Doni's journal

Funny Spoof Ad on Ra-fa

2008-11-13T01:54:00.002+11:00

I will like to share this video about a funny spoof ad on the pronunciation of Rafa Nadal.

I can't post it here, but here's the link however
http://sports.espn.go.com/broadband/video/video?id=3695015

Enjoy!

Trying too hard is sometimes a turn off

2008-11-11T01:52:00.002+11:00

Things are nice and good when they are sufficient and in the right amount. However if you over-supply a certain quantity of something, it starts to get annoying and a rather turn off. I'm referring to Singapore.

First, we look at the country down under with their landmark icon - The Sydney Opera House, and decide that Singapore has to have a landmark building. The Esplanade was built, a building also known as the Durians.

Then Singapore looks at their ex-colonial masters and saw a beautiful thing known as The Eye - a gigantic ferris-wheel. So we built one far larger and call it The Flyer. Now we've outdone them!

Then we look over the causeway at our neighbour who sells us our water and notice that they are doing well with their one casino - Genting Resorts. We shall have TWO! That's when the Marina Bay and the Sentosa Integrated Resorts begin their construction. Yes, we win the battle of the Casino.

Oh wait a minute, they have a Sepang circuit for the F1 Grand Prix! That is way too hot in the heat of the day. Let's have a night circuit in Singapore. Oh space constraint. Let's make it a street circuit and put it in the city. That will definitely attract the crowd! And we can cordon off all the streets and make it difficult for Singaporeans to travel into this area. If all else fails, there is the ERP. Beep! That will be $2 deducted from the cashcard in Hamilton's car. Yes that was an international success.

The F1 did well, now let's get the MotoGP into Singapore as well. That will certainly put us head and shoulders above our neighbours!

Wait a minute, F1 and MotoGP is not enough, how about introducing the World Rally Championship here as well. Now the fans can't complain we are not "Fun" enough.

For goodness sake....sometimes, more is less. Please do not try so hard.

My Christmas Wishlist

2008-11-08T00:04:00.002+11:00

It's already the 7th of November, and Christmas is just around the corner! Well a couple of corners actually, but we'll get there, soon.

I present to you here my Top 5 Wishes for Christmas for the year 2008:

5. Barack Obama as President of the United States of America! (Oops, just realised it has already been realised.)

Okay a new no. 5.

5. A new high-paying high-flying job

4. An Ipod touch

3. The global economic recession comes to an end

2. Winner of $500k in the gameshow "Don't Forget The Lyrics"

And...............*drumrolls*

Numero Uno.....

1. A new right leg

Super Bo Liao Stuff

2008-11-07T03:14:00.002+11:00

When you are bored and looking for a laugh, one of the best sites around is stomp.com.sg
And I can tell you why. Because most of the contents that people post up on it are so bo liao (boring, rubbishy, nonsensical) that you feel like laughing through your gritted teeth. Well there is a small fraction of the stuff on it which are really funny though.

First I come across this really popular post about some guy who refuses to give up his seat for a pregnant lady on board the train. http://singaporeseen.stomp.com.sg/singaporeseen/viewContent.jsp?id=41059
Is it necessary to take a photo of him and post it online?

And then there was this other one about the neon lights blowing off, leaving the original words "Hougang Plaza" becoming "Gang Plaza". http://singaporeseen.stomp.com.sg/singaporeseen/viewContent.jsp?id=41175
Come on, this is So Super Duper Bo Liao...

Tons of other bo liao stuff in there, ONLY check out when you have nothing better to do. I just happened to pass by, I have tons of better stuff to do. lol.

Sports around the world

2008-11-03T16:18:00.003+11:00

Have been catching up a lot on sports recently since I started having the Sports Channel as an addition to my cable tv channels. It's expensive to subscribe to the Sports Channel, but given a big sports fan like me, it's definitely worth it (except for the Golf Channel)!

