27 Aug 2017
After the attacks in smaller cities, like Turku in Finland, a port city in a sparsely populated country, I have no idea where it is safe from terrorism-related risks to travel to in Europe, outside of towns and villages.
On the other hand, the trend in downgrading from bombs to vans and stabbings supports my theory that the drop in oil prices was, at least partly, done to fight against ISIS.
09 Oct 2017
So decided after all to accept my mother's share of the money made from the sale of her mother's flat, after consulting most of my aunts (her sisters). Basically they all told me to take it, so I'm taking it for my bro and I. I plan to keep most of it separate and give it to some of my cousins when they go to uni, if they can.
NZ was nice but the two weeks there last month reaffirmed my belief that we shouldn't migrate there.
Mainly, it's the economy.
Even my aunt there admitted that while everything was awesome in her adopted country, making a living was the only downside. Canada didn't feel as nice the few times I stayed in Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal, but survival looks easier, with a more active job market that needs people like us more.
Of course, if it is all about making a living, I should just stay home in Singapore LOL
Canada is still the best balance.
Also, finally cleared all my Asia Miles with this trip so I can let my Marco Polo membership go next year. Cathay Pacific is one of the best airlines I've taken, both in the past and in the more recent years, but their uncompetitive prices outside of China make it hard for me to justify frequenting them every time I'm looking for air tickets. During the AKL-HKG leg, for example, I absolutely loved their tablet holder that comes with a cup holder just under the screen that has a USB charging point underneath. It's large enough to hold my drink, my phone, tissues and snacks while narrow enough to allow anyone to move pass with me out of the seat even when it's open. The variety and quality of snacks at the back of the plane was also amazing, making our flight so much more enjoyable.
03 Dec 2017
Going to Austria with Van tomorrow. Airport transfer has been arranged and so have 90% of the transport and lodgings. Not the castle-hopping trip we were initially gunning for but it will be nice. I just hope the public transport in Czech and Austria are as punctual as they're supposed to be because there are a few occasions when, if I remember correctly, we have 5-10 minutes to move from one vehicle to another.
Plenty of snow. Maybe we will even find new suppliers of winter clothing during the trip. Who knows?
Prague is going to be snowing when we reach there, and before that, we will try to get a free tour of Doha during the 12 hours of transit in Qatar. Speaking of which, they really tempted me when they offered to upgrade the both of us to Business class from Singapore to Prague for about S$2000. That's basically tripling what we paid for that journey, which is really still a decent deal, but it's not within our budget to spend on that; Austria is already expensive enough as it is.
Which brings me to how worth it my credit card is this year. It credits me one night's charge excluding taxes for each 4-night stay in a hotel I book through them. There are a few restrictions, mainly in that they can only book either through Expedia or directly with the hotel, but so far it's more than paid for itself through that alone, and I still haven't considered all the airport lounge uses Van and I have gone through over the years, plus the free airport transfers . In other words, despite the credit card's annual fee, the card is pretty much paying me to use it.
Wow took me this long to find a chauffeured ride from the surprise place I booked for her to Prague near the end of the trip that is below 400 euros. Previously everyone was quoting me close to a thousand!
Sunday 3 December 2017
Thursday 24 August 2017
Rant 1240 / Too Many Options In Europe
05 July 2017
Finally got the mood to exercise. First session of P90X3 got my core and limbs trembling. Had to sit down to shower and even now my abdomen trembles when I lean forward to type without resting my elbows on the desk. The mug of water in my hand is reminiscent of a certain scene in the first Jurassic Park movie.
The 7th will be an uncomfortable day.
06 July 2017
As expected, my thighs and abs are aching. Surprisingly not my arms except for my upper shoulders, probably because I'm very cautious with them not to strain them too hard since they need energy to brace for any difficult positions that may dislocate my shoulders. After all, I've dislocated one that one time while I was rushing a pushup to stand up near the end of a P90X session, and I don't really know how it happened.
07 July 2017
Can feel it. Since last night, I've been feeling warmer than before, exactly how I used to feel until the last few months. Even 25 degrees C is a little too warm for me, and I know that because of the thermometer-cum-hygrometer on my desk. It's also got a clock but judging from the dried stain inside after opening it, the battery probably got so old it leaked, so now replacing the battery doesn't work, ergo no clock.
Anyway my guess is my metabolic rate has been raised and I'm burning more energy even when I'm doing nothing.
Life is slightly more uncomfortable now though, feeling warmer constantly in a humid tropical climate. Makes me miss the cold. Maybe I should consider Canada instead of NZ for the big trip.
Just heard of Vicuña, an animal that cannot be reared and bred commercially. An adult produces roughly a quarter kilo of wool, and harvesting it involves a bunch of villagers encircling an animal and slowly approaching it till they're close enough to shear it. Once upon a time, they used to hunt and kill the animal for it instead, but this stopped when the animal almost got extinct, recovering in numbers only during recent decades.
The cheapest pure authentic vicuña wool product is 4000USD for a scarf, and an off-the-rack jacket typically belongs in the lower five-digit range, also USD, while any jacket under 15k should be viewed with suspicion. In other words, a pure vicuña sports coat, off-the-rack and not even tailored/bespoke, from Italy can cost as much as a 2-week cruise on Silversea. You know, the cruise line with the 24/7 butler service and free flow minibar in every room.
Basically, if you're wondering why it's so damn ridiculously expensive other than its rarity, the vicuña wool is said to make cashmere feel like straw. Or something like that. This is all hearsay; I wouldn't know - I haven't even seen the wool in reality before.
I'm interested because this is related to my line, but this is akin to a physics teacher reading about the inner workings of SpaceX rockets: I know how awesome it is but this stuff is way beyond anything I'll ever work with in my lifetime. However, knowing what real cashmere feels like, I can only imagine that putting on pure vicuña wool apparel should feel like wearing a piece of cloud.
Finally, "ñ" is Alt + 0241.
08 July 2017
Pretty good deal from Watsons for 48 pieces of 650ml dehumidifiers at $60, or S$1.25 per piece. In comparison, the so-called budget shops sell these at $2 each.
Also bought a 5mm-thick yoga mat at S$20 through their purchase-with-purchase promo. Definitely not the cheapest I've seen but seems to be worth the money because not only is it as thick as our last one and feels harder, it also has a black-coloured bottom half that clearly has a better grip than the usual yoga mat material. This last bit is particularly good as the last one has been slipping too easily when I have my hands or feet on the grounnd while the other is on the mat in the downward dog pose. I'm tall enough that it's sometimes too much trouble to carefully rest all four limbs on the edges of the mat. Anyway hopefully it actually has a good grip.
This dude is eating 70-year-old combat ration. 72 years, to be exact.
That beef bouillon smelled like cheese but still made edible beef soup. Honestly though, if I were a soldier surviving on that, I would have simply swallowed it like a pill. Maybe crush it a little if it was too big, but there was almost no chance I would savour it slowly as a soup, not in the situations this packet was meant for.
The coffee was as if it doesn't have an expiry date! Obviously I wouldn't try any instant coffee packet that was left lying around on its own for 70 years, but if it was sealed in its packaging like all instant coffee packets are nowadays and then further sealed in a watertight can like that one, yes I can believe it can last as long as the can stays sealed. The sugar was expected, given how we use sugar to preserve dehydrated fruits.
The chocolate bar (2oz = 57g) surprised me though. Does it even contain dairy? Maybe a tiny bit at most, which would explain the off-smell.
Basically proves that you shouldn't just throw food away solely because it's past its expiry date, especially for canned food. I usually judge by feel and then by sight followed by smell to gauge if food is edible, and there have been instances when food went bad before its expiry date.
Anyway his videos are really interesting since I've been eating a lot of Singaporean combat rations in the last several years and I do have some interest in history.
09 July 2017
Wow... my shoulders are still so weak from yesterday's The Challenge session that I can barely do a lot of actions, including anything that involves raising my arms above my shoulders. Even grinding my coffee beans was slightly more agonising than usual.
This is new. I've never needed more than a night to recover. At most there is an ache but not weakness by the second day.
12 July 2017
No, massages don't seem to work on me. Lots of pain followed by lots of throbbing pain, but all my aches remain, just like my past experiences with massages.
15 July 2017
Sometimes I wonder why some people love their country. Patriotism is a celebrated trait now but different things were celebrated in different places in different parts of human history that may seem strange, or worse, to people now.
Back let's not get side-tracked. Why are people patriotic? I know its benefits to a society, but people are not that rational when it comes to feelings, and that's where the question is aimed towards.
So the fundamental question to me, at the moment, is: do they love their country for what it is or the idea of their country?
Because the latter must be really well-informed and probably very liberal. To love a country for what it is, one has to embrace everything in it, including the stuff that people don't really want to think about. For example, in my country, do all patriots really understand and accept legalized gambling, the death penalty, the Raffles bubble in the upper echelons of our society, the fact that pawn shops are prospering to the point of having IPOs, and various parts of our history not taught in schools?
