$1,596.15

That's the total amount I recieved in my first ever paycheck from my first ever full-time job. No more temping, no more part-time. I've got a real job, and I'm starting on my career path.

This is hard earned money, boys and girls. I spent countless hours sitting here, surfing the net, blogging and all. I've got sores on my ass, and an indent in my chair.

If it wasn't for my paycheck, I might not be so willing to put myself through so much hardship.

For Mother Russia!

This is the cover art for the upcoming wargame Red Star Rising, from Multiman Publishing. It's designed by Masahiro Yamazaki, who is considered to be among the best in game design in East Asia.
http://www.multimanpublishing.com/preorder/viewGame.php?id=33

I just love the art on this picture. For the Motherland!

My list of wishes

I just realised that old posts are quickly removed from the main page, making it difficult to keep my wishlist on top and easy to view. As such, I'm going to have to repost this list a number of times in the future, I think. If only there were a way in which I could just click a button and this post would automatically jump to the top. I had initially thought that's what the re-publish button was for...

I've made some changes to my list, added a few items.

Comics
100 Bullets
300
Batman: Year One
Batman: No Man's Land
Batman: Broken City
The Invisibles
The Outsiders
Sandman Vol 1-10

Games (PC/Video)
Fight Night Round 3 (Xbox 360)
Gears of War (Xbox 360)
Chrome Hounds (Xbox 360)
Mass Effect (Xbox 360)
Bioshock (Xbox 360)
F.E.A.R (Xbox 360)
RAW vs Smackdown 2007 (Xbox 360)
Brain Age (DS)
Electroplankton (DS)
Phoniex Wright (DS)

Boardgames
Cartegena
For Sale
I'm the Boss
Diamant
Silent War
Through the Desert
Primordial Soup
Reef Encounter
China
Mesopotamia

Tchotke
Tabletop trebuchet
Batman mini-statue
Almost anything from the ThinkGeek site. www.thinkgeek.com.

Hardware
Nintendo DS Lite
Nintendo Wii

A huge risk...

I've placed an order for a couple of items with ThinkGeek, and have them sent the item to vPost. It's a bit of a risk here, and I hope everything will go smoothly. That's US$40 that I'm putting on the line there.

It's odd, but this is the second time that I've encountered a web-store that refuses to ship to Singapore. They have both cited reasons such as item restrictions and fraudulent orders for not wanting to ship here. Odd, isn't it?

I can definately understand shipping restrictions as we do have some tough customs laws. But fraudulent orders? There must have been a few people here spoiling the market... Because of people like YOU, now I have to pay a premium to get certain items from the States.

If vPost turns out to be a cost-effective alternative method of shipping, I may use it again at other stores.

www.vpost.com.sg

I'll get you! One way or another!

Sad news... it turns out that ThinkGeek does not ship their items to Singapore. That has just devastated me and I'm finding it hard to carry on. The disappointment is weighing heavily upon my shoulders, and I'm at a mental low right now.

I may have to turn to alternate means of shipping. Thankfully, SingPost offers the vPost program, which may be my last hope of owning a CanDroid. vPost is a courier service that ships items from the States to Singapore. So when I'm buying items from stores that don't ship to Singapore, I can have them mail the item to the vPost centre in the State which will then ship the item back here for me.

I may yet still have a CanDroid of my own. Take heart, people. And pray for me.

That's MISTER CanDroid to YOU!

This is the CanDroid. I want one. I think I'll go buy it now. http://www.thinkgeek.com/geektoys/cubegoodies/674e/

Batman will protect me!

This is the mini statue that I'm thinking of purchasing to decorate my cubicle with. It's very classic, yet does not have any of the campy nature of the 70s, 80s Batman. It's modern, classy yet still reverent.

Based on the art of Jim Lee, who is a great artist.

I need to work harder to meet the mark

In 2 years, you'll probably play about 101 different games. You said you'd like to own 65% of the games you play, so that brings it to 66 games. Given that you want to play 75% of your games every 2 year(s), that yields 88 games. Finally, you said you're willing to have 30% of your collection which will never be played. So, that yields a maximum reasonable collection size of 125.
Naturally, that doesn't include expansions.

Using a tool made by Mathew Gray, over at Boardgamegeek, I have calculated my maximum reasonable boardgame collection of 125 games. Which isn't far off the limit I had set for myself. I plan to, and hope to, own a total of 100 games. I've only got 36 in my collection right now, so I've got some work to do still.

I really love playing boardgames. I always have. I used to really enjoy playing Monopoly, Hotel and assorted other games. Those were really good childhood memories.

