Rant 084 / Also Sprach Senor Hybrido

I'm listening to the Amélie OST while typing this. I found one of the tracks in a Flash animation in www.newgrounds.com( more specifically, I later found out the track was La Valse d'Amélie, or The Waltz of Amélie). Somehow I was enchanted by the tune, and I had to listen to it again and again.

I find that I'm listening to the less popular genres these days, not pop, not rap, not rock, but instrumental(?) or classical. I got a copy of a compilation of Also Sprach Zarathustra by Richard Strauss, after I found out about its existence while reading on Xenosaga Episode III on Wikipedia, which is also titled Also Sprach Zarathustra. The English translation of this German title is "Thus Spoke Zarasthustra". There is a book of the same name too, written by German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. It is best known by its declaration of "God is dead!"

It was when I listened to the first piece in Also Sprach Zarathustra that I found that extremely familiar tune they play in some old movies, a tune I don't know how to describe, is the Introduction piece.

Another compilation of such music I listen to is the game music of Europa Universalis III, composed by Andreas Waldetoft. I like most of the war music, and pieces like The Road to Jerusalem.

What all these music have in common is that the climax starts later than most of the popular music people listen to these days. The climax in those composed by Andreas Waldetoft usually starts in the later half of the whole piece. Slow music.





My first try as the Table Topics Master was a success. I actually got praises instead of mere thanks for my helping out. Whoa! I didn't expect to get any of that with the little effort I put in. Even the topics were not original - I just arranged the 7 Deadly Sins in random order. My efforts were put into finding 7 interesting pictures, one for each, and putting them together into a Powerpoint show.

That wasn't hard either, since I keep a collection of weird pictures from when I surf the Internet, where there is an infinite supply of them. I just scan through my collection while keeping the 7 sins in mind and pick those that relate to them.

It was hilarious to me though, the reactions of the speakers to a few of the pictures. For example, in Gluttony I picked...


The speaker was stunned. She tried to speak on Gluttony, but kept thinking about the picture. In the end she said, "What a horrible picture! Animals have rights, you know?" It took some effort to keep myself from exploding. ROFLMAOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL! As a result of this, she almost could not hit the 1-minute mark. I'm not sorry; if she hates me for that, the hilarity was worth it. :D

But they said it was refreshing, my usage of the 7 Deadly Sins, compared to the usual topics like "If you can destroy one thing in the world right now, what would it be?"

And some liked my having the pictures explain the topics, since most Table Topics Masters pick pictures that don't link with the topics, which can be good for the speaker as it gives them a choice of 2 topics whatever they choose. Mine give some hints, not variety.

But the slides were not flashy, nor fancy. There were the pictures, and the titles( topics), and these were all there was in the slides.

In the end, no one cared about the quality of the slides.






Man, playing Europa Universalis III really changed my view of the world. Reading the changes of country borders and country names is different from seeing these changes! As I scrolled through the years while choosing which year I wanted to start the game in, between the years just before Christopher Columbus set sail for the Americas, to the year the French Revolution began.

In short, it was a revelation.

It was a stunning sight. An example is the Ming Dynasty. It was all Ming, Ming, Ming, Ming and then, poof, Manchuria. The giant patch of orange symbolizing the Ming for so many years suddenly just turned brown, which is the ingame colour of Manchuria. It made me realize how fluid borders can be. Or one can watch Europe during this period, and see how countries change like the spouses of Hollywood stars. One moment, Venice existed as an independent state, the next moment it was a province of one country or another.

Together with my meagle knowledge of Belgian politics, I find Singapore's future a dim one. In Belgium, about half its population believe their country will not remain sovereign within the next 50 years. It is a relatively new country, like Singapore, and was created by its bordering nations as a buffer state. The people feels that a national identity is lacking, and I don't blame them - all the countries around them have been existing for a long, long time, especially France, which has been around since the collapse of the Western Roman Empire, which was before the rise of the Holy Roman Empire.

I'd say that Singapore is luckier, since everyone around us haven't really been sovereign states till recently. Most of them were, once upon a time, but in recent history, few have been. Penang was a prosperous sultanate once upon a time. Java had its own kingdoms before. There were so many tiny kingdoms all around us, yet none survived the onslaught of European colonization.

As the watched the little patches swallowed up by the bigger kingdoms in the Indian sub-continent, I tried to imagine how the people in those tiny bits of land felt. One day they were a people of one kingdom, the next day there were ruled by a foreign king, for the rest of their lives. Then I imagine the same with Singapore. According to world history, this is very possible. It doesn't matter whether a nation is big or small; none is permanent. A sad fact, but a fact nonetheless.

Just think about the Ottoman Empire. It fought in WWI. It vanished in the years between WWI and WWII, yet few people of my generation knows about it. It has only been a mere century, and such a great nation is not even remembered! What would Singapore become?

