Tuesday, September 29, 2026

So the waifu, Onyo, actually played, finished and platinumed Elden Ring. Yeah, hot damn. After I played Elden Ring, I said I needed a break from such a heavy game and have been either reading or playing smaller games I could finish in hours. Then the waifu said she wanted to try. I know from a lot of online comments that it can be very discouraging for new players, so I suggested she try until the end of Stormveil Castle to see if she wanted to continue the rest of the game. My thinking was the intro of Limgrave and Weeping Peninsula would be a good open world start, and Stormveil as the legacy dungeon, with Godrick as a big boss (and Margit in the middle). All would give a generally good feel of the game as a whole. She did that! Over the course of the last few months, she was progressing well on the game. While I had used a Bloodhound Fang bleed build (starting class Vagabond), she picked the Astrologer and went intelligence mage, eventually settling on Carian Regal Scepter and Moonveil Katana. She was very upset and frustrated at many parts, but proceeded to play almost the entire game herself. The only parts I helped her do was some minor grinding for runes, doing the catacombs and tombs, and Malenia herself. Following a very helpful guide from Reddit, she did every single quest from beginning to end. Seriously! I only did like 3/4s or so. Ever the completionist, she truly deserved it. Me fighting Malenia a 2nd time was a bugger's nightmare though. I beat her with my own build after about 18 or so tries. With Onyo's build, about 8-10. Extremely frustrating again, and reminded me why I was sick of her rotting ass and that DAMNED Waterfowl Dance! We read up about certain spells to use and basically spammed Ranni's Dark Moon while using the katana for minor chip damage. In her 2nd phase, Mimic Tear was summoned. And after we ran out of flasks, I ran up to her and sliced with the katana to finish her off. The celebration was beyond joyous! Lmao. She picked Age of Order so we could get more achievements, although she personally preferred Age of the Stars, which was the ending I picked after a deep dive into the endings and what they entailed. Then she did a NG+ speedrun to get to the frenzied flame ending so she could platinum it officially. Yeah, damn. Nicely done, babe!

To celebrate our achievement, we both went to 401 Games to each get an Elden Ring blind box. She was okay with all characters except Melina, while I was fine with anything. We watched a ton of videos to see what was offered and sat with all the boxes, shaking them like idiots to guess the potential character inside. We kept going back and forth for almost an hour, lol. I picked what I thought was Malenia, ended up getting Vargram, while she picked one that was not Melina and got Vyke. We were both fine with our result, lol. She really wanted Alexander, but really didn't want Melina (I was fine with her). However, both of them didn't have additional weapons, and so wouldn't rattle like the rest who had swords and spears. Plus since Alexander was hollow, we weren't sure if he weighed more or less than Melina, even though he was bigger. In the end I thought we should pick the ones that rattled because we knew they'd have swords, and thus wouldn't be Melina; getting a character we were okay with was preferable to her potentially getting Melina.

We had Charm and Raouf come over to our place, Raouf for the first time, to play board games. Originally it was just Charm and Onyo hanging out, but it expanded into a boardgame session. We played a few rounds of Spot and Trio, and Raouf realized how bad his memory was, lmao. I also baked a brownie on the waifu's cravings. Charm and Raouf approved!

On September 9, I went to the now renamed RBC Amphitheatre to catch Breaking Benjamin. Yeap, one month after Evanescence, another of my teenhood bands crossed off the list. I didn't think too much of the opening bands, but I knew quite a bit of the crowd was. Anyhoo, it was basically rock karaoke. I'd played and listened to so much Breaking Benjamin back in my ITE days, they were on constant loop on my mp3 player (that Qin Sheng gave to me, since his mom worked at Creative Technologies). Funny thing was, when I entered The One Academy, Leonard Teh also said he liked Breaking Benjamin and said his favourite song was The Diary of Jane, their biggest hit to date. Since I was an old-school Limewire pirate, I downloaded individual songs, and it just so happens I missed out on The Diary of Jane. During one of our class karaoke sessions, Leonard picked it out, thinking we would sing it together, but since I didn't know the song, I didn't, and he lacked the confidence. LOL. But thanks to him, I downloaded the song and it has never left any of my playlists since. I guess it was weird for him knowing that I had so many Breaking Benjamin songs but didn't know the existence of their biggest and most famous track.

