So this was my first negotiation with a potential supplier in China on Alibaba.com.
Found one of the products similar to what I'm looking for, so I started this chat session with the representative, Ms Chen.
It was weird. Maybe it was because I was too formal, or maybe her English was not that good, but at one point she addressed me as "dear".
Sorry, forgot to take a screenshot.
What prompted me to blog about this was the end of the conversation, when she used an emoticon instead of saying, "Bye."
Am I supposed to reply?
Am I being too formal? Or is this normal among mainland Chinese netizens?
Am I being noob for being surprised by this?
Worst thing is, I don't even get the emoticon right away. I only guessed it meant "Goodbye" by inference. The emoticon for hand-waving that I use is o/ and \o.
Boldened and enlarged them to make it clear they're emoticons and not typos.
Anyway, OMG HER PRICE WAS EPICLY LOW!
The price she quoted excluded the shipping but it was an eighth of what I was told to expect.
AN EIGHTH!
HOLY FUCKING CRAP!
Too bad it didn't fulfil our basic requirements, so I couldn't take advantage of the unbelievably low price.
Initially I suspected a scam, but at that low price, it wouldn't have been a significant problem even if she really does vanish with my money.
The difference was probably due to the location. We're used to ordering from Guangdong, but this supplier is from another part of China. It kinda makes sense but I didn't expect that huge of a price difference.
Anyway, I don't think I'll need to fly to China after all.
The new MMJ town I'm in in Die2Nite is doing pretty well. A bit more drama but things are going fine. A few guys are doing things they shouldn't be doing and a few others are talking about giving up and suiciding already.
As for points, we aren't the best but neither are we bad. In the list in the Oval Office, we're in the middle among the towns that started on the day we had the MMJ.
So I don't like to cook regularly.
To replace the absence of vegetables in my meals, I've been buying fruits instead.
Normally I don't eat fruits because they take time to prepare. Cooked vegetables in my meals didn't.
Now that the latter is no longer true, fruits are the option that require less work.
I don't know if it's currently the mango season or something, but I've been buying those ripe mangoes that cost $1.50 each. Today I found some that was selling at 3 for $4.
All of them were so juicy and sweet, I learnt that I couldn't handle them properly after peeling them.
Nope, I have to eat them with the skin on to get a proper hold.
And it's also impossible not to get one of my hands wet when eating those mangoes.
In the past I didn't have to prepare mangoes myself because during those rare occasions when my mum bought them, she also prepared them for us.
Also cooked Kung Pao Chicken. The only real dish I've cooked this week. Made chicken porridge for two days in a row but that doesn't count.
Used a jar of Kung Pao Chicken sauce for it, with 2 drumsticks that cost $2.50 total bought at the wet market, 2 cloves of garlic, a few spring onions and some ginger.
No dried chilli. Only realized that when I started preparing the ingredients.
Sad.
Also, it's so hard to remove the meat from the drumsticks when it's not fully thawed.
I could barely tell the ice from the narrow pointy bone next to the leg bone.
Turned out alright. The sauce saved the day. The replacement of dried chilli using a packet of chilli pepper from Pastamania did not work. No effect at all.
Oh well. Since I didn't throw anything away, it was decent enough.
So my terrapin doesn't like soy beans.
I prepared my soy beans yesterday by soaking them for an entire evening, then leaving them in the fridge to soak some more before boiling them for 10mins this morning.
They tasted edible. Not soft like the sort I'm used to but edible.
They were actually for another culinary experiment involving some baking but my schedule appeared too busy today so I thought I wouldn't waste them by feeding them to the turtle.
He's like my garbage bin that only gets rid of edible wastes.
Or so I thought.
I tested a few and he ate them all, so I threw in the rest of the beans. It was about 2 cups, enlarged from soaking in all the water.
Didn't eat them all.
I had to squat for like 20mins picking them out with a glove on.
The glove didn't help with the grip but I didn't want to soak my hand that long in the one-day-old water.
I'll never feed these to him in such large amounts again. Maybe a small handful at a time, no more.
I like how she reloads her double-barrel shotgun so quickly we don't even see her hands do it.
As you can probably tell, the iPad is a very practical product.
There has always been a feeling of something missing in Fallout: New Vegas that I was never able to describe.
That is, until recently.
The problem with FNV is that the developers didn't have as much spare time on their hands as those of FO3 did. The result is that even though FNV has so many more places than FO3, most of these places are just... empty.
In most places in FO3, there are bits and traces left behind by people before, during and sometimes after the nukes landed 200 years before the game's start. When I explore the land, I'd always be looking for these journals and similar stuff lying around. All other loots are just bonuses.
For example, in Germantown in FO3, one would find the final journal entries of a group of soldiers who were with some civilians when America was nuked by Chinese missiles. In these entries the leader described their problems, like the shortage of radiation medicine and deserters who believed they could find help or hope in the radioactive wasteland beyond their camp. The journals ended when the leader herself succumbed to radiation poisoning.
In FNV, these things were too rare. True that the game quests and other things were more interesting, but the lack of these little things made the Mojave Wasteland a far more boring land than the Capital Wasteland of FO3.
And this is why I find it so hard to go back to FNV after completing it.
As for Lonesome Road, it's so much more boring than the last DLC, Old World Blues, which I think was the most interesting one. Most places to explore and there are little bits of backstory in a lot of places.
The third Mega-Meta Jump landed me in a town that seems pretty good so far. Second day now. A bit of bickering here and there but overall, most of us seem to know what we're doing.
A few deaths on the first night. I guess I was extremely lucky in my first MMJ town which didn't have a single death the first night.
Our town also found 2 hacksaws on the first day, including one by me. Good omen.
My first day was so epic. I found a hacksaw, a blueprint for ExtraWall, a trestle (DO) and steroids.
Not so good on the second day but I was rationing my water. Maybe I shouldn't have done that. The first few days are the most crucial for clearing the map. Oh well.
I'll stop rationing my water for the next 2 days or so.
54 Mexican Drumlets from Burger King - free of charge!
LOL!
I told the BK employee at Clementi Mall I expected a wait when I handed her the 9 vouchers that I got from Gobbler.com so that she wouldn't apologize so much like the one at the Burlington Square outlet.
Also bought several burgers just so that it didn't feel like I was robbing someone so much.
The BK at Clementi Mall was faster than the one at Burlington Square. 9 vouchers at the former took 5mins while 4 vouchers at the latter took 10.
Another difference is that this outlet uses boxes of 6 drumlets while the other uses boxes of 4. I don't know why.
Been playing some Tribes of the East, the last expansion for Heroes of Might and Magic 5 (HoMM V).
Cheated all the way through several stages in the last few campaigns in previous expansions to get here, mainly to refill movement points and add 10k of the top tier creatures of the race. A few were even completed within a single turn.
Didn't just win the map directly using a console command because of the cutscenes.
Anyway, ToE feels like what HoMM V should have been, and with it, the game feels complete.
I know. A little late. HoMM VI is about to be released soon.
But whatever. I'm just playing for the story. Everything else is just a bonus, with or without cheats.
The actor was waiting to film scenes with his glamorous co-star in
their new movie and was fiddling with the hi-tech gadgets attached to
his outfit.
