[BE88] The Strategist

LA Noire Awkward Death

2011-12-25T23:08:00.000+08:00

My enemies seem to like to die in this particular position. Hmmm…

BREAK ALL THE WINDOWS!

2011-12-20T23:04:00.001+08:00

Breakdown on North-South MRT Line

http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/singaporelocalnews/view/1171573/1/.html?fb_ref=.Tunt5IETDXU.like&fb_source=home_oneline

“A lot of people angry, banging on the windows to break the windows, I don’t know whether (the windows) can (be) broken or not, so that the air can come in. It’s very stuffy, it’s like a sauna.”

Assassin's Creed Revelations Quote

2011-12-10T23:03:00.000+08:00

To say that nothing is true, is to realize that the foundations of society are fragile, and that we must be the shepherds of our own civilization. To say that everything is permitted, is to understand that we are the architects of our actions, and that we must live with their consequences, whether glorious or tragic.

Skyrim Screenshot Awkward Death

2011-11-20T23:02:00.000+08:00

Skyrim Screenshot Displaced Head

2011-11-15T23:00:00.000+08:00

First World Problems

2011-10-30T22:59:00.000+08:00

Who is having sex with more people?

2011-10-20T22:58:00.000+08:00

I Did Nazi That Coming

2011-10-15T22:55:00.000+08:00

Lol. More! More!

Too Much To Play!

2011-10-10T08:01:00.001+08:00

I suddenly have a mysterious increase in the amount of games that I have to play. This is really odd, considering that there is barely any new game that has been released. I guess this arises from the fact that I've decided to breathe life into a few old games that I've played in the past, or have been playing.
Oh by the way, LA Noire has been added to the list of games I'm waiting for. It's going to be released on the 8th of November. WHERE'S RED DEAD REDEMPTION?

So, here's the list (Updated):
1. Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine
2. Navyfield (Now I lack both credits and points. Feel like quitting)
3. Digimon Online (So far so good)
4. World of Warcraft (Damn tiring to raid)
5. Dead Island (Graphics are messed up, and it feels like some MMORPG with it's quests, might skip this game)
~~6. Bully: Scholarship Edition~~ (Can't get it to work)
~~7. Mechwarrior 4~~(Don't like it)
8. Dragon Nest?

Like seriously, what the heck? If I don't complete all these by November, I'm going to have another load of games to play. Oh no.

4. Anyway, I think the problem stems from World of Warcraft. Recently, I've joined a guild, and the guild in currently in the process of recruiting new members and having a schedule makeover. So I'm now finally able to raid in Icecrown Citadel. So far, I've downed Lord Marrowgar, Lady Deathwhisper, Deathbring Saurfang and Festergut in both 10 man and 25 man versions. Additionally, Rotface and Blood Prince Council has been downed in the 25 man version as well. Yes, I did the 25 man version as my maiden Icecrown Citadel raid. I didn't get any loot from the 25 man run, since the loot drops were very plate item centric. I did get 2 items from the 10 man run, but I couldn't use one of them since it's a one-handed main hand item, and I don't have an off-hand item to complement it yet.

So, I've been spending my nights playing WoW, and as a result, I have no time to clear my other games. Not only that, it's been taking a toll on my sleep. I went to bed past 12am on Monday and Tuesday.

Well on the brighter side, the guild doesn't raid on weekends, so I guess I can play other games then.

8. Dragon Nest has a question mark beside it. That's because I'm considering quitting it. The game is a bore playing alone, and I'm not exactly talented at PvP in that game. I do admit that PvP takes time and practice, I didn't start playing Rakion as a pro. But the style of PvP here is quite different from Rakion. It's a lot more fast paced here, and I don't really like the mechanics of dodging. Blocking in Rakion made more sense. Not only that, the combo system in Dragon Nest is very unforgiving. Make one mistake, and if the enemy is able to use that opening, you can easily be skill comboed to the point where you lose at least half your health.

2. Navyfield oh Navyfield. How I enjoyed playing you when you were in open beta. Everyone was at an equal level then, so majority of players used destroyers, with a few light cruisers here and there. This made the game very enjoyable as battles were all balanced and everyone could get a a few shots in (unless you get torpedoed early). The situation now is that battles nowadays are filled with 80% of ships being heavy cruisers and above (aircraft carriers and battleships). This makes the first 30 levels or so of your gameplay pretty crappy. All you could do is either sail around to leech, or charge in and hope to get a few shots in. You could try to shoot some planes down, but that's pretty hard to do with your crappy guns.

However, after saying all that, I guess I can could myself lucky, as I joined during a period where all games gave 200% experience. I leveled really quickly, and now I'm level 41 with a light cruiser. I still stay back most of the time, but now I can effectively play an AA role, and that helps a lot since I will deny the enemy the vision of our ships. Besides, shooting down planes is the quickest way to earn money, and I am in desperate need of money, possibly due to the fact that I am leveling too fast. 200% experience but 100% cash. Now I have to earn about 600k in the next 10 levels or so (to give you an idea of how much that is, I earn about 1k each battle, which takes about 5-10 minutes). No choice but to skip the level 42 ship. Gah.

3. Digimon Online. Ah, I loved watching Digimon as a kid. I loved it even more than Pokémon. Even my Neopet is named after a Digimon. Off to try the game!

Hmm, how did this become a post about what I've been doing in my games? I originally intended to just come here to post about how I have too much to play. *Ramble ramble*

What Happens when I read a book

2011-10-05T07:58:00.000+08:00

Blizzzard Y U NO Invite me to Diablo 3 Beta?

2011-09-28T07:57:00.001+08:00

Nein Cat

2011-09-26T07:56:00.001+08:00

Games On My List

2011-09-25T07:55:00.000+08:00

These games will be out this year, and those on my list are sequels. There might be a new game that pops out to surprise me, but these are the ones that I'll be looking out for, and will be getting.

Not sure if they'll all be out on PC though.

October 25 - Battlefield 3
November 8 - Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, LA Noire
November 11 - The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (I'm not sure if I really want this, I'm not a fan of Bethesda Games)
November 15 - Saints Row the Third (Never played this franchise before, I should try it out, and I need to get my GTA fix)
November 18 - Batman: Arkham City
December - Assassin's Creed: Revelations (PUT EVERYTHING DOWN AND PLAY THIS FIRST)

So Heilarious

2011-09-21T07:53:00.001+08:00

Osaka Water Fountain

2011-09-19T07:52:00.001+08:00

Cool Boss

2011-09-15T07:50:00.000+08:00

Reblog Fuck Yea

2011-09-13T07:48:00.000+08:00

My Take: The Razer Blade

2011-09-08T16:21:00.002+08:00

http://www.razerzone.com/blade

Have you heard of the Razer Blade? Apparently it's what Razer calls The Saviour of PC Gaming. I don't think I can agree with that. There's a few problems with it.

1. Price
The price of PC gaming has always been brought up as an argument by console gamers. While a console costs at most $500 and can easily last at least 5 years, "PC gaming is too expensive, it requires a graphics card that's the price of a console and needs to be changed regularly". Although I do know that the above statement isn't exactly true, the Razer Blade does nothing to ease this perception of PC gaming being an expensive hobby. US$2800 is easily more than $1000 more than it should be worth, if you consider only it's specifications. The additional cost comes most likely from the brand name, the sleek design, the customizable buttons, and the cost of squeezing in all that power in such a compact frame. I, for one, do not believe in paying for that. Which is probably why I'll never get a Mac.

2. A Laptop? Really?
Why a laptop? Does anyone even use gaming laptops anymore? What's the point of a gaming laptop nowadays? Pardon my ignorance, but I've seen less than 5 people who bring their laptop outside of their house just to game. I guess the only time a gaming laptop would come in handy is when you bring your laptop for a school or work project, and you end up gaming somehow... but that shouldn't even be happening. Furthermore, with mobile gaming so prevalent on our smartphones, and a readily accessible 3G network, multiplayer mobile gaming has never been easier. Also, LAN shops.

And one of the horrors of PC gamers: not being able to upgrade your rig.

The only reason that I can see for this, is that Razer is merely using this as a stepping stone. An experiment of sorts.

3. Those customizable buttons
Aren't those on our desktop keyboards already? And on our mice too.

4. Appearance
Alienware. Stickers.

5. Alienware
Alienware has been selling gaming laptops for years now. What makes the Razer Blade so different that it'll save PC gaming? Portability and customizable keys? That's it? That's not a deal breaker at all.

So yeah, to me, the Razer Blade is just another gaming laptop out in the market. Nothing interesting to see here, move along.

What A World We Live In

2011-08-23T16:18:00.001+08:00

From: http://kotaku.com/5831743/how-could-one-sweet-little-cheerleader-ruin-the-image-of-females-everywhere
By Raso719

"This is why we can't have nice things. We can't just enjoy it because it's entertaining, no that would be too easy. We have to bitch and moan and cry racism or sexism or political agenda every time a game portrays women as less then decent and better at everything men are good at or has a black guy in a cluckin bell eating some chicken or spews some right wing, jingoistic nonsense about killing everyone to protect yourself.

I won't let you people ruin it for the rest of us. I'm sick of every game and movie having safe and mild characters and stories. I'm sick of movies being afraid to make statements, I'm sick of characters having to be boring, bland, blank slates just so they do't offend some one and I'm sick of it being totally ok to portray men as shallow, sex obsessed jar heads and meat heads in games and movies.

Guess what? She's scantly clad but she's kicking ass at an unprecedented level. And rather than focusing on ANY form of empowerment that could be seen in that character you're all gonna just cry and moan that she's half naked. You know what? You're only going to see what you want to see.

Don't ruin it for the rest of us who are mature enough to see that a game is just a game and not some attempt to reprogram society."

2011-08-20T16:17:00.000+08:00

Don’t remember if I ever posted this, but it’s a picture of my employee lying on the toilet floor. From the Facebook game Restaurant City.

Characteristics of A Creative Person

2011-08-18T16:12:00.000+08:00

Taken from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qiQcANX3NNE (4:57)

Don't know if I'm deluded, but all the above points match me.

Funny Captcha: A load of codswallop

2011-08-16T16:11:00.000+08:00

My Take: Hacker Group Anonymous Vows To Destroy Facebook On November 5

2011-08-12T16:08:00.001+08:00

Text release: http://www.businessinsider.com/anonymous-facebook-2011-8
Video release: http://gizmodo.com/5829353/anonymous-to-destroy-facebook-on-november-5th

If you are a willing hacktivist or a guy who just wants to protect the freedom of information then join the cause and kill facebook for the sake of your own privacy.

Contradictory. If there is freedom of information then we don't need someone to decide who we should or shouldn't share our information with. By killing Facebook, you just killed our right to the freedom of information.

Facebook has been selling information to government agencies and giving clandestine access to information security firms so that they can spy on people from all around the world. Some of these so-called whitehat infosec firms are working for authoritarian governments, such as those of Egypt and Syria

Sounds really scary, but guess what? Unless someone is really out to get you, nothing is going to happen to you. You are merely another person on Earth. No one really gives a shit about you. Sounds harsh, but true. The main reason why people buy data like this from Facebook is to gather demographics. Male/female. Who plays more Facebook games. Their jobs. Their age. You know, things like that.

Everything you do on Facebook stays on Facebook regardless of your "privacy" settings, and deleting your account is impossible, even if you "delete" your account, all your personal info stays on Facebook and can be recovered at any time

Same with pretty much every other account you've made on the Internet. Accounts are rarely deleted from a server unless they really need the space. Guess what? Same with almost everything you've written onto your hard drive too. Nothing is completely erased in this day and age. Don't tell me that there's secure deleting. I know. No one does that with everything they delete.

Changing the privacy settings to make your Facebook account more "private" is also a delusion.

What delusion is there? Facebook implemented the privacy settings to keep out other users on the Internet. It was never meant to keep itself out.

Facebook knows more about you than your family.

Damned right you are. Unless, you know, you don't really use Facebook much and actually socialize with your family. And for that I applaud you.

You are not safe from them nor from any government

For those who know where I'm from, have you seen how the government keeps all the information about you? *Shudder*

One day you will look back on this and realise what we have done here is right, you will thank the rulers of the internet, we are not harming you but saving you

I don't need a babysitter to govern how I use the Internet. Yes, I used the word govern. I use the Internet by my own accord. I understand the risks, I know that I have been willingly giving out information for the past 13 years of my life.

It is a battle for choice and informed consent

Seriously, this whole message doesn't make sense to me. By doing this you are removing that choice. And we were always informed. Read Facebook's terms and conditions. And everytime you use a new application on Facebook, read what the page actually says before you click allow. We were always informed.

When a service is "free," it really means they're making money off of you and your information

Pretty much. Heard of advertisements and tracking cookies?

I do know that Operation Facebook has been cancelled/never meant to happen. I'm just here trying to share with you guys what I think of this operation and their reason for doing it. It simply doesn't make sense to me.

To end off, here's a comic.

Know what you're doing before blaming or saying that privacy has been breached. You have given information to them willingly. They have never stolen it from you.

There's currently a rumour going on that Facebook now lists all our friend's contact numbers after the recent update. Guys, your contact numbers have been listed ever since you put it on your profile. You just got to know where to look.

Scamming Tips

2011-07-27T16:03:00.001+08:00

Plastic Coconut

2011-07-15T15:59:00.000+08:00

More Decisions... Sigh.

2011-07-03T20:18:00.000+08:00

I have no idea what's going on lately, but I've been plagued by decisions. Okay, so most of the decisions were started off by myself, but this one isn't.

As you might know, I've been downgraded to C9L9 in the army, and since I'm in the battery line (artillery calls their companies batteries), there's really not much use for me there since most of the things done there are:

1. Physical work.
2. Work I'm not trained in
3. Work in dusty garages.

Well, I'm currently the Sergeant Major's Personal Assistant, but he really doesn't need me. I'm just here to make his life easier. Well that's what a PA is supposed to do, but what I mean is that the work he gives me can effectively be done by himself without being overworked. I just give him extra time to chill. I've recently brought up the idea of revocation to him, and it seems that they have heard my complains of rotting away in the battery since I'm doing nothing at all.

Anyway, that's not the point.

I've been offered two options, either to get revocated and get posted out to S1, or if S1 doesn't need me, to another unit. The other option is to stay where I am right now, and the main attraction about that is that my Battery Commander (commonly known as the OC) has told me that he's able to just let me do nothing if I stay.

So, one of the options looks absolutely awesome and attractive. Who wants to do work anyway? The problem is, after the first week of September, there will only be three people in the battery left. I think 1 new guy is coming in, so that makes 4. After the end of October, only me and the new guy will be left. Do I really want to stay in a place with only 1 other guy? It's going to be as boring as hell. Okay, so maybe he might be the most awesome guy I've ever met, but till he comes, I'm not going to know.

Okay, so let me list out the pros and cons of both options.

Getting revocated:
+1. I get to meet more people so life wouldn't be so damn dull.
+2. There's work to do so time passes faster.
+3. I might have the chance of going to a better unit, be it location, people, or camp conditions.
+4. I think work is almost guaranteed to end at 5:30pm everyday.
+5. I learn a bit of office work, like e-mail etiquette, documentation procedures, and how to use OpenOffice (though no one else really uses this).
+6. Computers with Internet access are at the HQ.
-7. There's work to do.
-8. Who knows what camp I'll end up in. I might end up in Tekong. Lol.
-9. Kranji Camp MO's are really lenient, though this only applies if I leave the unit.
-10. I lose the protection and favour of my Sergeant Major.
-11. There's duty to do, and that includes weekends.

Staying:
+1. There's nothing to do, so I get to chill everyday when I'm in camp. Sleep a bit more in the mornings when I book in, study a third language, programming or whatever.
+2. Hopefully I'll be allowed to use my PSP during office hours. Then I'll be able to watch movies and TV programmes. Then my weekends and weeknights can be used for other activities.
+3. No regimental duties.
-4. I'll be as lonely as hell.

I think the real deciding factor is whether or not I want to be free but lonely, or working with a bunch of friends. What shall I do? Sigh.

