Deeparaya in Klang

You probably came from here:
http://aikyong.blogs.friendster.com/hengs_gaming_blog/2006/11/deeparaya_2006.html
If not, read there later.

A quick look-through at the stuff done in Klang for the Deeparaya.

'Nic had texted regarding plans for Deepavali:
7am - Bah Kut Teh breakfast
8am - TI3
12pm - Lunch
1pm - TI3
6pm - Finish

7am. 7AM. SEVEN ay-emm. To avoid risk of sleeping in until afternoon we'd bunked over at 'Nics'. At 2am 'Ward nicely called 'Nic to tell him that he just got back from KL and won't be joining us for breakfast >_<

Early in the morning, 8 o'clock...

After a so-so BKT breakfast we'd started Twilight Imperium (TI3) with four players: 'Nic, Ivan, 'Ward and us. In a 4-player game, each player took two strategy cards instead of one. This allowed me to win the game much faster than we'd anticipated as I got to draw the Imperial card quite often ('Nic, aware of what I was up to, tried to 'nudge' others into taking the Imperial card as well instead of taking it himself, sneaky!) - we'd finish TI3 by 1.30pm. 'Ward, however, was not happy that I'd robbed him of game satisfaction. Next time!

KFC for lunch at Giant Bukit Tinggi, then it was back for different games. NJH joined us at this point (hurrah more players!) and we did speed Puerto Rico with the expansion set buildings. Well, not really speed Puerto Rico but our PR games are getting faster and faster with everyone knowing pretty much what to do with the tokens (refill ship, place plantations etc). Strategy was a bit out of the window since we played with a mix of old and new buildings thus I lost out to everyone else.

Pick a role each turn, build districts and guess who's who...

Ivan then introduced Citadels to the rest of us. Whoa, was this fun! [More playtesting later would show that the game is at its best at 5-6 players.] A medieval setting where roles are chosen player by player, thus making the few last players guess what roles are held by the others. A simple yet mindscrewing game. Lots of laughter as after choosing a role, eye contact will be made, body language saying, "You know I know la I'm Assassin/Thief, you want to be who?"

Building...Construction complete. The House that produces the most spice- oops.

On Monday 23rd we did Siedler von Catan Travelbox followed by Caylus. There's a lot of multitasking in this game as well, where as a master builder you're to help construct a castle. 'Nic explained the game to the rest of us (Ivan, NJH and us) where NJH proceeded to win the game as master builder, leaving me with second as the King's favourite. Ivan, feeling rather drowsy that day, stuck with his strategy of "saboh 'Nic!!!" by being in cohorts with the Provost, first by denying 'Nic his resources and then rushing the build job. A round of Citadels and that was it.

Jeff teaching us Bang!

The heavy for the hols was on Tuesday night...starting at 11pm all the way to 7am next morning! Playing at Long's who kindly hosted, 'Nic finally gets Jeff to teach Bang! Another fun guessing game of Sheriff & Deputy vs Outlaws vs Renegade. Poor 'Nic, as Deputy he was killed by Outlaws early in the first game, and in the second game Ivan (as sheriff) declares, "Chances of 'Nic getting Deputy twice in the row very unlikely!" and promptly kills him before he even gets his turn!

"This...is the world map. Don't get lost."

This followed by Antike, a civilisation game, then Victory II, more towards warfare. Viktory II takes a start from Settlers of Catan, using the same tiles but with more. Loads more.

Fog of war covers the Island of Ca- game of Viktory II.

This game ended rather quickly with only 3 rounds as 'Nic capitol was crushed into vassalage by Jeff while 'Nic decided to say "Hello" to Wai Yan's towns with cannons.

The lighter games that followed: That's Life and Hey That's My Fish.

Us innocent souls thinking That's Life is a light-hearted game...

Analytic Paralytics hard at work trying to isolate competing penguins while saving the best fish for themselves.

Both were rather fun, quick, simple but importantly cutthroat games. So much so that I bought That's Life the day after :)

And that's Deeparaya for us in Klang.

What? Visitations? Food?

Deeparaya

Hah. How was the whole of the Deeparaya spent? Boardgaming, vodka, boardgaming, Bodypumping the PC to Low Yat for a checkup again, overnight boardgaming, afternoon boardgaming...whoa yeah. :)

Must Grudge-ingly Admit That...

While The Grudge 2 is good, Ju-On 2 still beats it hands down with more creative deaths :) The Grudge 2 retains some of the essence of Ju-On 2 but there are more changes to this one compared to Grudge/Ju-On. Anyways the spook factor is still there. Go watch.

Mo-Ther...Board!

Gah. Me PC's down again - the thing starts up but I don't see the memcheck running (thus com not starting...). Why??? Why???

Ming's first diagnosis was, "Motherboard rosak."

I think his mouth is very acidic.

Shall have to risk visiting Low Yat on Raya to see if anywhere is open to treat da PC.

Retreat! Retreat!

Second game for the day is Ra at Table 3. At our table, Jen Fai, Shaun, Chris and us. According to the Games Allocation table, this is game 7, a 1 hour game which should finish fairly quickly.

RA.
A game in 3 epochs. Objective is to gain the most points.
Tiles are drawn and placed representing various aspects of Egyptian life - gods, culture/civilization, pharoahs, buildings and season (flooding of the river), all earning points in some way. This are placed on the game board to be auctioned off. The intersting part of auction in this game is that each player only have three 'chips' for bidding with a value from 2-13 (or higher depending on players), thus players have to be mindful whenever they bid.

This was an interesting game, very quick learning curve but certain strategies in the game may smack you in the face if you don't keep watch - after the first epoch Chris was left with the 2, 3 and (we think) 6 chip for bidding! And we guess it would be better if a bag was provided for tile-drawing and shuffling. Otherwise it was a fairly quick game played, giving us time to check out other tables, or in Shaun's case, play dominos with the bidding chips.

Watching Samurai going on Table 1, things were quite hushed. Edwin and Jeff were already calculating their wins and losses already before the game has ended! Analyses Paralyses hard at work.

