First time in a long while that I'm wearing my CLs again. Hope my infection has finally cleared up. What happened earlier was that before I had realized that I had an eye infection, I thought that the discomfort I was feeling would be solved by replacing my old lenses with a new pair. When I started wearing my new pair, my left eye was still infected , and it damaged my new left lens so badly it went blurry on me. No choice in the matter, I had to buy yet another lens to replace the new damaged lens. Fortunately, Leow charged me only half-price for the replacement.

It's great to be rid of my clunky old glasses again, but I'm gonna have to be more careful with my lenses. Clean and disinfect them as directed, and not wear them any longer than is healthy. Guess that's the moral of the day.

The day of our planned for long, leisurely lunch began with a little anxiety about where to eat. The weekday high tea is almost non-existent already, and because we could only leave at 1400, many set lunch type places would be closing their kitchens within the next half-hour.

It was Josh that brilliantly suggested the little tea shop within Eclectic Attic in PS. Eclectic Attic stocks an array of antique furniture and knick knacks in such variety that made Josh's head spin. As it was, at our table, Amy, HP and Belinda shared an ornate bench carved with an ivy motif that cost nearly $4k; while Josh and I shared another $1k bench cushioned and covered over with black & white Holstein cow hide. Bizarre.

The set up is like an English tea house -- dainty yet not stuffy. The service is attentive and good humoured, they have to be to put up with us. They respond to the little porcelain hand bell placed at our table, and they come round often with hot water to top up our tea.

The a la carte lunch menu looks appetizing, though they feature foi gras which I try to avoid, but Josh gamely tried it as a side to his hamburger steak. My own steak, though juicy and tasty, was unfortunately quite stringy, held together by muscle fibre that took quite some work chewing. But then I think the place is better known for their tea menu.

I was quite impressed with the scones Amy ordered. They came hot and very fragrant served with butter and Devonshire cream and a choice of honey or jam. There are other cake pastries for the sweeter of tooth, as well as gelati. Their earl grey tea is quite remarkable in that it maintained it's pleasant flavour over a couple of top-ups and because the tea never grew too strong with prolonged soaking, there was no need to remove the tea bag at all. Dunno what brand of tea that was, but I'd like to find out.

In the evening, I had another steak. Met up with June and introduced NBS and Vince to Pepper Lunch. June chalked up enough stamps on her incentive card to get a free soft ice-cream. Macha flavoured, sprinkled over with a layer of green tea powder which I though was quite ok for $1.70, though June thought it was quite ordinary.

Another memorable Thursday spent in good company.

Never seen Sun Plaza so crowded before. Must be because today is the opening day for Spider-Man 3, and it's the Labour Day holiday to boot! A blockbuster tends to bring in good business for the mall too.

How was Spidey 3? Well, it was slick with a bunch of amazing CGI effects. Venom came off quite believably, though he didn't have as much screen time as I'd hoped. The Sandman, well, we've seen before, not all that much different visually from the sandstorm in The Mummy Returns, and I think they tested some of that sand-cloud effect in Ghost Rider from a couple of months earlier.

Compared to the previous 2 movies, #3 had a rather patchy storyline. Too many story threads being woven into too short a time frame to tell it all in. There was also a lack of a strong villain character holding the plot together, the way the Goblin in #1 and Doc Ock in #2 brought focus to the earlier 2. The Sandman, I suppose, came closest, but while he had pathos, his psychosis was not really from within himself, but rather as a result of being in wrong place at the wrong time. With Venom and the New Goblin, there are too many villain types sharing the spotlight. That may be a great opportunity for lots of action sequences, but dilutes the characterizations of each.

Speaking of character dilution, poor Gwen Stacey got the short end of the stick. She got an exciting sequence in the movie, but what Peter did to her was unforgivable, black costume notwithstanding. I know allowances have to be made for the film genre, but Gwen was Peter's first love and her character should never have been treated so shabbily. I'll always consider Loeb and Sale's 'Blue' as THE definitive Gwen Stacey story. So there.

Nevertheless, Spidey 3 still manages to play with our emotions (though not up to the intensity of 2). Not often a blockbuster movie ends with grown men shedding tears for each other, and perhaps some of the audience along with them. And JJJ and the Maitre 'd played by Bruce Campbell prove that the funniest scenes belong to those characters that take themselves the most seriously.

The Spidey franchise still thrills visually and charms emotionally, but it is getting a little tired and needs a nice long rest after this episode. In showbiz you always have to leave the audience begging for more.

