Was visiting the blog of the ex-Chinaman of the BC when I found one of the latest blog entries to be strangely emotional. Scrolling further down, I noticed a seemingly blank entry below the emotional one. As any normal Internet citizen would, I highlighted it.
A huge blast of emotionally-charged words attacked my eyes, seared my optic nerves and melted my brain.
Is that the same experience that my readers go through when I type an whiny rant?
Should I see a neurologist in case I have suffered brain damage from the unusual bout of emotional stress?
Went to activate my debit card today. Being a Saturday the bank was understandably crowded, with a queue that made the wait 30-mins long. I was there to convert my passbook's thumbprint into a signature and activate my debit card.
The conversion was simple and she said it would be effectively immediately. The card was more troublesome. I had to go to a nearby ATM to activate the debit card. Typed the number 4 times with no success, ended up with the machine spitting out my card and telling me to gtfo.
The bank teller had kind of expected that and had told me that in such a situation I'd have to sign a certain activation form and hand it to her. So I did. My expectations were smashed. Instead of activating it immediately so that I have a form of insurance when I go to Malaysia later tonight, I'll have to wait for 3 working days before my bro can SMS the PIN to me. That's Wednesday. Ugh.
Friday 28 May 2010
Thursday 27 May 2010
Wednesday 26 May 2010
Rant 553 / Just As Planned
My usual way of dealing with enemies sieging castles belonging to my faction is to siege their castles to pull them away. I'll then run when they arrive and repeat till the AI gets tired of running to and fro. This time though, I was unable to reach any of the castles in time (tried save and reload) so I had to attack them head-on. Fortunately, I met Sultan Hakim along the way and found Emir Deglan wandering about wanting to defend the castle but didn't have the numbers. So I asked him to follow me in my kamikaze strike against the united armies of the Rhodok kingdom.
2 lords on my side, 8 lords on theirs. Of course, my Sultan is worth at least 2 lords, so that's like 4v8 here.
Numerically speaking, I'm fucked. But if we lose Reindi Castle, my faction would lose a rather strategic central position on the map.
Miraculously, we won! It took 3 reloads but it was worth it. The second reload was sooooooo frustrating because I had halved their army before getting myself knocked unconscious. Subsequently my army was wiped out due to my absence and I had to reload.
The Sultan lost... only 2 men and 3 more were wounded including himself. He sacrificed himself as a decoy so that I could lance the crap out of 5 of the enemy Counts.
The Emir lost 5 men and had 8 wounded. Like Hakim, he was a great decoy. As you can see, he captured more than enough prisoners (53) to make up for his losses, unlike Hakim. Then again, Hakim only lost 2 men.
As for me, I lost 4 men and had 11 wounded, most of them my companions. I think it's because I gave them all Coursers and polearms and the AI sucked at lancing enemies. Managed to capture 4 Counts though. The Noyan was from a previous battle with the Khergit.
These are my settings. I'm not a hardcore player so 50% difficulty is enough. Challenging enough for me.Just received the pink card that I need to have to collect my new passport. Apparently when you renew your passport online via APPLES you're basically applying for a new one. It certainly doesn't make much sense because it's S$10 cheaper to do this compared to going there to get a renewal stamp on your old one ($70 vs $80). Weird.
Also received my first debit card. It's a DBS Visa Platinum, which has few perks and no annual fees. I like it solely for the complete absence of fees I'd have to pay regularly. So now that it's in my hands, I've just found out that I'll need to convert my thumbprint into a signature in my passbook in order to activate this card with a signature.
If I don't do this I'll never be able to use this card by signing. Should have just gone to the bank to get this card. Didn't know this. I had expected something like emailing them a copy of my signature.
Yesterday I had received a rejection letter from NTU for my application for the BA Linguistics course. Today I've just got the acceptance letter from SIM for their BA Translation course. My second chance. Wonder what I will be doing with it.
Ugh, back to school in July. School.
You know, when I used to feel down during NS, especially when I got tortured by the poly and ITE guys, I'd recall my JC exam days and I would feel much better. "At least I'm not there," used to repeat in my mind all the time.
This is how much I hate studying.
But fuck life! I can't live in Singapore without a degree. Heck, I can't live the rest of my life without a degree. I feel like all my life I was being prepared to get one. It's like my primary objective. It doesn't matter what I do after that, seriously. My parents don't care about what comes after. I can't go on without that fuckin sheet of paper when everyone I know has one. Worse, one of my cousins has a degree in some kind of engineering plus a degree in economics and working at Wall Street. Another cousin has a PhD in some sort of history subject. Me, a pre-U diploma at 25. Fuck. Me.
Peer pressure, man. Fucking peer pressure.
Should I get a job? I don't need one. Maybe I do. Ugh. Money.
So I'm going to mug again for another 3 years. How the heck did I live life without games? Oh wait, I didn't.
For now, I'd say that everything is going just as I had predicted right from the part where I'd leave NTU if I had hung on the Mechanical Engineering to how I was sure I'd get a place in SIM. Not that the latter was hard to predict. People with far worse grades then mine have been accepted there. The only reason for doubt was that I took only Physics and 2 Maths subjects in pre-U while I applied for a Translation course.
Now I'm really curious about why people can't handle SIM courses. If they could take me in for a course I don't have a foundation for, they'd accept anyone, right?
So yeah, I'm a student again.
Is this good news? Yes of course! Is this bad news? Definitely. Fuck.
I like doing nothing and have nothing scheduled. I like life when all days melt together and I am no longer aware of whether it's Monday or Saturday. That's when I can do things on a whim and it doesn't matter if I make supper at 4am or drink espresso at 6pm.
I wonder if I will ever be able to live like this again.
Did you know...
... that Light Yagami's surname spelt backwards is "Im a gay"?
Monday 24 May 2010
Rant 552 / ...And He Lived Happily Ever After.
I wonder if he really turned out to be that way.
I keep having this desire to play Metro 2033 again but at the same time I remember how it was such an emotional experience every time I play it.
Let me record this story of my ancestors before it is forgotten.Where should I begin. Hmm... from the earliest one that I know of then, even though he has been mentioned before in my blog. This time I have all my male ancestors from my mother's side of the family arranged in chronological order.
My great-great-grandfather was a minor official during the Qing Dynasty. He did not gain this position legitimately by going for the national exam, but instead bought it with money. Because of his job, he was able to foresee the chaos that was about to erupt when his government collapses, so he moved to the rural countryside. Somehow before that he was able to marry a daughter of a rich Shanghainese merchant, who probably gave him her hand because he could see the same thing that's about to happen, or maybe because she was just one of his daughters.
Anyway my great-great-grandfather set up a small business in his village as the writer and reader of letters because he was the only literate person around. Together with his farm the couple made enough to get by.
Eventually they had 3 sons. I don't know if he had daughters. When the eldest son was old enough he sold himself to Nanyang, the name Southeast Asia was known as back then. This practice was known as "卖猪仔" (mai4 zhu1 zi3). He was never heard from again. This was not surprising given it was common knowledge that at least a third of every boatload of immigrants did not survive the voyage. They either die of illness or starve to death and dumped into the sea.
Because the family didn't receive any further income from their eldest brother, my great-grandfather, together with his blind younger brother (I don't know why he was blind), decided to get out of their hometown before they grew old enough to be kidnapped and conscripted into Chiang Kai Shek's army. So with practically nothing but their clothes, an umbrella and some hard rice cakes the young men made their way to Hong Kong.
In Hong Kong, they made a living by collecting trash and reselling it. Eventually they saved enough to open a rice shop, which was a lucrative trade. My blind great-granduncle became a salt smuggler and for some personal reasons, took a vow of celibacy. My great-grandfather, on the other hand, married an illiterate woman from some poor family and settled down.
You know, I can't imagine how a blind man can smuggle salt. Sure, I know he did it by buying salt from the warmer Southern China where there were probably salt works and selling them in the black markets of Northern China. The thing is, how did he do it?? This I'll never know.
Now I'll return to my great-grandfather who got wealthy enough to open a second rice shop in one of the busiest area in Hong Kong, Tsim Sha Tsui, iirc. He was wealthy enough that he was one of the first in the area to own a telephone. As a prominent member of the local Teo Chew community, he also helped raise funds to build a hospital but did not appear in the photo of the founders due to... another story.
So here's the other story. Back then when they agreed on taking a formal photo of all the people who helped found the hospital, my great-grandfather did not own a tie, a suit or a changsan. Since it was just one photo, he thought it wasn't worth so much money just for a matter as small as this. Plus there was little chance he would ever wear them again. Hence he arrived to the photo shoot late with a roasted suckling pig and other food and had a feast with everyone.
Back to the original story. Like all other couples, they began to have children soon after marriage. The first two were daughters but the third child was male. When they had their first son, they were so overjoyed that it was a son that my great-grandmother brought the baby to his hometown to show him to their family. Meanwhile my great-grandfather stayed to tend to his shops.
It was then that misfortune struck. Their son contracted an unknown illness and quickly died in their hometown. The couple were devastated but got over it after some time. After they recovered, they decided to adopt 2 boys. I don't know whether they were orphans or sold by families too poor to raise their own kids but both were very likely back in those years. The elder one of the two was my grandfather.
They did try some more after that but their final 3 successful conceptions all resulted in daughters.
My grandaunts mostly went on to marry wealthy men. My eldest grandaunt married an guy who had a Chinese pharmacy. It later expanded to 5 stores. I don't know what state the business is in now.
My second grandaunt married a guy who had a business in cooking utensils. I don't know which brand it was other than the name contained the word "金". His business was large enough to require 36 vans at one point. I think that's pretty big especially when it happened in the post-WWII days.
My third grandaunt married a businessman who opened a mall in Venezuela. Seriously, Venezuela. I have no idea if the business is still in existence today.
My fourth grandaunt married an heir to a large restaurant business. I said "an heir" not "the heir" because he did not inherit much of the business. When the original founder passed away, he had it split between 2 sons. These two sons had more children each, then one of them died. My granduncle-in-law was a son of this dead heir.
His uncle, after the death, took over the other share and gave his dead brother's children lowly positions while saving the upper management jobs for his own six children. Today most of the family has moved to the US, where the business has apparently expanded a lot. Back when it was only a big restaurant in Hong Kong, it was classy enough that local stars had to visit its restaurant often to be regarded as a celebrity. Today, it's everywhere and even has a small restaurant in Singapore. The name is 枫林, most commonly known as 枫林小馆.
My fifth grandaunt had the least wealthy husband who was a prison warden. Everyone of my granduncles-in-law on that side of the family were successful businessmen except him. Pretty sad but understandable because she was slightly brain-damaged as a child. Another short story here.
Back when the Japanese finally surrendered, my great-grandfather and his family celebrated by having a real meal with actual bowls of rice, which they couldn't afford before despite owning a rice shop. My fifth grandaunt, being a child of about ten, couldn't resist showing off her bowl of rice to other people outside, so she took her food and went out to eat.
One of the beggars, upon seeing a good clean bowl filled with cooked rice, succumbed to his hunger and snatched her bowl and ran like hell. A bowl of rice was practically worth a fortune at that point of time, so my frightened grandaunt gave chase to avoid getting punished. The beggar was probably mad with hunger and just ran across the roads. Meanwhile she followed and subsequently got knocked down by a car. She survived but suffered permanent brain damage that made her talk funny for the rest of her life.
Just because my grandaunts all married rich men doesn't mean they were all happy tai tais. They had to frequently pool their jewellery whenever one of them had to attend special events like their mother-in-laws' birthday celebrations. The families were rich but they themselves weren't wealthy enough to afford full sets of cheongsams and jewellery to go with, so they had to share. It's just like how not all British nobles are multi-millionaires or billionaires. Some are poor enough to be willing to sell their titles.
I don't know when many of the above things happened and I have no reason to try to find these people.
Speaking of WWII, my great-grandfather had buried a lot of money underground during that period. People during the wars were very enthusiastic about hiding stuff under the floors and soil. His first attempt was before WWII. Most of his money were rotten and unusable by the time he dug them out. I don't know which war during which this happened.
