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?
