I recently received a nice e-mail from one of my readers.

He said, “I like your writing style, very personal. Most of us bloggers are vainpots and we crave attention. And traffic is defintiely the “blood line” of our blog.”

Well, although he called me a vainpot and attention-seeker, I was happy. I’m always happy to receive e-mail from my readers.

And I am a vainpot and am attention-seeking, so I have no objections to being called those things. I do try to be subtle and elegant about it and not do Steven-Lim-esque stuff. =P

Anyway, this reader introduced me to this new service called BlogRush and I like it because it’s actually useful.

If you scroll down my sidebar, you can see a new widget with random links to other people’s blogs. It’s cool for people who like to blogsurf.

It’s kinda like a link-exchange thing. You earn credits each time your blog is visited. The more credits you have, the more your blog gets advertised on other related blogs.

The program is still in beta but there are advantages to signing up fast because you also earn credits through referrals and your referrals’ referrals, up to ten generations. I suppose it’s kind of like MLM.

Once your link starts getting around, you’ll start getting lots of traffic to your blog without having to do anything apart from spending the intial two minutes to sign up and install a widget.

Pretty cool, ain’t it?

It’s an “everyone wins” situation. Bloggers get more traffic and readers get more reading choices. I like.

So, I’ve signed and I’m recommending it to my blogging readers. Do sign up through my link.

Categories: Regular Blogs
19 Comments »

Introducing… my beloved precious huggalicious brand new gaming rig!

I bought:

Motherboard: Asus P5KR Raid/GBE/DDR2 1066/1333FSB/Sound
Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo E6750 (2.66GHZ 1333FSB/4MB L2)
Power Supply: Coolermaster Real Power 450W
RAM: PC 6400 Kingston HyperX DDR2 800 1GB (2 pieces)
Hard Disk: WD3200AAKS 320GB- KS/16M SATA II (2 pieces)
DVD Reader/Writer: Samsung 20XDVD-RW SH-S202J IDE
Casing: Coolermaster Elite RC-330-KWN1-GP
Keyboard+Mouse: Microsoft Desktop 500 (Black)

Total damage: $1305 (including 2 fans)

Because I’m only playing World of Warcraft now, The Goonfather said I shouldn’t buy a graphics card, since any old lousy card is good enough for WoW.

I will buy a GeForce 8800 GTS when I tire of WoW and want to return to EQ2, or when Warhammer Online comes out next year.

And then I’ll also buy my dream keyboard and mouse!

Microsoft Reclusa.

Microsoft Habu.

Both were created by Razer specifically for gaming. They’re like $120. Each.

But they’re sooooooooooo pretty and they have blue backlights! Matches my whole setup. I have a black LCD monitor and black speakers. All black and shiny!

With blue beng lights all over.

My beautiful fan. (The other one is on the other side of the casing.)

Oh my gosh, beautiful, beautiful innards behind a see-through casing!

I could hug my computer to sleep!

Categories: Gaming Notebook
35 Comments »

I had just finished an audition and was walking out of the building, wondering if my car had gotten a parking ticket because I hadn’t used a parking coupon.

When I walked around the corner and saw my car, I also saw something else. A parking attendant was standing beside my car!

OMFG.

I did the 10m dash while shrieking, “Wait wait wait I’m leaving now!”

“Alamak,” she said. “Now then you come. I already gave you 10 minutes grace, you know?”

“Sorry! But I’m here now!”

“It’s too late.”

“What?”

“I already printed your summon.”

“Oh no! Can you unprint it?”

“Cannot lah. If you come a bit earlier, I can still help you. But print already, you have to pay.”

Shit.

Today is really not a good day.

Actually, I was half-expecting a parking ticket because I had parked my car there for an hour and 45 minutes without a coupon, so it’s not so much that I mind having a parking ticket.

But the shittiest thing in the world has to be knowing that you’re just two seconds too late in preventing something bad from happening.

The ticket was being printed out the very moment I dashed up to the car.

I COULD HAVE SAVED MYSELF $30 IF I HAD WALKED OUT A LITTLE FASTER!

Why the hell do these things happen?

Of course, I could have saved all the trouble by just using a stupid coupon in the first place.

But I was in a bad mood because today’s not a good day because it’s one of those days when everything just goes wrong. And because of it being one of those days, I was late for my audition. So I didn’t want to be even more late by spending two minutes tearing out a coupon. Plus I thought the audition wouldn’t last that long.

