Letters to my future self

20050329

Letters to future self

29th mar - screw the tiebreakers

bleh, for a 2nd time in a row, i'm 3-1 in a tournement, tied with the same score as 1 other person, but placed 2nd despite beating him in a earlier round. this really sucks. i hate the way the tiebreakers are calculated, my tiebreakers are actually lower then his becos i won him. how absurd.

so wad? i'm 2nd place cos i beat him and despite doing so i didnt get more wins then him? bleh, nonsensical. doesnt make sense at all.

pfft.

oh well, UDE sent out a certification card to all their judges, thus all judges' UDE cards are all plastic as compared to a cardboard card which normal players hold. a nice gesture, considering that very few games give that form of recognition and most of the time the judge is jus refered as the 'rules guy'

uni application dateline is coming up very close and i havent filled up the form yet ><"
will have to take leave maybe on the day aft (the last day of application) to go down personally to get it done. althought i probably wont be enrolling this yr, reserving a place for next yr doesnt seem like a bad idea.

now if only i can get hold of a transcript of all the modules i cleared b4 at nyp... prob give them a call tml and see if they can get a copy printed out for me. when i left nyp, i didnt feel that it was necessary and thus didnt ask for 1, darn.

oh well, its to bed for now, gotta go to work tmr *sigh*
-out-

20050326

Letters to my future self

25th mar - childhood memories

recently there's been a flood of memories coming back to me, regarding some of the older cartoons i've watch when i was much younger, like say over 10 yrs ago.

jus found out that one of these series is called "transformers: masterforce". its a japanese animated transformer series and also the series whereby some humans called "power masters" are able to transform with their vehicles when they put the bangles on their wrists together and shout a command phrase.

i'm currently happily downloading this series off bit torrent.. haha.

sadly thou, the series that continues aft master force cant be found, named "tranformers: victory". the series contains some of the more powerful transformers - starsaber and victory leo (recarnate of optimus prime), which can combine to form victory saber. damn cool back then, in fact if u owned one or both toys back then, u're the man. well, needless to say, i was quite uncool back then, not only that i hard to throw all my toys away at 1 pt of time... oh well, a story for another day...

the other series that left a very deep impression on me was a robin hood anime, it was shown on channel 8 back then, dubbed in chinese, named - shao nian luo bin han (young robin hood). i cant remember much abt the anime, but i remember the theme song pretty well and i kinda liked it. the song's title is 'woodwalker' btw. i actually managed to d/l the song off one of my seniors when i was in DMD, but the song was lost when my comp crashed yrs back. my search for the song continues, but so far no luck... darn.

shirts from threadless came in a couple of days back. i cant really say i regret buying them, cos i really liked the designs on them, but yea, it hurts esp when i'm struggling to get pass this month. strangely enuff, my mum doesnt quite like the shirts, citing that the quality of the shirt isnt gd. tsk tsk.

financial status has stablised for awhile, but not aft borrowing money from mel. some 50% of my pay next month will have to go into repay debts. ack.

5 more days until uni appliction closes, better start getting the paper work done ><"

oh well, back to work again tomorrow. quite sian.
come to think of it, aft the next person ORDs in april, i'm actually the next in line to ORD. not quite imaginable since its a 5 month gap, but its understandable if u realise that both my batch and the batch b4 me, only 1 person was assigned to my current workplace. so by right, 1 person would be leaving in may, except he got promoted and thus extended by 4 months, such that he ORD like 1 week aft i do. heh

so far its abt 5 months and 20 days left.
i'm slowly counting my days...
-out-

20050321

Letters to my future self

20th mar - leopards and stupid ppl

hard to work with a certain someone for my past shifts. i thought i could set aside our differences, i thought maybe he had changed for the better. i THOUGHT.

it took me the 1st 11 hrs to realise - leopards dont change their spots

it took me the other 11 hrs to realise - sometimes leopards do change their spots, the spots get bigger....

sigh...

