Update soon... I think

Will try to update a little tomorrow, if I'm not tired that is :/

notsniw is sick

Which explains why there hadn't been any updates.

Well, I'm still sick... :/
So... no updates till I get better I guess.

Elaboration of Quick Updates [Part 2]

Wednesday...
Woke up early in the morning to play Maple Story with my cousins. Party Quest. What's a Party Quest? The party quest that we played is at Kerning town in the game, requiring a party of four people. It is a 5-stage thingy that the party has to complete by cooperating with one another.

The first stage involves collecting coupons to answer questions posed by a non-player character. The second, third and fourth stages involve getting the correct combination by climbing on vines, standing on platforms and on barrels. The last stage then involves killing the "Slime King", a gigantic green slime. Every member who is in the party that completes the party quest is entitled to a prize of a random item.

One of my cousins came over after lunch for tuition. I went through his Chemistry mid-year paper with him. Hmmm, weak concepts on his side. He'll have to work harder for Chemistry. Hopefully, he has managed to clear some doubts during the tuition session.

Right, back to the quick updates...

6. The Pangya experience
I started playing Pangya as well, just to qualify for the free A-cash giveaway. A-cash is the game cash, bought using real money, for Asiasoft games. Pangya is a multiplayer 3D golf game, and the way it's played is similar to Gunbound. It's faster than real golf though... but still quite time consuming.

I had to get a rank of Beginner E to qualify for the free A-cash, but it wasn't easy at all. A 2-player 18-hole game takes an average of more than 1.5 hours and gives the winner 34 EXP and the loser 18 EXP. The amount of EXP for the levels up to Beginner E are as follows: Rookie F ---(30 EXP)---> Rookie E ---(40 EXP)---> Rookie D ---(50 EXP)---> Rookie C ---(60 EXP)---> Rookie B ---(70 EXP)---> Rookie A ---(168 EXP)---> Beginner E

A total of 418 EXP points are required. Given that I win every 18-hole game I play (which I didn't), it would have taken at least 20 hours. Which meant that I spent more time than that on it >.<"

7. Food poisoning
My second food poisoning experience this year...

Actually I think it's just severe indigestion. Perhaps I was too hungry at that time... and eating McSpicy was too stimulating for my stomach. I had diarrhea and vomitted many times. It wasn't as bad as the last food poisoning case though.

It took quite a few days to recover, since I didn't go to the doctor this time. Started on Saturday morning, had high fever on Saturday evening due to dehydrating, situation got better on Sunday, but eating rice made me realise that I cannot eat solid food yet... Stayed on a porridge/light diet till Tuesday or Wednesday.

These days, when I see oily food, I have second thoughts eating them.

8. Trip to NIE, getting Nokia 6280 and "X-Men 3" at The Cathay
A full day affair. With a friend, I made a trip down to NIE to submit my application forms, went down to Novena Square to get a new phone and watched "X-Men 3" at The Cathay.

The morning was spent in NIE, exploring the place and having lunch at the NIE canteen. It's rather small, but the maps around the place gave me the impression that the place takes up a large area. Well, that's because the buildings didn't seemed to be drawn to scale ba.

We took the MRT, then cabbed down to Novena Square because the train was taking too long. I actually wanted a Sony Ericcson K750i, but changed my mind because the Nokia 6280 was a 3G phone and only cost SGD40 more than the SE K750i. Well, couldn't imagine getting a sliding phone, but well, I got one in the end. It's quite good ba... rather user friendly... but the built-in camera can't be compared to the SE K750i's.

Another MRT trip over to The Cathay to catch "X-Men 3". A very nice show I guess. The special effects and all were good. No comments on the storyline though, since I don't really follow the story.

9. Maple Story and 2x EXP card
With the introduction of the new 24hr 2x EXP card, more and more players of the game are about to level at amazing rates. It was a real temptation and I too, succumbed to it.

Much was done in preparation for the ordeal of playing non-stop for 24hrs. My friend and I started at 3am in the morning, but I took a nap from 11am to 2pm as I was too tired. At the end of it, I was rather drained, but I managed to level from level 59 to level 64.

Haven't been playing much after that... still stuck at level 64 as of now... and it's been a week. It only takes less than 10 hours if I play without the 2x EXP card, but I've been going out and all... and wasn't really in the mood to play.

Elaboration of Quick Updates [Interlude]

Saw the following in a LiveJournal blog... supposedly from Bill Gates, from his talk in a school.
Quite interesting.

Rule 1: Life is not fair - get used to it!

Rule 2: The world won't care about your self-esteem. The world will expect you to accomplish something BEFORE you feel good about yourself.

Rule 3: You will NOT make $60,000 a year right out of high school. You won't be a vice-p resident with a car phone until you earn both.

Rule 4: If you think your teacher is tough, wait till you get a boss.

Rule 5: Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your Grandparents had a different word for burger flipping: they called it opportunity.

Rule 6: If you mess up, it's not your parents' fault, so don't whine about your mistakes, learn from them.

