Bao's BLOG!!

Hi Everyone! Wow, I haven't updated my blog in a long time! The main obvious reason was, that I think that nobody was reading my blog - or, the people that were reading it, were the same people that I would e-mail on a weekly basis, so there wasn't really a point to update everyone via both e-mail and blogging. Anyway, I'm writing this blog entry now because I wanted to write about stuff that wouldn't fit in an e-mail, or maybe it's not casual enough for the e-mail.

So over the past few months, I have lost two "good" friends - I put "good" in quotations because, well, if I lost them as friends, how "good" could they really be? I mean, I've know them for a long time, and we do a bunch of things together, but it was finally time to part ways. I'm not going to list names in this section, but I think most people know which two people I'm talking about. So yeah, we're no longer friends - I've deleted them off facebook, and I don't want to have any more communication with them. It's kinda weird that I'm now writing a blogpost, which is the most accessible way for them to read what I'm saying, but whatever.

But no time to be sad - I have made dozens of new friends recently, or I have strengthened bonds with more people. First, Eric and I became friends again - I messaged him on his birthday in January, and things started from there and we're okay again. Next, I started going to a Meetup for Mississauga Boardgames, and I've been doing so every Wednesday since the middle of June and then even some Fridays or Saturdays, and I'm having a blast.

Now we're up to the point that we're not just meeting on Wednesdays and Saturdays, but we're starting to hang out more in real life; a few weekends ago I went to a Filipino Street Food Festival because one of my boardgamer friends (her name is Maui) was participating in it, so I wanted to show my support. And then on a random Thursday, she suddenly invited me out for burgers and videogames so I took up her offer and did that too.

Friends have been pretty tame in the past - and events have been pretty structured - but don't you ever want to have those spontaneous kinds of friends, that call you up at 1 in the morning and ask if you want to go stargazing with them? Well, it's not that extreme yet, but the other day after a Boardgame outing, I was invited to a friend's place (once again, Maui :D) at 2am, and we stayed up gaming until around 5am.

So that's the kinds of friends I have now, and I'm liking it. After Magic on Mondays, a bunch of us would head to McDonalds and kinda just chat and chill about Magic, and maybe play a few games. Most of the time I don't even play Magic at McDonalds anymore - I just go there and chat with people. We would be at McDonalds from 9pm until 12am when it closes, and we would just chat and be friends. The friendship level is not as awesome as it is with the boardgames people, but it's proceeded beyond the point where we just play Magic.

We've been going to more UVSA events, lead up by their new leader, Nikki - I want to support UVSA in any way I can, and going out to events is one of them. I mean, I don't see them that often, because they're still based in Toronto - but when they have big events (and small events too, like Wings or Sushi gatherings) I try to come out for that. So that's a good friendship thing too.

Friendships with Tomson and etc are slowly expanding - it's pretty much still Magic mostly, and throw in a few xbox games here and there. Tomson has informally invited me out to Tennis but I haven't taken that offer yet.. but it's still good. I look forward to going out and playing more board games and videogames and other activities with my new-found friends.

Gaming wise, I still play Magic, and we've been playing a tiny bit more League of Legends (but not a lot) - the Hearthstone expansion came out and it's pretty fun - and we got back into N+. We got Mario Kart 8 and that's pretty fun, and we got a game called NES Remix 2 and it's pretty neat too. And as I said before, we're back into playing Sweet Day at Maui's :D Alan introduced us to a worker-placement game called Puerto Rico, and I'm really enjoying it. My next task is to get Maui into Hidden in Plain Sight :P

Additionally, I've gotten more people interested in board games! I got Duy to go once and Vinh to go twice, Alex to go once, and I got Ehsaan to come too - and then this upcoming Wednesday, Adam Hammill will be joining us so that should be cool.

One of the things I wanted to update about were the wonderful (and not so wonderful) board games which I've been playing! That's what the blog post was for - I wouldn't send out an e-mail listing 28 games and talking about each - the blog format is better for that. I've played a lot of games, but not a lot of each (except a few), so my opinion might be biased on the novelty.

Oh man, I have a list of 28 games, and I kinda want to rank them in order, and I kinda want to write a small description about each one, but then that would be like 28 paragraphs, and not a lot of people want to read 28 paragraphs about board games. Maybe I'll just talk about a few of my favorite ones.

On most nights, we end on a game of Ultimate Werewolf - previously, I've played Mafia, and then we switched to Werewolf with some unique roles, and nowadays we play a lot of Ultimate Werewolf, which has a bunch of unique roles and everything and it's really fun and exciting. We usually have a group of about 13-20 people, which is kinda required to play Werewolf - there are a lot of other games that require 7+ people to be really fun, so I urge you to come out to these events - because we don't usually get a group of that many people at home. Sometimes if we're shy a few people (7-8 people) and we still want to play a deductive game, there's Resistance/Avalon, which is pretty similar and also quite fun. Once again, I probably won't purchase it, because we don't normally have a crowd that big to  play with.

There's Telestrations, which is pretty much like Scribblish, and that is always a funny party game. I've been recording matches of Telestrations and there have been some really funny outcomes, and overall it's just a really good time everytime we play Telestrations.

In terms of more normal games, I've been playing Splendor, which I describe as, a game where you buy SCVs to buy more SCVs, and eventually you can afford to buy SCVs that give you victory points. I mentioned Puerto Rico before, and now I will mention Lords of Waterdeep, which comes from the folks over at Dungeons and Dragons, and it's also a worker-placement game where you go collect allies and you go on quests and get rewards. It's also pretty enjoyable.

I've been playing super-long games (2+ hour games) such as Terra Mystica and Caverna - Terra Mystica can sorta be described as a more complex Settlers of Catan (less dice rolling though), and Caverna is a worker-placement game like Puerto Rico, but like five times as complex. I enjoyed my first playthrough of Terra Mystica, and now I will go for better strategies next time - Caverna I didn't like as much - it looks nice, but it takes a long time and if you fall behind you really fall behind.

When I first joined I played a game of Coup, but didn't like it, but now I've grown to like it much more. It's a very simple game for 3-6 people (we tried it with two, it was pretty terribad) and it can actually be kinda fun. If it was cheap maybe I'd get it, or of course we can just all go to Boardgame night and try it out there.

Lastly, I want to mention a new activity, in the form of Ricochet Robots - I think we would like it! It's kinda just a puzzle game, where we have a board of robots trying to get to a certain spot, and they have restrictive movements and we just all stare at the board for 30 seconds and then one of us spots that we can accomplish our goal in 8 moves - and then we have a minute to try to beat that guy's record. I think you guys would enjoy that. I've read a review about it and it sounded bad, but then I played it once and I think it's pretty awesome and funny.

And I think that's enough for this update! Other games I've played include Smallworld, Parade, Chaos of the Old World, Bean Bonanza, Betrayal on Haunted Hill, the Catan card game, Shadows over Camelot, Shadow Hunters, Tsuro, Alihambra, Libertalia, Pandemic, Thunderstone, Galaxy Trucker, 7 Wonders (I kinda played it), Masquerade, Istanbul, and We Didn't Playtest this At All - which I actually bought a copy of and will be playing it tomorrow. So, if you guys ever need suggestions on boardgames, I can tell you a bit about each of these games, and why I liked them or disliked them.

Anyway, I first started writing this blog post on August 15th, and now it's 10 days later - and I've played more boardgames since then but whatever, no need to write about them yet. Vinh and I just did the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge, and that was pretty fun, and we donated to the cause as well. Yesterday Adam and Alan came over and we played Puerto Rico, and then we went to Wendy's and we randomly run into another Adam, from Boardgames. We finished the night going through Chapter 1 of Tales of Xillia2, and this seems like a good time to end the blog update. Anyway, it's Monday now, so soon I will go to the bank, then to XPlanet for a bit of Magic, then to Untouchables for a lot more magic, and then I patiently wait for Wednesday to introduce Adam to a whole group of new friends and new games. Excitement!

Anyhoo, this sounds like a good point to end the e-mail, and I should get started on writing my blog entry... wait -

I missed February's blog entry! So let's pretend this is February's blog entry, and then I'll do another blog entry near the end of March.

So last week, David introduced me to Hearthstone - well, obviously I knew that the game existed, but just like many other technologies, I kinda decided to avoid it until enough people talked me into it; kinda sorta. I already had Magic, which took up a lot of my time, so I didn't really want to try a new one - also, from trying "random drafts of games we don't know", I already had the idea that the game isn't as good as Magic. It's by Blizzard, so maybe it's good, but can it really be that good?

So Tim plays Hearthstone, and he's been spending a lot of time on it. I would say, before Hearthstone, he was 60% Magic, 40% League of Legends; after Hearthstone, he is 90% Hearthstone, 10% Magic (0% League). Anyway, he's been bugging me to get it, but I didn't; then David came over, told me that Hearthstone was good, and then at a spur of a moment, we decided to download it onto my computer so I can try it out.

