Nobody expects the Spanish inquisition!

And much like the Spanish inquisition, my blog posts are not expected either. Predictably, I failed to post an entry on December 7th, no matter what I had promised in my entry of the previous day. Seeing as how I have some time to kill, I think I will make an attempt at reducing two and a half months of life to a mere blog entry. Now isn’t that practical.

Shortly after my entry of  October the 2nd (a few hours after that, really), I got on a plane full of tourists and smartly-dressed young businessmen and within 30 minutes of flying above the Aegean, I found myself in a huge (for my standards) city known for quite some time now as Athens. All I can remember from that day is how long the ride with the bus from the airport to my house proved. Thankfully, I only had one piece of luggage.

Fast-forward two months and a couple of weeks and here I am, now not a highschool (or whatever you call it where you’re from) graduate, but a university student. Things that have changed (in almost random order):

• (This is kinda obvious, but establishing it once again will only add to the drama of everyday life as a uni student.) I live in a different house. All alone. In Athens.
• I have to pay my bills out of my monthly allowance. (Which isn’t that big of a problem.)
• I am now an adult (since Oct. 30th actually).
• I don’t have a TV…
• …but I do have a DSL connection. I can finally play Half-Life 2!!! (Goddamn Steam!)
• I can now cook some things, so I don’t starve to death.

Things that haven’t changed:

• I can only cook three or four different stuff, so I find myself in fast-food restaurants and similar places quite often.
• I still have my computer.
• I’m still looking for a good DSLR.
• I still have two arms and that peg leg.

There’s more, but I can’t bother to think of any right now, since it’s 2:08 in the AM and I’m not really in the mood for that.

Warning: What follows is a small paragraph that consists of random sentences linked together for the sake of saving space. Proceed at your own risk.

Needless to say, I’ve been seeing new places and meeting new people and trying to study new subjects, but be it places or people or subjects, they aren’t all pleasant. Too bad. Oh, I also noticed that ModBlog (does anyone remember that place anymore?) went down for good some weeks ago, so the link to my previous blog was removed from my blogroll. Um, this entry would have been way longer if I had written it five or six hours ago, but… well, I didn’t.

Till next time!

PS: Half-Life 2 (Episode One included) rocks. It’s shaping out to be my favourite FPS game of all time. I don’t think I need to mention that I was a huge fan of the first one, too. But then again, who isn’t?

PS the 2nd: I seem to be getting worst and worst at this whole blogging thingie. Should I stop?

Um…

I have this sudden wish to write and post an unbelievably long blog entry, but it’s 2:22 in the AM. I think I’ll do that tomorrow instead. Maybe.

Just a quickie

Ookay, so you haven’t seen (read?) a new post on this blog for a long time. There’s a perfectly reasonable excuse for that, though: I am moving out. That’s right, the day we’ve all been waiting for is here. As of tomorrow, I’ll be living in Athens.

I’ve officially been a uni student since the 22nd of September, but classes begin sometime next week, so I didn’t have to move until now. I wasn’t really in the mood of updating my blog, but I am planning to begin posting regularly (at least once a week!) as soon as I have an internet connection. That might take a while, as I have to get a DSL line installed and subscribe to an ISP, but worry not: I will make it back online. Oh, and it’ll probably be a late October or early November comeback.

That’s about everything for now. I’ll go and get some sleep. I have some packing to do tomorrow. Wish me luck.

PS: Fast food restaurants in Athens, here I come!

PS2: No, I can’t cook for myself, okay?

Holidays! (…and a new computer)

So I’m leaving tomorrow. I’m going on a family trip to the south side of this island to have some fun in the sun and spend some time away from the big small city. I’m looking forward to it, as it’ll be the last family vacation before uni and the first in five or six years.

I will be back by Sunday afternoon. That, my dear readers, means two things. One: this trip is far too short. Two: you won’t be hearing from me until Monday. Rejoice! I’ll catch up with any posts on your blogs after I return.

