Maple Story - Lv 35

Managed to hit Lv35 in Maple Story recently. Here I am, posing with Evil Eyes. I told myself that I would start hunting them beginning from Lv35, but alas, they still aren't worth the trouble. I'll just stick to Wild Boars.

The picture shows with some of my new gear. The nice Cross Chainmail is just for show; it is so weak, I prefer to just continue using my Lv30 armor. I love the Axe & Shield, though.

J2EE Countdown: 3 Days

A few days more and it will be the end of my misery. The J2EE project isn't going too well. Everyone is still slacking as for normal. It doesn't matter matter that this is the last week cos' it feels just like the first week.

Aside from worrying about meetings, my Acer laptop is suffering from some unknown problem that appears to be the result of the virus I got rid of.

Once everything is over, I will do a clean reformat to also symbolize a clean start after the end of my nightmarish semester.

Virus Attack; Thank You Norton

I got hit by some idiotic virus again in the evening. It got me depressed. The same old symptons resurfaced (on me, not the computer): splitting headache, loss of appetite, nausea.

I thought of reformatting again, but I decided to run all the anti-virus progams on my PC first. Norton managed to detect the malicious trojan and deleted it. My PC has survived another ordeal. Yippee.

J2EE Countdown: 6 Days

And so, here I am on the very last week of my course. After next Monday, there will be no more boring groupmates-bashing and complaints in my blog. I look forward to that a lot.

For now, just bear with it...

As usual, Monday blues for everyone. That XJ overslept again (probably had a foursome the night before). KH pulled off an amazing stunt; one that I never saw coming. He did the "I am mentally unstable; gimme VIP treatment" routine by declaring that he is suffering from depression ("I feel like committing suicide"). This automatically relieves him from all his project commitments for the last week. I don't buy his lame excuse. This guy should win an oscar. What a fooktard.

Today, we went to meet Jie Min. At first, I didn't like her cos' her expression is a tell-tale sign that we are extra burden for her. But today, I saw how she actually squeezed 3 different group consultations together (my group included), and was running to & fro, helping anyone who called for her. I take back my words now. If only she was our tutor right from the start, perhaps things would have turned out differently.

Weekends are here!

Went to AL's home today for project meeting from 11 am to 7 pm. It was tiring as hell, and sad to say, we aren't making any progress. I told everyone to mentally prepare themselves for the worst as the deadline draws closer & closer. I can tell that most of them are losing their temper, and they even openly admitted that they dislike XJ (who was not here today). At this rate, I foresee a lot of drama next week. Probably people breaking down, crying, shouting, quarrelling, etc.

They are having a meeting again on Saturday, but good thing I am excused. Saved by my dental appointment again. It's another tooth extraction; a painful price to pay in order to obtain one day of freedom.

Aaah! More project $hit.

Yay. It is Thursday! My hellish daily meetings routine for the week is almost over (then I'll worry about it again next week). Today was no better; only AL and I were the only souls who turned up. The rest went to screw themselves somewhere.

Sometimes, I feel like just saying to them: "Look, guys. We are all gonna fail. Let's not care about this $hit any more. That way, I can get on with my life. AL can stop stressing himself out. XJ can go on sleeping till he graduates. JN can stop coming up with excuses not to turn up. KH can stop deliberately falling sick. And SL can find other things not to care about."

I must endure. 10 more days and counting. Then I will be as free as a penguin, soaring through the skies.

Wait, that didn't sound right.

My Week...

Haven't blogged for the past few days because of my daily project meetings.

Yesterday, we went to consult Danny, who then redirected us to Jie Min, one of the other tutors. We could tell that she was not happy to see us. As a tutor, she already has like 10+ other project groups under her; Danny only has 5 and he keeps pushing us to her. At the end of the day, our codes will were not fixed. We were stuck once more.

I can feel tension building up, especially in AL. His face turned black yesterday when XJ said that he did not bring his own codes. I expected that from XJ, but this was the first time AL reacted that way. I could tell that, out of the 6 of us, AL was the only one who was truly concerned at this point in time. The others are simply bo chup. As for me, I have cared & worried enough for the project during the first four weeks of this semester, so I am now just numb and waiting for this nightmare to end.

Nowadays, every time I come home from school, I would play Maple Story. It is my only source of entertainment now, given my crazy project meetings every week day. Good thing I have a dental appointment this Saturday so that gives me reason to skip (but I have to extract my tooth again... so sad).

I also managed to finish the HK detective series "To Catch the Uncatchable" that my mum borrowed. The ending was totally unexpected; a tragic ending to a comedy series that had me laughing all the way. It left a sort of bitter feeling in me.