Onto our third game of the day - Table 2, Game 7: St Petersburg. Another 1 hour game.

St Petersburg.
Objective of the game? Earn the most victory points.
There are 4 phases in the game: Workers, Buildings, Aristocrats and Upgrades. Purchase cards revealed in each phase to either earn rubles (cash) or victory points. Workers generally earn rubles, Buildings for rubles and or victory points or even special abilities, Aristocrats mainly victory points. Upgrades allow you to improve cards you have already bought to either earn more rubles or points.

I didn't get to read about the flavour behind St Petersburg, because 'Nic and I were trying to teach Thurn and Taxis to Table 4 (why does Table 4 seem to have all the train games?). Hopefully our explainations were clear enough. Anyways, easy learning curve, heavy strategy punishment. Well, maybe not really. Just not paying attention to what we were buying, plus we didn't realise that, while we could 'take a card into hand' we couldn't 'discard a card from hand' as an action - leading to further point deduction at the end of the game <:( Back to Table 3.

Table 3, Game 4: Pirate's Cove, 90-minutes.

Pirate's Cove.
Objective is to loot different islands for their treasure, fight off any competing pirates on same island, take on notoriously famous pirates or The Royal Navy...all in the name of getting Fame Points.
Lasting 12 turns, pirates secretly choose their destination island to loot for treasure, gold, fame and/or purchase strategy cards as well as upgrades for their ship. Ships can upgrade sails (initiative), crew, cannons (both required for firepower) and hull (treasure hold space). During combat pirates blast each other until one sustains massive damage in any one of the four upgrades or flees.

We started rather slow because we didn't had anyone to teach us the game - Rob had to make do with going through the manual with us and us having mini-trials to ensure we've got the gist of it. Jen Fai has played the game before but that was waaay too long back, so we'd best go through everything again. We decided to sacrifice our hull integrity to increase our firepower might. Unfortunately as encounters prove, for firepower to be really impressive and intimidating, one's ship must be able to manouevre with ease. In the end our ship spent plenty of time at Pirate's Cove doing repairs T_T

The strategy cards may require clearing up on some details. Initially I'd cards that told me I could redirect the Royal Navy elsewhere. As the Royal Navy did not appear in the game I wondered what worth was the card for, until Jen Fai played it near end-game against Rob. Seems like when you play that card, you put the Royal Navy into play to chase and battle other pirates! So Rob had to fight off the persistant Royal Navy, but thankfully he had a card in hand that allowed him to deal double damage (or something). Rob won, got famous. After that encounter, next turn I launched my Royal Navy against Rob who fled ^_^

Which Is Which?

17th - Wee Wog and toy, originally uploaded by Janvier.

Midget has joined the family since February as has grown from the wee thing she was ^.^ Can you tell which is the toy and which is the wog?

[This is a posting via Flickr with the option of uploading a pic at 500px on it's own line. Hmmm. 'Twas too big for my template so had to resize pic in the end.]

Retreat!

[We can't upload photos again. So we'll just leave the post up and try and upload them sometime soon. What we've done so far is link text to the pics we've got up at Flickr. 'Nic, got a pendrive to get the whole lot of pix?]

Team, fall back!...

...All the way to Awana! The weekend was set for the 2006 Malaysian Eurogames Retreat. Starting at 8.30am Saturday and going alllll the waaaaay till Sunday afternoon. Shoot, should have had more marathon sessions with 'Nic and Ivan for practice. Hope brains don't dissolve before the weekend is over, as once we finished we'd to rush back, finish packing up for my trip to Singapore - we'll be there a week for training and will not be a good sign if brain has melted.

Decided not to take a risk in oversleeping so had kind 'Nic come up to fetch me over to bunk overnight at his place before heading up to Awana. We'd a good start and 'Nic also picked up Jeff along. The more the merrier, everyone was awake and the haze gave way to clouds and cool weather.

Soon everyone arrived and breakfast was underway. Edwin, our organizer did the honours of welcome speech and such and explained how we'd be playing da games. 16 gamers in all, split into 4 tables of 4 players. Essentially the games would be rated thus: Table 1 would be rather difficult games, scaling down to Table 4 with simpler games. As there were loads of games (28 for the event not counting extras for during free time) there were most of us who don't know some games. So those who knew how certain games are played were to teach the others, provided that they're teaching another table to "make sure you don't 'forget to mention' certain winning conditions". Fair innit?

First up, lots were drawn to see which table we'd sit at. Then the prelimenary game - for actual table placement. Heckmeck. A dice game. We suck big time at dice games. Anyways:

Heckmeck.
Objective is to collect the most points in worms.
Using six d6, roll to try and get marks to collect tiles of same mark and score points. Tiles either score 1, 2 or 3 points and can be stolen by other players as well!

This retreat was gonna have quite a bit of Musical Chairs/Tables - after each game, 2 winners will head 'up' a table while the 2 losers head 'down' a table. You could probably keep a permanant seat in Table 1 or 4 if you had the skill.

Anyways, as we're lousy at dice, we ended up at Table 4. No biggie. What's the first game up?

What the-? What is this game doing on Table 4???

Railroad Tycoon.
Objective is to get the most points by the end of the game.
Points are earned by building railroad tracks to send goods from place to place. Completing certain objectives also earn points. Cash is required to build tracks, upgrade train engines, urbanize towns etc and can be gained either by alloting shares or earning points.

Oh no. Heavy game IMHO, shouldn't this be a Table 1 or 2 game? A look around showed that the other tables had heavier games. Anyways, managed to suffer our way through as was slightly familiar with game concepts by now plus we knew what we needed to do during the initial stages of the game. But I guess the deciding factor as to how we won was the fact that KP wanted to win the prize for 'being fourth on the Table 4 in the final round'. That put Shaun and us up to Table 3.

small pleasures, small gripes

we've found a new pleasure in time-wasting - hanidoku. not only is it your regular sudoku but it's settlers of catan sudoku. and it's giving me a really big headache, an hour into the game and i've yet to place a single number. gotta read the strategies on working out this logic-honeycomb.

there's been a gripe i've had with apple since i've gotten their ipod. previously with itunes store, they'd only the 99¢ per mp3 which was pretty much worth it for them songs we couldn't find...elsewhere. now with itunes 7 there's more games, audiobooks (am eyeing project gutenberg for audiobooks now), downloadable telly episodes and movies as well! anyways. malaysia has no way of purchasing itunes store stuff! gripe gripe gripe.

