12 Nov 2016
Chopping garlic is such an annoyance. Let's see if mincing lots of garlic at one go and storing them in the fridge works.
Apparently a little oil should be added so I'll do that.
Got some fresh chilli and limes today so I will try to make sambal in the next few days if I'm in the mood. The belacan has been here for a while so it's time to make use of it.
19 Nov 2016
The sambal didn't turn out so well. It really does stink when toasted so I'll have to do it when no one is around.
The belacan in my first batch was probably not toasted enough so the mix ended up looking bright red. The freshness of the chilli also made it watery.
At least the mortar and pestle from Korea finally proved practical. It had a lot of grooves at the bottom but I wasn't sure if the whole thing was just a decorative item until it was finally put into use.
Next time the belacan will be toasted longer and maybe even get slightly burnt.
22 Nov 2016
Why is the view count so high for so long? It has been consistently about double the rate I was used to before this blog slowed down, with my latest 30 posts or so having at least 90 views each.
Totally no idea why because the top referring sites at the moment is this very blog and google. Basically this is saying that someone knew to google something that leads to my blog and has been clicking on my blog posts to read them one at a time.
No other clues because even the spam bots have died out here in Blogger so the comment section is always dead.
Bought the Friends of the Garden annual pass to Gardens by the Bay (GBB) because I've been there at least thrice already in the last year. With the flowers always changing, especially the cacti flowers (there are two towers of agave flowers blooming at the moment, which someone told us are very rare here and is the first time a regular such as himself has ever seen here in GBB), I think I may visit the conservatories more in the future.
The Flower Dome actually feels suitable for chilling out, seriously, so I may do that with the pass. Maybe order a pot of tea at Pollen and just spend hours there.
It costs me $20 to enter both conservatories with a single ticket, or $12 for just one, plus $8 (with no chance of any discount) per entry to the OCBC Skyway, so to pay $61 (10% off single conservatory ticket bought on the day of application) for unlimited entries to all 3 for a year is pretty good deal to me.
This brings to mind a friend of mine who bought the $2000 annual pass to the Marina Bay Sands. She gambles a little but shops there a lot, especially for the aromatherapy stuff to deal with the cigarette smoke in her home, and for that she's received 7 nights in total at the hotel this year, 3 of which was for her birthday month in December. Moreover, they usually give her one of the better rooms with a choice of either City View or Garden View (ie sea view), not the lowest tier just because it's a freebie.
Those 7 nights have totally covered her $2000 membership right there. Well, technically it's just almost but close enough.
I would sign up and try but the problem is that there's rarely any reason for me to go there and it's a bad idea to go out of my way just to spend $2000.
However, they're now offering another way to get it - spend $500 in a day then another $500 within the next 3 months. The first $500 will get me 3 months of upgrade to that tier from the free tier, then the following $500 gets me the other 9 months. It's still not very tempting though since it's limited to once per lifetime and the listed perks in the website are bland. Neither do I get the entry to the casino.
How this works is that you pay the $2000 levy for an annual pass to the casino, and this counts as a $2000 spend which gets you qualified to the first paid tier of the MBS loyalty programme. The shortcut does not involve the levy at all.
So the first batch of Tiko 3D printers has left port. Mine will be in the 9th batch and that's definitely arriving in 2017.
Lots of interesting deals on GMG for Black Friday but nothing particularly tempting.
In all seriousness, coffee prices are rising due to demand and a series of setbacks for coffee farmers recently. It just feels bad that people are wasting this increasingly precious commodity through.... pumpkin spiced latte? Among other things, of course. Let's be honest - most coffee drinkers out there just want a coffee-flavoured diluted milk.
Then again, I used to be like that before tasting espresso in Italy, so who am I to judge? As long as someone likes it, it is not a bad dish/beverage, right?
Tuesday 22 November 2016
Thursday 10 November 2016
Rant 1234 / Major Plans For Major Events
22 Oct 2016
It's been 1111 posts since Rant 123, 1000 posts since 234, and 11111 posts before 12345.
Wonder if I'll ever get there. The blog will probably be 40+ years old before this reaches five digits, if Blogspot or some sort of successor stays around for that long.
After all these months, I've finally checked out the iPad's app store again. It's never a good idea anymore because the iPad 3 cannot even handle the latest OS 9 (not even 10) and lags in whatever app I open. Still usable but frustrating.
Anyway, Heroes of Might and Magic 3 is on the app store for the iPad! For $15, I almost bought it, but then remembered that it will lag and I'm planning to get a new laptop anyway. The iPad is no longer good for any significant amounts of work and the 16GB is insufficient when more than half of it is already occupied by its OS and other necessary files. According to the Storage Usage list, 7.2GB is has been taken while only 5.1GB is available. Not sure where the other 3.7GB went, though my guess goes to data corruption. As for the apps used, only an estimated 4GB is needed, with 450MB of photos and videos being the largest group, so the other 3GB must have been taken by the OS.
Even the lock screen lags when it rotates!
So no more of the annoying lag, I plan to give this iPad to my staff when we upgrade our system next year by bringing our inventory list online.
Since my old Acer laptop is almost a brick with its battery in its motherboard in its pseudo-useless state for years, it's pretty much just a USB charging point for my other devices. Hence the need for a new laptop, one with decent hardware (1GB RAM, i5 processor, 500GB hard disk, most likely will also use a SD card) and warranty. The warranty is the main issue as it's hard to find to a good one, so the focus so far has been on Dell with its reputation for at least decent warranties here. Depending on the specs of the laptop, I will be looking at at least 3 years of on-site warranty plus accidental damage cover. From my past experience and the advice of others, laptops tend to start acting up after 2 years, so 3 years of warranty is my bare minimum level, and if I buy a S$1.5k-1.7k model, I may even invest on a 5-year warranty. The increases in price themselves rise dramatically after the 3rd year but my gut feeling says the money will be worth it at least by the 4th year, especially the on-site one. The last time I had to bring a laptop to a repair centre, not only did I have to bring it in during working hours but also had to queue for a pretty long time. And that was when my day was already like shit because the laptop died and there was a huge possibility of losing all the data inside (which happened).
So if it costs another hundred bucks or two to make shit feel less shitty, fine! Take my money!
Another reason I was looking at Dell was because they have 2% cashback on Shopback, and 2% even on a $1k spend is $20.
The good thing about this whole thing is that the laptop will not require the current gimmicky features like the laptop-with-keyboard style of the ASUS Transformer and the Microsoft Surface. I mean they're cool but not necessary, therefore just a waste of my money. By omitting these options, a few hundred dollars can be saved.
Current plan is to keep an eye out for deals and the real ones should appear by Dec. Right now there are some but they don't seem very good.
26 Oct 2016
Dislocated my right shoulder during the Burnout phase of The Challenge in P90X3 yesterday. Somehow pushed myself up so hard I also pushed my arm out of its socket. Don't even know how that happens but it did.
Now I've really got to stop for a few days, probably a whole week. Because my motivation level isn't low enough already, right?
So things will change dramatically next year. She'll be gone for half a year and then graduates once she returns. Beyond that, the plan is for her to continue in what is known as "professional bridging", the level between an intern and a full-time employee, for another half a year before returning to go to Russia and Europe in spring for her grad trip. Optimistically, she will also get a job in probably Toronto and I will move in with her to try to get the PR status together.
Now the thing is what I'm going to do with my business. Someone will need to handle the day to day management and my current staff will not do.
The other thing is that employment in Canada will be tough for me. Vanessa will have it far easier than me due to her field being in relatively high demand than mine. Moreover, from everything I've read, everyone who moves there will have to restart from the bottom because foreign degrees aren't accepted there. In other words, her degree from the Culinary Institute of America may count for little (unlikely but possible) while her experience will be the only real advantage she has while looking for a job in Canada, whereas I have nothing in the first place anyway - my current ongoing experience as a business owner doesn't apply to just about any job out there even in Singapore.
In all likelihood, I'll have to find a part-time job to begin with and for some reason, I'm slightly inclined towards security jobs, although this is still a very early thought. I have some experience in it that I can't prove, ie no experience, and I probably look the part already. With Canada being as safe as it is, a job as a security guard should have minimal risks in terms of injury. However, it's a little confusing how a foreigner could get a security license as the websites tend to list having citizenship, PR status or a valid work visa as a requirement for the application. If you don't have a license, how do you get a work visa? If you don't have a work visa, how do you apply for a license?
Unless I start with jobs that don't require even that in the first place, few as they are, but it looks like a driving license is still needed for those.
Another option is to be a tour guide, since I have the advantage of speaking English, Mandarin and Cantonese.
Funny thing is that a carpenter's helper will get a better pay than either of these jobs at 18CAD/hr compared to their 10-15CAD/hr at the starting level. Another is how work environments are described as "dangerous" only for jobs like mason's helpers but never for security jobs. Because in Canada, it's more dangerous to work in construction sites, right?
There are probably other options I haven't seen yet from the 10+ pages I have browsed through, but the conclusion here is that pride is the first thing that needs to go unless I somehow get my hands on fucktons of money before going there.
28 Oct 2016
Finally, after quite a bit of searching through the possible ways of obtaining Canadian PR, some good news!
So earlier, I noticed that there is a separate category just for farmers, athletes and artisans. That didn't seem like anything I do, so this was completely ignored.
Except this was only because I had been seeing myself as more of a businessman than a designer, both of which are part of my job. If I put more emphasis on the latter role, a fashion designer is one of the occupations under the "artisan" group, allowing me to apply for PR as a self-employed person, which is no different from who I am now.
If possible, I may just stay here and handle my business remotely, returning only during certain periods because the residency obligation is at least 2 years out of the last 5, though not necessarily continuously.
Practically speaking, I only need to be back for the two winters each year. Day-to-day stuff can easily be managed by either an additional employee, remotely online or by my brother. Everything else can be done by express mail and online. If somehow I cannot retain ownership of the business, he can take over in name. Between the both of us, it cannot be too hard to work something out. He doesn't give a damn about the business but owning it doesn't hurt.
In terms of eligibility, there are five categories and I have to score as much as I can out of 100 total. If they consider my JC diploma as a 2-year diploma, then 20 points, otherwise 5. For experience, 35 points right away. Age, 10 points. In language proficiency, I'm definitely at the "High proficiency" level for Speaking, Reading, Listening and Writing in English and with some brushing up, I should be able to get "Basic proficiency" in Speaking, Reading and Writing in French. That will get me either 19 if I can that 3 points in French, or 16 just for English alone. The last category, adaptability, is simple - 5 points for having Canadian relatives.
My total score will add up to either 89 optimistically, or at least 71.
As for Vanessa, she won't be try hot kitchens if she can help it but probably a baker or pastry chef. Being a pastry chef will be an interesting choice because the majority of the jobs are in Quebec which requires further research due to its separate requirements. Both of us will have to take French classes because even though we can already comprend un peu le francais, having been to Montreal for a short trip earlier, I know for sure a better command of French will definitely help.
First step for her will be to find a job there.
29 Oct 2016
Shoulder is still not done healing yet. Raising it all the way up still gives me a little pain, so it doesn't look like a good idea to try jumping jacks and push ups yet.
But the day I dislocated it, a facial therapist commented that my shoulders were "really hard" after the shoulder massages. Not sure if "really" here was used like "very" or it proved someone else right. Either way, that was my first time receiving such a compliment. P90X3 works!
Not so much for losing weight though. Mine's been staying between 93-95kg constantly, unlike my P90X days when it went below 93kg. I think the shorter sessions help build muscles but not so much on losing fats, so my fats loss weigh roughly the same as my muscle mass gain.
Though she doesn't like to talk about immigrating to Canada now due to the stress the entire plan gives her (she has to graduate and get a job for at least a year there as some kind of chef for this to work), I can't help but keep thinking about it, kinda like the Changbaishan trip earlier and the Russian train trip before that.
Since I don't have to follow as a spouse anymore (one of the slowest ways to obtain PR there), I can go at any time.
Meaning I can start when she's doing her externship in the US.
That is another option.
Now the next step is to ponder on the rules and how to make it work.
The steps, after some reading, look simple.
To start, take the IELTS with the British Council that's held every week, and the TEF with the FIAF that's held bi-monthly. The TEF is the harder one for sure not only because it only happens on one Friday every two months but I'll also need to brush up my French just to get a decently basic score.
Next, find and follow the steps at the official Canadian immigration website, which includes filling the forms, digging out all the necessary documents, talking to their officers to explain anything that isn't clear, getting that medical exam for me and my brother even though he's not going, and obtaining police certificates to prove our clean records if required.
Beyond that, all I'll be able to do is wait. If I succeed, the permanent residence status is, of course, permanent unless I commit a crime or stay outside the country for too long. In the meantime, it is a good idea to search for a place of residence.
Once I get the COPR, I'll fly there and start a sole proprietorship to become a self-employed fashion designer, the role that forms half of my current job. The bonus here is that there are no requirements on me and my business once I get the PR status, so if it doesn't work out I'll try for the crappier jobs. Anything to be a productive member of society to stay there.
01 Nov 2016
Shoulder still not healed yet but I have to start exercising already. My idea here is to skip all exercises that strain the shoulders but continue with the P90X3.
Got to talk to my aunt in Toronto about my plans. Maybe she can give me a better idea of what to expect.
The weird thing here is that usually, from what I've seen since young, people go to a country or get a job there before applying for visa and then PR. In my situation, it looks like I should apply for PR before I fly there.
...
Read further and got a better understanding of the residency obligations of Canadian PR.
I must stay in Canada for 730 days in the 5 years preceding my application. Not completely accurate, technically speaking, but this interpretation is accurate enough in my case.
The actual rule is that I must be able to prove that I have stayed for at least 730 days within the 5 years of the date I became a PR.
This stretches the current plan for 2 more years then.
08 Nov 2016
FUCK YEAH!
Oh wait... it's probably not going to live up to our expectations anyway.
