And the whole RPG experience point system has been lifted from pencil and paper RPGs, but went a bit off the rails. In the former, you get XP and gain in power, and get money and buy new equipment - it's a mathematical system designed to simulate increased skill and wealth. A good DM, though, will match the…

One thing I've always liked about the Zelda game is how neatly they manage to sidestep the whole level grinding process. You can't get by a boss or make a dungeon easier by simply wandering around killing things for a while, and there's a definite cap to how many hearts you can have at any point of the game. But if…

Although ComeBuy in Taiwan is advertising HK style milk tea at the moment, so there is crossover.

Pretty much anyone I know who has tried rootbeer (or sasparilla) without growing up with it describes it as tasting like medicine or mouthwash - and I've got a good sample of both Europeans and Asians. So you're sort of stuck with that.

That's were I stand. I actively like many types of tofu, and I have, voluntarily, eaten slabs of nearly plain tofu, and I quite enjoy a lot of naturally vegan dishes.

I think it's time for an adaptation of the Oz series that's 1) relatively faithful to the source materials and 2) aimed at the age group the books were actually written for.

I observed at Palomar about ten years ago. There's still no women's washroom in the dome, but they have made it officially unisex. My first thought was "Oh, how progressive," followed quickly by "Oh, yeah, that."

I'd be happier with larger fonts on some of the video games - higher resolution is not going to help me as I'm squinting at the TV, and I can't fit a particularly large TV in my living room.

Been there, done that. For us, it was mostly age related issue - I was in my mid-30s when we met. Tried the natural way, couple of early term miscarriages, got a bunch of tests, tried IUI, didn't work, tried full-out IVF, didn't work. By that point was at the age where the chances of IVF working were plummeting, plus…

Not always.

Okay, time for my favourite microwave story.

For us it was hot air poppers triggering the heat alarm. After the fourth or fifth 10pm fire alarm (with the notoriously hard-ass local fire chief very unamused) they banned them completely.

McDonalds in Taiwan delivers. Also KFC.

I will re-read Anne McCaffrey's Pern series up until the end of The White Dragon (plus the prequels) but skip the rest of the series. Same with David Weber's Honor Harrington books, where I'll stop at about Echoes of Honor.

Is this going to be another "this isn't your parents' Star Trek' like Enterprise promised? Where the sexy bits were only sexy if you were a pre-internet adolescent boy who had been using the underwear section of the Sears catalogue to fulfill his needs.

There's also the hard-core vs casual gamer divide, plus space and ergonomics issues.

They'll fit right in, then.

Gua bao are delicious, but they don't list the other Taiwanese speciality, the breakfast sandwich.

I still have Canadian Tire money and haven't lived in Canada in over a decade.

The contrast with current visual media might play a part as well. With a lot of YA books, girls get a wide variety of strong female protagonists doing interesting things, and romance from the girl's point of view. The current crop of popular movies and video games, on the other hand, are very much marketed towards…