I played the first few tutorials, and it seemed simple, yet kinda interesting. David tells me that he's played a few games (against real opponents), but I wasn't ready for that yet and I continued playing against bots. Anyway, that's all we had time for that day, but I continued to play against bots. I was under the impression that David was miles ahead of me, so I made it a goal to at least catch up to him... but then later I found out that David only played like, 5 real games, while at the time I've played like 10 bot games and 0 real player games. Fast forward to yesterday, and now I've played about 15 real games and maybe 60 bot games.

So it turns out I like the game! I mean, it's a nice past-time - it's not replacing League or Magic or anything. What do I like about the game? I think it's the novelty. Okay, first of all, the game mechanics are pretty good - they're alright, I've had my fair share of wins and losses, and I'm not a perfect player yet - I still make misplays. What I mean by novelty is that there are new mechanics and cards that I don't know about yet.



Remember how we used to draft magic cards without knowing the set beforehand? It's like that. The first time seeing Phytohydra or Who/What/When/Where/Why, is what I'm getting with this game. As of right now, I still don't know a lot of the cards, and I don't want to know - I want to discover them as I go along. The other day, I fought a guy online, and he brought out this guy that was pretty much like Doran the Siege Tower - he deals damage equal to his health. That's pretty cool, and then my opponent cast a spell that gave him x2 health - so now he's a 12/12? That's pretty cool, finding out about new cards that you didn't know existed.



I opened a booster, and I got a rare which is like, 1/3 - at the end of your turn, put a +1/+0 counter on a random dude you control. That's kinda neat. There are some other neat ones. The last booster I opened, I got a 2/2 which had "the first creature spell you cast each turn costs 1 less" - which, to be honest, didn't excite me much. But for the most part, the game can still surprise me plenty.



The game features 9 classes - Mage, Rogue, Warrior, Warlock, etc - and each class starts at Level 1. When you make your custom deck, you have access to a shared pool of creature cards, and then a set of spells that only your class has access to. You start with 5 class-specific spells per Class, and as you play games with that Class, you level that Class, and unlock up to 5 more cards, up to Level 10; So as you unlock more cards, you get more of that WOW/surprise factor.

Anyway, I started writing this yesterday, but when I started writing, I haven't yet tried two aspects of the game - The Arena, and Crafting. Now I've tried them, and I have to rewrite this part of the blog entry. I was going to write how I'm about to lose the WOW factor, because I just finished unlocking all the basic cards, and now the new-card-smell will come too infrequently to be really enjoyable. I also mention how, since each deck has a shared amount of cards, then each deck looks kinda similar. Sure, there are still different strategies, but I can tell you that 7 of my 9 decks have that 2/2 Provoke creature, and 80% of the opponents (both real and bots) use this same 2/2 Provoke creature - and so on, for other cards.

But now... I've tried Arena.

Arena is kinda like Sealed/Draft - but in a more casual kind of way, and unlike Magic, it doesn't take 2-4 consecutive hours to complete. You choose a class, and then you're presented with 3 cards - you take one, and then you're shown 3 more cards and you repeat, until you have a deck of 30 cards. The cards you get are of course randomized, but you will be guaranteed a certain number of commons, uncommons, rares, and even epic rares and legendaries. So there's the wow factor here - you can find out about new cards and it's super interesting to see them.



After you make your deck, you can fight other people who have also made an Arena deck! You keep your Arena deck until you've accumulated 3 losses, after which your "event" is over and you go and collect your prizes. So far I've completed two Arena events - the first I went 3-3, the second I made a silly deck but I still managed to go 2-3 - and this morning I started another Arena deck but I haven't played any games yet. So it costs 150 coins to enter the Arena (the first time you try in the beta, it's free), but the prizing isn't bad. When I went 3-3, I got a Booster (worth 100 coins), 30 coins, and 20 arcane dust; When I went 2-3, I got a Booster and 40 coins. So it cost me 150 coins to enter, and after 2-3 I win 140 coins worth of prizing. That's pretty good. I recommend if you spend coins, spend it at the Arena.



Coins are still normally awarded at a slow pace - You get 10 coins for every 3 wins you get (against real players), and every day there's a new quest which nets you about 40 coins - so if you're a casual player you might get 50 coins per day. So maybe you get to play Arena once every 3 days, if you want to play that much. That's actually not too bad - but there's not too much incentive to play more than a few games per day, unless you actually like the game :)

Crafting is pretty much the Card Store. With Crafting, you can see all the cards available - so I tried not looking at too many of the super awesome cards - I still want it to be surprising later. So you know how Magic stores (like Untouchables) lets you trade in cards for 60% of their value? It's like that here, except it's closer to 20% (+/-6). It takes 100 Dust to craft any rare card, and you can Disenchant any rare card for 20 Dust; Epic cards cost 400 but can be Disenchanted for 100, and Legendaries cost 1600 Dust to craft, and can be Disenchanted for 400 (I think). Uncommon cards can be made for 40, Disenchanted for 5. Anyway, I opened an Epic card that I thought was pretty bad, so I disenchanted it, and the game gave me an extra 100 dust because it's the first time I did it - and with that I bought a few uncommons and another rare.



Anyway, I'm enjoying the game, and I can see myself playing it for the foreseeable future; I might just play it casually, completing quests and competing in the Arena, and fighting with friends. I think the beta is ending within a few weeks, so now's a good time to join if you'd like. Also, you can take Screenshots! I've taken over 100 screenshots, but hey, that's just who I am.

Hi everyone! So as everyone can see, I missed my December 2013 entry. Then again, I do send out weekly e-mails to everyone (Alan, David, Vinh, Duy, Quynh Anh, Alex) - so other than a few people who just read this blog and are not on my e-mail list, you really haven't missed much. I was just thinking that one of my blog entries would be one of my e-mails, but I just haven't gotten around to copying and pasting any of those; it would feel kind of lazy, don't you think?

Anyway, gmail would probably be around forever (or for the foreseeable future), so there's no real need to copy and paste it here... but let me skim the past few e-mails and post three paragraphs about November, December, and January:

November: Games are priced so varied now, what's to say which ones should be more fun? PS4 and XBox One came out, didn't get those! Had Swiss Chalet, got Dominion Dark Ages, went to Scaddabush... had a Pre-Christmas Party! It was awesome and fun. Most of you were there :P

December: The Word Boob is funny and cool :) WinMagic Christmas party was fun. Scented Soaps are interesting! There's a new meme about a guy's wife. Lol Sexy Elephant (eventually I did find out what the words are and I can hear them and now I'm sad :( ) - also I posted that link with the gabvalencino instagram, which I still watch every now and then to this day - he made a few new ones around Christmas time, you should check them out! American Hustle is a good movie! Lots of relatives came for Christmas, had grand old time - check facebook video for most of it! Boxing Day was good too.

January: I thought I lost my computer by upgrading to Windows 8.1, but it was miraculously fixed soon. Intrigue this, Hinterlands that - and now I have Dominion Guilds too because I had to spend my tickets. We are going to many Winterlicious events this year! Also you can be a cheese expert. Amazon is funny, and naming a daughter "Cthulu All-Spark Mclaughlin" will be a hoot. I hope All-Spark stays - Amelia All-Spark Mclaughlin sounds like a decently cool name :) Old Spice has campaigns again, Frozen was great, Wolf on wall Street was good but kinda okay.

Anyway, we're all caught up now! Now I can write the rest of my blog entry, which has a theme, and is not really related to the daily happenings or whatever. So the other day I cleaned up some of my gmail drafts - yeah, you have near infinite space, but having 70+ drafts is kinda disorganizing, and some of the drafts are old things that just pertain to one certain date... so I cleaned it up, I reorganized some of them to make them easier to manage... yes. (Note if you want to clean your drafts, gmail has this kinda annoying (but useful) feature where it autosaves your draft - but sometimes it just autosaves for no reason. So you would look at a draft from August 2007 and then it would autosave, and now it's a January 2014 draft... so the dating is wrong, and it has jumped all the way to page 1, most recent draft...)

My inbox however... well, that can probably stay. I have about 1,750 e-mails, and there's no way I'm going to organize that... but then I had some time so I did something fun - I went back to look at my old e-mails. Previously, I went back to see some of my old blog posts, as well as other people's old blog posts, to see what we were like back then. In the case of e-mails, a bunch of memories came flooding back. A lot of it was discussions about fake magic cards that we were making, back in 2005 - seeing how Duy was still making cards related to Games, and seeing how bad the cards were back then - but enough about magic - there were also a lot of gems, or little moments in time, kept recorded in little e-mails spread across my inbox. Similarly to how my desktop background is always a trip down memory lane (in the form of pictures of food), so too are my e-mails.

