My Blog Space

   

 

25th February 2006 - Saturday

   

About this Blog

This ugly website is trying to follow web usability from Jakob Neilson which is why there is no design whatsoever.
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Related Blogs

Aifen

Cecilia

Huijuan

Phoebe

Shuzhen

Kenneth

Kevin

Xiuli

Xinda

 

My Tagboard

Gone for good due to regular spamming from those retarded people who are too free to post all the links on my blog.

Abandoned my previous blog created at blogspot. Many will ask me the question:Why? I think I was quite taken aback by the incident that happened in May 05 which I rather not talk about it. The last person who have asked me 'Why?' was during my trip to Kenny's house during Chinese New Year Season. To Aifen: I'm back!

Anyway, had my driving lesson this morning and my instructor was actually the father of one of the contestants in the Channel U's competition, 'Chao Ji Zhu Chi Ren'. Every lesson, he will talk about his son and ask me to watch the show and support his son by calling (In the end, I still miss the show because I always forgot the date and time). His son got into the finals and I think I'm not going to miss the finale tomorrow. Ok. Here's abit of advertisement on behalf of my driving instructor.


(this is the slip that he gave out to all the other driving instructors and students)

Please support S7, Huang Zheng Tao in the finals tomorrow, Sunday, 9pm at Channel U. Make as many calls as you can. Thank you, xie xie, arigatoo.

 

5th March 2006 - Sunday

 

Virtual World vs Reality

It's a cruel world out there at MapleStory, the most popular online RPG game that is hitting Singapore by storm after Gunbound. I have created a character in my sister's account since February and has been playing for about a month. I know it's seems that I may be abit slow when people has already started playing since last year. The reason why I only started recently is because work is too dull and I feel that probably playing this game can make me feel young.

Anyway, back to the main point. Why I said it's a cruel world out there at MapleStory? I have only started playing for a month and there are already alot of cheats and scams and vulgarities I have came across. Here's a few:

Trading Items

You can trade items with other people where the 2 parties agree on some terms, either in exchange for mesos (money) or items. If you are not careful, a noob (beginner) could be cheated by the other to drop your item out instead of using the trade function. I have actually encountered one who wanted me to drop my item out because my character was noob. Hello, I was not as stupid as you think!

Trading Fame

When your character reaches level 15, your character has a fame value which it can be 'up' by others. However, in Maple, there's no such thing as free lunch, no one will actually up your fame just because your character is pretty or powerful etc. (Actually I have met one who actually 'up' my fame willingly!) The common practice is trading fame or buying fame for 7k. Of course, if you are trading fame, there is not much choice but to trust the other party to up your fame once you have 'up' his/hers. Unfortunately, today, I came across this bloody hell character who ran away / log off once I 'up' his fame. Damm stupid I would say. Anyway, this is the virtual world for you. Everybody is trying to cheat one another.

Vulgarities

There's a message entry at the bottom left of the screen and I always see f*** everywhere. Of course, you can't key in exactly 'that' word, but they can always replace it with some other characters and the meaning is still the same.

(click on image to view bigger resolution)

Noob beggars

This is the most common incident that you will come across most of the time. I was just walking from one town to another when I received a trade request. This noob will beg me for some mesos using his sweet mouth saying words like 'You are very Pro, can give me some mesos?'. Hello, my character is only at level 15 and you are saying that my character is very 'Pro', are you kidding me? Anyway, I just walked off. Don't even bother to reply to them. If you have the time to beg, why not spend your time using your character to kill some snails or bubbles since this is what Maplestory is all about, gaining experience so that you character levels up.

(click on image to view bigger resolution)

Since my sisters were more experienced with this kind of cheats or scams; since they have played it since last year, whenever I was playing, they will always warn me about this and that therefore somehow my route as a wizard was probably smooth-riding (sometimes my sis will help me on completing some quests and leveling up).

Advice to people out there who just started playing MapleStory: Do not trust anyone! That's the best advice I can give.

Reasons why you like to play MapleStory: The graphics are astonishingly beautiful and the characters are very cute. You can buy clothes and equipments for your characters. You can make some virtual friends (but most probably they are out there trying to make use of you in some way!). It the talk of the town since there's a high chance that your friend is also playing.

Ok, Some screenshots of my sis's MapleStory characters.

