wyred dot nu

Most people seem to freak out when their purchase history is stored.

I don’t see what’s so bad about it.

In fact, because I’ve signed up for a membership card at Kinokuniya and that I shop from them so often, I’ve always hoped they would store my purchase history.

So I can make sure I won’t purchase a manga that I’ve already did in a previous visit. So they can make recommendations to me when a new series is released that matches the genres of manga I’ve purchased in the past. Or alert me when a new book in the series I’m collecting is out for purchasing.

There’s so many things they could do to make my experience with them a better one. And not just me, but many other manga lovers in Singapore.

But because it’s a Japanese company, and from my own observations, they seem to be afraid of trying such things in case it offends their customers, they probably won’t attempt something like this.

But I’ll drop them an email anyway and pray for the better.

I pushed myself a little too hard at jogging today.

To the point I fainted.

Judging from the position of the music on my ipod, I suppose I was out for 5~10 minutes.

I felt comfortable, had a dream. Then the image of my mum popped in and in my less than sub-conscious state, as if my body was moving by itself, got up and lied down on the nearest bench.

With my eyes open, I just stared blankly until I mustered enough strength to sit up. Then sat there for a while before I started walking myself home.

Went to a 24 hour clinic which told me I needed to go to the hospital.

Had a deep cut on my chin and little finger, kept bleeding, need to be stitched.

Doctor said I probably didn’t have enough sugar in my blood.

At least now my fears of being close to diabetic can be dismissed.

Today is the 4th day that I’ve stopped drinking coffee.

Trying to clear out the caffeine in my body so that I can once again enjoy that exhilarating feeling when one drinks coffee.

I feel like crap without my daily cup of coffee. Going to resume drinking after my…

Redang 3 days 2 nights holiday! This Friday, I’ll be leaving for another short holiday with a different group of friends. One of the events included in our travel package is snorkeling. Mmmmmm

I look forward to taking naps under the sun again. Waking up feeling refreshed to the sound of the waves.

However, it’s a holiday period now and it might be very crowded over there. :(

And what about beer?

Well, there was a small gathering of my secondary school friends at someone’s house and we had beer, cheese sausages and we chatted about the old days. This is when I discovered how I want to enjoy beer. With good company and good food.

It was such a good experience that I want to enjoy it again. But this time, an air conditioned room, friends, lots of beer and cheese sausages. And we’d just chat till the last can of beer. Ahhh…

Went to Bintan from the 8th to 10th May 2010 together with 4 other friends. Just a short getaway from the busy Singapore life.

We stayed at the Indra Maya villas of Nirwana Gardens. From what I understand, Nirwana Gardens consists of beach clubs, villas, resorts, and we chose to stay at the villas.

While my friends were checking in, I went out to the nearby beach. It’s the first time I’ve seen a blue sea. In Singapore, it’s a dirty green color.

At the beach, you can hear nothing but the sound of the waves. No children screaming, no cars, no boat motors. Very peaceful. We went during a non-holiday period so there’s not a lot of other people.

The waters are clear. If you try, you can see small fishes swimming around your feet.

This is where we stayed at, a private villa of our own.

With our own private pool!

And a buggy to drive around the place in! I had my turn to drive everyone around the place in this and it made me want to learn driving.

We ate, played in the pool, beaches, had karaoke, drank at a kelong style pub out in the middle of the ocean.

On the last day, we woke up early to go see the sunrise.

Each of us paid like SG$500 (USD$355. Includes food/transport) for the whole 3 days 2 nights trip. I feel it’s worth it.

There’s a few more photos in my flickr set here.

A friend of mine is pregnant.

She had a checkup at the hospital and was having her weight taken and it turned out to be 55.55kg. She seemed amused.

So one day during lunch, she told me about this and said she’s going to buy 4D for 5555.
(4D is a form of legal gambling in Singapore where you choose 4 digit numbers).

I said with a smile, “If you really win, I’ll give you another $10″. I didn’t sound like I was challenging her, or making fun of her choice of buying this number which has a very low chance of opening.

She said “Ok!” with a big grin.