Or what about the meritocracy that once existed? Why does it feel like meritocracy is only present between the lower and middle class? The only meritocracy that goes above that level seems to only apply to the merits of a person's networks.
Moreover, most of us don't know that many people. In fact, from the time we start working, most of us seem to keep our social circles at the status quo or smaller. In other words, we gradually insulate ourselves from the rest of our countrymen.
In that case, isn't the most comprehensive image of our country in our minds based on the media and the same friends we have had for a very long time? And the people we meet in our daily lives, of course.
Does it make sense to say that we don't actually love the country, but the piece of the country we interact with?
21 July 2017
Started with 1580MYR, spent another 150MYR on a pair of jeans, came back with 6800MYR.
Adding in the expenses $12 for the ride home, converting it to 36MYR, rounding it to 40MYR, further rounding the difference to the nearest 100, that makes a net gain of about 5000MYR.
All thanks to the Texas Holdem at Genting's SkyCasino, with the 5% jackpot coming from my 7-card royal flush (royal flush formed from my 2 cards and at the 5th community card) that amount to just over 5000 MYR.
This isn't a huge number, but it's still good to win a bit of money overall.
The process of handling even just the fraction of the jackpot is that they had to go through the entire deck of cards extremely thoroughly (it seems they have a set of SOP for that) like checking every single card in the deck multiple times by multiple supervisors who were called in just for that, made calls to some mysterious people I'll never know about, and took down my particulars and even took scans of my passport.
To top it all off, after everything was done and the dealer was changed after that one single game we played with her (it was my first round at the table), I scored another triple aces (pair aces in hand, plus an ace among the community cards) in the second game.
The story ended at that point when the dealer was instructed by a supervisor to raise the minimum bet from 25MYR to 100MYR, causing all players to leave. When I returned after cashing in the chips, only one guy was playing at that table, still requiring a minimum bet of 100MYR.
He had taken the seat I vacated.
25 July 2017
The bak kut teh 肉骨茶 and salted chicken 盐焗鸡 in KL really is awesome but it's because they really love their 当归 （female ginseng) so they put a little of that in both dishes. The original salted chicken is really just salt and chicken, with spring onion as garnish when serving, so what we had was a Malaysian variant of the dish.
26 July 2017
Weight hasn't gone down but fitness is definitely improving.
Some girl is apparently jealous to some extent about me being attached with Van. To be fair, I did say that I would date her, but that was a few days before I met Van and had had a few drinks. In Van's case, I didn't just say I would date her, I simply did it. Sober.
She seemed like a friend to the both of us and we did occasionally confide in her in the past, but now that I know that she's been saying all kinds of nonsense about Van behind her back really made me realize I'd inadvertently escaped a major shithole there. Best part was that she told another girl I was "supposed to date her". Made my day. Well, if a girl has been single for a very long time despite having at least one really persistent fan (read: stalker) and a rather significant number of guys expressing interest in her openly online over the years, there have to be at least a few good reasons behind her relationship status.
13 Aug 2017
So a question: why didn't the British leave Hong Kong after WW2 the way they did in Malaya and Singapore?
I've read about that little part of the history of Singapore and Malaya, and it happened because not only of the corruption ingrained into the local society by the desperation caused by the Japanese Occupation, but also because the British raised taxes dramatically without any effort in rebuilding the infrastructure here.
What happened in Hong Kong back then?
23 Aug 2017
Well, weight's gone down finally after switching to a pseudo-vegetarian diet for over a week. Last night's dinner was the most extreme with half a kg of jackfruit (weighed with seeds) and a whole brocolli, boiled (and cut before boiling, of course).
Today I'm 98.3kg before breakfast and passing motion, as compared to below 101kg before restarting P90X3 after returning from San Francisco. There was no significant weight loss until about 2 weeks ago when I began eating more vegetables, fruits and rolled oats, but this week, I notice that I feel weaker but not tired, as in I don't feel sleepy.
Somehow I've been feeling the craving for meat less. Good I guess, but it looks like I need to put more meat back in my diet.
24 Aug 2017
No more updates from AJ Hackett after notifying me via email that I've won bids in all 3 categories of Giant Swing, Skywalk and Bungy. Seems that they have also removed a few bidders above me in Bungy because the last time I checked, a few minutes after the end of the bidding period, I was a few positions lower than the one they told me I'm in.
Not #1 of course, someone went mad and made a bid of over S$6000 just for the #1 Bungy spot IIRC.
Also thought about the HK issue. I think it began with the self-consoling thought that everything was going to be ok in a century when they would be returned to China. Then as they got wealthier than their neighbours over the decades, the income gap between the locals and the British never became a major issue, because no matter how bad it was, they could just speak to any number of refugees coming in illegally from China and knew it could have been a lot worse. This was probably what happened after WW2. But how did they do better than the people of mainland China?
So I checked Wikipedia and apparently lots of people from the ROC went there as refugees during the civil war. That was during the time when the ROC was losing everything beyond Taiwan. Most of these were skilled workers, and they were followed by businessmen from Shanghai and Guangzhou escaping persecution in China later. That was the perfect mix that led to Hong Kong becoming the first of the Four Asian Tigers in the 50s.
Finally got the mood to exercise. First session of P90X3 got my core and limbs trembling. Had to sit down to shower and even now my abdomen trembles when I lean forward to type without resting my elbows on the desk. The mug of water in my hand is reminiscent of a certain scene in the first Jurassic Park movie.
The 7th will be an uncomfortable day.
06 July 2017
As expected, my thighs and abs are aching. Surprisingly not my arms except for my upper shoulders, probably because I'm very cautious with them not to strain them too hard since they need energy to brace for any difficult positions that may dislocate my shoulders. After all, I've dislocated one that one time while I was rushing a pushup to stand up near the end of a P90X session, and I don't really know how it happened.
07 July 2017
Can feel it. Since last night, I've been feeling warmer than before, exactly how I used to feel until the last few months. Even 25 degrees C is a little too warm for me, and I know that because of the thermometer-cum-hygrometer on my desk. It's also got a clock but judging from the dried stain inside after opening it, the battery probably got so old it leaked, so now replacing the battery doesn't work, ergo no clock.
Anyway my guess is my metabolic rate has been raised and I'm burning more energy even when I'm doing nothing.
Life is slightly more uncomfortable now though, feeling warmer constantly in a humid tropical climate. Makes me miss the cold. Maybe I should consider Canada instead of NZ for the big trip.
Just heard of Vicuña, an animal that cannot be reared and bred commercially. An adult produces roughly a quarter kilo of wool, and harvesting it involves a bunch of villagers encircling an animal and slowly approaching it till they're close enough to shear it. Once upon a time, they used to hunt and kill the animal for it instead, but this stopped when the animal almost got extinct, recovering in numbers only during recent decades.
The cheapest pure authentic vicuña wool product is 4000USD for a scarf, and an off-the-rack jacket typically belongs in the lower five-digit range, also USD, while any jacket under 15k should be viewed with suspicion. In other words, a pure vicuña sports coat, off-the-rack and not even tailored/bespoke, from Italy can cost as much as a 2-week cruise on Silversea. You know, the cruise line with the 24/7 butler service and free flow minibar in every room.
Basically, if you're wondering why it's so damn ridiculously expensive other than its rarity, the vicuña wool is said to make cashmere feel like straw. Or something like that. This is all hearsay; I wouldn't know - I haven't even seen the wool in reality before.
I'm interested because this is related to my line, but this is akin to a physics teacher reading about the inner workings of SpaceX rockets: I know how awesome it is but this stuff is way beyond anything I'll ever work with in my lifetime. However, knowing what real cashmere feels like, I can only imagine that putting on pure vicuña wool apparel should feel like wearing a piece of cloud.
Finally, "ñ" is Alt + 0241.
08 July 2017
Pretty good deal from Watsons for 48 pieces of 650ml dehumidifiers at $60, or S$1.25 per piece. In comparison, the so-called budget shops sell these at $2 each.
Also bought a 5mm-thick yoga mat at S$20 through their purchase-with-purchase promo. Definitely not the cheapest I've seen but seems to be worth the money because not only is it as thick as our last one and feels harder, it also has a black-coloured bottom half that clearly has a better grip than the usual yoga mat material. This last bit is particularly good as the last one has been slipping too easily when I have my hands or feet on the grounnd while the other is on the mat in the downward dog pose. I'm tall enough that it's sometimes too much trouble to carefully rest all four limbs on the edges of the mat. Anyway hopefully it actually has a good grip.
This dude is eating 70-year-old combat ration. 72 years, to be exact.
That beef bouillon smelled like cheese but still made edible beef soup. Honestly though, if I were a soldier surviving on that, I would have simply swallowed it like a pill. Maybe crush it a little if it was too big, but there was almost no chance I would savour it slowly as a soup, not in the situations this packet was meant for.
The coffee was as if it doesn't have an expiry date! Obviously I wouldn't try any instant coffee packet that was left lying around on its own for 70 years, but if it was sealed in its packaging like all instant coffee packets are nowadays and then further sealed in a watertight can like that one, yes I can believe it can last as long as the can stays sealed. The sugar was expected, given how we use sugar to preserve dehydrated fruits.