Downey Jr, 46, hit the ‘wrong’ button, which controls one of
the arms and hit Scarlett – who plays Black Widow in the movie – in the
face.
Show's over. Iron Man has defeated the villain. No need to watch the movie anymore. Sorry for spoiling the movie before its release.
The best way to keep a secret is to avoid giving the impression that there is even a secret at all. That way, the difficult questions that require additional lies can be avoided.
So one of the factory bosses in China whom we've been working with confided in my mum that Singaporean winter fashion is lagging behind that of Guangdong, China. Jackets he supplies us with, he wouldn't sell in his country.
We LOL'ed (though not on the phone).
Different tastes, probably.
And I guess just because you manufacture something doesn't mean you're an expert in the field.
Work that I used to think are very troublesome aren't actually that bad when they're necessary.
Like hanging the laundry.
It's tedious and boring. Doing it once in a while is fine, and feels good to give a pleasant surprise to someone. Doing it regularly is a different story.
But once it becomes a necessity, once I realize that no one else is going to do it, it just feels less annoying.
Tried Rusty Hearts, a free-to-play RPG available on Steam.
Very emo, very anime.
Interesting, but not impressed. Unsurprising for a f2p MMORPG.
Still waiting for f2p Star Trek Online.
There was such a huge storm last night, probably the remnants of a frickin typhoon that managed to crawl its way to our island.
The wind was so strong it blew one of our window panes beyond the angle it was supposed to go.
We use the sort of windows which has to be pulled in and pushed out (casement window?), and we normally leave the ones at the balcony slightly open at about 30 degrees (one-sixth pi) out.
Last night when the wind woke me up by shaking my door (came in through the windows of the living room), I got out to close them. That was about 3am.
I pulled the first one in to almost close it, then left it there so that I could close the rest before locking each one. I didn't think locking was important since it never was. The joints of the mechanism holding the panes above and below were so crappy they are hard to move with or without oiling them.
But as I closed the second window an extremely strong gust came and blew it wide open. I immediately locked the second window and tried to close the first one again.
Couldn't. It felt like I was going to pull the entire window out. The steel things holding the window was moving together with the pane as I nudged it when they were supposed to rotate.
In the end I locked the third window before going back.
On the way back I also noticed the second window was being dragged out by the wind, so I opened it a bit, hoping the same wind won't come again in the meantime, and locked the left pane securely using the metal rod lock thing that's inside the frame of the window pane that moves vertically.
That did the trick.
The first one was still a problem.
Wind was blowing in all the rain and I was feeling the full force of the storm while trying to close the window. The frequent lightning did nothing to make me feel safer.
I never unlocked the grills throughout, even though that would allow me to stretch out more to get a better grip on the outer part of the pane.
Finally, I came up with a makeshift solution.
Our curtain is really just a very large piece of light fabric that was supposed to be sewn into curtains but my mum never got around to doing that. Instead, we just use large pegs to peg it to the grills.
Hence I folded the curtain into a rectangle slightly larger than the window, and pegged it back onto the grills.
Stopped most of the rain from invading my home but lots of water dripped down onto the tiles of our balcony. Luckily they were ceramic tiles and not wooden boards like the rest of the my home.
So I took out a spare rag and placed it where the tiles ended and the wood started, to dry the feet of anyone who steps over and back.
Through the entire night I was worried that the pane might get blown away by the wind.
Never did.
At about 7am I woke up again. I think the worry was making me a light sleeper.
Came out to check, and the window was still whole.
Called my bro who was cooking breakfast to get there once he was done.
He came out to the balcony and immediately noticed one of the hinges had been pushed beyond the angle it was supposed to go.
This is pretty similar to ours. The leftmost L-shaped part was never supposed to bend the other way (into an inverse L), but it did last night. To make it go that way, the lower part of the L would have to be compressed for a split-second with a strong force. That same force could also snap the joint holding the two bars together or the one holding the shorter bar to the black part.
This morning, we had only 2 choices - risk breaking it and call a repairman if it does, or just call a repairman.
My bro picked the first, and with brute strength managed to pull the window back. I'll never open that window wide again, and I'll close the windows every night. For all I know he could have caused a minor crack somewhere inside.
IIRC repairing each window would cost us S$200, and that's just for a broken handle. No idea what a broken hinge would cost.
And it was pretty scary, I have to admit. Getting the window pulled out is pretty normal in this part of the year and for about 5 months from now on, but getting it pulled this hard isn't.
This is the first time. I consider myself lucky that everything turned out okay, not to mention happy to be alive.
And as if this wasn't enough, I was about to make a joke about selling freezers in Greenland when I googled it and discovered there really is a market for them there.
Capitalism is such a wonderful comedy.
Life is never easy only because the term "easy" is subjective.
My life isn't easy because of all the problems I have, but my life is also extremely easy because I'm confident that I cannot possibly starve.
I know with my crappy academic qualification I can still get a shitty deskjob somewhere and get less than a thousand dollars a month.
Compare this with the life of the Tuareg described in this month's National Geographic magazine. I think it's one of the worst things in life to have your entire race be notorious for being untrustworthy, even for amongst themselves.
War and starvation is a daily concern for them, and mere teenagers have to get out to fight for their freedom. Even for the civilians, making a living can mean walking across the desert barefooted for an entire month just for a trade. I have yet to walk for more than an hour continuously in years.
Compared to them, I must be living an almost impossibly comfortable life.
So the readership of this has been floating around 100, staying pretty constant at this level. The difference, currently, is that I'm getting several daily views from China.
I caught like one from Hong Kong too, so it's possible my cousins have found this blog. Places with only one pageview get pushed out of the Day (ie 24-hr) list very quickly.
It might have been because I accidentally gave the two sisters the email containing this nick a few months ago.
I wonder if they're able to understand what I'm saying here. I know the younger one probably doesn't but I don't know about the older one.
Anyway, even if they have, I don't think it's that big a deal to them.
After all, this is just a very uninteresting blog about a very uninteresting guy.
Oh yeah, and I got some views from Trinidad and Tobago. Seriously, people come here from everywhere around the world, probably for stuff I posted back when I was a more interesting person unburdened by anything but school/army. Or at least I'd like to think I was a more interesting person in the past.
Now that I've completed Lonesome Road, there's no longer anything for me to explore. I've thoroughly explored all the places in the Mojave desert that contains anything interesting and my level's already 40 going to 41.
There really isn't anything more I can do in the game but turn it into a porn studio.
Hopefully someone comes up with some good mods that provide extra quests.
Everything is being said very carefully because the scientific community isn't as objective as it claims to be. Some things are just... based on faith (and logic based on that faith).
I assume they're going to repeat the experiment at least one more time, if they haven't already, to prove that nothing went wrong the first time.
This is an extremely serious claim. If the results are true, some of Einstein's most famous contributions to the scientific world will be rendered useless. I bet there are many scientists out there who have their research based on some of these contributions, and their mark in history may be on the line here.
Therefore, it's not entirely going to be about the right and wrong of the theory, but partly about personal ambitions, ie politics.
And this is just one among many that will affect the outcome.
Completed Lonesome Road, the final DLC for Fallout: New Vegas.
Dramatic, kinda. I can tell that they really tried.
It was dramatic in a way, but not the "OMFG NOOKS!" sort. I don't know. I guess I was too... distanced from the action.
