The Final Lap

5 Exams and Mission 1 is over!
Mission 2 will start in 3 weeks time, but that's a different story.

I feel a great deal lighter after last Friday; all assignments and projects submitted!
The biggest of which is the Game Project: 2 months of hard work!
Bryan and I practically worked till 2am almost every day on it.
We would camp overnight at his place every Thursday.
And finally, it is finished.

Do me a favor, play my game!
Drop me a message or something, and I'll pass it to you :)

The game: Swarm

In Swarm, you play as a alien monster fish that controls a hive of tiny minions, known as Swarmlings.
Much like a queen bee with her colony of bees, except in the seas.

Order your Swarmlings to attack marine life, while dodging their assaults.

The game features 3 different kind of Swarmlings, each with unique abilities.

Some will charge towards your enemies and devour them like Piranhas.

Others shoot bolts of energy from a safe distance.

Customize your ideal army with a combination of the 3.

Battle 7 different sea creatures! And Epic Bosses!

Many people found the game addictive - students, teachers, and friends!

Hexing addicted to the game

All glory to God.

The journey was rough; there were days when I was losing it because of the physical tiredness, mental stress, and emotional weariness. I made plenty of mistakes - missed out on instructions, not submitting assignments properly, late for classes. Yet God helped me out. Friends will stop me from submitting wrongly and let me know what to submit. Lecturers would be gracious to let me submit later, or take a quiz that I missed.

It was God that helped me through my tests and papers - there were not a few papers when I got perfect/near perfect grade, which I knew I was not capable of. There was one paper which I was doing it wrongly. At the last few minutes of the test, someone asked my lecturer about the  requirements of the paper, and I realized my mistake. Because of that, I rushed through to change my essay and wrote a ton of crap. I was shocked to get 98/100. God must have blinded his eyes.

There must have been a dozen of such instances.

It must be the grace of God.

Alright I gotta go sleep now, C Programming Exam coming up later!
God's grace is upon me to do well!

Minecrafting with Josiah

Minecraft is super addictive!

Despite the pixelated (or some would say 'crappy') graphics, the gameplay is awesome.

This game is without form but full of substance.

Been playing with Josiah during this Chinese New Year :)

We started out with nothing, struggling to survive monsters attacks, and collecting the basic materials (wood, coal, stone). But after playing for many hours, we formed out our home nicely, planted crops, collected lots of resources, and built a long railway, etc

So here's how our abode looks like:

Outside our house.

That huge green mass is what we call the "World Tree".
To the right you can say a line of grey stuff, which is our railway track.

Inside our house
Fireplace in the center!

Our house is carved into a stony cliff lawl.

another view of our house 

 Railway in our house!

You can't imagine how much effort I put into building this railway.
It leads all the way to this huge cave, teeming with resources and monsters. The reason I built it was because it was quite a long walk from our house. The whole project consumed ALOT of iron, like about 60-70 Iron Ingots, all of which were legitimately mined (yes, you can cheat in the game).

But riding the cart is much fun! It's like a roller coaster ride :)

 Riding the railway system on a minecart

Riding pass the landscape

That's the World Tree in the background, a little to the left of the center.

This is our wheat farm.

Because of our wheat farm, we have tonnes of bread! Bread restores health, so it's awesome to have an inexhaustible supply of healing.

This is an ordinary tree. It's kinda dark; hope you can make it out.

Compare it with this:

The massive world tree :D

The trunk of the world tree is 9x9 tiles large, unlike the ordinary 1x1 trees.
Atop our house, is a vast expanse of sand. Here we made a cactus farm.

Cactus farm on top of our house.

It you're wondering whats that burning structure with green stuff surrounding it, it's the way down to our house. We surrounded it cactus and fire to guard ourselves against monsters that appear in the night.

Yeap, Minecraft rocks. And it's too addictive!
It's totally worth my $27.