I'm A Sucker For Good Goody Bags

Men's Health came down to Fitness First The Curve today, bringing with them girls with goody bags and forms. Thing is, goody bags from MH should actually have things of value. Of course we had to scan the booth for the T&C like must enter contest, make slogan etc.

For this one, one gal explained, "All you have to do is fill in this form, if you're one of the 20 picked you'll have grooming tips classes etc that will take place on the weekends somewhere next August."

Hmm. We gathered that it's basically a way to pick some zhialat fellows and do a before-and-after. The gals took photos of us, dressed in scruffy gym togs for BodyCombat. In the end there was five of us signing up for the freebies - lad, dad, Joel, Riza and us. Dunno if others had signed up before/after us. Chances that we'll be chosen? Hopefully as slim as us. Wethinks by August next year also we would have clean forgot that we'd signed up to do such >.<

Lesse. A Fitness First bottle (yay I lost mine), a Philips towel, a L'Oreal Professionel Liss Extreme shampoo, a Biotherm Homme Age Refirm Eye Force cream, a X-Trail keychain and compass, a GNC pill box, and IMO the star items: a big pink box from Playsafe called Love & Romance - a box of 12 Fit-tex 002 with a aromatherapy set, and...

A Dunhill Pure Eu de Toilette! Wow the waft! Yum...

The Devil wears Prada is a must watch - either to learn how to be a devil-boss, or just to watch Anne Hathaway or Meryl Streep or even just to see clothes and fashion galore.

Saturday had dropped by at Games Castle for the boardgamecafe meetup and dragged Paul along as well - as we were early (bugger every single road was jammed! What's wrong with KL this past week?) we started Ticket To Ride: Europe. An observer's take on our game pretty much sum up how a game of TTR:E by first-timers or players without the attribute: Analysis Paralysis play: "Eh how come no one block each other one? Everyone's got their long mission done already!" Ah well.

Somewhere mid-game Jeff, 'Nic and the others have arrived and started Tikal :( Oh well plenty of chances to learn new games. So after TTR:E we'd switch to Puerto Rico. Playing familiar games gives us the advantage of playing games quickly as we won't have to spend time letting information filter into the brain (like the implication of getting certain Operations cards in Railroad Tycoon early). Unfortunately these be new games to Paul so we couldn't zip through the game as we would like.

After 2 games had to rush off for the Les Milles new track launch. Was aiming for 'Combat, 'Jam and Rockstar Bollywood, but arrived late, missing 'Combat. Dunno if that's a good thing, because by the end of Bollywood my body was aching so bad that staying in Igor-hunch-limp-lurch pose felt most comfortable! It's actually quite scary at the launch, about half or more of the group very the 'yat chai' kind one...

Steven was back and was at Settler's doing dinner - which by the way was hosting some birthday function or other, all tables and chairs were taken and kitchen fully harassed. Tried the Chicken Cutlet dish, still find the Footlong the best followed by the Carbonara. Learned that in playing Power Grid you may want players that can bid fast >:P the game lasted from 10pm all the way till 1am!

Highway Dangers

Must take note of the following two highways, the road hazards are simply horrible:
1) Kesas highway
2) that highway leading to Putrajaya/Cyberjaya
Travelling on either highway has a 50% chance of inducing road fatigue/sleepiness, 70% if tired in any way. Travelling on both highways has a 100% chance of causing mental and physical fatigue and highway dreaming. Get a caffeine fix before attempting such journey especially just after lunch.

So Long, Farewell

Our last day at work started off with a bear invading my poisons cabinet. The fact that it was holding a box of Postinor didn't suggest anything good. I'd to tell my boss, "It doesn't work for me one la, take oso period neva come one."

Quite the paiseh really, because it wasn't only a bear-and-tie but there were assorted others from the rest of the staff as well. Touched touched. One of them even gave me a suspicious wooden box. Now when you ever get a wooden box for a present, it's always prudent to hold it away from your face (preferably in front of someone else's if to entertain others) and wonder what kind of bug is inside. In my case I got one with a rat and it was the supervisor who screamed. Heh.

The challenge, of course, was to take everything back (lesse now, my license, various personal effects, the prezzies) in a crowded train.

Quick rants

My com is down again. It starts, it runs a memcheck, and nil after that. I'm too lazy to check it out until Sat and I am getting seriously addicted to being online. I can't blog much 'cos I can't upload my photos onto my laptop, so things are being set back. I haven't gotten to the point of uploading my pictures and blogging at work yet.

Speaking of work, hoorah I'm a retail monkey no more. Back to a 9-to-5 jobbo. And am going to avoid talking about work on blog.

Last Tuesday my store gave me a farewell goody bag. Want to upload pics first before we get there.

Been down to Settlers for my meals. We found taste orgasm in their footlong sausage - 2 footlongs, potato wedges and buttered veggies. Heaven. Played Disx while eating. And their carbonara beats the bolognaise.

Tomorrow's Sat. Shall have to Bodypump my pc to Low Yat or summat if I can't get it to run T_T

Settling in at Settlers

So Sunday me 'n Paul have planned to spend the day at Settler's Cafe, whatwith it being RM5 for the entire day there ought to be a good crowd. Warned Paul to gimme a call when he's ready should I sleep the afternoon away. Anyways, was forced up at 1pm becos' me phone was hidden in a pocket somewhere in my room and Chiyo was singing away annoucing the arrivals of SMSes. So in the end got up, prepped up and headed of to pick Paul up and make our way to Settlers for some lunch. Speghetti carbonara. Good. Very good and generous.