Another Reason Why I Don't Like Half-Life 2

2011-06-20T20:17:00.000+08:00

"See, in a story like the one Half Life 2 attempts to tell, it's very important that the player character be told fairly early on what they are there for. You need a goal. Your primary carrot, then, is Eli. You are supposed to get to him. He will explain everything.

When you get there, smaller infodump, but he says he'll tell you more later. This is when he gets kidnapped.

So you fight your way to Eli, again, to find out why you're here. Now you're in Nova Prospekt.

He gets teleported away from you by a betrayal.

So... you fight your way to Eli. Again.

And suddenly, the game is over. You have no idea why you're brought here in the first place, but, quite by accident, you've gone and blown up the Citadel.

Act I: Get to Eli.
Act II: Get to Eli.
Act III: Get to Eli.

Act IV (Episode 1): Save the Citadel to save Eli
Act V (Episode 1): Get on a train to Eli

Act VI (Episode 2): Get to Eli.
Act VII (Episode 2): Defend the base after Alyx interrupts Eli who was going to explain everything.
Ending (Episode 2): Eli dies. "
Quote from DocSeuss from http://kotaku.com/5814604/is-it-ok-to-hate-great-games

Yes, the poster went on to say that HL2 is a good game, but the above is the exact reason why I don't like it.

NUS Computer Science vs NTU Accountancy

2011-06-15T20:15:00.001+08:00

Note: I posted this at http://forum.brightsparks.com.sg/showthread.php?p=60244
Hi everyone,

I've already got a course in NUS Computer Science (targeting to go to Bachelor of Computing in Communications and Media after the common 1st year) for the 2012 intake. However, I have started to reconsider and the other course I've been thinking about is NTU Accountancy. I have to admit, it's more of a lifestyle than an interest thing that triggered this off.

I need some opinions and experiences, preferably from people who have been there before, whether in the course or the working world.

I have come up with several reasons for the reconsideration, as well as some concerns that I might have.

tl;dr: Important concerns in bold

Overtime (Accountancy)
I've read that accountants need to OT often, especially during the end of the month "book closing" period, or the audit period. Is this true? Or do they OT everyday? I want to have a life after work everyday, not slog it out into the AM.

Overtime (Computer Science)
I'm not sure how often Computer Science graduates have to OT, and by the way, I intend to major in Bachelor of Computing in Communications and Media, specifically, I want to go into the video game industry. My guess is that OT will occur when I have to meet deadlines for projects, and not to mention that patches and fixes that have to be rushed out after a game is released.

Salary (Accountancy)
I think it's widely recognized that accountants have high salaries. Not much question here unless I'm wrong.

Salary (Computer Science)
I always had the assumption that programmers make good money, but the IT industry is filled with Indian foreign talent who readily accept a lower pay than us locals. Not to mention, many people have some sort of programming knowledge, especially poly graduates and those who decide to learn it as a hobby. Do I have a valid worry that such people will pull down my salary, or would specializing in some sort of game design prevent this from happening?

Competition For Jobs/Job Prospects (Accountancy)
I have the impression that jobs are readily available for accountants. Is this right or are accountants saturating the market since it's rather popular? This is attractive for me as it makes my options more flexible and I can change jobs if I am not happy with the working environment there, rather than just "sucking it up and endure it". Also, is there a need to be always ahead of the pack as an accountant? Or can I just get my degree/ACCA, find a job, and then do my job without worrying that a better qualified person is going to replace me?

Competition For Jobs/Job Prospects (Computer Science)
Take into account my previous point of foreign talent. Also consider the fact that I prefer to go into the video game industry, and that the video game industry isn't very big in Singapore. Yes, it's growing, but it's still small. I'd rather not go overseas. Another issue is that we have to be at the top/be the best at what we do in order to be wanted in the industry (or at least the big ones like Ubisoft or EA), since we have to be competitive and creative. The last issue is that IT advances quickly, and I'm not sure if I want to stress myself by needing to keep up with the times and learning new stuff. Putting aside the video game industry, I know that IT is going to be huge. Smartphones, cloud computing and augmented reality is really coming up now.

Before I go on to my interest level, which I believe many of you will bring up as the key point to what I should choose, let me tell you that I have absolutely no prior background knowledge about Accountancy or Computer Science. If this is any help, I took Economics for the first 3 months (PAE) in JC, hated it and changed to Geography. I'm a avid video gamer, FB addict and can watch TV shows and movies on the computer from morning till night, without getting bored or tired. But like many say, making a game is very different from playing one. I may hate one and love the other. Granted, I'm more comfortable at using a computer since I'm always using one. I took a look at the poly notes for Accountancy, and I found the business law section very interesting (I have yet to look at the other parts of Accountancy at a more in-depth level).

So really, I can't give you guys or myself a good gauge on my interest level since I haven't explored enough. Accountants seem to have boring jobs, and Computer Science seems no better, unless I do something related to media or entertainment, like the video games industry. In fact, I have very little interest in getting a Computer Science related job that does not have anything to do with the entertainment or media sectors. So I was thinking, if they're both going to be boring, why not choose a more stable and lucrative job?

This isn't really important, but I have more friends and there are more girls in Accountancy. Lol.

My grades are:
GP: B
H2 Math: A
H2 Physics: B
H2 Chemistry: B
H1 Geography: A
PW: A
Chinese: S (yeah yeah)

Yes, it's VERY borderline for entry into NTU Accountancy. I'm still willing to try.

Well, this is a very long post, and unlike most people who compare similar courses. But I hope you'll take time to read this and give me your opinions on the matter. This is going to affect my life for the next 30-40 years. Thanks!

tl;dr: Important concerns in bold.

Reconsideration of University Courses

2011-05-20T20:13:00.001+08:00

So just a few weeks ago I went into a frenzy to find out about other university courses. I'm not exactly sure what started it off. The main reason why I did it is because I had a sudden irrational fear that I wouldn't be able to pick up programming easily.

It's a really silly fear, that's why I called it irrational. After all, we are all going into a university course without knowing what we'll expect. I'm pretty sure most JC students have never did anything related to business or accountancy, and the only thing remotely close to it is Economics. Similarly, medicine, law and dentistry isn't a walk in the park.

Furthermore, I read that it's perfectly fine to get into Computer Science without any foreknowledge of it at all. In fact, some of those who enter without any knowledge can end up doing better than those who do.

Explanations of the irrationality aside, here's what I thought of the courses I decided to look into. I didn't make a blog post about this did I? So here it is.

I first looked into accountancy. I looked into it first because I have two good friends going into accountancy (although it's for two different universities), and accountants seem to have a good life (albeit a boring one). They make lots of money, they're heavily sought after, and the only time they seem to be busy is when they are fresh and green, and when it's time to do their accounting stuff (as in, "that time" of the year). But seriously, all those numbers and finance stuff, it confuses me to the ends of the Earth. And yep, it's boring.

I looked at Science next. Seems useless. It's like a really general degree. Honestly, I didn't research much about it.

Engineering was next. Since I was young, I always had this perception of engineers: people who carry spanners, going around fixing stuff. Blame games like Command & Conquer and Red Alert. I'm not too sure if this perception is too far off, but I do think that engineers do go around fixing things, whether is it a machine, or some sort of chemical or nuclear plant. Basically, I don't have a good impression of engineers. Too many guys anyway.

I like Geography. It's my favourite subject when I was in JC. Physics was a very close second, possibly even tied for top. But the future of a geographer in Singapore seems really risky. Sure, there are things like Marina Barrage which needs the help of a geologist, but I bet I'll just end up being a geography teacher or something of the sort.

What's left is Computer Science. I have plans to learn programming before the next university application date, so I can see whether it's for me. So far, either the books for programming are loaned out from the library, or it's not suitable for me. iPhone application development hit a roadblock when I needed a Mac. The Blackberry application development for Dummies book assumed I had knowledge in Java. The Android application development books are loaned out. I might try C++, but the books are loaned out too.

Anyway, I am comfortable with a computer (like duh, I can use it all day long), and the future is IT. Smartphones are growing exponentially, hackers are happily hacking companies, and even viruses are being developed for warfare. In the future, the people who know how to make products out of blocks of text will be powerful people. So yeah, I do want to be in Computer Science. I'm just scared. A very irrational fear. And I don't want 50% foreigners in my course, who are most likely stereotypical Indians.

Fate vs Choice

2011-05-10T21:28:00.001+08:00

Fate Vs Choice

Fate vs Choice. Many people have been asked their opinions on this, and often the reply I see is that they believe that they live their lives making choices. However, is this really the case? I want to present some examples, as well as some trains of thought. To me, fate is having your life and actions already predetermined before you have made the action, and choice is, simply put, being able to make choices and decisions for the paths that lie ahead of you. I'll be using examples from the movie Minority Report, the Bible, as well as the illusion of choice.

A little background information about Minority Report, in case you haven't watched it yet or you require a refresher. In short, the movie takes place in the future, and they are able to predict murders before it happens. The main character, John, soon becomes a to-be murderer, and he tries to escape capture, and tries to prevent himself from committing the heinous act itself. In the end, he does commit the murder.

So as you can see, the prediction of murder is fate, and the main character is trying to go against fate by attempting to not murder. If he did have a choice, then why did he still choose to murder, knowing that he did not want to do it in the first place, and knowing that it is wrong. To give you more background information, John works as a officer in the PreCrime department, where they discover murders before it happens. Many people have argued that there is no such thing as fate, and that you always have a choice. However, let me pose this question to you. If the John never found out that he was going to murder someone, and he somehow still managed to evade capture, would his murder be considered fate, or a choice?

And this brings me to my next point. The illusion of choice. Do we really have a choice? Us choice-believers live out our lives day by day, doing what we decide to do. However, how do we know that what we do isn't already pre-determined? How do we know that we aren't following what fate has laid out in front of us? Look in front of you. Press a letter on your keyboard. Did you choose to pick that letter, or did you just do what fate meant for you to do all this while? Simply put, just because you were not told that pressing the letter "k" was something that you were fated to do, does not mean that you chose to press "k". Hence, the illusion.

The last thing I'm going to cover is the Bible. I'm pretty sure you have some sort of basic idea of what I'm going to talk about. Divine powers and God would eventually lead to the foretelling of events. I will use a more prominent example in the Bible - the events leading to the crucifixion of Christ. Jesus foretold the betrayal of some of his disciples, and sure enough, it happened. I'm not going to explain this. It's the same concept; they seemed to have been given no choice at what they do at all, since what they were going to do was already predicted and pre-determined for them.

Instead, I'm going to present a different idea here. Was Christ predicting the choice of his disciples, or was he laying out their fate for them? In fact, this question can be applied to John in Minority Report as well.

I am not going to support any side in this argument. This is something that can never be answered. There will be no definite answer, and no one will know the answer, unless they meet God or whichever higher power there is in their afterlife. As you can see, I have asked many questions in this argument. I never laid out any sure and definite points, instead only giving examples and questioning certain ideas.

If you were to really ask me what I believe in, I would say that we have a choice in our actions. What you believe in is up to you. I just had to write this to express what I've been thinking about for quite some time.

I Know I'm In Camp When...

2011-05-05T21:26:00.000+08:00

1. I'm full of energy and awake at first, but when I enter camp, all energy is sucked away from me and I start to feel really sleepy.
2. My knee starts to hurt sporadically.
3. I start to itch.
4. I suddenly have the need to take naps in the morning and afternoon.
5. I am capable of sitting around and staring into space, thinking about absolutely nothing at all.
6. I can't seem to solve or answer simple questions that I could have solved in Secondary school.
7. I have no idea what day or date it is unless its Friday. Why? Because after that it's Saturday, and then its Sunday.
8. Time literally stops. I have little semblance of it and when I do, I suddenly realized that time has skipped forward. "Hey, where did my time go?"
9. I run out of books to read.
10. The MINDEF Forums become my number one source of entertainment.
11. I'm capable of leveling up to level 99 in a certain RPG on my PSP, just because I can.
12. But I don't, because I'd rather sit around doing nothing.
13. I never seem to be able to sleep at night without waking up at least once.
14. I randomly decide to SMS spam to my friends. And I think one of them decided to block me. Sigh.
15. After listening to 98.7FM for a day, you understand the meaning of "ONLY the hits".
16. I suddenly have at least three mosquito bites on myself.
17. I write blog posts on paper in camp.

2011-04-30T21:24:00.001+08:00

As seen in goodreads.com

What Really Grinds My Gears: Giving The "Can You Do Better?" Argument

2011-04-24T17:58:00.001+08:00

You know what really grinds my gears? People who give that "you can do it better?" argument whenever someone starts to criticize something or someone. Let me elaborate.

Once in a while, someone would criticize and give their opinions about something, be it food, design, or physical appearance. So the criticism continues, argument commences, and then you'll see it. That one person who decides to bring out that sentence. "So you think you can cook better food?" "So you're really handsome/pretty?" "So you can make better designs?" You know what's worse? The people who comment after that happens will back that person up, thinking that it's a perfectly fine argument.

I mean, where's the logic in that? Do I have to look like Barbie or Ken to say that someone looks horrible? If that person looks horrible, then that's how it is. It's fair, it's valid, it's factual, and there's nothing that's going to change that unless he or she goes for plastic surgery.

Food. I never knew that I have to be a fantastic cook to be able to voice out my opinion that a certain food is horrible. Apparently if I'm unable to cook, I'm unable to know that the food is too sour, too salty, too bland, too oily, etc.

I'm pretty sure all the critics and reviewers out there aren't experts at doing what they're reviewing. Surely all the movie reviewers out there didn't win a Golden Globe for being a director.

I'm not going to continue with more examples. I'm sure you get it. Or are you one of them? There's no logic in this argument at all.

Time to be An Asshole

2011-04-02T00:03:00.002+08:00

Welcome to "Time To Be An Asshole", where I become an asshole. I'm not sure if I'll be doing more of these. I definitely could, I have some ideas.

Well, I become an asshole by my own definitions, because I think that what I'm going to say is rather anti-social.

Main topic: A-level results.

You can probably guess what I'm going to say already. Yep, I'm one of those assholes who do well in examinations and still bitch about it. LOL. Here's my results:

H1 General Paper: B
H1 Geography: A
H2 Mathematics: A
H2 Chemistry: B
H2 Physics: B
H1 Chinese: S
H1 Project Work: A

I also have to add that I got into the course of my choice in NUS.

But why am I not happy with my results? I don't have a straightforward answer, but I can think of a number of reasons.

Maybe it's because I see Secondary school friends who did as well as me in the O-levels do much better than me in the A-levels. In fact, they pretty much got straight A's.

Maybe it's because when people in my Battery in the Army ask what my A-level grades are, they say "all A's ah?" before letting me answer.

Maybe it's because I've got this really retarded friend who can't open medicine bottles or instant noodle packages, and he takes pretty long to tie his shoelaces, but he has straight A's.

Maybe it's because I've failed my expectations for Physics for the second time. A1 for O-level preliminary examinations (top in the level too), then A2 for the actual O-levels. A for the A-level preliminary examinations, then B for the actual A-levels.

Maybe it's because half of my school got an A for H1 General Paper.

Maybe it's because I didn't listen in Chinese class, and didn't bother with the homework. I could have at least passed.

Maybe it's because I took a look at the 10th percentile for my university course for the 2010 intake (ABB/B), and realized that I'm most likely at the 15th or 20th percentile of the course, which pretty much sucks.

Do I have regrets? Nah, I won't say that I do. I got into the course I wanted, so I'm not going to mope around about it. Am I happy with my results? No.

So there you go, that's me being an asshole to all you people out that who didn't do so well.

Dragon Age Milestones

2011-03-20T00:32:00.000+08:00

Xfire Tsunami Warning

2011-03-19T00:30:00.000+08:00

FML

2011-02-27T20:15:00.000+08:00

So you've probably seen the recent updates that I posted on Facebook/Twitter. So why the recent hate for my unit after being in there for approximately 5 months? That's what this post is going to explain.

