Here's My Story

As reported previously , the lunatic trait didn't resurface again. Even during the reign of the 2 lunatic rulers, they did well. I attributed this mainly to the choice of Elective Monarchy succession law which gave +20 opinion with vassals but this law did cause trouble from time to time. I'll address this in another post. For now, let's just celebrate the end of another glorious campaign. Although its score was significantly lower than my personal best score , I am proud to have established 2 empires i.e. Hispania and Arabian, all via conquest except for 1 single county that was inherited. A few of my duchy vassals did wage their own wars and obtained about 10 counties. Yay! Somehow I think I ruled over a larger realm too despite the lower score. I attributed this to far fewer kingdom titles. I had to destroy 9 of them and refrained from creating 2 of them to deal with the problem of the succession law (will be discussed in another post). You can compare its ...

I was praying hard for insane events not to pop up again after the second Glitterhoof debacle. My either prayer got lost or ignored: Yes, he was the same ruler as previous but this time I chose a different law. Logical but poor prescription. It reads: " The new law has been written and couriers are even now distributing it to all of your vassals. You admire your handiwork: "Whereas the positive effects of fresh air is known to all, and: whereas the movement of the wind must not be obstructed by man-made structures: Therefore I, [Title Name], decree that all homesteads throughout the realm are to have two holes, each no smaller than a grown peasant standing with arms outstretched, in opposite walls facing each other to allow free passage of the wind. These holes are not to be covered by planks, windows, doors or cattle. If any member of the household is known to exhibit severe flatulence, the holes shall number three and no less." "This law will bri...

After trying and liking their chicken curry rice , I next tried their udon version: Sorry, I forgot to take note of its price but I think it's not much different than that of the rice version. More importantly, it was as delicious and definitely worth the price. The ingredient was the same as the rice version and oh yes, there was carrot. Once again, Sushi Zanmai, it's not hard, is it, to include some carrot pieces?

I've always preferred to have roti canai and roti telur here than at the nearby Kayu shop. It's more spacious, airy and somehow seems cleaner. Food is good too. I rarely visited it because such food is just not enough for lunch or dinner and I almost never go for supper. Morever, it's the type of food that Ban would not want to have often. Earlier this year, I discovered that they now serve chendol. Yum! So I tried it and I loved it. I dare say it's the best in PJ thus far. Ban and his brother love it too. We have gone there for chendol every now and then. Lately, however, I had a couple of bowls that had frozen chendol and palm/brown (not sure which it was) sugar that didn't melt properly. Hope those were exceptions. It used to be that they were so slow to serve it. There was once we ordered a couple of bowls after we were nearly done with our food and we were served chendol about half an hour later, with two reminders thrown it. So now we order food and chen...

Soon after the insane act , this event occurred: The words are probably a little tiny to read. They are: " Your horse has always struck you as being of a dependable sort, a quality you feel is sorely lacking in your councillors. Time to shake things up a bit. You will appoint him as your new Chancellor. Glitterhoof, I appoint thee as the Chancellor of the realm. " I had no control or it. My chancellor was sacked. Goodness! I rehired him but the damage was done: there was a -50 opinion from him towards my ruler. Oh, and guess what? It happened again within a year! @@ The above screenshot was of the second time. Luckily my chancellor liked my ruler very much that despite a total -100 opinion, his overall opinion is at the max 100. Phew. Lunatic ruler indeed.

It's been about 1.5 years since I blogged about this game. I probably hadn't played it for more than a year. In my current play, I tried new succession laws: Tanistry and Elective Monarchy. Pretty good and probably will use it again in future. There have been a few changes since the last patch. The most notable one is the limit on number of direct vassals. That proved to be troublesome every now and then, especially since most of my vassals' succession law is Gravelkind. Goodness. Anyway, more details later once I finished the game. This time I just want to highlight certain funny events for my current ruler. Not sure why/how but he has the lunatic trait. One event is the choice of implementing one of these 4 laws: (1) The Pants Act (2) The Turnip Act (3) The Hole in the Wall Act (4) The Cessation of Violence Act The game didn't tell me the details of each law and so I chose (4) as it's the clearest of them all. After choosing it, the next pop up was ...

I'm quite sure I stated this before in some of the posts on share investment: I rely on detailed analysis done by others and I supplement it by doing some research on my own before deciding whether a company should be on my watch list or not. Among the factors I look out for are: (1) Do I understand the business? (2) Diversification of revenue (3) Low debt (4) Economic moat (5) Free cashflow yield > dividend yield (6) Dividend yield of at least 5% (7) Consistently pays out dividend (8) Net income is generally growing However, once shortlisted, I'm usually at a lost of when I should buy its shares. That's because I didn't come up with a valuation model to determine its value...until now. I want a model that's easy to use and yet makes sense (to me at least). As at now, it looks like this: Value of share = [Net asset + Present value of net income for the next 10 years (both on a per share basis)] x [1 - margin] Net asset is just asset less liabili...

Rand sees Lan fall, and is almost spent, crushed under the weight of the deaths he’s seen. He hears his father’s voice say Let go. He whispers that he must save them, but the voice tells him he can’t do this alone, and it was their choice to make. Then he hears what he thinks is Egwene’s voice, calling him a fool.  Am I not allowed to be a hero, too?   “It’s not that…” You march to your death. Yet you forbid anyone else from doing so? “I…” Let go, Rand. Let us die for what we believe, and do not try to steal that from us. You have embraced your death. Embrace mine. - "The Wheel of Time: A Memory of Light" by Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson

Ban got this game for his birthday recently (from me and a friend). He wanted the latest version (Nightmare Princess) but checks with local store, online store, eBay and Lelong only had it for PS4 and PS Vita platforms, not PS3. It was much later he found out that you could buy the PS3 version as digital download from PS store. Oh well. It is essentially a game of traps. You control a character, laying down and activating traps on your enemies. I like the idea but somehow I don't like this game, citing it being gory. Later, I took a little time to ponder over my dislike. This game is similar to Orcs Must Die 2, a game that I like and it does have its share of blood and severed body parts albeit not as gory. So why the difference in preference? I concluded that this is because in Orcs Must Die 2, the enemies are orcs who are out to wreck mayhem on the human world. They are the bad guys in the game. In Blood Ties, however, your character is the Devil's daughter who is try...

After the "no carrot" debacle at Sushi Zanmai, I decided to try Sushi Tei's chicken curry rice (RM 14.80). Oh yes, those were 3 pieces of carrot. Sushi Zanmai, see? It's not hard to have carrot in Japanese curry, is it? There were many small pieces of chicken, 2 pieces of potato and lots of onion in the curry. Yes, all the elements that I expected from Japanese curry were all in. I don't know whether that's authentic or not but as at now, that's my expectation. Oh, but I could make do without that pickle on the rice though. The rice was soft and went well with curry. The curry was mild but the onion pieces spiced it up quite well. It was quite delicious and value for money. Unfortunately, curry is not something that I can have often due to acid reflux/GERD etc. But, yes, I would have it again when the time is right :)