Letters to my future self

20051214

Letters to my future self

14th dec - Life in review (for the past 2 weeks)

trip to KL didnt end as well as hoped. thank god for me, i had intended it to be a holiday from the beginning. last i heard, those we went up for the sole purposes of playing were sorely disappointed.

accompanying the fact that the team on a whole didnt do too well, i've also have to handle "wah, the hotel/coach so expensive" complains. in the future pls volunteer urself to make arrangements, thank you. if only ppl will actually sit down and listen when i was explaining possible incurred transport/accomodation costs.

i whooped ass with my original creation. almost all my opponents didnt have a clue as to what the held i'm doing, until they died, that is.

did a rude gesture in jest at the head judge when i got deck checked (long story which involves me getting deck chked really often during events, by chance, not by bad reputation). he saw it and gave me a severe warning for that ><". tee tee. got poked fun by all the judges on the way back.

tagged along with the guys to zouk in KL, one of my very few visits so far to a nightspot. had a drink, which i think was some sprite+random liquor. was contend to jus stay in the shadows and get blasted by music, but the guys coaxed me into dancing. tried not to look like a nut in the process. yes, aku = mountian tortise.

bought a new sling bag and a new pair of shoes which i felt made the trip worthwhile. they actually still have milkshakes in the mac's in malaysia!

had gum confiscated from me at the customs on the way back..... and all that cos my metal deckcase sounded off the alarm thru the metal detector scan. -_-" annoyance.

back in singapore, ben who started wow abt 2 months aft i did, hit lvl 60 aft missing the trip up to KL due to an expired passport. i'm still on the spot right now as to how to ask him for payment on the coach tickets.

hit lvl 57 with my human rogue, began my 1st instance run for my endgame gear. while it didnt drop, i still got hold of a pretty nice sword i can use... when i get to lvl 58, that is.

application for griffith comes to a standstill. apply that visa is so much troublesome then i had expected. after filling up countless forms both online and offline, i now have to schedule myself for a med chkup and an x-ray. not to mention the cost of applying the visa itself and the cost of the chkup + x-ray. hopefully all can be done this coming friday and settle the visa nonsense once and for all. after which i can go get the air tickets, attend the briefing and the nonsense. still quite clueless as to whats going to happen when i get there, esp since the campus doesnt have a hostel and i have to wait til i fly there and get the student office's help for accomodation.

actually wondering if its feasible for me to fly up to sydney 1st for the 10k, which is on the 14th of jan, b4 flying to queensland, considering hairul might be going. thou i have this feeling that the sneaky boy is bringing more then himself to sydney.

term starts in valentine's day next year. whoopi do~. not like i have anything to celebrate abt anyway.

work will officially end in 17 days. my 3 month stint with mart now only has slightly over half a month to go. if theres anything i hate abt working the service line, its abt how late u get to knock off. granted u get to wake up later, going home late = going online and seeing all the people u know already in a dungeon and u arent part of it.

otherwise, i would say i learnt alot during this short stay and read alot. considering how i used to take 1 hr to go thru the restock lists and still make mistakes and how i could do it now in abt 15mins with no or few mistakes, i def say its an improvement. but still.... annoying customers will always remain as annoying customers. some ppl say bad service breeds bad customers, i think its the other way around. still, theres nothing a smile and gd communication cant achieve, i think.

picked up a new game - clout fantasy. touted as the 1st collectible throwing game, which involves throwing illustrated poker chips onto a play area, triggering abilities and removing opponent's chips in a bid to score more points. i'm less dexterious as i thought i would be, most of the games i lost, were not due to inaccurate throws, but were due to throws which cause my chips to roll off the table. ><"

right, thats about all for now
server's back online again
-out-

"a sure sign that christmas is around the corner - bad jams on orchard road on a weekday night"

20051207

Letters to my future self

Dec 6th - back in the little red dot

Finally back at home, ended 28th for the 10k, missing the top 24 cut narrowly, but did put up a semi finals finish in the PCQ portion of the event.

to sum up:

day 1, sealed deck 1 (rounds 1-3)
bad pile of crap, had 2x all too easy which i ended up not playing due to insufficent support from the faction. if there was any consolation, i did end up with a secret origins and a foil hero's welcome. hoping to do a 2-1 and pray for a better deck for the 2nd half of the day.

