Everything is getting more expensive. Even when they don't say it, we can tell. Either the prices rise or the portions get smaller.
Eventually we're going to be like Europe - eating out will become a luxury.
But fortunately for me, macaroni in chicken stock soup tastes good. How expensive can macaroni (and other similar pasta) get?
And of course there are alternative soups, but chicken stock+salt+pepper is the easiest combination ever.
I just realized I've totally forgotten that Heroes of Might and Magic V: Tribes of the East allows players to upgrade units into 2 different versions.
However, most of them are pretty useless. Or maybe I just suck at judging their strategic value.
For example, the Magnetic Golem absorbs destructive magic. The thing is, how often do units get hit by destructive magic as compared to the frequency at which they get hit by enemy units?
The latter would be better handled by the original Steel Golem because it's way tougher and has 75% magic resist already.
On the other hand, Storm Titans are epic! The original Titans could cast "Call Lightning" to hit units,which is only useful against units that resist ranged attacks or something, but Storm Titans can cause units in a 3X3 area to suffer damage every turn and reduce their ranged attack. It's true that they could spend a turn to move away but the AI never does that.
Anyway I thought about this because I was playing a bit of HoMM V: ToE the other day while I was at home "watching" the painters work on my room. It's a great time-killer.
And I love the Acadaemy.
As for the maps, I didn't like how there were so few co-op ones. I didn't care if my ally/allies was/were AI(s), I just want the possibility that someone might help me block attackers closing in on my home base when my main hero is away.
So a little googling led me to the idea of using the Map Editor. Despite the fact that you can only make FFA (Free For All) maps in the Random Map Generator, you can save them and edit the team arrangements in the Map Editor.
It's under Map Properties. The only catch is that if you want a useful ally, his castle has to be close to yours. Therefore you have to know the positions of each player when you set the teams. It's not just simply making Player 1 team up with Player 2. I tried that. I ended up starting underground while my buddy was above.
So the stationery store directly across the street is closing. It's been there since before I moved here a long time ago.
Its business can't be bad when there are so many schools and new families here, so it came as a shock when I learnt that they had sold the unit already.
Apparently, they sold it for more than S$1.6 million! If it was owned by a single person, sure, he/she would be able to retire immediately.
But actually, it's co-owned by 3-4 siblings, so each would get roughly 300-500k depending on their arrangements (would make sense that the unmarried one(s) get more). It's still a lot of money though.
Also, that number is unconfirmed.
It's kind of sad. Though I've rarely bought anything from it since I left primary school, it's one of the last few stores that's been around since that time. And did I mention I walked passed it every weekday for the whole 6 years of my primary school life?
Everything ends. Not just the good ones.
This is not the first one that's gone (or about to be) that I probably won't forget. The other was the dental clinic that's closed down for years. That was where I got some of my baby teeth removed. The strange thing is that no one ever bought that unit. Even today, it's still there with the "Closed" sign on the wooden door.
And the private clinics in my neighbourhood are changing too. The two that I used to visit, one's already gone while the other's doctor is getting old and in fact, can already retire. Her kids have already graduated or are graduating from uni and poly and what she's currently making isn't necessary at this point.
But a lot of the older residents still go to her.
And her pharmacist isn't young anymore either, most likely she's in her mid-40s. I wonder what's going to happen to her when the doctor retires. Even with her qualifications and experience, I don't think it will be easy for her to find a new job in her late forties or early fifties.
Furthermore, I don't think a pharmacist in a private clinic makes enough to allow early retirement. But again, I wouldn't know. It's just a guess.
Tuesday, 19 April 2011
Sunday, 17 April 2011
Rant 764 / 糖爸爸
This sucks.
Something is wrong. I don't think the painters did anything wrong but the paint keeps bubbling or swelling or whatever it's called.
They did the rest of the flat before working on my room, and the paint on some of the walls swelled overnight. For my room, it happened within hours even before it was completely dry!
This is not just bad; this is terrible!
Why is this happening so quickly in my room?
Why is this happening at all?
This is the second time it's been repainted within the last 6 months and most of the walls also bubbled the last time. Eventually they cracked, peeled and left huge scars everywhere.
At this rate, history is about to repeat itself.
According to what I've read after some googling, there are lots of factors that can cause this, like humidity or the previous layer of paint.
Except, my problem is inconsistent. Some walls have been perfectly fine, no peels or anything. Others peeled both times.
Those walls that are hidden behind shelves don't peel, so it may be caused by environmental factors.
But which one(s)?
The Humble Bundle is available again... or still available, I don't know. The first time I saw it was on Steam where it was a collection of a lot of indie games (ie developed by small companies) for a very low price.
Now it's still the same concept but with fewer games and an even lower price.
How low?
Any price from 1 cent (aka a penny) to anything. Right now the highest is US$2000.2, with "notch" paying $2000, "garrynewman" paying $2000.01 and "Now what, Garry?" paying the top amount as mentioned previously.
If those names are really who I think they are, it makes a lot of sense.
Notch is the guy who's making Minecraft and Garry Newman is the guy behind Garry's Mod, a very well-known HL2 mod.
The highest contributor is just some unknown jackass.
I wonder if Unknown Worlds Entertainment (another indie game company currently working on Natural Selection 2) spent any money on it.
As for the games, there are 3 real ones, 1 that's still in beta (probably) and another that likely won't ever be finished but I wouldn't know.
Yea, get what I mean?
The two Shadowgrounds games look like an Alien-Swarm-clone, or maybe Alien Swarm was a Shadowgrounds-clone. Either way, they look interesting for the price, which is determined by you. Just don't be an ass and donate a single cent. The processing of the fee and the resources required to upload the game to your PC would cost more than that.
So after playing a lot of games against Easy AI on League of Legends the other day to farm points and have fun (okay yes it's fun to win) I decided to stop pwning my ego and went on to Intermediate AIs.
Immediately there was a marked difference in their behaviour. The first thing I noticed was that unlike Easy AI, they almost never get baited into my tower's range. It's as if there's an invisible line that I could almost see after baiting them often enough, a tactic I frequently used as Kayle - bait them into tower's range and slow them.
Doesn't work on Intermediate AI.
More challenging now but I haven't lost any games so far. But now I'm no longer having great ratios despite having over 30 assists in one game (iirc I had 31 and another guy had 33).
In addition, I'm beginning to feel the limits of Kayle's abilities. Now I'm quite ready to move on to Taric but I don't have the IPs to buy him.
I finally lost a match against bots. Intermediate bots. Oh well.
Apparently Asian men do the least household chores. I'm relieved I'm not unique in this aspect. Furthermore, the Korean males seem to be the champs for multiple categories, which makes sense given their 1337 skillz in online games.
"My life for Aiur" indeed.
I rarely do household chores. Mostly what I do involves cleaning my plates after meals and cooking utensils if I cook. Hence I hate non-stick utensils (I prefer to clean them immediately after cooking when the "momentum" is still there), yet I find that I can't cook without them ever since I tried to fry eggs and hashbrowns in a traditional steel pan with minimal oil. Anyone with experience with those ancient tools would understand how badly things turned out that day.
Fortunately I could use a metal scrub on it which we have because my mum prefers to use her traditional black Chinese work when she cooks.
Metal scrubs save lives.