Like that time when I had that job, and then that other time when I had that other job, with Peter Kao and Influenza. I found out back around in 2007 I was toying with Craigslist - I was trying to buy Dirty Dancing tickets secretly for my mom, or something - but to no avail. Before I read the e-mail, I thought I'd never played around with Craigslist before, but apparently I have. There's another e-mail that (in December 2007) I sent to a (then) co-worker of mine, discussing a video... I thought it was a work related video, but it had to do something with chocolate ice cream... and then I remembered what it was about, and I made a face >_< If you want you can try to remember what videos were popular around December 2007 that might have chocolate ice cream, but then you might make a face too. >_<

I see there were some e-mails from work, from co-workers that haven't been at WinMagic for 5 or more years, whom names and faces I've forgotten, but seeing their name jogs my memory to see if I can put a face to the name. I see old e-mails from friends that I don't have contact with anymore, and so on... but one of my favourite things I found was correspondence between myself and that cute tourguide we had in Guilin, China. Her name was Flora, and I remember getting her e-mail address while we were in China, but I don't remember talking with her afterwards... but it turns out I did!

We sent a few e-mails back and forth, I sent her a few pictures I took, and we talked about me visiting China again (or Vietnam, which is close to Guilin), or her visiting Canada and we can meet up - it sounded pretty friendly - but one day she sent me an e-mail but I didn't reply back. Then for the next month or so she would send me motivational mails - like, those things you forward to your friends, like chain mails, with good luck messages on them. Like always, I do not reply to those though... and then eventually, the e-mails stopped. That was 6 years ago, wouldn't it be funny if I contacted her again today? I haven't done it yet though, it'd be too weird :P

So I went and read some of the messages between 1,200 and 1,750. Let's read a couple more and then have this blog entry be ready to be posted. Ahh, Magic Arsenal - I used to order magic cards from these guys, but they're out of business now. Counthigh! Remember that? No? Me neither! Derp. Oh man a lot of e-mails with recruiters :/ lol, essentialmagic. sound that can't be heard by old people. That was 5 years ago! Magic Battlegrounds in Milton, trading with Adam Hermiston... Rockband 3d figurines! Renting from a girl named Queenette, sites that give online file conversions, and... roflcopter goes schwa schwa schwa? Now I need to find out what that is from again. I think Duy knows. (:: okay, i googled it, but I think... it was specific to Duy, like one of his chat friends would say it all the time. Anyways...)

Friendships breaking this, friendships coming back together, people quitting this, people quitting that, people unquitting things... the time I played Modern Warfare 2 with co-workers... Google Wave! And Buzz! That time when I was with UVSA and VCSA. Oh man, reminiscing too much. Reminds me of the Stanley Parable demo where the guy reminisces at the end. Lol, there's a thread where David replies with "This means war", and there's a thread where I reply to Isaque "ohh crap, plz don't haunt me". Anyway, I've gone through about 1100 e-mails (not reading each one, of course), and that brings me to September 2010, which is pretty recent, I guess. So, enough reminiscing.

Now we're in January 2014, and... yeah, stuff. As usual, I will send out another Wiseman Puzzle thread e-mail on Friday, which has some more of the weekly happenings, and then I'll update my blog again, maybe in the middle of February. Most likely, I will post pictures on facebook and write more weekly e-mails, but I will try to write at least a little something on this blog. Until next time!

So, I hope to have you guys enjoy the Stanley Parable the next time you are over!

It's middle of October, so perhaps I'll write two blog entries this month - but instead of waiting until the end of the month to post a really quick update about the 31 things that happened that month (like I did with the September update) I thought I would write a full blog update instead of a point form one. I have a few things I want to write about, but maybe I'll write about them on my other blog... oh yeah! I've been updating the other blog! Ever so slightly - I've updated 5 times since June, including twice already in just October alone. I want to mention Ascension, a game similar to Dominion, that Duy likes - so we might be getting that shortly. But anyway, this update, I wanted to talk about two games - Tales of Xillia, and... Cookie Clicker! Let's start with Cookie Clicker.

Okay, so Cookie Clicker is a game, it's been out since like, August, or maybe it has had betas earlier or whatever. Technically, it's not really a game, but it is. I'll start with... I've been playing this game. I start with that, because I'm going to say a bunch of negative things about the game, but then I might defend it, because I'm playing it? Imagine there's a game where you constantly stab yourself with a fork. If I was a spectator, I would not recommend this game to anyone - I would say it was stupid, it was a waste of time (and health!) - and I could go on about how it's terrible. But then imagine I started playing it, and I liked it - I can still tell you why it's terrible, but I will also try to tell you that it's a good game... right?

Anyway, that paragraph I just wrote - confused me, so I'll just start my real paragraph now. Cookie Clicker is a game about making cookies. For the first few hours that you play it, it's a game about making cookies, and about managing your resources to make more cookies! This may sound boring, but it's a game about accomplishment, about reaching new levels of... awesomeness. Anyway, I will try to explain these feelings of awesomeness and accomplishments, but surely, playing the game for 20 minutes would be faster than me writing this text for the next 20 minutes... but I'll write it anyway. If you want to try the game for yourself, click here:

orteil.dashnet.org/cookieclicker/ - (the game starts with fancy graphic settings and everything - if you have a weak computer, I recommend going into the menu and setting everything to off)

Oh yeah, before I start, I can actually relate this game to some of the things I've been learning in the seminars I've been taking! I will also refer to random real life terms as well. Anyway, when you start the game, you will have 0 money, or 0 cookies - there's no money in this game - cookies is the currency. There's a big cookie on the left side of the screen. When you click it, you get a cookie! You now own 1 cookie, and you also got an achievement for it. So for the next few seconds, you continue to click the big cookie - it's a bit boring and it seems a bit pointless, but after a few seconds you'll have 15 cookies in your bank, and you can buy the first tier of cookie makers - called a "cursor". If you read the description, it says "it will auto-click once every 10 seconds". So you buy one. What does that mean? It means that every 10 seconds, an automatic cursor will click the cookie for you, generating one cookie.

In the real world, this is called "cash flow". If you want, you can stop clicking, and your new "asset", the "cursor", will generate income for you, forever and ever. After 150 seconds, it would've generated 15 cookies and it would've paid for itself, and then after that it would be pure profit. So if you want, you can relax, but no, you're a bit greedy and impatient - you can click your mouse maybe 4-6 times per second, which generates cookies 60 times faster than the cursor does. After a few seconds, you'll have enough money to buy a second cursor! And when you do, you'll make 2 cookies every 10 seconds. The price of the cursor does increase as you buy more; so they do become less efficient, but they're still better than nothing.

After buying a few more cursors, you're suddenly making 5 cookies every 10 seconds, plus the 50+ cookies you are making by manually clicking. Soon you'll have 100 cookies in the bank, and you unlock the second tier of cookie makers: "grandmas". There's no description on the grandmas, so you're not sure what they do, but you buy one anyway - and you go from 5 cookies per 10 seconds to 10 cookies per 10 seconds! Once again, you've doubled your cookies per second. Now you're making 1 cookie per second, and you can watch your numbers climb. You're a bit addicted though - 1 cookie per second isn't really fast. Imagine if you had 2, or even 3 cookies per second?

You look on the right side, and there are 9 different tiers of cookie makers - and each time you reach a new tier, you get a sudden rush of amazingness, as your cookies per second gets a major increase! In no time, you are making 500 cookies per second - much more than you could ever make with clicking alone. Imagine if you were making $500 per month, without having to work. All your assets are making money for you - this is what cookie clicker is like.

Unfortunately, $500/month, even if it's free, isn't enough to satisfy your life style - and you also haven't unlocked the next tier of cookie makers yet! So you continue, letting your passive income grow, and then you buy the next tier of cookie makers - this time, it's Alchemy Labs, which lets you transmute gold into more cookies! And once again, your low 500 cookies per second suddenly jumps up to a massive 900 cookies per second! In one purchase, you go from $500/month to $900/month. You are living much more comfortably, and you know by buying another Alchemy Lab, you can jump from $900 to $1300/month. You grow hungry in excitement - so much money, and there are still so many more tiers to go!

And then there are upgrades! After you have a certain number of factories, you can unlock some upgrades for your factories - for example, your factories will produce 100 more cookies per second than they did before - or maybe even, your factories will become twice as productive. Now that's a good upgrade! Those kinds of things happen in real life too - it's always exciting to buy something that says that your cookie factories will be twice as efficient.

There are a lot of upgrades, as well as a lot of achievements! There are even some upgrades that give you more cookies, based on the number of achievements you have! After the first few hours of the game, it indeed gets a bit more boring - when you reach the last tier of cookie makers, there are no more tiers to reach - there are achievement levels, which also unlocks more upgrades, but eventually, things cost so much that you have to wait for a bit in between... or do you?

