Here's My Story

Woot! Third leaf! Like the post on the second leaf , it's all grown up now hehehe.

Few months ago, my adapter finally died. Ok, to be exact, the wire died. The part where it was connected to the adapter was exposed like years ago (?) and was duct-taped. Yes, that band-aid worked for years. When I ordered a new adapter, the old one was still working but needed to be placed oddly e.g. against a chair's leg and the connecting part was pressed on with books, and the position had to be changed occassionally. The problem was that it was a little difficult, for a non-tech person, to ascertain the correct adapater online. Also, many of them were shipped from overseas and the shipping time was aggravated by MCO too. So, to my pleasant surprise, instead of the stated minimum 30-day shipping time, I got this:

  Normally, for ABC soup, I'll make tbe broth the night before and cook the soup in the afternoon. It'll be heated up shortly before dinner. Ban doesn't like piping hot soup. I'll cook some lightly marinated chicken pieces in it, if I don't cook a separate meat dish. This time, I tried prawns instead. However, I made the mistake of cooking the prawn in it in the afternoon: by the time I reheated it before dinner, the prawns were a little too dry 😞 I should had cooked them during the reheating process.   I made the broth the lazy way on the day of cooking the soup itself: fish sauce, salt and sliced onion. Then later I added the enoki mushroom, tofu and finally the prawns. Later, I realised that I should had peeled the prawn and used its shell and heads to make the broth. Nevertheless, this was surprisingly delicious.   One of my favourites: samon don with egg (there were strips of seaweed underneath) and a bowl of coral lettuce with cashew nuts and sauce made up of...

 ...to evade humans? It's amazing! Well, high time they do that. Read this article . Photos taken from the article:  Can you spot the plant? I couldn't until I saw the photo of how it used to look like:   Can you now spot it in the first photo? " But just as many animals have evolved camouflage to better evade predators, human harvesting behaviors have spurred many Fritillaria plants to shift from loud greens to the muted grays and browns of the rocks they grow between, the researchers report in a study published this week in the journal Current Biology . The researchers also found that this effect is especially pronounced in areas where the plants are most heavily pursued by people looking to pluck them, reports Patrick Barkham for the Guardian. "

 

During a phone call with my mum... Mum: I have goat's milk for breakfast Me: Ok, so how much is the goat? Mum: It's RM 33 for each tin of goat's milk Me: No, mum. How much is the goat? Then you can get the milk from it Mum: *laughs* I'm also a goat Me: *laughs* I'm sorry to tell you mum: you're not going to produce any more milk  Ban looked at me strangely and then covered his ears. 😂

 

 

As a follow-up to victories on Ascension 2 , I finally completed them on Ascension 3. For completeness, here's what added at each Ascension level (effects are cumulative): 1. Elites spawn more often. 2. Normal enemies are deadlier. 3. Elites are deadlier. The order of which I won was Watcher, Silent, Ironclad and (once again) Defect. Defect is truly defective haha. Took me gazillion times. Here are the gameplays vs the Heart:

Recently, towards the end of my dream, my dad was there. He was dressed in a maroon coloured t-shirt, that looked like mine. He told me that a person just taught him something. Me: What's the use? You're dead. Dad: He taught me to listen more when people talk. Like really listen to what they say. Me: Will you come for Chinese New Year? Dad: Yes, I will. I held his hand, started crying. Me: It's not fair you suffered so much.   He patted my head.   Dad: Good boy.   😭 Woke up, told Ban about it while crying again 😭

I had planned to cook a dish of HK spinach and a dish of five spice chicken with onion, garlic and ginger. Marinated the chicken the night before with a little soy sauce, dark soy sauce, oil and cornflour. However, on the day of cooking, I realised that there was too much onion and, apparently, it's not advisable to keep chopped onion. At the same time, I was a little concerned that the chicken may not be enough for both Ban and I. Hence, probably for the first time ever, I cooked a third dish: egg with onion. In the end, it turned out that the chicken was enough and so we had some leftover haha. All were yummy! Hehehe

"I’ve just been feeling frustrated because I feel like you’ve been questioning a lot of my statements." This friend's remark, during a sort-of-apology he made to me, puzzled me at first. Does he expect me to not disagree with his statements? Many of his statements are arrogant and sometimes delivered arrogantly too but that's besides the point. I sometimes question and/or disagree with his statements because of the content, not the mode of delivery. There were some clues to this puzzle in this recent exchange:  #1   Him: I have never heard of a cluster where almost 50% tested are positive. TG must be breaking SOP and completely neglecting their workers health. And now they’ve overloaded our healthcare system. We can’t deal with 2684 covid patients appearing at once?!? Me: Did our Health DG say that our healthcare system is overloaded? Him: Ah, fair, that’s just my assumption. Maybe they can actually cope with 2684 cases appearing at once. ... I seriously doubt it, but...