And since we're surround by huge countries, this may seem inevitable. I can compare it with France 600 years ago. France, back then, was not a whole patch of land as it is now, but a loop surrounding several nations. Eventually, they were annexed into France. How long before Belgium is annexed, with the need for a buffer state becoming less important these days? How long before Singapore is annexed into another country? Perhaps not so long as we remain prosperous, richer than our neighbours. But once this stops becoming true, our sovereignty will be at the mercy of the wealthier neighbours. I believe the wealth of Singapore is the only thing that keeps the nation independent, instead of a mere province, therefore running Singapore like a giant corporation is not wrong.

Of course, an alternative would be to conquer other lands, but this is basically a diplomatic suicide, and culminates to an economic suicide.

Europe is on its way to becoming one whole nation now. Citizens in many European countries do not need their passports when travelling to most of the other European countries. Visitors need only one Visa for visiting anywhere within this zone. This is so convenient, but will it set a trend for the rest of the world? It's not hard to see, since the UAE seems like quite a success. And so is Malaysia. Maybe someday Singapore will willingly form an union with its neighbours to form a whole nation of SE Asia.






The recent issue of National Geographic magazine is somewhat disturbing. The article on Bethlehem paints a very tragic picture on what is one of the holiest spots of this world. Bethlehem, the birthplace of Yeshua, should be the holiest place of Christianity, yet it is being gradually abandoned by them. Right now, Christians are a minority in that city, with Muslims being the majority. It is a very chaotic city, in a very chaotic region of the world. Jews and Muslims fight each other for a place in their beloved land. Jews believe that God gave them this land. Muslims have been living there for many generations, and see this as their home, and the Jews are the invaders. Christians are the punching bag for both sides, even though some have been there since the time of Christ. One family interviewed by the journalist has roots that lead all the way back to the time before Jesus was crucified, and their ancestors were even mentioned in Old Testament! Yet now they are considering leaving this land for good, the first time this is happening in 2000 years.

How incredibly tragic this is! Yet no one gives a damn. They continue fighting, turning what could have been a beautiful place, a holy land, into a blood-soaked no man's land. The Church of the Nativity, instead of looking as grand as it should be as the first church of Christianity, appears more like fortress than a church, and seems to be designed with durability in mind, not beauty. I had always expected it too look... epic, I guess, but the picture of it in the magazine ruined my impression of it.









Xenosaga Episode III provided answers to most of the questions of the previous 2 episodes, but its ending is not satisfying at all. It contains so many references to Christianity too! Spoilers incoming! chaos is really Yeshua, or Jesus as known by most people. The soul within KOSMOS is really Mary Magdelene! UDO is God, and Wilhelm has been trying to stop God's influence in the Universe through his one giant plot that spanned millennias. Another sad fact. It had such a great concept but such poor execution. Did they think all gamers wanted was graphics? If they had spent more time on gameplay in the first two episodes, and hired good voice actors, the series wouldn't have failed as badly as it did. What was supposed to be at least 4 episodes long is now a trilogy, with a really open end.

But the scene after defeating Virgil was really touching. As touching as some parts of Eureka Seven.









Yuuri Morishita may be the closest thing to perfect feminine beauty. She's so gorgeous, she's probably a fake, as in she's probably had quite a few cosmetic surgeries. Only 2 things mar her almost perfection - her eye bags and the shape of her head. She needs to use her hair to cover the both sides of her face to look good, and even makeup cannot cover completely her eye bags. Other than that, she's as close to a goddess as I believe possible. And because she's drop-dead gorgeous, she doesn't do nudes! That gives her some class. I've watched several of her gravure videos, and her smile is so sweet she can give men diabetes. And she's my age too! Holy shit!

Arisa Oda is the goddess of beauty. Or at least as gorgeous as one. She's probably not human. LOL! By the way, they don't do porn - they're gravure idols, or in a way, poster girls.
















Also Sprach Senor Hybrido

Rant 083 / Sex Is Just Like Respect - It Is Earned, Not Demanded

Whoever thought someone would be concerned that this blog might die? This, together with Windows Messenger, is my personal entertainment when I'm not gaming. Gaming is to me as TV is to most other people my age, I think. And blogging is just something to fill the time slot between gaming and sleeping. I type better when I'm a little tired.

Some say that speaking in a poetic way in normal conversations is a symptom of some kind of mental illness, or basically something is wrong in the head. Speaking in such a way indicates that the person's unable to use or remember words they normally use, thus this person has to find alternatives. Beware, poets! And old people!

I see a link between the two paragraphs above. When I'm tired, I'm unable to find the words to say. At times, I stutter, which, basically, is the same thing. Therefore, fatigue screws my brain up temporarily( I hope), and I type in a more poetic way, utilising words of considerable lengths to create this effect of making my lines appear dramatically more impressive.

It's either this, or I don't care what I type when I'm shagged.









After learning to make perfect crispy bacons and sunny-side ups, I decided not to neglect my Chinese heritage and went on to find Dim Sum recipes.

Subject/Link to recipe: 鲜竹牛肉
Grade: Fail
Comments: GG, nub


This is the first one I tried, and the results are as described. What was supposed to be perfectly steamed beef balls with a smooth texture turned out to be minced beef in oyster sauce sitting in fragile balls. I followed the recipe dutifully, even frying the beancurd skin, which doesn't seem necessary since it doesn't make much difference in the taste of the beef!

