ThE NooB UnIoN

facebook games

2009-10-10T23:02:00.002+08:00

Recently I've been playing facebook games and I find them quite fun, although it might be a little boring :P Just starting playing cafe world, and it's quite similar to restaurant city. At first I thought it was just some lesser rip-off of restaurant city, so I stopped playing within a few minutes cos I generally dislike games that require you to manually add neighbours unlike playfish games which automatically acquire neighbours for you.

However, just a few days ago, I decided to give cafe world another try and found that I like it :D The one thing I like about cafe world more than restaurant city (r.c) is that when you don't open r.c in your browser, the maximum number of coins you can earn is only $2000, but in cafe world, as long as you have prepared enough food before you close the game, you can earn as much money as though you've been running the game in your browser. Another good thing is that you don't have to feed your employees! (lol, sounds like ill-treating :s)

In cafe world though, you have to decide and "time" the dishes that you're going to prepare, cos if you know you're not going to be at home the whole day (meaning you can't check on your cafe), then you'll have to prepare a dish that takes maybe 12hours or 1day to be done, if not by the time you log in to cafe world the next time, your dish will most likely be spoilt and wasted :(

Anyway I've a major problem with these facebook games like r.c, pet society, cafe world, country story etc. Each time I spend more than a few minutes with any of those games running in the browser, the cpu usage will inevitably shoot up to like 50% and above, causing the cpu fan to make some noise and it's super irritating. However, if I just leave the game running in the background and open another tab, then it'll be okay. I don't think it's the computer problem cos it's not that old, but I wonder if other people have this problem as well.

2009-09-14T01:33:00.002+08:00

Just chose my timetable on Sat. As usual and as expected, the school server lags (and sux) bigtime and kept having errors -_- Couldn't manage to get a 2day-week, but nonetheless, a 3day-week is still okay. Unfortunately, my lessons all start either at 12pm or 3.30pm; I would've preferred morning lessons so that my father can send me to school and also, I'll have more time to do other things after lessons end. So right now, I've lessons on Tue (3.30 - 6.30pm), Wed (12 - 3pm) and Fri (12 - 6.30pm).

Anyway recently I've got a very strong urge to learn guitar! Maybe it's because of playing guitar hero on ds :s I think electric guitars are cooler though, but then I think it might be too noisy, and it's super heavy man. Went to Yamaha the other day to take a look with my cousin, and could barely lift it up with only one hand O_O

But I think I'll most probably start off with an acoustic guitar ba.. though I'm thinking maybe I should try out on a friend's guitar first to see if I really want to learn it. Also not sure if my fingers might be too short to reach the notes comfortably, or fast enough to change notes smoothly :( And I also dunno what to look out for when buying a guitar, sigh.

2009-09-09T02:37:00.003+08:00

Have been too lazy to post anything here recently :P Hmm, anyway when I tried to log into blogger.com just now, I got redirected to a page and they kept saying my pw is incorrect even though I'm pretty sure it's correct. So anyway I decided to request for pw to be sent to my email, and here comes the irritating part; you have to type in your email address and then they'll ask you to type out the letters shown in a picture (probably for security reasons?) but the thing is the letters in the picture are so jumbled up and almost indecipherable that I had to try like 5 times before I got it right -_- Quite many websites have this feature which is so annoying! And I don't think it has to do with my bad eyesight :s I believe other people would've experienced this before too.

Anyway when I checked my email there wasn't any email sent yet, so I decided to try logging in using IE this time instead of google chrome. Surprisingly though, this time I managed to log in O_O so I tried using chrome and it was successful too, which is so weird because I'm sure I didn't type my pw wrongly on the first and subsequent tries.

Anyway, I was reading 8days just now and they have this "The Annoying List" and I found 2 of them to be really funny (in my opinion) so I shall be nice and share it :D

No. 20:
Nosey relatives who bug you about when you're getting attached / married / pregnant / a better job.

Do we ask you when you're hitting menopause?

No. 31:
Conversations with an air stewardess which go like this:

"Good evening, Miss, would you like the fish or chicken?"
"Fish, please."
"I'm sorry, we only have chicken left"

Actually I think I know why only got chicken left :s Hope the chickens will reflect on why nobody wants to eat them.

Oh and the twits actually got me a guitar hero grip for the ds as part of my bday present, lol. So unexpected but it's a nice surprise cos previously I did wanted to try it out cos it looks fun. However, the buttons are a little hard to press; it would be better if they made the buttons softer. So far I've only tried some songs on the first ds guitar hero game, and the song list don't really excite me :( It's all those English songs which I'm not really a fan of. Would've very much preferred it to consist of Chinese or Japanese songs :P

maple rant

2009-08-17T04:54:00.003+08:00

One thing I hate about buying stuff from people in maple is that most sellers will always ask you to offer a price. I mean, if you're selling something, by right you should be the one stating a price and not the buyer, because only you yourself will know what price you're looking for.

I totally hate being asked to make an offer when I'm the buyer. It's like going into 7-eleven and wanting to buy a slurpee, only to have the cashier asking you to offer a price, then proceeding to kick you out of the shop if the offer is too low. As the seller, you should be the one putting a price tag on the item you want to sell instead of the customer, regardless of who initiates the trade.

Having to offer a price will most likely put the buyer at a disadvantage because you can't offer too high or else you'll end up paying more for something that's worth less, but you can't offer too low either otherwise the seller will just cancel trade on you. This brings about the second grouse I have; most people don't seem to know that the word "negotiation" exists. If the offer you made is not up to their expectation, they don't even give a counter-offer and just straightaway cancel trade -_-

In that case why can't sellers just simple STATE A PRICE? Only ask people to offer a price if you really have no idea how much the item is worth. I believe that most people would've done some research before they sell an item and so will roughly know the selling price of it, yet they want to be greedy and ask people to offer and are willing to let go of the item only to the highest offer they get.

If it's some godly-scrolled item, then it's understandable that you will want to hold an auction for it and sell to the highest bidder, but don't tell me you want to hold an auction even for common stuff like scrolls? That's so pointless.

