Drought over!

Thank you O Fortuna! Hehe guess it works!
Found a trolley with the dollar still in it just as we left the car park, it was abandoned as soon as we went outside because we saw the people take their stuff from the trolley and boarded their friend's car. Lucky us :)

$1 from trolley credited to her because she pushed it most of the way back to the trolley point.

Started with $118.90

Ended with $119.90
$1 from her

Wish me luck
M$Penguin

Attack of the Super Drought

Wow its been really a really poor 2 weeks since the rabbit year hopped in.. not a since coin, not a since trolley... must break through this horrible drought!
Shall call upon fortuna again to help.


Wish me Luck
M$Penguin

Local Police Notice on Toami-Gyo / Fishing Season

Been to a few amusement centers recently and to my horror have seen the bigger places starting to put up notices from the Singapore Police Force about the Toami-Gyo , Fishing Season type of games that dish out tokens.

Now with the notice from the SPF, all token payout machines will have to be converted to ticket payouts. This mainly means that they will not be able to reuse the tokens to play for bigger prizes but will have to cash out in the form of tickets to exchange for prizes like stuffed toys and stuff at the redemption counters.

I suppose this is to discourage the sense of gambling that the public will no doubt associate with these type of machines.

I guess this step by the SPF will no doubt discourage the few that wish to make a profit by playing these games but from what I've seen today while going window shopping in my neighborhood shopping mall is that it hasn't really dampened the level of enthusiasm that the people playing still exude.

But really...when it comes down to it, people just want something fun to play, be it a token driven fishing game or otherwise. If people like it, they'll play it.

Hope this measure helps to reduce the incidents of gambling through gaming but just make it a purely entertaining game that you'll be able to exchange for simple prizes at the end to just make the trip to the amusement center that little bit sweeter.

I'm inclined to side with our police force on this measure because after seeing the number of little kids that spend hundreds of dollars a month gambling it away at these machines its about time something was done to curb the gamblers and leave those who truly just enjoy the game for what it is, a game, to play on and YES! get that little extra sweetener at the end.

Wish me Luck
M$Penguin

Experimenting with Clickbank

Been hearing a lot of stuff regarding this clickbank thing so just decided to dive in and see what its really about, just put up a link at the bottom of the archives to see how it goes. Hopefully it will yield some results...

Wish me Luck
M$Penguin

Reap what you sow...

Its been a crappy day, kinda lost all our tokens at the arcade today.... left with only 100 tokens.. and to add to that I kinda went a little nuts and spent $35 trying to get an iPhone 4 from the poking machine...

O and she found another token so it goes into the fund.

I guess its because its been really depressing with work the past few days with the added rubbish my agents are throwing my way...

Sigh..

Wish me Luck... kinda need it now...
M$Penguin

Toami-Gyo Ocean Spirit Jackpot!

Today we went again to Marine Cove's Prize Station arcade to play Toami-Gyo again and this time I exchanged $100 for 1000 tokens and got 50 tokens more instead of the stuffed toy, you've gotta ask the staff there for the extra tokens instead of the stuffed toy because their actually not supposed to give you more but be nice and ask and they'll give it to you, you'll need to get a card too to store the tokens and that typically costs $3 but again ASK for it and if you're nice about it they'll give it to you too!

Remember, ASK and you will usually receive. We sometimes take things for granted and assume that we will just get things because we've paid for it and deserve it, but they don't understand that we just need to respect others and be nice to them to get that little extra stuff.

After playing for a good 2 1/2 hours I finally hit a bonus and a jackpot! And while there she found 2 tokens too but we used them instantly instead of keeping them because we were constantly playing and it didn't make sense to just keep the 2 tokens there. But the next time we're there I'll make sure to keep the found tokens.

For this version, after collecting 5 gems you get a spin at the wheel and the bonuses are 300, 500, 800 and the super jackpot where you get to kill the skeleton fishes and a skeleton shark and the payoff is at 1,000 , 2,000 and the maximum 5,000!

The significant difference between this version and the normal Toami-Gyo is at the jackpot stage, EVERYONE playing at the time can earn a bonus by killing the skeleton fishes! And at the time of my jackpot there were 4 other people playing so they all got bonuses too! And there is no time limit and unlimited ammo!

The skeleton shark can only be hit by the one that triggered the jackpot and ends when you kill it, so the trick is to have a partner playing at the same time too and shoot the skeleton fishes to gain additional bonuses, sadly she wasn't playing at that time because we've been playing for over 2 hours and she was really tired and hungry.

Sadly the bonus and jackpot that I hit were both the minimum.. so I got a 300 bonus and a 1,000 jackpot. I spent a really long time and a lot of tokens to hit the jackpot, so the end result is that I got back what I've spent on the game plus 200 more. She enjoyed the game too when she was able to sustain and kill faster by using the double cannons. It was really unfortunate that she wasn't able to hit any jackpot but the important thing is that we had fun playing the game.