Well, I did change the recipe lol! I didn't have tangerine skins at home, and I didn't want to buy a whole packet just for one piece of it, so I skipped that. I didn't have water chestnut powder at home, nor cornstarch, so I substituted with potato starch. I think this last change made all the difference.

But I still don't understand how the oyster sauce's flavour can be so obvious! I'm not supposed to taste anything but the beef, as I remember it! And all 6 websites I checked display almost the same list of ingredients. I don't see why oyster sauce should be used at all, since I don't remember tasting oyster sauce when I last ate it in Hong Kong. Does the water chestnut powder make such a huge difference in flavour too?

Anyway 鲜竹牛肉 is not sold in Singaporean restaurants, which made me want to try it first.







Right now I'm folding boxes for Christmas gifts. These will be given out when I go to CZY's tomorrow. I'm estimating 9 people, but some may not come, like Ivan and XL who are undecided. Too bad for them. I prepared one even for CZY's sister. Btw, I won't be surprised if I find out that her favourite brand is Prada. Frigging she-devil who throws stones at my groin! But still, I'm a nice person. At times.

I have no experience in wrapping gifts, so I decided to fold boxes with magazine paper for all of them. These boxes are in different shapes and sizes, regardless of what they're containing. I can almost see their surprise when they realize what each of them is getting.








The Witcher is a pretty nice game. It's like NWN, an DnD style RPG in which you can pause at any time. But it's only for single player, allows only one playable character - the Witcher, and only 1 style - WITCHER STYLE!

This game is a horror-themed RPG focusing on the adventures of Geralt of Rivia, a warrior who has undergone special training and a mutation through alchemy, and lives to kill monsters that roam the nameless medieval world in the game. Such people, or, as some call them, mutants are known as Witchers. The game starts with a stunning CG clip of a fight between him and a striga, a monster which is really a woman under a curse. I'm amazed that they would put so much effort in a mere trailer that plays when you start the game.

The trailer is really a prologue that happened some years before the game's story. In the game, Geralt lost his memory prior to the game's plot, and was found by fellow Witchers. They brought him to a ruined fortress where some of the last Witchers in the world still lived. One day soon after he recovered, they were attacked by a mob accompanied by an unknown sorcerer, a notorious serial killer and a summoned monster.

Eventually the sorcerer and his hired killer got what they wanted in their alchemist lab and left, but not before killing their one and only apprentice Witcher. Of course they were pissed, and thus they split up in the four directions to gather information of the powerful sorcerer, and kill him.

Thus begins a game of seriously creepy music, monsters that pop out suddenly, gorgeous women who want to get laid, and an intriguing plot.

Bad points:

The isometric camera, similar to the one used in NWN2, pisses me off sometimes, since it works horribly when there are tall buildings to trees. Instead of making the trees translucent when they block the camera, the camera is raised to a higher level on the tree while maintaining the distance between the character and the camera. So if you're standing next to a tall tree while rotating your camera, one moment your looking from his back, the next moment you're getting a bird's eye view of the scene. WTF!

The loading is slow. It can take half a minute to exit a building into town. The saving is slow. It takes 10s to save.


Good:

The monsters are not scary since they always look so small when I use isometric camera instead of the other 2 camera choices. But the music and environmental sound effects makes all the difference. A headphone really helps.

There is no sex scene but you can get a nude portrait of each of the ladies you manage to have sex with. There are always a few in every chapter. All the pictures are more tastefully done, not lewd like most porn, and look nice except for the one with the vampiress. Vampiress is how they say it in the game. So far I've seen only one lady appearing nude in the game, but she's a dryad and is all green from head to toe, with leaves and vines around her body.

You can fool around with alchemical recipes to make new potions, blade coatings and bombs. Keeps it interesting.

The graphics are nice, but my laptop can only handle the low settings. When I first tried the highest setting, the graphics appear quite screwed up. Parts of everything appear bright teal, probably because my video card is unable to produce the textures for these surfaces.






This game has a Mature rating in Europe, and is partially censored in the US. Cited reasons include nudity, language and violence( there's a move in which Geralt slices his opponent's head off, and since you can zoom in with the right camera choice, it makes for quite a fascinating sight).






And when I mention "tastefully done" in regards to the nude pictures, I hope I'm not misunderstood. An example of a very lewd picture can be a young woman posing nude, sitting down on the floor and her legs wide apart. One hand is between her legs and speading her labia. And not to mention with that slutty facial expression. I can see how some people describe porn as disgusting.

On the other end of the scale, we have tasteful pictures, which are of a more "teasing" nature, in which "not all goods are displayed", and hints at beauty that is unseen. One example can be a silhouette of a young woman in nude, facing away from the camera, and maybe with one of her arms stretched out while holding a translucent sash that is barely covering her body. The body can be facing the side, making the outline of a full breast visible.

Both are nude pictures, but the former is gross and cheap, while the latter has more class. There is a big difference. In one you can see everything, in the other you need imagination.





