UltraCrepidate

Hey! Recently, I found myself often on the brink of tears. The funny thing is, I don’t feel embarrassed or ashamed of it. I love this new found emotion.

How do I put this in words. I don’t think the tears are because I am a weak punkass or anything. No, it has nothing to do with self pity. I believe they have something to do with finally being able to see greatness and  the moments of clarity in other people’s lives.

It feels great and at the same time weird. I am going through movies I’ve seen before and able to completely immerse in the storyline. I think it is because I can now shut off my analytical side so that I don’t notice these redundancy and corniness of all the story lines. I am able to believe the lie just long enough for me to feel what it is trying to convey.

Does this make sense to you?

I found my answer within a 15 minute meditation. Starting from my childhood and working my way to the present time. During this time, I discovered that I am a pretty shallow person. Let me explain.

You would thought that where I get the feeling of self worth changes over time. As my familiar world is constantly shattered and relocated so too should the reason for my pride. But that is not the case. From the day that I was born up until about the year 2006 I constantly strived for the same thing. Something that is so worthless in my point of view anyway. I get my feelings of self worth and importance from knowing more than others and from being better at something.

At least, I don’t get it from the amount of money in my bank account. Fast forward to today, I get my sense of self worth from interactions with people with the same interest and hobbies that I have. Which explains some of my recent behaviors. This, to my own evaluation, is perhaps a more harmonious approach to life and one that I should be able to thrive in. Someone once said: “When we were young, we seek to be independent, and as we grow older, we seek to be inter-dependent.” Maybe this shift is a result of that biological change.

Funny thing is, the change was triggered by a moment of crisis about two years ago. That crisis is caused by the shallowest of things: Money. Which also tells you how shallow I am for a decision to change to be because of money.

So there you have it, I give you the key to understanding me.

I never really attempted to make my desktop beautiful and have thus suffered the disgusting “default” since the year that XP came out. Now that multiple core cpu can handle graphical tweaking without slowing down computational tasks I can’t believe why I didn’t try to tweak my interface earlier.

With Rainmeter and RocketDock, working on the computer has become an eye candy. I really don’t feel the need to switch to anything else.

See that rupture? That’s right, the bread exploded. Or, in engineer’s term, it rose fast enough to break the surface tension.

I had been investigating the reason why my bread never matched the fluffiness and cheweness of mass produced bread. Before it was turned into a production line, some brilliant baker must’ve figured out how to do it by hand first. So, being me, I set out to experiment the techniques invovled.

At first, I had thought that it is the amount of bubbles and how large they are that matters, as is evident in the foccacia bread from my local Loblaws. Then it occured to me that the bubbles were constrained from expanding due to the hardened outer shell during baking. So I set out to eliminate that obstacle first, as well as trying some exotic ingredients in the underlying material used.

A combination of complex methods resulted in the picture you see above. The bubbles expanded so much that they broke through the dough and created that fissure. The bread itself is chewy and soft, but still not as soft as I would’ve liked.

For this one, I made the mistake of taking it out as is. Because once I did that, the air bubbles within the bread cooled and have the consequence of shrinking the bread’s volume. I will make sure to bake it for a bit longer to harden and solidify its shape next time while also switch to whole grain flour to see if I can reproduce the result.

Practicing some sales forecast on my free time. So I did it on my favorite topic. Game publishers. For those of you not interested in analysis, I’ll jump straight to the point.

I expect Activision Blizzard to make $933.705 million + $233 million (subscription)  = $1,166 billion dollars in the months of October to December 2008.

The calculation is done based on sales projection of 4 major games: COD: World at war, GH: World tour, WOW: Wrath of Lich King and Kung Fu Panda.

• COD : 7,695,324 copies generating $461.719 millions ($60/copy)
• GH   : 3,656,947 copies generating $255.986 millions ($70/copy worst case scenario)
• WOW: 4,800,000 copies generating $192,000 millions ($40/copy)
• PAN :    600,000 copies generating $  24,000 millions ($40/copy)

The sales projection are done based on the sales growth/contraction of previous years on similar franchises. Assuming operation margin of 15% continues throughout the quarter, operating income should be $175.005 million dollars or $0.132 per share. Which brings the total year revenue to $0.21/share. Which makes its price 47 times its earnings power.

COD

Last year’s final 5 week sales approximation (copies):

1. 300,000
2. 300,000 (+0%)
3. 500,000 (+66.66%)
4. 600,000 (+20%)
5. 300,000 (-50%)

COD has already sold 3,689,620 before this week. This week’s sales figure: 706,913 so projecting it to last 4 weeks of this year.

1. 706,913
2. 1,178,141
3. 1,413,769
4. 706,884

Projected sales 4,005,707 copies.

Year end projection is: 7,695,327 copies

A simple check against total consoles installed and past franchise’s total number sold indicates that the fan base is indeed this big.

