Yikes. How is it that sitting at home doing nothing productive makes time go so damn fast? It’s almost mid June now and I’ve not been at work for almost 2 and a half months.
An email from work at the end of may suggests I may not be going back until the end of July which would make 4 full months – the most time i’ve had off in what feels like forever.

I’m still doing OK and enjoying the time off, though the honeymoon period is over I suppose, I really miss being able to just go out to the shops or get bubble tea and pho in Kingston.
I’ve been passing the time with baking, and a possibly unhealthy serving of games and TV

What have I been playing?

• Started and finished Gris – which was nice but a little bit simple, it’s more of a walking sim than a platformer
• Started and finished Turmoil – reminds me a bit of motherlode, one of those drill for resources and then upgrade so you can drill faster kind of games, simple but surprisingly fun.
• Started up Middle Earth Shadow of War – which was fun for a few hours but they really went all in with the nemesis shit, it got boring pretty quick because it feels like that’s all you do in the game – just run to place, kill a dude, repeat.
• Started and finished Swords of Ditto – Pretty boring honestly, didn’t take long to finish at least (though i’m certainly not replaying it 5 times for the true ending)
• Finally finished off Druidstone – Was 90% of the way through and just abandoned it for no real reason, good to tick this one off.
• Started and Finished Bloodstained ROTN – Way better than I thought it would be, pretty traditional Igavania game and that’s not a bad thing. I actually wish they would remaster the gameboy ones because they were all really good as well and I don’t think I finished many of them.
• Started and finished Warsaw – It’s a bit darkest dungeon, mixed with this war of mine. It was decent, though not in any real rush to play through it again.
• Finished Raiden 5 – it was shit.
• Replayed/Finished Legend of Grimrock – I started it ages ago but never saw the end, lost my save so had to start from the beginning but nbd. Loved it, but the sequel was better (as it should be), I hope they make a third.
• Playing through Project Warlock and Shadow Warrior – Both filling that brainless FPS need
• Started Molek-Syntez – yeah it’s another zachtronics alright. As usual im sure i’ll get half way through and then abandon it, it may have already happened.
• Started up Trillion – I don’t really understand the game, its like some sort of incremental game but with the same boss battle every now and then, but the boss battle is really boring…
• Slowly making my way through Train Valley 2 – got it free from the humble, it’s actually really good, but quite hard and stressful as the game goes on.
• Started and probably dropped Jurassic world evolution – It was fun, but quite samey after a while. I don’t think I can be bothered to make another park.
  it’s also made me realise that I probably don’t want to buy Planet Zoo at anywhere near full price…
• Bought the Holy Potatoes! pack while it was on sale – All pretty simple games, but really good time killers because I can play it while watching Netflix, I’ve been watching shitloads of ‘Shark Tank’, I regret nothing.
• Started and finished Dishonoured 2 – Admittedly still not the biggest fan of this series but it was alright I guess, I think my main problem is that it really wants you to play stealthy and penalizes you for not doing so, but gives you so many skills to let you kill people so there’s that constant inner conflict.
• Then there are the months humble monthly games – which, honestly i’m really liking all of them so far. I’ve played Barotrauma with Anony and it’s been great fun (we went in completely blind without the tutorial and it was such a hilarious mess), i’m also slowly making my way through the Messenger, and I think i’m towards the end of Supraland, which is a shockingly underrated game.

So late towards the end of March, my company decided to use the government Furlough scheme on a third of our workforce. It makes sense really, and I don’t blame them for doing so – I recently changed from support to projects which basically means new installs/setups, but obviously nobody wants to invest in their IT when the economy is going down the shitter and income is drying up as everyone goes into hiding.

The scheme basically means i’m on leave for 2 months at 80% wage – which, i’m actually loving, i mean when they mentioned it and asked for volunteers I thought ‘surely this is too good not to volunteer for?’ When else in my life am I going to get paid 80% to not work?

The month has gone crazy fast, 4 weeks almost now, just whoosh.
I’ve been passing my time by going through my games backlog, picking up new games, catching up on anime and TV, and doing all the household chores and experimenting around with food a little more.

So what have I actually been playing this month?