game 1 (malaysian): my opponent wasnt farmilar with the new cards, got steamrolled.

game 2 (malaysian): my opponent decides that milling me was a gd strategy, lucky enough for him, he mills my plot twists away, leaving me with a full grip of guys and no tricks. narrowly loss this one. annoyed +1

game 3 (singaporean): had to play jeff wong here. *sigh* to sum up, he played consecatively, jon jonz, grodd and shazam. thats already 3x brokeness. when he ko'ed his shazam to try and take my grodd, i responded by trying to ko my wonder woman on his grodd, sinester citadel ate his grodd away leaving me with nothing to steal and does me in. point worthy of note, was able to wrap up the game on 6 if not for the fact that i was short of 1 atk (or 1 team up) annoyed +2
(1-2)

went downstairs for lunch, got quite annoyed by how everything charges tax upon payment. if i'm paying for something i expect it to be the price i see on the menu, if there is tax, please bloody list that final price as the actual price, for god's sake. as if 1rm isnt already very insignificant, i ended up with 1-cent rm coins aft lunch, damn tax.

sealed deck 2 (rounds 4-7)
godly pile. was hyperventilating when i saw the card pool. opened by my opponent from the 2nd round earlier on, it contained 2x jon jonz amongst other great cards. had to set aside 2x all too easy again, but had 2x plasma blasts and 2x air strike to make up for it. could actually end up 4-0 for this one.

game 4 (singaporean): jon yeo here, the slower of the 2 jons. traded board controls, got locked by luthor's ability. nearly got a DQ for misplaying a 2nd plot twist that drew me a card. turn 6 looked bad as he tried to end the game quickly with scarecrow burning for 13. was really behind on life by quite abit, but turn 7 turned tables as i took the init and hit him with a double powered up, double air striked rama khan into his ultra-humanite and still not stun, slapping him with a 28 point endurance loss on jus a single atk. was in negatives, but managed to put him on lower negatives, narrowly taking this one.

game 5 (singaporean): michael chew here. i hate playing against him, not the bertham- noel kind of hate, its jus i cant win him, despite not thinking that he's a very gd player. this game was almost no different. was behind on life all the time, on turn 7 he tried to finish me off by atking for jus enough damage. a jon jonz power up kept my hopes alive with jus 1 endurance going into turn 8.

the plan is to play out 3 dorks all adjacent to libra, team atk with all 3 of them, then atk with libra, then ko all of them to have libra atk again. watch tower ensures i get the drops i needed, played out taz devil, ted kord and maxwell lord and was ready to go. then he played.... grodd. of all the freaking cards in the set, grodd. ARGH. to cut the long story short, he stole my taz devil, i sent my libra into the taz devil such that he was -9, then rammed my ted kord and maxwell lord into his guys putting myself at -2. barring a teamup or a pump or a ig char in his hand, i might actually win. fingers crossed. he thinks for a while and extends his hand. scorez. i actually won with him still having a ready prometheus and ready grodd on his side, heh.

game 6 (singaporean): jerry lee. bah, 1st michael then jerry, the hell, wad are the chances. playing 2 guys from the same team back to back in a 75 man tournament *rolls eyes*
he screws really badly for this one, having out only 2 2 drops on turn 4 to my 2, 3, 4. not exactly a difficuly game.

game 7 (singaporean): ok, mantis is the suxxorz. i play 5 singaporeans out of 7 opponents, if i wanted to play with singaporeans i would have stayed in singapore. to make things worse, this round is friendly fire as i get paired up with jingyang. both of us are at 4 wins, t1 = 0. only 1 of us will make it. we make a pact, winner buys the loser dinner. i walk away at the end of the day with a free dinner. nuff' said *sigh*

4-3 placed me 28th overall, still suprised thou, had expected to be placed much lower as i thought my tiebreakers were much lower. oh well. 3 other members made the cut, eugene, benzie and ewan.

nvm, there's still the pcq on the day 2. traded for a set of longshots for my deck, its finally time to unleash my creation.

i registered long.dec for the pcq event. been in contant development since MOR, its about time i put this out on the stage of bigger events.

