Friday, 5 November 2010
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.
Tuesday, 2 November 2010
Rant 656 / 4:1
Changed a few characters in the above Chinese/English list after watching some guy play the Chinese version of SC2, like 象 to 像 for the Colossus.
Chinese SC2 has bad dubs.
Also found this website that's like the Chinese version of a SC2 wiki.
It's more complete than any other SC2 wiki I've encountered so far, but then again I haven't been going out of my way to find them.
Of course the students feel a sense of belonging. It's good, really.
But that was never the problem. The problem that this article is completely ignoring (and may be misleading to some readers) is that it was an adult final year undergrad who raised this problem and the example he raised was about an adult couple.
How the heck can you not feel loyalty to your country if you've been singing national songs every National Day, and singing the national anthem and saying the pledge everyday?
But when one grows up, more is seen and more is thought upon. Issues begin to merge; instead of a rainbow, we see a white light.
Singaporeans are annoyed that we're getting more expats than we're used to. A quarter of our population here on this island of 5 million people are "foreign talents" as the government so very much loves to put it. So we're getting Chinese paddlers to win our tournaments and 1 in every 4 of your friends on average are some guy making the same amounts of money as you do but doesn't have to serve NS and train for IPPT/IPT/RT like you do.
Life's a bitch, yes?
井底蛙們﹐我們應該看看其他國家的情況來做個比較。
Qatar has over 3/4 of its population made up of foreign workers.
Luxembourg has about 30%.
USA has about 10%, despite having the most expats in the world numerically speaking.
Generally, oil-rich Arab nations have the highest ratios of foreign workers vs native citizens, followed by tiny wealthy countries.
Our case isn't abnormal. We are but part of the world.
Life's never easy, even when it is.
Obviously senior executives in government ministries and their agencies need to have their salaries raised to become comparable with their counterparts in the private sector. This is to prevent more corruption from spreading. The problem with these men is that they weren't paid enough.
Singapore has one of the lowest corruption level in the world. But we should not be arrogant and stagnate. We need to look ahead and remember that the strongest chain is only as tough as the weakest link. Therefore all civil servants should have their salaries similarly adjusted.
And if they already are, then they should be raised further. The goal here is to pay everyone vast amounts of money so that the entire Singapore becomes practically incorruptible.
So after reading a particularly noteworthy list of 10 tips for guys going on a date, I decided to list down 10 things for girls to note when going out with a nerdy guy.
10) Play/try Starcraft 2.
9) Know what 6pool is.
8) Be aware of what DotA is.
7) Be aware of the natural superiority of Koreans in RTS games.
6) Do not ask him to play Maple Story with you.
5) If he suggests playing Maple Story, question his sexual orientation.
4) MMOs do not require skill, just dedication. No, this is not a debatable issue.
3) Be able to spend at least 3 hours a day playing computer games.
2) Do not post a list of dating tips for guys just because you've recently been on a bad date.
1) Don’t stare at our chests. If we catch you glancing at our chest when you’re just in front of us, we’ll think you’re rude andhave no willpower perhaps hungry. You can look, but from a distance (that way it’s not obvious what you’re looking at!).
I know, this list is about as funny as the aforementioned list is useful.
The last 2 RT sessions were rather different from those I attended last year. During the first session, we spent 45 mins in an air-conditioned auditorium listening to a 25min briefing. The last 20 mins were for the PTIs to chat while we stare at them, chat or ask them questions just to break the monotony.
After that we were supposed to be given a short orientation tour because in Bedok camp they sometimes used the gym for RT. Never used it in Maju.
We waited 5mins for the guys inside to leave the gym, then received the announcement that due to "unfavourable weather conditions" we were not going to have a short run at the end.
So we had a short introduction to the gym's various equipment, then wasted 15mins enjoying the cool air inside before moving on to the out-processing (out-pro) area.
That was it. And we got paid half day service pay for that. Not much, not even enough to cover the cab fare, but I really didn't mind not breaking a sweat. The worst part was only after we got to the out-pro area, when the OC wanted to talk to us till the sky darkened at about 7pm.
Really long talk that really didn't matter much since he only wanted to give us an idea how RT was supposed to help us and how he was going to make sure that happened.
Spoke to the clerk after out-pro to change my venue back to Maju.
Not missing Bedok camp at all.
But I have to say the RPs were stricter over there. I was told to tuck in my shirt when I entered and the RP who checked my back actually looked inside for a while. Good thing I never bother to bring my phone whenever I go for RT.
Even after I got my bag checked, another RP asked me again for my phone.
At the end when we were leaving the camp, everyone had to have their bags checked yet again, causing a long queue, even for the cars. The cars didn't get checked but the RPs seemed to have a list of cars' license plate numbers they had to match to each one that was leaving. Meanwhile the guy checking out bags was slightly more hasty in his scrutiny of the stuff in the bags probably because of the very long queue.
I like their alertness. Then again, they probably have fewer people to handle than those at Maju.
The second session I had was also quite different but in another way.
Apparently the camps were beginning to change their RT routines to slowly adapt to the new version of the RT that was going to be fully implemented next year.
For now, everyone had to be grouped according to their problems. For example, I'm in the overweight group with the green number tag. The number doesn't matter but the colour does. The blue tag was probably for those who failed only the 2.4km run so their training was basically all about running, with some short breaks once in a while.
I noticed their training only because our training involved 30mins of... walking. So we were on the road watching them pant like crazy while we barely broke a sweat after the walk. Some of us were even strolling and chatting with the PTI at the back. I think he was trying to speed them up to catch up with us in the front but failed.
After that was a long 10-15mins water break which most of us spent sitting on the benches staring at the others train. The PTI for the blue tags was shouting encouragements all the time while half of those guys were visibly struggling.
When our break ended we were told to go for the second half of our session, which was strength training. The list was supposedly long (I don't know, he could have made that up to make us feel like he was making life easier for us even though it was already very easy) but he said he would shorten it to about 5 exercises.
It began with 30 overhead claps.
Followed by 20 half-squats.
After which we did 20 push-ups.
Short 2mins break.
20 crunches.
Then we did this strange exercise in which one guy lies down and lifts his legs up to form a capital L, while another guy stands with his feet on both sides of his head and holding the first guy's feet, forming a rectangle.
The second guy was then supposed to push the first guy's feet down while the first guy tries to resist the push and then pull hiss leg back up into the other guy's hands.
10 of that.
Finally, 15 or 20 squats.
It was so hard, we actually broke a sweat.
The sessions were supposed to be progressively harder as the days pass but I have no idea how much more intensive they will become. It's likely we will have advanced to brisk walking in the next session.
Also, I get to miss one session because it falls on Hari Raya. =D
FoxeR won. Not surprising. However I was slightly off when I predicted it would end with 4:0.
Chinese SC2 has bad dubs.
Also found this website that's like the Chinese version of a SC2 wiki.
It's more complete than any other SC2 wiki I've encountered so far, but then again I haven't been going out of my way to find them.
Of course the students feel a sense of belonging. It's good, really.
But that was never the problem. The problem that this article is completely ignoring (and may be misleading to some readers) is that it was an adult final year undergrad who raised this problem and the example he raised was about an adult couple.
How the heck can you not feel loyalty to your country if you've been singing national songs every National Day, and singing the national anthem and saying the pledge everyday?
But when one grows up, more is seen and more is thought upon. Issues begin to merge; instead of a rainbow, we see a white light.
Singaporeans are annoyed that we're getting more expats than we're used to. A quarter of our population here on this island of 5 million people are "foreign talents" as the government so very much loves to put it. So we're getting Chinese paddlers to win our tournaments and 1 in every 4 of your friends on average are some guy making the same amounts of money as you do but doesn't have to serve NS and train for IPPT/IPT/RT like you do.
Life's a bitch, yes?
井底蛙們﹐我們應該看看其他國家的情況來做個比較。
Qatar has over 3/4 of its population made up of foreign workers.
Luxembourg has about 30%.
USA has about 10%, despite having the most expats in the world numerically speaking.
Generally, oil-rich Arab nations have the highest ratios of foreign workers vs native citizens, followed by tiny wealthy countries.
Our case isn't abnormal. We are but part of the world.
Life's never easy, even when it is.
Obviously senior executives in government ministries and their agencies need to have their salaries raised to become comparable with their counterparts in the private sector. This is to prevent more corruption from spreading. The problem with these men is that they weren't paid enough.
Singapore has one of the lowest corruption level in the world. But we should not be arrogant and stagnate. We need to look ahead and remember that the strongest chain is only as tough as the weakest link. Therefore all civil servants should have their salaries similarly adjusted.
And if they already are, then they should be raised further. The goal here is to pay everyone vast amounts of money so that the entire Singapore becomes practically incorruptible.
So after reading a particularly noteworthy list of 10 tips for guys going on a date, I decided to list down 10 things for girls to note when going out with a nerdy guy.
10) Play/try Starcraft 2.
9) Know what 6pool is.
8) Be aware of what DotA is.
7) Be aware of the natural superiority of Koreans in RTS games.
6) Do not ask him to play Maple Story with you.
5) If he suggests playing Maple Story, question his sexual orientation.
4) MMOs do not require skill, just dedication. No, this is not a debatable issue.
3) Be able to spend at least 3 hours a day playing computer games.
2) Do not post a list of dating tips for guys just because you've recently been on a bad date.
1) Don’t stare at our chests. If we catch you glancing at our chest when you’re just in front of us, we’ll think you’re rude and
I know, this list is about as funny as the aforementioned list is useful.
The last 2 RT sessions were rather different from those I attended last year. During the first session, we spent 45 mins in an air-conditioned auditorium listening to a 25min briefing. The last 20 mins were for the PTIs to chat while we stare at them, chat or ask them questions just to break the monotony.
After that we were supposed to be given a short orientation tour because in Bedok camp they sometimes used the gym for RT. Never used it in Maju.
We waited 5mins for the guys inside to leave the gym, then received the announcement that due to "unfavourable weather conditions" we were not going to have a short run at the end.
So we had a short introduction to the gym's various equipment, then wasted 15mins enjoying the cool air inside before moving on to the out-processing (out-pro) area.
That was it. And we got paid half day service pay for that. Not much, not even enough to cover the cab fare, but I really didn't mind not breaking a sweat. The worst part was only after we got to the out-pro area, when the OC wanted to talk to us till the sky darkened at about 7pm.
Really long talk that really didn't matter much since he only wanted to give us an idea how RT was supposed to help us and how he was going to make sure that happened.
Spoke to the clerk after out-pro to change my venue back to Maju.
Not missing Bedok camp at all.
But I have to say the RPs were stricter over there. I was told to tuck in my shirt when I entered and the RP who checked my back actually looked inside for a while. Good thing I never bother to bring my phone whenever I go for RT.
Even after I got my bag checked, another RP asked me again for my phone.
At the end when we were leaving the camp, everyone had to have their bags checked yet again, causing a long queue, even for the cars. The cars didn't get checked but the RPs seemed to have a list of cars' license plate numbers they had to match to each one that was leaving. Meanwhile the guy checking out bags was slightly more hasty in his scrutiny of the stuff in the bags probably because of the very long queue.
I like their alertness. Then again, they probably have fewer people to handle than those at Maju.
The second session I had was also quite different but in another way.
