Rant 1019 / Too Much Being Too Little

With Fire and Sword is not as great as Warband. The early game is just terrible and the path to glory isn't exactly intuitive.

I can't just fight my way up; I can't even find fights. The random bandits and deserters are too fast for me and the battles between factions do not allow my involvement until I join a faction.

But I can't join a faction because I don't have enough experience and renown.

So I can't fight because I'm not in faction and I'm not in a faction because I can't fight.

In addition, my troops suck. I rarely get any combat so they have little experience for leveling up. With such poor troops, I can't siege towns nor pick fights with the enemy nobles of the faction I wish to join.

To hell with this. I'm going back to modded Warband. As I recall, the Prophesy of Pendor mod was pretty fun.

I have to admit the guns are fun, but they are OP anyway. If you have 80-90% of your army using guns you're practically invincible.



















So the guys at the top are finally admitting that the current macroeconomic theories are inaccurate.

What took them so long?

"The paradigm that the market corrects itself, on which all the traditional economists such as Blanchard and Mankiw base their theories, is on the rocks," said Gatti. "What the traditional theories do not consider is that the financial market must be regulated. A too-liberalized market creates monsters."

The US seems like a prime example.

Up to one in four people can't find work in parts of Europe, and the reality of people who are unemployed without choosing to be is one of the biggest holes in mainstream theory, for Bofinger and others. In orthodox teaching, supply and demand in the labor markets should fix unemployment leaving just those people who choose not to work in the dole queue.

Most undergrads would assume that such flaws are likely solved by theories they aren't going to be taught at their levels of education. Sometimes, those don't exist, and it's scary to know what we learnt is incomplete to this degree.

Simon Evenett, professor of international trade and economic development at St Gallen University, said macroeconomists had ignored the financial system in most of their models, and the finance guys missed economic linkages. "That intellectual separation has been the cause of a lot of misdiagnoses."

London School of Economics economics professor Charles Goodhart told a conference macroeconomists had been "totally and egregiously hopeless." Their assumption that everyone in an economy can borrow at the same risk-free rate "blows one's mind, the degree of intellectual error."

I wouldn't go as far as to say that the intellectual separation should take all the blame. Most of their employees and the younger people they work with were taught by the same intellectuals or their written works, so if after all these years they found nothing wrong with these students, you shouldn't use their teachers as the scapegoats for your problems.



For too long, economists have been trying to fit evidence into theory, instead of the reverse. Now, we may be looking at a new age of economic theories, one that is based on the lessons learnt since 2008 and those we are still learning today.























Being superstitious is not necessarily a bad thing. It is true that it could mean that they are willing to believe in anything without real evidence, but it could also indicate how far they are willing to go to achieve something.

For example, the newer generation of Chinese people who don't really believe in traditions but still have food offerings ready for the spirits during festivals even when nobody expects them to do it, it just shows how motivated they are to succeed in life.

They are willing to try anything.

Of course I'm not talking about those who are expected to follow traditions. It has to be completely voluntary to the point where nobody would even know whether it's done or not.






















If a man discovered that his grownup child was not his biological offspring, can he sue him/her for all the money he spent to bring him/her up?

Apparently, you can. And you can also do the same to his/her biological parents.

Worst of all, there are actually people who did either of these, and it's common enough that they aren't considered newsworthy.

Rant 1018 / PSO

Phantasy Star Online may be the best MMORPG right now just because of the extraordinary jiggle physics.

















Ordered a delivery from Khansama the other day. Didn't read the old flyer I had carefully and dialled the number printed prominently in large fonts on the first page.

Turned out to be the number to the main branch at Little India, and they had to transfer the order after taking it down to the one closer to my place, which also called me to confirm the order.

Next time, I'll just call that nearer branch instead.

This time, I ordered more than $50 because I just felt like trying more, since I haven't eaten Indian food for some time now.

So I had a full set of tandoori chicken (they also offered half and quarter sets) for $22 and it had 8 pieces of them.

The meal showed me that for deliveries from Khansama, I should stick with soft or liquid stuff like rice and curry, even though there are quite a number of fried and roasted food in the menu. This is because unlike fast food deliveries, Khansama isn't able to keep things crispy - both the gobi manchurian and tandoori chicken were soggy.

I haven't tried everything because I left the fish curry, butter chicken and half the tandoori chicken for another meal, but everything so far is more spicy than expected.


Next time, I think I'll just order a lot of biryani and naans plus one or two curries/masala.





