I can't say whether it was me or the game, so I'm not saying anymore about that.
It was nice. A lot of looting too. I'm a little dismayed by the absence of any epic bosses. The Marked Men bosses looked no different from the other Marked Men, so I didn't even know they were bosses till I was looting the bodies.
So the left ear hook started leaking green goo too. The right ear hook is still fine with the tape. Haven't needed to re-bandage it yet. Either the tape's stronger than I thought or the pressure has dropped sufficiently.
But the left ear hook leaked on two spots simultaneously one day. I thought I solved it by applying the same tape on both but the goo from the lower crack managed to squeeze its way out of the upper end of the tape. Under the tape, the goo has visibly occupied like a whole centimetre inside.
I was actually expecting the blister to burst.
...
A little tighter now, slightly harder to put on and take off. Put a lot more tape to make it tighter to prevent similar issues for a longer time.
It's barely been half a year since the IT Show when I bought it. I know because there's a technological gadget exposition every quarter of the year, and there's been two since I bought it, the second of which ended earlier this month.
I guess this is what I get for S$11 (IIRC). At least it's still comfortable and working.
So my mum had transferred my AIA insurance to my name without telling me. After skipping premium payments for 4 months (I think) I got a call from the guy who took over our stuff ever since the last one... I don't know what happened to her lol.
Maybe she got promoted or left the company. Who knows? She was the nice one who managed to get our claims through quickly when my father passed away so that we could pay the hospital bills until the government sorted out the intestate stuff before it could pass us his money. My parents didn't have a shared bank account.
Anyway the new guy told me if I paid this month's premium that day, he could help me waive the interest for it.
My reply was that I was considering cancelling it altogether. My reason is that my income is still unsteady, and I don't know if I could maintain this for long after I've sold all the old goods ordered by my mum.
Of course I didn't tell him that.
He then of course persuaded me to continue, and he had a few very good points.
My parents had bought this policy 15-16 years ago, and this was supposed to last for 20 years, ie just a few years more to get the maximum benefits.
Moreover, the difference between what I was considering and what my father had planned was in the thousands of dollars. Compare this with the fixed deposit I'm currently investing in, I'd almost never get the same amount with the money I have unless I place everything I have in the same bank - and that's not I want ever since I learnt that even old established banks can collapse.
Personally I also believe its benefits are probably considered very good these days, even though I don't know what they are. (Honestly I don't like to care about money matters.) I mean, things were cheaper back then. For the same premiums I pay for similar policies today, I'll probably never get the same in returns.
It's just like how the doorframes in my home are made of a kind of wood that costs exorbitant amounts of money these days. I know because we asked some people about replacing those when we changed our doors some years ago. When the guy came over to do an onsite survey, he was so excited about telling my mum NEVER to change those frames because they were still good and would be extremely expensive to get the same wood.
Financially, I could afford 4-5 years of the premiums with my inheritance even without a steady income, so I've decided to go on with it, using internet banking to pay the premiums. Just paid one month of it as a trial since I was a virgin in this internet bill payment thing. Got the receipt from AIA so I paid the rest of what I owed just now, including the interests incurred before.
Interestingly, premiums owed to AIA are considered loans, and when I pay for it, instead of typing L in front of the policy number which is the designated letter for insurance policies, I type R which means it's for a loan.
Good thing the accumulated interest was only a couple bucks.
Using my inheritance is something I want to avoid in all things, but I see no harm in this. I'll just put it back when this is over.
Started buying stuff from the wet market instead of Shop N Save.
THINGS ARE SO CHEEEEEEAAAAAPPPP!!!
For about S$7 I managed to get a whole bag full of greens.
Then again, I picked the wrong veggies to buy.
I only bought vegetables and fruits that day. At first it was because I thought the meat and poultry stalls close at noon. By the time I learnt different, I didn't have the strength to carry so many things. I'll probably have to consider bringing the trolley that my mum used to use in the future.
As for the wrong vegetables, I actually planned to buy several, including kangkong. The problem was that there was no kangkong for sale that day. To prevent the possibility that I couldn't find it because I couldn't recognize raw kangkong (I've never seen raw ones before, embarassingly), I simply bought one bunch of every vegetable that had a long stem.
This was a safe plan because I have a hungry terrapin that eats anything green. It even tried to eat a candy wrapper that somehow got blown in through the window. Of course it didn't swallow. It's kinda picky. I once watched it pick the flesh off a piece of pear, leaving the skin whole.
The skin also vanished a couple hours later, but that's not the point.
Anyway, I got a bunch of watercress and sweet potato plants.
The watercress wasn't a big problem. I could make soup with it.
Sweet potato plants, on the other hand, was a significant issue.
They cannot be eaten without a bit of preparation, namely peeling the stems.
Unfortunately, sweet potato stems have a chewy skin. Therefore if I cook it I'll not only have to clean them but also peel them one by one.
No wonder it's so cheap.
But that's not as bad as it sounds. I tested it on my terrapin and it's totally okay with the unpeeled stems, so I can just wash them and throw them in. Maybe chop them up into inch-long pieces to let it have an easier time.
And I'll never buy it again. Too much work. I'm no housewife and I'm not that broke yet.
Lonesome Road really is a lonesome road. There's absolutely no NPC that I can talk to except my companion and Ulysses.
Everyone else has gone mad.
The only non-hostile NPCs in the game are those two and the animals because of my Animal Friend perk. Doesn't include Death Claws unfortunately. Those Death Claws in the DLC seem more dangerous than I remember - they all kill me with a single blow now.
Other than exploiting terrain glitches, the only way to defeat them is to walk sideways in light armour (faster movement speed) when anticipating an incoming attack in order to dodge it, then move in for the kill when it's recovering.
Luckily for me, Death Claws have very little stamina, so my War Club disables each in 2-3 hits, which usually land within a second. The only catch with this tactic is that I cannot handle multiple Death Claws.
Tunnelers are harder to disable but they don't hit as hard.
Marked Men are a different issue. Some of them seem to have infinite stamina. My War Club actually killed several without ever stunning them.
Anyway I'm finding this a little boring because there is no friendly zone for me to take a break in. Constant combat gets bland after a while.
Saw KassemG on =3 before but didn't really check out his work much until now.
In this series, everybody is basically bashing KassemG, including KassemG himself.
I never thought about the "dropping the soap" joke from this angle before.
As a result, Japan's foreign language education market is
growing, with learners more than willing to fork out plenty of money on
lessons, DVDs or e-learning.
It rose 1.6 percent to $9.8 billion in 2010 from a year earlier,
said Yano Institute of Research, and is set to grow another 1.8 percent
this year, making it a rare bright spot amid lagging Japanese private
consumption.
Pretty huge.
Or they could just come to this blog. The Youtube videos I posted in 857 were quite educational. Lots of new words right there that they wouldn't learn in school.
Sometimes, it's the small issues in life that makes it hard. People don't notice it after a while but the effects remain.
Having had my own bathroom for so long, I'd forgotten what it's like to share it with multiple people.
Now that I think about it, it seems to terrible.
It has to be so annoying to have someone bang on the door while I'm taking a dump in the morning telling me to get out soon.
