Rant 137 / Soon

He either saves your life or sends you to the Soul Society.

BANKAI!!!!




Been watching House. Great show. A few gross scenes here and there, but its fine.







Got a copy of Photoshop a few days ago. Couldn't get it to install until now. When I click on the setup.exe, the loading window appears for a few second and vanishes without a trace. Adobe has no solution for it. No forums have any answer for it until I found a blog that tells me to type in some stuff in dos prompt. And voila!

Now to fool around with photoshop myself! Gotta think outside the box. Something like this.








I'll admit that this is rather offensive, but it gets the point across pretty well.





Ending this short post with a real motivator.

Rant 136 / 天理何在?

Went to the doc as instructed one morning. All he did was to bring his apprentice along and looked at my wounds(from the surgery), and..

To me: Hi, how are you?

To apprentice: This is the patient...

To me: How's the arm? Everything okay? Looks fine. See me in 2 weeks' time.

To apprentice: Get him to see me in 2 weeks' time.

To nurse: Change the dressing also.


And she cleaned the wounds and changed the dressing on my shoulder. And the bill was $82.

$82.

天理何在??!?



But I realized how uncomfortable it is for me to walk. I had to hold my forearm to absorb the shocks when I walk or there will be jolts of slight pain after each step. Anything faster than a brisk walk is out of question.

At least I can wear a shirt properly.





Reaper is a lousy tv show. It started with an interesting story but turned out to be shit. This show is about a boy whose soul was sold to the Devil before he was born. According to the agreement, his soul would be owned by the Devil when he turned 21. Instead of taking him to Hell on his 21st birthday, the Devil made him his bounty hunter to catch escaped souls from Hell.

The down point right from the start was the Vessel in which he can trap the souls. In each episode he was given a different Vessel for each soul he was assigned. These Vessels ranged from a mini vacuum cleaner to a bird cage. It's neither impressive nor funny.





Forbidden Kingdom. Looks damn good, with the 2 kungfu megastars in its cast. Plot is nothing but crap, only necessary in order for all the fight scenes to make sense. Full of fights. In fact, I can only appreciate it for being so full of kungfu fights. There is really nothing else to talk about.





Tried playing Empires (HL2 mod). Fucking uncomfortable, but possible. Makes my left shoulder ache like hell every few minutes, and I have to pull my arm back to the normal sling position to rest. Trying to come up with alternatives. I think I shall have to use my PS1 games instead...



Baldur's Gate may be nice, but it's too hard. Sometimes I prefer games that I can enjoy without needing to plan for each battle an consider every action in each round.

Rant 135 / Poetry Is Not My Cup Of Tea

Dan Simmons is really great at mixing literary masterpieces with futuristic technologies.

When I came across Ilium and Olympos, I thought they were pretty unique. But now that I'm reading The Rise of Endymion, which is the last of the tetralogy that began with Hyperion, I find that this is precisely his style.

Both Hyperion and Endymion are titles of two epic poems by John Keats. However the books have nothing to do with their namesakes except that John Keats played a big role in this story.

The only problem is that many times, the characters used poetry to express their feelings. I can't understand poetry to save my life. Good thing I can infer from what they say before and after the poems to get it.

I'm sorry but I'm skipping all the poetry in the last book. Really, I catch no ball. I suppose they're beautiful and all (some were written by John Keats), but I guess I'm not the literary sort.






It's almost a week now. I can finally put on a shirt properly, albeit extremely carefully. I didn't need painkillers since day 3, except at night because I place my arm in a slightly uncomfortable position when asleep. Able to lift up my arm slightly today, that's how I got the arm through the shirt sleeve.

I still can't cook much. No eggs and bacons.

2 more weeks of sling.






19k confirmed dead in Sichuan, PRC. Chinese troops from all over are flown in o help in the region. 100k died in Burma. Like, who cares?





Josef Fritzl is a brave man. What he did was unimaginable. That he even attempted to justify his actions committed for over 20 years is also unimaginable. Kinda as possible as making shit taste good.

Now Austria is the most amazing country in the world, beating the US and Japan. And now Australia is the butt of all the lame bullshit on the net just because some morons think Austria is the misspelt version of Australia. Fucktards.

Josef Fritzl is a brave man.





Eurotrip was a lousy film. It was just Hollywood porn 'Nuf said.