Now with the card loaded, the question will be when do we return? :)

Wish me Luck
M$Penguin

Managing Finances

Wow.. got my credit card bill yesterday.. and it really seems like I spent a lot during the holiday season from December and January... Its killed like half of my pay cheque for this month and its really got me thinking... how much of what I spend is really necessary? Think I'll really have to keep track of my spending if I'm to better manage my money...
Its not how much you earn but how much you save that make you rich.

O well trudging along a dime at a time.

Wish me Luck
M$Penguin

CNY Ang Baos and Life Plans

This Chinese New Year has been to a rather crappy start, I've been sick from the first day with a totally frozen shoulder and a flu that followed me from CNY eve... that's why I didn't really go visiting on the first day and spent the whole day at home...
Well and as I get older it seems that the amount of money that I get from red packets gets lower and lower but that really doesn't get to me as much as before I started work mainly because I don't care as much as I used to when it was my main windfall in the year.

This year's tally is at $190, just to let myself keep track of things.

A new year also gives a new realisation to what I want to do with my life in the year and years to come. I mean I'm 27 this year and to be honest I really don't know what in the bigger picture of life I am wanting to achieve. I'm penning down my goals of what I want in my life here starting with family, career, education, savings, investment and anything else I think of.
I think the S.M.A.R.T goal setting system should be used for this and broken down as in this plan into many steps so as to keep track and not lose sight of what and where I am.

Wish me Luck and Happpy Chinese New Year
M$Penguin

Lucky Chinese New Year Eve

Today is good, found $0.20 at the supermarket near the cashier then found another $0.10 at the carpark right next to my car!
Guess its going to be a great year ahead :)

Started with $118.60

Ended with $118.90
$0.30 from him

Wish me Luck
M$Penguin

Return to Toami-Gyo @Marine Cove

Its been a long time since the urge to shoot fish has struck, so when it did it really did to the both of us.

As Timezone will only be having their dollar for dollar promotion on 2 dates, the 6th and 13th of Feb 2011, we decided against playing there and headed for Marine Cove's Prize Station instead.

The Prize Station there had a better promotion but only if you are willing to part with $100 or $200, then you'd be able to get each token at $0.10 instead of $0.20 and an added big soft toy or a mp3 player respectively.

This offer really pinched at me but my cooler headed other half said NO, so we ended up just changing $20 to start but I added another $20 after losing all my share... she even had to cash out her 200+ tokens so that I could take some... I sux at this...

But anyway we played on the new double screen machine and what I can say is that for this machine, you gotta aim for the big fish! That being said, you will kinda need to load up before hand for it, recommend to put in at least 100 tokens so you can take advantage of the double shot which in my opinion is the better weapon for taking out dolphins and sharks.

I managed to kill around 8-10 biggies there and got over 10 jackpot spins but no matter how I tried, the final gem eluded me and I was stuck sitting there with just 4 gems... I guess that's how they get you, they lure you in by giving you the first 4 then hold out the final gem.... But I may just be eating sour grapes because while we were there 2 other people got to the final gem and hit their jackpot for 300 tokens each.

One thing about this machine is that you can't cash out directly for some reason.. had to call the attendant to credit your tokens every time you wanna cash out, that kinda slows things down for the player because you can't do the usual cash out and restart with a lower number of tokens by yourself thereby making the process more tedious and less appealing to the player, I suppose it could be a ploy so you'll just keep playing and not care about cashing out.

But the best tactic is still to do so! I must remember that myself and cash out while I'm ahead so as to not dwindle down again... I know I am flawed that way so gotta change..
MUST CASH OUT WHEN I GET OVER 150 TOKENS!
150 is a good number because you'll be able to pocket 50 and play with the 100 again.

ho hum. For this session, Arcade centre $40 - Players Nil.

Wish me Luck
M$Penguin

An Orchard Central Afternoon

Had a great day out today with her, went to Orchard Central to get myself a new watch, one of those that you can see the cogs work. They had a promotion where you get a $10 voucher to a stationary shop just for taking pictures with a friend at 4 spots around the shopping mall, so we walked around with our trusty camera and took the 4 pictures of us.
It was easy enough to claim, just show the pictures to the concierge with your IC and ta-dah! We each registered and got a $10 voucher each, the easiest $20 voucher ever!

We had lunch at a place she read a review about called Long Xia Zou Zhuang which in mandarin means Lobster Porridge House and that was exactly what we had, LOBSTER PORRIDGE! Thank goodness it was 1 for 1 because hell if I was gonna pay $30+ for a bowl of porridge, even if it was with lobster... but no regrets it was delicious! Each of us had a lobster claw and another part of the lobster in our porridge, well to call it porridge is kinda a long shot.. it was more like rice in soup but hey it was lovely.

After lunch, we headed back to the concierge to submit our receipts for the weekly lucky draw that is going on and were pleasantly surprised when we saw that we had spent enough to get a free 500g packet of "Bak Kwa" (sliced BBQ pork), and to boot redeem a free hour's of parking! It was a real haul from our little afternoon and we were really happy.

Anyway found $0.05 at the end of the day while we were leaving a supermarket near her place.

Started with $118.55

Ended with $118.60
$0.05 from him

Wish me Luck
M$Penguin