Sami - Catering

It's been a while since I wrote last time. This is mostly due to laziness, but some things have happened during the last week as well.
For one, I've started to spend more of my free time (and sometimes project time) on drawing, trying to learn more since I've been procrastinating on my studies for quite a bit.
This is due to reading some posts by artists I admire, but also because I got around an art book shop with a project teammate of mine (A place called Basheer Graphic Books). Even though my wallet might not be so thankful, I must thank her for taking the time and choosing to take me there. There was a sale on some items so I didn't end up spending as much as I feared, although there was some temptation to get more books.

Futile Payback

In addition, mainly due to the generosity of a local friend of ours (one that I mentioned before. From now on referred to as Barbecue Guy or BG, in the same team as Teo the engineer.) we decided to host a party of sorts. He has bought us all kinds of things to the point of despair. Before his actions I didn't know a person can be destroyed by pure charity. Anyway, onto what we had in mind. We were thinking of cooking something Finnish for the locals. The recipe we ended up with was meatloaf with brown sauce served with potatoes and grated carrots, with a dessert of crepes with jam. The only problem was that our flat has no oven. Now, Barbecue Guy said it's no issue, that he has a smaller model oven he can borrow. We agreed.
The day of preparation arrived and tasks were shared. Three of us would go to the grocery store and two would clean up in the meantime. (One of us was away, over at Malaysia for a short period). Around 80 dollars worth of supplies were bought, slightly less than I had anticipated. Once I, Teemu and Toni returned from the shop, BG caught up to us with his car, bringing his oven. The timing was perfect, and Teemu grabbed it. To our dismay at the apartment, it turned out the oven was bought that day, under two hours ago as we found a receit on the box and the appliance was in enclosed packaging. I did not notice this since I didn't have a close look at it yet. Either way, he had one upped us by 50 dollars already, as the oven cost around 130 dollars.
Finally the day arrived (Thursday after school) and we all were anxious for one reason or the other. I was nervous due to two things: One being that we made some improvised decisions when it comes to ingredients and I hadn't cooked for a large amount of people in a long time, and the other because I had a feeling BG had something else up his sleeve.
Around ten people arrived to the flat that day. Local students, and one of the lecturers at NYP as well. We were prepared to cater for six or so. Not everyone ate though, so it wasn't an issue. There was enough food to go around, and while people waited Finnish drinks and snacks were offered. I was in charge of making the meat loaf, sauce and making sure the potatoes were cooked. Teemu prepared the grated carrots and helped me with the preparation of the meat loaf. Teo was in charge of dessert. Everything turned out fairly well despite some minor issues, as is natural for a group of people with Finnish intuition. Problems like removing a tray from the oven without oven mitts wouldn't be an issue.
People seemed pleased with the meatloaf especially. Some of the potatoes and carrot was thrown away. Our dessert seemed to please our guests as well. The reaction to Finnish drinks and sweets were mixed at best. Towards the evening BG had disappeared, apparently to have a smoke. He returned with a bunch of pizza, garlic bread and chicken wing drumsticks. Our plan to repay was wrecked in an instant, and we have given up on fighting generosity with generosity.

Friday (a day off due to Hari Raya Puasa) arrived and we decided to go to the barbecue place again. This time without BG, but with another group of locals. Chatting and sharing stories and jokes, the evening went really smoothly as we ate ourselves full. I didn't need food at all the next day, but had a small dish of noodles in the evening since we were traveling outside. During this time there was talk about planning to do something next weekend as well. Since we have an oven now and all. BG said he would grab it in the course of about a month, but I wouldn't count on that.

Sami - An Underground Guild

Over the course of the week we went through another presentation about our current situation on our project. To put it bluntly, a lot of work needs to be done. I got the task of working on the user interface, and the placeholders did not fit at all. A new version is in order and I am working on that. There's also the awaiting tasks of texturing which mean I'll need to get back to the dirt. Getting the UI to a good status is a little difficult since there's still decisions to be made about it and there's a bit of difficulty when it comes to communication.