10 Nov 2016
Absolutely no idea why my page view count has been rising in the last few days, up to over 300 a day today.
Another change to the Changbaishan trip. Various search results and replies from fellow travellers have finally convinced me that the souther slope is closed and the 1442 steps to the peak on the western slope will be too icy and slippery to be worth the view, so this segment of the trip has been changed to the northern slope where things are more developed and easier to handle.
It's also supposed to have the worst view but the buses go up to just a 10-minute walk from the viewing point.
And this change followed the other piece of information recently discovered through forum conversations and further digging on the specific topic - temperatures on the mountain can go as low as -40 degrees, the point where both the C and the F scales are the same.
This is the cold seen on videos where someone throws boiling water into the air and ice crystals hit the ground.
Therefore, I'm supplying the heat packs and these will be the good ones from the department stores, not the really really trashy Daiso ones. Vanessa will also need a ski mask and probably goggles because all of us must cover as much skin as possible to protect ourselves from the -20 to -30 degree wind that I'm expecting from the mountaintop.
Fortunately, the trains haven't been paid for and the hotel at Changbai was fully refundable, so no money has been lost yet. The downside is that the hotel costs more now since we're going to the most tourist-oriented town.
...
Downgraded the HSR fare to second class seats. That helps to offset the price difference from the higher hotel rate by about half. I'll cover the other half for both of them myself. It's not a major difference but the point here is that I now have things to save up for, like her grad trip and a future in Canada.
Weight loss is currently an issue. The P90X3 works but not in terms of weight loss. In fact, I've gradually gained weight too - 96kg!
Thing is, it's is a fact that I'm getting stronger, so the conclusion is that this workout helps with muscle gain but not fat loss. Since it's simple logic that weight loss is having a greater output than input, it is now necessary for me to skip one meal a day using my meal replacement shake. Have been neglecting it for too long.
Arms ached yesterday from The Challenge session of P90X3, partly from the almost healed shoulder but also from the wide-arm pushups because at some points, I was aching on both sides at the back of my lower neck and shoulder blade area.
And as usual, my triceps are still aching. Those are some of my least used muscles so they grow the most every time there is an exercise session like this that focuses on the upper limbs.
It's been 1111 posts since Rant 123, 1000 posts since 234, and 11111 posts before 12345.
Wonder if I'll ever get there. The blog will probably be 40+ years old before this reaches five digits, if Blogspot or some sort of successor stays around for that long.
After all these months, I've finally checked out the iPad's app store again. It's never a good idea anymore because the iPad 3 cannot even handle the latest OS 9 (not even 10) and lags in whatever app I open. Still usable but frustrating.
Anyway, Heroes of Might and Magic 3 is on the app store for the iPad! For $15, I almost bought it, but then remembered that it will lag and I'm planning to get a new laptop anyway. The iPad is no longer good for any significant amounts of work and the 16GB is insufficient when more than half of it is already occupied by its OS and other necessary files. According to the Storage Usage list, 7.2GB is has been taken while only 5.1GB is available. Not sure where the other 3.7GB went, though my guess goes to data corruption. As for the apps used, only an estimated 4GB is needed, with 450MB of photos and videos being the largest group, so the other 3GB must have been taken by the OS.
Even the lock screen lags when it rotates!
So no more of the annoying lag, I plan to give this iPad to my staff when we upgrade our system next year by bringing our inventory list online.
Since my old Acer laptop is almost a brick with its battery in its motherboard in its pseudo-useless state for years, it's pretty much just a USB charging point for my other devices. Hence the need for a new laptop, one with decent hardware (1GB RAM, i5 processor, 500GB hard disk, most likely will also use a SD card) and warranty. The warranty is the main issue as it's hard to find to a good one, so the focus so far has been on Dell with its reputation for at least decent warranties here. Depending on the specs of the laptop, I will be looking at at least 3 years of on-site warranty plus accidental damage cover. From my past experience and the advice of others, laptops tend to start acting up after 2 years, so 3 years of warranty is my bare minimum level, and if I buy a S$1.5k-1.7k model, I may even invest on a 5-year warranty. The increases in price themselves rise dramatically after the 3rd year but my gut feeling says the money will be worth it at least by the 4th year, especially the on-site one. The last time I had to bring a laptop to a repair centre, not only did I have to bring it in during working hours but also had to queue for a pretty long time. And that was when my day was already like shit because the laptop died and there was a huge possibility of losing all the data inside (which happened).
So if it costs another hundred bucks or two to make shit feel less shitty, fine! Take my money!
Another reason I was looking at Dell was because they have 2% cashback on Shopback, and 2% even on a $1k spend is $20.
The good thing about this whole thing is that the laptop will not require the current gimmicky features like the laptop-with-keyboard style of the ASUS Transformer and the Microsoft Surface. I mean they're cool but not necessary, therefore just a waste of my money. By omitting these options, a few hundred dollars can be saved.
Current plan is to keep an eye out for deals and the real ones should appear by Dec. Right now there are some but they don't seem very good.
26 Oct 2016
Dislocated my right shoulder during the Burnout phase of The Challenge in P90X3 yesterday. Somehow pushed myself up so hard I also pushed my arm out of its socket. Don't even know how that happens but it did.
Now I've really got to stop for a few days, probably a whole week. Because my motivation level isn't low enough already, right?
So things will change dramatically next year. She'll be gone for half a year and then graduates once she returns. Beyond that, the plan is for her to continue in what is known as "professional bridging", the level between an intern and a full-time employee, for another half a year before returning to go to Russia and Europe in spring for her grad trip. Optimistically, she will also get a job in probably Toronto and I will move in with her to try to get the PR status together.
Now the thing is what I'm going to do with my business. Someone will need to handle the day to day management and my current staff will not do.
The other thing is that employment in Canada will be tough for me. Vanessa will have it far easier than me due to her field being in relatively high demand than mine. Moreover, from everything I've read, everyone who moves there will have to restart from the bottom because foreign degrees aren't accepted there. In other words, her degree from the Culinary Institute of America may count for little (unlikely but possible) while her experience will be the only real advantage she has while looking for a job in Canada, whereas I have nothing in the first place anyway - my current ongoing experience as a business owner doesn't apply to just about any job out there even in Singapore.
In all likelihood, I'll have to find a part-time job to begin with and for some reason, I'm slightly inclined towards security jobs, although this is still a very early thought. I have some experience in it that I can't prove, ie no experience, and I probably look the part already. With Canada being as safe as it is, a job as a security guard should have minimal risks in terms of injury. However, it's a little confusing how a foreigner could get a security license as the websites tend to list having citizenship, PR status or a valid work visa as a requirement for the application. If you don't have a license, how do you get a work visa? If you don't have a work visa, how do you apply for a license?
Unless I start with jobs that don't require even that in the first place, few as they are, but it looks like a driving license is still needed for those.
Another option is to be a tour guide, since I have the advantage of speaking English, Mandarin and Cantonese.
Funny thing is that a carpenter's helper will get a better pay than either of these jobs at 18CAD/hr compared to their 10-15CAD/hr at the starting level. Another is how work environments are described as "dangerous" only for jobs like mason's helpers but never for security jobs. Because in Canada, it's more dangerous to work in construction sites, right?
There are probably other options I haven't seen yet from the 10+ pages I have browsed through, but the conclusion here is that pride is the first thing that needs to go unless I somehow get my hands on fucktons of money before going there.
28 Oct 2016
Finally, after quite a bit of searching through the possible ways of obtaining Canadian PR, some good news!
So earlier, I noticed that there is a separate category just for farmers, athletes and artisans. That didn't seem like anything I do, so this was completely ignored.
Except this was only because I had been seeing myself as more of a businessman than a designer, both of which are part of my job. If I put more emphasis on the latter role, a fashion designer is one of the occupations under the "artisan" group, allowing me to apply for PR as a self-employed person, which is no different from who I am now.
If possible, I may just stay here and handle my business remotely, returning only during certain periods because the residency obligation is at least 2 years out of the last 5, though not necessarily continuously.
Practically speaking, I only need to be back for the two winters each year. Day-to-day stuff can easily be managed by either an additional employee, remotely online or by my brother. Everything else can be done by express mail and online. If somehow I cannot retain ownership of the business, he can take over in name. Between the both of us, it cannot be too hard to work something out. He doesn't give a damn about the business but owning it doesn't hurt.
In terms of eligibility, there are five categories and I have to score as much as I can out of 100 total. If they consider my JC diploma as a 2-year diploma, then 20 points, otherwise 5. For experience, 35 points right away. Age, 10 points. In language proficiency, I'm definitely at the "High proficiency" level for Speaking, Reading, Listening and Writing in English and with some brushing up, I should be able to get "Basic proficiency" in Speaking, Reading and Writing in French. That will get me either 19 if I can that 3 points in French, or 16 just for English alone. The last category, adaptability, is simple - 5 points for having Canadian relatives.
My total score will add up to either 89 optimistically, or at least 71.
As for Vanessa, she won't be try hot kitchens if she can help it but probably a baker or pastry chef. Being a pastry chef will be an interesting choice because the majority of the jobs are in Quebec which requires further research due to its separate requirements. Both of us will have to take French classes because even though we can already comprend un peu le francais, having been to Montreal for a short trip earlier, I know for sure a better command of French will definitely help.
First step for her will be to find a job there.
29 Oct 2016
Shoulder is still not done healing yet. Raising it all the way up still gives me a little pain, so it doesn't look like a good idea to try jumping jacks and push ups yet.
But the day I dislocated it, a facial therapist commented that my shoulders were "really hard" after the shoulder massages. Not sure if "really" here was used like "very" or it proved someone else right. Either way, that was my first time receiving such a compliment. P90X3 works!
Not so much for losing weight though. Mine's been staying between 93-95kg constantly, unlike my P90X days when it went below 93kg. I think the shorter sessions help build muscles but not so much on losing fats, so my fats loss weigh roughly the same as my muscle mass gain.
Though she doesn't like to talk about immigrating to Canada now due to the stress the entire plan gives her (she has to graduate and get a job for at least a year there as some kind of chef for this to work), I can't help but keep thinking about it, kinda like the Changbaishan trip earlier and the Russian train trip before that.
Since I don't have to follow as a spouse anymore (one of the slowest ways to obtain PR there), I can go at any time.
Meaning I can start when she's doing her externship in the US.
That is another option.
Now the next step is to ponder on the rules and how to make it work.
The steps, after some reading, look simple.
To start, take the IELTS with the British Council that's held every week, and the TEF with the FIAF that's held bi-monthly. The TEF is the harder one for sure not only because it only happens on one Friday every two months but I'll also need to brush up my French just to get a decently basic score.
Next, find and follow the steps at the official Canadian immigration website, which includes filling the forms, digging out all the necessary documents, talking to their officers to explain anything that isn't clear, getting that medical exam for me and my brother even though he's not going, and obtaining police certificates to prove our clean records if required.
Beyond that, all I'll be able to do is wait. If I succeed, the permanent residence status is, of course, permanent unless I commit a crime or stay outside the country for too long. In the meantime, it is a good idea to search for a place of residence.
Once I get the COPR, I'll fly there and start a sole proprietorship to become a self-employed fashion designer, the role that forms half of my current job. The bonus here is that there are no requirements on me and my business once I get the PR status, so if it doesn't work out I'll try for the crappier jobs. Anything to be a productive member of society to stay there.
01 Nov 2016
Shoulder still not healed yet but I have to start exercising already. My idea here is to skip all exercises that strain the shoulders but continue with the P90X3.
Got to talk to my aunt in Toronto about my plans. Maybe she can give me a better idea of what to expect.
The weird thing here is that usually, from what I've seen since young, people go to a country or get a job there before applying for visa and then PR. In my situation, it looks like I should apply for PR before I fly there.
...
Read further and got a better understanding of the residency obligations of Canadian PR.
I must stay in Canada for 730 days in the 5 years preceding my application. Not completely accurate, technically speaking, but this interpretation is accurate enough in my case.
The actual rule is that I must be able to prove that I have stayed for at least 730 days within the 5 years of the date I became a PR.
This stretches the current plan for 2 more years then.
08 Nov 2016
FUCK YEAH!
Oh wait... it's probably not going to live up to our expectations anyway.
10 Nov 2016
Absolutely no idea why my page view count has been rising in the last few days, up to over 300 a day today.
Another change to the Changbaishan trip. Various search results and replies from fellow travellers have finally convinced me that the souther slope is closed and the 1442 steps to the peak on the western slope will be too icy and slippery to be worth the view, so this segment of the trip has been changed to the northern slope where things are more developed and easier to handle.
It's also supposed to have the worst view but the buses go up to just a 10-minute walk from the viewing point.
And this change followed the other piece of information recently discovered through forum conversations and further digging on the specific topic - temperatures on the mountain can go as low as -40 degrees, the point where both the C and the F scales are the same.
This is the cold seen on videos where someone throws boiling water into the air and ice crystals hit the ground.
Therefore, I'm supplying the heat packs and these will be the good ones from the department stores, not the really really trashy Daiso ones. Vanessa will also need a ski mask and probably goggles because all of us must cover as much skin as possible to protect ourselves from the -20 to -30 degree wind that I'm expecting from the mountaintop.
Fortunately, the trains haven't been paid for and the hotel at Changbai was fully refundable, so no money has been lost yet. The downside is that the hotel costs more now since we're going to the most tourist-oriented town.
...
Downgraded the HSR fare to second class seats. That helps to offset the price difference from the higher hotel rate by about half. I'll cover the other half for both of them myself. It's not a major difference but the point here is that I now have things to save up for, like her grad trip and a future in Canada.
Weight loss is currently an issue. The P90X3 works but not in terms of weight loss. In fact, I've gradually gained weight too - 96kg!
Thing is, it's is a fact that I'm getting stronger, so the conclusion is that this workout helps with muscle gain but not fat loss. Since it's simple logic that weight loss is having a greater output than input, it is now necessary for me to skip one meal a day using my meal replacement shake. Have been neglecting it for too long.