-out-

20050319

Letters to my future self

19th mar - ARGH

baka, baka, BAKA!

RAWR!!

-out-

20050317

Letters to my future self

mar 16th - uh-oh

yea, uh-oh. today isnt even 1 week aft payday, but i can already sense it coming already. i'm sinking further and further into debt. been spreading out my finances abit too much recently and not all my gambles are pulling off, take the recent PCQ for example.

my money from the buylists will most definately tide me pass this month, but it'll probably take 2 weeks to reach the states and another 1 week to transfer to my bank acct, by then it probably would have been next payday already. ack.

and to think i still bought more new shirts this morning from threadless. i jus couldnt resist it, their clothes are on discount. ack. there i blew abt 100 sing, which would mostly likely last me for at least 1.5 wks? it only aft i clicked 'pay' then i realised that i shdnt have. darn. too late for regrets.

aiyoh. looks like i need to work doubly hard to sell cards, something which i'm not very gd at. not only that, i need to stop eating junk food. argh, how am i going to survive without junk food... man, this is pretty bad.

oh well, anyways i went down to the uniform store at my division to get my boots, badge and belt buckle changed. all of them have been damaged thru my course of duty ever since they were issued. i've been putting off getting them changed becos... well... its abit troublesome and i'm lazy. mostly becos i'm lazy thou. anyway, i had to go becos 1st, my uniform isnt complete without the badge and if i dont get it replaced soon, sooner or later my superiors will most definately nag at me. 2nd, my boots are in quite horrigible conditions. the skin has peeled like 40% off and the left heel is coming off. so.... yea.

the whole process turned out to be less cumbersome then i thought it would be, it took like 15 mins. but it the travel part that got into the way. oh well, at least its over now. that jus proves that somethings can be really simple to do, the hard part is getting ur ass off ur seat to actually do them....

ok, off to bed
-out-

20050315

Letters to my future self

14th mar - invoking emotions

today at work was actually more happening then i thought.

1st of all i wasnt particularly in a gd mood cos i still havent gotten over my bad plays yesterday. 2ndly i didnt quite get enuff of sleep.

1st thing i got to my workplace, i saw a trainee that i didnt like very much. imo, he's quite lazy and not very bright. still, dont disturb me and i wont disturb you. he walks over and tries to strike up a conversation that didnt end up as well as he hoped

"morning yeo"

"morn"

"ask u a question, have you got a gal friend?"

"no"

"have you got a boy friend?"

"no"

he then decides to push his luck abit further

"then have you got an animal friend?"

"yea, you"

no prizes for guessing where that conversation ended. thou speaking in scientific terms, i'm technically correct.... i mean humans are also considered as animals... right?

we went to chk our equipment aft our rollcall. aft a while, he came over to help my crew chk mine, normally that wouldnt be a problem. except it seems that his crew isnt quite done yet. so as a piece of nice advice, i asked him to go join his crew. he seems to be offended by that fact and thinks that i'm trying to drive him away.

an argument soon follows and i tried to stop it by saying "hey, look here, i'm not trying to pick a fight..." before i can even finish, he walked in front my me at abt half a metre away and very furiously said "you think i can win me in a fight?"

woah, strong words, for threatening me u could get into serious trouble. but like i said i wasnt looking for trouble, so i merely repeated myself, jus in case he heard me wrongly. ok, so apparently either his ears are damaged or his brain is. cos he jus repeated himself too.

neither of us wanted to throw any punches too. i'm quite sure its not worth it for me to do so and i suspect he knows that abt himself too. there was a standstill for abt 5 mins and he decides to leave.

moron.

later in the aftn, he gets hold of my number from a co-worker and msgs me abt meeting aft work to talk abt the misunderstanding. like i really care to talk to him. i jus sneaked away and left aft work, he can wait for all i care.

this event really reminds me of wad someone once told me. he said that i shd change the way i express myself. wad i say seems to invoke unwanted/unintended emotions from ppl who dont know me so well, take anger for example.

i dont know, maybe its a way i protect myself. i think i'm subconsciously trying to say "dont mess around with me"

i'm the avatar of anger, fury and bitterness combined. bite me.
RAWR.

