“Mok, I hate you.”

It never fails to amuse me, how people get all jittery and shaky, when presenting an item to an audience. Reminiscing, it would be untrue for me to assume I was never once like that too. I would stammer and haw in front of an audience, and my world would shrink into something so tiny, that I would feel completely out of place in front of everyone. My mind would freeze, and time would draw like a blade.

I wouldn’t totally agree that one would need practice and participate in various toastmasters to be able to deliver a good speech which would be understood and communicated to the audience. To me, it is more about not betraying any emotion besides detachment to the people in-front of you. In our daily lives, whenever one can find unity among diversity, one will experience no fear. I quote Bhagavad Gita: “Performing your duty without attachment or aversion is a great antidote for the poison of fear.”

Which brings to mind another random quote:
“There is always a moment of dread in first looking at one’s portrait. It is how another perceives you, and you are sure their view must be truer than yours.”

Strange as it sounds, in the context of giving a public speech, one’s nervousness is actually rooted upon how he/she actually perceives himself to be or will react to when standing before himself. For example, if for some weird reason at all, you imagine that the moment you stand before an audience, they will laugh and jeer at you, what is actually happening in your subconscious is this:

You are picturing yourself standing before the yourself (the audience) and the you (the audience) is/are ironically laughing at you. Simply put, it is a self-esteem challenge that you are battling. Paradoxically, the more one imagines himself being put into or out of a undesired situation, the more likely will that event happen. I once read in book that psychiatrists refer this as the “self-manifestation prophecy” theory. I'm sure many of you would have experiences similar to this.

Moving on to a more personal issue, today my group which consists of four ladies and me were asked to tackle and present an economics problem to the lecture group. Here’s one the question that was asked which goes something like this:

Discuss the relative price elasticity of a cigarette, taking into consideration the factors, that affects a commodity’s price-elasticity of demand.

I’ve got to admit, it was a relatively easy question to tackle. The group prepared the answer in say 5mins? What tickled my funny bone was the other tougher and implied question: “Who will present the answer to the lecture.” It did not surprise me that the group unanimously volunteered me to present their findings without first approaching me. Now pardon my usage of suggestive profanities but WTF!? I don’t mean to be a coach potato and I do not deny that they voted me because they know I can present our answers but I had to turn down the invitation just for today since I was a little annoyed at how things that people generally abhor executing has a perverse habit of sidetracking towards me.

Here’s what I observed:

1stly, the girl next to me, told me that, the group had volunteered me to the job. I had to shyly decline though, giving the excuse that, I was in fact, not suitable for the job since I possessed little or no knowledge of the given question. There was some form of truth in it though which I will not go into. I was pretty adamant and declined their repeated invitations till it got pretty awkward. They got the picture nonetheless.

2ndly, they tried to get another guy seated in front of the row in front of us to present their answers. Excuse me but what a fucking joke but that was totally uncalled for.

3rdly, they tried to rationalize who among us (excluding me) was most suitable for the job. I seriously couldn’t care less who the lucky candidate would be as long as it was not me, though in my mind, I felt that the most eloquent one among us would be present the answers. Our group was asked to present question 8, so there was a lot of time for us to prepare our answers.

Finally, the moment came when it was our group to present our answers to the lecture. I glanced over to my right, and what do I see? One of them glared at me menacingly as though I was the cause of the plight. Cry me a river.

Very reluctantly and even more surprising, the 4 of them left their seats and moved over to present the answers. They had agreed that all 4 of them shall present their answers. There's a saying that Too many cooks spoil the broth, and I thought that it would be interesting if they could pull it off effectively since afterall, it was 4 people doing a job of one.

Frankly speaking, I thought that they performed an “okay” job in presenting the answers. I did understand the gist of what they were saying. In my opinion, they had communicated the answers effectively.

As they were making their ways back to their seat, their body language were telling me that I was their sorry little excuse that they had to make a spectacle of themselves in the lecture and can't help but feel that they themselves opined that they "fucked-it-up." Whatever. If they choose to believe it that way, it can't be helped. If I had to be their excuse or point of blame so be it. There's this saying that goes like this. "The strong look for more strength, and the weak look for excuses."