Sigh. And it's quite tiring trying to sell scrolls in the fm by shouting. I've already done research and base the scroll prices on a price range list from the forum, and always state a selling price that's towards the lower end, yet most people just cancel trade when they see the price. If you feel that the price is too high just jolly well negotiate by stating a counter-offer lah. It's like, only 1/10 people even bothers to counter-offer.

back to maple :P

2009-07-12T18:49:00.004+08:00

Recently just started playing maple story again, lol. There are so many new places to explore and tons of quests to do. Anyway when I finally installed the client and logged in (surprisingly I still rmbed the username and pw, haha), I knew my account got hacked again when I saw that my fighter wasn't wearing any equipment :( True enough, all my meso were gone (the "kind" hacker left me 700+ meso on each character!) as well as equipment and scrolls. But I still find it quite strange, cos the equipment on my cleric was left intact. Plus I had some level 50 and 60 equipment and certain scrolls untouched, so I was wondering why the hacker didn't just take those equipment as well or just simply sell it to shop and get the meso. Actually I'm not so sure if I'd given my account to a friend or something after I've quit maple previously, cos I really can't recall, but then I know if I did give my account to someone, I would've told the person not to touch the equipment on my fighter, hence I'm quite sure my account was hacked instead. Sigh, the worst thing is not to have any equipment left cos it's quite hard to recoup your losses without proper equipment and weapon to train.

Anyway I wasn't so affected by it since I've not been playing for so long. Plus, knight of cygnus just recently came out so I might as well move to bootes server and create another character since my cousin plays on that server. Tried out the pirate class, but find that it sux, lol. Not sure if it gets better at the higher level, but then I feel that it's not suitable for me cos the attack is very weak plus you can't attack monsters from close range. So I decided to make my knight of cygnus character a warrior as well just like my previous character in aquila.

It's quite a good thing that there're so many new quests now cos it definitely makes leveling easier, and the experience required to level has also decreased :) And the best thing is that you can have a whole map to yourself now; no more worrying about pesky ks-ers.

Btw I wanted to change my pw since my account was hacked, but unfortunately the website says my account is suspended :( So I've emailed them about it but until now they still haven't replied. They didn't even send any automated email reply to acknowledge that they've receive my email and will investigate or something lah -_-

Oh and on another note, the other day I just went to return my one-week overdue library book and they charge a 20cent fine per day of overdue!! So expensive lah, I thought it was cheaper last time? Plus a 5cent fine per day would be more appropriate. I mean since they now let people re-new loans for free (I think) why must the fine be so heavy -_-

2009-06-19T22:53:00.010+08:00

Accompanied Loh all the way to Woodlands yesterday evening to buy a wii, and on the way back, saw this shop selling those handicraft stuff and so I bought this pig thingy which you have to D.I.Y but of course the materials and instructions are provided. What's more, it cost only $1!! Thus, spent last night and a few hours today making the little pig keychain for my mum's birthday which is tomorrow. Hmm, quite proud of it, cos spent a lot of effort making it mah, so must show it off, lol :P

The other presents I got for her are also pigs and very cute too.

Pen holder

Small bolster

Lol. Couldn't resist doing this.

2009-06-05T08:58:00.002+08:00

I just went jogging just now! (finally) Hmm, actually I planned to jog up and down the path outside my house 6 times, but in the end I was quite out of stamina already so only did so 4 times, plus lots of walking in between, lol :( No idea what's the total distance I jogged, but still, I guess it's a good start. Luckily my mum told me to jog earlier cos just when I was about to return home, the weather suddenly became very sunny.

Went tamp1 with my cousin yesterday, and bought quite a number of things, including a pair of sneakers for jogging which I wore today, although I think sneakers are actually not really suitable for jogging... but then proper sports shoes are too ex haha. Went Yamakawa Super again to stock up on jap snacks, but unfortunately 2 of the snacks I bought the previous time seem to be out of stock, so bought more of other snacks instead. Spent about $17 there ;_; really ex lah.. but it's delicious so it's worth it. I'm so glad there's finally a place that sells these kind of snacks, cos usually quite hard to find. NTUC does sell some but the variety is very little.

2009-06-03T02:13:00.002+08:00

sigh, stupid weather is so hot nowadays. Wish it'll rain heavily everyday :( If only we can have semi-winter season the whole year round... just around 18 degree celcius will do.

Before exams ended, I felt as if there were many many things I want to do once the exams were over, but now that it's finally over, I feel as if each day just passes by so quickly while I've done nothing productive at all.

pbf exam

2009-05-14T17:22:00.002+08:00

Just came back from my pbf paper. Hmm, section a of the paper was bad as almost all the questions I'd never seen before, so I only did the minimum of 1 question from that section. Section b was quite okay, but the calculation questions were really minimal! Only worth around 15 marks in total for the 3 questions I did lor. tmd. Somemore this year they reduced the number of questions from 10 to 8! :( It's like when you compare the questions in this year and last year's paper to those in the past, the pbf standard has really gone up by a lot. In the '06 and '07 papers, section b is really mostly calculation questions and the weightage for calculation questions is quite high, but in recent years they focus more on theory -_-

Anyway I was quite annoyed, cos usually I just check my seat number and don't bother writing down somewhere. So today, after putting my bag at the back of the hall and walking all the way to the front where my seat is, I realised someone was already seated there. So I thought I must've memorised the number wrongly or something because my memory really can't be trusted, lol. So I walked all the way out to check my seat number again and turns out I did remember the correct seat number. So I went in and wanted to walk by the front, but the stupid invigilator refused to let me do so, saying everyone has to walk by the side to the back of the hall -__- so I was quite pissed off lah cos that means I have to walk one big round back to my seat again! No thanks to the girl who sat wrongly at my desk :P Plus this is not the first time this happened. Last year, another girl also sat wrongly at my desk making me go through the trouble of checking my seat number again. sigh.