Well that's it, hope you guys had a wonderful Chinese New Year :)

Minecraft, Music and Madness

Woot I just bought Minecraft yesterday!

Over the past few days. I have been playing Minecraft with Bryan, but I've been shamelessly using his girlfriend's account. Then, a surge of manhood sprung up within me, and I decided to do the right thing. I typed those 16 digits in, and within an instant, $26.96 departed from me. I silently (and embarrassingly) recount that this is the 1st time I spent money on a game in about 11 years.

So what in Arthas' Flowing White Mane is Minecraft???
A Blizzard game about mining???

Not at all, my speculative friend! What do you do in Minecraft? You

Haha nah it's more than that.

Minecraft is an adventure game, where you forge your own world, literally.

Don't let the shoddy, pixelated graphics fool you - there's real substance underneath that form.

To explain in layman terms, it's like creating a world with Lego, except that you are a person roaming in and building that world. Unfortunately, you'll most likely be lost at what to do without a friend to teach you the basics :P

Bryan and I had many adventures, such as building a cosy wooden cottage with a tall lookout tower, which had a waterfall flowing down from the top of the tower. We dug a nice pond, and we grew crops. Sadly, Bryan burned down the house in a failed attempt to create a fireplace. I went into the house to observe the carnage. Needless to say, both of us were incinerated alive XD

But thank God for the word "respawn".

The burning remnants of our house.

That's our waterfall, which kinda flooded the house after it burnt down.

We dug out elaborate mining shafts, battled the undead, crafted armor and equipment, built a glass tower that was founded upon a lake and reached to the clouds (later, we jumped off from the top into the lake). Oh yes, Bryan planted a tree on top of a tree on top of a tree on top of a tree on top of a tree on top of... uh you get the idea. Well maybe you don't.

The glass tower and a tree on a tree.

Bryan later extended both the tower and the "world tree" to the heavens.

You can build really cool stuff, like this beautiful hall I found online:

It's a great game, if you enjoy building worlds and playing games like Island Troll Tribes.

---

After some introspection, I realize that the main reason I wanna get a bass guitar is to compose songs - adding the bass parts to songs. But that would mean I'll need music software and recording equipment. And I'm not very into composing songs yet, it's just something I want to do as another hobby someday. Thus, I declare that getting a Bass Guitar will be of lower priority.

And that adds to the list of stuff I wanna do as hobbies:

- Music Composing

- Learn Bass Guitar

- Learn Piano

- Story Writing

I wouldn't consider playing games as a hobby I guess. More like a jumbled up combo of play and work.

Actually there's another thing I would like to do. Make awesomely cool and stupid T-shirt prints. For fun.

Oh yes, I was walking about Nex with Yufen and Joanne, looking for an ATM, when I suddenly stepped on something squishy. I was like crap... it's bound to be chewing gum or something.

Well it turned out to be something totally unexpected:

Wait... is that Sushi?!

Inconceivable!

Anyway, I won't be updating my blog as often as before. Gotta focus on more important things. So yeah, so sad. T.T cry me a river.

Peace out.

More about Modern Warfare 2

This video is one reason why I love the Modern Warfare series so much.

*Spoiler Alert*

This scene moved many players to tears. Not me though =P
But it was heart-wrenching nonetheless.

After this mission, you get thrown into the next mission,
pumped up with adrenaline (and perhaps vengeance):

Awesome.

Modern Warfare 2

Modern Warfare 2 ROCKS!

Played it on friday night and finished the whole campaign in abt 4-5hrs!

Its a really well tweaked game, with spectacular cinematics, thrilling gameplay, captivating storyline and packs one heck of a punch! I thoroughly enjoyed the campaign, except that it was kinda short, and I had to play the game at the lowest of lowest graphical settings T.T

Gotta love Captain "Soap" MacTavish and Captain Price.
The story has some tragic parts too...

But I shall not spoil the story...

Modern Warfare 1 & 2 can be summarized into 2 words: Interactive Movie.

