seeing them smile and whisper words of thanks, i felt happy :) not because i was proud of what id done today, but because i truly enjoyed my day with them, even if i did not really interact much with the elders @ renci hospital. it is feelings like these that keeps volunteers going. no, it is not the sense of accomplishment or just the pride volunteers have while giving, we just felt genuinely happy and cant bear to leave. its that simple.

im not fluent in dialects, and i am not the kind who can talk hours nonstop to strangers, much less elders. i do what i can to help here and there, and i think its not enough. more often than not, i find myself out of place and start to question whether my presence makes any difference. but as the frail-looking old man reaches out his hand to each and everyone of the volunteers around his bed, even when only one of us actually talked to him and gave him the card.. to them, every soul that was present was there for them, giving them support and comfort when they had even just a tinge of loneliness and boredom. i shook the hand, smiled and felt accepted. once u feel accepted, u know that what u have done does make a little impact, and u feel like coming back to give more :)

its not rare to see people who stop volunteering after a while, or after they leave school. in fact, its everywhere. commitments start to pile and priorities make us think twice about spending time on volunteer work. most volunteers would have thought about quitting before, and others would question themselves whether its time well spent. if i could spend the time reading one more chapter of the text, i would be one step closer to an A! if i could spend more time running dungeons, i could have gotten that epic item from the boss, oh well its raining, if it was good weather i would go.. if i could just SLEEP! well, all these are valid excuses, as one has his own choice of what to do with his time. but for me, it feels great to be able to bring something into others lives, even if only once in a while.

looking at the external choir group singing merrily to the patients, i sort of feel a sense of envy. even at their age, they could have a group of like-minded friends coming together and volunteering on a day that most people would keep for themselves to enjoy with their loved ones. they obviously are busy people as well, but compared to others who were working hard at their offices, they chose to share their joy here @ renci, singing the songs over and over again. they were tired, perspiration all over the guitarist's face, but they didnt stop smiling :)

its not wrong to not volunteer, and volunteering does not make u the best person in the world. follow your heart and do what makes u smile :D for us volunteers, i hope we will never lose this passion and love for voluntarism!

how can it be called the holidays if there isnt a nice big mmo to play!??!? haha. and its the christmas season, so there's bound to be events and special deco all arnd town (game town lol). MERRY CHRISTMAS!!

its been a while, since i wrote anything for myself :C however, im glad those interesting opinions about life and stuff didnt stop going through my mind from time to time. writing it down or recording it takes alot of energy!

exams hasnt ended, but i made it through the most difficult ones already. german sucked big time for me :C making me GUESS the questions, the passage and when i finally had a bit of confidence about what the questions were asking, i find that i DUNNO how to phrase it german!i could have left the whole paper blank, thx german :)

its been a while since i quit EE (previous mmo). lots of things happened INSIDE the game, with my dearest guild PhantomLord. although i left it in the end in support of one of my friends in the guild, PL and the numerous great people inside will definitely stay in my heart for a long long time. its the first time enjoying such nice friendship with people of other natinality, race and even religion (culture and timezones as well of course) and its been a very nice experience. normally in an mmo i would start SINGLE and end SINGLE with no remarkable interactions with any other player haha. well if u were wondering why no RLF (real life friends) play with me, my RLF dun dare to take up the challenges of mmos. TBH mmos take up really most of your time, if u go semi-hardcore like me :C

well, ive been in dragon nest SEA for a month now, and i might write something up for it too real soon, since it is definitely also one of the games that is worth thinking and writing about. all mmos have their good and bad points, and i am happy to say that DN indeed has many good points to talk about. i actually enjoyed DN more than EE mainly cos of the gameplay and almost non-existent grinding, but im limited to my friend's guild so i cant make lots of new frens online! YEP, this time my RLF from LOL played first before i joined them. swear, 1st time it happened. playing with your frens make good experiences too, esp if you have been playing games with them since like.. 8 years ago!? but i still fondly miss the times when i can talk to people in a large guild HAHA.