Hmm, at least I can now finally have one week of rest before the next 3 consecutive papers :(

macro exam

2009-05-13T16:00:00.004+08:00

Just woke up from a nap which I took after I came home from my macro paper. Hmm, not sure if can pass or not though, but at least it's not as bad as I'd expected. Cos yesterday I skimmed through the prelim paper and realised I couldn't even do a single question! But for today's paper, I managed to do 80marks worth of questions (did only 4/8 qns in section a, haha) although for many of the questions I think I wrote nonsense that does not make sense. But at least there's a slight glimmer of hope for me. Hopefully a miracle will happen again and let me pass macro! I really don't want to retake it next year since the syllabus will have changes made.

Anyway I still got pbf paper tomorrow, sigh. This one really must pass cos fail once already, lol.

Oh and I can't believe how careless I was. I actually left my house key in the key hole when I left home today! I didn't even realise it until I came home from exam and saw the key hanging there and got a shock. Luckily no chicken burger, oops, I mean chicken burglar came by.

Btw I actually slept quite early last night (cos I'd sort of given up on macro) considering the next day I had a paper. Usually I'll be burning midnight oil sometimes till as late as 5am, haha, but I slept at 1.30am last night. Lo and behold, my mind was far too active due to all the studying, and I couldn't fall asleep until around 5am despite actually feeling very tired already :( sigh, this always happens especially at a time when I really need the sleep.

final fantasy music performance

2009-05-03T01:17:00.002+08:00

omg I just found out that there's going to be a Final Fantasy music performance at the Esplanade in May, but by now the tickets are all sold out already :'( sigh, if I knew about it earlier I would have quickly bought the ticket, plus the ticket prices are really reasonable, from $20-$80. Somemore it's premiering on the 22-23may which would have been just nice to celebrate the end of my exams, but oh well.. So disappointing :(

bridge complaint

2009-04-22T11:33:00.003+08:00

Just now I was playing bridge again and this was roughly what happened:

The bid was 4 diamonds. Initially I had 3 trumps but 2 of it got drained by the bidder already, so I was left with a small trump. Between my partner and I, we both won 1 set each already, so we need 2 more sets to win the game. Anyway this was our seating position:

my partner -> me -> bidder -> bidder's partner.

So my partner went to put Q hearts, which I trumped (cos at that time only Ace hearts has come out so far). Then my unreasonable partner started saying things like "wtf" and called me a noob just because I trumped her. Eventually it turns out that the K hearts was with her too, but how was I to know that earlier on?

Still, I don't think I was wrong to trump her. I did so precisely because K hearts wasn't out at that time, and she's the noob who should have put her K hearts out instead of Q hearts if she didn't want me to trump her. Besides, for what should I keep my small trump? Keep until Christmas time issit? It will most likely be drained by the bidder eventually, so of course I should just use it when the opportunity arises.

Eventually we did win that game but she still continued to kpkb and so I scolded her. I mean, she should know her place lor; she's only level 9 with roughly 500 games played, yet she proceeds to call someone who's more than twice her level, and thus more experienced, a noob. If I indeed made a mistake, I would admit it, but not when someone who can't see the bigger picture berates me when I did nothing wrong.

It's bad enough that you scold someone who's at fault just because you lost the game, worse when you scold someone who's not at fault just because you lost the game, and the worst when you scold someone who's not at fault even though you eventually won the game.

Table of Glory 乒乓圆

2009-04-10T01:39:00.007+08:00

Recently I've been regularly watching the ch8 9pm show, Table of Glory (乒乓圆), which I think is a rather interesting show and I enjoyed watching it so far. Anyway, just a few random comments about the show:

* In the show, both Mai Xiao Fen (Teresa Tseng) and Ma Li'An are 19 year-olds but they certainly don't look the same age to me. Ma Li'An looks more like in her early twenties while Xiao Fen still looks like some secondary school kid, and the same goes for He Sheng Wu (Joshua Ang) and the guy acting as Xiao Fen's older brother -_-

* I'm pretty sure there'll be a love square between Xiao Fen, Sheng Wu, Jia Jun and Zhang Zi Yi (btw I wonder why they have to name her as such :P), but as I said before, Xiao Fen and Sheng Wu look far too young to even look compatible with Jia Jun or Zhang Zi Yi respectively.

* Kym Ng and Zheng Ge Ping's characters in the show are quite funny :P Especially the part when Kym Ng blurts out that Zheng Ge Ping's character's actual name is He Mei Mei, lol. No wonder he went to change his name to He Ying Xiong. Btw I think Zheng Ge Ping's acting is really good.

* I've nothing against Teresa Tseng, but then I can't really stand Mai Xiao Fen's character; typical of those shoujo manga heroines, and what's with the over-reliance on her horoscope book, her frequent display of lack of confidence (at one point refusing to attend a competition until Jia Jun talked some sense into her) and constant harping about her 4th position curse. Oh, and she needs to go for vocal-training class; like Jeanette Aw, her voice gets on my nerves at times, especially when she's talking to Jia Jun and suddenly the voice starts getting "cutesy".

* Although Sheng Wu's character is supposed to be like a block of wood in the show, he's unintentionally funny sometimes; when his father found him with his head submerged in a barrel of water, he kept saying, "我明白了! 我明白了!" His father then asks him, "你明白什么?", to which he replies, "我明白了. 乒乓球是圆的", and his father went like ".........................". lol, that really cracked me up. The second funny scene was when he had to play a match with Roy, then he takes out his rubber-less shabby-looking ping pong paddle only to be ridiculed by Roy asking what the hell is that :P

* I've no idea who's the actress acting as Zhang Zi Yi, but I think that she's really pretty and sweet-looking.

* Why on earth do Kym Ng and Zheng Ge Ping's characters not lock up the door of their shop-houses, especially at night??? Ridiculous!

--------------------------
Okay, some additional comments after watching more episodes:

* Totally can't stand Mai Xiao Fen now. Zhang Zi Yi was so right in scolding her and saying that Xiao Fen has no right to be Ah Wu's friend. How dare Xiao Fen claim to be Ah Wu's best friend when she doesn't believe in nor recognise his talent in playing table tennis, going as far as to calling him juvenile for thinking that he can play table tennis when she is the one who is behaving like a juvenile love-obsessed little twit whenever she sees Jia Jun.

