"01" because there is a high probability of another post on this one.
Yeah, mid-terms are in two weeks.
Scary, I haven't done real serious study for so long and I want to get this right.
Only in one subject, the other does a couple of assignments instead, one of which I have just emailed to the lecturer.
If I do well at this, i.e. get distinctions or better for both subjects, then I will seriously consider taking on another subject. Not a day one - the two that I do are the evening ones - but an online one in another course. Currently doing the Masters of Professional Accounting (which always make me ask "is there a masters in amateur accounting?) and the other being the Masters of Applied Finance, the trading major, i.e. options, derivatives, rates arbitrage, etc.
The MAppFin has four core subject, and two other compulsory at masters level (since it has a nested diploma and certificate which also include the four core but not those other two) and four electives which can be taken from a shorter list of five each to get different majors. Those two compulsory subjects I could get status for from the MPA. So, with the MPA having eight subjects, and taking me four trimesters, then I could have four plus two equals six of the ten required for the MAppFin completed by the time that I finish the MPA, and thus need only two trimesters to finish it.
This in two years I could have two masters degrees.
The plan would then be to move back to Singapore and do the SMU MBA.
When I was looking at MBAs this one caught my eye due to its cosmopolitan nature. Australian MBAs make small talk about multiculturalism and globalisation and might offer one relevant subject as an elective, but the SMU MBA has things like 'communicating across cultures' as a required subject and a few like 'trading in ASEAN' as an elective. So more realistically a global (although specifically an Asian, and even more specifically an Oriental) education.
On to other things.
A contract has been signed, but the project still hasn't really begun and I have been on this contract for three months so far.
That is SAG for you.
(i.e. South Australian Government for anyone that strolls in from out of town.)
I was going to blog about this months ago, but here it is now because I have noticed the effect far more of late.
Used to be that Oriental girls here had long hair, there weren't many and they stayed within their cultural groups, but they kept that long hair thing from their culture. Then more Orientals were noticeable, and the girls started cutting their hair short and being more like Anglos. Now there are LOTS of Orientals in Adelaide, and a lot of them are short term (they are foreign students mostly now) and so do not take to the local culture. So their hair is longer, not as long as it was in the first wave though, and they are keeping the styles and fashions from whence they came.
The main point to this is that they tend to show a lot more skin than the local girls. i.e. mini-skirts and shorts. When winter started coming on they started wearing shorts with pantyhose underneath, so they could still 'show' more, but not be as cold (logical really). What I noticed was that after a few weeks the Anglo bitches started to copy this style. Maybe they noticed the lack of attention that they were getting. I found this very interesting.
Adelaide girls are probably the most boring in Australia, and Australian women are the most boring of all Anglo Bitches, and Anglo Bitches are the worst of all Western women, and Western women are the worst of all White women. You know the way this one goes, you have probably heard it from so many guys, especially middle-aged guys that are on better incomes and so have travelled and have some experience to make the judgement. Like me.
Interesting that they felt the need to change their appearance.
What do you think the chances are that they might realise that they have to change their behaviour as well?
Not going to waste too much time on the upcoming Australian federal election. The Socialists thought that appointing a woman as prime minister could save them, and it had some initial effect with female voters, but that has decreased a lot as women realised that this woman has nothing in common with the average woman and is not a champion for women.
Interesting though that my economics lecturer, who I would have pegged as a wet liberal, i.e. the typical type of Liberal Socialist that would have voted for her, pointed out in class that the Labor government was the most incompetent government that Australia had experienced for a long time. He illustrated this with such things as the 'alcopop' fiasco where they brought in a huge tax on low-alcohol drinks (vodka mixers etc) that kids were drinking, in an attempt to curb their use. As any economist would tell you, the result was that the kids moved on to something else, in this case hard spirits like Jack Daniels. Further he pointed out the mis-use of terms like 'super profit', which economically means a profit in excess of that which you would get from moving your investment into something else. In this case the government was using the term pejoratively against the mining industry which had come out of the GFC ahead of the rest of the country due to other nations getting out first (Australia typically lagged) and their demand for resources ensured that our resources industry made good profits. So the government automatically (as all Socialists do) decided to punish them for their success.