The chocolate bar (2oz = 57g) surprised me though. Does it even contain dairy? Maybe a tiny bit at most, which would explain the off-smell.
Basically proves that you shouldn't just throw food away solely because it's past its expiry date, especially for canned food. I usually judge by feel and then by sight followed by smell to gauge if food is edible, and there have been instances when food went bad before its expiry date.
Anyway his videos are really interesting since I've been eating a lot of Singaporean combat rations in the last several years and I do have some interest in history.
09 July 2017
Wow... my shoulders are still so weak from yesterday's The Challenge session that I can barely do a lot of actions, including anything that involves raising my arms above my shoulders. Even grinding my coffee beans was slightly more agonising than usual.
This is new. I've never needed more than a night to recover. At most there is an ache but not weakness by the second day.
12 July 2017
No, massages don't seem to work on me. Lots of pain followed by lots of throbbing pain, but all my aches remain, just like my past experiences with massages.
15 July 2017
Sometimes I wonder why some people love their country. Patriotism is a celebrated trait now but different things were celebrated in different places in different parts of human history that may seem strange, or worse, to people now.
Back let's not get side-tracked. Why are people patriotic? I know its benefits to a society, but people are not that rational when it comes to feelings, and that's where the question is aimed towards.
So the fundamental question to me, at the moment, is: do they love their country for what it is or the idea of their country?
Because the latter must be really well-informed and probably very liberal. To love a country for what it is, one has to embrace everything in it, including the stuff that people don't really want to think about. For example, in my country, do all patriots really understand and accept legalized gambling, the death penalty, the Raffles bubble in the upper echelons of our society, the fact that pawn shops are prospering to the point of having IPOs, and various parts of our history not taught in schools?
Or what about the meritocracy that once existed? Why does it feel like meritocracy is only present between the lower and middle class? The only meritocracy that goes above that level seems to only apply to the merits of a person's networks.
Moreover, most of us don't know that many people. In fact, from the time we start working, most of us seem to keep our social circles at the status quo or smaller. In other words, we gradually insulate ourselves from the rest of our countrymen.
In that case, isn't the most comprehensive image of our country in our minds based on the media and the same friends we have had for a very long time? And the people we meet in our daily lives, of course.
Does it make sense to say that we don't actually love the country, but the piece of the country we interact with?
21 July 2017
Started with 1580MYR, spent another 150MYR on a pair of jeans, came back with 6800MYR.
Adding in the expenses $12 for the ride home, converting it to 36MYR, rounding it to 40MYR, further rounding the difference to the nearest 100, that makes a net gain of about 5000MYR.
All thanks to the Texas Holdem at Genting's SkyCasino, with the 5% jackpot coming from my 7-card royal flush (royal flush formed from my 2 cards and at the 5th community card) that amount to just over 5000 MYR.
This isn't a huge number, but it's still good to win a bit of money overall.
The process of handling even just the fraction of the jackpot is that they had to go through the entire deck of cards extremely thoroughly (it seems they have a set of SOP for that) like checking every single card in the deck multiple times by multiple supervisors who were called in just for that, made calls to some mysterious people I'll never know about, and took down my particulars and even took scans of my passport.
To top it all off, after everything was done and the dealer was changed after that one single game we played with her (it was my first round at the table), I scored another triple aces (pair aces in hand, plus an ace among the community cards) in the second game.
The story ended at that point when the dealer was instructed by a supervisor to raise the minimum bet from 25MYR to 100MYR, causing all players to leave. When I returned after cashing in the chips, only one guy was playing at that table, still requiring a minimum bet of 100MYR.
He had taken the seat I vacated.
25 July 2017
The bak kut teh 肉骨茶 and salted chicken 盐焗鸡 in KL really is awesome but it's because they really love their 当归 （female ginseng) so they put a little of that in both dishes. The original salted chicken is really just salt and chicken, with spring onion as garnish when serving, so what we had was a Malaysian variant of the dish.
26 July 2017
Weight hasn't gone down but fitness is definitely improving.
Some girl is apparently jealous to some extent about me being attached with Van. To be fair, I did say that I would date her, but that was a few days before I met Van and had had a few drinks. In Van's case, I didn't just say I would date her, I simply did it. Sober.
She seemed like a friend to the both of us and we did occasionally confide in her in the past, but now that I know that she's been saying all kinds of nonsense about Van behind her back really made me realize I'd inadvertently escaped a major shithole there. Best part was that she told another girl I was "supposed to date her". Made my day. Well, if a girl has been single for a very long time despite having at least one really persistent fan (read: stalker) and a rather significant number of guys expressing interest in her openly online over the years, there have to be at least a few good reasons behind her relationship status.
13 Aug 2017
So a question: why didn't the British leave Hong Kong after WW2 the way they did in Malaya and Singapore?
I've read about that little part of the history of Singapore and Malaya, and it happened because not only of the corruption ingrained into the local society by the desperation caused by the Japanese Occupation, but also because the British raised taxes dramatically without any effort in rebuilding the infrastructure here.
What happened in Hong Kong back then?
23 Aug 2017
Well, weight's gone down finally after switching to a pseudo-vegetarian diet for over a week. Last night's dinner was the most extreme with half a kg of jackfruit (weighed with seeds) and a whole brocolli, boiled (and cut before boiling, of course).
Today I'm 98.3kg before breakfast and passing motion, as compared to below 101kg before restarting P90X3 after returning from San Francisco. There was no significant weight loss until about 2 weeks ago when I began eating more vegetables, fruits and rolled oats, but this week, I notice that I feel weaker but not tired, as in I don't feel sleepy.
Somehow I've been feeling the craving for meat less. Good I guess, but it looks like I need to put more meat back in my diet.
24 Aug 2017
No more updates from AJ Hackett after notifying me via email that I've won bids in all 3 categories of Giant Swing, Skywalk and Bungy. Seems that they have also removed a few bidders above me in Bungy because the last time I checked, a few minutes after the end of the bidding period, I was a few positions lower than the one they told me I'm in.
Not #1 of course, someone went mad and made a bid of over S$6000 just for the #1 Bungy spot IIRC.
Also thought about the HK issue. I think it began with the self-consoling thought that everything was going to be ok in a century when they would be returned to China. Then as they got wealthier than their neighbours over the decades, the income gap between the locals and the British never became a major issue, because no matter how bad it was, they could just speak to any number of refugees coming in illegally from China and knew it could have been a lot worse. This was probably what happened after WW2. But how did they do better than the people of mainland China?
So I checked Wikipedia and apparently lots of people from the ROC went there as refugees during the civil war. That was during the time when the ROC was losing everything beyond Taiwan. Most of these were skilled workers, and they were followed by businessmen from Shanghai and Guangzhou escaping persecution in China later. That was the perfect mix that led to Hong Kong becoming the first of the Four Asian Tigers in the 50s.
Tuesday 4 July 2017
Rant 1239 / Some People Just Need To Get Burnt To Learn Not To Play With Fire. It Is A Fact Of Life.
30 May 2017
The mint plant is growing like so well and plucking leaves for mint tea has been easy. It may look like a huge bush but actually it's just a few of them growing really big and the rest of them filling up the space in between with smaller leaves. Regardless, this pot is providing an easy supply of mint tea.
Kinda miss the rosemary bush though, especially with all the chicken breasts in my freezer. Going to need some rosemary soon, and probably basil.
09 June 2017
Finished The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye. It really wasn't controversial at all; in fact the part they seemed to be talking about was really non-controversial to me - Charlie Chan tried to copy the story of The Man in the High Castle but changing its setting to Singapore.
I found The Man in the High Castle on Netflix pretty boring once they revealed who the person whom the book was named after was, but maybe the book was more interesting. Or maybe I'm just not interested in "what if".
Anyway it was just a few pages of something most of us would have thought about at least once during our lives - what if the PAP didn't win?
But I didn't start this to talk about this little bit; it's Lim Chin Siong, the man frequently mentioned and depicted as some kind of great person that made me think.
Lim Chin Siong was probably a very charismatic man, so much so Lee Kuan Yew teamed him with him (and a few others) to found the PAP. From what I've gathered, he appealed to the Chinese-speaking demographics very much and was involved leadership roles since his school days, eventually ending up as a MP at the age of 22. Better yet, he was once described as "the next Prime Minister of Singapore" by Lee Kuan Yew himself, probably before Singapore gained its independence.
The problem is not whether he was truly a believer of Communism but that, I feel, he would have had to act like a Communist either way if he had become PM, regardless of whether he was one from the inside.
Back then, a much larger proportion of Chinese-speaking Chinese were more accepting of Communism then those among the English-speaking Chinese because, to make an educated guess, the former group has stronger ties, perhaps communicating more often, with their friends and relatives in China. To be able to appeal to them, you're going to have to be able to mix with them and obviously there were going to be more new Chinese immigrants in their gatherings, and a far greater majority of them were supporters of Mao than of Chiang.
