Letters to my future self

20050731

Letters to my future self

30th jul - learnt alot, ate alot.

work was at serene, ran a couple of events until abt 6. learnt more stuff about comics and how they are priced. collected 1st pay check (yay!), thou the money will be dumped into the endless pit of card gaming tomorrow. (sigh...)

following that was "the deadweight's dinner" the 4 of us non-contributers in the recent 10K:SG campaign treated the rest of the team to the japanese buffet at suntec. food's fair, ate alot, in fact all of us probably are still vey bloated right now. heh.

came up with card reps for each of us during the over table conversation. while kengyin, ben and ryan are widely know as doom, magneto and c'hip, the rest of us dont really have card reps. so there:

Kengyin- Dr 'stands alone' Doom
Ben- Magneto, master of magnetism
Ryan- C'hip, C'hip
Ewan- The 'smash'in' Hulk
Me- Long 'all you need is luck' Shot

tentative-
Benzie- Ras Al Ghul
Eugene- Ironman
Hairul- Puppet Master

heh.
-out-

20050730

Letters to my future self

29th jul - FNM

i used to think that its not quite possible to get tired from standing and walking around watching others gaming.

i'm beginning to think otherwise...
-out-

20050729

Letters to my future self

28th jul - fables and reflections

"you have called me. and i have come."

"are you, then, the lord of sleep, the prince of stories, he to whom allah has given dominion over that which is not, and was not, and shall never be?"

"you know whom you have called, haroun al raschid."

-sandman #50 ramadan

-out-

20050728

Letters to my future self

27th jul - the 1st day at work

work randomly began today when someone called in sick and i was called up as a stand in. as a matter of fact i'll also be working this friday and saturday despite only supposing to start only in august, which is fine since i have the time to burn anyway. work = more money and less time to spend it, slacking on the other hand = having too little money and too much time to spend it.

speakng of which, i jus realised that all the work that i did today is only enough to pay for a 1st pod in the prerelease and having like... $2 change, which isnt even enough for lunch. pathetic things you'll do for gaming - working for free to feed hobbies. i finally understand how it seems impossible for me to save money, there are simply too many things that i'm playing/collecting. a fact that i've only realised too late.

work today was fine, except the computer program isnt too user friendly (neither is the bar code scanner), i'll probably need sometime to get used to it. the weekly work schedule is also distributed out as an excel spreadsheet, which is unfortunate since i do not have excel at home. bah, i'll have to get my hands on a copy of excel... soon, i think. yea, apart from that, its probably just brushing up abit on customer management. then again there's also alot of stuff thats not taught to me yet.. so i'll just keep my fingers crossed for now and hopefully my performance for today is satisfactory.

k, so basically i rest for 1 day, then i'll have to help run magic events for the next couple of days. collect my pay on saturday then dump it into the endless pit of card gaming on sunday. sounds like a plan, albeit a really horrible sounding one.

oh well.
-out-

20050725

Letters to my future self

jul 25th - sitting down at the work tables

stayed home today. did not spend my day in front of my computer.

instead i was buried under plastic pieces, paint markers, acrylic paints, brushes, cutting knives and other random modelling tools.

yes, its back to the model kit madness again, this time round its gundam kits. significantly harder to do without an airbrush, unlike organic shapes. me and adrian are experimenting with a mixture of spray cans, markers and brushes. so far results are... disasterous. haha.

the spray didnt work so well with the other paints, the paint flow from the marker is hard to regulate and brushes tend to leave marks. bah.

at least i sat down quietly do get some stuff done today. its been quite a while since i did anything like this. even though at the end of the day i produced very little results, at least i took the day off to do something that didnt involve me going out or sitting in front of the computer doing nothing but waste away.

judging by the looks of it this will actually keep me tied up for quite awhile. time to slowly recall all the stuff that i've learnt so many years ago....

-out-

20050721

Letters to my future self

20th jul - i'm the king of my room

jus a quick post, only because we all decided to do it.
the phrase above in the title was from me in a random conversation on the tales of orry 'the no friends' suen.

it all started with the some nonsense complain email, then it went on to a conversation btw benzie and ming, then to noel's report on orry's team affliation (unaffliated) then to... if orry was a VS card.

then someone mentioned black tom, to which i said "i'm the king of my room" which sort of fits black tom's ability, he gets a big ego boost when no one's around. perfect description for a person who has no friends. even doom has a friend in boris. tsk.

how he agreed to do a 3 way split is still beyond me. it reinforces the belief i have about him being a moron. anyway, the money is gd, jus recieved $410SGD for being dead weight. no complains other then the fact that i really shd have done better. have to try harder for KL then.