The week's off-project time brought it's own delights. Teo, an engineer from our flat and from another project group invited me to have lunch with his team. Aleksi and Toni would also join us. A warning was shared: We'd need more than an hour for lunch. I saw no issue with this, I'd just work overtime.
I was lead to a neighboring school campus, a short stroll away. There a local friend of Teo (not the same as the person who got us to try durian) was picking a place for us to go, and seemed to have an idea after doubting his first spotted culinary sanctuary. We entered a place that upon first observation seemed strange to me. All the tables had metal plating on the middle and some sort of smoke flue hanging over them. Our local guide would do the talking and in a moment I learned what this place was about:
It was a type of all-you-can-eat restaurant, and the buffet table had all kinds of goods: Salads, vegetables, sauces, fish, prawn, squid, chicken, pork, beef... One thing though: the meat was all raw. We would go grab as much as we can and take a seat to a table, and the metal plate revealed a grill on the middle. We would cook all these marinated goods ourselves.
This was excellent all in all. This was another take back to how I'd spend some of the summer in Finland. The difference here being that we were indoors. Plus we didn't pay much for it thanks to our local friend's charitable nature. We spent a good one and a half hours there, filling ourselves up. A thought kept coming up to me: It's a shame this would never work in Finland. Would be nice to see something like this though. Maybe there is and I've been living under the rock residing under a bigger rock.

As was mentioned before by Teemu, we had something else this weeks as well. On a later day, Teemu and Toni informed me that there would be another event where wizards would test their strength: MTG Origins prerelease. We set off to the wilderness where this gathering would happen, and the trek was long. We walked endlessly in the wild forest as earlier conquerors looked down upon us from their trees of glass and metal. I was at the rear as the slowest member of the group, and I had to keep up my pace. We faced a stray canine beast, but after it realized it was outnumbered, it backed away. Might have also been the fact that I reeked of death at this point.
We walked for one and a half hours to reach our goal. We saw a large building of stone, and set off to find the entrance to the guild entrance. I was drenched and feared it would pose an issue, but we found that our goal stood under the building, in a carved cave which already smelled of past duels between wizards. Thus I would fit right in.
The event begun at midnight, and the battles seemed to be in my favor at start, but it soon dawned upon me that my provided spells would prove to be futile towards the end.
As the trek back would've been horrid at four o'clock in the morning, we decided to hail a magical carpet that would fly us home for a fee.
Sadly I was too tired to join a later adventure that weekend, but there'll certainly be another chance another day.

Teemu - Title

Guh, I guess I haven’t posted anything since Chara-expo and even that one had a really narrow scope. It’s time to get you guys dated on what has happened. Please excuse the structure of this post, I’ll just write down whatever comes to my mind. Some happened events are from time prior to my last post and not everything will be chronologically accurate, especially given that I would rather talk about matters such as the project or food as a whole. Bear with it.

Project:

The Monday after my first post we got our final team member: the French designer. He’s a decent guy, though it’s a bit of a shame that the designed could only arrive after we had finished the basic design of the game. It’s not like he has no work to do, but I can imagine it wasn't really what he was looking for. In the same week all the final year teams (including us, obviously) had a quick presentation about their projects, and once we were done with it, we could finally start working for real. It felt really good to be in a team with proper project management for once. 

Afterwards the work has been fairly simple comparing to the previous chaos, we have a certain amount of tasks every week as well as larger milestones and it is our job to see those tasks done on time. I'm struggling quite a bit to keep up with my seniors. In fact, I sometimes have to ponder whether I am more trouble than worth, there’s not really a problem with my code working, rather than in how it fits the framework. I do technically know polymorphism and state machines, but I haven’t utilized them like this before as opposed to writing big lumps of individual code that manages to get the job done. Thus I have some catching up to do and I feel like I'm gradually starting to see at least how I should do things. Resulting from my stress and failures (and the nine-hour-long days) I can’t really say I have enjoyed the project and the school days but that, to me, is secondary. The important thing is that this is definitely useful which means the trip was worth it: I tend to value gaining useful experiences more than gaining fun ones.

