All finger puppets can be bought here.
A second Valentine’s Day entry is coming later today.
Also, be sure to check here tomorrow for two Valentine’s Day themed entries!
(I realised after I started writing this that I kind of wrote about this once before, quite a while ago. This other account, however, is slightly fictionalised as it combines this story with one where I very violently threw a shoe at her in anger.)
My secondary school was right next to the local leisure centre, as such, while I was in sixth form I was allowed to use it for free during the weekly PE lessons. What’s important to bear in mind, is that this was 2010; in 2007 I had been rather overweight, in 2008 that changed very quickly and I became very thin, and as such, all my PE clothes were suddenly very big and baggy on me. Around 2010, I was at my skinniest and was actually a little underweight (not now though) and since I don’t often buy new clothes, the fat PE kit was on me at the time.
I wandered down to the gym along with two female friends of mine. I went on an exercise bike, and they were each much lower down on rowing machines beside me. For a while, I was exercising away, burning calories to make room for an extra chocolate bar, and everything was going fine, they were doing likewise. After a few minutes, however, I realised that I had a question for them.
“Oh, by the way,” I said, turning sideways on the seat to face them, “do you happen to know the date of the school’s open day?” (I must admit, I don’t remember what I asked, I just made this question up. I suppose it could have been that, probably not though.)
They told me and I turned back to my exercising. Everything seemed, at least, to be fine. However, things, most certainly, were NOT fine. You know how, on television, when characters need to speak in private, they’ll just speak a bit quietly only a few feet from everybody else and somehow nobody’ll hear them? Well, it seems that these people seemed to think that it worked in real life, as I quite clearly heard the following exchange.
“My God, did you see that?” said Female 1.
“No, what’re you talking about?” asked Female 2.
“When he turned to face us, I could see RIGHT up Adam’s shorts. They’re so baggy, you could see everything!”
“No way! Surely, he’d notice? I don’t believe you, I’m gonna look for myself.”
So then she thought up some random question to ask me. This, of course, put me in a very awkward situation. I could just seem rude and suspiciously not look at them while I spoke (and probably make it obvious I’d heard them), or I could turn and humiliate myself. My decision was to turn and face them, but to try and position my legs in a protective way. Turns out I failed.
“I saw it, you were right!” ‘whispered’ Female 2.
“Well, that was one of the most horrible things I could have expected to see today!”
A few days later, when the uncomfortable situation was finally over, I decided to confide in a friend and tell them the whole embarrassing thing. Their reply wasn’t so comforting “Ha! Yes, everybody knows that. In fact, they told me first!”
Pokémon Red and Pokémon Blue were the first two games in the Pokémon series to be released in English (there were two before them, but they weren’t much different to this). Much like every main Pokémon game, the story is that you are a young trainer who has been sent out by a professor in order to fill a Pokédex (which is done by catching every kind of available Pokémon), and to also become a Pokémon champion.
Since it’s the very first and there is a much smaller number of Pokémon, this is probably the only game in the series where you are likely to actually ‘catch ’em all’ (if you discount the impossible to catch Mew). For anybody who may not know how these basic things work: you get into RPG battles with wild Pokémon and use your own to fight and weaken them, once they were very weak, you throw a Pokéball at them to catch them, and from then on they will fight for you. You also fight against the Pokémon of other trainers, and beat your way through various gyms and then finally the Pokémon league.
The game takes place in a region called Kanto, and you’ll doubtlessly have a lot of fun exploring the world. You’ll find yourself in large forests or caves, abandoned factories, giant graveyard towers and even sailing across the sea. Of course, being a game for the original Game Boy, the graphics are not amazing, but I don’t think this is an issue. The places still look like they’re supposed to, and they all have a nice ‘atmosphere’ to them (perhaps due to the soundtrack).
On the whole, an excellent game. It has its flaws, for example sometimes it’s pretty hard to figure out what to do next and things can occasionally feel a bit slow, but they don’t make it any less wonderful. Throughout this review, I’ve referred to this game in the singular, even though Red and Blue are different games, but the differences are VERY minor and basically boil down to the selection of Pokémon available. You have to do multiplayer trades with the other game in order to get every single one (you can also battle friends). So my score for this game is 9.6/10.
(If you buy this game now, it may have trouble saving, if so, read this for a solution.)
First it was the Faroe Islands, and now, for my second entry on a randomly picked country, it is Singapore! Coincidentally, much like the Faroe Islands, Singapore is also a collection of islands, rather than one mass.
In the past, there were many rainforests down in Singapore, but sadly very little of them remains in the current world. Steps are being taken, through land reclamation, to restore them, but it seems this could be a depressing case of too little too late. As you can infer from a lack of countryside, the place is very heavily urbanised, and there are over five hundred different cities there. Singapore is also the name of the country’s capital city, which makes it rather easy to remember.
If you’re wondering what might be done for fun, Stikfas is based in Singapore. For those who don’t know, Stikfas is a cool collection of customisable figures. You buy, for example, a pirate set, and you’ll have all the pieces needed in order to make a pirate figure. But you aren’t bound by that, all the pieces from all the sets are compatible, and people have a lot of fun making their own original figures. I had a lot of fun with these in the past, I even made an original one of my own, maybe I should photograph him sometime… But, yes, sorry, gone off on a bit of a tangent by using things I already knew about!
Should you ever be interested in visiting the country, Sentosa is the best known island resort to stay at. There are many fun and exciting attractions there, including large open beaches, an aquarium and theme parks. All sounds rather nice. It would be a lovely sunny break, and even if it weren’t sunny, it’d still be warm. At the moment there is a lot of rain, though it is still thirty degrees out, which is nice really, I like rain.
And so those are a few facts about Singapore. I could have also mentioned thing such as authors from that country, or spoken a little about the food they eat there, but I’ll just give you those links instead, rather than making an overly long entry and risking the loss of your attention!