Arms ached yesterday from The Challenge session of P90X3, partly from the almost healed shoulder but also from the wide-arm pushups because at some points, I was aching on both sides at the back of my lower neck and shoulder blade area.
And as usual, my triceps are still aching. Those are some of my least used muscles so they grow the most every time there is an exercise session like this that focuses on the upper limbs.
Wednesday 12 October 2016
Rant 1233 / The Times They Are a-Changin'
01 Sept 2016
So the following rant is going to be number 1234. Oh boy.
92.4kg this morning. Still couldn't do the bonus round in the Core Synergistics session of P90X but the weight loss is there. Waistline has now visibly shrunk when I put on my leather belt after a long period of using my army fabric belt which has no hole.
02 Sept 2016
Decided that this format is better.
Anyway, the 28th day horde arrived and left. The dance pit was deepened by yet another layer despite the mix of reinforced wooden log spikes and iron reinforced wooden log spikes. Two medium-sized holes just enough for zombies to get through were made on the front and right front side of the house, so it was easy to reseal afterwards.
That was a slightly larger horde though, and unlike the 21st day, half my walls were reinforced concrete and all of them were three to five layers thick. Therefore the holes indicated an even greater amount of damage despite no change in the size of holes in my walls. Strangely, the sole reinforced concrete pillar at one corner of the dance pit remained undamaged by the horde.
The mix of concrete blocks with reinforced wooden blocks was used because they have not dug through the soil level to the rock below, unlike in the dance pit, and I'm reluctant to do something that the zombies would do for me for free every 7th day.
Where there is soil, I'm more inclined to use wood because if they dig a tunnel underneath, the burden on the surrounding blocks would be much less, therefore putting the house at a much lower risk of collapse.
That's what I'm trying to avoid all these days - collapse. Hence the quick jump from wood to concrete, forgoing the iron reinforced blocks I could have used in between.
There are 90 units of steel in my chest too, ready to further reinforce my concrete walls which have mostly already been reinforced beforehand with rebar frames, but this will come later. Priority goes to thickening my walls, placing eaves all around the third floor of my house and building a very high fourth level.
Also realized that plants can't grow without sunlight so I'm moving the planned farm to above the roof which I've already build walls around. The fourth floor will be built above those walls so that there is a large gap between the top of those walls and the floor of that top floor. Maybe I'll build it with iron bars as windows so that I can harvest some hornets whenever they get close.
05 Sept 2016
The Qatar Airways Travel Festival is almost over but I haven't booked anything because we couldn't confirm anything. Damn!
The 35th day horde was pretty big compared to before, at about 105 by 6am and at least one zombie got close enough to keep hunting me after sunrise. It turned to have reached the second floor but somehow was only attacking horizontally, ie at the walls, instead of digging directly at the ceiling. Well, it did hit one of the ceiling blocks once but that was nothing compared to a column of wooden wall that got completely destroyed under me. Maybe the idea was to collapse the supports under me, an idea that wouldn't have worked anyway.
Moreover, how was the zombie seeing me through the floor? Probably a bug. Therefore I'm now in the process of adding another layer of wood to the floor, making the ceiling on the second floor lower.
Despite the size and the distance of one zombie from me, the horde did surprisingly little damage to my ground floor. Only one two-block hole was made through the side where the front door used to be and although the dance pit was deepened again, the lone log spike furthest from me was still intact.
All these are likely due to the increased amount of spikes placed within and without, which is, in turn, due to a larger supply of wood from the new farm/orchard on the roof of the house.
However, the one zombie reaching the second floor is still a concern, so I'm also considering filling it up with wood.
One major problem did crop up recently. I've been trying to extend some sections of the walls up beyond the roof by another 15 or so blocks but somehow, on one section, no block can stick to it. This is not due to any logical issue like weight and stress, a fact that I've learnt the hard way. The current theory is that the trees whose branches are clipping through it are affecting its physical properties, and I think that's the most probable answer because on the other side where half a bridge has already been attached at the top, there is no tree clipping through it.
Otherwise, it could be due to something buried under the wall, something that would take a long time to find.
And yes, this has to be a bug. If it's anything like physics, having something buried under the soil a structure was built upon would cause it to topple, not affect its ability to support horizontal beams. Instead of only having the beams collapse, the entire thing beginning from where the buried item is would fall.
06 Sept 2016
Took me this long to understand why this wasn't a bug. When there is a hole under a block, the block becomes a beam supported by other blocks next to it. Even if it is very tall, a beam is still a beam; it just becomes a heavier beam the taller it gets.
So the tree is causing a bug in a block in the wall, making it non-existent in terms of structural integrity, something like a jelly. The caused all the blocks above it to be considered by the game as blocks requiring support from other blocks, or a one-block wide and about ten-block tall bridge.
That was why when I tested the wall's structural integrity by placing wood frames on each section of the three columns that formed the bugged extended wall from the roof of the house upwards, it collapsed after I stepped on a wood frame placed on a block that was a tree was clipping.
This means I have to rethink my tree plantation. A safe source of wood is necessary but it also needs to stay away from the rest of my base. New idea: use the eaves that are currently only one block long to prevent crawlers from climbing up. If they are extended slightly, the upper surface can be used as a farm and plantation. Just need to extend them further for the wider trees.
This will take some work since the extension will require a lot of iron, the material that can reinforce wooden blocks to the point where they can support 16 blocks of themselves in weight on each of their four horizontal sides.
In the meantime, my need for more stones is becoming an issue. The safest source of stone is the ground under my house but it's slow. Moreover, it risks giving the zombies more surface to hit and possibly undermining the integrity of my structure. With enough holes under the walls, they can collapse my entire base, a problem I've been trying to prevent all this time with concrete.
Like I said, a block with a hole underneath becomes a beam, even if it's the rock under my house. If there is a hole 15 blocks under the rock of my house, then every block starting from the block above the hole gets considered as a bridge over the hole. The number of blocks supporting it may be great for that one-block-wide beam, but the 7th day hordes rarely do so little damage.
On the other hand, I can also just place many layers of log spikes.
The problem of the bad wall is that instead of being directly on top of the pre-built cobblestone wall of the house, I had placed it one block further out, on the overhanging roof block instead.
Time to rebuild the entire wall.
26 Sep 2016
Stopped playing 7 Days to Die for a while already. Probably two weeks. It was getting monotonous due to the simple mundaneness of building up my walls, repairing them after every 7 days and going out to harvest materials en masse every once in a while.
The hordes don't even get through to the center where my zombie dance floor is anymore. At this point, it's safe to fill the entire hole with concrete, and it may have to do with my sky base where I don't get detected by the hordes at any time, causing them to maybe not focusing on getting to the center as hard as they used to.
In any case, maybe A15 of the game will be more interesting than this.
Or I could just move back to Project Zomboid, where surviving is a lot harder.
Took SQ to Guangzhou this time and it was a lot better than expected. As I fly more, the little differences that didn't use to matter to me have become a lot more noticeable, like better food, eg Magnum ice cream for dessert, and the greater variety of movies, not to mention the metal cutleries. Still better than the ones from Qatar Airways but not as good as the older ones my parents took from SQ flights in the 90s.
It should be because when you fly this often, air travel has long lost its novelty and turned into an annoyance. I'm not even kidding - I find train travel a lot more pleasant than air travel, even though the former takes so much more time. Then again, trains are also better than coaches. Perhaps it's the fact that you have a greater freedom for movement when in a long-distance train ride, unless you're talking about packed trains which are as good as coaches and planes.
12 Oct 2016
So it's been a month since I began this post and it's still not done yet.
Been distracted. This year's trend in Korean fashion is yet another one that doesn't exactly fit the Singaporean style. Why are they still sticking with big sizes? At least it's not the gigantic sleeves that look like they were meant for morbidly obese dwarves, though similarities can still be found easily in this year's Korean winter fashion.
Work isn't going well tbh.
7 Days to Die is finally in a new version! Alpha 15 if I'm not wrong. Looks cool but I have no time to go into it. Looks really great though, with the new biome and NPCs. Also, spikes are no longer dirt cheap so a new defense strategy will need to be formed.
Mostly done organizing the trip to Changbaishan in December. Had to really go into it because it was kind of complicated, with three of us visiting three places in ten days. Even made an Google Sheet for it to remember all the dates and details, especially since some things cannot be booked, like the bus from the train station to the town we're going to stay while taking at least one day trip to Changbaishan.
This town, Changbai Town or Changbaixian, has almost no information available online in English and little in Chinese, mostly in comments made by visitors in forums and a few by professionals in the tourism industries in the same places.
It's so unknown in the English-speaking world, hotels that accept foreigners are uncommon in that town, so it was somewhat hard to find one that we could book online that was in a convenient location, had a reasonable price and had reviews commending their hygiene.
That hotel only accepts cash.
This will be an adventure for all of us because even I, as a far more seasoned traveller than any of my two travel mates, have never been to such an unknown place.
The main reason for picking that town to stay in is not only is it close to the lesser travelled and therefore more pristine southern slope of Changbaishan, but also because there's a train station servicing trains to North Korea there. Heck, the town itself is on the border between China and the DPRK, so going to the latter will simply mean crossing a road. At least, that's what it looks like on Google Map, but who knows if they will have guards standing along the actual border. Got to keep an open mind here when dealing with unknowns.
So the following rant is going to be number 1234. Oh boy.
92.4kg this morning. Still couldn't do the bonus round in the Core Synergistics session of P90X but the weight loss is there. Waistline has now visibly shrunk when I put on my leather belt after a long period of using my army fabric belt which has no hole.
02 Sept 2016
Decided that this format is better.
Anyway, the 28th day horde arrived and left. The dance pit was deepened by yet another layer despite the mix of reinforced wooden log spikes and iron reinforced wooden log spikes. Two medium-sized holes just enough for zombies to get through were made on the front and right front side of the house, so it was easy to reseal afterwards.
That was a slightly larger horde though, and unlike the 21st day, half my walls were reinforced concrete and all of them were three to five layers thick. Therefore the holes indicated an even greater amount of damage despite no change in the size of holes in my walls. Strangely, the sole reinforced concrete pillar at one corner of the dance pit remained undamaged by the horde.
The mix of concrete blocks with reinforced wooden blocks was used because they have not dug through the soil level to the rock below, unlike in the dance pit, and I'm reluctant to do something that the zombies would do for me for free every 7th day.
Where there is soil, I'm more inclined to use wood because if they dig a tunnel underneath, the burden on the surrounding blocks would be much less, therefore putting the house at a much lower risk of collapse.
That's what I'm trying to avoid all these days - collapse. Hence the quick jump from wood to concrete, forgoing the iron reinforced blocks I could have used in between.
There are 90 units of steel in my chest too, ready to further reinforce my concrete walls which have mostly already been reinforced beforehand with rebar frames, but this will come later. Priority goes to thickening my walls, placing eaves all around the third floor of my house and building a very high fourth level.
Also realized that plants can't grow without sunlight so I'm moving the planned farm to above the roof which I've already build walls around. The fourth floor will be built above those walls so that there is a large gap between the top of those walls and the floor of that top floor. Maybe I'll build it with iron bars as windows so that I can harvest some hornets whenever they get close.
05 Sept 2016
The Qatar Airways Travel Festival is almost over but I haven't booked anything because we couldn't confirm anything. Damn!
The 35th day horde was pretty big compared to before, at about 105 by 6am and at least one zombie got close enough to keep hunting me after sunrise. It turned to have reached the second floor but somehow was only attacking horizontally, ie at the walls, instead of digging directly at the ceiling. Well, it did hit one of the ceiling blocks once but that was nothing compared to a column of wooden wall that got completely destroyed under me. Maybe the idea was to collapse the supports under me, an idea that wouldn't have worked anyway.
Moreover, how was the zombie seeing me through the floor? Probably a bug. Therefore I'm now in the process of adding another layer of wood to the floor, making the ceiling on the second floor lower.
Despite the size and the distance of one zombie from me, the horde did surprisingly little damage to my ground floor. Only one two-block hole was made through the side where the front door used to be and although the dance pit was deepened again, the lone log spike furthest from me was still intact.
All these are likely due to the increased amount of spikes placed within and without, which is, in turn, due to a larger supply of wood from the new farm/orchard on the roof of the house.
However, the one zombie reaching the second floor is still a concern, so I'm also considering filling it up with wood.
One major problem did crop up recently. I've been trying to extend some sections of the walls up beyond the roof by another 15 or so blocks but somehow, on one section, no block can stick to it. This is not due to any logical issue like weight and stress, a fact that I've learnt the hard way. The current theory is that the trees whose branches are clipping through it are affecting its physical properties, and I think that's the most probable answer because on the other side where half a bridge has already been attached at the top, there is no tree clipping through it.
Otherwise, it could be due to something buried under the wall, something that would take a long time to find.
And yes, this has to be a bug. If it's anything like physics, having something buried under the soil a structure was built upon would cause it to topple, not affect its ability to support horizontal beams. Instead of only having the beams collapse, the entire thing beginning from where the buried item is would fall.
06 Sept 2016
Took me this long to understand why this wasn't a bug. When there is a hole under a block, the block becomes a beam supported by other blocks next to it. Even if it is very tall, a beam is still a beam; it just becomes a heavier beam the taller it gets.
So the tree is causing a bug in a block in the wall, making it non-existent in terms of structural integrity, something like a jelly. The caused all the blocks above it to be considered by the game as blocks requiring support from other blocks, or a one-block wide and about ten-block tall bridge.
That was why when I tested the wall's structural integrity by placing wood frames on each section of the three columns that formed the bugged extended wall from the roof of the house upwards, it collapsed after I stepped on a wood frame placed on a block that was a tree was clipping.
