Here's My Story

In recent months, Digi texted me a couple of times the following message: "Your SIM is not compatible with 4G! Upgrade to a 4G SIM for FREE at your nearest Digi Kiosk NOW! Find yours here https://digi.my/3gsr4" When I first received it, I was like, "Ok, I'll do it when it's convenient and if I remember." The message didn't sound urgent, did it? When they texted me again a month later, I was curious to find out location of the nearest kiosk and so I clicked on the link. Lo behold, the site pratically shouted the message that 3G is ending on 31st Dec this year! Lol, why didn't Digi just blare out this crucial message in the text message? Haiz. I panicked a little because I wasn't sure whether my phone was 4G compatible or not. It's compatible with 2G, 3G and LTE. I totally forgot about my research when I was about to buy this phone.  So I started researching once again. I wanted a small phone to fit into my pocket but the two I found cost betw...

This was my second time dining at this restaurant. The first time I had their Pad Thai, which was one of the better ones I had in recent memory. This time, I had Pad See Ew. Taste was just right but it was a little greasy. Pleasantly surprised over the fresh vegetable. There were 2 pieces of....fried flour? Strange. Mek Siam's Pad See Ew is better but unfortunately that restaurant closed down earlier this year :(

Since there was no improvement at all after taking glucosmaine, chondroitin and MSM for 70 days, I doubted another 20 days would make a difference. Hence I made an appointment to consult an orthopaedic at Pantai Hospital Ampang, who were highly recommended by a friend who is a doctor. The appointment time given was between 10am and 12.30pm on a first-come-first-serve basis. Despite not being a early morning riser, I made the effort to arrive just before 10am and I was glad I did that: I was the third patient when I arrived. After giving a historical account of my knee joint issue, interpersed with questions by the specialist, his preliminary diagnosis was patellofemoral pain syndrome (same as my latest guess ). Physical examination of the knee, and X-ray (taken from 3 different angles) confirmed this diagnosis. The X-ray also showed that the left knee joint is starting to show signs of degradation as well, despite not presenting any discomfort at the moment, but it did so 20 years ago...

This game is based on D&D 5e system, incorporating material from SRD and filling up the rest with their own. I was initially dismayed that it wasn't multiplayer and so it's not simulating the tabletop experience. However, after Ban started playing, I soon followed suit and I loved it! In fact, I am playing a player-made module now. Now, let me say that if you're not a fan of 5e, you won't like this game. I came across a player who complained about the cleric's ability of which later some of us concluded that it is by design, not the game developer's fault. There's, however, one rather major issue for me: except for 2 major encounters, all others were easy past level 5. My best guess is that overall challenge rating (CR) of the encounters was not high enough but if they were, which is quite likely because Solasta follows 5e almost all the way, then I don't know why. Here are some interesting videos: Each time my characters leveled up, game swapped wea...

Grrr it happened again: this time it was the Duchy of Greater Poland and the County of Lesser Silesia. I don't know why! Fortunately, since they are within my de jure empire and their rulers' rank was at least two level below mine, I could easily vassalise them. After about 5.5 years of war, my vassal King of Galicia-Volhynia successfully claimed the Kingdom of Novgorod. I then created a duchy and vassalised a chief of a single county. Luckily gift of some gold managed to persuade him to overcome our cultural difference. Thereafter I granted the duchy title to its de jure liege i.e. my vassal King of Chernigov. So compared to before this 'indendepence' bug happened, I gained one county due to war, one duchy due to inheritance (which i granted to my brother), and one kingdom indirectly due to inheritance by a vassal but threat level jumped sky high. Haiz.   I fabricated two out of three counties that constituted the Duchy of Vologda. Later, I was lucky to notice sudden c...