Campus got transformed into something of a mini-carny today. Apart from these air puppets which never fail to make me feel inexplicably euphoric, there were other inflatable devices to bounce on too. The occasion, of course, was to celebrate the College's 30th birthday.

'deep took me on at the jousting station -- Othello vs the Duke. Whoever stays on his pedestal is the winner, though in our game I think the results were rather inconclusive. One thing I discovered was that our pedestals were intentionally unstable, so while we're trying to push each other off with our padded quarter-staffs, our legs and knees were wobbling all over the place at the same time. It didn't take long for a grown man to fall.

The celebrations were both formal and informal. The task of making loud music to keep the carny side awake fell to me and my trusty little crew of DJs. Actually, "DJ" doesn't accurately describe them, they were running their playlists off my laptop, so I guess that makes them mp3Js.

These are them who've been keeping me busy for most of the past couple of weeks working out a balance of scripted and unscripted on-air chatter to go with the noisy music they selected to play. On the one hand, they were supposed to keep the carny lively and happenin' while making various announcements as required every quarter hour or so, but on the other, they also had to announce for the formal part of the programme too: basically informing the people stuck on the carny side what the movements of the GOH were, and where various sets of people should be at what time. AND deal with a wildly successful (free) song dedication service as well. Most of them are either debaters or journos, which is how they volunteered (no quotation marks) to take on this duty. Great kids, these, and I'm so grateful to them for the job they did today.

And a couple of old friends dropped by to say "hi!" B'lina and Cara met us for a caffeine fix in Gardens after the celebrations were finally over. That was, after NBS (on my behalf) confiscated the laptop powering our little makeshift radio station, and that was all there was to the evening's entertainment. Everybody just had to go home then.

Nice to catch up with Cara before she leaves for post-grad and possibly work in Holland. Yeah. Who knows when she'll swing by around here again? Anyway, happy birthday to the college, and happy trails, Cara!

Today marks another step for me up the hierarchy of the industry. The letter and the handshake confirm it. That must mean I'm getting more and more settled into this job. Odd because I never really meant to make a career out of it.

It's assuring to know that while I'm happy doing what I'm doing, Management is also happy to let me continue doing it. It's also ironic to be thus rewarded, because in the length of time I've been in the service, the one who's benefited most from what I've been doing is myself. While my job is to teach, I feel that I've learned much more than I've taught.

That, I think, is only possible with a great working environment; good friends among colleagues; and a sharing, open culture in which everyone is glad to lend a hand to shoulder each other's loads. When we can share our different strengths, talents and expertise within the staffroom it shows that the learning culture doesn't just stop in the classroom.

If I've stayed in the service longer than I originally intended, it's because of y'all who've made campus life so bearable. Thanks!

Suffice to say I've been unusually busy. Don't wanna say too much about that 'cos I don't wish to sound like I'm complaining, and indeed, I'm not. But it has been tiring and most nights I'm just too brain dead to do much more than zzzz...

Anyway, 1 task complete is the 5th print ish of NYconnex, college 30th anniversary edition. Must thank Jane and the publicity people for helping me finance the printing of this and subsequent issues. Download here.

Bought S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl. Boy, do I ever hate it. A major waste of money for me. But not because it's a lousy game or anything. It's more a reflection of my age and of my being unable to keep up with the sensory overload that the game prides itself in providing.

The graphics attempt to get as realistic as possible and I keep getting distracted with every dancing leaf, every swaying blade of grass. It gets so that I can't tell what's scenery and what's an enemy until it's 'Game Over'. I haven't even properly begun the game yet, but I'm lying face-down in a puddle of mud already. Killed by an enemy I didn't or couldn't see. Blech.

As so often is the case now, the movement makes me sick. No more FPS for this tired old man. I'll waste my time on C&C3 from now on. I blew a wad of cash on the limited edition DVD edition of STALKER but I willing to part with it already. Bidding opens at $30 (<50% of purchase price). Just drop me a comment, best bid by Friday 27 April wins.

Meantime, I'm gonna enjoy the free 29" Samsung HDTV Starhub delivered this evening. Yes.

Unbelievably busy this week, and zonked as a consequence. Some of it is my own fault, for accepting jobs I could have said 'no' to, but it seemed like fun at the time. They still are, though I wish they didn't all have to worked on and completed simultaneously.