There are things called Golden Cookies, which appear every now and then, and when you click on them you get some sort of bonus, such as "77 seconds of x7 production" - so your production levels will multiply by 7, for 77 seconds - so that's a huge chunk of cookies. There's another lucky cookie that instantly gives you a huge chunk of cookies. There are even upgrades for these cookies, which makes them last longer or appear twice as often. Using these cookies, you can severely shorten the time it takes to buy really expensive things.

Anyways, Cookie Clicker is really fun! I think if you enjoy "leveling" and seeing numbers get bigger and bigger, you could enjoy the game. As well, you could leave the game going overnight, and when you wake up in the morning you can see how your assets are doing, and you'll have 8 more hours of passive income to work with. It's a great feeling, to go to bed, and then wake up to millions in additional cookies, ready for your consumption. Anyway, I recommend you play the game, at least for a few minutes or hours. If you check google, there's a bunch of articles telling you to stay away, while at the same time, just like I did, they recommend the game, because it's about feeling good - and this game definitely makes you feel good.

Happy eating!

Tales of Xillia

The other game I wanted to talk about this update was Tales of Xillia. As of last week, Duy, Ambrose, and I beat the game, but as with any Tales game, there's plenty of things to do afterwards - optional dungeons, coliseum fights, huge boss battles - as well as New Game +. In this game, there's actually two story arcs, so New Game + won't just be harder enemies with all our equipment - it would actually be a different story. So we're looking forward to that, although Ambrose is heading to HK for a few weeks, so we'll have to put that on hold. It's a 4 player game, but we only had 3 real people with us for the adventure. Sometimes QA would come over and watch, but she joined a bit late so starting her off half-way through the game wouldn't make any sense - and she wouldn't've liked it anyhow.

I enjoyed Tales of Xillia! There are actually a few things that made it very enjoyable - the first, was the leveling system. In most other tales games, you simply just, gain levels - your strength, hitpoints, magic points, etc - they all increase by a little bit, each time you level. To unlock new artes, you just use one arte over and over, and then when you reach a certain level, you can unlock a new arte. In Tales of the Abyss, you had thingy cores, and you can equip them to different people - so maybe you had an attack based core, so each time you leveled, you would get +3 physical attack and +1 some other things - or if you had a boring core, you might just get +2 in physical attack, physical defense, agility, etc... so that was neat too.

In Tales of Xillia, when you leveled, you didn't gain any stats, like strength, HP, or anything - you would get points to spend in your Lilium Orb. Each character has a unique Lilium Orb, which looks like a Hexagonal Spiderweb, with nodes at each intersection point, where lines meet. You start in the center of the spiderweb, and each time you level, you get points, which you can use to access adjacent nodes. Each node is a standard stat - more DEX, more STR, more VIT - as well as more HP, more TP, and more Skill Points.

Additionally, each empty space on the spiderweb (which is surrounded by 4 or more nodes) represents something unique, such as a skill or arte. Skills work the same as they did in Tales of Vesperia - each skill is worth a certain number of points, and you have a certain number of points to work with. Some skills are just stat upgrades, and some give you unique abilities that only your character can do. Some examples of skills include

"You have 10% more HP" -- "You have 30% resistance against Fire attacks" -- "Your overlimit time is extended by 2 seconds" -- "You can jump twice in the air" --
 "Your Demon Fist arte is now Double Demon Fist" -- and a bunch of other things.

So in Tales of Xillia, when you level, instead of everyone just gaining a bit of HP and TP and SP and STR and DEX and whatever, each player gets points to add to their lilium orb - and then they can use those points to get more HP, or more TP, or more whatever, as well as unlock special skills and artes. Additionally, the spiderweb starts out small - but as you connect to nodes towards the outer region of the web, your web grows larger, giving you access to more unique skills and artes! So in a way, you can level twice in Tales of Xillia - you can level your character, and you can level your orb by expanding its size! As you increase the size of the web, it takes longer to re-level it, but it's fun to do so.

However, as you level a lot, eventually the web stops growing, so it can only expand so much, so it becomes a bit less fun to level. Also, as you reach really high levels, you start getting less points to spend between levels, as you're reaching the endgame - that too, makes leveling less fun. But in the beginning, leveling is a lot of fun and I really enjoyed it.

Another thing that made the game very enjoyable were the accessories. In other Tales games, you could get different costumes for your character - in Tales of Graces F, you can get more costumes, but you can also have accessories; that is, you can find a unique treasure, say, "Goggles", and then you can put them on your character. Then, visually, in battles and in cutscenes (and world map of course) your character will look a bit different - they might have goggles over their eyes or wear them on their head. But in Tales of Xillia, they took it a step further.

So let's say you pick up a pair of glasses - in Tales of Graces F, you could have them equipped, or not. In Tales of Xillia, you can customize the glasses - instead of them being attached to just a very specific point on the body (usually the eyes or the head), you can move them anywhere - their eyes, their head, their body, their right hand - and you can rotate, resize, and color them, to your liking. My current character has 3 attachments - he has elf ears, which I've resized to be huge and green, and their floating somewhere near my back... I also have Bunny Ears, which are purple and huge, and rotated and sticking out of my shoulders, so they look kinda like insect wings. I also have a purple hat, which I've enlarged and rotated and attached to my right hand, so it looks like I'm punching people with a huge shield in battle.

It is just so hilarious and awesome to be able to customize that. Of course, I wish each character can have more accessories, and I wish there were more characters so I can have different designs on them. Imagine if you could only have 6 mii's instead of infinite - how terrible is that? :P But it's super cool. It makes each character more uniquely yours, and therefore you are more attached to your character and therefore the story and the game. It's also pretty funny, how sometimes the huge hats or whatever get in the way of cutscenes.

I can continue to talk about Tales of Xillia for a while - there are a lot of differences between this game and the other Tales games - and in one blog idea I thought I would talk a lot more about it - how I hated the weapon crafting in Tales of Graces F, and how the store-upgrading is neat in Xillia, and a bunch of other things - but I think that's enough to talk about in one entry.

In short, Go play Cookie Clicker, at least for 30 minutes - maybe you too can be addicted. And Tales of Xillia is fun! Anyway, I will try to update again in October. By the next update, we might have Ascension, and we might have Diablo 3 for Xbox 360 - and we might've attended a Food Show in Toronto. Until then!

It is the last day of September! I have to blog now! so it's been about ~45 days since I last updated, so I guess a lot has happened so I guess I'll just briefly touch up on everything. Let's try exactly 14-15 words per subject... (it was originally going to be 15, but after writing half the entries I noticed that some of them indeed actually only have 14 words! Or did I?)

CNE: I went to cne 3 times. fun was had. see facebook for video and pics!
One Finger Death Punch: Got new SilverDollar Game. Two Button fighting! It's really fun! You should see bonus mode
Old TV: Favorites are back. Criminal Minds, CSI, Elementary and others - back to regular scheduled programming
New TV: New TV Shows Have Started! Lets talk about each of those television programmes down below:
Blacklist: Pretty interesting, good cast. I will continue to watch it. Looks interesting to watch.
Hostages: Kinda meh. Like a specific Criminal Minds episode. Will watch Episode 2 - give chance.
Survivor: family vs contestant this time. I watched first ep, is ok. Will watch Finale :P
Masterchef Junior: Actually, not the worst thing ever. Probably will watch with Quynh Anh. Picking favorites
Shield: Marvel show. Good! By Joss AND Jed AND Maurissa. Will watch, support those three.
Face-Off: not new, but watching with Mai; about costume makeup. It's really neat. Rooting for favorites.
Theros: Pre-release was fun. Some good cards for commander. I ordered a set again. Price reasonable.
Dominion: Have not played Dominion in quite some time but always lookin toward next game :)
Smash-Up: Finally played the expansion, fun was had. Thinking of next combination. Aliens and Plants?
Tales of Xillia: Playing with Ambrose a lot. Leveling was fun but it's scaling back. Game's Long!!
Wii-U: Can't find important power cable. Can't play :( I want to try new Incredible demo.
Dance Central: Downloaded Rihanna's Umbrella. Super Hard! Pretty crazy. Watch this youtube video. Good dancer! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4hh8SbOxdCM
LOL: League World championships are still going! Finale match this weekend. Good games were watched.
Cookie Clicker: Played this "cash flow" game where you constantly make cookies! Was fun but now terrible
Triple Birthday Dinner: Had 3 birthdays in 1 week; Mai made super meal! It was super delicious.
Perogies and Bacon: Mai made Perogies! Super delicious. We helped. New Desktop Background incoming. Good pictures taken.
Badminton: Quynh Anh and I want to play badminton! Might go with friends on Wednesday.
Movies: I've seen a bunch of movies lately! Let's talk about them through the upcoming paragraphs.
We're the Millers: Saw with Mai and Jon. Funny! I laughed good a few times. Aniston strips!
Now You see Me: Magic movie! actually not too bad, but nothing super amazing to write home about.
The Grandmaster: Kung Fu movie - some great scenes but also confusing, disconnected story. Ziyi's beautiful!
Drive-in: I went to the Drive-In with Quynh Anh for her birthday. Saw two movies!
Rush: About Racecar Rivals - it is a gift to have a rival that drives you.
Don Jon: Joseph Gordon Levitt directs and stars. Movie with sex and talks about porn watching!

retrospect: Hmm - fifteen words per subject leaves no room for descriptivities. Example: Theros paragraph super generic.

