Aion – Spiritmaster
My current MMORPG addiction is NCSoft’s Aion (released for NA last year). Although I’m obsessed over this game, I have learned to control and curb the addiction. Lately I’ve been limiting the amount of time I spend in game, which is awesome, but at the same time I itch to play the game periodically throughout the day. Anyway, a bit about what I play.
I play a Spiritmaster, which is basically a summoner class. Aion offers 4 elemental pets, Fire, Wind, Earth, and Water. My favorite by far is the Wind, its like a puppy dog in a way. :D In the screen shots below you will be able to see my current Wind pet (Wind IV). Happy! :D Too bad you can’t ride your pets though. :( Aion needs to have mounts soon… so I don’t have to run everywhere on foot (time consuming!!). Anyway, I’ll try to periodically update about the going-ons in game. :D
Note: I do not claim to own the art shown in the screenshots below, all the artwork and design belongs to NCSoft. But the images below are taken by me, and show characters that belong to me.
Cruise – Mexican Riviera – Cabo San Lucas, Mazatlan, & Puerto Vallarta!
On 1/17/2010, I embarked on a 7 day cruise to Cabo San Lucas, Mazatlan, and Puerto Vallarta. The cruise was booked with Royal Caribbean, and the ship’s name was Mariner of the Seas. The trip overall was fantastic, very relaxing, and tons of good weather (after we left stormy San Pedro, CA)… While everyone at home experienced stormy, rainy, and cold weather, I was down in Mexico enjoying 80F, sunny, bright, and clear weather. I took some random photos of the ship (though they won’t be shown in the order they were taken), and also some photos of the places that I visited.
I thoroughly enjoyed all 3 ports, as I participated in a different activity at each location. In Cabo, all I really did was walk around and do some souvenir shopping. The funniest thing I saw was the guy dressed as Captain Jack Sparrow (painted in gold). There were also whale bones on display… but it wasn’t that impressive because the skeleton was not complete. :(
In Mazatlan, I visited the beach in the “Golden Zone” and pretty much just lounged for a few hours before returning to the ship. The taxi ride back to the ship was in an “open air” taxi, as it was kind of like a motorized buggy.
Puerto Vallarta was probably my favorite, probably because I chose to do an off-road ATV adventure excursion…. though some embarrassing things did happen… I had an extremely difficult time turning left on my ATV… It was rather shameful. I suspect that either I am a complete and utter retard, or there was something wrong with my bike (off balance or something?). Turning right was easy and just fine, but left… I had to push the handle bars SO hard that my arms ached for 3 days afterward. Anyway, so I’m riding along, and we come to this rough sandy area where you have to go uphill and turn immediately to the left. Well.. me and my inability to make left turns ended up zooming up the slope and instead of turning left.. I went right.. and promptly found myself stuck in a bush. Yeah. The line of people behind me were like. WTF! And they proceeded to drive around me and stare. The guides had to stop the tour and pull me out of the bush before we could continue on our way. Yes. I crashed into a bush. Wonderful! What was even more lame about the situation was that this lady (who rode behind me) kept bringing it up afterwards. She told me that I should go work out and work on my “balance” because obviously I had problems going left. She just kept talking about it, and she even said “I felt sorry for you.” Yeah… I am shameful…. but all in all it was still uber fun, and I would do it again if I had the chance. Hopefully next time I’ll be able to make left hand turns. XD
Pho – Union City, CA
Every so often I get a craving for a deliciously rich beef broth, and when that craving hits… I know its PHO time! :D Tried a new Vietnamese restaurant last night, and ofc, had to have the Pho noodles. While not as good as the Pho restaurant that I usually frequent, it was still NOM. :D I ordered a rare steak, brisket, flank steak, tendon, and tripe Pho noodle soup, and had the rare steak on the side so they don’t get cooked before arriving at the table. I usually prefer not to have tripe in my soup, but I didn’t see a menu item that offered the kinds of meat I wanted without the tripe. I guess I could have asked for no tripe… but the thought didn’t occur to me at the time.
After dinner, I wandered over to the asian milk tea shop nearby to grab some chocolate milk tea (no pearls/boba). :D My favorite! :D
Here are some photos of dinner!