Anyway, I tried to be encouraging and I told them this sincerely: “You did well.” In exchange for my kind intentions, all I received was looks of contempt from each of them. Thats ok with me really since I'm usually nonchalent about the opinions others hold in regards to myself. What really shook my world this afternoon was when one of the girls among the 4 of them, a girl whom I would consider a close friend of mine, came up towards me and said: “Mok, I hate you.”

“Mok, I hate you.”

How fucking pathetic. My world down, in just four words.

Blessedly, wonderfully alone

Last night, I felt... alone- Blessedly, wonderfully alone. It felt like purest balm rubbed over my body, massaged into my skin. Alone. Alone. Alone.

I think it is more that I need a certain amount of privacy each day- A few minutes completely alone- in the same way I need food or sleep. Just as everyone's need for food and sleep varies, so, apparently, does everyone's need for privacy.

I have noticed that some people seem never to have an instant to themselves, and their humor is none the worse for it. I envy those people. But I am not one of them.

A Valentine's Day Special

What better description of Love than that provided from the Bible Scriptures?

Corinthians Chp 13

1.
Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not Love, I have become a sounding brass or a clanging cymbal.

2.
And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge,
and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, but have not Love, I am nothing.

3.
And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, but have not Love, it profits me nothing.

4.
Love suffers long and is kind;
Love does not envy;
Love does not parade itself,
is not puffed up;

5.
Does not behave rudely,
does not seek its own,
is not provoked,
thinks no evil;

6.
Does not rejoice in iniquity,
but rejoices in the truth;

7.
Bears all things,
believes all things,
hopes all things,
endures all things.

8.
Love never fails. But whether there are prophecies, they will fail;
whether there are tongues, they will cease;
whether there is knowledge, it will vanish away.

13.
And now abide faith, hope, Love, these three;
but the greatest of these is Love.

and this is what Valentine's day is about.

Mok's a nice guy part 1

Before you jump to any conclusions that this is another of my boring session of self-praising therapatic treatment to boost already rocketing sky-high ego about myself, think again. Last night while I was on the phone with a particular friend of mine, she commented something like: nice, good guys like me(Mok) was rare find and would make a good BF etc... at least something along that line. It was almost 5am that time and I was semi-awake on my bed hence I can't quote exactly what was said. Anyway, It got me thinking man. Hell? When did I become a nice and honest guy? In fact, admitting to be one or keeping silent about it would probably make me a hypocrite or some sort. I cheat, I lie, I scam, I steal, I ain't perfect and worst of all, I feel good about it. Now I would like to come clean about an event that took place recently. In a short summary of a few words, I would be classified as a scheming manipulative Backstabbing bastard. Allow me to come clean.

Now for those of you who don't know, I've been into the online games ever since secondary 2. It somewhat became an addiction to me and I would spend long hours playing the same game over and over again. It sort of killed time for me. I 1st began my 1st online trading/interactive game called Diablo 2 where i was introduced into the grand scheme in order of 1. Friendship, 2.trust and 3.betrayal.

Diablo2, was a horribly addictive game, which in game design was built such that you can cheat and steal and more importantly, get away with it. All one had to do was to create a Mule(a scamming account) and you could probably own anything you wanted in the server. Hey, i'm proud to admit that I was one of the so called "richest" player in the server owning almost everything a "heroin deprived-like" diablo addict could hope for. In the business sense, I accomplished this through unethical means.

How this how feat came about was when i was 1st Gimped by a local Singaporean (Yes a big FUCK to you whoever you are) of all my SOJ's (stone of Jordons). SOJs in Diablo2 could be regarded as a currency for bater and trade in the game. What that local Singaporean did was make friends with me gain my trust and finally betrayed my trust. I entrusted all my SOJ's to him. Yes, at that time I was 15 year old, naive, gullible and innocent. You can guess what happens next he took all my SOJs and bailed off laughing at my stupidity. 47-fucking-seven of my SOJs, which I took months to gather together through hours or mindless repitition of killing and slicing through the hordes of demons that got in my way. At that time, I was like "O FUCK!I just lost everything I had. Fuck! I'm gonna quit the game man" It stung, really. Losing all you had in the game, but more importantly being betrayed. This was the beginning of it all. Now I told a good friend of mine, lets call him John, about what happened. and John being the good friend he is to me told me "Hey Mok, don't sweat it man we'll get back what you lost and more." That was the beginning of it all man. From than John and I, 1st began scamming people small-scale of their online pixels. In no time at all, a week or so, I've already recovered all I had lost. The 47 Sojs and gained a something new in exchange. A new addiction. Online theft. From a small scale online-theft of a few SOJs at a time, it slowly became Big-scale. Very soon, I had found 2 other friends whereby we will sit together for a few hours in a lanshop, and steal as much as 300 SOJs in a couple of hours. I won't go into details of how we did that, but all I will say is that it was a very well organised and systemicatically planned by the 4 of us. Yes, we put our intelligence to good use. I had a notebook or how I would execute the plan, and a list of suckers who would be in my hit-list.