So, I totally deserved that, but it’s still shitty. I wish the parking attendant had come earlier and just left her present and gone away. I wouldn’t have felt bad. I would have gone, “Oh great,” and laughed it off.

But it sucks to be handed a parking ticket personally.

Don’t these things only happen in the movies?

Sigh.

I’m going to drown my sorrows in WoW now.

Categories: Regular Blogs
25 Comments »

I’ve been posting lengthy, picture-heavy entries for the past three days, so I thought I’d better give you readers a rest today by writing a short and sweet one.

(But you smart readers will probably rightfully suspect that the true reason is actually to give me a rest. Haha.)

Anyway, I’m claiming an award that Pretty Misha’s Mummy gave me. Very sweet of her! Misha and her mum are two of the sweetest people I know!

Presenting my Nice Matters Award!

“Awarded to those that are just nice people, good blog friends and those that inspire good feelings and inspiration! Those that care about others that are there to lend support or those that are just a positive influence in our blogging world!”

To show my gratitude and happiness, I’m supposed to award this to seven other people. So, here goes:

Daphne Maia
Faith
Minou
Miss Loi
Nadnut
Shelly
Starmist

Haha. I’m feeling sexist today so I’m awarding it to girls only. Well, the award looks very girlish, wat?

Anyway, enjoy your award, girls! All of you have a special place in my heart! ;)

Categories: Regular Blogs
17 Comments »

The Japanese are really great at marketing, aren’t they?

Who can resist walking into a restaurant when tempted by this!

Japanese plastic food displays have been around since before I was born and they always look better than the real food being served, but I’m still suckered by them every time. Of course, it helps that, in general, Japanese food actually tastes good.

Anyway, although I always find myself drawn to yummy-looking silicon sushis and parfaits (I would just stand at the window and gawk endlessly), I’ve been successful at managing my temptations, only very ocassionally caving in and allowing myself to be lured into a restaurant.

But Pasta de Waraku is something else altogether. They have like a hundred plates of shiny, mouth-watering pastas on display. Pastas you’ve never seen before. Pastas you simply must eat.

OMG all these delicious-looking fake pasta!

This was something I just had to allow myself to be tempted by.

We started our meal with some refreshing beverage.

Grape Cassis (alcoholic) and Japanese Red Wine (which is light and sweet, unlike normal red wine).

And then an appetiser. (Not that we needed any help to whet our appetites. The silicon food displays outside provided all the help we needed.)

This is Tofu Tomato w/ Cheese (swimming in some kinda sweet-salty Japanese sauce).

It’s quite tasty, but I don’t like tomatoes, so this is not a must-order for me. But The Goonfather loved it.

Because there were simply too many flavours of pasta to choose from, I couldn’t make up my mind. So I ordered the Half & Half Set, which gives you two mini-sized pastas, soup, salad and a drink. Unfortunately, you can only choose from five different pasta flavours if you order this set.

I chose the Japanese Style Cod Roe and the Carbonara WARAKU Style.

The cod roe pasta tastes quite good, although I would really preferred to have flying fish roe (tobiko). It’s worth ordering if you fancy cod roe.

The Carbonara is very disappointing. The sauce is not creamy or salty enough and the bacon is quite bland. Crispy bacon bits would have been better. But the egg is great. Haha.

The Goonfather had the Salmon Roe w/ Wafu Sauce.

Judging from the expressions of ecstasy rolling over his face every time he bites down on a salmon roe, I would say he quite enjoyed it.

But his final verdict was: “I will come back to Waraku but I won’t order this again.” According to him, the salmon roe pasta is good but not quite good enough.

To be honest, the fake food display on the outside of the restaurant hyped the food too much, so that when we finally got down to eating, our expectations weren’t met to the max. We enjoyed our food but we didn’t get blown off like we subconsciously expected.

Or maybe we just ordered the wrong dishes.

But it was a good enough experience for us to want to go back there again, to try the other flavours.

You can check out the menu and outlet locations at the Waraku Singapore website. Go ahead, make yourself hungry.

In case you’re lazy to click there, Pasta de Waraku can be found at #02-82/83 The Central, and #03-257 Marina Square.

Happy eating, and if you discover a to-die-for dish, share here!

Categories: Food Files
16 Comments »