was listening to a song by Angela Aki this whole week, real nice and moving. 手紙 ～拝啓 十五の君へ～. definitely worth listening to at least once, if not, for many years to come as we grow old :)

its been a while since i listened to slower songs like those from Secret Garden. they used to make me feel sad and emo when listening to them back then while i was alone on long bus trips home. now thinking back, being able to do that seems like a treat, as i can hardly feel those kinds of straightforward sadness or loneliness anymore.

sometimes when trying to emo for a while under the influence of certain songs, i end up yawning or giggling and juz give up after a short while. lol. i guess sad things no longer seem or feel that simple anymore. many other things are involved especially when the realities of the world and society steal away our sincere and honest feelings, or even when fatigue numbs us from the world.

well, at least i know im not going to jump or whatnot anytime soon >.<

Now playing Eden Eternal, a new mmo out there. To be truthful, its quite good.
In order to take a break and pull myself from the MOBA arena after so long, i saw Chaox (a pro LoL player from team SoloMid) also searching for new good mmos around on www.mmosite.com. ye, he laid his eyes on Eden Eternal too :D at first i dint think i would like it at all. After all, eeeek, anime char as my main? Seeing those cuties running arnd killing monsters? Absurd. And so i was rather attracted to Rift, and the reviews were not bad as well. BUT. Its P2P. Being a jobless (meaning income-less, not class-less), P2P is definitely out of the question. And being anxious and excited about some new mmo that im gna try out, i downloaded Eden. Its free, just try.

I got totally drawn into it after an hour of play. Well, the questing system is very normal, hunt some, get that, hunt more, get more xp. But it doesnt feel grindy, because i actually leveled rather fast. In an hour, i was alrdy level 10, despite the time i used to get use to the game at the start. And after the next day, i was level 25, then 33, then 36, so on. So.. its actually very fast leveling, as compared to grindfest games like Aion, where i totally got bored of even killing anything and got stuck at level 35 ONE MONTH PLUS into that character.

Whatsmore, the art is actually very lovable! I din think i would love anime style mmos so much lol. It proves one thing: if u want the character creation to be simple, plain and straightforward (Aion character creation takes arnd 1 hr if u care abt how ur char looks), make it anime. Its a simple logic, many mmos have character models that are super suave/pretty and such, but it just feels like seeing idol #1 or superstar #2 walking arnd, and everyone else is that handsome as well. But if its anime style... lol. We all know anime characters all look more or less the same, so we are actually quite comfortable with toons with similar faces but different hair color. =D plus, they are super cute. Just look at how they dance.

Eden has its own special and unique features to boast as well. Firstly, the class system is similar to some FF games, with a JOB SYSTEM. Meaning, u can switch between jobs anytime u like and cater to a party's needs. And the character level is seperate from the class level, so u definitely gta train up the class that u like. I personally like this idea a lot, since most of the time mmo players get abit itchy seeing other classes in action and need to create and alt to try them out. Here, just switch it and u r now a totally different role. Im usually a fan of alts, but up till now, i have not created another toon, as i still couldnt find a reason to, except for maybe just to create a female char.

The guild system is also quite remarkable. Its no wonder the best guild out there now is called FairyTail and im in PhantomLord. Well, guilds can have their own guild towns, which has npcs that offer crafting of items that are not available elsewhere in the game, and of course a quest bulletin board. But what i tink can be improved will be the emptiness of the halls. No one goes there except to buy quests or to make some items. Plus they could have a seperate map where all the guild towns can be accessed by walking arnd, instd of teleporting into anyone u choose from a list. Somehow, the idea was great but the product isnt as much as expected.