First, on motor racing. In the F1 motor championship, Lewis Hamilton has become the youngest champion in history, albeit barely. He cruised home in 5th position in the Brazilian GP at Interlagos, just what he need to beat closest rival, Brazilian Felipe Massa, by a single point. Hamilton became the first Briton to win the title since Damon Hill in 1996.
Ferrari won their 8th constructor's championship in 10 years, garnering 172 points, ahead of their rivals McLaren which managed 151.

In tennis, Jo-Wilfred Tsonga claimed his 1st masters series title at the BNP Paribas Paris Masters with a 6-3 4-6 6-4 victory over David Nalbandian. Buoyed by the 15000 home crowd, he played a tight game against the Argentine, who is the defending champion for the title when he beat Rafael Nadal last year at the final. The win gave JW Tsonga a place at the prestigious Masters Cup Final at Shanghai.

In the Rugby League World Cup, a faceoff between Australia and England turned into a pummeling for the English as the Kangaroos thumped them 54-4. It was an awe-inspiring display by the Roos, with Greg Inglis and man-of-the-match, Billy Slater, claiming 3 tries each. It is a really embarassing result for England. Australia is hot favourite for the title after the win, following their 30-6 win over neighbours New Zealand in the previous match.

In football, there were numerous shocking upsets by the small clubs over the big boys in the English Premier League over the weekend. We saw the bottom club, Tottenham overcome the top team, Liverpool 2-1. It was the first loss in the league for Liverpool this season, and only the second win for Tottenham. Credit to Harry Redknapp for the miraculous turnaround.
Then Stoke beat Arsenal 2-1 to set alight "crisis talks" at Arsenal, following their 4-4 draw to Tottenham previously.
Hull City fought bravely but still succumbed to Manchester United 4-3.
At Bolton lifted themselves off the bottom of the table as they defeated the latest nouveau riche club, Manchester City 2-0.

These are the latest sports which I've been catching up on, and although I did catch parts of the Iskandar Open (golf) which took place over the weekend in Johor which was won by Retief Goosen, I am not so passionate about the game.

Signing off, from Doni Sports Centre.

Still stuck on crutches

2008-10-22T02:15:00.002+11:00

Yeah still stuck on crutches despite almost going on to a month now. About slightly more than 3 weeks actually. Went to see the doc today and he said I damaged my anterior cruciate ligament as well as tore my right meniscus. Well now I have something similar to Roy Keane. He damaged his anterior cruciate ligament before. Take that Alf Inge Haaland!

Well the doc says that I have to go for Physio treatment to get my leg straightened and fully mobile before he can fix my ligament. So that's another 3 weeks before I see him again, and he has given me a 21days MC. Well I'm not sure whether that is good news or bad news, but it seems pretty bad. And I'm not sure what my boss and colleagues might think, especially now is busy season.
Guess I will be stuck at home for the next 20days, or maybe more.

On another note, I am totally engrossed in the Discovery Channel series: Man vs Wild, and Bear Grylls is absolutely awesome, gross and mad. Check the series out if you haven't, cos I think it's a series that every REAL MAN should watch. It teaches you survival techniques when you're lost somewhere, and these tricks can come in VERY handy when you are in the same environment. So far, the environments that I have seen him in are the Sahara desert, the snow covered lands of Siberia, the forests of Zambia, and many others. How do you survive in all these harsh conditions without the right knowledge and techniques? Boy this guy is reallllllll good.

However, the kind of stuff that he puts into his mouth, well almost 99% will think that it's real wild, mad and disgusting, but maybe put in the same situation, you will go for it anyway. Well this guy eats larvaes, scorpions, salamanders, yaks, yak's liver, yak's eyeballs, and tons of other stuff.....RAW! He even rips the meat from a dead gazelle a la leopard style! Just imagine.

Well I will recommend it to everyone to watch this show if you haven't already. It's Awesome!