Yep. It feels like you're watching and playing through a movie. Epicness.

I guess its a guy's game - fast-paced action, heroic endeavours, cool technology, epic stunts and cinematics, war and politics, etc. but without romance and with little relational/friendship scenes.

My rating: 9.0/10.0

Here's a video trailer of the game, but the actual game is so much cooler :)

Meat of the flesh, Meat of the Word

WOOT met with Robin and Janelle, my former bosses, last night. Bryan also tagged along :)

As some of you would know, Robin was also my lecturer back at NYP. He gave me a job after my graduation. Janelle is like a Project Manager/Producer, so that makes her my boss as well, I think.

Robin brought us to Phinn's Steakhouse at Bugis, and he treated us! Thank God for he's generosity! I felt kinda bad as I ordered the most expensive steak :X

But like what Pastor Kong always says, "If you feel led to give, I feel led to receive" :3

It was great conversing with them. As expected, Bryan and Robin discussed about Game Engines and programming stuff, half of which I didn't know about. Well, we got to the topic of Armor Valley, the game which I worked on when I was working for Robin.

Great news! They managed to ship the game, and the game received good reviews! This guy seems to love it a lot - he gave it a whopping 9/10!

Actually, the average score is 3.5 stars or 7/10, but that's great too. :)

Armor Valley!

After the sumptuous dinner, we went home. There was a conference call with Yufen and the CGCs at 10pm. Really thank God for refreshing my spirit during the whole prayer, as I felt that I was burning out through all the ministry. Thanks to Ernest for sharing my burden and giving good counsel. He reminded me about satisfying my soul(i.e. playing games :P), which I haven't been doing for the past week.

God revealed to me that I'll need a rhema Word, a promise from God for this season. Cos the ministering is only going to be more and more, and it will be the promise of God that sustains me.

When our world seems to be crumbling away, and all that we desire is falling before our eyes, only God's promise to us will give us hope; we can trust that everything's gonna turn out alright, because God said it, we believe it, that settles it.

God is good, all the time!

Anyway, I hope to share a great piece of news soon! God's truly gives seed to the sower!

But his delight is in the law of the LORD,
And in His law he meditates day and night.
He shall be like a tree
Planted by the rivers of water, (full of life)
That brings forth its fruit in its season, (fruitfulness)
Whose leaf also shall not wither; (never not-doing-well)
And whatever he does shall prosper.

(Ps 1:2-3)

New Development and Design Blog

Hey all!

I started a new Blog here:
http://noxdude.simiansoftwerks.com

It is totally dedicated for games development, web design and stuff like that :)

I'll still be using this blog as my personal blog.

Wooty shmooty.

2010 New Year Herald

"Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a NEW CREATION; the old has gone, the new has come!"

(2 Cor 5:17)

Praise the Lord! Happy New Year all!

2009 was an awesome year, but 2010 is gonna be greater!

I believe God spoke to me that the areas of my life that I wanted to change in 2009 will change in 2010! This means all the bad habits and disappointments in 2009 are past, and I will have victories in 2010!

2 Areas I believe I will breakthrough:

1) Passion for God: the same or greater passion that I had when I was a young believer.

2) Faithfulness: Being faithful to God, faithful in the little things(like punctuality :X).

I guess that if I have these 2, the rest will follow - financial blessings, joy, ministry promotion, etc. Thank You Jesus!

Let's take a look back at some of the cool stuff in 2009:

Awesoments of 2009:

• "Boomz" and "Shingz" added to the Singaporean dictionary
• Left 4 Dead - Awesome Multiplayer shooter
• Fireflies - Best Song (In my biased opinion)
• Dark Knight - Best Movie (Again, in my biased opinion)
• Windows 7 - Best Windows OS (Now that ain't biased)
• Jay Chou - Best Chinese Celebrity alive! (This ain't biased either!)
• Most Retarded YouTube video:

MUST WATCH!