Apparently the camps were beginning to change their RT routines to slowly adapt to the new version of the RT that was going to be fully implemented next year.
For now, everyone had to be grouped according to their problems. For example, I'm in the overweight group with the green number tag. The number doesn't matter but the colour does. The blue tag was probably for those who failed only the 2.4km run so their training was basically all about running, with some short breaks once in a while.
I noticed their training only because our training involved 30mins of... walking. So we were on the road watching them pant like crazy while we barely broke a sweat after the walk. Some of us were even strolling and chatting with the PTI at the back. I think he was trying to speed them up to catch up with us in the front but failed.
After that was a long 10-15mins water break which most of us spent sitting on the benches staring at the others train. The PTI for the blue tags was shouting encouragements all the time while half of those guys were visibly struggling.
When our break ended we were told to go for the second half of our session, which was strength training. The list was supposedly long (I don't know, he could have made that up to make us feel like he was making life easier for us even though it was already very easy) but he said he would shorten it to about 5 exercises.
It began with 30 overhead claps.
Followed by 20 half-squats.
After which we did 20 push-ups.
Short 2mins break.
20 crunches.
Then we did this strange exercise in which one guy lies down and lifts his legs up to form a capital L, while another guy stands with his feet on both sides of his head and holding the first guy's feet, forming a rectangle.
The second guy was then supposed to push the first guy's feet down while the first guy tries to resist the push and then pull hiss leg back up into the other guy's hands.
10 of that.
Finally, 15 or 20 squats.
It was so hard, we actually broke a sweat.
The sessions were supposed to be progressively harder as the days pass but I have no idea how much more intensive they will become. It's likely we will have advanced to brisk walking in the next session.
Also, I get to miss one session because it falls on Hari Raya. =D
FoxeR won. Not surprising. However I was slightly off when I predicted it would end with 4:0.
Monday, 1 November 2010
Rant 655 / They Aren't Pitching The Real BoxeR Against The Fake BoxeR Because They Don't Want The Universe To Explode From The Pure Awesomeness
1st Nov 2010
Just bought a set of measuring spoons... only to discover that the tablespoon is useless. The label had stated that they used Australian standards but I hadn't known what the difference was.
Suspecting a little, I decided to check after buying it. Turns out the Australian tablespoon is larger than the tablespoons of the rest of the world for some (probably historical) reason.
In the entire world but Australia, 1 tbs = 3 tsp = 15ml.
In Australia only, 1 tbs = 4 tsp = 20ml.
Since it's hard to remove 1 tsp of stuff from the tbs all the time, I might as well just convert everything to tsp when I use the set of measuring spoons.
...
But it comes with a 1.5tsp spoon! That should make things slightly easier. Just need to use that twice to get one tbs.
I could have just bought a test tube but I'm not too keen on getting strange looks from my family when I cook. Using sage on my chicken already made my mum question my cooking :\
...
Just tested it. It's fine. I poured in 2 spoons of water into the tablespoon using the 1.5tsp spoon. Fills perfectly.
I blame the Internet for giving me too much information. Good thing I tested it.
So one of my aunts came to Singapore to visit us for a few days. Some of the conversations she had with my mum were rather awkward for me, yet I had to listen and be visibly uncomfortable. No one deserves to listen to anything related to the sex lives of their elders. Since I'm not having lessons or exams for these few days, I have no excuse to avoid her like my bro is doing.
Not that I want to avoid her but I just don't have anything to talk about with her. Yet I have to entertain her or it would feel even more awkward if she's just watching TV. Seriously awkward.
I did consider bringing her to the new casinos but like I said, I have nothing to talk about with her so the journey would be filled with that strange silence that normal people usually prefer to a avoid.
My mum isn't exactly enthusiastic about walking around too much so she doesn't want to bring her there by herself either.
And if we both go with her, we'd have to fork out a whopping S$200 entrance fee. Nobody wants to do that.
If only she brought her husband with her. He likes to gamble like her, so it wouldn't be a problem. I wonder why he isn't here.
And if you've been to HK with me some years back, she's that aunt we stayed with that time.
She's still trying to treat my family. I'm not joking when I say she really turns pulling money out of the purse/wallet into an art. It's like she's got some kind of special technique that allows her to make money appear in her hands when the bill comes.
But I managed to stop her today when we went shopping and eating. Right from the taxi ride I was able to stop her from paying by holding my wallet the moment I had my seat belt on at the start.
XD
She's the only person I know with whom I have to fight with all the time the pay the bills.
Every. Single. Time.
No exceptions.
I have to resort to pre-emptive tactics to stop her from paying for everything. That's how hard it is. Nobody pulls out his/her purse/wallet as quickly as her.
And even after holding out the money to show her I have to keep telling her that I already have the money ready so she doesn't have to take out hers.
Yesterday when she first arrived I didn't do it because I thought my mum would be able to handle it. Apparently she's getting too old to compete with her elder sister. It's strange.
So she paid for the cab fare (with extra peak hour surcharge and airport surcharge) and dinner, even though she's already bought lots of stuff for us (mainly clothes for me since it's getting hard to buy those that fit me here in Singapore).
I still remember during the trip to HK with the BC that she told us that since she treated us for those meals we could treat her when she goes to Singapore.
Now that she's here, she's still trying to pay for everything. I'm not sure if there's anyone like her out there.
And right now her husband's business in China isn't doing very well, so it feels even worse when she does it.
Also reminds me again that it's very hard to do business there. It's not just about knowing people, but also about knowing the right people.
The right people aren't merely the ones who have contact with factories or other businesses, but also friends in the lower levels of society. In China, that is another important group to handle.
For example, one of my mum's friends closed down his bar in China because his imported wine kept getting stolen. At first he believed that he was making losses because his business partner in China sucked her work. Turned out that even though she had a lot of contacts, she didn't have friends in the triads.
Apparently they had offered her a deal while he was back in Singapore - help them steal the wines and get a cut of the profits or be killed. Not much of a choice there. He found out that his wine was really being stolen only after he secretly sneaked to his bar at night and witnessed her opening the backdoor while men went in to take out crates of wine and placed them in a private car. So he confronted her later and she confessed.
There was nothing he could do then so he closed shop to cut losses.
And now my uncle's business is kind of in the same position, except much worse, but that's another story. Suffice to say, even biological brothers can ruthlessly stab you in the back in China, let alone "bros".
So I thought it strange he wouldn't come with my aunt to visit the casinos since he likes to gamble. He's not going bankrupt but he's having a lot more free time. As the kind of guy who is used to working all the time, it doesn't really make sense for him to stay in HK alone now.
It's like history just repeated itself. First my father, now my uncle. I'm getting the feeling that China's market is grossly overrated.
Foxer vs KyrixZenith was an excellent match. I missed the first game but watched the rest on this Taiwanese guy's channel (anfree) where I'm learnt some Chinese terms for SC2 units.
Foxer = 假包
SlayerSBoxer = 老包 / 真包
NEXGenius = 天才
St-HopeTorture = 彩虹
NesTea = 雀巢
NaDa = 那打
Zenio = zhan1 牛
Jaedong = 解凍
Red Alert = 紅色警戒
Hatchery/Nexus/CC = 基地
Vespene gas = 瓦斯
Zerg = 蟲族
Roach = 蟑螂
Queen = 後蟲
Zergling = 狗
Drone = 工蟲
Baneling = 毒爆蟲
Overlord = 王蟲
Mutalisk = 飛螗
Infestor = 感染蟲
Terran = 人類/人族
SCV = 工兵
Marine/Marines = 陸戰兵/陸戰隊 (because land units = 地面部隊)
Reaper = 死神
Banshee = 女妖
Siege Tank = 坦克
Viking = 維京
Thor = 雷神
250mm Strike Cannons (Thor ability) = 雷神炮
Bunker = 碉堡
Marauder = 掠奪者
Protoss = 神族
Pylon = 水晶塔
Void Ray = 虛空
Chronoboost = 超時空加速
Dark Templar = 速隱刀
Mothership = 航母
Colossus = 巨像
Some terms that have acronyms instead of Chinese names:
Observers = OB
Barracks = BB
And finally,
Static noise = 流电聲 = signature of anfree's channel
Disclaimer: I've never played or watched the Chinese SC2 till after posting so some of the words above may not be the correct characters.
I'm getting these only because the Taiwanese guy was giving a commentary in Mandarin and these units were used a lot during the games. I didn't manage to catch some of the lesser-mentioned terms.
When Kyrix kept winning with a giant army of Banelings and a clean-up crew of Zerglings, and especially when his Banelings just blasted a path for the Zerglings through filled bunkers, depots and Marines at the back, I was like
In the fourth round Kyrix underestimated the power of Banshees and couldn't defend against a Banshee rush despite producing defences he appeared to have thought to be enough. Kyrix was able to see Boxer's base for most of the early game and still failed to defend against a rush. It was very disappointing.
Last game was epic. It was the kind of game everyone has been waiting for, the kind of the game that makes all the bad games in the tournament worth enduring for.
Boxer won. He completely deserved his victory in the last game. The way he dodged all those waves of Banelings and Baneling/Overlord drops probably pushed the limits of his micro abilities.
In the interview Boxer admitted that he had been practising with defeating Banelings with Marines. No wonder.
And he's explicitly agreed to changing his nick to Foxer in the future. XD
It's probably the best game of the tournament. Might have better ones though, since it's still best of 8.
Second match was disappointing. The champion of Blizzcon, NEXGenius, lost. No more Protoss left in the tournament. Proof that Protoss needs a buff.
Second interview:
Tomorrow: SlayerSBoxer vs Nada. SC2 match of the year?
Forgot to publish the post. Fuck it. I'll just add the dates in blue.
2nd Nov 2010
She's gone now. It's good since we were running out of things to do. Always trying be the first to take out my money got tiring after the novelty of it wore off.
It's actually possible to shop with her for an entire day and not spend a single cent. Apparently it's been done back when nobody knew she could go that far. It's unnatural and, hence, scary. Her behaviour is antithetical to the norm of the 21st century capitalistic world.
It's not like she's still as wealthy as before and has no problem of her own. She probably didn't even tell us everything.
Watched the GSL on the Taiwanese guy's channel again to help brush up my Chinese (and learn a tiny bit of Taiwanese Hokkien). Updated the list above.
In the match between Zenio and NesTea, NesTea basically outclassed Zenio with a score of 3:0. Interview with NesTea:
The real BoxeR won. Epic games but not as epic as the last game yesterday which Foxer won. It seems in the 3rd match (second victory for SlayerSBoxeR) NaDa wasn't playing very well for his skill level and made mistakes that should have been too noob for him to make.
Oh well, shit happens. He was probably trembling in fear against the might of the Emperor, and that is very understandable. Uncontrollably twitching fingers can make microing units very difficult.
Too bad we aren't going to see a BoxeR vs BoxeR match on Thursday. That would probably be the match of the year for sure. Hopefully both of them will win their way to the finals to make that happen.
Just bought a set of measuring spoons... only to discover that the tablespoon is useless. The label had stated that they used Australian standards but I hadn't known what the difference was.
Suspecting a little, I decided to check after buying it. Turns out the Australian tablespoon is larger than the tablespoons of the rest of the world for some (probably historical) reason.