This means I have to rethink my tree plantation. A safe source of wood is necessary but it also needs to stay away from the rest of my base. New idea: use the eaves that are currently only one block long to prevent crawlers from climbing up. If they are extended slightly, the upper surface can be used as a farm and plantation. Just need to extend them further for the wider trees.
This will take some work since the extension will require a lot of iron, the material that can reinforce wooden blocks to the point where they can support 16 blocks of themselves in weight on each of their four horizontal sides.
In the meantime, my need for more stones is becoming an issue. The safest source of stone is the ground under my house but it's slow. Moreover, it risks giving the zombies more surface to hit and possibly undermining the integrity of my structure. With enough holes under the walls, they can collapse my entire base, a problem I've been trying to prevent all this time with concrete.
Like I said, a block with a hole underneath becomes a beam, even if it's the rock under my house. If there is a hole 15 blocks under the rock of my house, then every block starting from the block above the hole gets considered as a bridge over the hole. The number of blocks supporting it may be great for that one-block-wide beam, but the 7th day hordes rarely do so little damage.
On the other hand, I can also just place many layers of log spikes.
The problem of the bad wall is that instead of being directly on top of the pre-built cobblestone wall of the house, I had placed it one block further out, on the overhanging roof block instead.
Time to rebuild the entire wall.
26 Sep 2016
Stopped playing 7 Days to Die for a while already. Probably two weeks. It was getting monotonous due to the simple mundaneness of building up my walls, repairing them after every 7 days and going out to harvest materials en masse every once in a while.
The hordes don't even get through to the center where my zombie dance floor is anymore. At this point, it's safe to fill the entire hole with concrete, and it may have to do with my sky base where I don't get detected by the hordes at any time, causing them to maybe not focusing on getting to the center as hard as they used to.
In any case, maybe A15 of the game will be more interesting than this.
Or I could just move back to Project Zomboid, where surviving is a lot harder.
Took SQ to Guangzhou this time and it was a lot better than expected. As I fly more, the little differences that didn't use to matter to me have become a lot more noticeable, like better food, eg Magnum ice cream for dessert, and the greater variety of movies, not to mention the metal cutleries. Still better than the ones from Qatar Airways but not as good as the older ones my parents took from SQ flights in the 90s.
It should be because when you fly this often, air travel has long lost its novelty and turned into an annoyance. I'm not even kidding - I find train travel a lot more pleasant than air travel, even though the former takes so much more time. Then again, trains are also better than coaches. Perhaps it's the fact that you have a greater freedom for movement when in a long-distance train ride, unless you're talking about packed trains which are as good as coaches and planes.
12 Oct 2016
So it's been a month since I began this post and it's still not done yet.
Been distracted. This year's trend in Korean fashion is yet another one that doesn't exactly fit the Singaporean style. Why are they still sticking with big sizes? At least it's not the gigantic sleeves that look like they were meant for morbidly obese dwarves, though similarities can still be found easily in this year's Korean winter fashion.
Work isn't going well tbh.
7 Days to Die is finally in a new version! Alpha 15 if I'm not wrong. Looks cool but I have no time to go into it. Looks really great though, with the new biome and NPCs. Also, spikes are no longer dirt cheap so a new defense strategy will need to be formed.
Mostly done organizing the trip to Changbaishan in December. Had to really go into it because it was kind of complicated, with three of us visiting three places in ten days. Even made an Google Sheet for it to remember all the dates and details, especially since some things cannot be booked, like the bus from the train station to the town we're going to stay while taking at least one day trip to Changbaishan.
This town, Changbai Town or Changbaixian, has almost no information available online in English and little in Chinese, mostly in comments made by visitors in forums and a few by professionals in the tourism industries in the same places.
It's so unknown in the English-speaking world, hotels that accept foreigners are uncommon in that town, so it was somewhat hard to find one that we could book online that was in a convenient location, had a reasonable price and had reviews commending their hygiene.
That hotel only accepts cash.
This will be an adventure for all of us because even I, as a far more seasoned traveller than any of my two travel mates, have never been to such an unknown place.
The main reason for picking that town to stay in is not only is it close to the lesser travelled and therefore more pristine southern slope of Changbaishan, but also because there's a train station servicing trains to North Korea there. Heck, the town itself is on the border between China and the DPRK, so going to the latter will simply mean crossing a road. At least, that's what it looks like on Google Map, but who knows if they will have guards standing along the actual border. Got to keep an open mind here when dealing with unknowns.
Thursday 1 September 2016
Rant 1232 / Thank You Indonesia For The Days When Your Smoke Does Not Reach My Country
31 Aug 2016
So hand dryers aren't that bad and when they say they spread germs, it actually means they spread germs from your poorly washed hands to other people, not from the dryer itself to your hands. Moreover, those cool new jet hand dryers that use UV lights and cold air jets are the worst.
Good thing I use my handkerchief. Probably the worst option to myself but best for everyone else and the environment. Then again, isn't the handkerchief meant to be used for almost every "dirty" thing that we have to do for ourselves?
Speaking of handkerchiefs, it's so hard to find good thick ones these days! Even Crocodile has switched to a fabric which obviously has a lower thread count and feels thinner and rougher. I'm still using two of the older ones bought like three years ago so I have something to compare the new ones with. Seriously, even the inconveniently large ones from Daiso are thicker than theirs!
Those Japanese ones are likely meant to be used like a bandanna though.
When you are in control, it cannot be helped that you take it the hardest when things don't go well.
The endlessness of 7 Days to Die is starting to wear on me slightly. I still have plans but they don't seem enough to stop this feeling.
My strategy is simple: once I've properly filled my first floor with reinforced concrete and a spiked dance floor at the center, expansion of the concrete walls will begin.
The current emergency exits will remain because as my concrete fort gets larger, the need for an escape route is reduced.
As soon as the first floor is expanded another three concrete blocks on each side, I'll thicken the walls of the second floor by one concrete block and then remove everything on the second floor to make space for agriculture.
Beyond that, I'm basically safe for quite a while but the general idea is to build a real fourth floor for a new base before converting the third floor that used to be the attic into another farm or storage area. A fifth floor will serve as my new spawn point and will be almost completely enclosed in reinforced concrete.
This is my plan now that I've read that building blocks in this game, despite having some form of physics, can support an infinite number of blocks on top of it, having only limits in the number of blocks attached to their sides.
92.7kg today. YES! Broke the 93kg line once again!
30 Aug 2016
Surprisingly small horde this time on the 21st day. There were merely over 60 zombies by 6am, just slightly larger than the 14th day horde.
The damage was more serious though: 3 holes 2 blocks tall were found through the house's original cobblestone walls, and the dance floor has been deepened and enlarged.
So the Redmi Note 2 that I bought off Qoo10 turned out to be a fake after checking its IMEI and S/N on the Xiaomi website because it was getting ridiculously slow for a phone of its level.
My solution was to get all the photos downloaded from the SD card to my PC then format it. Hopefully it would become its original form, whatever it was.
I was wrong. Whatever those people did to the phone to make it look like a Xiaomi, it seemed irreversible. Can anything be done?
Of course I proceeded to find a way to root it. Never done it before and at this point, I don't want to use a phone which probably contains some kind of spyware or malware.
Kingo Root did it for me. Now my problem is that I've deleted too many apps that appeared to be bloatware and couldn't be removed previously, and it's stuck at its logo screen when I rebooted it.
It's bricked now, I guess.
Ok I've lost momentum. After returning to Singapore, it's impossible to keep to the 6-day workout schedule of P90X. Now I'm making it 4-5 days weekly, maintaining the chronological order but adding in a rest day or two on top of the rest day.
Should still work fine though, just not as quickly. Weight has been maintaining at below 94kg in the mornings and steps still get easier by the week, so it has to be working, just that I haven't been losing fats as quickly as I'm gaining muscle mass.
Also found this article arguing that we're meant to chill as much as possible and that humans aren't meant to be working out all the time.
That's why we lose muscle mass so quickly - this conserves energy.
The thing is that until relatively recently, humans were still forced to exercise every once in a while by having to hunt for food and etc. Hunting for meat and leather without a gun can seriously require days of work outside, mainly because primitive bows and spears aren't as lethal and accurate as shotguns and rifles.
So yeah, I've just found a legit reason to not exercise so much. Now it just leaves the issue of not eating as much to compensate for the reduction of physical activity.
28 Aug 2016
Somehow I've forgotten whether this is my second or third week of P90X. I was convinced last night that it was only my second session of Legs and Back but Vanessa insisted that it was my third already. I'm confused.
In 7 Days To Die, little progress has been made. So far, the biggest concern is the lack of materials because concrete depletes my stones and sand so quickly! I thought bricks would be a cheaper alternative that could be used in conjunction with cement but every brick block costs 60 clays! Well, at least clay is easier to dig up than sand as the latter is only found in narrow bands along the riverbanks in the only river in the forest biome where I am.
At this rate, I will have to consider spending a day in the desert to harvest sand and stone. Probably some yucca and aloe vera on the side too. I've run out of aloe vera long ago after harvesting some along the way to town on the first day. Not important though because there are nine first aid kits in my possession now.
Been playing more Rebuild 3 though. Just reached Trail and it looks really easy. My strategy has always been rapid expansion in order to block the expansion of all other factions while keeping good relationships with them all. That's where a high-level leader gets really useful. In terms of food, it's mostly about scavenging while farms come later.
26th Aug 2016
Now skipping steps on the stairs is just effortless - P90X really does work if you try! And by "try" I mean work so hard that you're panting and/or at least some of your muscles ache the following day.
I'm terrible at motivating myself to exercise so I have to keep the difficulty low or the bad memories will just reduce my little bit of motivation to nothing. Hence this is how I definite "try" in this case.
Day 14 came and went in 7 Days to Die. 58 zombies were spawned in total and wrecked my bottom floor far more than the Day 7 horde did. The first horde only destroyed my doors and made a few small holes in the original cobblestone walls in the house, but this time, several large holes spanning 3-5 blocks were found in those walls. In addition, they dug a pit 1 block deep and probably 10 blocks large after destroying most of the wooden floor at the center of the house almost under the spot I was hiding at throughout the attack.
Fortunately, the center of the house is the least important in terms of structural support for the rest of the house, so my plan now is to turn it into a pit of log spikes where the Day 21 horde can hang out and mingle and make merry. In the meantime, the outer wall has been immediately repaired with either bricks or concrete. IIRC bricks are on par with cobblestone in terms of durability while concrete is at least twice as tough.
As for my emergency exit plans, the sky bridge has been completed. It is a one-way path that hangs above the roof of the adjacent house whose stairs to the ground floor have been removed and covered. The pillars, a necessity whose importance I had learnt the hard way, are reinforced wood surrounded by both wooden spikes and log spikes. Shifting of the bedroll and emergency supplies has become a secondary priority, however, given the extent of the repairs required and the planned construction of the zombie dance floor in the newly formed basement.
25th Aug 2016
Looks like the 1234th post is coming soon, with "soon" being relative to the history of mankind.
Of course I've known all along that the current format is like shyt. I mean, with this layout, it reads like I'm moving forward in time, then leap back, then forward again. Being the lazy slob that I've always been, this was completely ignored. Now, however, since I'm in the mood, let's try something new.
Instead of adding new sections for each date chronologically in each post, they will now be in reverse order. Just a little more work on my end but it should smoothen the reading experience, at least for myself when I'm checking my previous rants.
Playing a lot of 7 Days To Die on PC recently. My style pretty much is just asking to get wrecked but the thing is that I'm actually trying to see how much it takes for the zombies to destroy a good solid house in the town in Navezgane.
My base is a three-storey house in one corner of the town on the side closest to the river, for obvious reasons and also because it was also easy to get to on my first day. The stairs to the second storey has been destroyed and covered with wooden frames upgraded as much as possible with wood alone. The only way to get to my base in the attic, aka the third floor, is through a series of three sets of ladders on the outer wall that do not touch the ground.
At the point of writing, it's day 11 and the first horde on the 7th day had properly wrecked the first floor, leaving almost no indoor wooden walls intact and even destroyed two to three outer walls that are made of either concrete or cobblestone. I was too new to tell which they required when I repaired the walls afterwards, although I've now made cobblestones and even bricks that I plan to use later to reinforce the house before day 14.
Several layers of spikes have been placed around the house, with the front and back being the most protected. The attic has been further divided into two more floors, with the new fourth floor being the new spawn point complete with a chest of emergency supplies and an emergency exit planned using the other window of the attic. Hay bales have been added at the bottom but I don't really expect that to work out.
Hence a new porch has been planned to be built below that emergency exit with hay bales on top for me to leap onto. Additionally, a more elaborate emergency exit is being planned in which I create a narrow sky bridge between the attics of the houses. This will be made using wooden frames upgraded with wood, perhaps supported by the occasional pillars also consisting of wooden frames. Afterwards, the bedroll will be moved to another corner of town, in another house with the stairs destroyed and covered up and all windows barricaded.
If a major seventh day horde ever gets into the top floor of my base, the idea is that even if I respawn, it will take a while for them to move through the town with all its houses to get to my new spawn point and then break through everything to get to me.
If this doesn't work, then it's time to restart the game and rethink my strategy.
As for the base itself, the first floor is also missing some of the wooden floor blocks, so the plan now is to build reinforced log spikes in most of the holes and covering them with support blocks so that as they destroy the supports, they will have to fall and move through the spikes.
Three more days to finish all these. Hopefully it will work.
I can do proper chair dips now! Woot!
So hand dryers aren't that bad and when they say they spread germs, it actually means they spread germs from your poorly washed hands to other people, not from the dryer itself to your hands. Moreover, those cool new jet hand dryers that use UV lights and cold air jets are the worst.
Good thing I use my handkerchief. Probably the worst option to myself but best for everyone else and the environment. Then again, isn't the handkerchief meant to be used for almost every "dirty" thing that we have to do for ourselves?