Well, the Artillery Road Relay happened this Monday, and basically everyone in all the different artillery units met at Khatib camp for the event. So yeah, I met friends and course mates there, and that kind of made me feel really horrible because in my opinion, I went to the worst unit possible. Meeting everyone just made me think about everything all over again. You start to compare, and that's when shit starts to hit the fan.

After my artillery course I could go to 20SA, 21SA, 23SA, 24SA or AI. Few would say that AI is a bad posting. Office work, stay-out, clean and new facilities make that place awesome. I heard that the people in 23SA have PS3 and Wii in their bunk. Read that again, their bunk, not the mess. I don't know much about 24SA, but its in Khatib camp, and that alone just makes it awesome. Just compare Khatib camp to Kranji camp, taking into consideration the cleanliness and location, Khatib wins hands down. 20SA could have been worse than 21SA, but guess what? If I were posted there, I would be posted to 3DIV HQ since 20SA is closing down. 3DIV HQ is a stay-out place.

If being in the worst unit possible doesn't make things bad enough, I think I have the worst posting among my course mates who were posted there too. 6 of us went to 21SA. 4 of them went to the HQ, and life is good there even though they can't return to bunk to sleep. Another went to Bravo battery, and from an outsider's point of view, they have a lot of welfare, in terms of gaining off days and booking out early. So I ended up in Alpha battery.

Should I describe my life in Alpha battery to you guys? You guys would probably bitch and say I'm a retard for complaining. But there's a twist, and I'll explain that twist later on. Here's how my life has been for the past 5 months.

Wake up at 5:50am, go for breakfast, sleep from 6:30am till about 8am (sometimes 9am, sometimes 10am), go to the office, organize the office so it isn't so messy, sit somewhere in the office, read the newspapers, go for lunch, sleep some more, go to the office, sit around and watch sergeants make a fool of themselves, go for dinner, and then its free time for me. And just saying that just makes it sound really screwed up. "Free time for me". Well what that really means is that the others finally have free time for me. So I can play board games with them and just recently, Dungeons & Dragons. My field pack and boots are covered in dust and laden with cobwebs. I haven't been outfield at all, and I haven't taken a single IPPT test since I've been there. Sounds good eh? Or not. I'm going to get a heart attack from the oily food and lack of activity there.
Well, here's the twist. This coming Monday, we're going to have a new sergeant major. And I am as sure as hell that he isn't going to let me have this life. First of all he's not going to let us sleep in bunk before last parade. Second, he seems really against having people left behind in bunk or the office, and he wants everyone to just go to the garage. I have no idea how he's going to manage that with my "excuse dusty environments" status.

That's why I'm desperate to get out of my battery. Honestly, I'm really sick of all this. Having such a life sounds extremely appealing at first, but seriously dude, time passes as if a snail is powering the gears of the clock. I'm freakin' all alone. Why the hell does the battery even need an FOGA? If someone as introverted as me can feel sick from this solitude, imagine if its someone else *shudder*. Man if I was put in a proper office with office workers who stay there with me all the time that wouldn't be so bad.

Ah what the hell. FML. Must. Get. Out. Then again getting out of a unit is near impossible. I can always try to complain that the whole damn camp is dusty though. Post me to a clean camp like Khatib camp. LOL. FML.

Happy Valentine's Day!

2011-02-14T20:13:00.000+08:00

Oh My

2011-02-10T20:13:00.000+08:00

You know, the army really scares me. But its not in the way that you might think. Let me explain in a quick way.

1. Passive smoking.
2. Oily food.
3. Dusty areas.
4. Lack of physical activity. I get more exercise in school.
5. Lack of mental activity. As a result I can't remember anything and I can literally go "brain-dead" (not think of anything at all, really, nothing at all).
6. Bad English.
7. Doing absolutely nothing productive.
8. Have you heard? I haven't spoke to a girl my age for a year. I'm not kidding at all. When I say "spoke" to a girl, I mean actually hearing their voice, and them hearing mine. Well, I do admit its partly my fault.
9. Army makes people gay. Not healthy.
10. What's with people and spitting everywhere imaginably possible?

Well, that's all I can think of now. You notice I keep saying that lately? See point 5.

LOL

2011-02-02T20:11:00.000+08:00

Updated: Next Year

2011-01-21T18:40:00.003+08:00

Waiting for these games to come out in 2011.

~~Prinny 2: Dawn of Operation Panties, Dood! (PSP)~~ (Released)
Patapon 3 (PSP)
Guild Wars 2 (PC)
Diablo III (PC)
Mass Effect 3 (PC)
Dragon Age 2 (PC)
Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood (PC)
Deux Ex: Human Revolution (PC)
Portal 2 (PC)

That's all I can think of now.

Update: Torchlight II (PC)
Update: Valkyria Chronicles 3 (PSP)
Update: Mythos (PC)
Update: Starcraft II: Heart of The Swarm

What A Life

2010-12-27T17:00:00.000+08:00

Its been almost three months since I’ve given any update on what’s been going on in my life. Well, as always, nothing much. What I’ve said in the previous update mostly stays true even till now, but of course, there’s bound to be a few changes.

Well, first of all, we now have three more board games to play in camp. Settlers of Catan, Puerto Rico and Carcassonne. All very good games, but personally, I like Carcassonne the most. Simple yet complex, it’s straightforward so its not too mind-boggling. Settlers of Catan feels like Monopoly after playing it a number of times. Someone just dominates the whole game, and the other players just can’t do much to catch up. The winner is already known halfway through the game. Granted, this doesn’t happen all the time, but its bad enough. Puerto Rico supposed to be good, but I guess my experience of playing the game is pretty marred by new players who take ages to complete their turn.

Anyway, if you’ve been following me on Twitter or Facebook, I guess you probably know by now that I’ve got this three month status that excuses me from IPPT, RMJ, No. 4, outfield training and dusty environments. I’m also waiting to get a downgrade for my medical status, so as of now, life is going to be a lot more sedentary. I’m also glad that I’m excused IPPT, because that’s like one of the worst things to me. I mean, have you seen the horde of people who go to those IPPT camps everyday? I can’t imagine going to camp just to exercise after work, when I can instead go home and chill out.

One thing I’m pretty sad about though, is whether or not I’ll ever be able to experience artillery live firing. I mean, come on, I’m not in the infantry. I’m in the freakin’ artillery man. It’s an experience few people get to have.

One more thing. People in my battery aren’t allowed to bring our entertainment devices now. No more MP3s, PSPs, DSes, blah blah. There’s been a lot of theft going on. Money goes missing, four Wii controllers go poof, and just recently someone’s iTouch vanished. So, now there’s no Wii to play with, and no PSP. Great. Now I can only read books and play board games. Sigh.

Seriously, these two years are a waste of time.

Merry Christmas

2010-12-25T22:51:00.001+08:00

Kevin Butler E3 2010 Speech

2010-12-13T16:38:00.005+08:00

I saw this long ago, but seriously, this needs to be shared.

Naked Blood Elf

2010-12-11T22:39:00.000+08:00

Look what I managed to do. Lol. I never imagined this was possible.

Sweet DPS

2010-12-01T01:36:00.000+08:00

Sweet DPS.

Pilgrim's Bounty

2010-11-23T01:34:00.001+08:00

Done with the Turkey Shooter that's earned in the Pilgrim's Bounty event in World of Warcraft. I managed to get the whole Pilgrim outfit as well.

Finding The One: Rakion

2010-11-15T21:48:00.000+08:00

Welcome to Hell. Well, not really, but instead, its another installment of Finding The One, this time, its Rakion, as promised. I know, I know, I said Rakion would be done pretty quick, but I guess I can't really keep to schedules properly.

So, it was kind of my fantasy to be able to find and play a game that involved medieval combat. The medieval ages really interested me, and at one point I was going all crazy about archers and castles. Well, Rakion came along, as it's as close as it can get to fulfilling my fantasy.

Rakion features multiplayer combat in a third-person view, predominantly using close-combat weaponry. Basically, you use the mouse buttons to attack, using a different combination of clicks to come out with an attack combo. The whole concept is really solid and it could have been a really good game, but Softnyx decided to add a lot of trash in the game, and the servers are really empty now.

Swordsman, blacksmith, mage, archer and ninja. These are the five classes available for play in the game.

Swordsmen have balanced stats, and they're pretty much the jack of all trades, master of none. They don't hit that hard, they aren't exceptionally fast, and well, they're pretty much average in everything they do. I'm pretty much okay with this class. I don't like it, neither do I hate it. Being a master of none made this class pretty boring, in my opinion. There's no real move that you can execute that really brings out the "feel" of the class. Most of their attacks hit for average damage as well, so I can't feel that "ouch" for the enemy after executing a combo on them. However, being a jack of all trades pretty much meant that I could play in any way I like, since I wasn't losing out on anything if I decided to walk a different path.

Ah, the blacksmith. This was the class I decided to pick for my main character. The blacksmith is a hard hitter with lots of health and armour. He hits really hard. Everytime he picks up that sledgehammer and bashes it into someones delicate torso, you'd know that he definitely took a real beating from that. Unfortunately, he's one big and slow guy. Having the largest hitbox out of all the classes, its not too easy to miss a large target like the blacksmith. Even then, having the most health and armour helped to prevent you from dying too quickly. Once mastered, you'll learn that you should only strike when you know that you'll hit. Against a skilled player, a miss is just asking for a guaranteed beating. I loved this class so much. Even his ranged attacks hurt like hell. The blacksmith throws axes at people in ranged mode. I have to admit, its not easy throwing that axe around. It flies like how you'd expect an axe to fly - up, then down. But when it hits someone, ooh damn it hurts.

The mage. I loved the mage as much as my blacksmith. Small and cute, he wields power you wouldn't believe. His characteristics are rather similar to the blacksmith. He hits really hard, and he's one slow fella. Unfortunately, the mage can't afford being hit too much, he's pretty fragile. He is able to heal himself and other teammates though. On a one on one battle, the mage is not easy to play. A miss is definitely more fatal than if the blacksmith misses - the amount of time the mage leaves himself open after an attack is more than the blacksmith.

I haven't mentioned chaos mode have I? After five kills, you get to transform to chaos mode, which is a souped up version of your class. You get a new set of moves, and your attacks do a lot more damage in chaos mode. Of course, there's a time limit to chaos mode, so use it wisely.

The chaos mode for mages owns. It kicks ass. It unleashes a fury so scary you'd poop your pants everytime you see it.

Meh, the archer. Everytime I try to play archers, I end up using her dagger. For some reason I can never shoot properly. Maybe its because I have to take into account the time of flight of the arrow, maybe its the 50ms lag, maybe its because I can't do those kind of "1 shot, 1 hit" thing. I can't hit moving targets as a sniper in FPSes, and I can't do it as an archer. So, the archer is way out.

I had a love-hate relationship with my ninja. The ninja was the very first character I tried, and I started out throwing shurikens that tickle. The ninja hit for very little as well, and I soon came to realise that the ninja is only strongest when they wait for an opening to attack. The ninja specialises in grip attacks - three to four combos that can only be performed on a player that isn't moving at all. That usually happens after the player attacks. With enough attack speed added, the ninja is able to perform a stun-grip, which is basically attacking with quick 1-hit attacks in rapid succession, so that the enemy is "locked" in place due to their need to express the "ow". That leaves the enemy available for a grip attack by the ninja. This is how the ninja typically plays, and I have to admit, I'm not very good at that. Maybe its because I haven't added enough attack speed to be able to pull of a stun-grip, but I've seen ninjas of lower level that are able to pull it off, so its just me. I suck at ninjas, though I suck at them less than an archer.

Alright. I honestly think this was a badly written installment of Finding The One. I felt pretty off balance while writing this. Maybe its because I lost of blogging fingertips after so long, or maybe because I lost that vibe for Rakion.

This is going to be the last Finding The One article. I said that I would do Lord of The Rings Online, Dungeons & Dragons Online and Runes of Magic, but I don't think I'm able to do an article for those MMOs since I haven't played them enough to really understand every single class in depth. Adiós.

Computer Hell

2010-10-15T15:54:00.001+08:00

Well, since I wrote this out on a piece of paper for my Dad (and the repairman, when that happens) to figure it out, I guess I'll put it up here as well. Maybe one of you geniuses can figure out what's happening with my computer.

Stage 1:
When the computer is turned on, one of these things will happen:
- Computer goes to sleep mode and cannot wake up
- Computer hangs
- Computer restarts by itself
- Blue screen of death
- Computer works normally

Stage 2:
When any of those crashes occur, I turn off the computer by holding the power button. Then, I turn it back on. One of these things will happen:
- Computer makes a never ending beep sound. Computer doesn't boot up.
- Computer parts start working and spinning but there is no beep at all. There should be a beep to show that the computer is working. Motherboard problem?
- Computer starts normally
When the computer starts normally, go back to stage 1.

Additional information:
- Whether or not the computer will crash again seems to depend on luck.
- Crashes can happen anytime: While idle, surfing the net, playing a video game, or even while booting up.
- If the computer remains stable and does not crash, no crashes will occur until the next day when I turn it on.

So there you go. Pretty comprehensive, minus the technical details like crash logs.

Plenty of Neopoints

2010-10-10T01:29:00.000+08:00

Look how someone spent 101,010 Neopoints to post this on the notice board in Neopets.

Life So Far In 21SA

2010-10-09T12:48:00.000+08:00

Well, you remember the time when I was complaining about how I got the worse of the two specializations possible when I was in Artillery Institute? Well, I think that's changed. Even though I have to route march, use camouflage cream and dig shell scrapes, my life for the past five weeks in 21SA has been really low on activity. So far, everyone else other than those on medical status has went for an outfield activity either once or twice since I got posted in. Because I'm a Forward Observer Gunnery Assistant (FOGA as they call it), such outfield activities have no relation at all to me since they work with their guns and deployment. I'm the only fully healthy guy who hasn't gone outfield. Then again, I'm not exactly fully healthy, but what the heck.

So, because I'm a FOGA, I pretty much have to do nothing whenever there's gun related stuff happening in camp. That includes the Before Operation Service (BOS) that's done every morning, or whatever other funny stuff that they have to do from time to time.

Also, there's only one FOGA per battery. Therefore, that makes me an important person. Being an important person is good. Lol.

Anyway, I've been made the office boy. I've pretty much got an office job now, so I'll just have to go to the office to do some administrative work, or do some general cleaning of the area. I guess you can say that I'm the newspaper man too. That being said, that doesn't mean that I'm free of any other obligations. If there's any sort of physical training, lessons, or outfield activities that require my presence, then I've got to go for it.

So, since I didn't have to go outfield, guess what I did back in camp? Well, sleeping till lunch is one thing (still had to wake up for breakfast though), then its either more sleep, or a few rounds of board gaming (Pandemic, Citadels), Wii, or ping pong (there's also Saboteur and Monopoly Deal, but we don't play that for some reason. I effin hate Monopoly Deal anyway).

Another thing that makes my life so damn good are the sergeants. You'd usually expect sergeants to be more disciplinary and strict towards us men, but seriously, they give us a lot of freedom. Even if they do tell us off, most of us don't really care either way. Its kind of funny really. Nobody marches properly, there's never a timer for the march, nobody really does area cleaning properly, and just yesterday I saw someone throwing a bottle at a sergeant.

Well, since I'm the office boy, I stay in the office most of the time, and of course, I hear a lot. The sergeants and officers themselves are pretty sick of NS, and they want to avoid as much work as they can. They actively try to get medical statuses. I've never heard such things like that before, but then again, I've never been able to hear them until now. Either way, I've been told things by some sergeants. One told me that its good to be an ordinary man. Another told me that I'm a lucky guy, getting an office job. That's the aim everyone should be heading for.

Well, there's isn't a lot of outfields left, and 21SA, being the best artillery unit, is going to start getting up my nerves since I can't pass my IPPT and SOC. This good life is just the beginning. The only possible way is down.

Finding The One: Guild Wars

2010-09-19T23:57:00.001+08:00

Welcome back to another installment of Find The One, where I share my experiences of playing MMOs and the trials and tribulations I go through to find the class I truly love playing.