We'd set up our iPod and speakers (love you guys it's a great prezzie) in the store and started playing battle music from Final Fantasy, One Winged Angel, music from Heroes all this while while playing our games. Of course, we didn't realise that the music we've been playing was of a particular genre until Zach yelled, "Do you have anything else except game music in here?"

Which leads to the first game of the day. Risk Godstorm. Yes yes Ivan already has this game but we've yet to try it out. Not too big a Risk fan as am not so bloodlusty nor warmongering, but enough so to try the game. As it is, this Risk variant is based on deific mythology (which is always flavourful and interesting) from Norse, Egypt, Greece, Babylon and the Celts. So asides from just armies conquering lands and continents you also have gods running wild.


God of Death not scary? How about being butted by a war elephant?

When we first started setting up we were told the game ends after 5 turns. "Most people think five turns is too short, but you wait and see la." Hmmm. Okay. Set up armies, let my people's faith bring forth Hades, and send the god storming all over Asia Minor preventing enemies from reaching their version of heaven. Muahaha. However, it seems even Hades is afraid of plagued lands and it took a brave soldier to set foot into that territory to smite the enemy. Hmmm.

By turn 3 one fellow was feeling war weariness already while we controlled Asia Minor, another Atlantis and the fight for Germania was waging on between Egypt and the Celts (surely you can guess which civilization I was?). However, us Greeks couldn't help but notice that heaven was being overcrowded by the Egyptians, Babylonians and Norse, and thus had to secure our own altar back into the world. Of course it was somewhere around this time when we found out we were playing the rules wrong, as we've been getting Miracle cards regardless of whether the deity of said Miracle card was in play or not. Nevermind. Play as is. In the end at Turn 5 (phew!) the Greeks held out! All praise!

Next up, while waiting for free kaki three of us decided to Settle at Catan. No Cities, no Knights, just plain ole Catan. The Settlers? The Greeks, the Norse and the Babylonians from Godstorm. It was here where we came up with the 3-Player Theory for SoC: in a 3-player game, one player will definitely suffer badly and not progress much in the game. This time it happened to me for the first time.

After that there was a table setting up Niagara. Having read Hengky's review we'd thought we'll give the game a go, and it was a nice full 5 players paddling up and down the river getting jewels. Being the erratic player that we are, we'd like to call about foul weather to speed up the river currents to send boats over the waterfall. Playing 2 games in all, we won the first through collecting jewels while for the second one we learn that it isn't easy to steal jewels as we like to. Good simple fun to rest the brain though, this game.

...hmmm, it's true what Paul said. Methinks we did 6 games at Settler's but only remember 5...

Could it be Nanaca Crash that made our sixth game? Maybe...

Just before leaving Settler's for dinner (with kind invitation from Paul) we saw Zach being trashed at Blokus by a bf-gf team. Must be wary when playing 4 player games against a couple when you and your friend decided to be honorable and not gang up. While at Pauls, he intro'ed me to Guillotine. Guillotine be a simple card game where nobles of various points are lined up before a guillotine, and each player chops the head off a noble and collect points. After 3 rounds the player with the most points win. Of course, there'll be action cards to shift the order of the nobles in line, add points, deduct points, take 2 nobles at once etc. Simple fast game.


Back from dinner, Gary intro'd Dvonn. Goodness, it turns out to be another braindraining game. You could say it's made for analysis paralysis peeps who enjoy killing people at chess or checkers. It's a simple enough game where you place the Dvonn pieces, stack them about by jumping on other pieces and aim to make the largest stack with your colour on the top. Sounds simple? It was, until Zach played and literally wiped out more than half the pieces on the board by cutting of their connection with the red Dvonn pieces. I was so drained that I lost to him in 7 turns while Paul managed 14 turns.


Last game of the night was Thurn and Taxis. Objective, make mail routes, establish postal stations and earn points. The map was separated into different coloured territories where points were earned if you had a station in all the cities in said territory. Points were also earned if you made longer routes of 5 cities or more, or if you had a station in every territory etc etc. The thing here: the game uses a diminishing point system! Must focus and plan strategy! Not good for erratic players like us as we get distracted quickly.

We never really got to finish the game too...at 10.30pm the rest of the gang joined us to drag us out for DotA.

Three Blind Mice

One of the more full weekends. Friday we did Super Ex-Girlfriend, which puts a whole new meaning to the term, 'Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.'

Saturday now, was kicked out of bed early on as mum had a repairman brought in to have a look at my a/c. Blah, had already spend most of Fri nite up (re)playing Mario & Luigi Partners in Time and now had to be up at 9am. Feels pretty much like a Sunday instead. Friend sez that Times warehouse sale isn't so good this time so I decided to give it a miss instead.

Come evening we started making our way down to Subang for dinner and The Mousetrap play, put on by the Taylor's College Society of Performing Arts. We had our reservations...it's by students (lets not hold that against them), will they put on a Britishfied accent or attempt at just clear IELTS English or make a Manglishfied version of it? Dinner was at this Taiwan restaurant just opposite Taylors. Food wasn't bad, and service was fast. Could go there again if ever we drop by Taylors.

The Mousetrap? I plead guilty to the fact that I kept comparing it to the one I'd saw at St Martin's theatre. Asides from the fact that the fellow playing Christopher Wren had a voice that was painful on the ears and another playing Mr Paravacini seemed more like a Italian Indian (having excessive bounce and flair) the whole play was absolutely good. Everyone did their characters rather well, no one stumbled save Sgt. Trotter accidently flinging his pen cap and acting was tops.

Only complaint would be the fact that the play was done with a British accent. Most of the time it's clear enough to be comprehended but there were instances when we couldn't really make out what was being said. Small matter tho', I think I'd have ranted if it was done otherwise. As the money was going to be donated to Rumah WAKE and tickets were only RM10, it was definitely money well spent.

After the play dropped by Settler's Cafe to recruit C&C Generals kaki. Was then that we found out that Sunday was gonna be RM5 for the entire day. Goody. Generals was played with some of the Settler's Cafe staff and their mates - GLA vs the world! Overwhelming, the amount of GLA forces stampeding the map...fun fun fun.