The lecturer didn't word it like that of course, but it is a standard rant of mine that our Socialist culture in Australia is always seeking to punish success and reward failure.
And yes, they spell it 'Labor', we don't in English usually of course, but that is how the party concerned spell their name.
Avcon was a bit of a fizzle for me this year.
I didn't enjoy last year that much either, it is kind of like it lost something in the move out of the Uni and into the Convention Centre. I don't mind the increase in focus on games (that is what the government sponsors are behind) but it has come at the expense of the anime/manga. For example, one of the theatres that would have been showing anime was used for a series of presentation on game design.
It's not that I don't want there to be a series of presentation on game design - after all, I attended a few myself - but I do not want there to be a decrease in the amount of anime being screened.
Also a lot, and I mean a LOT, of vendors have withdrawn. Less than half of the displays/booths/whatever were anime and manga oriented. There were a few game oriented, and there were a lot of government ones (TAFE, libraries, Trade and Development, etc.).
It's just not the same.
And just to finish off.
I left Metro 2033 unfinished somewhere half way through and moved on to a Spellforce that I had bought - it had 1 and the two expansions and 2 and its one expansion all on one disc. I started from the very start and am redoing Spellforce 1. Not using any cheats, but using a walkthrough for its map, i.e. where to find people, you know, when you have a mission to take this to that person but it doesn't tell you where they are and you can't remember which of the maps they were on. Playing as a necromancer, but currently in reasonably good armour, with a sword and shield, I am not using the magic so much. I was raising skeletons a lot, but I am getting to level 20, although my magic skills are still only at level 5 and so I am not finding the skeletons much use right now.
It was the first game to mix role play and strategy, and playing a necromancer is always way cool dude.
And it has a long story ahead for me. Weeks, if not months, of gaming.
Saturday, July 31
Wednesday, July 7
Metro
There was something that I forgot last night about Metro 2033, the installation process really pissed me off - I bought a disc and yet it installed via steam and took more than an hour, then it wouldn't play saying it was missing some PhysX thing and that I needed to reinstall.
You can imagine my screaming: if you need PhysX you fracken moron why didn't you install it dickweed???
Anyhow, I found a copy in my UT folder and copied it across, obviously the UT guys know how to package a programme...
It still splashes an error message about my Nvidia drivers needing updating (which my Nvidia control panel disagrees with) and that game play might be degraded.
What is degraded is that, like Stalker, I have to turn the graphics way down or else it is very jerky. Both my desktop and my laptop have high-end graphics cards (naturally) and can play any other game on its highest settings, but not the games out of Kiev...
You can imagine my screaming: if you need PhysX you fracken moron why didn't you install it dickweed???
Anyhow, I found a copy in my UT folder and copied it across, obviously the UT guys know how to package a programme...
It still splashes an error message about my Nvidia drivers needing updating (which my Nvidia control panel disagrees with) and that game play might be degraded.
What is degraded is that, like Stalker, I have to turn the graphics way down or else it is very jerky. Both my desktop and my laptop have high-end graphics cards (naturally) and can play any other game on its highest settings, but not the games out of Kiev...
Tuesday, July 6
Netscape
I am a grumpy old man. I know that, I acknowledge it, I even take some pride and joy in it. And I know that as I am getting older, I am getting grumpier.
Being old and single kind of adds to it...
I have just returned from an evening lecture. These are meant to be phone-free zones, but routinely three or four people have their phones on and each goes off a few times, quite a few times in one girl's case (and yes, all of those that I clocked were girls). They have them on buzz, not on ring, but it still makes noise, especially in said girl's case as she lets it keep buzzing as she finishes writing whatever. Bear in mind that this is a small evening class of twelve or so students.