Anyway I clean my bathroom. In fact, I could tell the part-time housekeeper to stop cleaning my bathroom altogether but a bathroom can never be too clean. My ideal bathroom is one that's so well-maintained one could eat off the floor, something I occasionally encounter in some hotels.
Nowadays I can't maintain my bathroom to that degree because I dislike having a wet floor (unlike one of my aunts' home, the floor is tiled instead of carpeted). This is kind of unavoidable if I want a clean floor because in order to clean anything there, I spray water and scrub/sweep it with my feet. This means I can maintain a dry yet clean floor by sweeping the water to the drain as much as possible every time I clean the floor, but that's just too much trouble for something I do multiple times a day.
Speaking of carpeted bathroom floors, that's probably one of the most unnecessarily luxurious things I've ever heard of. That's so impractical, I can't even begin to imagine the amount of effort and money required to maintain it. You'd definitely need a full-time maid/housekeeper for that. But no, that aunt doesn't have one; she's a housewife.
I suspect my bro's actual future plans include selling this flat and moving to somewhere closer to his gf's parents.
I think that's a very impractical idea.
I admit this place has sentimental value - I grew up here - but this flat is extremely expensive for a reason!
We practically live in the centre of Singapore. We have direct buses to the Orchard Road right at our doorstep, a MRT station (with a mall soon) in 10-mins walking distance and plenty of schools and even NUS that take about 10-20 mins on a bus to reach.
Why move? Can a fresh (or a not-so-fresh) grad even afford a place in a location of this standard?
Yes it's true this building is getting old, but we can easily expect the Government to give us a 1-to-1 exchange with a nearby recently-built flat when they decide they need a new structure on this piece of land.
Moving to an inferior location simply so that they could be closer to his in-laws is a terrible reason to do so IMHO. No offence to anybody who actually did that, it's just how I feel about this line of reasoning.
Yet, is it a good idea for us to live together in the future?
If not, I cannot legally hold this flat alone and he cannot own/co-own two HDB (public housing) flats.
What do?
Must I get attached just so that I can stay?
This would be a fckin stupid reason to do it but is also, as far as I can tell, my best option.
I don't want such commitments so early in life (or ever in life unless my mentality changes in the future, which wouldn't be uncommon from what I've seen and heard), but how long before the time comes when he decides to move?
Maybe he'll change his mind once he graduates, gets a steady job and starts to look at his potential homes seriously. I don't believe the profit is worth the disadvantages involved in the long-term but I'm not him.
Hmm... I think I've talked about this before.
Some guy pwns his (now ex-)gf on air. XD
I didn't LOL like the DJs but it was a creative way to dump a gf (and for a very valid reason).
Something is wrong. I don't think the painters did anything wrong but the paint keeps bubbling or swelling or whatever it's called.
They did the rest of the flat before working on my room, and the paint on some of the walls swelled overnight. For my room, it happened within hours even before it was completely dry!
This is not just bad; this is terrible!
Why is this happening so quickly in my room?
Why is this happening at all?
This is the second time it's been repainted within the last 6 months and most of the walls also bubbled the last time. Eventually they cracked, peeled and left huge scars everywhere.
At this rate, history is about to repeat itself.
According to what I've read after some googling, there are lots of factors that can cause this, like humidity or the previous layer of paint.
Except, my problem is inconsistent. Some walls have been perfectly fine, no peels or anything. Others peeled both times.
Those walls that are hidden behind shelves don't peel, so it may be caused by environmental factors.
But which one(s)?
The Humble Bundle is available again... or still available, I don't know. The first time I saw it was on Steam where it was a collection of a lot of indie games (ie developed by small companies) for a very low price.
Now it's still the same concept but with fewer games and an even lower price.
How low?
Any price from 1 cent (aka a penny) to anything. Right now the highest is US$2000.2, with "notch" paying $2000, "garrynewman" paying $2000.01 and "Now what, Garry?" paying the top amount as mentioned previously.
If those names are really who I think they are, it makes a lot of sense.
Notch is the guy who's making Minecraft and Garry Newman is the guy behind Garry's Mod, a very well-known HL2 mod.
The highest contributor is just some unknown jackass.
I wonder if Unknown Worlds Entertainment (another indie game company currently working on Natural Selection 2) spent any money on it.
As for the games, there are 3 real ones, 1 that's still in beta (probably) and another that likely won't ever be finished but I wouldn't know.
Splot is still under development and will be added to your bundle once it is completed. Jack Claw is a prototype of a game Frozenbyte was developing but canceled before completion.
Yea, get what I mean?
The two Shadowgrounds games look like an Alien-Swarm-clone, or maybe Alien Swarm was a Shadowgrounds-clone. Either way, they look interesting for the price, which is determined by you. Just don't be an ass and donate a single cent. The processing of the fee and the resources required to upload the game to your PC would cost more than that.
So after playing a lot of games against Easy AI on League of Legends the other day to farm points and have fun (okay yes it's fun to win) I decided to stop pwning my ego and went on to Intermediate AIs.
Immediately there was a marked difference in their behaviour. The first thing I noticed was that unlike Easy AI, they almost never get baited into my tower's range. It's as if there's an invisible line that I could almost see after baiting them often enough, a tactic I frequently used as Kayle - bait them into tower's range and slow them.
Doesn't work on Intermediate AI.
More challenging now but I haven't lost any games so far. But now I'm no longer having great ratios despite having over 30 assists in one game (iirc I had 31 and another guy had 33).
In addition, I'm beginning to feel the limits of Kayle's abilities. Now I'm quite ready to move on to Taric but I don't have the IPs to buy him.
I finally lost a match against bots. Intermediate bots. Oh well.
Apparently Asian men do the least household chores. I'm relieved I'm not unique in this aspect. Furthermore, the Korean males seem to be the champs for multiple categories, which makes sense given their 1337 skillz in online games.
"My life for Aiur" indeed.
I rarely do household chores. Mostly what I do involves cleaning my plates after meals and cooking utensils if I cook. Hence I hate non-stick utensils (I prefer to clean them immediately after cooking when the "momentum" is still there), yet I find that I can't cook without them ever since I tried to fry eggs and hashbrowns in a traditional steel pan with minimal oil. Anyone with experience with those ancient tools would understand how badly things turned out that day.
Fortunately I could use a metal scrub on it which we have because my mum prefers to use her traditional black Chinese work when she cooks.
Metal scrubs save lives.
Anyway I clean my bathroom. In fact, I could tell the part-time housekeeper to stop cleaning my bathroom altogether but a bathroom can never be too clean. My ideal bathroom is one that's so well-maintained one could eat off the floor, something I occasionally encounter in some hotels.
Nowadays I can't maintain my bathroom to that degree because I dislike having a wet floor (unlike one of my aunts' home, the floor is tiled instead of carpeted). This is kind of unavoidable if I want a clean floor because in order to clean anything there, I spray water and scrub/sweep it with my feet. This means I can maintain a dry yet clean floor by sweeping the water to the drain as much as possible every time I clean the floor, but that's just too much trouble for something I do multiple times a day.
Speaking of carpeted bathroom floors, that's probably one of the most unnecessarily luxurious things I've ever heard of. That's so impractical, I can't even begin to imagine the amount of effort and money required to maintain it. You'd definitely need a full-time maid/housekeeper for that. But no, that aunt doesn't have one; she's a housewife.
