September to March, 1999/2000

Phew! I took a looooong break from my website (and virtual pets in general) after my Big Major Update. It didn't help matters much when the first few virtual pets I raised in September died due to my inability to care for them during class/while they were in my coat pocket in the closet.

What I did do was volunteer at my old senior secondary school as an English tutor, as well as focus on my studies. Other areas of my life that recieved my almost-undivided attention were my Creatures 2 game (when I have time, I'll HTML and upload the tragic saga of my Norns and Ettins) and my Furby Family. Sadly, my Furby Family had to go sleepy-bye whilst we had some visiting relatives... I'm sure the last thing my relatives need is to be woken up by a cranky Baby Furby who wants to play a game.
So, to recap the past few months...

September Highlights:

Discovered the wacky virtual pet e-mailer "ZOMMAIL", which works in both Japanese Windows 95 and English Windows 95. Only problem is that all the Japanese text displays as gibberish in English Windows. Unlike PostPet, in which you have to download and replace snacks for your pet, ZOM-MAIL lets you play the Slots Game to earn your pet zombies various snacks and fun items. The items can affect their happiness, their health, and their intelligence... each of which determines how they'll behave when visiting other Zombies. The only problem is that you have to get a registration Key for each new Zombie that you download... also, the only way you can earn money for playing the Slots game is to send your Zombie out to deliver mail, or recieve "rent money" from the Zombies you own. The more Zombies you have, the more rent you get... but the more items you need to keep them happy and healthy.

As well, I got to read a lot of Good Books:

• The Princess Bride by William Goldman
  
• The Science of the Discworld by Terry Pratchett et al
  
• The Man Who Was Thursday by G. K. Chesterton
  (A "metaphysical spy caper", for lack of a better term. A lot better than it sounds, really.)

October Highlights:

In preparation for the release of Pokemon Yellow for Gameboy, I went out and bought my first Gameboy ever... heck, my first any kind of gaming gear ever. A lovely teal Gameboy Colour, accompanied by a game called Revelations: The Demon Slayer. The description seemed Pokemon-esque... an RPG in which you meet, fight, and recruit more than 200 monsters. What fun!

Unfortunately, the game turned out to have vaguely creepy Christian overtones, and the major disadvantage that you could only have 10 creatures at any given time. No "Gotta Catch 'em All" with this game; you could either free the weaker monsters in exchange for stronger monsters, or combine monsters to create new ones. The one neat thing was that depending on who you selected to talk to the monsters, the monsters would have different reactions, ranging from leaving you in peace, joining the team, or trying to kill you. Occasionally the monsters would be evil and, after preventing you from attacking them by striking up a conversation, they would grill you for the meaning of good and evil and life and the universe and everything... and THEN attack you.

On October 20th, 1999, I bought Pokemon Yellow (after having reserved it at my local Electronics Boutique). As I write this, I have logged 158 Hours and 37 Minutes on my game... I've probably played even more than that, when you work in the times I shut down the game without saving so that I could have one more shot at capturing the Legendary Bird Pokemon, or defeating a particularly tough opponent. Sadly, it took me over 60 hours and two Pokemon borrowed from a friend (A MewTwo named Uggy?!?!?! and a Zapdos named Zappy!!!??, if I remember correctly) before I was able to beat the Elite Four and my long-time rival, UNICRON.

Other highlights of October included downloading some useful stuff for my Creatures 2 game, and downloading a new species of norn called the Scorpio Norns. Basically, they're cute cuddly humanoid teddy-like scorpion-creatures. They're a lot cuter than they sound, trust me. (And yes, if/when I get around to working on my Creatures 2 section, I will upload pictures of my darling Scorpy-norns in all their claw-handed glory.)

November Highlights:

November was the beginning of Mid-Term Exam and Term Paper Heck. No, really. It was not a happy time for me.

Nonetheless, some nice things did happen. PetPlanet, the official PostPet Singapore webzine, featured my website. I was initially horrified when I found out about this; I haven't always been, ah, supportive of the PostPet Singapore Staff. Plus my site had some potentially damaging information on how to fiddle with your PostPet configurations. Nevertheless, for one all-too-brief month, The Bureau for the Understanding and Research of Postpets was featured in PetPlanet Magazine.