*Spoiler:* The main character, Detective Mok contracted a medical condition from his injury after solving the last case. The doctor told him that he would drop dead any moment without any warning. Mok does not tell anyone about it, and indeed, he dies on the way to get his wedding photographs taken with his fiance.*/Spoiler*

I surfed around and realized that millions of fans were so put off by this ending that they wrote in tons of complaints to the show's development crew. In the end, they broadcasted an alternate 'happy ending', but it was lame and anti-climatic. The things people do to appease their fans...

Anyway, Duel Monsters GX episode 3 is out. Looks like I'll have more things to watch today. wee.

Monday Blues? More like Long-Term PMS.

This is going to be the beginning of a very looooooong week. The deadline for the project is 13 days away and our progress is still as pathetic as ever. I glanced at the little timetable my group has worked out; from now on, we are going to meet on every weekday from 10 am to 6 pm, with Saturday being a half day. (Holy, f**kin' s**t).

In such a dire situation, one would expect everyone to be in 'high alert' mode, right? No way; not with my screwed up groupmates. Everyone must be suffering from Monday blues or something.

XJ overslept (again... like what, for the 1 millionth time? Does he xxx every night or something?), JN pulled the old "last minute SMS: I got something on" routine, whereas SY just didn't care. The only ones who turned up were those who had lessons today (AL and KH), and one stupid guy who still cares (i.e. me).

We didn't do much cos' our sudden 'breakthrough' turned out to be merely a temporary moment of joy. Yes, we are stuck again. And AL says: "I think we need to meet more this week."

Holy f**k, 'meet more'??? How many days are there in a week? I feel like slapping someone. There is no way to express my feelings now, but with a most apt emoticon: -.-

Impressions: Yu-Gi-Oh Duel Monsters GX

Kyo gave me the links to download the first two episodes of Yu-Gi-Oh Duel Monsters GX on Bit Torrent. I must say I really enjoyed them very much; perhaps even more so than the original Yu-Gi-Oh series.

The opening song was unusual but lighthearted & upbeat. The intro featured the various characters and their cards. The 'baddies' (or perhaps I should call them 'rivals'?) are cool; I especially like the evil-looking Jun (the "Hell" deck duelist in Ep.2) and Ryo (with the Ultimate-Dragon-like "Cyber Dragon" in the opening). The French professor, Cronous is a Pegasus-wannabe but he looks very queer and speaks with an exaggerated accent.

There I go again, talking about the 'baddies'. I always forget about the good guys, but so far, they seem to be a weird bunch. Juudai is pretty neat, though. He plays an "Elemental Hero" deck, filled with anime-style super hero theme cards. Pretty original.

I also like the premise of the show in that everything (thus far) centers around the the Duel Academy. There may be a lack of any plot for the moment, but who cares; I like things to be straightforward this time round. The various 'houses' the characters belong to give the show a Harry Potter feel. haha.

I am hooked on the show. Guess I will download more as it gets released. Can't wait till Juudai actually duels Ryo.

I don't like this feeling!

I suddenly realized that this week was unlike anything I have experienced this semester.

For this week alone, I spent 4 days (inclusive of Saturday! *gasp*) going for project meetings, each lasting nearly 5 hours long (would've been longer if I didn't cook up an excuse to leave). I don't like this one bit. Whatever happened to my ultra slack group members? All of a sudden, half of them seem like they are on crack, especially AL who became super siao on. (He suggests meeting till 6pm every day beginning next week until the project deadline, that crazy #$%^!!!)

My life is beginning to feel very routine, mechanical and utterly dry. I guess this is what it is like to work in future. I also never realized how much I missed going out when I finally had free time today to go to AMK!

Coincidentally, I noticed that Kraazg is also having problems with J2EE according to his MSN nick. It seems that he is learning it to implement a project for his job. His deadline is 15 days, which is probably the same as mine. Looks like I am not the only one suffering from J2EE. Gyahahaha.

Maple Story (nothing to do with syrup)

Yay, I've managed to reach Lv 25 in Maple Story. It's not much of an accomplishment, but it's worth a mention since I got to switch from tacky-looking armor into something more nicer and presentable.

Anyway, Maple Story is this new 2D action/platformer MMORPG (probably the first of its kind) that I've recently started playing. It's not bad, but it took quite a while to grow on me because of its cutesy theme and the fact that it is not in 3D like all the other games I've played. Quite a number of my friends are playing it, too.

So what happened to Cronous, the game that I was hopelessly addicted to? It went commercial and all my friends who agreed to pay-to-play simply couldn't be bothered to keep their promise, leaving me as the only 'idiot' who bought the payment card. Even my guild leader put aeroplane, choosing to abandon the game for another that is free. Freakin' cheapskates.

