djkr and friends take on Life

IPPT. i always dread the time when i have to actually take it. maybe it is walking back into a camp again (i am one of those lucky few that don’t get called back during my holidays). maybe its just the pressure of having to pass the stations (stupid yes i know). or it could be just i really hate running 2.4km (don’t you?)

having been in san diego for 6 months and thus missed the opportunity to do ipt (for those of you that don’t know what ipt is – it is sort of like a get out of jail card; you don’t have to pass ippt if you attend ipt), i was really dreading doing ippt. actually no. i was really dreading the aftermath if i failed my ippt – that is remedial training, where you spend 20 sessions of 4 hours in camps training for IPPT. in fact, today while i was in bedok fcc, seeing those nsmen train for rt make me doubly determined not to go for rt. it seems like such a waste of time.

i do have to make a point that i feel standing broad jump is completely useless in IPPT. in fact, many fit people fail their IPPT solely because they cannot jump 216cm. my achilles heel has always been standing broad jump and for this IPPT i made sure that i trained for it.

to ensure that i didn’t have to attend the horror that was RT, i made it a point to train myself 2 months before my IPPT. i had help too. amin, my adm friend who i made while in san diego willingly helped to train me for IPPT, forcing me to run fartlags and timing 2.4 runs with me. he even brought a measuring tape to school to measure how far i could jump.

everything was going swimmingly to plan till 3 days ago, when i caught a throat infection. it certainly wasn’t  the best time to get one. struggling with the infection, i popped a pandol pill, took a red bull shot and headed to bedok fcc, still woozy.

i must admit it was quite daunting since doing my last IPPT one year ago. its just tests and the sort; you feel a sort of pressure to achieve, and if you failure, you feel miserable.

luckily this time, i cleared my pull up, shuttle run and situps (even though i had to push myself a little) quite easily. when it came to standing broad jump, i hesitated a long long while on the machine before taking the jump. i just had to get myself mentally ready. i swung my arms, tucked in my knees and launched myself forward. when you do a good jump, it just feels right. this one did to me. it is obviously not excellent, but considering the fact that last year i only jumped a palsy 207 cm, 221 is a great improvement.

my legs became slightly heavy before the 2.4km run. i speculated that it might have been the panadol; after all, i had never taken panadol before exercising before. it felt that my legs weren’t really there, which was obviously worrying. added to the fact that the weather was not on my side, i was not looking forward to the run.

the 2.4km run is something i really dread. your feet have to continuously pound the track at steady pace or you lose track of time. you must have the mental strength to keep going or you will fall behind. ignore the pain in your thighs and don’t give in.

as i ran around the track, my mind progressively went blank. the first few rounds i still could think coherently. as it went on, however, all i could think about was getting off the damn track and going home. actually no, my mind was like a white sheet of paper.

looking back, i don’t really know how i have been doing it, since my ns days. i managed to clear my 2.4 run in 11:52, which was definitely a nice surprise.

for the first tme since i ORDed, i passed my ippt, with a grand total of 15 points. however, i am most glad that i don’t have to go RT. that would have be an utterly horrible waste of time.

i wonder though if red bull and panadol has any weird side effects. oh well, i guess the $100 i will get for passing my IPPT will cover my medical fees if need be.

everyone who has been on the internet over the past few month must have seen them; those ads advertising for the latest online game evony. after seeing (for the umpteen time) another one of those ads boxed into a small square on the webpages i frequent today, i realised that the ads have actually evolved.

if you have been actually been living in a cave the last few weeks, evony is (supposedly) an online browser based game that the advertisements tout you can: 1. save the queen!, 2. play ‘discreetly’ 3. and will be free forever. and oh yes, the advertisements feature boobs quite prominently.

after doing a wiki and google search on it (ah, yes what would i do without dear wikipedia), i realised that the ads did evolve as time went by. i won’t post the pictures here but you can see for yourself here.

to be honest, i did not really notice them when they featured just the knight; it looked too generic and boring. who wants to play a game where the feature is a boring rusty stale old knight. the next ad with a sword pointed at a vulnerably posed, well endowed computer generated maiden DID capture my attention. you can’t really ignore phallic advertising can you. but no, still not interested.

not working?  lets put up real women on the ads. so now we have stock images of the generic model wearing a white dress staring longing out at you, asking you to ‘save’ them. no, still not catching my attention.

this is when the makers of evony decided, well, %)@# it, lets just put a pair boobs there. surely that will entice people to click on the link! they are boobs after all!

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evony’s advertising campaign reeks of desperation. there is plenty more i can go into (like how they are apparently run by a china WOW gold mining company) , but lets just focus on 2 aspects here: advertising and gaming.

from an advertising standpoint, the ads are actually meant to capture attention, and quite successfully so, even though there might be a  misrepresentation of what the game actually is. from what i have read online, there is no actual queen in the game. the official faq also writes:

How do I get my queen?
There is no queen in this game, the ad you saw is for marketing purposes and seems to be highly effective by the number of times this question has come up.

curious (or horny) individuals will feel compelled to click on the link to check out what it offers. if it has done that, the evony ads have done their job, as it is up to the main page to further sell the game. however, but using increasing amounts of cleavage in their adverts, they have earned the scorn of bloggers worldwide for their extremely distasteful ads that have nothing to do with the game. also, the adverts are becoming increasingly more and more like those web banners advertising for adult services.

i once read in the new paper (of all places) that neil french called ‘bad publicity’ the ‘holy grail’ of advertising. while it is true bad publicity (like that of the phallic burger king ad) will drive consumers to try your product, your product must be strong enough to sustain this interest.

this is where i delve into the gaming viewpoint of the game. and rip it apart to pieces.

i am gamer and i take pride in playing good games. and from what evony has shown me in its advertising, i can tell that the game is going to be of slip shod build. if a gaming developer cannot take pride in creative advertising for its games, what is to say that the game will be good? it is insulting to any decent gamer by propositioning the game like this. you don’t want to force dribble down my throat if i don’t want to play it. if you do so, i will reject it even more.

from ripping off the font AND gameplay from civilization, i expect them to get sued pretty soon.

/end rant.

to all my readers out there (whoever you may be, hello!),

it is ironic that i do not really like to blog or write when i really want to be a copywriter in the future (i was hoping the easy path was just to … you know think of ideas and get someone witter to write the copy for you: NEWSFLASH – in your dreams)

so i will try my best to force myself to write (blog rather, sorry) regularly. this is for my own good.

and maybe yours too. you might really enjoy this.

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