Fan Chan

2008-10-14T01:58:00.003+11:00

Watched a real wonderful movie on tv yesterday night, screening on filmart on Central. The title's Fan Chan (My Girl). It's a 2003 Thai movie about the life of a young boy.

This boy, Jeab, lives on the other side of the street, away from where the other boys live, and hence they wouldn't allow him to play with them. He then hangs out with the girls and becomes best mate with Noi Nah, this young girl who is his neighbour. The actor and actress for this 2 characters are real cute and good looking!

Yeah so this story goes on about the kind of games they play, and the growing up life of these children. It is a real heartwarming and feel-good movie complete with some humour as well as tear-jerking scenes. Hate to admit it, but I was moved to tears. And to top it off, the theme songs were real catchy and nice as well, with lyrics which were quite relevant to the movie. Ahhh....it really brings you back to those days when you were young and innocent, and you really wished you can travel back in time to relive those wonderful days.

Look for it if you can find the movie (with subtitles) and hope you enjoy it.
Ah, gotta get Prasart to find that dvd for me!

Breathe - Telepopmusik

2008-10-11T15:02:00.001+11:00

On a weekday morning...

2008-10-07T14:57:00.002+11:00

Oh how nice... it's raining cats and dogs (and cows with melamine milk too) on a tuesday morning right now, and here I am sitting, not at the office, but at home!
Yeah how great it will be when you can take a day off some time during the weekdays, laze around at home, and just enjoying the peace and tranquility...Ahhh.....
Now for that specialist appointment I have at the hospital this arvo....

Crutch

2008-10-05T16:59:00.002+11:00

Was having a game of tennis with Niankai as usual on a fine Saturday when I do not know how exactly but I injured my right knee. So with his help and an ambulance, I was sent to Changi General Hospital, which is about 3 min from my house. That's near....
After having an X-ray, the doc said that he is unable to tell the problem, and I have to return to see the orthopaedic on Tuesday. Meanwhile I just have to hobble around with a pair of crutches.

Now with the pair of crutches, it is possible to see kind/helpful people as well as other not so nice people around.
Nice people are like my colleagues who offer to help me buy lunch, offer to carry my bag, or some strangers who offer me seats while I'm waiting for a cab. Wow, I get special privileges!
Not so nice people are like those who quickly rush to enter the elevator and press the door-close button when I hobble up to the elevator, to have the door close right before me. Great people aren't they!

Revisiting "Noble Palace"

2008-09-08T00:28:00.002+10:00

Tonight my family had dinner at this small cantonese restaurant at Eastpoint shopping centre, which was near my house, and I was swept by a feeling of nostalgia, a "Noble" nostalgia if you know what I mean. Haha.

It was a small to medium size restaurant serving cantonese food. Getting in was not so much of a problem even though it was crowded. We ordered a few dishes and waited.

Well the first problem appeared. We had this pot of chinese tea, and after it emptied, what you usually do is tilt the lid of the teapot so as to inform the waitress to refill it with hot water. One waitress came over and brought the teapot away to be refilled, but it didn't come back. Instead it ended up on the next table. So my father had to inform them about this, and the waitress was still laughing heartily about how she had fumbled up this easy task.

Then my father was quite irritated that the food was served quite slowly, and the portions were quite small. There was no option for large/medium/small, all the dish portions were a standard, small.

And then as encountered before in a far far away place called Noble Palace, the dish which I ordered did not arrive! We were almost done with dinner but there was no sign of the dish. And the thing was, the waitress cancelled out the dish on the receipt to symbolise that the dish had arrive, even though it did not. Anyway, my father indicated to the waiter/waitress 2 times about this but still it drew a blank.

I was smiling to myself as I recalled this incident some time last year which ended in some drama. Hence I was keeping my cool while watching my father sweat over this. I wanted to tell him to take it easy but I thought that maybe it was better to just keep quiet, lest the tea ended somewhere else.