:( Tomorrow is work again and I'm expecting 2 Interns from Ngee Ann Poly. Stressed :(

 

7th April 2006 - Friday

 

What a Day

 

Took half day leave to attend an interview this morning at SMU because I was informed on Wednesday that I was shortlisted. -_-


Took a train to Dhoby Ghaut MRT and a 5-10min walk to School of Information System (SIS) Building. The building is cool and everything but on the whole 'It doesn't look like a school to me!' The different departments are all seperated by road paths. In all, these buildings do not look like they belong to one, except with the same architect design. There's no boundary to indicate that this is the school compound. Everyone can just walk past just like any other buildings near the streets. I feel kind of weird going there.

Anyway, went in and reported to the security guard in charge. They gave me a slip and told me to report to the room written in the slip. Ok. I went up and realise that I was early. Went in to the room but a lady in charge told me to wait outside because the badge of students inside the room are waiting for their turn before I can go in. Given me a set of their school brochures and I sat on the bench beside the door. Saw 2 SMU students preparing 2 interview rooms. To make myself feel more relaxed, I listened to my Ipod while reading the brochures. More and more students came. Finally, the 2 professors and his counterparts came. We knew that the interview was about to start. The students in the waiting room came out and went into both the interview rooms. It was my turn to go inside the waiting room when the lady called my name.

There were two rows with 6 seats on each row. The lady told us that the 1st row will be interviewed in Room1 and the 2nd row in Room2. After all of us were seated, she briefed us on the reason of interviews and what we were supposed to do while inside this room.

While her assistant was collecting our 'O' level certs and Polytechnic academic transcripts to make copies of it, she told us to watch a video on the professors' of SIS talking about the benefits and ....... (How do you think I can absorb what they are talking while I was thinking about the interview which is about to happen in about 30 mins time?) Anyway, I find that the video was badly taken in terms of the resolution, lighting and also sound.. (Sorry to say that but as someone who has taken a module on DVID, I can't help but judge the quality of the video.)

After that, we were required to read an article with a given time of only 15min and think about what to say during the interview. Everyone's topic is different so you can't really discuss. My topic was 'Knowledge is not Information' , do you agree with it? Oh my god, reading the article is already pain in my brain, somemore I still need to give my opinions! What the heck is that!

After the article, it's time to have some interactions with some new friends who are going in together with me for the interview. From the brief introduction, I know that all of us came from Polytechnic and I think almost all are IT diploma holders. (I wonder if JC students are even required to attend an interview!) Ok, quite a good start since we are breaking the ice to start talking. The lady said in that way we will not feel nervous when we go inside the interview and can readily speak out your points to the professors.

After the introductions, the lady told us to read up the posters around the room. There is particularly one poster that she said will give us a hint for the interview. Upon hearing that, all of us swarm around the poster and read about the contents. It's actually an analysis question and they show you the workings to derive with an answer. Of course, there's no right or wrong answers. Ok, here's the question: How many piano tuners are there in New York City? Puzzled? Confused? I feel the same way too. How do you find the number of piano tuners in New York.

After that, it's time we went into the interview room. Ok. I think I'm getting long-winded here. Anyway, the interview was split into 4 parts. The first part is to talk about the article. I started talking babbly when one of the lecturer's question me in the start. I did badly for that part. I can tell you, this is going to be the first and last interview I had in SMU. I don't think I even want to try applying for SMU again. I'm not trying to scare you or anything, but this is my experience and I think that if you think that you really like to study there, I think you should give it a try. The interview is a great exposure to me. At least I know, this is how competitive the world is. T T

Anyway, some photos I took while clearing my home storeroom.

A dinosaur phone from Ericsson probably 5 years ago. It's fascinating how technology advances so fast. It's a miracle that we did not throw it away.

Our bicycle. The tyres need to be pumped before I can cycle again.

Look like those binoculars you use in military but in fact it's a fake. But you still can use it as normal binoculars.

My driving is getting bad. I keep making mistakes for every lesson. I always make mistakes in making sharp turns. I feel that I'm getting more and more retard after graduating from poly. Can anyone tell me why is this happening to me? I'm starting to get worried :(

 

22 April 2006 - Saturday

 

Friday was a bad day for me. My web layout that I have painstakingly designed was commented for bad navigation, better with no country flags placed. So bad until that it's was not even worth a cent. When I ask the students about their opinion, they said it was alright, it was nice. Ok, so who's right and who's wrong! Should I say that nobody appreciate my design or I'm a bad designer that people are lying to me so that I feel better! Everything I do until now was not even appreciated. I felt like I'm just taking my pay doing something that is just dumped and thrown away into the drain with the sewage water.

I'm wondering what is my purpose of working in this company. :(

Maybe it's time for me to leave. Can anyone tell me what to do?