Even before the rest of my family stopped using my bathroom, we almost never had such a problem. 3 people, 2 bathrooms. Not much chance that all of us would need them at the same time.
So when I saw the picture in this month's National Geographic magazine of a bathroom that multiple families are sharing in a low-income neighbourhood in Brazil, it just reminded me of how lucky I am.
Just imagine how these people suffer if they want to shit leisurely in the morning. I guess they can never do that at home. Even if it's just 3 families with 2 kids each, that's still 12 people sharing the same bathroom at least.
Hygiene issues aside, the traffic must still be too heavy for anyone to even take a relaxing shower.
Compare that with me. Sometimes I continue to sit inside after I'm done so that I can finish reading an article in the magazine or a chapter in a book.
They can never have such a luxury even in their own homes.
How crappy mornings would be if you have to rush your morning routines.
Maybe it's just me, but I wake up at least an hour (sometimes two) before I have to leave in the morning even though I don't have the habit of eating breakfast. All I take is a cup of coffee. Usually I sip it so slowly I can't finish it before I leave.
That's how relaxed I like my mornings.
The sole reason is that I fucking hate mornings.
Yep. I'm a 100% night person.
Having to wake up early is bad enough. No need to risk making it worse.
It sucks to have to start a new day in a grouchy mood.
Bad times in Die2Nite. The second Multi-Meta Jump aka Mega-Meta Jump aka MMJ didn't turn out as well as the first one did for me.
I guess I was lucky there was almost no non-serious players or griefers in the first town.
But the second town was a whole different story. Half the town were very active, just the people I like to play with, but the rest were... not that great.
At the end, when I won the Last Man Standing award raffle, people actually tried to take that from me and succeeded.
The importance of this LMS award is that the winner gets free Hero (paid membership) days proportional to how long he survived.
This award is given to a random member of a town who stays within on the night it gets destroyed by the zombies.
Usually in towns such as this, we'd have a raffle in the forum to decide who gets this. The winner would be the lone brave soul staying in town while everyone else camps in their hiding spots elsewhere in the desert which they already have split among themselves in the forum.
In my case, two other people stayed in town with me on the final night and one of them got it instead.
Losing the LMS award itself doesn't matter to me - I didn't even know what I would do with the Hero days. It was the act of staying in town despite our discussions, which symbolises the lack of cooperation by some of the people in the town, and then getting rewarded for that that annoys me.
Oh well. At least it will be easy to remember who it was because the list of towns I joined is very short.
I can't and won't make an official complaint about this because this is part of the game. Life in a post-apocalyptic world isn't going to sheltered by rules and laws.
Also joined a random "distant" town after that just to fill the time. A "distant" town is one in which only players with over 100 Soul Points, earned through their time in Die2Nite, can join. In other words, only experienced players can get in.
Terrible experience, slightly better than the random noob towns I played in during my early days in Season 1. The 6 days I spent inside reminded me why I joined a mega-coalition in the first place.
Too bad mega-coalitions no longer work in the current Season 3. Every town has a coalition limit, so it's impossible for a town to be completely (or almost) by members of the same mega-coalition, only half full at most. The other half would be filled by random players such as the ones I played with in the 6-day crap town.
That's why we have the MMJs. Instead of having each mega-coalition to organize their own jumps that will only be 50% effective at most, all interested mega-coalitions would jump at the same time and fill up as many town as they can with their experienced and serious players, resulting in minimal numbers of players who end up in bad towns filled with players who don't give a damn.
Anyway the third MMJ is coming. Already signed up and eagerly waiting for some real teamwork.
Ever since I bought that bottle of decent quality sesame oil I've been using it non-stop in everything I cook, including the udon I cooked just now.
Boiled the udon, sieved the udon, then poured some soy sauce (both dark and light) and sesame oil.
Lonesone Road is out. The final DLC for Fallout: New Vegas!
That's why I stopped blogging a bit.
So when I played FNV again after so long, I noticed everything had a greenish tint. A very greenish tint.
Bug.
Spent quite a bit of time googling for it but nobody had exactly the same problem. Similar issues include the tint in some areas but not everywhere and can possibly be temporarily solved by drinking Nuka Cola Quartz.
Therefore I eventually came to the conclusion that mine may be an incredibly rare bug.
Not giving up (since it's in the save file and I'd have to do everything again if I delete it), I decided to look at my status effects to see if there's anything there.
Didn't expect to find anything.
Nightvision.
Gah! I was wearing a headgear with nightvision from somewhere in the Old World Blues DLC and I had completely forgotten about it.
Feel so stupid.
Everything's fine now.
Lonesome Road is pretty lonesome so far. Just got the detonator and blew up a few nukes. I still have no idea where these Marked men came from, what they are supposed to be and who they were originally.
They seem to be ghouls but feral ghouls don't use technologically advanced weapons.
On an unrelated note, those Auto-Inject Stimpaks are awesome. Instant heal and automatic usage. Runs out too fast though. I can't keep my HP above 50% quick enough to save them because I'm going melee weapons, or the War Club to be more specific.
Mordekaiser was the third hero I bought after Kayle and Taric, the latter being a mistake that taught me to use a hero before buying instead of just looking at the abilities and other data.
But I haven't been using Mordekaiser for a while, so when I picked it just now, I realized I'd forgotten what to buy for it.
So while the game was loading, I went to Mobafire.com to check on the guides.
It was then that I found this guide that recommends Hextech Revolvers... three of them.
Oh wow.
I used to use another build which focuses on HP regen initially to allow for more harassment.
This build discourages early frequent harassment but I managed to annoy enemies enough by using HP potions.
It's in mid-game that's when this build really shines. My Siphon and Mace seriously hurt even when only my first Revolver is up.
At first, I couldn't believe my Siphon took out so much HP out of Malzahar when I first met him in mid-game during that first game I used this build. I had to check my surroundings to make sure I was the only one who was around to hit him. Was it all me?
And it was.
Epic.
I'm going to stick with this guide for a long time.
Dickie be grippin the dick in his ass, hang the black fag at the end of the mast!
I wonder what lesson they're trying to impart to the kids who watch this show.
Today was a mixed day. It started bad but turned out to be pretty good.
I almost dislocated my left shoulder when I was waking up and that really sped up the process.
I guess I really need to maintain my shoulder muscles. I haven't been doing any sort of exercise for my arms for months.
It's still uncomfortable now.
Anyway after all the errands I ran in the morning, I passed by the Burger King at Burlington Square, so I decided to buy several burgers for lunch and redeem some of the drumlet coupons.
Took out 4 but the one in the black shirt (probably supervisor or something) told me I'd have to wait.
So I asked him if I could get the drumlets immediately if I only redeemed two of the coupons.
He went to the back and came back with a negative.
So I handed him the four vouchers. If I had to wait, might as well get them.
Strange thing was that instead of boxes of six, which was what the voucher described, the drumlets were actually packed in boxes of four.
That's why 20s after I walked out of the restaurant, the supervisor ran after me and explained he had only given me 4 sets of 4 instead of 6 sets.
I was confused because I thought 4 sets sounded right but he took my bag immediately and ran back.
So I strolled back. Might as well take it slow since I was going to have to wait anyway.
By the time I got back, he was just finishing with the packing and apologized to me again. Even gave me a free ice cream pie. Awesome!