Speaking of handkerchiefs, it's so hard to find good thick ones these days! Even Crocodile has switched to a fabric which obviously has a lower thread count and feels thinner and rougher. I'm still using two of the older ones bought like three years ago so I have something to compare the new ones with. Seriously, even the inconveniently large ones from Daiso are thicker than theirs!
Those Japanese ones are likely meant to be used like a bandanna though.
When you are in control, it cannot be helped that you take it the hardest when things don't go well.
The endlessness of 7 Days to Die is starting to wear on me slightly. I still have plans but they don't seem enough to stop this feeling.
My strategy is simple: once I've properly filled my first floor with reinforced concrete and a spiked dance floor at the center, expansion of the concrete walls will begin.
The current emergency exits will remain because as my concrete fort gets larger, the need for an escape route is reduced.
As soon as the first floor is expanded another three concrete blocks on each side, I'll thicken the walls of the second floor by one concrete block and then remove everything on the second floor to make space for agriculture.
Beyond that, I'm basically safe for quite a while but the general idea is to build a real fourth floor for a new base before converting the third floor that used to be the attic into another farm or storage area. A fifth floor will serve as my new spawn point and will be almost completely enclosed in reinforced concrete.
This is my plan now that I've read that building blocks in this game, despite having some form of physics, can support an infinite number of blocks on top of it, having only limits in the number of blocks attached to their sides.
92.7kg today. YES! Broke the 93kg line once again!
30 Aug 2016
Surprisingly small horde this time on the 21st day. There were merely over 60 zombies by 6am, just slightly larger than the 14th day horde.
The damage was more serious though: 3 holes 2 blocks tall were found through the house's original cobblestone walls, and the dance floor has been deepened and enlarged.
So the Redmi Note 2 that I bought off Qoo10 turned out to be a fake after checking its IMEI and S/N on the Xiaomi website because it was getting ridiculously slow for a phone of its level.
My solution was to get all the photos downloaded from the SD card to my PC then format it. Hopefully it would become its original form, whatever it was.
I was wrong. Whatever those people did to the phone to make it look like a Xiaomi, it seemed irreversible. Can anything be done?
Of course I proceeded to find a way to root it. Never done it before and at this point, I don't want to use a phone which probably contains some kind of spyware or malware.
Kingo Root did it for me. Now my problem is that I've deleted too many apps that appeared to be bloatware and couldn't be removed previously, and it's stuck at its logo screen when I rebooted it.
It's bricked now, I guess.
Ok I've lost momentum. After returning to Singapore, it's impossible to keep to the 6-day workout schedule of P90X. Now I'm making it 4-5 days weekly, maintaining the chronological order but adding in a rest day or two on top of the rest day.
Should still work fine though, just not as quickly. Weight has been maintaining at below 94kg in the mornings and steps still get easier by the week, so it has to be working, just that I haven't been losing fats as quickly as I'm gaining muscle mass.
Also found this article arguing that we're meant to chill as much as possible and that humans aren't meant to be working out all the time.
That's why we lose muscle mass so quickly - this conserves energy.
The thing is that until relatively recently, humans were still forced to exercise every once in a while by having to hunt for food and etc. Hunting for meat and leather without a gun can seriously require days of work outside, mainly because primitive bows and spears aren't as lethal and accurate as shotguns and rifles.
So yeah, I've just found a legit reason to not exercise so much. Now it just leaves the issue of not eating as much to compensate for the reduction of physical activity.
28 Aug 2016
Somehow I've forgotten whether this is my second or third week of P90X. I was convinced last night that it was only my second session of Legs and Back but Vanessa insisted that it was my third already. I'm confused.
In 7 Days To Die, little progress has been made. So far, the biggest concern is the lack of materials because concrete depletes my stones and sand so quickly! I thought bricks would be a cheaper alternative that could be used in conjunction with cement but every brick block costs 60 clays! Well, at least clay is easier to dig up than sand as the latter is only found in narrow bands along the riverbanks in the only river in the forest biome where I am.
At this rate, I will have to consider spending a day in the desert to harvest sand and stone. Probably some yucca and aloe vera on the side too. I've run out of aloe vera long ago after harvesting some along the way to town on the first day. Not important though because there are nine first aid kits in my possession now.
Been playing more Rebuild 3 though. Just reached Trail and it looks really easy. My strategy has always been rapid expansion in order to block the expansion of all other factions while keeping good relationships with them all. That's where a high-level leader gets really useful. In terms of food, it's mostly about scavenging while farms come later.
26th Aug 2016
Now skipping steps on the stairs is just effortless - P90X really does work if you try! And by "try" I mean work so hard that you're panting and/or at least some of your muscles ache the following day.
I'm terrible at motivating myself to exercise so I have to keep the difficulty low or the bad memories will just reduce my little bit of motivation to nothing. Hence this is how I definite "try" in this case.
Day 14 came and went in 7 Days to Die. 58 zombies were spawned in total and wrecked my bottom floor far more than the Day 7 horde did. The first horde only destroyed my doors and made a few small holes in the original cobblestone walls in the house, but this time, several large holes spanning 3-5 blocks were found in those walls. In addition, they dug a pit 1 block deep and probably 10 blocks large after destroying most of the wooden floor at the center of the house almost under the spot I was hiding at throughout the attack.
Fortunately, the center of the house is the least important in terms of structural support for the rest of the house, so my plan now is to turn it into a pit of log spikes where the Day 21 horde can hang out and mingle and make merry. In the meantime, the outer wall has been immediately repaired with either bricks or concrete. IIRC bricks are on par with cobblestone in terms of durability while concrete is at least twice as tough.
As for my emergency exit plans, the sky bridge has been completed. It is a one-way path that hangs above the roof of the adjacent house whose stairs to the ground floor have been removed and covered. The pillars, a necessity whose importance I had learnt the hard way, are reinforced wood surrounded by both wooden spikes and log spikes. Shifting of the bedroll and emergency supplies has become a secondary priority, however, given the extent of the repairs required and the planned construction of the zombie dance floor in the newly formed basement.
25th Aug 2016
Looks like the 1234th post is coming soon, with "soon" being relative to the history of mankind.
Of course I've known all along that the current format is like shyt. I mean, with this layout, it reads like I'm moving forward in time, then leap back, then forward again. Being the lazy slob that I've always been, this was completely ignored. Now, however, since I'm in the mood, let's try something new.
Instead of adding new sections for each date chronologically in each post, they will now be in reverse order. Just a little more work on my end but it should smoothen the reading experience, at least for myself when I'm checking my previous rants.
Playing a lot of 7 Days To Die on PC recently. My style pretty much is just asking to get wrecked but the thing is that I'm actually trying to see how much it takes for the zombies to destroy a good solid house in the town in Navezgane.
My base is a three-storey house in one corner of the town on the side closest to the river, for obvious reasons and also because it was also easy to get to on my first day. The stairs to the second storey has been destroyed and covered with wooden frames upgraded as much as possible with wood alone. The only way to get to my base in the attic, aka the third floor, is through a series of three sets of ladders on the outer wall that do not touch the ground.
At the point of writing, it's day 11 and the first horde on the 7th day had properly wrecked the first floor, leaving almost no indoor wooden walls intact and even destroyed two to three outer walls that are made of either concrete or cobblestone. I was too new to tell which they required when I repaired the walls afterwards, although I've now made cobblestones and even bricks that I plan to use later to reinforce the house before day 14.
Several layers of spikes have been placed around the house, with the front and back being the most protected. The attic has been further divided into two more floors, with the new fourth floor being the new spawn point complete with a chest of emergency supplies and an emergency exit planned using the other window of the attic. Hay bales have been added at the bottom but I don't really expect that to work out.
Hence a new porch has been planned to be built below that emergency exit with hay bales on top for me to leap onto. Additionally, a more elaborate emergency exit is being planned in which I create a narrow sky bridge between the attics of the houses. This will be made using wooden frames upgraded with wood, perhaps supported by the occasional pillars also consisting of wooden frames. Afterwards, the bedroll will be moved to another corner of town, in another house with the stairs destroyed and covered up and all windows barricaded.
If a major seventh day horde ever gets into the top floor of my base, the idea is that even if I respawn, it will take a while for them to move through the town with all its houses to get to my new spawn point and then break through everything to get to me.
If this doesn't work, then it's time to restart the game and rethink my strategy.
As for the base itself, the first floor is also missing some of the wooden floor blocks, so the plan now is to build reinforced log spikes in most of the holes and covering them with support blocks so that as they destroy the supports, they will have to fall and move through the spikes.
Three more days to finish all these. Hopefully it will work.
I can do proper chair dips now! Woot!
Tuesday 23 August 2016
Rant 1231 / Judging A Book By Its Author
22 July 2016
So according to this blog, Citibank has the lowest commissions among the stock brokerages in Singapore that let me own my stocks. Looks like when the next financial crisis hits, I'm going to be staying in the same bank.
So according to this blog, Citibank has the lowest commissions among the stock brokerages in Singapore that let me own my stocks. Looks like when the next financial crisis hits, I'm going to be staying in the same bank.
23 July 2016
I've never liked it that people complain about how others aren't doing certain things for them as if they're supposed to do it without being told out of the kindness in their own hearts.
Humans did not evolve to be kind; the nice ones tend to die first. We're social but the self always come first. Moreover, we cannot expect others to be like us and remember everything about us the way you remember their details, if you actually do remember everything.
When others around you fail to meet such expectations, that's exactly how people get grouchy and hate the world.
And that's silly - you're just giving yourself depression for nothing.
When the rest of the world seems to be off, be it that everyone's crazy except you or everyone is stupid but you, the fact is that there's this likelihood that you're the one with unrealistic expectations.
So chill, and expect nothing from everyone. Life is a lot more pleasant that way.
Otherwise, why not do something about it? Instead of constantly mulling over how someone didn't do something when it's something he/she is supposed to do it for whatever reasons, why not remind them or just do it yourself?
25 July 2016
So I've backed this KS project that has an interesting but definitely unoriginal idea of using magnets to replace shoelace tying.
25 July 2016
So I've backed this KS project that has an interesting but definitely unoriginal idea of using magnets to replace shoelace tying.
Basically, you loop your laces into the holes of each piece of magnet and you simply attach the two magnets to each other to tighten your shoe instead of having to tie your shoelaces.
You know what that's good for?
Army boots during training.
This is provided they're really strong, and I hope they are as good as they look in their videos.
Again, I've reminded myself why cheap shoes aren't worth risk. I've gone through three pairs of them so far and only one was really comfortable - the other two gave me blisters.
Yes, I'm spoilt, so spoilt I didn't know how uncomfortable it needs to be for a pair of shoes to give me blisters. Blisters used to be something that happened to other people, a problem friends tell me about, a myth as far as my body is concerned. But no longer.
The only comfortable pair, however, has really slippery rubber soles, so I'm going to have to do something about it, like filing it.
In the end, I'm going back to Gilt, where I had gotten two pairs of shoes that I still wear today.
31 July 2016
So here's a little bit of knowledge that might come in handy if you ever get lost in a forest - moss grows on the north side of trees and rocks.
And here's the catch: you have to know the reasons why or this can be completely inaccurate when you try to use it.
I was playing Tinker Island when this came up and it said that using moss to find the north is inaccurate. Doesn't moss simply grow on the north side of trees?
This website explained everything when I googled on this.
First, moss likes moisture, not the North Pole. It does not simply grow on the northern side of everything because it likes that direction the most.
Second, it does not particularly love sunlight - it needs it but not that much. In fact, sunlight dries things up, so moss doesn't grow so well in well-lit areas, hence that gets rid of the East and West.
Third, the northern side of things get less sunlight only in the northern hemisphere; it's the southern side of trees and rocks in the southern hemisphere. This is due to the curvature of the Earth. Therefore, moss grows on the northern side only in this half of the globe while it grows on the southern side down under (and in South America).
But if you're close to the Equator, then you're screwed.
Anyway, this method isn't very useful when you don't have a compass, since this is all about moisture and shade. For all you know, the next time you're in a forest, you may find that the moss is everywhere. You could be in a rather cool and shady spot, or it's a very humid area.
It's actually easier to plant a stick in the ground in a sunny area and use the shadow's movement to find the East and West. But you can probably try the average direction of the moss on multiple trees when you don't have good sunlight and you're in a rush.
2 Aug 2016
Feeling good but slightly apprehensive this morning.
Good because I woke up to a weight of below 95kg - 94.8kg to be exact - despite my large meal last night that included ice-cream and a lot of pasta.
My return to the world of P90X begins today though. Got to do it while I'm still in the best shape I can be in after completing my quota of RT (remedial training) sessions this year for failing the physical fitness test IPPT.
Of course it will be the lean version, and after my previous attempt at it a year or so ago, it's still uncertain if I can handle it at the pace set in the video. Therefore, my goal is to follow it as much as I can without stopping.
Won't be easy.
Of course, hopefully it will be easier than the Hammer series my bro is using currently. Leaping over the gym bench repeatedly looks hard! And I already know that lunges with side twists using weights is hard from my RT. My core is in a terrible state right now, and that's after significant improvement from RT!
... And Core Synergistics is complete! That was not easy and had to be at least thrice as intense as my training during RT, although I was usually in the weight-loss, ie least intense, group.
Some of the exercises were beyond my flexibility too, so the whole thing was far from ideal. Despite of these issues, sore muscles are expected in the near future.
05 Aug 2016
So today's the 4th day of my 1st week of Lean P90X. Wonder how bad Yoga can be. Abs Ripper X was close to impossible to me and by the 3rd exercise, my abdominal muscles were cramping at each motion, a sign of extreme fatigue (I think).
This blog's view count has been fluctuating a lot late, with the number jumping beyond 150 on some days. Why?
23 Aug 2016
So I went to Macau and did the Macau Tower bungy and tower climb. TBH the climb was scarier than the jump because it was a sustained scare rather than a quick intense one.
Third bungy jump under my belt now, excluding the sky jump at Auckland Tower which was not a real bungy.
