6 years after its release, I finally completed the single player campaign of Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. I really enjoyed the shift from old gear to new gear, and the tweaks to AI behaviour put the AI on level with my capabilities in Call of Duty, Call of Duty: United Offensive, and Call of Duty 2.

That, and the timed events really put the pressure on me, sometimes to the point of frustration. Nevertheless, it resulted in a suitably challenging game. I also enjoyed having characters like CPT John Price, Gaz and SSgt Griggs leading me around and building camaraderie among one another. Compared to the flat characters of the past COD games, they were more welcoming to me.

Still, the gritty aesthetic of Modern Warfare put me off, me having COD1 and COD2 dear to my heart. Also, I am very well burnt out of trigger-happy shooters now, and am going through a personal rehabilitation from sensory-overloaded action games.

Until next time.

Toodles!

The week of 14 April 2013 to 20 April 2013 has got to be a very eventful week global news wise.

The Boston Marathon Bombings
I look on with amazement the entire story of the Boston Marathon bombings thus far. From the initial bombings to the ensuing violent and bloody manhunt to the apprehension of the surviving suspect and the investigations into the motives, modus operandi and family background of the suspects.

It all happened so fast. I am saddened by the fact that 4 lives were snuffed out at the hands of the suspects, but happy that they were taken down swiftly by the FBI and Boston police.

Iran-Pakistan earthquake and yet another Sichuan earthquake
Its earthquakes like these that make me upset thinking that some poor people around the world just cannot catch a break from suffering. As if being given the shove by socio-economic competition is not enough, the planet deals them a deadly blow.

Suicide bombings in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan
It is the same old song and dance.

Ethnic violence in Bangladesh
Holy crap, Buddhist monks chanting death upon Muslims, and I know what happens when you piss off an entire community of oppressed, poor and deeply religious Muslims.

Muslims killing Buddhists, Buddhists killing Muslims, and the army stands by and watches (even films) the show.

Anyway, there are now 3 generations of my family living in 1 household! My grands will be there temporarily, and they brought along with them lots of baggage and birds.

Yes. Birds. Chirping away incessantly from sunrise to sunset. UGH!! At least my granddad is good at taking care of them.

It is also nice having 3 generations of people discussing life. Having lots of different viewpoints add variety, comedy and drama to everyday discussions!

Alright, time to rest my muscles after several days of moving things from house to house. Toodles!

Rashes
For the past week I have been having breakouts of rashes around my four limbs every 12 hours or so. This may have to do with the plantar wart I suffered on my left foot after walking through a river barefooted. They are very itchy and very irritating.

Fortunately they go away after 2 hours of onset. Unfortunately, if my hypothesis that they are caused by the human papilloma virus (HPV) is correct, then I will have to bear with them for a few more months.

"Meep!"
I caught myself whining like a scared dog for a split second when I read the job requirements for a crematorium officer.

Get a hold of yourself, man.

Three tabs are open in my browser.

In the first window, Sal's stream.

In the second, BBC.

In the last, rational and skeptical analysis and criticism of Islam.

Have I been nice to my parents out of fear rather than out of love? Do I obey them only because I fear making them angry with me?

I do not like being nice to others out of fear of retribution. I want to be nice because I love them. I want to be nice to them to see them happy, or at least satisfied, and to thank me.

Then again, I realise that my mind has been so set upon pleasing others by giving them what they want that I keep forgetting to please myself by giving myself what I want. Alas, I have given myself little to please, for lack of experience, skill, courage, friendship and money. Yes I have bought myself toys, games, books and artwork, but the pleasure I get from them is so fleeting.

I want someone who will welcome my love for them, and return them in kind, hopefully with pleasure lasting days, if not years.

There will never be enough of something.

All I yearn for now, though, is someone.

I really hope I don't have nightmares tonight. After dreaming of being shot dead through my heart and having my first night terror of a cackling witch pressing down on my back, even a simple dream of walking by the seaside is miles better than what I went through.

In the company of good people
I thought the people at the charity I was going to help out were pretty ordinary. Turns out the names of 3 of my bosses have been sealed in my country's history books for good reasons.

I feel awed by their presence even more now, no matter how homely they treat peeps my age. My resumé pales in comparison to their roll call of duties and achievements. Wow...

Terrorists in raccoon fursuits

What the foghorn. I dreamed that terrorists in raccoon fursuits were holding a water theme park full of holiday-makers at gunpoint. One side of me wanted to laugh out loud but another side butted in after knowing that it is not nice to laugh at children scared stiff having AK-47 rifles pointed at their heads.

