Here's My Story

'My child is gay: how parents react when they hear the news' is a book (edited by Bryce McDougall) consists of a "collection of letters written by parents who have first-hand experience of that moment. These letters were written to be shared - to help other parents come to terms with unfamiliar feelings. They have also proved invaluable to the concerned young person contemplating the best way to come out." Ban's mum lend this book to me, perhaps to help me and my parents if I should choose to come out to my parents. I have read over 40 pages of it so far. Each letter is short and so it's easy to just read one or two regularly. Recently I came across this advice to other parents, prefacing the letter, given by a mother from rural New South Wales in Australia: Enjoy your children, straight or gay. Have fun with them - life is too short to be angry and upset because they have not fulfilled your dreams of them. They are all individuals and must be respected ...

I was dining at Damansara Village (excellent steamboat!) when I saw these in their water tanks: The biggest tortoise I've seen in any restaurant. I don't think it's food stuff. Hope not. It looked ancient. It peaked out the water to look at me. I didn't dare to wave my hand closer in case it had really long neck :P It looked like the prawn was trying to escape from the tank full with crabs hehe. Edited on 28 Jun 2012: Should be 'Damansara Village' and not 'Damansara Legend'.

My sister commented that although the bread I baked was quite delicious, it became hard quite fast. This is consistent with my own observation. Hence, she suggested that I consider a recipe from her bread recipe book: the sponge and dough method. A brief description of the method, as stated in the book, is as follows: This method needs a longer preparation time, first of all a sponge dough is prepared which needs to prove for 2-4 hours or even longer. After a second mixing, it has a 15 minutes rest. Then it is divided, mould it round, then fill it with filling and shaped. This method produces a softer, bigger loaf which keeps longer. One notable difference in recipe (as compared to the basic one I've been using) is the inclusion of egg. Also, it supposed to have butter too but since Ban doesn't take butter, I've replaced it with olive oil. I tried it on the day I read the recipe. Due to time constraint, I shorten the proving time by about 1 - 1.5 hours and so was a ...

(continue from this post ) Gifts Besides the Gifts that came with Career and Species, I also got to choose 3 additional Gifts at the start. Ban highly recommended Resolve, which allowed my character to use Will die as additional soak die. Soak dice are like pseudo-hit points i.e. every die can potentially offset a point of damage. The default soak die is only the Body die. So if the damage is, say, 2, then for certain 1 damage will get through. Hence, the more soak dice, the better! Next, I took Secrets of Fire Magic, which allows my character to have a free refresh action for Ignite Fire (staple spell), Move Fire and Pilum of Fire, as long as the fire mage is wearing the red robe. Also, it increased the Presence skill mark by 1 i.e. from d8 to d10. Lastly, I took Increased Trait: Will which increased chance of success for landing Fire Magic spells and also increased the bonus soak die. Equipment The important equipment are: Robe - essential in enabling the free refresh...

Upon William's recommendation, Ban and I went to have dinner at Yamada recently. Consistent with William's observation, there was no need to make reservation. In any case, we arrived just minutes after they were open. My first major issue with the restaurant was the waitress' insistence that I couldn't request a change of sashimi within a set. As usual, if it is confirmed there is either squid or octopus sashimi/sushi, I would request it be changed to any other sashimi/sushi (I wouldn't even mind egg sushi!). Fortunately, a senior waitress intervened and corrected the waitress by saying that there was no squid or octopus sashimi in the set meal I was interested in. The set (RM67 + 10% service charge) I ordered included (sorry no photos!): (1) Salad Shredded fresh vegetables with thousand island sauce. I usually would request without sauce but I forgot this time. It was ok, although some leafy vegetables and cherry tomatoes would make it better. (2) Shredde...

(continue from this post ) Skill marks Aside from dice provided by Career (d8 for Academics, Observation and Supernatural) and by Species (d6 for Climbing, Digging and Presence), there were 13 skill marks to allocate to any Skills I wanted. Initially, I spread the marks across a variety of Skills but later I followed Ban's advice to (once again) focus on as few Skills as possible that would enchance my character. Note that the maximum skill marks is 3 (a d8 die) per Skill. A key skill that Ban strongly advised me to invest in was the Dodge skill. In dodging attacks, by default a character has only Speed die. So extra die from Dodge skill is very useful. The rest of the skill marks were allocated to the Skills associated with Career and Species i.e. 3 marks each in Academics Presence and 2 marks each in Digging Supernatural On hindsight, I should have allocated marks to Observation rather than Supernatural because the former is more widely used than the latter and ...

When I first started to generate my character, I willingly accept Ban's guidance in this matter. The sequence outlined in the book is as follows: Traits Species Career Personality Skill marks Gifts Name Motto Equipment Goal Career Instead of following the book, Ban suggested that I look at Career first. In the end I picked Elementalist and so the next step was to choose which elemental to specialist in. It's not a must but it's better to specialist so as to focus on the Trait and Skills that matter. I chose to specialise in Fire Magic because of one key feature of some of its spells: the ability to set people On Fire - a feature that is available even for its basic spell. The victim will suffer ongoing damage for as long as this status is in effect. Then we both looked at the various spells to determine the Trait and Skill they are dependent on. It turns out that all Fire Magic spells depend on only two things: Will (Trait) and Presence (Skill). On hindsi...

Recently, I had a terrible bout of sickness: phlegmy cough and fever. Took some time to recover. Unfortunately, I infected Ban with it too :( Here was his attempt to cheer me up (when he was still healthy): Made me laughed when he got me to look at it. Hehehe. Thanks honey!

I recently finished reading the 4th and final instalment in the Riftwar saga. The ending was rather unsatisfying. Nobody in the story knew how they survived at the end or what saved them. It was hinted that this would be investigated later. Really? In which series?

One night, after Ban's Ironclaw session, one of the players, Kevin, asked some of us whether we could join a "one-shot" Ironclaw game hosted by him for his friends, whom he said that had never played the game. Kevin also asked us to help him with the rules. Ban and I agreed as we were keen (and still are) to get as many people play this game as possible. We were expecting that some time would be needed for character generation. Later, it turned out that although they had never played it, they had read the book and even sort of created their characters. They then focused on writing this on a proper character sheet, while Kevin, Ban and I stood ready to help anyone. In fact, Ban was quite active in doing that :) Wayne: Now, let's see. For my Almoner/Thaumatuge, I get bonus d12 for parrying with my rod. Me: Hmmm hey, are you using a rod instead of a wand? Wayne: Yup. Me: Are you aware that a rod has penalty range whereas a wand has unlimited range? Wayne: Yup,...