But one guy at the front had his laptop open and on and spent the entire, and I mean the entire, lecture surfing for cars.
I will be extremely interested to know how he scores in the subject.
Young girl goes out drinking alone, gets picked up by three guys, follows them willingly somewhere lonely, gets raped repeatedly, only actually realises that she was raped the next day. Yes, I know that rape is a bad thing, but one of the crimes committed here was stupidity. In cases like that I seriously question whether valuable police time and resources should be wasted, she should just be told that stupid girls that go out alone and get drunk then go somewhere with strange men are going to get raped. She should count herself lucky to be alive. Where is the personal responsibility thing? Sure, in a civilised country blah, blah, blah, but she went with several guys from a not civilised place so what did she think was going to happen? That they wanted to play tiddley winks? You can say that she was drunk; she wasn't able to think at all. I will say; good girls don't get drunk, good girls don't go out alone, good girls don't go off with several strange men. Why is it that good girls are so rare now and we seem to have so many stupid bitches and sluts? In a word; feminism. Call it the rant for the day, though I don't think just one makes for a very grumpy old man, I should do a few more.
Played Wolfenstein last week. It wasn't as good as Return to Castle... Sure, it has weapons upgrades, but it has too many stupid boss levels and too much search every-fracken-where for intel, gold, tomes. Did not really enjoy it so much at all.
Steam was offline last weekend (as in the one before the one just passed), apart from the obligatory rant about what right do the wankers at valve think they have to take my hard earned money and then not let me play the games that I have paid for. Yeah, it wasn't just that the steam servers were overloaded and you couldn't download anything that you had just bought (though that too) but that fracken steam wouldn't run anything without fracken connecting to the 'cloud', which, of course, is just what it couldn't fracken do. So I put in a Stalker disc, only realised a few hours in that it was Stalker 1 - after my friend made some comment about it and I said that I wasn't playing 1, I was playing 2, but sure enough there was no swamp, I was in 1. Mind you 2 was heaps buggier. Eventually I bored out, took a few days, but eventually the lack of challenge, the lack of purpose got to me. Naturally I was refusing to go to Pripet (Pripyat, I think they write it in Stalker 1) and follow the game mission, and in 1 there isn't really the faction war to get into.
So I ended up buying Metro 2033, which is what I am playing at the moment. Kind of a Stalker thing (lots of Stalker references), with something like the Wolfenstein engine by the look (no damage meter, get blurry around the peripheral vision and hide somewhere whilst you regenerate). But some really fracken hard bits here and there, and no save option before one. Anyhow, it kept refusing to read the game pad part of my Zboard gaming keyboard, specifically the run button, which I eventually noticed when I had a bit where I was hand-cuffed and had to run or die. And as each failed attempt got me to have to reload the whole map section it was not retaining the changes that I made each time to the key bindings so that it would fracken run. So I found that quite tedious. Also had some issues with people giving me instructions, and vital details not being shown in the objectives list - I was to go where and do what? In Stalker, at least by Stalker 3, you can check your message log if the details in the objectives list is a bit vague, and you can re-read the whole conversation. I am not too sure about the guns, find versus buy etc, I suspect that it will take a few plays to get the knack of that. But, all in all, I am enjoying it, I enjoy the darkness, the Russian-ness, in this way I enjoy the whole Stalker series. And it seems to have some depth, I don't know how far through I am yet, but Stalker 3 was definitely too short.
So that is my life right now; I wake up, I work, two nights I have lectures, otherwise I play games. I do need to get some discipline about studying; dedicate Saturday morning or Thursday evening. And I need to do a bit more housework. Also I need to buy some food.
Being old and single kind of adds to it...