It was delicious, though not something I'd normally buy. Then again, I don't buy desserts from fast food chains at all.
1) The last time I forgot something from a BK, nobody ran after me and apologized for it.
2) Free pie for absolutely nothing! I wouldn't even be too concerned about the missing 8 pieces of drumlets because they were free of charge for me in the first place. Nothing minus nothing is still nothing.
Coincidentally during the 10-min wait I took one of their feedback forms as reading material and slipped it into my bag after that, so now I'm going to send them a compliment. The form came with free postage anyway.
I even made it a point to look at his name tag so I think he'll receive something. Even if BK doesn't give him anything I believe compliments like this should make him feel good.
It's interesting how such small gestures actually mean something to some people. Just something I learnt in the past.
Online gamers have achieved a feat beyond the realm of Second Life or
Dungeons and Dragons: they have deciphered the structure of an enzyme of
an AIDS-like virus that had thwarted scientists for a decade.
No, I wasn't involved. Foldit wasn't very well-known in the first place. The only similar thing I have ever used is Folding@home, which I consider to be the only charitable thing I've ever constantly helped with for a long period of time.
Foldit sounds like Folding@home, except the former requires manual work while the latter is purely automatic. Both are about making virtual 3D models of proteins.
Truth to be told, I'd totally forgotten about Folding@home ever since I lost my bookmarks in my previous computer.
I've installed it again just now :D
You should too, if you have a good computer that isn't struggling just to handle your daily routines.
Also installed Foldit but it's unplayable due to the traffic surge caused by the news.
I like the part where they kicked the nun out of her own church... during a zombie apocalypse.
OMFG A FLYING SHARK!
GASHUNK!
So here's another attempt to encourage local youths to speak openly about national policies.
If local youths have any say in those things, the Republic of Singapore will have to add "People's" in front of our country's name.
I don't really know why but there are so many socialist ideas being supported by them online.
It's like they still don't get what "meritocracy" and "capitalism" mean, or are unable to accept the facts.
Maybe it's because Singaporeans generally don't discuss politics enough, and I mean "discuss" as in "discuss", not "whine". And that probably made a lot of them unable to understand the implications of what they think they want in our national policies.
I'm not saying I'm anything close to being an expert in political science, but I can recognize it when people are leaning to the left. And there are plenty of such people these days on this island.
Hopefully they know what they're doing.
I cannot say which is right because
1) there is no absolute proof that socialism and/or communism don't work.
2) again, I'm no expert.
So yea, I'm just hoping they're not just ruining their own country.
Even if some of them are trolls, I think a number of them have trolled themselves.
Here's what I think happened:
1) Some people started spamming left-wing stuff together with anti-government comments all over the Internet during the last two elections, but don't actually believe in them.
2) Other people are stupid enough to think these ideas actually sound right and continue to spread them around.
3) Eventually the friends of the original trolls spread the same stuff back them them, and they think," OMG I was right!"
Such things can happen and have happened before in human history.
You can't whine about not having free stuff (eg healthcare) while whining about having high taxes at the same time. You can have low taxes or free healthcare, but not both.
I don't want our country to have free healthcare, and I seriously look down on Singaporeans who want it.
Free healthcare is essentially the average guy paying the medical bills of the sick. Ill or not, every working adult would always be paying someone's medical bills.
It's totally fine, morally speaking.
Except morality is not of utmost importance in capitalist societies. In our case, the words "moral" or "compassion" are nowhere to be found in our national anthem or pledge, so that's a pretty obvious clue for everyone.
Of course I know this is subjective. But this is my blog, my opinions. If you don't like them, the "Next Blog" button is right on top of the page.
Whoa! Wooden dildos??? WTF happens if you get splinters from one? Pussies are fine, but who's gonna suck splinters out of someone's ass?
Oh wait, you can't just suck them out of either.
So OpenNet finally set up the optic fibre cable at my home. 300 bucks. Man...
But we were getting really annoyed with out dying modem and we thought we might as well apply for a fibre connection that comes with a new and different modem instead of a simple replacement of the current modem.
But the good promotion is gone. My bro actually wanted the crappier 50Mbps promotion because it came with the Samsung tablet. It's useless for him but we both agree it's preferable to the laptops that the ISP offers for more expensive fibre plans.
We were actually going to ask the ISP if we could get a 100Mbps connection and downgrade our promotion option from the more expensive laptop to the cheaper tablet.
But it was removed the day OpenNet arrived.
Derp.
Made this. Ee noodles aka Ee Fu noodles aka fried egg noodles with mystery sauce.
Originally it was going to be a failed experiment in which I tried to fry the already-boiled noodles.
These noodles stick to the wok like whores to a billionaire.
Bad metaphors, my forte.
Currently soaking the wok in water so that the remaining noodles can soften enough to be scrubbed off.
Anyway I boiled the noodles and that part was alright. It was when I tried to make fried noodles that everything went wrong.
I poured some oil into the wok, then dumped the dried noodles into it.
Fuck.
As a result, well, nothing was burnt fortunately, but so much of them stuck to the wok and I had to scrap as many as I could off with some chopsticks.
That resulted in a bowl of ee noodles that was mostly fine but contained crunchy bits.
Perfectly edible, perfectly flavourless.
So I made that gravy.
That, I consider a separate experiment.
In this experiment, the objective was to see if a starch solution could thicken by itself, perhaps when it was heated. This was because Chinese cooks often make a thick sauce in their dishes by merely adding several tablespoons of starch solution.
Apparently, it doesn't work that way.
Instead, the starch solution must come in contact with oil.
Basically, a thickening, like the roux I made long ago with butter and flour for a failed pasta experiment.
If you were one of those who ate it, looking back, I'm sorry about it.
It was bland.
Anyway the result of the experiment was that gravy in the photo.
It was fine initially, then when it cooled it became almost like jelly.
Too much starch.
For the bowl or two of water, I added 5 heaped teaspoons of potato starch.
Yea. Bad idea, huh?
Also added some oyster sauce, soy sauce and a little chicken stock.
Still too bland.
It needs meat.
Next time.
The other dish wasn't as interesting, just broccoli with minced pork. Nothing much.
The only thing I had to note was that the broccoli had to be boiled beforehand because it takes too long to cook. Simply stir-frying it would take too much work and attention.
And my turtle seems to love broccoli. I threw it quite a few slices of the stem and they vanished quickly.
That was certainly unexpected. I was like "HOLY SHIT WTF!"
I'm so glad today isn't one of those days when I feel too lazy to even switch on the lights.
That was a damn good comic.
Cooked dinner again tonight. I'm now the new family chef. I guess that's a big clue as to what's happening in my life.
Honestly I didn't even know what the vegetable I cooked was called in Chinese. Had to show the Beijing cabbage to my mum to ask her.
This is Beijing cabbage:
Apparently Wikipedia's closest result to "Beijing cabbage" was "Chinese cabbage" which is actually this:
I have a Chinese cabbage too but my mum used one for soup a few days ago (I bought two) so I thought I should give it a few more days before I cook this again.
Turned out pretty well. I marinated some pork loin slices in white pepper, soy sauce, oyster sauce and chicken stock for an hour or two, then stir-fried it in chopped cabbage, more oyster sauce, more chicken stock, half a teaspoon of salt and some potato starch solution.
