet - NOT.

9) Uncreative Monsters - I’ve seen games where the only visual difference between Monster A and Monster B is that A is green while B is blue. And B has more health points so it’s harder to defeat. The best examples I’ve seen have monsters with the SAME name except with a different suffix (i.e. <name of monster> A/B/C).

Tags: videogames

Unispins are beautiful.

Tags: unispin, unicycling, videos, extreme

Milo with coffee is the most potent drink ever. I need to bounce around.

Pimped-out trishaws with hawt fluorescent lights strutting the public roads and scaring off traffic.  Click for a bigger view.

Ayam Penyat from this eating place on level 4 of Lucky Plaza.

Best. Chicken. Ever.*

*At this point in time when said Jobless Person is too hungry to think of how fried chicken at other places taste like.

While we’re still on the topic of pizzas, there’s this stall at a coffee shop I discovered the other day (it’s in some corner of Eunos) that has a rather deviant version of pizza.

Someone implied that those directions weren’t very helpful. Well, yes, they weren’t. So I’m going to be more detailed about exactly where the place is. It’s right opposite…

…this.

At my now ex-workplace, there’s this little pizza shop that serves pretty decent pizza at a low price ($6. Cheaper than a meal at McCrap). Personally, I’m quite fond of cheese (of the mozzarella variety) on my pizza but my all-time favorite from that shop is the one with chicken where which has what appears to be rocket salad, sundried tomatoes, chicken and mayonaise on a thin, crispy crust.

The one pictured here is the pepperoni version which I’m generally not in favor of but which I still enjoyed nonetheless for the simple reason that I’m greedy. Between the two, I liked the calzoni (puff-shaped edible object below the pizza) better because it contained lots of cheese and mystery meat. Calzonis are possible the BEST videogaming food they have ever because you get all the goodness of pizza, without the mess and stress of having the ingredients fall out AND you can eat it with one hand while holding your controller with the other (well, if your game requires two hands on the controller, you’re playing the wrong games).

While we’re still on the topic of pizzas, there’s this stall at a coffee shop I discovered the other day (it’s in some corner of Eunos) that has a rather deviant version of pizza.

See all those stuff on the menu and all the accolade?

This isn’t the sort of pancakes you find at McCrap or other western joints but rather a rather popular snack item here in Singapore. Flour mixture is scooped into a steaming device and usually, the cook would spoon crushed peanuts, sweetened coconut or red bean paste into them. This stall however, serves the pancakes like they would pizza, complete with a pizza cutter.

The one in the foreground has egg, hot dogs and cheese in it while the other has lots of carrots and uh, egg. They are surprisingly quite tasty though and considering you get the size equivalent of a small pan pizza for under $2, it’s all goood.