I checked her ticket to see if she really bought it and she did.

I never thought of it as a stupid idea or a waste of money. I only found it surprising that she would really buy it.

One week later,

It was a small win, she won $50 for that number. Nevertheless, I kept my word.

When Microsoft became the biggest software company, many people began to hate them. Then they support Google.

When Apple’s iPhone became the most popular cellphone, many people began to despise it. And they support Google’s Android phones.

Now when Google becomes a huge company from dealing with web searches, email, videos, ads, etc, people started to hate Google.

From what I’ve been observing, everyone loves support the underdog. When it becomes successful, they move on to another.

Screw all of you.

Yes, I’m sick of people who hate the iPhone simply because a lot of people use it. If you don’t like it because it lacks certain features that you really need, I can accept that.

I get slightly annoyed when people say they like to hate things that are popular. Hold on, a lot of people like to hate things that are popular.

Maybe if I start an ad in the newspaper telling everyone that it’s popular thing to hate things that are popular, perhaps they will start to hate themselves and then kill themselves.

I did say before that I tend to avoid mainstream animes. It’s simply because I have limited time and I’d rather devote that limited time to watch non-mainstream animes which I seem to find more enjoyable than mainstream ones. It’s an excuse based on my personal preferences and not what the majority of people like to do.

In closing,

On the last day of 2009, I lazed around the whole day. Lay down on my bed and read manga, played FF13. During the last few hours, I watched all 3 “Back to the Future” movies. Loved them back when I was a little boy.

On the first day of 2010, I lazed around too. Just didn’t felt like doing anything.

I’ve been looking forward to 2010. It has a cool futuristic feel to it. :D

Gah, just realized that back when I had a bad harddisk crash, my January 2009 entries went poof as well. Can’t recall what new year resolutions I’ve made and whether I’ve fulfilled them or not.

Since I’ve got my iPhone now, I’ve been contemplating getting a Mac mini just to learn how to write software for this phone. However, I am totally clueless on what software I should code out because there’s probably a software for everything, anything, out there on the app store already. It has to be something interesting enough to keep me going.

For career, all I can think of is finish up this CMS system I’m working on for my company. This should look good on my resume.

Acquiring a few more new skills are good too. Knowing lots of things broadens one’s opportunities. And by skills, I mean ones that can potentially help me in earning my bread and butter. Not like having the top driving skill at Initial D at the arcades.

Photography is an ongoing thing. I find that I’m bad at framing for portrait shots. That’s one area I need to brush up.

Japanese too, I’m still far from being able to have a proper normal conversation in Japanese. Although my previous Japanese teacher says there will be a lot of speaking in Pre-advance level, because my class has about 10~15 people, I only speak 1 or 2 lines each lesson. That’s fine. I can always do image training myself. :d

Ah yes, I’m going to try and get back into jogging now… Must make it a weekly thing!

A friend organized a paintball game last Saturday at Red Dynasty. This would be my first time.

It was pretty fun. And I love how it was drizzling, adds on to the mood.

But getting shot at isn’t fun, lol

Someone shot me from the side. First shot slid off my chest but left a bruise. The next 2 shots hit my side and hell they hurt. I thought we would be provided with vests but they didn’t. I regret wearing just a thin T-shirt.

I was so sure I was in a safe place before I felt the pain. Yea, they should call this painball.

We had 12 so we were split into 3 teams of 4, each team gets to play twice. Each round didn’t last very long. The objective is to bring 2 pieces of items back to base while dodging the other team’s bullets and preventing them from doing the same.

I think my bullets got stuck a few times. Like out of 10 shots, I could only see 2 coming out.

There was one occasion I saw a bullet flying towards me and I managed to duck in time.

If there ever was going to be a next time, I’m definitely going to wear thicker clothing.

After that all of us went to this friend’s home for a early Christmas party.

We played Cranium, good party game. Some of the activities involved having to sculpt something out of dough to get your friends to guess what it is. I did most of the sculpting and drawing for my team.

Some of the things I sculpted, and managed to get my team to guess correctly was: rocking horse, solar system.

There was once I had to sculpt out “holy cow”, so I made a weird looking animal, and held a halo over it, hahaha. My team couldn’t guess but a rival team member got it.

For sketching, some of the cards require you to sketch blindly. I got a card that says “seasick”, so I quickly drew a boat and a simple face with wavy lines coming out of it’s mouth. My teammates got this pretty quickly.

The only hard category was the one which require you to act out characters and hum out songs. As this game was initially designed for the US market, a lot of the characters and songs have never been heard of by many of us.

Later that night, I opened a small bottle of Otard cognac that someone brought. Drank like half of the bottle without mixing. I wanted to get drunk as quickly as possible. I did end up comfortably drunk and it was all good.

And I queued for over 6 hours for it.

I should’ve checked how long the queue was. And should’ve given up when it’s going slow.

But I stayed all the way just because I’m stubborn and optimistic. I thought I could go home by 3am.

I ended up leaving the place at 6am. I started queuing at 11.30pm. I didn’t expect such a huge crowd because the phone has been on sale in Singapore for at least a year?

The first part of the long queue ends when you arrive at the customer service counter (bottleneck #1) and you submit your details for a ticket number. A sales person immediately called for my number once I got the ticket. I thought my ordeal was finally going to be over when she directed me to another long queue which is for payment (bottleneck #2).

Then somewhere along the queue, there were 2 M1 girls helping customers apply the screen protector to the newly bought phones. So I too bought screen protector when making my payment and joined the queue.

And there weren’t seperate queues for those who pre-ordered and those who didn’t. I’m assuming there were people who didn’t pre-order in the same queue.

A friend of mine posted his honeymoon photos on Facebook. They went to Spain/Italy for around 3 weeks.

While browsing through those photos, I remembered how 10 years ago, both him and me were studying for our O level exams together.

Warm afternoon but windy. At the study benches. After all our classes have ended. Sometimes we would take a nap and I still remember him drooling over his textbook.

Fast forward to present time, he now runs his own design company, happily married and owns a vehicle. While I still work for someone else, live in a small house, no car and have accomplished nothing worth boasting.

I know it’s silly to compare other people with oneself but I feel that only applies to pessimistic people. I’m a mix of both.

I began to think about the differences in our lives which lead to our current situations. The things we’ve done and how we’ve spent the last 10 years.

Disclaimer: I don’t know what he’s done in the last 10 years but I’m going to guess anyway.

For him. Back in our polytechnic days, I remember he switched courses and sort of wasted 1 year, then finished it in 3 years. Then he has to serve National Service for about 2 years. Which leaves him 4 years to establish what he is today, a boss of his own company. I’ve seen some of his work and they are really good.

For me. I finished my course in 3 years, thereafter I took a 6 months break living a Hikikomori lifestyle. Learned a bit of PHP, then went job hunting. Worked in the same company for the same boss for 6 years for average salary.

Throughout my working years, most of my spare time went into FFXI instead of learning new things. Turned down social gatherings with friends and colleagues. All that’s in my mind at that point in time wasn’t about my future, it was all FFXI.

I’m currently reading a Japanese book about “Net game addicts“. Bought it for reading practice. Reading about the lives of different Japanese people who were addicted to online games. Some dropped out of university. Some neglected their health so bad they got hospitalized.

There’s one chapter about a young addict who says he lost all his youth to net games. All he does now is work random part time jobs. Has low income but enough to meet his daily needs.

Recently, I can’t help but wonder if life would’ve been better if I’ve never played FFXI. Could I be drawing a higher salary, driving my own car, living in a larger apartment now?

Some good things have come out of it though. Friends from all over the world. Having fun while saving money. Acquired natural reflexes when seeing the word “Radiant” somewhere else outside the game.

Still, if anyone asks me if they should play MMORPG, or show interest in one, I would advise them not to. Unless it’s someone with no ambitions at all.

P.S. I still play FFXI, and I don’t see myself quitting at all. However, I’m no longer as addicted as I once was. I have control over it instead of letting FFXI control me.