orangwutang

Well, well, well. According to my WordPress blog stats, Orangwutang recently passed 30,000 page views. Not bad for a little less than ten months. Also, last week’s Myanmar cyclone stuff set a new record for daily page views. Before last week, the highest number of daily page views ever was 210, and that was set back in November 2007 when I had that John Fitzgerald Page stuff on my blog - albeit briefly. Last week’s new record: 319 page views. So what does that tell me? Not many people are interested in reading a blog about living in Vietnam - but every now and then when this blog touches on real world events that people are actually interested in - the number of page views surges.

So big weekend: I finally got a working copy of Grand Theft Auto IV: Liberty City for my Xbox 360. I had put my Xbox 360 in the shop before I left on my trip to Myanmar. For the second time in my Xbox 360’s roughly two-year lifespan, I had the “three red lights of death” complete failure. (As hardware, Xbox 360s are pieces of junk.) Anyway, I left it in the shop to be repaired while I was gone - I wanted it to be fixed when I got back to Vietnam, because I knew that GTA IV was coming out while I was gone.

I picked up the Xbox 360 and a copy of GTA IV last week after I got back. I was excited to play it, so when I got home, popped the disc in, and saw “This disc is not compatible with your Xbox 360’s region code,” I was bummed! (U.S.-region-specific Xbox 360s will only play U.S.-region-specific discs, etc. - it’s a piracy prevention thing.) Anyway, yesterday I took that copy of the disc back to the shop, told them that it didn’t work, and asked them if they could get me a U.S.-region version. Surprisingly, they said they could, and to come pick it up in a few hours.

I went back to the shop yesterday afternoon and picked it up. They charged me 80,000 dong ($5 USD) instead of the normal 25,000 dong (~ $1.50 USD) since they had to get the U.S.-region version especially for me. But when I got home, it worked fine and I immediately began riding around Liberty City running doing carjackings, running over people, fighting it out with the cops, blasting fools, etc.

I spent about 4 hours playing it yesterday, and I have to say it’s pretty good. The graphics are much better than the previous versions of the game, and the physics of the cars, etc., feel more realistic. My only complaint is that the missions seem similar to the mission in the prior games - but I haven’t gotten to any of the more advanced missions yet and also the other games were so thorough and included so many different types of missions already that I imagine it’s hard to come up with new, completely original stuff.

I’m bummed that I still can’t play the online version, because I’ve heard it’s a lot of fun. It looks like our landlord is going to try to raise our rent considerably at the end of June, so I’ll likely be moving again at the end of June anwyay. I’m definitely going to make sure my new place has broadband internet - so hopefully after a year of living here, I’ll be able to play my Xbox 360 online again with my peeps back in the U.S.