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Safra automated membership stole my service pay!

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This is some quite dated news, but since most guys who gone through NS in Singapore will more or less be a Safra member, so I will just share it here. They sent me a letter early this year telling me to renew my membership, so as with most club memberships or magazines, when you never respond or send a renewal notice, it will be assumed that you do not wish to continue on with the subscription anymore, which I did as I will not be in Singapore so often this year.

But to my dismay upon receiving my NS pay for my IPPT award last month, the pay got a chunk of the pay deducted for no apparent reason. I searched around their site for any possible subscriptions or memberships they signed up for (knowing our NS system is give you $100, take back $99) but there wasn’t anything I was signed up for. I called up the NS.sg pay department about the issue and they told me that they acknowledged the deduction for my Safra membership this year (which I didn’t apply or renew either) and they will follow up and refer the case to Safra membership department.

So Safra followed followed on that and called me up about 2 days later telling me about the issue. Ironically too, they choose to renew my membership right after their 5% membership fees hike. But I didn’t told them I wanted to carry on, so they should not assume and act on it. Then they placed the blame me, saying that I allowed them to make auto deductions. I mean who knows whether they’ve checked or know about the automatic renewal thing when we registered almost more than 5 years ago while still serving as an NSF? Should not just assume and just quietly do their takings. That is not the way to do business taking membership deductions without people’s approval.

They agreed in the end to give a refund only when I write in personally to them on it, oh the hassle. NS.sg should have an online facility to allow users to manage all their subscriptions, like the pioneer, NCO/officer clubs as well as Safra memberships from there. Man will they see a big drop in memberships when that comes up!

Myanmar Hurricane Relief & Fundraising

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Myanmar cyclone relief aid flagday

In the spade of the Myanmar Hurricane Relief efforts going on. Singapore polytechnic students will conduct a class to class fund raising to aid the relief efforts within campus grounds itself. It will mainly be led by volunteer students from Myanmar themselves so please show your support if they come around tomorrow asking for donations. Besides the flag day tomorrow, here are other links you can contribute to the relief efforts as well:
Samaritian’s Purse
World Vision
Singapore Red Cross
UNICEF

12/05/2008 Flag day update – We’ve raised about $14,000 SGD over the short time span of one day. Thanks all who helped out in the efforts!

Ez-linkers in SP, Graduation website up.

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Ez-linkers in SP

For those who were wondering where I am these days, I am in school working part time- ummm distributing Ez-link cards. Ok it’s not really my definition of a wise way to spend my time there given the opportunity costs, but hey I had to be in school anyway to finish my national youth achievement (NYAA) reports for submission, so why not?

Moreover, the student development officer there who invited me to work there not only allowed me to bring all my barang barang there to work on my report but freelance jobs while I man the Ez-link distribution tables. I can even have stand-ins when I need to leave the table for awhile to meet clients and meetings in town. Now is that cool or what.

Ezlinkers - Moblerly Kejum buteh snacks

SP Moberly block will be having their official opening this friday as well, so part of my job there is to prepare some items for the event itself. I became rather proficient in making Kejum buteh cones for the Kejum buteh snack store after being tasked to make like 300 cones in 2 days (man was that so time consuming).

There was a photo taking session today as well in Moberly for all the gradation award winners as well and got to meet the other 2 of the 3 musketeers- Andrew and Cliff who were there as well, but only for a short while as we are all very busy people.

Got to know many of the SAA staff better since I was in and out the Student alumni office. It was kinda fun knowing almost all of this year’s juniors as well. This batch will be mostly the students born on the year of 1990-1991 and it seems that almost a large 20-30% of the applicants are foreigners, mostly coming from PRC based on the name list and records. Moreover, it seems that it’s more of a fad for modern Chinese local families to give their children Christian middle names, forgoing the usual 2 syllable chines name, so it’s like Matthew Daniel Yeo for instance. Though the norm in the west, in Singapore schools it’s like having the bragging rights of 2 names!

Oh yes, lastly, the SP graduation website is up already as well too, check that out!