Okay, I wanted to write an early-August post, but I ended up writing an e-mail instead - so that included things like Dominion, maybe some TV Shows, GLORY TO ARSTOTZKA, among other things. I saw a TV Show called the Chase, and despite it being named that, it's kinda slow-paced. We just got a Dominon expansion, but we haven't opened it yet but we will soon. Just the other day I went to the cheap theatre and saw "Epic", an animated movie featuring the voice talents of Amanda Seyfreid and Beyonce. It actually was pretty good. I'm not really a fan of the name "Epic" though. It should be reserved for like... forever, and never be used for anything. Same goes with LOL, LMFAO, and everything else in that vein.

CNE Casino Adventure

So this last Wednesday, David, Quynh Anh, and I drove to the CNE Casino in the hopes of scoring free CNE season passes and parking passes. I don't want to go into too much detail, but it was harder than we expected. The posts on redflagdeals and whatever made it sound easy - like you would walk in, register, and then walk out, and then come back after a few hours to collect your reward. But no - this year they had people walking around, making sure you are still there, spending money at the tables - and the tables weren't cheap. It's easy to lose $50 in a matter of minutes.

I did end up staying though, playing poker, which is a pretty good way to pass the time. Earlier, before we went, David asked me if I would go to the $10 tables, and I said maybe - a $10 poker tournament would be a pretty good way to spend the time, or three $10 poker tournaments would be fine. I would pay the entry fee for Quynh Anh too. But alas, it wasn't meant to be. In the end, I lost a bunch of money, and then there was some discrepancy so I had to go play another 20 minutes, and during that 20 minutes I turned $100 into $154, so I'm pretty proud of myself :)

So yeah, I lost more than $54, so I definitely didn't profit that day, but if I go to the CNE a few times then it will make up some of the money that I lost. Too bad nobody else got a CNE pass, so we would still have to pay for them to go. I'm considering going by myself next Tuesday - I looked at the schedules and I've planned what I'm going to do the whole day - so I would go to here for half an hour, then walk here for half an hour, then do this for half an hour, then do that, then have a lunch break, then this, then that; it was a fun exercise.

RichDad Seminars

So back in July, Quynh Anh and I took a seminar about Real Estate, but more importantly, about becoming rich and about cash flow; basically, cash flow is money coming in to you passively, and if your cash flow exceeds your expenses, then you can stop working and retire and you can live life the way you want to live it. Of course there's more to it than that, but that's how I would summarize it in a few sentences. After the seminar they offered more advanced courses (for more $$) - we're considering taking them, but it's a lot of money. So what we did is we signed up for them, but we still have a few more days before we have to decide on whether or not we're going through with it, but currently we can still take a look at some of the material online to decide. So we do have access to an abundance of resources, even if we don't go through with the problem. More on that later.

So when we signed up for the programs (the cheap one, the expensive one, etc - you don't really need to know) they gave us free audiobooks and actual books to read and listen to, and I'm currently listening to one of the audiobooks as I drive in the car. Man, I thought this paragraph would be longer, but... well, I'm having fun listening to it.

Facebooks Relatedness

One of my best friends from high-school came to visit from BC! I'm not sure if you guys remember or know Meredith, but she's super cool. We might've played Rock Band together, or if you were there for my birthday party when we went to Dave & Busters, then you might remember that we came back to my house to play Portal that evening, and we had a blast. Good times were had. Anyway, Meredith came and we spent a day chilling together; we went through car problems, then we were going to go to hamilton but didn't and then we had sushi instead, and then we went shopping, and... just overall a chill day. Wish she was here longer! But alas, she had to go back. We will see each other again next time!

I just found out (through Facebook) that my friend Charles (I know him through Tomson, which I know through Magic) has just become friends with Ray, so we talked a bit and it turns out they both volunteer at the Mississauga Chinese Business Association (this isn't classified info, right? and who else is reading this blog? :P) Anyway, charles said that Ray will be doing a Finance Seminar in a bit, and since Quynh Anh and I are more interested in Finance, maybe it would be a good thing to go to. So Charles will keep me updated on that.

Webcomics RelatedNess

The other day I discovered a webcomic called Happle Tea - so as I do with most webcomics (that I'm interested in), I started going backwards, starting from the most recent, until I hit the first comic. Well, maybe I'll check when the first comic is, and then I start my backwards journey, knowing that I have a clear goal in mind. For the most part, Happle Tea isn't sequential - like, it doesn't have a big story arc where you have to read everything in order - so that's good. I think the comic is about mythology, but it really isn't all that much about it. It's mostly about this young ~9 year old kid, and apparently he has a friend, and his dad is a Sasquatch, and GOD is a cat that hangs around with this kid... and maybe 60% of the comics are about this kid, and 40% of the comics are about other characters dealing with mythology or god and satan or whatever.

I like the comic - every now and then there are spirits and even Bakus, like from Kamigawa. Anyway, I went through it, and I just noticed it hasn't updated in the past 10 days - I sure hope it's not dead! Anyway, here is a link to one of the comics: http://www.happletea.com/2010/12/21/christmas-gifts/ - you'll notice that his friend probably dies in this one, but it's okay, because each comic is separate from the others, so nobody is really dead. Anyway, here is another one, not featuring the little kid: http://www.happletea.com/2013/02/19/the-midas-touch/ and one more featuring cinderella! http://www.happletea.com/2012/06/22/cinderella/

Upcoming Weekends full of Weekends

I wanted to write this blog post because the rest of August is pretty busy, and if I write another blog post in August, it will probably cover some of these weekend activities. First,there's a Len Duong Reunion BBQ tomorrow, from 11:00-4:00, so hopefully the weather will be nice and everything will be fun. Duy and I will be going, but Vinh will be at home studying for his exam. Afterwards, not sure what's happening yet - maybe people will come over for Dominion, or maybe there will be an after party. I know some people can't make it to the BBQ so an after party to accomodate them would be neat. Quynh Anh is also working until later that day so if there is an after party, that'd be cooool.

On Sunday, Quynh Anh invited me to her friend's wedding ceremony, which will take place a restaurant in downtown - so I'll be going to that Sunday afternoon/evening. I'm not sure what it will be like, but I hope it will be good. I hope to meet up with some old friends at least. I am going to be having the Salmon entree!

Next weekend, the 23rd-25th, is our other seminar; a few months ago, Quynh Anh and I paid $450 (between the two of us) for 2 seminars; each seminar is 3 days long and one features Real Estate Investing and the other is more about Stock market Investing. So all in all, it's about $37.50 per person per day. I know Quynh Anh wants to be an Investor when she grows up (then again, aren't we all grown up already?) and this is a good way to jumpstart that, rather than taking a few college semesters and spending $10K - so for the price, it was pretty good.

So as I said before, we did the Real Estate one, now we're going to do the Investment one, and then maybe we'll take advanced courses, or not, we'll see. So we are going to be quite busy on Friday and Saturday, and if it's like the last one, we'll be busy until maybe 2:30 on Sunday, and then we might go down to the CNE and see the Food Trucks event that is happening that weekend. So that should be fun!

The weekend after that, not sure what we're doing yet - Mai is probably coming back so we'll spend time with her. Not sure if we can go to the CNE again - maybe I'll be all burned out, if I am indeed going on Tuesday and again the Sunday after. But the more people the merrier, right? So we'll have a blast. Also maybe we can go to Ontario Place as well? I didn't even plan on that on my CNE trip, but looking at my schedule, I think I will only have time for the CNE. Besides, I can go to Ontario place the other 49 weeks of the year, right? :P

Anyway, that's my entry for today. Maybe I'll have another entry next week, after the CNE trip but before the seminar, but probably not - I will try to take as many pictures as possible and just make a facebook album. Oh, that reminds me, I just posted two videos to facebook, both of them dealing with cats. One of them has a fair number of likes, the other one doesn't have any! Maybe I timed it wrong, and both videos have nearly the same thumbnail :P So maybe I'll improve on the latter video and then re-upload it in the future, in higher quality as well.

Byee!

In a few days July will be over, so I wanted to get in a quick blog post before the month was over. I'm curently at work, but I finished all my responsibilities today but I still have a few hours before I head off to Magic, so I might as well put together a short blog post.