Anyway back to the Witcher, it is a nice game, but not as addictive as NWN2, probably because of the long loading times. Really ruins the momentum.

I'm playing this because my PS2's TV has finally shown signs of aging. More specifically, the green tube no longer works and the TV cannot display the colour green. Now everything appears red, so I stopped playing. If I get a new TV, fine. If not, I get less distractions in the future. I'm not planning to ask for a new one.

When I stopped playing my PS2, I was planning to play NWN2, now that I have the expansion set, but one of the files in the CD turns out to be corrupted, so I cannot play it until I get a new copy. Meanwhile I had nothing to play, and when withdrawal symptoms started to become obvious, my bro told me about the Witcher, which he tried but didn't like. He's a MMORPG addict, so this is not his type. I tried, and now I cannot make myself play NWN2 until I give up or finish Witcher.

And I cannot install NWN2 because my laptop is 3/4 full. The freaking Supreme Commander with expansion takes up 15GB!! Holy shit!

And about Supreme Commander's expansion, Forged Alliance, the campaign for the 3 races is really the same story in which you can choose to play as any of the 3 races. Since all 3 races are allies now, the story doesn't change whichever race you choose to be.

The new units are nice, but in the campaign, all I really use is heavy artilleries plus nukes - my omnipotent strategy against AI. First I create walls of shielded defenses at the correct choke points, then I tech up and build some heavy artilleries. If they have anti-nuke defenses, I have specific targets for the big guns. If not, I let my guns go free. Most likely they won't die from mere artilleries unless I build 20 of them, but this gets boring, so I get nukes.

If this shitty strategy is unsuitable, like for example they start out with Experimental Units that rush at you right away, I spam a mix of Air Superiority fighters and Strategic Bombers. Simple ideas for simple people like me.

The game's battles are so huge, I always zoom as far away as possible to reduce the load on the computer. I zoom in only when I pause to give orders. In the campaigns I can have up to 500 units, and even though this includes buildings and builders, 350 bombers and fighters is a FREAKING HUGE SWARM. I really built that many in one of the battles. I had about 50 structures and 100 builders all helping my 3 air factories spam planes. LOL! I remember I had about 50 builders on one, the rest split between the other 2.

Later in the game I realized that instead of building with these drones, I can get a hundred ACUs when I have the tech, so I spent 4 hours on that round, spamming upgraded ACUs and then sacrifice all the drones on planes. I never expected the building speed to go up as much as it did. It was insane. And so was the lag when I was done.

After that I tried building about a hundred Colossus ( I was Aeon), this time with only 30 ACUs, and using 30 on each of the 3 enemy bases. It was like using a towel to wipe the screen clean.

Hmm, should I use Colossii instead, as the plural of Colossus?







My mum has been bugging me about getting a girfriend. It is simply annoying. What did she expect? Not everyone can find a suitable girl in half a year like Ivan did. Not that she knows about him, but he's a good example of a lucky person.

Now she's telling one of her sisters about it, and one of my cousins too. Hong Kong and New York are no longer on my list of good vacation destinations anymore. I don't need blind dates nor arranged marriage; I need silence and peace in my life.

But this nagging will never end, I think. I am beginning to see the need for a girlfriend, if only for some peace at home, but I'm not aware of anyone suitable at all. In fact, I don't see myself as having any similar interest with any girl. I don't watch TV, I don't listen to music regularly, I read voraciously, I need games, I don't visit the cinemas often or even spend money outside much. I don't shop, except for groceries. I don't talk on the phone, and when I do talk at all, it usually evolves into a monologue. I'm not humorous.

This is a rather tricky problem for me.

Rant 082 / It Happens

My fondue pwns. Just kidding. I found out why cheese fondue is not as popular as chocolate fondue the other day - it is quite oily. But it's cheese after all, so it's no surprise. What is surprising to me is that it makes me full faster than I expected. Couldn't finish all the cheese even with my bro. It's only 200g of cheese, half cheddar, half emmental.

Beer does add a certain flavour to the cheese. I'm going to try bacon cheese fondue some day. I have 300g of back bacon just waiting for me in the freezer. Muahahahahahaha! But there's no alcohol in bacon cheese fondue. Wonder when I'm ever going to use the little bottle of Burgundy. Probably never, with the expiry date approaching soon. Or has it expired already? Oh well.

The sliced roast beef at Cold Storage tastes just like the sliced ham they sell! The salt covered most of the flavour in the meat and the beef flavour is detectable only if it is eaten without anything else. And it costs $4.50/g! Wasted my $14!

Now I have the ingredients for cheese fries, I'm going to try someday soon when my bro finally books out for the last time. What would holidays be for if not for sinning?

I also have almost all the ingredients for bacon cheese fondue. Almost. I'm going to buy the parsley and etc on the day I make it.

And I've learnt why french toast is usually made from sliced bread even though french loaf tastes better - because unless you have a good bread knife, never attempt to sliced the loaf for the toast. At home, I have only 2 types of knifes - the meat knives for when my mum cooks steaks, and the omnipotent cleaver. What choice do I have but to slice bread with the mighty huge knife? And so I attempted 4 times and found out that the uneven surface is not conducive for proper frying of the whole surface. Sliced bread, on the other hand, is perfectly cut, so if the crust is removed, it is easy to fry. Good lesson, and at least the toasts taste decent, not burnt.