Hero Wanted was a bad movie about a stupid mistake made by a garbage man. Instead of trying to talk to the girl directly, he had to set up a fake robbery to act as a hero. And it went wrong, like the way things tend to do in Hollwood films. She got shot. Stupidity.

Rant 134 / If All Internet Schadenfreudes Die, The Earth Would Be Empty.

Watched 4 movies in 2 nights: just now and last night.

Only ones that deserves a mention are Untraceable and Diary of the Dead.

Untraceable was a very realistic movie in the sense that it portrayed the public reactions very accurately. So accurate that I think they broadcasted the video on the net somewhere as if it were real, just like what was seen in the movie, to get all those realistic comments.

What do I mean? What I am trying to say is that there are millions of people on the web who just enjoy watching others suffer. Schadenfreude. Instead of trying to help, the average netizen is more likely to encourage whoever is causing the pain and grief. Twisted but true. Most of us grow up in a safe and sterile environment where such behaviour is unthinkable.

But this is the Internet. Anonymity brings out the worst in humans. Without fear of reprisal, we would have the freedom to do whatever we want. This includes indulging in what we secretly like to do. In the case of these millions of internet schadenfreudes, the web is Paradise.

Even in online games we see such people often, and these people are known among gamers as griefers. When I first encountered this term, I had mistakenly believed that these people only played MMORPGs and all they did was to kill other people.

Griefers are people, in online games, go out of their way to cause unhappiness. The pursuit of unhappyness. Not only do they kill other players' ingame characters in MMOs, they will do anything else to turn other people's enjoyment into anger and frustration. This includes exploiting map bugs in FPS games to keep important doors closed, trying to get teammates killed and ruining the game in general.

It's like a goalkeeper who runs away every time the ball approaches just to piss everyone off. Except that on the web, you can't just go up to him and give him a nice and satisfying punch in the face. In fact, there is usually nothing the victims can do but complain to the authorities, like the GMs. That will result in bans, but that will merely mean a change of server/game for the griefers. No big deal for them.

Schadenfreudes prosper in anonymity. In real life, laughing at someone who got raped and murdered would be unimaginable. People would beat you up, or at least fantasize about it. On the web, the same reactions would occur, but they wouldn't know who their target is.

On the net, there is a higher degree of true freedom. For someone who truly believes in freedom, anonymity would be God. People have been fantasizing about complete anonymity a lot in recent times: the Invisible Man, Batman, Spiderman and etc.

Somehow, few stories made in the times known as Back Then had anything to do with anonymity. I believe it has to do with our subconscious acknowledgment that we are losing our freedom. From birth, we are labelled with numbers, like cattle but without the branding. Our birth certs, identity cards, passports and death certs are all examples of how "unknown" we all really are.

And with the onset of the so-called "international terrorism", governments around the world now have the excuse to use the book Nineteen Eighty-Four as an instruction manual. Just take London for example. In the busier parts of the city, there are cameras everywhere. It would take a genius to rob someone there.




To keep people from accessing a web address, the worst thing one can do is to tell them the address itself, no matter how many negative superlatives you describe it with. They wouldn't not access it to save their lives. If Curiosity is no longer able to kill the proverbial cat, it would be the greatest motivator in Man, beating Cash by a significant margin.

Be it due to the great sense of safety anonymity provides or suicidal intentions, someone in the general public will enter a website even if he/she knows accessing it will destroy the world. I can bet my soul on it.





Diary of the Dead is yet another film with many acts of human stupidity and emotional illogic. The cause of the creation of the film within the film makes no sense. He didn't need to record everything to save someones' lives; he just needs to film a zombie getting a headshot and visual evidence that it wouldn't rise again. Who the fuck would care who his friends were anyway?

Jason Creed was such an asshole I would have used a gun on his cameras, if not on him. He would be the first person I'd throw to the zombies when I need a decoy.

Yet again, Romero portrays humans as something not worth saving despite that humans triumph consistently in all his films. Maybe it wasn't his choice.

Overall, not a good film unless the viewer is a zombie fan. It just sucks when the main man really deserves to die. Like this guy.



An example of how people can joke about horrible things on the net.

Rant 133 / The One-Armed Blogger Is In Da House!

Got discharged yesterday afternoon. Buggers couldn't give me my meds till 2pm even though its NUH's policy to discharge patients at 10am. FOUR HOURS LATE!!!!

