Here's My Story

    This is really literally a no through road haha.

I thought this was a good opportunity to press for a vassal's claim (I landed him with a spare county) on the kingdom because the major powers in the defensive pacts were busy: Analfi and friends vs Byzantine, and Mongol was busy on multiple fronts. However, it was much harder than expected: my realm was huge and so I had to send armies in different directions to recapture sieged land. Also, in the midst of it, my kinsman the Byzantine emperor faced a revolt and so I helped him too.   It was finally over after 3 long tedious years omg. The Tsar of Bulgaria was facing a revolt lead by the King of Bulgaria. To my delight, I could press the king's brother's claim to the kingdom. He was married matrilineally to my kinswoman and was in my court. I granted him a spare barony just before I enforced demand at 100% warscore. This was due to bad experience in the past where my vassal count revoked the barony from the claimant during the war.

Here are the results compared to 4 months ago :                                 Sep 2022              Ref               Jan 2023            Ref Total cholesterol           4.3               < 5.17                  5.4               <5.2 HDL ("good")               1.7               > 1.03   ...

Because we decided to have a very simple marriage solemnisation ceremony , there was only a few more things to do once we were in Australia: Met the marriage celebrant to do some paperwork, especially the Declaration of No Impediment. Discussed with Ban and my sister where exactly in the garden the ceremony should be held. Had to make last minute adjustments on that day itself because of the position of the sun (very glaring!). Cleaned up the venue. Determined who takes photograph and who records a video. Thanks to my sister and her family for volunteering for these tasks and taking care of the details :) Yet, I was a little nervous and anxious right up to that day. I had to occassionally tell myself that it would be alright because very few things could go wrong and even if they did, it would either not matter or quickly solved, all because this was a very simple ceremony. I'm happy that it did turn out well :) The weather was quite good, though I decided to ditch the jacket becau...

When my vassal King of Italy attacked Queen of Sardinia and Corsica for a county, I noticed that I could press claim on the kingdom for a vassal count. I took the chance, seeing that Byzantine Empire and Mongol Empire were embroiled in existing protracted wars. There were still quite a number of sovereign that came to the queen's aid, the biggest of which was the army raised by the merchant republic of Ragusa, who was also in a war against Analfi.   This war was even more tedious than the war for Papacy, spending most of my time with negative warscore. I'm surprised the queen surrendered when I was at 23% warscore.   I reloaded. Instead of pressing a vassal's claim on Kingdom of Sardinia and Corsica (which left only a few counties), I pressed a kinsman's claim to Byzantine Empire when the empress just started her defense against a revolt for the throne too. This is another first for me (the first first was setting up Antipope and conquering The Papacy). Yes, I know he w...

Good news regarding my mum's eye condition : by the second month, she no longer feel discomfort in the eye and no obstruction to her eyesight. During the follow-up appointment, the eye clinic at Bukit Mertajam Hospital confirmed that the condition had improved and prescribed the continue usage of the eye drop. So that likely means their diagnosis, retinal hemorrhage, is correct. Hence, there's no need for the injection of expensive drug. Yay!

These are the books I read in 2022, including those read online: The Prince - Niccolo Machiavelli The Hate You Give - Angie Thomas A Book A Day Volume 3 - YP Li Elfquest Siege at Blue Mountain Kings of the Broken Wheel Hidden Years • Shards I should read more! However, I realised that I do spend lots of time reading news, chiefly on Malaymail, on Malaysia, Singapore, Money and World. Sometimes I also read investment and actuarial related articles.

Yes, it's the usual opportunity to grab as much land as possible before all those defensive pacts refill. Unfortunately, there was no juicy kingdoms for me to press claim for. I had a spare barony to grant to claimant. One of the war was a holy war on a duchy from a Muslim leader. I surmised that he wouldn't get much help and I was correct. I won all the wars. The duchy I granted to a randomly created bishop. I then opted to Free Investiture and appoint him as Antipope. Yes, I'm aiming for the Papacy for the first time ever :)   This is it! The war for the Papacy so that my vassal antipope would be my vassal pope. My default plan was to wait for another handover so that the Pope would leave the defensive pact temporarily upon death of my ruler. However, I noticed that Byzantine was busy with moderately difficult war, the Mongols were facing some resistance to their invasion, two holy orders and a Catholic king came to my aid in defense against a Muslim ruler's attack on...

About a week ago, I received an SMS from MAS that my return flight had been changed. I checked it out on MAS website as well as their app and they both gave the same information: both the CBR-MEL flight operated by Qantas and the MEL-KUL flight operated by MAS were changed. What didn't make sense was that the Qantas flight would have arrived in Melbourne half an hour after the MAS flight would have departed! What nonsense is this? I thought that by purchasing the entire leg of the journey from MAS, such problem shouldn't exist i.e. the changed flights should make sense! According to the app, I had to call MAS in Malaysia to fix this. My sister helpfully offered her family's phones since at least two of them had healthy credits in their mobile plans. Fortunately, it cost only AUD 0.10/min to call Malaysia. However, there were huge connection problems when using their phones: conversation was choppy and at times I was disconnected. The first call to MAS ended with the office...

Back in October 2022, one day during lunch, one of my teeth felt sensitive when I was drinking soup. I also sensed something akin to pre-sensitive discomfort when I physically pressed on it. I consulted Dr Ting and I was told that it was the same troublesome tooth previously . So after the usual checking, she advised me to consult an endodontist. Upon my request, she gave me a list of recommended specialists and narrowed it further to one that was most convenient to me due to location. She then wrote a letter, detailing the history of that tooth, for me to pass it to the endodontist, Dr Bryan Ong. I can't remember the details as it's been more than 4 months. I remember that on top doing the usual checks, Dr Ong also checked by using hot water, X-ray and CT scan. Strangely the tooth didn't feel sensitive to hot water that time. The scans didn't detect hidden canal or infection. Incidentally, he commented that the crown was well done. Also, it appeared that the source of...