Overall, its a great mmo to try out, even for a few weeks, or maybe months, before the MEGA mmo Guild Wars 2 arrives in beta. It cannot be compared to giants like WoW or GW2, but it definitely brings something new to the mmo table with the very interesting concept of job system and the cute anime art used. Whats more, its F2P, took only 30 min to download and install, and with minimal specifications (even Basil's cui com could play it, wow. Din expect, at all). Its under development still as well, since only human race is playable and some classes are not unlockable yet due to the lowered level cap. Its worth a try :)

im so sad... finally...i only completed it NOW. just now. to think i was one of the first peeeps in SG to lay my hands on the game, cos i preordered the signature edition and it got shipped here even before any store in town had any copies of it on sale. and i only juz finished playing thru it. not because it was bad or anything, actl i liked it abit more than origins tbh, but bcos the lame previous com had too sucky graphics, i cldnt actl make it past half of ACT 1 before i risk turning the com into brick. so bad.. now with the new com, hehe :P. 1st runthru in 3 days :D

being the sequel, its definitely different from origins. the gamespot rating for it was 8.0, and i was worried at first. but after playign thru a while, one rly gets hyped over the new and improved combat in DA2. WOW. more like an action game merged with an RPG with the awesome cinematics and story-telling. combat is so fun and engaging that u do quests juz to fight (slaughter) the lame asses "hiding" in broad daylight (yes they appear more or less at the same locations zzz).

to start off, i chose a rogue agn, believing that since its a DA game, rogues are OP, and they wont get nerfed. sure enuf... i still believe rogues are the key to owning this game, so OP, beyond imagination. and with the brilliant animation of even a simple skill like backstab (u teleport to behind an enemy and crit, awesome graphics and sound effect), i immediately wanted to try all the skills laid out in the skill trees. and after a while... it feels like cheating, cos assassinate somehow one hit kills most elites, and half-life-s more powerful bosses, making most encounters simple but too fun. not to mention theres also another skill that does pretty much similar damage. i was worrying at first having to fight my companion fenris at the end, like "omgshiz i juz equipped him with the best sword and enchanted his armor, that worthless betraying soab!" but when i marked him and assassinated, one hit kill ftw :) the first thing that went thru my mind was "when r they gna nerf this". but its an rpg, so balancing is apparently not required, yay!

another satisfying change would be the storyline. in DA2, u no longer are juz a hero who will eventually save the world against these lame monsters and the big dragon. ye, its no longer so obvious wad u r gna do, unless u read spoilers. u juz know that u will eventually be someone very prominent in this city, but how u get there doing wad is a mystery, waiting for u to unveil. and the storytelling is a breath of fresh air as well, cos Varric (one of ur companions) is the one telling it after all the events have alrdy passed, right from the beginning. besides the more realistic and less fantasy-like storyline, its also much more personal, and i really did feel sad for hawke at some places in the game. the arc abt his mother was especially painful and memorable, while Seamus's sudden death was also rather shocking. in all, i enjoyed this story much more than the origins one, as one can remember the details of the story and the growth of hawke even after the playthru, rather than juz battle after battle after juz another heroic deed of saving someplace.

quests in DA2 were quite interesting, to my surprise. they are often much more elaborate than in origins, with plenty of cinematics to help. more often than not, u juz want to complete them once u have been introduced the quest, much less for the reward (u dun rly need gold after a while, nothing nice to buy anywayssss) than for the results of ur actions. it may not seem that ur actions impact the story in anyway, but lol, at the end of the story, any player will realise how many aspects of the present day he could change if he made some other choice sometime before. and i like having meaningful choices to make, esp in games, cos its for fun :DDD

according to wad we were told, the champion rises in status, and it was obvious (lol sometimes in games u dun even feel anything changed) and well planned. u start off in the slums like nothing different from a slave, and gradually move to the high-end town. u wear nice clothes at home, and as u adventure and lvl, u get new set armors. these armors not only giv u the good stats, they make u look like u have grown in status as well! in fact, they are so nicely designed that u wouldnt want to don any other piece of armor (even if they have better stats) cos the one set looks so awesome and epic (esp the final one).

if u wonder much abt the mage/templar conflict in orgins and thought why they included that since its not a MUZ HAVE in the dragonspawning storyline, well here u have it again, but in much greater detail. in DA2 this difference is much better represented, with full fledged quests and plot dedicated to this very important part of all of DA history, instd of mere codex entries back then. i remember back in origins i chose templar or mage juz for the achievements and other in game benefits, but here, its really a headache which side u choose. haha. have fun choosing, cos u will juz feel like punching both leaders' faces.

whats more, u get a nice look at how qunari looks like.. ye last time i rly din know and din care who/what the qunari is cos they dun even affect the trees arnd me. now i know they actl look quite cool, and nearly dominated my city.

