A lot happened in the last few days particularly. To start off, here's a report of yesterday. Yesterday I went to Netopia in Megamall to make use of their hideously fast internet speeds. I downloaded Japanese SilkRoad Online and some Lineage 2 movies.

So I got to play in jSRO last night... Good grief it's so adorable. The community is so interesting. One fine example that struck me immediately is how organized they are in setting up shops. They all put up their shops in organized rows, on the border of the circle around the fountain in the first city. And even those outside of this area all put up their shops to the side. This is just smart. It makes shopping super easy. I always hated shopping in iSRO because it was in such disarray. You'd go to one section, try your best to check every shop and not leave anything out (because you never know what you might find in shops), then move to the next section. When you come back to the section you began with, you notice that the shops have changed! So you're forced to check them again! Shopping in iSRO could take anywhere from 20 minutes to almost 2 hours, depending on what you're looking for.

Another notable mention is that because the server is filled with only mostly Japanese, and maybe a few Japanese-speaking foreigners. That means two things. One it means that most people on the server live in Japan, and two it means that the servers are far less congested than the international servers. What does the first thing mean? It means that you can pretty much tell when people will be most active and when they won't because of sleep. Unlike international servers, where people on the eastern side of the world will be asleep but the people in the western side would be awake and vice versa... There's never an inactive time.

And because the servers aren't congested, and maybe also because they could be using superior hardware, the servers do not lag at all. It's immediately noticeable to me, a dial-up player.

Anyway, now for the downsides heheh. jSRO is 7 patches behind iSRO. That's not so bad. Now for the really bad part. I speak a little Japanese. Probably enough to get through the game. But the problem is that the program does not display the Japanese fonts properly on the English version of Windows XP. Game text is all written as question marks (?), game buttons have invisible text (sad) and player names and text are written in ascii characters. I think it's Shift_JIS, but it's like your Windows can't handle the Shift_JIS. If I had a Japanese OS I'd be able to see the Japanese text properly.

Okay so now I'm torn between wanting to play in jSRO with the adorable community and good servers, despite being probably the only gaijin that can't read a single thing, or go back to iSRO, with all the annoying people and annoying lag, that I can at least read.


Enough of that though. I've just finished downloading a game called Freestyle, which is an online street basketball game. I haven't tried playing yet because the download just finished. But it looks interesting. Mikey told me about it and he enjoys it. Nevermind the fact that it's a Filipino server though, and might end up being p2p, because it's run by Level-Up Games Philippines.


Yesterday and today at the PIU machine a lot of people dropped by. A guy from Sta. Lucia yesterday, and today one of the participants in the tournament last October, from Riverbanks, Belo from SM North, and Jeremiah from San Lazaro.


Finally, b-boy news. I'm close to getting air chairs. Woohoo! I'm able to support my entire body weight now on just my stabbed hand. I just need to learn to balance it. When I lift my legs I immediately lose balance so I'm probably doing it wrong. It'll only be a matter of time though, if I keep at it. Oh and Mikey yesterday did another handstand -> suicide at the end of Funky Tonight. He missed but it was still fun to watch.