Internship

I signed myself up for an internship with an activist group to gain some semblance of experience not just for a resume but also for life.
Superior even gave me an opportunity to venture forth into composing PowerPoint slides and videos to promote their cause, which is great because it is one of my childhood dreams.

Still, I find myself being very scared of following through with said dream. Never mind. Nothing ventured, nothing gained!

Mass watching/saving

I set upon such feasts for eyes lately, from numerous artists online, including FurAffinity, but something creepy happened.
So I went through the galleries of my artists of interest and enjoying all the cute/happy/sad/angry/naughty until I reached HereLiesDeadSquirrel and Snow_L

HereLiesDeadSquirrel on deviantART made some beautiful artwork - some funny, some scary, some gory. I wondered "Wow, it's not always I stumble upon scary stuff."

It got a lot more grim when I stumbled upon  snowl. His last submission took me aback, and I got very worried as to what happened to him.

I really hope he is alright.

It is nice browsing through art galleries unbound and uncensored. However, when things start to move from sunshine and cute animals galore to murder, disembowelment and rape in a handful of minutes, I really have to stop and walk away for a while, however technically superb the artwork is.

Big sis rocks!
Hooray to my sister for her first overseas assignment! Hotel accomodation fees were reimbursed by her company, which is good since she will be there for a while. I hope her company finds her to be one of the best employees they have ever had and reward her generously.

The World Today
I may heard it wrongly, but is the army taking control of the Venezuelan government? This is almost always bad news. I never trust heavily armed groups to take charge of anything but an army.

Korea DPRK cuts all non-aggression pacts and the unification hotline and threatens the USA with a nuclear pre-emptive strike. I have had enough of that gonzo government repeatedly going "Screw the world, I'm have my rights" and bullying everyone in their region, even their own citizens, for their own benefit.

Also, knocking out the crooked governments of North Africa have only unleashed MORE evil in the region. Men with guns and bombs want to forcefully instate an Islamic Maghreb across North Africa and fund it through slavery, kidnapping, organ harvesting and drugs.

Someone one please tell me how North Korea and militant fundamentalist Muslims are NOT going to be the belligerents of World War III.

https://youtu.be/TdiEeqMeRTI

One of many videos of toys on low battery charge that I laughed out loud to. Searching YouTube for 'low battery' or 'dying battery' is enough to yield hilarity.

Strangely, only me and my little sister found sound gags like these funny. Everybody else in my family either found them weird or horribly unfunny. Do only a minority of humans find sound gags funny? Is one's sense of humour non-hereditary?

Went for counseling and felt so relieved after letting some of my grievances out to another human being at no consequence. It went so well that I wondered why I don't let my grievances out to my parents. Why am I so afraid of offending them? Granted they are just grievances regarding my irrational behaviour, nothing offensive. Maybe I am afraid of what they'll do to me if I talk about those 'special' grievances that could get me into VERY BIG TROUBLE.

Highly offensive not just to my family, but also to my relatives and some of the teachers and supervisors who got to know me over the past 20 years. Maybe the counselor can help me out.

I want to get a job that makes good use of speaking and writing English. Should I be a public speaker, an actor, a journalist? I really want to capitalise on my English.

Finally, went to see Argo with my dad and rewatched 2001: A Space Odyssey for the third time. Argo was heart-racingly awesome, and after growing to be a more timid and squeamish person, 2001 became much scarier to watch than I thought it would be.

I sure changed a lot.

The counsel and care centre called and offered me an appointment on Monday afternoon. I felt so relieved when the phone call came. I really hope this marks another chapter in my life, preferably one that will lead to better days for me.

---

Eagle Scout. College student. One of Indianapolis' most beloved EMTs.

A prancing and dancing purple-yellow canid named Lemonade!

The best son his parents could ever ask for.

A friend.

A lover.

Requiescat in pace
Pvt. Timothy 'Tim' McCormick
and his comrade, Specialist Cody Medley

Eagle Scout. College student. One of Indianapolis' most beloved EMTs.

A prancing and dancing purple-yellow canid named Lemonade!

The best son his parents could ever ask for.

A friend.

A lover.

Requiescat in pace
Pvt. Timothy 'Tim' McCormick
and his comrade, Specialist Cody Medley

---

"I've had enough of myself. I need help."
I hate myself for how I responded to questions and criticisms about my character and my actions. The slightest inquiry on my ability to serve a company breaks my heart, makes me burst into tears and get a migraine.