Dread intergorrations

The godparents are down for another visit among other purposes, and tonight mum made sure I attended dinner together rather than running off to the gym (thank goodness the Bollywood sessions are over!). Came back home, got into dad's car and promptly fell asleep thus making the dinner destination a complete surprise.

Dozing but aware enough to realise that drive seems pret-ty long.

We've stopped. Looks a bit like San Francisco Steak House from slit-eye view. But that's prolly 'cause Lemon has been making me think of the place lately.

Got out of the car to realise that we're in Port Klang Sea & Sky. Ooo. Dad's ordered crab porridge (delish), steamed (mantis?) prawns and squid. Heaven. And dad brought a bottle of pinot (no idea what vineyard it's from didn't bothered) that we'd chilled while waiting for our food...dinner was good.

Mum and godma exchanged stories and meetings with old nursing friends, dad and godpa talked about old friends, and there's also the crossover dialogues between all four regarding other mutual friends, and a sudden dreaded moment when godpa went, "I got a niece, also a pharmacist working in Singapore. Maybe I should introduce you to her."

Me: *Immediate hunched hunted position*
Dad: *laughs* How do you know he hasn't already got one yet?
Me: *mumbles* got no time la...
Godpa: Har? Part-time?
Mum: What? Got such thing as part-time girlfriend one ar?
Me: No...got no time...
Godpa: Oh, I heard part-time...you very soft-spoken ha boy.

And the topic changed unto that of old age and onwards. Phew. I don't need this.

Honk honk

Why can't Malaysian cars have more creative car horns? I'd like mine to go "Oi! Move la!" when some sakai weaves undecidedly in the middle of two carraigeways or dreams at a green light for ten seconds, and "Sakai driver!" when a bugger think his/her grandfather owns the road.

Was at Settlers again tonight, but unfortunately no crowd on Fri nite. Kamal wanted to do World Of Warcraft, which I was initially interested as have not played or seen the mechanics yet. After 2 hours into the game we were only on turn 13 with both teams having really no direction on what to do, plus feeling mentally lethargic already. So we just closed the game up, called out "GG, GG," and decided to go for something lighter.

Out came House on Haunted Hill (wheee). Four players, so the traitor may have a good chance of taking the game (based on personal experience as all our previous games had 5-6 players) if we'd a good haunting.
...
Frankenstein killed us all while he was on the verge of burning.

And it's now 2.30am. Meh. "GG. GG."

Sixty-nine

I've started picking up Men's Health of late. Flipping through September's issue, there's quite a good number of mouth-watering pictures. Some of them really got me drooling so had to make sure I wasn't in somewhere public when doing so. And the pictures are really everywhere, small shots, big close-ups, tempting presentations...the mind keeps flashing scenes even when not reading it.

The articles themselves were also quite informative. And the writers do keep mentioning about it. Most of the articles do. Like this issue, the writer sez: forget the old three times a day, do it SIX times a day! Read this article at page 70!

Excerpt:

Old diets
Eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

Abs diet
Eat six times a day.

...

How to do it: Eath three standard meals and three smaller snacks. For example:
8am - Breakfast
11am - Snack
1pm - Lunch
4pm - Snack
6pm - Dinner
9pm - Snack

Right. So have to customize it to our own schedule. No wonder I'm still starved. Must eat more! So lesse, our current eating habits:
11am - Breakfast
4pm - Lunch
10pm - Dinner
2am - Supper

We'll have to work on that. Must consider that our lunch is also not so healthy one, half the time it's fast food (whatwith having as neighbours the Golden Arches and BK and KFC a short stroll away) otherwise it's beef ball noodles, Subway sandwiches or heading down to KLCC for...McD's, BK, KFC or the food court. And if I'm feeling lazy, it's the combo meal of Bubur McD's followed by Maggi Mee made in the same bowl as the porridge once I'm done - Maggi Mee MSG.

To quote my sister, "One day don't eat meat can die one." Hear hear!

So if there wasn't any meat dishes during dinner, it's time to say hello to the Ramlee burger man outside 7-E. Otherwise junk food or instant noodles will do.

So we've been skipping meals! Aahhh! Need to feed!

Note to self: Cereal + soy milk + pineapples + plums = blech. Either plums not sweet enough, or should swap soy for skim, or dump cereal/milk and go yoghurt. I think yoghurt next time. Waitaminute, there's still that Baskin Robbins in the freezer!

BTW the title's referring to today's date.

Everybody Needs This

Instructions for our Kimia classes on chemical mixing and noting the reactions? Easily done. Compounding an extemporaneous preparation? Check up my Pharmacy Practise manual and the Martindale. VCR manuals? No probbie. IKEA single-sheet instructions for fixing up their furniture? Snap of a finger.

Whenever there's a problem, there's always an instruction manual that's comprehendable for troubleshooting.

My life?

This is missing:

I'd like to check up what to do whenever I feel like I've screwed up somewhere. Like why I get so screwed up over a trivial issue. Like why I feel so ataraxic over so many important issues. Like how to actually sleep/wake at hours like most people do (and not think it odd). Like how not to assume that books and my music player will be my constant companion throughout my entire life. Like finding out if some part of me is really broken and needs fixing.

Of Cities and Knights

Today be our first visit to Settler's Cafe at Damansara Jaya. We've been hearing about it from 'Nic and Kamal but somehow the timing has been such where we weren't free to follow. Now into its fifth month, Steven and I dropped by to have a look at the place.

Settler's Cafe is basically a cafe that allows you to 'rent' a table and try out their games in their games list. And they have food. As we were finishing our game the smell of food was killing me already.

The store setup was rather comfy, with some 8-10 tables wooden tables and the walls lined up with assorted board games. A group was already in the midst of playing Power Grid (good game) and we could see that this was a place for L5R supporters. MtG people, please take your business elsewhere.

Since Steven hadn't had the luxury of playing many boardgames, we were wondering what to play. Having Gary as our host, we somehow opted to start with Puerto Rico, but with the arrival of Kamal we'd decided to do Settlers of Catan plus the expansion, Cities and Knights of Catan instead as Steven and Kamal has played the original Settlers before.