My history with Guild Wars actually goes back to a date before my experience with WoW. Guild Wars was one of the first few MMOs that I played, alongside Runescape and Maplestory. I participated in the beta for Guild Wars, and I had a lot of fun with it. MMOs were a concept that wasn't exactly well-known during that time, and when I played Guild Wars, it was like a dream come true. I always wanted to play a game where I could play as "myself", an avatar symbolizing myself, living in a medieval fantasy world. I had an obsession with bows an arrows at that time, and seeing my ranger fire off arrows with delicate grace, hearing the arrow pierce into the enemy made me a happy man. Unfortunately, the beta only lasted for the weekend, and I become a sad, sad panda.

A year later, a good friend of mine decided to share his account with me. I do not remember my history with Guild Wars as well as I do with WoW, but I do know that I had a turbulent time with Guild Wars. Agreeing to split the 4 character slots equally among ourselves, I made a plethora of characters, hardly any of them reaching past the Northern Shiverpeaks.

As someone who prefers ranged characters to melee, I made all the available ranged/magical professions in the game. Elementalist, ranger, monk, mesmer, necromancer, I made them all. I kept deleting a particular profession, then making it again. This happened particularly often with the elementalist, monk and mesmer. I could never settle into the game.

Then one fine day, I just decided to make a warrior. That warrior opened my mind to the melee classes, and I don't particularly favour range or magic anymore. That warrior still exists today, and he has completed the Guild Wars: Prophecies campaign.

I think I like playing the warrior so much because it is the only profession that provides a non-stop, fast-paced style of battle. There isn't some sort of casting bar or projectile delay. You just whack, and keep whacking. Most skills are used instantly, and adrenaline isn't exactly difficult to build up. With my secondary profession being a monk, I was able to survive through many battles, and I had the ability to keep resurrecting my party members whenever I needed to. High single target damage-per-second and high survivability made the warrior very appealing. In short, he owned.

Remember that I said before that the warrior in World of Warcraft was a killing machine, killing foe after foe without rest? The warrior in Guild Wars is very similar.

So why didn't the other professions work out? After all, I play a healer in WoW, usually the main healer too.
Now lets start with the ranger. I know that there's primary and secondary professions in Guild Wars, and that makes each character unique in its playstyle. But I'm just going to take it from a general point of view by looking at what that profession does primarily.

So now, the ranger. It seemed like a dream come true when I first played it, but on a "like" scale, it's one of the lowest. The ranger in Guild Wars provided a lot of utility, such as laying traps, disrupting spells, slowing enemies, providing some elemental resistance, and doing some damage. Seems interesting isn't it? However, I play PvE in Guild Wars, and because of that, the ranger loses a lot of its usefulness. Sure, I can still disrupt the enemy, slow them down and trap them up, but PvE is so straightforward, predictable and simple that such tactics are rarely needed. The damage a ranger can dish out isn't exactly anything mind-blowing either. And that's why I don't play a ranger.

Now the elementalist. So I said that PvE doesn't require heavy tactics that the ranger can offer. So a fire elementalist would fit in nicely wouldn't it? Well yeah, it worked out well for a while, until I realised that spells took way too long to cast, and skills weren't exactly spammable. Also, for me to deal out optimum damage, I had to be beside the enemy, and I wasn't exactly cut out for frontal combat. So the elementalist is out.

The mesmer? Its a really cool and interesting profession, that one. Still haven't seen many games that have similar professions. Anyway, I don't play the mesmer for the same reasons I don't play the ranger.

The monk. I only decided to try playing the monk after I had my hand at healing in WoW. After all, taking responsibility for the lives and well-being of your teammates is a pretty daunting and scary task, since you decide whether or not everyone survives long enough to complete the mission. Being a monk in Ascalon wasn't so bad, but when I reached the Northern Shiverpeaks, I found myself being unable to keep everyone alive. I failed, time and time again, and this frustrated me. What's a monk if he can't keep his party mates alive?

The necromancer was actually the very last profession that I tried. To be honest, the necromancer was pretty fun. Raising an army of undead to fight for you made things really easy, since I didn't have to do much besides walking and reanimating corpses. Problems arose when I reached Kryta, where I had to fight undead. I couldn't reanimate undead corpses, so I had no choice but to play differently. Degeneration, curses and direct damage seemed rather similar to the elementalist. Still, if I had a choice on a second profession to play the game through, I'd choose the necromancer.

So, I've completed Guild Wars: Prophecies, and I'm eagerly waiting for Guild Wars 2. I've missed a lot of content from the other Guild Wars expansions, which include a few other professions. Either way, Guild Wars 2 is going to be a lot different, so all I have to do now is wait.

Oh, I missed something. I had the fortune to get "run" to the Southern Shiverpeaks on my warrior, so my warrior had the privilege of being able to obtain the best purchasable armour in the game pretty early. That helped, in a way, to fuel my desire to play my warrior.

Next up, I'll do something easier, so the wait for the next post shouldn't be that long. Rakion. I know most of you guys don't really play this game, but its a game that I enjoyed a lot. To be honest though, I didn't really have much of an issue finding my favourite class in this game. It look less than a month, actually. Either way, I'll still do one on Rakion.

Starcraft II Box

2010-09-06T03:13:00.000+08:00

The Rest of My Life

2010-09-05T16:32:00.000+08:00

For that special friend I made in the Artillery Operator Course. The last time I’ve had such fun was in Secondary 2.

I’ve actually made a more in depth post about you, but I don’t know whether I’m ever going to post it online. Its pretty personal, and its kind of embarrassing for me to post what I’ve written in it. I’ve done things in there that I’ve never done in my life, and to be honest, it can come across as kind of… gay. Maybe if I ever post it, it’ll be a private post just for you.

Artillery

2010-08-07T12:25:00.005+08:00

Well, its been a pretty long time since I've blogged about what's going on in my life. Time to continue.

After BMT, I got posted to Artillery Institute as a gunnery assistant. Its a 2 month course, and basically we'll be split into two specializations after the 6th week. 90% will end up to be liaison, and 10% will be going to field artillery (FA). Its pretty damned annoying. Basically if you're posted to liaison, you're pretty much back to infantry. We're basically the assistant for the forward observer. Basically we'll walk and end up a few kilometers away from the enemy, and looking for targets to strike. Yeah, pure bullshit. Most of what we do is pretty much in the Wiki anyway. Working in a small group, calling for fire, etc. Doubt we get to sit in a vehicle though. Singapore's technology and equipment is still way below that of the US. Lol.

Whereas those who go to FA gets to sit in the battery command post (BCP), operating a laptop to input all the necessary data the gun needs for it to hit its target accurately. Gah.

All I can do is hope and pray I get into FA.

Well, four weeks of the course has passed and gone. Honestly, I want the course to be longer. Life is good in here. There's a lot of freedom, there's no need to rush around to places, the facilities are good because the building is only 2 years old. There's about 4 hours of free time every night, and I wake up about 40 minutes later than I did in BMT. All we do for 85% of the week is sit in an air-conditioned room having either lectures, or using the computer. That's the benefit of going to a vocation that needs your brain more than your brawn.

But that might all change if I end up going to liaison.

The future is dark.

Tumblrbot Question

2010-08-01T19:47:00.002+08:00

tumblrbot asked: WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE INANIMATE OBJECT?

I hate “what is your favourite ____” questions.

Druid Or Not

2010-07-23T21:52:00.002+08:00

Reasons I should make a druid:

It can fill all four roles in PvE (tank, healer, melee DPS, ranged DPS).
Swift Flight Form is just plain awesome.
Shapeshifting is cool.
Druids use leather armour, and I believe the demand for leather equipment is the lowest. Who sees rogues in raids nowadays? Druids are in low numbers in a raid as well.
Druid tanking is easier to master, IMO.

Reasons why I shouldn't make a druid:

Gearscore is a bitch.
Do I really want to spend my limited time during the weekends, wasting hours waiting for a raid to start, only to watch it end in utter disgrace?
A guild would prevent that, but I'm a weekend player.
I still have other games to play, and Lord of The Rings Online is becoming free-to-play soon, although comments aren't positive about it's free-to-play model.
Druid healing is as mundane as shaman healing.

What Grinds My Gears: Asking Why I'm So Quiet

2010-07-08T23:03:00.004+08:00

You know what really grinds my gears? People asking me why I'm so quiet.

I really don't get why people never fail to ask me this. Do you ask your friend standing next to you why he's so damn noisy? Why not ask him, "why can't you ever shut up?" In fact, why don't ask every single person you see some sort of question that can't really be answered with a solid reply? Why are you so tall? Why are you so fat? Why is your hair so curly? Why are you always so sleepy? Why do you always eat so fast? Gosh.

Dude, there's one answer to all of this. THAT'S JUST HOW I AM. WHY THE #%@! DO YOU WANT TO QUESTION HOW I LIVE AS A HUMAN BEING? YOU TRYING TO FIGURE OUT THE MEANING OF LIFE?

And that's what really grinds my gears.

Get Your English Right.

2010-07-07T20:25:00.000+08:00

Finding The One: World of Warcraft

2010-07-05T18:06:00.002+08:00

Greetings. It has been a long time since I've posted something of true worth. There's been many times where my weekend was stolen from me because I had to live in the damn jungle. Anyway, I've decided to make a series concerning MMOs. However, this isn't some sort of guide or whatsoever. Its simply my experiences I've had with the games that I've played and put more effort into, and the troubles I've had finding the class that I truly love to play. I'll be touching on a few games, and those games will be World of Warcraft, Guild Wars, Runes of Magic, Dungeons and Dragons Online, Rakion, and Lord of The Rings Online. This list might not be definitive though, I might decide to add or remove some games from that list. As you can see from the title, I'm going to start with World of Warcraft, and it'll most likely be the longest post.

Warrior. Paladin. Hunter. Mage. Warlock. Rogue. Priest. Shaman. Druid. Death Knight.

You want to know why I love playing WoW? Well, one reason is the story. The lore of the Warcraft universe has, in my opinion, been a deep and well-developed one, and after Warcraft III, I've been a great fan. Reading novels, playing WoW, reading Know Your Lore from WoW.com and WoWwiki has broadened my my knowledge, and the story is still unfinished. Anyway the other reason is that I feel that the classes are just so diverse and unique. 10 classes, and all of them are special in their own way.

How many games really have classes like the shaman, being a jack-of-all-trades, placing totems around, reincarnating and turning into a ghost wolf? How about the druid, with its shapeshifting abilities. Death grip, conjuring food, draining souls, creating portals, summoning allies, auras, stances, the list goes on. What makes me like WoW classes so much is that these spells are just so damn hard to find in another game. Most MMOs create spells and skills that are generic damage and buff spells, with almost nothing else in consideration. Its unique spells like these that make life interesting.

Well, the very first time I played WoW, I started with the Burning Crusade about 4 years ago. I made a mage in WoWgasm, a private server. I played till I was level 40, until a foul server rollback had to devour my mage. I ended up making a priest the next time, leveling him up to 70, after which he participated in a Black Temple raid. I fought Illidan, who wasn't scripted with skills, so it was good practise for my priest. Back in BC, healers actually had to manage their mana and learn when to use their skills to heal effectively. I managed to win the Crystal Spire of Karabor, and that was more or less the end of one phase of my WoW career. I took a break from WoW.

Soon after I started to play WoW again. I went to WoWscape, the biggest and most populated private server then (its now closed). I made a priest, and it went on to be one of my most developed characters in the Burning Crusade. But when I say "most developed", it is really barely enough to contribute much to endgame raids like Black Temple. What to know why? I also made a paladin, warlock, mage, shaman, warrior and hunter. All of them reached level 70, with the exception of my warrior who made it to the lower 60s.
You see, I've never really been able to stick to one character. I'm an altoholic, and everytime I logged in, I was bound to play a different character. Each class just had something so appealing to me.

The priest gave me a feeling of playing God, saving people and shielding them from damage. Shiny, holy and sparkly outfits also appealed a lot to me. The playstyle of a holy priest was also fun and challenging, deciding when to use a specific heal so as to use mana efficiently (people actually alternated between flash heal and greater heal then).

The warlock appealed to me because of his wide arsenal of DoTs. DoTs appeal a lot to me as it is a form of damage that can catch people off guard, since the incoming damage isn't immediately visible. DoTs also offer the warlock a lot of mobility, since quite a few of them are instant cast spells.

The paladin appealed to me because, well, I said before that I like shiny, holy and sparkly things. Being in plate armour is also cool, and taking less damage is a plus.

The shaman appealed to me due to its jack-of-all-trades nature. Also, who doesn't like windfury weapon? The idea of buffing myself, throwing a lightning bolt, going up close for battle and then healing myself felt really great, and being able to wear mail armour meant that I could take a beating without much problem. At that time, I really thought that the shaman was the class for me. But alas, when I started raiding, the DPS rotation was boring, and healing involved spamming chain heal with little variation in between. So I decided, nope, shaman isn't my class.

I made a mage when the private test server (PTR) was launched to test Wrath of The Lich King on WoWscape. I really like the mage because it is one of the few classes with a huge range of abilities that provide a lot of utility. Teleport, blink, slow fall, conjure food and mana gems, evocation, polymorph and invisibility are just some of the cool spells that they have. However, I never did continue to play a mage because I find that DPSing on a mage is really boring. In fact, its as boring as the shaman.

The hunter is another class that I like because of its utilities. Increased run speed, traps, stings, aspects and pets make the life of a hunter much more interesting than other classes out there. However, I never seemed to be able to sustain my mana whenever the battle is long. I know that's why we have aspect of the viper, but I go out of mana in less than a minute right after I fill my mana right up. I'm just a nub at playing hunter.

I had a lot of fun with my warrior one he hit the 50s or so. My warrior was a killing machine at that time, dropping foe after foe, charging at the next target immediately after I've looted the corpse of the one I'd just slain. My warrior required hardly any rest, keeping his rage up all the time. I really enjoyed playing the warrior, but at that time, I was more or less getting sick of WoW, since that was one of my most intensive phases of WoW with 7 classes active. Because of that, I never leveled a warrior to the maximum level. In fact, I feel like leveling a warrior right now. It might even interest me more than my priest in the future. But then again, thinking of the raid opportunities, I'm going to have a really hard time getting into a raid unless I'm a tank.

Well then soon after, WoWscape got into dire trouble and MagicWoW was born. WoTLK was added along with it, and I had to start anew. There, I made only 4 characters. A level 80 priest, shaman and death knight, and a level 62 hunter (did that to activate death knight, who was on the Horde side while my priest and shaman were Alliance). However, only my priest and shaman are well-geared (above 4000 gearscore, pre-Ulduar). Now, the priest is the only character that I focus on. I am sick of shaman gameplay in raids, and my death knight is too hard to gear up due to the raid requirements imposed by the idiots in the server. Hunter? Told you I suck at them.

My WoW career most likely ends here. I don't know if I'll bother to continue playing into Icecrown Citadel and Cataclysm, but I'll keep in touch with the unfolding of events. Lord of The Rings Online is going to be free to play soon, and that's a pretty darn good MMORPG. I recently played one day of the LoTRO trial, and the main storyline is definitely immersive and good to follow. I plan to be a tanker in LoTRO to complete my playing of the MMORPG holy trinity (DPS, healer, tanker), but somehow I have this feeling that I'll end up playing a healer again. Or maybe I could play something similar to the WoW warrior, it should be fun.
Well, that's the end of the post for WoW, and the next few posts for other games will definitely be a lot shorter than this, since I played the other MMOs a lot less than WoW.

Next up, Guild Wars. Hmmm, it might actually be equally long.

Happy Independence Day

2010-07-04T00:00:00.005+08:00

Happy Independence Day

Happy Birthday

2010-06-30T00:00:00.000+08:00

Birthday in the army. Meh.

Rock Paper Scissors

2010-06-12T16:28:00.002+08:00

Love For Half-Life?

