Letters to my future self

14th Jul - Not sure if...

I should trust doctors anymore. Just a week ago, when my grandma was readmitted into the hospital, the doctors claimed that she's only got 2 weeks left in her. Apparently she's fit to be discharged now.

On a more personal note, things around me seem to be breaking down recently. Granted, I've had some of these artifacts for a number of years, but having them break down within the same time period annoys me to no end. First to go was my watch strap, then my PC, then my glasses. That and I sort of sprained my right ankle on my way home the other day.

That PC breakdown was a terrible experience. Problems were huge, the motherboard appears to be malfunctioning and a faint burning smell is coming out from my power supply. Not good at all. There were a few things I could do. I've been trying to save up for a netbook/laptop for awhile now, so one option was to speed up this process and get one immediately. The downside to that is that, while I do get my internet access restored, the data which I have on my current hard disks cannot be retrieved. That, or I could attempt to fix the machine (I've made some minor upgrades to the hardware some 3 months ago, replacing the whole system doesn't seem too wise.)

Marched off to Sim Lim the following day to acquire the parts I need. Thankfully, I'm still somewhat adept in this computer tinkering thingy. Got a new board, chip, power supply and a spare hard disk. Got home after work to try and assemble it all together, which was then I realised that DDR RAM and DDR2 RAM aren't quite the same thing and that my new board doesnt take the RAM that I currently have. *SIGHhhhh*

That, fortunately, was the last screw up in the entirely fiasco. Another trip back to Sim Lim the following day puts me back on my tracks, the system was able to boot up properly. I would however like to say at this point that WINDOWS BLOODY SUCKS. Upon booting up, windows claims that due to major hardware changes, I'd have to revalidate my copy of windows. That's fine by me, except there are only 2 ways to do it, call them for some code, or do it online. I didn't want to call and the internet is out of the question until I get all my motherboard drivers configured. The best part was, both my mouse and keyboard were USB. motherboard drivers not configured = no USB = no mouse, no keyboard. So I'm essentially stuck there. I eventually found a primitive way of getting around the problem and successfully boot into windows. Now, because my copy of windows has yet to be validated, windows is 'kind' enough to remind me AGAIN AND AGAIN that I need to get that done. As if trying to troubleshoot my driver problems weren't enough, I had to repeatedly deal with an annoying popup that assumes that I'm running a pirated version of windows... Nice.

I was actually looking forward to July, because of the GST credits. $200 towards the netbook/laptop fund helps on a long run. But now gaining that $200 seems trivial compared to the $400 and $170 I spent fixing the comp and getting a new pair of glasses. *SIGH*

My class 3 Practical is coming up next monday, hopefully I can clear that in one attempt and turn my fortunes around for the month ><"

-out- for now.

Letters to my future self

31st may - distant worlds

Attended the 'Distant worlds - music from Final Fantasy' last weekend. I haven't played most of the games from the franchise, nor heard their soundtracks, so a large part of the compositions I heard on Saturday were brand new to me. Even then, the experience is pretty surreal. What added to the awesomeness of the concert itself was that Nobuo Uematsu was present. The man who started it all even joined the choir for their final encore performance. Hearing 'To Zanarkand' played live, makes me a very happy person. The big band rendition of the Chocobo Theme is really cool as well. Pity that I didn't manage to get an autograph from Nobuo-san, still the T-shirt I bought is a fair souvenir for the night.

The weekend was horrible in terms of gaming thou. I got eliminated in top 16 for DMF: Singapore for the wow miniatures event. That's one win away from a tiger. Annoyance. I would have won the game too, if only I hard opened my eyes and see what was happening and see through what my opponent didn't want me to see. Intentional or not, he was misleading me at one stage or another, for that I'm really annoyed. Even more annoyed at myself for only realising it AFTER the game. If i had discovered it during the duration of the game, I probably could have gotten a judge to look at the situation. *BAH!*

That's two tigers I missed in two weekends. I'd like to believe in the law of averages, but luck just really isn't working out for me at the moment. *sigh*

-out-

Letters to my future self

12th May - minor updates

Minor updates cause there really hasnt been much change. I stopped the job hunt thing for a moment to focus on clearing my class 3. Remainder of my free time is spent doing part time work, some gaming, watching anime and catching up on my japanese lessons (the lessons are somewhat progressing too quickly and i'm kinda struggling to keep up).

On other news, I'm some what glad I'm not a christian (anymore). Islamic extremists are heavily criticised for their viewpoints, I'm not too sure if those christian fundamentalists are any different. Strangely enough, the 1st few episodes of FMA seems to be centered around similar religion-like issues. Art imitating life... or life imitating art, I wonder.

watchlist for this season updated
-out- for now...