So he stood up and went to the cashier to foot the bill before the dish arrive, with a great feeling of displeasure (this is an understatement). Anyway, I was at least glad there were no big dramas. Haha, what a "Noble" feeling!

the dark knight

2008-08-12T00:36:00.000+10:00

Finally had a chance to catch the Dark Knight on the big screen yesterday before it ran out. Was anticipating much from it, after Barney highly recommended it to me. And other heard good reviews from some others too.

I feel that the performance of Christian Bale was pretty ordinary, but it was the villains who shone brightly. Of that, Heath Ledger gave a stellar performance in the role as the Joker. Absolutely brilliant, although the make-up department was not fully functional I guess. The make-up of the Joker looked much better in the previous episodes, and it seemed like they had not much budget to apply sufficient make-up.
However, the emotions, actions, words and.....in fact the whole performance by Heath in the Joker was pretty brilliant and he really made you feel frightened by his appearance.

The guy who acted as Harvey Dent aka Two-face, can't remember his name but the same guy from Thank You for Smoking, was quite brilliant as well, not to the standard of the Joker, maybe cos he only had half a face left, but still a stand-out nonetheless.

And I did notice that the actor who played the Mayor of Gotham city was actually the leader of The Others in the series, Lost. I kept picturing him going to eliminate some people with gas attack or rifles or something like he did in Lost, but then he didn't.

Sorry no mention of Bale's performance as I didn't think great of it. But the movie was great nonetheless.

And a side note. Was at a kopitiam with my colleague for lunch today. So while we were eating, the har gow he ordered arrived and was served by one freak-head woman. He put it, oh sorry, she put it on the table and left. So my colleague wanted some chili sauce to go with it, and he quickly turned to her and said "excuse me, can I have some chili?"
And the woman turned back sharply and shouted "WHAT?!"
we were both stunned for a second.
But luckily I was wearing some amulet that could shorten the stun-time, and recovered and shouted back to her "Why So Rude?!"
And she went "what" again and widened her eyes and marched towards me, with my colleague looking at me with his eyes that seems to be telling me "Wahhhhhh..........you are a winner"

Work is tiring

2008-08-04T23:15:00.002+10:00

I had been resisting for 3 weeks to follow in my friend's footsteps in making a blog post to complain about how working life is tiring, but still I succumbed to that favourite SG habit - complaining!

Oh well, it's tiring!

Basically, I wake up at 7 every morning, wash up, read the paper while I have breakfast, and leave the house at 7.45am. Reach workplace at 8.25am, then work until 12pm+ then go for lunch. Arrive back in office at 1pm+ and continue working till 6.30pm+ or sometimes around 7pm+, then reach home 7pm earliest, or usually about 7.30pm. Rest for a bit, then have dinner, then rest for a longer bit, maybe watch some tv or like right now, do some blogging, and then go to sleep at 11pm.

I practically don't really have as much freetime as I used to have, to do whatever stuff like watching movies or playing pc games. Sigh...

Hey those of you reading this and sniggering away, it'll be your turn soon! Watch out man, I only started some time before you, but hopefully, fingers crossed, I can end this routine earlier than you!

Yawnz......

No Space for Complains

2008-07-20T20:24:00.002+10:00

Ever had this scenario, when you complain about some matter and you are shut out of your complain by someone? I shall talk about mine.

I have these nice REAL Polo Tees by Ralph Lauren [Just a side story: After you go travelling in Bangkok, people tend to assume that whatever branded stuff that you own, are counterfeit products, especially with the large variety of fake Ralph Lauren Polo Tees in MBK Centre. That's why the stressing of the 'REAL' at the beginning of the paragraph, just to tell you it's not the 199baht, which you can bargain to 180baht, products selling in Bangkok.] Anyway, so back to the main story.

