Breathing spaces

Housewarming is finally over. It was a hectic week of house keeping. Everything cleaned up for Christmas. Thank god and I hope that we can maintain the place until Chinese new year so that the next round of cleaning doesn't kill us. Breathing spaces at last.

Submergence Day

After a long 2 years wait, Gears of War 2 was finally launched today. It is no more emergence day but Submergence day. It's the day where we bring the fight to the locust. To destroy them where they breed. All is at stake and nothing is safe...

This game is the one game that blows me away so much that I've been playing it every week for the past 2 years. It's the sure realism and the numerous 'oh my god' moments that really kept me going. Heck... I even went to WCG with my friends in it although we didn't win.

As I'm holding Gears 2 in my hands now, i wonder if it will be able to live up to my expectation. Fable 2, which launch last week, rather disappointed me with it's short and unexplained storyline. Halo3, to my opinion, didn't really lived up to it's hype. Gears 2, hopefully, would be different.

It's still another 1 1/2 hours till knock off time. I can't remember the last time I was this eager to pop a new game disc into my 360... Today, I am happy. :)

I want to be your friend! Add me!!

Nope it's not for Facebook. I don't have that much friends in Facebook. What happened was that for the last 2 days, I've had like 29 people on xboxlive wanting to add me as a friend. What the fuck? I didn't know i'm so popular or did pictures of me being naked while playing Gears of War just got uploaded on to xboxlive?

Nah... It's all because of Fable 2...

You guys know that some people call me an 'Achievement Whore' because of how I like to grind for that 1000 achievement points for every game. Of course, Fable 2 would be 1 of them which I really tried. Last I checked, I'm at 990 points, just 1 achievement away.

Anyway, there was this really hard achievement called the 'completionist' achievement, where you had collect all the expressions, dog tricks and abilities in order to get it. One of these achievement is only obtainable if you have brought the Fable 2 pub games, which I happened to have.

When I posted in a Fable 2 forum that I've got the achievement for 'completionist', i unwittingly started a 'Anskiere's bestest friend' trend. Those blokes just wanted to be my friend and join my game so that they can get that achievement as well.

Initially, it was okay helping out a few guys but damn... at the rate that people are adding me, i can't find the time nor effort to help every single one of them. Some which I've help was nice people who tried to help me get some other achievements which I haven't got. Some were plain assholes who didn't even said thanks. There was even this bloke who tried to kill my wife in my game...

Enough is enough. I thought I was an 'achievement whore' but these people are worse. They achievement whores with nothing to boost cause the only way they can get achievements is to leech on others.

So to the rest of the 29 fellows who tried to add me, too bad. I'll just hit the delete key.

If dogs could blog, part 2.

Here we go again...

21th October to 5th November

I've settled into my new home by now. It's an interesting place you know. 1/2 the floor is stony and 1/2 the floor is wooden. I just love peeing on the wooden floor. The place is quite big for a small puppy for me. I can just 'pee pee' and 'ng ng' wherever i like.

Daddy and Mummy finally gave up putting me in the cage after 2 days cos i kept whinning. The cage doesn't feel good. i don't like it. I now have my own matress to sleep on. It a good place to 'pee pee' on sometimes as well. If I feel hot, i'll just sleep on the cool stony floor.

I did so many things these 2 weeks. I visited another guy they call doctor Kenneth. He wasn't so bad like the first bunch. At least he didn't stick anything up my 'ng ng' place or needles into my hands. He did force a tablet down my throat though. He told my daddy and mummy that it would de-worm me. Sounds scary...

I just love playing with daddy and mummy. My favorite game is 'I bite you' but daddy and mummy doesn't seems to like it very much. I tried to play 'U let me bite' but they don't seems to like that as well. Sigh... I don't know what they want. Don't tell me they want me to play 'I let you bite'. I don't think they'll like fur in their mouth.

I met a lot of other people as well. There was this old man who my daddy called 'PaPa'. He's very kind and he let me bite his fingers. He keep saying i look very cute and look like 'Ah boy'. I wonder who is that...