Food:

Aside from school, food was probably what I was most excited about when I got here. In most parts it has lived up to my (rather high) expectations but there are some quite disappointing factors. I expected the local food to be hot. I've been warned that ordering spicy food abroad is close to dangerous. Apparently I've already eaten the spiciest dish available at food courts (with some added chili and wasabi) in the country and it wasn't really hotter than what I normally cook at home. I did also complete the task of eating ghost pepper wings. Based on their taste they may have indeed been touched with one. I recently heard some locals decided to get me some ghost peppers online after I completed their weird instant noodles flavoured with something quite nasty (I admit that was hot). I'm rather scared (as well as excited) of that, I have eaten naga morich before and it was not entirely pleasant experience… OK, I can get the food spicy if I add raw chili peppers to it or throw in a large spoonful of chili powder to the sauce (which almost makes it divine), but I’d sure like a genuinely well-made food that makes me sweat and gives me the burn that echoes in my throat, nose and ear canals.

I’m also getting a bit tired of rice and noodles, and while there are dishes with neither, avoiding both rather limits your courses. I have managed to find bread (it wasn't that hard as I thought), which is rather helpful in the evenings. Too bad it’s a far cry from Finnish jaw-breaking rye bread: This one is about as dense as cotton-candy, and due to the locals’ weird customs, probably has about the same amount of sugar in it too (a mild exaggeration.) Some of my favourites here have been: anything with curry, barbecue sets, Indian and Korean food.

I'm fairly confident there is no Pepsi Max in the entire nation; I have found Coca Cola light and Zero, as well as Pepsi light and twist, but the divine liquid is ever so absent. As for coffee, there IS good coffee available, but it’s pretty much only in cafeterias: The coffee in stores often has pre-added milk or sugar, though there are black versions available. We don’t have a coffee maker in our apartment, but coffeebags (like teabags, but with coffee), seem to be fairly popular here, and I occasionally make some for myself. It’s all right, though lacking. In school we have a wide variety of different poisons labelled as coffee available. At first I didn't even notice there was a simple black coffee available and had the misfortune of drinking coffee with milk and sugar, and one with sugar. I don’t know which one was more horrible: the one with milk tasted like cocoa a five-year-old kid with a stage 2 diabetes would like, the amount of sugar was atrocious. The black one tasted more like coffee, but I'm not sure if it was a good thing or not. The horribly sweet flavor made it very difficult to swallow down. Luckily I only had to try both once before I noticed the normal coffee that seemingly interested no one. The best part was that it only costs 40 cents per cup. It tasted like poison, but at least it was honest poison, delicious sticky dough that has been sitting still for hours. The only thing better than an honest horrible coffee is an excellent one. I drink two cups every day.

Activities:

It’s been a while since this happened, and Sami has already touched on the subject briefly, but we got a change to playtest some games from local start-ups. It was obviously highly confidential since they weren’t announced or released yet so I won’t be talking about the games themselves, but I can touch the experience. Basically we got three days off school to do eight-to-ten hours of testing out all sorts of games for various platforms and filling out forms. Most of the games weren’t really targeted for us but some felt genuinely exciting, one was abruptly mortifying. Aside from the atrocious two hours we spent playing the abruptly mortifying one, we had a pretty good time: the developers were cool people, one bunch even bought us drinks after the day. Aside from playing, it was a good experience to see how the startup dev-scene looks like here in Singapore. They had a pretty cool system where the startups shared a building/environment called game solution centre, which provides them with software and mentoring and is actually managed by NYP (our school here.)

My apologies to the people who couldn't care less about magic: the gathering or otherwise have no idea about the following content: feel free to skip the rest.

The week after Chara-expo we participated (not in the main event) in mtg Grand-Prix held here in Singapore. It was actually the first official magic: the gathering event I ever attended, as Kajaani and much less Pieksämäki never hosted fnm. Needless to say, the place was crowded with people. The day passed quickly as we enjoyed the event and participated in a team-sealed with Sami and Toni. We got pretty trashed in it though Sami did quite well. I might have gotten my ass kicked in the Grand-Prix team-sealed, but I regained my honor as a limited player last Friday. The three of us (Sami, Toni, myself) went to a local game-store that held Magic origins prerelease. I somehow beat everybody with a rather mediocre deck by what seemed to have been blunt willpower and some dumb luck, thus winning the event. I will probably start going there on Fridays to play some modern now that I've gotten some upgrades from the grand-prix. I’ll let you know how I do, probably.