Take yesterday... fresh out of having pulled off a near all-nighter on laying out the latest print NYconneX, it was debate training in the morning, 'Othello' in the mid-afternoon, college 30th anniversary rehearsal in the late afternoon ('nuff said), and June & I joined JY for part of the night-cycling activity with the Outdoors club. It was close to midnight when our group set off.

Each item on the list is a pleasure in itself, but all jam-packed in a 24-hour block, it gets quite draining.

Still, I did have time for a good dinner with June. We went to Pepper Lunch at Novena Square. It's like a do-it-yourself teppan-yaki . A thin slice of meat cut into bite-size pieces, served sizzling on a hot plate. One side is already being seared while the other is still raw. The diner must quickly turn the bits of meat over to get an evenly cooked meal. Each dish comes with a heap of bean-sprouts, and a couple of French beans and carrot slices. And a bowl of rice.

It's a dining concept so simple, there's no need for a chef. Just someone who can heat up hot plates all day long. And, of course, order-taking staff -- it is a fast food joint after all.

This year's night-cycling began with us already fatigued from the morning's exertions. No surprise that we didn't travel as far as we did the last time. What wiped June out was the uphill slope up Henderson, even before we got to ascend the long steep incline leading up to Telok Blangah Park, the 1st rest-stop. Nevertheless, that was a considerable distance from our starting point at Fort Road (ECP) while cycling almost continuously for about 2 hours straight. So no guilt giving up at that point.

The coming week isn't going to be any less packed. I say, bring it on!

Some days, I feel like I'm a hundred monkeys banging away at the keys of a hundred typewriters. The odds are that at random occasions, something coherent might actually come out of it.

Why do we love video games so much? Maybe it's because they provide a form of activity in which we can drop all our inhibitions, and simply revel in immersing ourselves in our raw emotions without the self-censorship of our social filters.

Living in society means living with people, and we all know that isn't easy. Getting along with others means having to compromise, giving up many of personal desires for some perceived "greater good". Often, we judge our desires as "selfish", or "perverted", or even "deviant", and so we justify to ourselves why we can't have them. It's all in the name of maintaining good relations with the people around us.

But with video games, There's no need for politeness or social grace, no need for masks or suppression of desire. There are only obstacles to overcome and rewards to reap. These desires are legitimized in the video game as goals, but they are so much more simple than in real life. Find. Kill. Heal. Upgrade. Win.

And since we aren't dealing with real people in a real context, we can truly be ourselves. But, you know what, human beings must really be social animals because when we do indulge in being ourselves, it isn't a pretty picture. Observe:

This mug is one in a series of photos of people at play on an Xbox. You can view the rest of the series here.

Time for another 'model answer'. Worked this one out while the GP kids were working on their own essay assignment on Friday. My question was from the previous Block Test:

We are constantly 'wired'. Consider the impact of this phenomenon in today's world.

I actually intended to write an outline but, as usual, went overboard 'cos the question is quite a complex one. Not satisfied with this answer 'cos there're so many more facets to examine in more detail, but as it is, I've already exceeded my 800 word limit. 'Wired' essay here.

Hmm... now maybe I can use this 'outline' to write a research essay for KI. Taily and Co can help me. Heh, heh.

I've let Mel and Tina persuade me into taking up a walk-on role in NYeDC's production of Othello. This, among everything else I'm working on. Tina's cut some of my lines, but that's a relief 'cos I don't have all that much time to rehearse long scenes with long orations. I get to play the Duke of Venice, quite a straight-laced, uptight kinda' guy, which isn't surprising since he's busy planning a war campaign.

A bit rusty with the stage-presence thing with the script looking rather static for now. But it's best to take Shakespeare slowly and pick up on his nuances first, before getting creative with it. Here's a first, anyway -- I've never done Shakespeare before, so I am a little envious of Johnny (Brabantio) and Ben (Iago): they get to be screwballs on stage while I just maintain order like some stuffy old patriarch, which I am supposed to be, of course. Still, no time to learn their parts, so break a leg, fellas!

By our 2nd debate training session held today, the bleeding seems to have been cauterized and my membership is holding at 6 JC1s. The rest appear to have no stomach for this sort of contest and have fled the field already. Huh. Young people!

Met the Robinsons. They're an oddball family who exist sometime in the future. Each family member has his or her own eccentricities, but they accept each other with mutual love and respect regardless. Such eccentricities include minor dementia, schizophrenia, belief in the anthropomorphism of amphibians, delusions of grandeur, extreme sibling rivalry, and psychomotor disability. Exhibiting any one of there traits could land an individual in an institution, but collectively united by blood and heart they pull together as the Ideal Family.