Top Catch Fisheries @Taman Megah is our first choice shop to get fresh salmon. Before coming across this shop, we got it from Jaya Grocer. Although a little more expensive, Top Catch's fresh salmon is of better quality. Their fresh scallop is also one of the best, easily beating many Japanese restaurant's scallop sashimi. I usually preorder the salmon via WhatsApp and then pick it up on that day, bypassing queue, if any. It's the easiest. I sometimes also got their nori (seaweed) full cut, which is cheap: 50 pieces for RM 40. On a recent trip, just before we left, a staff gave this plant to us: She claimed that it's a small version of pegaga plant. It's cute! Hope it'll survive. Edit: I heard "penaga". William corrected me. Thank you.

King of Chernigov approached me with a marriage proposal for someone else. As expected, he left defensive pact to do that and so I declared war to press a claim for a vassal, which I won. Unbeknown to me, I controlled enough demense within the Kingdom of Chernigov to usurp the title. I remembered that I tried to do that earlier but game told me I couldn't usurp title from someone of different religion. The king was now Orthodox. Maybe he was Pagan previously? Can't remember. I made the mistake of not trying to vassalise remaining rulers before granting the kingdom title to a vassal. However, I'm certain I cannot vassalise them because they were all Pagan rulers, except for one Orthodox ruler. So at most, vassalise only one? The silver lining was that I didn't increase threat level even more by vassalising. I was keen to get the threat level sufficiently down to press my fabricated claims on a couple of pagan rulers. In the midst of my wars, somehow this kingdom gained i...

Best fried banana is the one sold at SS2 by a stall situated underneath a tree at a corner of a road, just opposite a mamak shop. When Ban's grandpa was around, it was a must to make a trip to buy these bananas. They used to have a branch at Dataran Prima but it closed down :( Another place is a stall at One Utama LG floor. We seldom go to that mall but if we do, I almost always buy some. It's expensive though: RM 2.20 each! Well, I rarely have it anyway.

Pope called for the fourth crusade. Target: Jerusalem, for the second time. I was thinking how long would it take for him to do that because it was lost before Aquitine was lost and regained. I had other ideas though: first time I asked to change to target on a pagan ruler that held land de jure of Kingdom of Vladimir, a kingdom that I was interested in because it forms part of the Slavic Union empire. I was tempted to claim the title for myself as I thought it was possible to shoulder the -20 opinon from the Pope but negated by +15 for Crusader trait. However, I tried a different route that's inspired by my previous campaign: nominate a beneficiary who is father of one of my vassals. In this case, it was even better that the vassal was the beneficiary's only son, so that the kingdom would pass to him upon beneficiary's death and, I would think, it would fold into my realm. Yes, we won the crusade and, due to early preparation and the short distance to the battleground from...

Noodle in PJ has gone up in price this year to RM 7 - RM 7.50. It's crazy. This makes me appreciate JJ Budget's RM 5.50 noodle, especially the wantan mee, which is one of the best I've ever had. So usually I refrain from having noodle here in PJ and have more in Butterworth, which cost around RM 2 less at similar establishment. However, due to the various MCOs and the pandemic in general, we haven't been to Butterworth for 16 months until recently to take care of my mum .  The one dish I must have is char kuay teow at this small zinc-roofed coffee shop. Personally, it's the best char kuay teow thus far. It cost RM 4.50 for the small size, extra RM 0.20 for duck egg. More than 4 years ago, it was RM 3.80. Inflation is smaller compared to here in PJ. Thankfully, it was still as delicious! I had it twice haha.

My mum has been following up with the ophthalmologist until one day he finally recommended surgery to remove the cataract , unlike previously where he just asked us to consider. First hurdle was the specialist's concern over mum's heart condition. Fortunately, my mum came across a medical result of either an echocardiogram or the holter that apparently satisfied him. The surgery was scheduled at 11am. She could only have oat (no other food or drinks, except water of course) before that. As instructed, we arrived at 10.45am where they conducted a RTK Covid-19 test, thankfully negative, and got me to sign as witness to two forms before leaving her to their care (due to Covid-19, no carer was allowed in). I picked her up at around 1.30pm after receiving her call. I didn't receive call from staff, as supposed to be, due to a little misunderstanding: upon seeing my mum with her phone, they thought she was calling me and evidently didn't understand her when she asked them to...