Len Duong

The first thing that happened between the last post and this one, was Len Duong. Len Duong was pretty great! Duy and I were staff members this year, while Vinh was a first time camper. We were on the technical team - so we were on a team of 6 people, responsible for creating and setting up the camp gate, as well as setting up and making sure the sound systems work. So, a lot of our work was done on the first day, before the campers arrived - we cut wood, painted it, and put together a good looking camp gate.

So generally, as we did the sound system stuff, we would have to arrive 15-30 minutes before an event happened and we made sure the microphones worked, everything was plugged in, the projectors were set up and everyone else would work - and then during the event, some people had to stick around to make sure everything went smoothly.

But, we did have a lot of spare time here and there, so we did some relaxing, and we also helped other staff teams if they needed help. Overall, it was a fun event, and I made a bunch of new friends; and then after that were the afterparties, which were even better. More friendships were made and more fun was had. I've created two facebook videos, one to celebrate the camp itself and one to celebrate the afterparties. Quite a lot of fun was had. I think going to Texas for the next Len Duong would be super fun.

Summerlicious

The next thing that happened after the afterparties was Summerlicious - this year I booked two places, each for 6 people. I'll just write a short paragraph about this - first was Bloke and Forth, which turns into a Night Club every day at 11. We had dinner from 8 to 10 so we weren't going to stay the extra hour. I went, as well as Quynh Anh, and then I invited my favourite male VSA member (haha) Tho and his girlfriend, and then I had one more spot and I gave it to Nhan, my magic friend. Pics are up on facebook.

The second place was Harlem West, which was more of a family outing - Myself, Quynh Anh, Mai, Duy, Vinh, and Alan. What attracted me to this place was Chicken and Waffles! They were pretty good. they had a sauce which was a mixture of that Chili Thai sauce, mixed with Maple Syrup - it's amazing! I would love to have more of that. I've been lazy and pictures are not on facebook yet, but they should be by the end of the month.

WinMagic

WinMagic had a major product release a few weeks ago, and we had a party at work - we had catered sandwiches and cupcakes, and our resident photographer (Signy) took professional pictures of everyone and we had photography sessions and everything - it was a super cool day. I don't think I'll put any pictures up on facebook - everyone who was in the pictures has these pictures now, but I just wanted to mention it and it was super cool.

Dinner Cruise

The other day we went on a dinner cruise! My mom bought a groupon for 12 people to go on Toronto Dinner cruise. We raced to beat the traffic to get into Toronto, and then we got on a boat with 80 other people and we ate and enjoyed the view of Toronto and the water. The food wasn't particularly impressive, but it was a neat trip. Pictures will be up on facebook by month's end.

Also, next time you see Mai and Jon, you have to ask them about the Snapping Game. It's truly marvelous, and I still don't understand it yet.

Rich Dad

A few weeks ago, Quynh Anh invited me to a free seminar about stock investing and real estate investing, and the seminar was presented by Rich Dad education - you may have heard of the book Rich Dad Poor Dad. At the end of the seminar, we bought tickets to go to another 2 seminars - it works out to about $38 per person per day. Quynh Anh's dream is to be an investor, and if something can jumpstart that dream, it might be this. Better than spending 10,000 to go to school for a few years, right?

Fast forward to this past weekend, where we went for this seminar. It's a 3-day weekend seminar, starting Friday, going until Sunday, each day is almost a full day of... I guess we can call it "class." So we took time off work, and we went Friday, 8:30-6:30, Saturday about 9-5, and Sunday about 9-2. Basically, it was about real estate investing, but more so, it was to educate us about Finance, and to give us insight about how money works or how it has changed in the past 40 years. There were a lot of ideas about how to make money work for you, and how you have to change your mindset and everything.

I could go into a lot more detail, but I don't really want to write about it, there's a lot to explain, and technically I'm not supposed to go into too much detail, as there are copyrights and whatever else that I don't want to cross. In the end, I'm a bit skeptical but at the same time my eyes are open and I'm open to trying new things, so we'll see. Anyway, we have another seminar at the end of August about stock investing, and then maybe some more stuff in the future.

Mai's Party

After the seminar ended yesterday (Sunday), we went to Mai's party at the park in Streetsville. It was fun - we played a bunch of sports (casually) and ate some good shrimp and brownies and things - it was fun. Met cool people.

Drinking

I wanted to add a subsection on Drinking because I haven't drunk for a long time! I mean, when I go to parties, I designate myself as the driver so I don't drink, so it's kinda annoying, but overall it's okay. I want to be at home sometime and make polarbears to share with you guys. We should do that. I don't know how many polar bears I can drink - I've only been drunk once, and that's pretty much the first time I've drank that amount, and that was ~8 years ago. Anyhoo, I digress.

Dominion

Last update I just have bought Dominion, and now we've been playing it so much. Quynh Anh is really good at it! Lately we've been playing 3-player games (Vinh, Quynh Anh, and myself) with modified end-condition rules, and we've playing with different card sets. Just yesterday I learned the power of Festival and Laboratory, as we decided to take out Market and Throne Room for this game. I've also tried out Chancellor (the one that lets you dump your library into your graveyard) with good success.

I'm always looking forward to the next game, and sometime this week I think I'll be getting two expansion packs to add some more strategy and awesomeness to the game. There are 8 expansion packs, but for now I just want two, and hopefully that will keep us happy for a while.

Game & Wario

We got a new Wii-U game - it's a Wario mini-game game... oh yeah, you guys have played it. Well, it's okay so far :)

TV-Wise

TV-Wise, there are 2 new shows I wanted to talk about - WhoDunnit and Hollywood Game Night. WhoDunnit is a reality tv show where on each episode someone dies, and the contestants have to use teamwork and cleverness to figure out how the crime was committed. At the end of each episode, the person who did the worst job DIES - not literally, but they do die as they get eliminated, and that sets up the next episode.

I find the show highly entertaining - it seems there is a lot of drama and scheming, and I'm surprised they can make this show work, but I do highly enjoy it.

The other show I wanted to touch upon is called Hollywood Game Night, and it's just that - a game night. There are two teams, each consisting of a normal person and 3 celebrities, and the host herself is Jane Lynch, from Glee. So they play trivia games and it's all fun and funny, and at the end one of the normals win $25k.

Anyhoo, that brings me to the end of July! In a few hours I will go to Commander as usual, but this time I might go a bit earlier - as I said, all my responsibilities are done for today, and M14 just came out so I have a few deck modifications to make.

Until next time...

Hi everyone! So this will be my second blog entry for the month of June. The first one wasn't really a proper entry - I just wanted to put some words down on my blog before I went on vacation - I wanted to write it before I went on vacation, because the next entry (this one) will most likely be about said vacation - and it is! Well, a few paragraphs, at least.

Cruise Vacation 2013

So we went on a Cruise vacation, and it was a blast! Previously, we went on a cruise in 2007, so now it's 6 years later and it's still as fun as always. Look forward to 2019 when we take our third cruise vacation! Anyway, last time I think we took an East Caribbean cruise, and this time it's a West Caribbean Cruise, which just means we visited different islands or cities - in this case, we went to Labadee (Haiti), Falmouth (Jamaica), and Cozumel (Mexico).

Anyhoo, since the cruise, I've posted two photo albums and three videos on facebook, so collectively you can browse 50+ pictures and about 10 minutes of video, which would give you a pretty good description of how the cruise was. Hooray! It's like you were there - but not really. I've had good comments on my videos - Jon's sister saw it, and now she wants to go on a cruise too. Royal Caribbean should pay me to make these videos :P Anyway, take a look at the videos, and I don't have to write as much about it here. Overall, it was a fun time.

A few things bugged me though - the first being, that while most of the foods were complimentary, a lot of the foods were not! There are still so many things on the cruise that you have to pay for. Maybe that's weird - on the first cruise we went on, mostly everything was free - now, maybe the same things were free, but they added a lot of things that are not free - still, it feels like things weren't as free as last time, if you know what I mean. For example, I don't think there were any places on the boat where I could get a decent iced coffee! I was looking forward to having a lot of iced coffee, hahaha. They had a starbucks on board, which you had to pay for, and there was a drink-pass you can buy to have access to those awesome Coke-machines - like the one at that Wendy's. We considered buying 1 pass, to share amongst the 6 of us, but as days passed, it became less and less worth it, so we ended up not getting the pass.

Of course, I still have another 4+ gigs of pictures and many more videos that I haven't uploaded - I could go into much more detail about each of the different shows we've seen, or about the ins-and-outs of being on the cruise ship - so there's still plenty I could talk about, that I haven't uploaded or written here, but I won't write about it or post it, unless someone really wants to hear about or watch the videos about them. Some of the shows were pretty good, but they don't really fit into a montage format.

