Metallica in Perth (22/23 Oct)

A day before my birthday, Metallica came to town (they also played another show on my birthday, but originally it was just 1 night). Whilst I'm not the biggest Metallica listener these days, I still occasionally listen to their stuff. These guys are the reason why I got into metal music.

CB and I got there just before doors opening at 6pm. We got to our seats (out in the sticks), and listened through the support bands. I wasn't a big fan of them, and the sound was very muddy, and wasn't very clear.

8pm rolled along and Ecstasy Of Gold started playing. This was it. Metallica were about to take the stage. They played through a mix of old and new, here's what was played:

October 22
01. That Was Just Your Life
02. The End Of The Line
03. For Whom The Bell Tolls
04. Fuel
05. Fade To Black
06. Broken, Beat And Scarred
07. The Four Horsemen
08. Sad But True
09. The Unforgiven
10. All Nightmare Long
11. One
12. Master Of Puppets
13. Blackened
14. Nothing Else Matters
15. Enter Sandman

Encore:
16. Breadfan (Budgie cover)
17. Hit The Lights
18. Seek & Destroy

October 23
01. That Was Just Your Life
02. Cyanide
03. Harvester Of Sorrow
04. Disposable Heroes
05. One
06. Through The Never
07. My Apocalypse
08. Sad But True
09. No Leaf Clover
10. Orion
11. The Day That Never Comes
12. Master Of Puppets
13. Fight Fire With Fire
14. Nothing Else Matters
15. Enter Sandman

Encore:
16. Stone Cold Crazy (Queen cover)
17. Whiplash
18. Seek & Destroy

The sound was muddy to begin with, but after awhile, the sound guys got it mostly right. It was loud, heavy, and on slower songs, the sound was crisp. When the songs got faster, it was a little muddled but still good. Metallica put on a great show on the first night, the crowd were going nuts, some of them were even climbing up on the support towers.


All in all, a really good show and I'm glad I went. I would've loved to hear some songs on the second night too. It's funny that I hadn't heard some of these songs in years but still manage to know the words. I still don't know some words from Gamma Ray whom I listen to more frequently these days..

If Metallica manage to come back to Perth again, I'll be up for another round for sure.

Soooo cold...

Winter has come very suddenly here in Perth. Whilst there has been hardly any rain, the clear skies have made nights very cold. Over last weekend, overnight minimums were near freezing. This was snapped on Saturday 26 June, at 8AM, after I hung out the washing. It was probably warmer in my fridge .. hahaha...

Just finished Final Fantasy XIII

.....that's over 40 hours I will never get back. This disk is never going back into my PS3 .. what a croc of shite that was....

Sick of Driving

I thought I'd never say it, but I am finally sick of driving. The past few days have been very testing on the roads, I've probably spent at least 3 hours driving to and from work in the last few days.

Perth roads and its drivers are fucked. We have no population and the freeways and highways still end up as car parks. The people who designed these roads have had no foresight into the amount of traffic they now carry. WTF is with highways and traffic lights? Drivers can't seem to handle a little bit of rain and drive 20km/h under the speed limit. They pussyfoot off the lights like their powerful 4 cylinder will be a handful from a standstill.

Main Roads and their traffic information are useless. Check it before leaving for home and everything is peachy. Like fuck it is. The Kwinana Fwy northbound was backed up and putting along from before Canning Hwy heaps of times. No mention on their website. Their freeway speed signs aren't turned on. Big fucking help that is. The radio stations and their traffic report must get the same information cos they didn't help one bit.

Getting to work is a shit because of the amount of boats which have docked. It's taken over half an hour to get past a security checkpoint. Some speedhumps have also been erected to make it safer for motorcyclists. If they actually stayed in line instead of overtaking everyone in line, then they wouldn't have a fucking issue.

All this, along with a lousy salary review after working 2 years for a promotion is surely a sign to move on.

Got Metallica tickets

Got tickets to see them October 22nd here in Perth. Whilst the above is not the Metallica of today, this is the Metallica I wish to remember. Ah well, here's hoping they play mostly old stuff. Fuck yeah!

Edguy and Metallica in one year .. can we tempt Gamma Ray to come back down? I doubt it, but my fingers are secretly crossed.

Early Birthday Present

MetallicA have given me a birthday present. They are coming to Perth the day before my birthday! Whilst I now listen to other types of metal, they were once my favourite band and I will still go, and secretly hope they play all their old stuff and magically forget their new stuff (although their latest album isn't bad).

First Impressions of Final Fantasy XIII

Pros

• Looks pretty

Cons

• No random battles. FF is not FF without random battles. (FF12 sucks too)
  
• The story is told through the datalog and not through the cutscenes/dialog.
• You only control 1 character in battle. The others are NPCs.
• If you get KO'ed in battle, then game over. Pheonix Downs are to revive NPCs only.
• Hard to keep track of how much damage opponents take. Numbers are flying everywhere.
• Battles are boring atm. It's just spamming "auto" mode.
• No towns to explore/loot.. wtf is with that?

It really seems like Square Enix have dumbed down the FF franchise, trying to open it up to a wider audience. But I don't think it has worked. It's too complex for non Japanese RPG gamers, but too basic/shite for "hardcore" players.

If Square Enix keep this up, they are going to lose their throne in JRPGs very quickly. Mark my words.

I wish I had these knife skills

...but I don't cook anywhere near as much siu yuk/char siu/siu ngaap to get the proficiency...