How were you supposed to be their friends if you couldn't be friends of their friends? How were you going to gain their votes if you had avoided the topic of politics when you chatted with them?
And once you had won after being known to be friendly towards Communists, how were you supposed to set any policies that work against them?
13 June 2017
Finished Mass Effect: Andromeda. Guess it's a much more... mellow game than the original trilogy.
Pacing was far more relaxed than in ME2 and 3 but that meant the main storyline felt less intense. I guess that's a tough line to toe and it can be deduced they wanted that. Maybe that's to nudge players towards multiplayer, the mode that makes games last longer.
Biggest gripe about it is the facial animation, though the voice acting comes a close second. The emotions aren't adequately expressed when the camera closes up on anyone's face and it's just weird sometimes to hear strong feelings while looking at bland almost-unmoving faces. Sometimes the voices just sound too calm or mild for the situation; these people can really take some lessons from Japanese voice actors.
Maybe this is already better than what they had in ME3 because I don't remember.
Honestly, however, the game is as great as I expected in terms of quests, combat and the rest gameplay. I got everything up to 100% viability, completed all quests except for like 7-10 additional tasks, and finished the main quest at level 61. This is on my first playthrough so that is how much I like the game, barring the cutscenes.
And oh yea, the part where the salarian ark escaped from the kett flagship was absolutely painful to watch when the expanded wings of the ship just clipped through the enemy vehicle before activating FTL travel. Seriously, animators, what the heck? It's a major cutscene and you can't even spend more effort on it than that?
Another part is the crafting and it is just strange, maybe clunky too in terms of interface. Just why provide such a complicated crafting system where I can create multiple copies of anything (even if that's "realistic") and I have to scroll through a long list of materials to see what I have?
First, multiple copies. Why bother??? I cannot customise the equipment of my team, just myself. Why bother with more than one of anything?? I'm not a manufacturer; I don't craft stuff to sell, not to mention there's plenty of money to be found by exploring and completing quests already.
Second, can't you create a single list of all crafting materials to be displayed next to the current interface for crafting? When I make something, it is much more convenient if I can see ALL the materials I have so I can decide whether to skip certain items if I'm planning to make an entire set at one go.
In any case, it's a great game beyond these few issues. Really love the exploration aspect since that's my favourite aspect in any of these games. All the places they made and all the datapads just make the entire galaxy come alive! It's reminiscent of Fallout 3 where all the areas have their own little stories, except in MEA they all have their own quests. Love everyone who worked on that because that's love showing in their work.
Combat is the other amazing part of the game. Despite being a sniper who can see through walls up to a certain distance, and shoot through walls of a certain thickness, I have often been forced to move around during fights to the extent where I fired my sniper rifle from the hip during the final boss fight, although I suppose I could have used my shotgun that is rarely taken out. Anyway this just makes life a lot more exciting than simply sniping from afar.
Hope there is a second game because it will be interesting to find the last ark and maybe even news from the Milky Way.
04 Jul 2017
I believe now that to lose weight, we have to consider why we are overweight in the first place. This is because if we don't, we rebound, an issue that I'm struggling with now.
Simply losing weight isn't enough because if we do not deal with the root issue(s), we will simply revert to the original lifestyle that led to the original weight gains.
My problems are a few:
- when I eat alone, which is 99% of the time, I cannot stop until I'm very full.
- I am so used to the portion size that I used to eat that it is difficult to feel satisfied with smaller amounts of food.
- I eat when I am bored. Nothing else interests me except for good games, but they rarely exist.
So how can I deal with these?
The mint plant is growing like so well and plucking leaves for mint tea has been easy. It may look like a huge bush but actually it's just a few of them growing really big and the rest of them filling up the space in between with smaller leaves. Regardless, this pot is providing an easy supply of mint tea.
Kinda miss the rosemary bush though, especially with all the chicken breasts in my freezer. Going to need some rosemary soon, and probably basil.
09 June 2017
Finished The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye. It really wasn't controversial at all; in fact the part they seemed to be talking about was really non-controversial to me - Charlie Chan tried to copy the story of The Man in the High Castle but changing its setting to Singapore.
I found The Man in the High Castle on Netflix pretty boring once they revealed who the person whom the book was named after was, but maybe the book was more interesting. Or maybe I'm just not interested in "what if".
Anyway it was just a few pages of something most of us would have thought about at least once during our lives - what if the PAP didn't win?
But I didn't start this to talk about this little bit; it's Lim Chin Siong, the man frequently mentioned and depicted as some kind of great person that made me think.
Lim Chin Siong was probably a very charismatic man, so much so Lee Kuan Yew teamed him with him (and a few others) to found the PAP. From what I've gathered, he appealed to the Chinese-speaking demographics very much and was involved leadership roles since his school days, eventually ending up as a MP at the age of 22. Better yet, he was once described as "the next Prime Minister of Singapore" by Lee Kuan Yew himself, probably before Singapore gained its independence.
The problem is not whether he was truly a believer of Communism but that, I feel, he would have had to act like a Communist either way if he had become PM, regardless of whether he was one from the inside.
Back then, a much larger proportion of Chinese-speaking Chinese were more accepting of Communism then those among the English-speaking Chinese because, to make an educated guess, the former group has stronger ties, perhaps communicating more often, with their friends and relatives in China. To be able to appeal to them, you're going to have to be able to mix with them and obviously there were going to be more new Chinese immigrants in their gatherings, and a far greater majority of them were supporters of Mao than of Chiang.
How were you supposed to be their friends if you couldn't be friends of their friends? How were you going to gain their votes if you had avoided the topic of politics when you chatted with them?
And once you had won after being known to be friendly towards Communists, how were you supposed to set any policies that work against them?
13 June 2017
Finished Mass Effect: Andromeda. Guess it's a much more... mellow game than the original trilogy.
Pacing was far more relaxed than in ME2 and 3 but that meant the main storyline felt less intense. I guess that's a tough line to toe and it can be deduced they wanted that. Maybe that's to nudge players towards multiplayer, the mode that makes games last longer.
Biggest gripe about it is the facial animation, though the voice acting comes a close second. The emotions aren't adequately expressed when the camera closes up on anyone's face and it's just weird sometimes to hear strong feelings while looking at bland almost-unmoving faces. Sometimes the voices just sound too calm or mild for the situation; these people can really take some lessons from Japanese voice actors.
Maybe this is already better than what they had in ME3 because I don't remember.
Honestly, however, the game is as great as I expected in terms of quests, combat and the rest gameplay. I got everything up to 100% viability, completed all quests except for like 7-10 additional tasks, and finished the main quest at level 61. This is on my first playthrough so that is how much I like the game, barring the cutscenes.
And oh yea, the part where the salarian ark escaped from the kett flagship was absolutely painful to watch when the expanded wings of the ship just clipped through the enemy vehicle before activating FTL travel. Seriously, animators, what the heck? It's a major cutscene and you can't even spend more effort on it than that?
Another part is the crafting and it is just strange, maybe clunky too in terms of interface. Just why provide such a complicated crafting system where I can create multiple copies of anything (even if that's "realistic") and I have to scroll through a long list of materials to see what I have?
First, multiple copies. Why bother??? I cannot customise the equipment of my team, just myself. Why bother with more than one of anything?? I'm not a manufacturer; I don't craft stuff to sell, not to mention there's plenty of money to be found by exploring and completing quests already.
Second, can't you create a single list of all crafting materials to be displayed next to the current interface for crafting? When I make something, it is much more convenient if I can see ALL the materials I have so I can decide whether to skip certain items if I'm planning to make an entire set at one go.
In any case, it's a great game beyond these few issues. Really love the exploration aspect since that's my favourite aspect in any of these games. All the places they made and all the datapads just make the entire galaxy come alive! It's reminiscent of Fallout 3 where all the areas have their own little stories, except in MEA they all have their own quests. Love everyone who worked on that because that's love showing in their work.
Combat is the other amazing part of the game. Despite being a sniper who can see through walls up to a certain distance, and shoot through walls of a certain thickness, I have often been forced to move around during fights to the extent where I fired my sniper rifle from the hip during the final boss fight, although I suppose I could have used my shotgun that is rarely taken out. Anyway this just makes life a lot more exciting than simply sniping from afar.
Hope there is a second game because it will be interesting to find the last ark and maybe even news from the Milky Way.
04 Jul 2017
I believe now that to lose weight, we have to consider why we are overweight in the first place. This is because if we don't, we rebound, an issue that I'm struggling with now.
Simply losing weight isn't enough because if we do not deal with the root issue(s), we will simply revert to the original lifestyle that led to the original weight gains.
My problems are a few:
- when I eat alone, which is 99% of the time, I cannot stop until I'm very full.
- I am so used to the portion size that I used to eat that it is difficult to feel satisfied with smaller amounts of food.
- I eat when I am bored. Nothing else interests me except for good games, but they rarely exist.
So how can I deal with these?
Monday 8 May 2017
Rant 1238 / Ups And Downs, Ups And Downs, Ups And Downs - That Is How We Roll.