Letters to my future self

16th march - bunch of thoughts

just came back from NUH visiting my grandma. she's not doing too well, been bedridden for months and in the 'final phase' now, i think. my uncles and aunties had a dialogue today to discuss whether or not to go ahead with a certain medical procedure. from what i can tell, the operation has a 10% chance of success, even if it does succeed, my grandma would still not get any better than what she currently is going through. it was a rather heated dialogue which lasted several hrs, which kind ended without resolution.

on the brighter side of things, i won some money off a minatures tournament today, something which hasnt happened in quite awhile (winning money, that is). hobbies that fund themselves arent too bad, really.

-out-

Letters to my future self

19th feb - overdue

hmm, its been over 2 months since my last update, hasnt been and major change to my lifestyle thou ><"

i'm still working at mart and not quite actively hunting for another job. my wow acct expires this coming sunday, been at it for 3 yrs? from newbie to raider to gold farmer, time to call it quits, i think. this shd free up alot more time for other stuff now, i suppose.

been trying to expand my horizons slightly, seeing how i still havent found 'proper' employment yet. signed up for jap language classes which will commence in april and finally cleared all the theory driving tests (the advanced theory is surprisingly easier than the basic theory). so hopefully i'd have acquired some driving skills by the end of the yr.

another yr older and another yr spending v-day alone. not that its something which i'm horrendously upset abt, i'm jus ... i dont know, not ready for it, i think. the other day i was contemplating exchanging my duties with a fellow part timer, since he was claiming that he's broke. he didnt wan to do it, cos the day in question jus happened to be feb 14th. chatting with another colleague afterwards when he was gone, i commented on how he was still celebrating v-day when he's broke. my colleague had to remind me that v-day isnt abt spending money, but rather spending time with loved ones. i felt a little silly at that moment.

finally managed to relocate an anime song from a very old robin hood series, which was shown many yrs ago on channel 8. while i cant remember much abt the show, the song left a very deep impression on me. i found the song during my poly days, but lost it when my hard disk crashed. managed to stumble upon it again *points to imeem box at the side*

anime watchlist updated for the current season

-out for now-

Letters to my future self

28th nov - a real update

life is currently occupied with work, anime, wow and more wow.

wow released its 2nd expansion 2 weeks back, i've met its level cap earlier this week. my drive to play is game is slightly diminished as compared to say, maybe a yr ago. the game still continues to be fun, challenging at times, but there are other things vying for attention now.

for one, there's the wow card game. which i took a hiatus from during my few yrs away from home. i don't really know why i got back to flipping cards, its not something that i'm particularly good at, although i do admit to having alot of fun when playing, something which not all card players can claim. luckily enough, i did qualify for a invites only event at the very 1st qualifiers which i played at, which came to a surprise to many. there were some who called me a 'free frag' in jest and have yet to qualify for the event after 3 tries, jokes on u guys!

this season's anime watchlist brings back continuations of serveral titles i loved from previous seasons (clannad, ef, gundam) as well as a good mix of new titles (kannagi, toradora). clannad is as usual great with the soft color, moe character designs, stuff. the misae arc had me go all 'awww...' at the end of it. ef, on the other hand, is shocking in terms of story development. yuuko's backstory is a slap in the face for anyone not prepared for it. gundam is well.... gundam. meachalaserspewpewpew!

speaking of anime, i had a blast at the recent anime fest asia'08. there are some regretable moments of the fest, but it was still relatively well done, looking at it objectively. at the very least, it raises the awareness about how popular the anime culture is, locally and within the region. the only gripe abt the overall thing is still abt how they seemed to be promoting the movement and yet still try and clamp down on people who are 'illegally' downloading anime.

the 2 guest star performances during the AFA were stellar. Ichiro Mizuki san's performance packs a punch and connects very well with the audience, despite the fact that i havent actually heard any of his songs before. and then there's May'N performance. this one's difficult to evaluate, i really did enjoy the performance, but i wasnt entirely thrilled abt how the organisers or her management handled the thing. no photos, no videos, presigned autograph, 7 songs, no encore. oh well. that, and i paid 68 for a ticket and picked a really bad spot to stand where i cant hardly see anything half the time. i'm neither tall, nor aggressive (as a fan) so i guess, i'm getting the shorter end of the stick. it was however, really fun to see 'sheryl nome' live on stage thou

back to real life, i've decided to turn down OBS's offer for the selection camp. it'd seem that if i do take on the job, i'd be confined in ubin, alot. that somehow or rather feels like signing on to the army, minus the regimental stuff. not something which i'm prepared to undertake at the moment, so its back to the drawing board for now.

in any case, life's not very good right now. this month's expenditure is through the roof due to too many events, releases happening at the same time. more wow means less work means less pay, which really doesnt make alot of sense, since work pays for wow, so less work means less wow on the long run. *sigh*

need to sign myself up for change ><"

-out-

Letters to my future self

nov 7th - a minor update

still working part time with mart
still wow-ing
still flipping cards
still looking for a job

anime watchlist updated with stuff i'm following for this season!

-out-