His second attempt was funnier. During WWII he buried Japanese money in those huge clay jars in which they used to preserve vegetables. The idea was that the bills would be preserved together with the vegetables by the salt and whatever else they used. When the war was over, they would be recovered and used. This was partly to prevent themselves from being robbed clean by Japanese soldiers who would often raid the shops. The official reason was to search for any illegal item, but in reality all they did was steal their money and food.
After WWII, all that remained were several notes which my great-grandmother gave out to the other family members. My mother has one which she has kept really carefully somewhere in her collection. The rest were completely ruined.
My great-grandfather did not live long after the war. After the surrender of the Empire of Japan, he was beaten to death by drunk Japanese soldiers when the family was having dinner in a restaurant. Somehow he was spotted by the men in the bathroom and by the time some random guy who saw it informed the rest of the family outside he was barely alive and the Japanese were gone. He did not survive the trip to the hospital.
This utterly meaningless death made everyone in the family hate the Japanese up to my mother's generation. I think this is called a blood feud. These things don't just appear in fiction.
My grandfather then took over one of the shops while his brother took over the other. He was spoilt, which makes sense given he was the elder son of a wealthy businessman. He went to expensive private schools that only whites and wealthy Chinese people could go to. Never went to university. As a child his allowance from his father was 1HKD per day. That's like a week's wage for labourers back then. In general he turned out to be a good man and his main weakness was his addiction to gambling.
By the time of my great-grandfather's death, he was already married to my grandmother who went to school for a single year because that was one of the conditions stated by my grandfather. She went to primary four directly. Yep, that year of schooling was obviously completely pointless.
Like all marriages in those days, it was an arranged one. Unfortunately, it was to be something my grandmother would be unhappy about even now. It began with his physical height because he was a short man, and the reasons multiplied as the years passed.
Yes he visited brothels and spent time with other women in hotels but that stopped when he finally couldn't afford it. Actually that was understandable given that women unhappy with their husbands are known to "have headaches" at night often. Anyway he couldn't afford it because his gambling habit made him lose his rice shop. Broke, the family moved to Shantou, Guangdong Province in the PRC, where he bought a small farm.
That place was haunted, or so my mother claimed. As a child she had had many encounters with the spirits in the area. Woman crying, spirits moving stuff, etc etc.
Those years were when she learnt a lot about farming that are still quite unchanged today, including battery cages and what is called "intensive chicken farming". To this day, one of my uncles still does not eat chicken absolutely and my aunts dislike eating chicken. Once I accidentally cooked chicken in one of the 4 pots of soup during a steamboat dinner because I didn't know about it. My uncle got kind of pissed at seeing that piece of meat in the pot he was using and demanded to know who it was who put it there. On learning that I didn't know about his attitude towards chicken he cooled down and settled upon using the last pot of soup that never touched any chicken.
That was the same uncle who cut the chicken gullet when he was first learning to slaughter chicken. It panicked and he, in turn, panicked. Then he let it go and it ran everywhere spraying blood all over the place from its severed artery.
Anyway they moved back to Hong Kong some years later to an apartment where my grandmother is still living in today. My aunts and uncles have told her to sell it before it gets too old to be sold but she refused to budge. I think it's already too old now.
It is strange how an unhappy woman can live so long. People often think that longevity and a positive attitude come together. My grandmother was always whining about stuff, according to my mother. When my grandfather returned home smelling of wine and perfume they would have quarrels, sometimes violent. These happened quite often.
When he went broke and moved to China, she often complained about his inability to support the family and needed her help to work. By the way she worked at home by putting plastic flowers together with glue. I'm not sure if that's hard work and I thought couples should support each other in times of hardship. Actually, never mind. Couples these days would just get a divorce if things like this happen.
Even after he died of pneumonia, she would always complain about him during at his grave during Qing Ming and his death anniversaries. It was only after my father had pass away that my mother spoke about this to her sisters, who in turned talked to her about this using my mother as comparison.
My grandfather died a few years before I was born. Guess how many years she whined about him after his death. She wouldn't have stopped at all if my father was still alive today.
She's my prime example of how negativity does not affect longevity. Pessimism does not seem to make people die earlier.
I mean, she's not even poor or anything. My mother estimates that she should still have a lot of money and that doesn't include the value of her home. All that came from her daughters who used to give her all their wages while she returned to them about 10 percent as allowances. If my mother never got married, she would still be giving her 90% of her income today.
So she's rich, her medical expenses are all covered by her children, she has grandchildren who are all growing up well and my aunts and uncles visit her every year. She still whines to them all the time on the phone about all sorts of things.
It is strange how she's still alive today with that attitude towards life. Maybe all that whining vents her frustrations and makes her happy inside. I don't really know.
Well that's the end of the story. I'll leave the rest for another rant.
This biography isn't objective at all. :P
I wonder how my life will be summarized by my bro when he tells the story to his children.
"Your uncle, he was a normal person when he was young. Then when he grew up he locked himself in his hot and stuffy room where he played computer games and surfed the Internet for the rest of his life."
That's like a modernized version of "and he lived happily ever after." I like it.
"And he wrote all kinds of shit about me when he was alive."
Just watched the third episode of the first season of Trick or Treat by Derren Brown. Every episode he would make someone pick two cards with either "Trick" or "Treat" printed on it. It's supposed to be random but where Derren Brown is concerned nothing is random and free will does not exist.
If he can make some random guy drunk just by seeing a word, what else can he not do?
In this particular episode, the participant picked "Treat" and he spent a week training the old lady to win in a world-class poker tournament. She didn't even play poker before that.
She didn't win but she was second. One week under Derren Brown can make an old lady become a world-class poker player. It's insane!!
If techniques that he uses are used in school such as how he made her more observant and confident, what would be the consequences?
I feel that teachers should learn what he does. In fact, it would make learning much less stressful if all the students were put into a trance during class. They wouldn't recall the lesson but they would remember all they learnt. Why not???
Even if we don't do this, we can use his techniques to influence the decisions of the students to make them more interested in studying. Just like how he made some guy think he really wanted a red bicycle, so can all children be made to love to learn.
It's true that it's not free will, but Singapore works.
It's strange how a game company would use pirated softwares to cover up their mistakes.
"Ubisoft ran into such a glitch with the CD-check built into the PC version of Rainbow Six Vegas 2; users who downloaded the game from an official source didn't have a disc to pass the check, causing a new patch to break legally downloaded versions of the game. Ubisoft had a novel—not to mention cheap—way to fix this: a crack that allows the game to play without a disc in the drive. The issue? The crack came from the "warez" group Reloaded, with no attribution or notice that third-party code was used to fix the DRM issue. "
In short, when they found that their then-latest patch had broken the legit copies of the game of all players who used it, they used the pirated copy of the exe file to solve this problem without acknowledging that it was Reloaded's work.
Do 2 wrongs really don't make a right?
That Dr Goh's funeral stuff was really overdone. Seriously, they even brought schoolchildren there. How many of them have even heard of his name a month ago?
Forcing people to go to someone's funeral really misses the point of having one in the first place. How do you pay your final respect if you didn't respect the deceased?
Rant 551 / Bake Your Own Bread To Find Out What Fresh Bread Is Really Supposed To Taste Like.
What the heck is going on with Windows Live? I keep getting emails notifying me of notes sent by random spammers. It's getting annoying.
On a random whim, decided to make bread. I didn't mention this but I've already tried it twice in the past few months. Both failed because I didn't know how to make my mixture into dough. It was always a watery paste that didn't rise.
So I decided this time to forget the recipe and just add water slowly to a third of a bowl of flour. Then I added a third of a teaspoon of salt, half a teaspoon of sugar and 1 satchet of dry yeast. No idea how much flour and water was used and no fats or oil was added as shortening.
It's now 11.57am on the 24th of May, Monday. I've just complete the first part of the process and leaving it to rise for the first time. Did about 5 minutes of kneading the dough before that. Now it's covered by a clean towel (not perfect, a few black spots here and there, but unused since it was washed) and left in my windless kitchen.
Not going to shower despite being very sweaty as usual because I'll need to knead it again after an hour of rising before letting it rise for another half an hour. Then bake.
Another thing is that I didn't put the dough into greased bowl. Instead I left it in the original flour-covered bowl. Hopefully it doesn't matter as long as it doesn't stick.
Kneading dough is tough work. I am unsure if I had removed all the hard bits because I didn't sieve the flour. I'll find out in the afternoon. Now waiting for 1pm.
12.19pm now. I just went to check on it and YES! It's rising! There's now a bulge on the towel and when I lifted it a little I saw that the originally flour-covered surface of the dough is cracking.
1.18pm. Just went to knead it back to its original size. Very elastic now. Took a lot of fisting to squeeze out the air but it's done. Another 30mins of rising and it's ready to be baked. Now waiting for 1.50pm.
4.02pm I'm now eating my bread. Too crusty, not enough salt. A tiny bit burnt at the bottom. Not good but it looks like bread..
This was the process:
A third of a large bowl of flour (the sort of bowl we use for soup) mixed with salt, sugar and yeast, pour in slightly warm water slowly while stirring with a finger.
Eventually I had a piece of dough that I could lift up. When stuck to the bowl, I sprinkled flour generously around it and tried to scrape the small pieces off the bowl.
Knead - squeeze dough with palm downwards, fold into half, repeat. Keep adding flour to reduce stickiness of dough. There's no such thing as too much flour. Excess flour is necessary to keep the dough from sticking. 5mins.
I left it in the same bowl to rise. Of course I had lifted the dough up, poured flour and spread it all over the bowl before putting it back. Left it there after covering the bowl with a clean towel.
1 hour later I kneaded it again. This time I squeezed as much air out as I could. Left it there under the towel again to rise.
45mins later I took it out and placed it in the baking tray, also covered with flour. Left it to rise for another 15mins.
15mins later, I preheated the oven to 225 degrees Celsius for 2-3 minutes before placing the dough inside.
10 minutes later I realized only the bottom heating element was turned on, so I turned the top heating element on too.
30-minutes later it looked well-browned on top so I took it out and knuckled it to confirm it sounded hollow. Then I took it out and waited for it to cool down to a tolerable temperature.
According to my mum, too much yeast, not enough water and not enough butter. Didn't let my bro try. He's not a bread person.
Next time, I'll use more flour, more salt, more water and a bit of margarine. Margarine isn't as good as butter because of its higher water content but it is supposed to work too.
The crust is so hard now that it has cooled down, I can probably fracture skulls with it. Really needs more shortening and less baking.
The worst oil spill in history may be happening right now in the US. It's getting so bad, the US government is threatening to remove BP from its responsibility to clean up the mess because it's currently doing such a bad job of it.
Personally I just think BP's engineers have run out of ideas, that's all.
Anyway the US government also admits that BP is probably the most qualified for the task. So that's basically an empty threat made in frustration.
Just heard about the 3 morons who accidentally hiked into Iran and got caught trespassing the border from Iraq without visas. Morons, nothing more and nothing less. I think they really picked a bad time for it. If they were spies, it's not surprising given that recent news have given us an idea of how spies keep a low profile and look so ordinary. Not to mention that their timing is excellent.
Opentrolley has replied to my email to tell me that I was not charged more than once. Good. If they had billed S$800 I'd have to do something drastic, starting from a serious call to a personal visit to legal consultation.
Now I hope the books arrive by Friday so that I can bring one with me to Malaysia.
On a random whim, decided to make bread. I didn't mention this but I've already tried it twice in the past few months. Both failed because I didn't know how to make my mixture into dough. It was always a watery paste that didn't rise.
So I decided this time to forget the recipe and just add water slowly to a third of a bowl of flour. Then I added a third of a teaspoon of salt, half a teaspoon of sugar and 1 satchet of dry yeast. No idea how much flour and water was used and no fats or oil was added as shortening.
It's now 11.57am on the 24th of May, Monday. I've just complete the first part of the process and leaving it to rise for the first time. Did about 5 minutes of kneading the dough before that. Now it's covered by a clean towel (not perfect, a few black spots here and there, but unused since it was washed) and left in my windless kitchen.
Not going to shower despite being very sweaty as usual because I'll need to knead it again after an hour of rising before letting it rise for another half an hour. Then bake.
Another thing is that I didn't put the dough into greased bowl. Instead I left it in the original flour-covered bowl. Hopefully it doesn't matter as long as it doesn't stick.
Kneading dough is tough work. I am unsure if I had removed all the hard bits because I didn't sieve the flour. I'll find out in the afternoon. Now waiting for 1pm.