* Jia Jun is also getting on my nerves, especially ever since he started picking on Ah Wu after thinking that Ah Wu dumped his shirt away on purpose, when obviously it was an accident! Who in his right mind will pick up the shirt from the rubbish bag for you and then ask if it is yours if he was indeed the one who dumped it on purpose? -_- And then stupid Xiao Fen sides with Jia Jun and chides Ah Wu for doing such a thing. What a good and supportive friend man. Xiao Fen can get together with Jia Jun for all I care and then they can both annoy the hell out of each other.

* Ma Li'An seems to be always using the same expression of sticking out her chin and raising her eyebrows (many times somemore!) to portray her anger or snobbishness. A bit annoying and very distracting.

* Somehow I have a feeling that Xiao Fen will get first place in the open tournament for the girls' match, but that will be totally unrealistic. Her skills seem so-so and I don't see her practising hard, as least not as hard as Liu Yu, plus she is known to have low confidence so it'll really be quite unbelievable if she manages to clinch the first place.

* I mentioned this before, but I just have to say it again; Zheng Ge Ping is really funny and likeable acting as He Ying Xiong, and he looks really good for his age too.

Okay, anyway I was surfing a forum and it seems like quite many people feel that this show isn't good and not comparable to TVB shows, to which I feel otherwise :( Most of the time I watch hk dramas with my mum and have not been watching mediacorp dramas for the longest time but this show definitely caught my eye. I think people need to stop looking down on mediacorp dramas and think that hk dramas are always better. There are some really good hk dramas, but likewise, some lame ones as well which are a waste of time watching. On the other hand, Table of Glory is a captivating show with many funny moments that made me chuckle a lot while watching it so I feel that it is weird that this show seems to be receiving so much criticisms.

2009-04-03T02:01:00.004+08:00

I never thought I'd actually cry while reading any manga, least of all Gintama (reason being is that the main genre is comedy), but I actually did today while reading chapters 207-209.

Those chapters were about an old man and his pet dog Kintarou, who've been together for the past 18 years. Anyway, due to old age, both the old man and Kintarou are very sick currently and everyone thinks that it is because the old man and Kintarou were really close to each other with neither of them wanting to outlive the other, so they fell ill one after the other.

But... in reality, Kintarou says he actually hates the old man and wants his freedom. (Yes, Kintarou can actually talk cos he's an alien dog, lol). Old man and Kintarou have this daily routine of talking a walk together at the park. Shockingly enough, while the old man is lying on the hospital bed, he manages to summon enough strength to get up and decide that it's time for the daily walk.

Meanwhile, Kintarou has escaped from the vet and is at the park with Kagura (one of the main characters), relating to her what happened between him and the old man; after the old man's wife kicked the bucket, the old man told Kintarou that he has grown tired of seeing so many of his loved ones and friends pass away before him and that it's saddening for him, so the old man says that he'll selfishly request for Kintarou to not go before him. However, Kintarou felt that it was actually a competition to see who can outlive the other and in a way it motivated the two of them to carry on living.

Suddenly, the old man appeared at the park with a leash in hand; he'd actually travelled all the way from the hospital to the park for the sake of their daily walk together. Kintarou is also very surprised to see that the old man came all the way for the daily walk, so he decided to go for the walk with old man.

A flashback of the past is shown again, whereby after the old man requested that Kintarou not die before him, he says this to Kintarou, "live a good long life without any worries about me or anyone else. And if it turns out you can't quite do it, I'll wet my eyes one more time for you and only you."

Back in the present, Kintarou realises that he wants to outlive the old man because he actually doesn't want to make the old man cry. But because Kintarou is very weak and too tired to continue with the walk already, in his heart, he keeps telling the old man to faster croak, lol. Well, the old man eventually can't go any further, but before he passes on, he said "Kintarou... looks like you win...looks like you're the one who's gonna have to cry like a baby." Shortly after that, Kintarou passes away too.

The above is just a really brief summary but I think that story is really super touching and thought-provoking. Although the stubborn dog keeps saying that he hates the old man, he actually loves the old man the same way the old man loves him. Also, the part about the old man requesting for Kintarou to not die before him as it's very saddening is very relatable. I often think about this as well that's why I wouldn't want to live too long because eventually you'll outlive the people around you and feel really lonely. Maybe that's why I was so emotionally stirred by these chapters.. and that's also why the occasional transcendent chapters are definitely worth reading.

bridge

2009-04-02T00:48:00.004+08:00

Started playing bridge on viwawa again recently after a 1 year hiatus , since I was feeling quite bored from using the computer and having nothing to do while on it. Anyway the first thing I noticed was the huge decrease in number of players; less than 100 players online each time. Second thing was, most rooms seem to require a minimum bid of 4, which I thought was quite dumb at first, until I was eventually decided to try it out and then understood what was up with the new fad.

Actually it's quite fun, although slightly tedious as it usually involves many rounds of re-shuffling of cards until any one person is satisfied and confident with bidding 4 or more. It's like even if you have bad cards, you won't feel THAT disheartened about ever winning that game, cos you and your partner need just 4 sets to win (although it's not that easy either, lol), but as long as you have 1 or 2 ace or king / manage to trump and the same goes for your partner, it's actually manageble.

Compare that scenario to one without the minimum bid (a.k.a normal bridge), if you get bad cards you really don't have much choice.

Choice 1: just keep passing and if your eventual partner doesn't bother to help raise the bid if his cards enables him to do so, then it'll be too bad cos there'll be a high chance of losing.

Choice 2: try your luck by raising the bid with no intention of winning it, which takes some guts cos if the other bidder doesn't continue raising the bid, you'll end up winning the bid and since your cards are bad, you'll most likely lose the game and your partner may blame / scold you :(

So what I'm trying to say is that I think playing with the minimum bid of 4 is advantageous in a way as even if your cards are bad, you still got some hopes of winning. The down side is that it's very unforgiving with little room for mistakes, so got to really pay close attention.