This could be it for me, at least as far as these ordinary bungy jumps are concerned. From this point on, unless someone wants me to jump with him/her, I'm only going to try new bungees, like the night bungy which is also available at Macau Tower but I didn't have the time to try.
Also tried a restaurant with two Michelin stars, Caprice, and one with three stars, Bo Innovation, while in Hong Kong. Bo was mindblowing with every single course, starting from the little starter before the first course that wasn't included in the chef's menu. It was like the tiny spherical cakes they sell everywhere there, except they only coat the hemispherical moulds with a thin layer so you get a piece of savoury crisp with all the hemispheres. Then they put a little bit of chopped spring onions and something else in each hemisphere before serving. The result was amazing.
Oh, and the xiao long bao there was absolutely magical!
Seriously, they do magic in that kitchen.
As for Caprice, their menu was just incredible but not as good as the food in Bo. However, they really made up for it with their impressive service as expected from a restaurant of this level in a Four Seasons hotel in that part of HK.
The food was the reason we think Caprice was demoted to a 2-star rating from 3 recently, while Bo received 3 stars after having been a 2-star restaurant previously.
In the meantime, I've skipped a week of P90X for the Hong Kong/Macau trip and my first session, Core Synergistics, yesterday was tough. It felt tougher than my second Core session but not as bad as my first.
Haven't gained much either. Still 94kg. Oh yeah!
The Robert Graham shirts arrived yesterday and they are fantastic! Such a steal too, for shirts like these. They usually go for US$250 a shirt but the two only cost me less than US$180 total! Woot!
I have to do something I enjoy.
I have to change what I'm doing now.
31 July 2016
So here's a little bit of knowledge that might come in handy if you ever get lost in a forest - moss grows on the north side of trees and rocks.
And here's the catch: you have to know the reasons why or this can be completely inaccurate when you try to use it.
I was playing Tinker Island when this came up and it said that using moss to find the north is inaccurate. Doesn't moss simply grow on the north side of trees?
This website explained everything when I googled on this.
First, moss likes moisture, not the North Pole. It does not simply grow on the northern side of everything because it likes that direction the most.
Second, it does not particularly love sunlight - it needs it but not that much. In fact, sunlight dries things up, so moss doesn't grow so well in well-lit areas, hence that gets rid of the East and West.
Third, the northern side of things get less sunlight only in the northern hemisphere; it's the southern side of trees and rocks in the southern hemisphere. This is due to the curvature of the Earth. Therefore, moss grows on the northern side only in this half of the globe while it grows on the southern side down under (and in South America).
But if you're close to the Equator, then you're screwed.
Anyway, this method isn't very useful when you don't have a compass, since this is all about moisture and shade. For all you know, the next time you're in a forest, you may find that the moss is everywhere. You could be in a rather cool and shady spot, or it's a very humid area.
It's actually easier to plant a stick in the ground in a sunny area and use the shadow's movement to find the East and West. But you can probably try the average direction of the moss on multiple trees when you don't have good sunlight and you're in a rush.
2 Aug 2016
Feeling good but slightly apprehensive this morning.
Good because I woke up to a weight of below 95kg - 94.8kg to be exact - despite my large meal last night that included ice-cream and a lot of pasta.
My return to the world of P90X begins today though. Got to do it while I'm still in the best shape I can be in after completing my quota of RT (remedial training) sessions this year for failing the physical fitness test IPPT.
Of course it will be the lean version, and after my previous attempt at it a year or so ago, it's still uncertain if I can handle it at the pace set in the video. Therefore, my goal is to follow it as much as I can without stopping.
Won't be easy.
Of course, hopefully it will be easier than the Hammer series my bro is using currently. Leaping over the gym bench repeatedly looks hard! And I already know that lunges with side twists using weights is hard from my RT. My core is in a terrible state right now, and that's after significant improvement from RT!
... And Core Synergistics is complete! That was not easy and had to be at least thrice as intense as my training during RT, although I was usually in the weight-loss, ie least intense, group.
Some of the exercises were beyond my flexibility too, so the whole thing was far from ideal. Despite of these issues, sore muscles are expected in the near future.
05 Aug 2016
So today's the 4th day of my 1st week of Lean P90X. Wonder how bad Yoga can be. Abs Ripper X was close to impossible to me and by the 3rd exercise, my abdominal muscles were cramping at each motion, a sign of extreme fatigue (I think).
This blog's view count has been fluctuating a lot late, with the number jumping beyond 150 on some days. Why?
23 Aug 2016
So I went to Macau and did the Macau Tower bungy and tower climb. TBH the climb was scarier than the jump because it was a sustained scare rather than a quick intense one.
Third bungy jump under my belt now, excluding the sky jump at Auckland Tower which was not a real bungy.
This could be it for me, at least as far as these ordinary bungy jumps are concerned. From this point on, unless someone wants me to jump with him/her, I'm only going to try new bungees, like the night bungy which is also available at Macau Tower but I didn't have the time to try.
Also tried a restaurant with two Michelin stars, Caprice, and one with three stars, Bo Innovation, while in Hong Kong. Bo was mindblowing with every single course, starting from the little starter before the first course that wasn't included in the chef's menu. It was like the tiny spherical cakes they sell everywhere there, except they only coat the hemispherical moulds with a thin layer so you get a piece of savoury crisp with all the hemispheres. Then they put a little bit of chopped spring onions and something else in each hemisphere before serving. The result was amazing.
Oh, and the xiao long bao there was absolutely magical!
Seriously, they do magic in that kitchen.
As for Caprice, their menu was just incredible but not as good as the food in Bo. However, they really made up for it with their impressive service as expected from a restaurant of this level in a Four Seasons hotel in that part of HK.
The food was the reason we think Caprice was demoted to a 2-star rating from 3 recently, while Bo received 3 stars after having been a 2-star restaurant previously.
In the meantime, I've skipped a week of P90X for the Hong Kong/Macau trip and my first session, Core Synergistics, yesterday was tough. It felt tougher than my second Core session but not as bad as my first.
Haven't gained much either. Still 94kg. Oh yeah!
The Robert Graham shirts arrived yesterday and they are fantastic! Such a steal too, for shirts like these. They usually go for US$250 a shirt but the two only cost me less than US$180 total! Woot!
I have to do something I enjoy.
I have to change what I'm doing now.
Thursday 21 July 2016
Rant 1230 / Sweet Espresso
29 June 2016
My old hard drives are dead. I had bought a device for turning internal hard drives into external hard drives, something I can just plug a hard drive into and it reads it, but no luck. They're dead, so some of the things are gone forever now, including my Nevis bungy video that I seem to have neglected to back up on cloud.
It is over.
But it just gives me another reason to do the Nevis again the next time I visit Queenstown, New Zealand. This time, both the bungy and the swing.
Ordered fourteen one-litre packets of skimmed milk so that Van and I can try to lose weight like that. This will work in tandem with the milk replacement shakes that prevents us from feeling hungry but can only be taken once a day.
The RT sessions are great and they even have MMA or other interesting stuff on every Thursday, and although I've not lost any weight, the feeling I get whenever I climb any stairs gives me a rough gauge of how fit I actually am, and I'm fitter now. Still not as fit as when I stopped my weight loss regime, due to the 15 minutes and 5 second timing of my recent 2.4km run in comparison with the 14 minutes and 35 seconds timing over a year ago, but my fitness is improving for sure.
14,000 Asia Miles are expiring next year and I still haven't got a trip worth spending on with miles on CX. The thing about this airline is that although it's trying to be a premium airline, it's rather expensive and Qatar is far better in quality while roughly in the same price range. This makes it hard for me to choose CX when QR is also available, and QR is available in most major routes from Singapore.
04 July 2015
Went to JB yesterday and bought a Lonely Planet guide on Africa and another on Russia.
Hopefully Africa will be possible in 2018, while Russia is quite probably in around August 2017.
Uganda, Morocco, Tanzania, Kenya, South Africa, Nigeria and Ghana are some of the countries I have my eyes on right now, especially the first three.
My desk has been tidied up last week and once my dresser has been removed, my room will be able to accommodate either one more desk or a longer desk to replace my current one. Progress!
7 July 2016
Just another day. Ate a lot yesterday and today so worked out hard during RT. Hopefully it helps. Just downed a meal replacement for tonight so maybe things will be better tomorrow, ie my weight goes down from 99kg.
99kg is scary.
20 July 2016
Down to below 96kg. I was 95.2kg yesterday morning, and should be below 96.5kg today. Skipped a week of RT and spent most of my days sitting around, so that should have led to at least half a kg of weight loss, if not a whole kg. Ate half a kg of beef plus some other stuff last night after the exercise session in which I tried to push myself again (the effort shows when it's practically raining where I stand), so that should help me build some muscle mass for the future.
My logic is simple - eat more in the beginning, when I have less muscle mass, especially proteins. Having more muscle mass is like getting a bigger engine, and a bigger engine means more fuel can be burnt in the same amount of time. It's worked before I skipped the week of RT, since I ate mostly rolled oats with some sugar for a couple of days without losing my fitness level for a week.
Maintaining that is the biggest problem of all.
The results are there, so hopefully the motivation will come with it. When I go below 95kg, it shall be a good day :D
21 July 2016
Having lost two other pants, the only long pants I have left that fits me is my darker Denizen jeans. So yesterday I sucked it up and bought another pair of pants from good old Jshoppers, plus another two that are one size smaller, for the near future when I can fit into those.
I love their Katsurugi stretch chinos because they're pretty stretchy, the material feels comfy and the cutting is great for the price. My 5-6 old ones are still in my wardrobe, kept in the hope that I will eventually get back to my 2013 waistline of 36".
One of the smaller ones is actually a pair of their jeans, which I kinda expect to be of similar quality due their similar prices. I didn't actually planned to get it but the addition of its price will get me free shipping, which really means that this third pair only costs me about S$20, so why not? Good chinos are hard to find, and very rarely at this price. The current trend of disposable fashion is not my thing, and it irks me.
I had recently succumbed to it and bought several pairs of shoes and a pair of pants at really low prices (S$30-65 for pants, S$17 for the pants) and they all sucked so bad. First, I started getting blisters when I've never gotten blisters before, not even in the army. Second, the pants' cutting is so bad, my balls get jammed back into my crotch and I have to stretch my shoulders back to get my hands into the tiny front pockets.
Never again. Expensive is fine if they're worth it! I will never be cheap again! I'm so sorry!
Reminds me of that one Robert Graham shirt that I own. It's a total party shirt and I'm still wearing it once in a while after at least 3 years. My only awesome shirt meant to be tucked out.
Anyway, 96.1kg after breakfast, so it's still holding. I expect to go below 96kg again tomorrow, after the RT session today, since tonight's dinner is going to be rolled oats and some skimmed milk. I have a feeling half a kg of beef is overkill, so milk will provide enough proteins.
My old hard drives are dead. I had bought a device for turning internal hard drives into external hard drives, something I can just plug a hard drive into and it reads it, but no luck. They're dead, so some of the things are gone forever now, including my Nevis bungy video that I seem to have neglected to back up on cloud.
It is over.
But it just gives me another reason to do the Nevis again the next time I visit Queenstown, New Zealand. This time, both the bungy and the swing.
Ordered fourteen one-litre packets of skimmed milk so that Van and I can try to lose weight like that. This will work in tandem with the milk replacement shakes that prevents us from feeling hungry but can only be taken once a day.
The RT sessions are great and they even have MMA or other interesting stuff on every Thursday, and although I've not lost any weight, the feeling I get whenever I climb any stairs gives me a rough gauge of how fit I actually am, and I'm fitter now. Still not as fit as when I stopped my weight loss regime, due to the 15 minutes and 5 second timing of my recent 2.4km run in comparison with the 14 minutes and 35 seconds timing over a year ago, but my fitness is improving for sure.
14,000 Asia Miles are expiring next year and I still haven't got a trip worth spending on with miles on CX. The thing about this airline is that although it's trying to be a premium airline, it's rather expensive and Qatar is far better in quality while roughly in the same price range. This makes it hard for me to choose CX when QR is also available, and QR is available in most major routes from Singapore.
04 July 2015
Went to JB yesterday and bought a Lonely Planet guide on Africa and another on Russia.
Hopefully Africa will be possible in 2018, while Russia is quite probably in around August 2017.
Uganda, Morocco, Tanzania, Kenya, South Africa, Nigeria and Ghana are some of the countries I have my eyes on right now, especially the first three.
My desk has been tidied up last week and once my dresser has been removed, my room will be able to accommodate either one more desk or a longer desk to replace my current one. Progress!
7 July 2016
Just another day. Ate a lot yesterday and today so worked out hard during RT. Hopefully it helps. Just downed a meal replacement for tonight so maybe things will be better tomorrow, ie my weight goes down from 99kg.
99kg is scary.
20 July 2016
Down to below 96kg. I was 95.2kg yesterday morning, and should be below 96.5kg today. Skipped a week of RT and spent most of my days sitting around, so that should have led to at least half a kg of weight loss, if not a whole kg. Ate half a kg of beef plus some other stuff last night after the exercise session in which I tried to push myself again (the effort shows when it's practically raining where I stand), so that should help me build some muscle mass for the future.
My logic is simple - eat more in the beginning, when I have less muscle mass, especially proteins. Having more muscle mass is like getting a bigger engine, and a bigger engine means more fuel can be burnt in the same amount of time. It's worked before I skipped the week of RT, since I ate mostly rolled oats with some sugar for a couple of days without losing my fitness level for a week.
Maintaining that is the biggest problem of all.
The results are there, so hopefully the motivation will come with it. When I go below 95kg, it shall be a good day :D
21 July 2016
Having lost two other pants, the only long pants I have left that fits me is my darker Denizen jeans. So yesterday I sucked it up and bought another pair of pants from good old Jshoppers, plus another two that are one size smaller, for the near future when I can fit into those.