12.19pm now. I just went to check on it and YES! It's rising! There's now a bulge on the towel and when I lifted it a little I saw that the originally flour-covered surface of the dough is cracking.
1.18pm. Just went to knead it back to its original size. Very elastic now. Took a lot of fisting to squeeze out the air but it's done. Another 30mins of rising and it's ready to be baked. Now waiting for 1.50pm.
4.02pm I'm now eating my bread. Too crusty, not enough salt. A tiny bit burnt at the bottom. Not good but it looks like bread..
This was the process:
A third of a large bowl of flour (the sort of bowl we use for soup) mixed with salt, sugar and yeast, pour in slightly warm water slowly while stirring with a finger.
Eventually I had a piece of dough that I could lift up. When stuck to the bowl, I sprinkled flour generously around it and tried to scrape the small pieces off the bowl.
Knead - squeeze dough with palm downwards, fold into half, repeat. Keep adding flour to reduce stickiness of dough. There's no such thing as too much flour. Excess flour is necessary to keep the dough from sticking. 5mins.
I left it in the same bowl to rise. Of course I had lifted the dough up, poured flour and spread it all over the bowl before putting it back. Left it there after covering the bowl with a clean towel.
1 hour later I kneaded it again. This time I squeezed as much air out as I could. Left it there under the towel again to rise.
45mins later I took it out and placed it in the baking tray, also covered with flour. Left it to rise for another 15mins.
15mins later, I preheated the oven to 225 degrees Celsius for 2-3 minutes before placing the dough inside.
10 minutes later I realized only the bottom heating element was turned on, so I turned the top heating element on too.
30-minutes later it looked well-browned on top so I took it out and knuckled it to confirm it sounded hollow. Then I took it out and waited for it to cool down to a tolerable temperature.
According to my mum, too much yeast, not enough water and not enough butter. Didn't let my bro try. He's not a bread person.
Next time, I'll use more flour, more salt, more water and a bit of margarine. Margarine isn't as good as butter because of its higher water content but it is supposed to work too.
The crust is so hard now that it has cooled down, I can probably fracture skulls with it. Really needs more shortening and less baking.
The worst oil spill in history may be happening right now in the US. It's getting so bad, the US government is threatening to remove BP from its responsibility to clean up the mess because it's currently doing such a bad job of it.
Personally I just think BP's engineers have run out of ideas, that's all.
Anyway the US government also admits that BP is probably the most qualified for the task. So that's basically an empty threat made in frustration.
Just heard about the 3 morons who accidentally hiked into Iran and got caught trespassing the border from Iraq without visas. Morons, nothing more and nothing less. I think they really picked a bad time for it. If they were spies, it's not surprising given that recent news have given us an idea of how spies keep a low profile and look so ordinary. Not to mention that their timing is excellent.
Opentrolley has replied to my email to tell me that I was not charged more than once. Good. If they had billed S$800 I'd have to do something drastic, starting from a serious call to a personal visit to legal consultation.
Now I hope the books arrive by Friday so that I can bring one with me to Malaysia.
Sunday 23 May 2010
Rant 550 / Reasonably
I've lost another champion courser! Argh!
It was worth it though. I lost it in the battle against the Nord King. 80+ men versus 300+ and won. I managed to stay up for 4-5 rounds before finally getting KOed and had to let my men fight on their own for another 3 rounds. Most of the casualties on my side went down in those last fights.
Unfortunately the king escaped. The good thing was the insane experience (12k I believe) and my Renown shot up to 700 from about 450.
In short, I exchanged 30 good highly trained soldiers and a 12k-denar champion courser for 250 Renown points and a whole lot of experience points.
Not a bad trade really.
It wasn't the king who gave me trouble. Oh no, he was downed by my lance at first contact. It was his huge army that was scary. I expected myself to win but in a pyrrhic victory. I guess I wasn't very far off. Lost almost half my army, lots of them Mamlukes.
Magically, my Swadian Knights remained at over 20. It's like they can't die. Maybe I should just focus on them. Then again, I noticed most of the kills were by my Mamlukes. Hmm...
I was checking on the publication status of A Dance of Dragons on Opentrolley.com when I saw that they are having a sale for all members paying with DBS/POSB credit and debit cards. So I immediately decided to buy it now before I leave next week.
Too bad A Dance of Dragons isn't out yet. Chaosbound is still in hardcover. Fortunately after quite a bit of scanning through the various lists by Amazon.com members, I was able to find enough books to make it worth the deliveryman's time. I usually buy about 150-200SGD worth of books, twice a year.
Or so I thought. After checking my order history on Opentrolley, it seems I've been buying only once a year since 2008, the year I started using this website. I definitely joined it that year because I mentioned it in a rant in this blog when I first found it. Time is running faster than I thought.
Another thing is that my range isn't 150-200SGD, but around 200. My impression of my expenditure must be outdated because I am very sure I used to buy only 150SGD worth of books back when I was still using Acmamall.com.
Anyway the newer series by Terry Brooks, the Genesis of Shannara, really interested me. I had read both his Word and Void series and all his Shannara books. This trilogy is the bridge between the two. That's like how Isaac Asimov connected his Foundation series to his Robot series.
This time I'm going to try a new author, Gene Wolfe. Ordered the books which are supposedly his best works, which are the Shadow and Claw, Sword and Citadel and the Urth of the New Sun.
The last book that really deserve a mention in the list is World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War. I don't know why but the description on Amazon just made me want to buy it so much. Now I really have to admit I'm a zombie fan.
I was very disappointed with the payment process at Opentrolley though. Apparently they did something to the payment pages since I last bought something from them and it made it incompatible with the Firefox browser.
Three times I entered the credit card information and three times the browser crashed after I hit "Submit". Frustrated, I tried the same on IE and voila, everything done smoothly. They could have stated on their front page that IE is required. Now I'm worried that I'm going to be billed 4 times the price. That's an extra 600 bucks!
Of course, I checked my email between each attempt and I received no payment notification before my final try on IE. Now I'm reasonably sure that I'm not going to be overcharged.
But only reasonably.
Yes, I emailed them. If it didn't concern money I wouldn't have bothered. But 600 bucks is a large sum for an issue this small.
It was worth it though. I lost it in the battle against the Nord King. 80+ men versus 300+ and won. I managed to stay up for 4-5 rounds before finally getting KOed and had to let my men fight on their own for another 3 rounds. Most of the casualties on my side went down in those last fights.
Unfortunately the king escaped. The good thing was the insane experience (12k I believe) and my Renown shot up to 700 from about 450.
In short, I exchanged 30 good highly trained soldiers and a 12k-denar champion courser for 250 Renown points and a whole lot of experience points.
Not a bad trade really.
It wasn't the king who gave me trouble. Oh no, he was downed by my lance at first contact. It was his huge army that was scary. I expected myself to win but in a pyrrhic victory. I guess I wasn't very far off. Lost almost half my army, lots of them Mamlukes.
Magically, my Swadian Knights remained at over 20. It's like they can't die. Maybe I should just focus on them. Then again, I noticed most of the kills were by my Mamlukes. Hmm...
I was checking on the publication status of A Dance of Dragons on Opentrolley.com when I saw that they are having a sale for all members paying with DBS/POSB credit and debit cards. So I immediately decided to buy it now before I leave next week.
Too bad A Dance of Dragons isn't out yet. Chaosbound is still in hardcover. Fortunately after quite a bit of scanning through the various lists by Amazon.com members, I was able to find enough books to make it worth the deliveryman's time. I usually buy about 150-200SGD worth of books, twice a year.
Or so I thought. After checking my order history on Opentrolley, it seems I've been buying only once a year since 2008, the year I started using this website. I definitely joined it that year because I mentioned it in a rant in this blog when I first found it. Time is running faster than I thought.
Another thing is that my range isn't 150-200SGD, but around 200. My impression of my expenditure must be outdated because I am very sure I used to buy only 150SGD worth of books back when I was still using Acmamall.com.
Anyway the newer series by Terry Brooks, the Genesis of Shannara, really interested me. I had read both his Word and Void series and all his Shannara books. This trilogy is the bridge between the two. That's like how Isaac Asimov connected his Foundation series to his Robot series.
This time I'm going to try a new author, Gene Wolfe. Ordered the books which are supposedly his best works, which are the Shadow and Claw, Sword and Citadel and the Urth of the New Sun.
The last book that really deserve a mention in the list is World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War. I don't know why but the description on Amazon just made me want to buy it so much. Now I really have to admit I'm a zombie fan.
I was very disappointed with the payment process at Opentrolley though. Apparently they did something to the payment pages since I last bought something from them and it made it incompatible with the Firefox browser.
Three times I entered the credit card information and three times the browser crashed after I hit "Submit". Frustrated, I tried the same on IE and voila, everything done smoothly. They could have stated on their front page that IE is required. Now I'm worried that I'm going to be billed 4 times the price. That's an extra 600 bucks!
Of course, I checked my email between each attempt and I received no payment notification before my final try on IE. Now I'm reasonably sure that I'm not going to be overcharged.
But only reasonably.
Yes, I emailed them. If it didn't concern money I wouldn't have bothered. But 600 bucks is a large sum for an issue this small.
Saturday 22 May 2010
Rant 549 / Bike
My lovely army. I have a fantastic number of cavalry but I need more spearmen. This is how the units work:
Normal infantry - weak against archers, strong in siege offense
Spearmen - anti-cavalry, weak against archers
Archers - anti-infantry, weak against cavalry, strong in siege defence
Cavalry - strong against everything not on horses except spearmen, weak against spearmen, weak in sieges.
Rhodok has the best spearmen since it's the kingdom that specialise in infantry units. I should probably get rid of some Swadian Horsemen or something to make room.
This is supposed to be a photo of women training in the Japanese army. Probably WWII or earlier.
Are they wearing... short dresses?? Or are those loose blouses and shorts? And are those high heels?
I didn't even know you can fire rifles in that position. They probably have really strong abs. Maybe the way their right leg is bent allows them to use that leg to absorb the recoil too.
Holy frickin shit! Just watched the first episode of the second season of Trick of the Mind by Derren Brown. He was able to convince this guy that he really wanted a BMX bike without saying "BMX bike" once. The best part was that the show finally explained how the trick was done very clearly.
That guy couldn't even remember that he had wished for something else! He was so sure that he had wanted a BMX bike even before the filming began! Then he took out a piece of paper on which he had written several days ago what he wished for a birthday gift. He had written "leather jacket". He was so surprised he even scrutinized the handwriting to make sure it written by was his own hand.
Normal people like me would have never known that this is how the mind works. I'd never have suspected that subtle hints like those would work at all. He practically drowned his senses with words and shapes that no one would have consciously noticed.
The first season wasn't as amazing most likely because he never explained how he did what he did.
Wednesday 19 May 2010
Rant 548 / Cordon Bleu
I didn't know that there is Caffeine-free Diet Coca Cola out there until now.
It's got no sugar and no caffeine but still called Coke. That's like a plate of spaghetti bolognese that contains no meat or tomato!
Yes! My first victory against an army twice my size!! My 74 men defeated a 160-man force. Woohoo! I lost a lot of top soldiers in the battle! Now I have to retrain them slowly. According to my estimates, the best soldiers I lost are
- 4 Sarranid Mamlukes
- 1 Rhodok Sergeant
- 3 Rhodok Veteran Spearmen
- 1 Nord Huscarl
- 5 Swadian Man-at-arms
- 2 Vaegir Marksmen
- 1 Khergit Lancer
As you can see, most of these valuable men are infantry. Infantry is great for sieges since horses can't climb siege ladders, but they get slaughtered in open combat. My one Huscarl... gone! The Huscarl is the toughest and most badass infantry in the game, and the most expensive. It takes forever to train one without combat.
The only good thing is that one of the Swadian Man-at-arms finally got enough experience to be promoted to a Swadian Knight. As far as I can tell, the Swadian Knight is the toughest cavalry in the game. That's why I didn't lose my single Swadian Knight in that long battle.
But while I was travelling around to trade I found Dhirim under siege. It belonged to the Khergits, whom my faction the Sarranids are at war with. I'm not officially allied or whatever with the Vaegirs but I thought I'd help them with the siege to balance things up. The enemy of my enemy is my ally.