ShaunChng.com nominated for Singapore Blog Awards 2008 (Omy)

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Here are some news with respect the site! This site has being nominated for the Singapore Blog Awards 2008 under the Best Design Category.

Thanks Alvin for nominating my blog.

Here is a general timeline of the awards schedule, starting from the beginning of this month:

Phase 1: Nomination (4 weeks – Now)
Phase 2: Closed Panel Judging (2 weeks)
Phase 3: Public Voting (4 weeks – starting round the 3rd week of june)
Phase 4: Results announced

The most critical part of the award will have to be the public voting period where I will require the support from you- My visitor to vote for the site. Do not worry, when the time comes, I will post the relevant details then reminding you on that. In the meantime chill!

Dad’s Birthday Dinner at Red Star Restaurant

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Dads birthday dinner at the Red ruby restaurant

Backtracking on his birthday dinner, dinner last Saturday was at the Red Star restaurant along Chin Swee road, (around the China town/people’s park area). It’s a quite a large Chinese a-la carte food restaurant with food portions and quality is much better than few other I’ve tried in the similar league as well. The food they serve there is good and above average, but not really in the definition of spectacular. The food and service at good and would please any descent and average person there for a typical neighborhood Chinese restaurant. The place is reasonably packed for a Saturday afternoon, despite being situated in a remote corner in Chinatown.

Some sidetrack of Chinatown
Since I was around these 2 areas rather recently, comparing Chinatown and Little India, I tend be more disgusted in the Chinatown area, though some people could be less tolerant of the fragrance our Tamil counter parts wear (which I can’t understand why people make such a big fuss about), with me personally completely being fine with.

At least Little India is relatively cleaner from litter and oral excretions- those foreigners there are really more disciplined than our locals. Which really made me think about the comments some of my overseas friends have on our local people here. No wonder as told by one of my cousins who studied overseas – he didn’t have a culture shock going overseas, but one upon his return to Singapore instead!

Happy Birthday Dad!

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Dads birthday cake

Today is my dad’s birthday, the 5th of May. Happy birthday Dad! Year older, a year wiser! And there was cake! Not meaning cake in the game “Portal” though we did have chocolate cake, something rather similar to the one in the game (as referred on my previous blog post).

You should be able to know how old he is by the number of candles on his cake. And as with every annual day birthday tradition, my family always have a habit of celebrating our birthday dinners the weekend nearest to our actual birthday, as we are usually too packed on the weekdays to do so. With cake serve only served on the actual day itself.

I’ve always had the impression that birthdays are important to people, but apparently it’s actually quite mainstream in Singapore families as I come to know, not even celebrating them at all even for their children from parents and vice-versa, is that weird or not?

Upcoming next will be my younger sister’s birthday, but before that is mother’s day! Time to get busy with presents and stuffs.

Portal completion and some facts about GlaDOS

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Got some time to complete the orange box game Portal today. For those who never heard of the game, it’s one kinda unique first person shooters (FPS) meets puzzle games. Portal is developed by Valve, the same company which brought the world Half-life and brought the game Counter-strike into the retail channels.

One of valve's portal chamber maps

The staff on the Portal project were previously students of the DigiPen Istitute of Technology who created an independent game freeware game Narbacular Drop in 2005. Portal is based largely on the original Narbacular Drop concept considering that the team are now all employed at Valve.

Certain elements have been retained from Narbacular Drop, such as the system of identifying the two unique portal endpoints with the colors orange and blue. A key difference in the signature portal mechanic between the two games however is that Portal’s “portal gun” cannot create a portal through an existing portal unlike in Narbacular Drop. Portal took approximately two years and four months to complete after the DigiPen team was brought into Valve, and no more than ten people were involved thus the rather small, short yet very funny gameplay portal offers.

Portal involves people going through 19 levels of the Aperture science enrichment test center, guided by a super intelligent computer by the name of GLaDOS, voiced by Ellen McLain, who also and the commentator voice in TF2.

