Here's My Story

"Now, no matter what the mullah teaches, there is only one sin, only one. And that is theft. Every other sin is a variation of theft. Do you understand?" ...... "When you kill a man, you steal a life," Baba said. "You steal his wife's right to a husband, rob his children of a father. When you tell a life, you steal someone's right to the truth. When you cheat, you steal the right to fairness. Do you see?" ...... "If there's a God out there, then I would hope he has more important things to attend than my drinking scotch or eating pork. Now, hop down. All this talk about sin has made me thirsty again." - "The Kite Runner" by Khaled Hosseini.

I've been meaning to dine at Dave's Deli ever since I looked at its menu at its outlet in One Utama. However, since I wanted to help my parents to buy a particular muesli at Atria's Village Grocer (which, as it turns out, they don't stock any more!), I went to the outlet there instead. Food were all pre-cooked and so I got mine immediately. I had to order and collect at the counter, similar to fast-food restaurants. Guess that explains why there was no service charge. I had their Dave's Original 1/4 Roast Chicken (RM19.60 nett) which came with mashed potato, salad and coleslaw. I also ordered a glass of warm filtered water (RM0.50 nett). The mashed potato was smooth and tasty. The salad (well, it was strictly only lettuce) and coleslaw were quite normal but of generous portions. The chicken was unfortunately a little dry despite it being made up of drumstick and thigh part. Imagine how dry the breast part would be. However, that was sufficiently compen...

Junkrat is one of my favourite heroes I use mainly for King of the Hill (KotH) maps and some Capture Points maps when on defense. In fact, for the competitive mode, I only use Mercy, Lucio, Junkrat and sometimes D.Va. His Frag Launcher, with no cool-down, throws out grenades. He can throw out 5 grenades before needing to reload. It has both direct and splash damage (the former is bigger). Due to its splash damage, it takes less aiming than, say, McCree or Soldier 76 but on you still have to learn to aim at a certain area to hit them as those grenades would bounce maybe twice before exploding on their own. Since I'm not a good FPS player, this suits me better :) He can also throw Concussion Mine (with cool-down) and manually explode it to damage enemies. It does the same damage as the direct damage of his grenade but with an additional effect: it bounces enemies up in the air. It's great to change the direction of enemies' shot especially then they're using ultimate....

As I mentioned in the passing in this post , my laptop's OS qualified for free upgrade to Windows 10. Since Microsoft will stop (or has stopped already) supporting Windows 8, I really don't see the upgrade as a choice and so I upgraded. It was quite a fast and painless experience. Dell made it easier by telling me my Alienware laptop was ready for the upgrade without issues as they had checked and tested the model. As usual, I searched the internet and changed some settings to suit my personal taste as well as minimise privacy intrusion (especially information passed to Microsoft via Cortana!). Upon completion of the upgrade, this was what I got on the screen: Okkkkkk. Good to know, I supposed. But wait a minute: why would they want to insert this message?Does this mean in previous upgrades, some files were moved?

For almost two weeks, Atlas Reactor (still in beta) was open to everyone and it was great to see many new players trying this game. Even better, I personally heard some players planning to buy or had already bought this game after trying it out for a few days. Awesome :) In the midst of this open access period, they also introduced a new Freelancer: Blackburn, a firepower. So I, along with many people, was keen to try him out. Unsurprisingly, there were duplicates regularly and sometimes I was forced by the game to choose another Freelancer. Seeing that my team didn't have a frontline, I chose Asana whom I've been actively leveling up recently. This game was spectacular for a couple of reasons: (1) We had no death! Yes, we won 5-0 on turn 15. Mind you, I didn't think we were stomping over the opposing team. I suspect that we somehow did more focus firing than them. At the end of the game, our Quark player was amazed that no one died - a first for him as a support :)...

Such a curious advertisement. It appears to say that previously you saved RM11.80 but now you save "just RM1"? Of course it's not meant to be that way but I can't make head or tail out of this. What do you think it should be and how it should have been better stated?

My Quark has finally hit the max level of 10! I then get to unlock what I think is the best skin (Radium) that can be purchased with in-game currency. The default starting skin is Xenon, which is not bad looking. This level 6 skin, Radon, is too garish for me lol. So I never use it: This level 8 skin, Neon, is the next best in my opinion although someone did say that it makes him look like a candy @@. Oh, I also started using a different modifier for his ultimate ability Positronic Surge. Previously , I used the default modifier, Power Surge, which grants allies might for that turn. However, at times this was a waste because my allies were running away instead of dealing damage to enemies. This is not surprising though because Quark's ultimate ability heals allies and so I try to use it when healing is needed for multiple allies. So now I use the modifier Luminosity which heals allies for 5 health a turn for the next 2 turns. I believed this is more co...

This is one of the longest games I had in Atlas Reactor: 32m 27s, 34 turns, score 9-8. I wanted to level up my Quark to 10 (which I did so a few days later, yay!) but game asked me to choose another because there was already a Quark in the team. It automatically suggested Asana. I do not know whether it did some sort of calculation to suggest that or it was purely random, but for certain there was no Frontline character in the team (1 Support, 2 Firepowers). There are 3 Frontline freelancers I'm comfortable playing: Asana, Garrison and Rask. I chose Asana (as suggested by the game) for reasons I don't remember now :P Game was very close but hilarious at times due to exchanges in the "All" chat. At score 4 - 4 (remember that 5 kills by turn 20 is a win): Enemy's Grey: ggwp *Followed immediately by our team mate's death and thus the score became 4 - 5* Our Gremolition: Or is it? *Followed by a death on enemy's team and so equalising the score to...

Asana is a frontline freelancer and the squishiest of them all, but luckily she has some abilities that help her survive better. I think she's the second frontline freelancer I tried after Garrison . Including Rask, she's the least successful among them in terms of win rate. She's classified as "medium" difficulty and I agree that she's a little harder to use compared to Garrison (who's classified as "easy"). Still, she's still fun and effective. Her main ability, Whirling Blade, damages nearby enemies in a 270 degree arc. Default modifier, Swordmaster, increases the damage by 3 per enemy hit (oh yes, that's an increase of 9 if you hit 3 enemies). However, my innate playstyle is defensive and so I choose the modifier Leech Blade which gives her 5 health per enemy hit. Hence, this ability allows her to deal lots of damage and heals quite a bit when hitting multiple enemies. Her 2nd ability, Rebounding Charge, allows her to das...

My friends, as I have discovered myself, there are no disasters, only opportunities. And, indeed, opportunities for fresh disasters. - Boris Johnson Lol. The first part sounds like a a cliche but the second part is hilarious and partially true.

Spotted this at Family Store @Rasah Jaya: First time seeing a whole shark at a supermarket. My father said people do eat its meat. Didn't know that.