Then I steamed a piece of beancurd ("silky smooth" is what it's called on the packaging) in some minced pork and a bit of chopped spring onions, and added soy sauce and sesame oil and the rest of the chopped spring onions after it was done. It was done when the pork was cooked.
It smelled like success so I had to take some pictures. Tasted like it too.
I call it a success because it was decently edible (and the beancurd was great) despite the fact that I did not measure anything at all - I just added whatever I felt like adding in whatever amounts I felt I like using.
There were two things I shouldn't have done.
First, the pork was way overcooked in the cabbage. The cabbage had to be cooked long to soften it but the pork didn't need that.
Maybe I should use fishcake and minced pork instead next time so I won't have to worry about this. Fishcake doesn't require cooking so I can just throw them in after the cabbage was done.
I could also add the pork slices when the cabbage is almost done, but I suck at estimating the time. I actually have no idea how long it takes to cook the cabbage properly; what I did was I let it cook over medium heat till it looked right.
Taste testing was done after I poured it out. Bad habit, I know.
Second, the salt in the first dish was totally unnecessary.
There was also no need to add the spring onion before cooking - it became tasteless after the steaming. But I don't consider this an actual mistake, just a tiny waste of food.
Unfortunately my mum thought I hadn't taken my share, that the food left in the kitchen was mine and I didn't cook anything for her so she cooked instant noodles for herself instead.
:(
If you have any experience at cooking your own food at steamboat (aka hotpot) restaurants, it comes surprisingly handy when you have to start cooking for yourself regularly.
Because that's what's happening for me. For example, the beancurd. The cooking time for this small amount of pork was easy to gauge, and the beancurd itself doesn't require any cooking, only sanitization from the steam.
Apparently back in the day it was trendy to give nicknames in England by changing the first consonants. It seems that "r" was disliked due to historical and cultural reasons so people named "Richard" initially were nicknamed "Rick", then later got called names like "Hick" or "Dick".
"Hick" didn't last long but Dick is now an actual name, and even became a last name.
Poor Germany. It got into the EU thinking it could give German companies free access to a much larger market.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel again bluntly
rejected such bonds as a solution to the crisis on Thursday, saying that
"collectivizing debts" would not solve the problem.
"In
order to bring about common interest rates, you need similar
competitiveness levels, similar budget situations. You don't get them by
collectivizing debts," she said.
I think that's rather mild compared to what the rest of Germany wants. Also,
Oh those Italians.
So while I was looking at my bookshelf to see what I can read tonight I found a small Hello Kitty painting blocking my books.
I thought it was my mum's but she said she thought it was mine. Don't ask me why.
So I took it down and looked at the back. There, I found some really mushy stuff for my bro handwritten by his girlfriend.
WHY ON EARTH WOULD HE PLACE HIS FRICKIN LOVE LETTER ON MY BOOKSHELF?
What was written there was never meant for my eyes, or anyone else's except my bro's for that matter.
Dammit. What's my bro thinking?
Of course I asked him. He said he had nowhere else to put it.
I left it on the section of the shelves where we keep our trophies from our younger days. Why didn't he think of that????
Why did he make me to read his love letter?
So my modem's been dead for over 24 hours. I called the customer care hotline and got transferred to their TV technical assistance department because apparently this is done when there's nobody attending to the hotline.
Damn. It's Friday night. It seems even the 24/7 customer care service doesn't work 24/7 :(
So I left my number and account number with the guy and he'll pass them to the Broadband guys when they get back.
24 to 48 hours.
I sadden. A whole weekend without broadband internet.
If my modem somehow ressurects before the technican gets here, I'm going to switch it off again just to show him.
To make things worse, I've encountered what is apparently a common bug in Civ V, which I've been playing today.
It seems for a lot of Civ V players, the game crashes in around mid to late game, often repeatedly on the same turn.
That's what I've been getting.
Hence I'm forced to stop playing Civ V.
And I was doing so well :(
Even successfully deflected a losing war against England and the Irquois by pulling a very strong Germany into it. England lost the city right next to its capital and scrambled to sign peace treaties with us.
I'm the sort of player who dislike the military aspect of Civ V.
So I can't play Civ V.
What do?
Made meatballs. It was surprisingly easy to make them round; it was surprisingly difficult to keep them round while frying.
The problem is that the soft meat flattens at the bottom as it rests on the frying pan. I think the only way to make sure they stay round is to deep fry them so that they can harden before they touch the bottom. Maybe.
Deliberately avoided mixing the chopped onions and and pepper thoroughly to give them some degree of variety.
And partly out of pure laziness.
Then made some simple gravy using some roasted-meat-flavoured gravy mix cooked with some onion rings. I initially cut those rings to make fried onion rings but when I saw the darkened oil after frying the meatballs, I decided it was too much work to fry more stuff in some fresh oil in a clean pan.
Result:
I almost forgot how to tell if the meat's thoroughly cooked :\
Fortunately, while I was frying the first few balls I recalled hearing from someone that I just need to poke through the ball with a chopstick. If the ball feels very soft or doesn't cling to my chopstick, it's not ready.
The only real problem with the meatballs was that they were boring. I need to give them more flavour next time. The gravy just wasn't enough.
SAT
Modem's still dead. ISP still hasn't called and most likely will be calling only on Monday.
My Burberry Body perfume sample arrived from Germany. It's just a 2ml bottle filled with the perfume that's meant for women.
I got it for the joy of getting freebies. It was simple anyway - I merely "Liked" Burberry's FB page.
Now I wonder how I shall use it since nobody at home wants it.
Took more pictures of it because it came with the most elaborate packaging I've ever seen for a tiny sample.
It came in this cardboard box.
Why is this printed in French when it's from Germany using Deutsche Post?
It came in a glass bottle instead of a scented sheet of paper or something that they usually use in magazines.
I'm definitely not spraying this on myself when I go out :\
Not that I use perfume (or cologne) at all in the first place, only deodorant.
And check out those ingredients.
I've never looked at the ingredient list on perfume bottles. This looks more complicated than a can of
Coke, and Coke's list already makes it feel less like a human beverage
and more like something people shouldn't put in their mouths.
Looks interesting. Strange setting for a comedy though. Nazism has rarely been associated with humour in the mass media.
Mr Rogers won, hands down.
I think it's intuitive to believe that larger supermarket chains will always undercut smaller independent shops.
Strange that our Shop N Save prices a number of its items higher than what can be found in other shops in the neighbourhood.
I only prefer Shop N Save to other shops because their aisles are wider. My bag and I, we occupy a lot of space. In those smaller shops I have to keep holding my bag behind me to move, and switch to reverse gear if someone going in the opposite direction wants to go around me instead of going through another aisle.
My 13 vouchers for 6 pieces of Burger King's Mexican Drumlets from GobblerDeals.com have arrived!
MUAHAHAHAHAHA! SEVENTY-EIGHT DRUMLETS!
(This is a bug trap, a piece of very sticky tape for trapping bugs.)
This guy needs a professional exterminator.
Or a frickin nuke.
What's with all the hype about Diablo III?
The Chinese are already playing Diablo V!
Clearly the rest of the world is getting its Blizzard games generations later than the Blizzard fans in China.