My vassal King of Galicia-Volhynia declared war on another vassal, King of Novgorod, for his claim on the latter's kingdom. He succeeded and now he had the largest realm among my vassals. It latter split into two because of differing succession law. Novgorod's ruler was overthrown by a faction but the Galcian-Volhynia's king pressed his claim and reunited the two kingdoms again. Gosh, I have to make sure he's happy with me! Third crusade called by the Pope. I had participated in every crusade and made no exception to this. I didn't really want Egypt and so was just trying my best to land my brother, who was a title claimant to my empire. When we were clearly winning, I had to take a little break to beat off a pagan ruler  (Pruthenia) who declared war on me. As a side note, just a few years later, he turned Catholic and with monetary gift, I vassalised him. Phew!  Anyway, when I was about to return to the war on Egypt, the tide had turned: we had significant ...

Decades ago, to obtain membership fee waiver for credit card, I had to call up the bank to request for it. Later, there was also an alternative for Citibank credit card: log onto their internet banking and composed a mail within it. They usually replied next day. Then I discovered an even simpler way but this time by DBS bank: called their customer service hotline and it would be the very first option (press "0" iirc) after having chosen the language. Now it's easier: log on to their internet banking and then chat with the digibot. A few clicks later, it's done. 😲

On the way to creating the Kingdom of Galicia-Volhynia. My previous ruler didn't expand the realm himself (I think his vassals did) because of defensive pacts and that he died quite young. That was disppointing. Right after the conquest of Kingdom of Novgorod, I noticed that Kievan Rus's ruler was also out of defensive pact but that pact was going to be filled up almost immediately after that conquest. So after standing down all my armies, I declared war on him.

When CPF LIFe was introduced and made mandataory for Singapore citizens and PRs, I was still working in Singapore as a PR. There were two or three options then of which one left nothing to beneficiaries, thereby maximising the monthly payout. That was the only option I wanted. However, after a year, CPF Board scrapped that option, citing the reason that few people took that option. I have a few issues with this decision. (1) The only people who could choose within that one year were those aged 55 and above. Any competent statistician would know that that is an insignificant sample size to draw any conclusion. (2) Any changes in CPF rules should have been grandfathered i.e.do not affect those are already CPF members and affect only new members. For Singaporeans, this matters because of voluntary top-up, transfer from OA to SA and usage of OA to purchase property and other uses. For foreigners, rules governing CPF benefits matters when considering whether to be PR or not. Imagine signing...

Although they were in a Pagan defensive pact against me, their total strength was manageable. Moreover, my ruler was already 51 years old, with fabricated claims on 3 out of 4 counties of High Chiefdom or Pruthenia. I thought of waging war on Pruthenia and also press ducal claim, for my vassal, on another pagan ruler. However, since the latter was dragged into the first war via the defensive pact, I couldn't declare war on her. I just need 4 counties to create Kingdom of Lithuania and Wendish Empire! I got super lucky to have captured the leader in the first major battle. Nice! After handily won the war against Pruthenia, I immediately pressed ducal claim on a pagan ruler to finally got the final county to establish Wendish Empire. Woot!

The A&W combo meal for its fried chicken cost RM 15.90, which included root beer which cost RM 3.90 ala carte.  Mineral water cost RM 2.50 ala carte. Swapping root beer in the combo for this drink cost additional RM 1.00. I asked the staff why did this cost more when mineral water was priced lower than the root beer but, as expected, they didn't know the answer. Tea costs RM 4.00 ala carte. Swapping root beer for this drink cost additional RM 1.20, which was a mere RM 0.20 more than the swap to mineral water despite costing RM 1.50 more ala carte. 😵 I chose to swap root beer with tea. Strangely, after verbally telling me the above pricing, they charged me only additional RM 0.50 for the swap. 😵

First time ever declared war on this order. I honestly thought I would vassalise them since I pressed a ducal claim. Hmmm. France, for some reasons, had land in the far east, land that I wanted because it forms part of Wendish Empire. In a previous revocation of infidel vassals and it subsequent civil war, I gave out as many demense to claimants of land that I'm eyeing. I couldn't get some of them because they refused to join court. So when I noticed France was attacking Umayyad Empire, I took the chance to declare war on them to press my (new) vassal's claim on the High Chiefdom of Livonia.