Speaking of Limewire, Breaking Benjamin's set started with a Windows XP screen, downloading their song from Limewire and playing it Windows Media Player with the visualizer. Total nostalgia trip! They opened and it was a treat listening to them! I stood in the lawn section (learned my lesson, far side, not the section near the entrance) and had a great, unobstructed view the entire time. Sang aloud for so many of their songs, along with the girl next to me who was belting out with her boyfriend. Fantastic, well worth it!

Tennis-wise, I've still been playing with Ali and a while back won my first match against him! Lmao, finally. After so many close calls, deuces and tiebreakers, I beat him cleanly after improving my serve and only double-faulting once, 6-2, 3-6, 6-1. I won again the week after again, winning quite comfortably. Ali came late, so Sazh, who was taking a walk on the trail saw me warming up and asked if I needed someone to play with. I mentioned that Ali was coming in late, but I'd appreciate the company. He took a few minutes to get his racquet and we just rallied a bit. Then Ali arrived and said he'd warm up while we played a game. Sazh proceeded to trash me 6-0, oof. I did deuce him several times, and if I was lucky I could have gotten away with a 6-3 loss. But there was still no way I'd win overall. His serves were crazy fast, and as a tall and lanky player he was able to reach really far. Plus he made use of severe topspin, making any returns go all over the place. A huge difference from Ali, who's playstyle I was getting used to enough that I could win. I took a break and proceeded to play Ali, where I mentioned I won. Then Ali faced Sazh and also proceeded to lose 6-0. Sazh offered some tips and things for us to adjust, which we both appreciated. We chatted as we were heading off and ended up talking about board games, to which Ali was thrilled that Onyo and I were heavy boardgamers. They said they loved Dune: Imperium and wanted people to play, but it was inconvenient and not a lot of people played with them. Sazh said he only played simpler stuff like Codenames and Catan.

I also ended up playing with some uncles recently. Onyo booked a tennis slot for us to play but got lazy 5 minutes before. So I went down alone to practice my serves, which remain the hardest part of the game for now. As my one hour slot was ending, Two guys and a teenaged girl came up and I asked if they were using court 1, which they were. I asked for some time to pick up all the balls scattered around and they told me not to rush, as they were waiting for a friend anyway who would be late. They asked if I was playing alone, and said I'd be welcome to rally with them to kill time waiting for their friend. I thought why not and decided to stay longer to play. I told them I had only played for like 2-3 months, so I wasn't a great player. They said no worries and to just play for fun. I got to know their names, and the main guy who spoke to me was called Rob, who lived in the condo. His friend Brian, was the most experienced tennis player (says he's been playing "forever"), and Rob's daughter Avaline. Their friend Charlie was arrive later. We ended up playing several doubles matches, with my team winning and losing some. Playing doubles for the first time, the extra space on the sides was a welcome addition, since that's often where my balls go out. In between games there was a lot of chat about life and the condo in general, Rob having lived here for 15 years. Told me about how good the neighbourhood and condo were, the lack of crime, larger space, more facilities and all. Overall, had a very fun time! 

I spent 3 hours down there, much longer than the initial 1 hour I was supposed to practice and came home to an extremely unhappy waifu. Sorry babe.

Towards the end of the month, I attended Onion's pole dance recital, organized by her pole studio, Redefine Fit. She'd been practicing like mad for several weeks, and even though she was discouraged at one point, did very well, and even edited the performance music, with my help, so it flowed better for the ending. Anyway, her troupe did a casino-themed performance with Poker Face by Lady Gaga as the music. Onyo and I went down earlier, because they had some on-stage practice earlier in the day, so I thought I'd just chill at the side. The owner, Joanne, knew I was Onyo's husband, so she gave me a wristband for entry and mentioned that they were setting up a balloon arch for pictures. So I offered to help and worked with some of the other pole girls to set up the arch itself and tie the balloons around it. Go to know some of them and after finishing, met up with Raouf, Charm's husband, and we grabbed good seats in the middle so we could take videos for our respective spouses. Overall, a good show! I know how much effort the waifu had been putting in it, practicing several times a week with Caroline and the rest of the troupe. She did extremely well and their show was definitely one of the highlights. Well done babe! I was recording the whole thing, so I couldn't slap as loudly, but that wasn't needed as the audience was hollering and clapping loudly anyway.

The other performances were really good too, with some very creative moves and themes. Charm's troupe also did very well, considering the drama that happened to her group weeks prior, and it was nice to see them do well in spite of it. Ending the show was a performance by Lychee Storm, a burlesque performer who basically charmed everyone in the show with an amazing stripshow and pole moves. Damn!