Here's My Story

By the end of this cycle, my dad's ALT has dropped to 20+, which is his usual reading. So that's good. Another good news is that the gap between morphine intake has widen to 7 hours now. Fantastic! Everything else is under control, except that every now and then he has low appetite but kudos to him (after much persuasion from his family and the hospice nurse) for having small amount of food but more frequently when that happens. The daycare oncology section in their own building (the "green" building) has finished undergoing renovation. Although we've been to that building before, it was in the clinic side. It was then our first time going to the daycare section. Luckily it wasn't too cold. However there is a change in procedure: they asked all carers to leave the section once chemo started. Don't know why the change. When we asked the oncologist for the tumour marker result, he didn't find any lab report in my dad's file. I also ob...

I had to double-take as we (Ban, his brother and I) were walking back to the car after dinner. I laughed and laughed. Do you think it was put up by the owner or his friend? Whoever it was, he was smart to mention "dogs". I believed most people love dogs and this is surely a plus :)

Insurance is part of the infrastructure of our society – you don’t really notice until it doesn’t work. - "Mental Health and Insurance", a Green Paper by Actuaries Institute

Ok, so I decided to stop being lazy and blog about my current Brynn build. It's essentially a shield build for survivability. Refer to this website for more details on Brynn's abilities and mods. (1) Impale: Hold the Line (2 mod tokens) Improves survivability. Aegis would already half the damage. With this mod, you can eliminate most damage from a single freelancer (other than ultimate ability, of course). (2) Aegis: Shieldbearer (3 mod tokens) The best Brynn's ability in my opinion. What could make it better? Make it last another turn. On the turn you use it, movement and position yourself such that you're under cover on as many sides as possible, including that provided by the persisting Aegis. (3) Soaring Shield: Wind Up (2 mod tokens) I selected mods for other abilities and only then considered this ability. The default ability is still good: it gives greater flexibility and sometimes it can catch enemies off-guard. (4) Flight of the Valkyrie: Batt...

(continue from Part 3 ) As usual, Catholic has the largest realm. What's interesting though is that Hindu has the second largest realm, Tengri (probably thanks to Mongol Empire) occupies the 4th position and Buddhist in 6th place. Sunni was completely wiped off. Shocking, eh? The King of England held the largest realm among my direct vassals (just slightly less than 10% of my realm), followed closely by King of Syria (he was on a roll with his holy wars lol) and King of Poland. However, due to a marriage in the past, the King of England was also the King of Navarra although the latter's kingdom was smaller. Yes, I had the largest army :) The only difference among the top 5 compared to the previous list sorted by army size is that Egypt is pushed down to 4th position. I wonder how they had such a large army compared to its realm size. In my current campaign, the Mongol Empire's realm size at one point was only 85 but with an army size of 100k+. Crazy. ...

(continue from Part 2 ) Due to de jure drift, Kingdom of Britanny, Navarra and Lapp had become part of Empire of Alba. Also note that I had sufficient counties to create the Wendish Empire but I didn't for fear of split in empire titles once different heirs are nominated for the empires (Tanistry). Yellow = Empire of Alba (my realm) White = Christian defensive pact vs Alba Green = Muslim defensive pact vs Alba Red = Pagan defensive pact vs Alba Yes, late game I couldn't declare war because of these pacts. I often had 80% - 100% threat level @@. Fortunately, my vassals were actively declaring war and so I would join their wars (more like take over because their armies disappeared the moment they accepted my offer) if they were faltering. Sunni was either gone or very tiny (evidently). Mongolia Empire this time adopted Tengri and so largely propped up Paganism.

(continue from Part 1 ) Disjointed realm, right? Some were my own doing but my vassals were responsible for the bulk of it. Here's how some of them became part of my realm (not in chronological order): (PS: sometimes I created duchy/kingdom titles and granted them to vassal, along with all lower ranked vassals within that duchy/kingdom, to manage my vassal limit) (1) Kingdom of England Each county was conquered based on fabricated claims and de jure claims (I created and granted duchies to my vassals). I did try to usurp, with the intention of vassalising as much lords as possible and then destroy the title (I didn't want a powerful vassal) but most of the remaining counties were then held by the former English king and, understandably, he refused to be my vassal. Hence the slower way of conquest. Later, after I had made sure that substantial part of England was held by vassals with primary titles outside of England, I created and granted the Kingdom of England t...

I've blogged about significant reloads in this campaign. I believed (it's been sometime since I finished this campaign) that there were no more major reloads after those. At the outset, I aimed for Tanistry succession law and to finish with it. I'm proud that I managed to do it. Yes, there are downsides to this law e.g. can't really control what foreign land your heir can inherit (unlike Primogeniture) but, oh boy, the stability it brings to the realm is amazing. Elective Monarchy can arguably be more stable but Tanistry guarantees that the realm stays within your dynasty. The score of 139,066 didn't beat my personal record of 178,253 . Realm is smaller than the latter's (1,165 vs 1,214) and, due to Tanistry, I didn't hold as many titles (for fear of splitting the realm due to different nominees). 22 rulers. Peter the Cruel ruled the longest (56 years) while Emperor Lachlan the Great has the highest score (12,386). As with previous campaign...

With bated breath, we look at the blood test result. Since we didn't know exactly which liver function test to look out for, I tried finding one that has its upper limit in the 40s. I found only one: ALT, with upper limit of 41. The reading was exactly 41! Although it was significantly below 60+, it was still way above his usual 20+. However, we thought that he would be allowed to do chemo because it wasn't flagged out as "high" by the pathology lab and that there would be a 14-day gap before the start of Cycle 5 Day 1 chemo after this second session of Cycle 4. Luckily we were right! Phew. Kidney function reading stabilised just within the normal range. Dad gained a little weight. Not a problem. In fact, there was good news (as acknowledged by the oncologist): dad added duration of his walks and also lengthened the time between morphine intakes from 4 hours to 5 and then to the current 6 hours. Yet, there was no pain in his leg. If he crosses over 6 hours, then ...

Years ago, my parents and my sister's family dined at this restaurant a few times. They loved it. Later, they also dined at Butterworth Western Food which later they found out that it's operated by someone who is former partner of the cafe's operator. My parents thought that the latter wasn't as good as the former. So when Ban wanted a change in routine by having dinner outside, I suggested Butterworth Cafe. My dad joined us too. I chose a set meal that included mushroom soup, root beer, grilled fish and lychee pudding. First thing I noticed was the pitiful amount of salad. Doubling that would had been much better. At almost the same time, I noticed the brown sauce. Normally grilled fish comes with white sauce but this one came with BBQ sauce! So unusual and it was not nice for me. The fish was grilled with a layer of flour. Seems like it was pan-fried rather than grilled. Overall, it wasn't to my liking. The root beer came in this cute glass :)...