As I sit now in my hotel room in Perth I feel refreshed and vitalised, far beyond any feeling of freshness I've felt in the previous 7-10 days and at this very moment I feel hope. Hope that life is more than the ooze of phlegm and mucus, the pain of my chest and lungs as said ooze builds homes and a family of little oozes, and my feverous forehead which is much more akin to an aging woman in menapause than it is to in fact... a forehead.
I've been sick with a pretty bad flu for a good week or week and a half now and let me tell you... I'm desperate for this thing to run its course and GTFO. I've now started my business trip, yesterday being the first day wherein I grabbed perverse, viper-7 and crus and hit the Atomic show (more on that soon...) before retiring (alone) to the Holiday Inn Sydeny Airport, which let me tell you does not have thick (enough) walls.
With a raging headache, as per every day since getting sick, and a sore chest I quickly rammed some lovely gourmet pizza room service dinner down my throat then promptly passed out like Heath Ledger... well... not QUITE like Heath Ledger... but close.
A further 2 hours of sleep saw me awake once more to the sound of what I would describe as a party finishing up in the lobby (my room being on the first floor overlooking the lobby.. was very much like being at the receiving end of a drain pipe as far as ambient noise was concerned). Two more hours and it was time to rise (5:45am) to go catch my plane to Perth which went smooth thanks to me over-estimating required time and having to sit on my ass for 90 minutes. Just to backtrack a wee bit... Holiday Inn Sydney Airport, you can suck my balls you low quality piece of crap hotel (note: low quality, not low budget).
So.. I'm now in Perth, a city I've heard so many great things about you'd think the King of Sweden lived here or something... guess what, he doesn't. The city is very well spaced and looks lovely (hopefully I'll be able to go see some of it this week), but 80% of the road are one way, and if you miss a turn due to... I dunno... lets say NEVER BEING HERE BEFORE, it's a HUGE mission to try and get back to where you wanted to go. Don't be fooled people... if you're trying to get back to a destination and you take a wrong turn trying to find that way back, you could end up on a string of one way streets that will lead yo' ass clean out onto the HIGHWAY! I shit you not.
"Get a GPS" my wife says... easier said then done when the hire car place is booked out (of GPS's.. not cars..), but screw it I'M HERE NOW, FINALLY. Nine floors up and placed in a non-smoking room is a blessing in disguise as I'm too f#%king lazy to drag my ass downstairs, just so I can further hurt my aching lungs like I was last night in my smoking room at the Holiday Inn. Coupled with my now-fear of driving in Perth when I have deadlines to meet, I'm going to walk to and from the office here each day and really try and get my lungs running properly again, and who knows? By the time I get back home I might be on the patches and not smoking at all! One can only hope...
So... ATOMIC! I should really write something about it as they are one of our sponsors, and this is a LAN/gaming website and not my personal whinge blog of whingyness... Myself and a few unruly type lads jumped a hire car and hit Atomic yesterday at the Showground in Olympic Park, which none of us had any real clue where is was, and ended up having to use Google maps on the fly from the car via nextG, and winged it through the city for the way home... 3 of the occupants were stoned (I think.. maybe 2), and I was driving, good times.
After we eventually got there (around 1pm...) we did a quick tour and merch-grab of all the free loot we could find (ASUS if you read this, the WGT shirt is sick (Y) I shoulda grabbed more than one) consisting of a dirty amount of laniards, an awesome shirt, the most retarded dogtag I've ever seen, and the usual amount of landfill headed flyers and brochures. My bag further inflated with crap about Microsoft small business server (I think?) as I couldn't resist the honey trying so desperately to offload them!
The stalls were good with almost everyone having something to give away for free. The ATi desk raffled (free raffle...) off 3 nice video cards which we... missed the draw for. We caught a glimpse of the PC building comp which looked none too exciting (or overly fast), but they were being built in a funky new dome case from *forgotten name!*, so that would have been a challenge in itself!
