Posts

Showing posts from May, 2021

State before stats

Remember this obnoxious friend ? Here's a recent conversation with him: Friend: A is better than B Me: How so? Friend: Can you give me the statistics for me to make a detailed comparison? Me: ...... Ahhh yes, the classic 'state something as fact and thereafter look for data to back it up'.

MCO food: Part 10

Image
I've cooked watercress soup many times before and have always preferred to have a separate meat dish, rather than just cooking meat in the soup. So I thought of cooking one of my favourite dishes: prawn omelette.   I added two ingredients to the standard prawn omelette recipe: milk in the egg just before cooking it (this I learned from a recipe) and a dash of oregano, something I experimented with when I was studying in Australia. Delicious! I also used the prawns' heads and shells to make prawn broth, which was used next time to make soup with mock snow crab meat (excpetionally good from Top Catch Fisheries), onion and enoki mushroom. Yum! I also tried cooking curry chicken, with potato, for the first time in years. As expected, the portion kept overnight was more delicious. However, to my dismay, both times gave me tummy ache. Guess I can't have spicy food from dinner onward :(

Crusader Kings II: War on Eleven

Image
Oh yes, I decided to beat the previous record of war on 7 fronts when there was a change in ruler:   The last war. Won all of them quite convincingly. Of all of them, King of Bohemia put up the greatest fight, having gotten help from Knights of the Teutonic Order. No, I was not a heretic or infidel. I suspect they were both allied.   I should have built the grove long time ago to use this feature when my threat level was constantly near 100%. If the target dies, I win beause I get rid of someone undesirable. If I die, I also win because my new ruler can then start war on several front.     

Paladins: Barik patch 4.3

Image
Barik's hp was reverted back to 3400 and so another round of determining loadout ensued because the previous loadout , but with Double-Time replaced with Failsafe, no longer worked for me.  I then tried this loadout ("Turret Saviour") and was sticking to it for sometime: (refer to this gamespedia for more details) Field Deploy - 4 Forged Alloy - 1 Healing Station -3 Brave and Bold -4 Failsafe - 3 A couple of gameplays: I was still thinking of how to tweak the previous Turret Reset loadout to make it work. The problem, to me, was Barik's low hp. In the end, I made a compromise between One Man's Scrap and Brave and Bold: Field Deploy - 3 One Man's Scrap -3 Healing Station - 3 Brave and Bold -3 Failsafe - 3 This is probably going to be my default loadout for now. A couple of gameplay:

#CucukMyAZ 1st dose

Malaysia government seprated out Astrazeneca (AZ) from the main national immunisation programme as they alleged that people were hesistant about taking that vaccine. "Alleged" i.e. didn't back it up with any statistic/survey/study etc. So they instead opened it up for anyone to register, regardless of which 'phase' we were supposed to be in, on a first-come-first-served basis. The first exercise was conducted, through a website, on 2nd May, for Selangor residents. The second one would be on 23rd May but would be firstly reserved for those aged 60+, in Selangor, Penang, Sarawak and Johor. If there are leftover slots, then it will be opened to everyone (in the same states, presumably). Getting a slot on 2nd May was akin to getting a cheap Air Asia ticket. It didn't help that, as later revealed by the government, the website was glitched. It opened at 12pm. By around 12.30pm, I suggested to Ban that he should go off to get us lunch while I would continue to click

Cholesterol 2021: Part 2...and others

Results as compared to 4 months ago:                                 Jan 2021        May 2021          Ref. range Total cholesterol           4.9                 6.3                  < 5.2 HDL ("good")               1.81              2.08                > 1.04 LDL ("bad")                  2.8                4.2                 < 2.6 Triglycerides                 0.7                0.8                 < 1.7 Total/HDL ratio            2.7                 3.0                  < 5.0 😬😢😭   I can think of two explanation (so far): 1. During the second half of this 4-month period, I've reduced the intake of fenofibrate from 4x/week to 3x/week. 2. Few days before the test, I had a loaf of coffee butter cake over the course of a week. I agree with my sister that it's highly likely due to the reduced intake and so I'll be upping it back to 4x/week. Unfortunately, due to MCO 3.0, swimming is not allowed. Meh. I've also taken the opportunity

Kwong Wah: ABC??

Image
Before MCO 3.0 started, I managed to have Kwong Wah's mini assam laksa again (RM 5.80!). This time, instead of chendol, I ordered ABC (RM 5.50) because I remembered it was tasty the only other time I had it before. Yes, that dessert on the right is ABC (or Ice Kacang). I was surprised when I received it but the server assured me that the kacang was underneath. Yes, all other ingredients, aside of the chendol sitting atop, were inside. To me, it tasted too similar to their chendol. Seems like there was coconut milk it it but smaller amount? I was a little disappointed because I was looking forward to a different taste. So I probably will order chendol in future.

Crusader Kings II: Crusade, Denmark, Mistake, Burial

Image
The Pope declared crusade on Kingdom of Nenetsia and I was interested in getting this kingdom because it was next to my realm, despite not liking that area due to low supply limit. Unfortunately, its leader was captured so early before I could take the lead in the crusade. Damn. Curiously, it was my duke vassal who contributed the most to the crusade and the kingdom went to his nominated beneficiary.   I suddenly found out that I had a weak claim on Kingdom of Denmark, and it so happened that the heir to the throne was a child. Hehehe. So I plotted to murder the then King of Denmark: (1) Succeeded but they had a change of heir (Agnatic Elective) and he was an adult. Meh. However, the new heir was also a child. (2) Barely had 100% plot power. Failed and my complicit was made known. Yikes. (3) Succeeded and the kingdom was then placed under regency. Declared war! That war went fine, without problem. However, just further than midway, the Polish King died, leaving a child as the next king

Welfare or not

So, a friend applied for OKU card September last year and recently wondered why he hadn't received his card. He called their phone number but nobody picked. Hence, he made a trip to the Welfare Dept. Turned out that they do not inform applicants when it's ready, applicants are supposed to check with them on the status of their cards, their phone wasn't working properly, and as an alternative, applicants can check the status online. How on earth could my friend know all of these if they didn't tell him when he handed in his application? This is Welfare Dept, which supposed to help people with disabilities and so they supposed to  make it easier for them, not harder! Even people without disabilities would expect them to give such information. My friend has executive function deficit and so, understandably, it didn't occur to him to ask. It is no wonder that the department had many unclaimed OKU cards. Goodness! They have failed our disabled people. A note from the fri

Foo Foo Fine Desserts

Image
I came to know of this dessert cafe from my friends and by chance, I saw a photo of pavlova in their Facebook! So I willingly paid for delivery of the dessert. At that time, there was a ban on interdistrict travel....which is coming back soon. Haiz. Although it was quite delicious, understandably the toppings were separated and so I had to decorate the cake with it myself. So once the travel ban was lifted, Ban and I made our way there. Unfortunately, we couldn't get a  carpark at that part of TTDI just before 3pm and so Ban dropped me off first. It looked great. Texture was great too but unfortunately, as with most pavlova I had, it was too sweet too me. Even worse was that Ban ended up couldn't join me because he had to park at One Utama :( So I probably wouldn't order this again. I may go to Serai at Jaya Shopping Centre if I want pavlova. That was the only other place I know that served this dessert and theirs wasn't sickly sweet.