I put this one particular Polo Tee together with the rest of the laundry to be washed. My father usually does the laundry at home. So today I was doing the ironing of clothes, which is usually done by me, I noticed that there was a small purple spot at the front of the Polo Tee. Okay it's not too obvious, so I thought it should be ok. But horror of horrors, when I turned it to the back, I saw large purple spots on it, and I fainted! WTH! I don't know what caused the spots but I suspect it might have been the softener. [Side story again: This has not been the first time that my laundry has appeared with spots of other colours on it, and strangely enough, these spots seem to appear only when my father does the laundry, and they seem to only "attack" my clothes! Or maybe they do stain other clothes but that I do not pay attention to.]

So I was pretty resigned to fate that my nice expensive Polo Tee was going to be stained for the rest of its life, maybe something like the life of a rich man who suddenly committed an offence and was put behind bars, and suddenly find himself with a stain on his life. So later on, I complained to my Mum, and as you may know, complaining is one of the favourite pastimes of a Singaporean. So the conversation goes something like this:

Me: You know, I found a large purple stain on my Ralph Lauren Polo Tee!

Mum: 你这么厉害，你自己洗啦！[translates as: If you think you are so good, why don't you wash it yourself!]

Ok, Short & Sweet. A big full-stop to my complain.
So is there no room for me to complain in my own house?
Sometimes we are not trying to blame anyone for anything, but we just try to speak out our hearts so as to feel more comfortable, and that was certainly no relief for my comfort at all.
Well my Mum's next sentence was a heart breaker too.

Mum: Is it a fake Polo Ralph Lauren? [which explains why I told my first side story]

Sigh................

The latest commoner's woe: ERP

2008-07-08T02:09:00.002+10:00

That's right! After the recent hike in food prices and oil prices, and the 7% GST last year, the emotionless Transport ministry had to join in the fray and pile more misery at this gloomy time on the people by activating more channels of income - activating 5 more ERP gantries and raising the ERP charges. Hey Transport minister, Thank you very much! *sarcastic tone included*

I think this is ill time to be doing this, and no doubt do many Singaporeans think the same. Even while many people question the motive and are really doubtful of the claim by the LTA (Land Transport Authority) that car speeds in particular roads are really slow, they inputs are ignored. Well, first of all, the include waiting times at traffic lights into the calculations, and in this country where we can claim to be Numero Uno in the most number of traffic lights per mile of road, this would definitely be so! Come on, use your brain!

Then in the papers, there was a guy who worked in the clarke quay area who did his own recording of car speeds in the area, and took pictures of the roads at peak hours, and his study showed that it was completely unnecessary to raise the ERP charges at that area. Even his submission of his study to the LTA was unable to retract LTA's decision. "Disappointing! " I say. "Elitism!" Others claim.

Then what about the business of surrounding areas? This decision definitely would affect them, Big Time! At a time of rising inflation and stuttering economy, this ERP decision will put off people into travelling downtown, and hence reduce the business of the shops in the area. In the long run, these business will go Kaput! All that will be left are food stalls, and maybe only the popular ones, and perhaps some other shops which are a necessity. Shops that sell stuff that can be found somewhere else, well I think it's time to say goodbye! In this sense, retail will suffer, and hence tourism too.

In so many years as a Singaporean, this is the first time that I feel that many big & bad decisions have arise in such a short period, particularly pertaining to transport. The people feel irked by these things, and it is not hard to hear criticisms from the news to the coffeeshop. I think Mr transport minister should come out to explain these decisions, from the hike of public transport fees, the erecting of gantries as and where, and the raise in ERP charges. We need a proper and reasonable explanation.

"Disappointed & Upset!" I say, falling short of calling for his replacement

politically motivated?

2008-07-04T15:08:00.002+10:00

I just shifted to a new apartment, and though the facilities and environment aren't as great as the previous one, at least I don't have to sleep in the living room anymore, and it's near to the mrt station. Gets a bit noisy though with the sound of trains running by, and of buses (my old place was quite a distance from the bus stop so I couldn't hear any buses). Well, pros and cons.

Well lots of interesting news recently, but still no news of Mas Selamat. One that made the headlines was that of Anwar Ibrahim being accused of sodomy, once again.