-out-

20050313

Letters to my future self

mar 13th - BOOMBA

bleh. i suck. once again, i failed to make top 8. only this time, its so bad, i'm quite speechless. i'm placed 14th with a very mediocre score of 3-4. more losses then wins, cannot be gd.

it sucks to be losing. it sucks even more to know that my deck was actually quite powerful, 7 rounds. 3-1 b4 lunch. 0-3 aft lunch. ack ack. all the mistakes i made, its haunting me. i dont even wan to be reminded abt what happened in my game against chapman.

if theres any consolation, i completed my set of wild rides. whoopi~.

went down to kino aft that to drown myself in comics.

i'm really quite kicking myself now, cos i sacrificed meeting rui en to play at a PCQ and i boomba. ack, i so wished i was at ntu watching her perform instead. suuuuu.

bleh bleh bleh.
i think i'll go bang a wall or something now. ack.
-out-

Letters to my future self

12th mar - SIM

went down to both NTU and SIM aft knocking off work in the morning. took a train all the way down to boon lay, met adrian, then a bus into NTU.

at NTU we tried to look around for the admissions office or the design skool that adrian wans to enquire abt. we were actually quite lost for a while.

1stly, we got off the bus like 1 stop earlier and ended up on the hostel part of the campus and had to walk cross a small hill to the main buildings.

2ndly, despite being the open house, the place was actually quite quiet.

3rdly, on the map we couldnt find anything that says admissions office, so we decided to try the admin office instead.... closed. darn.

walked around abit... b4 adrian decided to call his cousin and we found out that he had remembered the date wrongly... and the open house is *ahem* actually tomorrow and not today. no wonder the place looks unprepared and quiet.

nevertheless we asked around for the place to enquire abt admissions and we got directed to some student something centre... where we found out that they dont operate on weekends. well, done. 1x wasted trip. bah.

took the bus back to boon lay where we decided to get a cab down to SIM. the taxi stand was overflowing with ppl, so we decided to go to some nearby road and try our luck.

barely 5 mins of waiting, i saw a cab turn into a housing estate, in it was a passenger. so i reasoned that the passenger was probably getting off inside and so we crossed the road waiting for the cab to turn out aft dropping off the passenger. this plan would have worked perfectly except 2 secondary skool kids randomly appeared out from nowhere right where the carpark exit was, abt say 10m away from us and got onto the cab *facepalm*

over ther next 20 mins saw the 2 of us walking to different parts of the road in the scorching sun, complaining abt how every freaking cab around here seems to be either occupied or on call.
we finally decided that if a cab doesnt appear in 15 mins, we'll take the train down to clementi and take a cab from there.

in abt 5 mins time, i finally managed to flag a cab down. opened the door, even b4 i can step into the cab or say anything, the moniter in the cab started beeping. b4 i know it, the cab driver said "sorry sorry, i on call, sorry sorry" -_-" WTH

abt 20 mins later, we got off the train at clementi mrt station. the taxi stand there was no better. we went to the opposite side fo the road, man, also got quite a number of ppl there. already quite tired of having to wait for cabs (or having our cabs snatched away), we walked abt 50m further up the road, away from the ppl waiting for the cabs. 5 mins later, we were on our way down to SIM.

only upon arriving at SIM then did we realised that there is a free shuttle bus service back and from clementi mrt station *facepalm* ARGH

asked around abit abt their courses. apparently i shdnt have problem getting into 2 of their courses cos for the 2 programs they take in students even at o lvls. one is for a bach of arts in communication and the other is bach of science in business administration, a collaberation btw SIM and the university of buffalo in the states. each of the courses costs a bomb of close to 60k thou ><"

bleh, prob apply 1st then see how....
oh well, at least thats the least of my worries.... for now... i hope

alright, to rest... its PCQ day again tomorrow...
gd luck to me
-out-

20050308

Letters to my future self

8th mar - money out, money in

strange how my finances always seem to work themselves out.... only when its already pay day or damn close to payday.

