Year End Review 2024

2024 is over. Let's see the stats

Nintendo 64: 18 (↑ 13) Nintendo Switch: 2 (↓ 2) PS5: 4 (↓ 1) PS1: 1 (↔) VR: 2 (↔)

Racing: 6 (↓ 5)
Platformer: 4 (↔)
Board: 3 (↔)
Sport: 1 (↔)
Action: 8 (↓ 1)
Shooter: 2 (↓ 1)
Board: 1 (↔)
Fighting: 1 (↓ 1)
Music: 1 (↔)

Game Played: 27 (652) (↓ 6)
Finished Game: 21 (539) (↓ 3)

Game of the Year

10) Star Fox 64
9) Diddy Kong Racing
8) Star Soldier Vanishing Earth
7) Balatro
6) Wave Race 64
5) First Encounters
4) Ghost of Tsushima Return to Iki Island

3) Ghost of Tsushima Directors Cut

Another year, another one open world game I try to do. This game doesn't dissapoint. It was a delight from start to finish. I am glad I started this game later in life so I get to enjoy the whole package. I think I am going to do that with the sequel as well.

2) Beat Saber

I got a Meta Quest 3 and this game was amazing. It just shows that VR is just on another level to play. I love every minute of playing this game. Plus it does give me a good sweat. I think I will play this game for another year until I get bored of it

1) Astro Bot

A love letter to my childhood. I think I played most of these games growing up so I did enjoy going to memory lane. Plus this game won Game of the Year and I think it lives up to the hype. I won't probably touch this again but maybe one day I would. Awesome 2024 in gaming

Honourable mentions
Another year and another of no honourable mentions. It is probably due that I didn't play any good games and to get 10 was difficult enough. Hopefully next year I get to play a couple of awesome games.

Series

Every year I watch a lot of shows and this year is no different. The problem is I don't quite remember what I watched starting early of the year. So next year hoping it would be different.

Memorable moments and shows

Finishing Monk, The West Wing and Parks and Recreation and Twin Peaks this year
Saying goodbye to This is Us. I was trying my best to not watch it until I can't avoid it.
No more Young Justice, Doom Patrol, All Rise, Evil, Quantum Leap
Stating Kamen Rider from the 80's until now
New Shows like Fallout, Batman and Mr and Mrs Smith is a must watch

Total series that I watch is 1061 (↓ 153)

Movies

Movie of the year

3. Transformers One
2. The Wild Robot
1. Deadpool & Wolverine

Unrelated = 45 (↓ 4)

NEW STUFF FOR 2024

1.Proton Ativa (Wife got a new car and is a small cute SUV. She likes it but Im out 500 a month for 10 years +)
2. Meta Quest 3 (VR is an awesome piece of equipment. Best non crucial piece of equipment I need. Plus I get to mod it. Win for me)
3. Iphone 15 Plus (Finally after close to 7 years. Got a new phone)
4. Ayn Odin Pro (Not a steamdeck but it could play my retro games for now)

(UN)MEMORABLE MOMENTS FOR 2023

2024 has been a whirlwind of a ride. This year I think it is the hardest for me with a lot of losses than wins

Hit my new car but it was just a scratch
Year two of not getting back our investment money. I think this is going to be at least 5 years.
I lost 18000 to a scam that made me think that I can earn a lot of money. Such an idiot. I decided to pull the plug so that means for this year it is time to get back what I lost. It is going to take a while but it will okay
Gain back my weight which sucks. It is so hard to maintain the weight

MEMORABLE MOMENTS FOR 2024

One year for teaching English and loving it
Vacations that I took
H1 finally graduated high school and now it is Uni
Just being present for the things that matter in life.
Mom gave half a million to me and the kids

2024 New Year's Resolutions

1. Finish writing my will for the people that I love
(Nope, that hasn't happen yet. I keep putting it off which it really my mistake)

2. Bring the whole family aboard this year
(Nope, I got the money but just didn't have the time. I really need to do new passports for the girls)

3. Buy a steamdeck OLED (Bonus if get a second handheld)
(I got a Ayn odin but I didn't get a steamdeck OLED? Maybe this year?)

4. Start back investing slowly
(Finally a win. Yup Investing back slowly. Next year I am going to ramp it up but yeah. Looking like my 10 year plan is going into motion

5. Get abs (this is impossible but I love a challenge)
(I think I am going to stop doing weight loss challenges. It doesn't seem to work. But I am however going to work on myself)

2025 New Year's Resolutions

1. Save 30000 this year. or more.

2. Buy a switch 2

3. Go on 4 vacations this year with one international destination.

4. 3500 classes a year

5. Buy a new laptop for work

And with that. 2024 is done and dusted. It was not a great year year with it shares of ups and downs and I can't wait for the adventure which is 2025. Ameen. The same thing I write every year.