Unfortunately, Cow Brother (Damansara Uptown) closed down sometime during MCO. From their Facebook page, they highlighted a stall they were still operating at a restaurant at Ara Damansara, a place that we're not familiar with. One day, when one of our new favourite places for chap fan, 134 Mixed Rice, had a long queue, we decided to see what else to eat. By chance, previously, I spotted a Cow Brother stall at Megah Good Luck Restaurant and so I suggested to Ban to try it out. The taste was quite right. Definitely better than any other dry beef noodle outside of Seremban but seems a little inferior to the Damansara Uptown's Cow Brother's version. It didn't have pickled vegetable and ingredient was quite little. On the other hand, their noodle texture was so much better and similar to that in Seremban. Subsequently, I've asked, and they acceded, for the following changes: less noodle, more peanuts, and less soup. Short of going to Seremban, this is the best so far. ...

I continued playing after achieving one win (right up to defeating the Heart) for each character at Ascension 1 level . The next goal, unsurprisingly, was to do the same but at Ascension 2 level. Note that to open up the next Ascension level, one just needs to defeat the Act 3 boss but I make it a personal goal to beat the Heart as well before moving up a level. This time, my victories were chronologically ordered as follows: Ironclad, Silent, Watcher and Defect. I usually will start with Ironclad because that's the first character. Second, third and fourth characters are Silent, Defect and Watcher, respectively. If I lose, I'll move on the the next character. This time, Defect took so many more tries than the others. Here are some videos: I'm taking a break from this game because I'm ranking up in Overwatch's new season.

We're still sticking to cooking dinner 4 times a week. Tuesday is for Domino's Special Tuesday pizzas and two other days we dine out. Ban, however, has taken to cooking meat dish to last for two consecutive days. Lazy fella :P Ginger soy sauce chicken is one of my favourite dishes that I cook. I rarely pour gravy onto my rice but this one...yum! The reddish soup is red spinach soup with soft tofu. I absolutely love soft tofu. It's quite rare I cook a main meat dish and a soup dish because of the amount of work: I usually make the soup broth the day before. Fish sauce onion soup with snow crab meat & mushroom. This was my attempt to quickly make soup broth: fish sauce with onion, rather than using chicken carcass. I thought seafood would go well with it and so I got some snow crab meat, from Top Catch Fisheries, which is made of mostly fish, rather than starch. In fact, it tasted so much like real crab meat! Pan-fried chicken with garlic and thyme, by Ban. Simple and yet...

In my previous blog post , I essentially stated that I wouldn't be playing this game any more. However, for some reasons, I decided to accept the challenge of going for higher difficulty levels. My aim is to win once per character for a particular level before moving up to another one. In my opinion, Ascension 1 is actually beneficial: there are more elites. So compared to normal dfficulty, there is no way of escaping from an elite. However, Act 1's elites are actually doable and more of them means more relics. Oftentimes, I took the path that allowed me to fight 3 elites. Profitable almost all the time. If not, little time was wasted on the run since it was still in Act 1. The following gameplays are shown in chronological order in term of which character I managed to win at this level first. It's quite shocking that my Defect won before Ironclad and Watcher, given that, in my opinion, its the hardest to play.

Imagine you're working in one of the numerous companies of a conglomerate, Company M, which is related to the ultimate parent company by 3 tiers i.e. it's the subsidiary of a subsidiary of subsidiary of the ultimate parent company. Someone else, let's call person P, works in Company B which is is also 3 tiers away from the ultimate parent company. Whenever customers discover mistakes made by person P, instead of correted directly by him or by Company B, the onus is on the customers to approach Company B to get it rectified, which then falls onto your lap. Neither person P or Company B is involved at all in this rectification. Every single time, you have to correct those mistakes. It sucks, doesn't it? It's even suckier for the customers. There are no repercussions to person P since it's probably too troublesome for Company M to file a complaint that needs to go through 3 tiers to reach the ultimate parent company (provided those in-between agree to act on it) an...

I was so happy that my adopted plant had sprouted a second leaf: Actually, this is an old photo: it's all grown-up now hehehe.