03 Apr 2017
After reading and watching videos on the history of several companies, there appeared to be a pattern among the big brands - some smart guy or people created the product but lacked the capital and/or the sales expertise to make it popular, so he/she/they sold it to a someone with experience in sales who may even be working for an already large company, and that person made it big.
So it was with Jell-O, patented in 1845 by Peter Cooper, made delicious in 1897 by Pearle Bixby Wait and his wife, and then bought in 1899 for US$12k by their neighbour Orator Francis Woodward whose company was already successful through selling Grain-O.
Wasn't this similar to the story of MCD? Except with a little more guile from Ray Kroc and quite a bit of naivety from the McDonald brothers who decided to get into a business transaction without putting everything in black and white.
And Apple, whose story a lot more people should be familiar with since it's got a film to illustrate it, worked because it was led by Steve Jobs whom I feel was one of the greatest salesman ever.
Finally, there's Microsoft, because Bill Gates managed to sell the world his vision of "a PC on every desktop" within 2-3 decades.
Does this mean that every successful business needs a salesman at its head? Or does it mean that salesmanship is a prerequisite of good leadership?
Can't focus on games so can't play all the good stuff like Tides of Numenera, FF17 and ME:A. They will have to wait till she goes away for externship.
The plan for Russia is still ongoing but I feel the three of us are kinda sure it will happen. I sense doubt from Lisa and also some at a much lesser degree in Van but it's not too hard to make it happen.
Just wondering how cold it will be in Yakutsk and Irkutsk in October. We have never experienced anything below negative 20 degrees C so the possibility of going beyond negative 40 brings excited anticipation and a slight level of worry.
At least it won't last beyond a month, the maximum period of stay we can apply for in a tourist visa. There are so many questions I will have to ask when I attend some Russian classes in the next few months.
One worry that I cannot do anything about, however, is whether October is when absolutely nothing is happening since it is in the transition period from autumn to winter.
In the meantime, it looks like it's chaos over in South America.
05 Apr 2017
My room is a mess.
The Dell laptop is great and I hope using it less makes it last longer. The 15" Dell Inspiron 7567 can play Mass Effect: Andromeda on some of the lowest settings so that's good enough for me, and the cloud save feature on Origin (and Steam for other games) is really appreciated now that I can play the same games on two computers.
Saved about S$200 buying it from the IT Show earlier last month after friends told me the prices on the brochures are negotiable, unlike buying from shops. Since Van has also worked as a expo salesperson before but not for computers, she gave me a rough idea of how flexible prices and freebies can be.
At first when I went straight to the Dell booth to get it, the salesman only gave me about $100-150 off and without any freebie but the warranty, but when he found out only the display set was available, Van showed her bitchy side (really practical in this society) and he pointed us to the Courts booth. TBH I was going to negotiate for another $50 off and take that set since that's already far cheaper than expected.
Turns out Courts had available stock and when I neglected to mention that we came from the Dell booth, the negotiation started anew, resulting in the aforementioned deal of almost $200 off, plus the Dell laptop backpack and a wireless mouse. I also added 3 years of extended warranty, though the accidental damage cover was forgotten in the excitement.
Once the mouse and backpack are sold, the overall discount compared to the price offered on the Dell website will be about S$230-250. The mouse itself can already be sold at S$10-15, and the backpack S$30-50.
However, since we took a bus home and a cheap car ride there, I guess $10 can be deducted from the discount.
No wonder IT Shows and their equivalents that run ever quarter still draw crowds despite the popularity of online shopping. All the big ticket items can be really good deals there.
Oh then I bought two flash drives and a SD card from Changi Airport because I refuse to buy from any sellers that don't appear legit enough. It's really cheap even with the GST when I compared the Sandisk Cruzer between the airport shop and Popular ($12+ vs $17+). Needed one of those to be the laptop's recovery drive, and another for video storage for when I travel.
As for other accessories, got a sleeve that doubles as a hand-held bag for the laptop (S$9), a large mousepad (S$4) and a 5500dpi wired mouse (S$5) from Aliexpress. The mousepad is the only one that's not for the laptop but to replace the old smaller mousepad of my desktop so that I can bring it along with my laptop for my travels.
07 Apr 2017
I may be getting most of my new gadgets and accessories from Aliexpress, but it's definitely not the place with all the best deals. Funny thing is, sometimes it's still cheaper to get certain things from other places than from there, like Qoo10 and physical stores, like office chairs with wheels.
08 May 2017
It is not worth it to go for airline and hotel elite statuses for those of us who do not have our travel expenses fully covered by our companies. This is the conclusion I've come to after the last few years flying round trips almost monthly.
Seriously, I have tried, mainly by always looking out for promotions and searching flights and hotels first on specific airlines and hotel groups, but they rarely make sense in terms of pricing and location vs what I need.
The biggest example is SPG in Seoul for my business trips that I no longer go for. While I need to visit the various clothing wholesalers in that city, none of their hotels are as convenient for me as other hotel chains in Myeongdong, Dongdaemun and Namdaemun and those closest ones are never cheaper than, say, the Skypark chain.
As for flights, Cathay Pacific turned out to be a really bad choice in my situation as their fares tend to be as high or even higher than those offered by Singapore Airlines for routes from Singapore to everywhere I want to go. I'm not kidding when I say it makes absolutely no sense these days for anyone from Singapore to be loyal to CX. Pretty sure the prices used to be more competitive in the past but I cannot be sure. Moreover, their Marco Polo programme is making things harder for those of us who usually fly short distances with the new mileage earning system that seems to favour long-haul flights.
With all the promotions in Singapore for SQ nowadays, it makes far more sense for me to invest in SQ instead, though I am actually flying budget most of the time these days. Hence despite all these analyses, the fact is that in my situation, the most sensible option is to stay loyal to price. Not the absolute lowest all the time, but the lowest price with the lowest acceptable level of comfort, service and punctuality. This tend to be Scoot and Jetstar for the last two years, with full service airlines coming into play when I fly long haul, like China Eastern for my upcoming SFO trip.
The only reason I would pick other airlines more often is if someone else is paying for my travels because honestly, 80% of the time I'm fine with sacrificing various comforts to save hundreds of dollars, like food and beverage and movies on a 7 hour flight for $300 saved.
Just late last month Vanessa and I spent a grand total of S$500 on a weekend 3D2N trip to Da Nang, Vietnam by taking a Jetstar Starter fare that is practically a random seat with 7kg carry-on luggage, and a beachfront hotel found through Expedia that charged S$35 total for a room for 2 nights. We even brought too much clothes since we ended up not using our swimwear, and returned with only 5-6kg of luggage each. How would it have made any sort of sense to use this trip to earn miles on an airline and points on my SPG membership when the trip was perfectly smooth and comfortable as it was? We even had beautiful cloud-covered hills in the north and a gorgeous sea view through the eastern windows that we woke up to each day! For SEVENTEEN DOLLARS A NIGHT!
This is getting stupid, this chase for miles and points. I'm stopping this bs here and just going to use up as many Asia Miles as I can before letting this membership expire.
All I really need is cheap fares and unlimited airport lounge usage. Maybe one of these days, the airlines can offer more lounge usage instead of whatever other nonsense they are trying to bait us with.
It is getting hard organizing a trip with Vanessa and Lisa. The former doesn't discuss travel plans with the latter so when I raise the conditions the latter stated that do not fit into her plans, I sound like I'm siding with Lisa against her.
This is extremely annoying when every time their requirements don't match and I have to remind her of that, it turns into some sort of "Lisa vs Vanessa" thing.
It's a group trip and everyone has certain conditions. Good thing Vanessa's finally agreed to discuss directly with Lisa instead of going through me so it should get easier from now on.
After reading and watching videos on the history of several companies, there appeared to be a pattern among the big brands - some smart guy or people created the product but lacked the capital and/or the sales expertise to make it popular, so he/she/they sold it to a someone with experience in sales who may even be working for an already large company, and that person made it big.
So it was with Jell-O, patented in 1845 by Peter Cooper, made delicious in 1897 by Pearle Bixby Wait and his wife, and then bought in 1899 for US$12k by their neighbour Orator Francis Woodward whose company was already successful through selling Grain-O.
Wasn't this similar to the story of MCD? Except with a little more guile from Ray Kroc and quite a bit of naivety from the McDonald brothers who decided to get into a business transaction without putting everything in black and white.
And Apple, whose story a lot more people should be familiar with since it's got a film to illustrate it, worked because it was led by Steve Jobs whom I feel was one of the greatest salesman ever.
Finally, there's Microsoft, because Bill Gates managed to sell the world his vision of "a PC on every desktop" within 2-3 decades.
Does this mean that every successful business needs a salesman at its head? Or does it mean that salesmanship is a prerequisite of good leadership?
Can't focus on games so can't play all the good stuff like Tides of Numenera, FF17 and ME:A. They will have to wait till she goes away for externship.
The plan for Russia is still ongoing but I feel the three of us are kinda sure it will happen. I sense doubt from Lisa and also some at a much lesser degree in Van but it's not too hard to make it happen.
