Here's My Story

Dad vomited air, as usual, during first few days of Cycle 4 but kudos to him for trying to eat as much as he could. Despite that, he still lost nearly a kg when starting Cycle 5 :( There was appointment with PCU few days before Cycle 5. By then, even his back pain was gone. The only problem was this: when he got up in the middle of the night to go to toilet, he would feel numbness in his left leg and some pain. So PCU increased Gabapentin to 3 times a day. Cycle 5 was much kinder to him: there was no vomiting of air or food and by Day 2 onward, there was no more pain in his leg when he got up in middle of night. Later he had constipation and slept only a few hours each night for two nights but fortunately, he could sleep normally on Day 5 and moreover, his leg was good enough for him to walk without the using the walking stick. By Day 6, his constipation was gone, with the help of some medicine of course. There was nothing much the oncologist could comment from the CT scan (with ...

One fine day, Discord announced the launch of their game store and right away, there was a free game, Minion Masters, with this description: "Dive into 1v1 - or bring a friend to 2v2 - battle in this dangerously addictive fast-paced hybrid of deckbuilder, MOBA, and tower-defense." That turns out to be apt. This game is still in Early Access and so some expected features (e.g. playing vs friends, vs bots, etc) are missing. A deck consists of only 10 cards. You can have 3 copies of a single card (yes, you can't have multiple copies of multiple cards) but only after you have "promoted" that particular card. There are 3 types of cards: minion, spell, building. The aim is to destroy enemy's base. You choose a "master" to pair up with the deck. Each master has 3 perks that are unique and will affect your playstyle. Conversely, choose a master that suits your desired playstyle. Stormbringer is the starting master and it's unlocked permanently....

Since the last appointment , my mum managed to reduced intake of 0.125mg of clonazepam to once every 4 nights. However, there was no improvement to her dizziness. ENT specialist asked a few questions, got her to do some simple gestures, checked her eyes and her ears. He didn't think mum had vertigo but nevertheless refer her to physiotherapist for vestibular rehabilitation. Meanwhile, mum had to take ad hoc olanzapine at an increasing frequency (on 8 different days) due to "uneasy feeling" and "extreme sadness". This could be event-driven: my sister wanted to rent out the house and moved to a smaller house to earn the difference, due to financial reasons. It was a no-choice situation. We emphasised that unlike previous shifts, mum just needed to take care of things in her room and so it wouldn't be a as stressful. We wished we didn't want to do this but we had to. Things came to a head when within 2.5 days, six times she heard her own voice telling...

OZ has become one of the hardest freelancers for me to play since Beta. He is no longer one of my favourite freelancers, mainly because his dash is weak i.e. it's predictable and so enemies can still hurt him badly during that dash turn. After meddling with the mod sets a number of times, the current mod set I'm using that I used to level him up from, maybe, 15 to 20 is as follows: (for details on abilities and mods, refer to this wikia ) (1) Phaser Laser: Divide and Conquer (3 loadout points) The frequency of which OZ and his after-image can't hit the same target is high enough to favour this mod. (2) Photon Spray: Lucent Burst (3 loadout points) Tagged is equally good but because I have leftover loadout point, I choose this mod. It helps in focusing damage on team's target(s). (3) Zap Trap: Dazzling Luminescence (1 loadout point) Slow is great in putting distance between adjacent enemies and OZ. (4) Made You Look: Tr-Tr-Tr-Tricky (1 loadout point) ...

The US firm has finally stopped making assertions  and properly addressed our queries on a particular part of the accounting standard. Remember the analogy I presented earlier? Well, the accounting standard says that if it's a crocodile, then use method B but if it's a hippo, use method A. The problem arises when the creature is a hippo, wears a hat but cannot twirl. This apparently causes a diversity in views (and methods) among actuaries. The actuary did express his uneasiness over this grey area (note that he thought it was a grey area i.e. both method A and B were viable) and stated that if we had been the first team to perform calculation, he would have chosen method A (previous actuary used method B) and yet strangely, to me, he left up to the US firm (who is signing off the report, it seems) to decide whether to terminate our subcontract or to get us to continue and use method B. The US firm, predictably, chose the latter to "avoid disruption to client". ...

This is probably the shortest PVP match for me: I saw that the enemies have two dashless freelancers (Orion and Vonn) and so I tried to change a couple of mods compared to my standard mods : (for details on abilities and mods, refer to this wikia ) Water Spout - Spray and Play (3 loadout points) Electrifying Eels - Master Angler (1 loadout points) The idea is to max out heals and also max out eels' damage. The more dashless lancers enemy team has, the easier to land the eels. Here's another gameplay where I did very well using these modified mods:

The last 2 days  (Cycle 2 Day 13 and 14) before the start of Cycle 3 were pretty good for my dad: he didn't need to take panadol for his back, could sleep better and appetite was pretty god. However, he needed to take Oxynorm 3 times a day. Hmmmm. Cycle 3 Day 1 started off worse than previous cycle: he vomited once before administration of chemo drugs (we suspect it was the wantan meet he had for breakfast) and twice during the infusion. Oncologist said that this was due to cumulative effect of the drugs. I also pointed out to dad that this time the gap, as per standard schedule, was 2 weeks whereas it was about 3.5 weeks between Cycle 1 and Cycle 2. Thankfully he didn't vomit that night (took the prescribed vomit medicine and dexametasone) and his sleep was a little better than usual. From Day 4 to Day 6, dad felt weak in his legs. Fortunately, his vomiting more or less had stopped. By Day 7, he felt better. Legs were better but still weak. He slept better on Day 6 nigh...

My fridge has a peculiar feature: you put a bottle of good champagne in it, and when you come to look for it you find a bottle of noxious cheap white wine in its place. I still have not worked out how this happens, ... - "The Salmon of Doubt" by Douglas Adams

In this new project , I'm having many instances of disagreement with the actuary. There are 3 parties involved: the insurance company, the US consulting firm who's the main consultant to the insurance company and there's us. At this point, I am not comfortable with some of the things the US firm is telling us because it is not backed by the accounting standard that we're supposed to adhere to and at times contradict it. Despite asking them to address the discrepancies, they added more assertions and create rules out of nowhere! "Their judgement would not be wrong given that they're expert in US GAAP," said the actuary. My issue is this: it is not a judgement call because the accounting standard is very clear on this particular issue (something that they have not addressed satisfactorily when queried). As part of our job scope, we're also supposed to try to match the figures for previous financial year that was produced by the previous actuary. Na...

Freya is one of my two favourite melee champions (the other is Raigon). Unlike some other melee champions, she doesn't have abilities that can heal herself, not even with battlerites. The battlerites I used are based on a tournament player (not sure he's still playing or not): (read this gamepedia for details on abilities and this page for details on battlerites ) (1) Tempest Storm Mace is the only range attack Freya has. So having haste is great in closing gap with enemies, especially if you want to take advantage of the Static condition inflicted by the ability. (2) Twin Hammers Two charges for your only range attack? Sounds good. Also, yet another way to utilise the incapacitate feature of Storm Mace. (3) Lightning Rod Since Freya cannot heal herself, shield is important to her. This battlerite synergises with Thunderclap since it gives her sustain to hit multiple enemies. (4) Torrent It gives crowd-control and can be quickly followed-up with Charged Stri...