About GlaDOS in Portal
GlaDOS is cool, I mean, she something like a near-perfect a biological operating system- she is a research computer who had hrashly overtook the Aperture facility by releasing a neuto-toxin gas, killing and evacuating everybody in the complex- She have only one purpose and ablity- develop the portal gun autonomously by means of volunteer tests subjects going through the enrichment test center- promising tasty and moist “Cake” at the end of the series of camber tests.

With joes aside, some of the rather interesting textured walls
With jokes aside, some of the rather interesting textured walls
GlaDOS your last "boss"
GlaDOS your last “boss”
The ending escape scene
The cake is not a lie!

The mission ends with GlaDOS wanting to “murder you”, but you escape and put your familiarity of the portal gun to good test as you make you way from chamber 19 through the facilities research and industrial areas into GlaDOS central area, where she tries very comically to kill you just as how navie she is always in the game. Here is the last part of the last boss fight with GLaDOS damn funny speech:

I was not until I completed the game where I came to know that the eyes you throw into the fire actually speak- In the video you will see 4 different ball “modules” GlaDOS is made up of a central AI system which is hot-plugged with several control chip sphere to provide her with her various traits and/or to control her, with an explanation of each:

1) Purple (Quiet) – Morality eye – A hotfix install preventing the re-occurring release of the deadly toxin
2) Orange– The inquisitive eye which builds GlaDOS intelligence
3) Blue (Video with some overlapping content from other eyes)- The knowledge core of GlaDOS who is obsessed with “Cake”
4) Red The angry thing – The part with expresses anger and revenge

The cake is not a lie!
The ending escape scene
GlaDOS singing "Still Alive"
GlaDOS singing “Still Alive”
Cake and your companion cube back!
Cake and your companion cube back!

Portal will definitely be one of the most humorous games I’ve played. Now after playing portal I am so into my companion cube, I want one!

A day with the professors NUS GMS Final Interview

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I had this funny mixed feeling of happiness yet guilt about going so far and being shortlisted for the final NUS scholarship interviews- As one of my main intentions was to study overseas in the UK, particularly in Cambridge and the Imperial College. I wanted to pull out, but I won’t want to count my chickens before they are hatched despite having my aims set, besides considering myself rather fortunate being having offered a place in NUS as well as NTU (which I kinda declined even though I didn’t applied to study there). Adding to the guilt was now being the critical period for final admissions and appeals with respect to people failing admissions.

I’ve seen both sides of admissions, being rejected into the corner for consecutive years to the contrasting extreme of being treated like god- It definitely made me see more and appreciate the coaxing nature, yet the harshness of university admissions- something which I know many are going through now. I do not intend to use NUS a stepping stone, or even compromising my possible stay in NUS with this public entry, but I just feel that I have to be frank in what I pursue.

Nus university hall

However, all those who knew my about situation told me not to pull out so soon and go for the interview instead, emphasizing “whos knows what else can come up?”. I wanted to see how far I can go as well, so there I was last Saturday morning was making my way to the NUS University Hall. The eye opener of that final interview was me being the first person to be interviewed that day out of a handful of 8 on the list for the highly prestigious, yet bond-free NUS global merit scholarship.

So for those who are on or yet to go through the final rounds of the interview, here is the experience: You will be interviewed in the deputy head meeting room of NUS with it being chaired by 5 professors and presumably the main Deans of the whole NUS. The setting is rather corporate board room style and it being 5 versus 1, expect lots of questions to come from all angles as they start questioning you based on your portfolio, if you put it in literal sense.

However, despite how daunting that may sound, the interview actually takes a very casual setting- there are no technical questions and the proffs there are very down to earth and are more interested to know more about you, your future commitments as well as your passions on top of what makes you tick and able to contribute to the college community.

In the end we all ended up chatting like friends, addressing each of key issues and even bringing the whole group to laugh with an occasional joke here and there. I think I did well- abit too well than I intended it to be.

Like with every ending interview, I was all high on jumpy adrenaline thereafter- My mum was like laughing at me on how easy I take interviews now- the normal nerve wrecking experience is all like second nature to be, having gone through almost more than 10 interviews in the last month, it’s always like what I call it: “You are the pieces of a half-finished jigsaw puzzle belonging to your interviewer”.