Achievements of 2009:

• 1st time being a cheerleading flyer!
• Read finished Harry Potter series!
• 3 Polar Bears in my room!
• Learnt cheng yao dance
• Learnt Sorry Sorry dance
• Attempted to cut Show Luo's hairstyle
• Listened to the radio (hey, that's a big achievement for a guy like me :P)
• Completed Call of Duty 4
• Drank about a bottle of Heineken
• Drank beer with Sprite
• Ate 5 meals a day for about 2 weeks
• 75 posts
• Kept a Blog alive for more than 3 weeks

Good and bad happened in 2009, but I'd rather let go off the bad and thank God for the good :)

So here's some things to thank God for...

1) Graduation! (12th March)

Wow! Time does not just fly - it soars with jet packs on! Thank God that my last year in NYP was a most fruitful one, as I worked with Bryan Yeo and Robin Chia, the Top and Second of the entire Digital Entertainment Technology cohort!

Graduation!

These 2 buddies are not only awesome in their work, but also fun, helpful, and great people to work with! We made the best Final Year Project evar! =3

So yeah, I ended up with exactly 3.5 GPA! Thank God its not 3.49 wahaha.

2) 20th Birthday! (10th April)

2009 marked the end of my teenage years(sadded). Anyway, the 10th of April was incidentally Good Friday, and our church had our Easter Celebration during my birthday! I had lots of fun celebrating my birthday together with W406! I remember we had lunch at some Chicken Rice stall near Raffles City (imagine that!).

Thanks, W406, for the new jacket!

After which, we went to Esplanade and did all sorts of random stuff. Took plenty of photos and did some cheerleading stunts wahaha.

But most of all, want to thank God for saving Sheryl, Melody and Zining! That was the best birthday present evar! Thank God that they brought Jolin later and she too got saved! XD

3) Faith Camp (June 2009)

My 1st ever Church camp! It was loads of fun, and the sessions of seeking God were awesome!

Indeed we are the next generation of leaders, to take the baton from pioneers! Thank God for this privilege!

4) Game Programmer Job (5th July)

This job was really God-given. My elder bro told me to pray for a job specifically, so I did.

I prayed for:

- Work as a Game Programmer

- Salary of 1.6k-1.8k

- Nice boss

- Get the job in 2 weeks

My workplace in Johor.

That's right, its my boss' house.

I sent out like 2 or 3 applications, 1 of which went to my previous lecturer at NYP, who had his own game company. Bryan Yeo, Robin Chia and I made the best game project for the module which my lecturer was teaching, so he was willing to hire me!!! Praise the Lord!

Screenshot of the game I worked on

So I got a job as a Game Programmer, had a monthly salary of 1.6k, a friendly boss whom was my lecturer - all these within 2 weeks. God indeed answers specific prayers! Thank you Jesus!

5) Revelation of the Word of God (August)

I was in one of my most down periods around this time, but thank God that Weiren shared about the Word of God! He said that if we live by the Word and believe it, nothing can shake our lives. Not trials, not testings, not temptations. Our lives will ALWAYS be fruitful, NEVER having a dry season.

¹ Blessed is the man
Who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly,
Nor stands in the path of sinners,
Nor sits in the seat of the scornful;
² But his delight is in the law of the LORD,
And in His law he meditates day and night.
³ He shall be like a tree
Planted by the rivers of water,
That brings forth its fruit in its season,
Whose leaf also shall not wither;
And whatever he does shall prosper.

6) Callings: Armorbearer & Leadership (August)

During this season God began to reveal to me 2 great callings in my life:

a) Be Weiren's armorbearer.

This means to serve him faithfully, anticipate his needs, refresh his soul, protect him from enemies(critics or whatever), stand by him during tough times, honor him, and to help him fulfill his destiny.