Len Duong 2013

This upcoming weekend is Len Duong, and all three of us are going! Duy and I will be attending as part of the Technical team, which is in charge of setting up all the electronic equipment - so sound systems, microphone systems, etc, in each room before they need to be used - and we're also in charge of setting up the camp gate and some other structures here and there. This is Vinh's first time, and he'll be attending as a camper, obviously. We haven't come in 2011 and 2012, so we miss it, so we're glad to be back.

Actually, this year, we weren't planning to go, but the president of VCSA asked me JUST right after TOJAM8, so they caught me at a good time. Similarly to TOJAM, I haven't been to TOJAM the last 2 times, and so coming back from TOJAM, from a community of like-minded individuals, doing stuff together for a whole weekend - I was looking forward to doing more of that, so I jumped at the opportunity to join Len Duong camp 2013. It's going to be a lot of fun, I hope.

Actually, the camp is not what I'm looking forward to the most; I'm looking forward to seeing my friends again, especially the ones from out-of province or out-of country - Michelle from Vancouver, Diana from Texas - a lot of people that I haven't seen in a while, and I want to see again. And then, I'm expecting there to be several after parties, after camp - so next week might be pretty busy! I might have to take a day or two off of work to hang out with my friends.

Maybe there will be a DespicableMe2 after party! That'd be funny and sweet. Monsters U. is out now, but I haven't seen it yet, and I kinda want to see it but I'm pretty lazy. If Quynh Anh wants to see it too, then maybe we can make a movie date out of it. Plus, I still have my uncle's hard drive so I have plenty of movies to watch. That reminds me - the other day I got my girlfriend and my sister to watch Battleship! Trollololol - but it turns out my sister liked the movie, so did my girlfriend, so I guess I didn't really troll them. But still, haha. Next up on the list is probably the Bollywood Aladdin :)

Summerlicious 2013

Also after Len Duong camp comes Summerlicious! Summerlicious runs from July 5th to 21st, and I've already made two reservations - to Bloke&Fourth, and to a place called Harlem West. Bloke&Fourth is like, both a night-club and a tapas place - so I'm expecting the plates to be kinda small, but hopefully very creative and very high quality. I hope I'm wrong about the portion size, but whatever - we're here for the food quality and creativity, and also for taking pictures of the food! Maybe if it actually is a night club, we can do some dancing afterwards, hahaha... gotta invite some more girls. We're going on a Thursday though, so maybe it won't be as night-clubby as Fridays.

The other restaurant is Harlem West - I chose it because of the menu. It had neat things such as Chicken and Waffles, so I've always wanted to try that combination, even though in my mind I can imagine what it tastes like. Price-wise, it's on the cheaper end, so that's good for a second outing. I've made each reservation for 6 people, and this one is probably myself, Quynh-Anh, Vinh, Mai, Jon, and a 6th person - Duy decided he didn't want to go to any Summerliciouses this year. The other outing is for 6 people, and so far it's myself, Quynh-Anh, and Alan, and I'm thinking about bringing someone from work, and then 2 other people. I hope she says yes! I also hope it's not awkward, haha.

I was thinking of doing one more reservation, but nobody else seems to want to do a 3rd, so maybe I'll just reserve for Quynh-Anh and I. I was thinking Hot House Cafe, mainly because I haven't had swordfish in a while... but I probably won't do it. If I do, it will be for the first Sunday it's available, so July 7th - but who knows, maybe there will be a Summerlicious Len Duong dinner outing somewhere - that would be sweet! Here's hoping!

Games - part 1 of 2 - physical games

So June is almost over, and we haven't physically seen Alan or David for the entire month of June! Is that weird? I think so. I hope it's not a new trend that's starting. We've got a lot of games to play! First up is the Smash-Up expansion, which comes with 4 new factions and 8 new base cards, so that should be pretty fun. I haven't opened it yet - I'm waiting for Alan and/or David to come over to try out the new combinations.

Next up is Dominion - I've played it once, and thought it would be a fun game for us to play. I waited for it to go on sale, and then I bought it, and now it's sitting near my desk, waiting for people to come over to play it. I mean, I guess I could try playing it with Mai and Jon, or maybe Quynh-Anh as well, but it's more for our crowd, so I guess I should wait for Alan and/or David. I already mentioned it briefly in an e-mail, but it's a deck-building game, which I thought was pretty neat and unique. You have starting hands and as you play, your deck gets bigger and you obtain more useful cards for your deck - it's pretty cool.

Lastly, is Modern Masters - my Modern Masters journey started when I pre-ordered 6 boosters from Face-to-Face Games (in Quebec), and then it came out and apparently it's not as scarce as people thought it would be. They are still selling it online, and you can buy it at Teddy 'n' Me as well, and in limited quantities at Untouchables too. Now, I've opened almost a box worth of boosters, and I still have about 21 boosters left. Most of these boosters were meant to be drafted, so that's what I'm waiting for - a day when both Alan and David come over, and we draft Modern Masters. Maybe Alex will be there too! haha.

But Vinh and I have been pack-warring Modern Masters, and it's super fun! It's just... really, really fun. As for money cards, we've gotten a few, but nothing special like Tarmogoyfs or Bobs or Cliques or Swords - best things we've gotten are a shiny Sarkhan Vol, Arcbound Ravager, Pact of Negation, Yosei, shiny Trygon Predator, shiny Eternal Witness, Kitchen Finks - things like that. Anyway, I look forward to drafting the "set" - I'm not sure if I will buy more of the set - I mean, I haven't been spending money on DGM boosters, and I doubt I'll buy a lot of M14 - and MM IS so much fun...

I also saw Carcassone on sale, but I'm not sure if I will buy it - it might just have been a novelty thing. Also, since Alan and David haven't been here for a whole month, it doesn't seem like a good way to spend the money - maybe if Alan wants to buy it, then we'll play it, haha. But for now, I've already spent enough on Dominion and other things that I shouldn't be buying Carcassone. I'm sure Isaque doesn't use it every week so maybe we can just borrow it from him.

In other news, we've been playing a lot more Charades, a bit more Taboo, and also, my dad revived "Acrophobia" - we played it on Father's Day, with my dad, my mom, Quynh-Anh, Jon, and the rest of the family. I'm glad to see Quynh-Anh joining in these games - her english isn't the best (don't worry, she doesn't read this blog) - but I'm glad to see her try. We've also been playing Say the Same Thing - and Vinh and I started making variations of the game, to keep it from getting stale - so we can try those out if we want to, next time.

Magic-wise, I'm still going to Commander exclusively - and just a few days ago, Tim invited me to a game at Reuben's house, so Vinh and I went there - we got there at 10:30pm and we stayed until about 3am - haha. Never under-estimate how long a 5-player and a 4-player commander game goes on for. Still, it was fun times, and it's good to see old friends again.

Games - part 2 of 2 - video games

I'm not going to talk about the Xbone or the PS4 or E3 - I actually didn't pay much attention to E3 - just some highlights about Titanfall and the new Smash game - I always thought Megaman would make a good fit, and now he's in the new Smash game - so that would be cool.

We are still playing Candy Crush! I am around level 270 now, so soon I might catch up to Alex! BWAHAHAHA! Vinh and my girlfriend are playing it too, but they are about 100 levels behind me, but Vinh's catching up pretty fast. It's funny - when I first started Candy Crush, I just wanted to play because I wanted to see what all the hype was about - but then I ended up continuing to play, sorta because I wanted to beat my friends, but also, I guess it actually was pretty fun, despite some levels being very harsh and unforgiving.

Other than Candy Crush, I haven't actually been doing that much on the computer - I follow twitter, I catch up on facebook, I talk with my girlfriend via facebook, and I play Candy Crush every now and then. Well, lately I've been working on my Cruise video - and every now and then I get in a game or two of ARAM on League of Legends - but I haven't been doing that much else. Sometimes I might watch a movie from my uncle's hard drive, but really - not much else. I'm behind on all my youtube subscriptions, and I have a videogame backlog the size of Ambrose's - haha - maybe not that big.

Although, I did pay for a Humble Indie Bundle the other day, which included Thomas Was Alone, and I started playing that. It's a minimalist game where you are a bunch of blocks, navigating in a world that is a bunch of blocks and some water and some block switches. I've played maybe 40 levels so far, and I'm not sure if I like it yet. Imagine level 15 - you control a square block and a rectangle block (you can switch between them) and your goal is to get both to the end - the rectangle is good at jumping but the square is not - and so what you do is you alternate between the two characters, and you can control the rectangle to make "stairs" for the square - and together, you switch back and forth, so that eventually both guys are at their goal.

Sounds tedious, yes? I think it was tedious, but I kept playing, as I was curious - also, I paid for this game. Anyway, now I am five blocks - square, rectangle1, rectangle2 (can float in water), tall stick (best jumper and runner ever), and flat plane (bouncing board woman) - so I guess it's a bit more challenging but still pretty simple. So I played for about 40 minutes, but then I needed to take a break - I might play more later.