On other news, my computer finally arrived today. I’ll post the specs just for the heck of it:

• MB: ASUS M2N32 SLI Deluxe
• CPU: AMD Athlon X2 4600+ M2
• VGA: NVidia GeForce 7900GTX (Asus EN7900GTX 512MB RAM)
• Sound Card: Creative SB X-Fi FATAL1TY FPS
• RAM: Two gigs (2×1GB DDR2 533MHz)

As you can probably guess, I won’t have another PC for at least a decade. Other, less noteworthy parts, include a 500GB disk, optical drives, et cetera. I haven’t thoroughly tested my computer yet. I tend to avoid benchmarks (I’m not that obsessed with performance) and go for the in-game feel instead. The only “new” game I’ve tested so far is The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, which runs great with just about everything (from shadows to filters to other things they use to make you buy new VGAs) turned on. I’ll rant about my computer on a future post and definitely expect an Oblivion review sometime next week.

Comment while I’m gone and have a great rest of the week!

Shopping… well, kinda

So I headed out to the shops today and here’s what I got:

Games

My new computer’s arriving any day now, so I got two games I wanted to play but couldn’t due to crappy hardware and a collection of games of sentimental value.
Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas You know this game. For those who don’t (are there any such people out there?), this page can prove quite helpful. Now, before you ask, no I haven’t played San Andreas yet. Well, I’ve played five or six hours on a PS2, but that’s nothing, right? The game’s so huge I’ll be playing it for months. I am a big fan of Vice City (that would be the previous installment in the GTA series, for those who do not know so) to the point where I’ve played through it five or six times. After waiting so long to play San Andreas, I think I’ll be more than happy to finally get my hands on it.

Half-Life 2: Episode One All I’ve read/heard about this expansion is that it’s tiny, but great. I’ll also play Half-Life 2 along with this, since I never could on my previous computer. So I think I’ll be satisfied. Here’s a link to learn what this is about.
Baldur’s Gate Boxset Computer RPG players know this. Heck, any gamer should know this. One of the greatest RPG series ever made and Black Isle’s finest work, after maybe Planescape: Torment. I do own Baldur’s Gate and Baldur’s Gate II along with its expansion, Throne of Bhaal. What I couldn’t find, though, no matter how hard I searched for it, was the original expansion, Tales of the Sword Coast. When I saw that boxset lying on the shelf, I knew I had to get it. It cost about 15 euros, which is not bad at all for two games and two expansions. This set ought to keep me company in the cold winter nights, aka some months from now.

Books

I do some reading, too, although this summer I’ve stayed away from it, mainly because I wanted a rest after school. These days I’m reading the complete short stories of Ernest Hemingway and today I also got these two books:

Notes of a Dirty Old Man by Charles Bukowski Anyone who hasn’t read any Bukowski go to a bookstore and grab a book right now! I will not comment on the writer himself, as that would be unnecessary; I’ll only mention that this book is a collection of articles published in Open City, an underground LA newspaper of the late 60s. Therefore, this book is also of historical value. Seriously, though, you’re missing a lot if you haven’t read any Bukowski.

In Search of Lost Time, Book 2 by Marcel Proust A masterpiece of 20th century fiction and one of the longest works of fiction ever published. This book is as monumental to literature as the Bible is to Christianity. Okay, maybe not quite, but you get the general idea. I have only read half the first book, but I happened to have some extra money on me, so I got part 2. This is a masterpiece, but a long one at that, so be prepared to devote two or three months of your life if you’re planning to read it. It’ll be worth it, in my opinion.

Music

Minimum – Maximum by Kraftwerk Apparently the group’s first live album. I can’t say I know a whole lot about electronic music. As a matter of fact, this is my first album of Kraftwerk. I haven’t even listened through this once, so I might come back to this 2-CD live album in a future post.

This is pretty much all. Do note that this isn’t what I’d regularly get when going out. This was a rare occasion: I happened to have the money and I was lucky enough to find certain items I was interested in. So, uh, any thoughts?