Had a reconstruction surgery on my left shoulder on Thursday noon. Had totally no exp in the procedures, so when the nurse handed me th gown and disposable underwear, told me to "take off everything" and put them on, i really took off everything. It was only a minute later when a nurse was questioning me on all the routine questions like when I stopped eating that she told me I can still wear my shoes.

It was also my FIRST time wearing a gown aka a skirt-like farked up thing. The first time in my life when i had no choice but to keep my legs tightly closed while seated. It was definitely very funny to see me desperately trying to protect my modesty and I would have laughed if it wasn't actually happening to me.

My surgery was scheduled at 10.20am, but it was delayed to 12pm due to a car accident. Whoever was involved needed the doctors more.

At the waiting area, I waited in the patients' area while my mum waited outside. A nurse handed me a pair of socks to keep my feet warm while the anaesthetist explained to me that I would be given general anesthesia because I'm "a healthy young man".

At about 12 they brought me to the OT for my surgery. It was freezing inside and the flimsy farked up thing I wore didn't help. It got worse after I got onto the bed in the OT for my operation when they told me to take off the thin "jacket" and shoes, leaving me with only the gown and socks.

But they stopped me from thinking about the cold by poking the needles and plug into my right hand to prepare me for the IV drip. It was probably a trainee doing it because another doctor told him to use another spot after he had already friggin inserted a needle in the Y-shaped veins at the back of my hand.

Then one of them placed a mask on my face and asked me to breath deeply. I stayed awake for another half a minute before dozing off.

I woke up in the observation ward and the first thing I saw was the TV screen displaying my heart rate and etc. A nurse informed me that I was to wait there because there was no bed available.

When I finally arrived at my bed, I was still groggy, but I had to crawl onto my bed from the bed they carried me on. It was friggin hard, especially when I could only use one arm. In the end, I did get onto the bed and they proceeded to help me change into the yellow hospital clothes. The nurse didn't tie my pants tight, and it was very awkward for me when I had to hold my pants while walking to the toilet.

I had to ask a nurse to help me pull down the rails/handles on the left side of the bed before standing up. Pointing out that I was labelled as "Needs assistance" above my bed, he then offered to help me to go to the toilet, which I refused. Actually, I stared at him incredulously before telling him that "I can walk!" And I held onto my pants and walked to the toilet.

There, I began to learn what every handicapped person must learn at the very beginning - how to put on their clothes properly. More specifically, I taught myself how to tie the cords of my pants without moving my left arm. I had to use my left hand carefully, and it wasn't easy.

I spent the whole day sleeping, but the painkillers wore off by dusk. I didn't know that and thought it had aways been that painful and that I managed to sleep only because my fatigue overcame the pain during the day.

So I spent the night trying to sleep. It was only till 5am when it was time for my next dose of medicine that I was finally able to sleep again.

But only to wake at 8am. I was in the C Class ward (it was only a night's stay after all), so I woke together with everyone else. A nurse went to each bed and asked us if we had washed our mouths and if not, whether we wanted to use their mouthwash instead. Not wanting to move my body at all in fear of causing more pain, I agreed.

Then a food server with a very wide and artificial smile asked me what I wanted to drink for breakfast. That smile had to be the widest and most insincere smile I've ever seen in real life. Not that I blame him but it was really quite incredible.

In anticipation of my discharge at 10am, I refused their offers to help me bathe and didn't bathe till I got home. So I didn't bathe for 31 hours straight.

At 9am, my doctor, a certain Prof Kumar, arrived to check on me. He then went on to instruct the nurse in charge of me on what I need to get before my discharge: two weeks of antibiotics and painkillers, one month MC, a universal sling and an appointment with him on the next Monday, not the coming Monday.

At ten, my mum arrived, but the nurses didn't discharge me. My mum went to ask them at 10.30am, and they told her my sling and medicines haven't arrived yet. The sling arrived at 11am, the lunch came at 12pm, but I had to wait till 2 for my medicine. All the while, the nurses came and apologized, explaining the doctor was busy.

Putting on my clothes and cleaning myself is a tricky business. I refuse to wear a shirt at home, and I'm only wearing my boxers. But when I went home, I had to put on a shirt and a pair of pants. I needed help to put them on and the shirt was the hardest since I couldn't put my left arm through the sleeve. I had to keep my arm inside the shirt, but the shirt wasn't large enough, so I was only able to use the top and two of the bottom buttons.