So while I was pwning the archers with my siege crossbow (it was pure ecstasy to snipe with a heavy siege crossbow - everything dies in 2 shots at most!), I suddenly realized the guy fighting next to me was the Vaegir King!
How did he get that cool mask?
The improvement in relations with his faction wasn't useful but... what a coincidence! No wonder he was able to beat 3 soldiers alone!
Loving the Champion Coursers. It's the fastest horse in the game but also one of the weakest. This horse is actually my 3rd Courser. Lost a Spirited Courser (best maneuver, slightly lower speed) and another Champion Courser during battles, which explains why I'm down to 23k denars.
This horse is great if you're into lancing, which I evidently am. No other game has this combat feature, which makes it such an interesting fighting style. Basically I just get my horse to run like hell while I carefully place the tip of my polearm (the top weapon in the Arms column in pic) to hit the target as I run pass him.
If my horse is running while the target is moving at a relatively low speed or standing still, it's a one-shot kill or, in my case, just KO without killing. This is because my weapon is a Jousting Lance, which is blunted.
It's incredibly weak but I get more kill on it than I did during my stint on a Heavy Charger.
Check out the differences! This is the toughest horse in the game. With 61 Armour and 175 HP, it's practically tougher than me. You can compare its armour to mine and I have 51 HP.
The thing is that it's very slow. Most uphill angles would slow it to a trot, which means even if my lance is aimed at the head, the target would merely get a migraine after the battle. On the other hand, this horse is fantastic if you're into swinging swords and axes because this animal NEVER DIES!
Horses in this game get magically revived after each battle if they die. The catch is that if they too many times they get certain defects, like my previous 2 Coursers that became Lame Coursers after 2 deaths or so. Lame Coursers are slow and weak.
What a waste. Spirited Coursers are easy to find but Champion Coursers are extremely rare and expensive.
A decent compromise between toughness and speed would be this, the Hunter. It's got slightly more armour and slightly less speed. Safer to go with this horse but just not as exhilarating as rider a Courser.
Yep, I keep 3 horses as backup in case I run out of horses while I have enemies to chase. There's a Spirited Courser in my inventory that isn't shown in these pics.
Do fish have hands? Yes they do! Only in Australia though.
http://au.news.yahoo.com/a/-/technology/7274602/new-handfish-species-walk-on-by/
Someday when we see mermaids, evolution will be proven beyond a doubt. Just don't expect hot babes with fish tails. Looking at this picture, the real mermaid will probably be a fish with arms instead of just hands.
Just watch a few episodes of Mind Control which is about this guy named Derren Brown who goes around doing mind tricks with people. He's not psychic but he makes it appear as if others are psychic.
It's amazing how he can influence the subconscious minds of other people using various verbal and physical tools and create the illusion that complete strangers seem to be reading his mind.
I think he has gone one step beyond mind-reading. The show just proves how easily the human mind can be influenced.
What is the difference between the normal Martell XO cognac and the Martell Cordon Bleu XO cognac???
The former is more expensive but the latter has a classier name. WHY?
It took quite a bit of googling but I finally found the difference between the two.
Cordon Bleu uses a high percentage of brandy made from grapes from one certain area of Cognac, France, called the Borderies which is the smallest cru at 4160 hectares.
FYI cognac is brandy that's been distilled and further aged.
Normal Martell cognac, on the other hand, is made of brandy from four different areas.
This does NOT explain why Cordon Bleu is cheaper! In fact it would make more sense if it was more expensive.
I still don't get it.
My late father preferred the normal XO. According to my mum he said Cordon Bleu burnt more. But from the various online descriptions I'd say the main difference is that Cordon Bleu has a sharper flavour and shorter aftertaste.
NOTHING IS MAKING SENSE!!!
I'd taste them myself but we don't buy them often enough to waste any for my curiosity. We use the XO cognac as offerings for my late father during special occasions because it was his favourite drink.
Personally, after trying the normal XO that one time, all I can say was it tasted good. None of the nutty or caramel nonsense. Just good. Can't describe it more specifically.
Anyway my mum's friend bought Cordon Bleu and now she's understandably a bit upset. Worse is that she bought 2 bottles. Now we're going to make do with these for the next couple of years.
It's got no sugar and no caffeine but still called Coke. That's like a plate of spaghetti bolognese that contains no meat or tomato!
Yes! My first victory against an army twice my size!! My 74 men defeated a 160-man force. Woohoo! I lost a lot of top soldiers in the battle! Now I have to retrain them slowly. According to my estimates, the best soldiers I lost are
- 4 Sarranid Mamlukes
- 1 Rhodok Sergeant
- 3 Rhodok Veteran Spearmen
- 1 Nord Huscarl
- 5 Swadian Man-at-arms
- 2 Vaegir Marksmen
- 1 Khergit Lancer
As you can see, most of these valuable men are infantry. Infantry is great for sieges since horses can't climb siege ladders, but they get slaughtered in open combat. My one Huscarl... gone! The Huscarl is the toughest and most badass infantry in the game, and the most expensive. It takes forever to train one without combat.
The only good thing is that one of the Swadian Man-at-arms finally got enough experience to be promoted to a Swadian Knight. As far as I can tell, the Swadian Knight is the toughest cavalry in the game. That's why I didn't lose my single Swadian Knight in that long battle.
But while I was travelling around to trade I found Dhirim under siege. It belonged to the Khergits, whom my faction the Sarranids are at war with. I'm not officially allied or whatever with the Vaegirs but I thought I'd help them with the siege to balance things up. The enemy of my enemy is my ally.
So while I was pwning the archers with my siege crossbow (it was pure ecstasy to snipe with a heavy siege crossbow - everything dies in 2 shots at most!), I suddenly realized the guy fighting next to me was the Vaegir King!
How did he get that cool mask?
The improvement in relations with his faction wasn't useful but... what a coincidence! No wonder he was able to beat 3 soldiers alone!
Loving the Champion Coursers. It's the fastest horse in the game but also one of the weakest. This horse is actually my 3rd Courser. Lost a Spirited Courser (best maneuver, slightly lower speed) and another Champion Courser during battles, which explains why I'm down to 23k denars.This horse is great if you're into lancing, which I evidently am. No other game has this combat feature, which makes it such an interesting fighting style. Basically I just get my horse to run like hell while I carefully place the tip of my polearm (the top weapon in the Arms column in pic) to hit the target as I run pass him.
If my horse is running while the target is moving at a relatively low speed or standing still, it's a one-shot kill or, in my case, just KO without killing. This is because my weapon is a Jousting Lance, which is blunted.
It's incredibly weak but I get more kill on it than I did during my stint on a Heavy Charger.
Check out the differences! This is the toughest horse in the game. With 61 Armour and 175 HP, it's practically tougher than me. You can compare its armour to mine and I have 51 HP.
The thing is that it's very slow. Most uphill angles would slow it to a trot, which means even if my lance is aimed at the head, the target would merely get a migraine after the battle. On the other hand, this horse is fantastic if you're into swinging swords and axes because this animal NEVER DIES!
Horses in this game get magically revived after each battle if they die. The catch is that if they too many times they get certain defects, like my previous 2 Coursers that became Lame Coursers after 2 deaths or so. Lame Coursers are slow and weak.
What a waste. Spirited Coursers are easy to find but Champion Coursers are extremely rare and expensive.
A decent compromise between toughness and speed would be this, the Hunter. It's got slightly more armour and slightly less speed. Safer to go with this horse but just not as exhilarating as rider a Courser.
Yep, I keep 3 horses as backup in case I run out of horses while I have enemies to chase. There's a Spirited Courser in my inventory that isn't shown in these pics.
Do fish have hands? Yes they do! Only in Australia though.
http://au.news.yahoo.com/a/-/technology/7274602/new-handfish-species-walk-on-by/
Someday when we see mermaids, evolution will be proven beyond a doubt. Just don't expect hot babes with fish tails. Looking at this picture, the real mermaid will probably be a fish with arms instead of just hands.
Just watch a few episodes of Mind Control which is about this guy named Derren Brown who goes around doing mind tricks with people. He's not psychic but he makes it appear as if others are psychic.
It's amazing how he can influence the subconscious minds of other people using various verbal and physical tools and create the illusion that complete strangers seem to be reading his mind.
I think he has gone one step beyond mind-reading. The show just proves how easily the human mind can be influenced.
What is the difference between the normal Martell XO cognac and the Martell Cordon Bleu XO cognac???
The former is more expensive but the latter has a classier name. WHY?
It took quite a bit of googling but I finally found the difference between the two.
Cordon Bleu uses a high percentage of brandy made from grapes from one certain area of Cognac, France, called the Borderies which is the smallest cru at 4160 hectares.
FYI cognac is brandy that's been distilled and further aged.
Normal Martell cognac, on the other hand, is made of brandy from four different areas.
This does NOT explain why Cordon Bleu is cheaper! In fact it would make more sense if it was more expensive.
I still don't get it.
My late father preferred the normal XO. According to my mum he said Cordon Bleu burnt more. But from the various online descriptions I'd say the main difference is that Cordon Bleu has a sharper flavour and shorter aftertaste.
NOTHING IS MAKING SENSE!!!
I'd taste them myself but we don't buy them often enough to waste any for my curiosity. We use the XO cognac as offerings for my late father during special occasions because it was his favourite drink.
Personally, after trying the normal XO that one time, all I can say was it tasted good. None of the nutty or caramel nonsense. Just good. Can't describe it more specifically.
Anyway my mum's friend bought Cordon Bleu and now she's understandably a bit upset. Worse is that she bought 2 bottles. Now we're going to make do with these for the next couple of years.
Tuesday 18 May 2010
Rant 547 / Tipping For Potable Water
Organizing an overseas trip from scratch is very different from what I expected. It's not difficult but there's a certain procedure to it that I'm figuring out with some help.
For example, I can't just Google "Perhentian Islands" and compare all the chalet/hotel prices I see. Google isn't specialized enough for this and the results it provides are not optimal.
The right way is to search Google for travellers' websites and filter through the reviews and comments. Booking accommodations itself is a separate matter. I have to search for hotel-booking websites for this before comparing prices.
Everytime I send an email updating the others on the situation in case there are objections, I get reminded of why Free and Easy packages are so popular. Quite a bit of clicking, remembering and thinking about everyone's preferences are necessary when you're choosing your own accommodations and transports.
Even when my late father travelled across Europe alone before he got married, he went on packaged tours. Then again, he used to own a factory in those days. There's also that matter of the absence of the Internet in the 70's.
One issue at Perhentian Islands that I'm slightly concerned about is the lack of potable water. Apparently not all of the resorts have it running from the taps. Some provide refills but I'll probably need to tip every time I call for a new bottle. Ugh. I hope they like 2RM tips.
For example, I can't just Google "Perhentian Islands" and compare all the chalet/hotel prices I see. Google isn't specialized enough for this and the results it provides are not optimal.
The right way is to search Google for travellers' websites and filter through the reviews and comments. Booking accommodations itself is a separate matter. I have to search for hotel-booking websites for this before comparing prices.
Everytime I send an email updating the others on the situation in case there are objections, I get reminded of why Free and Easy packages are so popular. Quite a bit of clicking, remembering and thinking about everyone's preferences are necessary when you're choosing your own accommodations and transports.
Even when my late father travelled across Europe alone before he got married, he went on packaged tours. Then again, he used to own a factory in those days. There's also that matter of the absence of the Internet in the 70's.
One issue at Perhentian Islands that I'm slightly concerned about is the lack of potable water. Apparently not all of the resorts have it running from the taps. Some provide refills but I'll probably need to tip every time I call for a new bottle. Ugh. I hope they like 2RM tips.
Monday 17 May 2010
Rant 546 / What Are The Lyrics For The Song "Around the World"?
Today I shall discuss the cost-effectiveness of the three main fast food delivery services.
I find that KFC Delivery has the best value for money. For 50SGD I was able to get enough food for a 3-person dinner, and another 2-4 meals.