I suspect my bro's actual future plans include selling this flat and moving to somewhere closer to his gf's parents.
I think that's a very impractical idea.
I admit this place has sentimental value - I grew up here - but this flat is extremely expensive for a reason!
We practically live in the centre of Singapore. We have direct buses to the Orchard Road right at our doorstep, a MRT station (with a mall soon) in 10-mins walking distance and plenty of schools and even NUS that take about 10-20 mins on a bus to reach.
Why move? Can a fresh (or a not-so-fresh) grad even afford a place in a location of this standard?
Yes it's true this building is getting old, but we can easily expect the Government to give us a 1-to-1 exchange with a nearby recently-built flat when they decide they need a new structure on this piece of land.
Moving to an inferior location simply so that they could be closer to his in-laws is a terrible reason to do so IMHO. No offence to anybody who actually did that, it's just how I feel about this line of reasoning.
Yet, is it a good idea for us to live together in the future?
If not, I cannot legally hold this flat alone and he cannot own/co-own two HDB (public housing) flats.
What do?
Must I get attached just so that I can stay?
This would be a fckin stupid reason to do it but is also, as far as I can tell, my best option.
I don't want such commitments so early in life (or ever in life unless my mentality changes in the future, which wouldn't be uncommon from what I've seen and heard), but how long before the time comes when he decides to move?
Maybe he'll change his mind once he graduates, gets a steady job and starts to look at his potential homes seriously. I don't believe the profit is worth the disadvantages involved in the long-term but I'm not him.
Hmm... I think I've talked about this before.
Some guy pwns his (now ex-)gf on air. XD
I didn't LOL like the DJs but it was a creative way to dump a gf (and for a very valid reason).
Thursday, 14 April 2011
Rant 763 / Keel Damn Awl!
Very strong feet and hands.
So in the last few days I've found fan-made Oblivion videos floating about on the Internet. Those aren't just any boring gameplay videos; those are porn videos made using a modded version of Oblivion.
For a very long time, I've been aware of the existence of mods that enhance the appearance of all the characters, change their clothes into birthday suits (the developers did not add in nudity, so mod creators have to make their own naked bodies) and finally, create sex animations, but I didn't expect people to start sharing videos of them.
The animations aren't perfect, especially when the voluptuous figures of the characters didn't seem to be taken into account when making them.
And gross, when the animators use Argonians.
Yes, I'm serious about Argonian porn. Scaly reptilian skin, really fcked up face... and boobs.... huge scaly ones.
There's Khajiit porn too but that's much more normal on the Internet (*cough* furries *cough*).
And did I mention the facial expressions never change? It's almost like watching someone having sex with a doll. Wait a min, wouldn't that be masturbation? Wouldn't that mean it's like watching a virtual dude masturbate, technically speaking?
This just gets worse and worse, doesn't it?
I hate you, Internet.
Despite all the clamour for a change in government in Singapore, I find that we don't actually need it. Fact is, we're doing well, relatively speaking. Prices around the world are rising, from what I can tell, and it's not just us. Can't blame the PAP for stagnant pay and rising costs because it seems to be doing a good job controlling prices already.
In the first quarter, Singapore's gross domestic product grew 23.5 percent quarter-on-quarter on an seasonally-adjusted annualized basis, blowing past even the most bullish forecast in a Reuters poll.
Singapore's central bank allowed an immediate rise in the value of its currency dollar to help tackle inflation, which it said would likely stay elevated.
The Singapore dollar -- the world's 12th most actively traded currency -- rose to an all-time high of S$1.2452 per U.S. dollar before slipping back closer to S$1.25.
The upbeat Singapore growth news helped temper losses in Asian stocks. Japan's Nikkei .N225 fell 0.6 percent, having earlier lost as much as 0.9 percent, while stocks elsewhere in Asia .MIAPJ0000PUS shed 0.3 percent.
I still think we need more non-PAP MPs but the PAP should stay in power. Most people don't actually want them gone; they just want the MPs to stop giving themselves raises and GDP-pegged bonuses when the people aren't getting any.
Unless you want to take into account my $700. Oh right, that's big. Who cares about their 8-month bonuses anyway, right?
As for ourselves, this is a great time to buy RMB because for some reason, the bank buys USD with our SGD before using the USD to buy RMB. I don't know why.
After some googling, I learnt that it is actually not possible for us to buy RMB in Singapore.
As the RMB is not a free currency that has offshore market, it is virtually not possible to buy RMB outside China.
Wednesday, 13 April 2011
Rant 762 / Cheap Tapioca Chips
How To Get A Guy To Notice You While You're Having Sex With Him
Some of the best relationship tips you will ever hear. Can't miss this.
Discovered Die2Nite yesterday. Interesting game.
Anyone who is even the slightest bit interested in Urban Dead should like Die2Nite. Basically it's a much, much better version of the game.
Everyone likes zombie games. In this particular one, players take the roles of survivors staying in desert towns in a post-apocalyptic zombie-infested world. I've only been in this game overnight, so I've barely scratched the surface of the game.
Initially I got the impression that I'd be getting limited Action Points per day kinda like in Urban Dead (that game recharges APs on a per hour basis), but apparently I can find food outside of town that can immediately refill my AP. Furthermore, I can just stand around at the same spot using the Search action and I will automatically do a search every 2 hours. This does not consume APs.
Things I find can also be useful materials like logs which can be refined into planks that are used to build structures. While there is a large variety of buildings to build, the most important ones are the defensive structures.
Defensive structures are the point of the game because every night, the town is attacked by a growing horde of AI zombies. Their numbers will also be further supplemented by any dead survivors whose bodies were not destroyed or removed from the town. This attack will come at 12 midnight, every night. To make this clear, a timer is always shown on the upper right corner of the page telling us how long we have before the zombies attack.
In addition to these structures, there are also things like Workshop, which reduces the costs of construction. In fact, the Workshop is apparently one of the best things a town should build first.
In this game, the cure for zombification is water. Water, however, is rare in the desert. Players can get a single ration of water per day, more if a Water Pump is built. Water is not merely a weapon, it's also necessary to make cement and rehydrate yourself during your desert scavenging trips. One tip I've seen is to use it as the final AP boost (it also counts as food) at the end of the day, and to avoid using it before since it's so precious.
APs are not to be wasted. They're necessary for movement across the desert, for refining materials and for building stuff. With a mere 6 APs as the maximum, it's always necessary to plan your moves before clicking even with food in your possession. However as a newbie, I am still learning about the mechanics of the game in order to plan properly.
So far it appears to be a rather interesting game but the amount it costs to get those "Heroic" features is just too much for such a game. It's probably tempting if one gets serious about it but for me, no thanks.
Whoever recently linked my blog to Facebook probably had a lot of friends. I've just hit over 200 views per day for Monday (Sunday for the Americans), which usually sees a spike in traffic to this blog. Tuesday was over 150, which is possibly the new norm now.
Over 200 very bored people are reading this every Sunday/Monday. It's a strange thought. Never expected this. It's not like I actually consciously try to make this blog more popular. In fact, I've found better reads in Wikipedia. Then again, I like war stories.
Or maybe, just maybe, there's this one very lonely cyber-stalker pressing F5 200 times here on a Sunday (of all days, making him all the lonelier).