If I had burnt one of them, I'd have ruined another pan lol! How many years has it been since I burnt something on a pan... maybe 2, or 3.

Next time, I'm going to fry some of the bacon together with the french toasts, so that there will be something salty for the meal. Frying bacon is easy, especially since the no oil is necessary. I used to fry it in in microwave, but washing the plates I fry them in is hell... for the maid. :P Part-time maid, btw, not full-time.





Hellgate: London is just like Diablo in first-person view! Right now I have only a lvl 22 Engineer, and I've been playing in first-person throughout. According to my bro, and the online reviews, the two Hunter classes may be the only classes that require the first-person view. The other classes do not need to fight from far away, which I can tell from all those unusable weapons I've picked up so far. The weapons with the longest ranges (up to 40m) are available only to Hunters, while the Cabalists use short and mid-range weapons (20m or shorter). Templars use mostly melee weapons, but these are hard to come by. Most weapons in the game seem to be for Hunters, and this makes the two Hunter classes to be the most interesting.

Back to why HGL is like Diablo. Some monsters are very similar, like the small leaping thing in Diablo and its sequel, though in HGL it seems much larger. In first-person view, of course. The loot is also similar, except the names aren't as lame as those in Diablo, like "Scaly Ring Mail of Luck" and such. Bleh.

In fact, it is the variety of loot that makes the game interesting, since the story is quite minimal - you cannot understand the whole story unless you read beforehand the backstory. This is the one thing Flagship Studio is depending on the make it playable. Together with the MMO feature, it may just work, if not for the unimpressive bosses in the game. It could have made a good MMORPG, if not for the fact that the bosses are mostly normal monsters with different stats and names. Totally in contrast with WoW, where the bosses are bigger than normal and look different from the rest of the mobs.

There are some quirky minigames within, but those aren't enough. One minigame I've just finished requires me to fire cannons on a gigantic monster that constantly moves about. I cannot get near it or it'll either stamp on me or breath fire on me. I can't hurt it either unless 2 cannons are firing on it at once. These cannons only fire for a short while without me manning them, and they are placed some distance from each other. When 2 of them are firing on it, it will shrink and lose its immunity to my weapons for a short while.

And the minigame called Triage! It is just like the Triage quest in WoW Horde, except with mobs coming in while you save the dying soldiers within the time limit. Triage is the quest where there are eight beds in the room and Severely injured or Gravely injured soldiers suddenly appear on the beds and you have to save them while the clock ticks.

There really is little reason to play HGL offline, unless you are bored or you love loot. I love loot. :P When I finish HGL I'll leave it in my laptop so that I can play again, probably as a Summoner or Evoker. No way am I going to try Templars when my framerate can dramatically decrease at times, especially when things explode or many mobs appear. Not always, but often enough to prevent me from trying.

Or maybe I should just stop playing this and play Atelier Iris 2, then Xenosaga Ep III, and leave HGL for hall days. Hmm...




Valkyrie Profile 2 isn't a game that I like. The graphics are fine, but the gameplay isn't that interesting for me. Somehow I just dislike the combat style and the fact that I need to use things in dungeons that I may have left behind in previous dungeons. I hate replaying old dungeons in single-player games - feels exactly like my grinding days in Lineage 2, brings back bad memories.



Talking about Lineage 2, it is the first game that introduced to me the reality of gaming addiction. Before that, I always thought gaming addiction was meant the player loves gaming so much that he cannot stop. It was only through my experience in L2 that made me realise that love is not necessary for the addiction to persist. Something just holds me to the game, something I cannot explain that pulls me back from real life. I hate grinding, but I just want to play it, for reasons I cannot understand. Then with the help of a friend in the game, I moved to WoW, and I realised I hated L2. WoW is actually enjoyable because grinding isn't necessary to level, and the PvP games rock!

In L2, I grind 24/7 on the same mobs all the time. A small mistake can often lead to death and the loss of 4% of the exp bar. A small mistake can be running too far and agroing a high level mob accidentally. Worse is the lawlessness of the L2 world, where PKers roam free and farmers care about their quotas more than the area available for the other players. Because of the stingy loot drop chances in the game, demands for farmed gold and items are always in high demand, and thus the thriving farmer populations. These guys play like sweatshop labourers, never resting and always farming. Of course they most likely have shifts but I don't care. What I care is that they actually take up so many of the better areas that real players have only the worse rooms to grind in.

And it's boring as hell to kill the same things all day. Or watch your party members kill them anyway, if you're a healer like I was. All I did was watch their HP bars, and sit when nothing needed to be done. It was just like my 2 years as RP, doing nothing all day, but have to remain alert throughout - no sleeping, no other forms of entertainment even if you're bored of sitting, because the others may get seriously injured suddenly, and you have to spam the heal buttons right away.