Anyway back to my recent scam. Now, after I had quit diablo 2 and stepped into the magical realms of Final Fantaxy X1(FF11), I had made a resolution not to steal from another person ever again. It went pretty well. In my whole 2 years plus of playing FF11, I've cheated a total grand times of 4 times. I'll have to admit that it was not an easy addiction to kill from what was multiple cheats in a day to 4 times in 2 years, required alot of self-restraint on my part.
I stole recently from a guy called HKBadazz recently in December 2005. I shall begin my adventures in the following walkthrough.

Let me begin with a little of how FFXI game system was designed. There are Game Masters(GM) which acts as the judge or policemen to help capture anyone breaking the terms or conditions in the game. Theft for one, will get your account banned therefore you have to be particularly careful if you are going to cheat. Also, getting caught for theft will leave your reputation in dumps. In a game such as FFXI, player reputation is EXTREMELY important for you to function. If word spread around the regional player community that you are SCUM, there is no way for you to ever enjoy playing the game anymore. You won't be able to get into Guilds(linkshells), take part in organised raids in game and have any "online friends" Lol ^^. How pathetic.

Here's a picture of me landing up in jail for being suspected of a different scam. In it you will get to see how a GM looks like too. Simply put, a moron. The GM will send you to an online prison and interrogate you. However, I managed to wiggle my way out of trouble by somehow convincing the GM that the victim's items was lost through a glitch in the game. Haha. How convenient.















How I Did it.
Now, I had left game sometime in June 2005 and only came back during December 2005 during my school break since I had a lot of time to kill. Before I quit in June 2005 I was one of the wealthiest few players in the server owning quite a number of the rarest items in game which was highly sought after. Worst of all, I had a scam plan in mind which was carefully thought off. Organised, big-scale and had to be executed swiftly and aggresively.
I'll run through the plan in a simple ordered sequence.

Step.1 - I would get the word out that I had quit game for good.
Step.2 - I would take a long break from the game(6months or so to make it seem I had left for good)
Step3 - I would use my unused items in my possessions as bait to lure greedy players who wanted a piece of me, into thinking that I would give it to them since I was not using it. For a condition of course.
Step.4 - I would come back around December and prey on some unsuspecting sucker.

December finally came. I went back to game with my account still functional. I went to the local trading area and started shouting to sell all my items away. This got the community hyped up. I started getting tells and messages and offers for the items I was selling. One particularly HOT item was this thing called the "Kraken Club (KC)" It was my Ace to baiting players into falling for my trap. No sooner, this guy called HKbadazz sent me a tell. I had known this guy for a long time and he already existed somewhere in my mind as one of my victims for the hitlist. Bingo. He fell for the bait.

Our conversation was somewhat like this. BTW, he was vietnamese with really bad english. I'm just writing down the main gist of it since I can't really remember what was said.

Hkbad: Hey Vierge, I heard you are selling all your items
Me: yeah I am
Hkbad: Why are you selling them all? are you quitting for good?
Me: Yeah i am
Hkbad: I'm interested in buying your KC, how much?
Me: I don't know.... I Really Wanted to try using a thief knife before I left the game.
Hkbad: You'll trade your KC for a Thf knife?

*at that time, The value of KC was about 3XThf Knife*

Me: Yeah we could work around that deal

*Although KC had a much higher price tag than a THF knife, it would not smell fishy since I gave everyone the impression that I was leaving game for good, with the 6months break and shouting to sell all my items in my account*

Hkbad: Cool, if I get you the Thf knife, will you trade my the KC?
Me: Well, I don't know it sounds cool, but seems like the price is too low.
Hkbad: What will I need to trade?
Me: Hmm.. I was thinking we could work a deal, How about THf knife +80m Gil?
Hkbad: Sounds cool, ok i'll work on it

*Hkbad at this point of time shouted to buy the thf knife like a pig on crack. He finally bought the knife from a player called bvlgari for 85m Gil.*

Hkbad: Hey Vierge!! I managed to get the Thf knife!!!
(He sounded so happy and excited it almost made me feel sick. I had to feel equally excited too din I?)