Nah, I can see the nationalities of the majority of the visitors coming here. Normally most are American, and I've noticed a new spike in German visitors this time.
Strange because I'd expected an increase in Singaporean visitors due to my anti-PAP rants. Apparently nobody cares. Or perhaps there are more Singaporean expats over at Germany than I thought. I wouldn't know. I don't live there.
The best guesses I can make is that either it's related to Vidya 2 (that's a German website) or that guy who said he linked my blog to FB has quite a few German friends/fans/stalkers.
Either way, I don't think they'll stay long, especially when I get distracted for a long period of time (for new games and etc) and stop putting new videos and music here for a while. It happens.
Actually the Grow and Share money is a good idea once you stop seeing it as a one-off deal and take it as something one should save up and spend over the year to supplement your income. I probably discussed this before so I won't go into detail.
Personally I'm getting S$700 this year, no income tax rebate because I'm not paying income tax. That, in turn, is because I'm working only for food and accommodation. In some places, they'd call me a slave. Technically, they wouldn't be wrong.
Unless the fact that I get free-flow allowance limited only by my mum/boss's net income is taken into account.
There is absolutely no need for her to limit my allowance/salary because I simply don't spend, other than on transport and food. The best thing is probably the fact that the cheap mobile phone plan I'm using is so old, nobody can sign up for it since years ago.
I'm aware that this isn't normal anywhere. Most people seem to be fixated with this concept of "my money" and I'm guessing the root of this is that they've never had the experience of having only "our money". In fact I believe the concept of sharing a pool of cash among a whole family might seem quite foreign to most.
Except some wealthy people I know, whose parents simply hand them a wad of bills every time they need money.
One could say I'm like that, except we just keep this wad somewhere at home and take a few notes whenever we need some. Generally, I take less than what she recommends; I've lost too many wallets when I was small.
Y'know, I think I might just make an internet store for winter wear, but only after I can handle what I have now. Just a backup idea.
Completed the Republic campaign for Caesar 4! Wasn't too hard after spamming Prefects' Offices(?) everywhere to prevent fires.
Took over 3 years to complete though. Ingame years.
Now to the Empire campaign!
Magicka: Vietnam is out. This is probably one of the most hilarious ideas in modern games today. Anyone who has played Bad Company 2: Vietnam will understand the humour better.
Magical Napalm Strike FTW!!!!
Ugh. The painters are coming tomorrow to repaint my home. We had a paint job for it like half a year ago but they did a really bad job and the paint peeled like the skin on the hands of a newbie dishwasher who doesn't wear gloves (yes I'm describing myself yes).
My home looks terrible now, so my mum decided to hire someone else to do it this time.
I think it has to do with the fact that they didn't scrape the old paint off before repainting the walls.
Anyway they're going to work till Saturday. Lots of stuff are going to be covered and moved around. At least my bro can stay at his gf's place, though he really dislikes that.
The final campaign of Caesar 4 is hard even on Normal difficulty! I'm only playing the first round on the economy map and I can barely handle all the requests from Rome. Frickin Caesar keeps demanding the same stuff, like 50 gold within a year, then 3 months later, demand another 50 bracelets (made from gold) within 18 months.
I just managed to deliver but then another request came for utensils.
Except I only had 1k denarii left.
I was completely reliant on exporting bracelets at that point, so the previous demands had really dragged down my economy. Utensils need a lot more work because I have to set up the homes, construct the iron mining camps and then the factories. All the while I have to watch the food supply to make sure the people don't starve.
All that was costing more money than I could scrape up, so I stopped there.
Next time, I'll have to act really fast. Can't just wait for things to stabilise (eg for the newcomers to settle into their new homes) before moving to the next step.
League of Legends is getting slightly more interesting now that I find that there are a lot of people playing against bots.
Bots are somewhat challenging but they don't hunt together. At the very most, they push together. Their ambushes are non-existent but they can still have a good chance of winning when we meet head-on, since they don't have slow responsive timing like us.
Good for training with new heroes and earns IPs, which are like money to be spent on passive bonuses.
Better than HoN before 2.0 was released. I have yet to test HoN 2.0 even though I already have it installed.
LoL is so casual. I don't really mind. I don't want to get too serious about it and start raging over something that's supposed to be fun.
Monday, 11 April 2011
Rant 761 / Innernet Style!
Saturday
Frogster has just emailed me 10 Closed Beta keys that are pretty pointless. Here's why:
Open Beta, which doesn't require any keys, begins on the 12th of this month. On the 28th, the game will be officially released, but not before a wipe just before the 26th.
Even though there is no wipe between Open and Closed Beta, it still feels rather pointless to play now, unless you want to try out the different characters, which is what I'm doing now.
The Bloodletter summoner is so easy. I tried this before the last wipe and it was basically Easy Mode. All I had to do was summon the army and then I just walked around to pick up loot dropped by dead monsters.
Currently I'm trying the Pyromancer summoner, which I had expected to be just as easy.
On the contrary, it's actually pretty hard despite having a really big and strong-looking lava golem-thing. That thing may be tough but unlike the Bloodletter's summons I can only have one of it. When a Bloodletter's minion dies, there are several others to hold the monsters back (I had an army of 6, 3 tanks and 3 ranged). That gave me plenty of time to summon a replacement.
A Pyromancer doesn't have this luxury. He is limited to one golem and multiple wisps, but wisps are extremely fragile and even have a time limit. To make it worse, the golem attacks very slowly and yet doesn't do a whole lot more damage than the Bloodletters' minions.
In short, it sucks as a summoner.
I'm probably going to try the Gadgeteer next.
Anyway here are the 10 keys in case anyone chances upon this blog and wants to try it immediately. Not sure why though, since I won't be publishing this till Sunday night/Monday morning and the 12th is the coming Tuesday. This has to be one of the most useless things ever posted on my blog, but hey, the space doesn't cost me money here.
Now that I've found a way to get stuff from stores that don't ship to Singapore, I can spend my PTZ in Lockerz.
Except my 14k PTZ aren't worth shit anymore. The best I can get is a t-shirt for over $5, which I can easily get from the 6dollarshirts.com though Lockerz can ship for free.
But spending all the PTZ to get a few dollars off isn't worth it.
So the smell in the local wet markets that I've always thought to be the smell of dried animal blood or something turned out to be... the smell of all the coffee beans from the coffee bean stall.
Been there this morning to buy some beans. There was no queue so I just went ahead and asked. The stall was run by an old couple and the guy was the one who talked to me. He was surprised by my question and asked me if I was a local. I said I was, but I've been drinking instant coffee all my life, which was almost completely true.
Both their reactions were the same, "哦, 那就很大不同了！"
The man then went on to tell me about 2 of the 16 types, saying one was South American and one was Indonesian, and both were Arabica. The South American beans were going at S$18/kg while the Indonesian ones were priced at S$14/kg.
I'm still pretty much a noob so it didn't matter if he didn't tell me about all 16 types and it's too much to ask for anyway.
Bought 300g of the latter. I learnt my lesson the first time. Can't buy too much. Even though I poured the grounded beans in a larger bag, tied the bag tightly and used a clip to seal it even more tightly before placing the bag in a cheap air-tight container originally used to store dried tea leaves by my mum, the flavour of my coffee changed this week.
I estimate there's still a quarter or a fifth of it left.
