It keeps getting worse. I made an attempt to sleep before 12am, thinking that maybe I wouldn't wake at 12. I was right - I woke at 2.14am instead and couldn't sleep anymore. Had that refreshed feeling one would usually have in the morning.
It's starting to feel like I having "afternoon naps" at night and real sleep in the day, even though I've been setting up alarms that ring in half an hour after I sleep in the afternoon and keeps ringing again every 9 mins.
My mum's been buying a lot of that frozen dim sum lately. Right now her favourite brand seems to be Amoy. I think it costs about the same as ordering them in a restaurant, except they can be eaten anytime, even at 2.30am.
Yes I'm eating a packet of black pepper chicken shaomai as "breakfast" now, though if I hadn't slept just now I'd have called it supper instead.
The special match between Jaedong and Bisu was something of a disappointment. The first four were good, but the final decisive match was an epic fail by Bisu. Usually players are supposed to block off the ramps to their bases with units, but somehow Bisu just didn't completely wall off Jaedong's Zerglings.
It was a complete shock to everyone when SEVEN Zerglings entered his base and just destroyed all his plans. This was made worse by the fact that Bisu was obviously trying out an unorthodox strategy that Jaedong would probably never expect. Such mad build orders require a perfect economy and are heavily dependent on the element of surprise.
By letting even one Zergling in, his plans would have been destroyed. He might have still made a comeback by quickly adapting to a more normal plan, but the army of seven was either destroying his Pylons or helping more Zerglings enter the base by forming a sandwich together with the reinforcements around the units Bisu sent to block off the ramp. Losing the chokepoint meant that the numerically superior Zerg was able to fully utilize its advantage.
In short, the blunder on the ramp was a mistake that should not have happened. Even the commentators were shocked by the sight of so many Zerg units infiltrating the Protoss base. Quoting Tasteless, on Bisu: "It's called hold position, bro!"
Bisu probably went home to cry after the match. This isn't something a pro is supposed to make a mistake in.
Anyway the next season of Averatec-Intel Classic is beginning on the coming 15th of March. I'm quite surprised that it is coming so soon. I thought there would be some time for the players to rest and train up. Oh wait, they are professionals, so they play all day and night anyway.
Yesterday, AIG announced a US$61.7bn quarterly loss for the final 3 months of last year, pushing its total losses of 2008 to US$99.29bn. That is over half of the official reserve assets of Singapore's Ministry of Finance in Dec 2008, which had amounted to US$174bn. AIG is pretty screwed now.
It's also mentioned on Reuters that the money that AIG has received from the US government so far may not be enough because of the huge losses it had incurred last year. Are we witnessing the fall of a titan here?
The recent economic situation reminds me of the concept of metanationals discussed in the Mars trilogy that I'm reading now. In this fictional world, the Earth in the future would be ruled by multinational corporations known as "metanationals". Nationalism would be just a legacy of the past as the various governments become so dependent on these giants that they no longer have any power over them.
In effect, the corporations took over the various governments and eventually, the word "country" lost its meaning.
In many countries around the world today, governments are forced to give money to failing corporations to keep them alive. If these governments are in trouble, would they do the same for them? Did they do that after the Bush administration incurred heavy debts during the invasion of the Middle East?
This means the idea of metanationals has become real, at least in the US. That companies have become so important to the country that it cannot do without them has some serious implications to that.
Violence is now a thing of the past. Once an effective solution to problems, it is now a tool for the entertainment industry. Coups, invasions and such are now conducted through economic methods.
No one has ever liked to invade other lands for the sake of invading them. All conquerors did what they did to expand their lands, for the land and the resources that come with it. It used to be that these can only be acquired through force. Now, as we all can see, they can be taken by other means.
Capitalism is actually not what it appears to be. The concept of an globalisation is really a war, except it's in terms of profits and net gains. Anywhere with a free market is involved in this war, and any company, business or corporation is an army.
Now lands do not need to be conquered by force for expansion to continue, we just simply buy/rent the land and open a/an office/factory/mine/etc. The people would come with the land, when we hire them as employees.
Of course, we would not have complete power over the land or people, but the point of this game is to gain money, not absolute power. That would come later, when a player gains enough influence through economic power.
On Reuters, analysts fear that US companies may be addicted to government aids. If the US government continues to feed them money after the current stimulus packages are used up, then what I've typed above will be confirmed beyond doubt to be true. That the government is so dependent on the companies that it would pay them to stay around would mark a new era of the evolution of politics.
Of course, there is that possibility that everything I've typed so far is trash and I don't know enough to discuss these issues. On the other hand, I'm blogging, not writing an article for TIME or something.
After reading about women entrepeneurs, I thought the one thing that is really giving women a disadvantage is the long period of time they are unable to work when they are pregnant. They would be forced to take leave when they reach a certain stage of pregnancy and such things never happen to men.
Pregnancies also create the possibility that they would want to leave their careers to take care of their children. Saying sorry will not solve this problem.
Hence I believe women should consider hiring surrogate mothers, women who are willing to bear children for other couples. There is no need to sex if they don't want to, just surgically insert the fertilized egg into the uterus of the surrogate and the couple can just take care of her, maybe by giving her a room or something in their home. Kinda like a maid, except she only helps with being pregnant. Then this woman can also stay and be the nanny after giving birth, or move on to another job.
If this notion is more popular, women will lose this disadvantage and, at the same time, open a new market for women who need money but have no skills. Instead of resorting to being hookers, they can sell their bodies for a more meaningful purpose. As long as they're healthy enough, that is.
Maybe it can be profitable to open a surrogate mother agency that works like those domestic helpers' agencies.
In a survey done by a German ISP Bitkom, Germans in their twenties would rather have internet access than their spouses or their cars. I've always had the impression I'm the only one with such an opinion but... I think I should forget about French and start on my German again.
97% of the people in this age group also can't live without their handphones. Now I wouldn't mind losing my handphone if I still have my internet access because there are softwares that can replace the phone.
Began playing Fallout 1 today. Feels almost like Planescape: Torment but in a different setting. Since the world map is slightly different, with travelling simplified to a dot moving around the map, it feels like the world is smaller and less empty compared to Fallout 3. Probably because Fallout 3 required a significant amount of time for travelling in the empty Wasteland.
Anyway all these retro games always have that gloomy feel to them. Fallout 1,2 and Planescape have that dark atmosphere in common. Perhaps it has to do with the lack of bright colours. This is much more obvious when I compare these games with Warcraft 3.
Warcraft 3 is filled with all sorts of colours, whether its the villains or the heroes everyone is colourful. This makes the game easier to look at and attracts my attention better.
On the other hand, the old RPGs give me a sense of hopelessness and despair because the colours they use seem to be limited to shades of brown and black. It's probably supposed to be that way, but must the more populated areas be that way too? Given that most plants and animals have died off in the Fallout world so that they couldn't make dyes, wouldn't they have made some tinted glass to beautify their homes? I mean, people have to live with some bright colours in their lives.
And tinted glass isn't that hard to make; it's just some rust dumped into the sand before burning it, and glass is just burnt sand! (Yea yea it's a mix of limestone and etc, but sand is sand!) And glass-making isn't exactly an advanced technology because humans have been making glass objects since at least 3000 BC.
Anyway, Fallout feels like a pretty nice game so far. Haven't done much in the game yet but I've a feeling this game isn't going to take me very long to finish.
No comments:
Post a Comment