What I ordered was a Bargain Deal, 2 Ultimate Value Boxes, 2 Fish Zingers, 1 Shroom Burger, 1 Large Whipped Potato and a $5 addon for 4 drumsticks for $50. What these gave me was these:
-12 pieces of chicken
- 3 Shroom Burgers
- 2 Fish Zingers
- 2 Small Whipped Potatoes
- 2 Medium Whipped Potatoes
- 1 Large Whipped Potato
- 1 Medium Coleslaw
Initially I was planning to order an extra Shroom Burger instead of the addon, but how can anyone resist 4 drumsticks for a mere $5?? Almost all value meals or deals from fast food restaurants are bullshit, but this feels seriously cheap. It's more than a half price discount!
Anyway for Pizzahut, $50 would get me just enough for a 3-person dinner and another 1 meals, unless I order nothing but pizzas. Why would I want such a monotonous meal?
One example of my order is a Crunchy Cheesy Meal and 3 baked rice for $55. That gave me:
- 1 Regular Super Supreme Crunchy Cheesy Bites pizza
- 1 Garlic Bread
- 6 pieces of Chicken Karage
- 3 Baked Rice
This set gave me a 3-person dinner and 2 more meals. To get it below $50, I'd have to remove one baked rice. That's a 1-meal reduction.
McDelivery's menu is roughly as expensive as Pizzahut's. Since I don't want drinks, I'd usually order maybe 2 value meals and lots of ala carte stuff. For example, I once ordered 1 Double Quarter Pounder with Cheese, 1 Quarter Pounder with Cheese, 1 Filet O Fish, 1 Double Quarter Pounder with Cheese Upsized Meal, 1 Mega Mac Upsized Meal and 1 Lunch Bundle for $50.
What I got was:
- 2 Double Quarter Pounders with Cheese
- 1 Quarter Pounder with Cheese
- 1 Mega Mac
- 2 Filet O Fish
- 1 McSpicy
- 6 pieces McNuggets
- 2 Medium Fries
- 2 Large Shaker Fries
- 1 Medium Green Tea
- 1 Medium Milo
I know the list is longer but many of the stuff are small. The 4 fries, 2 drinks, 6 McNuggets and 3 of the larger burgers would become the 3-person dinner. That leaves nothing but the 3 smaller burgers and a large one, enough for two meals.
In conclusion, Pizzahut has the most heavily advertised but also the most expensive delivery menu. McDonald's comes second and KFC is the cheapest.
Packaging and service-wise, KFC is pretty much the worst. Pizzahut has the best packaging and nothing leaks mostly because of the nature of its products. Nothing is messed up when they arrive and the cardboard boxes are really good for both absorbing any condensation and heat insulation.
McDonald's understandably has problems with bringing food to the customers in perfect conditions because of the food they serve. One example is the fries. It's hard to make them stay crunchy especially in larger orders like mine. It can only be done if nothing is pressing on them during delivery, which is pretty much impossible unless you use lots of separate bags. So at least a third the fries I get from McDelivery is kind of soggy.
But I have to say two things that they did right. First, it's the paper bags. They absorb condensation which the plastic bags, which their outlets often use, can't. This helps the fries stay crunchy a bit longer. The other is that they try to pack it really neatly such that the fries don't spill out. I'm usually the first to unpack food so I can tell. It's very obvious anyway, how they stack the food. It's almost as if they hire people with OCD specially for that job.
KFC, being the cheapest in terms of volume versus price, has the worst packaging. Even right from the beginning when I call them, they told me the fries would get soggy by the time they reached me. Seriously, I was informed about that once after I ordered a Snack box. That guy was pretty honest, I like that. For the company though, that's probably not such a good move.
Alright, other than the fries, two other bad points. First, the whipped potatoes. Almost everything from Pizzahut can be reheated in conventional ovens. Pizzas, baked rice, garlic bread. Their pizza boxes even come with printed instructions for reheating. McDonald's, everything can be easily placed on a plate and microwaved, like fries, McNuggets and burgers. It's practically intuitive.
But KFC Whipped Potatoes can't be reheated in either of these! The plastic cups they come in aren't microwave-safe and obviously heating them conventional ovens would give you a new side dish called "Whipped Plastic". If you pour it out, you can't put it in the same plate as the chickens. You can place fries and burgers or pizzas and pasta in the same cooking device simultaneously, but you cannot microwave whipped potatoes and chickens together. The chicken may come into contact with the gravy! I'm picky like that. I don't like to mix stuff together if they aren't supposed to be mixed together, unless I'm getting sick of the original flavours.
I'm not sick of Whipped Potatoes, probably never will. A large Whipped Potato is not an option when I order KFC Delivery, it's a necessity! The chickens are just a bonus.
Second is the messy packaging. By "messy" I mean crumbs dropping everywhere. The boxes they put the chicken in are useless. They might as well just throw them straight into plastic bags because at least they don't leak! The big cardboard boxes for only chickens aren't so bad, but the last time I ordered KFC, that thing was covered with tiny crumbs that rolled off when I opened the lid.
The Ultimate Value Boxes are the worst. The basic design of the paper box did not take into account the crumbs that often drop off the chicken parts. Whoever designed it obviously had the engineering knowledge but not the frickin intelligence. I'm not even going talk about the management people who approved this moronic object. Really, how did so many people convince themselves that the sieve is a box? Do they pour flour through a box when they bake cakes at home?
If you have never tried baking stuff at home you probably wouldn't get that. So for you guys I'll explain it. When you make dough or batter with flour, you have to sieve it so that the clumps are separated and re-pulverized. If you don't sieve your flour as you mix it with the liquid, you're going to have lots of hard bits in your final product.
Don't get me wrong - it's not all bad. I like how their chicken stay crunchy for days in the fridge. True, they get a bit soggy, but if you bake it in a conventional oven it regains a little more crunch. Not true for Original Recipe (OR) chicken though. That one gets soggy in the fridge and stays soggy.
The coleslaw is very convenient since it's supposed to be served cold. Whipped Potatoes, on the other hand, must never be served cold. It tastes a little funky when eaten straight from the fridge.
What I do is I microwave it for 10-15s in its original microwave-unsafe cup right from the fridge. It should get a little warm on one side. I then stir it all up. No choice, that's the only way to warm it up evenly without having to wash a bowl later on. Then I microwave it again for about 5-10s, depending on the size of the cup. Stir again. Then another 5-10s. Stir again and I get a room-temperature or slightly warm cup of Whipped Potato, and I won't have to get my fingers all dried up by detergent later.
I dislike washing dishes. Either I suffer the dry skin or I suffer a minute or so of doing absolutely nothing while staring at my monitor. I can't stand seeing my screen and not being able to hold my mouse just because I have to wait for the moisturizer on my hands to dry.
I wish Long John Silver and Burger King would start delivery services. I've been waiting for BK to deliver for so long.
I find that KFC Delivery has the best value for money. For 50SGD I was able to get enough food for a 3-person dinner, and another 2-4 meals.
What I ordered was a Bargain Deal, 2 Ultimate Value Boxes, 2 Fish Zingers, 1 Shroom Burger, 1 Large Whipped Potato and a $5 addon for 4 drumsticks for $50. What these gave me was these:
-12 pieces of chicken
- 3 Shroom Burgers
- 2 Fish Zingers
- 2 Small Whipped Potatoes
- 2 Medium Whipped Potatoes
- 1 Large Whipped Potato
- 1 Medium Coleslaw
Initially I was planning to order an extra Shroom Burger instead of the addon, but how can anyone resist 4 drumsticks for a mere $5?? Almost all value meals or deals from fast food restaurants are bullshit, but this feels seriously cheap. It's more than a half price discount!
Anyway for Pizzahut, $50 would get me just enough for a 3-person dinner and another 1 meals, unless I order nothing but pizzas. Why would I want such a monotonous meal?
One example of my order is a Crunchy Cheesy Meal and 3 baked rice for $55. That gave me:
- 1 Regular Super Supreme Crunchy Cheesy Bites pizza
- 1 Garlic Bread
- 6 pieces of Chicken Karage
- 3 Baked Rice
This set gave me a 3-person dinner and 2 more meals. To get it below $50, I'd have to remove one baked rice. That's a 1-meal reduction.
McDelivery's menu is roughly as expensive as Pizzahut's. Since I don't want drinks, I'd usually order maybe 2 value meals and lots of ala carte stuff. For example, I once ordered 1 Double Quarter Pounder with Cheese, 1 Quarter Pounder with Cheese, 1 Filet O Fish, 1 Double Quarter Pounder with Cheese Upsized Meal, 1 Mega Mac Upsized Meal and 1 Lunch Bundle for $50.
What I got was:
- 2 Double Quarter Pounders with Cheese
- 1 Quarter Pounder with Cheese
- 1 Mega Mac
- 2 Filet O Fish
- 1 McSpicy
- 6 pieces McNuggets
- 2 Medium Fries
- 2 Large Shaker Fries
- 1 Medium Green Tea
- 1 Medium Milo
I know the list is longer but many of the stuff are small. The 4 fries, 2 drinks, 6 McNuggets and 3 of the larger burgers would become the 3-person dinner. That leaves nothing but the 3 smaller burgers and a large one, enough for two meals.
In conclusion, Pizzahut has the most heavily advertised but also the most expensive delivery menu. McDonald's comes second and KFC is the cheapest.
Packaging and service-wise, KFC is pretty much the worst. Pizzahut has the best packaging and nothing leaks mostly because of the nature of its products. Nothing is messed up when they arrive and the cardboard boxes are really good for both absorbing any condensation and heat insulation.
McDonald's understandably has problems with bringing food to the customers in perfect conditions because of the food they serve. One example is the fries. It's hard to make them stay crunchy especially in larger orders like mine. It can only be done if nothing is pressing on them during delivery, which is pretty much impossible unless you use lots of separate bags. So at least a third the fries I get from McDelivery is kind of soggy.
But I have to say two things that they did right. First, it's the paper bags. They absorb condensation which the plastic bags, which their outlets often use, can't. This helps the fries stay crunchy a bit longer. The other is that they try to pack it really neatly such that the fries don't spill out. I'm usually the first to unpack food so I can tell. It's very obvious anyway, how they stack the food. It's almost as if they hire people with OCD specially for that job.
KFC, being the cheapest in terms of volume versus price, has the worst packaging. Even right from the beginning when I call them, they told me the fries would get soggy by the time they reached me. Seriously, I was informed about that once after I ordered a Snack box. That guy was pretty honest, I like that. For the company though, that's probably not such a good move.
Alright, other than the fries, two other bad points. First, the whipped potatoes. Almost everything from Pizzahut can be reheated in conventional ovens. Pizzas, baked rice, garlic bread. Their pizza boxes even come with printed instructions for reheating. McDonald's, everything can be easily placed on a plate and microwaved, like fries, McNuggets and burgers. It's practically intuitive.
But KFC Whipped Potatoes can't be reheated in either of these! The plastic cups they come in aren't microwave-safe and obviously heating them conventional ovens would give you a new side dish called "Whipped Plastic". If you pour it out, you can't put it in the same plate as the chickens. You can place fries and burgers or pizzas and pasta in the same cooking device simultaneously, but you cannot microwave whipped potatoes and chickens together. The chicken may come into contact with the gravy! I'm picky like that. I don't like to mix stuff together if they aren't supposed to be mixed together, unless I'm getting sick of the original flavours.
I'm not sick of Whipped Potatoes, probably never will. A large Whipped Potato is not an option when I order KFC Delivery, it's a necessity! The chickens are just a bonus.
Second is the messy packaging. By "messy" I mean crumbs dropping everywhere. The boxes they put the chicken in are useless. They might as well just throw them straight into plastic bags because at least they don't leak! The big cardboard boxes for only chickens aren't so bad, but the last time I ordered KFC, that thing was covered with tiny crumbs that rolled off when I opened the lid.
The Ultimate Value Boxes are the worst. The basic design of the paper box did not take into account the crumbs that often drop off the chicken parts. Whoever designed it obviously had the engineering knowledge but not the frickin intelligence. I'm not even going talk about the management people who approved this moronic object. Really, how did so many people convince themselves that the sieve is a box? Do they pour flour through a box when they bake cakes at home?
If you have never tried baking stuff at home you probably wouldn't get that. So for you guys I'll explain it. When you make dough or batter with flour, you have to sieve it so that the clumps are separated and re-pulverized. If you don't sieve your flour as you mix it with the liquid, you're going to have lots of hard bits in your final product.