Okay, time to complain about this particular game I had. I won the bid and we were seated in this way: (P for Player)

P1 - P2 - P3 - Me

P1 threw a 2 hearts, P2 threw a 3 hearts, P3 threw a Q hearts, to which I ate with my Ace hearts. That was the first time the hearts suit was played, so naturally I was 99% sure p3 is not my partner cos if he is, he wouldn't waste his Q nor try to waste my Ace (unless it so happens that the Q hearts is his only hearts card). He should just put his smallest heart card right?

Okay, so I played hearts the next round, and turns out the Q hearts was not P3's only hearts and he definitely had smaller heart cards in his hand. Anyway later on, it turns out that P3 is actually my partner and I was like so shocked cos I'd long ruled him out as my partner. We did win the game in the end but what he did was perplexing and I couldn't think of a reason to explain why he would do that. I mean, there's nothing wrong with misleading the bidder into thinking that you're his partner when you're not, but why on earth would you want to make the bidder think that you're not his partner when in fact you are? Doesn't make sense right? lol, I need to be enlightened.

Gintama

2009-03-27T15:39:00.003+08:00

Yeah! I finally managed to get into the mood to study again after procrastinating for a few weeks. Managed to sort of read and summarise 2 chapters of CF (and intend to do 2 more chapters later :P) Sigh.. left about 2 more weeks before revision classes starts, so really got to make use of the 2 weeks to study cos once revision class starts, I dunno if there's enough time to study or not. Hmm.. last night I kept yawning and was feeling sleepy, so I went to bed at 11pm, but couldn't fall asleep until past 1am I think :( In the end I woke up at 12pm the next day.. which means I slept 13hours -_- haiz.. I go to bed early hoping to be able to wake up in the morning but it always turns out like this :(

--------------

Anyway recently I've been busy reading Gintama manga and watching the anime and it's really good. Maybe when you read the first few chapters, you might find it quite boring, but then the first few chapters is mainly for the introduction of the main and recurring characters. Once you get past those chapters, that's when the greatness starts. I think it's the funniest manga I've ever read so far :D

I don't usually read shounen manga and Gintama is a shounen manga actually and the humour is at times crude but it's really damn hilarious. There're many idiotic characters in the manga who tend to do dumb things even in life-and-death situations and that's what makes it so funny :P

One of my favourite arcs is the OwEe Arc, a parody on Wii. Watch it, if you don't find it funny means you've no sense of humour :P (but then I think you need to know the general relationships of the main characters first in order to fully appreciate the humour lah..) Oh, and it's okay to skip the starting part about Ginpachi sensei -_-

OwEe arc is from episode 98-99 which can be found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OiFyEcD0Yeg

2009-03-18T14:47:00.003+08:00

Recently this really cool looking otome game called Bakumatsu Renka Shinsengumi just came out for the DS.

Needless to say, what attracted me to this game was the drool-worthy graphics, but unfortunately, as with all cool looking games with anime-like graphics, it's released in Japanese only and I do know there's absolutely 0% chance of it ever being released in English (unless there are fans kind enough to make an English patch), so the only thing I can hope for now is a Chinese version :( Actually I did dl the Jpn version to try out but of course I skipped through most of the dialogues and randomly picked options when presented lol, and I managed to get through Okita Souji's (the bluish-silver haired guy) path in about 2hours. It'd definitely be more fun if I could actually understand the dialogues :(

Okay so anyway I went to youtube trying to search for trailers of the game and happened on chance upon this anime called Bakumatsu Kikansetsu Irohanihoheto (what a tongue-twister-like title :P). This anime is nothing to do with the previously mentioned DS game although they took place in the same era I think. So I went to check up on the anime and it sounded quite interesting so I thought of watching it, but unfortunately the subtitles' font for the first episode was horrendous and it sort of put me off from watching any further. However I read that the fight between the two main characters, Akizuki and Kakunojou, in the last episode was interesting so I jumped straight to watch that :P

This is the later part of the fight and I think this scene is really touching plus the insert song is really great!! One of the best songs I've heard in a long time :D The apt song really helps in bringing out the heart-rending scene.

It seems Kakunojou was possessed by the red head and she's struggling with herself to avoid killing Akizuki. Although Akizuki's sword skills are better than hers, he just sat there looking quite stunned when he could have just easily knocked the sword away or something. I think it's because he wanted to see if Kakunojou is strong-willed enough to hold herself back? Anyway I really like this scene (and the song) a lot.

Btw the song is Namida by Ishikawa Chiaki. I'm really dying to get the piano score for this but I don't think anyone has transcribed it and I couldn't find the midi either :( I'm sure it'll sound very nice and melancholic on the piano and it sounds like it'll be fun to play too. This is the full version of the song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWFn6NdciQk&NR=1

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On Sunday, had a class gathering with my JC friends at Tampines Safra. Was supposed to meet at 6pm, but almost everyone was late, lol. Okay lah I was the last to reach at maybe 7.30pm? But it's really not my fault lor. I reached the bus stop at 5.40pm to wait for bus 10, and guess what time the bus came? 7pm!! WTF!! It took a good 1hr 20mins before the bus finally arrived! Even if the bus broke down or something, it still shouldn't take THAT long for the next bus to arrive right? In the span of 1hr 20mins, on average 6 bus 10s should have come by already! I waited until I was quite pissed off lor. And when bus 10 finally came after what seemed like an eternity, another bus 10 was trailing behind -_- I was feeling pissed off already so when I boarded the bus I refused to tap my ez-link :P Plus the bus was very crowded so why should I pay after they wasted more than an hour of my time resulting in my lateness?

So yesterday night I went to the SBS transit website and filled up a complaint form and ended with this sarcastic sentence: "I seriously urge SBS transit to increase the frequency of their buses rather than that of bus fare hikes." :P So far they only sent a computer-generated email to acknowledge that they've received the complaint, but I shall wait and see how they explain the atrociously long waiting time >:(

Anyway, because it was already 7.30pm by the time we met at Tampines Safra, we decided to have dinner at Sakura first. Actually I wasn't feeling hungry since I had quite a late lunch; think I only ate $10 worth of food, lol. Chicken on the other hand took all the durian puffs again and ate at least $100 worth of food.

