Thursday, November 15, 2007
Singapore bans Mass Effect
"Microsoft and Bioware's sci-fi action role-playing game Mass Effect is due to be released on November 20 in North America and November 23 in Europe. There will be one country that won't be playing the highly anticipated title, though--Singapore.
Reuters is reporting that the Microsoft game has been banned by Singapore's Media Development Authority due to the much publicised love scene that can occur between a female human--if the main character is set up as female--and alien 'woman'. The gender of the alien in question is actually not quite that simple; while female in appearance, the designation has little significance for the species in question--the Asari--as they are mono-gendered."
Haha kinda unreasonable to ban the game just for this isn't it? For those who've seen the movie, its just 10 secs of 2 moving heads and 1 hand, so it's.... definitely not as sexually explicit as the MDA makes it out to be.
Maybe it's for the greater good, just like the retaining of Section 377A was for the good of the society, to give gays their own space while still maintaining our status as a society with conservative, traditional values. So maybe in the same way, this ban's to protect the sensibilities of the (impressionable, i guess) youths.
But good news! It’s not illegal to play or own the game in the country. So Singaporean players are still free to obtain their game from other sources. And the MDA stated that a new video games classification system would be introduced next year could allow titles such as Mass Effect to be passed and classified appropriately. Yay!
Edit: About-turn! The ban's been lifted. Looks like Xboxers are gonna be able to enjoy Mass Effect after all (:
Chris
ABUNDANT PEACE :)
11:38 PM
Tuesday, November 06, 2007
There's a lull in the storm. 3 weeks left and 7 papers more to go.
Exam papers always have a way of surprising you. No matter how well you study, no matter how much practice you get, somehow someway there's always bound to be something unexpected in every paper. And it just so happens that some of this stuff comes out during one of the most important exams in your life.
GP was just absymal. Horrendous, absolutely torrid performance on my part. And not that I didn't prepare well enough.. it's just that whatever I studied didn't come out. What a shocking way to start the A levels... In the end I and maybe 1000 other people chose to do the environment question which was like a no-brainer, but I wouldn't be surprised if reading essentially the same arguments over and over again could make the markers decide to "adjust" their expectations a bit. =(
And the past 2 days have just been downright horrible. Chem Paper 3, Bio Paper 2 and Math Paper 2 squeezed into two days. I think it's all Deepavali's fault.
Nothing much to say about Chem, except for the fact that there was absolutely no elucidation. That's always been my forte.. I always look at elucidation questions and think to myself : Free Frag. But not this time nope, just some silly questions on inorg and physical chem mostly. Bleah. And I gotta make a note to myself to never ever study the way I did for bio ever again. Making notes and not practicing. On the eve of Bio and Math with less than 12 hours to go i found my brain shockingly devoid of any bio knowledge. So in the end i had to burn the midnight oil doing other schs' prelim papers until 1, catch some sleep, then wake up at 5 and pia again until 7 when it was time to leave... Surprisingly, both papers weren't so hard. I've got a feeling that 99% of the sch population's gonna get at LEAST 90 for math paper 2 coz it was that easy.
And now we're looking at 1 week without exams, until next Tuesday. Bit of time to catch up on Bleach and ppl on msn. I'm watching Dan in Real Life now. It's a comedy starring Steve Carell, who's this columnist Dan Burns who gives people advice on how to manage their relationships but who's own life is ironically so screwed up. Single parent with 3 daughters growing up with their own brand of teenage agnst, and the youngest of whom brands him a "good father but a bad dad". Then he meets this beautiful lady at his family reunion, and they instantly click and just fall so deeply in love with each other, but she turns out to be his younger bro's (Dane Cook) girl. So... lots of meaningful looks across the dining table, some sad attempts at being a caring father, awkwardness etc.
I'm really loving Steve Carell. It's not that we havent' seen this kind of comedy before, and Jim Carrey's "Liar Liar" comes to mind, but its just not often that you see the bad-parent plot work. But Steve Carell makes it believable and real. Its because he's such a failure at managing his relationships with his daughters and fitting into his extended family where everyone's married/dating that makes him a character we laugh at and sympathize with at the same time. I hope he goes on to make more good movies while keeping up the good work with the Office.
(: Happy Deepavali.. i guess.
ABUNDANT PEACE :)
8:27 PM
Saturday, November 03, 2007
I'm scared...
'Cause things rarely turn out the way we hope they would
Chris
ABUNDANT PEACE :)
11:35 PM