In the entire world but Australia, 1 tbs = 3 tsp = 15ml.
In Australia only, 1 tbs = 4 tsp = 20ml.
Since it's hard to remove 1 tsp of stuff from the tbs all the time, I might as well just convert everything to tsp when I use the set of measuring spoons.
...
But it comes with a 1.5tsp spoon! That should make things slightly easier. Just need to use that twice to get one tbs.
I could have just bought a test tube but I'm not too keen on getting strange looks from my family when I cook. Using sage on my chicken already made my mum question my cooking :\
...
Just tested it. It's fine. I poured in 2 spoons of water into the tablespoon using the 1.5tsp spoon. Fills perfectly.
I blame the Internet for giving me too much information. Good thing I tested it.
So one of my aunts came to Singapore to visit us for a few days. Some of the conversations she had with my mum were rather awkward for me, yet I had to listen and be visibly uncomfortable. No one deserves to listen to anything related to the sex lives of their elders. Since I'm not having lessons or exams for these few days, I have no excuse to avoid her like my bro is doing.
Not that I want to avoid her but I just don't have anything to talk about with her. Yet I have to entertain her or it would feel even more awkward if she's just watching TV. Seriously awkward.
I did consider bringing her to the new casinos but like I said, I have nothing to talk about with her so the journey would be filled with that strange silence that normal people usually prefer to a avoid.
My mum isn't exactly enthusiastic about walking around too much so she doesn't want to bring her there by herself either.
And if we both go with her, we'd have to fork out a whopping S$200 entrance fee. Nobody wants to do that.
If only she brought her husband with her. He likes to gamble like her, so it wouldn't be a problem. I wonder why he isn't here.
And if you've been to HK with me some years back, she's that aunt we stayed with that time.
She's still trying to treat my family. I'm not joking when I say she really turns pulling money out of the purse/wallet into an art. It's like she's got some kind of special technique that allows her to make money appear in her hands when the bill comes.
But I managed to stop her today when we went shopping and eating. Right from the taxi ride I was able to stop her from paying by holding my wallet the moment I had my seat belt on at the start.
XD
She's the only person I know with whom I have to fight with all the time the pay the bills.
Every. Single. Time.
No exceptions.
I have to resort to pre-emptive tactics to stop her from paying for everything. That's how hard it is. Nobody pulls out his/her purse/wallet as quickly as her.
And even after holding out the money to show her I have to keep telling her that I already have the money ready so she doesn't have to take out hers.
Yesterday when she first arrived I didn't do it because I thought my mum would be able to handle it. Apparently she's getting too old to compete with her elder sister. It's strange.
So she paid for the cab fare (with extra peak hour surcharge and airport surcharge) and dinner, even though she's already bought lots of stuff for us (mainly clothes for me since it's getting hard to buy those that fit me here in Singapore).
I still remember during the trip to HK with the BC that she told us that since she treated us for those meals we could treat her when she goes to Singapore.
Now that she's here, she's still trying to pay for everything. I'm not sure if there's anyone like her out there.
And right now her husband's business in China isn't doing very well, so it feels even worse when she does it.
Also reminds me again that it's very hard to do business there. It's not just about knowing people, but also about knowing the right people.
The right people aren't merely the ones who have contact with factories or other businesses, but also friends in the lower levels of society. In China, that is another important group to handle.
For example, one of my mum's friends closed down his bar in China because his imported wine kept getting stolen. At first he believed that he was making losses because his business partner in China sucked her work. Turned out that even though she had a lot of contacts, she didn't have friends in the triads.
Apparently they had offered her a deal while he was back in Singapore - help them steal the wines and get a cut of the profits or be killed. Not much of a choice there. He found out that his wine was really being stolen only after he secretly sneaked to his bar at night and witnessed her opening the backdoor while men went in to take out crates of wine and placed them in a private car. So he confronted her later and she confessed.
There was nothing he could do then so he closed shop to cut losses.
And now my uncle's business is kind of in the same position, except much worse, but that's another story. Suffice to say, even biological brothers can ruthlessly stab you in the back in China, let alone "bros".
So I thought it strange he wouldn't come with my aunt to visit the casinos since he likes to gamble. He's not going bankrupt but he's having a lot more free time. As the kind of guy who is used to working all the time, it doesn't really make sense for him to stay in HK alone now.
It's like history just repeated itself. First my father, now my uncle. I'm getting the feeling that China's market is grossly overrated.
Foxer vs KyrixZenith was an excellent match. I missed the first game but watched the rest on this Taiwanese guy's channel (anfree) where I'm learnt some Chinese terms for SC2 units.
Foxer = 假包
SlayerSBoxer = 老包 / 真包
NEXGenius = 天才
St-HopeTorture = 彩虹
NesTea = 雀巢
NaDa = 那打
Zenio = zhan1 牛
Jaedong = 解凍
Red Alert = 紅色警戒
Hatchery/Nexus/CC = 基地
Vespene gas = 瓦斯
Zerg = 蟲族
Roach = 蟑螂
Queen = 後蟲
Zergling = 狗
Drone = 工蟲
Baneling = 毒爆蟲
Overlord = 王蟲
Mutalisk = 飛螗
Infestor = 感染蟲
Terran = 人類/人族
SCV = 工兵
Marine/Marines = 陸戰兵/陸戰隊 (because land units = 地面部隊)
Reaper = 死神
Banshee = 女妖
Siege Tank = 坦克
Viking = 維京
Thor = 雷神
250mm Strike Cannons (Thor ability) = 雷神炮
Bunker = 碉堡
Marauder = 掠奪者
Protoss = 神族
Pylon = 水晶塔
Void Ray = 虛空
Chronoboost = 超時空加速
Dark Templar = 速隱刀
Mothership = 航母
Colossus = 巨像
Some terms that have acronyms instead of Chinese names:
Observers = OB
Barracks = BB
And finally,
Static noise = 流电聲 = signature of anfree's channel
Disclaimer: I've never played or watched the Chinese SC2 till after posting so some of the words above may not be the correct characters.
I'm getting these only because the Taiwanese guy was giving a commentary in Mandarin and these units were used a lot during the games. I didn't manage to catch some of the lesser-mentioned terms.
When Kyrix kept winning with a giant army of Banelings and a clean-up crew of Zerglings, and especially when his Banelings just blasted a path for the Zerglings through filled bunkers, depots and Marines at the back, I was like
In the fourth round Kyrix underestimated the power of Banshees and couldn't defend against a Banshee rush despite producing defences he appeared to have thought to be enough. Kyrix was able to see Boxer's base for most of the early game and still failed to defend against a rush. It was very disappointing.
Last game was epic. It was the kind of game everyone has been waiting for, the kind of the game that makes all the bad games in the tournament worth enduring for.
Boxer won. He completely deserved his victory in the last game. The way he dodged all those waves of Banelings and Baneling/Overlord drops probably pushed the limits of his micro abilities.
In the interview Boxer admitted that he had been practising with defeating Banelings with Marines. No wonder.
And he's explicitly agreed to changing his nick to Foxer in the future. XD
It's probably the best game of the tournament. Might have better ones though, since it's still best of 8.
Second match was disappointing. The champion of Blizzcon, NEXGenius, lost. No more Protoss left in the tournament. Proof that Protoss needs a buff.
Second interview:
Tomorrow: SlayerSBoxer vs Nada. SC2 match of the year?
Forgot to publish the post. Fuck it. I'll just add the dates in blue.
2nd Nov 2010
She's gone now. It's good since we were running out of things to do. Always trying be the first to take out my money got tiring after the novelty of it wore off.
It's actually possible to shop with her for an entire day and not spend a single cent. Apparently it's been done back when nobody knew she could go that far. It's unnatural and, hence, scary. Her behaviour is antithetical to the norm of the 21st century capitalistic world.
It's not like she's still as wealthy as before and has no problem of her own. She probably didn't even tell us everything.
Watched the GSL on the Taiwanese guy's channel again to help brush up my Chinese (and learn a tiny bit of Taiwanese Hokkien). Updated the list above.
In the match between Zenio and NesTea, NesTea basically outclassed Zenio with a score of 3:0. Interview with NesTea:
The real BoxeR won. Epic games but not as epic as the last game yesterday which Foxer won. It seems in the 3rd match (second victory for SlayerSBoxeR) NaDa wasn't playing very well for his skill level and made mistakes that should have been too noob for him to make.
Oh well, shit happens. He was probably trembling in fear against the might of the Emperor, and that is very understandable. Uncontrollably twitching fingers can make microing units very difficult.
Too bad we aren't going to see a BoxeR vs BoxeR match on Thursday. That would probably be the match of the year for sure. Hopefully both of them will win their way to the finals to make that happen.
Friday, 29 October 2010
Rant 654 / The Idiot With The Glasses
Yes! I managed to kill the Vulpes guy in Nipton after he dared me to do it. No idea why this guy is special now. I remember him being mentioned by the last Legion boss of the game at the dam but I'm not sure why.
It was actually easier than I thought. All I did was stand behind him, start VATS and blew his head away with my 9mm SMG. The VATS part did away with 80% of his HP (I repaired the MG to 75% before the fight MUAHAHAHA) and killed him right after VATS ended.
The rest I just kited while spamming Sarsaparilla and Stimpaks. Didn't need any companions (sent ED-E away to prevent it from getting killed) or boosting items. What I needed was ammo. After killing everything all I had left was my 10mm pistol. Used up over 130 9mm rounds and 15 ECP from my Laser RCW.
Quite easy IMO.
But it made Legion Assassins come after me. Met two soon after Nipton while waiting for ED-E to return to Primm to recruit it again. Also kited these guys. I like how they are only good at melee and they would attack me in the open. Too easy to kite. The thing about melee is that you have to pause a little before swinging your weapon. I could get out of the weapon's range in that split second if I wear light armour just by holding S.
It's kind of retarded actually. Theoretically speaking, I can kill an entire Legion army if I have enough space and bullet. Except for the higher-ranking soldiers, eg Praetorians. Those are fast.
I've completely forgotten about these screenshots I took at HELIOS One, which is called the "Nevada Solar One" IRL. Just noticed them just now when I opened the game folder to fix some meshes. The following were taken during a conversation with the scientist put in charge of the solar power plant by the NCR, named "Fantastic".
The following are for the 2nd question the cursor is pointing at.
For the third question, his answer was:
Finally,
I think it's obvious how successful they are in restarting the power plant.
Was reading abut Mustafa Kemal Atatürk during one meal and was impressed by his career. I thought LKY was pretty amazing in what he has done for Singapore, but Atatürk would have outshined him if Turkey and Singapore were geographically closer and if Atatürk hadn't died in 1938.
I kind of skipped his military career, which I supposed must have been just as impressive given that he was described as "an extremely capable military officer" right in the beginning of the Wiki article.
Unlike Singapore, Turkey had to fight for its independence. Worse is that it was a 3-front war, with Turkey fighting the French, Greeks and Armenians. Atatürk was the one who made a new Parliament out of the ruins of the Ottoman Empire and told it to build a new army for this.
But of course nothing is perfect. The country achieved independence but was unable to regain the oil-rich ex-Ottoman lands from the British. Atatürk didn't really give up on them but it seemed the right opportunity just didn't arise during his lifetime.
