Dolphin Olympics

A cute, simple looking game that got me going back. The game will even consider your local time zone and show day and night accordingly!

-3H0U

He loves me. He loves me not.

The age old question. "Does the person of my dreams really love me?"

Does she smile at me?
Does he bother to call me?
Does she touch me when we talk?
Does he talk to other girls?
Is she attached?
Is he married?

I supposed we can always ask.
And once we do, we can only trust.

-2H0U

Unasked help

Thanks to...
Benjamin for volunteering to take over my cases and helping me when I refused;
Guru for the same issue;
Eric for locating a source code when I refused his help.

-3H1U

Last minute

Stupid Kelly. Disappeared for 5 whole years and the first thing he asked was to help his cousin do Java.
"When he wants it?"
"She needs to hand it in tomorrow"
"Tomorrow??!!! I want a finger of yours as payment", I replied grumpily.
I downloaded the code given by the lecturer inside and guess what? It's empty!
"I want two fingers!!"
"Ha ha, I need my fingers to play games"
So he's going to buy me dinner on Saturday. I'm not going let him pay of course but I have my right to grumble and demand fingers :p

Gaga called me out for a game of Pirates. We chose a chess table and set up our game. To counter his fondness for La Furie and large ships, I chose HMS Alexander for her speed and La Resolucion for her power. I filled out HMS Alexander with a captain, a musketeer and an oarsman. For La Resolucion, I gave her a captain. Gaga chose 2 large ships and a small one. Seeing that he has several crewmen, I knew that he must have picked his special crew that allows him to have 4 more point values.
The "local seas" was in the shape of macaroni. Our home bases were at the far ends. 3 wild islands were scattered in between. The island furthest away from us held the most gold. Due to the tight constraints of space, forts were not allowed to be played.
The horn goes off. HMS Alexander sped for the nearest island while La Resolucion sailed gracefully towards the richest one. My plan was a gold grab. It was fortunate that Admiral Gaga picked slow ships. I ended my turn.
To no surprise, Gaga revealed a crew that gave him 4pts. He then revealed a helmsman that gave his flagship greater speed. This won't be a cake walk after all.
HMS Alexander made landfall first but so did Admiral Gaga. He stole the gold under my nose with an explorer, which allowed him to cart off all the treasure. I signalled HMS Alexander to set course for the island furthest away while my flagship went for the island with the largest yield.
Contact! My English captain sailed up to a small enemy ship and revealed the musketeer and himself. Cannons were fired and the opponent was left derelict. While distracted, she was rammed on the port side by an enemy battleship. She was boarded but the attackers were repelled quickly. In the fight, her oarsman was lost. HMS Alexander then fled for land and docked. Meanwhile, my flagship also made landfall.
Pursuit was hot on both my ships. As La Resolucion delivered her booty safely onto the home island, the remaining two enemy battleships bored into HMS Alexander's position. She hopped into safety at the next island but alas, her captain was lost. The two battleships tried to blockade the island but she broke out while Admiral Gaga was on the wrong side of the island. She fled for the home island and was safely escorted into port by myself.
Admiral Gaga called for a return to port and the tattered remains of the combined English and Spanish fleet gave chase. HMS Alexander went ahead in a daring attempt to sneak a broadside attack. Without her captain, her crew were too slow and she was sunk by the enemy flagship. La Resolucion caught up and gave a valiant battle but in the end, the two ships turned on her and all hands were lost.
The gold was tallied and victory went to Spain and England.

Ref:
La Resolucion (SS-009, Spanish, Spanish Main, 12pts, Uncommon)
HMS Alexander (040, English, Crimson Coast, 8pts, Common)

-2H0U

Departures and divisions

Yesterday was Debugger and NDrew's last day. Debugger is a nice, helpful guy who just like to disturb me. NDrew is nice too but he won't stop stealing my snacks. Once again, we lost 2 experienced colleagues that will be hard to replace.

I showed my little ships to my colleagues. The range of reactions was interesting.
"You're just like my son" -my shi mei who doesn't have kids and is one year older than me
"You're just like my brother. He's two years older than me and he's younger than you!"
"That's very interesting"
"So cute!"
"My son(me) wants to give this to me" -she's kind of my mentor
"You play this?"

I went off after work and met the others for Chloe's sending off dinner. When I arrived, they were finishing their soup. The place is run by a Hainanese group who cooks with a Russian influence. As usual, we traded news and gossips. I learnt that Biscuit is getting more unpleasant which suited me fine. For desserts, we picked off 3 on whim and they turned out to be their flaming specialty The ice cream cake was set on fire with burning brandy and the taste of it was strong and fragrant. The second was stir-fried cherries in orange liquor served with vanilla. The last was crepes in orange juice and brandy(I think so..). Who wants to go?

I shared a cab ride with Ding Dang and had a long chat with him. He had long been a pacifist and a peacemaker and it was until recently that I realised how in odds our thinking were. Can we really adopt a give and take attitude? What about guys like Biscuit, who take and take?

