Christmas Tree

Where is tree? You may ask. It is sitting right on top of the television. The last time I talked about this paper tree my niece and nephew sent me 2 years ago, then I decided to take a photo of it. When I upload the photo from the camera to the computer, I found it funny to see myself in the flection on the screen. This is a lovely gift.

Greetings from Australia

I received this postcard a while ago, but was too busy (yeah, right) to blog it. I started to use Plurk some months ago, and talked to a few people. Pey is one of the few ones I really enjoy chatting with. It's funny that on Q&A of Plurk's website, the intention of the plurk creator is to create a space for close friends and relatives to share information, but it turned out many friends on my plurk are total strangers.

Many people on plurk live in a completely different world from mine. I think they talk in Greek when they mention places they go, and how they have fun. Pey is one of the exceptions. I admire her courage in pursuing her life and passion, her determination to do what is right for her. We talked on plurk and on MSN, and had a really good time. Few weeks ago, she asked me for my address, and promised to send a postcard, and she did. Since internet became popular, I had not received cards for quite a while. The last one is probably from my nephew and niece. They wrote a card and attached a small foldable paper Christmas tree. The tree is so cute and adorable that I put it on top of my TV. Now I need to find a good place for this card, for this unexpected friendship, from Australia.

Lament for the Raid Leader

Snow has been our raid leader since World of Warcraft released the new patch last year. It is not easy to be organize a group of people online, especially everyone has his own schedule for the day. Some work during the day; some have to take night shift; some are students and disappear before the exams; some are engineers and have to work overtime without warning in advance. Sometimes we do not have enough people before the set time, then the raid leader just has to figure out a way to make it happen, either to recruit some strangers, or other sort. It is a very tedious work.

I went to Canada to travel, thus was absent for a whole month. After I returned, I only saw Snow once, and he simply disappeared. I know he is a nurse and works at different shifts. Maybe he has to be busy with his baby and spend more time with the family, or maybe he just needs to have a rest, and leaves the computer for a while.

This evening, he signed on, and told us this shocking news. Conversation is as followed:

Me: Snow~
Me: Please use your handsomeness to save us~~ (this is his slogan when we defeated each boss in the game for the very first time: OMG, I use my handsomeness to save the world again.)
Snow: @@
Me: Touched? :D
Snow: I may not be able to play game again
Me: @.@?
Snow: my fingers are so stiff.
Me: What happened?
Dog: I thought you are having rehab?
Snow: More problems with the tendom and scar (Can't translate those medical terms)
Snow: It's like 2 or 3 tendons tangle together
Dog: Was the operation not done well?
Snow: It's hard to have full recovery. Improvement at most.

Then Snow explains more about his condition, how much pain he had when he took us to Ulduar, how he decided to go to the doctor, after he could not grip the equipment at work any longer. It is just a sad moment for me to realize, maybe our raid team will be gone. If no one stands out to re-organize, we may just have to see if any other team has any vacancy for us, and try to fit into another group. It is sad, however, especially for Snow. We all know how passionate he is in gaming.