TOP 5 MMO GAMER GRUB

This is in response to my good friend Joel Tan's meme Top 5 MMO Gamer Grub.

Me and Joel go a long way and the grub he posted explains why in almost 17 years of gaming marathons from playing Dungeons & Dragons, to Robotech, to eventually Perfect World we never really ended up fighting about the food.

Here are my choices. Please note that before I was a blogger or a tech journalist, I spent four years as an assistant editor for a health magazine, so excuse the jargon and the tone.


1) Coffee. Black as night. No Cream. No Sugar. The dairy taste of cream might trigger sleepiness from your programming as a kid to drink warm milk before beddy-bye. Too much sugar and boom, your pancreas over reacts, and floods you with insulin--sugar crash. Good bye all energy reserves, hello pillow!

2) Water. Dehydration kills, and not taking any non-diuretic liquids while gaming eventually will. I try and have a bottle nearby to take a sip out of every now and then. Also helps when you burn your lips on the coffee mug. Taking controlled sips prevents having to go to the loo. The trick is to keep hydrated not over hydrate and cause a flush.

3) Ice diluted Mountain Dew. The water in the ice cuts the amount of sugar in Mountain Dew so as to prevent sugar crash. This is the alternative if it's too warm for coffee and the closest to actually drinking those "energy drinks" which contain too much caffeine and have too much chemicals and actually induces taking a wiz. Why Mountain Dew? It contains the most caffeine of all sodas, and is classic gamer fare in any platform.

4) Soda crackers. Take your pick, but make sure they are salty enough. The salt helps your body retain the liquids you take and its taste off-sets the sweetness of soda, the bitterness of coffee, or the blandness of water. The crackers also help calm the acids of your stomach.

5) Pizza. Easy to eat, easy to digest, filling, only one hand required. As simple as a sandwich, as filling as a hotdog. No cooking required and available 24/7.

Though I have mentioned five already, I would like to suggest carbo loading an hour or two before a game marathon. Not only does it provide long term energy reserves, but a raid on a full stomach just works better. A large plate of pasta with a heavy sauce, a substantial sandwich, or rice and your favorite savory viand should do the trick.

Check what the other peeps invited by Joel think: PJ Punla, Mon Macutay, Darrick Regondola, and Robert Sanchez.

ACER LAN PARTY ROCKS!

I played Game Master to the LAN Party that was hosted by ACER for the CyberPress (ITJAP) last January 23, 2009. And I joined the Crysis match and won by three measly kills from Ed Geronia of T3 and four from Billy Allardo of PC World. This was a serious win for me and I had to bring my A-Game to the match and then some as these two beat me in a previous match that was hosted by INTEL.

I was quite ecstatic that I was able to pull it off, and I sincerely congratulate Ed and Billy for their respective wins. Tom Noda of Computer World also deserves some kudos as being a black horse in the competition when he took fourth when he said that it was his first time to play the game.

We helped the people of ACER set up the matches and in choosing the games for the LAN party. They were honest enough to admit that they were not hardcore gamers who went to LAN parties. I, being one of a such did so a lot, and was asked by President Jing Garcia of ITJAP to become the point person for the matches.

This I did and I think that I pulled it off quite well, though I could have set up the matches for the Need For Speed: ProStreet a little faster if I did it before. I asked for help in setting up the Crysis dedicated server as I was busy myself in practicing for the match. The NFS: ProStreet was four matches, a qualifying heat, then I separated the players into two tiers, with the winners from both tiers going on the finals. The winners were Melvin Calimag of Manila Bulletin at first, Joel Pinaroc at second place and another dark horse, Luis Oliveros of Computer World at third. Another participant who said "I am not much of a gamer." Funny that the two dark horses in the event were from the same company.

It also helped that the LAN setup was composed of the top of the line gaming computers of ACER and get this, the server we used was the new Predator G7710, the one with the new Intel Core i7. Yes the new processor which again, simply laughed at the load we gave it hosting the NFS match and the Crysis practice match at the same time. Lufet!

All in all, it was a fantastic night of learning for everyone on what a LAN party was and for me on how to seriously host one in a professional manner, used to be it was my friends who did host the LAN parties I went to who did the hosting bit. I guess it also brings me back to the late nineties when we had our first LAN parties at Leech's house where we played Blood, Quake, and Red Alert. Before that we had Modem to Modem parties I guess because that is what we used playing Command & Conquer and Diablo. Ah those were the days indeed.

Tonight it was nostalgia and also some things coming full circle for me when I helped with this little activity. Me winning the Nikon Coolpix L10 was just icing for the cake. It doesn't hurt that the camera will surely help me in my coming coverages for the year for this blog and for Playground Magazine.

Thanks to ACER to Mr. Manuel Wong, Ms. Agnes Espino and the rest of the ACER Team for the very fun night.