Never Understood Why...

Things like sky-diving, bunjee jumping, cliff diving and the list just goes on and on of extreme sports...I've never understood why would people do it? Why would someone risk his life for the thrill of the moment? For the adrenaline rush? These mere reasons do not satisfy my senses, I need something more reasonable than poor excitement to put your life at stake.

For one, I'm afraid of trying new things; games for example. Roller-coasters scares the hell out of me so why would I even think of going in for the ride? Unlike others, I'm not afraid to admit that I'm a wimp, a huge one at that, but just recently and in China to be exact, I tried on a scary-looking game. I seriously do not know why I did but I wanted to get out my 'comfort' zone and wanted to experience what fear is like so I decided to tag along with my little brother. The long queue was draining the last bits of courage I got and I've even thought of going back. Before I knew it, I had to hand in the tickets and take a seat at the round circle.

The moment I seated myself in, I secured myself with the upper belt and there's was this Chinese guy next to me who said 'hello' in his Chinese-accent and normally I'd respond back but right then, I said 'leave me alone' in Arabic because for the life of me, I was tensed. The game started, we'd take off in the air, to the left and then the right..and that damn upper belt used to raise whenever we were soaring above. I hold it tight as if I were crying for dear life. It jumped up and we were high above and I felt like my heart was lifting everytime the cycle continued. I was crying. I didn't care but I was repeating 'bismellah' out loud. It felt like the right thing to do.

When we hit the ground for the last time, my head was spinning. And my face had the weirdest stripes of wet tears which my sister later pointed out with a laughing and accusing finger. I recounted my hysterical moments of holding the upper belt tight and was told there was another belt that should have been wrapped around the waist. How stupid of me to think they'd let us fall right from the sky!

[Wii] Burn The Rope

Recently, I was obsessed about finishing Cut The Rope, an app in which all you have to do is 'cut the rope' obviously to drop down the candy to the little green monster at the bottom. But when I downloaded Burn The Rope, I knew I had to finish playing all the levels.

And so it happened that I finished all the 80 levels of the 5 deck of cards in two days. With a score of 6000+ Not much but I did enjoy wasting many hours on the small screen.

All you have to do here is 'burn the rope' by the blazing fire; make sure to always let the fire's top forward so it wouldn't turn off. Then keep on moving your device till it burns the whole length of the rope, which is in different forms in every level.

What are your favourite games? Share it with me. Who knows, I might just download it tonight and get it over with. Oh and enjoy the weekends!

[Game Review] Guitar Hero III

When I first tried it, my young brothers kept laughing at how clueless I was and thought that I'd never master it but good news; I did, eventually.

I mentioned this before, and here it is again: I'm not a hard core gamer and if I get stuck in a level I'd leave it at that, but with Guitar Hero, you'd have to keep going. For one, the song finishes if the arrow of the rock meter deflects to the left. The song get stuck in your head and you have to keep going to hit the right tunes this time and listen to the rest of it. This what kept me going.

Starting out with the Quick Play option can be good if you're looking forward to practice the many songs on the list. You can then click on Tutorials to get the hang of things, and when you do, starting a new Career with the aim of scoring high hits is right thing to do.

The song 'One' by Metallica was hard for me at first as it had double tunes at the same time. Practice made my fingers adapt to the beats and keep working with the flow of the song. Now, my highest rank in it is 92% but I'm getting there in no time. Click here to find out the list of songs featured in Guitar Hero III.

After practicing for so long on the Quick Play option, I now started a career of my own with Judy Nails. There are other great guitarists like Slash, Tom Morello, etc.

There's the Multi player mode as well and that would mean the second player wouldn't get the chance to play on this cool guitar;

The Wii remote control should be placed inside it (as you can see on the picture above) and the 2nd player will only play with the control. It's fun to compete, but I'd like to finish off my career then head for a live competition with my mocking siblings, just for the heck of it.

My rating: 9/10.

Have you ever played it? And which version of Guitar Hero do you like best? To me, Aerosmith's animation doesn't stand a chance near Legends of Rock.

Busy March

Guess what? Today is the official day of my last mock examination (not technically because there’s the ICT practical test tomorrow but I don’t usually count it as one). That being said, the next big worry is acing IGCSEs which is on May-June.

After being prepared for almost 2 months for this examination, what I desperately need is a few weeks of relaxation and taking my mind out of school and the hectic days I go through. And no, this can never be the case since there’s one month to be all set for IGCSEs after having finished the syllabus. We all have to wait and start revising from now on because (as everybody's aware of), it’s not any exam, alas, an international one. Pray for me, readers.

On the bright side, this is a very busy week for me. There’s tomorrow’s final exam, and Tuesday, which is the deadline of the photography competition (that has no theme whatsoever and that makes it all the more harder to choose) and….

.....The long awaited ferry trip (the ferry below, to be exact)

Thanks to BOMU for arranging this event, 1st Youth Summit participant are all invited. If I was allowed to go, I would meet up with the friends I made while attending the workshops back in December and the awarding ceremony in February.

Profession wise, I am working with a team of my own choice in building up a story for TheWeek’s Cubscribe challenge (finding Sultanate’s best journalist), and the deadline is on March, 25th. Besides, there’s the Journalism Workshop on March, 16th at Muscat International school in order to get some tips and get the work done easily.

As a treat, I am currently downloading Spore and Half Life 2 to play later. Are there any good video games you recommend for a noob like me?

After boring you for so long about my days, what are you guys up to lately?

For now, enjoy the rest of your day!

Age Of Empires II

The other day, I went through my cousin's documents and files searching for something interesting, and this is what I found: Age of Empires II.

My cousin then got me the original CD and showed me how things should be done because I'm a total noob when it comes to games. Reason being, I have zero patience, so I give up easily. The only good thing about this game is that there are no levels. It's either you win or lose. As simple as that.

You're ought to create civilization using basic things, with the help of your stone-aged men. Things like wood, food (hunting down animals or fishing) and rocks to build houses, storage pits and the likes.



By providing all of these, you can then create more men to help you and for doing that, you should have enough houses and food, or else how would they be able to survive?

On the downside, there are invaders. People try to sneak in your area and take whatever they want plus kill your men off on the way.

Basically, the game demonstrates the ways in which human used to survive back in the stone age, and it's going pretty smooth as I'm a beginner, and as I type this, I'm downloading the game on my PC too. What can I say? I'm hooked.

If you knew me really well, you'd realize how bored I was (and I am) to have played a game (which is not something I'd personally do) and written about it.

+ Click here for free download.