After that, we went to play 2 sets of bowling. I think it's quite funny cos normally friends will be encouraging each other like when people's ball goes into the longkang, your friend should be saying "oh don't worry lah do your best" that kind of thing, but we were all laughing at each other when the ball goes into the longkang -_- lol.. what kind of friends are these :P

Hmm anyway I got a blue-black on my ankle after accidentally knocking the bowling ball against my ankle. I thought blue-blacks usually appear after a few days, but this time my ankle turned blue-blackish immediately :S

By the time we finished the 2nd set, it was very late already, almost 11.30pm. Had to walk quite a distance to the bus stop and by the time we reached the bus stop, it was already past the time for the last bus for bus 10 and 31, so I had no choice but to take bus 168 (I think) to Bedok interchange. When I reached the Bedok bus stop I called my father to pick me up from there. Wah.. the dust bins there were overflowing with rubbish and even spilling onto the floor, and to my horror I saw 3 huge rats scurrying around :O damn disgusting lah.. it's unlike the small cute little mice that my little cat occasionally catches. First time I've seen rats in public places.. maybe they only appear at night?

trip to kinokuniya

2009-03-13T17:25:00.003+08:00

Went out with my cousin to the Orchard Kinokuniya yesterday. While walking around, I happened to chance upon the Twelve Kingdoms Manga :O I didn't know they have the manga for that series, but then I think the manga is based on the anime which was in turn based on the novel. Quite unusual, cos usually animes are based on manga I think, so this one is the other way round. Anyway the manga is in Japanese so there's no way I can ever read it unless they decide to translate it into English. And it costs $20+ just for one volume!! Damn expensive.. but then again the whole manga is in coloured pages, hence the expensive price tag I guess.

Anyway these are what I bought in the end:
- The 2nd book of Twelve Kingdoms titled Sea of Wind, for $13+ which is cheaper than what I expected cos the website said it's $16+ :D
- The complete 3 volumes of a manga titled Kimi ga Suki which I was really glad to have found cos I didn't think there'll be a chinese version. Actually I already read the 1st 2 volumes on mangafox but then since it's only 3 volumes long, I thought I should just buy all 3 to make it a complete set :P
- 2 tarepanda files

On the way home, we were lucky to find seats on the train cos I was really quite tired. So we proceeded to read our newly bought mangas :D Managed to read 1 chapter before alighting, then proceeded to finish reading the remainding chapters when I reached home. It's a good manga with nice artwork, but a pity it's too short :(

After dinner, I started reading the Twelve Kingdoms novel. It might seem strange that I start reading from the 2nd novel rather than the 1st, but then the stories are such that they can be read in any order and it'll still be understandable. Hmm, but then again I think that watching the anime first before reading the novel did help me a lot in understanding what's going on, and also there're quite a number of Japanese terms in the novel that you've got to remember by heart otherwise when the terms appear again later on, you might not know what it means.

However, what I dislike about the translation is the way they romanize some of the terms and names, such as "Sanshi" being spelt as "Sansi", "Shirei" as "Sirei", "Gyousou" as "Gyoso" etc. For the last one it's still reluctantly acceptable since it's still pronounced the same way in English, but when you read the first two without the "h" it just sounds wrong. I would prefer that they romanize it exactly the way as it's spelt in Japanese.

Anyway it's a really good read although I don't think it's suitable for just anyone cos some people might not have the interest in this kind of stories, but what I really like about Twelve Kingdoms are the character developments and not so much the politcal stuff. It's 300+ pages long, but by 3am I was only up till page 270 and since it was quite late, I decided to sleep first and continue reading the next day. Sigh.. and I only woke up at 2.30pm the next day. It seems that the anime followed very closely the the novel, so actually while reading the novel, I already knew what was going to happen next, lol.

2009-03-12T02:09:00.002+08:00

Couldn't really get to fall asleep yesterday night, so I decided to tidy up my wardrobe again and throw away some clothes since there's barely any space left. Then I realised that I've quite a few shorts / jeans that I can't fit into anymore simply because it's too tight (or rather my waist is really getting thicker) ;_;

I think from now on I can only fit into M or L sizes for bottom wear lor :( It probably started a few months ago where I was just so lazy that everytime after I ate something I just plunk onto bed to play ds or sleep straightaway. Then one day I went to weigh myself and to my horror, found that I've gained 2-4kg, something which has been unprecedented for a few years. I mean I don't really mind gaining weight, but it's sad to know that all the weight I've gained has actually gone to my waist / tummy :(

So I've decided I shall try doing sit ups everyday :P Actually I really hate sit ups lor.. Had to resort to cheating last time during napfa test wahahah.. oops. But for the sake of not looking pregnant, I shall try to make some sacrifices. I've also really been wanting to go jogging as well, but then I dunno where I should go to jog.. sigh. Okay I shall just try out the sit ups for a few weeks first and see if it works ba.

Twelve Kingdoms Novel

2009-03-09T02:39:00.003+08:00

I remember that I first watched the Twelve Kingdoms (Junni Kokuki) anime on the now defunct arts central back during the secondary school days, but at that time I did not finished watching it. Then a few years later, I started re-watching it from the beginning on youtube and the story, albeit incomplete, was so fascinating and engaging that I finished all 45 episodes in a few days.

Anyway, just yesterday I found out that there's actually an English translation of Twelve Kingdoms released as a novel! Actually the first volume of the English novel came out in March 2007 and subsequent volumes will be published annually, for at least the first 3 volumes. I also went to the kinokuniya website to check and the price for each paperback volume is about $16, which is fairly priced so I think I'll be buying it :D So maybe someday when I'm free I'll drop by kino to get the Twelve Kingdoms novel as well as to check out whether they have some manga series I'm looking for or not.