Finally, I brought out my fishing fleet against Gaga's fully assembled armada. The 30-points game was over quickly but it gave hint to what was to come. I chose speed while Gaga went for power. I went for assets while he worshipped talent. With our respective mistakes in mind, we tweaked the game parameters and had a 40-points game. I used my speed to good effect and so did Gaga with his firepower. When I got 2 ships in close proximity, I rammed his chase ship left and right and that gave my treasure ship a breathing chance. His tiny ship-destroyer La Furia, later crawled in and things got pretty hot. In another sector of the sea, my Fire Dijiin was unmolested throughout the game. She built a fort and carted off some treasure. While the rest of the world was fighting or sinking beneath the waters, she sailed into the home island unchallenged and pushed the gold tally to a win.

-7H3U

Pains

I got a new pain. My left wrist. Ya, I went badminton again :p But I shouldn't play too much as my ankle is not fully recovered yet.

On the issue of pain, it's so tough to build those little ships. My hand trembles whenever the slots for my rare ships are not precisely cut. What about a little precision engineering??

-4H2U

New member to my fleet

By the way, a friend of mine suffered a fall and couldn't meet me for dinner. Speedy recovery...

-4H2U

Military takeover

This came as a shocking news today. The government of our closest military ally has been overthrown. Will we move?

-0H0U

Forwarding links

A friend sent me this link
and I wanted to share it with my friends online.
What I got was aggravation.

"What's this?"
"What's tat?"
"Is it the latest porn?"

I must have forgotten that the new hobby of my fellow countrymen is to be BUSY. Pardon me for sharing. It won't happen again.

-5H4U

The day when we had no cash in our pockets

As arranged, I went to Gaga's house for swim and games. I took a cab and Voila! Where's my wallet? Happily dozing at home, no doubt. This paved the way for an interesting day.
I called Gaga down to pay for my cab fair. After which, we have $9-10. "What? You don't have any cash at home?", I was incredulous. "My clients lor", he replied sourly.

We had lunch at a coffeshop and depleted most of his cash. As we had planned to watch a movie, I did a funds transfer so that we could pay for the tickets. Once done, we allocated an hour to play the Constructible Strategy Game I brought with me. After the game, we were so pleased with it that we checked out the official website. We were so engrossed that we ran into time trouble and had to take a cab. We would pay via Visa and for the tickets as well. Wait a minute, how much cash did you have before I transferred the money? Nothing? Oh great.
After the movie, we used his last $10 in his bank account to top up his EZ-link card. We then used it to purchase our dinner at McDonalds.
As I do not have my EZ-link card with me, we walked up to Leisure Craft and back to Raffles City on foot. There we found that they sell 3 series of the Pirates card that will become our new vice. We promised ourselves to be back after payday and journeyed home. Him on his EZ-link card. Me on $1.80 in coins.

-4H1U

Yahoo mail

Argh. Finally got it to be able to send out mails again.
I have suspected for some time that the disabling of their ads stopped me from mailing out. Was right.
Irritating...

-1H1U

Java...

Another 1.5hr and I completed it.
Total 3hrs. Oh well, not too bad.
Good thing is he coded or secured a copy before I completed so the last half hour I was just coding for fun.

-1H0U

Quick work

Ok... I created the constructor and the accessor methods. Did a conversion of String to Double. Then tested the methods. 1.5hr, not too bad... (self-flattery)

-1H1U

It never fails

"When is it due?"
"Oh, actually he has to hand in on Wednesday"
"..."

-0H1U

Income tax

My first tax payment. Not too bad I guess.

Btw, I uploaded some photos.

-1H2U

Dream: catching up

[Dream state]
Handphone rings.
Me: "Hello? This is JW. How may I help you?"
Caller: "This is Mr Siu. How may you help me??"
Me: "Err.. I'm kind of a helpdesk"
[Ponders]
"Oh! You're Siusian aren't you?"
[Wondering why he told the wrong surname]
Mr Ling: "Yes. My handphone number is xxxx-xxxx"
Me: Oh ok, thanks.
Mr Ling: "I've left my job and is now a team lead. I'm happy to see that you're doing well.
Me: Er ok, thanks.
[/Dream state]

I woke up feeling touched, mixed with a little guilt. He is my character reference and I have not seen him for 4 years.

-3H1U

Break down

I thought I could pride myself on my health as well as my stamina in project work. However, I have also not failed to fall sick after the completion of a tough one. So I woke on a monday morning with a pain in my throat, knowing that it's too late. Rather than let it bloom on Tuesday, I took sick leave.
Under the heavy influence of fatigue and a little bit of the drug, I slept from 10am to 5pm. What good timing!

-?H?U

Another career flip flop

Oops, guess I did it again.

For those who missed my posts, I have been working overtime on a novation project for the last few days. Thursday was the worst where we worked till 8am. Today (saturday) , we worked till 1am (sunday).

This novation project was my "most urgent task" for the last 4 weeks and was the cause of much of my stress. It wasn't helped by the fact that people who think that their demands on my time is more critical.

Given all the effort I put in, I thought it would be a waste if I left now. So I would probably go for one last interview. If no job offer comes, then I'll wait for my contract to mature, collecting my 13th month.

Till then.

-2H1U