Back to Work

My project-mates suddenly had a breakthrough. Thanks to Giant Hamster's sample J2EE codes and a semi-enlightening consultation with Danny, we managed to figure out things a bit. Our progress is no longer 0%; I'd say maybe 2% (which is still miserable...).

Normally, I would be happy when such things happen, but when it happens with only 2 weeks left to the deadline, it is not at all good. I had already planned to grant myself a quick and painless death by idling my time away, failing the module, and then starting afresh next semester. But with everyone else becoming slightly more serious about their work (I say slightly, cos' the talking cock and slackiness still goes on during meetings), I am driven by my conscience to push myself to work hard, too.

Oh, well. On Wednesday, we met up at Sylvia's to work on the project. I realized that she has a large VCD collection (pirated, of course). She had a lot of new & old movie titles; everyone grabbed a couple to go home and watch. I, myself, took AvP, Catwoman, and Starsky & Hutch. They should come in handy during my sleepless nights.

Gundam Seed Destiny

I managed to download the first episode of Gundam Seed Destiny to watch in the wee hours of the morning. Insomnia. Again. *sigh* (Incidentally, this is my first Bit Torrent download. wee.)

The opening was a visual treat, featuring lots of new characters as well as returning ones. (Yzak looks so cool in grey uniform! And that masked guy... very high chance he is a Kruuze clone or something.) The song was not bad, though I still prefer TM Revolution's INVOKE. Perhaps it will grow on me after a while.

I found it interesting that the episode begun with the Orb Battle. Caught sight of Calamity/Raider/Forbidden, but too bad the three druggies weren't around with their usual amusing banter.

The hijacking of the Gundams brings back memories of Seed (cliche?). The three Earth Alliance pilots are all badass; it almost seemed as if the Chaos/Abyss/Gaia were made to be stolen by them. Impulse appears near the end; it somehow reminds me of Victory Gundam (good god, no!). I didn't think MS with multiple detachable torsos/parts were back in style. *_*

Game Watch: "Shining Tears"

Oh, rejoice! Fans are getting a new 'Shining' game on the PS2! Shining Tears is the next instalment in the series. I fell in love with the character designs when I saw them. Even if the game wasn't fun (but I am sure it is), I'd play it just to experience the story and live the life of the characters.

Yoshitaka Tamaki didn't design the main characters this time round (he is in charge of monster/enemy design), but fellow artist "Tony" has done justice to the series with attractive and colorful characters. I just find it a little strange that, out of the 6 partner characters, 4 are females and 2 are males. Oh, well, I shall not complain since the two males are anthros; Lazarus the Dragonewt and Volg the Wolfling.

The characters are voiced by a mostly all-star cast. Most notably, the main character (Xion) and intro song are done by Souichiro Hoshi (of Gundam SEED fame). I downloaded the anime opening and it is beautiful (despite the noisy background); I can't wait to get my hands on an MP3 of the song.

The game is set to be released on the 3rd of November, which is sort of a nice bitter-sweet date since it is two days after my project deadline. I will be waiting for the game's release with great anticipation.

[ Resources ]
- IGN Opening Video (Beware: shaky-hands camera man filming movie off giant screen TV at the Tokyo Game Show.)
- Official Shining Tears site

I Hate Sundays!

I hate Sundays. It is almost as if Sunday is a predetermined day for self-reflection, tying up loose ends and pondering about everything that irks you. For me, today is one of those days where I wake up feeling moody and not taking any interest in anything that I do.

To pass the time, I tidied up my room, watched the latest episode of the detective drama I got hooked on, and... oh yes, reminded my groupmates up for our project meeting on Monday. (Our previous two meetings ended up in failure with only 2/6 people turning up.)

My Mum tells me that, since I am ready to just fail the damn module, why don't I just stay home everyday instead of wasting my time entertaining my groupmates. Well, I still have to carry on because I don't want to get a bad remark when they do team-mate appraisal at the end. At the very least, I gotta put on a good show.

I've got 3 more weeks left. I'll just bare with it. I am actually looking forward to the deadline (i.e. 1st November) so that I can be put out of my misery.

I Have Turned Bad!

My insomnia problem has been solved... by me falling sick. After so many days of sleeping late & waking up early, I have finally caught the flu and fever, ensuring that I go to sleep earlier than usual every night.

And because of that, I got an excuse for not attending today's project meeting. Yes, I have turned bad. But at least I am not as bad as I thought; AL SMS'ed me to tell me that only 2 people turned up today and they cancelled the meeting. Good thing I did not go and waste my cab fare.

Me + Hong Kong TV Series?

A few nights back, I passed by my Mum's bedroom and saw that she was watching one of those Cantonese Hong Kong shows she had rented from the VCD rental store. I usually wouldn't bother about those (since she usually watches some soap opera or drama), but this time, what I saw on the screen caught my interest.