• Started and finished Dead Rising 4 – fun but ultimately pretty forgettable
• Started Catherine – Enjoying it, but the puzzles are actually really stressful, I wish I put it on easy or something because i’m playing it more for the story than the climbing segments.
• Started and finished Doom Eternal – Great FPS, and much longer than I expected, though I actually think I prefer the simplicity of Doom 2016.
• Finished off Shantae and the Pirates curse – Eh, it was OK, nice characters but kind of weak as a metroidvania goes.
• Started and finished Hitman 2 – and by that I mean i’ve done all missions once, I bought the DLC and finished those as well. I’m still doing some extra runs to play around and see the other outcomes, but I suspect i’ll get bored way before I run out of content, I played a fair bit of Hitman 1 and unfortunately the progress doesn’t carry.
• Started and finished Forager – Bought this one while it was on sale as I had my eye on it for a while, I’ve been really craving a crafting/automation style game and this scratched the itch
• Started and finished Resident Evil 3 (remake) – Bit disappointing after playing REmake2? Still enjoying it I guess but it felt like they just did the bare minimum required to push the game out. Really short, only 6 hours for my first playthrough and I would say I was taking my time.
• Started up Final Fantasy 7 remake – Absolutely loving this so far, like way more than I thought I would, I had the opportunity to play it for a while but had no urge to, thought I may as well seeing as I have the time right now and I’ve been totally sucked in. The music was amazing, the characters and graphics are stunning, Tifa’s side boob in chapter 9 probably has more polygons than the entirety of everything on screen in the original and god bless.
• Continued playing Call of Duty MW Warzone – this has replaced Apex for me for now, really loving this BR and it’s so much fun to play with friends, the gunplay feels really good.
• I’ve also given Valorant a try after getting a beta key, if i’m honest, i’m not really impressed, I like the idea but the art style or something about the way things are conveyed on screen just isn’t satisfying, like getting kills or shooting ingame doesn’t feel as fun as in counter strike.

Poor neglected blog, As usual in my life, doesn’t really feel like theres much to talk about, but I figured given the current situation in the UK, I may want to look back and reflect at some point.

Jan:
Was Cordelias birthday, we went out for a meal I think, also got the car serviced and MOT’d which turned out to be a few hundred quid for brake pads and disks, i’m hoping i’ll be able to switch to another car soon but I kind of want my own drive first before I get a ‘nice’ car.
MHW Iceborne came out and I clocked another 100+ hours on the content, really good expansion though I wish more of my friends were playing it.

Feb:
Nothing of real note, did a fair few extra weekends overtime to get some extra money, hoping to save up for a PC as this one (Sanshiro3) is starting to struggle in some CPU heavy games like Modern Warfare (2019).
My birthday at the end of the month, but didn’t really get much of note, just some money and small bits

Mar:
After some extreme frustrations at work and having to take a day off for my mental wellbeing, they moved me to another department, so i’ve switched from the servicedesk to the projects team which is more based around new installs or implementations rather than just troubleshooting day to day stuff. It’s shocking how much management can affect the simple day to day feeling of your job, even if nothing had really changed requirements wise, just the change in management made me hate every minute of work.

The rest of the month, as you may or may not know, has been all this Coronavirus/COVID-19 shit, which has been super interesting but also a bit shit. I’ve loved seeing the natural human reactions and quick devolution of the british public, the underlying racism which has bubbled to the surface, and the sheer stupidity of some of our citizens. It has however made food shopping quite frustrating, and the now forced quarantine is a bit annoying as I can’t go out to town and have a shop around etc, or even see my own mother on mothers day (as she is high likelyhood of having it, due to work).
They have switched us to working from home which is equal parts nice and not, I love being able to wake up 5 minutes before work starts, and use my own peripherals, however it does also feel a bit lonely at times and it feels like i’m in the same spot all day. It’s also caused havok and stress regarding our next holiday, which was due to be Portugal in mid May – which is now looking very unlikely, I guess i’m just glad that it wasn’t a larger holiday as our investment in this was only a few hundred quid.

That’s all for now, we’re all fine and healthy still, plenty of food in the fridge, tons of loo roll in the cupboard, just waiting for it all to blow over so I can visit my local bubble tea shop again.

What the actual hell, where did the time go?

I haven’t done a proper post for months because honestly, life has just been really uneventful outside of a few outlier days.