And I like how the Lord of Destruction made a comeback in the 5th game. I knew Baal wouldn't die so easily <3
So the power was out for an hour just now due to maintenance. Supposedly it was supposed to be down for four hours but the power was back after one. I even called the guy in charge (contact number was in the notice letter that all the residents were given) to make sure it wasn't a temporary thing. Y'know, because of the computer.
Anyway it caused by modem to die again. So now I have to use my mobile modem instead. :(
So Scarlett Johansson got some of her nude pics leaked. Google is full of them.
What's up with everyone taking their own naked pics with their phones?
Why doesn't anyone ever use a frickin real camera?
...there is a much easier way to edit the CameraDefaultFOV cvar located in Data0.pak/Data/Skills/default_levels.xml
To do so, simply extract the file, locate your Dead Island folder in your user's documents folder, where your audio and video settings are already saved, and create a "Data" folder, a "Skills" subfolder, and place the default_levels.xml in the skills sub folder. Open the file, edit away.
Then change the default value of 62.5 to 90. It's quite simple, really. Depending on the format of your game, your default_levels.xml file may be hidden inside a Data zip file or something like that instead of a Data folder.
NOTE: This does not effect the shake caused by damage, explosions, or alcohol, those are located in a different file
Again, it may not be in a Data folder but in some kind of archive file with "Data" in the name.
I can't imagine how many times they restarted the game everyday to figure out what each value does. You can't even skip the intro at the beginning where they show which companies made the game and stuff.
Finally there's this problem of equipping alcohol when you pick them up and accidentally using them Apparently it's because holding F for 0.1s (yea seriously, wut) will make you auto-equip whatever you're looking at instead of just picking the item up.
Open Data0.pak in Steam\steamapps\common\dead island\DI dir with winrar
(or any other archive program). In the root dir of Data0.pak find
inputs.scr and inputs_def.scr, copy them both to your My
Documents\DeadIsland\out\Data folder. Create the Data folder if it does
not already exist.
Been watching some Game of Thrones. 3 episodes so far.
There has been more nudity in those three episodes than I could have ever imagined!
I swear, 3 hours of GoT has far more sex than 3 hours of Witcher 2!
I bet Ros was given a name at all (she's nameless in the book) because they wanted to give the role more importance, and that in turn was because they wanted someone really hot to play this really minor role just so that they could see her naked.
And they got Esme Blanco.
Huge success!
Sex scenes aside, they followed the books more closely than I expected, although some things weren't quite right.
First and foremost, Jon Snow. Jon's supposed to be this really cool young man who's frustrated and yet confident of himself. But in the show he appeared... wide-eyed. I don't know. He just wasn't the Jon I had in mind when I read the books until later in episode three. I guess he took a little while to get used to the role, or maybe that's intentional. I wouldn't know.
Another thing is his mother. Ned Stark never revealed her identity. Robert Baratheon never found out. Yet in episode 3 Ned mentioned her name and Robert actually recalled her, albeit vaguely.
Watching this show induced some sadness in me. I didn't expect that, but seeing the characters brought to life also brought to my mind all the tragic ends they were going to meet later. I'd elaborate but I'm too lazy to type all the spoiler warnings.
My favourite character (and I bet it's the same for a lot of other Song of Ice and Fire fans) is Tyrion Lannister, and I love how Peter Linklage has surpassed my expectations in his portrayal of the Imp.
Seriously, he's impressive. In fact, he's exactly the Tyrion that I had in mind when I read the books.
Finally, I come to the Kingslayer, who's supposed to be an arrogant son of a bitch until much later in the story. Somehow, they seemed to want to inject some goodness in Jaime Lannister this early in the plot. That's how I feel anyway.
Jaime Lannister, aka the Kingslayer, was a villain through and through in the first and second book. He killed the previous king despite being one of his personal bodyguards, tried to kill Bran Stark twice, been fucking his sister, whom I have to say was a complete bitch, since they were young and their son was the heir to the throne instead of Robert's real children.
Nobody was supposed to think he was good in any way even though his regicide was so justifiable. Nothing, IMO, could really justify what he did simply because of what he was - a Kingsguard.
Teramura, 71, decided a decade ago to widen his business beyond graves to funerals and he opened Lastel last year.
Behind
its flower box framed windows, hidden away from mourners, is an
automated storage system. It stores and chills encoffined corpses,
delivering them through hatches and into a viewing room, day or night,
whenever friends and family come to pay their respects.
Not that I blame them, but it's just pretty morbid. This idea of a hotel for the dead only works when you have a situation like the one in Japan where the crematoriums simply can't handle the number of people dying.
Also,
Annual deaths are expected to peak at 1.66
million in 2040 as the bulk of the nation's baby boomer generation
expires. By then, Japan's population will have shrunk by around 20
million people, an unprecedented die off for a nation neither at war or
blighted by famine.
Smells like opportunity to me. Major changes like this always create millionaires out of people who can spot the emerging opportunities first.
On the other hand, 2040 is still about 30 years from now.
So Singaporeans of my mum's generation were more materialistic than I thought. Apparently one reason we were invited to birthday parties back when we were young was because my father was a businessman.
A friend of mine whose father was an employee (and not a well-paying position either) was actually not invited to some of the parties.
Life.
And I just found out how shallow one of my neighbours is. It seems she's been trying to introduce the sisters of one of her daughters-in-law to my bro, despite the fact that he's already attached and there's no sign that they're going to end the relationship in the foreseeable future.
The best part is that she's been asking my mum why they haven't split up yet because his girlfriend is so ugly. Therefore she recommends those girls since they're much prettier than her.
Seriously, what?
She's like in her mid-50s and she's still that shallow!
See what I mean when I say physical age is a poor indicator of mental maturity?
Being 18 doesn't automatically make you an adult; being 50 doesn't automatically make you wise.
Even though I concur with her observation about his girlfriend, I do not agree that they should split up because of her looks. As long as they're happy, why should it matter?
Yet apparently it matters to my neighbour - she herself has a good-looking husband (or used to be good-looking).
People are people.
There will always be such people so that the good people will look good.
Sometimes we just got to admit there's nothing we can do about certain things. It's not true, technically speaking, but the available choices just require too much to be worth it.
There are choices and there are choices. There are choices that reality offers us and there are choices we offer ourselves.
For example, there are many choices available to me if I want to get a plate of Hainanese chicken rice.
1) I could buy the herbs and the chicken and cook it at home.
2) I could buy some of the herbs to make the rice, then buy a cooked chicken from a nearby chicken rice stall.
3) I could just buy a plate of it downstairs.
4) I could fly to Hainan, China.
The choices we offer ourselves are the ones whose prices we believe are worth the rewards. In this case, the only choice is 3 for me.
This month is so bad, we actually had to dip into my savings for our daily expenses. Just withdrew a thousand dollars last week.
This isn't a rare occurence - we just depend on the holiday seasons so much.
Fortunately payday is sometime during this week.
In the meantime, I learnt to cook a very simple dish. Got to know more of such recipes to prepare for the future.
Just need minced meat, soy sauce, oyster sauce, starch (we use potato but others like corn are fine too) and oil.
Marinate the meat in soy sauce and oyster sauce (black pepper optional).
Mix in some starch before cooking.