I have just returned from an evening lecture. These are meant to be phone-free zones, but routinely three or four people have their phones on and each goes off a few times, quite a few times in one girl's case (and yes, all of those that I clocked were girls). They have them on buzz, not on ring, but it still makes noise, especially in said girl's case as she lets it keep buzzing as she finishes writing whatever. Bear in mind that this is a small evening class of twelve or so students.
But one guy at the front had his laptop open and on and spent the entire, and I mean the entire, lecture surfing for cars.
I will be extremely interested to know how he scores in the subject.
Young girl goes out drinking alone, gets picked up by three guys, follows them willingly somewhere lonely, gets raped repeatedly, only actually realises that she was raped the next day. Yes, I know that rape is a bad thing, but one of the crimes committed here was stupidity. In cases like that I seriously question whether valuable police time and resources should be wasted, she should just be told that stupid girls that go out alone and get drunk then go somewhere with strange men are going to get raped. She should count herself lucky to be alive. Where is the personal responsibility thing? Sure, in a civilised country blah, blah, blah, but she went with several guys from a not civilised place so what did she think was going to happen? That they wanted to play tiddley winks? You can say that she was drunk; she wasn't able to think at all. I will say; good girls don't get drunk, good girls don't go out alone, good girls don't go off with several strange men. Why is it that good girls are so rare now and we seem to have so many stupid bitches and sluts? In a word; feminism. Call it the rant for the day, though I don't think just one makes for a very grumpy old man, I should do a few more.
Played Wolfenstein last week. It wasn't as good as Return to Castle... Sure, it has weapons upgrades, but it has too many stupid boss levels and too much search every-fracken-where for intel, gold, tomes. Did not really enjoy it so much at all.
Steam was offline last weekend (as in the one before the one just passed), apart from the obligatory rant about what right do the wankers at valve think they have to take my hard earned money and then not let me play the games that I have paid for. Yeah, it wasn't just that the steam servers were overloaded and you couldn't download anything that you had just bought (though that too) but that fracken steam wouldn't run anything without fracken connecting to the 'cloud', which, of course, is just what it couldn't fracken do. So I put in a Stalker disc, only realised a few hours in that it was Stalker 1 - after my friend made some comment about it and I said that I wasn't playing 1, I was playing 2, but sure enough there was no swamp, I was in 1. Mind you 2 was heaps buggier. Eventually I bored out, took a few days, but eventually the lack of challenge, the lack of purpose got to me. Naturally I was refusing to go to Pripet (Pripyat, I think they write it in Stalker 1) and follow the game mission, and in 1 there isn't really the faction war to get into.
So I ended up buying Metro 2033, which is what I am playing at the moment. Kind of a Stalker thing (lots of Stalker references), with something like the Wolfenstein engine by the look (no damage meter, get blurry around the peripheral vision and hide somewhere whilst you regenerate). But some really fracken hard bits here and there, and no save option before one. Anyhow, it kept refusing to read the game pad part of my Zboard gaming keyboard, specifically the run button, which I eventually noticed when I had a bit where I was hand-cuffed and had to run or die. And as each failed attempt got me to have to reload the whole map section it was not retaining the changes that I made each time to the key bindings so that it would fracken run. So I found that quite tedious. Also had some issues with people giving me instructions, and vital details not being shown in the objectives list - I was to go where and do what? In Stalker, at least by Stalker 3, you can check your message log if the details in the objectives list is a bit vague, and you can re-read the whole conversation. I am not too sure about the guns, find versus buy etc, I suspect that it will take a few plays to get the knack of that. But, all in all, I am enjoying it, I enjoy the darkness, the Russian-ness, in this way I enjoy the whole Stalker series. And it seems to have some depth, I don't know how far through I am yet, but Stalker 3 was definitely too short.
So that is my life right now; I wake up, I work, two nights I have lectures, otherwise I play games. I do need to get some discipline about studying; dedicate Saturday morning or Thursday evening. And I need to do a bit more housework. Also I need to buy some food.
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