Woke up on the right side of the bed? Things are going perfectly for you? Other guys' wives are flocking to you after their husbands lose their jobs?
Don't worry, if life is going too smoothly, we have just the solution for you.
Introducing Singapore opposition Parties - the death zone where all successful people go to be less successful. If you have too much money, LKY has ways to solve that. If you have too many wives, the Sg gov has the suitable solutions. If you have are too smooth with people, they have the answers that YOU want.
Mr Low(not his real name) used to be a local successful multi-billionaire in the shipping industry. He was good with people, great with business tactics and best with women. But finding his life too successful and good, he decided to join the opposition.
It was a revelation to him. He never knew how bad his life could have been if he had never gone into the wrong side of politics. He learnt to suffer in slow agony, and couldn't sleep for weeks at a time. He contracted herpes from a rent boy and ear infections from his handphone.
In short, he trashed his life. And he just couldn't get enough of it. Day and night he stand on the line between a career suicide and exile, and couldn't be happier.
This is but one of our success stories out of the thousands in our archives. We, at the League of Extraordinary Personnels (LEPers) , believe that everyone should have a chance at a life on par with that of a stray dog in the streets of Bangladesh. We know that there are those who are getting sick of their great, successful lives, and yearn for one that is disgusting and filled with inhumane depravity.
Services we offer include Eternal Damnation, Career Ruination, Slow Torture and our most popular service: Medical Treatment a la Kevorkian. With such a wide range available for all your sadistic needs, how can you miss this chance to take advantage of our Buy 2 Get 2 Free Deal?
Yes, you saw right! Buy 2 Get 2 Free Deal! If you let us slowly torture and kill you, we will make sure you are eternally damned and your remains get sued for grand theft auto, fraud, embezzlement, vandalism and even rape! And all these at the low price of 666 easy payments of $6.66! How can you pass up this chance?!
I don't think that was funny. Hmm...
If you have been reading this blog, think of all those minutes of your life you will never get back. What a waste!
We are going to need more monkeys.
Nothing happens. This is the infamous Week of the Deadly Calm.
Watched 28 Days Later and I Am Legend last night. They both have many things in common: the rest of the world is turned into Sun-fearing monsters, colonies have somehow been set up by survivors, both movies suck.
I Am Legend is unsatisfying in that I feel there's something missing. I don't know exactly what but something seems to be missing, and that sucks.
28 Days Later suck because it is just a crappy movie full of inconsistencies and illogical actions/ideas by the characters.
But watching those movies, I keep remembering the game Urban Dead, because I'm always alone except while resting for the night. I would have to move around alone and have to find a safe haven set up by other survivors before I run out of turns, This is just like the main guy in I Am Legend, who has to be home before dusk.
Finally realize what was wrong with my Shared Folders. Before, I was thinking of the Windows Vista Shared Folders as something like a common folder - 1 folder accessible by anyone in the network. Now I see that the Shared Folders are really separate folders on each computer in the network that are accessible by anyone inside. So I cannot access my Public Folder for files that are on my bro's Public folder, which is what I've been doing so far. This sounds really stupid as I type it out.
I now have my own room. Kind of. When a part-time maid cleared the mess that was in the storage room, which used to be the master bedroom, I saw the opportunity to change my nightlife. Right away I packed up the final bits of the mess, mopped the floor, polished it and sprayed insecticide on the walls.
The next day was the day I moved in. Now I have a room that will give me a relatively better measure of privacy. The cupboards are still here, filled with old stuff. There is a small hill of miscellany covered completely by two old bed sheets.
Now even though I have my room, it is still not a good idea to have anyone come over for an overnight stay, because this bedroom has a toilet. While this presents no problem for me alone, it is a whole different story when one person in the group has a stomachache with the rest in the room. We rely on natural wind-powered ventilation here, and the wind directions are not always reliable.
Not only that, I have no table in the room. I am typing this on my laptop, with me on the bed and the comp on my lap. It is definitely not advisable for 6 person to do so at the same time on my bed. Well, unless they're ladies, of course.
I wonder, is my style cold, unfeeling? Or do other guys blog with too much emotions?