My Mum was watching some comedy/detective series and, since I enjoyed the Kindaichi TV series when it aired last time, I sat down on my Mum's bed and watched the show with her.

Before I knew it, I was hooked and have been watching the show whenever I can't sleep every night (all thanks to insomnia). The name of the show in English is the awkward "Catch the Uncatchable", but I later learnt that its name is: 棟篤神探 (Heck, I don't know how to pronouce it). So far, I am enjoying it. It's not too bad, with a lot of comedic elements, yet the cases are serious. But I guess I am saying that just because this is the first HK series I am actually keen on watching.

Sometimes, weird things like that just happen in life.

Introducing the Stars of Our Show...

My insomnia problem carries on to plague me, causing me to sleep for only 3 hours today before going for my project meeting at 10 am. I was a little irritated when "SV" SMS'ed me that she overslept and, as usual, "XJ" simply did not turn up.

Ah, yes. From now, I shall be referring to my project groupmates by code names, just so to make my blogs a little more colorful. Let me introduce the five of them.

There is AL, a rather perky and hardworking kind of guy. So far, he seems to be the only one (other than myself) who is somewhat aware of our rather dreadful situation. Then, there is JN, who is also pretty hardworking (she volunteers to do things).

Next, we have SV and KH, who spend most of the time talking cock during our meetings and generally try to be totally oblivious to the project.

And finally, there is XJ, our mysterious fifth member who rarely shows up for meetings, and even when he does, he is awfully quiet and does not speak much. (We are just hoping that XJ is secretly a programming whizz who will ultimately help us in our darkest hour of need.)

Then of course, there is me. I used to be hardworking, but after considering the state of my group, I have sorta half given up hope.

At our meeting today, AL went to assign parts for each of us to do (SV,KH,XJ excluded, of course).Er, yeah. Splitting up the work when none of us have the faintest idea how we are going to do it.

I laughed in my mind: "I'll just go spend the day at AMK today (Note: which I actually did), and when I come home, I will have magically mastered J2EE and come up with all the codes for our meeting tomorrow morning at 10 am".

Good grief, they have no mercy for a guy suffering from insomnia. Oh, well. Enough rambling from me today. Perhaps I really should at least come up with something for the meeting, no matter how miserable my efforts may be.

Crazy M:TG Drafting Day

I woke up at 12 noon today (once again, thanks to my insomnia) and was surprised to see that GreatGuy actually SMS'ed me and asked me to AMK to draft M:TG. I was actually planning to stay home today, but since it has been quite a while, I obliged and quickly left the house after a quick lunch.

I reached there at 2 pm, and we began drafting with Chris and Andy (altogether four players). Darius arrived later; too bad he missed out. I was a bit disappointed with the cards I got from my Tournament Pack this time (probably due to the fact that my last 3 Tournament Packs all had imbalance/overpowered cards in them). My only consolation was a Keiga, the Tide Star from one of the boosters.

The draft lasted very long, all the way till 6 pm (because Chris/Andy occassionally had to stop and serve customers).

At night, after dinner, Mata's old M:TG buddies were around. They were Ah Xiong (a nice & quiet mature guy), Wen Bing (a okay, albeit talkative guy) and their friend. The three of them wanted to draft for fun and needed a 4th player. I told them I was tired from drafting in the afternoon, but Ah Xiong offered to pay for my 3 draft packs; they just needed a 4th player. (Of course, the cards would go back to him after the draft.) So I gave in and drafted with them as well.

Oh, well. I had a fun time. The little outing turned my typically boring Sunday into an eventful one.

Movie Review: "Resident Evil - Apocalypse"

RE: Apocalypse continues from where the first RE movie left off, so unless you have seen that, you might be a little lost here. I enjoyed this sequel a whole lot more than its predescessor. There is a lot of Matrix-style action and some lighthearted bits going on. I read from 8-Days that the movie's name was originally "RE: Nemesis", named after the game, which is why we see Jill and the Nemesis, too.

I won't comment on the plot since it is nothing special. A pretty nice movie to catch.

Insomnia!!!

The fact that I am typing this at 4 am in the morning clearly proves that I am suffering from insomnia! I have been having it for almost a week now. I go to bed at around 1 am, but end up actually sleeping at around 3-4 am.

A quick search on Google attributes it to the following possible reasons:

• significant life stress (job loss or change, death of a loved one, moving) <- yes, very likely...
• illness <- not very likely, but I do feel like I could've caught a cold in the rain.
• environmental factors like noise, light, or extreme temperatures (hot or cold) that interfere with sleep <- nope, not at all.
• things that throw off a normal sleep schedule (like jet lag or switching from a day to night shift) <- definitely no

I hope my sleep disorder heals soon.