Here's My Story

I recently concluded another campaign in Crusader Kings 2 and this time I did better than my previous best score and my previous campaign with the largest realm . With a score of 178,253, it easily beat the highest benchmark of 100,000 by the House of Capet. There were 24 rulers, all male (easily explained by choice of succession laws) with King Mernix II the Magnaminous having the longest rule (50 years) and Emperor Somerled the Great having the highest individual score (18,037). At the end of it, I was Emperor of Alba, Emperor of Hispania, King of Scotland and King of Mauretania. There were many more kingdoms I could have created but chose not to (e.g. Wales, Ireland, Portucale, Arabia, Greece, Anatolia, Cyprus) to avoid adverse consequences emanating from succession laws. I was liege to King of Andalusia, Castille, England, Galacia, Leon, Lithuania, Syria and 20+ dukes! As soon as I could affect the succession law, I switched to Tanistry. From the outset, I had been ...

OneDrive is a Microsoft software that allows you to backup files to their cloud server. It was pre-installed in my laptop and I left it as it was because I thought it was a good idea to have backup. However, recently I realised that it had its own Documents folder i.e. it wasn't backing up files from my the user's Documents folder where my important files are. A quick search on the internet revealed that, stupidly, OneDrive doesn't allow you to select which folders you want it to backup. Then I found a workaround here  given by Matthew Broady: " A Workaround easiest, although it would be a useful feature. Find the Address of the folder you want to be synced. (ie. C:\Games\). Copy it. Find the OneDrive location you wish for it to sync to. Hold shift and right click. On the context menu, click open command window here. In it type "mklink /j "YourCustomFolderName" "Address of Location(i.e. C:\Games\)"", without the outer punctuation ...

This is my first time seeing so many food trucks in one place: Know which is truck was the most popular? The one that sold chips. I've always though that food trucks are a foreign concept but then again we all along have those in Malaysia that sell chendol, rojak and burgers, right? I know they started off as stalls decades ago but more and more have switched to trucks.

Someone in my group wanted to play Phaedra to complete a mission. I wanted to play Rampart (also a frontliner) for the same reason. So I asked the group whether they are ok with that or they prefer me playing another role. Someone told me to play what I wanted but immediately followed by someone else's suggestion for all members to player frontliners. That got spontaneous approval from the other 2 who promptly changed to that role, leaving me still trying to lock in my choice lol. At their urging, I did choose Rampart and here's the resulting crazy match: I don't usually play Rampart. In fact, I believed he is my least played freelancer. The current set of mods I'm using are (loadout points in bracket): (1) Radamantium flurry: Battle rush (1) Because of the mods I chose for ability 2, 4 and 5, it's either this mod or Area Suppression (simply due to leftover loadout point). I don't like the latter. Decently skilled enemies wouldn't be surrou...

My mum rarely cooked these years because of chronic illnesses. So it's always a treat when she feels up to it. During the recent CNY celebration at my sister's place, my mum cooked this: It is nasi lemak with yellow curry chicken. She even made the sambal. The banana leaves were obtained from neighbour. It was delicious, as usual with all her cooking, but in truth I would prefer spicier chicken dish. I do understand though the chicken was cooked this way so that my young nephew and niece could have them too and, yes, they enjoyed it too :) It was a resounding success since the young and old loved it :) Thanks mum!

Due to logistic issue, I suggested to my parents come over to KL to have an early lunch celebration of my dad's birthday. After going through a few options, we settled on Fish & Co. The last time they dined at an outlet was decades ago in Singapore with one of my close friends (the first friend I made there :) ). In any case, my parents had long forgotten the food there and in fact, my dad couldn't even recall dining there at all hehehe. So we met Ban (I drove my parents) at the restaurant's outlet at Paradigm Mall. I guessed, and turned out to be correct, that my dad would enjoy sharing with me a seafood platter because of its variety of food. My mum chose creamy mushroom and chicken pasta (she's allergic to seafood...currently) while Ban had grilled fish with coriander. We shared a garden salad. The order consisted of 2 lunch sets and 2 ala carte food. Bear in mind that the cost of the ala carte food was about twice of that of the lunch sets. This is quite relev...

About a year after I straightened out, I came back to America and wound up writing a couple of books with a novelist named Peter Straub. These were called Koko and Mystery , and maybe you read them. It's okay if you didn't. - "The Throat" by Peter Straub. N.B: Peter is the author of Koko and Mystery haha.

I am the first 5 players to level up Grey to 20. I tried to do the same for Gremolition and Orion but couldn't make it. Subsequently, I wasn't interested in playing much of the new freelancers until Khita came along. She's the latest support freelancer and after trying her out in vs AI bots and PvP, I decided that I liked her enough (and still do) for me to try being the first 5 players to level her up to 20. When the 3rd player was announced, I went "Nooooooooooooooooooooo" in the chat hahaha. I believed my Khita was level 16 or 17 then. The problem is that the list  I used to refer to is no longer updated and so it was hard to know who had done so already. The "3rd player" announcement was the latest indication. The first one was someone on Atlas Reactor's Discord complaining about not being able to unlock a Mastery skin despite leveling up Khita to 20 (and it is still a bug currently). Finally, just past 3am on Friday, 3 March, I made it :...

Grey is the first freelancer I leveled to 20 after launch and I am the 4th person to do so :) It is still my highest level freelancer (level 23) at present. I'm still using the same build today, unchanged since pre-launch (loadout points in bracket): (Please refer to Atlas Reactor official website for description and video of the abilities) (1) Tracer bolt: Hunt them down (2) (2) Hawk drone: Infrared enhancement (2) (3) Tranquilizer dart: Overdose (2) (4) Slip away: Agile escape (2) (5) Voltaic cage: Zapper (2) As stated before, I generally aim for consistency and survivability. So first off, I addressed her greatest weakness i.e. her dash (4). By default and with all mods except for one, she can only dash to a 3x3 area within her drone and thus making her susceptible to area effect attack such as Aurora's Ion Cloud. Agile Escape increases this area by 1 i.e. 4x4. With some judicious positioning of the drone, you have more choices of safe spot to dash to. Next ...

Don't lose your way with each passing day You've come so far Don't throw it away Live believing Dreams are for weaving Wonders are waiting to start Live your story Faith, hope and glory Hold to the truth in your heart If we hold on together I know our dreams will never die Dreams see us through to forever Where clouds roll by, for you and I Souls in the wind Must learn how to bend Seek out a star Hold on to the end Valley...Mountain There is a fountain Washes our tears all away Words are swaying Someone is praying Please let us come home to stay If we hold on together I know our dreams will never die Dreams see us through to forever Where clouds roll by For you and I When we are out there in the dark We'll dream about the sun In the dark we'll feel the light Warm our hearts...everyone If we hold on together I know our dreams will never die Dreams see us through to forever As high as souls can fly The clouds roll by Fo...

Haven't played these for ages... ...until the recent CNY celebration at my sister's place :) I remember when I was young, I played this with my cousins at my grandfather's shophouse (upstairs was the living quarters), in the middle section of the building. I have fond memories of these. Been decades. Faded but fond :)