Don't get me wrong - it's not all bad. I like how their chicken stay crunchy for days in the fridge. True, they get a bit soggy, but if you bake it in a conventional oven it regains a little more crunch. Not true for Original Recipe (OR) chicken though. That one gets soggy in the fridge and stays soggy.
The coleslaw is very convenient since it's supposed to be served cold. Whipped Potatoes, on the other hand, must never be served cold. It tastes a little funky when eaten straight from the fridge.
What I do is I microwave it for 10-15s in its original microwave-unsafe cup right from the fridge. It should get a little warm on one side. I then stir it all up. No choice, that's the only way to warm it up evenly without having to wash a bowl later on. Then I microwave it again for about 5-10s, depending on the size of the cup. Stir again. Then another 5-10s. Stir again and I get a room-temperature or slightly warm cup of Whipped Potato, and I won't have to get my fingers all dried up by detergent later.
I dislike washing dishes. Either I suffer the dry skin or I suffer a minute or so of doing absolutely nothing while staring at my monitor. I can't stand seeing my screen and not being able to hold my mouse just because I have to wait for the moisturizer on my hands to dry.
I wish Long John Silver and Burger King would start delivery services. I've been waiting for BK to deliver for so long.
Sunday 16 May 2010
Rant 545 / Wormgrass
Just read a few articles in this month's National Geographic Magazine. The one about the trade between China and Tibet, exchanging horses with tea, was very interesting because it mentioned cordyceps aka 虫草.
My mum used to tell me that it's a sort of herb that contains the eggs of certain worms. Strangely the NG journalist referred to it as a "caterpillar". So was it really a caterpillar or did he misunderstand the Tibetans?
So I went online and checked. Sure enough, 虫草 is really a mummified caterpillar whose insides was completely consumed and replaced by the roots (aka mycelium) of the cordycep fungus.
The orange parts are the dried caterpillars. The black parts that protrudes from the heads of the carcasses are the fruiting bodies of the mushrooms.
FFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUCCCCCCKKKKKKK!
It would have been very much less disgusting if it was just the fungus.
Unlike McDonald's, both PizzaHut and KFC still do not have security measures to prevent fake orders. For McDelivery orders using cash payment, they would send a PIN via SMS to the handphone number registered to the account. The user would then enter the PIN online to confirm the order.
The other 2 merely take your word for it. True, they may log your IP but free proxies and TOR would prevent their simple softwares from finding out the origin of that order. It's unlikely they have softwares that can track down an IP covered by those two measures.
This only shows how nice Singaporeans are.
Sometimes when I read other people's comments on Reuters I think I get a feel of what it's like for others to read the stuff I type here. Obnoxious. Retarded. How did he come up with that misconception?
It's like when I used to say things against the use of crude oil. Our essays in GP and English classes that praise environmentalism and vilify fossil fuels, they are all the same. I guess we're all well-trained in the art of hypocrisy.
How can one write an essay on a plastic desk using a plastic pen on the evils of petroleum and not be a hypocrite? How can one write on a clean sheet of lined paper the benefits of saving trees and not see it as hypocrisy?
It just makes me laugh to think that we are all so full of shit. I thought it's just me but I guess I was wrong. It's just so fuckin funny!
Imagine me going "YEAH PROTECT OUR TREES SAVE MOTHER NATURE STOP USING PETROL ENGINES YEAH!!!!" on a 600W computer consuming electricity generated by burning natural gas, a type of fossil fuel. It looks so stupid now, I can't believe I did that so wholeheartedly.
We can't go that extreme in this, not when we are using what we're using. Suggest that we use less, fine. But to go so far as to say that we should stop using oil completely, now that's bullshit.
Fact is, we are so dependent on oil we don't even notice it. Look around you. No, look in front of you. You don't even need to shift your head and you can likely find at least 5 plastic objects. Right here I have my handphone, a clock, a portable hard disk, a monitor, a brush and many other stuff. Without oil, I wouldn't even have a computer.
Without oil, all Singaporeans would have Japanese-like diets, ie full of seafood. Not to mention we'd be broke without our oil refineries. Rice and most other crops would have relatively exorbitant prices since we have to import everything. In short, Temasek would have remained Temasek, a mosquito-filled swampy island.
We cannot simply stop using oil. We're addicted to it the way heroin addicts are to the white powder. All alternative sources of energy simply aren't as cost-effective. Recently I came across this movie called Daybreakers, a 2009 film. We're exactly like those vampires down to their situation in which they were running out of human blood to consume. To revert back to our pre-oil state would be just as painful as when they reverted back to humans but in a different way.
Anyway I started this because I wanted to say that sometimes it just isn't pleasant to know the opinions of everyone. Maybe we should all just keep our voices down no matter how right we think we are.
My mum used to tell me that it's a sort of herb that contains the eggs of certain worms. Strangely the NG journalist referred to it as a "caterpillar". So was it really a caterpillar or did he misunderstand the Tibetans?
So I went online and checked. Sure enough, 虫草 is really a mummified caterpillar whose insides was completely consumed and replaced by the roots (aka mycelium) of the cordycep fungus.
The orange parts are the dried caterpillars. The black parts that protrudes from the heads of the carcasses are the fruiting bodies of the mushrooms.FFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUCCCCCCKKKKKKK!
It would have been very much less disgusting if it was just the fungus.
Unlike McDonald's, both PizzaHut and KFC still do not have security measures to prevent fake orders. For McDelivery orders using cash payment, they would send a PIN via SMS to the handphone number registered to the account. The user would then enter the PIN online to confirm the order.
The other 2 merely take your word for it. True, they may log your IP but free proxies and TOR would prevent their simple softwares from finding out the origin of that order. It's unlikely they have softwares that can track down an IP covered by those two measures.
This only shows how nice Singaporeans are.
Sometimes when I read other people's comments on Reuters I think I get a feel of what it's like for others to read the stuff I type here. Obnoxious. Retarded. How did he come up with that misconception?
It's like when I used to say things against the use of crude oil. Our essays in GP and English classes that praise environmentalism and vilify fossil fuels, they are all the same. I guess we're all well-trained in the art of hypocrisy.
How can one write an essay on a plastic desk using a plastic pen on the evils of petroleum and not be a hypocrite? How can one write on a clean sheet of lined paper the benefits of saving trees and not see it as hypocrisy?
It just makes me laugh to think that we are all so full of shit. I thought it's just me but I guess I was wrong. It's just so fuckin funny!
Imagine me going "YEAH PROTECT OUR TREES SAVE MOTHER NATURE STOP USING PETROL ENGINES YEAH!!!!" on a 600W computer consuming electricity generated by burning natural gas, a type of fossil fuel. It looks so stupid now, I can't believe I did that so wholeheartedly.
We can't go that extreme in this, not when we are using what we're using. Suggest that we use less, fine. But to go so far as to say that we should stop using oil completely, now that's bullshit.
Fact is, we are so dependent on oil we don't even notice it. Look around you. No, look in front of you. You don't even need to shift your head and you can likely find at least 5 plastic objects. Right here I have my handphone, a clock, a portable hard disk, a monitor, a brush and many other stuff. Without oil, I wouldn't even have a computer.
Without oil, all Singaporeans would have Japanese-like diets, ie full of seafood. Not to mention we'd be broke without our oil refineries. Rice and most other crops would have relatively exorbitant prices since we have to import everything. In short, Temasek would have remained Temasek, a mosquito-filled swampy island.
We cannot simply stop using oil. We're addicted to it the way heroin addicts are to the white powder. All alternative sources of energy simply aren't as cost-effective. Recently I came across this movie called Daybreakers, a 2009 film. We're exactly like those vampires down to their situation in which they were running out of human blood to consume. To revert back to our pre-oil state would be just as painful as when they reverted back to humans but in a different way.
Anyway I started this because I wanted to say that sometimes it just isn't pleasant to know the opinions of everyone. Maybe we should all just keep our voices down no matter how right we think we are.
Thursday 13 May 2010
Rant 544 / Better If They Were Never Born
In Mount and Blade, books don't stack. For example, having 2 Books of Healing don't give you +2 in Wound Treatment. Wasted 6-7k for that. =\
100k denars! It took about 20 Naruto episodes but I did it! But my M&B world sucks now. I can't find Butter ANYWHERE! I think the Caldarian economy has gone down the drain without my help and all that constant warring is screwing up the trade routes.
Butter has always been the rarest food in the game for me and now it's completely absent in towns. Looks bad. I think I should start to actually play the game instead of just moving around buying and selling. I'll keep the peace and make sure the farmers can bring their products to the towns for sale.
Now that I have 100k, yea I'll do that. But I'm only at episode 145 for Naruto Shippuden, another 15 episodes to go (latest episode isn't available for free at CrunchyRoll).
2.6 billion people in the world do not have water piped to their homes. That's over 500 Singapores. For their sake, I shall use as much water as I can so that their sacrifice is not in vain.
It's a sad fact that the people who need clean water the most are also the ones who have to pay the highest price. When you have a good clean river next to your home, water is cheap and you don't need more water. But when you're in a desert and the closest source of water is a muddy brine a few kilometres underground, water is bound to be insanely expensive.
How does one solve that?
Again, as I always have, I suggest providing the poor with free condoms. Now, I'll add 10-year subscriptions to World of Warcraft and subsidized abortions to the list. I don't support genocide but I do very much support family planning.
I'd even suggest free sterilization for the poor if I thought it could be affordable enough for the charity organizations.
I agree that everyone has the right to live their lives, but it's irresponsible to bring your child to the world only to force him/her to live a shitty life till he/she dies at 40 from dysentry. It's much more merciful if the child was never born, am I not right?
I may have thrown in tasteless jokes in this rant, but the message is serious. Think of all those millions of children out there looking forward to a life of hopeless poverty. Spending 8 hours everyday to collect and carry back home uphill 45kg of water can't be anything but hardship.
It's pretty fucked up when I read about this and recalled images like these:
Once during my army days I escorted these chefs and waiters from some 5-star hotel restaurant who were hired to cook a meal for some special foreign VVIPs. Grilled fish, sharks fins, crepes, etc. I had to watch them work to make sure they didn't wander off the more sensitive areas of the building, so I had the opportunity to see what the waiters threw away after the meal was over.
Entire dishes of perfectly cooked food by experienced chefs, practically untouched, were dumped straight into the trash bags! Evidently, some of the guests didn't even lift a fork!
And then you have starving children like these:
who probably think that walking 15mins to school with a 2kg bag is hard work.
Half the children in the world live in poverty. Half the children in the world have nothing to look forward to in their future except to work like slaves and die paupers.
For every healthy child you see, for every healthy child you meet, for every healthy child you know, there's probably one living under a straw roof drinking raw mud water.
Saving each one manually via community service and volunteer work is not the solution. That's basically just giving the poor man a fish. Anyone can do that. Everyone is doing that. I can run bots for freerice.com whenever my computer is online and donate a million grains of rice a day.
No, they require something more permanent. They need to be taught to fish. Unfortunately developed nations will lose a cheap source of resources (eg oil, gold, diamonds). A fragmented people is easily exploited (see Qing Dynasty), hence it's to our benefit to keep them hating each other.
I'm not going anywhere with this. Just saying that the poor will remain poor if you want to maintain your present lifestyle. Life isn't fair in this sense, never was, probably never will be. Do all the good you like, but you're still not helping those who really need it. Until you can unite the African tribes and cure idiocy, nothing you do is actually helping.
Yes, keep feeding the poor man with the fish everyday and tell yourselves you're doing right. When he spawns 10 more hungry children with life expectancies of 30-40 years that will end in painful deaths, keep telling yourselves it's not a problem but a blessing to the world.
I say either work towards a more permanent solution or divert our increasingly precious resources to protecting our cities and bread baskets from the inevitable climate changes. Protect our water, protect our food, protect our shelters. Keeping a larger amount of emergency funds is always a good option.
What if I'm one of them, you may ask. The "what if" game should never, ever be used in this manner. It is best used for disaster prevention, not for making people feel guilty about imaginary matters. Well, I'm not one of the poor and I'm not about to spend money and computer power on hungry people who will do nothing but breed more hungry people who do nothing but breed even more hungry people.
I prefer to run Folding@Home to Free Rice bots.