Tough Mudder 5k
So I did a tough mudder event back in October, which was great fun, I really enjoyed doing all of the obstacles and it was quite nice to actually do something physical for a change, going to the gym is nice and all but it doesn’t quite compare to actually doing a human pyramid, climbing up walls, hanging from poles, etc etc etc.
I really did not enjoy the running unfortunately, and after I finished (even though I was wearing a knee support and an ankle support) I found it pretty hard to walk for a few days due to the pain in my right knee, this is kind of something I’ve had for a while but it only seems to manifest after I do heavy squats in the gym. I wonder what’s wrong with it…

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Guess next time it will have to be the 10k, obstacles too easy but the running was starting to take its toll towards the end #toughmudder5k

A post shared by Steven Loh (@mengplex) on Oct 5, 2019 at 4:29am PDT

Shiny new shoes
So after the above, I figured maybe it was because my current gym/running shoes are absolute trash, i’ve had the same pair for maybe 5 years so felt like I would be ok to invest in a better pair this time.
I went down to RunnersNeed in Kingston, they were really friendly and helped pick me out some shoes after analysing my gait, sizing up my feet, and bringing out a bunch of different shoes for me to try, which was so different from the usual of going into the shop, and you explicitly asking and they bring it out, this one was the guy bringing out shoes, and me saying yes or no. Highly recommend them if you’re in that market, though I did end up spending over a hundred in the end on some fancy new trainers (Brooks GTS19’s if that means anything to anyone).

EGX 2019
EGX was over in october, I went with my brother and we had a great time wandering around and playing all the games. All of the big games had massive queues but I did get to try Switch fit adventure thing, Nioh 2, Kakarot, and a bunch of other games, as well as reliving some old times in the retro corner playing DJ Hero.
I’ve really missed being able to go to EGX with my bro, so i’m very happy it’s returned to London.

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Awesome day out with the brother at #EGX #egx2019 so much bigger than the last time it was in London!

A post shared by Steven Loh (@mengplex) on Oct 18, 2019 at 1:29pm PDT

New kit and upgrading to Win10
After rocking windows 7 til it went out of style, and then some, I’ve finally had to upgrade to Windows 10.
I was suckered into buying the new Call of Duty and that game basically runs at half FPS on windows 7 (Literally, if you cap the ingame fps to 60, it plays at 30 – you have to run the game at 120fps to get 60 real), I think this is due to it being DX12 only, so alas, grabbed a new m2 SSD and installed win 10 pro.
At some point I also impulse bought a new monitor as well, an Asus VG287QR which runs at 165hz, and oh man, the high framerate thing is bliss. It’s really nice and you can definitely feel the difference, it’s actually quite shocking how choppy 60fps seems to feel once you get used to it.
Would defo recommend upgrading if your PC can handle it, but be warned that you really do need a bit of a beast rig to run at full speed on it, i’m now having to start considering a full PC upgrade to take advantage, even though I don’t really want to spend more….

I started writing this thinking I had plenty to talk about and it turns out I really don’t.

It’s kind of shocking how uneventful life has been lately, but sometimes boring is good too.

Budapest

Was great fun! Cordelia took me there as a birthday present, there wasn’t really enough there to keep us fully occupied for the 5 days or so we were there, but it was a nice change of pace to have a holiday where we can come back to the hotel and have a nap without feeling like we’re wasting the day away.

Another exam down

Passed my 70-740 Microsoft Exam, one of three for the Server 2016 qualification. It was pretty hard, I actually thought i was going to fail when I was mid exam, though I somehow managed to pass with 82%

Apex Legends

Oh my god Apex came from seemingly nowhere and has eaten maybe 100 hours of my life, I’ve never really seen the appeal of battle royale games due to my short experience playing Fortnite but this is completely different. It’s a shame i’m not very good at the game of course, maybe it’s my age catching up to me?

New home

I’m moving again at the end of this month, to a small 1.5 bedroom house, really looking forward to not having to share with other people, I can totally deal with cleaning up mess, but I fucking hate cleaning up after others. I’ll be sure to post some pictures after i’m moved in.

It’s been a busy but somewhat uneventful month, I’ve spent most of the last 2 weeks just grinding through.

Healthy Mind and Body

My new years resolution is to get a six pack, i’ve actually wanted one for as long as I can remember but it’s too difficult as I just love food too much, portion control is definitely not my strong point, particularly as i’m so good at cooking (if i do say so myself). I’ve been trying to control my calorie intake to about 1800 a day, hitting the gym 2-5 times a week and doing intermittent fasting where possible. So far there hasn’t been much change, but we have a body analyser thing at the gym, and i’ve ordered a tape measure, so hopefully i’ll start seeing some positive results soon – it’s a bit of a struggle though as work have ordered in free pizza twice in the last fortnight, and i’m a sucker for that.
I’ve also decided to push myself and go for another MCSA certification, picking up a CBTnuggets subscription which is a painful $84 a month – more than 4 times what I spend on gym. If it helps me get the cert then I guess it’s money well spent, and it does seem like a good resource, but it’s certainly not a cheap service.
I’ve been trying to claw time to do it by coming into the office early for half an hour, doing half an hour over lunchbreak, and then half an hour after work – followed by 90 minutes of gym, and then coming back home to collapse due to exhaustion – on days I need to cook dinner or go food shopping as well I want to cry.