Whenever we have prawns and there are shells, I always use them to make prawn broth and then freeze it until it's used to make a soup dish that consisted (thrown in sequence) onion, enoki mushroom and mock snow crab leg meat. As with all broth, Ban can't stand the smell when I'm making it but he's more than fine to have the soup in the end. He especially loves watercress soup and ABC soup (with slightly more tomato) where I use homemade chicken broth. There was this time, though, where his mum gave us some very fresh prawns. She bought them live and concussed them in freezer before passing some to us. These prawns emitted stronger smell. I didn't mind but not Ban. I thought that as usual the end product, the soup, would be fine for him but he complained about it. First time. So the next time I cooked broth from shells of these prawns, I asked my family for advice on how to lessen the 'prawn-y' smell. Mum suggested ginger but we didn't have any that time....

Right after the crusade, I noticed that the rulers of these two realms had left the Pagan defensive pact against me. Checks in the ledger indicated that their combined army size should be manageable. Hence, I declared war on both. I aimed to finished the war on Mazovia first so that I could grant a county to the Lithuania claimant. I did started building a barony in my capital county as a back up. Fortunately, I inherited a barony and so I quickly granted it to that claimant. Won both wars quite handily. Phew! Now I need another 13 percent i.e. 8 more counties to create this empire. Let's go!

Despite the delicious deep fried prawns we made, we still didn't know how to make them closer to the typical Japanese prawn tempura. One day, after Ban ordered soba with prawn tempura as a side, I jokingly asked the waiter (he recognised us as regular customers) at Sushi Tei for permission to watch the chef cook the prawn dish for a nominal fee of RM 1 😁 Quite surprisingly, a few minutes later, he returned to us and gave us a tip: drizzle the batter on top of the prawns while frying them. This method was validated when we examined the prawn tempura that was served: the thicker 'fluffy' flour was only on one side. Later, Ban watched a couple of videos on how chefs do it. One of them did drizzle the batter while frying. Furthermore, a tip from her was to make a few small incisions at the top and bottom of the prawns. So the next time we cook, we incorporated both tips and here's the result: Yes, they still curled up because we didn't bother to remove their spines. T...

The actuary I'm working with plans to retire in about a decade time and offered to give his business to me during a period of transition. I was flattered but declined the offer. He took it well and thanked me for the help I've given and will be giving in future until he retires. Among my response was the following: My dad practised a healthy lifestyle. He ate right, exercised daily and socialised frequently. Except when he was much younger, he didn't smoke and he drank only occasionally. When he was aged 60+, I even boldly predicted that he would live to at least 80+ and possibly to 90, especially given that my grandfather managed to live that old. Yet, despite these, he was taken away by cancer at the age of 73. This got me thinking about my life.......given the myriad of ill-health conditions I have, the period of good quality of life may even be shorter than that. There are things I want to do and more actuarial work isn't one of them. Hence my decision. Also, I don...

Turned out that my sister was a bear?! This is the second crusade called by the Pope. I didn't want Kingdom of Jerusalem and so I was mulling who to nominate as my beneficiary when I noticed my beary sister. For the fun of it, I wish to propagate the Bear culture. Unfortunately, she had only two daughters. Though they were still young, they hadn't had any sons. I married them off matrilineally. I just wanted to do well enough to get my sister demense within the kingdom and so was shocked that I contributed the most! So all hail the Beary Queen of Jerusalem.