After that, in addition to fighting the threat of Communism from the USSR, his northern neighbour, he also managed to prevent Fascism from Italy from taking hold in his country.
Singapore only had to worry about Communism from China.
Then he modernized his country's education system and and promoted the idea of compulsory education for girls, which in a traditionally Muslim country must have taken some effort.
I'm not sure about this issue in Singapore in the past. It probably wasn't a big deal since girls schools were opened a long time ago, like RGS.
The next big thing was that Atatürk forced a change in dress code for all Turkish people. They were all used to wearing the fez since the Ottoman days, but he made it compulsory for all civil servants to wear Western-style hats. Those were just the first group of people and the first part of the dress code to be changed.
I'm not sure if this was just about modernisation. It feels more like Westernisation to me. But I guess during that era both terms were synonymous.
After that was more moves to support women's suffrage and removing the influence of the Muslim clergy in state matters. I think he was pretty successful in separating religion from the state, especially if one compares this with Turkey's neighbours like Iran.
His most incredible achievement in my opinion was in introducing a brand new set of Turkish alphabets to replace the Arabic script.
Apparently Arabic is extremely hard to learn and with this new alphabets, literacy rates soared from a measly 10% to 70% in 2 years.
2 years! He made 60% of his countrymen able to read and write in 2 frickin years!
These alphabets, despite being so easy to learn, weren't the products of years of research like Esperanto. When he asked a group of language experts how long it would take to create these alphabets at first, he was told it would take 3 years.
Somehow it took less than a year.
He had consulted them in the spring of 1928. He publicly announced the alphabets in November the same year. All newspapers and textbooks were forced to convert within two months. The first newspaper to use it began to publish in December.
If his success in regards to the alphabets weren't incredible, I don't know what is.
His foreign policies weren't as interesting. Mostly he tried to keep a low profile and talked his way out of everything. Then again, nobody really wanted to fight before WWII began, and by the time that started he was already dead.
In 1938, he died at the young age of 57. Building a country must have been no easy work.
Too bad his successors sucked and almost ruined his work. I still remember someone joking about the Turkish lira when I was young. In fact it was so bad they had to replace it with a new lira which was simply the old lira minus 6 zeroes. They had to cut 6 zeroes to make the 1.29 lira worth a single USD in 2005. In 2004, one USD could buy 1.35 million lira. This year it has grown to 1.39 lira per US dollar.
Apparently after Atatürk they just couldn't find another strong leader, something he failed at and LKY probably succeeded at. I mean, so far so good, right? Hopefully we won't have to go through the sort of trouble that Turkey experienced after his death. Military coups are never a good sign.
Yesterday on my way to Bedok Camp the cab driver gave me this Buddhist booklet entitled "How to Overcome Your Difficulties" by Ven. Dr. K. Sri Dhammandanda.
I flipped through it a bit, read the quoted words supposedly spoken by Buddha and I was quite surprised to see that a few of them were old stuff I figured out years ago but rephrased.
And I didn't even need to meditate for 6 years under a tree like he did!
On page 2, the quote was:
Which I interpret as "desire will give you unhappiness". Didn't I say that everything has a price? That if you want something, you will have to pay for it? (Pay != work.)
The book's interpretation was that "all forms of attachment will end in sorrow." It's true, but I do not agree that this is the full meaning of what the quote is saying. Sometimes, it can begin in sorrow too, and sometimes you have to pay halfway through.
Unfortunately an average guy cannot be completely free from attachments. It is human nature to want certain things, like breathing, eating and companionship. These, too, have prices of their own, some of which may be hidden till the moment of payment.
But apparently certain Buddhist monks are able to avoid even these basic desires. For example, in a documentary I watched on Discovery yesterday, it was mentioned that some American scientists did experiment on Buddhist monks by soaking them in ice water. When they came back after a few hours, the water was steaming. Steaming, which I presume to mean much higher than the normal body temperature range.
If they can control their body temperature and environmental influences like that, it is not too far-fetched to say they can probably control their hunger and thirst.
So there's this discussion on why the younger Singaporeans are no longer feeling like they belong here. This is probably the beginning of how the culture of Singapore becomes overwhelmed by foreign influences, when being Singaporean isn't being Singaporean anymore.
Strange that I've never felt it in the first place. Then again, I wasn't born here.
Still, this is a good place to be in if one can afford it.
Me, I'm actually unsure about this in the long term. Translators don't make much here in Singapore.
And with the retirement age rising, it just means people are going to reap their CPF rewards later in life as policies change in the future to adapt to this change.
Yes sure we're going to get more. That's a good thing really. People in the US are now worrying that their version of the CPF isn't going to provide them with enough money when they retire. We probably won't have to worry about that. Hopefully.
Problem is, how many of us are going to live long enough to need the extra benefits?
Life expectancy isn't enough for me. Just because the life expectancy is 70 here doesn't mean I will be immortal and invulnerable till 70 years after my birth. It's probably better to know how many percent of Singaporeans live beyond 70, 80 or even 100. Nobody ever tells us those numbers.
As for the feeling of alienation at home, it's probably inevitable anyway. It's not like we have a choice. I can't expect Singaporeans to seriously produce 5000 Annabel Chongs spontaneously. Other than making us exceptional as a people, that would have helped with the local birth rates too. Too bad they can't do it.
And who's going to build your homes?
...
Why not the Bangladeshis? We've been hiring them for, like, decades to do the shitty jobs. Why do we have to keep importing foreign talent from mainly one country? I'm also pretty sure lots of Malaysians and Indonesians who aren't already here would love to work here if given the opportunity. The government's been setting quotas for all sorts of population-related things, like the way they spread people of each race in HDB flats so the minorities don't clump together.
Why not do the same for our beloved foreign talents too?
But if things go on like that, national pride will erode. Like those sports medals that are won by Singaporeans with Chinese single-word (given) names. Are Singaporeans really proud of those?
So, we've got our homes built. Except our homes are beginning to stop feeling like our homes.
How long before we practically become just an extension of the PRC?
How long before a new SAR is born?
But it's going to be great! All Singaporeans, as citizens of the PRC, will get greater access to the humongous market of the mainland. Who's going to build your homes then? The Tibetans and North Koreans, of course! They're probably even cheaper!
I didn't know North Korea exports ginseng. Apparently it does and it's pretty good. But recently prices have been driven up by traders China.
It was actually easier than I thought. All I did was stand behind him, start VATS and blew his head away with my 9mm SMG. The VATS part did away with 80% of his HP (I repaired the MG to 75% before the fight MUAHAHAHA) and killed him right after VATS ended.
The rest I just kited while spamming Sarsaparilla and Stimpaks. Didn't need any companions (sent ED-E away to prevent it from getting killed) or boosting items. What I needed was ammo. After killing everything all I had left was my 10mm pistol. Used up over 130 9mm rounds and 15 ECP from my Laser RCW.
Quite easy IMO.
But it made Legion Assassins come after me. Met two soon after Nipton while waiting for ED-E to return to Primm to recruit it again. Also kited these guys. I like how they are only good at melee and they would attack me in the open. Too easy to kite. The thing about melee is that you have to pause a little before swinging your weapon. I could get out of the weapon's range in that split second if I wear light armour just by holding S.
It's kind of retarded actually. Theoretically speaking, I can kill an entire Legion army if I have enough space and bullet. Except for the higher-ranking soldiers, eg Praetorians. Those are fast.
I've completely forgotten about these screenshots I took at HELIOS One, which is called the "Nevada Solar One" IRL. Just noticed them just now when I opened the game folder to fix some meshes. The following were taken during a conversation with the scientist put in charge of the solar power plant by the NCR, named "Fantastic".
The following are for the 2nd question the cursor is pointing at.
For the third question, his answer was:
Finally,
I think it's obvious how successful they are in restarting the power plant.Was reading abut Mustafa Kemal Atatürk during one meal and was impressed by his career. I thought LKY was pretty amazing in what he has done for Singapore, but Atatürk would have outshined him if Turkey and Singapore were geographically closer and if Atatürk hadn't died in 1938.
I kind of skipped his military career, which I supposed must have been just as impressive given that he was described as "an extremely capable military officer" right in the beginning of the Wiki article.
Unlike Singapore, Turkey had to fight for its independence. Worse is that it was a 3-front war, with Turkey fighting the French, Greeks and Armenians. Atatürk was the one who made a new Parliament out of the ruins of the Ottoman Empire and told it to build a new army for this.
But of course nothing is perfect. The country achieved independence but was unable to regain the oil-rich ex-Ottoman lands from the British. Atatürk didn't really give up on them but it seemed the right opportunity just didn't arise during his lifetime.
After that, in addition to fighting the threat of Communism from the USSR, his northern neighbour, he also managed to prevent Fascism from Italy from taking hold in his country.
Singapore only had to worry about Communism from China.
Then he modernized his country's education system and and promoted the idea of compulsory education for girls, which in a traditionally Muslim country must have taken some effort.
I'm not sure about this issue in Singapore in the past. It probably wasn't a big deal since girls schools were opened a long time ago, like RGS.
The next big thing was that Atatürk forced a change in dress code for all Turkish people. They were all used to wearing the fez since the Ottoman days, but he made it compulsory for all civil servants to wear Western-style hats. Those were just the first group of people and the first part of the dress code to be changed.
I'm not sure if this was just about modernisation. It feels more like Westernisation to me. But I guess during that era both terms were synonymous.
After that was more moves to support women's suffrage and removing the influence of the Muslim clergy in state matters. I think he was pretty successful in separating religion from the state, especially if one compares this with Turkey's neighbours like Iran.
His most incredible achievement in my opinion was in introducing a brand new set of Turkish alphabets to replace the Arabic script.
Apparently Arabic is extremely hard to learn and with this new alphabets, literacy rates soared from a measly 10% to 70% in 2 years.
2 years! He made 60% of his countrymen able to read and write in 2 frickin years!
These alphabets, despite being so easy to learn, weren't the products of years of research like Esperanto. When he asked a group of language experts how long it would take to create these alphabets at first, he was told it would take 3 years.
Somehow it took less than a year.
He had consulted them in the spring of 1928. He publicly announced the alphabets in November the same year. All newspapers and textbooks were forced to convert within two months. The first newspaper to use it began to publish in December.
If his success in regards to the alphabets weren't incredible, I don't know what is.
His foreign policies weren't as interesting. Mostly he tried to keep a low profile and talked his way out of everything. Then again, nobody really wanted to fight before WWII began, and by the time that started he was already dead.
In 1938, he died at the young age of 57. Building a country must have been no easy work.
Too bad his successors sucked and almost ruined his work. I still remember someone joking about the Turkish lira when I was young. In fact it was so bad they had to replace it with a new lira which was simply the old lira minus 6 zeroes. They had to cut 6 zeroes to make the 1.29 lira worth a single USD in 2005. In 2004, one USD could buy 1.35 million lira. This year it has grown to 1.39 lira per US dollar.
Apparently after Atatürk they just couldn't find another strong leader, something he failed at and LKY probably succeeded at. I mean, so far so good, right? Hopefully we won't have to go through the sort of trouble that Turkey experienced after his death. Military coups are never a good sign.
Yesterday on my way to Bedok Camp the cab driver gave me this Buddhist booklet entitled "How to Overcome Your Difficulties" by Ven. Dr. K. Sri Dhammandanda.