Not to mention make me sign a resignation letter.

Jobless as soon as I try to answer just a few taxpayers. Jobless as soon as I realise how much of a burden on my brain once peak filing period kicks off. Jobless as soon as I fumble over the simplest of questions.

"Why? Why? WHY!?"

My father tells me its because I give up too easily and that I avoid getting job experience just because I fear people criticising me. That he is right. However, even knowing this, I just cannot seem to make myself stop doing all that. My bad attitude seems uncontrollable - nay, instinctual! Routine!

I keep telling myself to stop thinking so hard about it, get to the point and stop crying but no! It is like some wretched soul of a spoilbrat inside me wrestles control over my brain, my mouth and my heart and initiates these irritatingly routine reactions that get me into trouble!

Enough ranting. The time is now for me to seek professional counselling - educated insights into how to right my toxic self once and for all.

No more lies, only action.

Oscar... what have you done?

Terrible news aside, I was looking forward to the passing of 2012 DA14, one of many unique astronomical events to happen in my short lifetime thus far! And then Space decided to celebrate Valentine's Day in its own special way.

"Hi Earth happy love day. HERE, HAVE A METEOR!" and WHAM goes Chelyabinsk. Goodness that no one was killed. Unfortunately, numerous hospitalisations followed.

Why do meteors love Siberia?

Now to shower watches all over FA. So many many great artists/commissioners, including some I see potential or I just like their artwork, journals and/or personality.

Happy Chinese New Year!

Not submitting anything in a long time is starting to really get on my nerves, so I'll submit a few of my photographs these next few weeks.

In the meantime, I am enjoying my run of the trial version of Easy Paint Tool SAI. I am considering buying a copy of it, if it works out better than ArtRage.

Finally, I am so pumped up, ready to study in my first short educational course over the Internet. I figured that I might as well take up such courses while I try to get employed again. Still, disclaimers said that certificates granted from such courses do not count as formal education, and as such may minimally improve, if at all, my chances of being employed. Oh well.

Toodles.

Finally! A few hundred dollars of income! Now to stop lazing around and to make use of the extra hundreds to find a decent job.

One of my favourite franchise eateries is in big trouble. Lots of missed payments and underwhelming business has beckoned many of my favourite cooks to close shop and move away. With them went their delicious dishes, which makes me sad. I went there yesterday night to find quite a ghost town of an eatery. Very sparse customer presence compared to the huge crowds back in its heydays.

A strong thunderstorm blew by my area, tearing down lots of small trees along the way and blocking some pedestrian paths. At one particular park, one can see two uprooted trees, 3-4 stories tall each, lying down next to each other. What a storm.

Lovely weather for a new year, friends! It made me chuckle looking at the wall of 'Happy New Year' greetings in my messages.

My father's Dell Dimension 9150 he bought for my family back in 2005 is aging badly. The motherboard circuity responsible for the PCI Express and PCI busses is faulty, resulting in the X16 slot being dumbed down to X1 and causing all PCI slot devices to malfunction with a fatal memory parity error whenever they feel like it.

Excuse me while I tend to the mosquito invasion in my house. Till next time!

Marry Christmas!

Just passing off an Engrish vibe, not to worry! Merry Christmas and happy year-end holidays to all on FurAffinity!

Wow, that was some job 'interview'. It was more like a school examination than a job interview, what with simple maths and physics tests, visual reasoning tests, personality profiling and a really difficult smelling test.

A smelling test!

Also, I got my retro PC kind of up to snuff, as far as the troubled AMD Irongate platform from 1999 goes. It should be all ready to play late-90s and early 2000s PC classics like MechWarrior 2 and Deus Ex.

That should be all for now. Toodles!

As I wait for a temporary deployment somewhere soon, I went back to two of my favourite hobbies, in the process of neglecting one. :(

Also, I see my younger sister and mother developing some pretty jarring interests.

iRacing
I had so much fun driving around and watching races in iRacing. Using a Free 3-month Membership Voucher I won in an iRacing competition, I made an iRacing account, plugged in my Logitech Momo Racing Wheel set and let loose.

All the cars and tracks feel wonderful. After getting pooped from playing Gran Turismo 4, iRacing feels like a breath of fresh air. The highly detailed car and track designs, mechanics, physics and convincing force feedback sucked me in. For nearly 3 hours I could not stop jumping in and out of driving sessions.

Still, I got a bit anxious trying out the competitive races. Already on my first practice session, I violated pit lane exit technique and shunted a pro driver off a track. It scared me so much I stayed away from the multiplayer lobby for a few days.