I love their Katsurugi stretch chinos because they're pretty stretchy, the material feels comfy and the cutting is great for the price. My 5-6 old ones are still in my wardrobe, kept in the hope that I will eventually get back to my 2013 waistline of 36".
One of the smaller ones is actually a pair of their jeans, which I kinda expect to be of similar quality due their similar prices. I didn't actually planned to get it but the addition of its price will get me free shipping, which really means that this third pair only costs me about S$20, so why not? Good chinos are hard to find, and very rarely at this price. The current trend of disposable fashion is not my thing, and it irks me.
I had recently succumbed to it and bought several pairs of shoes and a pair of pants at really low prices (S$30-65 for pants, S$17 for the pants) and they all sucked so bad. First, I started getting blisters when I've never gotten blisters before, not even in the army. Second, the pants' cutting is so bad, my balls get jammed back into my crotch and I have to stretch my shoulders back to get my hands into the tiny front pockets.
Never again. Expensive is fine if they're worth it! I will never be cheap again! I'm so sorry!
Reminds me of that one Robert Graham shirt that I own. It's a total party shirt and I'm still wearing it once in a while after at least 3 years. My only awesome shirt meant to be tucked out.
Anyway, 96.1kg after breakfast, so it's still holding. I expect to go below 96kg again tomorrow, after the RT session today, since tonight's dinner is going to be rolled oats and some skimmed milk. I have a feeling half a kg of beef is overkill, so milk will provide enough proteins.
Thursday 23 June 2016
Rant 1229 / Sense Is Unnecessary As Long As It Works For You.
09 June 2016
Yep. Somehow it struck a cord in me. I've always thought that this "follow your passion" thing is for the masses. It's like if you throw enough darts, some of it is bound to hit the bullseye. Same here. If everyone follows his or her passion, someone is bound to get successful. Just not everyone.
It's something leaders and role models should say to everyone under them, because ultimately, with a large group of people, this benefits them overall - you just need one superstar within your neighbourhood and everyone will get some of the pride.
But individually, it is kinda stupid when you realize what some people are probably dreaming of. I may be wrong here, but when I see what a lot of people spend their money on and their justifications for them, it just feels like there is little chance that they can be dreaming of any job that is either possible or within the reach of 99.99% of the human race.
Like people who seem to believe that being your own boss is the best thing in the world.
The fact is, whatever your job is, it is simply like modern medicine - there is no perfect cure to any problem. The painful reality is that every treatment that a doctor has in his arsenal merely exchanges your current set of problems with another, one that he feels you are better equipped to deal with.
So I agree with Mike's assessment - follow the money, bring your passion with you and perhaps, find some along the way. You can only really follow your passion if you can already support yourself. C'est la vie.
14 June 2016
The moka pot is the best manual coffee-making tool I've ever owned! Being Singaporean, our local coffee aka kopi is served seriously overbrewed, so it's very thick and can be quite acidic.
And I'm used to that thickness that cannot be found previously except in the french press, which also makes it very acidic, not to mention the sieve part is kinda hard to clean thoroughly.
With the moka pot, it's different. The filter is easy to clean since it doesn't have any tiny gaps other than the holes, unlike the french press. Moreover, it makes the thickest coffee ever created in my kitchen!
The moka pot is actually considered by some as an espresso machine due to the thickness of the coffee it produces, but it's really just thick coffee. Real espresso is almost a syrup. Having stayed in Italy for 8 days, drinking 1-3 espressos every single day, I have the creds to back up my opinions on coffee LOL
Tried the SleepPro Anti-microbial version and it was so painful on the first night. Only tried it one night so far. It made my lower front teeth feel like they were getting pulled out all at one go (which technically they kinda were) and I could barely sleep that night until I spat it out sometime in the pre-dawn morning. My lower front teeth were sore for the rest of the day too.
All the reviews mentioned the ache and soreness but apparently it goes away after several nights of usage, so I may reuse it tonight.
18 June 2016
Decided that to get used to the SleepPro, I'll need several days to get used to it due to its effect on my quality of sleep.
Not doing it for now.
I was thinking about taking all my cash out and investing most of it in index funds. Apparently, these are the ones that actually make sense. Not just yet though, because as bad as the Singapore economy is right now, it can't be at the nadir yet.
21 June 2016
I don't get why semi-automatic guns are allowed among civilians in some countries. They aren't needed for hunting and if one ever finds oneself in a situation that necessitates the use of semi-automatic rifles or shotguns, then one has to ask," What is the police doing?"
...
So they do need it for hunting, especially larger animals that may not get killed by the first round and may even attack the hunter after surviving it. It increases the chances of a quick death for these large animals and smaller ones like birds, therefore making it more humane.
This isn't about the act of hunting in the modern world, which is an entirely different story, but the use of firearms during the hunt.
23 June 2016
After pushing myself a little during the last RT session, my body aches, especially my shoulder area from the "pushups" I made myself do. I added the quotation marks because they were not real pushups - the instructor advised those who couldn't do a proper pushup to just go all the way down before pushing ourselves up from the ground.
A proper pushup, to me, means I can hit the ground with my forehead just by tilting my head forward a little. I can't do that anymore, so I just slammed into the ground and pushed myself up. He noticed it though, and told me even if I was doing that sort of pushup, I had to put in a little strength when going down, ie go down slowly.
That was way harder.
But the overall effect is that I can handle life with less sleep, ie this morning I got up at my girlfriend's first alarm (she has three in the morning) when we usually got up at the second. This is what I used to do back when I was losing weight.
This means my momentum is back!
:D
RT may be one of the better things that gets forced onto Singaporean men.
So after the last few days of using the moka pot, it became clear that the guidelines I've learnt online weren't enough.
Using the moka pot is an art, I feel. There's a standard amount of water and beans you can use, but the fineness of the grind is up to you. Sure, there's a range of values for this factor, but the specific number you want to use really depends on your personal preference.
The thing is that the finer it gets, the more it can extract due to increased surface area - but it also makes it easier for the water to go through and therefore reduces the water brings less of the goodness out. The coarser, the better the pressure within, the more coffee it can extract - but the bigger chunks might be unwilling to let everything get out. Moreover, if it's too fine, you get really thin coffee, while when it's too coarse, the coffee might explode out of the pot due to the immense pressure that built up when the chunks block the holes in the filters.
So it's kinda like using a rice cooker without reading the manual - you go by trial and error.
Right now I'm still trying to get the balance, but I tend to favour fineness over coarseness, because the coffee the moka pot makes tends to be pretty thick compared to that of other manual methods of making coffee, and I usually go for a second brew.
Speaking of coffee, apparently ants dislike coffee grounds, and I'm starting to find ants in my plants, so later today I'll be spreading today's coffee grounds on the soil.
Also, epsom salt with crushed garlic mixed in water works wonders on aphids. My plants look great now and there is only one or two aphids left. The epsom salt in the soil will make sure that lone aphid will die without reproducing.
96.8kg today. Hopefully it gets better.
Yep. Somehow it struck a cord in me. I've always thought that this "follow your passion" thing is for the masses. It's like if you throw enough darts, some of it is bound to hit the bullseye. Same here. If everyone follows his or her passion, someone is bound to get successful. Just not everyone.
It's something leaders and role models should say to everyone under them, because ultimately, with a large group of people, this benefits them overall - you just need one superstar within your neighbourhood and everyone will get some of the pride.
But individually, it is kinda stupid when you realize what some people are probably dreaming of. I may be wrong here, but when I see what a lot of people spend their money on and their justifications for them, it just feels like there is little chance that they can be dreaming of any job that is either possible or within the reach of 99.99% of the human race.
Like people who seem to believe that being your own boss is the best thing in the world.
The fact is, whatever your job is, it is simply like modern medicine - there is no perfect cure to any problem. The painful reality is that every treatment that a doctor has in his arsenal merely exchanges your current set of problems with another, one that he feels you are better equipped to deal with.
So I agree with Mike's assessment - follow the money, bring your passion with you and perhaps, find some along the way. You can only really follow your passion if you can already support yourself. C'est la vie.
14 June 2016
The moka pot is the best manual coffee-making tool I've ever owned! Being Singaporean, our local coffee aka kopi is served seriously overbrewed, so it's very thick and can be quite acidic.
And I'm used to that thickness that cannot be found previously except in the french press, which also makes it very acidic, not to mention the sieve part is kinda hard to clean thoroughly.
With the moka pot, it's different. The filter is easy to clean since it doesn't have any tiny gaps other than the holes, unlike the french press. Moreover, it makes the thickest coffee ever created in my kitchen!
The moka pot is actually considered by some as an espresso machine due to the thickness of the coffee it produces, but it's really just thick coffee. Real espresso is almost a syrup. Having stayed in Italy for 8 days, drinking 1-3 espressos every single day, I have the creds to back up my opinions on coffee LOL
Tried the SleepPro Anti-microbial version and it was so painful on the first night. Only tried it one night so far. It made my lower front teeth feel like they were getting pulled out all at one go (which technically they kinda were) and I could barely sleep that night until I spat it out sometime in the pre-dawn morning. My lower front teeth were sore for the rest of the day too.
All the reviews mentioned the ache and soreness but apparently it goes away after several nights of usage, so I may reuse it tonight.
18 June 2016
Decided that to get used to the SleepPro, I'll need several days to get used to it due to its effect on my quality of sleep.
Not doing it for now.
I was thinking about taking all my cash out and investing most of it in index funds. Apparently, these are the ones that actually make sense. Not just yet though, because as bad as the Singapore economy is right now, it can't be at the nadir yet.
21 June 2016
I don't get why semi-automatic guns are allowed among civilians in some countries. They aren't needed for hunting and if one ever finds oneself in a situation that necessitates the use of semi-automatic rifles or shotguns, then one has to ask," What is the police doing?"
...
So they do need it for hunting, especially larger animals that may not get killed by the first round and may even attack the hunter after surviving it. It increases the chances of a quick death for these large animals and smaller ones like birds, therefore making it more humane.
This isn't about the act of hunting in the modern world, which is an entirely different story, but the use of firearms during the hunt.
23 June 2016
After pushing myself a little during the last RT session, my body aches, especially my shoulder area from the "pushups" I made myself do. I added the quotation marks because they were not real pushups - the instructor advised those who couldn't do a proper pushup to just go all the way down before pushing ourselves up from the ground.
A proper pushup, to me, means I can hit the ground with my forehead just by tilting my head forward a little. I can't do that anymore, so I just slammed into the ground and pushed myself up. He noticed it though, and told me even if I was doing that sort of pushup, I had to put in a little strength when going down, ie go down slowly.
That was way harder.
But the overall effect is that I can handle life with less sleep, ie this morning I got up at my girlfriend's first alarm (she has three in the morning) when we usually got up at the second. This is what I used to do back when I was losing weight.
This means my momentum is back!
:D
RT may be one of the better things that gets forced onto Singaporean men.
So after the last few days of using the moka pot, it became clear that the guidelines I've learnt online weren't enough.
Using the moka pot is an art, I feel. There's a standard amount of water and beans you can use, but the fineness of the grind is up to you. Sure, there's a range of values for this factor, but the specific number you want to use really depends on your personal preference.
The thing is that the finer it gets, the more it can extract due to increased surface area - but it also makes it easier for the water to go through and therefore reduces the water brings less of the goodness out. The coarser, the better the pressure within, the more coffee it can extract - but the bigger chunks might be unwilling to let everything get out. Moreover, if it's too fine, you get really thin coffee, while when it's too coarse, the coffee might explode out of the pot due to the immense pressure that built up when the chunks block the holes in the filters.
So it's kinda like using a rice cooker without reading the manual - you go by trial and error.
Right now I'm still trying to get the balance, but I tend to favour fineness over coarseness, because the coffee the moka pot makes tends to be pretty thick compared to that of other manual methods of making coffee, and I usually go for a second brew.
Speaking of coffee, apparently ants dislike coffee grounds, and I'm starting to find ants in my plants, so later today I'll be spreading today's coffee grounds on the soil.
Also, epsom salt with crushed garlic mixed in water works wonders on aphids. My plants look great now and there is only one or two aphids left. The epsom salt in the soil will make sure that lone aphid will die without reproducing.
96.8kg today. Hopefully it gets better.
Monday 6 June 2016
Rant 1228 / Something Something Something Something, So Something.
26 May 2016
So I tried to type something on the 18th and nothing came out.
Anyway OneDrive just downsized our free capacity from 15GB to 5, so now I'm uploading as much as I can to Google Drive. Everything in my iPhone was back up there and it's only 3GB full, so I'll have to manually copy the rest over. Could take a while.
After Van fell in love with Qatar Airways (I'm impressed too, btw), I started looking at the flight deals from the airline and found that it's actually quite affordable on most routes despite the relative opulence offered even in Economy class.
Now I feel like such a frog in the well for believing that Singapore Airlines sets the standards for airline comfort. No, because not only does Qatar still uses metal utensils even on Economy, they also offer free Wi-Fi. Other things included in their trans-Atlantic flights include ear plugs, toothbrush with toothpaste and eye pads. Slippers are only for Business class.
I have not been on one of their flights so I cannot say anything about the seat sizes and recline, although generally speaking, they're all the same on Economy across the board with really minute differences, like an inch in seat width.
So I'm using perfume regularly now since the two bottles I bought a year or two ago were barely getting used. Spraying my handkerchief turned out to be an extremely useful idea and I'm even more tempted now to bring a some perfume when I travel to places with warm weather.
6 June 2016
Went to the PC Show last Friday to look for a flash drive with a lightning connector for my phone in hope that bringing some videos with me will help to avoid the above incident. I know, there are ways to download videos into the iPhone, but they feel so complicated.
So there I went, and not only did I find the flash drives with lightning connectors, but also a flash drive that can connect to other devices wirelessly by creating its own tiny hotspot.
