In a strange way, while I don’t blog on a regular basis, I have never missed an update on my gaming monitors. This traces back all the way to 2004. To recap:
What bothers me most is not one day I am fine, another day I end up with a scar on my brow. What bothers me most is that I do not recall how it happened.
I was on a bicycle in the early Saturday morning. I must have been cycling pretty fast because when I collected my bicycle from the security guards who cared for me before the ambulance arrived, it was in the lowest gear (or was I really cycling fast at the moment of the accident?). The bicycle looks okay. In fact, while my face took the most hit, my body besides a few minor scratches with a bit of soreness was okay too.
But how?
If I were to fall off at a high speed, I would have ended up with some nasty scratches on my exposed arms and legs. According to eyewitnesses, I hit a pillar. But how? Wouldn’t the bicycle take the first hit? Wouldn’t I have hit my back while falling down? I was wearing a helmet. How would my eye get hit so badly?
I said I was being assaulted. But no one believes me.
I am not a big live recording fan (classical music is an exception). I prefer studio recording whereby all the tracks are perfectly recorded and mastered. A great live recording requires every band member to do well and the song rendition should offer something different, something better than studio recording (otherwise, why bother?). Live Tour 2022 “A revolution” at Showa Women’s University Hitomi Memorial Hall 2022/11/23 ticks all the boxes for me. Before writing this blog entry, I was thinking hard about what other live albums I like. I can only come up with one. Pink Floyd’s Pulse (Live).
How time flies is an understatement. A little over 11 years ago, I have participated in the Diablo 3 beta. Last weekend, I played the open beta early access. I would like to share with you my afterthought. The beta weekend has its ups and downs. I will address my concerns first and end this on a good note with things that I like.
In this blog post, I would like to share with you my casual rating on the various aspects of Dragonflight based on my initial month of playing the game. After all, I have to pay US$14.99 a month to continue playing. So one month is a good time to evaluate the expansion. And as I said, I am a casual player. Our views may vary. And if you are into watching a video review instead, below is the clip.
Now, 28 hours of gameplay on the latest expansion Dragonflight is not considered as long for a huge MMORPG like World of Warcraft. Previously, I have sunk in more than six thousand hours playing up to Cataclysm in the year 2010. I have left the game for around 10 years but I have made a promise in the past that I would return to WoW when Blizzard releases a new class and a new race. Dragonflight has Dracthyr – a new dragon race that offers one new class, the Evoker. Hence, I am back!
Update: Due to feedback from the players, the developer has substantially increased the boss spawn rate. So it should be a lot easier now. The Emperor protects!
If you are playing Warhammer Inquisitor as I do, you probably would wonder how long it would take to complete season 6. To answer that question, I would look at probably the lengthiest objective to complete, which is Ultimate Escalation.
Ultimate Escalation requires us to take down all 10 unique seasonal bosses. Each seasonal mission requires escalation points to generate and escalation points culminate as we take down Harbingers. Each seasonal mission we generate has a 15% chance to spawn a seasonal boss of a random type. Depending on how fast you can fill up the escalation bar – which in my case is somewhere between 30 mins to 1 hour including the actual gameplay, inventory management, screen loading time, etc., you can work out an estimation on how long more to go.
This recording by my brother-in-law Benny Pang and my sister Lora Wong is possibly the best public performance we had with my band No Eye Candy. It was a charity event Music for Hope. Jason Tan was my lead guitarist. Wieke Hartono was our drummer and had decided the pick up the guitar instead. The bassist was Cynthia Arianto, also the vocalist. And I wrote the songs, played the rhythm guitar, and was the main vocalist. Selrol Ng, the now-wife of Jason, was our band manager, and thanks to Selrol, she got us the gig. Wieke had personally arranged our music and she was so creative. Behind the scene, we had a lot of practice sessions including traveling all the way to KL Malaysia to play for our friend Jason Seet seeking his opinion. All songs are original, written by me. We had a great time.
I love arthouse movies. They got me thinking long after I left the movie theater, reminiscing scene after scene. The synopsis of Wandering (or The Wandering Moon) captured my attention.
In a park on a rainy evening, a 19-year-old university student, Fumi, offers an umbrella to a soaking wet 10-year-old girl, Sarasa. Realizing her reluctance to go home, Fumi lets her stay in his place, where she spends the next two months in peace. They take each other’s hands and seem to have finally found their place in the world until Fumi is arrested for kidnapping. Fifteen years later, the lonely two are reunited both still suffering from the stigma as the victim and perpetrator of “a pedophile case”. Will society give a place to the unshakable bond they have formed?
I am a massive fan of anything dinosaur. It is fascinating that creatures so giant and out-of-the-world looking existed for hundreds of millions of years in the past, we now get a glimpse of what some of them look like. I recalled years ago I read an online article that one British museum would exhibit dinosaur fossils, I had made a commitment to revisit the UK one day, which I did before the pandemic.
You know that feeling when you feel like you are drifting, not in control of where you are heading? You want to be grounded with something, just anything. But the sense of uncertainty is overwhelming you. That paralyzed feeling. You sleep, wake up, take a nap, and soon sleep again. How many days? How many days more?
I am dying to tell this to the world. But I can’t. Because I need this to happen first, then that to happen, and then …
But when?
At work, I thrive in crises. I love the firefighting, getting that high feeling. But when the work I do is in constant crisis and will be so for the next six months, one year, it isn’t a crisis anymore. Just business as usual. Our COO rallied the people today to charge forward. I admire his tenacity. In my mind, I thought of something I have learned two decades ago …
A death march.
Inflation. Rising interest rate. Looming recession. Ongoing pandemic. That war desperately needs a conclusion. US versus China. A retirement plan that already requires reassessment, is put at risk. Our world is full of surprises. Where is hope?
I love painting but don’t feel like painting these days. I love making music but don’t feel like creating music these days. I love video gaming but nothing really excites me these days.
Gosh. I need to move on. You need to move on. Why? So that we can move forward.
I am glad that I have bought a new iPhone. At least, I love photography and I am trying to take some pictures every day.
And oh. Yes, I love to blog. Still do. An overdue rekindled passion.
I love the outdoor staircases. The old versus new structure. A photo taken near my home.