The results of the scholarship will be out end this month, with the university acceptance period open since 2nd of May. May the best man wins.

Tips and tricks on getting all Team Fortress 2 (TF2) Medic Achievements

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With the new Team fortress achievement packs out, I bet everyone on the steam server will be raiding on medics hoping to get all the new achievements (aka new weapons loadout). Many of the achievements can be unlocked while playing normally on any causal server, but if you simply wish to speed up the process for the OMG OMG BFG uber-bonesaw you saw that guy having on a public server, here are some tips I have for you on all of them.

TF2 Pyro Frenzy!
TF2 Pyro Frenzy!
April Medic Rush on GoldRush
April update Medic Rush on GoldRush
Blast Assist on interteam team achiemvement
“Scouts no more in a corner” – Blast Assist on interteam team achievement

The screenshots here show how some of the achievements can be unlocked if you group up with some friends to grind on a server. My favorite will defiantly have to be “The Raid” where you can a bunch of 10-16 scouts of the other team running straight into heavy mini and medic syringe guns. You can easily get 5-6 achievements for your team at a go on a single map round doing this, some of them being “Does It Hurt When I Do This?” and “Big Pharma” achievement just to name a few. Its also a typical laughing stock on how it is done too, trust me.

I’ve got almost all the achievements as of yesterday with few more left as I have only reached about half of the 1 million heal points for “chief of staff” together with milestone 3 after playing few hours for 2 days so far, with one weapon unlocked per day since I’ve started playing. The new Level 5 syringe gun (crap I don’t remember those fancy Kso-bomatic-zerg names!) is nice but pathetically little in health generation. The new critical medi-gun is very useful in helping you getting few more achievement as well, though that only most of of them only works with the old medi-gun, so stick to the old one even if you got the new one, so as not to take chances and wasting people’s time.

Engineer setup for the Medical Breakthrough achievement
Engineer setup for the “Medical Breakthrough” achievement
Mass medic BBQ for the
Infernal Medicine achievement
Mass medic BBQ aka “circle of fire” for the “Infernal Medicine” achievement
Scout teams running into mini and syringe guns
My favorite “The Raid!”- Scout Massacre teams running into mini and syringe guns

With that I present to you a short but extensive tip and guide into getting all of them yourself, with the help of your friends of course!

asterisk * denotes an achievement which can be easily obtained in-game public server casual play, but can take sometime or based on luck.

*First Do No Harm: You can get this one only before the map ends with a round win or map change, being the highest scoring medic on a team of 6 or more players with your kills = 0, which means only earnings points in assists and deploying ubers.

*Quadruple Bypass: Heal a teammate who’s taking fire from 4 enemies at once- Can be done on defense, say dustbowl map on a heavy teammate, you will most probably get it unexpectedly in the heat of the battle. Or just have 4 enemies sink one round each into a teammate you are healing.

*Group Health: Happens everytime in dustbowl or goldrush, work with 2 other medics to deploy 3 simultaneous uber-charges at the starting rush.

*Surgical Prep: Works in dustbowl or goldrush too, very easily as well too- have an uber-charge ready before the setup phase ends.

Trauma Queen: Realistically on public servers, 3 ubers in 5 minutes is almost God-like. You need both teams to work on this- Have a teammate (solider/demoman) constantly damaging himself and have some enemy volunteers to kill and to charge your uber faster. You need to deploy 3 uber-charges in less than 5 minutes, and assist your teammate in killing 5 enemies during that time.

*Double Blind Trial: Happens everytime in dustbowl or goldrush. Deploy an uber-charge within 8 seconds of a nearby enemy medic deploying his.

Play Doctor: Despite this being the easiest to get, its the hardest infact now with everyone playing medic now on casual game servers. In a team with no medics, get a teammate to call for “medic” then be first to switch to medic, and then heal 500 health on any teammate without dying. After healing 500 health, change class to get the award.

