Author Archives: Johan Ho

After a pretty long break I’m finally eligable to give blood again. It’s nice since you can get a little gift every time you do (in Norway at least), and you get free drinks and cookies at the hospital when giving blood. So you’re pretty much getting free stuff for chilling on their bloodgiving couch. And your blood might save a life! Don’t be a wuss, give some blood today! This time I picked a brightly green towel with velcro, so you can wrap it around your hip like a skirt or a manly kilt. At first I thought it was supposed to be for kids to wrap around their neck like a cape, but I eventually realized it’s actually for childish adults, so it was perfect for me. Haven’t tried using it yet, but I don’t expect myself to run around the house wearing it, since one of our windows is pretty much visible from the whole street outside my house.

“Are you my type?” I still can’t quite remember what my bloodtype is. I think it’s A+? Hmm. I need a dog tag with my bloodtype or something.

Other than that I’ve been trying to finish more games. Played through Max Payne 2, a pretty outdated FPS, and finished off the final boss in Super Mario Galaxy 2. Now I’m just waiting for my copy of Metroid: Other M, which I was looking forward to. Thought I’d get it on Friday, but well, delivery time is stated as 2-5 days so the latest I could get it is Thursday. I think. If I don’t have it by then I’ll have to look into matters. *sigh*

Gimme my game!

Visited Anna Tieu last weekend, don’t even quite remember the last time I met her! I was away when she was in Oslo too. We walked around town a bit, met with some of her friends. Also went to one of her friends birthday/farewell party, where I played some Japanese dance mat game (I think it was DDR2, although I’m not sure) and Super Smash Bros Brawl (pretty much lost except that one other guy got almost same low score as me), watched How to Train Your Dragon (was pretty funny!), ate lots of great food and played Monopoly (although we didn’t have time to finish since I had to catch my train). I’ve never actually finished a game of Monopoly…

Travelled with Bus4You for the first time, they had pretty big seats! At least the bus I was on. There are only 3 seats in each row (one side of the bus has 1 seat and the other side has two seats per row), and I think there were more space in front (or behind) each seat, so the seats are bigger and have more space around them. It was pretty comfy, although I found that if I used the recliner-like feet rest, my butt ended up hurting. I think it’s because even though you can lower the back of the seat, the seat doesn’t actually tilt backwards like a recliner would. So instead of laying “straight”, you’re actually laying on a slope, and the butt is the only thing keeping you from sliding down. (There weren’t anything to put my my feet against either.) Maybe if I wasn’t so worried about lowering the seat too far back it would’ve been better. I’m always afraid that if I lower the seat all the way it’ll be in the way of the person behind me. Maybe I’ll try to just sit on the last seat in the bus next time.

 Turns out that Bus4You is actually run by the same company as GoByBus. But the bus routes are different I think.

Oh and they seemed to have free Wifi, although I couldn’t get it to work more than a few minutes. Could be that someone was downloading a torrent or something… Oh well. Just played some games and read comics on my iPad. Had an enjoyable travel.

But yeah, give me my Metroid arrrgh!

After getting my iPad, I’ve been buying a lot of content for it. The thing is that each app and game is pretty cheap, but I’ve bought so much that it probably adds up to quite a bit of money… *checks the receipts* The total cost so far seems to be 306 NOK. Over half of that is the price for buying e-issues of comic books. I bought 20 issues of Fables on sale. I’ve always wanted to get that one, because the idea is interesting. It’s a comic book series with characters from lots of well-known fairy tailes and folk tales. I must admit I had to look up quite a bit of them though. I also bought 3 volumes of Atomic Robo, which is a comic book written by the same guy who made the webcomic 8-Bit Theater! He’s a pretty good writer, I really like the humor in that comic! Even if you don’t want to buy the comic book, you could read through his webcomic for free.

  
Goldilocks and the three bears.
And a machine gun.

The games I bought are:

• Osmos – interesting “eat things smaller than you”-game. To move around you have to eject mass, which means you actually grow smaller every time you move! The game is way too short for 29 NOK though. But it was cheaper than buying for the PC, which I had considered before.
• Angry Birds HD – a fun slingshot game, with lots of stages! So it’s worth it even though it costed 29 NOK.
• Doodle God – Create new items by combining elements/items you already have! Was funnier in the beginning when you can try different things and it usually works, but as you get more items, you have end up having to rely on hints because it’s impossible to assume what kind of items you can create in the game (since the number of creatable items is limited). This game can also be played for free online, but it only costed 6 NOK to buy the offline iPhone version so I bought it.
• Song Summoner – A strategy RPG made by Square Enix! And it was on sale… It uses your iPhone/iPad songs as battle units! The game is prety ok so far, although it’s frustratingly random to try and get “good”/strong units
• Dungeon Hunter HD – a Diablo clone, also bought on sale for 6 NOK, for that price it’s well worth it, even though the game is pretty “generic”.