I flipped through it a bit, read the quoted words supposedly spoken by Buddha and I was quite surprised to see that a few of them were old stuff I figured out years ago but rephrased.
And I didn't even need to meditate for 6 years under a tree like he did!
On page 2, the quote was:
"From craving springs grief,
from craving springs fear.
For him who is wholly free from craving,
there is no grief, much less fear."
Which I interpret as "desire will give you unhappiness". Didn't I say that everything has a price? That if you want something, you will have to pay for it? (Pay != work.)
The book's interpretation was that "all forms of attachment will end in sorrow." It's true, but I do not agree that this is the full meaning of what the quote is saying. Sometimes, it can begin in sorrow too, and sometimes you have to pay halfway through.
Unfortunately an average guy cannot be completely free from attachments. It is human nature to want certain things, like breathing, eating and companionship. These, too, have prices of their own, some of which may be hidden till the moment of payment.
But apparently certain Buddhist monks are able to avoid even these basic desires. For example, in a documentary I watched on Discovery yesterday, it was mentioned that some American scientists did experiment on Buddhist monks by soaking them in ice water. When they came back after a few hours, the water was steaming. Steaming, which I presume to mean much higher than the normal body temperature range.
If they can control their body temperature and environmental influences like that, it is not too far-fetched to say they can probably control their hunger and thirst.
So there's this discussion on why the younger Singaporeans are no longer feeling like they belong here. This is probably the beginning of how the culture of Singapore becomes overwhelmed by foreign influences, when being Singaporean isn't being Singaporean anymore.
Strange that I've never felt it in the first place. Then again, I wasn't born here.
Still, this is a good place to be in if one can afford it.
Me, I'm actually unsure about this in the long term. Translators don't make much here in Singapore.
And with the retirement age rising, it just means people are going to reap their CPF rewards later in life as policies change in the future to adapt to this change.
Yes sure we're going to get more. That's a good thing really. People in the US are now worrying that their version of the CPF isn't going to provide them with enough money when they retire. We probably won't have to worry about that. Hopefully.
Problem is, how many of us are going to live long enough to need the extra benefits?
Life expectancy isn't enough for me. Just because the life expectancy is 70 here doesn't mean I will be immortal and invulnerable till 70 years after my birth. It's probably better to know how many percent of Singaporeans live beyond 70, 80 or even 100. Nobody ever tells us those numbers.
As for the feeling of alienation at home, it's probably inevitable anyway. It's not like we have a choice. I can't expect Singaporeans to seriously produce 5000 Annabel Chongs spontaneously. Other than making us exceptional as a people, that would have helped with the local birth rates too. Too bad they can't do it.
And who's going to build your homes?
...
Why not the Bangladeshis? We've been hiring them for, like, decades to do the shitty jobs. Why do we have to keep importing foreign talent from mainly one country? I'm also pretty sure lots of Malaysians and Indonesians who aren't already here would love to work here if given the opportunity. The government's been setting quotas for all sorts of population-related things, like the way they spread people of each race in HDB flats so the minorities don't clump together.
Why not do the same for our beloved foreign talents too?
But if things go on like that, national pride will erode. Like those sports medals that are won by Singaporeans with Chinese single-word (given) names. Are Singaporeans really proud of those?
So, we've got our homes built. Except our homes are beginning to stop feeling like our homes.
How long before we practically become just an extension of the PRC?
How long before a new SAR is born?
But it's going to be great! All Singaporeans, as citizens of the PRC, will get greater access to the humongous market of the mainland. Who's going to build your homes then? The Tibetans and North Koreans, of course! They're probably even cheaper!
I didn't know North Korea exports ginseng. Apparently it does and it's pretty good. But recently prices have been driven up by traders China.
Wednesday, 27 October 2010
Rant 653 / Over Five Thousand!
Many, if not all, of the places in Fallout: New Vegas are based on the real Nevada.
The above is Goodsprings, which is Good Springs in real life and is the starting point of the game.
Above is the real Primm, complete with the Buffalo Bill casino and its roller coaster. In the game the Casino is called Bison Steve's instead, probably due to copyright. The other casino in the real Primm is Whiskey Pete's, which is named after a bootlegger of the same name. In the game that place changed into the Vicky and Vance Casino, also named after a criminal couple of those names.
Not sure about Novac though.
I'm aware that I should have known these, but I thought it was just the Strip and Hoover Dam that was copied from real life. It wouldn't be incredibly strange if the towns shifted and changed so much they became unrecognisable after 200 years. The nuclear war would have caused all sorts of large scale economic and social changes, hence small towns would have grown and died in different places as time passed. That's how ghost towns are created! Not because of nuclear wars, just economic and social changes.
So after a while of not looking at my blog's Stats, today I decided to take a peek at the numbers, expecting traffic to die a little due to my recent absence.
Well, it hadn't.
Something else did catch my attention though.
Something that actually worries me.
Someone was searching for Rant 588 specifically multiple times in the last few days. How did I know that? I used 2 Ouija boards, 4 decks of Tarot cards and 8 Moon Blocks. Results should be reliable, but it was hard work.
Those Ouija boards kept dancing under the planchette I was holding and the crappy Customer Support on the phone didn't help either. The made-in-China Moon Blocks weren't as effective as I was led to believe - they kept landing on their edges.
Shit sucks, seriously. Next time I should just hire a bomoh. Btw do they charge hourly rates or something?
Anyway I had discreetly un-published it some time before I went MIA when I noticed that traffic to that particular rant had been rising recently for unknown reason. That post was 98% about my NS days and should have been pretty boring. Plus I'm very sure I was told that I could say anything I want after 3 years.
So why the sudden rise in traffic in a post that's already 2 months old?
Certain logical guesses made me remove that post indefinitely. No harm not posting it anyway.
But now I'm getting more searches for that specific rant than most of the other rants. And they likely aren't referrals from other sites.
Now that is a real reason to feel suspicious about. Why would anyone need to return to it repeatedly? Yet there's absolutely no frivolous reason I can think of for spreading it.
Maybe I should remove it from this blog altogether and store it elsewhere.
Or am I just being paranoid? It's possible someone merely found what I talked about familiar.
No wonder I've always felt that Singaporean actors always sound like they're reading!
原來新加岥的口語和書面語很相似﹐所以話說起來和讀劇本的分別不大。比如說 "骯臟" 是口語﹐但我們講華語時也會說到這個詞。其實口語只用"臟"就夠了﹐例如"這東西很臟。"
Or maybe they just suck. I don't know.
Linked page also discusses many other differences between Singaporean Mandarin and Chinese Mandarin. Bet most Singaporeans who speak Chinese all the time don't even know some of the ways they phrase their words originated from the Yuan and Song dynasties and are no longer in use today in the PRC.
Also﹐
XD
But my Chinese still sucks. If you think I'm trying to insult anyone, I'm not. I'm just stating what I found as I did my research for assignments. Apparently the assignments don't just cover what's in the textbooks. For example, Qn1b of the assignment I'm doing is asking for 10 examples of Chinese phrases that differ in meaning when used in Singapore and China. This is why I found and read through the linked page above.
I had no idea there were so many differences. How many years did China isolate itself? 50 years? 30? It's amazing how the Chinese language changed in just a few decades in Singapore, Malaysia, Taiwan, Macau and Hong Kong as compared to China.
Shit, I'm not even that good at Singaporean Chinese, let alone PRC Chinese. Those 10 marks really aren't easy to get. Fortunately I'm not alone in this opinion. My class was pretty vocal about the difficulty of this question last week.
My instructor (that's the term they used in the evaluation forms) kept telling us that there are definitely more than enough examples even though he had explicitly told us not to use the examples he had raised in class, which were quite a lot, like "書記" which means "clerk" in Singapore and is a high rank in China. It's not used to refer lowly clerks there. That would be "秘書" or something.
And after reading the stuff I found, here's my list of 10 words and phrases that are 同名異實.
Should be correct. If there are any mistakes, I'll mention it when the instructor returns it to me provided I remember to do it then.
There are also many others that I found that I couldn't use because he had already mentioned it in class.
After reading some of my older posts, I've noticed a difference between them and the more recent posts - I used to think. Now I just observe.
RT first session on Sat. Ugh. In Bedok some more. UGH! Booked RT too late, in the end Maju was full. Left only 1 choice - Bedok. Fuck!
Fortunately I can change the venue from the second session onwards. If go Bedok for entire 2 months I'll be really pissed. Next month exam some more.
Not going to defer because I think the exercise may help me revise. I don't really know, so it's just an experiment. It's only 2 sessions per week and I can shift the days as I wish. Only 4 papers, so probably won't get too many clashes anyway.
Raise the retirement age in Singapore to 68? I know medical technological advancements are allowing people to live longer, but their brains aren't staying young. Not being offensive or anything, just stating the truth. They could raise it to 75 for all I care, but until they can actually prevent natural neural degeneration I'm not sure if raising the retirement age is going to help.
Been making croutons. Very easy to make and good for soups. Also can be eaten as snacks or used in salads like Caesar salad.
For my first batch I just cut 4 slices of bread into 16 cubes each. Didn't matter to me if they were flattened in the process. Then I poured them into a bowl and cut out some frozen butter onto them. When the butter softened I tossed them to mix them while warming up the oven.
I turned my oven to 110-20 degrees Celsius so that it's easier to handle. Didn't want to burn anything when I wasn't watching. Baked them for a while until they were golden brown, can't remember how long, maybe 2-4 mins.
Poured them back into the bowl and added pepper and salt. Tossed them again and they were done.
That wasn't so good. I didn't have very fine salt at home so there were bits of coarse salt stuck to some of the croutons.
Next batch was much better.
I basically did the same thing except instead of salt and pepper I sprinkled a bit from this bottle of Italian Seasoning I bought when I tried to make Bolognese sauce from scratch. Also added two packets of parmesan cheese from the pizza orders I had in the past. Haven't been adding them onto my pizzas, don't see the need for that much cheese.
Might have been too much cheese because there was a lot of it at the bottom of the bowl at the end.
These cheese croutons tasted even better when I re-toasted them the next day. Somehow the seasoning goes really well with the cheese.
Anyway I was really looking for oregano but I didn't have it. The closest thing to it was the Italian Seasoning which was a mixture of a lot of herbs including that.
This is a good way to use bread that's going to expire soon. That's the reason why I started making croutons in the first place. Even if I made mistakes it didn't matter as much. Explains why I didn't state the amounts I used. I just guessed everything and it turned out well.
Just proves that cooking is an art. Precise amounts aren't always necessary.
Those croutons I made are really just bite-sized toasts with herbs and cheese. Nothing special but theoretically it can lengthen the shelf-life of the bread plus give me a cheap snack out of stuff that are going to be thrown away anyway.
Those double-toasted croutons are good.
I agree that Singaporeans need to strive to be exceptional. There really aren't many Singaporeans who are seriously successful. Today's exceptional Singaporeans are rare. I really can't think of many right now. Sim Wong Hoo? Chee Soon Juan? Annabel Chong?
The Al-Qaida only has 500-1000 members, yet they can produce 1 guy that the entire developed world can recognize - Osama bin Laden. If Singapore can do it at their rate of 1 famous person out of every thousand, we'd have 5000 Annabel Chongs!