Cordelia’s birthday

it was the gf’s birthday last weekend, we went to the dino golf down the road, basically an 18 hole minigolf kind of thing with luminous green water features and animatronic dinosaurs, they also play the jurassic park theme practically on loop, it was goofy, cold and pretty expensive, but good fun all the same, I won in our group, kind of made me miss playing Albatross 18.
We went to a chinese restaurant in kingston for dinner called Yimchai which was actually surprisingly good, there was a good authentic selection of food and the taste was pretty spot on from what I had. We’ve already booked to go again at Valentines. I got her a silver pendant with a garnet hung in the middle – her birthstone, she seemed to like it.

Other smaller things:

• We’re going to see Dragonball Broly film tomorrow, which should be a laugh
• Mum bought a house, going to help on the weekend.
• Got back into Payday2, great game, so much content, I just wish I had people to play with as the randoms can be a bit trash.
• Had to get my tyres and some bulbs changed for my cars MOT, £250ish in total, painful, but then I spoke to a friend who said that a single tire cost him £100 and considering I had all 4 done, I guess I got off lucky due to my car.

And so 2018 comes to a close.
This year was fairly uneventful as they go, aside from the 3 holidays

Christmas!

Christmas was a little weird this year, as my parents sold the family house and are a bit all over the place right now, I woke up on christmas day alone in my room – unsure whether or not I should open the few presents I had, or bring them to my mum’s place or leave them or what.
I ended up opening up – I got a really nice superdry rucksack, a superdry tshirt, Codenames pictures (boardgame), a steam gift card, a mug, a Yakuza series tshirt, a comic book by hiimdaisy, a bunch of cash (because buying presents is hard), some chocs/biscuits, a glass chopping board which looks like a chipset, and some socks.

We went to my mums sister’s place this year, and had a lovely dinner, followed by some gambling (went from £2 to £7, yay) and jackbox, Hailey was being a bit of a diva this year and got into a strop because nobody was paying enough attention to her, and someone thought it would be a good idea to buy them instruments (harmonica, keyboard and a recorder) so my ears were ringing by the end of the night just because of all of the noise.
Boxing day morning me and brother just hung out, we were trying to find something to play, try doing a bit of Resi6 and promptly ended up buying Lethal League Blaze instead, which we blasted for a few hours. The eve was spent at an Aunt on my dads side, and was mostly uneventful, my cousin recently bought Jackbox 5 so we went through and played all of the games in that, some of them were really good but we didn’t really have enough people for it to be a party.

Ham house Christmas walk

Cordelia booked us on a ghost tour of Ham House – it was mostly uneventful unfortunately, though the interior was nice. I wasn’t really expecting much, but it was purely a ghost story kind of walk, rather than a haunted house kind of experience. I remmeber going to a ghost walk a long time ago as a kid and they had actors burst out of coffins and all sorts, but the Ham House ghost tour was just “sometimes you can hear this….” followed by everyone going silent, and nothing happening. Bit disappointing, especially given the high price of admission (£25 pp)

Book Club Christmas Dinner

‘Book club’ threw a Christmas dinner on the weekend before Xmas, it was all surprisingly organised, with teams for mains, dessert, drinks and decor – I was on the mains team, but the host ended up preparing basically everything so my only real role was to deal with the turkey – which was almost a disaster, the turkey I bought and had been defrosting for 2-3 days was still part frozen, so we ended up having to source a replacement. I was taught how to rub butter underneath the skin of the turkey, which was a very odd sensation, literally crawling in it’s skin – all turned out to be good in the end though, however it was much harder and more tiring to carve than I expected.

Ooops.
That awkward moment when you forget about your blog for 3 months.

God, time goes fast though huh? We’re almost towards the end of the year and I’m going to be a very old man soon.

So uh..
Whats happened in the last few months?