According to my blog I bought this on the 12th of March. It's now the 9th of April, not a full month yet. I guess I should stick with 300g or buy again every 3 weeks, whichever is earlier.
This stall is even better than the last because they sealed the bag with one of those machines that melts the plastic in a line.
The strange thing is that this is more expensive than the other store I bought the first bag from. That store was selling the 100% Arabica at $12/kg while this one is $14. Why would a stall that specialise in coffee sell it at a higher price than a small grocery store?
Unless there's something better about these beans? Maybe the guy at the first store lied to me and those beans I bought actually also contained filler.
Nevertheless this is still better than instant coffee.
Currently experimenting with sealing the supposedly sealed bag in a small plastic bag inside a ziplock bag, but I can smell it even though the bag is inside my cupboard!
What this shows me is that the airtight container is seriously airtight, even tighter than a ziplock bag.
Sunday
Decided to open the new bag of coffee to make today's cup of coffee. The aroma that was released from the opening made me realize I had forgotten the smell of freshly ground Arabica, and made the old bag of coffee grounds smell dull.
The coffee was great, much better than yesterday's cup.
This is making me consider the possibility of buying a new bag every fortnight instead of 3 weeks.
Showed my boss the pic of a jacket that was recommended (in a way) by some guy in an online forum. Since no one had any complaints in his thread, I wondered why that guy liked it even though it was worth over S$220 during a sale when we're selling better ones at below S$200 normal price.
For various reasons, I cannot show the image nor state the brand and store.
Anyway it's branded stuff, bought overseas, which could explain why that guy was so happy with such jacket at such a price.
The first thing I noticed was that the pockets' opening were not placed at a comfortable position. Upon further digging, I realized many of the jackets of that brand were designed just like that.
How does a good brand sell such a poor design and still maintain its reputation?
Is that the norm? Is the same happening with Nike and Reebok and all that?
Only people in the shoe industry would know.
Pockets like that have been proven to be unpopular among locals because another wholesaler has tried importing jackets of such designs as if the owner of that business really liked it.
It didn't end well.
I have no idea what is so appealing with pockets that look as if the wearer has to bend his wrists to slit his hands in. Personally I prefer diagonal pockets with slanted openings that fit the angle of a forearm with a bent elbow, and that's what we're selling.
As for that particular jacket I showed her, it was using fleece for both inside and out, which prevents it from being waterproof. Yet it's so expensive because double-sided fleece requires more work.
Now she thinks I'm interested in making that, even though the truth was that I was merely curious about why they could sell that jacket at such a high price while we are selling ours at much lower prices despite that pocket height. I wanted to know if she saw anything special in its design.
In the end, she did - the brand name. That's the first thing she pointed at when I asked, and the only positive thing she mentioned.
I have yet to find any jacket design I really want, probably because I don't have strong preferences, and that in turn is because I don't wear jackets at all. Even at Genting Highlands, the coldest place I've been to in recent years, my jacket was mainly a decorative item for my arm and a filler for my bag.
I believe I've just found the source of all the traffic from Facebook! Apparently a long time ago someone linked one of the images I got from 4chan on Facebook together with a link to that particular rant despite the fact that it had nothing to do with the image (that was the norm for me then).
Nothing big, this was only something I was curious about.
Watched the Silent Hill movie the other day. I think I can understand the bad ratings. They tried to incorporate too many Silent Hill elements into a single movie, then made it worse by having a plot that does not make a good film.
So it's scary, yes, and gross too. What I didn't like is how the plot was full of crap that pisses me off, like why there's that one nurse that moves even when the light isn't on and how the girl wouldn't just clear the way for the protagonist if all she wanted was for her to see the truth and help defeat the religious fanatics.
Installed Garena Messenger, League of Legends and Heroes of Newerth on this PC some days ago but never got around to playing them.
Played League of Legends tutorial yesterday and a real game today. It's... less harsh, which translates into "more casual" in gaming terms, compared to DotA and HoN. That game has plenty of life-saving abilities usable by all players regardless of their choice of heroes like Revive, which revives you instantly but has a 9-min cooldown, and a Heal spell that heals you and all allies close to you.
I'm not saying it's not fun, in fact it makes me feel more powerful just having 2 extra spells, but it feels somewhat like I'm playing on Easy Mode.
But it is more complex because the enemy players have their own 2 spells too. More factors = greater complexity.
I guess this means it's got a gentler learning curve, and not that the game is easier or simpler.
Anyway both LoL and HoN are free of charge on Garena in Southeast Asia. Probably one of the best things about gaming in Asia, I guess.
Frogster has just emailed me 10 Closed Beta keys that are pretty pointless. Here's why:
Open Beta, which doesn't require any keys, begins on the 12th of this month. On the 28th, the game will be officially released, but not before a wipe just before the 26th.
Even though there is no wipe between Open and Closed Beta, it still feels rather pointless to play now, unless you want to try out the different characters, which is what I'm doing now.
The Bloodletter summoner is so easy. I tried this before the last wipe and it was basically Easy Mode. All I had to do was summon the army and then I just walked around to pick up loot dropped by dead monsters.
Currently I'm trying the Pyromancer summoner, which I had expected to be just as easy.
On the contrary, it's actually pretty hard despite having a really big and strong-looking lava golem-thing. That thing may be tough but unlike the Bloodletter's summons I can only have one of it. When a Bloodletter's minion dies, there are several others to hold the monsters back (I had an army of 6, 3 tanks and 3 ranged). That gave me plenty of time to summon a replacement.
A Pyromancer doesn't have this luxury. He is limited to one golem and multiple wisps, but wisps are extremely fragile and even have a time limit. To make it worse, the golem attacks very slowly and yet doesn't do a whole lot more damage than the Bloodletters' minions.
In short, it sucks as a summoner.
I'm probably going to try the Gadgeteer next.
Anyway here are the 10 keys in case anyone chances upon this blog and wants to try it immediately. Not sure why though, since I won't be publishing this till Sunday night/Monday morning and the 12th is the coming Tuesday. This has to be one of the most useless things ever posted on my blog, but hey, the space doesn't cost me money here.
| CB3F_mNKRk9Wdbv |
| CB3F_XAJNEDADXn |
| CB3F_5SACLWUWDE |
| CB3F_xVVY6NS69f |
| CB3F_bCFDW3Ns6J |
| CB3F_un8bsJygkb |
| CB3F_zS1TCLwYfN |
| CB3F_3msaGPc57b |
| CB3F_9NJHHymbtN |
| CB3F_dxXzrv6sxz |
Now that I've found a way to get stuff from stores that don't ship to Singapore, I can spend my PTZ in Lockerz.
Except my 14k PTZ aren't worth shit anymore. The best I can get is a t-shirt for over $5, which I can easily get from the 6dollarshirts.com though Lockerz can ship for free.
But spending all the PTZ to get a few dollars off isn't worth it.
So the smell in the local wet markets that I've always thought to be the smell of dried animal blood or something turned out to be... the smell of all the coffee beans from the coffee bean stall.
Been there this morning to buy some beans. There was no queue so I just went ahead and asked. The stall was run by an old couple and the guy was the one who talked to me. He was surprised by my question and asked me if I was a local. I said I was, but I've been drinking instant coffee all my life, which was almost completely true.