2010-05-22T19:32:00.000+08:00

“I’ve never understood the love for Half Life, particularly Half Life 2. Have tried any number of times to get into it, on both PC and PS3, but just can’t. The mechanics don’t feel right, and the story (that I’ve seen) is always just “Hey, we were going to tell you something important, but now we’re being attacked! Go to point B, perhaps in this awkward vehicle here, and *then* we’ll tell you!”
And then at point B, the same thing happens…”

- erlik, Kotaku commenter

Self-Righteous People.

2010-05-01T18:17:00.002+08:00

You know those people who bitch at you all the time because you’re not doing a particular thing? Yep, its those annoying idiots who never seem to disappear. You want to know why I hate my section so much? Its infested with them. 90% of the self-righteous people in my platoon come from my section.

*To give you an idea of what a section and platoon is, 1 company has 4 platoons, which is further divided into 4 sections. Your dealings in the army will revolve mainly around your platoon.

These people never fail to correct your mistakes, ask you to hurry up (even though you’ll just end up waiting for others), and the next thing you know, you see them making mistakes. One of them even corrected me on a mistake while he was doing the mistake. Genius. And when I corrected him back, he continued with his ramblings.

From Urban Dictionary: “Self-righteousness is a way unintelligent and non-athletic people can retain a sense of superiority.”

I know Urban Dictionary isn’t exactly trustworthy, but somehow I can’t help but feel that it’s true. I didn’t have any problems with self-righteous people in ACJC, possibly because the unintelligent weren’t very prominent there, and majority of the people are physically fit. When you step into where I am, where people are mixed up from all spectra of intelligence, and 95% of them failed their NAPFA, my gosh does all hell break loose.

Either way, they’ll never fail to piss you off.

I’m a miserable sod living in the army. I was just reading the usual news that I read each week I come back, and there was this guy who can’t seem to find friends in World of Warcraft. If you’re wondering why I’m having such a miserable time in the army, read the reply by Drama Mama Lisa. I just can’t find “my tribe”. Its been two whole months, and I don’t think that status of “miserable sod” is going to change. There’s only 60 or so people in my platoon, so I believe “my tribe” doesn’t exist in my platoon at all.

What tribes are there though?

- Enthusiastic people who want to go to OCS or SISPEC (about 20 or so people).
- Soccer fans (possibly 45 people).
- Horny idiots who think about girls, clubbing and sex (another 20 or 30).
- People who seem to just talk generally, i.e. day to day activities, what’s to come in the army. This is normal, except when that’s all they do (20).
*Numbers overlap, I’m not an idiot. And for your info, I hate the people who possess the first 3 qualities. Quality number 2 is fine if they don’t overdo it. The others are just simple turnoffs for me.

I swear, that’s it. No hardcore gamers, fine, I can understand and endure that. No one who can just let their hair down about the army activities? Sigh. Its like everyone’s a zealous fanatic who has a never-ending passion for the army. What has Singapore really offered to you? All Singapore ever does is care about the economy and the budget. We’re humans living in a country, not cogs in a machine. Singapore is merely oiling us to keep us spinning. And don't tell me that "at least we're not rusting". The Singapore government earns enough to use the two dollar notes as wallpaper for his house.

I might give the next person who annoys me the finger, or just reply with "shut up recruit".

Cheena Cheena

2010-04-17T20:33:00.002+08:00

You know, I'm starting to get really withdrawn in the army. When I first went in, I was like, "okay fine, I'll try to socialize and have fun, so that my time in the army wouldn't be that torturous." That is really not working out. I mean, the people there are just plain horrible. Culture shock, you might call it. Maybe its because I come from a more westernized culture, being in predominantly English-speaking schools for the past 12 years of my life.

The section I'm in has three quarters of them speaking Chinese. And for half of them, you don't even have to speak to them to know that they're of Chinese descent. They look so damn Chinese that you know that they speak Chinese wherever they go, and that includes at home. One of them doesn't even like the Western meals that they serve sometimes. And guess what the "Western" meal is? Broccoli, baby carrots, a big sausage, rice and generic Campbell soup. He doesn't like it. I mean seriously. That's barely the tip of the iceberg of Western food.

And they go around singing Chinese songs. It wouldn't be so bad if they can sing it properly, but they can't. Since they're so Chinese-bred, they bring around all their Chinese customs and behaviour along with them. I really can't get along with them. I have absolutely nothing in common with them. When I say absolutely nothing, I'm not exaggerating a single bit. DoTA, L4D, not reading books, watching crappy local TV dramas, what else is there that I don't like that they have to do?

Well, it looks like I'll be bumbling around in camp on my own for the next few weeks. Any interaction will be purely for the sake of army interests. Its already the case for the past week or so already anyway.

Time Is Scarce

2010-03-27T23:06:00.002+08:00

Been a while since I updated, and the reason is obvious. I actually came home last weekend, but I had to catch up on 2 weeks worth of news and apply for university courses, so I really didn't have time to do anything else.

Well, I'm not going to list out what the NS experience has been like from the start to till now, because that's just going to take pretty damn long. I'll just type out whatever stands out more.

So on the first day, you basically go to Pasir Ris Interchange, get on a bus, reach the ferry, get to Pulau Tekong, and you have to say oaths and stuff. They steal your pink IC, then they give you your green SAF card. After that, its lunch with the people who came with you, then its goodbye for 2 weeks. You go to your camp, get sorted to your bunks, then its a real busy day ahead of you. Its easily one of the longest days you'll have even though its factually one of the shortest.

First they'll give you a black duffel bag containing your army clothes and shoes and stuff. After that you'll get your field pack containing army equipment. Then I had to lug the damn things up 2 flights of stairs up to the hall to check if we had everything. Seriously dude, those things were heavy as hell. And my damn bunk is on the 4th floor.

Anyway you check your stuff. I really can't remember things well now, so what I say might not be very accurate. I think its lunch next, then things just get fuzzy. So to just list out the non-routine events of the two weeks:
1. Cut your hair
2. Get 3 jabs for vaccinations
3. Fill in a bunch of annoying paperwork

After all that administrative stuff is settled, life in the army is generally something like this:
0545: 5BX (basically morning exercises)
0630: Breakfast (not sure if its really at 6:30am, meh)
After breakfast to first parade: Clean the area you're assigned to
0730: First Parade (they make you drink 500ml of water and take your temperature)
0800:
1000:
1200: Lunch
1300:
1500:
1800: Dinner
Night:
2230: Lights Out

I'm sure you're wondering why there's blank spaces in the timetable up there. They're basically variables that change from day to day. It might be a route march, games, swimming, a talk, lessons, strength training, speed training, cadence runs, flexibility training, ability group run, area cleaning, or some other random rare event that might pop up.

So yeah, the army life is generally boring. Or to be more accurate, the physical training phase (PTP) of army. You're not going to be handling your SAR21 much, you're not going to learn to use the grenade, run the standard obstacle course (SOC), not going to go on field camps, no situational tests (something like the Band of Brothers part where Sobel had to lead his men through a set-up mission), nothing of that sort. In fact, I won't exactly call what I just listed above "fun". Its just unique and a special experience to go through.

Well, we all did get our rifles once though. Basically they're making us get used to the route marches, so they slowly add more weight and increase the distance we have to travel. The final target is 16km, with the full uniform, the load-bearing vest (LBV), field pack and rifle. Currently we're only wearing the green camo pants, the brown army tee, the LBV and the rifle. That's already about 8kg of weight. Oh, and we only march 3km.

So all we really did with our rifles is carry it around, oil it, and learn to check clear. Check clear is basically a process to ensure that there's no live rounds in the rifle. I'm not that keen anyway. Getting a rifle just means more responsibilities and more opportunities to screw up.

- The freakin' camp is infested with birds.
- We spent the first few nights smacking bees dead with a newspaper.
- I'm not sure if its a good thing, but staying away from the main camp requires transport, and its usually coaches we get to ride (air-con and comfy seats). Less time maybe?
- Thank God for putting me in the slackest platoon. I hope that title remains status quo. However, we've been told that we are crappy, so things may be heading downwards.
- There's ice cream every Tuesday during lunch.
- Their noodles and other noodle-like stuff taste damn weird. Its mushy and chewy.
- Their drinks always seem to taste better before you eat the food.
- You're going to gain weight.
- The floor surrounding the swimming pool is as gross as hell.
- Damn El Niños.
- Army songs are going to get stuck in your head for a while.
- Stale cigarette smoke. Sigh.
- Stop speaking Chineseeeeeeeeee!!!!!

And now for something interesting that even people who completed NS might not have experienced before.

Well on Wednesday, there were around 5 or so people who reported sick and came back from the medical centre with an "unfit for duty" status. On Thursday, it increased to about 12 or so. On Friday, there was close to 15 (light duty/unfit for duty). That's not including the people who were sick but did not report sick. I forgot to mention that this is purely on a platoon level, not company. My platoon has 64 people. If I'm to do a rough estimate on the number of people who are sick, I'd say 30 people.

That's a pretty alarming figure, so on Friday, we were sort of quarantined. On Thursday, they checked our bunks and water for ways that sickness might be spread. On Friday during morning exercises, we had to do it with a gap between us and the other platoons. During swimming, we didn't have to do warm ups, and we didn't have to swim. Damn that was good. Lots of us just slept through the swim. During gym session, we went off to a little corner to do our own exercises. To be honest, I kind of liked the way things was going, because it was like we had some sort of special status that just made us a special bunch. Its like we have our own VIP seats or something like that.

Thank God again for letting me kind of survive that. I'm not sick, though my throat is a little ticklish.

Friday was also book out day, but the bus driver went home when he was supposed to fetch us. Lol. Anyway, they called in army transports (you know, those huge lorries whose tyres are about three quarters my height). So we had to book out about 30-45 minutes later. Oh well.

Right. I just realised the title of the post is "time is scarce" and I've mentioned nothing about time being scarce at all. Well, I book out on Friday nights, reach home at 9:00pm the earliest. I have to bathe and stuff, and I'm sleepy as hell, so I usually sleep by 10:30pm. I have about 12 hours of sleep, wake up still sleepy on Saturday, read a week's worth of news and other crap, and I realise its almost time to sleep again. Then on Sunday, there's church, lunch, and when I reach home, I have to pack up, and its time to leave for Pasir Ris again. So really, I only have Saturdays to do what I want.

Ah well, 3 weeks down, 14 more weeks to go.

Conscripted.

2010-03-06T00:00:00.000+08:00

If you are reading this, then I am already gone.

I have been conscripted by Singapore. I'll be online a lot less now, and as a result, will be blogging a lot less.

Singapore. Remember that country. If you're below 18 and male, don't be a citizen or a permanent resident here, unless you don't value your freedom. Besides, most first-world countries don't have conscription. Since we have a largely third-world population, and we're in Asia, we're conscripted. Well that's not really the proper reason, but what the hell.

If you haven't realized yet, the link I put above for conscripted brings you to the slavery section of the page.

Average lifespan of a Singaporean male citizen: x-2 (x being the current average lifespan). Those two years we're stuck in the army isn't ours to use. On the bright side, I'll be more inclined to give someone a punch in the face now that I learn how to defend myself. Thanks.

Goodbye.

Results

2010-03-05T16:25:00.003+08:00

H1 General Paper: B
H1 Geography: A
H2 Mathematics: A
H2 Chemistry: B
H2 Physics: B
————
H1 Chinese: S
H1 Project Work: A

And that concludes one phase of my life. The next phase begins tomorrow.

You know, every year ACJC does this thing where they go down the list, calling people up the stage to celebrate, starting with the top student to the students with 3 distinctions. So starting with the two students with 8 distinctions, we have to wait one by one for like, 200 students to get up to the stage. Its like some sort of American Idol elimination. Its annoying if you ask me. Sometimes it makes you wonder “HTF did [insert name here] do that well?”

Ah, whatever.

A Day Out

2010-03-03T20:13:00.000+08:00

Went out with Samuel yesterday. Haven't seen anyone from Secondary school who isn't in ACJC for two years. Pity the other people I usually hang out with in Secondary school can't make it.

Anyway, we were supposed to meet at Cathay at 11:30am. I reached there at 11:30 or 11:31 or so, but that idiot decided to come 30 minutes late. Anyway, we were going to watch From Paris With Love. I haven't been keeping up with movies news other than the ones that are hyped up (Avatar), so I don't really know if there were better movies to watch.

Anyway, we bought our tickets first, then headed to Plaza Singapura to find something to eat for lunch. So the idiot decided to take a lift to the 6th floor, walk to the Japanese restaurant, flip a few pages, then walk around some more. Then I suggested Cafe Cartel and we went all the way back down again. Cafe Cartel has this set lunch meal for $9.50, which includes soup, free flow of bread, a drink, main course, and dessert. Pity the main course was kind of crappy for that day. Their fries suck. They used to serve ice cream for their dessert too. Now its some cream chocolate roll that you get from Polar Puffs & Cakes.

We were kind of late for the movie, so we went off right after lunch to Cathay. We were late, but not late enough to miss anything important. Only had to sit through about a minute of trailers before the movie started. Did I mention the movie is rated M18? To be honest, that rating doesn't even make sense. Movies like 300 and Hitman feature much more gore and nudity, and they're NC16. The censorship board being stricter maybe?

The movie is about two secret agents who try to protect people from terrorist threats and other shit. That's pretty much it. Lol. Just sit back and enjoy the action.

Quick rating: 3.5/5.0

So after the movie we decided to go play pool at Marina Square. I've never played pool before then, so I guess I wanted to try it out. But that idiot had a lot of things to do. Lol, keep calling him "that idiot". Anyway, he wanted to go buy some bread from Breadtalk, then he wanted to go to the bank. When we were in the link between City Hall MRT and Marina Square, he wanted to buy sushi. Well, I went to buy ice cream from McDonalds in Marina Square.

There are a lot of toy claw machines thingys outside the pool place, and I told him that there was this particular kind of machine which I think may be easy to win at. Its those kind of two-claw machines. Two claws might seem harder, but if you look at how they place the items, its always sticking out dangerously over the chute. I'm always thinking that all you really need to do is give the toy a little push with the claws, and you win. I never bothered to try. I don't want to sacrifice $1.50 to do that.

Either way, we went to play pool after that. It was $12 an hour, and apparently they don't accept our student Ez-link cards. So we had to give a $50 deposit. We didn't have 50 bucks, but the guy there was kind enough to just accept 30 bucks.

I kind of screwed up the first few shots, but who doesn't? I couldn't exactly get a comfortable hold with the stick, so I ended up hitting the ball weakly and off-centre. Well Samuel isn't that good at pool anyway, so I wasn't too far back even though I kept hitting like an idiot. He somehow managed to hit the cue ball off the table. Lololoolololooooooooool.

Halfway through the game I managed to get a hang of it. I didn't screw up my shots anymore, but that doesn't mean I'm pocketing balls left and right. Its going to take a lot of practice for that to happen. That doesn't even happen when I play pool on the computer. Anyway, I won the first game, mainly because Samuel took an eternity to pocket the black ball. I was like 4-5 balls behind him, and I had the luxury to pocket all those balls while he desperately tried to pocket the black ball. Somehow 1 game takes 30 minutes, so that really sucked.

The second game ended really quickly, simply because I accidentally pocketed the black ball before I was done with the coloured balls. Since there was about 15-20 minutes left, we started on a 3rd game. I did pretty well in the 3rd game, since by the time we had to stop, I had pocketed all my coloured balls, while Samuel still had 4-5 balls left. I went on a method of "just hit the damn ball and see where it goes". It works pretty damn well actually, since the balls just somehow manage to reflect off the walls and end up in a pocket you'd never expect. Even if it doesn't the ball might manage to end up somewhere that might be easier to pocket.

Comparing pool with bowling, I have to say pool is a lot easier to get a hang of. Just 10 minutes and you're pretty much able to hit the balls properly. I even made one shot that pocketed a ball from corner to the opposite corner, along the longer length of the table. Mastering pool is another thing. I still can't get a hang of pocketing a ball as long as its not an exactly straight line. In fact, I miss the straight line shots sometimes. On the other hand, bowling takes a much longer time to get a hang of. You're going to throw your ball into the gutter more often, and even if you do manage to hit the pins, you'd rarely ever be hitting anywhere close to the middle. But once you get the hang of it, throwing the ball where you want it to go is not much of a problem. However, causing any sort of spin or getting strikes constantly is something that would most likely not happen unless you had professional training.