Hey! I managed to type everything with only my right hand!



So now I'm not going out till I can move my arm enough to wear a shirt properly. Heck, I can't even lift my arm slightly to clean my armpit. I'm also not able to walk quickly because every time I do not land gently, it sends a jolt of pain into my shoulder.

3 weeks of sling. Only 2 days have passed. But I probably won't wear it for so long. My guess is 2.5 weeks. By 1.5 weeks I shouldn't need painkillers and should be able to lift my arm. Imagine when I am finally able to clean my armpit for the first time in more than 10 days! It'd be some sort of organic Pandora's Box.

Ok back to BG2.

Rant 132 / It's Another Gaming Marathon Every Day!

Right now I'm blogging out of boredom. Downloading a 161MB Windows update and together with my utorrent running, I can't do shit online.

At first, I thought I had wasted about 20 bucks on my copy of Half Life 2. It costs 40 bucks at Sim Lim Square, but can be bought on STEAM for 15USD. Worse, I was unable to install it from the DVD. It kept giving me that bullshit error that I don't have enough memory to run STEAM. Unable to find an answer after a quick search on Google, I decided to activate the damned thing on STEAM and see if I could download it.

Bingo. But it took half the day to download the whole HL2. In the end, I spent 40 bucks on the fucking CD Key alone. From now on, I swear, I will buy games online whenever it can be downloaded right from the website. Fucking discs. I knew I shouldn't have trusted them. All they do is be water-proof and occupy space. Useless scum.

But it wasn't a waste at all. Despite the fact that I think HL2 sucks, I wasn't considering playing it when I bought it. What I wanted was its mods. By buying this game, I was really paying for all the games that are created from it, like Empires, Zombie Master and Zombie Panic. In fact, that 40 bucks gave me more 4 games.

Right now, the HL2 mods I have in my comp are Empires, Zombie Master, Zombie Panic and Pirates, Vikings and Knights. Empires is, by far, the best game in the list.

It is similar to Natural Selection in that both sides have a Commander who plays the game like a Real-Time Strategy game like C&C while the rest play as soldiers in the field. Most maps also involve the acquiring of resource nodes to get resources (ingame money) which can be used for research by the commander and etc.

However, in this mod, players get to choose their classes, namely Scout, Soldier, Engineer and Grenadier. Different classes have different sets of weapons and abilities. Also, players get to level up after receiving enough experience points. Leveling up allows them to choose additional abilities, both passive and active.

The best feature in this game is not those listed above, but the fact that the players can buy tanks with the team's money after the commander builds the Vehicle Factory. Right now, there are several tanks which can be bought and customized by the players and they fall under the category of Light Tanks and Heavy Tanks.

In the future, additional features will include aircrafts for the players.


The second best mod is Zombie Master. In this mod, one player gets to be the Zombie Master in each map. He will summon various types of monstrous zombies to kill all other players (Survivors) while everyone else tries to do what their names say - survive.

Basically, every map have many objectives which survivors have to complete to win the game. These may be simple-sounding things like finding fuel cans to power the generator so that the doors can open, or hold the area for 2 mins while the lift motor warms up. Some maps are simpler though, requiring the survivors to stay alive for 6-7 mins to win.

Meanwhile, the Zombie Master is able to travel through the whole map like a god and gets to use the Orbs that only he can see. These orbs can either be used for booby traps or for summons. Both require credits which are given to the ZM every few seconds.

Survivors get to use guns that can be found at certain locations throughout the maps. However, ammo is limited and healing items are extremely rare. Most of the time, survivors only have the 100hp that they begin with to last the whole game.

The ZM is able to summon zombies like Shamblers, which are the stereotypical zombies that we see in all zombie flicks. Other zombies include Hulks, which are huge things that are tough and do 50hp per hit. Yes that's half a survivor's hp.



Zombie Panic, the main reason for buying HL2, turned out to be less fun than ZM. Most players play as Survivors, while at least 3 players start out as zombies. Survivors in both games are similar, but in ZP, there is only 1 type of zombie- the Zombie!!!! LOL! In most maps, the survivors just need to keep themselves alive for a certain amount of time and in some maps, zombies have limited numbers of revives. Dead survivors become zombies, while dead survivors in ZM become Spectators of the game.

Zombies are boring in this game. It is exactly the same as playing Hide and Seek, except one side has guns with extremely limited ammo while the other have only claws.