Was this a politically motivated action? Some, or rather many, believe that this is so due to the timing of the accusation, just as Anwar is about to compete in an upcoming by-election. Even the US believes so, and has one of its spokesperson warning the government not to make politically motivated arrests. This has definitely not gone down well with the ruling government, who now appears to be trying to eliminate its strongest opposition through underhand means. This particular case brings back memories of Anwar's first arrest due to sodomy charges which he has maintained his innocence, and many still believe it was a set-up.

A parallel can be drawn to a scenario in Taiwan during Chen Shui Bian's second presidential election. As he was riding down the street during a campaign, he suffered a gunshot wound from a mysterious assassination attempt, but survived. This gained him many sympathetic votes, and drew many conspiracy theories about the assassination being staged. Well the Malaysian situation may not be exactly the same, but this event can be similar scenario for Anwar who can gain many sympathetic votes out of this situation, if he survives another prison sentence.

This can be an interesting development to be observed.

An Ant's Life

2008-06-20T14:16:00.008+10:00

This is an interesting story about ants.

In a laboratory, there is a colony of black ants. The queen (purple) only produces black ants. They live peacefully within the colony.

Then one day, the scientist in charge of this colony introduces a red ant into the colony. This red ant is aggressive and strong. As part of nature, the black ants are inclined to repel the intruder. But as this red ant is aggressive and strong, it is able to repel any attacks easily.

Very soon, the red ant feel very comfortable about its new home. There is ample food for itself as it did not need to fight for every small bit of food which it used to do back at its red ant colony. It can easily bully the other black ants for food, and it earned the favor of the Queen ant as the Queen felt that this red ant is a foreign talent (FT). So the Queen granted the red ant a space in the colony.

One day the red ant disappeared. All the black ants are very happy that this intruder who had come and take away their "shine" is gone. Life can be back to normal again. But they are sadly wrong. The next day, they got a rude shock.

The red ant came back with two other red ants! Being part of nature, the black ants decide to repel the invaders. But as before, the red ants swiftly thwarted their attack, and left the black ants bruised and battered. The Queen is very glad however, as she feel that these new ants are strong and talented. She welcomed them with open arms, and decide to grant them a bigger space for accommodation. The black ants are naturally dismayed that not only do they have to work harder to find more food, they have to sacrifice some space for these red ants in a colony which is already very small.

The next day, even more red ants entered the colony and made themselves comfortable in this new place. Naturally, the black ants are unhappy and decide to repel these new intruders. But there are just too many of these strong and aggressive red ants that the black ants feel they have no chance against them at all. So they decide to launch a complain to the Queen about this, but it was swiftly put down by the Queen who praised the red ants as FT and are integral to their colony. Some of the black ants become disappointed and decide that it is time that they leave this colony to find life elsewhere as this colony does not belong to them anymore.

The next day, the Queen woke up to find almost half the black ant population gone, only to be replaced by red ants. And she wonders why.

A case of too much, too soon

2008-06-06T12:31:00.002+10:00

Malaysia yesterday raised the prices of petrol nationwide by 40 percent and resulted in widespread unhappiness with the BN. This move is supposed to help Malaysia save billions every year in terms of subsidies which had kept Malaysian oil prices one of the lowest in the world. However, no doubt, this is a move that will incur the wrath of the common folks who felt they had their carpet pulled from under their feet. And at a time of rising inflation in all sorts of goods, having the price of this important commodity raised by 40 percent at one shot suddenly is like getting hit by a cyclone after getting hit by an earthquake.

This will no doubt be a big risk move by BN following their recent election loss, and in the short term, it will seem to be a outright suicidal move that could see a bigger shift in popularity to the opposition. However, if the central government is able to pull this off, I foresee that Malaysia's economy will do really well as the move will save it billions of dollars which can be put into its reserves to strengthen the economy and propel it to a more prosperous future. Otherwise, the situation can end up like the one which threw Indonesia into a turmoil about 10years ago, and most likely, "some heads will roll".