Sometimes I wonder if our police force has grown proportionally over the years with our population growth.




















I'm always excited when I'm expecting a package. Now I have 4 on my waiting list.

No idea why but it's like waiting for gifts, even if they're paid by myself and meant for work.

Speaking of work, I recently came to the conclusion that I still have little idea how to handle the freedom I gained. I recognize the fact that I can do anything I want but my methods of doing things rarely involve solely my own decisions without the advice of others.
























After playing Fire and Sword for a while, I realized that the lance had been nerfed and it's way better to fight with the newly introduced firearms. The reload may be slower than a dead snail but 3 shots from a good gun can kill even someone wearing heavy armour.

Of course, those 3 shots may be the only ones you have time to fire throughout the battle, but still, it sounds like fun.

Unfortunately I have already invest 3 levels' worth of points in polearms, so I'll have a long way to go before I become a competent musketeer.



















Holy crap! Dota 2 can suck my balls.

Rant 1017 / The Other Day I Had

Oh wow this manufacturer actually explained to me about wool after I told him I could get 100% lambs' wool sweaters at half the price he quoted for his mercerized-merino-wool-with-acrylic sweaters.

Lambs' wool is soft and fluffy but considered inferior to merino wool because the latter is apparently much lighter.

Nevertheless I did not plan to order sweaters within that price range so I cannot continue with my original order. I already have enough of those from my current suppliers.

His email reply sounds like the sales pitch of a persistent salesman except I actually learnt useful knowledge from him.

I'm only curious about why he is trying so hard. Does he want this deal so badly or did I sound like a big company? No, surely I didn't order enough to be considered a big buyer.


















With this nonsense happening at what is probably the biggest church organization in Singapore (I don't know for sure), I for one am glad that we have nothing like Fox News here among our media.

It is easy to imagine the kind of "news" they would report and together with the fact that the church members are mostly young people, it's just scary to think about what fires it could ignite.

But so far it's fine. Fortunately.



















Just tried this Amethystory facial wash gel stuff from Ginvera. It's a tiny tube of free sample I got some time back and never used until now.

I rarely use facial wash and usually I just get random tubes from Biore. The last one was this black-and-white stuff with tiny beads within.

This Amethystory, however, was quite different. At first, it didn't feel very soapy on my face so I thought maybe my housekeeper sprayed water on it and some of it got into the tube. I mean, my floss has gotten wet before because of her, so this isn't surprising.

Then as I massaged my face with it, my fingers felt lots of stuff on my face gathering the way eraser dust do when you use an eraser on a piece of paper.

Hence came the realization that it didn't feel soapy because it contained a lot of rough stuff inside, kinda like adding soap on sandpaper.

This facial wash is practically liquid sandpaper.
















Finished Deus Ex: Human Revolution.

Very nice game, but I noticed the trend that games with such great graphics are becoming fun to watch instead of being fun to play. When playing, I'm usually too focused in the looting, fighting and sneaking to appreciate anything else.

Anyway it was fun trying to get the Ghost award for most of the missions, and at the end I was just using invisibility instead of finesse since I had so many nutrient bars and I had a feeling it was the final part of the game.

When I finished the game, I didn't even use up everything.

Rant 1016 / Disturbing Fact About The Future

The retirement fund calculation some time ago is still bugging me. To retire without relying on anyone while maintaining a post-retirement budget of about $1500 per month (in today's terms) assuming 7.5% inflation, I have to make at least 5 million SGD in 40 years.

This calls for a plan. It simply cannot be accomplished by consecutive short-term goals.

1.25million per decade is 120k per year in savings alone average, which is also an average of 10k saved per month from today onwards.

Or assuming I can find ways to get an ROI rate of 2% per annum over the 40 years, I only have to save about $8k a month, $96k a year, a million per decade.

How is this even possible without working really hard?

I'd have to double my gross income within the next 5 years just to have a glimmer of hope at reaching this level.

And this is assuming that I won't encounter any major money-draining issues for the rest of my life, which is as close to impossible as anything IRL can get.

Another assumption, though, is that I will stop having any income beyond my investments by 67, a reasonable estimate of the retirement age in the future. I can't make any prediction on whether I will actually retire by then, but for now the money I can possibly make from working past retirement age acts as a sort of buffer for the whole thing.

The status quo is far from satisfactory; expansion is now of utmost importance. Making the first million in my thirties is no longer a far-fetched dream - it may very well be a necessity if the calculations are accurate.