Stir fry it. The last time I did it I also added button mushrooms first into the hot oil. Another optional addition is garlic.
Finally, there's the final optional step of pouring it onto a dish of greens.
All amounts are up to you. Personally I use 2-3 tbs of oyster sauce and soy sauce (each), a generous sprinkle of pepper and 2 pinches of starch on about 400-500g of minced pork. Probably should add more starch IMO.
This is so simple.
Quite salty, should go with rice, just in case this wasn't obvious.
Anyway, August sucks. September should get better.
Also added the a new gadget and those crap at the bottom of each post.
Still thinking about the ancient Chinese and fried chicken.
I still don't understand why there's absolutely nothing the Chinese made for this dish despite the fact the Chinese cuisine has incorporated ingredients originating from the New World, like potatoes and corns.
Moreover, if they used to eat deep fried meat at all, why isn't there a Chinese dip for any of them? I mean we already have a ginger dip and a spring-onion-and-ginger-in-oil dip for steamed/boiled chicken, a garlic-in-vinegar dip for boiled/steamed pork, and even soup recipes for roasted duck.
Yet I draw a complete blank for all fried meats.
This implies that the Chinese has never really liked deep fried food.
My guess is that the reason is not because of the ingredients involved, eg the scarcity of lard. There cannot be a scarcity of anything in the emperor's palace, right? So definitely they must have tried deep frying there, even though I don't expect any emperor to have liked it, given the fact that all emperors already get 12 dishes every meal cooked by the best chefs in the land.
Deep fried food cannot possibly be deemed as such a great dish that they would place it among those 12 dishes.
So the reason has to be much less material.
Just noticed another behaviour displayed by opponents who're ignorant about Yorick's abilities.
They see me with half HP or less, so they gank me alone thinking they can get an easy kill.
The problem with this idea is that I can clone myself with my ultimate, the Omen of Death.
If I die before it does, I get revived for 10s with full HP.
You can't escape from that.
Not without teleport anyway.
DAMN! The new ASICS running shoes at eMart is limited to one pair per training cycle!
I can't get a new pair after I gave one to my bro!
Damn!
I can just buy after this year but I don't know how long my current pair is going to last.
Starting to have to buy groceries regularly, starting to watch out for stuff we're running out of, starting to check the prices of the groceries I buy (by reading the receipts at home), starting to hang the laundry regularly, starting to cook regularly, starting to notice the stuff in the shops I never looked at in my neighbourhood.
As long as I can maintain our income, I'll not have to start cleaning the floor and the other bathroom in my home.
Now I see how the Shop N Save in my neighbourhood can survive.
Almost none of the stalls in the wet market are open after 3pm (excluding the ones on the hawker centre side). In contrast, this Shop N Save is open 24/7, catering to people like me who really hate to get out of the house before 11pm.
Work is a necessary exception, of course.
I very much prefer to get my groceries at about 2-3pm, when it's much less sunny and the queues are shorter.
Except the place where I get my coffee closes at noon. That's a problem.
Holy crap! Just played one game after hitting level 20 in League of Legends.
Immediately after hitting 20 I spent 2.1k IPs on tier 3 runes.
INSTANT RESULT!
Mainly, I believe it's the three Marks and one Quintessence that boost Attack Damage per level.
(This is still under development.)
As for Masteries, I've focused mainly on Offense.
Initially I thought Mana Regeneration would be a good mastery since I always need more. However, ever since I revamped my runes to focus on Attack Damage, I thought the Armour Penetration mastery would have better synergy with them.
Despite losing the game, this was what I got:
That's definitely out of the ordinary!
I've got more kills than deaths in a losing game as a frickin tank!
This is what I usually get in games I lost, partly because near the end, we just feed too much.
1) I have to meet people face-to-face, and the condition of my skin rarely inspires positive comments.
2) I've spotted some offers thatappear to be very cheap. $20 facials from those places sound really tempting.
As usual, I should probably sleep on it.
Dead Island makes me very nauseous, and I play FPS games frequently.
This sucks.
It just takes 5mins for me to feel kinda sick. Within 15mins I'm totally ready to quit.
The game's still fresh and interesting to me; all I've done so far was to complete the first main quest of retrieving the security card.
I just cannot handle the bobbing and (apparently) the field of view (FOV).
What a pity.
E.Y.E. Divine Cybermancy is a... pretty uninteresting game. The concept was good but it was terribly boring.
Also, the user interface (UI) was kind of confusing. It definitely needs to be revamped to make it more intuitive for players.
Gameplay was weird. On one hand, I respect the developer(s) for making the AI able to detect players as long as they're visible, unlike in many other games where I'm magically invisible as long as I'm about 50m away from them, eg Deus Ex Human Revolution.
On the other hand, I found this boss whom I was supposed to kill for a quest just standing there with the speech bubble symbol indicating I could talk to him, presumably for some sort of deal. I just shot him and be done with the quest. Why bother?
Just tried a bit of Bastion, a recently released game and the only game I've ever seen that's produced by Warner Bros.
It's actually kinda good. Visually it looks very colourful but the narration, which plays a big part in the game, sounds like something I'd associate with film noir.
Anyway it's an action RPG about this guy who woke up to find his bed floating on a bit of his bedroom floor in the air. For some reason, rocks would fly up and form a path as if to tell him where to go.
Stranger still, he decided he'd go to the Bastion, a place "they" agreed to meet at if something happens.
As if he had a choice.
Kinda interesting. Way better than Divine Cybermancy and my current impression of Deus Ex Human Revolution. Dead Island's still more interesting to me, but until they solve the problem of the extreme nausea I feel, I'm not touching the game at all.
League of Legends is still the most interesting game I have though.
Speaking of LoL, I'm getting the hang of Yorick.
Yorick should never ignore Omen of War, the melee ability that does the most damage. Seriously, not only does it hurt, it gives me a 5s movement speed boost. In any fight, that should be the second spell I cast, the first being Omen of Pestilence of slow down the target(s).
With the speed boost and slow, I should be able to chase anyone down as long as he/she is unable to teleport/leap away.
In addition, I love Exhaust and Ignite, so I become quite effective in hurting people but turn less tanky.
I don't mind having less survivability though because my spells must hurt. That's the most important thing in this game - to hurt. What's the point of spamming shitty spells more? Battles don't last long enough for that.
The capability to cast more weaker spells is only useful in the early game for harassment. In mid and late game, it's the damage that counts.
Therefore, I've begun to save IPs to buy level 3 attack damage Marks. I'm only about 1200 exp away from hitting level 20, so by the time I can use level 3 runes, I'll be able to buy a few of those.
I need more of those and less of the Ability Power (AP) runes I've been buying for Mordekaiser. Those runes were also useful for Gragas and Maokai, but Yorick definitely needs more Attack Damage in order to boost the effectiveness of his ghouls which become an important source of damage later in the game.
When I have 3 of them out for 5s, that's practically a 105% boost of my attacks, albeit spread out among the enemy heroes in the area (ghouls automatically focus on enemy heroes when they're around, otherwise they go for the creeps).
And if there are still enemies about after 5s, I can re-cast everything again after another 2-3 seconds. Yorick seriously shines as a lane pusher. I can practically push a lane without the aid of creeps and still have no worries about losing HP due to my lifestealing Omen of Famine.