There has been a few changes to the build I'm using since I first blogged about Corvus .  The first change was my agreement with someone's opinion that it's not effective putting many points into The Price of Salvation (I had 5 points in it) because the amount of heals won't save Corvus from being burst by damage dealers (best just to escape, rather than outheal). Its use is mainly for out-of-danger situation to quickly recover some health or to heal up bit by bit any poke damage received so as to negate the need to escape. So I experimented and settled on, for sometime, the following build: Grand Design - 5 Shadow Tribunal - 5 Priority Targets - 2 The Price of Salvation - 2 Magistrate's Might - 1 I stuck to this build, for a while, despite the following changes: Grand Design: Reduced Lifesteal scaling {5|5}% ⭢ {3|3}% The Price of Salvation: Increased healing {60|60} ⭢ {75|75}, Reduced healing time 2s ⭢ 1s (I read this in forum/reddit) Bug fix: No longer gets heal f...

 Saw this at Top Catch Fisheries (Taman Megah):

Ying needs the Life Exchange talent to be on par with other top supports. This then means constant management of the abilities Shatter and Illusion, where the former needs some precision. I find myself busier when playing Ying, compared to other supports. (For abilities, talents and cards for Ying, please refer to this gamespedia )  I've tried a few builds and in the end settled on this: Carry On - 3 Spring Bloom - 4 Squadron - 2 Rewind - 1 Brittle - 5 Some gameplays:  

(continue from Part 1 ) I was pleasantly surprised to receive the results a mere three days later. Total IgE shows the total antibodies that my body produced to fight allergens and its level was pretty significant. However, only a small portion of it was attributed to chicken (wth!). Responding to my queries, Dr Sia said that there's no need for me to avoid or even cut down on intake of chicken. At most, maybe I avoid it when the symptoms are bad. Based on these results and by process of elimination, the next probable trigger of this vasomotor rhinitis is the sudden change in extreme temperatures, something that's difficult to control. I've already been doing what he suggested i.e. aircon temperature not set too cold, take warm shower. Treatment of the symptoms remain the same: antihistamine and, if bad, steroidal nasal spray continuously for a period of time.

Earlier this month, I felt my throat was irritated but I wasn't coughing though. Since it persisted for a while, I consulted my GP. Uniform redness at the back of the throat but no inflammation or swelling. So I was given antihistamine and thymol. It went away but came back about two weeks later with a vengeance: daily morning inflammation of the nasal membrane (I usually tell people it's "sinus" for simplicity but it's actually not accurate; accurate term is vasomotor rhinitis) and slight sorethroat. It appears my GP is a little stumped and so asked his daughter, who is a doctor herself, to provide second opinion. She recommended the following: (1) Avoiding milk and gluten. Allergic to these can manifest in this rhinitis. (2) Take two capsules of fish oil daily and 1000 mg Vitamin C four times a day. (3) Eat organic food To be honest, I'm not comfortable with the last two as their cost is prohibitive. Moreover, such extremely high dose of Vitamin C is questio...

Despite having said that I gave up on Inara , for reasons I've already forgotten, I persisted and so now she joins Barik as my choice of tank. I think what helped me most was this reddit thread , where I learned to cycle through her defensive abilities. I first found success with a popular standard build: Geomancer - 5 Insurmountable - 1 Lodestone - 1 Steadfast - 3 Stone Bulwark - 5 Gameplay:   Because I want to add DR feature to Warder's Field, I modified it this way: Geomancer - 5 Insurmountable - 1 Sacred Ground - 1 Steadfast - 3 Stone Bulwark - 5 Gameplays:    This standard build has now evolved into this build: Geomancer - 5 Standing Stones - 1 Sacred Ground - 1 Steadfast - 3 Stone Bulwark - 5 The lost of extra ammo and ammo regeneration shouldn't matter much to me since I'm not good at aiming. Gameplays:     My favourite is the build that provides significantly more DR upon activating Warder's Field but I usually feel safe in using that only if there are t...

  They had applied GST formula i.e. service charge was taxed, instead of the current SST's tax regime where the charge is excluded. I realised this only after I got home. I went to their website, hoping that there was a way for me to tell the management this but to no avail. It was only recently I thought of checking out their Facebook.

I can aim but quite poorly. That's why I play mainly support characters in Paladins (and Overwatch). My next preferred role is tank. If I play a dps character, it's usually because they have features that are more forgiving towards poor aiming skill e.g. Torbjorn, Junkrat, Symmetra in Overwatch. On my return to Paladins this time, I tried the following dps champions, chronologically: Talus (new) Moji (new) Viktor (tried years before) Tyra (tried years before) Moji is the easiest in terms of aiming but they have survivability issue. I can't seem to be competent in using Talus's Blitz ability. I'm still puzzled why I cannot make Viktor work. So far, Tyra is the most successful. As usual, I searched for recommended builds. I am attracted to the talent Mercy Kill because there are defensive cards associated with using nades. I first tried using FrostFangs' build but because I'm not good at aiming, the card Primal Might is useless to me (refer here for Tyra...