Five thousand!
Now think of what 5000 Annabel Chongs can do.
5000 X 70 men = 350,000 men!
A gigantic orgy involving 355,000 people for over 10 hours would break quite a number of records!
If you can't imagine how many people that is, think of the Singapore National Stadium.
It has a capacity of 55,000 people.
Don't forget Annabel Chong did a total of 251 sexual acts on the 70 men.
5000 X 251 = 1,255,000
Now how many Terabytes of space would a video of that fill?
Yes, Singaporeans should strive to be more than just above average. DO IT!
The above is Goodsprings, which is Good Springs in real life and is the starting point of the game.
Above is the real Primm, complete with the Buffalo Bill casino and its roller coaster. In the game the Casino is called Bison Steve's instead, probably due to copyright. The other casino in the real Primm is Whiskey Pete's, which is named after a bootlegger of the same name. In the game that place changed into the Vicky and Vance Casino, also named after a criminal couple of those names.Not sure about Novac though.
I'm aware that I should have known these, but I thought it was just the Strip and Hoover Dam that was copied from real life. It wouldn't be incredibly strange if the towns shifted and changed so much they became unrecognisable after 200 years. The nuclear war would have caused all sorts of large scale economic and social changes, hence small towns would have grown and died in different places as time passed. That's how ghost towns are created! Not because of nuclear wars, just economic and social changes.
So after a while of not looking at my blog's Stats, today I decided to take a peek at the numbers, expecting traffic to die a little due to my recent absence.
Well, it hadn't.
Something else did catch my attention though.
Something that actually worries me.
Someone was searching for Rant 588 specifically multiple times in the last few days. How did I know that? I used 2 Ouija boards, 4 decks of Tarot cards and 8 Moon Blocks. Results should be reliable, but it was hard work.
Those Ouija boards kept dancing under the planchette I was holding and the crappy Customer Support on the phone didn't help either. The made-in-China Moon Blocks weren't as effective as I was led to believe - they kept landing on their edges.
Shit sucks, seriously. Next time I should just hire a bomoh. Btw do they charge hourly rates or something?
Anyway I had discreetly un-published it some time before I went MIA when I noticed that traffic to that particular rant had been rising recently for unknown reason. That post was 98% about my NS days and should have been pretty boring. Plus I'm very sure I was told that I could say anything I want after 3 years.
So why the sudden rise in traffic in a post that's already 2 months old?
Certain logical guesses made me remove that post indefinitely. No harm not posting it anyway.
But now I'm getting more searches for that specific rant than most of the other rants. And they likely aren't referrals from other sites.
Now that is a real reason to feel suspicious about. Why would anyone need to return to it repeatedly? Yet there's absolutely no frivolous reason I can think of for spreading it.
Maybe I should remove it from this blog altogether and store it elsewhere.
Or am I just being paranoid? It's possible someone merely found what I talked about familiar.
No wonder I've always felt that Singaporean actors always sound like they're reading!
原來新加岥的口語和書面語很相似﹐所以話說起來和讀劇本的分別不大。比如說 "骯臟" 是口語﹐但我們講華語時也會說到這個詞。其實口語只用"臟"就夠了﹐例如"這東西很臟。"
Or maybe they just suck. I don't know.
Linked page also discusses many other differences between Singaporean Mandarin and Chinese Mandarin. Bet most Singaporeans who speak Chinese all the time don't even know some of the ways they phrase their words originated from the Yuan and Song dynasties and are no longer in use today in the PRC.
Also﹐
华语的基数词“万”，英文里用''ten thousand''。新加坡人受英语的影响，也将“万”说成“十千”。但是，这么用是近期的事，我这一代华校出身的新加坡人，没有人是这么用的。这也是学习不全面所造成的结果。
XD
But my Chinese still sucks. If you think I'm trying to insult anyone, I'm not. I'm just stating what I found as I did my research for assignments. Apparently the assignments don't just cover what's in the textbooks. For example, Qn1b of the assignment I'm doing is asking for 10 examples of Chinese phrases that differ in meaning when used in Singapore and China. This is why I found and read through the linked page above.
I had no idea there were so many differences. How many years did China isolate itself? 50 years? 30? It's amazing how the Chinese language changed in just a few decades in Singapore, Malaysia, Taiwan, Macau and Hong Kong as compared to China.
Shit, I'm not even that good at Singaporean Chinese, let alone PRC Chinese. Those 10 marks really aren't easy to get. Fortunately I'm not alone in this opinion. My class was pretty vocal about the difficulty of this question last week.
My instructor (that's the term they used in the evaluation forms) kept telling us that there are definitely more than enough examples even though he had explicitly told us not to use the examples he had raised in class, which were quite a lot, like "書記" which means "clerk" in Singapore and is a high rank in China. It's not used to refer lowly clerks there. That would be "秘書" or something.
And after reading the stuff I found, here's my list of 10 words and phrases that are 同名異實.
Should be correct. If there are any mistakes, I'll mention it when the instructor returns it to me provided I remember to do it then.
There are also many others that I found that I couldn't use because he had already mentioned it in class.
After reading some of my older posts, I've noticed a difference between them and the more recent posts - I used to think. Now I just observe.
RT first session on Sat. Ugh. In Bedok some more. UGH! Booked RT too late, in the end Maju was full. Left only 1 choice - Bedok. Fuck!
Fortunately I can change the venue from the second session onwards. If go Bedok for entire 2 months I'll be really pissed. Next month exam some more.
Not going to defer because I think the exercise may help me revise. I don't really know, so it's just an experiment. It's only 2 sessions per week and I can shift the days as I wish. Only 4 papers, so probably won't get too many clashes anyway.
Raise the retirement age in Singapore to 68? I know medical technological advancements are allowing people to live longer, but their brains aren't staying young. Not being offensive or anything, just stating the truth. They could raise it to 75 for all I care, but until they can actually prevent natural neural degeneration I'm not sure if raising the retirement age is going to help.
Been making croutons. Very easy to make and good for soups. Also can be eaten as snacks or used in salads like Caesar salad.
For my first batch I just cut 4 slices of bread into 16 cubes each. Didn't matter to me if they were flattened in the process. Then I poured them into a bowl and cut out some frozen butter onto them. When the butter softened I tossed them to mix them while warming up the oven.
I turned my oven to 110-20 degrees Celsius so that it's easier to handle. Didn't want to burn anything when I wasn't watching. Baked them for a while until they were golden brown, can't remember how long, maybe 2-4 mins.
Poured them back into the bowl and added pepper and salt. Tossed them again and they were done.
That wasn't so good. I didn't have very fine salt at home so there were bits of coarse salt stuck to some of the croutons.
Next batch was much better.
I basically did the same thing except instead of salt and pepper I sprinkled a bit from this bottle of Italian Seasoning I bought when I tried to make Bolognese sauce from scratch. Also added two packets of parmesan cheese from the pizza orders I had in the past. Haven't been adding them onto my pizzas, don't see the need for that much cheese.
Might have been too much cheese because there was a lot of it at the bottom of the bowl at the end.
These cheese croutons tasted even better when I re-toasted them the next day. Somehow the seasoning goes really well with the cheese.
Anyway I was really looking for oregano but I didn't have it. The closest thing to it was the Italian Seasoning which was a mixture of a lot of herbs including that.
This is a good way to use bread that's going to expire soon. That's the reason why I started making croutons in the first place. Even if I made mistakes it didn't matter as much. Explains why I didn't state the amounts I used. I just guessed everything and it turned out well.
Just proves that cooking is an art. Precise amounts aren't always necessary.
Those croutons I made are really just bite-sized toasts with herbs and cheese. Nothing special but theoretically it can lengthen the shelf-life of the bread plus give me a cheap snack out of stuff that are going to be thrown away anyway.
Those double-toasted croutons are good.
I agree that Singaporeans need to strive to be exceptional. There really aren't many Singaporeans who are seriously successful. Today's exceptional Singaporeans are rare. I really can't think of many right now. Sim Wong Hoo? Chee Soon Juan? Annabel Chong?
The Al-Qaida only has 500-1000 members, yet they can produce 1 guy that the entire developed world can recognize - Osama bin Laden. If Singapore can do it at their rate of 1 famous person out of every thousand, we'd have 5000 Annabel Chongs!
Five thousand!
Now think of what 5000 Annabel Chongs can do.
5000 X 70 men = 350,000 men!
A gigantic orgy involving 355,000 people for over 10 hours would break quite a number of records!
If you can't imagine how many people that is, think of the Singapore National Stadium.
It has a capacity of 55,000 people.
Don't forget Annabel Chong did a total of 251 sexual acts on the 70 men.
5000 X 251 = 1,255,000
Now how many Terabytes of space would a video of that fill?
Yes, Singaporeans should strive to be more than just above average. DO IT!
Rant 652 / NO VAC
So this CityCar is going to be tested in Singapore next year. Hopefully it will eventually incorporate the auto-drive system. On the other hand, I'm not sure why it's a great invention because it really looks like a glorified golf cart to me.
But it does sound like a good idea. I used to have this Chinese teacher who lived near my place and he would drive a car to our school. The thing is that the school is just a 5-10 mins (slow) walk from our flats. In fact, by driving on the road he was taking a large detour. There had been a few occasions when I took a ride on his car and I distinctly remember that the car would barely get cold by the time it reaches the school.
That was probably one of the most pointless waste of petrol. On the other hand, by driving the short distance he was able to conveniently bring our homework home to mark at his leisure.
This new CityCar will greatly benefit people like him, but not him specifically since he's no longer teaching there.
Older people should also like this, especially those with walking difficulties. If this gets popular, maybe lifts will eventually be able to accommodate them, allowing users to park outside their gates on their floor. Old people will definitely like this then. Lazy people too. Fuck walking.
Parking isn't an issue even on lift lobbies since it's really a 4-bar linkage. It's something I used to study about in Mech Engineering but anyone can see what that term means. In case it's not as obvious as I thought, it means it's made of 4 bars linked at each end to form a quadrilateral.
In the case of a crash, it shouldn't be that dangerous despite it's foldable structure. With a max speed of 50km/h, or 13.9m/s, an average guy at 70kg stopped suddenly would feel an impact of 973N, or roughly 99kg, spread over his whole body assuming he's not wearing his safety belt.
Might be lethal to old people and their brittle bones, but if the average guy is able to accidentally crash into stuff while driving at 50km/h, he definitely deserves the injuries.
Excluding COE, this car is supposedly going to be priced at around 18k USD. Nothing is mentioned about maintenance and durability though. Hard to judge if it's actually cheap and if it's actually worth getting since you can't just drive it anywhere.
I never knew China's counterfeit goods sell so well around the world that they even have wholesalers who don't sell to tourists. And there's even industry lingo too, like the "5-As" and "double A" grades. How good is 5A? So perfect that even experts have difficulty telling the difference? And how big is the difference between 5A and AA?
Speaking of counterfeit goods, check out this counterfeit game that's so blatantly ripping off WoW that I just had to try it.
As if that wasn't enough, here's the race option menu:
They didn't even bother to change the names of the races and factions and places.
Not exactly the same.
The game lags horribly so I left the game within the hour. The servers are probably not even in China. Mongolia maybe.
