Ten Things in Sims that may (or may not) happen in real life.

I love Sims. It’s an excuse to sit in front of the computer for hours on end controlling someone else’s life, AND you get to pick out their wardrobe. And between the hours I spent leading countless Sims through their lives (and just occasionally trashing their lives when I’m in the mood), I’ve realized – there’s something to be learnt in this PC Game. So may I present you, ten things in Sims that might (or might not) happen in real life.

10. VERY VERY UNLIKELY – the cheat bar.
So I never had to worry about money in Sims (pfft who wants to worry about money when there’s so much more to be done – having a job is simply for fun) since there’s the handy cheat code. Type in a word and WALA the Sim is set for the rest of his/her life. And of course, that never, ever happens in real life. (sigh)

9. VERY UNLIKELY
You know how in Sims 2 the Sims just disappear once they walk out of a 5 metre radius of their house? That *might* just happen in real life if Martians chance to abduct you right after you step off your porch, but I wouldn’t put my money on that. (The programmers have learnt, and have fixed that in Sims 3.)

8. VERY UNLIKELY
When Sims get really really depressed (and I’ve seen this quite often….whoops aren’t supposed to let you know my evil side B)) a huge Bunny pops out of nowhere to comfort the Sim. I’m not an expert on this, but I’m pretty sure giant bunnies aren’t standard protocol for emotion therapy in reality ;p

…will continue list later

Defeated by the Bookworm.

I’m sitting in a 10 by 10 cm of space surrounded by piles of dusty books sorted in stacks, singing the alphabet under my breath trying to wonder whether R or P comes first.

I’m executing my annual bookshelf clean-up / tidying up. (Aha, now all that makes perfect sense now.)

I’ve been trying to create some sort of order and logic in my bookshelf for the longest time now, and since school’s broken up for summer and it’s a rainy day, I decided it’s as good a day to start.

It’s a road of no return.

Bookstores have this magic in them – with perfectly aligned books according to alphabetic order of the author’s last time. And that’s exactly what I’m going to do with my own little collection of books back home. It proved to be a workout that left me more exhausted than a run round the park. I spent the good part of an hour trying to pull out books from the corners of the house they’ve somehow found themselves in, and sorting them by author. Along the way I’ve discovered some gems (“Once” by Morris Gletizman [pronounced Glightsman...I think.] – am immediately reminded of the touching ending the moment I saw the book), some not so gems (Wide Range Readers from way back in Grade 4 and a swimming club receipt), and five books from a series called Everworld which I very very vaguely remember that looks promising for a reread. It’s about rediscovering childhood favourites (I reluctantly put away a Noddy storybook and handed over a Captain Underpants book to my brother – his current favourite, at the age of 7 [now I feel old]), and tenderly fingering books from a more recent past that I just can’t bear to let go (Artemis Fowl has to be my favourite fictional character hands-down; I still scourge “young adults” bookshelves for the newest book despite being way overage). It’s about reliving my own very past – from the typical teenager period that has left a stack of Jacqueline Wilsons as proof, to a more adventurous time of Pendragon and just about every book under the sun about alternative universes, even a brief fling with Twilight (eeek yeah) and Gossip Girl (see if you can spot it in the pic above :p).

And my attempts to sort everything in alphabetic order proves to be a far more daunting task than I’ve imagined too. It started off well enough with five or six newly-acquired Jeffery Archer books (seriously he is a heck of a storyteller), but then shortly afterwards I got to “B” and the ten colourfully bound Enid Blyton short stories just didn’t fit in with the colour scheme. I let that slide, and proceeded on to a successful 5 minutes in which I managed to place Charles Dickens’ Copperfield in the first row, which I haven’t read (yet) but looks impressive enough. But then came frustration, and more frustration. After swearing for the fifth time for discovering a book that sprang out of nowhere (NOWHERE I tell you) with an author with A as last name (despite my fervent prayers that there be a co-author with a Z last name so I could at least place it somewhere else) when I got to the “C” authors I just kind of gave up.

Mind you, I did manage to sit there in that 10x10cm square for a good hour and half before shoving the books back for another rainy day to come.
(How do they even DO it in bookstores? Okay, they do normally have more bookshelves and manpower than my one-woman attempt so I guess I shouldn’t feel so bad…?)

But hey guess what! At least I unearthed a prize possession – a dog-eared copy of Official Pokemon’s Handbook (Gotta Catch ‘Em All!). I guess the bookshelf sorting can wait while I relive the joys of Jigglypuff, Bulbasaur, Charmander (weighing 19LBS, good against Ice, Bugs and Grass) and the like.

   <———-I’m satisfied with the day’s work

The Land of Jellyfish-Eating People. Rah.

In the place where I live, we eat jellyfish.
If that’s not weird enough, get this – you can actually order it in any good old restaurant round the area, and nobody will stare at you like you’re a freak (or alternatively, the second Andrew Zimmern).

Don’t tell anyone this (lest I get looked at weirdly), but – I actually enjoy eating jellyfish.

I’ve had jellyfish since a tender, young age – when I didn’t know (and didn’t care) what I was eating. I never even knew it was jellyfish, since its name in the local language bears no resemblance whatsoever with jellyfish, and my mom never explained to me what it was. Of course, I could turn it into a great big evil ploy to get my young, impressionable self to eat jellyfish (gasp!) and accept this freaky thought, but I think it was really mainly because eating jellyfish isn’t a big thing where I live. So using “OMG I ate jellyfish this morning!” as a conversation starter probably wouldn’t be a very good idea.

On second thoughts, eating jellyfish isn’t a big thing for a good reason – it translates into an extremely innocuous-looking dish- translucent, slightly chewy squares dipped in vinegar (plus, it tastes pretty good, and nothing like what you’d expect a jellyfish to taste). If you think about it, your average dinner steak was once a cow with big, adoring droopy eyes, and your chicken wings came from a live chicken (who was once a cute, little chick). (Sorry, no intention to put anyone off their meat!) In comparison, eating jellyfish seems less cruel and easier to stomach – at least they don’t look cute.

I’m not a vegetarian (my attempts to become one were foiled when Christmas came around), and I am by no means an Andrew Zimmern. I went queasy when I saw that special Bizarre Foods episode when they brought out a full carcass of some tiny, cute animal as a main course and liquid blood to drink (with lemon, just to bring out the freshness).

But I do agree with the philosophy of Andrew Zimmern – “if it looks good, eat it” (although granted, guinea pigs don’t look that appetizing). The reason people mentally perceive food as “bizarre” is largely because it is foreign to their culture – if you grew up eating bugs, you’d probably think eating pigs is an utterly horrifying habit.

In the end – burgers are just made up of chopped up living creatures, and while I still cannot muster enough determination to convert to a vegetarian or be so completely open to the idea of food that I’d eat a guinea pig whole, I’d certainly bear the famous line from the show in mind. And maybe one day,

Oh, and by the way. “The Land of Jellyfish-Eating People” I was talking about is actually Hong Kong – a perfectly normal, New York City style cosmopolitan city. Just thought the name would sound more dramatic, and it’s more or less true anyhow.