Here's My Story

About a month ago , I said that I was looking for a tenant but alas there still isn't one despite searching for 3.5 months already. It's definitely a renter's market in Singapore and KL. Potential tenants are being picky. I don't mind fulfilling their requests if they are reasonable. Relatively easy fixes like new furniture and new coat of paint are fine by me but I certainly cannot do anything about "the condo is facing the highway and so it can be noisy" @@. On equity side, shares are taking a severe beating mainly because of continuous drop in oil price and the slowdown in China's economy. I would love to buy more but since my main income (from rent) is non-existence, I have to restraint. Sigh. Two share counters are conglomerates with revenue derived from oil & gas industry and so their shares are significantly down. I expect reduced or probably no dividends from them too. Due to rising SIBOR, I paid about 28% more interest payment in 2015 comp...

Ban and I rarely go to One Utama nowadays. Paradigm Mall and Tropicana City Mall are simply closer and more convenient. Also, parking at One Utama is a nightmare, especially during weekends. Moreover, the only place we would dine at One U was Kita No Zen but since there are other Japanese restaurants closer to home that are about the same or better, there was just no reason to go to One U. Recently, Ban wanted to pay a visit to the Boardgames stall set up at One U during Pesta Selangor weekend. We also took the opportunity to shop for a friend's birthday gift. Parking was extra bad (probably due to the festival) and we ended parking outside at Dataran. We were lucky getting that spot since even that area was crowded. Due to where we parked and the location of the stall and craft shops, we were just looking at restaurants that we passed by. We settled on Vietnam Kitchen after flipping through their menu. As with any Vietnamese restaurant we dined at, we ordered beef noodle ...

I recently tested my cholesterol levels but this time, instead of going for blood test at Pathlab in PJ, I had it done at Alpro Pharmacy in Seremban where they just pricked my finger to draw blood and placed it on a plastic strip which was then inserted into an electronic device. Results out in 3 mins. So fast and cheaper by RM10 (RM30 instead of RM40). The ref range is slightly different:                                   Jan 2015           Ref. range           Jan 2016           Ref. range Total cholesterol           6.0                      < 5.2                  5.8                    < 5.17 HDL ("good")           ...

Found this in the toilet of a seafood restaurant in Canberra called Snapper - On The Lake, along Lake Burley Griffin: Too bad my phone's camera was not good enough to zoom-in on the article. It was hilarious! Snappers around Canberra swam to see this "catch of a lifetime". The snapper who caught this unfortunate man used a popular bait: hot chips with tomato sauce. Lol! Right on the money :) Moral of the story? Don't chase after free hot chips :P

As mentioned in a previous post , the current meta then was flier but what I forgot to mention was the introduction of a set of new armoured blocks: sloped cubes. The magic is this: they are less than half the weight of the corresponding normal cubes and yet their health is about 3% less. So no brainer for fliers: replace all normal and curved cubes with these ones. This made fliers as heavily armoured as a tank and this was especially boon for tesseract: the drone made up of this sloped cubes, protecting its core functioning parts inside i.e. thrusters and rudders. With the auto-regen feature, fliers can rest somewhere safely (e.g. on top of mountains) and recover. After a while, I concluded that fliers are superior to other movement-type bots and among fliers, tesseracts are kings. I tried one but alas, I'm not skillful enough to pilot one. Instead, I used a walled-smg copter as a guardian against enemy fliers, especially tesseracts. Here's a video of my gameplay: So...

One my way back from Australia, I transited at Sydney because the air ticket was cheaper than that via Melbourne. I regretted it almost immediately after the purchase :) Unlike Melbourne airport, Sydney airport's international terminal is not walking distance from its domestic terminal. One would need to pay (oh yes, it's not free) to go from one to the other: Bus - AUD 5.50 Train - AUD 5.80 Taxi - AUD 17-22 (yes, for a journey that takes up to only 10 minutes) There are free bus shuttles provided by Qantas and Virgin if you're transferring between their own respective flights. I took the train. I had to walk to to the station, purchase ticket and wait for the train. Compare that to Melbourne where I just need to walk...for free! Once at the international terminal, here was what I found at the Air Asia counters: There were 3 check-in counters and 3 baggage-drop counters. The queue for the latter was easily 4 times longer than the former. Does that makes ...

As stated in their website , Costco is a "membership warehouse club". To me, it's similar to Tesco here in Malaysia except that you need to pay for membership. They do have significantly more items packaged in bulk. Malaysia used to have Makro hypermarket that charged for membership but they didn't survive. According to my sister, it can't be said in general that things are cheaper there. They have items that are cheap but others are priced similarly as, say, the supermarkets. So you will need to pay attention to the things you buy and the number of trips you make to determine whether it's worth paying the membership fee. So here's a photo of how it looks inside: It does have the warehouse kind of look, doesn't it? Not too far off from Tesco except that Tesco looks more like a supermarket? It even has a small foodcourt: Although there was hot food sold by that small store, we purchased food from inside Costco and ate at the table her...

Here's a video of my Golden Lovebeam in action. Sorry for the laggy parts. As you can see, after the last major patch, map awareness becomes critical because you need cover to auto-heal. There's also the decision of when you should do that because you will need to stop shooting for more than 10 seconds to heal 100%. Does that make it worse for your team? Team mates dying in the mean time? Fusion tower at risk of being hijacked? Or does it make it better? Once healed, you're at full power and thus able to push back enemies better? Survive better?

There was a huge major update (named "Full Spectrum Combat") that changed Robocraft building process significantly: Only 1 set of chasis cubes Fewer sets of weapons and movements A paint tool No more pilot seat. Bot destroyed when at less than 25% CPU left All battle modes made available at the start, except for the new League mode which is ranked battle for maxed RR 25k. Yes, RR is also revamped Auto-heal kicks in if you don't get shot and you don't use your weapons for 10 seconds. Thereafter, the regeneration can still be interrupted if either condition is breached Bots on CRF can no longer be rented. They must be purchased. Many bots can be purchased with RP For more details, please check the official patch note here . In my last post on Robocraft , I was considering modifying my Lovebeam Mercy. I tried but unfortunately it didn't pan out well. So I scrapped it and built another from scratch. The result is a medic hover (with 8 hoverblades) that i...

One thought common across the years is how fast each year passes by hehehe. So 2015 is no exception. I had thought that I usually review the year once it is just over but apparently not. I think it's quite a good idea to have a summary for reflection. Here's a summary of 2015: (1) Books I didn't read as many books as I would want to, mainly due to spending too much time on the laptop. I expect people would think that I spent too much time on games but that's not true. Oftentime, I do not play games until late afternoon before dinner and after dinner. If there's work, it would be just at night. I would surf Facebook, read news, do some financial housekeeping, read actuarial and investment articles, blogging, and working on actuarial projects. Yes, I do read frequently but reading books is different. (2) Games Finally stopped playing Guild Wars 2, just before their expansion. I knew I would stop playing it since Ban has stopped playing long before I...