Rule 7: Before you were born, your parents weren't as boring as they are now. They got that way from paying your bills, cleaning your clothes and listening to you talk about how cool you thought you were. So before you save the rain forest from the parasites of your parent's generation, try delousing the closet in your own room.

Rule 8: Your school may have done away with winners and losers, but life HAS NOT. In some schools, they have abolished failing grades and they'll give you as MANY TIMES as you want to get the right answer. This doesn't bear the slightest resemblance to ANYTHING in real life.

Rule 9: Life is not divided into semesters. You don't get summers off and very few employers are interested in helping you FIND YOURSELF. Do that on your own time.

Rule 10: Television is NOT real life. In real life people actually have to leave the coffee shop and go to jobs.

Rule 11: Be nice to nerds. Chances are you'll end up working for one.

Elaboration of Quick Updates [Part 1]

Tuesday...
Slept early the night before and woke up early as well. Friend came over early to deposit his laptop at my place. Got ready and went out to meet another friend at the MRT Station near my place and headed down to Sim Lim to get some stuff. Lunch at the food court below Sim Lim Square... didn't know that it was renovated le :/ So suaku. Heh.

Anyway, bought a mini-SD card for my handphone, some CDRs, two microfilters for a friend and a bluetooth adaptor for my desktop (which I cannot manage to get it to work despite spending hours trying to get it to detect my handphone and vice versa). A waste of money, until I get it working... lalala. Not sure what the problem is also.

Two persons were left after lunch... one of my friend had to go work... part-time invigilation for the ACCA exams. Anyway, went shopping for clothes and finally decided that I have to tailor make my pants. Really really cannot find a suitable pair of pants. Bought two long sleeves shirts and a new pair of swimming trunks though. G2000 didn't have decent looking short sleeves shirts. I'll have to get a few as well... can't possibly wear long sleeves everyday. Speedo swimming trunks... used to be using Arena I think. Went Bods to try, but ah... too revealing le O.o I don't dare to wear ah.

Tried the wasabi ice-cream sold at a booth at Bugis Junction basement. Eh, quite interesting ba, I think people who like wasabi will like it. I'm not exactly a fan of wasabi. Heh. Ehz, tried the dessert at a Japanese restaurant... my friend had something similar to mango ice cream ice kachang and I had a sweet potato with ice cream thingy. Quite nice ah... but we were shivering throughout the whole "ordeal" but it was enjoyable ba. Next time will have to bring a jacket along when eating :P

1. Trip to Jurong Bird Park
It was a bright Sunday morning. Something happened the night before which resulted in me having not enough sleep, but I went to the Jurong Bird Park anyway. Free tickets from my mum. It was a May Day thingy... "Outing for Foreign Workers". My mum isn't a foreign worker, but she managed to get tickets anyway.

I went with two friends. We had breakfast at the Jurong Point food court and headed over to queue up for the free bus into Jurong Bird Park. There was free bus service from the place of interest back home as well. Not bad... heh. Anyway, had quite an enjoyable time there but it was tiring though :/ It's been quite a long while since I last went there. It rained though, but not for long. Didn't manage to see any penguins... I think the enclosure was under upgrading or something. A few other enclosures were under upgrading works too... and thus there were no birds in those enclosures as well.

Lunch at Jurong Point Mos Burger before heading home... tired and thirsty. Well, I'm thirsty most of the time anyway... I don't drink enough water because drinking water makes me go to the toilet often.

2. Photo-taking at Paya Lebar and lunch at Beach Road
I went down to Cisco Centre at Paya Lebar to have my photo taken for the smart card that I'll probably be using at work. It took only less than a minute to take the photo, but travelling down took about 35-40 minutes probably. Fortunately, I was accompanied by a friend... so the trip there wasn't that bad.

Lunch was at the Beach Road hawker centre... had the 辣椒面. Quite nice ah. It's the second time I'm eating it. Brought my friend along this time since he didn't eat it before =]

3. Maple Story and Ludibrium
The release of the Ludibrium maps in Maple Story. It features the Eos Tower, which is a tower with 100 floors. Fortunately, there are sections of the tower with nothing, so it's effectively less than 50 floors I think. Not too sure about that. Ludibrium is also known as Legoland to some people. Why? Because it's a toy land with toy monsters and the buildings are made of toy bricks. There's even a toy factory in Ludibrium, with high level dark monsters a cleric would be happy healing or erm, killing. I'm not high level... so I'm not happy. Ha

Anyway, spent the day completing all the new quests which emerged together with the release of Ludibrium. It took my friend and I the whole day... well, partially because he wanted to hunt for Omok game pieces of Ludibrium monsters to make a new "Ludi" Omok set. A pity playing the mini-game led to a pointer exception and crashing of the game client.

Ok, what's an Omok game? An Omok game is a mini-game (similar to tic-tac-toe) which a player can create with monster Omok pieces (monster-shaped pieces which will be dropped randomly by certain monsters) and an Omok table (also dropped randomly). Creating the game requires two different Omok types (99 pieces each) and an Omok table. It allows the owner of the mini-game to set up a mini dialog box which others can double-click to enter and start playing the game.