Friday, 11 January 2008
Wednesday, 9 January 2008
Rant 087 / How Does A Person Bleed For Days And Not Die? Be A Woman.
I just found this blood donation flyer at my door. "You can save life! C'mmon"(typos are from the flyer itself). Why can't we let the ladies handle this particular facet of our lives? I mean, they bleed almost every month of their bloody lives and where does all the rich, fresh blood go? Down the hole, where else?
What is the logic in this? Everyday, there are people dying because the blood or blood product that they desperately need is not available in the blood bank, yet every day we throw away good, wholesome, nutritious blood down the drains! Instead of sanitary bins, some bored smartass in the US should invent a sort of freezer that's cheap enough to be placed in every cubicle, and able store blood for some time.
The fact is, humans are born hypocrites. As babies, we are said to cry for milk all the time, yet everyone knows babies want tits, not milk. Around the globe, we beg for donations for the poor, yet everyday we dump millions of tons of food into the trash bins. There is no logic in this; we just are.
Well, actually the baby part has no link, but it just seems nice to type out.
Alright, enough bull. If you had read the entire part above, you may be confused whether they are all truth or trash. It's both.
I still can't muster the guts to sign up for a speaker slot at other Toastmasters Clubs. Gah! Even the thought of it is scary. It is hard enough to speak a 5-min speech in front of the NTU TMC, but to speak at another TMC doesn't cost points! FREE! I have to earn points by performing roles during our fortnightly meetings, and even though they're easy, its not a fast process unless I pick a tough job. So far I've been choosing easy tasks like the Sergeant-At-Arms aka sai kang warrior and the Table Topics Master, who organizes and presents the Table Topics sessions.
Harder jobs that earn more points include:
-Language Evaluator, who notes down every single grammatical, pronunciation and any types of mistakes made by everyone throughout the meeting,
-Project Evaluator, who judges and comments on one of the Prepared Speakers using a 2-3min speech, and
-Ah-Counter, who notes down every "ah", "er","hmm", non-linking sentences, non-linking words and just about any mistake a speaker shouldn't make, throughout the meeting.
Now it should be apparent why I'm not picking these roles yet.
I don't pretend to understand how most people think. Yesterday I found out a male friend of mine has a blog, and it is linked to the blog of a primary school friend of mine, a girl. The one thing that has me confused is that he stated in his blog that he loves her, yet is unable to tell her in person.
The confusion begins here: as I scanned the comments on his blog, I see all evidence of her being a regular reader of his blog. What was the point of typing out that he is unable to tell her in the face and keeping it at that? Why couldn't he go on and type more?
But he has stated in a later update that he has told her through the phone, something I rarely touch.
I don't know either of them well enough to judge who got the better side of the deal. I can say I knew her, not know. I can say I know part of him, the desperate student in him. I don't know her because she has to change in the last 10 years that I didn't see her for. I don't know the part of him who is reading manga, playing basketball and fooling around in life.
I'm ignorant of a great many things, yet what is the point of knowing so much?
Donating blood takes so much time. Why can't they stick the tube straight into the right atrium and suck it all out? The guy would probably faint for a bit, but who cares? The patient is dying! Which has a greater priority - a donator who passed out or your dad who's about to die of excessive blood loss?
Who really cares whether there is logic in the Internet? I know my blog is full of upside-down bull. Life is full of worse. If Bush can be elected President twice, how logical can life get?
Woohoo! Another overnight LAN party incoming! This time it's 7 of us, not 5. So we will only need 1 more guy from outside to make it 4v4 DoTA. Overnight. I like playing team games as long as the team doesn't whine about my noobness in games that I'm noob in. Like in Natural Selection, I prefer to play on the more pro US servers to the noob China servers. The Korean servers are fine but empty most of the time. I like big and pro servers. But in the US server I play in, my ping is always around 250 compared to the other guys with 10-100 ping. Even if I'm pro, and I'm only an average player, I cannot shoot well there.
Therefore I'm usually noob in that server, but no one complains because I try not to get in their way. I figure ways to help the team without shooting, like being the team gorge(builder class), or if someone else has taken the position, I try to other less direct strategies.
