Here's My Story

Odd name for a restaurant, isn't it? The waitress there didn't know what plan A was and why the name Plan B. I urged her to ask her boss :P It used to be that for such restaurant, plain water was free but nowadays, more and more restaurants are charging for water. Plan B still does not charge for it. Ban had the Teriyaki Salmon Soba (RM58++). Yes, trust me, the salmon was in there...somewhere. Ban said it was not bad and not too oily. The salmon was seared properly i.e. there was still some raw bit, rather than thoroughly cooked. The soba and vegetables were well cooked. I had the Pho Bo (RM22++). Its broth was light in taste, which was what I wanted that night. Noodle was smooth and round, similar to the one used for Seremban Beef Noodle (if I didn't get it mixed up with some other noodle lol). The sliced beef was thoroughly cooked and the beef balls were tasty. Overall, all the ingredient mixed well with the broth. The only odd one out was the sauc...

There's swimming pool at Ban's place. Ever since I moved in 3 years ago, I had been meaning to try swimming there but there were always reasons/excuses not too: Too crowded, especially between 4.30pm and my usually dinner time of 6pm+, and during weekend Too hot i.e. 11am until 4pm Woke up late and so it was too hot to swim Wanted to have breakfast first and time to digest. Too late to swim after that because it was too hot Too cold because it rained. The water certainly felt cold Work Just plain lazy :P Recently, finally I swam for the first time here (and first time since I swam in OZ in Jan/Feb) and did it again a few days later after that. Swam around 11am+. To stave off great hunger right after the swim, I had half glass of milk before the first swim and half piece of biscuit before the second swim. Had oatmeal after each swim. The pool's water temperature was fine by me. Just nice. In fact, the short light shower I had before going into the pool was cold...

Previous two posts were on the strategic part of Mount & Blade: Warband. This post is about its tactical part, which is chiefly used on a battlefield and during sieges. Oh yes, having a shield is so useful, especially against range attack. For melee attack, you still have the option to parry. My calvaries at the back, my crossbowmen in the middle and... ...my infantries at the front. I generally aimed to have Swadian Knights, Rhodok Sharpshooters and Nord Hurscals. I need to be careful because that means my troop suffers from negative morale if we attack Swadia, Rhodok and Nord respectively for each type of unit. Now that Rhodok is no more, it's a non-issue for the sharpshooters. Later, I changed my tactic a little: if I'm just aiming to defeat enemies on the field, I'll bring only calvary units as they are clearly superior against other units on the battlefield. If I aim to conquer castles or towns, I'll bring archery and infantry units. Of course,...

It's already been 4 years. I believed our relationship has pretty much stabilised (so far) after having living together for about 3 years. Yes, as with any relationship, there were grumpy moments and arguments but thank goodness they have been quite rare. I hope Ban thinks the same hehehe. So here's wishing Ban and I many more years to come, with much love, manjaness and giggles :)

I couldn't resist but capture the castle nearest to Veluca i.e. Grunwalder Castle. Yes, I (red) was surrounded by Rhodok holdings (green) and bordered with Sarranid (yellow) to the south and Khergit to the east but I didn't have quarrels with Khergit (purple) though. My main problem was attracting other lords to defect to me. I didn't want lords who were sadistic and quarrelsome, which left me the choice of good-natured (most difficult to attract), upstanding (second most difficult) and martial. It took me very long time and much persuasion to finally have other lords, which I later realised one reason why: I was too quick to award newly conquered holdings to my existing lords. Leaving holdings unassigned increases the chance of attracting lords of other kingdoms to defect. Conquered Uxkhal, which was originally a Swadian town and so gave Swadia more reasons to declare war on me. Also, managed to capture Ergellon Castle and persuaded 3 lords to defect. Oh, I c...

Inspired by Ban's attempt (and he succeeded in conquering all of Caladria), I started a new game where my main objective is to establish my own kingdom. Normally, in any game, I usually play a male character. However, I found out that in this game, a female character as an additional means of establishing kingdom: married a lord of an existing kingdom and the persuade him to rebel. The advantage here, as compared to what Ban did as a male character, is that the female character, together with her husband, gets to keep whatever castles or towns they're holding. So I did that and instead of choosing my husband as the ruler of this new kingdom, I chose myself as the rightful queen of Caladria hehehe. Oh, and my character's name is Galadriel :P Coincidentally, I was randomly given the looks of a blonde. At first, I was in service of the Swadian king but they were crushing the Rhodoks all too fast and so I switched to the latter. I sieged and was awarded Weyyah Castle, a ...

Sometimes when I watch or listen to an advertisement, I take note of its key selling point. For cars, it can be price, size, design, stability, reliability, special features etc. The most recent car advertisement I heard over the radio is that for the latest Volkswagen Golf. Their selling pitch? It can go from 0 to 100km/h in just 6.5 seconds.  Really? That's the selling point in a country where the top speed limit is a mere 110km/h? In KL itself, there are even sections of highways/expressways where the limit drops to 80km/h and that too hasn't taken into account the traffic. In fact, I find it hilarious watching some drivers at such roads zoomed for 50m before needing to stop again because of traffic and lo behold, we mere turtles behind them catch up in mere seconds. Look at the examples of selling points I listed at the start. Would you spend your money in choosing speed over any one of these?

I definitely purchased the Groupon voucher at a significant discount since its worth was RM130. Likely it was about 50%, shared with Ban. It consisted of a starter, main dish and dessert for each person. It turned out to be a great gastronomic fine-dining experience. Yes, the original price was also gastronomically high lol. Drinks were not included and so since I already enjoyed much discount on the food, I decided to splurge a little by ordering carrot juice with additional request for milk. Ban had orange juice. Both were good although on hindsight I should have ordered without ice. The juice was about RM9++ each. Salad was good although they didn't follow my instruction of having dressing on the side. The most delicious part of the salad, upon query (I didn't know what it was), turned out to be the fried turkey bacon. Surprisingly, there were also quail eggs in it. Interesting, isn't it? The risotto (my first one ever!) with truffle and asparagus w...

This is the sequel to Servant of the Empire and also the last in the Empire series trilogy. The stake was even higher in this book. In the first book, it was merely the survival of Mara's House, helped by building relationship with various other Houses. In the second book, it was the destruction of a powerful enemy (first tier House), helped by allied Houses, the Emperor and Great Ones. One would think: what would the third book ultimately about? SPOILERS AHEAD!

In our favourite chapfan shop... I told Ban that I suspected that the man, sitting at a table nearby, just threw a cigarette butt on the floor. One minute I saw him smoking and the next he was without it but a cigarette butt rolled from his table towards us. Ban took a look at the butt, then the man and then looked around the shop. He walked up to a table nearby, took an ashtray, picked up and placed the butt in the ashtray, and then placed it on the table next to the man with a heavy thud. Fortunately or unfortunately, the man and the people he was talking with looked towards the noise but went back to their conversation. Brave. As for the man, it was really inconsiderate of him for not using the ashtray when it was nearby and not used. There were a few ashtrays at the shop. Sadly, he was not the only inconsiderate fool. This occurred rather frequently. The shopkeepers tried to encourage them to use the ashtrays by placing them at where the smokers were smoking but when th...