today i went down to town for a haircut, while i was in plaza sing, i thought, hm.. y dont i go to the apple corner and take a look. bad bad mistake... when u're trying to stretch ur dollar until payday, any kind of apple shop shd be considered as one of the last places in the world u would visit.

i ended up paying 38.40 for a pair of silicon covers for the shuffle, and a 'smartwrap' thats supposed be a piece of rubber that i can 'wrap' the wires of the earphones around so that i dotn have to face the problems of entangled wires again.

tsk.

less then 20 mins later, i was back at meridian. out of no where orry suddenly popped up, bought some random rare foils for me and took my doom EA promo for 30. 30 for the EA promo is actually quite high now. if i were him, i would rather wait a few more days until the next pcq and get it then, esp he's only missing 1. not that i shd be complaining now. oh well, he handed me 38 dollars, which almost cushioned the impact of my recent purchases entirely.

following that was a draft which i'm supposed to have won, except i had to pull some stunts in my game against timmy and promptly lost.

which reminds me, by the way, eugene, if u're reading this, actually i think i lost the coin toss (or die roll) in our game. come to think of it, u took init on turn 1, passed to me, took turn 3.. AND turn 4 (i remember how all my guys were stunned aft i played bullseye). which is y suddenly out of no where i had init on 7, a pt that has been puzzling me since the end of the draft.

then end results of the draft was a 4 way tie at the top and we had to roll off to determine the winner. i rolled a high of 25 on 5 die to claim 1st pick, redemption for the silly mistake against timmy.

for some strange reason, aft the draft, someone suggested to play baluut. alright, baluut it is. its some dice game that involves some money and alot of luck. i finised 2nd in the 1st pod and won abt i dont know... $4? i won the 2nd pod, which was not hard since i pulled off a baluut of 36, thou i had some mediocre rolls towards the end... *grumble grumble* i believe i won abt $10 for that one.

teleport back to home. random chk on buylist status... oh... changes to price... *groans*
oh hello? wait a min.... this used to be 5... its now... 10? and that... didnt it used to be 4? now.. its 7? oh... wow.

a pile that i was going to be sending in almost doubled in value, making it literally 'a pile', i really shdnt be complaining at all.... it looks like in abt a couple of weeks time, i'll have quite abit of money to play around on ebay and online shops. more investments perhaps? *heh*

alright, off to catch spirited away and gundam. hurray to bit torrent
-out-

20050303

Letters to my future self

3rd mar - fear

last night wasnt so busy, its jus that we didnt get much sleep. came back very tired in the morning.

last night i also wasnt quite myself, had some difficulty trying to keep up with wad my fellow co- workers were doing.

jus realised that i have a new fear - the smell of blood. didnt really realise it until yesterday, when a drunk supposingly went to punch his bathroom mirror. needless to say, it was all over the floor. when we went into the room, i began to feel sick. excused myself to go downstairs to prepare the other stuff.

probably the traumatising effects of that call many months back that involved a knife a suicide attempt and even more blood. i remember nearly vomitting for that one and returned back to base all pale.

apart from drunks, my other dreaded case would be family dispute. yesterday we had one that last for close to 2hrs, that even got the inspector from the nearest NPC down. its was like unfillial son vs the whole family clan. eventually the son was put into police custody cos he had some previous record or something liddat. oh well...

alright, gotta go make dinner then to work
-out-

20050302

Letters to my future self

2nd mar - rejection

bah, went down to SMU today to see if there's any chance that i could enrol into any of their courses. well, let jus say that the trip wasnt fruitful at all.

the lady at the admissions office, on learning that both me and adrian didnt have poly diplomas, told us that we could still apply, but our chances will be... erh... not high.

in other words, she was probably asking us to save our time and money. ><"

oh well, there's still sim left and maybe a design course at ntu that i can try... hmm...