One day, as we were about to leave our capark lot, a couple of strangers, with masks on, walked past. Not sure who initiated it: the result was a spontaneous waving and greeting between them and I. When we were in the car... Ban: Who are they? Me: Oh, I thought that guy was SF but I don't who the gal is. Ban: SF? Doesn't look like him. Me: Oh?......Wait: ya hor, he lives in a different block. Alamak, then why they waved at me. Ban: ......   The next time we bumped into them, after the exchange of waves... Me: Maybe they're that couple with the talkative child. Ban: No lah. Me: The woman's figure seems to be the same. The man, though, is a little different.   After the third encounter... Me: Alamak, it's not the woman. She's not wearing mask and so I can tell she's not the mum of that child. Then who on earth are they? Ban: I don't know. Me: *laughs* One day, we might need to confesss. "Errr, sorry ar, who are you? How do you know us? Ban: *laughs*

One day I noticed that I could press claim of a courtier for the Duchy of Lesser Poland. I checked that the ruler didn't have many allies and the one I most worried about was my tributary vassal. So I landed that courtier and then declared war. I lost to him previously and so I was careful to think through many times when considering waging holy war. Heck, previous loss wasn't even a holy war lol. He had many allies. This time I noticed he was in like 3 wars, one of which was a huge one. I guessed that his allies might not be incline to join in defending him another war and so I declared holy war for the Duchy of Greater Poland. I was winning the war when he suddenly saw salvation in God and converted to Catholic. Grrrr. Apparently him turning Catholic didn't mean there was a truce and so I could declare war on him again, just not a holy one. Thank goodness for my spare baronies (most of my demense had spare empty holdings): I granted one to a claimant of the entire High Ch...

My sister's former house had lots of mosquitos from late evening onward. Their presence was obvious especially in bathroom. One day, Ban randomly bought this to deal with it: It worked well! We sometimes used it at our home as well, especially at where we're using our laptops. It's quite expensive compared to conventional insecticide because of its much smaller size but it's worth it to deter pesky mosquitos.

The pain that started more than 12 years ago never went away completely. Once a while, it came back but it would be gone by the next day after some leg strengthening exercise (bend and straighten it repeatedly) and some rest. However, starting September last year, it took longer and longer to go away until one day, it just never did 😢 Fortunately, the pain occurs mainly when I'm walking downstairs. I noticed it when doing leg strengthening exercise too. When it occurs, the pain level is between 3 and 5. So overall, my daily routine is largely not affected. I forgot that the symptom this time, pain right within the middle of knee cap, is different than that two decades ago when I was diagnosed with osteoathritis on the knee. Hence, I wanted to get back on glucosamine (with chondroitin and MSM) which helped my knee to recover then before I approached an orthopaedic, since they probably would just say, "Have you tried glucosamine which helped you two decades ago?" The loc...

Germany was at war on two fronts and so I was hoping to conduct a quick war to claim a county (part of Kingdom of Pomerania and, hence, Wendish Empire) on behalf of a vassal, whom I gave a demense for this purpose. Conclusion: I failed miserably haha. Had to surrender in the end. Once again the Kingdom of Italy landed on my lap. I gave it some serious thoughts. Maybe just destroy the title to avoid the "desire for Kingdom of Italty" opinion penalty with the dukes there? In the end, though, I decided not to keep it. Too hard to defend.

Me: Let's go to Centrepoint to get dinner. We then can go to Jaya Grocer to get gas lighter and your Weetbix. Bla bla bla ...... Ban: Huh? Me: Let's go to Centrepoint. Think that's all you need to know. Ban: Yeah! Bagus! 👍 😂

Mage Knight is still one of our favourite boardgames. In a recent game, this happened for the first time ever 😄: Ban burnt down three monasteries @@, whereas I increased my reputation dramatically due to battling multiple enemies using the Advance Action card 'Chivalry'.

So I inherited Italy. After some consideration, I decided that I couldn't keep Italy because it would be hard to defend it. Also, there would be dukes/duchesses who desire the kingdom. I made Bohemia the primary title because my end goal is to form the Wendish Empire and also I built up considerably the capital county, Praha. Before I granted Italy to my brother, I changed Bohemia's crown authority to medium but it went back to low after the grant! It wasn't a reset because game told me that I had to wait for 50 years before changing this again. Grrrr. All along I wanted to go for ultimogeniture as a temporary measure before primogeniture (the latter needs at least high crown authority). However, as usual, due to dissatifaction of vassals in Duchy of Moravia, I granted the duchy to my only son then. If later I get another son and the inheritance law is primogeniture. it would be troublesome. My idea is to always grant that duchy to my heir. It then struck me that elective m...