Week 52: The final week of the year

Final week. It was a good week

Dec 22

After sending the maid home I decided to give the girls their allowance
Brought them to a fancy italian restaurant but we didn't have a resevation so we had to wait for a couple of hours before we could eat. So we went to the mall and just had some fun. We ordered a couple of pasta, gnocci and soup and ended it with dessert. Overall it was a fun day

Dec 23
Didn't cook today so brought the whole family to eat rice outside and after that we had ice cream.

Dec 24

Wife is somehow upset with me and decided to lock herself in the room
I made some pasta bake
Did a lot of classes

Dec 25

• Wife is still I her depressed mode. This sucks. I wish things were different. But this is the hand that I was given. Just be patient I guess
• Mom came back and brought some goat curry
• Finished 320+ classes for today

Dec 26

• Followed mom to visit her friend. She has stage 4 cancer but she is doing quite well. She has a 28 year old son with celerabal palsy. Very nice guy. We talked and I really worry what will happen to him if his parents are no longer here.
• Had some banana leaf rice with mom
• Wife is in a good mood today. H1 had to spoil it by being H1 but I ask her to avoid talking to her.

Dec 27

• Wife is back to her bad mood self again. Sigh
• Mom has gone home. See her next year
• It was raining very heavilty in the evening. So H2 had to skipped swimming. So I bought them to a restaurang (mamak) to eat
• We need to find some safari theme clothes for father in law birthday. So troublesome.

Dec 28

• Went to the mall since we need to get stuff for the party
• Had some korean for lunch
• Bought some cookies

Dec 29

• In the morning went to a house warming of the neighbours
• After that went to get our glasses check
• Stop at mom in law house
• H1 got contacts for the first time. It is going to take her a while to wear them
• Wife bought some cakes. I got a lychee cake. It doesn't taste anything special.

Dec 30

• Today we had two parties organised by wife's students.
• First we ate grilled chicken and a lot of desserts. 2 groups gave her a perfume and the other a expensive piece of cloth
• we then hang out at the library
• At night there was another party. The food was not that great but the company was better

Dec 31

• Today dad in law did a party at his house far away from home
• He wanted everything to be freshly cooked. So I was cooking the chicken at 8pm at night
• We ate some nasi lemak, satay, cakes, and curry puff
• The theme was safari theme so we took a lot of pictures
• My sister in law is 37 weeks pregnant and another is 6 weeks pregnant
• It was the first time in a long while that we see everyone

Echo 3

Last Series of the year

What is it about? A scientist who has a family of special forces soldiers find herself capture and send to a South American prison and it is up to her family to rescue her 

How real is it: Well the show is grounded meaning that there is a lot of things they can't do since it involves global politics so the stakes are really high even when dealing with rescuing one person. 

Side characters: They really don't bring much to the table. They have Bradley Withford but I don't get his character role since he just dissapeared wihtout any trace 

Verdict: Action is great, Storyline is great but the ending sucks. 

Beat Saber

The number 1 game on every VR unit

Game no: 539
Genre: Music
Platform: VR (Meta Quest) 
Release Date: 2019

I've been seeing Beat Saber videos on youtube since this game came out. In my mind that this game looks like fun. After getting the Quest 3. This was the second game I tried and boy it did not dissapoint. In Beat Saber you control two light sabers and hit blocks in a direction of the beat of the music. The game requires fast reflexes and skills in order to complete a stage.

First of all, I love the songs. The songs have a lot of vareity ranging from pop, sync beats, jazz. Everything is caerfully curated to give you the best Beat Saber experince. The game gives you multiple modes such as Easy to Expert+. Other modes includes One Saber, No Arrow cubes and my favorite 360 (where the cubes will come from all angles) The best part of beat saber for me is when you reach the zen mode you can hit the cubes with precesion to get your combo meter to go up. This game is really a workout, playing it on hard makes your heart rate increase to around 160 beats per mintue. The suddent burst of adreneline is a good way to keep your blood pumping. There is also other songs (or packs) from different artist like Lady Gaga, Billie Elilsh, BTS, Linkin Park and more. They provide you with a different set of challenges that is not in the base game. I like the Daft Punk song which is 10 minutes long. That is a complete workout on its own. 

The only thing I say it a problem in this game is the campaign mode. You need to complete the challenges in order to proceed. The problem is that the challenges gets progessively harder each time. I also think it is my age where my limit is a 3 seconds speed. Anything more than that my reflexes gets a little slow and I usually fail the course. This mean that I can't complete teh campaign after level 24 since its on expert and it is getting too frustrating. 