Oh yes, I did manage to cause the party to wipe because I was watching tv while the tank suddenly died from a massive overdose of mob agro. And I got... shit for that.

WoW was heavenly compared to L2 hell, because there are so many areas I can roam, and so many unorthodox forms of entertainment I can find in WoW, like exploring unopened areas. But in a serious guild, it does get kind of like L2 because members will need to grind for materials for better items one is required to have. Which sucked. And made me quit. I hate grinding.


Time to go.

Rant 081 / Sustenance!

I have this sneaking suspicion that I may have pushed myself too hard. Yesterday I could not make myself do more than a few questions throughout the day. Everytime I look at the paper I couldn't think; my brain just refused to budge. And this is just when I'm starting my revision on my weakest subject: Chemistry. What luck!

And I'm no longer eating much since 2 weeks ago. Everyday I feel hungry only once, maybe twice, but I do not eat at those times. Instead, I eat only when I'm tired to doing work, and needed some relaxation. By doing my revision or playing some games, I have been ignoring my hunger everyday.

But I have nothing to worry about. I do eat 1-2 slices of cheap cheese daily. Cheap, because it is almost tasteless, and sold at $4+ for 36 slices. And with some fruit yoghurt and fruit slices I eat occasionally, I should be able to avoid scurvy, or any nutritional deficiency. The only thing really lacking may be sugar/carbohydrates, because the only real energy supplier is the fat from the cheese.

I still have a box of Laughing Cow Cheese that I eat once in a while. About 1 portion every few days, because it's expensive and contains an unholy proportion of fats. But it tastes heavenly compared to any food that I can obtain without taking a bus.

Plus I still have some canned food, like these 2 cans of tuna chunks in olive oil. One of my favourite canned food. And I have a few packets of instant bee hoon and hor fun, which helps when I don't feel like spending money - I have only $35 left that I can allow myself to spend until the 23rd. I started with $300 two weeks ago, and spend quite a bit on canned food and cheese( I started with three boxes of La Vache Qui Rit, but used one and a half boxes for my French presentation). My meals also cost $5-7 every time.

Of course I eat real food. I buy a meal from the Chinese food stall everyday, and sometimes they give me discounts. Once I tried the Western stall's food by ordering a roasted chicken leg and wing. It was good, and when I use the word "leg", I mean both the drumstick and upper thigh.

I have only 2 reasons to be dissatisfied. One, the black pepper gravy was totally unnecessary, and tasteless. Unnecessary, because the chicken was already roasted with honey or something sweet. Second was the price. The leg costs $3.50, the wing $1.10. That meal of leg and wing alone costs $4.60. Maybe it is comparable with the prices outside, but if that is true, improve that damned gravy! Or use something else! I can't taste the pepper unless I drink it! You might as well use a weak salt solution with black flecks in it.

Well, I must admit it's worth the price, barely, but it is not what I need. I don't need the fats and high sugar content. I need proteins, vitamins, and some carbohydrates. With cheese, yoghurts and fruits, I can get enough proteins and vitamins. With the rice I can get the carbohydrates. And I don't really care about dietary fibre since I don't have much to pass out anyway.

Maybe I just need seaweed or something, for iodine. I don't want to get thyroid diseases. Not till after exams anyway. Oh hell, I'll just risk it LOL! There are only 5 days more before I can eat like a king again. Not counting today, there are only Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday! On Friday morning I'll finish my last paper by 11.30am, and packed up by 1pm. Home by 2pm! Yes I'm planning to take a cab, because I'm bringing almost everything back.

And XL suggested that I ask some ladies to join us! LOL! When I used the phrase "I don't talk to much" I was trying to say I don't speak/chat to them at all, but I did ask them a question or two during the term, and I did speak to them during my presentation because my presentation was a game in which the whole class participated in.

Of course some of them are cute, but still, I merely know their names and have a vague idea of
which courses they're in. So no help from me there.

Rant 080 / Planning Holidays For Motivation To Go Through Exams

The Fountain is a pretty good movie. I still don't exactly understand everything(I believe the spaceship was a metaphor for his mind and his thoughts, but what was the meaning of him dying in the end and the tree reviving?), but it had a nice story and excellent music. In fact, without the music the whole film would be crap, because the music pieces seem to be composed for the scenes in the show.

I didn't know www.purepwnage.com was so famous that the Australian video game show, GG, invited them onto for a tournament. PP vs GG lol! So far PurePwnage has 15 episodes since their start in 2004, and they are showing their new episodes in cinemas! Plus they are sold out all the time!

But that's only in Canada. In Sg, I think I'm the only person who knows about them. Probably because many gaming Singaporeans can't understand non-local English. It's not wrong to speak Singlish, but you've got to learn to understand foreign accents if you want to get out of this island.

Other than some of the nerdy fighting scenes in the later episodes of the first season, the show is extremely humourous. They poke fun at the stereotypical gamer and many internet memes. I can never forget the villain in ep 15 saying,"You are on the way to destruction. You have no chance to survive make your time!"

