Another Lesson from Gaming

Before I begin, I must say that gaming isn't all that good for you, if you play too much.

OK.

The game is called Shogun Total War 2 - based in Japan.

I played a game which lasted 240 rounds, and the aim was to conquer 60 cities, on 'hard' difficulty. I started with 1000 gold and 1 city. The more cities you want to capture, the more gold you require to finance armies and navies.

The game was really quite hard, and after a lot of saving and loading I had about 57 cities under my control, with 3 more to capture before I win.

I had a lot of gold - 130,000. The next turn I took over 3 cities and won the game.

Now, all that effort in accumulating gold, and fighting battles, all amounted to what? To me finishing the race with 130,000 gold? So what does that translate to when the game takes you back to the menu? Absolutely nothing.

I had that feeling of: when I leave this earth, what can I take with me? Absolutely nothing. And what of, all the time I spent on accumulating the earthly wealth? Nothing, of it - waste of time.

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So in conclusion, gaming is not all that good if you play too much, however some vital life lessons can be learned, if the game is properly played.

The Chef

Who is the Chef?
Anyone who cooks food.

How do you disappoint the Chef?
Not eat his food.

Can eating too much of the Chef's food make him unhappy?
Yes, if you eat all of it without leaving some for other people.

Which one would make the Chef more unhappy: to not eat his food, or eat all his food?
Not eat his food.

What then, must you do?
Eat the Chef's food. Don't tell him, show him.


Love from Sydney

Technology In A Bank

Hello everybody, I'm back.

To talk about what happens inside a bank.

Before I started working in a bank, I thought that all the data was in fancy systems and applications, so when you want to retrieve information, you just press this button and it generates this report that you can use to display information.

Totally incorrect. We store data any ol' how, e.g. word docs, excel sheets, access database, and the worst display interfaces ever. Sometimes we don't even have places to put this information, e.g. the names of the people hired for projects, so we have to quickly come up with an excel spreadsheet that has all the names of people, and design it, and sort it, and try to teach people to use it!!

Every department uses technology differently. SharePoints are different, data sharing is different, and I find that hard to believe.

However, the people are nice, and that's one important aspect about work. Disregard the technology.

I very occasionally get thoughts of having a cat at home, who can wait for me to come home, and stick to me when I'm on the computer. That would be very sweet.

Jibby Jades and Jewellery

Happening of events:

1. We went into this underground jewellery place. With lots of jewellery, jades, precious stones, and rings.
2. We sat down in a room and an ordinary sales person came to talk to us.
3. About 3 minutes into talking with, the sales person suddenly 'receives' a message from his ear piece/outside and says: "what the boss is here??"
4. He hurries out, and a 'boss' comes in, and start speaking loudly and acting boss.
5. The boss starts telling us about these things:
- how it is destiny that we meet, because
- this is only his 3rd time here in 20 years of operation, as he has 200 stores across China
- but unfortunately, his son is having some health issues, and he even chose to be here with us
- he starts to give out some small jades, as a gift, his rationale was,
- he hopes that we can give his son blessing, when we receive the jades

Boss Lin thanks us for blessing his son

- he says he will not sell us anything, he will not do business with us today, otherwise he is not our friend!
6. We proceed outside and he shows us how to tell real jade from fake jade. He says wrapping a piece of hair around a real jade, will disallow it from burning when fire is put against the hair. He tested, and it was true!
7. He then reveals the 'secret' of all secrets of the price markup, which was approximately 3 times higher than cost price. He says he applies this for all his items.
8. Then he says, "These jades are all very expensive (some were marked CNY190,000 = USD$31,000), BUT because he is now our friend, he will give it to us at USD$1,000 with no room to bargain, because if we bargain, he will not be happy and no longer wants to be our friend. He says this is the king of all bargains.
9. Next, 7 aunties rush up to claim the jade. Face palm from some of us non-aunties.
10. My mum picked one and showed it to my dad. My dad looks hesitant...and just at the point of hesitancy, the boss appears and says: "Ok, because you are my friend, please take this gift from me - it is a ring I have worn everyday for 20 years, please take it." Then he takes it off his hand and forces it on to my dad's hand.
11. I go to see what was going on. The boss suddenly appears and takes off the other ring on his hand, and says: "OK this ring I have been wearing for 15 years. Take it. You are my friend." Unbelievable! I took it. It looked expensive, but it didn't look good on me. And unbelievable! Boss's 35 years of ring-wearing given away in just 30 seconds! Truly not-believable.

Boss talks abour rings

12. Then when he sees another lady hesitating about the purchase, he goes up to the sales man, and says: "You! What are you doing?? She is my friend. Give her half price now." The sales man says sorry sorry and bows, and offers the lady the new price on the calculator.

This was exactly what I paid for. Live Chinese drama.

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Check out this flight ticket:


This means, if you pay AUD$300 for a flight, and they will donate 1/20,000 of it to charity!

Priorities

There comes a time in life, when gaining weight isn't as bad as a lot of other things in life. So 'negate gaining weight' on the priorities list becomes lower and lower.

This may or may not be such a bad thing, depending on what is on top of that priorities list.