I've unlocked Ascension 10 for all 4 characters recently. As per previous post, I'll blog about victories over the Heart, the Act 4 boss. Ascension 7: Sadly, none of the characters managed to beat the Heart. Ascension 8: Only the Silent managed to beat the Heart.   Ascension 9: Only the Defect, surprisingly, managed to beat the Heart.

Ban's experiment with prawn tempura wasn't done yet. There was one more step: mixing in yuzu & chilli pepper paste into the tempura flour batter.  There's a funny story to this: he wanted to infuse tempura prawn with black pepper and flavour the soba sauce/soup with yuzu but since he couldn't get yuzu, he bought this yuzu & chilli pepper sauce only for the prawn. Yes, that's the reason. Don't ask me why 😆 So one day, we continued with this experiment: It was so delicious that I didn't need to dip it into the tempura sauce. So addictive too! Definitely different than any deep fried prawns I had before. However, given that it's a lot of work in preparing this meal, we weren't be having this often.

Happy anniversary my dearest Ban :) May we grow old together with much joy and happiness. Like previous year , we celebrated twice but this time the first one was unintentional: for the first time, I mixed up the dates 😅  Both times we ate at Kinpachi. During this Phase Two of the National Recovery Plan, the restaurant is open for dine-in, subject to following conditions: 1. Reservation is a must 2. Need to choose one of three available hourly timeslots and, yes, dining time is restricted to an hour On our first dinner, we shared an oden and four pieces of hanpen. Ban also had soba with mixed tempura whereas I had four pieces of salmon sushi and a stick of scallop yakitori. We were happy with the food but I was so full! On our second dinner, Ban had one of his favourite set meals there i.e. teppanyaki seafood, which I had 6 pieces of salmon sushi (they serve the best salmon sushi imo) and 2 pieces of bachi maguro sushi. Forgot to take photos, once again. All good!

This will be the last post on Paladins at least for a while. Two reasons: (1) Fed up with SEA server because there was at least one disconnected player in almost every match. I tried OZ server which was much better (only 1 dc in like 8 matches) but the ping was doubled, and (2) Started a fresh Divinity Original Sin 2 run with Joker but this time in Tactitian mode. Due to lack of disk space, I had to uninstall Paladins. Here were the last few best matches: Corvus Second highest (K+0.5*A)/D ratio, joint lowest death and second longest elimination streak. Seris Highest (K+0.5*A)/D ratio in team (2nd highest overall), joint lowest death, longest elimination streak (16), highest healing (beating both opponent's supports' combined). Ying Joint highest (K+0.5*A)/D ratio, joint lowest death.

Upon a friend's recommendation, I ordered some Nyonya rice dumplings from a seller based in Melaka. It appeared that a minimum order of 10 was required and so I also ordered some Hokkien bak chang with salted egg yolk for Ban's parents and a tub of pineapple tarts for myself. Delivery fee was RM 20 @@ Recently, with her agreement, I provided the following feedback: Hokkien bak chang:  very good; lots of meat. Nyonya chang: loved the glutinous rice's texture; the filling seems to lack spices because all I tasted was sweetened minced pork. Pineapple tart: delicious; the jam wasn't sickly sweet and not dry; the pastry wasn't too crumbly. The feedback process went well until she said that she tried a spoonful of the Nyonya chang's filling of which she could taste the spiciness (due to coriander and pepper) but not so peppery kind of spiciness. She then assumed that I liked strong peppery taste. This, I believed, is a mistake. Seller shouldn't make assumptions ab...

My nephew, who was the second in line for the throne, was exceptionally better than my heir (my son). I was trying to figure out how to get rid of my son. Apparently game was patched such that you cannot murder your own children. Meanwhile, I was worried that my son would die before I did. Should that happened and later I passed away, Duchy of Moravia wouldn't be in the hands of the would-be king (my nephew). Hence, I revoked the duchy from my son and gave it to my nephew.   RNG god favoured me this instance: my son died from natural cause and so my nephew became heir. Yay! As expected, my nephew became King of Italy via inheritance and so took out Duchy of Moravia with him. The risk was that he dies before I do but highly unlikely because I was much older. The battle over Krakow was probably my last.