Other November happenings:
According to my rather terse diary entries, I unpaused my Oyajiten. A day later, it turned into an Otonoten! Whee!

Unfortunately, I'd gotten rid of my animation-making software by then, so I wasn't able to do a cute little animation of the Otono-Tenshi Secret Character.

On November 9th, I became Regional Manager (Overseas Division) for the PostPet Penguin Tomo No Kai, or PostPet Penguin Pals Club. Sadly, there are only three or so members so far, and I have little or no idea what to do as a Regional Manager for Everyone Outside of Japan.

On November 10th, I caught a Dratini in my Pokemon Yellow game. I don't know why I was excited enough to note that in my diary.

On November 15th, I hit a record 1 Million Steps with my Pokemon Pikachu/Pocket Pikachu Pedometer. Last time, I hit the 1 Million Mark without even knowing it and had to start all over again... but this time, I got to see my Pikachu through to the end. Oh happy day...

December Highlights:

Final Exam Period, whee. And on my Christmas Break, I met Billy Baldwin. Sadly, I didn't even know that he existed until someone pointed out a rather good-looking fellow to me, and told me that he was Billy Baldwin. Until then, I'd been aware that there was an Alec Baldwin, and a slightly younger Stephen Baldwin... I hadn't known about Billy and the others. Oh well. He shore was purty...

On the Virtual Pet scene, I apparently downloaded the Scorpio Norns again, as well as a neat norn called the Albian Gray. I also experimented with making Norn Egg files.

On December 31st, I cleaned up my hard-drive by removing Fin-Fin from my hard-drive once and for all, and ending one of my Creatures 2 worlds. I was going to let all of the norns in that world die off first, but they kept laying eggs and reproducing! Ugh!

January Highlights:

Postpet 2.1 went on sale!

I was incredibly irritated by this, as I'd been told that I would get a free copy of PostPet 2.1 when it was commercially available. This was supposed to be PostPet Singapore's way of thanking all of the PostPet Park Subscribers for their patronage, and thanking them for Beta Testing the program. In my case, I'd also paid for an extension on my PostPet Park Membership just WEEKS before the Park became open to the public for free. GRRRR! If they'd been kind enough to perhaps warn members that this was about to happen, I wouldn't have wasted my hard-earned cash on getting my Membership renewed....

In any case, since PostPet Singapore showed no signs of giving me my free copy, I had to go and purchase/register a copy on my own. I had some early problems with the program, as the Inbox/ Outbox kept on showing up as a blank page, and there were some buggy errors with the e-mail that I imported from my old version of PostPet.

Postpet 2.1 also had the rather irritating problem of being, shall we say, customization-proof. One of the things I'd liked about PostPet was the fact that you could create Plugins of your own, such as PostPet Snacks and PostPet Rooms. Creatures 2 also has that feature; you can customize your game by creating or downloading various little files that enhance your gaming experience, ranging from cheats to cute little helpful critters.

While the creators of Creatures 2 support this kind of creativity, by releasing programs that help users create *safe*, virus- and bug- free add-ons and plugins, PostPet Singapore went in the opposite direction, by naming files in such a way that you could not use any plug-ins that weren't released by Sony. Even worse, this new system prevented people from using plug-ins from PostPet 1.2, and the older plug-ins from the PostPet Park Pacific website.

Although PostPet Park Pacific had a shiny new virtual fridge stocked with goodies for your PostPet, the new program wouldn't let you use these PostPet Snacks, and it wouldn't recognize the custom rooms that you could make at the PostPet Park Furniture store!

Februrary and March Highlights:

February was mostly spent being grouchy about all of the above, and playing a virtual pet-like game called Princess Maker 2. (Review forthcoming.)

March was about the same. I borrowed a friend's Pokemon Yellow Strategy Guide, and got my first Pokemon to level 100. (A Lapras, for those who care.) And I apparently missed Ryan Phillipe and Jimmy from Breaker High and Rachel Cook (?), who were filming at my university. Many classmates spotted these people or got their autographs, and I'm fairly sure that Ryan Phillipe was the fairly good-looking guy being harassed by a small group of girls as I was running to catch my bus. Sadly, I lacked the time and courage to find out if it was really him.