I'm stunned. Fruit Dealer got pwned by the fake BoxeR in the Ro32, even though apparently he didn't suck at all in Blizzcon. 2:0 so Fruit Dealer didn't even manage to win a single round against him. Fake BoxeR sucked for his entire match in Ro64; nobody expected him to win here.
He was supposed to be a piece of cake for a Fruit Dealer! WTF?
Fruit Dealer even managed to do some really epic Baneling drops and those didn't save the game for him.
This is so unbelievable, he didn't even end the game until he lost everything. He was probably just staring at the screen when the last of his army died.
Good thing the real BoxeR also won his match and better still, he's playing against Loner in the Ro16 on the 29th. Loner is the best SC2 player from China, so that's a big deal.
Fallout: New Vegas is really much easier with the DLCs that people get when they buy from certain stores, like the Caravan pack when they buy from Steam. Made a huge difference with those guns that come in good condition because it takes more ammo to do the same amount of damage with a gun that's close to breaking.
No wonder I never seemed to have enough ammo in the beginning in my first run until I entered the Strip.
Probably also helped that I'm focusing on the Gun skill this time. Even managed to have 2k caps before I reached Novac.
Speaking of Novac, I just realised that this is how the town got its name:
But it does sound like a good idea. I used to have this Chinese teacher who lived near my place and he would drive a car to our school. The thing is that the school is just a 5-10 mins (slow) walk from our flats. In fact, by driving on the road he was taking a large detour. There had been a few occasions when I took a ride on his car and I distinctly remember that the car would barely get cold by the time it reaches the school.
That was probably one of the most pointless waste of petrol. On the other hand, by driving the short distance he was able to conveniently bring our homework home to mark at his leisure.
This new CityCar will greatly benefit people like him, but not him specifically since he's no longer teaching there.
Older people should also like this, especially those with walking difficulties. If this gets popular, maybe lifts will eventually be able to accommodate them, allowing users to park outside their gates on their floor. Old people will definitely like this then. Lazy people too. Fuck walking.
Parking isn't an issue even on lift lobbies since it's really a 4-bar linkage. It's something I used to study about in Mech Engineering but anyone can see what that term means. In case it's not as obvious as I thought, it means it's made of 4 bars linked at each end to form a quadrilateral.
In the case of a crash, it shouldn't be that dangerous despite it's foldable structure. With a max speed of 50km/h, or 13.9m/s, an average guy at 70kg stopped suddenly would feel an impact of 973N, or roughly 99kg, spread over his whole body assuming he's not wearing his safety belt.
Might be lethal to old people and their brittle bones, but if the average guy is able to accidentally crash into stuff while driving at 50km/h, he definitely deserves the injuries.
Excluding COE, this car is supposedly going to be priced at around 18k USD. Nothing is mentioned about maintenance and durability though. Hard to judge if it's actually cheap and if it's actually worth getting since you can't just drive it anywhere.
I never knew China's counterfeit goods sell so well around the world that they even have wholesalers who don't sell to tourists. And there's even industry lingo too, like the "5-As" and "double A" grades. How good is 5A? So perfect that even experts have difficulty telling the difference? And how big is the difference between 5A and AA?
Speaking of counterfeit goods, check out this counterfeit game that's so blatantly ripping off WoW that I just had to try it.
As if that wasn't enough, here's the race option menu:
They didn't even bother to change the names of the races and factions and places.
Not exactly the same.The game lags horribly so I left the game within the hour. The servers are probably not even in China. Mongolia maybe.
I'm stunned. Fruit Dealer got pwned by the fake BoxeR in the Ro32, even though apparently he didn't suck at all in Blizzcon. 2:0 so Fruit Dealer didn't even manage to win a single round against him. Fake BoxeR sucked for his entire match in Ro64; nobody expected him to win here.
He was supposed to be a piece of cake for a Fruit Dealer! WTF?
Fruit Dealer even managed to do some really epic Baneling drops and those didn't save the game for him.
This is so unbelievable, he didn't even end the game until he lost everything. He was probably just staring at the screen when the last of his army died.
Good thing the real BoxeR also won his match and better still, he's playing against Loner in the Ro16 on the 29th. Loner is the best SC2 player from China, so that's a big deal.
Fallout: New Vegas is really much easier with the DLCs that people get when they buy from certain stores, like the Caravan pack when they buy from Steam. Made a huge difference with those guns that come in good condition because it takes more ammo to do the same amount of damage with a gun that's close to breaking.
No wonder I never seemed to have enough ammo in the beginning in my first run until I entered the Strip.
Probably also helped that I'm focusing on the Gun skill this time. Even managed to have 2k caps before I reached Novac.
Speaking of Novac, I just realised that this is how the town got its name:
Monday, 25 October 2010
Rant 651 / FNV
Just completed Fallout: New Vegas (FNV). And before I forget, SPOILER ALERT!!
Was not exactly what I expected, but the differences made sense.
Fallout: New Vegas is a darker game. Fallout 3 was about a boy who became a man. Fallout: New Vegas, like Fallout 1 and 2, is about...
War. War never changes.
If my guess is correct, no matter what the player does there will always be casualties among the innocents.
I, too, unintentionally caused harm to people who shouldn't have been harmed. The first mistake I made was in getting the NCR to protect the town Primm.
Initially I thought since the NCR was the "good" faction, I should help them expand. Later when I learnt about Mr House, I realized I wanted this guy to be in charge.
It's true that the NCR is good in that it tries to provide for its people and protect them, but the Republic behaves like a bully towards anyone who isn't a citizen.
On the other hand, Mr House is the CEO of RobCo since before the Great War, the corporation that made just about every single robot in the Fallout series. That makes him the best businessman and leader alive in the Fallout universe at that point of time as far as I know. Who better to rule than him?
There was also the option of myself, but being king wasn't my goal in the game. I did consider this for some time but wanted to see Mr House win in this run. Not to mention on this path I get the House advantage.
I'll kill Mr House in the next run just for the different ending. The House can't always win, right? :P
Anyway, back to Primm. Since I let the NCR protect Primm, apparently Mr House decided to punish the town for supporting them. It was not even their fault since I was the one whom they requested to pick a sheriff for them :(
Another unintentional victim was the Kings, a gang that had monopoly over the personal bodyguard service in Vegas. They weren't bad guys. In fact they maintained order over Freeside, a town just next to the Las Vegas Strip, while impersonating Elvis Presley without knowing who he was. I had helped the NCR to take control over the faction so, in the end, Mr House annihilated them all for supporting the wrong side.
The Brotherhood's case was slightly different. They had to die. The faction isn't evil but it exists only to acquire pre-War technologies. If I were to take over Mr House's network of (seriously overpowered) robots, they would pose a significant threat to me. That wouldn't do.
Even if I had sided with the NCR and forego the benefits of having an army of Securitrons, they would still be bullied around since they had been fighting each other since before the game began.
Come to think of it, I'm not sure how they could have had a happy ending in FNV. Everyone wanted them dead or gone and I couldn't find a way to make them leave the region.
Too bad.
Maybe the only way would be to make myself king without using House's Securitrons. That would probably be pretty hard.
As for the bad guys, Caesar's Legion was an interesting faction. The Legion, led by a man named Caesar, wasn't evil in the sense that the members wanted to destroy everything. That role was for the raiders. The Legion was really trying to save the world by radically changing society into a very extreme version of Singapore.
The area controlled by them was said to be very safe, with all criminals either dead or chased off (imprisonment was not mentioned). Drugs and alcohol were outlawed, and anyone caught possessing them would be crucified literally (as shown during one quest) on a cross, except they were tied with ropes instead of getting nailed like Jesus.
But like Mr House said, the entire faction was not following Caesar's ideals, but Caesar himself. Such an organization would fall when the leader is gone. Also, they owned slaves and burnt entire towns as punishment for being not being virtuous. That's not very nice.
Now that I've completed the game, I can confidently say that the plot doesn't exactly suck you in until the end when you finally see the real big picture. It got boring in the middle because I wasn't sure where I was going. The large number of quests overwhelmed me and got me a little frustrated. However, the game got a whole lot more interesting when I learnt about the master plan that the House had in mind.
Now I come to the gameplay. Not too different from Fallout 3. Sniping is very fun in this game because of one of the companions who can increase your detection range by 50%. I thought it was great in the early game when I was sniping with a 9mm pistol, but it just blew my mind when I bought a Sniper Rifle in late game. With this epic gun, I was seeing heads explode everywhere I go. It was so interesting, I went out of my way to snipe any hostile creatures I detected along the way to completing quests.
The hardest to snipe was probably the Deathclaws west of the Quarry, which were blocking my way to some Khans there. Due to their location, they kept being erased from the screen when I went to the other mountain (sniping from a high ground = tactical advantage) because that's how the game works.
When something reaches a certain distance from you, they get erased to lower memory usage. But to cut a long story short, I managed to find out by trial and error that if I kept looking down while climbing the mountain till I reach my perfect sniping spot, they wouldn't be erased when I looked up. The reason why is the long story, and it's cut.
I had designed my character to specialise in Melee in the beginning but because of this I eventually placed many more points on Guns instead. My melee attack was still powerful but it was not as easy as it used to be in Fallout 3.
Since I also played in Hardcore mode, all the ammo had weight. It was slightly annoying but challenging too. I was almost always carrying my maximum weight and in several cases, I had to make multiple trips to sell my loot. I just couldn't resist selling most of the guns I find later in the game that I couldn't use.
Despite this, I was still running out of ammo from my 10mm and 9mm guns in mid-game when I obtained the submachine guns (SMGs) for these calibres.
Hardcore mode also made healing gradual instead of instant, such that no healing items gave an immediate boost of HP. Instead, they regenerate HP over a small period of time. For example, Stimpaks gave me 6 HP per second for 6 seconds even at the end of the game due to my average Med skill. This is a major reason why I found melee attacks to be less useful than guns in FNV compared to FO3.
Teleporting has also been made easier. It used to be that even hostile creatures far from you would stop you from teleporting. Now you're only prevented from it when they're close enough to be visible (ie in direct line of sight), I believe.
The Speech skill has also been given a huge priority, which reminds me of older RPGs. By maintaining a high Speech level, I was able to save lots of lives and skip some very difficult battles.
The missions in this game were better IMO compared to those in FO3. For example, when I was supposed to protect the President of the NCR, I really had no idea who or what was going to happen other than a few clues. For example, the quest merely told me to watch the snipers because the secrecy of their positions may have been compromised.
I did comb the entire place but found nothing, so I gave up the pre-emptive security sweep without much result (expected to find and arrest/kill enemy infiltrators). In the end, I managed to snipe the guy who killed one of the snipers to impersonate him and then found the bomb in the Presidential chopper just before the President returned to it to fly home. Close. I was actually expecting a suicide bomber though, and half-expected to fail the quest.
Now for music. I didn't turn on the radio during the game this time because I found that it kept covering up the NPCs' voices. The ambient music, this time, wasn't so good. One of the new pieces was similar to Arcanum's music, too somber.
Voice-acting was not as good as it used to be in Fallout 3. Somehow I just noticed that the voices were kind of dead. In some cases, they were droning on without pausing over the punctuation marks. Pauses give impact, and without them the sentences had little force.