How much money has been spent over the decades on food aids? How many people did these help bring to the world? How many of these won any Nobel Prize? How many made any "World's First" achievement other than the "World's First People To Commit Genocide Without Having The World Missing A Beat" prize?
There you see millions of people crying for just a drink of water. Boys with bloated bellies and flies in their eyes. Women who get beaten for cutting a queue for a running tap. They will die and it's going to be just another day in the slums. Burial is a simple dump-the-body-in-a-pit ritual. Nobody remembers; three generations down and such a person never walked the earth.
And who brought these people into this world? People who live as nothing and die for nothing. People whose greatest concern is whether they have water tomorrow. Who gave them the opportunity to exist?
It is a far greater mercy to provide them with free sterilization and contraceptives.
For every chicken they can't eat, I'll eat three. Thanks for not being there to eat them.
Just because you feel great to be alive doesn't mean everyone is going to be happy to live. Some people never do. They just crawl out of a vagina one day, feel hungry all their short, pointless lives and die crying. Better if their parents had starved to death.
Better if they were never born.
100k denars! It took about 20 Naruto episodes but I did it! But my M&B world sucks now. I can't find Butter ANYWHERE! I think the Caldarian economy has gone down the drain without my help and all that constant warring is screwing up the trade routes.
Butter has always been the rarest food in the game for me and now it's completely absent in towns. Looks bad. I think I should start to actually play the game instead of just moving around buying and selling. I'll keep the peace and make sure the farmers can bring their products to the towns for sale.
Now that I have 100k, yea I'll do that. But I'm only at episode 145 for Naruto Shippuden, another 15 episodes to go (latest episode isn't available for free at CrunchyRoll).
2.6 billion people in the world do not have water piped to their homes. That's over 500 Singapores. For their sake, I shall use as much water as I can so that their sacrifice is not in vain.
It's a sad fact that the people who need clean water the most are also the ones who have to pay the highest price. When you have a good clean river next to your home, water is cheap and you don't need more water. But when you're in a desert and the closest source of water is a muddy brine a few kilometres underground, water is bound to be insanely expensive.
How does one solve that?
Again, as I always have, I suggest providing the poor with free condoms. Now, I'll add 10-year subscriptions to World of Warcraft and subsidized abortions to the list. I don't support genocide but I do very much support family planning.
I'd even suggest free sterilization for the poor if I thought it could be affordable enough for the charity organizations.
I agree that everyone has the right to live their lives, but it's irresponsible to bring your child to the world only to force him/her to live a shitty life till he/she dies at 40 from dysentry. It's much more merciful if the child was never born, am I not right?
I may have thrown in tasteless jokes in this rant, but the message is serious. Think of all those millions of children out there looking forward to a life of hopeless poverty. Spending 8 hours everyday to collect and carry back home uphill 45kg of water can't be anything but hardship.
It's pretty fucked up when I read about this and recalled images like these:
Once during my army days I escorted these chefs and waiters from some 5-star hotel restaurant who were hired to cook a meal for some special foreign VVIPs. Grilled fish, sharks fins, crepes, etc. I had to watch them work to make sure they didn't wander off the more sensitive areas of the building, so I had the opportunity to see what the waiters threw away after the meal was over.
Entire dishes of perfectly cooked food by experienced chefs, practically untouched, were dumped straight into the trash bags! Evidently, some of the guests didn't even lift a fork!
And then you have starving children like these:
who probably think that walking 15mins to school with a 2kg bag is hard work.
Half the children in the world live in poverty. Half the children in the world have nothing to look forward to in their future except to work like slaves and die paupers.
For every healthy child you see, for every healthy child you meet, for every healthy child you know, there's probably one living under a straw roof drinking raw mud water.
Saving each one manually via community service and volunteer work is not the solution. That's basically just giving the poor man a fish. Anyone can do that. Everyone is doing that. I can run bots for freerice.com whenever my computer is online and donate a million grains of rice a day.
No, they require something more permanent. They need to be taught to fish. Unfortunately developed nations will lose a cheap source of resources (eg oil, gold, diamonds). A fragmented people is easily exploited (see Qing Dynasty), hence it's to our benefit to keep them hating each other.
I'm not going anywhere with this. Just saying that the poor will remain poor if you want to maintain your present lifestyle. Life isn't fair in this sense, never was, probably never will be. Do all the good you like, but you're still not helping those who really need it. Until you can unite the African tribes and cure idiocy, nothing you do is actually helping.
Yes, keep feeding the poor man with the fish everyday and tell yourselves you're doing right. When he spawns 10 more hungry children with life expectancies of 30-40 years that will end in painful deaths, keep telling yourselves it's not a problem but a blessing to the world.
I say either work towards a more permanent solution or divert our increasingly precious resources to protecting our cities and bread baskets from the inevitable climate changes. Protect our water, protect our food, protect our shelters. Keeping a larger amount of emergency funds is always a good option.
What if I'm one of them, you may ask. The "what if" game should never, ever be used in this manner. It is best used for disaster prevention, not for making people feel guilty about imaginary matters. Well, I'm not one of the poor and I'm not about to spend money and computer power on hungry people who will do nothing but breed more hungry people who do nothing but breed even more hungry people.
I prefer to run Folding@Home to Free Rice bots.
How much money has been spent over the decades on food aids? How many people did these help bring to the world? How many of these won any Nobel Prize? How many made any "World's First" achievement other than the "World's First People To Commit Genocide Without Having The World Missing A Beat" prize?
There you see millions of people crying for just a drink of water. Boys with bloated bellies and flies in their eyes. Women who get beaten for cutting a queue for a running tap. They will die and it's going to be just another day in the slums. Burial is a simple dump-the-body-in-a-pit ritual. Nobody remembers; three generations down and such a person never walked the earth.
And who brought these people into this world? People who live as nothing and die for nothing. People whose greatest concern is whether they have water tomorrow. Who gave them the opportunity to exist?
It is a far greater mercy to provide them with free sterilization and contraceptives.
For every chicken they can't eat, I'll eat three. Thanks for not being there to eat them.
Just because you feel great to be alive doesn't mean everyone is going to be happy to live. Some people never do. They just crawl out of a vagina one day, feel hungry all their short, pointless lives and die crying. Better if their parents had starved to death.
Better if they were never born.
Wednesday 12 May 2010
Rant 543 / Isn't It?
http://video.xin.msn.com/watch/video/new-approach-to-teach-mother-tongue-according-to-different-abilities/1babnsp5t
So while in English it's either you suck or you don't suck, in Mother Tongue you can now suck, a little bit sucky, kind of suck, don't really suck and don't suck at all. Yep, now kids in SG can totally kind of suck at Chinese.
Seriously, haven't we had this system for like decades? It used to be called "Primary 1/2/3/4/5/6" and "Secondary 1/2/3/4/5" right?
So the voice actor of the Illusive Man was Martin Sheen, father of Charlie Sheen. The voice actor of the male Shepard was Mark Meer. Bioware had quite a few big names in their cast.
Researching on Penang and Genting Free and Easy packages. Initially I calculated the cost if I reserve rooms directly from hotels and throw in coach fares. That was a horrendous idea. Just the rooms alone cost more than the F&E packages from Grassland Express, which I'm seriously considering at the moment.
Now I'm given the price of S$375.50 per person for F&E to Penang plus Genting Highlands(31st May to 3rd June and 3rd June to 6th June) from Grassland, with accommodations at Sunway Hotel in Penang and First World Hotel in Genting. Coach transport to Penang, from Penang to Genting and from Genting to Singapore.
Doesn't look too bad. I should check other options but I don't think other agencies have comparable coaches at this price.
Monday 10 May 2010
Rant 541 / 750-Billion-Euro Morphine Shot
So a wife in Mount and Blade: Warbands is, in practice, your secretary. She shows you the contents of your safe and even helps to come up with ideas on how to improve your standing in the realm.
18k for this. Oh well, at least she's the daughter of one of the most powerful Emirs in the Sultanate.
Halmar is a big distraction though. It's a bloody frontier town that keeps getting sieges from anyone we have war with and the nearby town, Peshmi, gets raided ALL THE TIME! It's like there's a huge bullseye on the area that makes the town and village the number one target for all enemies.
The only good thing that comes with retaking the town is that the garrison gets refilled with over 20 Mamlukes, which is the Sultanate's version of knights, which is the game's heavy mounted melee unit. So I can switch my low-ranking infantry with these cavalry and make my army highly mobile. Too bad Mamlukes don't have lances. Apparently lances and mounts go together very well in this game.
Now that I've learnt so much about this game, I'm going to make a new character. This time, I'm not going to waste points of useless things like Engineering. Once I get this companion named "Artimmer" he can handle all that Engineering stuff since he starts with 4 points there.
Also, I'm going to ignore most of the Party skills since they stack when multiple companions have it. Just focusing on combat stuff and Personal skills.
Holy shit! 1 trillion dollars?? Weren't they considering 500million just yesterday? Apparently it worked! At least for now. Finally the EU is able make a swift and effective decision, especially after the Greek aid issue showed how fragmented it is.
EDIT: It's only been like 8 hours since I first read the above news and here's a new update that says the euro is slipping already. What the hell? 750,000,000,000 euros spent for an 8-hour high!
Replaying Mount & Blade, now with Trainer skill! My combat sucks but with good Riding skills and some points spent on Polearms, I'm now just zooming around killing people with my sharp lance.
Did you know that if your Lance Control in your option is set to Automatic, whenever your horse is going fast enough your lance will lower down by itself? If you aim properly and hit someone with the tip, it's almost always a 1-shot KO.
Fun! Not easy though. I can't just ram through a mass of soldiers because lancing someone stops slows down my horse. Therefore it's best to aim for stragglers or enemies at the edges of the crowd.
Properly done, it is possible to single-handedly take down entire armies. You just need luck, good Riding skills and a decent aim. Once I received a headshot from a javelin while riding at full speed and got KOed by that one hit, so luck is important.
18k for this. Oh well, at least she's the daughter of one of the most powerful Emirs in the Sultanate.
Halmar is a big distraction though. It's a bloody frontier town that keeps getting sieges from anyone we have war with and the nearby town, Peshmi, gets raided ALL THE TIME! It's like there's a huge bullseye on the area that makes the town and village the number one target for all enemies.
The only good thing that comes with retaking the town is that the garrison gets refilled with over 20 Mamlukes, which is the Sultanate's version of knights, which is the game's heavy mounted melee unit. So I can switch my low-ranking infantry with these cavalry and make my army highly mobile. Too bad Mamlukes don't have lances. Apparently lances and mounts go together very well in this game.
Now that I've learnt so much about this game, I'm going to make a new character. This time, I'm not going to waste points of useless things like Engineering. Once I get this companion named "Artimmer" he can handle all that Engineering stuff since he starts with 4 points there.
Also, I'm going to ignore most of the Party skills since they stack when multiple companions have it. Just focusing on combat stuff and Personal skills.
Holy shit! 1 trillion dollars?? Weren't they considering 500million just yesterday? Apparently it worked! At least for now. Finally the EU is able make a swift and effective decision, especially after the Greek aid issue showed how fragmented it is.
EDIT: It's only been like 8 hours since I first read the above news and here's a new update that says the euro is slipping already. What the hell? 750,000,000,000 euros spent for an 8-hour high!
Replaying Mount & Blade, now with Trainer skill! My combat sucks but with good Riding skills and some points spent on Polearms, I'm now just zooming around killing people with my sharp lance.
Did you know that if your Lance Control in your option is set to Automatic, whenever your horse is going fast enough your lance will lower down by itself? If you aim properly and hit someone with the tip, it's almost always a 1-shot KO.
Fun! Not easy though. I can't just ram through a mass of soldiers because lancing someone stops slows down my horse. Therefore it's best to aim for stragglers or enemies at the edges of the crowd.
Properly done, it is possible to single-handedly take down entire armies. You just need luck, good Riding skills and a decent aim. Once I received a headshot from a javelin while riding at full speed and got KOed by that one hit, so luck is important.
Sunday 9 May 2010
Rant 540 / Music Transcends Language And Cultural Barriers.
Looks like BP is hitting the Panic button pretty hard now. Covering the blown up oil well with a dome sounds more like something that come out of a fiction novel than an actual engineer's solution.