i really, really want to try playing long.dec, except its really quite vulnerable to anarchy trap and i'll lose to myself if i dont hit 'the long'. still, if i intend to bring it down, i shd start practicing taking down physical notes when i'm doing the 'longshoting'

or the alternative is to wait and see until avengers. i'm happy with the set already, they gave me the card i've been waiting for ever since they decided to print something called 'have a blast!'. getting my teamup blown up is not so funny at all.

ok, enough ranting for the day.
-out-

20050720

Letters to my future self

20th jul - 7 days

its been a week since i stopped going to work. it feels... different, like i have too much time... and i dont know how to spend it.

actually i could have spent it wisely instead, i chose to:

- start online gaming. re-downloaded rose online, nuff said.

- randomly hang in town. apart from kengyin and ben i havent seen much of the rest of the team. prob taking a break from VS for the moment?

yea, and of all things, i went down to amk with adrian and qujin. knew thing i knew me and qujin end up sharing 2 boxes of the japanese kingdom hearts card game. yes, JAPANESE. nope, neither of us can read japanese. cute cards thou. ><"

yea, i think i need to regroup and put myself back on track again. oh well, at least i'll have work to keep me occupied come august.

-out-

20050717

Letters to my future self

18th jul - a plan twarted

bah. jus yesterday i got outbidded last min on the complete set of sandman singles. the damn auction ended at 152.51, when my final bid was 150.01. it ended at the early monings of 6.30. despite me waking up to chk, i woke up some 5 mins too late and turning on the computer to see the red words saying "auction ended" on the screen.

pfft, i thought all was fine since there was 1 other auction for a set. except it supposed to end tomorrow at 11am, and currently its already close to 170us, the price being jacked up by 1 american and another singaporean. i havent even made a bid yet. pfft. looks like i wont be getting the set aft all. off budget. if theres a chance in the future, i might try again but for now, pass.

i shd be happy that i got the statue thou, it shd ship next wed and hopefully be in hand at the end of the month.

oh well
-out-

20050713

Letters to my future self

jul 13th - the last day

yay. the off issue has finally resolved. i'm getting a bonus of 12 days, i dont really know how it calculated but 12 days is already more then enough (thou i think i shd have gotten more, but thats besides the pt) i only have abt 6-8 duties anyway, so 12 days is abit... well... redundant. not like its transferable or that i can sell it. wasted that it couldnt be resolved earlier such that i could get more days off. oh well, it happens when you're the 1st person to be affect by the system.

anyways, that effectively means that today is my last day at work and a pretty much extremely very busy last day it is. we were so busy, we didnt have time at all for lunch until 3.30 and barely 15 mins into the meal, there as another turnout. came back at 4.30 to wrap up lunch. my personal best had been 8 turnouts... until today where it was 9. kao.

probably will be slacking round until aug where i'll begin work with mart, need sometime to tie up some loose ends here and there.

current list of to-do lists:

- revamp of this blog, very much overdue, probably will put back in all the old stuff that was deleted earlier this yr. i still hate the powers that decreed it so.

- education, still undecided. will apply with MDIS for their mass comm degree program, but at the same time will see if i could get into NIE too. otherwise there's always SIM to fall back on. options on going overseas is still very much open.

- driving liscense, something which i'm supposed to get while i'm still in NS. now that i'm going to ORD in 2 month's time, i havnt even passed my basic theory test yet, tsk tsk.

- to buy: a pair of nike free, more gaiman stuff, digicam, laptop, world of warcraft (?)

- to upgrade: computer. despite having bought not very long ago, there are somethings that need to be changed, like the graphic card for example and i really need to be reformatting my drive to free up the space within.

- 10K:KL. have to do better, SG was utter disappointment, not to mention utter dead weight.

- tidy up my tables, while this seems to be a really minor task, it really is extremely uphill. it involves having too much stuff and too little space. perhaps its time i dumped all my remaining magic and LOTR CnU's away. not to mention all the random mageknight, mechwarrior nonsense lying around. i actually believe i still have my poly notes buried somewhere on my table under a huge pile of gaming rubble.

sigh. what alot of stuff to do.
at least i'm actually getting to time to do them now, now that the current chapter is coming to an end.

