Here's My Story

Lately I've been playing lots of Dragon's Dogma 2. The copy of the game belonged to Ban and he shared his Steam library so that I could play it. He had finished playing it like 8-9 months ago. Graphic is good, world building is not bad, combat is great but boy, their quest system is...questionable. Some of them gave very little clue on how to progress. Some needed others to complete so as to have "good" ending but with no hints of the prerequisite. NPC quest givers randomly died off-screen 🙄 At the start, I could start off as one of 3 classes: Fighter, Thief and Mage. As usual, I chose Mage but soon I switched to Sorcerer shortly after I unlocked it. I built my my pawn as a Fighter and I usually hired a Thief and a Mage. My Sorcer build is as follows: Weapon skills High Levin: I don't like Sorcerer's basic attack i.e. Magic Bolt. Yes, it's great that it's semi-auto aim but it merely tickles the enemies. As much as I love High Frigor for it's crowd...

As usual, I did health screening in January, shortly after I returned from my trip to Australia. In future, I plan to do this before the trip because I realised that the results do not represent my usual health condition. I considered postponing the tests by about 3 months but then I remembered that although I ate more sinful food (specifically dessert and slightly sweet  drinks) in Australia, I also exercised a little more than usual. So, I went ahead to get them done. WBC dropped slightly from 3.5 to 3.4, which is comfortably above 3. This time, they also provided the absolute count of the various types of WBC. Neutrophil count is at 2.1 i.e. comfortably above 1.5. Lymphocyte and monocyte are, however, below the the acceptable range i.e. 1.0 (ref 1.5-4.5) and 0.2 (ref 0.4-1.1) respectively. Based on previous year's results, my GP calculated the counts of these two and the results were similar as well. Given that clearly I'm generally fine, she wasn't too concerned about ...

The first time my sister brought me to this restaurant at Gungahlin, Canberra, was about 2 years ago. I had some nigiri which was not too bad but not great either. Maji had much better nigiri but so was the price :D Recently, we went there again as our first, second and third choice of restaurants were closed. I nearly ordered the set of 6 pieces of salmon nigire but then spotted salmon avocado rolls (8) for much cheaper price. I decided to try that instead. I vaguely recall that proportion of the ingredients was similar to that depicted in the menu. Quite impressive :) The fillings were quite generous and the overall food was delicious. A definite must-have.

There was no improvement or deterioration slightly more than a month after the last session i.e. there was still pulling pain at the wrist just below the base of the thumb when I moved my clenched fist upward, there was still sharp pain at around the same spot as above when I push the back of my palm towards me, and there was still sourish pain, at the base of thumb where the bone is, when I pushed my thumb backward and away from the fingers. The therapist tested a few things, asked some questions and then explained some things. He massaged to loosen some tight areas until the first two above were gone. Miraculous. He modified the physio regime: Fingers and thumb straightened side by side. Place rubber band around it in such a way that there's some challenge in moving the thumb sideway away from the rest of the finger. Moved it 30 times. Do this before the following stretching exercises. Palm faces forward, fingers pointing down. Pull the thumb backward for 10s. Do this 30 time...

Saw this in Canberra:

 Saw this in Canberra:

(Emphasis is mine, to show the mistakes) 1. BBC article "Trump vows to 'take other countries' jobs' in economic speech". Sentence: "Harris will return to the another critical swing state, Pennsylvania, on Wednesday to lay out her own economic agenda." 2. FMT article "Grab shares jump 15% after ride-hailing firm raises forecast. Sentence: "Yet, the firm also needs to show it can maintain healthy balance between profits and growth even as tough competition from rivals including GoTo Group weighs on its ride-share and food delivery margins." 3. Malaymail article "PAS spiritual leader says party must lead Perikatan, didn’t back Muhyiddin as PM". Sentence: "PAS controls 43 of the 67 parliamentary seats under coalition’s control, with Bersatu holding the remaining 25 . The other PN parties — Gerakan and MIPP — have none." 43 + 25 = 68. 4. FMT article "Writing a will: 4 common mistakes Malaysians tend to make". Se...

1. Unlocked 135 achievements (Steam median 13) 2. Played 18 games (Steam median 4. Only 4?) 3. Longest streak: 14 days (Steam median 6) 4. Spent 7% of my playtime on 2024 newly released games (vs 15% for all Steam users). 5.  Explained by point (6) below. 6. Top 5 games (with % of total play time): Slay the Spire (21%), Baldur's Gate 3 (20%), Wildfrost  (16%), The Last Spell (13%), Minion Masters (11%). 7. Played the most in February (by far) and the least in May (by far). 8. Seems like they don't take into account of the game I played from Ban's library (he shared it with me): Dragon's Dogma 2 isn't on the list of games that I played in 2024.

1. Listened to 13,163 minutes, which puts me in the top 27% of listeners. This was mostly due to me listening to Spotify when I drove to Butterworth and back home. 2. Apparently the song Spotify played for me (since it's shuffled within the "Liked" album) most was Every Heart by BoA, a song from the anime Inuyasha. It was followed by Baldur's Gate 3 Main Theme Part 1 by Borislav Slavov, A Thousand Years by Christina Perri and Steve Kazee, Beautiful Love by Tanya Chua, and Shadows, Curse and Death by Borislav Slavov. 3. Listened to 6,987 minutes of podcasts. 4. Top podcasts: The Rest Is History, Romance of the Three Kingdoms Podcast, The British History Podcast, The Explanation, and The Foreign Affiars Interview. 5. Top artists: Borislav Slavov, Mariah Carey, Kaoru Wada, Olivia Newton-John and V.

Here are the books that I read, podcasts that I listened to and shows that I watched in 2024: Books: Cradle: Skysworn - Will Wight Cradle: Ghostwater - Will Wight Cradle: Underlord - Will Wight Cradle: Uncrowned - Will Wight Cradle: Wintersteel - Will Wight Cradle: Bloodline - Will Wight Cradle: Reaper - Will Wight Cradle: Dreadgod - Will Wight Cradle: Waybound - Will Wight Reborn: Apocalpyse Vol 1 - L.M. Kerr Reborn: Apocalpyse Vol 2 - L.M. Kerr Reborn: Apocalpyse Vol 3 - L.M. Kerr Reborn: Apocalpyse Vol 4 - L.M. Kerr Shadow Slave Chapter 1 - 2045 - Guiltythree Shows: The Good Doctor Season 3 Ep 15 - Season 4 Ep 8 Delicious In Dungeon One Piece (Live Action) Ep 1-3 Dr Stone Delicious in Dungeon Frieren My Instant Death Ability is Overpowered Ready Player 1 Young Sheldon Season 3 Young Sheldon Season 4 Young Sheldon Season 5 Young Sheldon Season 6 Young Sheldon Season 7 Avatar: The Last Airbender (Live Action) Season 1 Bleach: Thousand War The Adventure of Dai Daily Dose of Sunshine Ep...