Asuka ♡
August 29th, 2006 by Erik Benerdal
I’m doing some drawing again. It’s going kind of slow, but I try to work on it whenever I can.
Archive for August, 2006
Impressions of Singapore
August 28th, 2006 by Erik Benerdal
It’s soon been a whole month since I arrived in Singapore. A lot of people have asked me how it’s been and how I’m coping with all the changes.
The answer I give is usually something like a shrug and “Okay I guess. Haven’t really thought about it”. Because I haven’t really. Singapore have it’s quirks and oddities, but generally it feels like any other place.
There are a few things that is expectable from a large city of 4 million inhabitants. Stuff like a good subway and awesome shopping areas. Naturally (no pun intended) there are a different eco system here in terms of animals and insects. I saw my first cockroach last week. Everyone was like “Eww! Cockroach!” where I went “Oh really? Neat!” XD
Just to be clear: No, there are no cockroaches in sweden. My favourites are the tiny gecko’s that you can spot here and there. They’re like super cute XD
One thing that’s really important to remember is the fact that Singapore used to be a brittish colony until the mid-60’s. This means that everyone drives on the wrong side of the road. So whenever you cross the street, make sure you look BOTH ways. I keep getting it mixed up. XD
Language-wise I haven’t had much trouble at all, except the occational mindblock or hic-up. The natives speak english, sure, but only with foreigners like myself. Amongst themselves it’s Indonesian, chinese or whatever (honestly, I can’t tell). All of the public signs are written in at least three languages. Some shopkeepers might have a really thick accent but sometimes a simple thumbs-up or down will do the job just fine.
The guys are work have been awesome and they quickly embraced me as one of their own. There are a lot of different nationalities in the company (French, Argentina, USA, Indonesia..) so everyone is really patient with any english short-comings. I guess they (and me too, I guess) have developed a kind of half-english for common conversations. We don’t necessarily care too much about proper grammar or pronouns (except Dan the american, I guess). For some reason it just works.
New site design
August 20th, 2006 by Erik Benerdal
It’s been on my mind for a long time and I’m sure I’ve mentioning it. Scalari.net needs a new look, and now it has got one. Instead of writing everything from scratch like I used to do, I used a free blog software.
I’m going to take this opportunity to clear out some of the old crap, as well as try to give the site a bit more focus. This is my site, so it will be about me, my new job and my art.
I’ve posted the all the entries from a couple of weeks back. If you want to read older blog entries, you need to go here.
I haven’t been able to implement everything just yet. I will bring back the videos and files, but I need to do some more coding.. and I just realized I can’t programme php, but I’m learning as I go along.
More Simlin adventures
August 14th, 2006 by Erik Benerdal
So I finally got a camera this weekend. It’s kind of an embarrassing story, but I’ll tell it anyways.
I went to the only place I know where I could find a whole bunch of cameras, Simlin Square. There are like 50 stores and 80% of them sell cameras. The problem is that everyone working there are chinese, and they would do nothing else but to rip you off if they get the chance, especially if you’re a fair-skinned european like me. I was aware of this.
So I go there and start looking around, talked to some guy, he showed me a camera and gave me a price. I told him I’d look around some more.. and I figured I could do that for a while until I got a good sampling of cameras and prices.
But like the second store I went in, this guy was all over me. I gave him the pricerange I was going for (bad idea) and then he showed me a camera. The camera looked pretty basic and lame, but it was pretty small, had a big LCD and the price wasn’t that high. Actually it was way less than I had hoped to spend. So after some dealing I succumbed to his dealer powers and I bought the stupid thing.
I was really suspicious so as soon as I got outside the store I unpacked it and tested it outside. It was a pretty straight-forward camera, and the pictures seemed to look okay. So I went home.
Once home I looked at the photos on my computer and by gawd they were horrible! The camera said 5Mpixels.. but it was more like 1Mpixels stretched to five. Fuck. But I figured it would be okay since where I come from, if you don’t like a product, you just return it the next day.
So next morning I went back to Simlin and told the clerk “This camera is a piece of shit and I don’t want it. Give me my money back”. Apparently he could do no such thing. He started running around like fucking crazy, I’m not sure if he was trying to find me another camera or if he was just avoiding me.
After a while I had grown pretty pissed, but I let my rage subside and we started talking about maybe getting me another camera. Fine. He recommended another camera to me that was japanese *sarcastic “ooooh!”*
By this time I was pretty fed up with all of the salesmanship, but essentially I just wanted to go home with a decent camera. So I said “Fine. Give me a good price and we have a deal”. The price he gave me wasn’t great, but it wasn’t bad either. Probably what I’d have to pay for it back in sweden.. so I figured okay. He even threw in a pouch and a memory stick for good measure.. though they always to that.
While home I tried the camera out and fortunatly this one’s a keeper. The photos are really crisp and so is the video. I really like it. It’s a Sony Cypershot and it uses a Memorystick Pro Duo, compatible with my PSP.
