The joy of giving

First and foremost, a question: if you give someone something, would you expect them to keep or to use? For instance, a water container or a towel or a mug? Do you really expect the gifts to last a lifetime?

The most thing that I like when comes to giving is the look on the recipient face. You'd find joy and honesty and sincerity. And of course if I give something, I do expect the recipient to put it to good use. And if it breaks or wears out or not in the form when it was first given, I'm grateful for they really put the gifts to good use. Nothing ever last in this world anyway.

If in case you are thinking of the appropriate gift for me at this moment, it would be a KitchenAid mixer.

Uhmmm just so you know why I raise this gifting issue, I actually recently accidentally broke a mug given by a dear friend who bought it when she was in Sydney, year 2000. This incident happened just about a month after I accidentally broke another mug bought by a dear friend too when she went to Hong Kong for holiday. Although I paid for it but the fact that it was one of my precious collection of mugs, it was indeed a great loss. Both of the mugs were indeed a great loss. Just so you know.

The Confession of an Addict

Hi everyone, my name is Naora Aida and I am an FVaddict.

Remember back in December last year I wrote about how my children got hooked up playing the online games over at facebook and how I vowed I wouldn't go near those games for fear that I would end up become an addict? Well... I am now, a complete addict, a hard-core e-farmer and I need rehab. If you haven't noticed, it's been nearly ten months since I last updated this page. And to tell you the truth, it has been ten months too that I haven't kept in touch with my college mates either. And while I'm busy with my farm online, busy decorating and re-decorating the farm, it's been that long too that I haven't tended to my actual, real garden.

At first, it was normal farming. Plant, wait, harvest and plant again. Then the levelling up. Then I found out about mastery whereby after completing 3 stars of planting each crop, you are awarded with a mastery sign. Objective? Just for showing off. So, I worked hard for mastery, there are more than 20 types of crops then. Later, when the creator came up with a themed farm, I fell for it too. Not long after, I got hooked with collecting foals and calves and breeding them too. Hah!!! Don't you find it interesting? You can breed. I guess breeding is really my forte... just look at the 5 mini-mes I have. This was when I started to use FVC (FVcash) appropriately. Before, as the FVC increases, I randomly buy stuff from the market. Then, I started saving up so that I could buy rare horses and cows for breeding and later sharing them with neighbours, especially for those who collect like I do. These animals were priced ranging from 14 to 22 FVC back then. Only recently they have marked up the prices of these animals. Screw Z!!! I have stopped breeding since.

Anyways, this is embarrassing and so cheap-O but who cares. So I find ways to get the cash without having to spend my real money. When they introduced a game bar that came with a free 35FVC, I, at the same time, created 3 aliases for my farm. Plain pathetic!!! I know... but what do I care, at that time every effort seemed all worth it. I enjoyed spending every penny of the cash. As the cash depleting, in fact I had only 1FVC left in my 'account'.. I became

lucky when they replaced the barn that they took away from my farm with a 100FVC. That was the highest cash I got the entire time I was playing this game. It surely didn't look like I were to give up the farm completely any sooner although the idea did cross my mind a number of times. I became lucky the third time when they compensated me with another 38FVC when the survey I participated which promise a 3FVC reward wasn't working. THIRTY EIGHT!! Wow!! Come to think of it, I may have earned nearly 600FVC throughout the year. Whoa... rich, eh? Hey, before you make any judgement.. do you know how much is the price for just 1FVC? Almost RM1, you know that. And you know what I can get with 1FVC? NOTHING!!! At one point, I was quite annoyed for the price they put on the market but then again, as long as I don't use my real money... I'm happy. Just aim for items you can buy using your free coins.

Oh... I can rant about this over and over and over again but seriously, I need to break away from this game.

I really need to stop. My deadline? New Year 2011.

P/S: The above was written in September 2009