At least that's what the Armorbearer book said.

b) Grow the connect group to 200. (O.O)"

Wow okay, I'm glad I posted this - it reminded me of my callings. God only gave me the vision to grow my connect group after the calling to serve Weiren. The saying that God will only give you your destiny after you help someone fulfill his destiny is true.

Looking at this 2 callings, there's only 1 thing I can say: I can't do it.

No wonder Pastor Kong says that the dreams God give you are so big that you cannot accomplish it without God.

7) God's grace in NS (September-December)

I just can't believe the amazing grace that God has given me during the whole course of my army! God answered my prayer for 9-5 vocation, so that I can serve him! Throughout these 3 months, I have been under good and lenient supervisors! (Or at least much better than I imagined NS supervisors to be)

8) Risk game with Weiren! (30th December)

Played Risk for the first time in years on the 2nd night of the Chalet! I never really liked Risk cause:
- it seemed like more of a luck game than strategy

- the game lasts for hours

Weiren revolutionarized that! He taught us how the play Risk properly with various strategies and tactics. After a trial game, all of us became very "jian"(cunningly sinister)!

It was a pretty exciting game, which enemies became allies and allies became enemies, which the weak overcame the strong, which lasted for 3.5 hours. XD

-----------------------------------------------------------------

Wowzer that was some long post! Thank God for an eventful 2009! However we've entered into a new decade, a new era of breakthrough!

This Season

Torchlight
I started playing this game called "Torchlight" recently, after my friend showed us the game. Its a Diablo 3 wannabe, with the gameplay mechanics, items, skills, etc. pretty similar to the Diablo style.

Torchlight,
by Runic Games

Right now playing as the Alchemist, although I'm pretty noob; I'm still at level 9 while Josiah is already level 16 or higher wahahaha :P

It's a pretty fun game; a game to play while anticipating the release of Diablo 3! XD


This game is developed on the Ogre3D game engine! And its a very polished game! Can you believe it?! Even Bryan was amazed that Ogre could make such a game.

Nice artwork.

Deepavali Celebration
Alright enough about Torchlight. Last friday, my camp had a Deepavali Celebration, and all of us had to attend it. SAF is wise in wanting to build cohesion between the different cultures and races in Singapore, but we all kinda felt that it was eating into our free time, as it was after working hours.

Nevertheless, we went and it turned out to be quite entertaining hahas.
It was a little boring at the start, and the food was too greasy, but things got better.
The dance performances by Restricted Authority was good, with the last hip-hop dance item being the best! The most entertaining portion of the event was dressing up 4 men in a an Indian Sari!

Bryan was one of them, and that day I had the shock of my life. I saw a side of Bryan that I never hope to see again. All 4 men, including Bryan, acted like women, dancing those Bollywood moves and making some obscene notions. The whole room was full of laughter and shock.

Too bad cameras are not allowed in camp, or I would have posted those abomina- I mean unbelievable scenes :P

Personal Life
As for myself, I believe that now is the season for me to have a breakthrough relationship with God, to know Him as a friend, to have conversations with Him frequently. Now, I only know Him as a source of strength, wisdom, anointing and provision. Weiren told the CGCs that we have to go up one level higher in a spiritual maturity before our breakthrough as a Cellgroup will come. I believe this is the next level that I will achieve :)

Its quite a struggle to patiently wait on God and to seek Him diligently. Perhaps the issue is faith. This is the verse for my season:

"But without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him." (Heb 11:6)

In other words, I have to believe that God will draw close and speak with me as I diligently seek Him.

Trip to Johor Bahru! (Part 2)

Hey all, here's part 2 of my trip!

Me outside Mr Robin's house

Back to Business
After that viewing the condominium, we went back to Mr Robin's house. As he drove back, he said to me "Hope you learnt something today" ;)

Mr Robin, Jeffrey and Gen Yuan discussed loads of technical stuff about various projects, which were hard for me to follow. We were discussing about getting references for the art style we were using when Mr Robin brought up Starship Troopers.