Teamwork is always enjoyable. In games this is especially easy to achieve. In MMORPGs, this is essential to have fun at higher levels. In a FPS/RTS game like Natural Selection, everything is about teamwork. Pwnage aim helps, but if that is lacking, a team that works together can more than offset the lack of one godly shooter.
The satisfaction of teamwork is what drives me to play online games. Back in WoW, that was what kept pulling back until I feared I would never be able to get out. Now it's Natural Selection, as it has always been for 4 years. Or is it 5 now? All I know is that I started at v1.04, when games lasted for hours and I can quit halfway through for a meal, then come back for the same round.
NS is different from the other more famous Half-Life mods in that the teamwork is more organized in public servers. In Team Fortress, it is also about teamwork but no one is needed to organize the teams' efforts. In CS, teamwork is usually found in servers with extra mods, or in competitive play.
Now I'm back to Heroes of Might and Magic V. At the moment I'm still at the last round of the Fortress Campaign. Even though I don't have the save files from my previous try, cheat codes are easy to find. I just kept using @Win() until I reach the round I don't remember playing, then I gave my Wulfstan 30,000 exp and went on with the game.
The Fortress race seems so strong, so solid, yet in actual place the units seem so weak. Somehow the formidable-looking bear riders die like flies every time they get hit. And the Spearwielder does practically negligible damage. The only good it does is the crippling wound it occasionally does. At least the salamander is strong. In fact, it's stronger than it looks. Hell, even the Thane looks stronger than it, but the Thane has crap for HP.
I'm starting to use the Berserker's special ability less often. It is always so tempting to use it every turn. You know, it's like letting loose a mad dog into a human crowd. Feels fantastic, but after its turn, it'd be the enemies' turn to feel fantastic. But still, it's so weak! All the HP/Defense of all the Fortress units seem so low, other than the Magma Lizard or whatever it's called. Sometimes it's very frustrating to see my beloved bear riders reduced drastically in numbers with every blow it gets, which it gets a lot because I always push it ahead of my other units.
But if I don't make full use of it's mobile range, I'd have to depend on my range units to take care of the enemy range units. And this is bullshit because only the Runic Priests do decent damage. The Spearwielder is for slowing down melee units, not for damaging them. Or I can send in the Thane, but the results would be the same, just more expensive for me.
At least the Runes are useful, especially the Rune that doubles the unit's mobile range. Totally rocks in all those situations where your unit can almost reach the ranged unit but just can't get there in time.
What is the logic in this? Everyday, there are people dying because the blood or blood product that they desperately need is not available in the blood bank, yet every day we throw away good, wholesome, nutritious blood down the drains! Instead of sanitary bins, some bored smartass in the US should invent a sort of freezer that's cheap enough to be placed in every cubicle, and able store blood for some time.
The fact is, humans are born hypocrites. As babies, we are said to cry for milk all the time, yet everyone knows babies want tits, not milk. Around the globe, we beg for donations for the poor, yet everyday we dump millions of tons of food into the trash bins. There is no logic in this; we just are.
Well, actually the baby part has no link, but it just seems nice to type out.
Alright, enough bull. If you had read the entire part above, you may be confused whether they are all truth or trash. It's both.
I still can't muster the guts to sign up for a speaker slot at other Toastmasters Clubs. Gah! Even the thought of it is scary. It is hard enough to speak a 5-min speech in front of the NTU TMC, but to speak at another TMC doesn't cost points! FREE! I have to earn points by performing roles during our fortnightly meetings, and even though they're easy, its not a fast process unless I pick a tough job. So far I've been choosing easy tasks like the Sergeant-At-Arms aka sai kang warrior and the Table Topics Master, who organizes and presents the Table Topics sessions.
Harder jobs that earn more points include:
-Language Evaluator, who notes down every single grammatical, pronunciation and any types of mistakes made by everyone throughout the meeting,
-Project Evaluator, who judges and comments on one of the Prepared Speakers using a 2-3min speech, and
-Ah-Counter, who notes down every "ah", "er","hmm", non-linking sentences, non-linking words and just about any mistake a speaker shouldn't make, throughout the meeting.