LOTS of origins and awakening chars make appearance as well, which is very good to have. makes one feel honored to have played origins and known those characters first hand. for example, anders even joins ur team, and he was the first i romanced. ye i was a male char, so its gay. doesnt matter cos DA2 doesnt have sex scenes. whats more, they return with much better-looking faces, like leliana and zevran. alistair was soso.. i tink he looked better in origins, and his arc was so short that its like he appeared for the sake of appearing. having said that, its nice seeing him agn after all this while ^^



and u wonder, then wad's bad abt this game to bring it to 8.0 rating (8.0 is actl quite high alrdy)?

some things do disappoint me. not all corners have loot :C ye. u may have gone out of ur way to walk round that corner risking ur life in hope of getting something sweet, but no. theres nothing. and when theres finally a glimmering object, omg all there is is some junk item that u would rather not waste ur inventory space with. its sad, when so much of the stuff juz doesnt impact gameplay at all. the items here doesnt weigh as much as those in origins. u dun have fatal shock bombs dropped off monsters, and health pots are rare that u fight most battles trying to not use any of those. and the worst, companions armor cant be changed! so most of the armor items u loot go to the market, since u only want to wear ur set armor, and no one else is eligible to wear them. so no bonuses from gloves, helms, armor and boots for all ur companions. well their armor could be upgraded, some can even change appearance, but omg where has the customizations gone!?!?! and its not even easy to upgrade some of the armor, u have to find the right chest at the right place during the right quest zzz, and that particular companion had to be there. so if u only play with a few companions (like i do, i refer to holy trinity and only liked having fenris, merrill, anders and ocassionally sebastian with me), most armor pieces are going to be left sparkling NEW. this system could have been better imo.

although there are many interesting quests out there, not many have a major link to the main storyline. yes, they affect wad u see at the end, but they are not involved in the main events. saving that mage from the fade did not change anything, or even at least had him come back to aid me in the final fight. killing that high dragon.... was for fun seriously. maybe its asking abit too much, and origins din rly feel better in this aspect as well, but i thought maybe the story could have been longer like those of FF standard, and shed some of the not so prominent quests that are there to take up time. the whole concept of rising to power was great, and i rly did enjoy it, but it couldve been longer and more things couldve happened, not just the 3 that define the acts.

one major frustrating thing would be the interior design of buildings, caves and explorables. why are they all the same in layout!??! it feels absurd that this cave is juz the same as the other one, and this mansion is designed exactly like the one my companion lives in. they are really the same, dun doubt. ok, u may say, the mansions in hightown are all built by the same architect so have similar layout, then WHY are there stl corpses lying arnd, tables strewn across the floor and drawers collapsed on one another in Fenris's house in ACT 3? six years down the road, as my companion, living alone, and he stl has that same corpse lying there, not rotten, room not tidied up and he smiles and talks to me like nothing happened. from what i see he gets burglars everyday and is simply tired of tidying up the place. well, if they put so much effort into details, they shldnt have missed this part, cos anyone absorbed into the game will notice this flaw immediately, and find it rather disappointing. tbh, i really only wanted to see Fenris having a good life in his mansion, with new furniture and all... he worked hard u know.

lololol. ive alrdy created the second char and am on my way to kirkwall now :) this time its a female, but stl a rogue. sry, i cant bring myself to try other classes, because tanks are boring and are meant to be sustained-skill aura dogs, dps warriors dun have the broken skill called assassinate and i dun wan the AI to controll a game-changing rogue cos me>AI and mages dun deal damage like i do (they do aoe and in bursts, SLOW bursts). so... at least i will try a different path now, instd of the usual full dps rogue, i shall try some new stuff like stealth and chaos, which looks fun but effectiveness is stl to be confirmed. but one thing is for sure, ill be taking different choices down the road, and researching beforehand all the upgrades for my main companions, and of course, romance another target :) this would be fun.