Just wondering how cold it will be in Yakutsk and Irkutsk in October. We have never experienced anything below negative 20 degrees C so the possibility of going beyond negative 40 brings excited anticipation and a slight level of worry.
At least it won't last beyond a month, the maximum period of stay we can apply for in a tourist visa. There are so many questions I will have to ask when I attend some Russian classes in the next few months.
One worry that I cannot do anything about, however, is whether October is when absolutely nothing is happening since it is in the transition period from autumn to winter.
In the meantime, it looks like it's chaos over in South America.
05 Apr 2017
My room is a mess.
The Dell laptop is great and I hope using it less makes it last longer. The 15" Dell Inspiron 7567 can play Mass Effect: Andromeda on some of the lowest settings so that's good enough for me, and the cloud save feature on Origin (and Steam for other games) is really appreciated now that I can play the same games on two computers.
Saved about S$200 buying it from the IT Show earlier last month after friends told me the prices on the brochures are negotiable, unlike buying from shops. Since Van has also worked as a expo salesperson before but not for computers, she gave me a rough idea of how flexible prices and freebies can be.
At first when I went straight to the Dell booth to get it, the salesman only gave me about $100-150 off and without any freebie but the warranty, but when he found out only the display set was available, Van showed her bitchy side (really practical in this society) and he pointed us to the Courts booth. TBH I was going to negotiate for another $50 off and take that set since that's already far cheaper than expected.
Turns out Courts had available stock and when I neglected to mention that we came from the Dell booth, the negotiation started anew, resulting in the aforementioned deal of almost $200 off, plus the Dell laptop backpack and a wireless mouse. I also added 3 years of extended warranty, though the accidental damage cover was forgotten in the excitement.
Once the mouse and backpack are sold, the overall discount compared to the price offered on the Dell website will be about S$230-250. The mouse itself can already be sold at S$10-15, and the backpack S$30-50.
However, since we took a bus home and a cheap car ride there, I guess $10 can be deducted from the discount.
No wonder IT Shows and their equivalents that run ever quarter still draw crowds despite the popularity of online shopping. All the big ticket items can be really good deals there.
Oh then I bought two flash drives and a SD card from Changi Airport because I refuse to buy from any sellers that don't appear legit enough. It's really cheap even with the GST when I compared the Sandisk Cruzer between the airport shop and Popular ($12+ vs $17+). Needed one of those to be the laptop's recovery drive, and another for video storage for when I travel.
As for other accessories, got a sleeve that doubles as a hand-held bag for the laptop (S$9), a large mousepad (S$4) and a 5500dpi wired mouse (S$5) from Aliexpress. The mousepad is the only one that's not for the laptop but to replace the old smaller mousepad of my desktop so that I can bring it along with my laptop for my travels.
07 Apr 2017
I may be getting most of my new gadgets and accessories from Aliexpress, but it's definitely not the place with all the best deals. Funny thing is, sometimes it's still cheaper to get certain things from other places than from there, like Qoo10 and physical stores, like office chairs with wheels.
08 May 2017
It is not worth it to go for airline and hotel elite statuses for those of us who do not have our travel expenses fully covered by our companies. This is the conclusion I've come to after the last few years flying round trips almost monthly.
Seriously, I have tried, mainly by always looking out for promotions and searching flights and hotels first on specific airlines and hotel groups, but they rarely make sense in terms of pricing and location vs what I need.
The biggest example is SPG in Seoul for my business trips that I no longer go for. While I need to visit the various clothing wholesalers in that city, none of their hotels are as convenient for me as other hotel chains in Myeongdong, Dongdaemun and Namdaemun and those closest ones are never cheaper than, say, the Skypark chain.
As for flights, Cathay Pacific turned out to be a really bad choice in my situation as their fares tend to be as high or even higher than those offered by Singapore Airlines for routes from Singapore to everywhere I want to go. I'm not kidding when I say it makes absolutely no sense these days for anyone from Singapore to be loyal to CX. Pretty sure the prices used to be more competitive in the past but I cannot be sure. Moreover, their Marco Polo programme is making things harder for those of us who usually fly short distances with the new mileage earning system that seems to favour long-haul flights.
With all the promotions in Singapore for SQ nowadays, it makes far more sense for me to invest in SQ instead, though I am actually flying budget most of the time these days. Hence despite all these analyses, the fact is that in my situation, the most sensible option is to stay loyal to price. Not the absolute lowest all the time, but the lowest price with the lowest acceptable level of comfort, service and punctuality. This tend to be Scoot and Jetstar for the last two years, with full service airlines coming into play when I fly long haul, like China Eastern for my upcoming SFO trip.
The only reason I would pick other airlines more often is if someone else is paying for my travels because honestly, 80% of the time I'm fine with sacrificing various comforts to save hundreds of dollars, like food and beverage and movies on a 7 hour flight for $300 saved.
Just late last month Vanessa and I spent a grand total of S$500 on a weekend 3D2N trip to Da Nang, Vietnam by taking a Jetstar Starter fare that is practically a random seat with 7kg carry-on luggage, and a beachfront hotel found through Expedia that charged S$35 total for a room for 2 nights. We even brought too much clothes since we ended up not using our swimwear, and returned with only 5-6kg of luggage each. How would it have made any sort of sense to use this trip to earn miles on an airline and points on my SPG membership when the trip was perfectly smooth and comfortable as it was? We even had beautiful cloud-covered hills in the north and a gorgeous sea view through the eastern windows that we woke up to each day! For SEVENTEEN DOLLARS A NIGHT!
This is getting stupid, this chase for miles and points. I'm stopping this bs here and just going to use up as many Asia Miles as I can before letting this membership expire.
All I really need is cheap fares and unlimited airport lounge usage. Maybe one of these days, the airlines can offer more lounge usage instead of whatever other nonsense they are trying to bait us with.
It is getting hard organizing a trip with Vanessa and Lisa. The former doesn't discuss travel plans with the latter so when I raise the conditions the latter stated that do not fit into her plans, I sound like I'm siding with Lisa against her.
This is extremely annoying when every time their requirements don't match and I have to remind her of that, it turns into some sort of "Lisa vs Vanessa" thing.
It's a group trip and everyone has certain conditions. Good thing Vanessa's finally agreed to discuss directly with Lisa instead of going through me so it should get easier from now on.
Monday 27 February 2017
Rant 1237 / Quite A Lot Of Red Packets This Year
18 Feb 2017
And this is why when it comes to money, you can't trust anyone to do anything that won't benefit them.
Got an Xperia XZ. Transferring stuff from the iPhone 6 to this phone has been a pain in the butt, regardless of whatever is said about switching from an Apple to an Android on the Internet.
There are guides for this, yes, but not everything works as described!
For one, the mobile transfer app that came with this phone for the purpose of bringing old data from a previous phone over does not support the 2-FA that the iPhone requires, so it disconnects when it reaches the point where I am supposed to enter the code that is displayed in my iPhone.
Another issue is how not all my contacts are syncing through the Google and Hotmail accounts, so there are some important ones that had to be emailed over.
Also, Whatsapp on the iPhone does not like it when you are trying to bringing it over to Android. Seriously, when you can only backup your chats on iCloud, how else am I supposed to interpret that? Those backups aren't even visible via iCloud.com on my browsers!
Anyway, I'm seeing why we pay extra for an iPhone now. Getting used to the occasional lags in the keyboard will take a while more.
But never am I returning to Apple anymore. It's not all Apple's fault, but it remains a fact that it's annoying as heck to move from an iPhone to another OS.
27 Feb 2017
The Xperia XZ, if nothing else, is good for its display. So alive, the pictures look. My gf's LG G5 may take awesome wide-angle photos and my old iPhone 6 may take much sharper pictures, but it is on my Sony phone that they can be best appreciated.
So someone from Artsy asked me to post a link on my blog to a page on the website featuring the works of Yayoi Kusama. While not a big fan of either Ms Kusama or polka dots, I appreciate that they are working towards making art more accessible to everyone.
Not that the US$1500 pumpkin plushies by her are particularly accessible, but hey, it made me read up on her and realize that not only do I not know jack about modern artists, she is also quite a renowned artist who seems to be fascinated by polka dots.
I don't get her, but if polka dots are your sort of thing, the link is on the right, under my bio in the blog.
And here too: https://www.artsy.net/artist/yayoi-kusama
The Hangzhou/Yiwu trip was kinda unfruitful but it did let me learn a few things.
First, for decorative stuff and all sorts of jewellery, Yiwu has a huge market complex for them. It is probably the closest thing to Paradise that I know of for anyone dealing in these two categories of goods.
And that's including chokers that my girlfriend is trading as a part-time business. Seriously, there is two entire floors on four blocks that are just filled with shops that sell them in more forms than I imagined... in bulk.
Yes, I got rejected for trying to buy a few. Apparently, retail sales are frowned upon and tiny amounts like 50 pieces are only allowed if you're willing to accept double the price one might find from Chinese merchants online, and even that's only when the shopkeeper is in a generous mood.