I normally get my lipid profile test done at a Pathlab. I usually get Ban's help to drive me there because it's hard to get carpark spot there. So, when I found out the local pharmacy offered this service, I opted for it (it was significantly cheaper i.e. RM 25 vs RM 45) despite its accuracy at 90% of that done at Pathlab via blood test (this is via blood from finger prick). Results as compared to 4 months ago:                                 May 2021         Ref range              Sep 2021          Ref. range Total cholesterol           6.3                  < 5.2    ...

A country is currently planning to update their law governing insurance so that it's in accordance with international best practice, protect consumers and all those good stuff. Among the proposed changes are licensing requirements of various professionals, including claim assessors. Of course they couldn't resist collecting fees for those licenses.  It is good that they spell out when the various licenses will be revoked (e.g. when the professionals committed fraud) but one particular scenario made my eyes widened: if claim assessor hasn't assessed any claim for a period of more than 6 months, their license will be revoked 😂 So, imagine this scene in an insurance company: CFO: Good news! There have been no claims for nearly 6 months already and the actuary expects nothing unusual for the remaining year. Our investment is doing well too. CEO: Excellent! We can expect record profit this year. Claim assessor: Oh no! CEO: ? Claim assessor: My license will be revoked in a few d...

One day, I noticed that my Paladins game was sluggish and that I wasn't able to record it using GeForce Experience. So once that was done, I went to check the application and noticed that its recording feature, Shadowplay, was greyed out and stated that I didn't have an external graphicas card. Eh? Check on Device Manager showed that it was hidden! I tried many things, including system restore, but they didn't work. The final action I took was to uninstall it but it didn't reinstall when I restarted my laptop. In fact, it wasn't even hidden 😬 I wanted to send to Yus for repair but that would be crossing interstate border, which was still banned and so instead I planned to bring it to OK Computer Solution Petaling Jaya the next day. However, later there was a greater problem: BSOD, with the error message "Bad System Config Info error". It happened 3 times within a short period, the last of with somehow the system got me to a troubleshooting option which a...

Many years ago, probably close to a decade, after trying out a few mouses, I finally found a cheap mouse that's comfortable for me: Logitech M100r. This model became my go-to replacement and the last one lasted for about 4 years before its left click became erratic: it either double clicked (although I pressed it only once) or it didn't respond at all. As usual, I right away searching for Logitech M100r on Shopee. This happened shortly after I researched and purchased the RK 71 keyboard and that got me thinking maybe I should buy a better quality mouse, one that can also help improve my gaming experience. To my shock, a good mouse cost almost as much as a good keyboard. As with the keyboard, the research on mouse also took many hours but fortunately not as long. In the end I settled on Razer Viper Mini. It so happened that there was incoming 8.8 sale on Shopee and I got about RM 5 discount hahaha. But the good thing was that it was from Razer official store itself and had 2-we...

Dredge 169k damage, single digit death, 2nd highest KDA   138k damage (highest), single digit death (lowest), (K + 0.5*A)/D ratio Highest (K + 0.5*A)/D ratio, lowest death, second highest damage and longest elimination streak.   Fernando   Longest streak, lowest death, highest KDA   Seris Highest (K + 0.5*A)/D ratio, fewest death, 2nd highest dmg in team, 3rd highest dmg overall   Highest (K + 0.5*A)/D ratio, lowest death, longest elimination streak.   Longest elimination streak. Second highest (K + 0.5*D)/A ratio.