 

Barik was a favourite the last time I played Paladins and still is now. In fact, it's the only tank I'll play at the moment. I tried playing Inara like 7 to 8 times and concluded she's just not for me. Not too keen on Fernando or Ruckus. I've tried 3 different builds and at the moment, I find this to be the most consistent: Field Deploy - 4 Forged Alloy - 1 Healing Station - 4 Brave and Bold - 3 Failsafe - 3 Some gameplays:

(continue from Part 2 ) Six days later, I reported to the dentist that there wasn't any noticeable difference. So she recommended redoing the crown, at her own expense. Although it was the right thing to do, in my opinion, I am still grateful that she offered that.   However, the problem was that at this stage, it was uncertain whether the cause of the pain/extreme sensitivity was due to structural problem of the crown or that the nerves were already damaged. So she suggested that I monitor for two weeks after the temporary crown was inserted, while waiting for the permanent one to arrive. If there is improvement, then proceed with sealing the permanent crown and then further observe its effect. If the sensitivity/pain is still there, then no choice but to undergo root canal treatment   If the sensitivity/pain worsens during the two-week period of wearing temporary crown, then I would have to decide whether to go for root canal treatment right before sealing the permanent cr...

Our usual chap fan shop, Family Mixed Rice, also houses two other food operators selling pork noodle and Western food respectively. The Western food operator, Sheng's Fusion Food, also opens at night for dinner. As expected, the price of the Western food is cheap, so one day, I decided to try their grilled fish: At RM 12, it was cheap considered the portion. The taste wasn't super delicious but neither was it bad. I do recommend it if you want cheap Western food and not hunkering for good quality.

Jenos was a new champion to me: he wasn't around when I played Paladins years ago. Initially I hesitated to select him because he lacks burst healing regardless of choice of talent (unlike Grohk with Spirit Domain's talent, Seris with Mortal Reach talent, and Ying with Life Exchange talent) and his escape mechanism appears lacklustre (65% movement speed). However, I can't remember why I tried him anyway 😆 It's still true that he has no burst healing and to compensate for that, I need to quickly top off any missing hp and also to anticipate who will receive huge damage soon. Tricky. As for ways to escape, I try to make use of the environment (terrain, building) to take advantage of Stellar Wind's extra movement speed to shake off enemies. Even better if I first use Void Grip before moving away. Interestingly, despite his lack of burst healing, he remains a popular pick (together with Corvus) in tournament and apparently also a popular ban choice (again, together wit...

Results as compared to 4 months ago :                                 May 2020        Sep 2020          Ref. range Total cholesterol           6.3                 5.1                  < 5.2 HDL ("good")               1.70              1.89                > 1.04 LDL ("bad")             ...

Seris probably pips the other supports, by a little, to be my favourite support mainly because of her healing (some auto-aim and once locks on target can continue channeling behind cover) and defensive mechanics (invisible and invulnerable).  Two of her talents are also super useful: Soul Collector is the default talent. It is the best talent for Seris's survivability, so much so that she can duel 1vs 1 other 2k-ish hp champions. I generally pick this talent if I feel that multiple enemies may flank me a lot. This is the current loadout set: (refer to this gamespedia for Seris's abilities, talents and cards)  Veil 3 Blood Pact 4 Spirit Leech 1 Fade to Black 2 Umbral Gait 5 Some gameplays: Soul Collector Seris players are sometimes disliked by their teammates for picking such selfish talent. However, I ask, is a dead Seris a better player? I believed that player should choose a loadout set and talent that first and foremost prioritise the champion's survivability and then o...

Eleven years of many ups and few downs. Love this man to bits! Muaccccck! We went out twice to celebrate. Firstly, we had lunch at Jyu Raku. I was pleasantly surprised that their lunch sets were avaialble during weekend too. The sets were exactly the same as their dinner sets but RM 3 cheaper.     However, the set I tried before, and still the preferred one, was too much for me and so I ordered this instead. The photo is missing a piece of salmon belly sushi because I forgot to snap a picture of it before eating :P I like this dish. First time I came across coffee jelly in a restaurant. The texture was just right and it wasn't too sweet. I would have preferred coffee with milk though. Later we had dinner at Dilmah Tea Restaurant. Just kidding :P It was at Three Little Pigs & The Big Bad Wolf. We qualified for this free gift, unintentionally, when Ban ordered I Am So Hungry I Could Eat A Wolf. They had a promotion of buy a drink and get another drink of the same type for fr...