Sami - Wizard Battle Royale

I was quite keen to get myself to a Magic: the Gathering event after such a long time. The last time I did anything of the sort was when I played in FNM during RTR. Excuse my lingo there, sages know what I speak of.
I prepared myself for the upcoming battles in the side events as I, Teemu, and a few engineers made our way to the familiar locale of the Expo Hall, although this place was a lot more expansive than I originally thought. I wouldn't be taking part in the main event, for my inventory was not complete and I knew that the lines were filled by the greatest of wizards from Singapore and elsewhere. After quite a distance indoors we would start seeing people trading their spell scrolls. We had arrived. Plans were made to show the might of European planeswalkers in a trio team Sealed match, where we'd have a shared pool of cards to build our inventory from. The time for that wasn't now, however. I settled to destroy my eastern opposition in a game of four-way Commander. This showed that mana flows differently here, as the game turned into a 3v1 game against the strongest among the wizards. The battle was harsh and fate was sealed, and despite my vain attempts to destroy his library of spells, I fell.
How ever, in the trio match I had more luck. I managed to defeat two of my three opponents. My arcane brethren weren't so lucky, as they fell before their superior foes. The break in between matches due to the team total score was an experience in it's own way as we went a bit further away for food (We got two free rounds and could have a break at that time). We needed to be back in 50 minutes time. Had a spicy Korean seafood soup. My meal choice was poor since I needed to eat in a hurry. Again I would sweat like there was no tomorrow. I have to make note that this particular place had forks and spoons in use, and to my dismay I realized that eating with these utensils had become more difficult as I have gotten used to chopsticks. I had to find these eastern standard tools in order to finish my meal in time.
I also played a match of Draft on Sunday after drifting about in a mall with my comrades. The way that was played was a brutal single elimination: You lose, you're out. I managed to stay in for one round as I overran my opponent, but afterwards I was utterly destroyed.
Aside the battles there was merchandise to buy, but due to the price tags I settled for some Commander-suitable single cards. I also traded with some locals, including someone who recognized me from CharaExpo. I guess I do stand out like a sore thumb.
To my surprise once I got home Sunday, one of the engineers had taken upon themselves to buy a board game. XCOM. We would be playing that quite a bit on our free time I'm sure.

Another Week Begins

After the flowing mana became dormant again, another week begins. I hear rumors of broken promises and plans that may or may not go awry when it comes to a trip to Hong Kong that was being orchestrated. I wasn't planning on taking that route due to having enough on my hands and due to spending quite a bit already. All the while I am still focusing on modular tile texturing.
Due to the sudden changes in the plan to venture forth within the eastern world with our new acquaintance, I have yet to have a taste of tortoise flesh. How ever, this week I managed to grasp a treat originating from India thanks to an earlier exchange student reminding me of it. He had mentioned it before I left for Singapore.
Murtabak. I'd describe it as a filled pancake folded during the cooking process. It contains onion, spices and a meat of your choosing. Chicken and mutton seems quite common in this area. You are also given a dip sauce, which has a flavor I'd simply call delicious with this combination. I guess it is a type of curry gravy flavored with some herbs. You tear away pieces from your pancake sandwich pizza thing and dip it into the sauce. Left over scraps are easily dipped with the help of a spoon so not much is left on the plate.