This makes me wonder why didn't the Malaysian government implement this in tiers instead of raising the entire 40 percent at one go? What I mean is that they could have raised the prices of petrol by 10 percent for a few months, and then another 10 percent and so on, instead of making citizens feel the full brunt of the price hike at one go? Or could this imply that 40 percent is the first tier, and further hikes are still on the horizon? This could be logical considering prices of petrol are still cheaper than in Singapore, and Singaporeans will still be willing to make the tour across the causeway to get cheaper petrol from the kind Malaysian government which has scrapped the plan to ban Singaporeans from buying petrol within a 50km radius from the border. Nonetheless, this was a necessary move that would become unsustainable as there seems to be no quick end to the rising oil prices.

Recent Happenings

2008-06-03T00:48:00.003+10:00

Today is (today is not over yet, so I should use the present tense) a dark & gloomy day for Singapore football as it was humiliated by Uzbekistan 7-3 in the world cup qualifiers. That exposed a really leaky defense in Avramovic's team, but at least it showed that the attack was in existence as it managed to put in 3 goals against one of Asian football's giant. We'll just have to pull ourselves together in the next few matches to get a spot in the world cup. And meanwhile, we're like approximately 5days away from Euro 2008!

Got my university exam results a few days ago, and I am more pleased than I can ever be. Had a few mini-shocks actually. First was that I expected an A for my honours thesis, but only got an A-. Damn! But was really pleased with the B+ and B for Macro 3 and Econometrics 3 respectively, so I am really happy because the exam was so f*cked up that I thought I was going to get a C. Screw those foreign lecturers who can't teach properly, teach very little but set very difficult exams. Poor attitude I must say. They should have a screening procedure to eliminate bad lecturers, and send them home or maybe back to training school where they belong.
Haha I'm blasting them even though they gave me a much better result than I expected, but then I would have scored much better had they taught much better, and set exam qns which requires more intuitive thinking rather than qns that require you to memorise stuff and do simple but long & tedious calculations. Who the hell wants to calculate the roots of a time series equation manually when you can use a computer nowadays?! Geeez...

Oh and some days ago I saw this lady, no offence to her but is she brainless or is she trying to commit suicide? I couldn't figure, cos she brazenly stepped in front of an approaching double-decker bus to pick up a coin she dropped on the road. C'mon lady, I am not prepared at that moment to witness some bloody horror scene, and she made me had that urge to run forward to grab her off the road. But where're the brains I wonder. This reminds me of an analogy used by my lecturer, Tim Higgins, "picking up pennies in front of the bulldozer", a phrase he used to describe the guys from Long Term Capital Management (LTCM). Well LTCM provides for some interesting read if you search them up on Wikipedia. But I can now figure why that seems rather familiar at that moment....

Fund Raisers

2008-05-25T23:14:00.002+10:00

Singapore's mediacorp has a fund-raiser for China's Sichuan earthquake this evening. This is admirable, but when you consider that a disaster has struck Myanmar as well, and Myanmar is a much poorer country than China and hence requires financial aid much more than China, holding a fund-raiser for Myanmar would seem like a more reasonable thing to do.

So why is it that they hold fund-raisers for China instead of Myanmar? And we see that the total amount of funds raised through all sorts of events for the China earthquake is much more than the hurricane that hit Myanmar. If you look at it, China is right now such a prosperous nation, that if their citizens were to each donate $1, they would have $1.1 billion! That is much more than the single-digit million that Singapore raises.

I suspect that this has to do with relations. Having more contacts and business relationships with Chinese clients is, I suspect, one of the main reasons for holding such fund-raisers. This is to let their clients know that we care for them. This is similar to businessmen sending gifts to clients to make them happy. Whereas there may be less business dealings with Myanmar, and hence no such need to hold fund-raisers for Myanmar. This is a realistic world, we must understand.

