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Saturday, Dec 09, 2006 - 20:47 SGT
Posted By: Gilbert

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Like Old

Ironically for her age, my grandma detests any sort of clutter, venerable or otherwise; This has in the past led to the demise of my entire collection of Doraemon comics, which accompanied me through my kindergarten and lower primary school years, and my collated Beano and Dandy tomes from which I gleaned my first scraps of English.


At the going down of the sun and in the morning, I shall remember them

I wouldn't call myself much of a hoarder, but I start to draw the line when someone starts "accidentally" disposing of things that are not his or her own. Couldn't save most of them, but here's a (very incomplete) list of the dearly departed (some of which I hid) for posterity:

SHAME 2000 by Think Centre how did it get here?
Singapore/Cambridge GCE exam booklets 2000 and 2002
NUS, NTU, MIT, Yale, Harvard, UChicago (seriously big sized), Duke, Dartmouth College admissions et al
8 Days Issue No. 648 Mar 6 - 13 2003 with cover cut out, probably smuggled back from camp
8 Days National Day Edition 2004
Una Noche HCJC prom booklet
Time Magazine Mar 10 2003 "Among the Faithful - A TIME Special Report on Islam in Asia"
Scholarship Guides 2002-04, and brochures from the Air Force and CAAS, nothing came of those :P
NDP 03, 04 commemorative booklets
Primary Six Grammar & Usage through Multiple-Choice, three volumes and Word Formation, one volume, all compiled by Oei Soo Kee, which i religiously did (or copied) so long ago
Discover magazine August 2001 "The Unbearably Unstoppable Neutrino"
The Economist March 2-8 2002 "The business of bribery"
Forbes Global March 17 2003 Double Issue "Billionaires"
QBasic Fundamentals and Style by James S. Quasney, John Maniotes & John Repede, with a hummingbird on the cover - totally obsolete, but where I got my feet wet with programming
Using Computers A Gateway To Information by Shelly, Cashman and Waggoner - still recognize some concepts despite it being published in 1995!
Mini Science Encyclopedia by Ang Woon Chuan, B.Sc.(Hons.), Dip.Ed, with the crosshatched cover and lots of handdrawn illustrations. 26 Feburary 1989! Published by Manhattan Press (s) Pte Ltd 1988, situated at Blk 144 Viking Road #01-91 Singapore 0315
New Syllabus D Mathematics 4, General Editor Lee Peng Yee, Ph.D. Happy TCHS days.
Physics, A Course for 'O' Level, General Editor Chia Teck Chee, Ph.D. Writing textbooks for 15 years old must be seriously hard!
The Tower Hill (TCHS Maths and Science magazine) '97, Issue 58. Anchored by Toto Prediction, the Overall Best Project for Projects Day (which concluded with "From our results, we discover that theoretical prediction also will not successfully give us the desired results, that is, to successfully obtain the winning combination. Besides, indulging in Toto do no good to any of us and it shouldn't be the way to make money, so why commit yourself to Toto?"), redeemed by a nice introduction to Ultimate Gess, and a Win At Dice! cameo by pxh, csq and lyr, Fibonacci Puzzles by A. Sng and occ, and a nice Mnemonic for Pi by a couple of my 1A classmates:

Now I have a Maths emergency,
We cannot think and write anything excellent.
Writing mnemonics for pi,
The problems seem plenty.

 Sec Two Hurricanes term paper
Sec Three History Research paper on Mao Zedong: His Life and His China, which I must have been pretty proud of then - early evidence that I had discovered the beveled textured Photoshop text effect
Sec Three essay on Aggression and a review on athletics doping

Talking of old, I've been engaged in catching up on some overdue "jobs" after the exams, key among those being to save the world in Ancient Domains of Mystery (ADOM) for once. You gotta give the gaming elders some respect - many of the newer kind can, with all due respect, be completed by a trained monkey. Oh, the monkey won't get the highest scores, or discover all the hidden secrets (then again neither would most mortals, without walkthroughs), but slaying the Final Evil Overlord and gaining the gratitude of the universe is guaranteed, given enough button-mashing. If the character dies, just load from the last savepoint, or if the game is kind enough, it reloads automatically. One can almost sense the frustration of the bad guys, who having mopped the floor with some idiot adventurer just minutes ago, see him rushing at them again, fully healed up, for the seventeenth time. Or the other way round.


Artist's Rendition of ADOM's cutting-edge graphical system - Here, a brave adventurer confronts a fire-breathing Red Dragon (from Just ASCII+)

No such wimpiness in ADOM. One strike, and you're out, like in real life. Mistook an emperor lich for a lame cripple? Unspeakably mighty barbarian warlord tripped and fell into a river before realising that he never learnt Swimming? Kicked a locked door in frustration only for a huge stone slab to crash down on one's head?

Sorry, that's dozens of hours of play gone down the drain. Blizzard's Diablo series called it Hardcore mode. In ADOM, it's the default. Oh, you could manually copy the savegame folder and copy it back to mimic the functionality of reloading, but be forewarned that it is not looked kindly upon by the community - savescumming, I believe they call it.

Not that even that will keep a character alive forever. Often, especially for newer players, the horrible realization that their prized character is irrevocably doomed (there's literally a Doomed intrinsic available too) dawns, despite having learnt to discriminate mighty undead from soon-to-be dead, not to leap blindly into waterways, and to treat doors with care. Yes, folks, corruption from ChAoS makes ADOM a race against time, and a hero that tarries too much along the way becomes a writhing mass of primal chaos. Fat lot of good armfuls of wondrous artifacts will do him then. There's plenty of warning, to be fair - once horns start sprouting on one's head, or one's hands start dripping poison, any adventurer with a positive Intelligence score should know something's afoot.

Let's see what two days of attempts have got me:

Silbeard. L9 dwarven paladin (M). Died of acute blood poisoning in a sinister dungeon on level 7.

Roder. L7 gray elven beastfighter (F). Killed by a green hag in the small village dungeon on dungeon level 6.

Squegh. L4 gnomish monk (M). Killed by a swordsman on level 2 of a dangerous cave at the Drakalor Pass.

Coronth. L6 dark elven healer (M). Shot by a ratling archer in the small village dungeon on dungeon level 4.

Gragh. L1 orcish elementalist (M). Killed by a dire wolf somewhere in the hills.

It's not all bad, though; There's a promising level twelve drakish fighter, a level ten high elven assassin whom has had it easy thus far, a tough level eight trollish elementalist who can cast the odd Fire Bolt on creatures when smashing heavy things on them doesn't work, and another level eight, a goody-two-shoes dwarven paladin (some relation of the unfortunate Silbeard above, I think) whom I believe has beseeched his god for divine assistance more than once already.

But it's dreadfully slow going, especially when trying to be careful. Ah, for the good old days when I duplicated potions of gain attribute and blessed rings of djinni summoning without compunction, and yet put off actually closing the chaos gate. Good times. Then again, if others can win while under outrageous challenges, I don't see why I can't finish it the normal way.

Thirteenth week was not profitable for my punting, and it's the third net loss in a row - Had Arsenal and Liverpool to thank for avoiding a wipeout. Maybe I've been a tad too greedy with United, can't expect them to always win by two clear goals; $1192.75/$1300 now, more than a hundred smackers off the pace.

$30 on Man U in the Manchester derby (at 1.25) - Win is a win is a win
$20 on Portsmouth to beat Everton (2.20) - Sounds very reasonable, at home
$20 on Spurs to beat Charlton (1.43) - Found their boots
$10 on Blackburn to draw Newcastle (3.15) - Don't ask why
$20 reserved for Chelski and Arsenal tomorrow.



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