So far, I've only gone past the South Pole in Blockheads and reached the next landmass.
Also upgraded the portal to diamond but I don't have enough to get even the ruby pickaxe, let alone the diamond one.
Took forever because I keep losing my boat. Next time, I'm getting 3-4 of them in my inventory before setting off into the unknown. I have enough slots for it but the lag caused by the water and melting ice screws things up.
When I hit ice and keep pushing against it, somehow the ship would shrink back into inventory-size and sink. If I don't pick it up back again (done automatically by standing on it), it would sink. The graphics lag makes it such that it does not get picked up even though I'm right on top of it.
Then I'd have to swim slowly across the frozen ocean. It's a good thing the temperature doesn't hurt me, maybe because of my fur coat, although I'm not sure how a fur coat protects me against sub-zero icy seawater.
Actually most of the time is spent creating tools, mainly spades and pickaxes. I do a lot of digging because I dislike swimming. The game has nothing in the sea but ice and I can find more useful materials underground, so I dig under all bodies of water that I come across.
Someday I'd create a highway in the sky as a shortcut between oceans, but right now I'm focusing travelling around the world. At the moment, I should have less than half the globe left to explore.
Tried Red Faction: Guerilla but there's just one horrible problem with the game: there is really no way to increase the field of view (FOV) beyong 95 degrees.
I need about 100 or more to avoid nausea as I play.
So now I like the game but it makes me extremely uncomfortable to play.
Hence, I turned to Dungeons of Dredmor. It's harder than expected but after 3 failed attempts, I think I've finally gotten the right combination of skills to begin with.
Also tried Elven Legacy but my brain isn't willing to work very hard right now, or it would be a great game.
It's one of those "tactics" games like where you fight with multiple units against the AI in turns. I think one of the more outstanding features of the game is that the player brings along his old units to each stage, creating a strong incentive to keep the units alive as much as possible.
Otherwise, in between stages the player can also buy new units with the reward money. This money can also be spent upgrading those units. The problem with buying new units is that even though the classes may be upgraded, they lack the additional skills that experience can bring as they level up during battle.
After a while, I started to realize that it's actually not that important to hit the gold award by finishing each stage as quickly as possible without exploring the rest of the maps because I'm certainly feeling the pinch in my budget right now especially after losing an unit or two every stage, so much so that I had to choose between buying a lower level unit and moving on with a vacant slot.
These have been the games that I turned to ever since my internet died.
Other than that, I've also done some research on whether I should move to M1 and the answer is that it's a feasible option in terms of money.
The termination fee for my home fibre broadband is going to be about S$280 total when I go for the M1 promotions during the coming tech expo in March.
My mobile's contract is ending in June, so that can wait a little.
The M1 100Mbps fibre plan is about $25 cheaper, but the 5GB mobile broadband plan is an additional $20. There is currently a bundle promotion to get both but the mobile broadband is limited to 1GB and I don't feel safe with that.
Hopefully, with the recent service breakdown, M1 will offer some good promotions in March.
The alternative is to not have the separate mobile broadband and instead, get a 3G mobile plan. However, that seriously depends on which phone I can get and I have no idea if I can get a good phone with the kind of budget I have in mind.
The Nokia Lumia 920 is still far beyond my current budget and I don't expect the price to drop much by March, and this makes me reconsider getting a top-notch camera in my phone.
Yes, I can trade my current N8 in for $150 but I'm still uncertain.
Without the need for a good camera, I can go with pretty much any smartphone that doesn't perform too badly like the N8 does.
I guess I'll have to see what promotions M1 comes up with in 2 months.
My transporter calls me "老板", my workers call me "towkay" behind my back and now one of my suppliers have become so happy I'm getting that kind of crap from that end too.
I haven't been able to stop my transporter from addressing me like that so I call him the same in return, since we're both bosses of our own little worlds anyway.
My workers have always addressed me by "Mr [last name]" since that's the only way I know to be appropriate from my memories of my father. Yet when they're happy, they still call me 老板, and between each other and to outsiders, they use the term "towkay" since they're Hokkien speakers.
Last week, I sent like about S$4k extra to one of my suppliers because I was pissed at myself for repeatedly sending them slightly too little, anywhere between S$10 to S$150, in my previous payments (I really don't want to appear to be that kind of guy to them) and because the Chinese New Year is coming.
So just now I was addressed as "老闆" during my discussion with the Hong Kong supplier about my next order on Whatsapp (hence the traditional Chinese character 闆). Immediately I told her I'm too young for that and even "Mr [last name]" feels too old to me, so it was changed... to "boss". I hope this is only a temporary issue.
How does an advance payment $4000 make a supplier that happy? The business must be smaller than I thought!
My staff, I would understand if that kind of thing can make them ecstatic, but a supplier deals with far more money than that on a regular basis. $4k shouldn't impress people of that line of work, but I guess I must be wrong.
This year is problematic. It's my first year deciding on my staff's bonuses and I'd love to be generous, but not to the point of overspending like my mother probably did. I had always thought that I could get my accountant to tell me how much I made in 2012 before I make the decision but I just found out she's coming over only after Chinese New Year, the festival that's perfect for handing out bonuses.
My mother had been doing that since the beginning and my staff are used to it. Paying them later would make them unhappy unnecessarily. I can use my personal estimates to calculate but I just don't feel as comfortable with that.
Doesn't really matter. If I hand out too much, I'll just eat into the profits of 2013 by a little, then we'll see how things go from there.
This year has been alright. I made a few big mistakes so they should more or less offset whatever else I had done right. What a major setback it had been when I underestimated the traffic during the end of the year after the lull of the lunar Seventh month (Chinese Hungry Ghost Festival reduces traffic for the entire month). I'm not sure if I had made a net loss but I don't think I did. Regardless, my staff believes 2012 had not been a bad year so they expect a bigger bonus than the previous year.
No matter, I'll talk to my accountant about coming over earlier next year.
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