game 1 (CE): oh boy, liang woi lun. prob one of better malaysian players. before the match commences, he comments on how we could be playing a mirror match. despite no knowing what he was playing, i rest assure him that there is no chance we could be playing a mirror, cos my deck is unique. well, 2 turns into the game, i realises he's playing common enemy and my longshot still hasnt appeared. he finally did on turn 3, but was still blind and didnt hit a single draw at all. died on turn 6 without a struggle.

game 2 (SS): my only fear in this matchup is them drawing their god hand or other-earth. else it shd be a breeze if i setup my deck successfully. anyway he managed to get my down to 9 before i go off and sent him down to the negative zone. i win despite forgetting to put my guys behind them crowd control, but i figured it wont make a diff if he had other earth anyway.... so...

game 3 (IG): tim using bernie's deck. chronos and luthor create huge headaches for me, its only in this game that i realised that i actually play quite a number of plot twists a turn. anyway the game drags on abit, eventually scarecrow comes down on 6, and puts me into -21 on turn 7. but i managed to go off and make 5 kelly activations of 10 pts each, putting him at -30.

game 4 (SS): he gets me down to 6, then i hit him with a 45 pt burn to -19 and crowd control for the win.

game 5 (SS): bad start for the SS player, earliest drop came down on turn 3 in the form of lady lark. plays other-earth on turn 4 on defense to take 1 less endurance loss from lady lark. needless to say, i won this one with plenty of life to spare (43)

game 6 (IG-Doom): he misses luthor and i scrolled all my teamups to the bottom. when finally go through my deck once and lands a teamup on the top of my deck, he plays secret files *sigh* had to ko a school to get the teamup into hand. to make things worse, i actually forgot to lay the teamup down on the next turn. lucky enough for me, i still have a big enough board to do a kelly, replace kelly, double recon for the win.

game 7 (new school): i get to play kengyin here, but since we have both already made the cut into the top 8, he scooped me in so that we avoid bumping into each other in the quarterfinals. we went to wrap up lunch.

at the end of the swiss rounds, kengyin, james and me were placed 1, 2 and 3 respectively on the top of the table, total dominance.

quarterfinals (titans): played zhen yuan here, room mate for the event. supposed to be a bad match as they have terra and if they time it properly, is pretty bad for me.
game 1: no struggle, rolled over and died
game 2: he has no early drops and no terra, i won with the unconventional way of cyclops team atking into the player.
game 3: i stick with my game plan and he doesnt draw terra quickly enough.

semifinals (avengers): 4 semi slots and we occupy 3 of them, gd chances i would say. anyway i play james for this one.
game 1: i get a god hand and kill him with 47 endurance remaining.
game 2: longshot went blind, wasnt much of a struggle
game 3: see game 2

oh well, there ends the run. final record = 7-2, not bad i must day, but i have to admit to having very good hands thruout the day, only not drawing longshot in my opening hand in 1 out of 12 games.

Props:
- great run with long.dec, caught alot of people by surprise, they totally had no idea what i was doing.
- the team netting 2 spots in the top 20 and another spot in the top 24 for the 10K and top spot in the PCQ
- team t-shirt! sponsered by comicsmart
- new pair of shoes! haha, finally got hold of a pair of nike free. not exactly the color i want, but close enough.
- new bag! great bargain for slightly over 18sg

k, off for now
-out-

20051202

Letters to my future self

2nd dec - posting from our northern neighbour

am safely in KL, in a internet cafe right now.

day didnt start off too well as ben got turned back from the customs as he's passport has expired. 1 man down even before the event has started ><"

but otherwise everyone is here, including the really annoying ones, like noel and berthram (thou i havent seen him yet, but he's supposed to be coming)

hotel room isnt very big, will prob have to squeeze a little tonight, then again, we prob wont be sleeping much... i think.

tomorrow... the big day
gd luck to me and the team

-out-

Letters to my future self

1st dec - roadtrip

tomorrow afternoon will see the whole team depart for KL for the 10k event. just finished packing my bags. recieved the team t-shirts today, not too bad i must say.

would talk abit more cept i'm really tired now, will post updates if i can get hold of a comp in KL

will be back late monday night
-out-