My driving tips/experiences

Here are some of my thoughts and tips for other drivers of Perth:

Freeway

• Mitchell and Kwinana Freeways should be renamed to Mitchell and Kwinana Carparks. Seriously. WTF? Every single day, the freeways are choked and aren't getting any better. Main Roads should seriously be thinking about adding extra lanes the entire length of the freeway.
• Notice how on-ramps are downhill? That is to allow any vehicle (independent of power) to get up to 100km/h before the merge point. I see so many retards who fucking putt below the speed limit on the on-ramp. FFS. If my POS car can get up to 100km/h, then every fucking old woman/man in their 4WD/Falcodore can get up to speed. Here's a tip: Press the accelerator down further. Your lazy automatic gearbox will do the rest.
• If you see someone up your arse, then pull the fuck over and let them pass. Who gives a shit if you're doing the limit.. someone wants to go faster than you. If everyone is up your arse and you're on the left lane, fuck off the freeway and take some slower paced roads instead.
• No FUCKIN rubbernecking.
  

Turning Lanes

• See the car behind you who wants to turn into a slip lane but can't? That's me. It's because you and every fucker in front of you has stopped with a zillion metres between each car. Why? Is the road flat? Yes. Even if it wasn't, an automatic car, or anybody with decent clutch skills will not roll back the cricket pitch you leave between cars. Simply edge forward and let everyone turn into the slip lane.

Traffic Lights

• See the green light? It means GO. Don't fuckin dawdle. Everyone who fuckin putts off the line is simply holding up everyone else. Seriously. If everyone was paying attention and got off the line quickly, I wouldn't spend a fucking eternity at traffic lights everyday waiting through light changes cos some fucktard wasn't paying attention or didn't want to use some petrol and use some decent acceleration.

If everyone pays attention to these tips, then Perth might actually have less traffic issues. We're a "big town" FFS, we shouldn't have these huge traffic problems. If everybody took notice, everyone (or maybe just me) would be a lot happier on their drive to/from work.

The case of the missing bun...

On my previous trip to Singapore, I bought a fake soft bun from Action City, similar to this one (without the chocolate smiley face).
I left it on my desk at work, and it fooled quite a few people who thought I had left a real bun sitting on my desk for days on end.

After the Christmas break, my bun had disappeared. I was a little annoyed, cos it cost $5! I thought someone had stolen it...

One of the other guys had a friend going to Singapore, so he asked them to buy some donuts. Now four of these donuts are sitting on my desk, and they've done an even better job at fooling people.


Turns out, the cleaner asked one of the guys at work if we were going to through them out as they were on the desk for days. After a little investigative work, I eventually found out my bun was thrown out by the cleaner! Argh!

What have they done?

Technology makes easy work to spy into people's yards. Today, I was using nearmap.com.au which is like Google Maps but higher resolution and a timeline where you can look back in time (Perth has about 2 years of data) and see how things have changed...

I had a look at my folk's old house, where the family lived until 1997ish. Boy have things changed. This shot was taken in winter (the grass is green .. the latest one in Dec 2009 shows everything dead/brown). The only things which have remained after 13 years are the pavers and the concrete slab where the shade house used to be. No more citrus plants. No large patch of buffalo to play on (or ride and get prickles on). All my childhood memories are now just that.

Australian retail ripoff

Australian gamers are amongst the most ripped off when it comes to paying for games. Case in point:

On the EB website (and I presume the stores), you can get:
PS3 Star Ocean for $108.
PS3 Final Fantasy XIII (pre-order) for $118.
Total = $226

On a UK game site, I just bought:
PS3 Star Ocean for $56.08.
PS3 Final Fantasy XIII (pre-order) for $70.56.
Total = $126.64

Same game .. only the cover doesn't have the Australian Classification markings.

What a joke. I just saved $100 (effectively got a game for free in Australian terms), got it delivered to (my folks) door and didn't have to deal with the body odour filled games stores that we have here in Aus.

F*cktard drivers in sports cars

What is it with people who have sports cars and can't drive? I almost got cleaned up today cos some guy in an EVO VII decided to cut through a double lane roundabout. It's not like the car was unable to corner properly, and I was beside him leading up to the roundabout, so he must've known I was there. Really pissed me off this morning.

I noticed he had to stop at the next traffic light, so I stopped right next to him and motioned for him to wind down his window. I gave him a few nice words before moving forward into the traffic light queue.

Evaporative Cooling

So a few weeks ago I got an evaporative cooler and ducting installed. I must say that it's made the whole house more comfortable in the hot days that we've had since. On the second or third fan speed, the house stays around 25-27 degrees, which is quite comfortable when it's 35+ outside.

I'm not sure how much water it's using through the evaporation process, but I've been putting the dump water on the lawn. The lawn is half green half yellow, due to the hot and dry weather, but the salty dump water hasn't kill it completely yet...

Ensiferum/Cynic/Edguy gig

Here's my quick review of the gig on Thursday:

Ensiferum weren't bad. I think they are like a faster version of Elvenking (which isn't a bad thing), although I'm not big on the growl vocals. Couldn't really hear the chick keyboardist at all, so not sure if she was actually playing or not haha. Maybe she was there for eye candy. She didn't have her top off like the other guys.

Cynic were a jazz fusion band with progressive metal elements. The vocals had a ton of reverb with some other effect thrown in and just wasn't my cup of tea at all. The crowd wasn't going off because the songs were too slow. Their last song was their fastest, which got the crowd going, and was my favourite. But not looking for their albums any time soon.

I went to see Edguy, and I would've paid the money again just to see them again. They certainly didn't disappoint. Tobias and the band got the crowd going with his singalong antics. The played a 60-70 minute set and left the crowd wanting more. Tobias promised the crowd they will be returning to Perth, I would definitely go and see them again. My ears were ringing afterwards, my throat was a little scratchy this morning from the screaming, and it was so worth it.

Kamelot, Symphony X, Sonata Arctica, Elvenking, take note! If Edguy can come down, so can you!