On my trip home today it suddenly dawned on me that I have not seen a weekday Singapore for a very, very long time. Today I saw a typical noon where students have just finished vacation lessons and were lazing around the bus interchange chatting with friends while waiting for buses to come, and office workers walking through in groups either to have their lunch, or to return to office after their meals. The entire crowd created a buzz that is usually not seen on weekends, where people would generally just be heading towards town to meet friends and shop. It is even worse at Tekong; I don't even get to see anything that is not green in colour, or hear anything else besides the firing of gunpowder.
I miss being a civilian.
In other news, computer games are getting more and more realistic these days, which is supposed to be a good thing, but the games are improving too fast for the hardware (and our pockets) to catch up. An example is this. I have always loved playing off road racing games, but the previous game, Colin McRae Rally 2005, could not run on Vista, so I was excited when Codemasters was coming out with DiRT.
But alas, the system requirements of the game are too high! My five-month-old computer just reached the minimum system requirements, and when I tried out the demo, the game was very laggy, even at the lowest settings (640x480!), so laggy that it was almost unplayable.
I recall my good friend told me before, meeting the minimum requirements only means 可以动。Haha.
I thought maybe the problem lies with my graphics card, because 7300LE is an entry-level card which was created for the purpose of home entertainment (aka watch movies), and not for intense gaming. I realised in recent days that the GPU temperature is 70degrees when idle, and easily shoots up to 80degrees when playing games!
Ok fine, I am just giving myself an excuse to buy a new card, since the PC Show 2007 is coming. Haha. Then again, the 8600GT looks like a good buy, and the fact that my good friend has got himself a powerful card recently is tempting me furthur.
Ever since I got my own NETS card and allowances from the SAF every month, I have become more and more greedy. You know, NETS is scaringly convenient. Just one swipe, press in 6 digits, and ta-ta, the thing is now yours (Recalls purchase of my $106 RAM. Bloody hell it cost 50bucks now nia.).
Fortunately my willpower to resist temptation is rather strong, because I frequently think about where I am going to find money to study in university (yes, I lied to my PC when I told him I do not have any financial problems. Well I do not have any now, but I foresee that happening in the future.), which is why you don't see me with an external hard disk or a PSP in my hands.
Going back to games, I don't think this advancement is going to slow down, going by the description of Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, a to-be-released game. While PS3 and Xbox 360 gamers can enjoy all these games without worrying about lagging or hardware not being able to run the game, PC gamers will have to burn large holes in their pockets.
I'm tired.