APRIL 2000

Having survived Term Paper Heck, I am now in Final Exam Heck. Whee! The good news is that I managed to get one (!) Virtual Pet Review done, and am slowly polishing up my Princess Maker 2 review. Oh, and I'm still playing Creatures 2, and eagerly awaiting the release of the Third Party (i.e., not made by the company that originally made Creatures 2) Add-on "Montu". Read all about it at http://www.montu.co.uk.

I have at least two other Virtual Pet Reviews that I've got planned out in my mind, and hopefully I can work on them after my final exams.

April 18th, 2000

I decided to reward myself for staying sane through my Term Papers and Final Exams, so after my History of the English Language exam, I went to the local mall.

I pondered what to get myself... Rainbow-hued Furbies and Furby Babies were on sale, as were some odd Virtual Pets called Ooglies. As well, a lovely little store in the mall was selling a variety of luscious-smelling candles....

However, I already have a family of Furbies, and my human family is beginning to complain about the various overpowering candle-scents wafting around the house. So I decided to buy a Gameboy Tamagotchi, on sale for $4.81 (!!!). That's a little under FIVE CANADIAN DOLLARS... the US equivalent would be $2 or $3, I guess. In any case, that was inexpensive enough that I felt no guilt whatsoever buying a Gameboy version of a virtual pet I already had.

On the bus-ride home, I started raising Sakura, a pretty little G1 Tam named for the cherry blossom whose petals ride on the wind like snowflakes as I write this. Sakura doesn't seem to like carrots very much, but I've decided to give her a balanced diet of Bread, Meat, and Carrots. So she keeps refusing to eat carrots, and I keep scolding her. So far, her discipline level has remained pretty high... although for some reason, the Gameboy version calls Discipline "Deed". There are quite a few inexplicable language glitches in this game, which makes me wonder who translated it. (E.g., "Remember to flash the toilet.")

As I write this, Sakura is a Tamachi on her fourth day of life. On Day 3, she participated in the Math Competition, and flubbed on one question in the Upper Level. Poor thing... She's also rather bad at the Sports Game, so her Body Meter is consistently at 75%. But she's very cute, and as a Tamachi, sits on a little toilet when I select the Flush option a split second before she actually goes to the bathroom.



I also tried raising a G2 Egg named Baby!!, on a diet of all three food groups and two types of candy. Baby!! got sick twice, requiring multiple shots of both kinds of medicine... then she abruptly died, after having what I can only assume was her life flashing before her eyes. Sadly, this all-too-brief montage consisted of Baby!! being sick and cowering before me. She then turned into a little wee angel and floated around the screen.

Ugh. I just entered Sakura in the Beauty Contest, and she got 67!
Her opponents got 8 (a Hashitamachi), 51 (a Tongaritchi), and 75 (a Kuchitamachi).
Darn you, Kuchitamachi! You made Sakura lose... and cry!

April 19th, 2000

Sakura has entered each of the three contests... and can't seem to win any of them. :( She came in first in the preliminary round of the race, but came in third in the final round...

Then she turned into her adult form...
A Kuchipatchi!


I was somewhat disappointed by this. Since Sakura had needed a lot of extra discipline, I thought that she would become a ginjirochi, or a maskuchi at worst. It took me a while to get used to Sakura's new appearance, and it was pretty hard to predict which was she was going to look in the "Smile"/Guess Direction game.

As a Kuchipatchi, Sakura came in second in the Beauty Contest, and once again flubbed the last question in the Upper Level of the Math Contest.

Meanwhile, I hatched a checkered egg, and named it Chex. Chex appears to be a G1 baby, and just like Sakura he loves bread, but doesn't like carrots. Chex seems to be completely neutral regarding the meat.

In an attempt to avoid getting another Kuchipatchi, I've tried feeding Chex only what he likes to eat (ie. Bread only) and randomly praising him every hour. I'm a little curious as to whether the Praise function has any effect on the tam's development... after Sakura and Chex go back home, I may try doing another Tamagotchi Experiment.