Now it should be apparent why I'm not picking these roles yet.
I don't pretend to understand how most people think. Yesterday I found out a male friend of mine has a blog, and it is linked to the blog of a primary school friend of mine, a girl. The one thing that has me confused is that he stated in his blog that he loves her, yet is unable to tell her in person.
The confusion begins here: as I scanned the comments on his blog, I see all evidence of her being a regular reader of his blog. What was the point of typing out that he is unable to tell her in the face and keeping it at that? Why couldn't he go on and type more?
But he has stated in a later update that he has told her through the phone, something I rarely touch.
I don't know either of them well enough to judge who got the better side of the deal. I can say I knew her, not know. I can say I know part of him, the desperate student in him. I don't know her because she has to change in the last 10 years that I didn't see her for. I don't know the part of him who is reading manga, playing basketball and fooling around in life.
I'm ignorant of a great many things, yet what is the point of knowing so much?
Donating blood takes so much time. Why can't they stick the tube straight into the right atrium and suck it all out? The guy would probably faint for a bit, but who cares? The patient is dying! Which has a greater priority - a donator who passed out or your dad who's about to die of excessive blood loss?
Who really cares whether there is logic in the Internet? I know my blog is full of upside-down bull. Life is full of worse. If Bush can be elected President twice, how logical can life get?
Woohoo! Another overnight LAN party incoming! This time it's 7 of us, not 5. So we will only need 1 more guy from outside to make it 4v4 DoTA. Overnight. I like playing team games as long as the team doesn't whine about my noobness in games that I'm noob in. Like in Natural Selection, I prefer to play on the more pro US servers to the noob China servers. The Korean servers are fine but empty most of the time. I like big and pro servers. But in the US server I play in, my ping is always around 250 compared to the other guys with 10-100 ping. Even if I'm pro, and I'm only an average player, I cannot shoot well there.
Therefore I'm usually noob in that server, but no one complains because I try not to get in their way. I figure ways to help the team without shooting, like being the team gorge(builder class), or if someone else has taken the position, I try to other less direct strategies.
Teamwork is always enjoyable. In games this is especially easy to achieve. In MMORPGs, this is essential to have fun at higher levels. In a FPS/RTS game like Natural Selection, everything is about teamwork. Pwnage aim helps, but if that is lacking, a team that works together can more than offset the lack of one godly shooter.
The satisfaction of teamwork is what drives me to play online games. Back in WoW, that was what kept pulling back until I feared I would never be able to get out. Now it's Natural Selection, as it has always been for 4 years. Or is it 5 now? All I know is that I started at v1.04, when games lasted for hours and I can quit halfway through for a meal, then come back for the same round.
NS is different from the other more famous Half-Life mods in that the teamwork is more organized in public servers. In Team Fortress, it is also about teamwork but no one is needed to organize the teams' efforts. In CS, teamwork is usually found in servers with extra mods, or in competitive play.
Now I'm back to Heroes of Might and Magic V. At the moment I'm still at the last round of the Fortress Campaign. Even though I don't have the save files from my previous try, cheat codes are easy to find. I just kept using @Win() until I reach the round I don't remember playing, then I gave my Wulfstan 30,000 exp and went on with the game.
The Fortress race seems so strong, so solid, yet in actual place the units seem so weak. Somehow the formidable-looking bear riders die like flies every time they get hit. And the Spearwielder does practically negligible damage. The only good it does is the crippling wound it occasionally does. At least the salamander is strong. In fact, it's stronger than it looks. Hell, even the Thane looks stronger than it, but the Thane has crap for HP.
I'm starting to use the Berserker's special ability less often. It is always so tempting to use it every turn. You know, it's like letting loose a mad dog into a human crowd. Feels fantastic, but after its turn, it'd be the enemies' turn to feel fantastic. But still, it's so weak! All the HP/Defense of all the Fortress units seem so low, other than the Magma Lizard or whatever it's called. Sometimes it's very frustrating to see my beloved bear riders reduced drastically in numbers with every blow it gets, which it gets a lot because I always push it ahead of my other units.