Parents have sold the house

Obviously not our choice or decision, but one which had to be made, I’m going to have to head back in a few weeks to clean up the last of my stuff so they can properly move out.
I don’t live at home anymore anyway, but mum is moving to Orpington while dad is staying in Essex.
I’ve not actually seen the new house, but it’s only a 2 bed.

My stuff broke

Not having great luck with tech this year, I had a hard drive suddenly die on me, then my keyboard, and my power supply did some really funky stuff as well, where it just wouldn’t turn on, and then after a few days started working as normal – I decided to RMA it anyway because it’s still in warranty, I’d rather take my chances with a new unit than keep this one which has stopped working in the past.

I gamed my heart out

Yikes, probably one of the main reasons why I forgot to blog post, I’ve just been so overwhelmed with games lately.
We absolutely binged Monster Hunter World for a good month, and that was some of the most fun I’ve had in years, it was great being able to play with everyone again into the early hours of the morning, and it’s been so long since I’ve played a game that I’ve actually taken time off work to get more hours in.
Unfortunately a lot of the hype has died down now and there’s only 2 of us playing (down from 6), which is a real shame as I still enjoy the game, but playing with randoms isn’t as much fun – I guess my own expectations have gone up as well and I get more annoyed with people who have no idea how to play.

Since then, I’ve also been playing the fantastic Hat in Time DLC, and more recently have started up Opus Magnum, and The Surge – both of which seem really good and will probably keep me occupied for a fair while.

Oh I guess there was also God of War which I finished, and I’ve been playing some Spiderman and Yakuza 6 on PS4 as well – all courtesy of my brother who buys too many games.

Other stuff

uhhh…
– I sold my Sega Saturn for a hundred something quid
– I spent 2 weeks commuting to Watford for work (emergency on-site cover)
– We had a small LAN party thing at work
– I went Axe Throwing and came 2nd place in our group of 12
– I became a Microsoft Certified Solutions Associate (MCSA)
– I went to a trampoline Park and realised how unfit I am

Been a while since one of these, so long that i’m not really sure what to put in here.

Meeting old friends

Managed to catch up with some of my oldest friends, people I’ve known since secondary school / college. We unfortunately don’t really meet up as much as we should so it was a nice change. It’s mad how quickly everyone can drift apart in such a short time, similarly it seems crazy how much things can change in only a few years. We had a lovely dinner at Patty & Bun (still the best burger chain, imo) and then had a nice little romp through central london.

Back to studying

Been working hard towards finally getting some microsoft certifications, i’m currently aiming for an MCSA in office365, mostly because it’s the shortest path to getting qualified. After a few weeks of study I passed the 70-346 exam this week, meaning I just need to pass one more to become properly certified.
On the plus, technically by just passing one exam, you turn into a microsoft certified professional. Yay.

Games

Man, i’ve had hardly any time to game lately, I honestly have no idea where all my time is disappearing to, I suppose between full time work, trying to study for exams and cooking/cleaning and doing normal living stuff, doesn’t leave me much time to do what I want.
I’ve finally managed to finish off the holiday photos from my recent Taiwan and Dubai trip, so hopefully I can claw back a little more time there.
I’ve borrowed the fantastic God of War from my brother, which I wasn’t actually expecting to enjoy as much as I am, I thought it would be another overrated Dark souls lite style game but i’ve really enjoyed just exploring the world they have created. It surprisingly feels a lot like the gameplay of the recent Tomb Raider games, but with the combat mechanics more closely matching a (easy) souls game, I love that it gives itself leeway to throw Kratos to different environments as well – though saying more would be spoilers.
I’ve been really missing Rainbow6 siege but it feels like I just don’t have the time nor reflexes for it anymore, perhaps this is a sign of getting old? I feel like I just can’t be bothered to play games that frustrate me to a huge degree.
I picked up Titan Quest as my mind numbing game, something to do while listening to music to just unwind after a day at work. I totally forgot how long it is, I’m coming towards 10 hours now and i’m still at the start of Act 2, and i think there are 3 or 4 including the DLC. I’m playing a warrior with some fire enchants and am currently around the level 15-20, if anyone wants to team, let me know.

Gym switch

I’ve officially left the Easygym, and will be starting up at the Virgin active at the start of next month. You don’t know what you’ve lost until it’s gone, it used to feel like a chore but since I haven’t been able to go, I’ve been really itching to just pick some heavy shit up and put it back down again. Y’all know how it is, right?
The new gym will have a steam room and a room full of punching bags and stuff, which sounds fun. One more week to go.