ROFLMAO! For those of you who don't understand, this is part of the ultra-famous internet meme "All you base are belong to us." The whole scene that this line originated from was this:

Narrator: In A.D. 2101, war was beginning.

Captain: What happen ?

Mechanic: Somebody set up us the bomb.

Operator: We get signal.

Captain: What!

Operator: Main screen turn on.

Captain: It's you!!

CATS: How are you gentlemen!!

CATS: All your base are belong to us.

CATS: You are on the way to destruction.

Captain: What you say!!

CATS: You have no chance to survive make your time.

CATS: Ha Ha Ha Ha ....

Operator: Captain!!

Captain: Take off every 'ZIG'!!

Captain: You know what you doing.

Captain: Move 'ZIG'.

Captain: For great justice.

Anyway, Purepwnage is definitely for you if you consider yourself a gamer!



Now to real life. Back when I was doing some research for my French presentation, I found several simple cheese fondue recipes that I thought I could use. I pinned 2 of the easiest in front of me now, so that I can test them when my exams are over. Not only that, I also found that there is "Beef Fondue" in which you dip bite-size beef into a pot of oil and butter. Something like frying, but DIY. Sounds interesting, but a bit dangerous for a n00b like me. I'll try cheese first. Maybe if its good, I'll suggest it for the BBQ, or replace the BBQ with fondue. You can dip many things in both cheese and beef fondue. In the cheese fondue, one can also use ham or anything suitable for eating with cheese. For beef fondue, any meat can be used.

Now there is only 1 problem - I don't know how much electric fondue pots cost... Some websites state prices ranging from S$200-450, while in ebay, there are prices ranging from S$10-60. Hmm...



www.freerice.com is a very interesting website. I found this bot for it via wikipedia that plays the game for me. In addition, since this website allows a separate game for each browser opened on it, even if they are on the same computer, I can thus open several bots at one go. The most I have tried using at one shot is 10. Yea, in 2 hours with just 5 bots, I've donated 100000 grains of rice. Taking 1 grain to be 25mg, 10k grains will be 2.5kg. If 1000 ppl do this for 8 hrs a day, they will be giving out 10,000kg of rice daily. The best thing is that this doesn't require much bandwidth, so I can run it together with this Folding@Home program, or with games running.

Rant 079 / Stone-Age, Bronze-Age, Iron-Age, Pwn-Age

A few days back I started playing this browser-based MMORPG Urban Dead, which is pretty low-tech, not time-consuming, but interesting. Being low-tech, it is a rare online game which my shitty dorm bandwidth can support. It is designed such that you cannot spend much time on it, making it ideal for muggers like me. It is interesting, since it is the only MMORPG I know of that has no NPCs. And the zombie-infested-city theme is also makes it more unique.

http://www.urbandead.com/map.cgi?logout

What is it about? The background story is that the city of Malton suddenly becomes filled with zombies. Before all residents can successfully evacuate, a quarantine was placed on the city. Meanwhile, researchers of the company, NecroTech, were ordered to stay within the city to study the zombies.

Players can choose to play as the humans or the zombies. As humans, there are 3 classes to choose from, with many sub-classes: military(Private, Medic and Scout), civilians(Cop, Firefighter and Consumer) and scientists(Doctor and NecroTech assistant).

Most of the sub-classes are pretty obvious, but some of them are rather unique. As a Consumer, you can find loots in malls more easily. As a NecroTech assistant, you can "tag" zombies and allow other players to spot them more easily.

But if you feel evil and want to try the zombie, there is only 1 class of zombies - Zombie.

Zombies seem quite easy to use, since you cannot die(you simply rise again by spending Action Points). Other than that, you also have a whole range of skills to choose from, like Scent of Fear and Infectious Bite.

The game doesn't have good graphics, and is turn-based. This means even if you lag, consequences are not as bad as if you are playing a real-time game. It uses a system of Action Points, in which you gain 1 AP per half-hours, or 48AP everyday. Every action you take(eg walking from one building to another, attacking or talking through the radio) consumes 1 AP.

There is no economy in the city of Malton. Makes sense, who'd want to trade while struggling to survive in a city of zombies? This is ensured by the game designers refusing to implement the trade/give function. Therefore, what you find(btw, "searching the area" takes 1AP) is always yours until you drop it, at which point it disappears.

The "search area" function gives you a chance of finding items, and your location affects what you can find. In police stations you can find guns, and in NecroTech offices you can find revival syringes(for turning zombies into people).

But the lack of AP really bugs me sometimes. Everyday, I get about 48 APs, and just walking to a building and entering takes 2 AP. Everytime I have to stop doing whatever I was doing and find a safe building to rest in before my AP runs out. Yes, you have to find a barricaded building to rest before logging off or you may get killed by zombies that sees you.

And as for barricaded buildings, barricades can be removed by zombies when they attack them enough times, but also can be rebuilt by anyone who has the right skills and enough APs.

Rant 078 / Curiosity Gets Sued By SPCA For Animal Abuse

Sitting with a one-liter bottle of water, and two filled half-liter bottles next to my laptop, I type this blog knowing I will not be running out of water before I finish this rant.