4. Release of examination results
The examination results for my final semester were released in the morning, but I only checked it in the afternoon because I was asleep. I'm happy with it ba... considering the amount of time that I spent :/

Yea. 4 years in University, over. So slow, yet so fast.

Time to move on to a new phase of my life. A year in NIE, followed by a bond of 3 years of teaching. Well, I'll probably teach for the rest of my life, unless something catastrophic happens. Ha.

5. "Over The Hedge"
My friend and I caught the show on a Friday night. Couldn't get tickets to the 9.20pm one... so ended up watch the 11.30pm one O.o So so late. Anyway, it was a really cute animation. The tortoise was cute. Hee. Well... ok, he was serious, but still cute =] An animation worth watching. Heh

Late dinner at MacDonald's before the show and I cabbed home after that. Well, a 30-minute walk didn't seem welcomed at 1am in the morning.

No stamina to write le... :P

Elaboration of Quick Updates [Prelude]

Well, I didn't manage to sleep early yesterday night... ended up watching TV. Old show on TV I think, but I've never watched it before. The story was about this advertising agency manager who kept repeating a day in her life, experiencing the day in different perspectives. Erm, woke up real late... at about 7pm :P

Went to give tuition, but no dinner, so I went downstairs to buy dinner. Ehz, bought fried rice but had to wait quite some time because the person made a mistake with my order I think. Tuition was ok... cousin was reluctant to do work, but I sort of forced him to do.

Okie... let me just browse through my previous entries and make a list of "topics" to elaborate on. It will consist of a prelude (this entry), two parts, as well as a finale which will consist of some photos ba.

Part 1:
1. Trip to Jurong Bird Park
2. Photo-taking at Paya Lebar and lunch at Beach Road
3. Maple Story and Ludibrium
4. Release of examination results
5. "Over The Hedge"

Part 2:
6. The Pangya experience
7. Food poisoning
8. Trip to NIE, getting Nokia 6280 and "X-Men 3" at The Cathay
9. Maple Story and 2x EXP card

PC Show June 2006

Well, this is going to be a rare entry with paragraphs of text rather than points. I'm taking a pseudo break from the playing... perhaps for a day or two or more (minus a few hours per day). There are some things which needs to be settled.

1. FLASHbox website
2. Maple Story guild website
3. Church youth website
4. Hosting payment
5. Packing of room
6. Library books
7. and the list goes on...

Well, the FLASHbox website isn't the priority though... but I'll quite like to implement "owner protection", requiring any user who wants to post Shouts using the owner's nick to key in a number for validation. I still haven't decided how many digits it should be... but it would most probably be five. The church youth website is more of a priority, though there's something which I really want to get done for the Maple Story guild website, not to mention reading the books which I borrowed from the library a week ago (PHP and FLASH related books though).

Right. Saturday was a stay-at-home day, with meat dumplings for dinner. The day was probably spent playing Maple Story. Not much though, since I only woke up some time in the afternoon.

Sunday... was late for discipleship class because I didn't know what time it was at. I should have asked my friend earlier. I didn't manage to wake up early this morning... otherwise I would have been in time, since I would already be in church :/ So... the early part of the afternoon was spent in church, followed by a short visit to Suntec Convention Centre for the PC Show. My friend wanted to get a printer, so I followed two of them there, before going back to church in the late afternoon for cleaning duty.

One word: crowded. It was totally packed with people. I had quite a difficult time maneuvering, although I'm thin. I tend to be pushed around easily because I'm light. Didn't manage to get anything from there. I guess I'll make a trip over to Sim Lim Square some time this week to get a Mini SD Card as well as some CDRs... and maybe a USB hub (the old one is a bit cranky) and a bluetooth dongle... easier for transferring MP3s and stuff to the phone.

I'll write more tomorrow... shall pick some events from the three "quick update" entries to elaborate on. Time to go take a shower and maybe sleep early.

Quick update 3

Tuesday:
- Finally attained Beginner E rank in Pangya, qualifying for the free A-cash giveaway.
- Still sticking to liquid food due to the stupid feeling of wanting to vomit.

Wednesday:
- A friend accompanied me to NIE to hand in my registration form
- Had lunch at the canteen. Not too bad I guess.
- Went over to United Square to find a friend who sells handphones and got a Nokia 6280 at SGD238.
- Went to The Cathay to watch "X-Men 3"
- Walked around at Plaza Singapura for a while before heading home

Thursday:
- Accompanied a friend to school in the afternoon and had lunch at the Engin canteen
- Took a nap in the late afternoon
- Went to give tuition
- Had supper, then purchased a 2x EXP card from the Maple Story cash shop and started playing

Friday:
- Continuation of 2x EXP card = Play Maple Story the whole day
- Increased in level from level 59 to level 64
- Free A-cash results out. I should be getting about 6.5k A-cash, equivalant value of about SGD6.50.
- Friend SMSed me that I was lucky to have bought the phone early, because there is a price increase of SGD40 starting from Saturday.