*Triage: You can get this by accident (if you are lucky) when you uber a teammate after the setup in dustbowl or goldrush when both teams collide. Alternatively, this is a very easy achievement to obtain- Get a demoman teammate to lay a critical sticky on the ground, and get him to immediately detonate it (while he’s standing on it) after you’ve deployed your uber-charge on him.

*Preventive Medicine: Have an uber ready and deploy it the moment an enemy touches your CP, with means blocking the enemy from capturing a control point with an uber-charged teammate.

Consultation: This one is hard to get on casual servers. Get the other team to be full of scouts (5 minimum) and heal a team medic to kill them all in a single life without dying. You can get this while going for the “Does It Hurt When I Do This?” achievement as well.

Does It Hurt When I Do This?: Kill 50 scouts with your syringe gun. This can be done on the method I call “The Raid”– In dustbowl, get blue to be all scouts and have them keeping running out the spawn and your syringe gun/team heavys all on full auto at the entrance. You can get Big Pharma and placebo effect easily for your whole team in less than 30 minutes before switching for the other team to have ago at it too.

Placebo Effect: This one is hard on public servers as most medics (unless the other team is retarded) can’t get past 2-3 kills without dying. This involves having your uber-charge charged and killing 5 enemies (preferably clean kills, no assists) without dying. On a recommendation you can get this done on “The Raid” as mentioned in the “Does It Hurt When I Do This” point.

*Peer Review: Takes time, or initiate a medic melee match to get it within the hour- Kill 50 medics with your bone saw.

Big Pharma: Can be done while doing the method in “Does It Hurt When I Do This?“- Assist a heavy in killing 20 enemies, where neither of you die.

You’ll Feel A Little Prick: In pure execution style, get enemies to bunch up weakened in a corner and ubber the scout using the scatter gun to clear them all at close range. You need to kill 4 enemies with single uber-charge on your scout with only with one med gun on the scout at one go.

*Autoclave: Assist in burning 5 enemies with a single uber-charge on a pyro. You can get this with a “friendly/tamed” pyro lighting up some volunteers from another team standing bunched up together. Or you can get it in my recommend “Mass medic BBQ” while doing the “Infernal Medicine” achievement.

Blast Assist: Refer to the 3rd screenshot on the 1st row. In pure execution style, assist in exploding 5 enemies (in this case weakened scouts) with a single uber-charge on a soldier. Can be done only with one medi-gun on one soldier at every go (i.e do not works if 2 or more medi-guns are on the soldier delivering the blows).

Blunt Trauma: Have some deliberately weakened enemy (say scouts) clustered in an area and rip your uber on the heavy- Assist in punching out 2 enemies with a single uber-charge on a heavy. Also, like in the “Blast Assist” achievement, can be done only with one medi-gun on one heavy at every go.

Medical Breakthrough: 3-4 is normal in causal servers but 8? Now that is difficult. With reference to the 2nd row screenshot above. Have blue build dispensers and teleporters all clustered together, then get a red demoman to lay stickies all around and destroy everything with a single uber-charge. Also, like in the “Blast Assist” and “Blunt Trauma” achievements, it can be done only with one medi-gun on one demoman at every go.

*Midwife Crisis: This is easy and paints a very typical situation in normal TF2 play, just heal an engineer as he repairs his sentry while it’s under enemy fire.

*Ubi Concordia, IBI Victoria: This one is tricky as it is all about positioning. You can get it by having you (the medic) and a heavy standing near by not on an enemy Control Point and having opposing team scouts (5 enemies) coming on towards you kill 5 in a single life. Dustbowl or the TF2 Warpath is a good map for this. The easy way is to blow up 5 enemies all standing on their control point with a team Demoman.

*Grand Rounds: Very doable, but just takes time- You just have to keep on playing- Heal 200 teammates after they’ve called for ‘Medic!’

*Infernal Medicine: Can be done overtime in casual servers, or for a fast track do it like what I do in the screenshot above with a “circle of fire” aka Mass medic BBQ- Extinguish 100 burning teammates, only when the fire disappears when it can be considered extinguished. You can get everyone to call for “medic” at the same time in the circle to get the “Grand rounds” achievement as well.