But the ones I'm loving nowadays, aren't those sorts of games at all. I prefer the euro-style of games, which are quite different from those old, outdated games I mentioned above. Games like Carcassone, St Petersburg, Purto Rico, Samurai and Power Grid have all really captured my interest.

Even heavier, more complex war themed games like A Game of Thrones, Struggle of Empires and Antike have won me over. In fact, I love these heavier games.

www.boardgamegeek.com is the absolute best source of information on boardgames, as well as a lively online community for discussing games.

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/user/kracken is my profile there, and also a list of the games that I'm wanting to buy for myself. My wishlist of boardgames.

Which you should buy for me...

I want to decorate my cubicle

That's the main thing on my mind right now. Mark my territory, declare my geekiness. I really want to do up my cubicle and really make it mine.

I've been looking over at the Think Geek site, and have a number of items that I'm probably going to purchase in a short while.

One of those things will be the CanDroid. All will fear the CanDroid, as it rampages around the office, and annexes co-workers' working spaces. Complete and utter domination will be mine!
http://www.thinkgeek.com/geektoys/cubegoodies/674e/

Some of the things on the site, I really want to get, but I don't think any of my colleagues would go for it. Items like R/C Mini Blimp, or R/C Laser Tank, or the TAG Paintball Simulator for cubicle warfare!! I think I'd be the only nut in the office running around with stuff like this. Sigh... If only my co-workers were geekier.

I also want to get a few mini Batman statues to decorate my cube with. I saw a few at Absolute Comics at Bugis and I'm longing to get my hands on them. It's got to be the perfect Batman statue though. I don't want something to superhero-y. I want the statue to really portray the obsessive, dark and gritty nature of Batman. Something that shows him as a vengeful, tortured being that he truly is.

Everything is just shiny.

Firefly, if anyone knows that I'm talking about. A really great Sci-Fi television show that spawned a movie due to immense fan interest.

I love this short-lived show, written by Joss Whedon. I wasn't a big fan of Buffy, his other notable piece of work. But Firefly really captured my heart.

Characters with depth, meaningful inter-personal relationships, interesting settings and environment. There's just so many things to like about it. And it was all well written and produced.

If ever you wanna watch it, I might even be willing to lend you my copy. Maybe.

Oooh... Shiny...

I was surfing over at the Think Geek site, looking for a suitable gift for someone. And my goodness, there's an AWFUL lot of really cool items that I'd be interested in.

At least, those things there are cool to a geek like me.

Gadgets, electronics, toys; Think Geek has it all!

SO! I think this website is going onto the list of things that I want. I'd like almost anything available on that site.

www.thinkgeek.com

Alone

The previous post led me onto think about something else. How comfortable would I be eating lunch alone? Or for that matter, how comfortable am I doing anything alone (leaving out all inappropriate innuendoes aside) ?

Truth is, I'm actually quite comfortable being alone and doing stuff on my own. I used to have a problem with it, being self-conscious and all. But not anymore. And in fact, there are times when I prefer to do things alone.

I've eaten alone, at fast food joints or restaurants before. I've seen many movies on my own. I don't have a problem being seen alone, being alone, doing things alone. I used to be. But not anymore.

Maybe it's because I enjoy some quiet time sometimes. Or maybe it's because I make such fascinating company. And maybe it's because I just can't stand people sometimes.

I dislike people stealing my fries, disturbing me when I wanna concentrate on a film, or prattling on about nothing at all. I get bored with dealing with other people's tedious problems, and I sometimes get very tired entertaining them, especially when they get funny moods.

But I do like me. I like me very much, and I love to spend time with me. I am the most interesting person I know, and I think I'm the only one who can stand large doses of me. I like the person that I am, I like the little silly personal jokes I make to myself, and I like my taste in all manner of things.

I don't mind spending time with myself, by myself. Does that mean I have a high self-esteem? Or that I am a recluse? I don't know. But I know I wouldn't have a problem eating lunch alone.

Lunch

I just came back from lunch, with a whole group of my colleagues. It was kinda nice to be part of a larger group, and that I have some company when I'm having a meal. The food wasn't bad, but that's not the focus.

Lunch is the only time during the working hours when I have a little bit of personal time, and a moment to refresh myself. However, I'm spending this short hour with my co-workers where the conversation topic invariably always turns back to work. It's not a bad thing to get to know the people whom I'll be spending so much time with, but often times, we'd just run out of things to say, so we talk about the one thing common to us all: work.

My uncle once told me that he has always insisted on eating alone even from when he first started out. He enjoys taking his own time, making his own lunch schedule, and doing the things he likes to do during this short amount of free time. If he wants to take his time and eat a length lunch, he'll do that. If he wants to eat quickly and then go shopping, he'll do that instead. He contends that often when eating with colleagues, you'd just sit there and talk and chat and wait for one another. He doesn't like that.