I also met another lady which my mummy called 'mum'. She is very weird. My cute tricks didn't work on her and she always distract me by whistling. Somehow, i'm scared of her.

There's this other girl they asked me to call 'Sharon jie jie'. She always play with me a lot when she comes but when i bite her, she always slap my backside. Why she cannot understand i like to play bite???

Anyway, daddy and mummy brought me a lot of toys. There's this red lobster which i really like to chew. There's also this round donut-like thing which makes funny sounds when i bite on it. They also brought me 2 clothing. I don't like to wear them. I rather chew on them.

Life is good. It's all 'pee pee', 'ng ng', 'mumm mumm' and 'bite bite' everyday. To reward them, i 'ng ng' as much as i can cos they seems to like to take away my 'ng ng' and put it into a plastic bag. :)

The only thing I don't like is when daddy spray water on me once a week. I hate getting wet. It makes me shivers but after that, the towel is so nice to chew on.

5th of November is also a special day. I learned that if they say 'Sit' and i sit down, i'll get a nice 'wang wang' treat which is very tasty. When they say 'shake hand' and i lift my paw, i also get a treat. Now I know how to get food, i hope there's more to come.

It's gonna be 5 more days before 10th of November. Daddy and mummy said they'll celebrate my 3 month birthday with me. I could hardly wait for that. I wonder what new toys I will get. Meanwhile, I think I'll 'pee pee', 'ng ng' and take a nice long nap first.

Oh yah. I also found out my name is Lucas. Somehow, I thought daddy just called me Locust. :)

If dogs could blog......

Let's do a what if again. What if my dog Lucas could blog...

19th October 2008
3pm
Today was a special day for me. I was lazily asleep in my pent when a guy and a girl came to look at me... I couldn't understand what they were talking about so excitingly but they kept looking at me. I gave them a wiggle of my tail and they were like jumping all around... Weird... They spoke to this other guy who always fed me and before i know it, the girl was carrying me to this black box that moves on wheels (I heard other puppies calling this thing a car).

5pm
They brought me back to this place with cold stony floor. Somehow they keep petting me and calling me "Good Boy". I wonder what that means... The girl also kept calling me "Oolong Cha". Is that something I can drink? I donnoe but i had a great time bitting fingers of a group of people. There were 2 little people who were playing with me.

9pm
I'm dead tired at the end of the day. I 'ng ng' and 'pee pee' all over and had my dinner. As I was still nursing a cough, it was difficult to breathe. Sigh... why is the weather so hot?

12am
I think my 'cough cough' caused the guy and the girl a lot of excitment. So much that they carried me in that car of theirs and brought me to see this bunch of other people in the middle of the night. I just wanted to sleep but they put me on a icy cold metal table and poked a thing they called themometer up where i 'ng ng'. It didn't feel good.

Then this other guy tried to poke something into my hand. I started screaming for help. The metal thing didn't really go in and they tried to do it on my other hand as well. I was really crying out very loud now. It was very painful. I think they're trying to make me bleed and collect my blood. I think these people are vampires...

1am
They finally let me eat and rest. They fed me this tasty food but had squrted some strange liquid into it. The liquid tasted lousy but it seems to make me cough less and i don't feel so hot now. I heard someone mentioned the word fever... That's new.

The guy and the girl who brought me here finally left and now, the people here left me in a nice little cage with my own blanket, water and a chewy toy. I'm contented and went to sleep.

20th October
The nice girl came back in the morning and brought me back to her place (the one with the rocky floor and lots of things to chew). She fed me and played with me the entire day. At night, the guy came back and played with me again. It was so fun today and i was contented and slept like a drunk puppy. I finally figured out the girl's name is 'Mummy' and the guy's name is 'Daddy'. I'm happy.

I'm dead tired

Sigh... these few days have been crazy. The little bugger is one crazy doggie. He's currently a bit sick but still damn hyper active. We have to take extra care to ensure that he don't play until he's too tired. Plenty of rest for him.

Talking about rest, we thought that letting him stay in his playpen would be good. just give him a comfortable matress and his toys and he should be contented. But we've forgotten one simple fact. No animal likes to be caged. Even for a puppy. It was okay at first but after the second day, keeping him in the pen is impossible. The way he whines to be let out, there's simply no fighting it...