Life can never be easy, can it?

First world problems are still serious problems.

These numbers may not surprise some people, but my parents never planned for retirement themselves and therefore I had little idea what I need for it before this.





Compared to my future, people retiring today only need a fraction of what I need. A person aged 55 today retiring at the current retirement age of 62 in Singapore would only need about S$400k in savings for a monthly budget of $1000 up to the age of 85, or just under $600k for $1500/month, both assuming 5% inflation throughout.

Sounds easier but isn't, mainly due to inflation and buffers against unforeseen circumstances in my case.

























Another uncommon request from someone calling to conduct a research survey today.

"Can you redirect me to the senior HR manager or director of your company?"

Dohohoho!

Yet one more nuisance caller who ends the conversation right from the beginning.





















The Standard Chartered banker needed me to sign another document and surprisingly, she sent a courier from Speedpost Islandwide Services to my office.

Even more surprisingly was that it was a 2-way service so that the courier would deliver the document back to her immediately.

So I talked to the courier and asked him how much this service cost. He told me there were a few options and this was the 1-hour delivery service and cost about $20, finally adding with a laugh that the commission was also "very high" for himself.

According to a Speedpost PDF document this is the fastest courier service Singpost offers, "guaranteed delivery within 1 hour of collection".

Since this included a return delivery and the minimum price was S$18 for the lightest package (up to 3kg), just getting me to sign a single sheet of paper cost them $36.

Apparently my bro got the same from Citibank when he applied for his account and it was fully paid by the bank, so I guess I can expect this to be free for me too.

I'm pretty sure the banks get subsidized rates but the thing is that I've never received such treatment before, hence my surprise. Neither of us signed up for simple basic savings or current accounts on these occasions so I don't know if this is only for such accounts or if it applies to all their account holders.

Regardless, I'm still slightly unhappy that this could mean that the two weeks only began today. I didn't actually ask her but it would make sense.

I've already explained to my staff and asked if they could accept a postponement of their wage payments by a week, so if the chequebooks don't come by Thursday, I'll have to talk to them again, and it won't reflect well on myself.

I'll probably have to ask them for their account numbers to transfer cash directly through internet banking from my personal account.

Rant 1015 / Pondering Ponderosity Ponderously

Now I see how consumers can adapt to online shopping for anything.

You just need a few stores where people can try out or test the features of products. Still doesn't work in my case but if the larger stores push in this direction, my case would be too insignificant to affect the trend.

Which means I either have to adapt my business or I should get ready to do something else in 10 years.

Meanwhile I have to keep learning about clothes. When I started, I had no idea I needed to go that deep into the details. But I like this control over the quality that I don't get when dealing with wholesalers who don't usually ask such questions.




















No wonder Standard Chartered doesn't state the minimum sum upfront on its website for business accounts.

I went to one of the branches today to apply for the BusinessSaver account and was told that the minimum sum was S$30k.

Thirty thousand dollars stagnant?!?!?!

What.

The banker clearly saw my hesitation when I heard that so she recommended another business account that had free chequebooks with a lower minimum sum of just S$10k.

Took that one instead. 10k is alright. If I had to resort to using that last 10 thousand it will be a good idea to close shop anyway. 30k, on the other hand, was too high for me.

So yea, that's how small my business is.

The funny thing is that it actually requires business experience to open a business account there. She was kinda shocked when I told her I only had a single year of experience, so I asked her if experience was a requirement. When she said yes, I told her it was a family business so that can be taken as many years of experience as long as it's not mentioned that I never worked in the business before that.

Packing and labelling doesn't really count as actual experience, does it?

Too bad it takes 2 weeks to get me the account, but she can issue me a temporary chequebook earlier. The problem is I have no idea how soon that will happen.

All I needed was a chequebook with my business name.

And I can't deposit cheques that's made in my name there because it will only accept cheques for my business, not me.






Anyway I decided on Standard Chartered instead of Citibank because the person on the phone told me they didn't have chequebooks that use business names. I think she was unfamiliar with their business banking stuff and was therefore wrong, but it's not my problem if they don't educated their telemarketers properly.

As for the referal promotion, it would have only got my bro a $20 voucher from an unspecified merchant. When she pointed out that the referer won't get the $20 voucher if I don't open an account, I almost laughed. $20 is obviously serious business.






















Finished ME3. That last real battle at the missiles was as hard as I remembered, except even more because it was my first run on Insanity difficulty.