I decided to throw away my winter coat of many years and take a swim in the campus pool area. It is a good place to go, although I do not know what time would be best. I went with an engineer when the sun had already set in order to cause terror when two Finns destroy the area with their utter ignorance. However my partner in crime had already gone to the pool a few times, and there weren't that many people. Could swim in peace and the ignorance was already dealt with before. Will definitely do that every now and then from now on, perhaps take a look at the Shower of Bees, a legend told by the engineer.
I hope that later this week I'd have a chance to be taken for a trip by the Expo Sage of the East as was said prior. But there is no certainty about the state of vehicular repairs right now. Might be at the end of this week, might be later.
On another note, I have now settled to get a room in Breda for my one year exchange period, so now I need to figure out the timing and means to get there in addition to the many documents I need. Preparation for that trip will be hasty as there will be only a few days between my arrival from Singapore and my departure to the Netherlands. And I'd need to get and set up a brand new laptop as well. All in all a stressful thought.
As the end of the week came closer, I set these stressful thoughts aside for a while when I found that while the original travelling plans had gotten a bump on it's way, the travels themselves would still happen. Might as well make note that also the trip to Hong Kong will take place, apparently. Not relevant to me, but it just means things went better than expected all in all. Anyway. We took ourselves to an area with our local guide that was a lot more like my initial imagination had pictured Singapore to be. A lot of traffic, people, small alleyways, street vendors all over the place, lights blinking and so forth. We enjoyed a local treat: Durian. A large, spiky fruit that had meaty bits inside covering the large seed. The whole ordeal was like dissecting some sort of alien cocoon: The hard spiky surface was cleaved with a large knife to get to the inner delights. The flesh of the fruit had a yellow skin-like cover under which soft quark-esque substance was around the seed. It also tasted a bit like quark, and many of our group grew tired of the taste quite quick. Personally I liked it as long as it lasted, but each to their own. Worth a try either way.
After that treat we went to have ourselves a single beer at a local terrace. After our guide exchanged some words, six bottles were brought to us and we were enjoying them in peace. During conversation another bartender brought six bottles of a different type of ale to us, visibly confused that we had ourselves a batch already. She was determined to sell this bucket of ale, and proceeded to fill our glasses with the current drink we had, apparently to motivate us to drink faster. I tend to be rather quick with drinks anyway, and personally didn't mind having another so I settled with one more bottle. Three from the second batch were bought in total and from it all I drank five cans worth due to the latter offering's flavour causing an engineer to give away half a bottle. I didn't like it that much either since it had a side flavour reminiscent to tobacco, but as a Finn who already had a few sips I wouldn't turn down a free glass of ale.
Amidst discussion and warnings about the local criminals and shady services, new plans were made due to our local guide remembering my enthusiasm for strange dishes. Nearby there was a place that served frogs in different ways. We had rice and two types of frog legs: One set in sweet and sour sauce, and one in hot and spicy sauce. The latter must be the spiciest food I've had here thus far. Nevertheless, frog is pretty much like a miniature chicken when it comes to texture and taste. Very good all in all.
We headed home and got to our rooms and beds. In the weekend I would simply rest.

Sami - Chronologically Confused and Probably Biased Notes About Singapore

Observations and thoughts while I'm here. I'll update it at some point.

Flights

• Pack everything in the large compartments of your luggage. Anything small and/or valuable should be hidden amidst your clothing within the bag or on your person.
• If travelling with Turkish Airlines, do not bring any blue underwear, you may no longer have them on arrival. This varies on person to person, may be the product of paranoia.
• Wear comfortable clothing for the flight.
• Watch Turkish movies on flight.
• Don't eat pizza at the Turkish airport.
• 17 hour flights aren't too grand.

Singapore

• Buy water, bring it with you everywhere you go, keep yourself hydrated.
• Check some lists of laws to know, some are rather strange. For example: Connecting to an unsecured WIFI is considered hacking.
• Figure out key supply locations as soon as you can.
• Be prepared for a short period of illness.
• The weather strikes you like a hot sponge.
• You get used to the weather, but air conditioning becomes very appreciated. Sometimes air conditioning is not very appreciated.
• Everything you do or don't do is a ticketable criminal offense.
• All banknotes have the same face on them (Singaporean Uncle).
• Have cash on you, pay for everything using cash.
• Things are cheap. Except beer.
• ATM’s vary in their exchange rates, Visa Electron and Visa Debit are fine for withdrawal. Withdraw large bundles at a time.
• Guards and police aren’t as common as you’d imagine.
• Streets are less crowded than originally imagined. They are still crowded though.
• Street layouts are confusing.
• Crosswalks are placed sparsely and look dangerous.
• Milk tastes weird.
• Rye bread is nonexistent, any other bread is a luxury.
• Winter melon tea tastes like liquid popcorn in cooking oil.
• All concentrated juice looks like cleaning detergent or radioactive ooze.
• Salt is used gracefully.
• There are no potatoes.
• Everything sounds like a video game.
• Food is eaten either with sticks (and spoon) or a fork and spoon, no knives.
• Food is generally good.
• It can be warm and dark at the same time.
• The immigration office removed a paper clip from my passport.
• I wonder when we'll be paying our rent.
• No one sleeps.
• Money tends to crawl out of your pocket in events.
• I wonder how I'm going to deal with customs.
• A large European may have trouble in smaller local grocery stores. The hallways are like 5cm wide.