Here's My Story

It's been just over a year since the last update . There had been many changes since then. Firstly, a share counter was renamed: SP Ausnet -> Ausnet Services I added/initiated the following share counters: (1) Ascott REIT: initiated position in this after been following its news on-and-off for quite sometime. It's yet another member of the CapitaLand family (as are CapitaMall, CapitaComm and CapitalRetailChina). It invests in "real estate and real estate-related assets which are income-producing and which are used or predominantly used, as serviced residences, rental housing properties and other hospitality assets". Yes, it overlaps a little with Saizen REIT (rental housing properties in Japan) but it has much wider coverage (13 countries), mainly serviced apartments and they are under a number of chains with their own branding. It also provides diversification to my portfolio. (2) Boustead Singapore: bought more shares as the company is still managed ...

Ok, these photos do no justice to how beautiful this garden is at the second storey of this house. I remember I was strucked by how...hmmm...pretty and peaceful (calming effect?) it looks. Lush. I like it but I can imagine the huge amount of effort needed to upkeep it. I wonder whether the owner does it himself or hire a gardener.

Wow, didn't realise it took 6 months before we visited this restaurant for the 3rd time. Given the disappointing experience previously, I had hoped that this time it would be must better. I ordered Ohyako Chicken Ramen (RM15.80): When it was served, I immediately smelled fried garlic. I love fried garlic and so I was pleasantly surprised :) It's visible in the photo above. There were carrots (both thinly sliced and chopped pieces version), beansprout, seaweed, spring onion, 2 halves of an egg and of course chicken. The soup and ramen were quite normal while the chicken was mild in taste. Yet somehow everything worked together to make this dish delicious. I am baffled. Maybe it was the fried garlic hehehe. I'll definitely have this again.

The expansion, Time of Renewal ("ToR"), was launched on April 15, taking 11 hours to finally get the server up. Gosh, that's crazy. No gesture for compensation at all. Bear in mind that aside from some rebalancing feature, everything else is the same as the cards in the Chinese server. Currently, the expansion can only be bought with seals (premium in-game currency that can only be obtained using real cash and, no, they are not the fish eating kind). Historically, expansion will only be available for gold purchase 2 weeks after launch. As expected, I haven't seen many new cards yet but I have seen quite a few cards that were previously non-Standard but now is Standard. The popular Kal-Azaar 4/6/0 control deck is nerfed due to the change in Spell Stealer Heretic. Previously, spells can be recycled (once on any spell) without meeting its stats requirement. For example, Arkath Wrath needs 5 Magic. You can use Kal-Azaar's hero ability to discard it and deal 2 d...

Remember the "no carrot" incident ? Something similar happened recently. I ordered Kaisen Ramen from their temporary menu: Apologies for not having the photo of the actual dish that was presented to me. I was then taken aback by the obvious absence of prawns. There are prawns in the picture above, right? Now, I understand that the actual dish cannot replicate exactly the picture in the menu but to completely devoid of an obvious ingredient is shocking. Incidentally, there wasn't a disclaimer stating either "the picture is for illustration purpose only" or "actual ingredients may differ depending on the availability of the ingredients and/or its freshness". So, I highlighted this glaring absence to a waiter who promptly took the bowl of ramen to his supervisor. After a few seconds of discussion, the supervisor brought it to the kitchen. A few minutes later, the supervisor brought to me a bowl of the same ramen but this time with prawns and ap...

See the world not as it is but as it should be. - Glee series finale

One day, after gym, Ban's brother suggested Pho Hoa for lunch (instead of yet another Japanese lunch). That was an excellent idea as I then recalled Ban and I had looked at their menu for future lunch venue but forgot about it later. The restaurant is on the side, not along the main avenue, and so easily forgotten. I ordered from the most expensive category because I wanted to have a variety parts of beef (apart from steak), including tripe. It cost more than RM 30 @@ The soup was too light for me whereas Ban's and his brother's soup tasted much better. Seems like a waiter caught a whiff of my displeasure because he voluntarily came over to our table and asked for feedback after we were done with the food. I told him about the soup and he said that in future I could ask for change of soup. He was quite friendly. However, another major complaint was that the meat was tasteless. I doubt they would change the meat for me lol. I may give this restaurant another tr...

Hehehe can't believe I won another so soon. After a string of close unranked game losses, I decided to join Swiss tournament again when Standard format was up. Needed to check in 3 times because there were not enough participants (need 8). Again I used Kal-Azaar 4/6/0 control as it was generally still the best deck at that moment. All 3 opponents used Inferno heroes. The surprise was the first opponent: his ELO was merely 6! Guess he was just trying out the tournament. I know my bro-in-law and I tried even before we finished the campaign hehehe. Incidentally, my current ELO is 1380 The second duel was the toughest (ELO 1587): also a Kal-Azaar 4/6/0 but without Enthrall and with 2 Moon Phoenix. I was behind time and towards the end, his 2 Phoenix were just annoying me. In the last 1 minute or so (he had like 3 more minutes than me), I top-decked Enthrall and used it to control and move his blocker for me to deal the final blow. The last duel was against someone I dueled with t...

Not sure whether 6th April as the rumoured date for the new expansion is going to be true or not as there is still no word or hype on any date. Haiz. So, I took the opportunity to join the Swiss tournament whenever the format is Standard and when health permits (need mental clarity). I managed to notch my 13th win with Kal-Azaar 4/6/0 control deck :)  The first (Shaar 5/5/0) and third (Kal-Azaar 4/6/0) duels were against opponents of around the same ELO as me whereas the second (Kal-Azaar 3/3/2) duel was against opponent whose ELO was about 200 above mine. Quite surprisingly the 1st duel took the longest time. So with that, the tally now is as follows: Necro (2) - Ariana on Standard and BS2 format each Inferno (3) - Deleb probably on Inferno-only format, Kal-Azaar on "minimum 30 spells" format, Kal-Azaar on Standard format. Stronghold (5) - 3 Kat on Standard and 2 Kat on BS2 format Sanctuary (1) - Yukiko on Standard format Haven (1) - Cassandra on Standard format A...

Unfortunately, the last wasn't the last. Here's how I noticed something amiss: a website told me that my password was invalid. So I thought perhaps I had the Caps Lock on but despite pressing that key a few times, its indicator failed to light up. Later, I noticed that neither did the Wifi and loading indicator. It was on a weekend and since it wasn't urgent, I e-mailed Dell's customer service. Meanwhile, I ran Dell's diagnostic programme, both on my laptop and on its website. It didn't flag anything wrong. Shortly later, a Dell officer e-mailed me and asked me to do a few things but it didn't help. Hence, he arranged for an engineer to visit me. About 2 days later, two engineers called and arrived on-site to fix it. They, however, noticed that other indicators on the keyboard were not lighting up as well e.g. the power button, the touchpad. Somehow this was important but I told them I wasn't aware of those because my attention was drawn to the Ca...