Anniversary

Azreal and I celebrated our fourth anniversary last week. We both took the day off work and had breakfast at Southbank. We walked around there for a while. It was a beautiful morning; the fog was really thick and was hanging over the river – the city was covered in a thick blanket and the skyscrapers disappeared into the clouds. Very dreamy. It was so nice being there without anyone else there.

We eventually walked over into the city and took our time walking around. We went into an arcade and played some games. We shot zombies together and I stood by his side as he challenged a very serious looking Korean guy at Tekken 6 (which Azreal lost 3-2). I loved racing cars in the rally game because I can’t drive due to my epilepsy and the games have full steering wheels, pedals, surround sound and force feedback (and I won). We had lunch, did a little bit of shopping, spent far too much time on the PS3 demo at Harvey Norman and went back to Southbank to eat ice cream, sit by the river and talk about solving the world’s problems.

It was a great day.

Brisbane's own gaming convention

Brisbane is finally getting a gaming convention. I’m so excited. We get Supanova (http://www.supanova.com.au/) every year which I admit I wouldn’t mind going to, but it’s more about comic book geeks and kids dressing up and doing their cosplay comps. To be honest I’m scared of the kind of people who go to it. Though I’d love to see the celebrities that go, and listen to the speeches.

But we’re getting Gencon (www.genconoz.com), four days of anime screenings, seminars, displays from game developers, previews of new games, game tournaments, tabletop game displays (and tournaments), game and anime merchandise, cosplay (of course) and of course celebrities! It’s the first time it has been in Australia and of course Sydney and Melbourne people are complaining about it going to a one-horse town like Brisbane. But they get lots of conventions. I’d even take time off work to go to it if my boss wasn’t already having that time off. Damn it. But I’ll see what I can do. Maybe I can have a half day.

Two of the FragDolls posted a picture of them with Peter Petrelli (Milo Ventimiglia) at a Comicon. No fair!

25th birthday party

To celebrate my birthday I had a few friends over on Saturday afternoon/evening to play a few Wii and PS2 games. Of our “normal” friends (ie. friends that we’d made before we got into gaming) we’re definitely the most into games but as you can imagine the guys out of the group had the most fun because they also played games on a regular basis or picked the games up more easily. The girls had a little more trouble but all in all it was still a pretty good night. It was a small group – my friend from uni and her husband who we have had over before for games nights, Azreal’s brother (who we bought the Wii off) and my friend from work who’s never even used a Wii before.

We played Wii tennis, boxing, bowling and baseball as well as Buzz hollywood and Guitar Hero II on the PS2. Of course there was drinking involved and we walked up the road to Nando’s to create a commotion and feel embarrassed as Azreal and I go there quite regularly so the owners of the store know who we are. And we had ice cream cake, which I’ve wanted since I was a kid but was never allowed to have. Nice dessert to have on a cold and rainy night!

It was lots of fun but I couldn’t help but feel that I had to go easy on the others (Azreal excluded – we went head to head on both Wii boxing and Guitar Hero and both went hard…that was fun!). It would be nice to have a group of gamer friends that we could really spur each other on. Now I kind of know how Azreal feels when he plays – like he’s being held back by playing with people who are noobs.

I was just glad that I got to have a relatively cheap night without having to pretend to have fun (how I usually feel when I do the civilised dinner and drinks for my birthday) and could just be myself – a geek – do the things I want with the people I want to be with. The sign of becoming mature, yes?