And also, he says that often times, co-workers gathered together tend to gossip about one another. And he wants no part of that. Little lunch cliques, and people would only go to lunch with a select group. He doesn't want to be part of that either. So he's insistent on his views.

My uncle is sometimes a very opinionated person, and sometimes his views are a little odd. But as I sat there at lunch today, with people I work with, making small talk about how hot the weather is, and where I live and how I travel to work, and all the while waiting for someone to suggest that we leave, I wonder if there isn't a bit of truth to my uncle's views.

How do I want to spend the only free hour I have, when I'm here from 9am til 6pm?

So I have to get your permission to do something that YOU told me to do?

Or rather, I have to fill in a form to seek your approval to go to a seminar that you told me to go for?

I've just been burdened with a project that does not relate directly to my work, or within my job scope. And I bet I'm not a unique case. But thankfully, it is a relatively easy project, and the timeline/deadline is subject to our discretion. Believe me, that deadline will be set FAR off.

So the evil HR mistress told us about a seminar that she wanted us to go to, as it had direct relation to the project that she had just offloaded onto us. We all tacitly agreed, and then she told us to fill in a training request form to submit to her for her approval. Huh!

So I need your permission to do the thing that you told me to do?

I love HR.

Things that I want. i.e Things that people should buy for me.

OR Things that people ought to feel privileged to have the opportunity to buy for me.

Comics
100 Bullets
300
Batman: Year One
Batman: No Man's Land
Batman: Broken City
The Invisibles
The Outsiders
Sandman Vol 1-10

Games (PC/Video)
Fight Night Round 3 (Xbox 360)
Gears of War (Xbox 360)
Chrome Hounds (Xbox 360)
Mass Effect (Xbox 360)
Bioshock (Xbox 360)
F.E.A.R (Xbox 360)
RAW vs Smackdown 2007 (Xbox 360)
Brain Age (DS)
Electroplankton (DS)

Boardgames
Cartegena
For Sale
I'm the Boss
Diamant
Silent War
Through the Desert
Primordial Soup
Reef Encounter

Tchotke
Tabletop trebuchet
CanDroid
Almost anything from the ThinkGeek site. www.thinkgeek.com.

Hardware
Nintendo DS Lite
Nintend Wii

That's about it for now... that's only several hundred dollars worth of stuff. Start coughing up the cash, people! These are the things that I want.

Blogging? I should be working!

I thinking that why so many people blog, and that blogging is so popular, is that most people are supposed to be doing serious work, and they'd rather be doing something else. Makes sense, no? People are slacking off when they're supposed to be productive, and would rather talk and gossip rather than doing any real work.

Just like me.

I'm sitting in my little box, and I've got a phone, a computer, a good internet connection, AND I don't have any immediate work that needs to be done. I'm not about to volunteer for MORE work, and I'm not keen on engaging in small talk with the rest of my colleagues (at least, not at the moment). So what should I do? Just sit here and talk to myself, I guess.

So I'm going to indulge myself, and just keep banging away on this keyboard. There's nothing better to do, and things could be a lot worse. So I'm in a sort of a general malaise, which, in my mind, is the perfect mindset for blogging.

And I think this kinda applies to most people too, no? But I could be wrong, as I often am.

I mean... look at my day's highlights so far: It's 10.30 in the morning, and all I've done so far is write two emails, read some old emails, ate a couple pieces of bread, and had a big-ass cup of tea. And I think it's gonna go downhill from here. I've got a training workshop about Brand Management in the afternoon. So blogging is the next best alternative, right now.

But what do I really wanna do? What do I really want? To go home and play Oblivion on my brand-spanking Xbox 360.

Things that I want

I'm making this blog for me! These are the things that I want. Things that are for me and ME alone.

But seriously. I just wanna use this blog to list out the things that I want for myself. Material things that I plan to get on my own; hopefully some kind friends would decide to buy them for me instead.

It's really a public service, you see. It's tiring looking for gifts for friends. We had to celebrate a number of birthdays recently, and buying gifts was just such a chore! We had to guess what the other party would like, sorta gauge and anticipate expectations. Then we had to decide whether one gift was more appropriate than the other due to price, or availability.

This way... I can just send out a link to people who are interested in buying me things (and I hope there are many such people out there) and the problem of looking for an appropriate gift is resolved. I'd still be pleasantly surprised because I wouldn't know which item on the list I'm getting, but I can be assured that I'll get something that I'd like.

I'm an awfully thoughtful guy.