Hence I deduce that if I were able to take several hundred pieces at one go, the prices they could accept might have been surprisingly low.
And as for myself, the biggest wholesale market for clothing in Yiwu is under renovation, and prices in Hangzhou were not competitive compared to what I am used to.
At least it was nice to check out these cities. The large proportion of Muslim population and shops in Yiwu was a surprise and allowed me to further explore the Chinese Muslim cuisine and Middle Eastern imports. It's my first time getting Jordanian canned food - not a huge deal but exotic enough for a trip that was supposed to be quite bland.
As for Chinese Muslim food, they got a little monotonous after a while, probably from using the same spices in all their dishes.
Or maybe it's just that what is available in the menus are limited to what outsiders can accept. I wouldn't know.
Anyway, the hotel at Yiwu was surprisingly good for the price and for a hotel in a small city.
The worst thing about it was only the crowded breakfast where we all had to share tables. The continental breakfast buffet spread was good with an egg station and a noodle station, just that the seating space needed an upgrade. However, the staff was well-trained and very friendly, so when I tell them something has run out, it didn't take them too long to refill despite clearly being understaffed (nobody manned the entrance till the end so it was free access for all). They also gave me one of the best rooms on the level, judging from the fire escape map on the door. There were a few other rooms of roughly the same size but none of them were at the very end of the corridor like mine was.
Having a coat room was amazing because of the need to wear an outer layer that doesn't get soaked in sweat like it would in Singapore, and it was a convenient place to leave the shoes at.
On the other hand, the hot tub was quite pointless because the water was nowhere near warm enough. At 4 degrees and without a strong heater in the room, the water cooled too quickly for the tub to be enjoyable. They improved the water heater by the last two days but the water, at best, could only be described as "quite warm" to me instead of "lukewarm". Not enough.
The staff made all the difference though. The doorman did his job and the front desk staff were surprisingly friendly and responsive for a hotel of its price level.
And this is why when it comes to money, you can't trust anyone to do anything that won't benefit them.
Got an Xperia XZ. Transferring stuff from the iPhone 6 to this phone has been a pain in the butt, regardless of whatever is said about switching from an Apple to an Android on the Internet.
There are guides for this, yes, but not everything works as described!
For one, the mobile transfer app that came with this phone for the purpose of bringing old data from a previous phone over does not support the 2-FA that the iPhone requires, so it disconnects when it reaches the point where I am supposed to enter the code that is displayed in my iPhone.
Another issue is how not all my contacts are syncing through the Google and Hotmail accounts, so there are some important ones that had to be emailed over.
Also, Whatsapp on the iPhone does not like it when you are trying to bringing it over to Android. Seriously, when you can only backup your chats on iCloud, how else am I supposed to interpret that? Those backups aren't even visible via iCloud.com on my browsers!
Anyway, I'm seeing why we pay extra for an iPhone now. Getting used to the occasional lags in the keyboard will take a while more.
But never am I returning to Apple anymore. It's not all Apple's fault, but it remains a fact that it's annoying as heck to move from an iPhone to another OS.
27 Feb 2017
The Xperia XZ, if nothing else, is good for its display. So alive, the pictures look. My gf's LG G5 may take awesome wide-angle photos and my old iPhone 6 may take much sharper pictures, but it is on my Sony phone that they can be best appreciated.
So someone from Artsy asked me to post a link on my blog to a page on the website featuring the works of Yayoi Kusama. While not a big fan of either Ms Kusama or polka dots, I appreciate that they are working towards making art more accessible to everyone.
Not that the US$1500 pumpkin plushies by her are particularly accessible, but hey, it made me read up on her and realize that not only do I not know jack about modern artists, she is also quite a renowned artist who seems to be fascinated by polka dots.
I don't get her, but if polka dots are your sort of thing, the link is on the right, under my bio in the blog.
And here too: https://www.artsy.net/artist/yayoi-kusama
The Hangzhou/Yiwu trip was kinda unfruitful but it did let me learn a few things.
First, for decorative stuff and all sorts of jewellery, Yiwu has a huge market complex for them. It is probably the closest thing to Paradise that I know of for anyone dealing in these two categories of goods.
And that's including chokers that my girlfriend is trading as a part-time business. Seriously, there is two entire floors on four blocks that are just filled with shops that sell them in more forms than I imagined... in bulk.
Yes, I got rejected for trying to buy a few. Apparently, retail sales are frowned upon and tiny amounts like 50 pieces are only allowed if you're willing to accept double the price one might find from Chinese merchants online, and even that's only when the shopkeeper is in a generous mood.
Hence I deduce that if I were able to take several hundred pieces at one go, the prices they could accept might have been surprisingly low.
And as for myself, the biggest wholesale market for clothing in Yiwu is under renovation, and prices in Hangzhou were not competitive compared to what I am used to.
At least it was nice to check out these cities. The large proportion of Muslim population and shops in Yiwu was a surprise and allowed me to further explore the Chinese Muslim cuisine and Middle Eastern imports. It's my first time getting Jordanian canned food - not a huge deal but exotic enough for a trip that was supposed to be quite bland.
As for Chinese Muslim food, they got a little monotonous after a while, probably from using the same spices in all their dishes.
Or maybe it's just that what is available in the menus are limited to what outsiders can accept. I wouldn't know.
Anyway, the hotel at Yiwu was surprisingly good for the price and for a hotel in a small city.
The worst thing about it was only the crowded breakfast where we all had to share tables. The continental breakfast buffet spread was good with an egg station and a noodle station, just that the seating space needed an upgrade. However, the staff was well-trained and very friendly, so when I tell them something has run out, it didn't take them too long to refill despite clearly being understaffed (nobody manned the entrance till the end so it was free access for all). They also gave me one of the best rooms on the level, judging from the fire escape map on the door. There were a few other rooms of roughly the same size but none of them were at the very end of the corridor like mine was.
Having a coat room was amazing because of the need to wear an outer layer that doesn't get soaked in sweat like it would in Singapore, and it was a convenient place to leave the shoes at.
On the other hand, the hot tub was quite pointless because the water was nowhere near warm enough. At 4 degrees and without a strong heater in the room, the water cooled too quickly for the tub to be enjoyable. They improved the water heater by the last two days but the water, at best, could only be described as "quite warm" to me instead of "lukewarm". Not enough.
The staff made all the difference though. The doorman did his job and the front desk staff were surprisingly friendly and responsive for a hotel of its price level.
Wednesday 15 February 2017
Rant 1236 / It Has Been THREE Months Already?1
24 Nov 2016
Wanted to buy a few cheap games in the Steam Autumn Sale but decided not to. I don't need any new games urgently and the USD is still pretty strong despite slowing down its rise after Trump's victory.
A cockroach found its way into my laundry and got disintegrated when I started the washing machine. Now some of the clothes had bits of cockroach that I have to vacuum off the floor after flapping each piece. This is bloody gross and hopefully the only time it will ever happened.
Was wondering what those plastic-like bits were and thought maybe someone left a packet of tissue paper in a pocket. Picked one up and realized despite the plastic-wrapper-like sounds and weight, it was most likely a cockroach head.
At least it was clean and smelled good.
Went to the Philatelic Museum yesterday because Van wanted to see the Harry Potter exhibition. It was just a small one but since it's free for citizens and PRs, I'm not complaining. Neither am I a Harry Potter fan so that wasn't even the reason I was there.
I am an amateur philatelist who have never been to this museum before, so her wanting to go gave me a good reason to check it out.
Turns out they do have some interesting cheap stamps to buy, like some from Iran, Benin, USSR, Czechoslovakia and even a mix of 500 stamps from around the world. The most amazing ones were the Malayan stamps produced when we were occupied by the Japanese, and they were selling at $24 for just 6-7 of them.
Didn't buy them though because it felt like I'd just ruin them by keeping them in my albums that I can't guarantee will stay mould-free.
Wanted to buy some first-day covers too but I didn't feel like splurging so it was just that 500-stamp set, some Iranian stamps and some Czechoslovakian stamps. Iranian stamps because it's extremely unlikely that I'll ever visit the country, and Czechoslovakia because it no longer exists as a single country.
04 Dec 2016
I play games just to see new things, so now it looks like I'm done with Fortresscraft Evolved. Spent like 10-13 hours in a new map and pretty much seen an Overmind, a Hivemind underneath its hard resin shell, a Tunnel Nuker, a Worm Boss, the waves of mobs except for heavies and bosses, all the layers of biomes and their ores up to just over 1000m deep and get burnt to death in the magma... but not before collecting a few units of that stuff in my inventory. Seriously though, how does one store fluid magma in any form of space suit?
The Hivemind was the last thing to be seen since it took a while to ablate and liquefy enough of the resin to make a hole through. Underwhelming though, since in the Holobase mode it looked it it was moving but in reality it was just a static model floating in a bubble inside the resin. When I peered through the first hole, I kinda expected it to start lashing its tentacles at me, so the still creature was just boring.
05 Dec 2016
Felt like listening to them again and the Protectors of the Earth brought so much nostalgia that I almost teared.