But if I don't make full use of it's mobile range, I'd have to depend on my range units to take care of the enemy range units. And this is bullshit because only the Runic Priests do decent damage. The Spearwielder is for slowing down melee units, not for damaging them. Or I can send in the Thane, but the results would be the same, just more expensive for me.
At least the Runes are useful, especially the Rune that doubles the unit's mobile range. Totally rocks in all those situations where your unit can almost reach the ranged unit but just can't get there in time.
Friday, 4 January 2008
Rant 086 / Girlfriends Are For Lozers Who Can't Download Pr0n!
Miracles of miracles! I can actually play Natural Selection in campus!! Well, only for a few hours a day, but as people start to waste bandwidth surfing their pointless websites during their free time I will not get to play again. In hall, at least. But there's no hurry! I have planned my schedule in such a way that I have every alternate Friday FREE!! Together with the fact that my first lesson of the week falls on Monday AFTERNOON, it is going to be a great semester... theoretically.
But as long as the ping doesn't hit 600, I can still play as the builder and camp in base lol.
But it is so hard to get the right electives!!! Right now I want to take 3 electives, but I can only confirm 1. I have successfully got 2, but Digital Lifestyles is really about the technical stuff of everyday electronic devices. Fuck that! I want something that's quite simple, like Cyber Security. But right now it's full. Patience is a virtue, in this case. I have up to 20th Jan to wait. Patience.
I have given up on Simcity Societies. It sucks balls. I have just removed it from my laptop. Even removing it was troublesome. It took just about forever to "retrieve necessary information", and made me worry that it had crashed. EA can go screw itself. Everything EA buys, it ruins. Heroes of Might and Magic, Command and Conquer, SimCity. Why doesn't EA get sued the hell out of it like Microsoft does? There is no justice in life, apparently.
So now I'm installing HOMMV with both expansions. New races, 1 in each expansion! Weeee!
My clock tells me I need to sleep. My mind tells me I need to sleep. The construction yard outside my window tells me I better sleep. But I can't sleep. I keep thinking about things. Many things. Things like what I can use as the topic for my next speech in Toastmasters. Things like how I'm going to handle Maths 2 this sem. Things like how EA should suck my balls. I have difficulty sleeping. And it seems my roommate is some sort of robot and doesn't sleep. He can mug all day, chat all evening, play all night and next morning he has lessons at 8.30am. I need pills.
I was reading this article on these 2 time capsules buried 60 years ago in New York, and are supposed to be opened in 5000 years time. Yes, they are to be opened in 6939! Holy cow! The metals used in each are supposed to withstand 5000 years of corrosion. In it are items from that time, microfilms containing a whole bunch of useless things and messages from lot's of people including Albert Einstein, Thomas Mann and R0bert Milikan.
Their messages are available in the article in Wikipedia, and they did write them expecting the readers to be living in the year 6939 CE. This feels to me like a outstandingly romantic idea. It is completely motivated by the heart, not the mind. There is no reason for the capsules' existence other than emotional reasons, like the expectations of great emotions when the people in the future finds it, or that the sponsors wanted to be remembered for as long as they can make the capsules last. There is no practical reason for spending money on this, for the people who built them.
This is a classic case of "I'm spending truckloads of money just because I feel like it."
Some people are just too rich. I should set up a charity fund for these people. A charity fund that benefits people who waste time blogging about how people are just too rich.
But as long as the ping doesn't hit 600, I can still play as the builder and camp in base lol.
But it is so hard to get the right electives!!! Right now I want to take 3 electives, but I can only confirm 1. I have successfully got 2, but Digital Lifestyles is really about the technical stuff of everyday electronic devices. Fuck that! I want something that's quite simple, like Cyber Security. But right now it's full. Patience is a virtue, in this case. I have up to 20th Jan to wait. Patience.
I have given up on Simcity Societies. It sucks balls. I have just removed it from my laptop. Even removing it was troublesome. It took just about forever to "retrieve necessary information", and made me worry that it had crashed. EA can go screw itself. Everything EA buys, it ruins. Heroes of Might and Magic, Command and Conquer, SimCity. Why doesn't EA get sued the hell out of it like Microsoft does? There is no justice in life, apparently.