i'm abit lost... really.
bleh

to work
-out-

20050301

Letters to my future self

1st mar - cards, cards and more cards....

its more or less taken over my life already. our team is probably the most hardworking bunch of individuals in the game right now. yet, i feel that i'm the only one thats not making progress. kengyin has started to win drafts, eugene won his this morning... and i'm still drawing blanks. even having myself clobbered by cards i branded as awful.

i'm beginning to find difficulty sometimes in trying to give ewan drafting advice, he keeps thinking that i'm trying to lecture him or something. *sigh* then again, at the rate that he's beating me, its not like i'm in any position to say anything. like how i always say, its difficult to tell you how bad that card really is when u keep winning me with it. ><"

argh.. oh well.

been tweaking the xstatix deck, very unfortunately testing results were a tad disappointing today. despite having added a kill condition, things have not taken a turn for the better. my guys jus kept getting pushed into the river, which is not a gd thing. time to take into consideration - star of the show. which also nearly cost me the constructed xstatix mirror today. we played til a record turn 13, the last 3 turns were all devoted to playing vivisector(2) boost all the way

other cards news sees me trying to tip the scales abit back to even up my expenditure for the month. unfortunately, one of the price lists that i was working on changed just as i was going to send it in. that small delay costed me 35 sing and left me with a stack of junk. bah.

currently attempting to make more money buy importing then re-exporting. supplies in from australia, exporting to the states. profit margin for this deal stands at abt 40%? jus as long as the price lists doesnt change like wad just happened, my financial status will cushioned slightly.

back at home... sleep has not been peaceful. there's 1 or even 2 zero fighters flying around my bedroom at night these few days, their atks have been randomly waking both me and my brother up at night. these atks left us itchy, irritated and tired. the most fustrating part of all seems to be how we know they exist, even sometimes hear them as they fly past our ears, but can nv seem to see them. let alone smash them. rawr.

if this continues, i only have 2 ways to do it. insecticide or that lame burger oil nonsense. hmm.. either that or i look really hard and *splat*

i'm going to pray for peaceful sleep tonight
-out-

Letters to my future self

28th feb - the coolness of it all

today is jus great, i'm enjoying every minute of it.

1st up, princess mononoke that i've been d/ling for the past 2 days has finally finished d/ling this morning. its a animated movie made by the same director that did spirited away and howl's moving castle and propelled him to fame. i've nv really seen it b4, but i've heard plenty abt it. that day aft watching howl's moving castle, i surfed around abit and found a torrent for it... and so there it sits on my desktop, now.... if only i can find the time to watch it.

the lastest eps of naruto and gundam have also been d/led. naruto gets more exciting as my favourite melee fighter gets back into action, woohoo.

2nd, the ipod shuffle is finally in! soooo soooo cooool. so small, so light, sooo simple. jus spent the past 30 mins tinkering with it. dumped some jay, she and linkin' park in the player and... woah, only 50mb left. lol, darn, now i wish for more space ;p
anyways, thanks alot guys, mel and kun for the shuffle! (btw, i saw both of u on tv jus now. the news was featuring the oscars movie marathon and suddenly... hey, i thought i saw.... *heh*)

3rd, x-statix. the dysfuntional team of superheros got made into vs cards. sporting a totally differnt playing strategy, i tried to put them together for a modern age deck. the results were slightly better den i had expected. its too damn cool to play it. it damn funny when u only have 1 character against 4 of ur opponent's characters and urs actually survives the ordeal. made some minor tweaks to improve my end game. with some luck, this might actually turn into a viable archtype in this format, despite the unorthodox methods used to play this deck.

i feel high tonight, only thing that could have made this day better would be that i win the draft jus now, which not surprisingly i made 2nd place... again. but fine, i didnt have a very powerful deck... but still... *grumble grumble*

oh well, to bed, have to wake up early tomorrow for draft practices. *grumble grumble*
-out-