In fact, the only trait that poses any danger to anyone is typical teenage irresponsibility, and even then, Wilbur Robinson does his best to rectify the grave error he has committed.

The Robinsons are quirky enough to extend an invitation to orphan boy, Lewis, to join the family despite having their house nearly wrecked by a rampaging tyrannasaur as a result of his arrival (take it as it is, it's too complicated to explain). But when they discover that Lewis is from the past, they freak out and withdraw their invitation, insisting that he return to his own time.

The movie deals with the themes of failure and rejection. The Robinsons themselves celebrate failure -- the more spectacular, the greater the rejoicing. Or rather, they celebrate the learning that failure brings, while downplaying success which doesn't teach a whole lot. Hence the Robinson motto: Keep moving forward.

Lewis is himself a bright young man who has many great ideas, but his inventions often fail in their execution. He also has to face rejection several times over as his imagination and his devotion to science fail to endear him to the prospective foster parents who come to the orphanage to interview him. Apart from Mildred who looks after him in the orphanage, the Robinsons actually offer Lewis a home and a family, so it's especially heartwrenching when they eventually reject him too. But they have a good reason to send him back to their past.

The future is both predestined, yet it isn't set in stone. The choices we make in the present set a chain of events in motion that lead to the future. Conversely, the future depends on the choices we make in the present. The critical choice in this movie is Lewis's. One thoughtless incident is all it takes to change the idyllic utopian future into a horrific nightmarish one. He has to learn what that moment is, and make the right choice or end up irrevocably destroying the Robinson family of the future.

The plot sounds quite serious, but the comic relief comes in the form of the Bowler Hat Guy, arguably one of the worst evil villains to ever take up a career as an evil villain. He is the result of living a life of failure, yet never learning anything from his experience. His evil plans fail because he seriously lacks vision, knowledge and follow through. He is pure impulse who has unspecific goals, and no idea how to achieve them. It's hilarious when his plans fail. He deserves to fail because he doesn't think ahead or learn from his past mistakes. Resilient and persistent but neither resourceful or innovative, BHG is just pathetic.

Lewis, on the other hand, is driven by his desire to find his birth-mother. He studies through the night, attends university lectures uninvited -- and still dares to question the lecturer for more information -- and applies his learning to create a device that will help him achieve his goal. All he needs is encouragement and a realization that his many failures are necessary stepping stones towards the success that has so far eluded him. The bigger the goal, the more steps it takes. Lewis we root for, and hope that he will eventually find the belonging he so desires.

Perhaps it's because I don't earn a million bucks a year that's why I'm thinking: if I'm already earning a million bucks a year, how could the prospect of earning another half-million or so possibly motivate me any further to work harder, or be any less corrupt than I already am?

Sure, I'm grateful for my own pay rises and annual increments, but then I have room to upgrade and improve my lifestyle. But once we reach a certain tax bracket, how much further up can we possibly go? By then, we should have been able to afford all the creature comforts we could want, and then where does all the extra cash go? What good could so much money do, once we already have everything?

It's all a matter of perspective, though. We constantly tell ourselves that if we earned $x more, we would be happy, satisfied and have no worries about our future any longer. So when it comes to considering pay rises for our Ministers, we're all agape at how much more they'll be getting. While already comparing with their original pay, our salaries are a pittance. We think that already at their original salary, they should be contented because we are convinced that WE would be if we earned that much.

But perhaps asking the Ministers themselves if they are happy with their good fortune, or if the people are happy for them are the wrong questions to ask. The real question should be: now that we know how much our Ministers are earning, has 'politician' now become a viable job opportunity? Not too long ago, nobody wanted to get into politics. We'd rather abdicate ourselves and let the 'gahmen' make the decisions and solve our problems for us. But then, no one wanted to be the 'gahmen'. "No money in it," they'd say. But now that there's going to be plenty of money in it, I wonder if we're still going to be squeamish about getting into politics? If people still hesitate, then the pay rise would have been for nothing.

Big Boss calls our vocational institutes the 'jewel' of our education system. I wonder if the rest of our population would agree, and finally put to rest the stereotype that vocational study is where the Epsilon semi-morons of our society end up to train to do the necessary but menial jobs that no one else would want to do.

In my 2 years of vocational training, even as far back as '83-'85, the VI was certainly no dumping ground for cannot-make-it kids. Believe it or not, I was there to study Accountancy. The textbooks were thick and detailed, the tutorials no less gruelling than the ones we conduct in JC, and the fact that we all felt like bottom-of-the-barrel kids motivated us to study harder to prove that we weren't.