I have no idea why I mentioning the water, but I just did.

The past week has been rather frustrating for me, not because of the approaching exam dates, but because of my horrible neighbours. I used to think that the guy in my neighbourhood who shouts that "wooot!" thing suddenly at any moment during the day was annoying. I was, as the Chinese idiom goes, frog in a well.

Just yesterday in the afternoon, the group of four were waiting outside a room a few doors away from me, and two of them were shouting to someone. From the lack of response to their shouts, I can conclude that their target was inside the room. But from the fact the they were actually shouting, I can also assume they were shouting to someone on another floor. So which should I choose?

Before seeing them, I was suffering their shouts in silence in my room. But when I got too distracted from my work, and thus remembered to eat, I decided to go out for some food.

That was when I saw them shouting there outside the room, like the scum of society that they are. I decided to avoid them by taking another route to the canteen, lest I feel like punching them too much.

Unfortunately, after buying my food, I was looking forward to eating so much I forgot about them and took the path I had avoided. As I took the corner and started to approach them, I got real pissed because they were still shouting things that most of the neighbourhood didn't care about but were still hearing anyway.

I didn't do anything foolish, but I stared at the guy in blue who shouted the most. Even in normal circumstances, I believe I look unfriendly though I never try to look fierce for no reason. But this time, I decided to put a little more effort in the stare.

Of course he stopped and looked at me, probably thinking I was going to do something to him. But it'd be ludicrous sight since I was holding my lunch in one hand. So I just walked passed him without a word, almost knocking into him (I'm big, but the corridor isn't much bigger).

Several moments passed before he spoke again. He was speaking somewhat softly (but still audible to me from my distance) to a friend in Mandarin, "那个人 很 凶 hor?"

Fucking morons. What did you expect, a smile and congratulations from me for attaining the rank of Asshole, First Class?

But of course, as they were morons, they did not quite seem to get what I meant and went on with their infernal screaming. Now you see what that Finnish guy meant when he said he was a "natural selector" before massacring in his school?

Not that he was right, but I sure can see why he felt like killing them. And with that gun of his, lousy model as it was, it was still a great temptation to use a gun on low-lives like these.

I'm also not implying those people he killed probably shouted a lot. I mean they are obviously human pests who's future is obviously detrimental to modern society.

But that wasn't all. On the same day, in the evening, a group of guy played some kind of video game in a room downstairs. From a few whistles I heard, I'd say they were playing Winning Eleven. The main problem isn't with that they were playing when exams start next week for most people. What pissed me off again was that one guy kept shouting whenever he scored a goal. And I could tell he scored quite a few goals.

That isn't all. Another guy was shouting vulgarities once in a while, and there were a few shouts from some others. I'm glad Singapore doesn't allow civilians to possess guns.

After 2 hours of the din, there started a few shouts from other guys who were trying to shut them up. To no avail. And from the persistence shouts from the same guy, I believe it to be the same person as the one I stared at that afternoon.

In addition, I feel helpless. I have no idea if the hall office have the capability to resolve such problems. I have no idea how to contact the hall committee and if they would help in such matters.

Worst of all, I feel embarrassed. They were obviously locals, and at least half the residents in this block are foreigners. It is bad enough that everyone knows the foreign students always get better grades than local students, at least in Engineering. Do they have to make things worse by making asses of themselves in front of so many foreigners?

Everyday?

Another reason to get out of this country when I graduate.






A month back, my roommate got dumped by his girlfriend. Very sad. I was quite surprised, since just a few days before it happened, she came to our room to visit him in the morning. They looked like they were at a very intimate stage, sharing his seat and stuff. And he isn't even ugly or anything; He's even the leader of his guitar ensemble. Cried quite a bit, but eventually stopped.

Then all of a sudden he was crying again last night. I'm not going to say anything this time. The last time I had advised him not to hold it in, and that's the only advise I will ever give to anyone who needs to cry. Any other advices may not be beneficial to him, especially since I'm not a pro in life anyway.

Wonder what he was crying about. Oh hell...










Democracy is the celebration of mediocrity. Why? Think about it this way:

The one with most authority, whether it is the President or Prime Minister, is changed regularly. I'm not talking about Singapore since it is not a true democracy. But when the ruler is changed, long-term plans are interrupted. If the ruler knows he will be replaced soon, he will not bother to plan anything for the far future , eg 20 years ahead. But in a government where the authority is certain to remain with the same person, eg in an absolute monarchy, the ruler can plan for the future.

Even if a President plans for the far future, it will very likely be changed according the ideas of later Presidents.

But in a government where a person is able to hold on to power indefinitely, like LKY, great benefits can be reaped by planning very far ahead.

But this is a gamble, as seen in the world's history. Though this is a possibility that democracy lacks, democracy is able to prevent serious damage if the ruler happens to be unfit for rule. Bush Jr is an exception.

What's more is that every several years, the government has to spend great amount of tax money for elections and keeping the people happy with the ruling party.

So in the end, democracy greatly limits the benefits of having a good ruler, but it also prevents the country from ruination. It is the celebration of mediocrity.