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Showing posts from July, 2012

DnD 4e: Human Warlock Part 2

(continue from Part 1 ) Power All warlocks, regardless of choice of pact, will need to choose either Eldritch Blast (also can be used as basic range attack) or Eldritch Strike (also can be used as basic melee attack) and decide whether it should be Con or Cha based. Initially a friend frightened me about the prospect of my warlock of being surrounded by 2 or 3 enemies and so I picked Eldritch Strike for the sliding effect. However, the very same friend later persuaded me to pick Eldritch Blast (which does more damage) because that friend would be playing a shaman that could give free basic attack to his ally. As for being crowded? Well, I have to make sure I don't get into such situation! Since I chose Infernal Pact, Hellish Rebuke was automatically picked for me. Great At-will power. As a human, I got to choose an additional At-will power. Initially I chose Dire Radiance which caused additional damage the first time the target moves closer to me on its next turn. I though

A deal almost gone wrong

I have become accustomed to getting my car washed (and occasionally vacuumed) at the car wash place at Armanee Condominium, where my sister stays. It's a little more expensive than at petrol station i.e. RM6 for wash and RM10 for both wash and vacuum but it's convenient for the residents and visitors there. Also, they do their job quite well. I recently sent my car there for wash. The first thing I said was "cuci saje, tak mau vacuum" and the guy said something about "dalam" that I couldn't understand but I made it clear that "luar sahaja" needed. Later, when I collected the car, I was shocked that he vacuumed the car as well. I protested and also pointed out that I had RM8 with me at that time but to no avail because even his boss (I presumed he was the boss) just told me to pay the balance RM2 next time. I went away unhappy. In my opinion, it was stupid of them to argue with me over a mere RM4 when there was clearly a  misunderstanding.

DnD 4e: Human Warlock Part 1

After Ironclaw, Dungeons & Dragons 4th edition was the second pen&paper game I played. I did hear a little about it from Ban, who had been wanting to get hold of the Core Rules books (which we did few weeks ago - yay!) and disliked the previous edition ("Pathfinder") for having fun-killer game mechanic. Class In an astute observation made by Ban very recently, consistent with Ironclaw (and the MMORPG game Everquest which I played and loved years ago), the first character I chose was a warlock and more specifically, the high damage-dealing kind. Ban was very helpful in providing links to two guides on building a warlock character. From the guide and given that I'm looking to specialise in dealing damage, I chose the Infernal Pact. Not a great Pact Boon - gain temporary hit points ("THP") equal to my characater's level - but good spells. Abilities priority As per Ban's advice, I looked at the spells to determine which abilities (Strength

Risk nothing

The person who risks nothing, does nothing, has nothing, is nothing, and becomes nothing. He may avoid suffering and sorrow, but he simply cannot learn and feel and change and grow and love and live. - Leo F. Buscaglia

GM-ing: result

Ban, a friend and I decided to go ahead to start my GM-ing debut without Ban's brother, with me offering to play a cleric, acting essentially like an NPC, to be part of the party. After an Ironclaw session, I spent nearly 4 hours finishing up my GM material as well as building my cleric character. I admit that I was a little stress and I thank Ban for being patient, understanding and helpful in this instance *muack!* Overall, the gaming session went pretty well. Not entirely the way I expected (the players were zanier than I expected hehe) but I believed I managed to execute the game according to a primary guiding principle i.e. everyone should have fun! This is also Ban's belief. If a GM builds his campaign around this idea, then his game session should go much better. The 4e book for dungeon master has some good tips on how to do so. For my game, there was no negative feedback, despite me asking for it a few times. I take that as a good sign.I hope to inject more fun i

GM-ing

After flirting with the idea for months, I've decided to try my hand at hosting a pen & paper game. I could have chosen either Dungeons & Dragons 4th edition ("4e") or Ironclaw but I've chosen the former because generally it's an easier game to host and play. The final impetus that clinched this decision was Ban. He has been planning to play a druid charater (who can turn into a bunny and summon a swarm of bunnies hahaha) during the next campaign to be hosted by our current GM. However, from the latest session of our current campaign, Ban was fed up with the GM's skill. The basic problem was that we, the players, were stucked at a particular place for a long time. We did this and that and yet yielded no result. Yet, for a long time, the GM didn't give any hint or make things happen so that we could move along. So Ban decided not to join the next campaign and I decided to host one so that he could play his druid. I'm nervous and anxious becau

Conned

Have you ever been conned by others before? I have. Twice and I felt shameful each time. Once was due to greed. A later incident was due to my sympathy for the conman. From my experience, the one that played on sympathy was awful because I kept putting myself in the conman's shoes. I was fully aware that there was a great chance that that could be a con job but "just in case it's not" kept playing on my mind. It's terrible that there exist such people who indirectly deny help for those genuine cases. It's similar to donating to beggars. I once told a friend that I've stopped doing that after knowing a few fraudulent cases from the media (and also that I believed some of the able-bodied ones are just lazy to find jobs) but that friend said he would continue to donate in case there are genuine beggars out there. It's ironic that I'm constantly cautioning my parents to be wary of suspicious "words" and yet I fell prey to 2 of them. Si

Bread: Extra egg

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My third attempt at baking bread using the sponge and dough method yielded the largest dough ever! It was a result of proving the dough (i.e. letting the kneaded dough to rise to at least twice its size) longer than I wanted to (was busy outside). It was so large that it couldn't fit into the loaf pan (gah, should have taken a photo). So I split the dough into two and baked half on that day and the remaining the next day. The first half tasted as per normal but the second one was harder and smelled of yeast i.e. the sourish smell. The latter didn't rise as much after I took out of the fridge even after I placed it in the oven together with a separate tray of hot water (and then later, switched on the oven at very low fire). For the next attempt, I wanted to to reduce the volume but since the recipe requires an egg, it's difficult to 'split' the egg. Hence, I decided to reduce everything else by a quarter. However, the decision was taken out of my hand due to

Share investment Jun 12 Part 2

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( continue from Part 1 ) Here's a breakdown of where my investment went to: Here's the average purchase price and the closing price on 28 Jun 2012: Here's the historical dividend yield: The annualised dividend yield for a share was calculated as sum of  the actual dividend yields (actual dividend yield = amount of dividend paid divided by invested amount) pro-rated to a year. This was done sensibly by taking account of the frequency and timing of the dividend payment. Shares with dividend history of less than a year were excluded.

Share investment Jun 12 Part 1

Here's the latest update on my investment in shares ( last update was in Feb 12 ): (1) I finally managed to sell Suntec REIT at a very slight profit. Before that, I found more reasons to sell it: (a) The manager, ARA Asset Management, sold almost all of its holding in the REIT at the same time. These units were distributed to them as payment (in lieu of cash) for their service. Naturally shareholders were a little upset about them being sold at one-go which caused a knee-jerk decrease in share price. ARA defended the use of units as payment because it aligned the interest of the manager with the shareholders but there is no such alignment if they sell most of the units! (b) The % of the REIT's income that went to the manager (as reported in The Edge) was clearly above most of the REITs in the market. Tsk tsk tsk. (2) With Suntec REIT gone, I had no position in any of the REIT that owns malls in Singapore. So, when market went down significantly due to very poor job grow