I was also wondering what took them so long to finally decide on translating Twelve Kingdoms into English, and worse still, I think publishing at one volume a year is pretty slow but then at least that's better than nothing. Actually if you search on google, you can actually find non-official English translations of the novel as well and the translations are really awesome and I believe it should be as good as the official one. Unfortunately the volume I was really interested in reading was the fifth one, Tonan no Tsubasa (The Aspired Wings), but the only website I could find with a translation of it is only partially translated, and the owner of that website seems to have slowed down in updating with more chapters, like 1 chapter in 6 months?(;_;)

Anyway I hope they don't stop publishing the English version at volume 3, but rather, continue as far as till where the Japanese version is currently at. Sigh. And if only they would continue with the anime, which had stopped at 45 episodes without some sort of properly wrapped-up ending, although that's very unlikely :(

On a side note, I'm quite glad that I've found something to read since I've not read a proper book for ages (manga doesn't count, lol)

LBO eprelim

2009-03-05T19:00:00.003+08:00

Phew, I just finished my LBO (Law of Business Organisations) eprelim exam just now. eprelim means that we don't have to do the paper in school; just log onto the student portal and type out the answer but there's a time limit of 3 hours as well. Hmm, they did have a notice saying reference to notes is not allowed, but who cares, lol :D I do think the eprelim is quite a good idea, especially for theory-based units. I mean it gives us the flexibility of just typing out the answers at home, hence saving time and money on not needing to commute to school just to sit for the prelim paper. It's definitely not the same as under exam conditions, but I think prelims shouldn't be taken seriously since it's just a rough gauge and sort of like a practice on a mock exam paper.

Anyway I was feeling very guilty these few days cos it's prelim week already but I've not done any studying at all (other than 1 hour of reading through 3/4 of CF chapter 2 and 1 hour trying to summarise Macro notes but to no avail -_-) I did intend to at least briefly browse through my LBO notes first before attempting the eprelim, but well... in the end I spent all my time reading manga online ;_;

Actually we were given a period of 4 days to attempt the LBO eprelim, from mon to thurs, and as usual I always do everything at the last minute :( Anyway halfway through, I was feeling super hungry and I think it's because of all the sneezing today (due to a cold) which sapped away my energy, sigh. So I went for a tea break for about 15-20mins then continued with the rest of the questions. Unfortunately there's no pause button so I did waste 15-20mins, and as a result I couldn't finish part c of the last question, but it's okay. I just hope I can pass the LBO prelim, cos afterall I did it while referring to you-know-what, cos there's just far too much stuff to memorise. Wah if like that I also can't pass I think I can die for the actual exam already lor. Plus I can type much faster than if I write out using pen, so I'm afraid I might not be able to complete the paper if I were to write it out :(

Anyway after the timer stopped, I went to re-read my answers, only to find that there were a couple of typos since there wasn't enough time to finish the paper, let alone check through my answers -_- Hope they don't penalise marks just because of some spelling mistakes :P

The search for Cy-believers manga

2009-02-19T23:52:00.003+08:00

On Tueday I went to the M.A.G.E shop at Eastpoint cos I wanted to look for the English version of Cy-believers (the manga I mentioned in the previous post). My cousin just went there on Sunday to help me check if they have that manga, and she mentioned seeing one volume there, so I was very convinced they do have that manga, thus the trip there.

Went I reached there and went into the shop, there was only a male staff there. So I asked him if they have Cy-believers, and without even checking or anything, he said they didn't have it. So I was feeling quite skeptical cos he didn't even bother to check, thus I said my cousin just saw it there on Sun and he still said they don't have it -_- Then he proceeded to say they only rent out mangas and don't sell them, which is contrary to what's stated on their website, "book rental and sales". By then I was really dubious of his words and since he said it plain and clear that they don't have that manga, I've no choice but to leave; not nice to proceed to check their shelves as if outrightly doubting what he just said right..

Anyway when I reached home, I realised they had finally replied my email enquiry about that manga, which I sent out maybe 2 days earlier. And guess what, the email said they can help me import the manga at $18.70 per volume, meaning they do have mangas for sale! Which makes me pissed off, cos that guy at the shop obviously seemed like he didn't want to do business or what. I'm not sure if he's the guy who replied my email, hence the sureness they didn't have that manga, but then when I asked there and then, he could have at least told me they can help import the book if I wanted right? And why on earth did he claim that they don't have manga for sale? >:(

Bah.. anyway at $18.70 per volume it's far too expensive; in fact it's around the price that kinokuniya is selling it at, so if I really want it I might as well just go kino to buy -_- Yeah, so after feeling very disappointed that I couldn't read the English version of Cy-believers, I decided to just read the traditional Chinese version I dled previously, and to my surprise, it was actually quite okay :D I could read and understand maybe 90% of the words and occasionally using babelfish to translate some words I didn't understand :P The manga is really cute and funny although I don't know why it doesn't seem very popular, which is quite sad.

But the sadder thing is, it seems that there're only 2 volumes uploaded on the internet. Not sure why no one uploaded volume 3 & 4, so I've decided that when I'm free, I'll go buy the Chinese version instead since it's much cheaper, and hopefully it's in simplified Chinese so I'll have an easier time reading it :o)

2009-02-17T00:29:00.002+08:00

My school is very incompetent when it comes to choosing of timetables. Their server seriously sucks and it's high time they get a better server. The original day for selection of revision classes was actually last week (mon-wed), but they sent an sms saying that it'll be postponed. Then on Friday they sent another sms to tell us we can do the e-rev (selecting of revision classes) at 3pm. Well, a few hours later, they smsed again to say it's been postponed once again -_-

Seriously a waste of people's time lor, cos some people actually skip classes and all so that they can do the e-rev at the time it launches so as to get good slots. And furthermore it seems that those in my course are the last batches of the mid-tier to do the e-rev which is so unfair since we're then left with few choices. I had a hard time fitting in all my subjects just now, and when I finally did, I realised I have a stretch of 13 days where I have to go to school, consecutively!! (yes, that includes sats & suns). So I decided not to go for the local revision class for CF and Macro, and I eventually ended up with a stretch of 9 days of school and 6 weekends gone :( sigh, this really sucks. I have to give tuition on sats and I don't think there's any other day I can change the tuition to.