So now I'm installing HOMMV with both expansions. New races, 1 in each expansion! Weeee!
My clock tells me I need to sleep. My mind tells me I need to sleep. The construction yard outside my window tells me I better sleep. But I can't sleep. I keep thinking about things. Many things. Things like what I can use as the topic for my next speech in Toastmasters. Things like how I'm going to handle Maths 2 this sem. Things like how EA should suck my balls. I have difficulty sleeping. And it seems my roommate is some sort of robot and doesn't sleep. He can mug all day, chat all evening, play all night and next morning he has lessons at 8.30am. I need pills.
I was reading this article on these 2 time capsules buried 60 years ago in New York, and are supposed to be opened in 5000 years time. Yes, they are to be opened in 6939! Holy cow! The metals used in each are supposed to withstand 5000 years of corrosion. In it are items from that time, microfilms containing a whole bunch of useless things and messages from lot's of people including Albert Einstein, Thomas Mann and R0bert Milikan.
Their messages are available in the article in Wikipedia, and they did write them expecting the readers to be living in the year 6939 CE. This feels to me like a outstandingly romantic idea. It is completely motivated by the heart, not the mind. There is no reason for the capsules' existence other than emotional reasons, like the expectations of great emotions when the people in the future finds it, or that the sponsors wanted to be remembered for as long as they can make the capsules last. There is no practical reason for spending money on this, for the people who built them.
This is a classic case of "I'm spending truckloads of money just because I feel like it."
Some people are just too rich. I should set up a charity fund for these people. A charity fund that benefits people who waste time blogging about how people are just too rich.
Tuesday, 1 January 2008
Rant 085 / Confucian
It's a brand new year. The year 2008 promises to be a full dozen months of despair, broken promises, unnecessary stress and leaky condoms! But fear not - with those leaky condoms, all your other problems will be nothing compared to your pregnant girlfriend forcing you into a shotgun marriage you were never meant for!
Indeed, 2008 is one of the best years in the century, together with 2018, 2028, ...2088, 2098, according to the ancient Chinese scholarly research. There is evidence that in each year that contains the digit 8, someone must prosper. This theory has not been proven wrong so far, and is accepted as a inexplicably real phenomenon by most sociologists.
There are theories that suggest the digit 8 is linked to the Underworld, the realm of the Devil. As the Devil is the most evil of all beings - 80% in fact, it is the main source of all money. As the saying goes," Evil is the root of all money." Whether you square root or cube root money, you will always get 4/5 of the Devil.
Just like the chief export of Chuck Norris is Pain, the chief export of the Devil is Moolah. And if you're not evil, it probably means you have no Moolah. Without the cash for an abortion, despair, broken promises, unnecessary stress will all be integrated into the principal part of your life.
Of course, as an expert in shitty lives, I always have a solution for you:
I have no idea where the idea for the entire essay above came from. It just came into my mind as I typed the title.
I'm playing Neverwinter Nights 2 again, but this time as a Favoured Soul, going for Stormlord. I find the game somewhat boring. Maybe it's because I haven't forgotten enough. Damn, I need a nicer game. SimCity Societies is quite boring too, coz it's really too easy, at least in the first 10mins I've played so far.
Maybe I should install Heroes V with both expansion, and play the campaigns. I think I was at dwarven campaign or something when I stopped. Oh well, I hope Starcraft 2 comes out in June, even though it seems highly unlikely.
Only game that is interesting is Natural Selection. Good ol' NS. Always there when all else fails. And now I get to pwn China nubs. Yay! They suck at comming, but after months of practice while I was away, their standards are improving. Most of them are actually aware that the Aliens need the 2nd hive in the first 6mins to win. What a huge difference from the retards I was embarrassed to play with half a year back.
And somehow many European players are playing in the US servers now. Some Singaporeans too, but I'm only aware of a few. These invaders seem to like lame maps like siege better than normal maps. Just like Aussies. At least it adds a little variety to the normal routine.
Wednesday, 26 December 2007
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
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
Monday, 24 December 2007
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.
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.
Thursday, 29 November 2007
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.
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.
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