Rant 573 / I Want A Remote Control That Comes With Its Own Remote Control

Yet another article that makes no sense. This time it's from Singapore. Apparently this guy was kneeling in public to apologize to this girl over something he did in Maple Story. Oh that's not the most absurd part. It was the ending that irritated me:

“To all parents out there, do you encourage your children to play online games, knowing that it could be a bad influence on them?"

Uh.. what? Where's this "bad influence"? Am I missing something here? Where is the link?



But it's Stomp. I should have known better than to read it. :\

And about that couple, obviously some people are watching way too much TV.













The shortest way to a woman's heart is through her ribcage, but sometimes it's easier to go under the sternum.












Everything is dropping. I wonder if we're heading for a second Depression. If so, are we going to need another World War to save us?













My mum's Taiwanese friend who's been supplying her with her Alishan tea leaves recently gave her a free sample of this fruit tea. It's a packet of dried tea leaves and chopped fruits which is supposedly the fad now in Taiwan. I wouldn't know; I haven't watched the Taiwanese TV channel on cable for months.

The first time I tried it, it was prepared almost according to instructions given by her - one teaspoon of the mix into a pot of water. It was not totally pleasant, mainly because I forgot to add sugar and was too lazy to add sugar into the pot. From what I've heard, if I did that I'd have to wash my pot thoroughly after I'm done. Adding sugar directly into my cup instead would mean that I'd need to keep a few packets of sugar on my table, something I very much prefer to avoid to prevent another infestation of ants which had disappeared since I returned from Malaysia.

So it was very acidic and sour. But fragrance-wise, it was very peachy. I think those were dried peaches inside but I'm not sure if dried peach bits are supposed to be orange and a little translucent. As a complete noob at tea-tasting, I also have no idea what sort of tea leaves were inside.

Now I have the idea of adding tiny bits of it into my daily Lipton tea. No I don't drink the Alishan tea because it needs to be timed to prevent over-steeping. Tea steeped too long becomes too strong and in this case, very acidic (ie the "sour" taste at the back of the tongue). If I liked acidic tea I would have just drank the stuff from my mum's pot.

Anyway I'm currently testing on the amount of fruit tea mix versus 2 satchets of Lipton Yellow Label per pot. So far I've been adding as little as less than 10 bits of it in a pot and it's still a tiny bit too acidic for my taste.













Made French onion soup. Supposed to cover the top of the bowl with melted cheese and croutons but all my bowls had enlarged mouths which really weren't suitable for it. So I decided to replace that with cheese toast served separately and made with slice french loaf and a mix of grated parmesan and mozarella. Supposed to use gruyere but it was a little too expensive and troublesome for an experiment.

The onion soup wasn't that nice. Too vegetarian for my taste. Plus it might be caused by the absence of alcohol, which I was supposed to use to deglaze the pan of browned onions. I thought it was just some fancy dining gimmick, and maybe it really is. I wouldn't know.

Not making it anymore. The toast was great but the soup wasn't. Cheese toast I can make anytime but browning chopped onions takes time and concentration.

Next attempt: beef burger patties... TOPPED WITH PARMESAN AND MOZARELLA!












Just watched some guy play the entire Singularity on a game stream site. It's less scary than Metro2033 but the style is similar. It's very linear, with great graphics and an intriguing storyline. Compared to Metro, the gameplay here focuses a lot on your very cool time-control abilities (one of which is identical to Ultimate skill of the Void Demon in DotA) while Metro was all about frightening the shit out of players.

Similar to Metro, this Russian game is an interactive movie IMO. Therefore it's actually quite exciting to watch someone play it, since it's like watching a movie shot completely in the first-person view.

It was a live stream, so you can't watch it unless someone's streaming it again. When they stream, they're actually playing it so it's very rare to find them playing a game you want to see. I found it only because that guy made a thread in 4chan and had an auto-bump bot to keep it on the front page.

Very nice game, just not my cup of tea. Worth buying? Not unless it costs S$20 or below since it has very little replay value.













I wonder if the following is true:

A trick to get an "extra" night goes a little something like this: The system used to check people in/out is on it's own clock. It will not roll over to the next day until I tell it to, and I usually do that around 3 or 4 am. This is called the night audit. Should a guest arrive before the night audit (say Tuesday at 2am) and ask for a room, they would have the room that night and need to check out the same Tuesday by noon, because the system clock would say they checked in Monday. If however a guest arrives right after the audit on Tuesday at 4am, they would technically have the room until Wednesday at noon.... so they'd get that morning block to sleep, and an extra night.

So if it's late and you want a deal, ask if they ran the night audit.

Hmm... kind of useful, eh?