The NRG machines were out in force with 10 of them setup for anyone to jump on and play Farcry 2, and they looked awesome. I didn't get a chance to sit down and try one out but for an obviously graphic intense game, the NRG boxes looked to be handling it without breaking a sweat.
The Guitar Hero comp looked lame at best unfortunately, with the grand final coming down to 2 guys playing a song out of the FIRST TIER! (Either Talk Dirty To Me or Hit Me With Your Best Shot... I can't remember as both were played a few times) This it feel was largely due to the fact that the disc being used in the competition only had the first 2 tier's of songs unlocked.. giving competitors a choice of 10 songs instead of 73, but by the looks of their skills, that was about as much as they could handle anyway. One young lad attempted to "go large" by picking expert when given the choice of whatever he wanted, and got nailed for it as he'd obviously never played expert before and the semi final become a loud shrill of missed notes across a very loud speaker system! But these things happen, it's by no means a reflection on Atomic as it was "enter by leaving your name at the front desk" and 100% a comp for the people there on the day, not a pro competiion... Good work by Atomic in either case as the organisation was smooth and on time like the rest of the day.
Over to the WGT tent and we got to watch a bit of CS: Source on the big screens, including the Grand Final between sublime and F4F, which was great to see. The setup was really laid out clean and professional, with awesome coverage. Every player had there own big LCD showing what they did (though.. I have a suspicion they didn't line up with where they were sitting...) as well as a massive screen on each side of the room which followed 1 member from each team 'till they died, then followed another. Unfortunately 1 of the LCD's wasn't working which sucked, cause this was Teg's seat in the grand final and noone could see what he did. Which raises a question... why was sublime using a ringer from Sydney Underground in a grand final? Nevermind though, unfortunately for the boys F4F were just too strong on the day. I could be wrong (haven't looked into it), but my impression was that the lads from Good Game were in fact the shoutcasters of the games being played on screen, and if so then really nice work! They did a damn fine job and for me personally the experience was very enjoyable. Also, lol @ calling the real-time game and not being able to call exactly whats happening because the other team will hear where they are, twas amusing.
Even though we arrived late, we didn't see any sign of Quake 4 or WC3 being covered on the big screens, and sort of got the impression the Q4 final was being played while we were watching the CSS games, can anyone confirm/deny?
We ended our little trip to Atomic with the Cosplay and Adam Spencer, who to ME didn't seem like the advertised "ubergeek" whatsoever, and appeared disapointingly un-funny for a guy who works on the comedy channel (as pointed out by viper-7) and the Qantas in-flight radio "The Smile High Club" (as found out by myself earlier today), where he is also rather un-funny. Nevertheless the Cosplay was quite amusing! Some awesome costumes let go straight away (like the Racoon City Umbrella troops, hell yeah!) while others stuck it out a bit longer (CoD4 camo guy and the TF2 Spy!), however I think the show was stolen by 2nd and 3rd place. Coming in 3rd was Aussie Vader, and this guy was just outrageous. Darth Vader getup in green and gold with the corked brimmed hat etc, then he stipped down to a Borat wig and moustache in an Aussie cricket shirt, THEN he stripped down to the Borat man-kini (flesh coloured tights thank the lord...)! This dude went to a lot of effort and got a lot of cheers and laughs.
Coming in second was a guy who literally didn't dress up at all! He got on stage and simply said "I'm a girl on the internet". Funny as hell I'll admit, but personally I don't think he deserved a prize for humour in a dress-up competition, especially the sweet swag that was 2nd place prize. At least first place went to a "serious" competitor who had a picture perfect costume of Altaïr ibn La-Ahad from Assassins Creed.
All in all I had fun, I would have had a "lot of fun" had my head not been pounding from my aforementioned daily headache! Big props to Atomic to pulling it off, and I'm sure I'll go back next year, with a special note of getting there as early as I can so I don't miss out on the comp games being played.
It's now 11:30pm local Newcastle time, however it's 8:30 in Perth! Lucky I had a 3 hour nap not long ago, which seems to have balanced me up a little, but the sickness still throws the wrench in at any given moment.
Over and out - On the road again...