Time to start posting about my Ironman #3 run .  I started out as Duke of Bohemia and Moravia, which coincidentally constituted the entirety of Kingdom of Bohemia, with 2 extra counties in the de jure of Hungary. I just lacked gold and piety to form the kingdom but boy this ruler came with a set of problems: (1) Kinslayer! (2) Many tribal vassals - wrong type of government and so negative opinion (3) Many vassal chiefs desiring the Duchy of Moravia - more negative opinion (4) Exceeded demense limit (1) was unexpectedly solved this way: when I had enough piety, I bought indulgence from the Pope. Soon after, he offered to get rid of the Kinslayer trait for gold. Nice! The rest was solved by granting the Duchy of Moravia to my heir when he came of age (wanted to make sure he married a lady of my choice first).

Ban's attempt at cooking prawn tempura sort of failed twice. The main problem was that almost no flour stuck to the prawns. He researched and the only difference he could have done was to make sure the prawns were not wet, Upon speaking with my sister, I learned two other things we could do differently: make sure there are bubbles in the oil before frying the prawns (it's an indicator that it's hot enough for deep frying) and mix the flour and (cold) water to make it into a paste for better coating. Here's the result: Much better than previously, with flour wholly coating the prawns but still not like those served in Japanese restaurants. Curiously, the ones in restaurants are straightened. Maybe that will make the difference? Although delicious, with tempura sauce, I cautioned Ban that we shouldn't do this often because there was too much cleaning to do due to oil splat on stove and some on the floor, quite difficult to scrub the pot that was used for deep frying,...

Despite Slay the Spire being explicitly listed in the 'Games' section of GeForce Experience, the app couldn't work when I wanted to record gameplay, with error message stating that the game is unsupported. Wth. Every now and then I tried recording with that app but to no avail. So I resorted to taking screenshot of the victory page and the run history. I did that only if I managed to beat the heart.  On any one Ascension level, I would play each character until they opened up the next level, by beating Act 3 boss. Each time I failed, I would just move on to the next character who had yet to finish that Ascension level. The order of which I chose characters followed the default order in game i.e. Ironclad, Silent, Defect and Watcher. So here are the screenshots: I am surprised that the first character to beat the Heart at Ascension 4 level is Defect, a character that I'm least comfortable playing. Silent's feat is much less of a surprise to me. Only Watcher managed t...

"Very, very close to the real deal in Penang." "Best ckt in Klang Valley." A couple of friends said that (they are a couple). So after finding out that the coffeeshop isn't far, Ban and I made a trip there. We didn't know it was a public holiday and so there was a long queue outside it. Eeek. Fortunately, it was just the queue for Assam Laksa. There was ample space inside the shop to practice social distancing. The only other queue was inside but on one side of the shop, for the yong taufu. I got the char kuay teow with duck egg and asked for less noodle, whereas I got Ban duck rice (RM 7.50). Ban said the amount of duck meat was little. Oh well. As for the char kuay teow (RM 8): The portion was huge despite the seller repeated my request for less noodle, when I collected it. The taste was quite delicious but it was too oily for me. I highly doubt I would have it again. Currently, the best char kuay teow for me (duck egg is optional) is the one at Kedai Kopi...

I was monitoring the logistic of my newly ordered keyboard because because I want to make sure my phone wasn't on DND mode when arrived, as I needed to pay the deliveryman (cash-on-delivery). I noticed something strange: Why couldn't they directly send the parcel to the logistic facility at Petaling Jaya, instead of meandering around in Puchong?

(expanding on this ) The keyboard I bought was Fantech Fighter II K613: Actually, before this, I bought a cheaper smaller keyboard, just to see whether I can make do with such a cheap keyboard. Problem with it was that the spacebar slowly became stiff i.e. it got harder to press it. So I bought the above keyboard at a computer shop, upon the staff's recommendation after my complaint about the previous keyboard. This keyboard has warranty of a year. Sadly, not even close to a year (think it was like 4 months), its USB connection became unstable: it could suddenly stopped working. Switching USB ports didn't solve the problem. The shop gave me a new one as replacement. The new one worked for almost 6 months before the same problem occured. This time, not only did I tried a different port on my laptop but I also used ports on a USB hub and ports on Ban's laptop. Well, at least we managed to confirm that it was the keyboard's problem. I started researching on the internet fo...