24 Nov 2016
Wanted to buy a few cheap games in the Steam Autumn Sale but decided not to. I don't need any new games urgently and the USD is still pretty strong despite slowing down its rise after Trump's victory.
A cockroach found its way into my laundry and got disintegrated when I started the washing machine. Now some of the clothes had bits of cockroach that I have to vacuum off the floor after flapping each piece. This is bloody gross and hopefully the only time it will ever happened.
Was wondering what those plastic-like bits were and thought maybe someone left a packet of tissue paper in a pocket. Picked one up and realized despite the plastic-wrapper-like sounds and weight, it was most likely a cockroach head.
At least it was clean and smelled good.
Went to the Philatelic Museum yesterday because Van wanted to see the Harry Potter exhibition. It was just a small one but since it's free for citizens and PRs, I'm not complaining. Neither am I a Harry Potter fan so that wasn't even the reason I was there.
I am an amateur philatelist who have never been to this museum before, so her wanting to go gave me a good reason to check it out.
Turns out they do have some interesting cheap stamps to buy, like some from Iran, Benin, USSR, Czechoslovakia and even a mix of 500 stamps from around the world. The most amazing ones were the Malayan stamps produced when we were occupied by the Japanese, and they were selling at $24 for just 6-7 of them.
Didn't buy them though because it felt like I'd just ruin them by keeping them in my albums that I can't guarantee will stay mould-free.
Wanted to buy some first-day covers too but I didn't feel like splurging so it was just that 500-stamp set, some Iranian stamps and some Czechoslovakian stamps. Iranian stamps because it's extremely unlikely that I'll ever visit the country, and Czechoslovakia because it no longer exists as a single country.
04 Dec 2016
I play games just to see new things, so now it looks like I'm done with Fortresscraft Evolved. Spent like 10-13 hours in a new map and pretty much seen an Overmind, a Hivemind underneath its hard resin shell, a Tunnel Nuker, a Worm Boss, the waves of mobs except for heavies and bosses, all the layers of biomes and their ores up to just over 1000m deep and get burnt to death in the magma... but not before collecting a few units of that stuff in my inventory. Seriously though, how does one store fluid magma in any form of space suit?
The Hivemind was the last thing to be seen since it took a while to ablate and liquefy enough of the resin to make a hole through. Underwhelming though, since in the Holobase mode it looked it it was moving but in reality it was just a static model floating in a bubble inside the resin. When I peered through the first hole, I kinda expected it to start lashing its tentacles at me, so the still creature was just boring.
05 Dec 2016
Felt like listening to them again and the Protectors of the Earth brought so much nostalgia that I almost teared.
The Mass Effect trilogy was truly epic, and so hopefully, Andromeda will live up to expectations.
Anyway, speaking of old games, Huxley was a game I was interested in many years ago when it was first announced but never seemed to have gotten released. So after a decade of occasional search, I have finally found closure to what seemed like a potentially great game - it was sold to a Korean company which developed it all the way to beta stage before it was shut down just a few years ago.
Maybe they realized that with just two factions, it was never going to beat Planetside 2, a game that hasn't really done too well over the years IMO after the few attempts at marketing it. Such a waste. So much must have been invested into it.
Welp that settles it - speed reading is nonsense. You can read really really fast but your brain just can't catch up, causing comprehension to get compromised beyond certain speeds.
So last week, both my bro and I agreed that the likeliest cause of all our internet issues is the router they gave us. First, our wired connections directly from the modem are always fine while only the wifi from the router is inconsistent. Second, the Linksys router only costs about US$50 on Amazon so it's clearly not a particularly durable one. Third, my wifi from my pc that is using one of the wired connections never has any issues.
The only problem here is that we came to this conclusion just after Cyber Monday.
Next year will be tough. Specifically, the arrangement of the flights to and from Canada/US will be different from the routine - again.
She will fly to Vancouver (YVR), then to California for her externship, followed by Toronto and finally back to Singapore. I will fly to Vancouver, back to Singapore, then to Toronto (YYZ) when she's leaving the US and back to Singapore again. How will I be able to arrange these flights so that we sit with each other between Canada and Singapore? Separate reservations tend to result in separate seats, presenting the biggest obstacle in this situation, yet I have never booked such flights in a single reservation before.
Will I finally have to call the airline, for once, to make a flight booking?
Seems so.
At this point, I am tempted to spend my miles on a business class upgrade because we will very likely take CX to go to YVR via HKG. First, there are no direct flights in this route. Second, CX is the best airline between HKG and YVR. Third, my Asia Miles membership is holding some miles that will expire in 2017.
15 Feb 2017
Just went for a recontract with M1 and their Fonecare+ is now quite different from the past. Not only is it a subscription-based service for some sort of insurance for phones, it also allows for contract renewals annually.
This means it makes far more sense to sign up for the phone with Fonecare+. Using the MySim plans to calculate how much my phone costs, it seems that it's cheaper to pay for this service and recontract after 12 months as compared to the usual 20-month-recontract practice.
And that's 20 months because of the existing early recontract fee waiver.
The difference between a 3GB plan with a phone and a 3GB SIM-only plan is $22 ($42 vs $20). Yes, the mySIM plan actually has 1GB more for the duration of the 12-month contract but I need 5GB anyway and a small data upsize costs $11.80 a month instead of the $5.90 rate for the normal with-phone plans, while the next bigger plan is a $10 upgrade.
So anyway, $22 a month difference. The Fonecare service is $8.50/month.
If I don't sign up for the Fonecare, I recontract at the 20th month. By then, I would have effectively paid $(22*20) = $440 for the phone.
With the Fonecare annual recontract feature, I pay just the 12 months of $22 and $8.50 = $(22+8.5)*12 = $246.
This is a difference of $194.
Of course, this is on top of the lump sum that was paid for the phone just now, so my Sony Experia XZ is costing me S$(398+194) = S$592.
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