That is probably the only command that the aliens from Space Invaders know. Space Invaders, as the name suggests, involves invaders. That are from space. You are some kind of weird tank-like vehicle, that has a barrel pointing directly upwards, as if it were designed specifically to shoot down targets from the sky. Also, your shells travel pretty slowly, and probably have their own propulsion devices. There's no other way that they can keep traveling against gravity at a constant speed.
The nice thing about Space Invaders is that it is simple enough to play for a while, before inevitably losing. A bunch of aliens/spaceships in a grid pattern magically appears above the Earth, moving left and right in a two-dimensional world, and dropping down slightly every time they hit walls that wouldn't be there in real life. They then start to move left or right faster, accompanied by a quickening of that repetitive electronic music. For each wave of Invaders that you fight of, you get one extra anti-air tank thing. If you are careful enough not to get hit by what appear to be identical cannon shells, and bolts of lightning, the number of extra lives you can accumulate is rather high. However, each successive wave spawns one step lower to the ground. And is also accordingly faster.
Your cannon, is a peculiar thing. For some reason, you can only fire another round when your current shell has disappeared from the screen, either from hitting an Invader, or when it reaches the limit of the sky. This puts pressure on you to aim your shots right, or you would end up waiting the entire duration needed for your cannon shell to reach the end of the universe, leaving you unable to fight the ever descending Invaders. Thankfully, it is not too hard to gauge your shots, as the problem of distance is solved with the slow and constant speed of the Invaders' motion, while high speeds are solved by having a shorter distance.
Granted to you are a few armoured shields, which also happen to probably be like big blocks of concrete. The Invaders, being haters of big blocks of concrete, will tend to not care about your current location, and still shoot at the shields. They do not get repaired after each wave. This sucks, because they tend to help you to survive longer.
You fight and destroy wave after wave of weird looking aliens, that crap lightning bolts and other strange objects. The alien-dudes in the alien command centre realise that they should spawn their next fleet even closer to the ground. Eventually, they start out so close to the ground that you only have one chance to take out the first line.
Which I have yet to do. Instead, the aliens manage to land. As soon as that happens, you are automatically assimilated/disintegrated. No matter how many reserve tanks you had accumulated, they all turn to dust, and you lose the game. Makes you wonder why they didn't just add a laterally-oriented barrel to the tank.
But I guess that's what Metal Slug had in mind.
Anyway, today was awesome. We went book shopping, and spent many minutes looking through books on physics, biology, origami, astrology, and many more. I eventually located the book that I sought: The Origin of Species. It was about fifteen dollars, and Hongjie offered to pay for it, as a birthday present. Thanks again! Along with that, I also obtained a nice purple notebook, with a fancy velvet cover. All I need now is to learn how to write in proper cursive and I'm on my way to creating my own scientific journal.
With substantially more irrelevant doodles, of course, but those'll just be to keep it light.
After leaving Borders, we ended up in Sunny Bookstore, a little bookshop in a corner of Far East Plaza. There were really a lot of books. And a lot of fiction, and titles that I recognised. Much to Hongjie's delight, he was able to find Brave New World, and the Hitchhiker's series, which I spotted at the last moment before we paid up.
Man, I really should have used conditioner tonight. Hair is pricking my neck.
And it's time to stop procrastinating, because I am going to be very not free this holiday. Time to start compiling.
-Joe