Sigh... Didn't expect that the playpen would be obsolete after a mere 2 days. My brother recently said that i was cruel to keep Lucas in a cage. I guess that's not a problem anymore...

Anyway, regardless of how naughty he is, this one look will make me forget all the mischief he has done...

:)

I'm a daddy now!

To those reading my blog, please don't get too excited.

On a lazy sunday afternoon, my wife and me went to various pet farms to take a look. It's not really a shopping trip as we used to do this quite often, just to kill time.

However, when we saw 'him', our hearts just melted...

You all know that I used to have a pug (Ah boy) who has passed away after a good long life (full of food). I always wanted to get another pug but to even spot one in a pet shop was hard enough. Let alone see one that has such good features.

Pugs has always been a very problematic breed of dogs. They have weight problems, eye problems, heart and lungs problems. They snore, sneeze and would sell their soul for a hamburger. They are not an easy pet to take care of if you want to keep them happy and healthy. In the USA, the number of abandon pugs are astronomical, partly due to the popularity of the dog after the movies 'Men in black 1 and 2' and people realising how much it takes to take care of a pug AFTER they've brought them.

It's not easy...

Anyway, when we first saw him, it seems that he took an instant liking to me and my wife. The feeling was really mutual and we can't take our eyes off him. However, he seems to be a bit sick, coughing and sneezing. My first thought was then about donut's blog. When he saw his 'Angel' at a farm, his first worries was that she might not survive another day there if he doesn't bring her home. The same thought was going through my mind.

After much discussion over a cup of coffee, my wife and me decided to take the plunge... We brought him.

First thing in order was to book an appointment with the vet on monday. Then next thing was to bring him home. This little bugger is soooo hyper active. I know most puppies are but hey! He's a pug! He's supposed to eat sleep and do nothing useful!

Anyway, i know he was nursing a cough but when we asked the pet farm fellow if he is on medication, that fellow just told us to feed him some 'pipa gao'. Wah lao... I'm not even sure that works!??!! What the hell? I think that statement was the one that made us bring him back. I was really worried for his life.

All was well until late at night. He started wheezing and coughing. With us being so worried, we brought him to a 24hrs vet. What got us so shock was that he was burning a fever of 40.2 degree... that really high even for a dog... Despite of the cost, we decided to let him spend a night at the hospital (bill is around $600).

Just this morning, my wife brought him back home, healthier but fussy about taking his medication.

At least, we've saved his life considering that he'll only be fed 'pipa gao' if we left him at the doggie farm.

:) well guys, meet my son.

ps: i haven't named him yet but my wife calls him ooglong cha. damn. :)

FUBAR!!!

Ever had the feeling of being stuck between a solid stone wall and a speeding train heading your way? That's exactly how i'm feeling right now.

I always had a lousy career but never in my life felt worse than what i'm experiencing right now. I'm in a department which i have nothing to do. Things are going nowhere. Worse still, my ex-boss is asking me to go back to my previous department (aka "Hell"). With my job searching turning up fruitless, i've given her the word and promised to go back.

I always had the impression that HR takes forever to get things done. I thought this would buy me some time while i search frantically for another job. Well, it would be at least a month before anything actually happens right?

WRONG! My boss told me this morning that everything is settled with HR and i can move over to my new department on monday. Hell i thought... Just go over and sit tight first, at least until after Christmas while looking for someplace else to go.

No... I received some good news from a job agency. Apparently this company which i went for interview, which i had thought they've written me off, is ready to make an offer.

Damn... What am i going to tell my ex-boss? She have a fearsome reputation. My previous colleague who tried to resign got his resignation letter torn to pieces...

I'm thinking to myself... If i got to go, i've got to go. How can a company don't let me go??? Nevertheless, I'm being gripped by fear. No... It's sheer horror... Of breaking the news to my boss.

I sincerely pray i don't get run down by her BMW...

Permission Granted

Permission granted. That sounds like a familiar phase. Reminds me of asking permission in secondary school to go to the toilet. Or even applying for an off day back in army.