We thought of bowling after the pool game, but they were doing some upgrading works on the bowling alley, and half of the lanes were closed. The remaining lanes were almost fully occupied, and the whole alley stuck of paint, cement, and all other smelly things you can think of that is related. It was getting quite late too, so we just went off wandering into the shopping mall. We went into quite a few techonology-related shops, such as Creative, Sennheiser, and Sony. To be honest, I really want a good pair of earphones. One that blocks out noise, and one that plays music with a quality as rich as normal speakers. Another funny thing is that I've never seen a PSP Go yet. PSP fails too much for them to bother selling it? Too expensive to bother trying to sell? Whatever the cause, all I know is that my PSP is becoming obsolete.

The idiot somehow managed to walk into a clothes store and wanted to try a pair of jeans. Full of problems.

Anyway on the way back to City Hall MRT, I bought the chicken floss bun from Breadtalk. I haven't eaten that in years, and geez doesn't it taste good. If there's a type of food I have to choose to survive on for the rest of my life, it'll be bread and cereal. Played the game where you have to tilt the phone to guide a ball into a hole on his iPhone. Pretty fun. If the iPhone isn't obsolete by the time I'm out of army, I might get one. Bloody hell.

I decided to stop at Dover MRT again to try to walk back home. Well, this time I didn't make a wrong turn at all. But the problem is, I didn't turn at all. So I ended up walking a lot more than I should have again. I ended up at Pine Grove, and damn that place is bigger than I thought. I don't know when I'll be attempting that walk again, but since I didn't turn at all, now I know that there's a total of 4 turns, and the 1st and 4th turn shouldn't be made at all. So there's two turns left for me to explore.

Assholes hogging the connection

2010-03-02T00:11:00.000+08:00

Here's my bandwidth history for today. I have a more accurate one, but that one would most probably be 1000000 pixels wide.

As you can see there's a funny part called "assholes hogging the connection". I know I spelled connection wrongly because Photoshop has a problem with detecting double-typed letters if done too quickly. To be honest, all they're doing is streaming videos to watch. I'm totally fine with that. But due to the nature of what they use to stream their shows, it causes other users of the connection to be slowed down so drastically such that attempting to surf the net is near impossible. Opening Google (one of the simplest pages around) takes a minute or two. Sometimes even a maintained connection with MSN Messenger cannot be set up (such programs use less than 1kb/s to maintain logged in status).

So, I download unnecessary things. It doesn't let me surf the net any better, but at least its denting their streaming.

I Like This Spoon

2010-03-01T00:48:00.000+08:00

I like this spoon. Its from Awfully Chocolate.

It's pictures like these that make you want to learn photography

2010-02-26T02:09:00.003+08:00

It's pictures like these that make you want to learn photography.

Interesting (reblogged comment)

2010-02-25T15:11:00.000+08:00

Referring to a comment by someone:

bloodelves88:
...
I really don’t mean to be THAT guy but I really just can’t help myself. Which Gears of War are you referring to? The first or the second? Either way your statement is ridiculous.
“The problem is, the screen is smaller, and the graphics is much worse (anything below cinematic... Read more...

Well whenever I blog, I blog for people I know and they know that I never play any console games at all, unless you count in the PSP. So there's no way I could have played Gears of War 2, and if you're some random person who somehow stumbled upon my blog, well, sorry about that.

That's a pretty long rant about my retarded expectations of gaming graphics. What I said was really just meant as a joke. Seriously? I compared video game graphics to a movie. You seriously expected to take that for real? Cloverfield has real people acting in it. Come on.

And graphics are always relative. When reviewing a game, you rate the graphics by comparing it to other games. If you want proof of this, I do a lot of game reviews. I don't go around giving games a graphics score of 2/10 or 5/10 just because of that statement I made. In fact, I'll give Gears of War a 9/10 or so. Heck, maybe 10/10, because you are right that Gears of War has revolutionary graphics. When I made that statement about anything below cinematic trailers or Final Fantasy movies is crappy graphics, I was being idealistic.

Lol, "blow my load" over graphics. I made one non-angry sentence about graphics, and you reply with 2 paragraphs full of angry, CAPITALIZED words. You're funny man. You're funny.

In fact, the whole point about this graphics thing is for me to explain why I'm getting sick from playing Gears of War. Its not as realistic as Cloverfield. I compared it to that movie because the camera movements are similar. I didn't bring up the topic of graphics for the sake of technology or gaming of any sort.

Game Update: The World is at War with Commander Shepard

2010-02-22T18:59:00.000+08:00

I haven't made any wordy posts for quite a while now, so here is one. I'll be talking about Call of Duty: World At War and Mass Effect 2. This is possibly going to be the last of the game updates for a very long time. I did want to play Gears of War, but that game just gave me horrible headaches similar to those you get when you read while in a car. Its funny, because Kotaku made a post about headaches recently too. I might get around to playing it one day, but it'll definitely take a while. If you're wondering why I'm getting sick from Gears of War, the camera moves around Cloverfield style. The problem is, the screen is smaller, and the graphics is much worse (anything below cinematic trailers or Final Fantasy movies is crappy graphics).

CoD: World at War isn't anything great, to be honest. It follows the older CoD 1 and CoD 2 games more closely than it follows Modern Warfare, and the whole World War 2 weaponry thing just isn't to my liking. What really annoyed me is that Nazi's or Japanese would just keep spawning until you get past a certain game trigger. Sure, killing them slowly does thin them out, but come on, watching 50 to 100 people pour out of a building is just annoying.

What I do like though, is flamethrowers. Yeah, you get to use flamethrowers in quite a number of missions, and since they have unlimited ammo and pretty much kills people once the fire touches them, it makes the game much easier.

I think the problem with Call of Duty games is that they start to become very repetitive and typical after you've played a lot of them, especially if you play them one after another. I played Modern Warfare 1 and 2, and World At War just within a month. This might be the reason why Modern Warfare 2 felt less epic than Modern Warfare 1, and World At War was just a pain in the ass to me.
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On the other hand, Mass Effect 2 is a masterpiece. Mass Effect 2 allows you to use your Mass Effect 1 save game to continue the story, and even though you might be tempted to download a random save game out there, I really suggest that you play Mass Effect 1 all over again and continue using that character. Its much more personal, and you'll feel a closer connection. Besides, when you use your Mass Effect 1 save file, its not only the major details like the survival of the council that will be brought over, but many other minute details that you might not even remember that would be brought over. People you've freed or killed will come back to jolt your memory one way or another, and when you remember who that person is, you'll have that moment of surprise.

One thing I'm not sure whether or not I like is the change to the weapons. More specifically, the ammo. In Mass Effect 1, you had unlimited ammo, but there was an overheating system that prevented you from shooting too much in a short period of time. Now, weapons will never overheat, but they now use thermal clips that quickly cool the weapon, and well, its just a fancy way to say that the gun uses ammo. Finding ammo isn't particularly difficult, but that doesn't mean that I can go around shooting like a maniac either. The reason why I may not really like this change is that the effectiveness of the sniper rifle is reduced. Its not reduced in the sense that its weaker, but the stronger rifles only have about 10 shots before you're out of ammo. Even then, these shots take off at least 90% of the life of the enemy, so its as good as a "one shot, one kill" thing because you can let your squad kill him off.

Speaking of squads, the AI of the squad has been significantly improved. In Mass Effect 1, they pretty much just stood there looking cool and killed the occasional enemy that decides to come too near (well technically they spent a lot of time dying and shooting at the air). Now, they take cover, use skills, and actively take part in combat, but that doesn't make your job any easier.

You can now explore the galaxy actively, probing planets to collect resources that you will use to upgrade both your squad and your ship. This is pretty much something that you have to do, or bad things will happen to you and your squad. I'm really just being vague and talking only about gameplay, because the story is something that you should really find out for yourself.

There we go. That's it. Don't know whether I'll have any time to play more games.

Happy Valentine's Day!

2010-02-14T23:36:00.000+08:00

Woops, almost forgot to add a Valentine's Day picture this year. I guess since I don't go to school anymore, the whole atmosphere just isn't there. The fact that Chinese New Year is on the same day makes the atmosphere even less.

Well, Happy Valentine's Day!

Do You Like My Shoes?

2010-02-10T00:49:00.001+08:00

Do you like my shoes? I’m wearing it in my Facebook profile picture, if you’re wondering how the overall look might be like.

Game Update

2010-02-04T20:05:00.001+08:00

Its that time again, where I bring you updates on the games I've been playing, and my progress so far.

In my previous Fallout 3 update, I said that I was just going to play Mass Effect and Batman: Arkham Asylum. Well, plans change, and I'm adding Modern Warfare 1 and 2 to that list. I'll most likely have to add another 1 or 2 more games to that list again as well, and I'm considering either Mass Effect 2 or Gears of War. I'm leaning more towards Gears of War because its better to play an entirely new game since it'll give me a wider scope of the games out there.

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Mass Effect is created by the same people who brought us Dragon Age: Origins, so the same high standards are present in both games. However, the player's speech is voiced in Mass Effect, and chat isn't "what you see is what you get". Well what do I mean by this? In Dragon Age: Origins, if you choose to say something, then that's it. But in Mass Effect, you might choose to say "are you sure?", but once chosen the player will start to say something much longer and more developed, usually of the same meaning of what you chose to say. Notice I said usually. Sometimes I picked something, but the player decided to say something I wouldn't want to have picked.

Anyway, I chose to play as a ruthless spaceborn infiltrator. Ruthless spaceborn is just the character personality that I picked, and it hardly affects the game later on. This problem kind of exists in Dragon Age: Origins as well - your personality makes little difference as the game develops.

Picking infiltrator to be my class was a great choice. Most areas in the game are big enough for sniping to be effective, so that really made my life easy. Besides, its always much easier when you can snipe some idiot who doesn't want to come out of cover. I almost wanted to pick a biotic. Biotics use force, similar to the "force" in Star Wars. Push, pull, shield, blah blah.

I tried to get some downloadable content (DLC) for Mass Effect, but for some reason, after installing it, it didn't seem to work. The game said it doesn't not have any DLC installed. I tried to patch the game next, and it said Mass Effect wasn't installed. Er okay. Whatever. I got the Return to Ostagar DLC for Dragon Age: Origins though. You get to get the late King Cailan's armour. And Duncan's daggers. And you can choose to leave Cailan rotting at Ostagar. Lol! Oops, spoilers.
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I played Modern Warfare 1 next. Modern Warfare is what you'd expect from any Call of Duty game. Immersive, epic, and the feeling that you're in the game. I've never been disappointed by any Call of Duty game, and if Infinity Ward keeps this up, I don't think I'll ever will.

One of my favourite missions in Modern Warfare is the one where you play as Captain Price when he was a Lieutenant. You're a two man team with Captain Macmillon, and you're wearing this funny ghillie suits. Its really funny especially when you're supposed to run from cover to cover in a limited amount of time, because you look some like sort of swamp monster running around. ahahaha!

I'm also given many choices to whether I want to get around enemies stealthily, or to take them down stealthily. Its kind of annoying, because, Captain Macmillon also has a sniper rifle, and when there are two guards standing in front of me, I have to take them down both by myself without alerting one of the guards. Why can't we just shoot them both at the same time like in Modern Warfare 2?

Anyway, there was this part where you had to snipe the target from a really long distance, so you had to take into account the wind speed and direction, as well as the distance to target. Well I hit the target's shoulder, so his arm flew off. Pity so few games have such sniping circumstances.

The ending was kind of funny too. Did they really have to repeat the same situation in Modern Warfare 2 again? You and Price are badly injured, and you somehow manage to kill the enemies in an epic sort of way. Then help arrives. Meh. (I haven't played MW2 yet by the way. I've seen all I know about it from Xfire Live Stream.)
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Batman: Arkham Asylum was a surprising one for me. I've always had the idea that games made out of movies/books/etc are just plain horrible, so I'd never imagine this game to be that good. To give you the best idea of what it plays like, I'd say its like Assassin's Creed in a future timeline.

Batarangs, explosive gel and grappling hooks are just a few things that Batman has in his arsenal. Batman isn't as invulnerable as you'd want him to be, so you have to be careful who you want to pick a fight with, especially if they're armed or a super mutant. What's really good about this game is the fighting system. To be honest, its one of the best melee fighting systems I've seen so far. It's dynamic and fluid, so fighting never seems to be out of place or broken in some way. Well I can't really explain it properly. You have to try it or watch it. I'll put a video up for you to watch.

I can't seem to think of much to say about the game, even though it never has a rating below 9/10. I'll just say what the story is. Basically, you've caught Joker and brought him into Arkham Asylum, and things go horribly wrong. Joker has been planning to be caught for a really long time, and now, he's put his plan into action. He has got the help of certain people, and he's looking for the formula to make a toxin which turns people into large mutants with super strength. So, you're off to stop Joker, who leaves many clues and continuously goads you to try to stop him.

Okay, first video is how fighting is like, and second video is what a day in the game is like.

So, Where Do I Live?

2010-02-03T19:10:00.001+08:00

I’ve never really liked answering that question. I usually reply with the name of my condominium, but that’s really not a good answer, because nobody really knows where each condominium really is.

Actually, it wouldn’t be such a bad question if I stayed at a place which is well-known to many. However, looking at the map, I’ve come to realize that I really stay in the middle of nowhere. Take a look at the map I’ve attached. I stay near many areas that people would recognize immediately once they hear it, but I’m not near enough to really be considered “staying there”.

So, can anyone answer that question for me? Where do I stay?

Roleplay Gone Amok

2010-02-02T16:47:00.002+08:00

Hi: Greetings noble one!
Ken: jere: lol ya it is a long show but a reallly nice one. hi: zzz yes peasant what do u want?
Hi: I seek audience with the king of the land of blankness!
ken: err... what? i guess i'm the king....
Jere: well.. whoever is Hi.. seems... eccentric..
Hi: I am a messenger from Roak! We kindly ask for an alliance with you, great and mighty one.
ken: jere: no hi is more than eccentric, he's an idiot! lol
ken: hi: an alliance u shall have, but what do i get in return?
Hi: That is wonderful news! I shall give this message to my king. For now, farewell!
Hi: And if you call me an idiot again, the Kingdom of Roak shall be at war with your tiny little village.
Hi: My King says that your blog is a pain in the butt to navigate.
Jere: Err..... This is weird, seriously, kenneth ban this toot from your box LOL
Hi: Ha! You underestimate the Kingdom of Roak. A puny little ban will not stop me...
ken: lol i don't really care... spam away hi. only thing u can do but not irritate me
Hi: Madness? This is Roak!
Hi: This is blasphemy! Thou shall not put blogs under my great name!
Jere: This is like watching roleplay amok
Hi: Foolish friends you have noble ally. He calls the life we're living roleplay? Indeed! More blasphemy!
Jere: seriously. if you got the guts come find me with a sword -.-... i got 5 to pick from.. and i aint kidding.
Hi: Oh really? I have the Legendary Sword of Truths, made my the finest blacksmith in the land. Those silly little swords you have will not scare me! Be gone! Spawn of Darkness!
Jere: Cough... wow...... sword of truth.... I'm.. so.. scared.....(cough, if only i really was)
Hi: Fool! You shall cease such retarded behaviour at once! Annoying indeed!
ken: lol glad to see u 2 are enjoying each other's company...
Hi: Enjoying? That man is a scourge upon your lands. You should drive him out at once!
ken: hi: lol juz ignore him... nothing to do anw

Possibly The Last Outing In The Next Two Years With Great Friends

2010-01-30T11:46:00.002+08:00

What a long title. Its a long post too.

Anyway, the usual bunch of us who usually hang out together in school decided to go hang out on 27 January. Seems like lots of people want to hang out before they go to the army sometime during the first week of February (hate spelling February). Its understandable anyway.