*Doctor Assisted Homicide: Assist in killing 20 of your nemesis (i.e getting revenge only by assisting). After one round is completed in “The Raid” as a scout (refer to “Does It Hurt When I Do This”), you will more of less the whole opposing team as a nemesis, switch over as a medic and heal the teammate who dishing out the honours to the scouts on the other team after the switch.

*Sawbones: Got this on a casual server, or you can set it up like how I got it- An enemy heavy healed by medics are best for this. Hit him with your bonesaw 5 times in arrow without dying or missing.

*Intern: Accumulate 7000 heal points in a single life. Once you 7000, why not go for the next 10,000 one?

*Specialist: Accumulate 10000 heal points health in a single life. Key point- do not die.

*Chief of Staff: Accumulate 1 million total heal points. This was brought down from 10 million after the gods at valve software found out that most of us players are not like Bruce almighty. Takes and really takes time to complete, no shortcuts here, though you can speed it up in the “circle of fire” as mentioned in my “Infernal Medicine” point.

*Hypocritical Oath: This depends on your luck but I happen to get this on an unlucky spy on a competition server- Kill an enemy spy (bonesaw, syringe gun) that you have been healing. The trick is to go to him and heal him when you see any spy decloak (or look suspicious) then block their retreat with your syringe gun and keep firing at them (in the air) even when they cloak up.

Medical Prevention: Save a falling teammate from dying on impact. This one is very tricky, get a demoman teammate against a long flat wall and have him damage himself till about 50% health. Then have him sticky-jump up vertically and heal him in the air (apex of the jump) before he hits the ground and dies. You need quite a few goes at this to get it right. This is harder to get being soldier though.

*Second Opinion: Very simple, but DO NOT work when you have auto-heal on checked in the multi-player options. Focus on 2 teammates preferably standing side by side and deploy your uber-charge on both on them (2 of them) only, rotating between them quickly in a circle so both of them have the uber effect together at once.

*Autopsy Report: Provide an enemy with a freezecam shot of you taunting above their ragdoll. Simply just taunt on an enemy after you killed ’em with a clean kill (no assists).

*FYI I Am A Medic: Can be completed over time with luck as 5 spies is not too hard or simply just have the other team keep sending spies for you to finish off. Use your bonesaw to kill 5 enemy spies who have been calling for ‘Medic!’. Note the spies have to call for “Medic!” before you kill them or it won’t count.

*Family Practice: Uber-charge ten of your steam community friends. Part of a community? simply just join their game and uber them simple! No friends? make and add some!

House Call: Join a game that one of your friends is in and then deploy and uber-charge on him. Same as Family Practice ahievement as above, only that its a friend this time instead of a group member. To work, you need to enter the game from the community “friends” panel or “retry” on a server with your friend currently playing inside.

*Bedside Manner: Be healing a teammate as he achieves and achievement of his own. With medics stealing the achievement limelight, just focus your med gun on any of them during a Control Ppint setup map (goldrush, dustdowl) and you will more or less able to get one very easily on any server when the achievement frenzy spams your command prompt the moment the gate opens. It only valid only for the duration when your teammate have the achievement trophy on his head. It works for other classes too, but you are better off targeting teammate medics for now.

Thats all I have, feel free to let me know if you have gotten yours in another way or either. Cheers!

P.S: Oh yes I guess to all those grievers over the last few days in many servers mocking people on the “console command” Valve accidentally left out to unlock all your achievements prior to the hotfix update, you will notice that your achievements are all like gone now.. whahah serves ya right! Remember there is no easy way out!

Got my Ubber saw!

May 3rd 01:00am Update: I’ve got the uber saw! Apparently from my achievement list, you need not get almost all the achievements to unlock the last milestone 3. I still have Chief of Staff leftover (which can be achieved slowly over time) and my milestone 3 was just unlocked today! The uber saw is the only cool weapon in the update. The Kritzkrieg from experience do not have much of the wow factor as the old uber-charge, besides doing a good job in confusing your teammates who run into the enemy lines the moment they get charged.