Somehow, a lot of my friends like to schedule outings/meet-ups on friday night or weekends. This sort of creates complications for me. Friday is my "Dinner at in-laws" night so usually i'm not free. Saturday, also happens to be a "Go out with mom-in-law" day, which again leave me pretty much tied up. Sunday happens to be the day which i can have a bit of free time which i spend with my wife cleaning up our messy home. Occassionally, my folks will drop by and see? I'm not free again.

I know sometimes my friends felt that i'm scared of my wife and doesn't have my own life. Any outing requires ample notice and even sometimes when my wife said to go ahead, she can forget my schedule in an instant.

What I'm trying to say is that truthfully, i really do enjoy spending time with my in-laws. My mother-in-law works part-time and sometimes, listening to her complaint about her horrible workplace does help her release stress. I'm all for that. After all, it didn't feel right to leave 2 lonely old folks at home to eat dinner by themselves. I don't know. Maybe it's just me.

Sigh... If only the weekend would last longer...

Down goes the financial markets... Hey, i'm hit right?

I'm giving myself a pat on my back for my third consecutive day of blogging. It nice to have an avenue to vent my frustration and views so on it shall go.

Today's kao peh topic is $$. There never seems to be enough money for me. For as long as i can remember, i've been in financial troubles ever since the day i started working. Wait... That seems to have began when i was still studying.

I remember well the stock market bull run back in 1999, when we seems to have recovered from a recession. The stock market was easy. Simply just buy any stock and watch it reap a profit. That was my first foray into the stock market (also happened to be my last). My first stock pick was UOB bank, which i brought and sold within a couple of days (Short selling). I earned $420. Heck, i didn't even have a trading account. I got a friend of mine to help me buy and the money just came. Imagine, for a university student who didn't fork out a single cent and made a couple of hundred on his first trade. That's easy money.

The bull went on and i made quite a bit. of course, none of the profit stayed long. Me and my girlfriend spurged it on resturants, movies and such. We had the time of our lives for that 6 months. Until the market started to crash again... We lost almost everything... Well, it was great when it lasted...

Then came gambling... That's even worse than stocks... the money was again good when my luck held. i made thousands, spurge it on anything possible. Of course, of all the gambling lessons, we know that we can never beat the bookie. I came crashing down again. Owe thousands of dollars in debts (bookies and credit cards) and i even had to get my sister to bail me out.

My first pay from my first job was used to pay my sister back for the loan i took from her. This continued for like almost 3 years. Every pay day, my account was cleared out the next day. damn... i can't remember a month where i was debt free...

After a 3 year stop to soccer betting, i fell to it again, accumulating debts again... sigh... that was the last straw for me... hate feeling broke.

I spent my years after that paying for my mistake. Mostly refusing help from family cos i firmly believe that i should pay for my own mistakes. Without the pain, i won't repent.

At last, i can finally say that i'm free from the gambling lure. Perhaps an occassional bet on TOTO or 4D. Or even a single bet on the world cup or euro championship. I am no longer a hardcore punter i was.

Of course, came the wedding, then the house. I've been clean out of all my money, and the suffering returned again... With all the past experience in mind, i look forward to a day where i can finally feel financial freedom...

ps: just got my pay yesterday. paid bills, pay committments, i'm left with $158.42 till the next payday... Life sucks...

Kelvin vs PC

Personal Computer. I always thought that there was a nice ring to it. It is the product that changed the face of the world. Without technological personal computers, we would still be playing paper and pencil RPG games. Hey... maybe that's too superficial to look at it from a gaming point of view. But hell, you get the idea.

I always like PCs, so much so that all i wanted to do when i was in secondary school was to become a programmer. I always wanted to do comscience, for the purpose of advancing the future of mankind. Okay. That's bull shit. :)

Anyway, I alway have a love-hate relationship with PCs.

Back when i was living in Simei, I decided that I needed a new PC. So i brought one from Sim Lim (self assembled), with my brother's help of course. It was weird stuff... The PC has a habit of switching itself on and off. Or even a slight knock on it will result in it refusing to start up for 2 days.