I was initially kind of annoyed by a few things about this outing. First, we had to meet at 9am, and since I've been waking up at 10:30am or later since the A's ended, waking up at 7:45am is a rather colossal change for me. I went to sleep a few hours earlier, and I didn't feel horrible at all, so its all good.

Second, they wanted to watch Tooth Fairy out of two better movies. IMDb is a highly reliable source of movie information, so when I saw the rating of 4.1/10, I was like, "ZOMG NO WAI!" I went to google for more reviews from other sources, and most of them didn't turn out good. We didn't watch a movie in the end, so its all good again. Lol.

Okay, time to go on to what we did.

We decided to meet at City Hall MRT, then make our way to Marina Square. I decided to take the bus route instead of the MRT, and I ended up getting stuck in the rush hour jams. Sigh. At least there's no squeeze in the bus I guess. Still had to stand during most of the trip though. I reached City Hall MRT at 9:15am, and the last guy arrived less than five minutes after me, so that's a great improvement from the other class outings.
Then we had to walk a really long distance to Marina Square (alright fine its not really long, but its still long anyway), and Kenneth was already there so we had to meet him there. According to Matthias, he brought "a few friends". Turned out that his "a few friends" was just one girl. Right. Girlfriend?

So Matthias starts getting worked up about how we're supposed to be hidden from view because we were going to go bowling, and we are all beginners at it. Its just one of his usual rants, so nothing really happened anyway. LOOOOOL.

It was around 9:30am then, and the bowling alley opens at 10am. So we ended up at McDonalds to have breakfast. Only Matthias ate anyway. I wanted to buy ice cream, but it wasn't ready yet. I ended up having a tummyache sometime later, so I didn't buy it later even though it was available. Matthias doesn't know who Yoda is.

So blah blah blah, we talked here and there, laughed at our stupidity and lameness, and then went to the bowling alley. We ended up taking some pictures outside the bowling alley, where there was a few murals on the wall. Apparently Matthias wanted us to stand in the pose mirroring the creatures on the wall, so err, that kind of felt stupid, but at least he doesn't upload pictures onto Facebook.

I didn't bring any sort of identification with me, so I ended up paying the adult rate. Its just 1 dollar more anyway. So we took our shoes and picked our balls. Initially I chose balls with numbers around 10. So we started bowling, many balls started flying in the air, many landed in the gutter, and some hit the pins. I was leading during the first half of the first game, then Matthias suddenly somehow just got this miraculous touch, and started flying past me. So the game ended, I came in second, we had fun, and a second game started. This time, Kenneth got a few strikes and spares initially, so I ended up starting at second placing. Then my hand kind of got tired while bowling, and I dropped to the smallest number there, which was 8. After a while, I managed to find the ball that was best for me, and I started owning with that ball. Balls started to strike head on in the middle, and I could target individual pins standing alone. Strikes and spares starting coming in for me, and I was on par with Kenneth. Then I got a spare on the 10th bowl. That helped me win. That concluded the bowling session for us, with me holding the highest score of 109. Matthias took videos of us bowling, but I doubt he's going to upload them anytime soon. I'd love to see the bowling again.

After that, it was lunch time, so we somehow ended up at KFC. I haven't ate there for quite a while. I bought this Ultimate Value Box thingy, which included a regular drink, mashed potato, 1 chicken, and 1 burger for $5.50. So we talked stuff again, and I said "hey, its Gaga again!" If you're wondering, Bad Romance was being played again, the first time in McDonalds. I talked with Zhong Sheng about some Facebook games, mostly about fighting bosses in Castle Age. But really, we were discussing what to do next. Movies was kind of eliminated because there wasn't exactly a good movie to watch, and someone already watched the good movies available. So, it was either billiards/pool (what the hell's the difference?) Somehow we ended up discussing what game to play, and pool just made a silent exit out of the discussion. With still no idea what game to play, we made our way to the LAN shop anyway.

Soooo, we reached the LAN shop (odd, I don't remember anything about the MRT trip from City Hall to Dhoby Ghaut, other then the time we were all looking at the map and I asked Kenneth if he needed a compass). It was four bucks for three hours, and the LAN shop has an authentic Frostmourne. I wanted to take a picture of it, but it was took dark. I can't transfer photos from my phone anymore anyway, new computer has no infrared/bluetooth. So we started off playing Counterstrike, the first map being the stupid AWP sniping map. Gosh I seriously hate that map. I've played on that map twice, and I've NEVER ever killed a single person there with the AWP. Something is seriously wrong. Anyway the map was changed soon enough, to that map with the swimming pool. That map was pretty fun, but somehow for some reason I just plain suck at Counterstrike. I didn't do too badly anyway, ending up with a 1:1 kill-death ratio, considering that I was in the team of two people and the other team had 3.

Then the map changed again, to the de_dust map. This time, bots were finally added, the gaming continued. We also played the map where we are mini people in a house (the kitchen to be exact). That didn't last long, and we changed to Warcraft 3 soon enough. At first we tried to play rabbits vs sheep, but that game is impossible to play fair with unbalanced teams. Skill level isn't going to overcome an extra player there. So we changed to Enfo's Team Survival. Yeah, one of my favourite maps in Warcraft 3. In fact, I think its my favourite map. I picked my favourite hero, the Cabalist (the one with the immolation). So at level 6 I started running around burning everything in sight, racking up the highest kills and the least deaths. Then at some point in the game, the creeps just started to do way too much damage to us for us to survive, so game over.

Somehow, I didn't give you some gaming background information about the group of five people. Well, all you really need to know is, two of us are experienced, while the other three are kind of new at the games. Not that new till they're totally stupid though. They can still get by. Better than some idiots you see around in WoW or Garena.

Since it was really fun, round 2 started. I picked a mage this time, the moon mage. Unfortunately, the moon mage is one of the harder characters in the game, so I ended up contributing crap for the game. I had the least kills in that round. The cooldowns were just too long. Well technically, I'm supposed to know when's the best time to use my spells, and that's why its a hard character to play. I can't just go around spamming skills just because I like them and that its a confirmed clearance of the area. I also learnt how to summon creeps using the spellbringer (the giant book on a pedestal), so that will be very useful for emergencies. Anyway, there was no proper end to that round, because the 3 hours of gaming was up. =(

So Enxuan (Kenneth's friend) said something like "that was fun although I suck". I didn't really bother much at first, but now I bother. Few girls play video games, even fewer play games like Counterstrike and Warcraft 3, and actually have fun. I've always made it up in my mind that I'd try to get engaged to a girl who's not totally against gaming, and if possible, even play a bit of games (hopefully with me). Damned lucky are the gamer guys who get such girls.

Apparently, we overshot by 6 minutes, so we had to pay an extra 50 cents. Ok... Sure. Right. That's how you afford your Frostmourne huh? HUH?

So we were wondering what to do next, and we ended up walking around two arcades. One in Dhoby Ghaut MRT, and another in Plaza Singapura. I have no idea why we did that.

Right after that Matthias, Zhong Sheng and I parted ways with Kenneth and Enxuan, since Kenneth had to buy a cake and present for his sister or something like that. Dunno.

So Matthias and Zhong Sheng wanted to take the shuttle bus from Plaza Singapura to somewhere nearer their house, but they couldn't find it, so we all just ended up taking the MRT. Chatted a bit about NS and Facebook games, then I stopped at Dover MRT. Apparently its better if I stop at Dover MRT and just walk home, so I decided to try it now. I ended up making a wrong turn, and I had to walk a bit more than I think I should have.

Then the next day, I woke up with an aching forearm and back. I need to start exercising soon so that my muscles ache while I'm at home rather than in camp where I can't rest just because of aching muscles.

And I want to play again! Lets go LAN again. Lol. The people in Garena suck. $10 for 10 hours? Nah just kidding. Not really kidding about the LAN again though. Playing alone gets boring, no matter how good the game.

Good memories deserved to be archived like this in full.

Fallout 3 updates.

2010-01-28T20:19:00.001+08:00

Alright, I've just completed Fallout 3 a few hours ago. I don't know if its because I've played Assassin's Creed, Dragon Age: Origins, and GTA IV all in a row, but Fallout 3 didn't seem that great at all. Maybe its because I cheated, but I really doubt what I cheated with should make such an impact at all. If you're wondering what cheats I used, wonder no more! I changed my move speed from 4 to 10, I turned on god mode, and I gave myself a magnum that killed everything in one shot. All I really did was just to speed things up. I couldn't imagine walking across the Wasteland at the normal speed. I'd most likely fall asleep doing that. The combat isn't anything great too, so I cut the crap out. In fact, this allowed me to spend more points into things that does not affect my combat directly. I could invest more in speech, science, lock picking, and perks like "child at heart", "lady killer", and other similar perks. This opened up many more interesting things that I could do, so I have to say I experienced more in one game than the non-cheater would have.

I think what really spoiled the game for me is the fact that I kept getting lost. It is very likely that this is attributed to my move speed being more than two times normal, so I missed many side paths while traveling around. You have absolutely no idea how often I kept getting lost, and I'll soon get really frustrated and annoyed, and that really killed how I felt about the game.

Next up, Mass Effect, Batman Arkham Asylum, Seasons 1-4 of Family Guy, then its probably time for me to leave this island.

The title of this post was originally "Game Updates & Life", but I have no idea what I was going to say about "Life", so I guess I'll stop here. I'm starting to suffer from short-term memory loss. I keep forgetting what I was going to say or do. Sigh.

Sneezing Baby Panda

2010-01-26T12:45:00.001+08:00

The Eraser And The Dust.

2010-01-24T01:52:00.001+08:00

Grand Theft Auto

2010-01-23T11:24:00.002+08:00

Geez I hate needing to think of good and proper titles now that they can be see easily.

Anyway, I’ve recently completed GTA4, and sad to say, its the first PC version of GTA that I’ve completed while going through and understanding the whole story. I’d also like to boast about how many GTA titles I’ve actually completed. Lets take a look (in chronological order):

Grand Theft Auto: Vice City (PC)
Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (PC)
Grand Theft Auto III (PC)
Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories (PSP)
Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories (PSP)
Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars (PSP)
Grand Theft Auto IV (PC)

Yep, I’ve played and completed every single one of those. However, only in the last 4 did I really bother going through the stories in detail.

When you’re young and just want to have fun, you play games just for the heck of it. “Who cares about the story, I just want to blow some things up.” However, there comes a point where blowing things up starts to get a little dry, so the story and character development starts to become the main priority of your game. The challenge of the game also starts to become pointless, so you start to play everything at easy difficulty so that you can get the story and game completed as soon as possible. I guess that’s what 10 years of gaming does to you. In fact, I tried looking for some sort of cheat in Dragon Age: Origins to make my character walk faster. I was getting annoyed.

Well I guess I should be talking about GTA here, and not about general gaming. I don’t think I’ll be doing a review on this, so I’ll say what I want to say here. You start off as a European guy who has traveled to Liberty City in hope of making some money and living the life of a king. Your cousin picks you up, and you’re off to your life. Your cousin has lots of problems that you end up fixing for him, and you start to end up working for a bunch of other people in order to earn money. In fact, earning money becomes one of your main reasons why you work for others. You’re also looking for two people who survived the war with you, one of them a person who betrayed you and the army.

Rockstar (GTA’s developer) has also significantly improved the graphics and physics of the game. There’s ragdoll physics, so seeing your character fly through the air and tumbling across the ground is rather amusing, since all the limbs and joints can twist and turn independently. You also get to control the headlights of the car, and crashing the car will cause dents and damage specific to where you hit the car. I really love how cars explode now. Instead of the usual circular boom of fire in the previous versions, you get to see a boom of fire, coupled with smoke and flaming debris flying through the sky, leaving a trail of smoke following it. What’s left of the explosion is the metallic husk of the vehicle, with remnant bits of fire here and there. I’m sorry if I’m a little obsessed with the graphics, I’ve been playing games with a crappy graphics card for a few years now, and honestly speaking, I’ve never seen such good stuff.

Oh, and I really love it when a rocket from a rocket launcher flies past you, because it sounds awesome.

You can also form relationships with other people now, adding them to your phonebook (yeah you get a phone), calling them up to have dates and to do activities together. You can go bowling, play darts, pool, go drinking, have a meal, and go to the strip club. You get to play and control the bowling, darts and pool too, and I must say, the way pool is played here is pretty good. There’s lots of control in it. They should have added a casino in the game though. That would have been interesting.

ACJC V-Day

2010-01-21T12:36:00.000+08:00

To Marina Barrage!

2010-01-19T00:38:00.002+08:00

Just last Saturday I went to Marina Barrage with a fraction of my class. Its a pretty cool place, in the literal and the "slang" sense.

Well, as freakin' usual (like what? the 3rd or 4th outing and its the same), we were supposed to meet at 4pm, but I reached there at 4:15pm, and less than half the people were there. The last person came at around 4:45pm. The number of people who came was rather disappointing, because only 7 of us (including me) came. Excluding the six foreigners from our class, that's 7 out of 18 people. However, the plans for it only came about last Thursday at 11:30pm, so many people had their own things going on. Anyway, small groups are good in a way because people don't get divided into their own cliques.

So, after meeting up, we walked to some random bus station that's just planted on the sidewalk somewhere. The wait was pretty darn long, and there was some confusion on whether the bus even leads to Marina Barrage. Anyway, the bus finally came, and we were lucky to get on board because the number of people waiting before us was pretty large.

After a while, we reached there. Walked in, followed the crowd, and we walked to the rooftop to find a spot to sit. We were having a picnic, and there was no mat. Lol. Anyway we just sat somewhere, then we kinda sat around and did nothing much for a while. There were a lot of kites in the sky, so we just sat there silently looking at the kites. After a bit of eating sandwiches (which tasted really good), bananas, grapes, McDonald's nuggets, and getting hit in the face by an uncontrollable kite (fortunately it doesn't hurt since its lightweight material), we decided to buy a kite.

So the kite came, we assembled it, and off it went! The kite never seemed to go above a certain height, and I'm pretty sure its just us. There were a few other identical kites that went pretty high up, though nowhere near the highest of the kites. The string snapped while we were flying it, but thankfully the kite landed somewhere retrievable. I somehow ended up reeling the string back, and geez, that is seriously one long string. I bet it isn't even the longest string around.

Anyway there were many interesting kites around. There were fishes, bats, octopuses, squids, Mickey Mouse, Hello Kitty, snakes (really long), kites with blinking lights, and possibly a lot more that I can't remember. So the kite flying went on for an hour or so. The sunset was also visible from where we were, and there was this one time where the sun was behind the clouds, and it created a really nice effect.

Night soon came, and we all just sat down and started talking. There was this group of church teenagers, and they were being really active and making lots of noise and singing songs, so people like Kannan have to start joining in by mimicking them or making stupid noises. Then the girls would just start attacking him.

Sooooo, we sat and talked for a really long time, until 9:30pm. Kannan was the main conversation starter, asking a lot of questions here and there. Me being me, I just lay on the ground and listened. It was also pretty darn cold there, with a non-stop breeze of cold air. I really felt like just sleeping there overnight. The grass was amazingly comfortable and it had no insects infesting it. They must have did something to the grass since its insect-free. All grass living on this planet should be like that. Lol. Begone, six-legged freaks!

We talked about how the quiet people are all secretly people who are sort of badass, how we have gangs and stuff. We talked about Harsha's journey to India which was seemingly pointless even though she went to many parts of India. Then there's Brenda who isn't exactly the good girl you think she is. Then the inevitable Mr Foo pops up in the conversation, and I was kind of surprised to hear that the PAE people actually saw him as a really good and kind teacher that one would want to have, and that the classes before us actually really liked him a lot. Hmm, I wonder what changed to cause the crap that he gives to us. Sigh. Then there's the prom, in which I have no idea what's going on.

Eventually, all good things come to an end, so we had to leave. Went back to the bus stop and took a bus to somewhere near the MRT station. I had to part with everyone a bit earlier since I had to stop at Dhoby Ghaut to take a bus home, since the usual bus service at Buona Vista doesn't operate during the later hours of the night. I was wondering if I should stick around longer and stop at Clementi instead, but ah, what the heck.

So there, that's the story of my day. What's yours?

Hold Devil's Pot Of Tea

2010-01-16T00:32:00.001+08:00

Random Day Video

2010-01-15T00:00:00.000+08:00

Funny Pictures

2010-01-14T01:14:00.000+08:00

I've uploaded a bunch of funny pictures to my Facebook album. Enjoy!

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=135262&id=744977054

Also, this thing is really cool.

Dragon Age: Origins

2010-01-12T14:36:00.000+08:00

Dragon Age: Origins

To be really honest, this game wasn't on my "must play" list. I've never really liked RPGs in general, since they somehow tend to become very tiresome after a while. However, I still got the game anyway, and there has been no regret.

The game centers around the issue of the Blight, a threat that happens once every few hundred years. This Blight occurs when the Archdemon threatens to gather all the darkspawn, bringing them to the surface to wreak havoc among the inhabitants. You end up being a Grey Warden, and you are tasked with gathering an army to defeat the darkspawn. Legend says that only Grey Wardens are able to completely defeat the darkspawn. I shall not talk much about the story, since the story is meant to be something that you discover for yourself.

Now, on to character creation. The character creation is very flexible, allowing you to design your character's face in almost any way possible. Hairstyles, eyebrows, jaws, nose, eyes, blemishes on your skin, face paint, your voice, and much more. However, I do find the amount of hairstyles limited, and I'm wondering why there's no option at all to adjust other parts other than the face. I want to be a short/tall, fat/thin, or muscular/lanky, you can't customize any of those. Everybody's body will look the same, and I find that rather depressing.

In this game, there are three races and three classes you can play as. Humans, dwarves and elves are the races, warrior, rogue and mage are the classes. However, dwarves cannot be mages as they have a natural immunity to magic. Also, each combination of a race and class has a certain background that you can choose from. These backgrounds range from a noble to a casteless person, and each of these six backgrounds will give you a different start to the game. Also, what you choose will change the reactions of people towards you. Pick an Elf, and you might see yourself be discriminated against much more often than if you were to pick a Human Noble. Each class will also have four different specializations that they can make in the game, but they will have to either learn it from another person, or from a tome that can be purchased from certain merchants.

Combat is more tactical in nature rather than real-time, allowing you to pause and give out commands to your party of four. If you want an idea of what it is like, try playing Dungeons and Dragons Online, for it is very similar. If you are a mage, you will not be able to charge in and unleash all your area-of-effect (AoE) spells, as these spells can damage your own party, unless you play on easy difficulty. Tactics can be assigned to your party members, allowing them to know what to do in a certain situation automatically. Surrounded by two or more enemies? Use cone of cold. Health drops below 10%? Use a health poultice. There are also default tactics given, allowing characters to be a damager, healer, defender, archer, scrapper, and several other default tactics that will allow you to easily set the tactics without being too much of a hassle.

What I really like about this game is the way you can interact with the characters in the game. Conversations are aplenty, and each conversation can have a different outcome, some decisions even impacting the story that you will get when the game ends. Often I find myself wondering how I should respond, hoping that the desired outcome can be achieved. Bioware (the developers) have also seemed to think of every possible reply that a person would want to make to the character, for I have rarely come across one where I couldn't find a suitable reply. You can try being a kind and hospitable soul, or an idiotic, rude barbarian, or even a person who wants a reward for every single helpful deed he does. When it comes to your party members, the interaction goes another step further. There is a approval rating for each of them, and it is based on how you interact with them. Each party member has their own set of beliefs, so how you act in front or with them will change how they think about you. Trying to go the extra mile to help someone may impress one, but it may annoy the other. You can also give gifts to your party members, increasing their approval. Eventually, you may be able to form relationships with them, gaining kisses and possible a night with them. Some of them are also able to teach you the specializations for your class.

The terrain and buildings are built on an epic level scale, encompassing tall, majestic statues, mystical carvings on the walls, and boy, if you walk into the Dwarven cities, the masonry will blow your mind. I wonder why is it that Dwarven cities are always so epic. The level of detail is also very high, with intricate designs on your armour, threads and stitches can be seen on your robes, and a full plate set of armour on a warrior never looked so good. However, one major gripe I have with the graphics is the way they portray blood on the characters. Whenever you go into a battle, the game literally sprinkles blood on you, leaving you covered in dots of blood. While I understand this is supposed to be realistic, it looks like crap. There is absolutely no design in the way the blood is splashed onto you. I maybe never have had an enemy killed behind me, but there is random dots of blood all over, from the face all the way to my toes. And it is seriously random dots. Yes, dots. DOTS. I have my graphic settings maxed, so yes, it is dots.

The music is pretty much scarce, and will only play when an event happens. Combat music will play when you enter combat, and it will disappear just as quickly once the fight is over. That is pretty music the only music you will hear throughout the game, other than one or two celebratory pieces at the end of the game.

The amount of lore in the game is vast and plentiful, as you will come across many books, scrolls, and events that will give you an entry in the codex that you collect. These codexes contain much information, from quest information, information about the creatures you fight, the people you meet, and the places you visit.

All in all, this is one game that no one shouldn't be playing. Pick up your arms, join the Grey Wardens and let us begin this battle.

Graphics: 8.5
Sound: 8
Gameplay: 9
Lasting appeal: 9.5
Overall: 9.5

Dragon Age and updates

2010-01-11T02:42:00.000+08:00

Been quite a while since I posted something. Ever since I got a new computer, I've been playing a lot of new games. So far, I've completed Assassin's Creed, Dawn of War 2, Dragon Age: Origins, and I've got 4 more missions left on Settlers VI: Rise of An Empire. However, I don't really feel like completing Settlers VI anymore, because I'm at one of the harder missions, and its really annoying me. Besides, the story is mediocre, and when it comes down to RTS games, the traditional type still reigns (Command & Conquer, Dawn of War 1). Of course, there have been good changes to the RTS genre, such as World in Conflict and Company of Heroes.

Anyway, the next game I'll be getting is Grand Theft Auto IV, and I might have to get another one if it doesn't last me until March. Also, if you've haven't played Dragon Age: Origins, you really should. Its an RPG game, and possibly the first single player RPG that I've ever liked. The first RPG that was the most promising to be was actually Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, but that really disappointed me since the interaction between NPCs is rather rigid, the skill system too complex for my liking, and the AI did not live up to the hype that the developer brought.

Well, I think I'll do a review on Dragon Age: Origins, but I still don't feel like doing any sort of work. I have a basic theory of driving test in two weeks, and I've only studied like a fifth of the book. There's still the need for me to do some questions to see what its like. Ugh.

Also, with all these good games that I'm playing now, I've naturally stopping playing WoW. MagicWoW is taking a century to release Ulduar, and I have a feeling its not going to be released before I lose my soul for two years.

Building buildings

2010-01-05T23:56:00.000+08:00

I wrote this for Geography, something about earthquake hazards and management. Apparently the lecturer marked my script and decided to read it out to the whole lecture group. Everyone had a nice laugh there. Lol.

Its the third paragraph.

Church?

2010-01-03T01:20:00.000+08:00

Sometimes I really feel like changing to a different Church or something. To give you a bit of background information, I go to Jubilee Presbyterian Church, which is a church somewhere off Outram Road. Its started off as a Chinese church, but now they've added a bilingual service, where they translate the sermon after each sentence, and worship songs are in both English and Chinese.

Anyway, now that you know that, I'm pretty sure you can guess one of the reasons why I don't really like staying in this church. I don't like the "Chinese factor" that's present in the church. The church is supposedly over a century old, so there's a very large elderly population in the church, and most old people speak Chinese. The fact that they have to translate the sermon is also really annoying, since they practically repeat every single sentence said in another language that 95% of the people in the auditorium understand. It drags the sermon unnecessarily, and it kind of lessens the concentration you have.

The next reason is that I think the sermons make absolutely no sense at all. Ok, maybe absolutely is too strong a word, but I don't see how the sermons are relevant at all. They talk about stuff in the Bible, but I don't see any connection between what they're preaching, and what it has to do with us. I know not all sermons have to have some sort of moral to the story or a guidance or assurance, but this has been going on for the past three or so months, and its bugging the hell out of me. I can't really give an example now, because I tend to filter out information that doesn't make sense to me.

I also haven't really been going to Youth Ministry, mainly because of inconvenient timings and such. I don't really like Youth Ministry anyway, since I feel its rather badly coordinated and I don't really like the people there.

So there, as you can see, I'm not very happy with my church. There is actually another reason, but its a silly reason. I have to wake up at 9am, and because of that, I'm always more tired on Sundays than on any other days. The main reason is the sermons, and I honestly think the sermons in school are better. I miss chapel in school actually.

Happy New Year!

2010-01-01T00:24:00.001+08:00

Not sure how happy it'll be. The army isn't a good place to enjoy one's life.

Goodbye laptop, hello PC

2009-12-30T00:30:00.008+08:00

20 December 2009. That is the day my Ferrari Laptop died. Let's observe a minute of silence.

......

Ok.

I was planning on having fun playing Team Fortress 2 on that day. I only played it for about an hour or two the day before, and I wanted to play it even more on 20 December so that I could enjoy as much of it as possible. Valve was offering TF2 for free play during that time. Unfortunately, after playing for about 30 minutes on that day, the laptop just blacked out. I was going to snipe someone then, and I just went, "wtf". The laptop blacking out isn't something that hasn't happened before, so I wasn't too worried. However, try as I might, pressing the power button didn't seem to do anything. I turned off and on the main power supply. Nothing. Then I looked at the battery adaptor. The light on it was blinking faintly. I plugged out the wire connection to the laptop, and the light lit up perfectly. I have no idea what happened, but my Dad didn't want to repair the laptop anymore because its just a waste of money.

So, now I have a new computer. I think I did say previously that I didn't want a new computer that early, since I can't really take advantage of getting a Directx11 card. I did get Windows 7 though. Also, my computer is going to gain 2 years of age without me using it very often. Sigh.

Anyway, here are the specifications for the computer:
Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Quad CPU Q9400 @2.66GHz
RAM: 3072MB DDR3
Hard Drive: 736GB Total
Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce GT 220 1024MB
Sound Card: Realtek High Definition Audio

It isn't anything amazing, but its only SGD$1399 and it works fine. Google "Acer Aspire M5800" and you'll see its a budget power-pc. However, it has already been giving me problems. Just early this morning, the computer just became slower and slower, and then suddenly, it hanged. Next thing I knew, I saw a blue screen of death. I still have no idea what happened, but its fine now. Later in the night, while playing Battleforge, I was alt-tabbing frequently because I was either waiting for people to load (I'm finally waiting for others, ha!), or waiting for people to join. When I alt-tabbed back to the game, the screen just started flickering between my desktop and a black screen. The only way to stop it was to put my computer in sleep mode by using the button on the keyboard, waking it up, then closing the game without maximizing the game. It started when I saw a notification from Windows that the Geforce drivers had stopped responding, and that it has recovered. I seriously wonder why there are so little Radeon cards in premade computers. They're cheaper and provide the same or better performance.

Peektures!

That's my new computer. It doesn't look snazzy or anything. Who cares about the look of a computer anyway? Anyway, I'm not using those speakers, and the mouse is wireless. The $1399 price comes with a 23 inch widescreen monitor too. But my Dad took that and gave me his 19 inch monitor. The crappy thing is that it only has a 1280x1024 resolution, which is smaller than my laptop (no kidding). At least its an optimum resolution for most websites.

And that's the monitor I'm using. That funny sticker (I think) is not on mine.

And you know what's funny? My laptop's mouse isn't wireless (see picture). I'm glad to have a new mouse anyway. The Ferrari mouse has a really screwy scroll wheel. It can scroll up when its supposed to scroll down. I can feel the unresponsiveness of the new mouse though. That's the bad thing about wireless stuff.

I don't use that cooling pad either.

I use those speakers. They look like crap because they've existed since I was in Primary school. Brand is Cambridge Soundworks if you're wondering.

WoW update - Priest > Shaman

2009-12-29T16:50:00.021+08:00

WoW update. I've got my priest to 4106 gearscore, and my shaman is around 3950. I'm starting to get a little sick of my shaman, and to be honest, I do prefer my priest. Haha, I've been always talking about how the shaman is my favourite class and all, but in the very end, I like my priest more. I do think that I can PvP better with my shaman, but I've never been a PvP person. So, what really made the priest a better option for me is the fact that I don't have to drop totems in a raid every 5 minutes, I don't have to bother with crap like Heroism/Bloodust (funny, I just realised Horde gets sated while Alliance gets exhausted. Stupid Horde favour.), I don't have to keep Flame Shock up so that I can use Lava Burst properly (though 7-8k critical hits are cool), and I don't have to refresh Water Shield whenever its gone. All I have to do on my priest is keep people alive, and that is not as hard as it sounds to be. Or maybe its just easier for me. Besides, I enjoy the prestige that a priest can enjoy, being the premier healing class that can do all types of healing very well. So, its back to my priest. My shaman can be my money making character.

I've just booked a date for my basic theory test for driving. Seems like learning to drive is going to be a pretty long and slow process, and I have no idea how its going to work out with NS in the way. Oh well, I guess I'll just see how things goes when the time comes.

I know this is weird, but I'm wondering if I should go for orientation as a J3. I have no idea what's up with me. I hate orientation, and yet, I'm considering going for orientation. I guess the main difference is that I don't have to be obliged to do what they want me to do if I were a J1. Besides, I do like the campfire part of orientation, and people sneaking up on you and putting crap on you is pretty fun too (doing it to others is fun too). When does school start anyway?

I feel as if I'm wasted.

2009-12-28T20:12:00.000+08:00

This is the hardest story that I've ever told
No hope, or love, or glory
Happy endings gone forever more
I feel as if I'm wasted
And I'm wastin' every day

I seriously think that I've screwed up my JC life. Yeah yeah, I know that I've made two really really long posts about this already, but I just can't seem to get it off me. I've spent my JC life wanting it to end, wanting to go home each time I'm at school, wanting as little things to do with school as much as possible. In the end, I'm living a life of solitude and boredom, with my social circle in ACJC with at most 30-40 people, with 23 of those from my own class. =(

Anyway, I've got a 4E class chalet tomorrow. That's my secondary school class, and I don't think I want to go. I've never really connected or kept in touch with any of them, and they're not exactly that great too. I think I'll just leave it at that. Its funny don't you think? One paragraph talking about how I wasted away my social life in JC, and the next paragraph talking about me avoiding a good chance to widen my social circle. The difference is, one is a social circle that I've never bothered to discover. The other is a social circle that I've looked at, didn't like it, and stepped out of it. Besides, even if I want to go just to see how things have changed in the past two years, its at the eastern end of the island. I don't think its worth the trouble.

I'm going to make much shorter posts now, but they'll come in more often. This is the tl;dr generation, no one is going to bother reading such long posts unless they're really interested.

Merry Christmas

2009-12-25T00:00:00.001+08:00

Merry Christmas Everyone!

I'm here to rant

2009-12-23T16:56:00.000+08:00

I'm here to rant. Whenever people post something on forums or on video-sharing websites like Youtube, often there will be people who try to criticize the person who posted the original article. Next thing you know, a person replies with "why don't you post yours and lets see if its better?" or something along those lines. That really pisses the hell out of me. You can say its one of my pet peeves.

I'm not totally unreasonable about my pet peeve at all. In fact, such a retort to the criticism has absolutely no logic or meaning at all. One does not have to be an expert at something to be able to criticize it. Of course, there are some things that need an expert to be able to provide good criticism. Such things include photography and technical stuff such as building computers and such. When the above reply happens for such areas of work, I'm fine with that. However, it takes anyone with a brain to be able to know that someone looks horrible, or someone plays horrible music, or sings like a hyena. The next thing you know, "can you sing better?" "Why not post a picture of yourself and lets see how you look". I tell you, its annoying as hell.

I think you're trying to be cool and smart, but seriously, you just look like a complete retard with absolutely no logic or reasoning to anyone who realises that such a retort holds absolutely no power or meaning. So, stop it.