-out-

20050712

Letters to my future self

12 jul - a steal from ebay

heh, today is a happy day. won an auction for a full sized arabian nights sandman statue today for about a third of its original price. limited to 7000 copies and produced about 10 years ago, the said figure despite being second hand, is supposed to be mint in box. i estimate having to pay about $100+ sing dollars after the conversion but i still think its worth the money, so long as it does reach my hands and in 1 piece, that is.

now now, i have to start thinking of a place to put it on display when it gets here.... hmm.... wonder if i can put it at RC. heh.

now aiming for a set of sandman singles. which if it ends at around the same price as the previous one, ridiculous as it sounds, might actually cost less then buying a full set of softcovered trade paperbacks in singapore even after the conversion. now, i'm only counting on 1) winning the auction, 2) for vpost not to chop big chunks out of my bank account.

at work, the off that supposed to be awarded for the not taking MCs have not been resolved yet. i have this stinking feeling that if its awarded to me, i wont even have to go to work starting from tomorrow, but it hasnt resolved yet. so... chances are i'll end up with too many extra offs that i dont have the days to clear. bah. talk about inefficiency. so until then, clearing leave starts only on the 1st day of august. *sigh*

back to work again tomorrow.
-out-

20050710

Letters to my future self

10th jul - victory to the team

nope, the team didnt bring back the cup. however we did have 2nd place finish and a 3rd place finish and 2 others within the top 24. pity abt the cup thou. still this performance is much better then the last trip to KL as a whole.

boomed out of the constructed event too today, aft making a very bad play mistake against bertram. made very gd plays on turn 4 to prevent myself from getting ROT'ed and turn 5 to deactivate doom's ability to go off.... and i had to make that damn mistaken while going off. still quite sore over that loss, my inexperiance with the deck allowed me to be mislead by him.... bah.

only saving grace in this couple of days is... well, passing the lvl 2 judge's test. had some problems with the triggered and replacement abilities, however i scored jus enough to pass, getting 80%, which is the minimum requirement.

joined the guys at the wake aft the event. the gang was cracking jokes here and there to keep the atmosphere abit more cheerful (with no intention of being disrespectful). no questions asked either. went over to janus's after that for some pizza before we dispersed back home.

after being deprived of much needed rest for 2 days and not to mention the disappointments, its abt time i catch some much needed sleep....

-out-

Letters to my future self

9th jul - disasterous

lose, win, lose, win, win, lose, lose

thats how i went today. 3-4. out of money. only saving grace is that i ended in top 64 for some random tin can n a promo.

i was mauled so badly, i think my parents could recognise me when i got home. (joking, it really isnt that bad, but close enuff)

with the exception of the 1st game, i either won by impossible margins, or loss by impossible margins. its ridiculous.

as of now, my status is currently classified as 'dead weight', pulling down the team's overall takings. now if only i can actually finish in money for tmr's PCQ then maybe it wont look so bad.

towards the evening, heard some very shocking news. i still havent quite gotten the full picture yet. but lets jus say i have to rush over to a wake tomorrow evening right aft the event.

hope it all turns out fine tomorrow.
-out-

20050709

Letters to my future self

9th jul - eve of the storm

ok, actually not eve, more like the day itself, since its already 1.38am on my clock. isnt suppose to work out this way, as in, i shdnt be awake now. i shd already be in bed, such that i'll actually get sufficient sleep for the event later today.

as a matter of fact, when yonghui asked me earlier on yesterday on whether i have any good advice to give for today, my reply was: sleep early. as such, why i'm still awake in front of my comp is still a mystery.

deep inside, i'm actually quite worried abt later on. i'm really not so good at sealed. the fact that i always randomly die to some random effect haunts me. it also a fact that i havent been using my PCQ to fund my expenditure of late. mental block? maybe. if so, i better overcome it... soon. preferably over the next few hours.

enuff blabbering for now, if not i might not even get up in time for tomorrow.
note to self: coffee for breakfast
and gd luck to me, lots of it.
-out-

20050707

Letters to my future self

7th jul - and so it comes to an end....

yup, yesterday was the last day for signings. still have so much more i want to get signed... pity he had to leave already... oh well.

went to queue particularly early to beat the long queue, which later i learnt stretched from the front of the store, 1 round along wheelock place (the area in front of borders where the elevators are located) then outside all the way til the cafe located at the other end of the store. the plan to go early put me in the store some 30 ppl from the front of the queue, lucky me.

i was there as early as 1 even thou it starts only at 6, loitered around for abit, no queue yet. went over to BK for lunch. if theres anything i learnt from these couple of days, it would be that fast food tastes awful during peak lunchtime hrs. maybe they prepared the food too early b4 hand, or are rushing to have the food pushed out, so it hardly tastes anything like usual.

anyways aft lunch i went to back to the store to check with them where the signing's supposed to be. front of the store it is. walked to the front of the store, where i saw a couple of ppl hanging jus outside the store, so i hung out there too. over the next 30 mins or so, ppl began to appear and a queue began to build itself. i was abit adamant about the queue initially, since there were no tables nor any signs that show where we're really supposed to queue, however, as the queue slowly developed into 10+, 20 ppl. its probably better to be safe than sorry and joined in.

