Goodbye

We've been staying in Malaysia for all our life now, and must say that we've enjoyed every bit of it. After all, school wasn't a nightmare, college was (somewhat) fun, university was our first taste of freedom. Now that we're working, can't really enjoy la, but still life has been good.]

We've made good friends here. Not like we're gonna forget them. But the bastard that is me will probably be very slack at keeping in touch frequently.

There's really good food everywhere in Malaysia! Klang's bahkutteh, Ipoh's hor fun, Penang's char kuey teow, maggi/indo-mee goreng, the list can go on and on...Not to mention that mamaks all open till the wee hours of the morning and there are 24-hour fastfood outlets nearby.

Thing is, we're gonna be moving soon. To our dream island.

We've joined up the pioneering team of other individuals who shall settle in Catan. Damn. That mean's we gotta give up all our luxuries and work like buggers raising sheep for wool, harvest grain, chop trees, baking clay and mining ore!

All just to be the Lord of Catan one day.

We've decided to get the Travel Box first as it's very portable (and cheaper). Of course, we've to put up with everything being in German. But that's ok. Downloaded da English almanac in preparation. Development cards a wee bit small and also in German? No problem, make our own:

When we're Lord of Catan we'll build guest houses near good beachfront property. Do come visit!

Meet Sprixie

Name: Sprixie
Description: A flying spirit allied with the great outdoors. Known affiliates include Sorceress towns, Confluxes, Preserve towns and Sylvan towns.
Quote: *Blows kiss*
Occupation: Tier 1 creature.

Speed: 3
Attack: 4
+ Martial Arts (5)
Dexterity: 3
+ Lockpick (3)
+ Dodge (2)
Intelligence: 2
Persuasion: 2
Medical: 2
Defense/Health: 4

After tonight's scenario of When Darkness Comes, she has the following upgrades:
Dexterity +1
Lockpick (+2)
Dodge (+2)

Not your average sprite. This one doesn't have the 'No Enemy Retaliation' speciality, for one thing. Nor does she have high initiative and/or high speed too. We'll work on that as time goes by.

When Saturday Comes...

Today happens to be another hot lazy day where sleeping in and taking things easy was in order. Come afternoon and methoughts it would be a good time to try out the 'Elbow Room' scenario of HoMM III without allies this time. Conflux doesn't do well in short games and we've developed a liking for the undead. Just as the main menu for HoMM III pops up, lad calls.

[lad throws a Persuasion 4 + Bargain skill 2 against a 3K challenge]

lad: "Did Kamal call you? He has a new board game that he wants to try out."

[lad gets a 23455]

aycee: "I was gonna play Heroes, but...alright."

-.-

Turns out Kamal has bought a game called When Darkness Comes from Room. He'd even printed out copies of the Combined Rule Set which he says does a better job explaining the rules compared to the actual manual.

So there we were, lad, Kamal, Paul and me, sitting at a mahjong table muggling through the game. It's a sorta RPG game where each player has a character to go around town, breaking into buildings and killing adversaries, finding allies etc. Makes one think of House on Haunted Hill but with a higher learning curve.

[lad, Kamal, Paul and aycee need to pass an Intelligence challenge of 4K]

Today was mainly a test round to get a feel of the game, work out the mechanics etc. Seems like there's another session tomorrow. We'd used the pregenerated characters, and I took Sharon, a flirtatious lockpicker that can kick a man's kidneys out his ears with her martial arts. Somewhere during the game Sharon met this doctor ally and had to persuade him to join forces, but her wiles failed to woo him. Instead, the gay doctor fell for the manly Brian that was lad's character (okay, I should really stop bitching about this) who'd threaten the poor doctor instead.

[Intelligence of 4 + General Knowledge skill 4 = dice throw of 235566]

Somehow combat turned out to be a bit of a problematic issue so we've somehow chose to ignore the exact details and used the ever-convenient 'house rules' or 'mutual understanding'.

[3 allies = 3 rerolls allowed: 1st reroll = 122356]

Characters-wise, not all the skills seem to be needed until we either get the expansion set or probably try out different scenarios. Poor Paul's first character, the ever-alert Valerie, had a Ranged Mechanical Weapon skill modifier, and there was only one gun in the whole items stack. So if we have another session tomorrow we're gonna make our own characters.

[2nd reroll = 123456. Success!]

Reminder to self

Graveyard tastes bad. Graveyard tastes horribly bad. Graveyard tastes Hacks cough drop bad.

Must chase it down with a daquiri.

First full weekend of the middle of the year

It's one of those weekends where the days are just packed with things (well for me it is).

Have set for an appointment on Saturday with my neurosurgeon, a 2-yearly thing, down at SMC. Straightforward chitchat, examination and goodbye-drop-in-anytime-if-you-need-to-else-every-2-years. Everything under an hour. Goodbye, long appointments where it's wait to get an MRI done then wait to see the doc which takes about a good 3 hours.

After that was lunch. Now, lunch at 12pm is a novelty for me. Lunch for me is normally around 3pm onwards okay, weekdays because of work and weekends because of sleep. So lunch at noon means got chance for kopitiam food...char kuey teow...chicken rice...prawn mee...char kuey teow...soup kuey teow...pork ball soup...beef ball soup...char kuey teow...

Choices choices choices. Why choose? Lunch of char kuey teow and chee cheong fun and cups and cups of iced tea.

Steven's back so that meant a DotA session would be on sometime. In fact, we'd a session in the afternoon and then again at night. Sigh. Being trashed just because you're a casual player makes your brain 'numb', and having to repeat the session at night again, really, there are better ways to kill one's brain cells.

Oh yes. This happened.

See clear.

Sigh. Not even a year old.

So we'd thought that mebbe we could do a simple pair at A-Look The Curve, them cheap RM138/RM168 pair to replace my current pair.

Took us an hour plus, but thanks to a limited attractive selection we'd chose this.

Hooray, another hole in my pocket. Good news is that my power has not increased since Form 5.

Ever since we'd came back from Cameron we'd a shock noticing more scratches on our iPod. Serves us right for playing about with skins, now no screen protector...plus it's been a hassle keeping it in our pocket while we commute. The mind commands us thus, "Care now for thine iPod, or it shall not survive thee abuse." And we listened and we cared for it thusly.

The denim cover. Clips to our beltloop on our pants and has its own earbud pocket! Hurrah. Our iPod is naked no more.

Sunday evening saw us at Taman Botanik in Klang for the housewarming of a church friend. The place is...wow. The family has gotten a semi-d facing the lake. Very peaceful. Absolutely lovely. It was night time and I still do not have my camera. Well, the area is still new after all. And deep in enough to be away to be shielded from the current fugly phase Klang is going through.

Mahjong rules!

Hey! Wish we had read this during our Cam trip. Our memories about 3-kaki mahjong (it's a Malaysian variant!) were sooo rusty that we'd gotten most of the rules wrong!

Cameron Getaway! [Redirection]

Bah, Blogger's been playing up again on picture uploading. So go here until I get it fixed.