Of them all, the Kritzkrieg is overall best for defense where health is not a concern but terrible at offense and as a counter-uber measure. So the best loadout for the versatile medic will have to be the new Blutsaugher syringe gun, the old medi-gun and the new Ubersaw to charge things up real quick. The damage of the new uber saw is greater too, one clean shot of an injured enemy will guarantee a kill and 25% uber boost! Nice!

Ok enough for medic for now. Hope my favorite class, the engineer will have new laser mounted tesla-coil sentry guns or spy detector building probes for the engineer achievement pack.

Dinner at Muthu’s Curry (Racecourse road branch)

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Muthus Curry Eatery Outside

Dinner tonight was at Muthu’s Curry joint situated along race course road. It’s a restaurant which serves authentic Indian cuisine in a relatively posh setting comparable to that of general hotel restaurants. Having eaten there, why don’t I just share bit more about the place.

The old Muthu’s curry eatery used to be around the race course road area as well, but a much smaller restaurant till they moved to this new place not too sometime ago. It’s directly opposite the current temporary Tekka food center and market, given the actual Tekka food premises being closed for renovations. They have a 2nd Muthu’s curry branch in Singapore at the Suntec fountain terrace basement as well.

The place is very modern looking themed with a posh feel. All the staff are ironically Tamil but no language barrier here- they all speak good English well, which means good for the large considerable number of expats who frequent the joint based on the crowd that night. Overall, if you have a flair for Indian cuisine with quality and nice western ambiance, the place is for you. There is a high degree of authenticity you can get from the large variety of foods you can choose from the menu (including desserts) or the waiters will walk your through the main food selection display area if any of the food names on the menu gives you no clue what is it.

My family was there being invited by cousin Gordon and family as well. So it’s haha very much a dinner on them. We had fish head curry on top few some servings of nun, mutton, cabbage, sotong just to name a few. The food is good, but spicy for me and I kept sweating despite being in air-conditioning! But it’s just me as I was the only one breaking a sweat of of the 7 of us there, mainly because I have a low tolerance for spicy food as my sports and running culture prevents me from eating too much spicy foods.

General setting
The restaurant general setting
The table setting and servings
The table setting and servings
Serving selection area
Serving selection area

But I won’t put them down just because of that. The quality of the food is excellent and freshly made (and replenished frequently from the kitchen), but having eaten from the streets of little India and Tekka and with the exception of their Kebabs and Masala Crabs and Prawn, I find that there is actually nothing else special or exclusive in what they serve- you can get the same delicacies off few stores in the Tekka food center at a much cheaper price as well. But Muthu’s curry have their own fair share of pluses- air-conditioning, security, a no-frills one-off melting pot for all what you want Tamil cuisine in one place as well as not having to pull through crowded little India streets and hawker center for crowds and keeps. If paying $6 for a cup of coffee at Starbucks is cool for you, then Muthu’s curry might just justify the asking price for you on their premium menus, which is ironically only al-la-carte (no buffet) and by nature is not exactly cheap either. As the saying goes, you pay $1 for the coffee and $5 for the seat and ambiance in Starbucks, maybe that might justify the free valet parking offered just right at their doorstep as well.

The staff service is just good but not excellent, given the exceptional one or two staff which dampened the rating. The whole place runs off an efficient computerized reservation as well as ordering system, just like what they do in our fast food joints- paperless PDA orders on wi-fi, so the onyl paper they use are your receipts- thats commendable on on their part.

In all Muthu’s curry is not totally bad, but for Singaporeans living in Singapore you will find yourself quite hard to be pleased by what they serve there. I will recommend the place however as an excellent joint for any expat friends you have around town who wants to try authentic Indian cuisine but just don’t want to get down and dirty in the mainstream hawker centers. You will have my vote for that.

