Wait out

Left all my cash cards at home, So here I am waiting at a junction coffee shop sipping coffee while I wait for 10am. Thats right, waiting for the ERP gantry to turn off.

Its been awhile since I was at Siang Kwang. This area brings back toddlerhood memories.

Beside this shop is an alley lined with street vendors of all kinds. There was the sweet man who would spread his colourful wrappered sweets on his push cart. Five cents for 3. And then there was the yummy huat kuei, this guy had a mini portable steamer. And not forgetting tau suan served in a porcelain bowl. Ah memories.

Now the alley is just an alley. Progress. First world living standard. Street vendors have all been relocated to hawker centres or food courts by early eighties.

Cool D&D T-Shirt

Cool D&D T-Shirt,
originally uploaded by MacroGrey.

DOTA Allstars new map 6.44

Dota 6.44 map is out. 6 new heroes. Tried Storm Spirit, Dark Seer, Sacred Warrior, Pit Lord and Lanaya. I didn't get the time to try Dirge the undying. Would be cool, because that hero is IMBA.

Sacred Warrior is a troll that heals and does fiery damage at the expense of his health. His ultimate is good for beginners. Damage done is base on a percentage of his hit point. So for this dude, go for the strength build. He is a good healer, so he gets to stay in the lane real long.

Dirge the undying is one tough zombie, able to control the lane with the zombies that he raises, they in turn heals the hero and Dirge is a walking radiance, well better, imagine 1% of your hp goes away at his presence at regular interval. His ultimate really slows you and am not sure if damage is done. But this zombie can really push. Takes a lot of effort to stop him. With the right team, I think its possible to push very hard into enemy base at level 6. An IMBA hero that is just dying to be nerfed in the next version.

Storm Spirit is a blue panda, probably seen him before. Its the blue panda when Pandarean Brewmaster calls his ultimate and splits. Storm Spirit shoots electric bolts and can shoot them fast at the expanse of mana. Has a chance of creating a mini purge. His magical shield is also nice, making him good against magic users. Lastly his ultimate is a grapple. Just one night and I've seen creative use of it. I suck at grappling..ha ha ha.. once I brought my entire dying team close to the opposing team. Wasn't very popular after that. Anyway, grapple is cool, you could grapple an object (even trees and living things) and bring anyone around you to it. You could grapple a far away tree to escape from an enemy. Its not a blink so, I suppose your line of path must be clear.

Pit Fiend, a demon like hero. Able to do minimal area damage by raining fire at an area, cast a wall of tomb stone around his enemies. if they touch these tomb stones they are stunned for a short while. Most times they just walk right between the tombstones with ease. His ultimate is cool, he can open a portal that leads to any where in the map. Seen one creative use of it, where he transports his entire team to another part of the map. Naturally surprising the enemy in the forest.

Dark Seer, a melee intelligence hero. First skill brings every one to a point and damages them. Second skill shields and damages. Third removes negative buffs. Ultimate creates a wall, any hero that passes through an image of the hero is created. Possible deadly combo is, wall in front of him, cast first skill to pull enemy heroes through the wall creating images of them which in turn attacks his enemies.

Lanaya, the toughest to play. Then again I only had one night to evaluate and by evaluate I mean just join a game and play, trying to read their skills while farming and wondering what skill build to go for. Lanaya can hide, but only for awhile. Her ultimate is to set traps that last pretty long, cool down for the trap is also short. You could set as many traps as you want. Traps slows her enemies, but you have to manually trigger them, have yet to test if it auto-triggers. This micro manage of traps makes Lanaya a hero for advance players.

Anyway, amongst these new heroes, I guess Storm Spirit and Sacred Warrior suits my style. And maybe Dirge for his IMBA abilities. Pit Fiend if my team mates are really good.

Looks like IceFrog introduced piercing type of heroes. Lanaya and Sacred Warriors are throw dart like weapons. Sacred probably made to look like spears where as Lanaya throws her psionic daggers. Wanted to read a bit more on these new heroes but couldn't dotaportal.com seem to be down since yesterday. Maybe it couldn't handle the load.

Like all things new it comes with defects. I hear there are memory leaks. Players disconnects probably due to a crash sometimes. Encountered a check sum error while playing, good thing it was caught. A red message appeared asking us to save the replay and email to IceFrog. Well, kind of got carried away, forgot to save replay and just joined the next game :P

Rising cost

With the recent rise in commodity due partly to climate change and partly to China's insatiable consumption the timing of the increase in GST to 7% will hit some hard. Though there are offset packages and salary increments which never seem to keep up with inflation, it is the low to middle income that will suffer the most.

Even sugar cane juice has increased by fifty cents! Coffee and milk will soon go up too.

There has been much news on the rise of commodities. To correct the public's view that the rising cost is not solely due to the coming GST hike.

It is unfair that the problems of other countries affect us. Being resource scarce Singapore imports most of its food. And most of our diary imports from Australia. With Australia experiencing its worst drought in years, food yield is severely down.

I hope we find alternative source of supply. But it will take time. Mean while most of us will just have to bite the bullet or eat less.

A mudder falls

Sad, just read in the papers and later confirmed with some old friends that a player I use to see around in a mud I played has succumbed to deep vein thrombosis (DVT).

This was his third - and final - attack of breathlessness in about as many years. Shocked at the sight, Han Boon, a 22-year-old medical student, called for an ambulance immediately. He said: 'Every single breath was a gasp. He couldn't speak or move much.'

Then Rui Hong fell silent and became cold to the touch.
Excerpts from news article.

Oh Rui Hong, may you rest in peace. Will always remember you as the awesome Pyromancer.

I suck at DOTA

Man, I suck real bad at DOTA these days. Sheesh, to think I've been playing since 2005. Its the age. Most likely. To make it worst, the people I play with are getting younger. Am amaze at their reflex. So what's an old geezer like me to do against lightning reflexes of youth? I chose Medusa, one for mana shield and for her ability to split arrows. That should allow me to farm well and have enough buffer to run right? Well wrong. I meet people who could deny my creep kills early in the game, first blood me even with mana shield. Damn these kids are good!

Well on the work front, it sucks. We had a deadline but there are major bugs that couldn't be squashed. Team is tired, been working round the clock for the past four days and there's no light at the end of the tunnel. Only just, we think we have identified the problem and is now rushing for a fix. Looks like this weekend wouldn't be much of a weekend. We didn't break for Vesak Day. Wife is shopping, at least she's happy.

Update: Next day, I scored well with Tormented Soul and Magnataur woot! This Uncle is back!