Both their reactions were the same, "哦, 那就很大不同了！"
The man then went on to tell me about 2 of the 16 types, saying one was South American and one was Indonesian, and both were Arabica. The South American beans were going at S$18/kg while the Indonesian ones were priced at S$14/kg.
I'm still pretty much a noob so it didn't matter if he didn't tell me about all 16 types and it's too much to ask for anyway.
Bought 300g of the latter. I learnt my lesson the first time. Can't buy too much. Even though I poured the grounded beans in a larger bag, tied the bag tightly and used a clip to seal it even more tightly before placing the bag in a cheap air-tight container originally used to store dried tea leaves by my mum, the flavour of my coffee changed this week.
I estimate there's still a quarter or a fifth of it left.
According to my blog I bought this on the 12th of March. It's now the 9th of April, not a full month yet. I guess I should stick with 300g or buy again every 3 weeks, whichever is earlier.
This stall is even better than the last because they sealed the bag with one of those machines that melts the plastic in a line.
The strange thing is that this is more expensive than the other store I bought the first bag from. That store was selling the 100% Arabica at $12/kg while this one is $14. Why would a stall that specialise in coffee sell it at a higher price than a small grocery store?
Unless there's something better about these beans? Maybe the guy at the first store lied to me and those beans I bought actually also contained filler.
Nevertheless this is still better than instant coffee.
Currently experimenting with sealing the supposedly sealed bag in a small plastic bag inside a ziplock bag, but I can smell it even though the bag is inside my cupboard!
What this shows me is that the airtight container is seriously airtight, even tighter than a ziplock bag.
Sunday
Decided to open the new bag of coffee to make today's cup of coffee. The aroma that was released from the opening made me realize I had forgotten the smell of freshly ground Arabica, and made the old bag of coffee grounds smell dull.
The coffee was great, much better than yesterday's cup.
This is making me consider the possibility of buying a new bag every fortnight instead of 3 weeks.
Showed my boss the pic of a jacket that was recommended (in a way) by some guy in an online forum. Since no one had any complaints in his thread, I wondered why that guy liked it even though it was worth over S$220 during a sale when we're selling better ones at below S$200 normal price.
For various reasons, I cannot show the image nor state the brand and store.
Anyway it's branded stuff, bought overseas, which could explain why that guy was so happy with such jacket at such a price.
The first thing I noticed was that the pockets' opening were not placed at a comfortable position. Upon further digging, I realized many of the jackets of that brand were designed just like that.
How does a good brand sell such a poor design and still maintain its reputation?
Is that the norm? Is the same happening with Nike and Reebok and all that?
Only people in the shoe industry would know.
Pockets like that have been proven to be unpopular among locals because another wholesaler has tried importing jackets of such designs as if the owner of that business really liked it.
It didn't end well.
I have no idea what is so appealing with pockets that look as if the wearer has to bend his wrists to slit his hands in. Personally I prefer diagonal pockets with slanted openings that fit the angle of a forearm with a bent elbow, and that's what we're selling.
As for that particular jacket I showed her, it was using fleece for both inside and out, which prevents it from being waterproof. Yet it's so expensive because double-sided fleece requires more work.
Now she thinks I'm interested in making that, even though the truth was that I was merely curious about why they could sell that jacket at such a high price while we are selling ours at much lower prices despite that pocket height. I wanted to know if she saw anything special in its design.
In the end, she did - the brand name. That's the first thing she pointed at when I asked, and the only positive thing she mentioned.
I have yet to find any jacket design I really want, probably because I don't have strong preferences, and that in turn is because I don't wear jackets at all. Even at Genting Highlands, the coldest place I've been to in recent years, my jacket was mainly a decorative item for my arm and a filler for my bag.
I believe I've just found the source of all the traffic from Facebook! Apparently a long time ago someone linked one of the images I got from 4chan on Facebook together with a link to that particular rant despite the fact that it had nothing to do with the image (that was the norm for me then).
Nothing big, this was only something I was curious about.
Watched the Silent Hill movie the other day. I think I can understand the bad ratings. They tried to incorporate too many Silent Hill elements into a single movie, then made it worse by having a plot that does not make a good film.
So it's scary, yes, and gross too. What I didn't like is how the plot was full of crap that pisses me off, like why there's that one nurse that moves even when the light isn't on and how the girl wouldn't just clear the way for the protagonist if all she wanted was for her to see the truth and help defeat the religious fanatics.
Installed Garena Messenger, League of Legends and Heroes of Newerth on this PC some days ago but never got around to playing them.
Played League of Legends tutorial yesterday and a real game today. It's... less harsh, which translates into "more casual" in gaming terms, compared to DotA and HoN. That game has plenty of life-saving abilities usable by all players regardless of their choice of heroes like Revive, which revives you instantly but has a 9-min cooldown, and a Heal spell that heals you and all allies close to you.
I'm not saying it's not fun, in fact it makes me feel more powerful just having 2 extra spells, but it feels somewhat like I'm playing on Easy Mode.
But it is more complex because the enemy players have their own 2 spells too. More factors = greater complexity.
I guess this means it's got a gentler learning curve, and not that the game is easier or simpler.
Anyway both LoL and HoN are free of charge on Garena in Southeast Asia. Probably one of the best things about gaming in Asia, I guess.
Friday, 8 April 2011
Rant 760 / Outside My Comfort Zone
I thought it's quite funny how LKY's latest book, Hard Truths to Keep Singapore Going, got turned into a meme.
In case a translation is needed,
M: I'm treating you (for dinner) and you're still playing hard to get :3
m: Because you're not handsome, have no car and fat wallet :)
M: *sigh* Hard truths.
This is not exactly the most interesting thing that's happening and is in fact, old news, but I thought it was worth a mention.
Our Prime Minister finally admitted that not all wards are treated equally because those that vote for Opposition members get fewer public upgrades.
Every I wanted to say has already been said by the people quoted in the article.
Yea, it's nonsense. Does he even remember the National Pledge?
Nowhere does it mention anything about benefiting just the PAP and their supporters.
And what about those citizens in the Opposition wards who voted for the PAP?
Just discovered that there are ways to shop in overseas stores and get them to ship to Singapore no matter what. Pretty handy since most online shops are kinda biased towards Asia in terms of shipping policies.
First is comGateway. It's pretty expensive since, if I'm not wrong, it uses DHL, and DHL is known for its high prices (and reliability). In addition to the usual shipping, it also charges for Fuel Surcharges and Service Fees, and the Fuel Surcharge has been rising constantly (13% of shipping cost atm).
Not so inclined to use this service.
Another is VPost, which I believe is a service provided by Singpost. It appears cheaper and has multiple offers depending on what you're paying with. For example, I'm using a DBS Visa Platinum Debit, so I can get the Concierge service for free. VPost apparently can make orders on your behalf, and that's what they call "Concierge service".
Other promotions include half price for first shipments of new customers.
Overall, it's still expensive to ship stuff to Singapore. I tried to buy 9 t-shirts from 6dollarshirts.com and have it ship to the US address in Portland, Oregon given by VPost before letting VPost ship it to me.
The result? Each shirt would have cost me around S$15 net after shipping and the currency conversion charge. I can easily find t-shirts at this price in Singapore.
