All Posts by ‘George Chen’

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FFXI and Blogging

April 21, 2004

I was going through my Web Blog site stat, and notice a link from this site which turns out to be a fellow blogger/FFXI gamer. She’s a lvl 71 Mithra Bard. It’s a very pleasant surprise to know someone is checking you out…. It’s rare for someone that can blog and play FFXI at the same time since both can be time consuming. ^_^;

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If you can be any race of your choice, what would you be?

April 16, 2004

Obviously, not in RL. But in the world of MMORPG FFXI , you can choose to be one of the 5 different races. You can pick between Hume, Elvaan, Galka, Taru, and Mithra. For Galka, and Mithra, they are asexual male and female respectively.

Here’s a very interesting break down on what uses actually pick in the game:

humes (40.95%)
tarus (22.63%)
elvaans (20.21%)
mithras (10.68%)
galkas (5.53%)

I guess majority are still happy being “hume” after all…

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Beautiful pictures of Hong Kong II

April 12, 2004

Alison’s forwarded this site to me. She said it makes her “home sick”, I can certainly empathize with her. The picture I used here is what we called “Ding-Ding” (slang) – the Hong Kong Island side only electric trolley – since they make the sound of “ding-ding-ding” when you are in its’ way, similar to San Francisco cable car. It’s a slow, traditional, and economical way of traveling from east side to west side on the Hong Kong Island. Last I heard, it might be going away… but I was in Hong Kong in March and the Ding-Dings are still Ding-Dinging away…

Also check out this post if you are interested in this topic.

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When Play Money Becomes Real

April 9, 2004

Perfect timing. Wired New’s article about bying Gil with RL money. Even though it didn’t mention FFXI, the situation applies perfectly.

Some interesting thoughts:

“There’s a relationship between real-life economies and a virtual economy,” says Selden. “I happen to believe that these virtual economies are very real, serious economies.”

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Digging Your Scene by Ivy

April 8, 2004

The other George found this tune on iTunes music store. It’s Ivy’s cover version of Digging Your Scene originally by The Blow Monkeys. Haha… I thought there are like 5 people in this world know about The Blow Monkey… guess not… Remember The Blow Monkeys? Curiosity Kill the Cats? The Style Council? Arrr… 80s’ British stuff….

I grew up under the whole British Hong Kong thing (not that’s good or bad, just the way it was), so exposure to British Pop was just that… more so than my “American friends”.

“Hay, what did I hear you say ayyy~~~ You know, it doesn’t have to be that way~~~” It Doesn’t Have to Be This Way – The Blow Monkeys

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Added Category for FFXI

April 6, 2004

Some of my older posts on FFXI are now all under FFXI section since I know I will be writing more about it… plus posting more screenshots in the future…. Consider the fact (on averge) I spend about 20+ hrs. with the game I think I should set up a special section for it, if not a seperate blog.

The game is not at the point affecting my social life yet *couch* since Alison is being as considerate and as understanding as possible, but she does get annoyed if I play the game. (I love you Alley if you are reading this – and I know you don’t read my blog. Haha…)

One thing I also slowly discovered, is that, FFXI is not just an MMORPG, it’s also has a strong sense of Japanese “Life Similation Game” feel to it. There are all kinds of similation games popular in Japan from horse racing, to train station/system sim, dating similation etc…. FFXI truely encourage you to do crafting (like cooking, fishing, farming, and smithing, etc) within the game… I just thought that’s a very interesting thing that FFXI brings to the US gamer which is rather old in Japan, yet new to US.

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It’s “Hip” to be Asian. Or is it?

March 29, 2004

Like one of the Creative Director I have worked with in the past once said, “It’s Hip to be Asian.”….

Today, one of my friend send me a link to the April issue of Details magazine. At the moment I am writing this, I am not sure if this is for real or not… but if it is a real scan, then I think this is pretty racist. I am by no mean a PC person ( most of you know), but I think whoever wrote this article or came up with the story idea…. if nothing else, maybe is jealous that Asian tend to have better taste, style and economic statue or something… 😉 Don’t know… A pretty uncomfortable article for sure being Chinese. Your thoughts?

I know Details is going to get a lot of shit on this….