So what does that mean. That means this game is great without the campaign. You can play every songs and you try to get the best score. in my opinion 30 mins a day is good enough to burn a couple calories. This is one of my games of the year. I give this game an S-Rank

Tepuk Amai-Amai

First time reviewing a play 

What is it about?
A play on how students try their best to get the great results but what we don't how they are coping with life around them. 

The Good
The actors are great. They ooze out charistma. Each one of them has different roles taht they bring out to the play and they perform it flawlessly. How did they perform without any breaks that is beyond me 
The story is good enough since it shows from start till the end a journey

The Bad
This play was a bit too long. Clocking in at close to 2 hours without no breaks. It is a real endurance to watch it. 
This is not for kids. Brought H2 but there were a lot of swearing 

The Ugly
Nothing much 

After Credits: Yes, everyone behind the scenes came and gave a bow

Verdict: I can see the appeal, I will never see this again and it was a great experince 

High Country

Australia series are always good

What is the High Country: It turns out is a reserve land in the Australian highlands. So what will make it interesting... A murder of course

Country life: This is a place where everyone knows everyone and nothing much happens without the local police know. So the suspect list is not that much but it took them close to 8 episodes to figure out who did it

At the start: This shows was made with persimmison by people who own the land. I think this show is here to promote tourism I guess since it is a beautiful place. 

Verdict: It is an okay show. Nothing too special. Another good Australian show in my book 

Ikiru

My first Japanese movie in a long time

What is it about?
A goverment official dying of cancer decide to make his last days on earth fill with meaning 

The Good
It shows how after everything, your life is short and you have accomplished nothing
The story really hits you from the heart
The sad nature of the protagonist andhow he overcome it 

The Bad
This movie is too long. There are some parts that could be cut out but I think that he want to tell the complete story

The Ugly
Nothing much 

After Credits: No

Verdict: A good movie but a bit too long 

Week 51 - Best friend came and went

This week m best friend came down for a short visit since his mom was not feeling well. It turns out his mom had stage 1 cancer and so they need to operate on her. At 84 living with dementia as well is not that easy. I didn't hang out with him since it was a short visit but it was okay. The time I got to spend with him was more than enough 

Dec 15 • Maid came yesterday so the whole family had a familly outing. So we test the new car • We had a fancy breakfast • Went to the library to study. While they were doing that I went grocery shopping

Dec 16
• Made some baked mac and cheese

Dec 17
• Wife drive herself to work
• My best friend came back from Korea. I left home a 630pm and came back at 1030pm. I got some choclate and cookies from them. The baby is getting cuter.

Dec 18
• Make some pesto bake
• Did 14 classes today

Dec 19
• H1 sold her painting at the university. She shares a booth with a couple of students who were selling their painting. She made 51 bucks
• Had some ramen with wife and she wanted to go shopping at the mall
• Didn't had too many classes today even after my nap
• Went to a play organised by wife's university students. H1 classmate was in the play. All of her high school friends came to support the her. The play was about how hard is it for students to get good results in order to not dissapoint their parents. Lots of swearing. H2 was in the audience. She didn't understand most of it since it was in the local language. The play went on for 2 hours. I am quite amaze and how these kids didn't need to catch their breathe or drink.

Dec 20
• Made some roast chicken and rice
• Last day of school for he for H2. After this she is free until next year.
• H1 also doesn't have any physical classes next week.

Dec 21
• Pick up maid early today
• The family went out to eat at Chillis and they went shopping for a while
• Send them home and went to pick up best friend and family
• Drove them to the airport. Checked in their bags and then just hang out and Mcdonalds until it is time for them to leave. The baby just gotten used to me. Hope to see them again.

Next week will be the final week. I have still a lot of classes to do an dI don't think I can finish the game. So I need to make a point to finish at least Batman before the year end and do my final housekeeping of all the other stuff in the blog 

Twin Peaks The Return (Season 3)

This series is a waste of time 

Why do I watch shows: It is an escape to experince something different. To see new styles of storylines that can excite and make me think. And then there is Twin Peaks. This show is really an F you to me. This is what I don't like a show to be.  

Did I like it? Don't get me wrong I love all 3 season even as quirky as it sounds. The problem with the story that as an average viewer which is me you won't understand this what is it all about. The funny thing is that you have to check all the footage from previous episodes and you still wouldn't have get it. I had to watch 3 youtube videos explaining what happens throught the whole show. 

Spoiler Alert: Since the creator David Lynch likes to make up your own interpretation. This is how I see it. There is good and evil everywere. In this case Dale cooper needs to save Laura Palmer which is considered to be the entity of good in this show. After he did he is send to another reality to repeat it again and again with his memory wiped off so he doesn't know what happens next

Ending: Sucks balls. Really I think if Lynch was still alive and they paid him a buttload of money he would probably do a season 4 only to mess with the audience and they will that this is the greatest show ever. Do not watch... I don't recommend