Rant 974 / Equipotential Marmalade

Is it just me or do games suddenly feel more interesting when I'm about to go to work?

Seriously, I spent like the two days here in front of the PC and yet I felt like playing none of the games I have.

The urge to play Grosteque Tactics 2 returned only this morning when I thought I should go to work today.

Distance makes the heart grow fonder.

Or in this case, the potential distance.


















As for Trapped Dead, I got tired of it quickly. The idea was admittedly pretty damn awesome but the execution left a lot to be desired.

First, my guys do not always attack first even though the humans have faster reflexes than the zombies. For some strange reason, they would frequently run to the zombies and just stand there to get hit by the zombies once before retaliating.

WHY?

WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT?

TOO MANY MEDKITS?

OR ARE YOU SOME SORT OF MASOCHIST?

"OOOH YEAH! HIT ME! HIT ME RIGHT THERE!"

The problem I have with this isn't the loss of HP but the possibility of bleeding. If he bleeds, the zombies in the game are seriously like sharks and they can smell blood through walls and from the other side of the Earth.

Second, there are no loot drops nor experience points. If I kill a zombie, the only reward I get is a dead zombie.

Hence I have no reason to kill anything that doesn't get in my way. In fact, I could simply run the heck out of any situation that allows such a strategy and the results would still remain the same.



















Yesterday I got a wake-up call from a buyer. She was the second buyer whom I was showing this jacket to and it didn't go well.

The first buyer knew my mum and was very nice to me probably because of that. And some other reasons, most likely. She didn't make any comment about that design and set the price to the lowest I could take without making a loss.

Which means I'll probably make a loss eventually, just a minimal one... if they all sell.

I described that as "nice" because the next buyer who saw that immediately remarked that it look very ugly and told me to give her half of the usual quantity. Apparently, this design will be used to offset the other products she's selling.

She didn't actually say that but it was strongly implied.

I have several hundred pieces of that, which is a significant problem.

Such a thing has always been expected to happen but it doesn't make me feel any better when it did.

Her comment made me rethink what I've been doing, which isn't much.

I'm genuinely interested in the trading aspect. Buying and selling stuff for real profit outside a computer game is exciting to me, but when it comes to actually sieving through all the junk to find the few sellable products, the thought of that feels extremely boring and kinda repulsive.

The profit is just a score, an unimportant factor when I have nothing to compare with. As long as I have all that I want, it feels like too much work to calculate my net profit.

What are important to me are the unpacking of my goods, receiving orders for my products and knowing that my transporter is coming over regularly for work.

Despite of this, I've come to the conclusion what I'm doing now is insufficient. I cannot simply ignore certain things just because I'm allowing myself all kinds of mistakes for this year. I may have expected losses but that doesn't justify the complete disregard I have for those numbers.



















So again I've confirmed that most things are cheaper on DX than at Sim Lim Square.

Actually it's just based on two products - a USB hub and a 11200mAh external phone battery.

The USB hub I saw was a human-shaped 4-port USB 2.0 one that was priced at S$5.90. It's US$3.50 on DX, or less than S$4.50 (plus free delivery via snail mail).

The 11200mAh Yoobao battery was priced at S$89.90 at SLS and was about S$60-70 on Gmarket. On DX, a similar one cost US41.90, or less than S$55, but it was significantly bulkier.

I was actually shopping for earphones with hooks because I find it hard to believe that it's so difficult to find a decent set under $10, USD or SGD, especially when I had a great pair for S$11 last year.

I couldn't find the same one anymore and neither can I find anything similar. The current set I'm using costs over US$12.