Furthermore, I'm not sure if it's true but I read from hardwarezone forum that foreign students actually have priority over the local students when it comes to choosing of timetables, and it's because they need to have 70% attendance. This is rubbish lor. So because they need to have 70% attendance, they need better slots? Does that then mean that those whose e-rev start later may not be able to get enough slots to get the 70% attendance? Okay, in the first place surely there have to be enough slots for everyone, since we paid for the classes. So if there're not enough slots, then I'm sure SIM will just add in more classes, so it's actually not necessary to give priority to foreign students what. Haiz I'm just pissed off cos it's always hard to get a good timetable and it just makes things worse when they stagger the launch times making it unfair to those who get the later launch times.

manga addiction

2009-02-16T23:31:00.003+08:00

Lately, I'm sort of addicted to reading manga. The manga I've been reading these past few days is called Special A. It's really damn cute, funny and romantic at the same time and I found myself LOL-ing a lot while reading it :D However right now, I'm trying to read it slowly cos there are only 90+ chapters out so far and I'm up to chapter 70 already. If I read too fast I'll have to wait a long time for the next chapter to be released and most of the time by then I would already have forgotten what happened previously -_-

Well, that was what happened with Naruto. A few years back I read till the latest chapter which was chapter 200/300+ then, and due to non-continuous reading, I forgot what happened and I was too lazy to re-read hundreds of chapters, lol. So later on when I tried to continue with the series, I really couldn't catch what's happening so I just stopped. Btw I usually don't like manga with too much fighting, since some fighting scenes can span a few chapters just for one fight and I it find pretty boring, but there's just some charm about Naruto that makes it very interesting :P

I think I'm very superficial when it comes to reading manga; I actually search for manga to read based on the art first! (if the main characters don't appeal to me I won't read it no matter how good the story may be :P)

Anyway I've also been wanting to read this manga called cy-believers. I tried to find it online but it seems like none of the manga websites have that title uploaded and I have no idea why, sigh. I could only find the Chinese version on a website, but it's in traditional Chinese somemore! -_- To me, English manga are much easier to read than Chinese; I mean I'm actually okay with reading Chinese but it's just that there's something about the characters' and location names being written in Chinese that I'm unable to connect to; not sure if that was understandable, but it's hard to express, so I shall give an example: the male lead of cy-believers is called Nijo Natori which is 二条那鸟 in Chinese but it just sounds very weird when you say it in Chinese! The direct translation would be "two strips that bird" which just doesn't make sense :S

But anyway, the story of cy-believers really seem interesting and I'm dying to read it :( Yesterday I went to comic connection with my cousin to try to find that manga, and after some time the staff managed to find it for me, but I was actually looking for the English version and they only have the Chinese version, so I didn't buy (and I felt quite bad for not specifying earlier that I'm looking for the English version, but it slipped my mind so too bad :P)

Then today, I went to the kinokuniya website and found that they do carry the English version of cy-believers, but I was seriously shocked by the price. $18-$19 per volume!! Wth!!! That's almost 4 times the price of a Chinese manga can!! The most I'm willing to pay is only $10+ per volume lor and luckily cy-believers only has 4 volumes, phew.

My cousin told me about a shop in eastpoint selling manga and based on their website, they seem to specialise in English manga! Yeah, there's hope :o) Anyway I emailed them to enquire whether they carry cy-believers and for the price as well, but they haven't replied yet. Maybe some day I'll just drop by there to check it out myself.

Btw, mangafox is a good website for reading manga online, and it has a comprehensive list of titles, image of the manga cover as well as story description. Well, that's where I was reading my manga from at first, until I realised it's way too slow at times cos you have to wait a few seconds each time you go to a new page. Thus, I went to mangatraders to dl manga and reading has since been much faster (although you have to register first).

my injured toe :(

2009-02-07T16:09:00.003+08:00

Yesterday after lunch I went for macro lessons but I accidentally hit my left toe when I was opening the LT door :( Sigh, of all days I had to hit my toe when I was wearing slippers; if I was wearing covered flats I believe it should be okay. It was very painful but with a cursory glance I thought that it was only a part of the skin that came out or something, so I went in to sit down first. But after a while and to my horror, I noticed a mini pool of blood on my slippers -_- So I quickly wiped it off with tissue then pasted a piece of plaster over my toe.

At that time the lecturer gave us the new set of notes so I took it and went out of the LT (since I actually went there only to collect notes :P) Decided to go home by taxi since I didn't want to take public transport and risk having anyone step on my toe.

When I reached home, I took out the plaster to inspect how serious my toe injury was, then realised 1/5 of the nail was actually detached as well (but it's still there, just separated from the main nail) :O I reluctantly sprayed some water over my toe to wash it but dunno why it wasn't painful when I did so. After that, pasted another piece of plaster then went to sleep, lol.

Later at night, I told my mum what happened when she came back then she said I should have gone to see doctor immediately in case the door (I think the bottom part was metal) was rusted. Well, I didn't know that.. I thought that by washing the toe with water, it'll be okay. So she made me go see a doctor immediately when it was already 11pm. My father had to call my cousin to ask for the location of any 24 hour clinics, then we drove there. Actually that clinic is open only until midnight, but we arrived at 11.30pm so it's ok. When I went in to see the doctor, he actually said there's not need to take a jab but he gave it to me anyway -_- The jab was quite painful as well and I have muscle aches on my right arm when I woke up today.

Sigh.. So now I think I'll have to wait a few months before the new nail is fully grown out. Luckily it wasn't the whole nail that came out, cos that'll be far too scary. And because of the stupid toe, I didn't go out with my pri sch friends last night, which was supposed to be a last gathering before one of them leaves Sg to study overseas tmr :(

P.S Btw I finally finished writting the HK trip part 2 :P Can read from here since it's quite a few posts behind and I don't think anyone would have scrolled backwards.