The Mass Effect trilogy was truly epic, and so hopefully, Andromeda will live up to expectations.
Anyway, speaking of old games, Huxley was a game I was interested in many years ago when it was first announced but never seemed to have gotten released. So after a decade of occasional search, I have finally found closure to what seemed like a potentially great game - it was sold to a Korean company which developed it all the way to beta stage before it was shut down just a few years ago.
Maybe they realized that with just two factions, it was never going to beat Planetside 2, a game that hasn't really done too well over the years IMO after the few attempts at marketing it. Such a waste. So much must have been invested into it.
Welp that settles it - speed reading is nonsense. You can read really really fast but your brain just can't catch up, causing comprehension to get compromised beyond certain speeds.
So last week, both my bro and I agreed that the likeliest cause of all our internet issues is the router they gave us. First, our wired connections directly from the modem are always fine while only the wifi from the router is inconsistent. Second, the Linksys router only costs about US$50 on Amazon so it's clearly not a particularly durable one. Third, my wifi from my pc that is using one of the wired connections never has any issues.
The only problem here is that we came to this conclusion just after Cyber Monday.
Next year will be tough. Specifically, the arrangement of the flights to and from Canada/US will be different from the routine - again.
She will fly to Vancouver (YVR), then to California for her externship, followed by Toronto and finally back to Singapore. I will fly to Vancouver, back to Singapore, then to Toronto (YYZ) when she's leaving the US and back to Singapore again. How will I be able to arrange these flights so that we sit with each other between Canada and Singapore? Separate reservations tend to result in separate seats, presenting the biggest obstacle in this situation, yet I have never booked such flights in a single reservation before.
Will I finally have to call the airline, for once, to make a flight booking?
Seems so.
At this point, I am tempted to spend my miles on a business class upgrade because we will very likely take CX to go to YVR via HKG. First, there are no direct flights in this route. Second, CX is the best airline between HKG and YVR. Third, my Asia Miles membership is holding some miles that will expire in 2017.
15 Feb 2017
Just went for a recontract with M1 and their Fonecare+ is now quite different from the past. Not only is it a subscription-based service for some sort of insurance for phones, it also allows for contract renewals annually.
This means it makes far more sense to sign up for the phone with Fonecare+. Using the MySim plans to calculate how much my phone costs, it seems that it's cheaper to pay for this service and recontract after 12 months as compared to the usual 20-month-recontract practice.
And that's 20 months because of the existing early recontract fee waiver.
The difference between a 3GB plan with a phone and a 3GB SIM-only plan is $22 ($42 vs $20). Yes, the mySIM plan actually has 1GB more for the duration of the 12-month contract but I need 5GB anyway and a small data upsize costs $11.80 a month instead of the $5.90 rate for the normal with-phone plans, while the next bigger plan is a $10 upgrade.
So anyway, $22 a month difference. The Fonecare service is $8.50/month.
If I don't sign up for the Fonecare, I recontract at the 20th month. By then, I would have effectively paid $(22*20) = $440 for the phone.
With the Fonecare annual recontract feature, I pay just the 12 months of $22 and $8.50 = $(22+8.5)*12 = $246.
This is a difference of $194.
Of course, this is on top of the lump sum that was paid for the phone just now, so my Sony Experia XZ is costing me S$(398+194) = S$592.
Wanted to buy a few cheap games in the Steam Autumn Sale but decided not to. I don't need any new games urgently and the USD is still pretty strong despite slowing down its rise after Trump's victory.
A cockroach found its way into my laundry and got disintegrated when I started the washing machine. Now some of the clothes had bits of cockroach that I have to vacuum off the floor after flapping each piece. This is bloody gross and hopefully the only time it will ever happened.
Was wondering what those plastic-like bits were and thought maybe someone left a packet of tissue paper in a pocket. Picked one up and realized despite the plastic-wrapper-like sounds and weight, it was most likely a cockroach head.
At least it was clean and smelled good.
Went to the Philatelic Museum yesterday because Van wanted to see the Harry Potter exhibition. It was just a small one but since it's free for citizens and PRs, I'm not complaining. Neither am I a Harry Potter fan so that wasn't even the reason I was there.
I am an amateur philatelist who have never been to this museum before, so her wanting to go gave me a good reason to check it out.
Turns out they do have some interesting cheap stamps to buy, like some from Iran, Benin, USSR, Czechoslovakia and even a mix of 500 stamps from around the world. The most amazing ones were the Malayan stamps produced when we were occupied by the Japanese, and they were selling at $24 for just 6-7 of them.
Didn't buy them though because it felt like I'd just ruin them by keeping them in my albums that I can't guarantee will stay mould-free.
Wanted to buy some first-day covers too but I didn't feel like splurging so it was just that 500-stamp set, some Iranian stamps and some Czechoslovakian stamps. Iranian stamps because it's extremely unlikely that I'll ever visit the country, and Czechoslovakia because it no longer exists as a single country.
04 Dec 2016
I play games just to see new things, so now it looks like I'm done with Fortresscraft Evolved. Spent like 10-13 hours in a new map and pretty much seen an Overmind, a Hivemind underneath its hard resin shell, a Tunnel Nuker, a Worm Boss, the waves of mobs except for heavies and bosses, all the layers of biomes and their ores up to just over 1000m deep and get burnt to death in the magma... but not before collecting a few units of that stuff in my inventory. Seriously though, how does one store fluid magma in any form of space suit?
The Hivemind was the last thing to be seen since it took a while to ablate and liquefy enough of the resin to make a hole through. Underwhelming though, since in the Holobase mode it looked it it was moving but in reality it was just a static model floating in a bubble inside the resin. When I peered through the first hole, I kinda expected it to start lashing its tentacles at me, so the still creature was just boring.
05 Dec 2016
Felt like listening to them again and the Protectors of the Earth brought so much nostalgia that I almost teared.
The Mass Effect trilogy was truly epic, and so hopefully, Andromeda will live up to expectations.
Anyway, speaking of old games, Huxley was a game I was interested in many years ago when it was first announced but never seemed to have gotten released. So after a decade of occasional search, I have finally found closure to what seemed like a potentially great game - it was sold to a Korean company which developed it all the way to beta stage before it was shut down just a few years ago.
Maybe they realized that with just two factions, it was never going to beat Planetside 2, a game that hasn't really done too well over the years IMO after the few attempts at marketing it. Such a waste. So much must have been invested into it.
Welp that settles it - speed reading is nonsense. You can read really really fast but your brain just can't catch up, causing comprehension to get compromised beyond certain speeds.
So last week, both my bro and I agreed that the likeliest cause of all our internet issues is the router they gave us. First, our wired connections directly from the modem are always fine while only the wifi from the router is inconsistent. Second, the Linksys router only costs about US$50 on Amazon so it's clearly not a particularly durable one. Third, my wifi from my pc that is using one of the wired connections never has any issues.
The only problem here is that we came to this conclusion just after Cyber Monday.
Next year will be tough. Specifically, the arrangement of the flights to and from Canada/US will be different from the routine - again.
She will fly to Vancouver (YVR), then to California for her externship, followed by Toronto and finally back to Singapore. I will fly to Vancouver, back to Singapore, then to Toronto (YYZ) when she's leaving the US and back to Singapore again. How will I be able to arrange these flights so that we sit with each other between Canada and Singapore? Separate reservations tend to result in separate seats, presenting the biggest obstacle in this situation, yet I have never booked such flights in a single reservation before.
Will I finally have to call the airline, for once, to make a flight booking?
Seems so.
At this point, I am tempted to spend my miles on a business class upgrade because we will very likely take CX to go to YVR via HKG. First, there are no direct flights in this route. Second, CX is the best airline between HKG and YVR. Third, my Asia Miles membership is holding some miles that will expire in 2017.
15 Feb 2017
Just went for a recontract with M1 and their Fonecare+ is now quite different from the past. Not only is it a subscription-based service for some sort of insurance for phones, it also allows for contract renewals annually.
This means it makes far more sense to sign up for the phone with Fonecare+. Using the MySim plans to calculate how much my phone costs, it seems that it's cheaper to pay for this service and recontract after 12 months as compared to the usual 20-month-recontract practice.
And that's 20 months because of the existing early recontract fee waiver.
The difference between a 3GB plan with a phone and a 3GB SIM-only plan is $22 ($42 vs $20). Yes, the mySIM plan actually has 1GB more for the duration of the 12-month contract but I need 5GB anyway and a small data upsize costs $11.80 a month instead of the $5.90 rate for the normal with-phone plans, while the next bigger plan is a $10 upgrade.
So anyway, $22 a month difference. The Fonecare service is $8.50/month.
If I don't sign up for the Fonecare, I recontract at the 20th month. By then, I would have effectively paid $(22*20) = $440 for the phone.
With the Fonecare annual recontract feature, I pay just the 12 months of $22 and $8.50 = $(22+8.5)*12 = $246.
This is a difference of $194.
Of course, this is on top of the lump sum that was paid for the phone just now, so my Sony Experia XZ is costing me S$(398+194) = S$592.
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