Starship Troopers is an extremely old sci-fi movie released in 1997. I first came to know of it when I played a custom game in Warcraft 3 about Starship Troopers.

The movie has many similar elements to Starcraft; it is about a human Federal army fighting against bug-like creatures that looked and operated like the Zerg. I told him that I heard the movie was good, but I've never watched it before.

Mr Robin replied "You must watch it! Its a very good movie! If Transformers 2 is rated 2/10, Starship Troopers is 10/10!"

At this, he went upstairs to search for the CD. After finding it, he personally switched on a computer and played the disc. He set it to full screen and adjusted the volume to ensure that I have a pleasant experience. It was almost like I was being compelled to watch it. But I was genuinely interested anyway :D

I thought Starship Troopers would be a PG family show like Star Wars. I was horribly wrong.

Countless soldiers were being decapicitated or ripped to shreds throughout the whole show, with brains being sucked out of people's skulls, bodies dissolved in jets of acid sprays and limbs being torned off.

However, the gore didn't bother me that much; I have seen enough gore in other movies and games. It was the scenes with nudity that got me uncomfortable. It was then that I checked the CD cover, only to find that it was a Restricted movie. T.T

Well, I didn't like the movie because of the mature scenes and the disgusting deaths of the soldiers. It kinda portrays humans as expendable, which I really hate as every single soul is precious. But I have to say that the plot is quite interesting.

Games Show
By the time the movie was over, it was already about 7pm. Mr Robin decided to visit an Online Games show before dinner. We saw their advertisement with the words "Biggest Online Game Show" printed on it. It was very vague and really poorly advertised. Mr Robin joked that it could mean a commercial game show (e.g. Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, 百万大赢家)

When we reached there, we found out that this "Biggest" game show was really small with not many people. There was some weird chinese game about being a business man. Not interested :P

A game called wulin(武林) looked quite fun. Mr Robin commented that the game wasn't very well done in technical terms though.

There was also a Street Fighter 4 competition, with a Sony MP3 Player as the prize. Well, I can't even execute a "Hadoken" properly...

The cool thing was that I encountered this:


As usual, By2 would be promoting 希望 Online or Seal Online. They even have a song called "Seal The Love". They will be there on 5 July at 5pm, which is today :/

Okay I'm not that excited about By2 anymore hahas. Weiren would probably say that I have grown into maturity :P

Dinner
We walked over to City Square shopping centre to have dinner. Mr Robin treated us to dinner at a Sudenese Restaurant!!! XD The meal was like rice with various dishes - Beef, Chicken Curry, Kangkong and squid. To me, the nicest dish was the Kangkong vegetables - the meat were kinda tough and not really appealing. Thank God for the meal though; I'm happy as along as there is food to eat. Furthermore it was FREEEEEEEEEE!

Back To Singapore
Jeffrey and I took bus 950 back to Singapore together. A security guard stopped me and asked me to take out my passport. Do I look that suspicious? hahahas :D As the bus crossed the causeway into familiar ground, a sense of safety and belonging subtlely entered my heart. There's no place like home :D

I reached home at 10.45pm on friday. The journey felt more like a holiday trip than a project meeting :) I've also decided to join Envisage Reality! I'll be going back to JB tomorrow for an important meeting. This means that I won't be able to make it for By2's 签名会 T.T

Oh well, sacrifices have to be made to achieve greatness.

Thank God for this job and the opportunity to shine for Him in the marketplace!

Trip to Johor Bahru! (Part 1)

Yo guys, I went for a company meeting at JB on friday! Before I start describing the journey, I remembered the name of the donuts and coffee shop! It is called "J.CO Donuts & Coffee" hahas

Man this is going to be a super long post, so I'll split into 2 parts :X

Crossing Over
Mr Robin Tan, my boss, arranged for Jeffrey, a colleague, to meet me at Woodlands. From there we will take bus 950 to JB.