CCAs were free and easy, but they attracted quite a few talented students. I, unsurprisingly, got myself involved in Drama, and Debate, and was ed-in-chief of the institute's newsletter (omg, I just realized that in over 20 years, nothing's changed!).

These days, the institutes are pretty much equivalent to N American Community Colleges that offer diplomas and degrees in vocational skills. Both are run in Uni-like campuses, though I think only we have an image problem. Giving our institutes more recognition is a good move, and a timely one too.

Some other bits of personal trivia:
In the 2 years I spent in the institute, I was determined not to get involved with anyone so I could concentrate on studying and getting my Accounting qualification. Irony #1: I flunked the course and didn't get my cert after all. In 2 years, I simply couldn't learn to count, a fatal disability for a career in Accounting. Irony #2: a couple of years after I left, June arrived at the institute to study Secretarial duties. Despite my intention not to get involved with my classmates then, I married a fellow alumnus of the institute anyway.

Funny, the curveballs life throws at us.

Nice to see that old things can still be useful, even in a reduced capacity. Watson, my old desktop PC, once dead but now revived, had been lying around dormant for months already. Ever since Mr L33t replaced him, there wasn't much I needed Watson to do besides collect dust in the corner.

Today, Watson has a new lease of life. I donated him to the All or Nothing Cafe, my bro's workplace. So Watson can't play murderous, violent, bloodthirsty games anymore, but he can live out the rest of his retirement as a cash register for a Christian outreach centre.

Each one of us carries with us a gene that, while unique to ourselves, is also the result of several hundred-thousand years' worth of mixing different DNA strings in such a particular combination that it now defines us as the persons we are. Any tiny difference in the way your genes had been put together in all that time, and you wouldn't be you any more, in other words.

So the gene that we carry has survived up to this point in time, and our genetic imperative is to ensure this gene we carry will continue to survive by combining it with someone else's gene, thus passing it on to the next generation. And speaking in evolutionary terms, we hope that the new combination will improve the new genetic host, making it stronger and fitter to survive into the following generation after that, and so on.

Natural selection tells us that often, gene-lines come to an end because the genetic mix was flawed and was thus unfit to be passed on. These genetic hosts are therefore literally dead-ends, and deserve to be removed from the gene-pool because they were defective. These genes will not contribute to develop the species any further as the stronger, fitter genes that do get passed on to the next generation pass them by.

But although the biological drive to have offspring is strong -- after all, the more offspring there are, the more likely it is for the parents' combined genes to continue to survive another generation -- these days, the human species is making evolutionary history by making a conscious decision not to procreate any further.

Considering the falling birthrates that today's ST is pointing out in Taiwan (politics too unstable, therefore we'll not have kids), and throughout the developed nations of Asia, people are declaring themselves as evolutionary dead-ends, thereby voluntarily removing themselves from the gene-pool. Thus, they summarily end several hundred-thousand years' worth of their own gene's evolution, not because the genes are themselves defective, but because the current hosts are "exercising a choice" not to pass them on any further.

It's almost like saying that we are the epitome of our gene-line's evolution, and this is as far as it goes... because we said so.

We human beings think too much. We intellectualize our environment by assessing and analyzing risk factors and cost-benefit ratios. We imagine worst-case scenarios and visualize perfection, and are even prepared to hold out for it even though the ideal is only ideal because it is unattainable. We have developed over-complicated mating relationships, and possibly childcare duties as well.

Our big brains that we're so proud of, the one that has led us to evolve into the dominant species on the planet, could perhaps also be our greatest impediment to evolutionary progress. Evolving smarts has helped us immensely, but evolving too smart could in itself be a genetic defect. I can already imagine the gene-pool lifeguards yelling, "OK, everybody, out of the pool!"

Those of us who do have children, we sometimes think of in animalistic terms. We say that they "breed like rabbits," and we are aghast at men who have voracious sexual appetites, calling them "beasts," "wolves" and "buaya," but chances are, in the long-run, their genes have a better chance of advancing our species than those of the more conservative persuasion. If our wholesome couples persist in choosing not to have kids, we can be assured that the future will only belong to the horny bastard.

Now, there's a future to contemplate!

Dusted off my old street performance outfit this morning. 900 SAC recalled I performed an item for them a few years back, and commissioned an encore in honour of Easter Sunday today.