The only way I can have it cheaper would be to get only their US$2.95 "Mystery" shirts, which I'm guessing will cost me around $5-7 including all the other costs, but I'm pretty sure I wouldn't want to wear those outside. Obviously they're going to give me those with crappy designs that aren't selling.
Then again, I should spend more time on Mturk again. Amazon has stuff that is kind of hard to find here.
Can't play Mythos now because they're having an extended maintenance together with a wipe. This is a last-minute wipe in order to make drastic changes to their servers to improve performance. Unfortunately, there will be another wipe that has already been scheduled to happen just before the actual release on the 26th of April (28th for those who didn't buy their "early access" box), forcing anyone who plays the game before to lose everything again.
Not going to play anymore until the 28th. Or maybe not even then, since the exams will be close.
So I was looking at the fixed deposit rates the other day (aka "timed deposits") and I realized there were some banks in Singapore that had higher rates than Hong Leong Finance. The thing is that they were all foreign banks, eg the ICICI bank, which is currently offering a whopping 1.65% for 3-year deposits of S$100k and above.
No other banks are offering such a high rate for any amount below a million dollars.
Now I'm wondering if it's better to have my fixed deposits there instead.
What are the cons of fixed deposits in foreign banks?
So today was the first time I had to speak to someone from the factory in China. It was hard to understand what he was saying as he was speaking in Cantonese.
I know I've said I can speak Cantonese (and recently, even type a bit) but
1) my Cantonese vocabulary is severely limited due to a lack of use
2) he had got a significant accent because he was not a native speaker
What I'm trying to say is that I had a lot of difficulty understanding him.
First, I had to think a bit to recall what "QQ" means. I mean, c'mon, "QQ" can mean plenty of things in different parts of the world!
For example, in Taiwan, "QQ" means "al dente" which is for describing food. In contrast, people in China use this term to refer to instant messaging, as in MSN, ICQ, that sort of thing. The third meaning is used in the English-speaking online communities to mean whining, raging or crying because QQ looks like tearing eyes.
Second, I forgot what 传真meant. The last time I heard someone say this was probably back when my father was still alive. Since then everyone I know has simply used the English term "fax".
Because of that and his accent, I had to think for an embarrassingly long amount of time (which to him, was a really long silence that made him mistake it for a problem with the phone line) to comprehend what he was saying.
Life ain't easy. I guess that's what they mean by being "outside the comfort zone".
In case a translation is needed,
M: I'm treating you (for dinner) and you're still playing hard to get :3
m: Because you're not handsome, have no car and fat wallet :)
M: *sigh* Hard truths.
This is not exactly the most interesting thing that's happening and is in fact, old news, but I thought it was worth a mention.
Our Prime Minister finally admitted that not all wards are treated equally because those that vote for Opposition members get fewer public upgrades.
PM Lee's reply was, "The answer is that there has to be a distinction. Because the PAP wards supported the Government and the policies which delivered these good things."
He said that while basic goods such roads, transportation, housing, healthcare and defence apply to Singaporeans, the extras — which come down to the upgrading programmes — is a national programme.
"Between the people who voted and supported the programme and the government, and the people who didn't, I think if we went and put yours before the PAP constituencies, it would be an injustice,"
Every I wanted to say has already been said by the people quoted in the article.
"Upgrading is not delivered solely based on policies. It is driven by money from the reserves. The money comes from the people and not from PAP."
"I thought that as PM, he was there to represent ALL the people, without favour or preference. He is not the PM of just those he voted for, but for each and every Singapore citizen, including those who did not vote for him or his party... How can the PM say that if you vote for PAP, you get nice chocolate cake and coffee, but if you vote for other party you only get water and biscuit?"
Yea, it's nonsense. Does he even remember the National Pledge?
- We, the citizens of Singapore,
- pledge ourselves as one united people,
- regardless of race, language or religion,
- to build a democratic society
- based on justice and equality
- so as to achieve happiness, prosperity and
- progress for our nation.
Nowhere does it mention anything about benefiting just the PAP and their supporters.
And what about those citizens in the Opposition wards who voted for the PAP?
Just discovered that there are ways to shop in overseas stores and get them to ship to Singapore no matter what. Pretty handy since most online shops are kinda biased towards Asia in terms of shipping policies.
First is comGateway. It's pretty expensive since, if I'm not wrong, it uses DHL, and DHL is known for its high prices (and reliability). In addition to the usual shipping, it also charges for Fuel Surcharges and Service Fees, and the Fuel Surcharge has been rising constantly (13% of shipping cost atm).
Not so inclined to use this service.
Another is VPost, which I believe is a service provided by Singpost. It appears cheaper and has multiple offers depending on what you're paying with. For example, I'm using a DBS Visa Platinum Debit, so I can get the Concierge service for free. VPost apparently can make orders on your behalf, and that's what they call "Concierge service".
Other promotions include half price for first shipments of new customers.
Overall, it's still expensive to ship stuff to Singapore. I tried to buy 9 t-shirts from 6dollarshirts.com and have it ship to the US address in Portland, Oregon given by VPost before letting VPost ship it to me.
The result? Each shirt would have cost me around S$15 net after shipping and the currency conversion charge. I can easily find t-shirts at this price in Singapore.
The only way I can have it cheaper would be to get only their US$2.95 "Mystery" shirts, which I'm guessing will cost me around $5-7 including all the other costs, but I'm pretty sure I wouldn't want to wear those outside. Obviously they're going to give me those with crappy designs that aren't selling.
Then again, I should spend more time on Mturk again. Amazon has stuff that is kind of hard to find here.
Can't play Mythos now because they're having an extended maintenance together with a wipe. This is a last-minute wipe in order to make drastic changes to their servers to improve performance. Unfortunately, there will be another wipe that has already been scheduled to happen just before the actual release on the 26th of April (28th for those who didn't buy their "early access" box), forcing anyone who plays the game before to lose everything again.
Not going to play anymore until the 28th. Or maybe not even then, since the exams will be close.
So I was looking at the fixed deposit rates the other day (aka "timed deposits") and I realized there were some banks in Singapore that had higher rates than Hong Leong Finance. The thing is that they were all foreign banks, eg the ICICI bank, which is currently offering a whopping 1.65% for 3-year deposits of S$100k and above.
No other banks are offering such a high rate for any amount below a million dollars.
Now I'm wondering if it's better to have my fixed deposits there instead.
What are the cons of fixed deposits in foreign banks?
So today was the first time I had to speak to someone from the factory in China. It was hard to understand what he was saying as he was speaking in Cantonese.
I know I've said I can speak Cantonese (and recently, even type a bit) but
1) my Cantonese vocabulary is severely limited due to a lack of use
2) he had got a significant accent because he was not a native speaker
What I'm trying to say is that I had a lot of difficulty understanding him.
First, I had to think a bit to recall what "QQ" means. I mean, c'mon, "QQ" can mean plenty of things in different parts of the world!
For example, in Taiwan, "QQ" means "al dente" which is for describing food. In contrast, people in China use this term to refer to instant messaging, as in MSN, ICQ, that sort of thing. The third meaning is used in the English-speaking online communities to mean whining, raging or crying because QQ looks like tearing eyes.
Second, I forgot what 传真meant. The last time I heard someone say this was probably back when my father was still alive. Since then everyone I know has simply used the English term "fax".