Me: OMG!!! really? yeah!!! Hey but before we trade, I want you to keep our trading secret because I don't want anyone to know that they can get things from me cheap. Please dont' tell anyone"

*So we exchanged trade. KC for THF knife +80m Gil. You must be wondering WTF? I'm supposed to cheat that sucker. But hey it was all falling into plan :D. Why I told Hk to keep our deal secret was so that I could proceed to cheat other people simultaenously with the same bait*

We had a good chat, became "good friends" over the past few days, and he gained 100% trust in me that I was indeed quitting the game for good. Excellent.

Now to drop the next bait. ^^
2 days later.

Me: Hey Hkbad, I Dont' have much time to play already. School starts again in 2 Weeks and I won't have anymore time to play again. I've got my whole account of rare items in hand and I was thinking of leaving most of them to you.

Hkbad: OMG Vierge? You would really leave your items for me?!
(what a stupid prick and wonderful friend. Shouldn't he be trying to convince me to stay in game?)

Me: But before that, i was wondering if you could let me borrow the KC for a while man. It would be cool to use a KC and a Thf knife together simultaenously for a week or 2. After all, it had always been my wish to equip the both of them together since i started out as an amateur.

*Hkbad naturally pauses for sometime to contemplate whether he could trust such a highly valued item in my possession. How expected. After a few mins or so:*

Hkbad: Sure Vierge I would do that for you.

(Hahaha. Sucker. I was laughing to myself and I felt sick. I had to portray myself as excited again. Time for some bootlickin')

Me: OMG HK?!?! you would really do that for me? THANKS!!!!!!! I'm so happy!! You are so nICE! I will surely leave my whole account for you when I leave!!

Hkbad: :D

*We exchanged trade, and occasionally during the 2 week time frame, when Hk needed to use KC, I would return it to juts to reaffirm his trust in me. When I gained 110% of his trust, time to take one step further. *

Me: Hk...... Omg.. i'm playing My summoner(mage Job in game) at the moment, but its pathetic... it has no equipment to wear... I'm sorry to ask of you again, but could You let me have some of your mage equipment to wear since i can't play w/o any items ><

*HK pauses to think about it again*

Me: Anyway I'm leaving soon, you will get back everything anyway and you know I won't run away. I have return KC to you whenever you wanted...
HKbad: Ok Vierge, I believe you are honest player ^^ *haha* Me: Thx Hk you are the such a nice friend!

*sigh* and so he passed all his mage item to me... After a few days, I would repeat this process in a very subtle and unsuspecting manner, to get more of his items into my possession.. and everytime he fell for it. Finally the time came when things got fishy when I had not quit after 2 weeks. This was the crucial point of it all. He would definately ask for all of his items back and I had to becareful to play the game so that 1stly, I wont' get busted by the GMs(Police) in game, and 2ndly, I could maintain my reputation.

Hkbad: Hey Vierge, i'm wondering... when you will be leaving game? and when can I have my items back?
Me:
Hkbad: Vierge you there?
Me:
Hkbad: Vierge you there?
Me: yeahs?
Hkbad: Vierge please scroll up my tells
Me: O yeah I saw that
Hkbad: well?
Me: I'm sorry Hk, I don't think you will ever get back your items back.
Hkbad: I don't understand Vierge
Me: I'm sorry what is on me stays on me
Hkbad: you are kidding right Vierge?
Me: No i'm not kidding i'm sorry :(
Hkbad: are you going to cheat me?
Me: I'm sorry Hk

*At this time he got so flustered and hotheaded and all and said his heart was beating so fast he could have a heart attack. Lol.Good.*

Hkbad: why are you doing this to me Vierge? Am i Not your friend?

*Time to lay the final groundwork in my plan*

Me: You are not my friend, I remember last time you wanted to scam me too of my KC.

*this was true though. He did not know that he was trying to scam "Vierge" though, since at that moment, i was Using my Mule called "Merkava". How he wanted to do it, I wont' go into details into it, but I do know a scam when I see one. I'm afterall a, professional at it.