Update beep beep
August 12th, 2006 by Erik Benerdal
It’s been a fun week. It went by so fast, but that was probably because last wednesday was Singapore’s national day and we all had the day off.I finally went and got myself a quilt for my bed, so it’s pretty comfy now.
Work have been great so far. The mood of the office is pretty laid back.. in a busy working kind of way. I’ve been having a bunch of game design discussions with the designer and manager.. which is always fun. If I could have any other job than programmer it would be game designer.
I’m still eating way too much McDonald’s. There’s one right down the street and I don’t know too many restaurants. We always eat lunch across the street at IMM (huge mall), but today’s saturday and I have no clue of where to go.
There IS this one pizzeria that delivers absolutely DIVINE pizzas. Seriously the best pizzas I’ve ever had.
I’m going to try to draw some more on my spare time.. but I’ve also thought a lot about Swords and Rifles. I’ve learnt a few thing from looking at the Ksatria game engine that I might want to try out.
Computah go!
August 5th, 2006 by Erik Benerdal
Hans from work slash roommate took me to Simlin square today. Simlin is “8 stories of pure electronics shopping paradise”. Basically a huge mall with nothing but tech-stuff. I had to get a couple of things to be able to assemble my computer. I managed to get some really nice deals too.So yeah, now I finally have a working computer in my appartment. I’ve been using my PSP for casual surfing and checking my email, stuff like that.. but it’s been kind of a bother.
I also managed to pick up a copy of Tekken: Dark Resurrection. I haven’t played it that much yet (was busy assembling my computer), but it looks absolutely gorgeous! It is a bit akward though because when I play Tekken 5 on the PS2, I’m used to like flipping the controller around for optimal finger positions during hard combos.. but when I do that on the PSP I lose track of what’s happening on the screen. Also the analog disc is kind of in the way for my thumb when I want to press the down or foward-down.
I’m gonna play some later before going to sleep and see if I can get more used to it.
I’m also noticing an increase with my english. I’m hoping my surrounding notices it as well. ^^;
[Update]
Like I said I played some Tekken before going to bed.. for like three hours. I had to stop when the batteries started to run out and it was getting way too late. It’s just awesome. I managed to adapt to the psp controls and I had a total blast. The action’s great, the soundtrack is even better than Tekken 5 and um.. yeah. Go buy it if you have a PSP and you like fighters.
I’m here
August 4th, 2006 by Erik Benerdal
I arrived in Singapore 2 days ago and I’ve had (almost) no problems so far. My co-workers are great and they’ve been really helpful.The appartment’s nice. It’s on the 15th floor of Guilin View. I sure as hell ain’t complaining. So far my impressions of Singapore have been really positive. The natives are nice and they all speak english. Most of them anyways. It’s weird. Everything is in english. Billboards, road signs, the papers, tv-shows.. but they all speak chinese, thai or indian amongst themselves.Oh, and I managed to get myself lost for the first time yesterday. I went with Laurent (roomie) to work in the morning, and I did my best to memorize the route. It’s quite easy.. you just have to find the train station, go two stations and then find a (huge) mall, walk through it and the Ksatria office is behind it.I decided to try to get home by myself, and all I had to do was retrace my steps. Seemed easy enough. I found the mall (just across the street), so I went for some grocery shopping.. got take-out at McDonalds.. and then I started walking towards the train station. Sure enough, I found it.. but which train should I take? Hmm.. I figured like this: I was sure I came from one direction.. so naturally I only had to go in the opposite direction for two stations. Wrong!
Apparently there was two trains going in that direction.. one heading east, one heading north. Of course I had to take the wrong one.
I didn’t realize it until I stepped off and tried to get my bearings. I went out the station and went “Hmmm.. this doesn’t look quite right. Maybe I need to go to the other side of the station”. After aimlessly walking around and about, trying to find the tall Guilin View buildings, I finally realized I was way wrong. So I went back two stations from where I had left off and there (after looking at several maps and billboards) I managed to figure out which train to take.
It wouldn’t had been so bad if it wasn’t like 30 degrees and my fries were getting all soggy.
My computer is still in pieces. I do my spare-time surfing on my psp.. which is why I haven’t posted anything until now. I’ll see if I can get one of the guys to show me a good computer store this weekend.
On me way to Singapore
August 1st, 2006 by Erik Benerdal
The last couple of days have been exhausting. I’ve done nothing but packing and preparing for the flight down to Singapore.I’m currently sitting in Arlanda airport, Stockholm.. waiting for my flight. I just checked in my ridicilously heavy suitcase. It weighs around 25-26 kilos.. which isn’t exactly something I want to drag along with me all day. So now I’m feeling quite relieved.
I brought clothes, my disassembled computer, my PS2 and all my PS2 games. There are a lot of games I haven’t finished yet and I couldn’t bring myself to leave them at home.
So far everything has gone as planned. All the tickets have cleared and I haven’t been searched or anything, har har har.
This flight will only take me as far as Istanbul, and then I need to wait there for roughly 4-5 hours. Maybe I’ll find another internet café and write some more..
Either way I’ve brought my trusty PSP and Loco Roco. Should keep me busy and entertained for a while.
Peace!