The latter was impressive! According to the salespeople, it creates a small hotspot for up to 3 devices and has a battery that lasts up to 6 hours. When I tested it at home, I could watch videos directly from it without copying it over, although copying would help save battery life in the drive. The SanDisk Connect app was also required to use the drive so that limits the number of people who can freely access it, in addition to the usual network password obstacle.
The idea that I immediately had was that when I share this device with Van, I'll plug it into a power bank and let it run. With 64GB of space, there can be a lot of videos we can store in there. Moreover, it can be an emergency storage if we somehow manage to run out of space in our phones without realizing it until we are taking more photos/videos.
Not travelling as much as I did in the last several months so it will be August before I have the opportunity to test it in a trip. Then, this will be really a necessity as the average will be about just over a trip a month, if I remember correctly. There will be several work trips this winter instead of just one or two as my business (and seriously, the economy) isn't doing so well, although tbh this is going to be fun since my gf and her best friend will be tagging along with me for my work trip to Seoul. My plan is to go wherever with them, then add a few more days for myself just for work.
Not going anywhere for the next Chinese New Year public holiday though because Van wants me to be around then, then I may go somewhere after that since it's still CNY for the first 15 days of the lunar month while only the first two days are public holidays in Singapore. It will be a long weekend as it begins on Saturday, making Monday a public holiday to compensate for Sunday, but it's not long enough to go anywhere nice, plus it will be frigging crowded.
Played mahjong with Van's family on Saturday, including her aunts, one of which was her godmother. They put me through a little interrogation during the game and, not to be arrogant, but it would be seriously surprising if they find anything to disagree with me.
Learnt a bit of Singapore mahjong but the expert, her godmother, had to leave halfway through the game and it got a little confused afterwards. The Singapore mahjong game app in my phone described several rules and advanced tile combinations that they did not mention at all, so we were playing with only the basic rules while none of the advanced ones were mentioned during the game, like winning with the last tile would get you an extra point.
So I tried to type something on the 18th and nothing came out.
Anyway OneDrive just downsized our free capacity from 15GB to 5, so now I'm uploading as much as I can to Google Drive. Everything in my iPhone was back up there and it's only 3GB full, so I'll have to manually copy the rest over. Could take a while.
After Van fell in love with Qatar Airways (I'm impressed too, btw), I started looking at the flight deals from the airline and found that it's actually quite affordable on most routes despite the relative opulence offered even in Economy class.
Now I feel like such a frog in the well for believing that Singapore Airlines sets the standards for airline comfort. No, because not only does Qatar still uses metal utensils even on Economy, they also offer free Wi-Fi. Other things included in their trans-Atlantic flights include ear plugs, toothbrush with toothpaste and eye pads. Slippers are only for Business class.
I have not been on one of their flights so I cannot say anything about the seat sizes and recline, although generally speaking, they're all the same on Economy across the board with really minute differences, like an inch in seat width.
So I'm using perfume regularly now since the two bottles I bought a year or two ago were barely getting used. Spraying my handkerchief turned out to be an extremely useful idea and I'm even more tempted now to bring a some perfume when I travel to places with warm weather.
The elevated bus that debuted in Beijing. At first it looked like THE solution to traffic jams, then it looked like it will just block all the road signs for almost every vehicle going under it.
Looks cool though.
30 May 2016
Watching the latest X-men movie got me thinking: if we know the dimensions of the school, we should be able to get a rough estimate of the speed of Quicksilver.
Turns out it's already known to be Mach 10, or about 340,000m/s, or roughly 0.1c, i.e. 10% of the speed of light.
At that speed, he should be experiencing effects predicted by Einstein including the slowing of time relative to everything else. If he wears a watch, it would get lag behind other clocks a little bit every time he gets close to that speed.
Also, he should be creating sonic booms every time he gets beyond the speed of sound, a mere 340m/s.
Another irregularity is how he makes everything feel so effortless when he does crazy stuff while moving at supersonic speeds.
I don't believe this version of him has super strength nor super strong bones, yet he can deflect bullets with his fingers and fling people around by gently pushing them.
One has to keep in mind that even when he is moving slowly in those high speed scenes, he is still doing all those things in milliseconds. To nudge an average adult male 5cm within 0.1s is still a lot of momentum and acceleration.
There are a few assumptions made here, but if you take the average resulting velocity to be 0.05m/0.1s=0.5m/s, then accelerating him from stationary to 0.5m/s in 0.1s would take an acceleration of 5m/s^2. Assuming this man weighs 70kg, the amount of force he has to apply would be 350N, or roughly like carrying a 35kg weight.
He saved everyone in that school in probably less than a second, so obviously it's a lot less time spent on each person than 0.1s, hence even more force applied than that. And everyone should have been bleeding in their ears afterwards from his sonic boom.
1st June
In Guangzhou Baiyun International Airport now at 4.30pm and there's no Wi-Fi. Technically, it's there, but according to the lady at the information counter I had approached just now, since I don't have a local SIM card, I can't get an authorization code to access it. With roughly 11 hours to go before my flight at 3.45am, this is so fucked up.
Hence I'm blogging while sipping on this indecently overpriced latte at Oak Tree. 60RMB, my readers, is a lot even in a city like Guangzhou. An extremely filling meal at an average restaurant is only less than 100RMB per pax.
This coffee is practically at the same level as Singapore cafes! And it doesn't even come with free Wi-Fi unless you had been willing to fork out a few hundred RMB for a prepaid SIM card.
And my rant isn't over yet, mainly because my flight is still 11 hours away. Not that I'm going to type for the rest of these 11 hours, but it could end up being the most interesting thing I can do here, especially with my luggage preventing me from being too adventurous, not to mention Guangzhou really is quite bland IMHO. It wasn't designed to be a tourist attraction, I feel. A food haven, no doubt, but with precious little to do in between meals after a few days.
My plan is really to sit a little while more, then get out and find the 7-11 in the arrival hall for a cheaper meal. There are lounges I have access to later when I reach airside, but without Wi-Fi, there's no way of knowing if they will still be open by then.
I'm going to miss the food here. If you're into Chinese food and not too squeamish about the hygiene issues that plague the F&B industry in China, this is frigging paradise on Earth.
It reminds me of the older Singapore in terms of availability and variety of cheap food everywhere, just a lot more Chinese and far more chaotic. Furthermore, they're good despite the prices. Brings to mind my old theory that when food ingredients are cheap, people are more willing to experiment. I know it's not exactly true; food prices don't necessarily affect innovation, but what I really do feel is that the prices aren't a direct factor - the amount of people eating out is. The prices affect the type of people eating out and therefore the type of food the chefs get creative with.
In the cheap range, look at the night markets in Taiwan. There's always something new and sometimes they even spread to other countries, like the giant fried chicken cutlets. In the expensive range, restaurants in Singapore are always pushing their chefs to come up with something new regularly. In fact, one ex-chef I talked to spoke of his ex-boss who instructed him to create a new dish for the menu every week.
With the working hours of chefs in Singapore being as long as they are, I wonder how they can still have the time to be creative.
Forced creativity?
No wonder our restaurants haven't made any new dishes that have spread to other countries. Even our breads (Bread Talk) and barbecued meat (Bee Cheng Hiang) have gone further.
Alright, it's 5pm.
So there are cheaper meals at the arrival levels. I'll go back there again later for dinner. 5.37pm now. Wanted to buy some duck wings back but they need to be chilled.
No luck with the internet still but I found some vending machines selling prepaid SIM cards for various countries. Since they were selling some for Hong Hong and Macau, that was an opportunity to use the mouldy 100RMB bills that remain in my possession.
50RMB for a SIM card that provides 7 days of unlimited data is an awesome deal even if it didn't accept the old bill, but it did, so that was even more fantastic.
Usually these days I only use the data passport from M1 that costs S$10/month and a one-time registration fee of $2 and allows me to use all the remaining data in my monthly plan in a specific country or city. 50RMB would be around that price and is perfect for my week-long trip to Hong Kong and Macau later this year. Too bad they didn't have any for South Korea or Seoul.
Now that I'm in China, the thought that Vanessa's classmates labelled one of them who grew up in the US a "banana" really brought to my mind that saying involving a pot and a kettle.
None of us in Singapore can be considered to be really Chinese anymore.
9pm now. Been playing War Tortoise and had a decent meal for 89 yuan involving braised ribs with rice, a side of boiled veg, a side of pickled radish and carrot cubes, a soft drink and a dish of steamed rice rolls with minced pork. Expensive for this city but decent.
One thing that kinda stood out for me is that there are a lot of Africans here because Ethiopian flies here. Moreover, they only seem to eat at the only shop that sells meals for a mere 25 yuan - the "Fast Food" shop selling what we call "cai png" in Singapore. They have a small selection of vegetable and meat dishes, and you choose three to have your rice with. For 25 yuan, you get to have one meat dish and two vegetable dishes. This is the cheapest full meal in the entire airport and is still more expensive than the average price one would find in Singapore outside of the CBD area. Just as expected in an airport.
And it also underlines the poverty in that continent.
11pm. Took a long walk in the airport and in the process, helped a local girl with the SIM card vending machine and an African guy with directions to the Metro.
In an hour and a half, the check in counter will finally be opened. It's possible that they won't be open but if any of them is, I'll take a shower. With the clean clothes and everything needed for a shower except a towel in my bag, I'll definitely go for one if it's available for free. Heck, if necessary, a clean T-shirt can easily be used as a towel since I'm already heading home.
Anyway, as I had initially discovered on the taxi to the hotel I had booked on the first night, there is actually a hotel right next to the airport. In fact, there are signs directing people to Pullman Hotel so it must be very close. I'm going to check out the price when I get back. Otherwise, there are hotels closer to the airport than the one I booked, far more than Expedia and Hotels.com led me to believe, so if Pullman is above S$100 a night, I'll try searching for them in Ctrip.
My hotel was decent enough though, at S$67 a night, plus about 35 yuan for cab, making the night a total of $74. Even when that's added to my airfare, it's still cheaper than those offered by other airlines.
Now the problem is finding a place to stay while coming back. This 3.45am departure requires a night at a hotel if possible. Airbnb will be difficult because not all hosts will have the proper system for handling the keys without being there till the next day, so I'll have to ask before booking next time. Or stay at Pullman. Then again, I have a feeling it's an expensive hotel, given its location. Optimistically, it could turn out to offer capsules or hourly rates.
Another thing is that it's far cheaper to fly from JB to Guangzhou than from Singapore. Yesterday, I found fares as low as S$150 for a return trip and that's about $200 lower than what I paid. For that kind of difference, I really have to find out how one can go to the airport in JB from Singapore.
Since I always go to Guangzhou with only carry-on luggage, an open-jaw trip may be possible in which I fly from JB to Guangzhou with only carry-on, then from Guangzhou to Singapore with checked luggage. Unless, of course, it's really convenient to get from the JB airport to Singapore with heavy luggage at a reasonable price.
Uber maybe?
12.23am. Apparently there's such a thing as Iraqi Airways and it flies from Guangzhou to Baghdad. Also, I'm really worried by all these signs everywhere saying that all carry-on luggage must be below 20*40*55cm and weigh less than 5kg. It looks like I may have to buy checked luggage space if it applies to all airlines departing from this airport.
It was only just now that I recalled that I could have bought a day of data for S$15 just now. Would have made the wait a lot more entertaining. Oh well.
12.56am. Queue is slow. At least they were opened on time. Brain is pretty dead. Not sure what will happen later when I have to go eat at her school.
Good thing that rule about luggage doesn't seem to be enforced. Plenty of people leave the counters with huge backpacks so I'm safe. I'll just pretend to be stupid and ask for the carry-on limit anyway.
4.34am. On the plane but can't sleep. It's definitely the space issue. I feel like I can't breathe.
6 June 2016
Went to the PC Show last Friday to look for a flash drive with a lightning connector for my phone in hope that bringing some videos with me will help to avoid the above incident. I know, there are ways to download videos into the iPhone, but they feel so complicated.
So there I went, and not only did I find the flash drives with lightning connectors, but also a flash drive that can connect to other devices wirelessly by creating its own tiny hotspot.
The latter was impressive! According to the salespeople, it creates a small hotspot for up to 3 devices and has a battery that lasts up to 6 hours. When I tested it at home, I could watch videos directly from it without copying it over, although copying would help save battery life in the drive. The SanDisk Connect app was also required to use the drive so that limits the number of people who can freely access it, in addition to the usual network password obstacle.
The idea that I immediately had was that when I share this device with Van, I'll plug it into a power bank and let it run. With 64GB of space, there can be a lot of videos we can store in there. Moreover, it can be an emergency storage if we somehow manage to run out of space in our phones without realizing it until we are taking more photos/videos.
Not travelling as much as I did in the last several months so it will be August before I have the opportunity to test it in a trip. Then, this will be really a necessity as the average will be about just over a trip a month, if I remember correctly. There will be several work trips this winter instead of just one or two as my business (and seriously, the economy) isn't doing so well, although tbh this is going to be fun since my gf and her best friend will be tagging along with me for my work trip to Seoul. My plan is to go wherever with them, then add a few more days for myself just for work.
Not going anywhere for the next Chinese New Year public holiday though because Van wants me to be around then, then I may go somewhere after that since it's still CNY for the first 15 days of the lunar month while only the first two days are public holidays in Singapore. It will be a long weekend as it begins on Saturday, making Monday a public holiday to compensate for Sunday, but it's not long enough to go anywhere nice, plus it will be frigging crowded.
Played mahjong with Van's family on Saturday, including her aunts, one of which was her godmother. They put me through a little interrogation during the game and, not to be arrogant, but it would be seriously surprising if they find anything to disagree with me.
Learnt a bit of Singapore mahjong but the expert, her godmother, had to leave halfway through the game and it got a little confused afterwards. The Singapore mahjong game app in my phone described several rules and advanced tile combinations that they did not mention at all, so we were playing with only the basic rules while none of the advanced ones were mentioned during the game, like winning with the last tile would get you an extra point.
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