This absence was especially striking in the final conversation I had with NCR's General Oliver when I convinced him that it was to his and his Republic's best interest to agree to the terms of surrender in my hand. I think he was supposed to sound breathless and excited but he sounded too monotonous to give his speech any sort of emotion. The result was that he basically droned through his script without any pauses.
In FO3 you could hear the warmth from the father's voice and the crazy enthusiasm in the voice of Moira Brown, but in FNV there was no such NPC. Lily (the Nightkin companion) had a voice that was both funny and creepy at the same time though. She spoke just like a stereotypical senile granny, except in a Super Mutant's voice.
The DJ on the only radio frequency I tried to listen to was also horribly boring. Three Dogs in FO3 was interesting because of his antics, but this DJ sounded bored and like he was mumbling.
Bugs! I encountered some bugs, had some crashes. Fortunately I saved like mad, accumulating over 230 saves during this run. Thanks to this obsession to saving, I managed to solve all bug problems I found.
The biggest was with the chef Phillipe being absent from the game. I kept reloading from several previous points to no avail. In the end, I managed to find out that it was caused by taking multiple quests at once. On one hand I was about to expose Mortimer for being a cannibal but simultaneously I had agreed to help Mortimer cover up the murder.
The former was to be completed during a speech he was going to made. The latter was to be completed before he even makes the speech. I think the contradiction made the game go crazy. Took me a day to figure that out because the game is so new that nobody seemed to have encountered this problem.
Replay value of this game is much better than that of FO3 due to the different endings. I don't believe it's possible to see everything in even two runs, so it takes quite a bit of replaying. This is because when you complete a certain number of quests from one faction, you'll inevitably ruin your standing in another faction, making them stop wanting your help. There are 3 major factions plus myself in this game as I see it: the NCR (good guys I guess), the House (neutral), myself (Wild card, not a faction) and the Legion (evil), so it will take at least 4 runs to see everything.
One major improvement over FO3 was probably the humour. Some of the jokes were actually funny.
Overall, it's a very good game but also a much darker one than FO3. Can't say if it's actually better or worse because it felt like a different game using the same engine.
Still, it probably won't be as good a game for the younger players. Even without the deeper philosophical questions some Japanese games use (in the past), this is still pretty much an adult game (and not because of sex).
Lindt Extra Dark with soft filling is epic.
If cloud computing does succeed, computers will be revolutionized yet again. In Singapore, that would still require a big improvement in coverage and mobile modem bandwidth though.
Was not exactly what I expected, but the differences made sense.
Fallout: New Vegas is a darker game. Fallout 3 was about a boy who became a man. Fallout: New Vegas, like Fallout 1 and 2, is about...
War. War never changes.
If my guess is correct, no matter what the player does there will always be casualties among the innocents.
I, too, unintentionally caused harm to people who shouldn't have been harmed. The first mistake I made was in getting the NCR to protect the town Primm.
Initially I thought since the NCR was the "good" faction, I should help them expand. Later when I learnt about Mr House, I realized I wanted this guy to be in charge.
It's true that the NCR is good in that it tries to provide for its people and protect them, but the Republic behaves like a bully towards anyone who isn't a citizen.
On the other hand, Mr House is the CEO of RobCo since before the Great War, the corporation that made just about every single robot in the Fallout series. That makes him the best businessman and leader alive in the Fallout universe at that point of time as far as I know. Who better to rule than him?
There was also the option of myself, but being king wasn't my goal in the game. I did consider this for some time but wanted to see Mr House win in this run. Not to mention on this path I get the House advantage.
I'll kill Mr House in the next run just for the different ending. The House can't always win, right? :P
Anyway, back to Primm. Since I let the NCR protect Primm, apparently Mr House decided to punish the town for supporting them. It was not even their fault since I was the one whom they requested to pick a sheriff for them :(
Another unintentional victim was the Kings, a gang that had monopoly over the personal bodyguard service in Vegas. They weren't bad guys. In fact they maintained order over Freeside, a town just next to the Las Vegas Strip, while impersonating Elvis Presley without knowing who he was. I had helped the NCR to take control over the faction so, in the end, Mr House annihilated them all for supporting the wrong side.
The Brotherhood's case was slightly different. They had to die. The faction isn't evil but it exists only to acquire pre-War technologies. If I were to take over Mr House's network of (seriously overpowered) robots, they would pose a significant threat to me. That wouldn't do.
Even if I had sided with the NCR and forego the benefits of having an army of Securitrons, they would still be bullied around since they had been fighting each other since before the game began.
Come to think of it, I'm not sure how they could have had a happy ending in FNV. Everyone wanted them dead or gone and I couldn't find a way to make them leave the region.
Too bad.
Maybe the only way would be to make myself king without using House's Securitrons. That would probably be pretty hard.
As for the bad guys, Caesar's Legion was an interesting faction. The Legion, led by a man named Caesar, wasn't evil in the sense that the members wanted to destroy everything. That role was for the raiders. The Legion was really trying to save the world by radically changing society into a very extreme version of Singapore.
The area controlled by them was said to be very safe, with all criminals either dead or chased off (imprisonment was not mentioned). Drugs and alcohol were outlawed, and anyone caught possessing them would be crucified literally (as shown during one quest) on a cross, except they were tied with ropes instead of getting nailed like Jesus.
But like Mr House said, the entire faction was not following Caesar's ideals, but Caesar himself. Such an organization would fall when the leader is gone. Also, they owned slaves and burnt entire towns as punishment for being not being virtuous. That's not very nice.
Now that I've completed the game, I can confidently say that the plot doesn't exactly suck you in until the end when you finally see the real big picture. It got boring in the middle because I wasn't sure where I was going. The large number of quests overwhelmed me and got me a little frustrated. However, the game got a whole lot more interesting when I learnt about the master plan that the House had in mind.
Now I come to the gameplay. Not too different from Fallout 3. Sniping is very fun in this game because of one of the companions who can increase your detection range by 50%. I thought it was great in the early game when I was sniping with a 9mm pistol, but it just blew my mind when I bought a Sniper Rifle in late game. With this epic gun, I was seeing heads explode everywhere I go. It was so interesting, I went out of my way to snipe any hostile creatures I detected along the way to completing quests.
The hardest to snipe was probably the Deathclaws west of the Quarry, which were blocking my way to some Khans there. Due to their location, they kept being erased from the screen when I went to the other mountain (sniping from a high ground = tactical advantage) because that's how the game works.
When something reaches a certain distance from you, they get erased to lower memory usage. But to cut a long story short, I managed to find out by trial and error that if I kept looking down while climbing the mountain till I reach my perfect sniping spot, they wouldn't be erased when I looked up. The reason why is the long story, and it's cut.
I had designed my character to specialise in Melee in the beginning but because of this I eventually placed many more points on Guns instead. My melee attack was still powerful but it was not as easy as it used to be in Fallout 3.
Since I also played in Hardcore mode, all the ammo had weight. It was slightly annoying but challenging too. I was almost always carrying my maximum weight and in several cases, I had to make multiple trips to sell my loot. I just couldn't resist selling most of the guns I find later in the game that I couldn't use.
Despite this, I was still running out of ammo from my 10mm and 9mm guns in mid-game when I obtained the submachine guns (SMGs) for these calibres.
Hardcore mode also made healing gradual instead of instant, such that no healing items gave an immediate boost of HP. Instead, they regenerate HP over a small period of time. For example, Stimpaks gave me 6 HP per second for 6 seconds even at the end of the game due to my average Med skill. This is a major reason why I found melee attacks to be less useful than guns in FNV compared to FO3.
Teleporting has also been made easier. It used to be that even hostile creatures far from you would stop you from teleporting. Now you're only prevented from it when they're close enough to be visible (ie in direct line of sight), I believe.
The Speech skill has also been given a huge priority, which reminds me of older RPGs. By maintaining a high Speech level, I was able to save lots of lives and skip some very difficult battles.
The missions in this game were better IMO compared to those in FO3. For example, when I was supposed to protect the President of the NCR, I really had no idea who or what was going to happen other than a few clues. For example, the quest merely told me to watch the snipers because the secrecy of their positions may have been compromised.
I did comb the entire place but found nothing, so I gave up the pre-emptive security sweep without much result (expected to find and arrest/kill enemy infiltrators). In the end, I managed to snipe the guy who killed one of the snipers to impersonate him and then found the bomb in the Presidential chopper just before the President returned to it to fly home. Close. I was actually expecting a suicide bomber though, and half-expected to fail the quest.
Now for music. I didn't turn on the radio during the game this time because I found that it kept covering up the NPCs' voices. The ambient music, this time, wasn't so good. One of the new pieces was similar to Arcanum's music, too somber.
Voice-acting was not as good as it used to be in Fallout 3. Somehow I just noticed that the voices were kind of dead. In some cases, they were droning on without pausing over the punctuation marks. Pauses give impact, and without them the sentences had little force.
This absence was especially striking in the final conversation I had with NCR's General Oliver when I convinced him that it was to his and his Republic's best interest to agree to the terms of surrender in my hand. I think he was supposed to sound breathless and excited but he sounded too monotonous to give his speech any sort of emotion. The result was that he basically droned through his script without any pauses.
In FO3 you could hear the warmth from the father's voice and the crazy enthusiasm in the voice of Moira Brown, but in FNV there was no such NPC. Lily (the Nightkin companion) had a voice that was both funny and creepy at the same time though. She spoke just like a stereotypical senile granny, except in a Super Mutant's voice.
The DJ on the only radio frequency I tried to listen to was also horribly boring. Three Dogs in FO3 was interesting because of his antics, but this DJ sounded bored and like he was mumbling.
Bugs! I encountered some bugs, had some crashes. Fortunately I saved like mad, accumulating over 230 saves during this run. Thanks to this obsession to saving, I managed to solve all bug problems I found.
The biggest was with the chef Phillipe being absent from the game. I kept reloading from several previous points to no avail. In the end, I managed to find out that it was caused by taking multiple quests at once. On one hand I was about to expose Mortimer for being a cannibal but simultaneously I had agreed to help Mortimer cover up the murder.
The former was to be completed during a speech he was going to made. The latter was to be completed before he even makes the speech. I think the contradiction made the game go crazy. Took me a day to figure that out because the game is so new that nobody seemed to have encountered this problem.
Replay value of this game is much better than that of FO3 due to the different endings. I don't believe it's possible to see everything in even two runs, so it takes quite a bit of replaying. This is because when you complete a certain number of quests from one faction, you'll inevitably ruin your standing in another faction, making them stop wanting your help. There are 3 major factions plus myself in this game as I see it: the NCR (good guys I guess), the House (neutral), myself (Wild card, not a faction) and the Legion (evil), so it will take at least 4 runs to see everything.
One major improvement over FO3 was probably the humour. Some of the jokes were actually funny.
Overall, it's a very good game but also a much darker one than FO3. Can't say if it's actually better or worse because it felt like a different game using the same engine.
Still, it probably won't be as good a game for the younger players. Even without the deeper philosophical questions some Japanese games use (in the past), this is still pretty much an adult game (and not because of sex).
Lindt Extra Dark with soft filling is epic.
If cloud computing does succeed, computers will be revolutionized yet again. In Singapore, that would still require a big improvement in coverage and mobile modem bandwidth though.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)