I've also pre-ordered Duels of the Planeswalkers 2014, mainly because it's a good game - looking forward to more challenges, and I hope the Sealed-Deck thing is nice - and also, because of the real-life card bonus, which is Scavenging Ooze, which might still be worth $15-20. That's sweet. It will go into a bunch of decks, and I think it will totally rock the Modern format.

Xbox-wise, I haven't been playing anything! No Dance Central, no Bioshock, no Far Cry, no Metal Gear - just nothing! So I'm probably not getting any new games in a while - I think a bunch of neat stuff is coming at the end of this year, but I probably won't be getting anything since we haven't had time to play games. I'm sure we'll get the new co-operative 3D Mario World, and then Bayonnetta2 when it finally comes out, but nothing fancy like Last of Us or Watch Dogs or whatever else.

Other Things and Final Words

TV-wise, I'm watching America's Got Talent and Masterchef - so when my girlfriend is free on Thursdays, I invite her over and we watch a few hours of those shows. It's summer season now so a bunch of shows ended and a bunch of new shows are starting, so I'll update on that next month when or if we're watching new shows.

Lastly, the other day my girlfriend invite me to a free seminar, about Investing and Real Estate. The company was "Rich Dad" and the presenter was David Shamy, and he talked to us about how it's good to have Rental Income and have a business that does rental stuff, and some more about investing in the stock market - long story short, not bad, but he also invited us to a few 3-day training-workshop things - so Quynh-Anh signed us up for some of those, for about $450 total, which is discounted from like $2000. At first I was iffy, but the price wasn't that bad. I mean, I'm kinda working currently and Quynh-Anh is working in retail - not quite the dream job - so the opportunity to change our lives, for $450 - hey, it might be worth it - at least, we'll learn something.

$450 sounds like a lot, so let's say it was $297 for one 3-day course on Real Estate, and $149 for one 3-day course on Investing - and each ticket is good for two people, so you could say the cost was half of that, per person. So $50 per person per day and $25 per person per day - there, that sounds a bit better than the lump sum of $450. So Quynh-Anh and I will be busy for 3 days at the end of July and 3 days at the end of August.

Also, at the seminar was my next door neighbor! She actually introduced herself to us the other day, because her cat was sick and she wasn't sure if our cats were at fault - long story short, I now know my neighbour's name, and then I randomly bumped into her the next day! I guess the story sounded better in my head, but I wanted to type it out. Maybe we'll see her more often now - that'd be... cool? I don't know. I just want to use her pool - hahaha. Just kidding, but no, really, her pool would be awesome to use.

Anyway, this update has been awfully long. Almost time to go! Byee!

I wanted to write a blog entry but things were a bit hectic yesterday - well, not really, but stuff. I had a Len Duong teleconference-thingamajigy for the better part of the morning-afternoon, and then I had to pack and do all the regular stuff, and then get in a few games of League of Legends before heading to bed :P

Vinh has facebook now! And with Facebook, comes Candy Crush. We've been playing a fair amount of Candy Crush. I started after Alex Chen was having trouble with Level 181, so I wanted to try it out for a bit, and then I saw a bunch of friends playing it so I continued playing it, and now I'm on level 185. Vinh's playing it, and my girlfriend's playing it, so we keep each other motivated to keep going on.

I've finally played Dominion, the deck-building game. It's pretty good! I already e-mailed briefly about it, and of course I don't have the time to write more about it now, but I think we should get it and play it!

I've been watching more movies, as my uncle gave me a hard drive full of movies - some good, some bad. So I've seen some weird obscure movies, as well as things like The Amazing Spiderman, Fast Five, Premium Rush, among weird ones like Sushi Girl and Sex&Death 101.

My mom gave me an iPhone that the office wasn't using, so I'm happily making use of it now. Unrelated, I found a new drink - it's Life's brand Green Tea with Pear, a water beverage - so it's pretty much water with flavor. I like it though! It's very good.

Well, it's 5:38am - I just wanted to write something at the start of June, since the next entry probably won't be until the middle, and we all know what THAT entry is going to be about...

Today I wanted to blog about one of the webcomics that I link to above: Buttersafe. I found Buttersafe a few years ago, probably through another webcomic. It had cute drawings and cute humor and nothing crude and everything all PG-rated - so I stuck with it, and I'm glad I did. Buttersafe updates twice a week, Tuesdays and Thursdays, which doesn't sound like much - and it really isn't, but it has been around for 6 years - so at about 100 comics per year, they're up to over 630 comics now.

Anyway, I wanted to take this opportunity to talk about it - to celebrate it, to link to it, to bring awareness to it - because I think it's pretty cute and awesome overall. Also, I'm not sure if there's a search-function, but every now and then I think about a buttersafe comic and I want to view it, but I don't have an easy way of accessing it - so over the course of a few days, I started compiling a list of my favorite comics. So if you want, you can start from the beginning - or go backwards from the most recent one - or you can just take a look at my favorite 21 comics. There's no big story in the comic - each comic pretty much stands up on its own - except some comics feature recurring characters - but for the most part, each comic stands on its own.

My original list was just the top 20, but I noticed all my entries were from 2009 and onwards - so I made #21 be an entry from May of 2007. Anyway, without further ado, here are my top 21 comics, in almost backwards order:

#20 and #21

http://buttersafe.com/2007/05/15/snail-mail/ - this comic is from May of 2007 - a very simple comic about a snail being a friendly neighbor.

http://buttersafe.com/2010/09/30/peas-in-a-pod/ - okay, so I said earlier that everything was PG-rated, but that doesn't mean it's not scary - some things can be scary yet still drawn pretty cutely. This comic is somehow memorable to me, for some reason. I think it's cute.

#17, #18, #19

http://buttersafe.com/2011/02/17/crosswords/ - this one is about crossword puzzles - I think Vinh (and David) would appreciate this one - I'm sure I've shown this to Vinh already, but here it is, for your linking pleasure.

http://buttersafe.com/2013/03/28/chess/ - Following the theme of games, this is a good representation of Chess.

http://buttersafe.com/2013/02/07/no-i/ - This comic is actually the inspiration behind our TOJAM game's name.

#12, #13, #14, #15, and #16

http://buttersafe.com/2011/05/26/detective-sun/ - Once again, this is what happens when Mr. sun just wants to help.

http://buttersafe.com/2009/07/09/dracula/ - This is just a little neat comic

http://buttersafe.com/2011/09/22/the-great-falunkalumph/ - If you want to be happy, you just have to know where to look

http://buttersafe.com/2011/06/30/axe-fight/ - You might find yourself in a similar lack-of-employment situation, so be careful not to make the same mistakes as he does

http://buttersafe.com/2009/01/08/the-snake-and-the-fuzzy-thing/ - It is good to stand up for yourself

#11, #10, #9, and #8

http://buttersafe.com/2012/03/29/moon-junior/ - This is a long comic about a meeting between an astronaut and a girl he finds on the moon

http://buttersafe.com/2010/01/07/wishes-for-a-newborn/ - The guy is so happy at the end

http://buttersafe.com/2009/02/05/fire-and-water/ - this is a cute comic

http://buttersafe.com/2011/03/24/a-wolf-howls-at-the-moon/ - ... A wolf howls at the moon

#7, #6, #5, and #4

http://buttersafe.com/2011/11/01/camping-trip/ - This comic is about a family of bears taking a camping trip!

http://buttersafe.com/2012/12/13/good-dog-and-little-kitten/ - this is another cute, long comic about life

http://buttersafe.com/2012/11/01/candy/ - this comic is about candy! I also like this comic because... well, I guess it has a phrase that stems from another phrase that we (including Jia) use often - "What happened Eric? You used to be cool." - of course in this comic, the new phrase is "This is what your life has become. Are you happy with yourself?"

http://buttersafe.com/2010/01/26/dirt-eater/ - I already had a comic about animals wanting to eat each other, and I have yet another one in my top 20 that is very similar! Let this be a lesson to you - if you're ever in this situation, don't make fun of the other party!

And that brings us to my top 3! One from early 2011, one from late 2011, and one from less than a month ago! The most recent comic actually inspired me to do this blog entry, so... here we go!

http://buttersafe.com/2013/04/25/census-taking/ - This comic is about census taking. I think it's a well done comic, so it is in my top 3. Also, that robot in the first panel looks so happy and eager.

http://buttersafe.com/2011/12/22/the-greatest-gift/ - My second favorite comic starts out super happy and quickly turns super sad :P

http://buttersafe.com/2011/03/03/obedience/ - Lastly, my favorite comic features a cute little puppy and his new owner. I just think it's a really good comic.

And there you have it! That's my top #21 list of my favorite Buttersafe comics. Anyway, I strongly urge you to check out more if you like, and also check out the Katamari comic too - it's super cool. That one though, you have to read in order. Anyway, enjoy the rest of your day! Ciao!