Me, myself and I

I got inspired by a multiple self-portrait I saw in a magazine recently and I’ve always wanted to do one so here it is. Had a bit of trouble blending some parts but had a little help from hubby who’s better at Photoshop than I am. Overall, I had quite a bit of fun making this and I know it’s not entirely accurate but I still like the stylized look.

The games we play

In case you’ve been wondering why there hasn’t been a post here for nearly two weeks now, it’s just that we’ve both been busy. Hubby has been busy with his newly acquired Guild Wars game while I’m busily solving the puzzles being thrown my way by Professor Layton!

I’ve first heard of the Professor Layton game from one of hubby’s downloaded podcasts and we’ve been anticipating its release here in Australia since then. It was released last Thursday and we promptly bought it from JB Hi-fi. I originally intended to get my copy from Target when I saw that they had the best price in their catalogue but it seems like when Target said it would be released on 11/04/08, they actually meant 12/04/08. When we asked for the game in the shop’s CBD branch, they told us to come back the next day!

Fortunately, it was in stock in the neighbouring JB Hi-fi where the price has been reduced from its pre-release price of $69.95 to $59.00, almost a full dollar less than we would have paid for in Target. Ha! Bonus.

Anyway, the graphics of the game is simply amazing and I do love the art style. The puzzles are of varying levels of difficulty, although some people might find the placement of the puzzles a bit contrived. I mean, how odd is it that everyone you meet in the town of St. Mystere wants Professor Layton and his apprentice to solve a puzzle? I don’t mind though as I knew that going in and I like that it has an underlying story while getting the player to solve interesting little puzzles on the side.

If you own a Nintendo DS (Lite) and love some puzzle solving, I couldn’t recommend this game enough. Meanwhile, I better finish up with this post so I could get back to my game!

Hurricane-strong winds

It’s not everyday we experience winds so strong that it brought trees down and roof tiles flying in Melbourne. Well, that was what we got last Wednesday (February 2). “Winds of up to 100km/h whipped across Victoria as the remnants of tropical Cyclone Pancho combined with an intense cold front in the Great Australian Bight and moved east,” according to an article on The Age titled Victoria’s killer weather causes chaos. I remember hearing on the radio that it was an event that only happens in one in fifty years.

That morning began like any other cloudy day. Then, I started hearing roaring noises that I couldn’t account for. To me, it sounded like the noise generated by a construction site. I thought that maybe a building was being demolished. However, the loud sound repeated every few minutes. The building-being-demolished theory was out the window then. My officemate thought there were jets flying around Melbourne. But that would mean that they were flying in circles for a long time as the noise spanned a few hours.

We looked out the window and realised that it was the winds that was causing all the ruckus. The glass windows of neighbouring buildings were wobbling from the force of the winds. The trees down on the streets were swaying wildly. Looking at the horizon, we saw that Melbourne was being surrounding by a brown foggy cloud. Apparently, the wind picked up a lot of dust as it went causing the sky to turn brownish from afar.

I didn’t mind the strong winds at first. After all, it reminded me of the youth when I used to wish that there was a typhoon so we didn’t have to go to school or to work. So, I’ve always associated storms with happy times rather than sad and scary times. However, nearing the end of the day, I discovered that the winds was causing major damage around Victoria. There were power outages in some parts of greater Melboourne. The West Gate bridge had to be closed (that’s the bridge I needed to use to get back home if I had taken the car to work that day). Trains got cancelled.

For a moment, I thought I’d be staying the night in the office. Some offices allowed their employees to go home early that day. Because of that, Raquel was able to get an earlier train home. It was a bit late but at least it wasn’t cancelled. I had to stay at work till 5.45pm because I had some work I need to finish before going home. The train I was trying to catch was 20 minutes late but apart from that, it was all easy going.

We were lucky. All we experienced were minor inconveniences. Others weren’t so lucky. Some people still don’t have power back as of this writing. Some people lost their homes. Some, even lost their lives.

My main worry is that this kind of storm will no longer be a one-in-fifty-years-type of event. Due to climate change, I’m afraid that we’ll be experiencing this kind of freak weather more frequently. I hope I’m wrong.