Watched Inception with Yi Tong after writing my last blog post, it’s a pretty good movie. Kind of expected the ending, but I read a movie “explanation” on a blog which mentioned a lot of other clues for the ending that I had missed. I’m not really good at paying attention… Anyways, you should see this movie if you want to think. If you don’t want to think, you should probably watch The Expendables, which is probably the next movie I’m gonna watch.

Sunday 1st August we had a barbeque with my cousin Iselin who was visiting from Stockholm! I was in charge of the barbeque for once, I think the food turned out pretty good, although I put more coal on that necessary, making it way too hot. The food almost got burned before it got cooked! But I somehow managed to cook edible food in the end.

After that Kwun Chuen and Wen Hao visited us for almost a week, so we spent almost every day going out with them! Because it is so expensive to eat out in Oslo, they ate at someone’s house almost every day. It was fun. 🙂

Last weekend I went to Gothenburg with Joe, and we went to Liseberg with a bunch of friends! Joe and I stayed at Jenny’s tiny apartment, it was actually pretty cosy. Ken So, Rebecca, Connie, Ailinh and Yvonne also went with us to Liseberg, and some of their other friends joined us later. I also played a bit Shadow of the Colossus at Jenny’s place, it’s really quite a good game! It’s a game basically with only boss battles. Although Jenny told me how to beat all the monsters/colossi because she thought I already spent too much time failing to climb onto the horse and then running it into walls. I beat 5 of the colossi so far, might visit her again to beat the rest of them. Oh yah!

   
You looking at me?

In other news, I finally decided to skip the rest of the missions in Final Fantasy XIII and go on with the story, and I finished the final boss just now. The ending didn’t show enough people! Show me more! Where are everyone else, all the side characters? I really think Final Fantasy VIII had the best ending, because it had this cute little “homemade” video at the end with all the main characters. Although I guess even there most of the side characters aren’t shown in the ending either. Oh well… Anyways I don’t think I want to do the rest of the missions any more now that I’ve beat the game. The next game I’ll be playing is probably Super Mario Galaxy 2!

So long, Final Fantasy XIII, and hello, shiny flying Yoshi!

I’ve been almost three weeks in Toronto on a short-term mission trip with the SCCC in Oslo youth group. Then one week in summer camp. Unfortunately, my phone broke, so I ended up not being able to take any photos after that… But I bought an iPad in Toronto, which works pretty well as a replacement for my Android phone, even though all the limitations are a little bit annoying (can’t easily transfer files to and from the iPad, but have to use the iTunes application to transfer stuff). Using it mostly to surf on internet (Facebook), chat and play games for now.

iPad and me.

I went back to using my old Nokia N95 as phone and camera, ordered a new battery for it since the current one barely lasts a full day even when I’m not using it for anything. But for internet stuff I’ll be using the iPad from now on I guess.

Anyways, Toronto and camp was pretty fun. Did I get closer to God though? I guess I can’t honestly say that I feel like anything has changed… pastor Enoch’s speeches at the camp were pretty interesting and funny though. I have notes! And I especially remember one line he said about prayer, that “God doesn’t answer our prayers because of our great faith, he answers them despite of our little faith” (roughly quoted from memory). I’ll just have to keep praying for me to change.

Pastor Enoch and me.

Other than that, I did feel like I managed to talk at least a little bit with people (both in Toronto and at camp). I also got to know a few more people, even though I hardly ever try anymore. I usually don’t even really feel like talking to people in my group at summer camp much… Now in the young adult’s camp there are more new people than back when I was still in youth or working as a group leader in youth camp. But I just don’t really feel any urge to talk to the new ones… Still I got to know John Asmussen a bit more, he was at last year’s camp too. And in Toronto I talked a bit more with Helen Su this year, last time she only came to one of the gatherings so we didn’t get a chance to talk with her more.

Some photos from Toronto:

Some photos from summer camp:

The drama team	Who is this girl? And why am I sneering at the camera?	OrangeEdward and the Ho brothers.

Anyways, I’m back at work now. Even though it’s pretty quiet nowadays because most people are on vacation, I still would like to have more vacation… Have promised to try and visit people too, I guess I’ll probably take some weekends and go to various cities in Sweden and maybe to Bergen. Will see. Have stuff to do in Oslo too, we’re supposed to paint a room at church. By next week. Ack.