as the hrs go by, my position is the queue also slowly increase as friends started to join those already in the queue, cept none of those are my friends. haha. oh well, i supposed being in the 1st 30, 40 is still fine.

adrian came by at abt 4+, his plan was only to sign 1 book, so i brought a couple more so that he could sign for me. unfortunately while he was at mart earlier, a couple more books caught his eye... u know the rest... bleh. fortunately he brought a camera. but unfortunately, the cam died jus aft the 1st photo. ARGGGGH. why didnt u charge the damn batteries u... BEEEEEEP. sigh.

wanted to request for a small drawing of dream which i've seen gaiman do for the past few days, but unfortunately he didnt have the time to do it today. shucks.

right aft the signings, went over to MDIS for a preview talk on their mass comm course. its attractive enuff for me to wan to consider again my options. now all i need to find out abit more...

10k looms ahead, cant help but feel some tension coming ahead this weekend....
-out-

20050705

Letters to my future self

4th july - The legend himself: Neil Gaiman

finally got to see him in person for the 1st time today! its soooo exciting!

haha.

the plan for the day is to sneak into the press conference early morning, whether i fail or not, i will hang at mart until the mirrormask screening later in the evening at 7.30.

i woke up early so that i wouldnt be late for the event itself, had a hasty breakfast then hit the tracks downtown to orchard. from there i grabbed a latte and briskly walked to the council where the conference is held. the only problem being that i was walking in the wrong direction and i only realised it until 10mins later when i found myself going nowhere. time was running short. sigh. stood by the side of the road and put my hand out. 5 mins later, i was right in front of the council, jus in time. it costs me 3.50 but its probably a small price to pay assuming i do get in.

in the end, i did get in, and it was significantly much easier then i had thought. no name taking, no pass checking. i jus slipped myself into the building, in the lift, then into the conference room. follow the crowd, they say.

its only aft i settled down and gaiman walked in then i realised how out of place i really was. everyone around me was carrying either 1) pen + notepad or 2) armed with a bad ass camera or video cam. i had neither. not only that, i didnt even have the press kit which was some distance away which i could have taken when i entered the room. was focused too much on trying to get myself a seat 1st. by then, i seemed abit funny to stand up and pick up the press kit, so i stayed put anyway figuring that even if my cover is blown, they prob wont kick me out anyway. ;p

ok, so i jus sat there and listened and laughed, alot. while it was only a QnA session, wad he said is inspiring and equally funny. despite it being a 1 hr session, it seemed as if time was put on fast forward, before we knew it, it was over. right aft the end of the session, at least half the crwd reached into their bags and started out pulling books for him to autograph, to say he was swarmed was an understatement. haha.

got a trio of books signed, dream hunters and 1602, and another dream hunters for adrian. only pity was that he closed the books b4 the silver marker could dry for both copies of dream hunters, as a result, the words were well... smudged. oh well....

looked around for kun's colleague which i managed to find by coincidence (turned out i was sitting next to her all the while, haha) returned the pass, gave her thanks and bid her farewell and i was on my way to mart.

mart was bustling with activity, phone rang almost non stop as ppl called up the enquire abt the tickets. mucked around with the gang for abit, grabbed lunch, at abt 6 the 1st few ppl from the 4.30 screening made their way out. yet around 6.30, there were still ppl waiting to get their stuff signed.

the 2nd screening was supposed to start at 7.30, but to give the man time to catch a breather and to get dinner, they played us a 20min short film by gaiman on john bolton. disturbing, but at the same time, very funny. then it started, the background on how mirrormask came abt, collaboration with dave mckean, etc. the highlight itself was of course the screening of the trailers themselves. very short visuals, but u can tell how unique it was, mckean's style of art.

following that, a short QnA session, then it was down to mart for the signings. the queue was so long, it stretched from mart til the loo at the same lvl. i got to sit in the shop, joining the rest, but it also meant that i had to wait til the end of the queue to get my stuff signed, which was fine and in fact i was hoping that he would sign a couple more since it was the last few.

waited for abt 3 hrs i think, by 10, the central air conditioning was down and the shop was getting warmer by the min. eventually the queue cleared, but by then it was already jus past midnight. i didnt get alot of extra stuff signed thou, could tell that he's really worn out. signed 3 books, and my ticket (which i use as a bookmark).

had to take a cab home, which aft sharing still costs my close to $10.

still, its been hell of a day, i only look forward to wed when it all begins again....

ok, now to sleep, morning shift tomorrow... argh
-out-