Walk round Little India
Walk round Little India
The place is packed
The busy crowds
The busy crowds
The place is packed

Walk round little India
Thereafter, since we were there, my family went off the explore few areas of Little India for the night and we were amazed to see the place like a little self-contained town. I mean yes we know that the place is mostly a populous area for our Tamil counterparts, but in terms of standards, we were surprised that it’s almost matching it like the orchard road of “India” you can say. Race course road on the other hand can be seen as the Holland Village of Little India. Walking through there really makes you feel like a foreigner- people all sitting in open fields chatting in Tamil, all the store sign boards are in Tamil, posters, signs, etc… and everyone is all foreign there, kinda makes you feel very much like you are in a foreign country- with the exception of the warmer Singapore nighttime climate hinting to you that you are not. If it were abit cooler at night it felt just like you are off the streets of a Bombay town. Further coupled with the May Day public holiday crowd, you should go there to see it for yourself, the feeling was unreal.

New Team Fortress 2 Update- Goldrush and 39 Medic achievements up

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For those TF2 fans, the day of the major update has arrived, with a new game mode called payload in the goldrush map (very similar to thehappycow style tf2 maps) and many new spy-friendly fixes and misc updates on top of the new “loadout” menu for the medic with 39 new achievements. Here is the low down on what is up:

Team Fortress 2

  • Added Goldrush
  • Added Character Info and Loadout to the main menu
  • Added 39 Medic achievements
  • Added unique Medic items:
  • The Blutsaugher, The Kritzkrieg, and The Ubersaw
  • Added new attack animations to most melee weapons
  • Added new speech for the Heavy and Demoman
  • Added Stopwatch mode to Tournament mode
  • Automatically used on Attack/Defense maps
  • Teleporter effect no longer shows up on invisible or disguised Spies
  • Spies disguised as their own team can now capture control points
  • Increased force taken by pipebombs by bullets and explosions
  • Target ID hud is now colored red or blue to match the spectator target
  • Tournament mode no longer ends matches early if the time limit is nearly up when a new round starts
  • Fixed exploit where clients could start benchmark mode on servers
  • Fixed drowning exploit that allowed players to regenerate health
  • Fixed reload exploit that allowed plays to fire instantly after switching weapons
  • Fixed flamethrower bug where a player flush against a wall couldn’t be lit on fire from the front
  • Fixed invulnerability overlay not drawing if the invuln player was previously on fire
  • Fixed “times used” entry in teleporters maxing out at 32
  • Fixed rare client crash on level change during control point capturing
  • Minor fix to stat gathering to prevent players using sv_cheats to easily garner achievements

For mapmakers:

  • Mapmakers can now directly place the tf_gamerules entity into their map. Fixes Hammer thinking the inputs to it are broken
  • Mapmakers can now place Engineer buildings directly into a map, with an option for them to be invulnerable
  • Added “AddRedTeamScore” and “AddBlueTeamScore” inputs to tf_gamerules
  • Added “SetRequiredObserverTarget” input to tf_gamerules. Force spectators to use the specified viewpoint

Granary

  • Added setup time logic, and gates to the middle
  • Fixed an overlay alignment bug on one of blue’s gate signs
  • Minor lighting fixes in red/blue spawns

2Fort

  • Added medium ammo and health to basement hallways
  • Added small ammo and health to top of spiral
  • Fixed a clip brush exploit outside blue sniper deck
  • Fixed number “2” overlay on front of red base not being assigned to the brush face

Pop on the update by simply logging into Steam and the update will kick in automatically.

Here is a video of the new goldrush map and medic weapons explained in the video on the click courtesy from gamevideos:

Singapore Formula Drift – USA’s Ryuji Miki Champion

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Though I have a whack more for continental cars more than Japanese tuner cars, the recent formula tuner drift held on April 27 was a sold out crowd at the Changi exhibition center, with Team USA’s Ryuji Miki taking the crown in his RX-7. You can check out more on their site at www.formuladrift.com.sg.

So the Japanese who started the drift craze will more or less be the naturals in the field (with the exception of tofu delivery on Akina), here is a small short video of zen in appreciation to just what they do as a pastime back in Japan ontop of the quickest way of turning rubber into smoke: