Category: Life

Hmm… 166 blog entries for the year of 2004. 166 is also the bus I take to
work every morning.

If you check my first blog entry at page 1, you’ll find the reason to why I
am no longer interested in going out for a celebration. And another added reason
would be that it rained almost non-stop for the past few days.

As usual, I enjoyed another long session of Final Fantasy XI.

There was also a little celebration my friends and I did for another friend
who had his birthday on 1st Jan. What we did was ask him out for dinner, and
then we gathered at his void deck of his HDB flat and discussed what to do. Two
of us guys hid at the back of his pickup whereas the other 4 ladies equipped
with a bottle of cherry soda and some eggs hid behind a building nearby.

My friend and I crept into his pickup with a bag of washing detergent powder.
The birthday boy came down, opened the door of his pickup to put his PDA phone,
went to the back of the vehicle to open the flap to find 2 of us inside with
powder. [XD]

So it’s 2005 now. I don’t feel any difference nor feel the new year mood,
which explains why I keep forgetting to greet others “Happy new year”. The
holidays passed just like any other weekend. Is it because I’m getting older? Or
just too much time spent without regret on FFXI.

By the way, I bought a new LCD monitor last Thursday. A 17 inch Samsung 710T
with DVI. Response time 12ms. Good for gaming purposes. I love the extra viewing
space. My new screen resolution is now 1280*1024, an increase from the
previous 1152*864. Paid S$599 and sold my old CRT monitor to an old friend for
S$100. I also get to enjoy extra space on my computer table, less electricity
consumption, less heat generated.

Last Sunday, went down to Singapore Expo with a friend to another cosplay
party. Being lazy, I had to wait till around 2.30 for him to pick me up with his
car. Of course, I missed out on a lot but thankfully, the Ayanami Rei figurines
I was eyeing wasn’t sold off.

The booth owner had advertised her stock through an anime forum and I browsed
through a lot of pictures and spotted some really neat figurines. She was nice
to give me a small discount probably because the day was going to end soon and
she still has lots of stuff on her booth that she wants to clear. I tried to
bargained a few more dollars off and the sum we agreed eventually was $125.

Besides shopping, I had the chance to meet some FFXI players. All of them
from other servers. One of them cosplayed as a Red Mage in his full artifact
armor and another, a black mage in his job-specific equipment. Red Mage, Etoh,
brought some Ginger Cookies, Meat Mithkabobs, Shihei, a Mandragora and Goblin
plush toy and some other FFXI stuff. I don’t think they were for sale but just
as part of his cosplaying. I heard he even brought a flute and played like the
bards in the game.

Etoh had played FFXI for 2 years. Yes, he started the game with the Japanese.
Which also means he played the Japanese version of the game. I also had a chat
with another FFXI player whose main job was Monk. He ranted about the high
prices of equipment and how he spent 10 hours a day farming for gil. Eventually,
he found it a chore and stopped playing for a while. Then returned and went
levelling his character.

Here’s the pictures of the stuff I bought, taken from the merchant’s
website.

How different are they from each other? All involves money, luck, judgement and gives a certain degree of excitement.

Just came across this site about Families Against the Casino Threat in Singapore. Their petition letter as quoted below.

My thought is, it’s the parent’s responsibility to teach the child that gambling is bad. Not the government.

Bleah. Crystal reports is newbie-unfriendly. Hong Kong trainers can’t help me
much. I am the key person of this project so if clients don’t like it, I’m too
be blamed. This is by far, the first unenjoyable project I’m assigned to (as if
there’s other people to assign it to).

This project is a fruity mix of technologies, not much helpful
training provided, lots of business concepts/terms my technical
brain have difficulty comprehending.

Anyway, tomorrow’s the presentation of this CRM program to our client. I will
be present during the meeting with the big guys. Can’t wait to get this over
with.

Every second of it makes my whole body shiver in excitement. It’s coming soon, IT’S COMING SOON!!!

Torrent users click here to download the second trailer fansubbed by animeone.

Lotsa great screenshots from the movie and some magazine scans at AdventChildren.net.