The piece is a short solo set to "Watch the Lamb" by Ray Boltz, a strongly narrative song. The performance was originally choreographed by Todd Farley, but I 'koped' it and modified quite a bit of the movement because the original was too slavishly literal, acting out the song line-by-line. Boring.

I got the music and burned it onto a CD as the only track so there could be no screw-ups in selecting the right song. I arrived early before service to do a sound-check, no problems. We were all set.

Just before the sermon, they introduced my item. I entered to appreciative applause, centered myself at zero-position, cued the sound-booth, and... nothing. No music over the loudspeakers. Now, that is quite an experience -- to have hundreds of pairs of eyes staring at you, expecting you to do something, and there you are frozen like a rock because only you know that technology had somehow managed to mess things up again.

It was a contrast of panic states: me petrified onstage, while in the sound-booth the techs are freaking out, pressing buttons, sliding sliders, double-checking connections, the works. That was it, I broke with performance discipline and went for a mike to buy a little more time for the tech crew to resolve the problem.

As I ran out of patter, they did get the problem fixed, sort of. The guys jury-rigged a laptop to play my CD over the speakers, but the sound quality was crap, barely audible and not quite doing the music much justice. Still, the show had to go on, and that was my show for the day. I won't be expecting rave reviews for this one.

Post-mortem report: during service, someone came into the sound-booth and made off with the cable connecting the CD player to the amplifier. A-mazing. I can be as careful as I ever could be, and yet someone else's human error can ruin the whole show.

Guess that's a clear sign from on-high: Thou shalt not quit thy day job.

Clan celebrated Uncle W's golden wedding anniversary last night at Ah Yat. The whole banquet room was full with our family, his in-laws and friends. Uncle W sure knows how to throw a party!

The food was standard 10-course Chinese fare, not quite spectacular, but then it wasn't the highlight of the evening. Most of the evening we were entertained by the 'live' musicians whose oldies repertoire took us past retro right into nostalgia. Each table had an ample supply of songsheets so we could sing along while we ate. Apart from the MC and the regular musicians, a few other 'guest performers' took turns with the mike, including a cannot-make-it blues singer who seemed to be making up the words as he played. Perhaps that's the nature of the blues?

I think June would have enjoyed the evening if she didn't have to go to Bangkok. They were playing songs from her favourite era.

But to think of a marriage that has lasted 50 years and is still going strong is such an inspiration. Uncle and Aunt have always been a loving couple, inseparable though all these years. In his address to his guests, he hinted at an incident many of us have by now taken for granted, and we got to see it from Aunt's perspective. She had to say 'goodbye' to him once when duty called, and she had no assurance that Uncle would return home alive again, or even if he would return home at all. But her unquestioning trust gave him the courage and assurance that what he was doing was the right thing to do. That operation is now a small, mostly forgotten, chapter in our local history books.

True love breeds true courage. 50 years on and looking ahead... for me and June, we've barely scratched the surface of what it means to be married to each other. As we sang along to those old songs, as we watched Uncle and Aunt dance... I really missed June last night.

I picked up C&C3, and after only 2 moderately successful campaigns on the GDI side I'm already getting my sorry butt severely booted by the Brotherhood, and I'm playing on 'easy' mode. So I like playing games, but obviously that doesn't make me any good at them.

No messing about with the venerable RTS formula for C&C3. Establish (or rescue) a base of operations, fortify base defences while simultaneously building up a massive army comprising a variety of capabilities. When ready, send the troops over the hill to wipe the enemy off the map.

The game is graphically a treat with destructible terrain and firefights that are awesome to behold. When units gain access to beam weapons and railguns they light the map up in a breathtaking firestorm whenever they encounter their opponents. Such eye candy makes even losing a few units bearable while learning not to do "that" again.

Setting the battles in context are live-action cutscenes with a number of characters played by actors on the sci-fi circuit. Michael Ironside and Billy Dee Williams head up the GDI, while Joseph Kucan and BSG's Tricia Helfer lead the Brotherhood. Helfer's BSG compadre, Grace Park (whoohoo!), lends a supporting role -- now, there's a reason to get through a battle and open the next cutscene quickly!

This is a game more suited for multi-taskers. There are resources to balance and allocate, favourite units to keep an eye on, and battles to wage on a number of fronts. People like me who can only focus on one problem at a time frequently have their asses handed back to them on a plate. Never mind. If I can't multi-task, I can still exercise my persistence and resilience, and the payback they get when I finally succeed will be sweet.