GH

Last year’s final 5 week sales approximation (copies):

1. 250,000
2. 300,000 (+20%)
3. 350,000 (+16.66%)
4. 400,000 (+14.3%)
5. 250,000 (-37.5%)

GH has already sold 1,937,312 before this week. This week’s sales figure: 330,693 so projecting it to last 4 weeks of this year

1. 396,831
2. 462,943
3. 529144
4. 330715

Projected sales 1,719,635 copies.

Year end projection is: 3,656,947 copies

WOW

WOW has already sold 2,800,000 before this week.

Year end projection is: 4,800,000 copies (Figure based on the fan base who installed Burning Crusade)

I stormed out of the front door at work and welcomed the icy relief that attacked my senses. The cold is a welcome reprieve against my seething anger.

It’s getting easier and easier for me to understand a person. With the side effect of knowing how vulgar a personality that they possesses. So much so that I can’t stand their presence sometimes…

I was frustrated because of people’s ego. That and the type who, as soon as they detect any hint of kindness, make it a mission to extort everything out of you. Then there are those who, during business meetings, insists on making inappropriate jokes about you. People who seems to relish in pointing out every mistakes you made.

Just when I have finally found a place where humbleness and kindness can fit into my life, it seems to attract those of the opposite opinion who enjoys taking advantage of it. I don’t want to go back to the critical person that I was and as a person who pinches every penny out of everything.

Perhaps it is because they are so similar to my old self that it infuriates me so. When I have finally discovered a better state of being, the first obstacle I encounter is my old self. Trying everything it can to drag me back down to where I was. Doing so while I am still unsure of how to react in the new consciousness and the call from the old behavior is still sweet and recent.

Part 2 of the Morocco backpacking series: Backpacking through Morocco

Day 2: Marrakesh Nouvelle Ville

Kim’s email

Costs:
Breakfast split: 24 Dirham
Train ticket split: 168 Dirham
Water Split: 3 Dirham
Youth Hostel split: 120 Dirham
Drinks split: 28 Dirham
Food Mark: 20 Dirham
Food Peter: 20 Dirham
Shower split: 12 Dirham

We rode hard to Marrakesh. A 4 hours train ride inside an oven is how the experience played out. Mark noticed that I got a tan just from the reflected lights of the window. The torturous ride isn’t without its own color though. While in transit, we met some helpful Moroccan engineer who’ve been to Montreal who later introduced us to his home town of Ouarzazate. He mentioned how he still decided to live in Morocco after having seen the world. “Where else would you get all 4 seasons.” A statement that we would later come to understand and appreciate.

Immediately upon arrival at Marrakesh’s Nouvelle Ville we felt the difference. It is a cleaner city, with the majority of buildings painted red. There are less people trying to sell us stuff and more young women who don’t wear the signature Hijab. It does not mean that we get to skip the full welcoming committee, consisting of shady taxi drivers trying to rip you off. If  you ask me, I say that the most dangerous moment for tourist’s wallet is when they first get off the train. here’s what happened to us.

A taxi driver demanded 50 Dirham to drive to our hostel which, we later found out is a mere 10 minutes walk. We haggled and pointed and we haggled again. The guy doesn’t want to budge on the price, calling our bluff. We called his bluff and decided to call the hostel even though we don’t speak Berber Arabic. This is where our phone card came in handy and allowed us as much time as possible to sort out the route.

To those of you who does not know. Morocco seems to have two different phone network. One can be accessed with a calling card you buy at convenience stores and their phones are easy to find with a little orange roof overhead. While the other, more local phone network function with coins. I believe these are being phased out because half of them are broken and some of the locals don’t even know how they work. Cellphones are the easiest way to communicate in Morocco. If you have a SIM card from France or Spain, they will also work here. No such luck for American SIM cards. Resort to the newer calling card based phone if you have to and only use the coin based phone on backwater country side.

Then again, there’s the taxi driver who kindly pointed us to the right direction because he’s off duty.

We took a walking tour to the nouvelle ville the same night. It doesn’t seem very Moroccan to me. Just the fact that the whole city is clean and painted red (clean as in cleaner than Casa Blanca.) Other than that, the city feels like any other modern city of a 2nd world country. Plus lots of dirty old white man with pretty young Moroccan woman.  This city used to be known for child prostitution and remained so even after the crackdown. Then again, who am I to judge the morality of such an arrangement.

The night at the youth hostel, we met Kim and Linda who’s part of a 17 people group of dutch students. We found out that there’s actually four of these groups running around in Morocco and the main reason why all hostels were full on the first night we landed. They are very outgoing and friendly, I wish we’d meet them sooner. This is part of the reason why I like youth hostels. You meet people and you get important information.

Dinner was spent on some local delicacy with I don’t know what’s in it. The vendor motioned something with horns. It is a piece of bread with some veggie/tomato sauce and pieces of meat and liver. Little did we know the exact nature of the meat. The next morning, we some someone bike past us with bloodied, skinned head of mountain goats.

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