But I survived.

Before the battle, I didn't remember much about it but I did recall it being a pain in the butt, probably the most insane battle in the game. I mean, 5 brutes as the penultimate wave? 3 was already painful but 5 was pretty overwhelming when I finished the count.

I just held Shift (paused command mode) and stared for 10 whole seconds.

As if 5 brutes in a single wave weren't enough, the final wave was 2 banshees, a lot of marauders and the Reaper's laser randomly hitting everywhere.

I'm only surprised that I didn't have to use up all my medkits and grenades there. Come to think about it, I only used 3-4 medkits (2 of them at one go in a desperate run when I got flanked by marauders) and 2 grenades.

I love Shield Drain and marauders. Free shields everywhere! That almost suicidal escape took a nonstop combo of sprinting, shield-draining and medkits. Not to mention a lot of luck.

Never did take down the banshees. Though one of them was right next to the missile controls at the end, I just ran towards it because I had nowhere else to hide. In fact just before I hit the missile control terminal the banshee's ranged attack took out my shield. Another split second and she would have meleed me, and banshees' melee attacks are instakill.




Now that I'm done with the ME trilogy, time to move on to Deus Ex: Human Revolution that I just bought.

























With the traffic going so slowly, I suspect I may be the cause of it. Moreover, I am beginning to doubt I will be able handle the incoming volume of goods I'm planning to order.

Why?

If it happens, why?

What am I doing wrong?

My goods are selling. My gross income is not worse than my mother's last year. So why is it that I am running out of space to the same degree as I did earlier this year?



Also interested in doing online business but the international shipping costs are insane due to the weight of the things I sell. On the other hand, it could work for the things I'm willing to sell at cost. Ebay only charges like 9% for stuff sold on Ebay US and Paypal only takes another 2% or so, totalling to about 11%.

Rant 1014 / Flashmobs And Flashbangs

Finally figured out how to deep fry food. I guess that also tells you something about the homecooked portion of my diet.

I stopped after trying once a long time ago because I put the food in before it was hot. It was supposed to prevent hot oil from scalding myself but it turned out to be the wrong way to deep fry anything.

I think my mum mentioned it once but I was too inexperienced back then for it to make any sense.

Now after having this notion reinforced the other day when one of my employees suggested it after hearing that I get things stuck to the pan when I lightly fry food on it, plus my current experience in the kitchen, I saw how it works.

The hot oil solidifies the surface of the food before it reaches the bottom, whereas in my first attempt, the surface solidified only after it was in contact with the pot.

Today, I tested it on some baby squids I had intended to use as terrapin feed. It's spent half a week in the freezer and another half in the middle compartment of the fridge, so it's not fresh but still edible.

And some fishballs, just for the heck of it.

Covered them in flour and put them in hot oil that made my chopsticks fizzle.

Deep frying is so easy. Too bad I don't have a good ventilator in my kitchen so just this one attempt was enough to make the entire kitchen floor feel oily.

In other words, I can only do it once a week, preferably within the 24 hours before the housekeeper comes over.

























Augmented reality is the next big thing. I'm very sure of it.

Other than the cabs I mentioned some time back, imagine AR with motion sensors. It seriously cannot be a difficult task to combine the both of them once AR is mastered.

AR is going to be a technological revolution within the foreseeable future. Bet on it.




















Currently studying yarns because this manufacturer I'm interested in is asking me for all sorts of information and I'm not sure if I can afford to appear noobish in this situation. Moreover with the minimum order limit he stated and his English proficiency, his company doesn't seem to be a small one.

In short, he sounds like a pro, or at least infinitely more pro than I am.
 
But now I know more than I did a couple hours ago. Finally realized that a few of the terms he used were taught to me by very different names when I found out their meanings.

It's just inconvenient sometimes when the bits of knowledge my mother passed to me were all taught in verbal Cantonese (I can't write most Cantonese-specific words), and the Internet I know is in English. Worst of all, I have yet to find an online English-Chinese translator or dictionary for fashion industry jargons. At least I could make educated guesses if there were English-Mandarin ones.

The strange thing is that I feel that this is how learning should be - you get a problem, a few hints or keywords, and a textbook filled with everything you need and more, then you figure the rest out yourself.

I don't know if it's just me, but I've never got how the audial part of the lessons in school was supposed to help me, like when the teacher reads stuff aloud from the books or projection slides. The only things attending classes did for me was set a pace and regularly remind myself that I have to study.