Ooo lookit the original board tiles. Very Van Goth. Instead of following actual board setup we decided to have the numbers (white circles in the middle of each tile) distributed randomly.

The setup basically is the same as Settlers with the addition of an ocean hex that shows the progress of the dreaded barbarian ship. There are other additions as well, pushing the gameplay time an extra half-hour or more. Cities and Knights gives a very good impression as an expansion set for Settlers than the expansion for 5-6 players. We started about 5pm and ended at 8.15pm, but given that we'd to pick up the new rules plus clarify on old ones it probably wasn't too long.

"Summon the Krake-I mean Pirate Sheep...I mean Black Boat!" BOOM! ...in seven or more turns.

We definitely am looking to get the original plus Cities and Knights expansion of Settlers sometime. Thing is, now that we've a taste of the expansion it's definitely more fun that just the original. Like Steven says, "Once you played Frozen Throne you don't want to play back Warcraft III." The Travel Box set I currently own can't do the expansion plus is slightly limited in board setup variability. Only one slight gripe about the C&K expansion tho', it's still for only 3-4 players!

Eyes set out so far on: Settlers and Cities and Knights, and prolly Shadow over Camelot.

Happy Birthday Lemon

We'd celebrated Lemon's birthday (happy 25th! Welcome to the 2nd third of your life according to your calculations) at Coliseum, a place filled with plenty of atmosphere and entertainment. Unlike the other restaurants where there's plenty of funky furniture, zen-like surroundings, jazzy music, food decorated on a plate twice the amount of food served etc, here you get furnishings established since 1972 and weird weird waiters. Their idea of service is (in Mandarin), "I don't know what all of you ordered, so please raise up your hands when I call out the food ya!"

The waiters here not shy one.

So, happy birthday Lemon.

Oh Emm Gee

OMG.

Nostalgia

When a friend sent me the link back to Dune2k for the music files for the background music of House Ordos's Mentat screen, we got a bit disappointed because we'd heard it before and frankly, it didn't sound like the original. However, it has already been about what, 3 years since we'd visited Dune2k and so we'd dug around a bit.

Happily enough, we stumbled upon this.

Hooray! Once again bound to Ammon's Advice in loop-repeat.

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.

At The End Of The Day

Today's song is due to some Orzhovish influence.

[THE POOR]
At the end of the day you're another day older
And that's all you can say for the life of the poor
It's a struggle, it's a war
And there's nothing that anyone's giving
One more day standing about, what is it for?
One day less to be living.

At the end of the day you're another day colder
And the shirt on your back doesn't keep out the chill
And the righteous hurry past
They don't hear the little ones crying
And the winter is coming on fast, ready to kill
One day nearer to dying!

At the end of the day there's another day dawning
And the sun in the morning is waiting to rise
Like the waves crash on the sand
Like a storm that'll break any second
There's a hunger in the land
There's a reckoning still to be reckoned and
There's gonna be hell to pay
At the end of the day!

[FOREMAN]
At the end of the day you get nothing for nothing
Sitting flat on your butt doesn't buy any bread

[WORKER ONE]
There are children back at home

[WORKERS ONE AND TWO]
And the children have got to be fed

[WORKER TWO]
And you're lucky to be in a job

[WOMAN]
And in a bed!

[WORKERS]
And we're counting our blessings!

Taken from Les Miserables, the musical.

Funny how the situation doesn't really change much then and now. When we come out into the working world, it's:

Lovely quote by OPL.

Of course, that's how the world works, hor? If no one works, we won't have our char kuey teow or our nasi lemak, our garbage cans will overflow, there'll be nothing to watch on telly, radio got nothing to listen...and this is on the everyday small things level.

If only work was fun, and was rewarding. Yeah sometimes it's fun, sometimes it's rewarding. But not all times. I went for a company dinner, and they had this bit to acknowledge staff that has stayed with the company for donkey years (well, actually over ten years). What did they get? Cash? Pittance. A nice plaque. Back to work, now.

We're not gonna spend our entire life seeing other people making profits out of our work and us only getting a bite of it. We wanna see ourself in a place where we work when we want to and enjoy it without suffering. And we're not talking about doing anything like be a lovely lady.

So:

Who will join in our crusade?
Who will be strong and stand with me?

Quick aside.

Our iPod is really now part of our life man. Mebbe we should get it engraved. But what to say?

Gaming marathons

Boardgame sessions in Klang, while fun and engaging, tend to be rather vampiric, energy-sapping sessions. Generally we start from 9pm onwards, and go game after game after game until the wee hours of the morning where everyone emerges pale, glassy-eyed and in a zombie-like trance.

A good meetup will see about 7 of us at Cynic's, where he has a (sort of) game room for all our boardgame/piano/Osim massage chair needs. Since the various boardgames we have vary in sizes we normally use the floor. Very practical when it comes to games like Carcassonne, Twilight Imperium, House on Haunted Hill and Railroad Tycoon. When there's a large crowd and a board game can't support all available players, you gotta entertain yourself (and the others) right? That Osim chair, man it does wonders.

Only thing with most of these games, they tend to be cerebral. How to tell leh? Firstly, even to set up the game you'd probably need 1/2-hour. And if no one knows how to play the game? Mebbe need an hour to explain the rules and run a quick demo.



Twilight Imperium, interesting space game with many alien races. Build, wage war, trade etc. Very diverse and time/energy/brain/life-engaging. Takes an hour to set up the entire board and pieces.

After the first two boardgames everybody's definitely opting for lighter no-need-to-think-so-much games. Brain has fizzled out whatwith thinking of strategies to win the game, what to buy, who to sabotage etc. After all for the most of us we only play these games during these boardgame sessions, not all the time.

So when last night Cynic called to say there's a marathon, a tingle of fear and excitement went through my spine. The last time we had a marathon it started at 9pm and went all the way till 7am, and I had to work in the afternoon. Ended up just three of us, though. Cynic, Ivan and me. One was busy with football and another wanted to spend quality time with Heroes of Might & Magic V. In the case of the latter I totally understood and didn't bug him about it (one...more...turn...).