Hkbad: HUH!?! I have never try to scam you!!

Vierge: Yes you did, think hard... have you ever try to cheat anyone before of KC? it was probably me.

Hkbad: No! I never even think of that!

*Liar*

Me: well you won't see your items anymore i'm sorry goodbye

Hkbad: Vierge i'm going to let everyone know what a CHEATER you are! and you won't enjoy this game anymore at all

Me: Go ahead.
*and i ignored his msgs for the rest of the day*

*so Hkbad went on about letting everyone know what a scum i was. Game over? NOT!. Everything is still going on as planned :D I was getting a lot of flames fromm Hkbadazz friends and random strangers though. But i played it cool*

Few days later,

Me: Hkbad, hey i'm sorry man I was in the wrong for stealing your items
Hkbad: ....
Me: Yeah i want to return you of all your items today, but you have spoilt my reputation way too much. and its true that you tried to cheat me before, do you remember Merkava?

*it hit home*

Hkbad: .....
Me: Yeah you try to cheat me before by doing this....
*and I went on to elaborate the sequence of events and he remembered it of course*

Me: I'll return the items to you on one condition, that you clear up the mess you created that I cheated you, and you let everyone know the truth of why i did what i Did. that you tried to cheat me 1st.

Hkbad: I'm sorry Vierge, I did not know it was you!! I'm sorry i tried to cheat you. I please dont' do this to me

Me: Well you created a big mess of it, please clear it for me.

*He did exactly as I told him to. Everyone begin to know that he was a scammer who got scammed. BOOHOOHOO cry me a river. Even if he did not do it, I had printed a screen as proof of our conversation and posted it in a local FFXI server forum. No sooner, I got tons of tells from various people who actually believed and sympathised with me. Yay. My fans were returning.

Before the whole thing was blown over, I gave away various items I stole from Hkbad away to random people. I told them "Hey, I know I stole from Hkbad, but it was not out of greed and to prove it i'm giving away all his items I stole. and you can have this item called "XXXX."" The plan was just to buy them off. and they will prove to be helpful to me in supporting me in the FFXI forums that hey Vierge was not the bad guy afterall. After Hk cleared the mess for me, he begin to ask from me the items I borrowed from him back. but now, I could claim that I had none of his things left on me and that I had given them all away since I did not know for sure that he was clearing the mess for me. Afterall, I had friends and random people i bought off with the items I had stolen, who would testify for me that I had indeed given away all Hkbadazz items ^^.

Now Hkbad could not get back any of his items plus he was frowned upon by everyone that he deserved the tragedy that had befallen him. He quit game for good after what happened and if what other people told me was true, I was USD2000 richer in pixels. Haha. Yay.

Addiction's do die hard. Seriously, I do this this just for fun and to see how far I can go without getting caught and also before my conscience pricks me. This is just ONE of the many tricks up my sleeves.

Mok's is a nice honest guy? Think again.

Note: forgive me of any Grammatical and spelling errors. I just typed whatever came to mind and have no intention of editing plus i'm not exactly some guru in using the English language.

Which brings to mind. Our local recent prices and markets lecturer once couragely admitted that he had been spelling "Judgemental" without the "e" for all the years of his life as "Judgmental" and the majority of the lecture just broke up laugh at him as though it was "a-matter-of-factly obvious mis-fuking-take" this left me somewhat confused. Since I was pretty sure "Judgemental" was spelt as "Judgmental." At least that's how I've been spelling it all the time too. But whatever. After lecture, a couple of my lecture mates spoke to me and they were dissing the lecture for being lousy and his inability to spell. This left me seriously annoyed since i was making the same "so-called mistake" as our lecturer. I mean, whats the big deal? It aint' even funny at all and plus we should give the lecturer due credit for trying to keep our focus on lecture at hand even if we do not agree upon the methods he adopts in so doing. Its not as though spelling "judgemental" was dummy proof. I gave the annoyed look and openly admitted that I for one had made the same "mistake" as the lecturer too to shut them off. When I hit home, I looked up the Microsoft Word's Word inbuilt dictionary and My handy Oxford dictionary and I realised that both spellings were correct. It's just a matter of where you are from. Sad ain't it? The common herd mentality that the masses adopt. When one laughs at the lecturer, the others simply follows blindly and how people tends to notice the sawdust in other's eyes, while not noticing the spliter in their own.