And sweater sizes. I used to think there was some kind of standard for this. I mean, that's how my world used to work, y'know, because the whole education system is founded on standardised... everything.

But the truth is, as far as I can tell, there is not even a permanent regional standard for Southeast Asia.

Everything depends.

And now I'm supposed to find out what measurements I should specify to the manufacturer just like this.

This is how learning should be.



















Decided on Citibank, just because my bro has an account there and there are referral rewards. A lot of banks already offer free chequebooks for current accounts which is my only condition, so the referral thing broke the tie.

Now I just need to see if it can get me the chequebook within the week or I'll have to find another way to pay my staff.



















Bought Deus Ex: Human Revolution on Steam at 75% off, so it was about US$11.50 total for the game and its expansion, The Missing Link.

As awesome as the deal sounds, it made me realize one awful fact about my recent purchases: I'm spending more money on indie games even before they're made, like US$15 on Dead State, than on these games made by more established studios.

What does it say about me?

Rant 1013 / Security Upgrades

Someone tried to log into my Facebook account on a few weeks ago. Good thing I enabled this security option that required access to my phone when logging in from unrecognized devices.

Changed my password upon being prompted by FB to do so and made sure this password is even more secure than the one on my tablet.

Of course I won't say how but whoever does hack into my account from now on by brute-force hacking my password must either have spent a lot of time on it or knows me in a way that no one else does.

This guy was from Saitama, Japan, according to FB, so he's definitely not anyone I know.

Slightly disturbing since the most logical path he took must have been through my blog or Google account.

Except you can't access this Google account without access to my phone - I've set it to require a one-time password sent to my number via SMS on every log in.

I say that he knew the FB account through this blog because this is the only thing that has had any contact with Japanese people. One of my past posts had received a lot of Japanese spam comments that I've never published. Probably an entire page's worth of them.

Or he might have found my Hotmail address, but that account's password is pretty strong too, my third strongest after my tablet's and FB's.

Or... he's the same guy who tried to access one of my Yahoo emails some time ago.



Regardless, I'm changing all my outdated passwords for the accounts I deem important.

...

Done. Now they're all kind of strong. I just wish Paypal would implement this one-time password feature.

Still, I heard Paypal is rather cool with stopping payments if something bad happens.
























Seriously, how do I yarn?

One manufacturer told me he didn't have the stocks he had on display on his webpage and asked me for the designs and yarns I have in mind for sweaters so that he could make them for me.

How do I specify what yarns I want and what specifications can I talk about?

I'm an ex-engineering student, a translation student, a gamer, a bad cook, a blogger and a terrible businessman, and this job isn't getting any easier.

Shops don't usually talk about these so I can't just look at the labels.

I guess I'll just have to do some trial-and-error experimenting.



















Whenever I visit the post office I always notice the stuff they try to sell there, like the terrible mobile phones and... potato chips.

It's a very small selection of goods and honestly I have no idea what they are trying to do.

Does anyone ever buy those?

Seriously, I have this sneaking suspicion that the chips are probably soft by now.

I get that the postal service probably isn't a very profitable business and this is an attempt at trying to stay afloat, but at best I can only describe it as "half-hearted".

When I look at what they are offering, I get this feeling that they aren't really trying to sell anything and the guy in charge is probably just humouring someone higher up.

Moreover, the post office in my neighbourhood is surrounded by convenience stores, an entire open-air market and a 24-hr supermarket. What's the point of selling anything edible?





















How nice! Just when I was about to run out of rice, one of the crappier brands offers a promotional offer of S$18.95 for 10kg. That's almost $10 less than what I paid for the premium brand Songhe I used to go for.

I wonder how bad it is.

If it isn't too bad, I might just stick with these relatively unknown brands of rice from now on.




















Filled the holes the knife made the other day with some putty. My mum had bought 2 tubs long ago for the floor and they've both dried up. The dark brown putty is now rock hard and the greyish one is slightly malleable but mostly hard.

On the tub there was a line instructing the user to add a little water when it's hard, so I added a little for both.

The solid putty remained solid, but the slightly soft one dissolved slowly in the water.

Used a tiny bit with my thumb nail to fill up the holes. I can still feel the gaps because I didn't file them, and I can see the grey spots that replaced the holes, so the whole thing wasn't perfect.

However I don't have to worry about finding anything trapped in those gaps. Who knows what might get in? I eat on this desk everyday after all. Soup? Water? That would be really bad for the actual wood under this top layer.