I was thinking what to wear as I didn't want to appear rich, 'cause JB isn't the safest place in the world. I wanted to wear a T-shirt with bermudas and slippers. However, I felt the peace of God after praying and knew that everything's gonna be alright. Thus, I decided to glorify God by looking sharp rather than to be paranoid and dress sloppily :D

Or maybe I'm zilian.

Promptly, I changed into a T-shirt and jeans. I opened my passport and was shocked to find out that the last time I travelled to Malaysia was in 28 July 2002! That was even before I came to City Harvest! Thank God that I had Jeffrey with me, or I would be very lost. In fact, I was quite blur as I went through the customs and the various counters - I was even stopped by the security staff 3 times on my way to JB and back.

Jeffrey and I met in Woodlands at 10.10am as we were supposed to rendevous with Mr Robin in JB at 11am. Upon arrival, we waited for Mr Robin's car at City Square shopping center. As we chatted, Jeffrey told me something that surprised me. The company's office was actually Mr Robin's house itself! (O_O)"

Finally, Mr Robin arrived to pick us up. As we entered the car, I took a glimpse at his attire. The boss of Envisage Reality was wearing a T-Shirt with shorts and slippers! Cool huh? XD

Yup, that's the dress code for the games industry! :)

Lunch at Johor Bahru
Mr Robin drove us to have lunch at some "ulu" (obscure, unknown) place. This "restaurant" boasts a wide variety of food, ranging from western to Chinese to Japanese and Korean. To me, it was more like a high-class hawker center than a restaurant.

What a "ulu" place.

I ordered a Japanese Spicy Chicken set and a Black Soya Bean drink. The food was pretty average, nothing that special. The drink was quite blend too.

You must be thinking "I didn't know Israel was so particular about food". Well, I will gladly eat any food but value for money is of interest to me :D If the food is free, I won't really mind about the quality hahas

I paid 10RM(SGD$4) for the meal and Mr Robin covered the rest (Yay!).

The Sacred Office
After the meal, we went to Envisage Reality's sacred office - Mr Robin's abode. His home was super grand and beautiful! From the outside, it resembles some sort of barred fortress:

Mr Robin's House!

Another view of the house

The sliding gate of his house

I was further wow-ed as we entered his home! It was extremely spacious and beautifully decorated, except that it was kinda messy haha. Right in the center of the living room was the workspace - about 7 computers arranged in a circular fashion. It looked like a secret operations base or a military command center. Only it wasn't underground. XD

Mr Robin wanted to protect the IP (Intellectual Property) of our projects, so he'd rather me not take photos of the bungalow's interior. Still, its the coolest office I have ever seen in my life haha.

He showed me several project demos, including the game I'll be working on. Thank God for granting my desire - I'm no longer called to produce the casino game!!! Instead, I'll be working on an awesome XBox 360 game based on an old classic game! :D

Property Viewing
We were at the "office" for awhile when Mr Robin had to pick up another colleague, Geng Yuan, one of our artists. He's a talented mainland Chinese who earned singaporean citizenship.

After picking him up, Mr Robin took us to see JB's housing estates. He wanted to open my eyes to see how expensive HDB flats in Singapore are.

Viewing JB's property

He brought us (Jeffrey, Geng Yuan and I) to a condominium. The place is pretty cheap, but the scenery was kinda slum-ish and there aren't many facilities, save for a small swimming pool.

Nice atmospheric view but the landscape is marked with zinc-roofed houses and construction work.

View of the living room

At least there are some nice terrace houses from this view.

Mr Robin then chatted the property agents. They discussed about loans, monthly payments, interest rates, renting, etc. I learnt quite a bit about the property market, and discovered the meaning of the term "mark-up" :D

Hey wait a minute! I thought we're supposed to have a project meeting. How did this turn out to be a property business trip? Haha it was fun though.



Well, I'll continue the next half of my trip to Johor Bahru on my next post! Keep a lookout for it! =D