Rant 657 / Mariah Carey Sang About Some Chinese Guy?

"I thought Europe was a country."

































SlayerSBoxeR lost! LOST! 4:0! NesTea's superior micro and alertness completely overwhelmed him. NesTea was pretty thorough when searching the map, really deserves the victory. But in the last round I felt he was just toying with BoxeR after defeating his early double Barracks rush.













Ok, replaying Fallout: New Vegas the third time without completing the second because I just couldn't use the Sniper Rifle with my low strength. I was going for higher Perception, Agility and Charisma but that sucked.

Strength is way too important in this game since good guns require higher strength to handle. With 4 Strength, the Sniper Rifle was swinging in every direction when I looked through the scope as if my guy was drunk.

Was doing so well and got lucky a few times.

Oh well.

But now that I've gone through the beginning of the game twice, it's getting boring to have to do everything again.

I have to resort to using the shotgun to blast my enemies to oblivion (not the game) to make it more exciting.

One thing I did find very interesting was how I was able to get easy experience by killing the Giant Radscorpions that can be found some distance away from the Goodsprings Cemetery. Though extremely tough by a beginner's standards, there was a terrain feature that players can exploit to kill all of them.

In the cemetery is a grave that's fenced off. A player would have to jump over the fence to get in.

Radscorpions cannot jump.

One can, however, shoot through the wires of the fence.

Put 1 and 1 together, and you get a completely legal exploit to get some easy experience points. I think I was able to get 50 exp from each kill. Took a lot of ammo, but ammo isn't that hard to find.

The only catch is that the Radscorpions can sometimes glitch through the fence when given enough time. Keep a finger on the jump button to gtfo when it happens. Took out half my HP, broke a limb and poisoned me for a while when I got hit. No way I could have survived a second hit.












My chair broke. It broke some weeks ago seemingly for no reason.

Just one of those problems of being overweight that I didn't take into account. Who would have known a sturdy chair like this with a strong metal frame could have broke even though I never try to make it stand on two legs.

It broke at its weakest points, the part where part of the frame was welded together. And only for the left and right side in front. The two at the back are perfectly fine.

It's still usable, but I can no longer sit on the edge of my chair, which I do very often when it gets warm. Not if I want to sit comfortably. The front half of the chair can still withstand half my weight apparently, but it slips down suddenly if I put my full weight on it.

Never expected it. It didn't even creak when I first got it a year ago.

It's not easy to get strong desk chairs in Singapore. Those office chairs with wheels are worse since they're usually made of plastic, at the the bottom legs where the wheels are screwed into.

I have no idea how long this chair is going to last. The occasional bending of the back of the frame when the front slips downwards is going to break it eventually.

Looks like another reason to lose weight. Being fat is expensive.













Apparently my bro bought some huge campaign pack or something for LOTR Online a few months ago by working on Mturk.com. As an International Worker he could only redeem his pay via Amazon vouchers, which he spent to buy that package with the help of a friend in the US.

Not very easy to make money on Mturk, but money is money. Plus some of the work offers are obviously scams.

Most of the work involves writing essays and pays less than a dollar per 100-word essay.













So my hairdressers told me to dye my hair the other day when I went for a haircut. Said I was getting more white hairs.

I didn't notice any change. I've always had a lot of white hairs. Probably the genes.

It's possible they just wanted me to spend more.

Not likely at all that I'll be dyeing my hair black any time soon. C'mon, I'm only in my mid-twenties. It's ridiculous if I have to start doing that now.

As for thinking, of course I think. Nobody ever has no problems. Even when their problems appear less important than yours, they are still as worrying to them as yours are to you.

It's all relative. Just like happiness.

But the more I talk to her (only the youngest girl in that shop talks to me since she's only less than 10 years older), the more uninformed I find her.

I believe it's because of her job. All they do is spend 12 hours a day, 7 days a week, in the shop working on hair or watching TV drama series. Sometimes they take vacations to Malaysia, where they come from.

I kinda couldn't believe she was serious when she advised that I improve my Cantonese because she claims Cantonese-English translation is going to be useful.

Cantonese is gradually being killed in China as Cantonese media in Guangzhou are slowly being replaced by Mandarin-speaking ones. It's good to know Cantonese, but it's not a necessity in my books.

Even in Hong Kong, students have to learn Mandarin and it's actually possible to survive with Mandarin alone, albeit with some difficulties.

I'm not saying she's inherently retarded or anything. It's just the reality of working life that saddens me, that good minds are forced to rot for the sake of making a living.

Even when I was much younger, I've heard teachers admitting they have no idea what we were talking about when we mentioned something we saw on TV. There were only 2 TV channels Chinese Singaporeans watched back then and there was no cable TV or Internet in those days. That meant they were working so much they didn't do anything else. Maybe read the papers and going on annual vacations, yes, but that's probably about it.

Having your own small business doesn't change that either. My late father used to spend all 10 hours a day at work. Came home just in time for dinner, watch an hour or two of TV and then sleep. It was quite normal for him to work late or work during weekends or going to fortnightly business trips.

The only way a small business owner can have a flexible schedule like my mum's is to either have trustworthy employees (ie people whom you don't mind learning your trade secrets/techniques) or not mind if the business shrinks. And it always shrinks if nothing is done to expand. That's why all companies must grow constantly. Costs can only go one way - up. This is almost as solid a law as the Law of Gravity.

This is probably a major component of the price of not having to worry about losing our lives, the price of living in a peaceful civilization.

Something for something.













Just watched 2 episodes of Sherlock, a new UK TV series based on Sherlock Holmes. Only has 3 90-min episodes, but I can tell it took a lot of work to produce it. To make a show about a genius, one has to think like one. This would have taken a lot of thinking, which explains the small number of episodes.

Just one last episode left. I leaving it for another day.













KEN LEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

I know. It's a bit late. I just couldn't get this out of my head.