Surprisingly we managed an average of and hour a game, 4 games in all: Puerto Rico, Carcassonne, Railroad Tycoon and Hotel. Everyone's pretty quick with Puerto Rico now except for finding that perfect strategy against a certain someone who practises using an Excel program of the game. Carcassone is simple fun. Railroad Tycoon...man, now this game should have been played first instead. It so happened that instead of playing Ticket To Ride we voted for 'the other train game' instead. Thankfully everyone already had a rough inkling how to play the game, (Cynic of course knew the game best having to teach everyone else how to play the game at different occasions) so we could jump-start into the game fairly quickly. Hotel's a faster version of Monopoly and thankfully doesn't require much thinking.

Left Klang at 5am stiff and starving. There's gonna be a bigger session come end of the month. Need to prep!

Movies galore

This week has been a good one for movies. Although I didn't expect there to be a theme (can you spot it?):

First movie was The Omen on Tuesday, 6th June 2006. Yeah, so it was a marketting gimmick but hey, I'm a movie buff and I do like scary movies (including Scary Movies). Looking through the papers we found that we could catch the 11.25pm show at Cathay Cineleisure so we did just that. Cathay's good points: lotsa roomy legspace and 90% of their popcorn were perfectly coated caramel crunchy popcorn, not cardboard! Cathay's bad points? Straight-back seats that doesn't allow you to lean back and enjoy.

Oh yes. The Omen.

I never realised that Terry Pratchett's and Neil Gaiman's book, Good Omen was a parody of The Omen! In a way, the book was a good introduction/synopsis for the movie. The movie had a totally unlovable child playing Damien, black dogs, witchy nannys, slowly-getting-mad mother (think Devil's Advocate?), pictures of how people will die (think The Ring and Final Destination), graveyards...Not really that spooky la tho. But it did spark my curiousity as to the original Omen, and Omen 2 and 3 too. And if Scary Movie 5 ever comes out, surely The Omen's gonna be in it!

Next up, Saint-Ange. Since I wasn't working on Thursday I thought I'd try and catch a French Festival movie. Initially planned for Le Coeur Des Hommes at 12.15pm, but whatwith mum and a contractor locking horns till past half-twelve, I decided to catch Saint-Ange at 2.30pm instead. Mana tahu this turned out to be a horror flick, and mainly in English! In a cinema with only a couple and another dude! Had a better spook factor compared to The Omen tho, I must admit.

Finally, Saturday night. Initial plan, bowling at happy hour.

1 hour, 2 people, 3 games. Worth it? Worth it.

As we walked past GSC, the lure of a near-nonexistant queue compelled us (Lemon and me) to take a look at what's showing. What show did we get tickets for? Black Night. This was a spontaneous buy, and for this show we thought there should be plenty of seats. The whole cinema turned out to be full! There were only three separate seats left, thankfully two of them near the back. We assumed it to be an Asian horror flick but wasn't sure if it was Chinese, Japanese or Thai.

It turned out to be all three: three short stories in Cantonese/Mandarin, Japanese and Thai. Two things all three stories had in common: vengeful spirits and water. It seems that once someone dies, it's always bent on killing you after suitable scaring the shyte out of you. And their ghosts are either immersed in water, or have water flowing all over their skin, or disappear only to leave a big big puddle...

Am waiting for Scary Movie 4 now.

One more turn...

Civilization popularized it, Civ IV uses it as their tagline.

But we're using that line for Heroes V. Like Heroes III, it's always, "One more turn," or "After the outcome of the battle," or "Let me build this structure in the next round first," or "Let's see what the AI does first," but essentially its:

One more turn.

Move heroes, build up town, collect resources, recruit army, fight enemies, conquer territory, end of day. AI players take their turns. Day ends for all players.

One more turn la. Move heroes, build up town, collect resources, recruit army, fight enemies, conquer territory, end of day. AI players take their turns. Day ends for all players.

.
..
...

One more turn la. Recruit high-level army of frightening dragons, archangels, archdevils, titans, chase and slaughter other players' armies, seige their towns, cast impressive spells like chain-lightning, meteor shower and armageddon, claim town for own...

One more turn la, wanna see what that town's magic guild has in terms of spells and probably recruit their high-level creature. Ooo! More dragons!

Let's go hunt roaming creatures to try the bigger army/new spells on. Conquer more territory, capture more resources, end of day. AI players take their turns. Ooo! Enemy hero wandered within our sights! Must chase! Day ends for all players.

One more turn. Gotta chase that hero before he becomes a threat.

.
..
...

One more turn.

One more turn.

One more turn.

Look at the time! Gotta save! Sleep! Sleep! Okay, after the next turn.

Keeping ourselves busy

Hurrah! A few things have finally dropped into our lives to keep us occupied, and all of them are leisure-related!

First up came the opening of Pay Less Books at 1 Utama's new wing, with Agatha Christies selling from RM3.90 before a further discount! Whooo! Now Agatha Christie books cost about the same as a normal novel (around RM35 nowadays), so picking up 5 AC books was absolute joy! As an added bonus the books were all either Miss Marple or Hercule Poirot stories.

Am onto the last book now. Normally wouldn't have taken me this long to finish all the books, but whatwith...

New Super Mario Bros out for the Nintendo DS! Glee! Have been waiting for this game also. It has been absolute years since a Mario platformer has been released, and this one does not disappoint. Our personal favourite is still Super Mario Bros 3...gleeful music, many many powerups, short sweet stages, very good game physics...sigh. When we first started stage one seeing those little goombas walk walk walk *small jump* (!) our heart also took a small jump ^_^ Took me 2 nights just to finish the last stage (with short cuts etc of course). Am now finishing all stages properly.

However, thank goodness we'd finish New Super Mario Bros when did. Because what's keeping us awake at nights nowadays is...