Because of that and his accent, I had to think for an embarrassingly long amount of time (which to him, was a really long silence that made him mistake it for a problem with the phone line) to comprehend what he was saying.
Life ain't easy. I guess that's what they mean by being "outside the comfort zone".
Wednesday, 6 April 2011
Rant 759 / Restrictive And Non-Restrictive Clauses
So I passed the stall that sells coffee beans the other day, the one at my neighbourhood's wet market. There were about 16 kinds available, 4 times as many as the one I bought from. I've only barely used half the bag I bought from the other store, hence I didn't bother to check out what they had for sale.
But I did buy a reusable filter. Not that hard to wash especially when it only had to be big enough to contain the grounds in a single mug. The filter came in the form of a rectangular bag, so I had to cut it into two squarish ones, which is great since one can serve as a spare.
How could they do it?!? How could they write off Gideon after season 2 of Criminal Minds?!? The entire show practically revolves around him!
Oh well, it's not the first time I've seen such a thing. Remember the original CSI? They wrote off Grissom too.
So apparently, Gideon was written off because of artistic differences. He didn't like the violence in the series, which explains why it was so mild in the first season but got a little more gross in the second before he left completely.
On a slightly unrelated note, Elle was not written off because she sucked at acting! Well, I thought she was terrible, especially with her Jay-Chou-like wooden expression throughout her time in the first season. Or maybe that was the actual reason and the official "she got sick of living in that area" was just an excuse.
So I just got informed that I'm going to have this thing called "Ops Manning" in one of the months this year.
Since I'm not sure whether this is supposed to be classified, I'll keep the details to the minimum.
From online discussions I've found out that this is actually not a big deal. It just means for the period of time it's supposed to last, I'm going to need to be ready for someone or something telling me to report to my camp.
There are two ways I can be informed:
- by phone/SMS
- by TV/theater/radio
If it's the latter, there will be codes displayed on the screen of the TV for example. If it's the former, I'll either get a phone call or SMS telling me to get to the camp.
I've never actually been for anything like this, which means I have no idea what code I'm supposed to look out for. Fortunately, they know, so sometime before it happens I will get a letter summoning me to a briefing. I hope I never get it, because it would mean they aren't planning to do anything.
Yes there's the possibility that nothing will happen during the period of time.
On the other hand, it could get as bad as a field exercise if the officers in charge decide to be more hardworking.
(I can't believe the Firefox dictionary doesn't have "hardworking".)
According to other more experienced Singaporeans, it takes a lot of logistics to organize a field exercise, therefore it's usually avoided. But it's still possible.
In the most probable scenario, I'll only need to report to them in FBO (Full Battle Order, ie uniform, fieldpack and etc) and then I'll be allowed to go back to my life.
However, within the given period of time, they can call me as many times as they want, and usually only during the weekends so as to minimise disruption to our work life.
It sucks, and it sucks even more when I recall that over a quarter of the people on this island aren't citizens.
After watching some gameplay of Black Prophecy, I thought if humans ever have those humongous space ships, we won't have our defensive battles so close to them.
I mean, those things are expensive. Imagine how many man-years it requires to make just one of those space ships. The construction of an entire modern-day metropolis will be child's play compared to that.
Therefore, defensive measures will be, at the very least, similar to those that defend our planet today. Nothing unauthorised will be within several AUs of the ship ever. In fact, when there is one, it will be too late.
If a modern aircraft carrier is like a small city, then one of those space ships would be like a small planet. Hence anything crashing into the ship would have the same effect as the same thing happening on a planet, except there are people everywhere in the ship.
Repairs for that will probably take thousands of mechanics years to repair and will require a drydock (or whatever it's space counterpart is called) that's even larger than the ship itself.
The resources required will mean that humans have already colonized multiple planets and have the manpower to create skyscrapers in mere days, because skyscrapers will be like toothpicks compared to the ships and the drydocks.
Anyway I'm probably going to abandon Mythos and try Black Prophecy.
...
Oh damn I can't play the game from Asia.
This was the first time I'm mentioning that I'm a wholesaler IRL. Usually I dress like a jobless bum to avoid questions like that but during today's class, they decided to discuss our occupations.
I'm pretty serious when I say I have a terrible fashion sense. The other day after meeting the buyer at one of the stores with my boss, the buyer told her that I appear to be the thrifty sort because of my faded t-shirt. I was just learning from my boss who also doesn't exactly dress up either. =P
Anyway during the class we had like 30mins of extra time at the end and nobody had any questions since we had recently just handed in one assignment and had plenty of time before we worry about the next one. So one thing led to another, and they began to talk about how most people taking this Translation course were teachers.
Among the 8 who attended today's class, 3 were. Apparently, they get like S$1000 raise when they upgrade their diplomas to degrees, hence a lot of them try to study for a degree, and it makes sense to go for one such as Translation, although I'd say that if they were teaching either language, they really should have just focused on their specialities.
Translation is rather different from taking both because in addition to studying the grammar and peculiarities of each language, we also have to look at specific differences between the two that people who specialise in either won't notice.
For example, while English sentences contain clauses that have varying degrees of importance (eg subordinate clauses), Chinese sentences do not. English sentences are more like trees, with the main clause that contains the almighty Subject-Verb being the trunk and everything else being branches. In contrast, Chinese sentences are more a length of rope, with each part that's separated by a comma having roughly the same degree of importance.
In fact, in Chinese, it's completely possible to write an essay that contains only a single full stop and plenty of commas without breaking any grammatical rule, although it would be a really bad one.
Which leads me to another difference, which is how commas are different in both languages. While commas in English are an important tool that can change the meanings of the sentences dramatically depending on the position(s), Chinese commas merely separate each part of a sentence to change the topic of each part.
The truth is that there is no clear law that mandates where a writer has to place a full stop and where he/she should place a comma instead. The general rule is that when the writer feels that that part is done and whatever comes next has a very different meaning, that's where a full stop should go. The problem is that such a rule is very debatable.
My guess is that this is because Chinese punctuations are a relatively new additions and haven't had enough time to develop a stronger purpose. In ancient literatures, the Chinese language did not have punctuations. Therefore it's not advisable for modern readers to study ancient texts without proper training, even if they know the words.
Anyway the lecturer decided to kill time by asking everyone about their jobs. I could've said I'm a part-time online whiner/gamer, but they might ask me about this blog and I do not want to let the lecturer know I'm regurgitating her lessons on my blog. Might have copyright issues then, especially when she wrote like 70% of the textbook we're using.
The thing is, I did not expect so much interest in winter wear among my female classmates. Heck, even the lecturer wanted some. One even asked for a catalogue, while the lecturer suggested I could give out my name card.
I had neither.
No catalogues. That's not how we roll.
Name cards, not yet. I'm not even officially on the payroll. My boss is my mum, so it really doesn't matter to me whether I'm on the payroll or not.
In the end, I suggested I could bring them to the office to show them the products, but before they thought of asking for my number, I had to visit the bathroom. Well, I swear I wasn't pretending, and it was time to leave anyway.
They were gone by the time I got out.
Hmm... this is a problem. I can't afford to be shy anymore. I need to do something about it.
On hindsight, I also forgot to tell them they could check out the quality of our products by visiting the winter wear sections of any of the stores we supply to. It's actually easy to identify which is ours since it's reflected on the price tags in the form of a code.
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