When i shifted to my new place in SengKang, i decided it's time to get rid of the old PC and get a new and more stable one. Splashing out a thousand, i got another one. With my brother's help again from Sim Lim (where else?)

This was supposed to be good. same model which my brother is using, cool look, dual core, window media center and of course running on Vista.

This time, it was worse. After one month, media center refuses to work. and just a week back, the PC will run for an average of 1 minute 30 second and then hang... I'm at my wits end now... To attempt to reformat and lose all my movies? Or simply just junk it and get a Mac...

Time to shout for help!

ps: Somehow, this post is not showing up on my blog despite of me publishing it... weird... let me try to fix that.

RPGs anyone?

Let me get this straight. RPGs are great games. For as long as i can remember, i've always been an RPG fan. Think back to the days of Ultima (yes. I started from Ultima I until 6??), Knights of Legend, Fallout and etc... It's always a great way of stepping into an alternative world.

Recently, Japanese RPGs on xbox360 are really killing me. It's not so much about grinding through endless hoard of monsters to level up to complete the games but more of getting the 1000 achievement points that the game have to offer for xbox. Being an achievement whore, I can't resist the urge but to try. However, those japanese game makers are really insane... To imagine clocking like 200 hours and playing the game through 5 times just to get those achievements? It's killing me...

I think i need to take a different approach. No more gunning for full achievement points. Just play through and enjoy the story.

Oh yeah... Even Viva Pinata (Trouble in Paradise) is crazy...

down goes the walls

This is an interesting turn of events. My company seems to have lifted the ban on blogspot. I suppose this means i'll be blogging much more frequently. I checked the firewall and it's still up so it shouldn't be some kind of system down thingie. Anyway, doesn't really matter cos i don't think anyone actually read my blog. More later. Maybe I'll blog twice a day on weekdays now. :)

Here i go again

Damn... My blogging frequency sucks. I've came to realise that the only time i blog are the times when my company's firewall goes down. Other than that, i can't seems to be bothered to blog...

Anyway, just a bit of what i've been up to recently...

3 interviews to 2 different companies and none wanted to hire me... For 2 of the interviews, i was pretty sure i've nailed it. The age old saying of not counting your eggs before they hatch held so true. I guess i figured how it works... The more you want the job, the less chances of you getting it.

Work sucks... apart from having nothing much to do, there's really nothing much for me to do. I spend countless hours in office thinking of what to do, acting busy doing nothing. Hell... I even felt bother getting paid for not contributing much.

It's a cruel world out there. thousands lost their jobs (with the big companies in financial troubles) and here i am with a job but living life aimlessly.

Perhaps i should not think so much. It's thursday and it's my games day. can't wait to get home and lose myself in the gaming world with my friends. A brief reprive from reality...

Blood ties

Last night i had a dream... I was telling someone that my brother is not talking to me anymore. I turned around and saw my brother sitting in a chair. I lost control and hugged my brother and started crying...

Then I woke up... Tears in my eyes... It was but a dream.

Things have not been good between me and my brother. I always thought that blood ties are stronger than anything else. We used to always rise above petty quarrels and made peace.

Just the other day, i was watching an episode of "Supernatural" on TV. It was the episode where the younger brother Sam was killed and the older brother Dean was overcame with sadness. After much thoughts, Dean summoned up the devil and made a pact with it to bring Sam back to life in exchange of his life (Dean will only get to live another year).

I was pondering if my brother would do the same for me until i realised that we ain't on speaking terms anymore. At this point... the tears came again...

With so much uncertainty in my life now... i only know 1 thing that's certain. He'll always be my brother...

Eons ago...

Can't remember the last time i blogged... What the hack. That seems to by my opening line everytime i blogged. Bottom line is that i'm simply too lazy to blog?! Although i like to blame it on my company for blocking blogspot.com, the truth is that i always felt that blogging should be done in office.

It was only during times when the company firewall goes down that I manage to add in a post or 2. damn it... Perhaps i should just shift over to wordpress where i can access in my office.

Anyhow, much have happened during my last post (as usual, many moons ago). Rather than list them all here. Just take it that i'm still alive. :)