Nevertheless, I look forward to earning enough money to enjoy iRacing for a few more months, or even years!

Retro PC Gaming
I acquired a cheap used old mid-tower ATX case with a very convoluted installation procedure and a design which assumes the underside fan of an ATX12V v1.3 power supply unit is all that is needed to exhaust all the hot air out the back of the case. Soon enough, though, I managed to set up my AMD Duron 750 MHz system and got it working with Wary Puppy Linux just fine.

I tried to get 2 AMD Athlons working on it but they never seemed to work! I may have to settle with an AMD Duron 1.1 GHz eventually.

The Horror
My younger sister and my mother seemed to be avid fans of the supernatural! Lately, they have been treating themselves to an almost daily dose of Paranormal Activity and videos of purported ghost sightings and cryptids. It makes me wonder what lead them to this. It scares me a bit.

Since nothing much important is happening to me lately, I might as well cut my weekly Monday Blues soon. In the meantime...

I have known myself to be a very cautious guy, sticking to tried-and-true knowledge and routines that keep me safe and content. However, sticking with what is familiar to me has stopped me from venturing out into the wide wild world, and my fondness for familiarity is paralysing me.

It is stopping me from socialising, dating, trying out new activities and foods and getting jobs. I hate being scared of what I have never done before and making mistakes. I want to be brave, bold and enterprising!

What can I do to be a braver man than I am now? Is there something or someone that can raise me up to new heights of experience and excellence?

I successfully got a paperback copy of  blotch's Nordguard Book One: Across Thin Ice last night! I have read a few pages and found it to be intriguing, not to mention beautiful.

Now to go work out at the gym. See you later!

Wah, that vacation was great. Snazzy hotel, theme parks, beautiful sunrise through the balcony, hi-fi stereo... just what I needed to calm my nerves.

Now draining my ears of water from wiping out at a high-tech water slide from hell.

Also, what were the hotel room bathroom designers thinking? There are no locks in the bathrooms!

Back to Job Hunting

Here I am, unemployed and looking for work again, preparing for a re-re-re-run of my fitness test and trawling the Internet whilst huggling my Gosig Marsvin and Gosig Ratta plushies.

I still feel much better now than when I had to work at the ware-

You know what, I'll stop mentioning that and get to the bottom of what I want to scream out loud...






Something serious

I have had enough of being associated with my assigned race and religion. I feel no sense of sincere belonging to either and I am going to do what it takes to burn them bridges once and for all. What I am going to do may very well anger my family, relatives, close contacts and even a whole society.

After that I could finally live as the man I always wanted to be.

Or I could suffer and die trying.

Contract Over!
After nearly 3 months, the contract for my warehouse stint is officially over! I can finally start looking for jobs more to my liking and play around with my Wacom Bamboo again! Unfortunately, the flu decided to ruin my weekend again, and then some.

Just as I was about to retake my physical fitness test, influenza ravaged my body, rendering me unfit for the test. Now I need to undertake yet another round preparatory exercise before I can take the test. Blasted virus. Something about that warehouse is just not right for me.

The depressing monotony, the dusty stuffy cold air. Man am I glad to be out of there.

Middle East is on high alert... again.
Good grief. As if Syria, Iraq and Iran were not enough, here comes Israel and Palestine... AGAIN. This is one area of world politics and diplomacy that really irks me, though I still accept the possibility of studying it in university. The Middle East is a beautiful place, but when you add humans into the mix, bear witness to the madness it brings.

Something about the region makes people cranky - or is it just the people?

Hobby time!
Arright! I have a copy of Nordguard: Across Thin Ice and the PlayStation version of Need for Speed: High Stakes on the way to me! I missed one chance to get Nordguard at Books Kinokuniya KLCC Kuala Lumpur, so I will not let this one pass.

Also, I sketched out a widescreen 'poster' of my 'Past Crushes' idea. It is looking good to me. Now to practice drawing birds.

I am into the home stretch of my contract to the warehouse. Fortunately for them, this being the school holidays, several young temporary workers joined to (unwillingly) assist in getting work done.

Also, I have completed my supplementary fitness training course! I feel lighter, stronger and faster than ever. Now the only thing holding me back is myself.

Art Update!
Alongside getting a character sheet of Shak done, I have another idea coming up called "Past Crushes", which is about me and people close to me who I felt for from kindergarten up to my new work life, both gals and guys.

Let me know what you think in the comments! See you next week!