Heroes of Might and Magic V! Oboy! Could not believe it when lad called us at work to tell that the game was out (what, a week before it's announced launch date?). Doesn't matter, if the game provides, we are DEFINITELY getting the limited addition of the game! Anyways...first impression of the game. EYE-BOGGLING with appreciative "Waaahs!"...Main Menu..."Waaah!"...Adventure Map..."Waaah!"...*scroll scroll scroll* Adventure Map zooms in!..."Waaah!"...Town Screen..."Waaahhh!"...*rotates* Town Screen rotates..."Waaahhhh!"...Town Screen rotates till sunflare in background..."HWaaahhh!!!"...

We are not, repeat, not getting much sleep nowadays.

The Body Remembers

When observed that we seem to know the moves for Bodycombat and Bodyjam quite well, we just reply, "We don't memorize the moves or anything, it's just that after a while the body remembers the tracks and the moves."

Somehow, it's not good to just let the body take over like that. This month, Gwen Stefani's "Rich Girl" is playing in the stores. Gotta remember not to swing them hips!!!

Tax(ing) Income, 2005

Sigh. Last year, I totally totally left doing my income tax until the last week, because I never realised that the income tax submission dateline was nigh plus never realized why my company sent me an EA Form. The final week for submission saw me heading over to Randall's for a crash course in income tax form filling, and then the next day to submit the form at the Inland Revenue Department at Kelana Jaya.

Only one problem: I hadn't had a registration number, so my form wasn't complete. Plus I hadn't any tax to pay, since I only started work in September 2004. So, I spent an hour there trying to register only to be told that I need not submit my BE income tax form in the end. Blah. So, I'd marked down on my phone calender to get my registration number by February 2005.

That calender reminder, I must say, was just ignored for about a month until I got a letter from the Inland Revenue Dept informing me of my registration number etc (phew). No escaping income tax submission for me this year, then.

Should be easy, hor, filling up the income tax form after having done so?

AAAAARGH!

Burn you, horrible horrible forms!

By habit I print out 2 copies, one in English for rough filling, and the actual BM one for submission. This year instead of printing out the BE form I'd print out the B form instead, which has yonks more sections that did not relate to the employed but to those that opened their own business. Wasted my resources printing out some 14 pages.

And then, instead of the quick within-the-hour of filling up the forms, I'd decided to look for my book receipts to claim. Another habit of mine is to use the receipt of the book I bought as the book's first bookmark. So, it's just a matter of flipping through my books to find the receipt and hope it's for the correct year.

A treasure hunt that turn out to be. I ended up finding a measly few (hey, I'm allowed to claim up to RM700, and I know I buy books aplenty) and wondering where the rest have disappeared, but the treasures...

The Discworld Almanak. April 26th, 2006, Thursday: Rain of fish a high probability. Be prepared to find forgotten currency.

A crisp, new RM50 note and an unopened angpow.

Well. A final bit in me EA form caught me off-guard as I never had that bit in the previous year, so I'd to leave completing the form until I'd someone instruct me properly. Once done, it's just waiting for next year to once more go through another bout of treasure hunting.

Puppy License

And a wonderful thing it is to have. Wee'd inside the house? "Aiya, pee here ar!" in that symphatizing voice that states: Aren't you CUTE! Equally, "Aiyo, why you pangsai there?" Variations in Cantonese and other baby talk also feature heavily with this license enforced.

And people don't get angry with you for any reasons! Bite this, crap there, whine about...all people can do is let their hearts melt, get mildly upset, but never, ever really get angry having to clean up (or whatever) after you!

Nice hor? Not only that, you get cuddled, carried about, loads of attention...Aren't you the baybee? Aren't you? Aren't you the fuzz-wuzz cute thing now?

Here's hoping: never grow up. Sigh. You only go through this once.

I Dream

I dream:

• Of how my future home will be - how each room is decorated, the layout of the garden, the pool...
• The kind of cushy job I can have
• That financial issues will never be my issues
• That I can enjoy life and remember all the enjoyable bits instead of being so forgetful
• Of Heroes of Might and Magic V to come out very very soon (I would buy the original for this)
• That perfect, credit-card-thin PDA
• That perfect Nokia phone
• For more people to trash compete with in Tetris DS
• For that bachelor-for-life to find a partner-for-life
• Of joining a choir
• Of weird dreams
• Of getting a Citroen (I may entertain the thought of a VW Golf...maybe)

I Just Like The Colour Green...

Following njapf, we got this:

Your Personality Profile

You are nurturing, kind, and lucky. Like mother nature, you want to help everyone. You are good at keeping secrets and tend to be secretive. A seeker of harmony, you are a natural peacemaker. You are good natured and people enjoy your company. You put people at ease and make them feel at home with you.

The World's Shortest Personality Test

Sins that we give in...

Now, if there's a thing we cannot resist, it's treating ourself to some good sinful chocolate. Chocolate will set us a-flutter if we need to do some self-pampering, and in a non-destructive sense too (no-ooo, we don't think getting fat counts as destructive. Non-productive maybe.) And so while walking about The Street at The Curve this afternoon (our third home, nah, not yet...) we decided to head for the Chocolate Fountain stall for choco-covered marshmallows. That hit the spot. But it wasn't enough. The day was still young.

So when we were at our second home we stopped by Bakerzin to havva try at their wares. Delightful, sinful wares. Enter the Sumatra: a mix of white and dark chocolate blended with Sumatran coffee beans...

One bite, and it was ambrosia. Ab-so-lute de-lish!

Every bite to be savoured. The lemon macaroon in the background served as intermission, to allow the taste buds to recover from the onslaught, much like lemons given out during half-time at lacrosse.

And at the end, the mental equivalent of loosening the belt and slouching in the chair. Who needs books telling you how to detox or relax when the simple pleasures of life are everywhere?

Says it all.

Exactly about how we feel about looking for a job.

Introducing a new member to the family

We have a new wog. She be unnamed as of yet, as there were nothing suitable that everyone can agree on. Say hewwo to the new Maltese woggie.

Hmmm. Let's try again. Say hewwo to our new woggie.

We hope the parents come up with a easy nice name...