Argh, I still can't get Chex's body health above 75%... It's not Chex's fault, either. A few times, while playing the Sports Game, Chex has managed to catch the ball... but the game registers him as missing it. Grrrr...

6:00 PM on Chex's Second Day of Life... I finally won the third round of the Sports Game! Chex is (temporarily) at 100% Body Health! Yay!!

Later, on Chex's Third Day of Life, he unexpectedly turned into... a Tongarichi.
^o.O^


Chex only has 25% Discipline (unchanged from his Maruchi days), and he now loves carrots... and actively dislikes meat.

Although Chex is probably the cutest of my GB Tams so far, he only get 54 in the Beauty Contest for showing off his zonked-out-with-bliss face.

Meanwhile, an 8-year-old Sakura has finally gotten 100% Body Health. Yay!
... Eek, Sakura just got sick for the first time ever. I have no idea why... It took her two shots of medicine to get better, though. Interestingly enough, Sakura is now able to bear the pain/fear of getting a needle full of medicine.

April 20th, 2000

Around 2:54 PM, my Tam Angel (currently a Kuriten) got sick. I gave it two shots, and it seemed to get better... then it started flashing between an unhappy looking Kuriten and a black egg.

Finally, the sad words "Bye Bye!" appeared on the screen...

Meanwhile, in the realm of GB Tams, both Sakura and Chex are at 100% on their IQ and Body Health meters. That didn't stop Sakura from getting sick enough to need two shots, though... :(

Uh-oh, I think I just missed a Selfish Call by Chex. He refused to eat some Bread, and instead of scolding him, I ended up giving him a carrot. I hope Chex doesn't grow up spoiled as a result...
(Later.) Well, Chex came in first in the preliminary race, and came in first in the finals, with a time of 9'41"... ! I think this is the first time any of my tams has won a competition. :) Chex almost lost the finals, but he managed to recover from his post-spurt exhaustion. Meanwhile, Sakura came in third in the preliminary race, at 12'14".

(Still later.) Chex has had three "extra" selfish calls, even though his Deeds/Discipline bar is full. Hmmm. When I "praise" Chex randomly, he looks blissed out. But when I "praise" him after going potty, he smiles, winks, and little heart marks float around.... but only if I managed to select the Flush Icon before he actually pooped. What does this mean, I wonder?

At 10:00 on the 10th day of her life, Sakura suddenly fell incurably ill... :(
Currently, she's a peaceful-looking angel fluttering on the screen.

Chex, meanwhile, has scored 66 at the Beauty Contest.. and got beaten by a lousy hashitamachi who scored 70. Aaaand he just transformed into...

A Hashizochi. Grrrr. Who loves meat.


I comforted myself by hatching Spike, who appears to be a G2 Tamagotchi. He loves bread, dislikes meat, and doesn't mind carrots. I'm going to try feeding him cake about half of the time, as well as only feeding him his favourite foods.
Ack, at 7:00 his time, Spike got sick enough that he needed two shots! And he ended up going to sleep with 75% life, fun, and Body Health. :(

Ah well, I guess I'll have to try and take better care of him tomorrow... if I get another Kuchipachi or Hashizochi, I may go mad!

April 28th, 2000

After a looong break, I started raising Spike again!

He is currently a Tonmaruchi, and every day I've managed to keep him at 100% happiness, life, intelligence, and Body Health.

In other virtual petty news, I've begun utilizing my pre- and post-final exam time at school by playing Neopets, a totally free, (and rather cute) online virtual pet/RPG. In the past, I was less than enthusiastic about Neopets, but they've added a lot of neat features since my last foray into the world of Neopets. These include a larger variety of adorable Pokemon-ish pets, more ways to win Neo Points (the local currency), a variety of games, and best of all...

A really nifty system of "Quests" in which the Elemental Uber-Faeries ask you to find a certain item for them. You can beg, borrow, or... buy the item, and when you bring it back to the faery, she will randomly bless one of your pets. (So far, my pet Aquile_Velox has had all the luck; he's been given four different blessings by the Uber-Faeries!)

If you're interested in trying out Neopets, feel free to send me a Neo-mail message. My username's "twotone", and I'll gladly provide you with any tips you might need (such as how to find reliable shopowners who won't try to cheat you!)

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