What's more? It didn't work. Apparently gases crystallized inside and clogged the pipe within. It's estimated they will take another 2 days to think of a new desperate solution. Desperate definitely because that dome sounded too much like a last resort.
An estimated twenty-five thousand barrels of crude oil is leaked per day under the sea since 20/04/10. By the end of today, BP will have lost five hundred thousand barrels, not to mention the damages to various seafood-related industries and wildlife refuges. Lots of ammo will be gained by environmentalists from this accident.
Tried the lyrics of Om Mangalam but I can't read Tamil and the English lyrics really don't help.
Just after I spent a fortune buying those 2 6k-denar books!
Some guy in Japan brought a scale to McDonald's to weigh his fries. He found his packet to be lighter than what was advertised by about 20g and he got extra fries for complaining about that.
Each french fry weighs 3 grams? 4? So he got 6-7 more fries for lugging a scale over. Wow. Obviously someone isn't watching enough anime and has too much free time.
So I've finally tried to court this lady who's the daughter and sister to 2 lords in the Sultanate. Thought it would be useful to have such a tie with 2 just by one marriage, and one of them is Emir Mundhalir who is sometimes the Marshal of the realm.
When my standing with Lady Yasmin hit 20 points, I asked Mundhalir for her hand. That's when trouble struck. The dowry is going to cost me a whopping 18100 denars. EIGHTEEN THOUSAND DENARS!
This is now a quest I must complete within 30 days. If I don't raise that 18k by then I don't know what will happen. 30 days is a long time, yes, but it's still a large sum of money.
Right now I have 14k, excluding the goods in my filled inventory. Shouldn't be too hard to hit 18k, but I need to have an extra 10k as seed capital after the marriage.
At least the Sultan gave me Halmar and Peshmi for hanging around during battles. When the battle was won I immediately had the idea of talking to the lords before they scattered. Good thing I did, because I managed to convince several of them to support me as the person to receive this newly conquered fief.
In the end I'm only earning about 200 denars more.
Saturday 8 May 2010
Rant 539 / How To Have Glossy Plastic-like Skin In Oblivion?
Scientists are suggesting that ancient humans may have mated with Neanderthals. Oh man. What the heck? That's... disgusting, to say the least. I mean, I thought fucking chimpanzees was bad, but this... this is... well, not that surprising anymore actually, now that I think about it.
TWENTY-FOUR-DENAR WINE IN SUNO!
Since Colgando En Tus Manos is in Spanish, it's pretty hard for me to learn. I have to admit I got hooked, so that explains my interest. Fortunately I found the video below. Still not easy because I'm too used to English pronunciations. Luckily I can pronounce all the Spanish syllables, unlike German and French, so this video really helped.
This song may not be as awesome right from the beginning as Faint by Linkin Park, but it seems to sound better each time I hit the replay button. I can kind of understand the 49 million views now.
Learnt a little more Spanish from this song. The first two verses are very hard because they're so fast and I keep getting confused over the different pronunciations of the same syllables. For example Carlos seemed to pronounce "z" as "z", which is the South American way, while Martha pronounces it as "th", the Spanish Spanish way.
Is it even correct to say "Venezuela" as "Benethuela"? I can't really tell from the song but some Google results imply that it is.
If you're male and actually want to try, it's easier to mimic the original version of the song sang by Carlos alone. Its lyrics are different at the end though.
Lyrics copied directly from http://learningbysingingspanish.blogspot.com/2009/01/colgado-en-tus-manos-hanging-in-your.html
Colgando en tus manos (Hanging in your hands)
by Carlos Baute (Venezuela) Feat. Marta Sanchez (Spain)
Translation: Laura
Quiza no fue coincidencia encontrarme contigo
Maybe it was not a coincidence meeting you
Tal vez esto lo hizo el destino
Maybe this was made by destiny/fate
Quiero dormirme de nuevo en tu pecho
I want to fall sleep in your chest again
y despues me despierten tus besos
and afterwards your kisses will wake me up
Tu sexto sentido sueña conmigo
your sixth sense dreams of me
Sé que pronto estaremos unidos
I know that soon we will be united
Esa sonrisa traviesa que vive conmigo
That naughty smile that lives with me
Sé que pronto estare en tu camino
I know that soon I will be in your path
Estribillo 1 (refrain)
Sabes que estoy colgando en tus manos
You know that I am hanging in your hands
Asi que no me dejes caer
so, do not let me fall
Sabes que estoy colgando en tus manos
You know that I am hanging in your hands
Estribillo 2
Te envío poemas de mi puño y letra (1)
I send you poems in my own handwriting (written by me)
Te envío canciones de 4.40
I send you songs of 4.40 (2)
Te envío las fotos cenando en Marbella
I send you the photos of us having dinner in Marbella (3)
y cuando estuvimos por Venezuela
and when we were in Venezuela
Y asi me recuerdes y tengas presente
And so that you remember me and always have present (in mind)
Que mi corazón está colgando en tus manos
that my heart is hanging in your hands
Cuidado, cuidado
Careful, careful
Que mi corazon esta colgando en tus manos
That my heart is hanging in your hands
No perderé la esperanza de hablar contigo
I will not lose the hope of talking to you
No me importa qué dice el destino
I dont care about what fate might say
Quiero tener tu fragancia conmigo
I want to have your scent with me
y beberme de ti lo prohibido
and to drink from you what's forbiden
Refrain 1
Refrain 2
Cuidado, cuidado, mucho cuidado, cuidado
Careful, careful, be very careful, careful
No perderé la esperanza de estar contigo
I won't lose the hope of being with you
Cuidado, cuidado, mucho cuidado, cuidado
Careful, careful, very careful, careful
Quiero beberme de ti todo lo prohibido
I want to drink from you all that's forbiden
Cuidado, cuidado, mucho cuidado, cuidado
Careful, careful, very careful, careful
Quiero amanecer besando toda...
I want to wake up kissing (your) whole
toda tu ternura mi niña, mi vida te necesito
your whole tenderness, my girl, my life, I need you
Again, this is for the original song only. The duet version has a different final verse which you can read from the video above. Didn't include the footnotes for the lyrics from the website of origin.
The male-only version lacks the insanely high notes that only people without Adam's Apples can go unless you're 费玉清. If that's the case, I was not aware that you sing Spanish songs.
This song keeps playing in my mind like it's on Autoplay and Loop!!!
Finished Baldur's Gate 2: Shadows of Amn. I didn't know I could turn into the Slayer or I wouldn't have purposely lost reputation just to keep my evil party members happy. Edwin was probably worth it though.
The game did get much better after leaving Amn but I didn't explore the game much after that. Just played it for the story because I was beginning to get bored of the combat. Fortunately I left Aerie behind or the game would have become much more annoying. Sure she's very useful but I think Black Isle made her a very irritating "weakling" sort of character just to make all the others look better.
Not very interested in the expansion Throne of Bhaal. The story seems to be about me hunting down the other children of Bhaal, unlike the main story which has such an interesting villain that kept the player wondering why he was doing what he did if he wasn't trying to destroy the world or something.
Settlers 7 is a nice game but Mount and Blade is much better. I felt the former game was too restricting in terms of gameplay. It's not only because M&B is a sandbox game but also due to the limited resources in S7.
Ouch! Knowing that the octopus is a highly intelligent creature, I kind of pity it as it was being eaten alive by those fish.
Holy shit!
TWENTY-FOUR-DENAR WINE IN SUNO!
Since Colgando En Tus Manos is in Spanish, it's pretty hard for me to learn. I have to admit I got hooked, so that explains my interest. Fortunately I found the video below. Still not easy because I'm too used to English pronunciations. Luckily I can pronounce all the Spanish syllables, unlike German and French, so this video really helped.
This song may not be as awesome right from the beginning as Faint by Linkin Park, but it seems to sound better each time I hit the replay button. I can kind of understand the 49 million views now.
Learnt a little more Spanish from this song. The first two verses are very hard because they're so fast and I keep getting confused over the different pronunciations of the same syllables. For example Carlos seemed to pronounce "z" as "z", which is the South American way, while Martha pronounces it as "th", the Spanish Spanish way.
Is it even correct to say "Venezuela" as "Benethuela"? I can't really tell from the song but some Google results imply that it is.
If you're male and actually want to try, it's easier to mimic the original version of the song sang by Carlos alone. Its lyrics are different at the end though.
Lyrics copied directly from http://learningbysingingspanish.blogspot.com/2009/01/colgado-en-tus-manos-hanging-in-your.html
Colgando en tus manos (Hanging in your hands)
by Carlos Baute (Venezuela) Feat. Marta Sanchez (Spain)
Translation: Laura
Quiza no fue coincidencia encontrarme contigo
Maybe it was not a coincidence meeting you
Tal vez esto lo hizo el destino
Maybe this was made by destiny/fate
Quiero dormirme de nuevo en tu pecho
I want to fall sleep in your chest again
y despues me despierten tus besos
and afterwards your kisses will wake me up
Tu sexto sentido sueña conmigo
your sixth sense dreams of me
Sé que pronto estaremos unidos
I know that soon we will be united
Esa sonrisa traviesa que vive conmigo
That naughty smile that lives with me
Sé que pronto estare en tu camino
I know that soon I will be in your path
Estribillo 1 (refrain)
Sabes que estoy colgando en tus manos
You know that I am hanging in your hands
Asi que no me dejes caer
so, do not let me fall
Sabes que estoy colgando en tus manos
You know that I am hanging in your hands
Estribillo 2
Te envío poemas de mi puño y letra (1)
I send you poems in my own handwriting (written by me)
Te envío canciones de 4.40
I send you songs of 4.40 (2)
Te envío las fotos cenando en Marbella
I send you the photos of us having dinner in Marbella (3)
y cuando estuvimos por Venezuela
and when we were in Venezuela
Y asi me recuerdes y tengas presente
And so that you remember me and always have present (in mind)
Que mi corazón está colgando en tus manos
that my heart is hanging in your hands
Cuidado, cuidado
Careful, careful
Que mi corazon esta colgando en tus manos
That my heart is hanging in your hands
No perderé la esperanza de hablar contigo
I will not lose the hope of talking to you
No me importa qué dice el destino
I dont care about what fate might say
Quiero tener tu fragancia conmigo
I want to have your scent with me
y beberme de ti lo prohibido
and to drink from you what's forbiden
Refrain 1
Refrain 2
Cuidado, cuidado, mucho cuidado, cuidado
Careful, careful, be very careful, careful
No perderé la esperanza de estar contigo
I won't lose the hope of being with you
Cuidado, cuidado, mucho cuidado, cuidado
Careful, careful, very careful, careful
Quiero beberme de ti todo lo prohibido
I want to drink from you all that's forbiden
Cuidado, cuidado, mucho cuidado, cuidado
Careful, careful, very careful, careful
Quiero amanecer besando toda...
I want to wake up kissing (your) whole
toda tu ternura mi niña, mi vida te necesito
your whole tenderness, my girl, my life, I need you
Again, this is for the original song only. The duet version has a different final verse which you can read from the video above. Didn't include the footnotes for the lyrics from the website of origin.
The male-only version lacks the insanely high notes that only people without Adam's Apples can go unless you're 费玉清. If that's the case, I was not aware that you sing Spanish songs.
This song keeps playing in my mind like it's on Autoplay and Loop!!!
Finished Baldur's Gate 2: Shadows of Amn. I didn't know I could turn into the Slayer or I wouldn't have purposely lost reputation just to keep my evil party members happy. Edwin was probably worth it though.
The game did get much better after leaving Amn but I didn't explore the game much after that. Just played it for the story because I was beginning to get bored of the combat. Fortunately I left Aerie behind or the game would have become much more annoying. Sure she's very useful but I think Black Isle made her a very irritating "weakling" sort of character just to make all the others look better.
Not very interested in the expansion Throne of Bhaal. The story seems to be about me hunting down the other children of Bhaal, unlike the main story which has such an interesting villain that kept the player wondering why he was doing what he did if he wasn't trying to destroy the world or something.
Settlers 7 is a nice game but Mount and Blade is much better. I felt the former game was too restricting in terms of gameplay. It's not only because M&B is a sandbox game but also due to the limited resources in S7.
Ouch! Knowing that the octopus is a highly intelligent creature, I kind of pity it as it was being eaten alive by those fish.
Holy shit!
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