Also, one can suspect that as Myanmar is controlled by the military junta, funds raised by various organisations may not reach the people in need, but end up somewhere in the coffers of the junta. This could be a reason that put people off donating sums to Myanmar.

Nonetheless, I feel that to be fair, Mediacorp should have a fund-raiser for Myanmar as well, as they really need the funds, much more than their Chinese counterparts.

My Tennis Kakis

2008-05-13T13:04:00.002+10:00

My usual Saturday past-time, having a game of tennis with my kakis. Had a real good set of tennis doubles match last saturday which Niankai and I won 6-4 3-6 6-3. Great times!

Me, the poser. Ha...

The Doubles Team!

JR and his super sliced serve!

Champions of England once again

2008-05-13T12:54:00.002+10:00

Manchester United is crowned the champions of the English Premier League once again. It was an emphatic victory, made sweeter by the fact that we did not end level on points with the hated Blues, which only managed a paltry draw with Bolton while Man Utd managed a sweet 2-0 victory over Wigan. The victory was never going to be in doubt, with Cristiano Ronaldo scoring a penalty and Ryan Giggs, the one and only Ryan Giggs, wrapping up with a second. And all the Blues are going home with, are sad faces and a broken shoulder for Captain John Terry.
Bye Bye Terry, take all the time you need to recover, and we'll take the Champions League trophy from you meanwhile...

On the other hand, I was really upset with Inter Milan for failing once again to wrap up the Scudetto with a simple win over Siena at home, by drawing! Fans have high hopes you know. And holding such a big advantage, they had to let it go down to the wire in the last match. That is pathetic. They were so dominant throughout the match and should have done more to seal up the win, which was REALLY disappointing. With all the home fans out with banners and flags and champagnes ready, they had to go out and not win this easy match. Now, a bad and familiar feeling is overwhelming me as I remember a few seasons back when Inter was the leader, but was pipped at the last day by a loss to Lazio which allowed Juventus to grab the title. That really sucks. I do hope history is NOT REPEATED.

Unbelievable Upsets

2008-05-10T02:21:00.002+10:00

I just ended watching the match between Radek Stepanek and Roger Federer, where Stepanek won 7-6 7-6. Ouch! What an upset for the world number 1. Sad.
And the other match I watched 2 days ago also saw a MAJOR upset with the clay court specialist Rafa losing to Juan Carlos Ferrero 7-5 6-1. Subsequently, Ferrero lost in the next match.
Also Nikolay Davydenko lost to Tommy Robredo whom he had won against for the previous matches, but this time on clay, the spaniard proved to be superior. It was a REALLY tight match, 4-6 6-2 7-6(7-4). The spaniards seem to be better on clay??

A player whom I see who has potential is Simone Bolelli, a 22 years old Italian player. He was the finalist in the Munich open but lost to Fernando Gonzalez. Watched him play against Andy Roddick, and although he lost and made many stupid mistakes, but he seem to be able to progress far in future.
Without the number 1 and 2 players in the competition, will the number 3: Novak Djokovic win this tourny? hmm...

Man Utd 4-1 West Ham!!!

2008-05-04T02:57:00.002+10:00

Woohoo! What a wonderful result that now puts Man Utd 3 points ahead of the much disliked Chelski. Now I hope K.Keegan & his Newcastle team can halt Chelski's run. If they don't, it will be next week's match against Wigan which will be the decider. Let's do it and win the double!
We have to make Chelski pay for the FA cup by winning the Champions League in Moscow. SWEET VICTORY!

And Another match that I'm keenly interested will be the Milan derby tomorrow. 3 match to go, and Inter are currently 6 points ahead of roma. But if Inter can get a winner tomorrow against the rossoneri, we can seal up the title! So this is a very crucial match, one of the most important derbies. For milan, they want to win this match to stay in the race for a 4th spot for Champions League qualification against Fiorentina, BUT seriously, who cares whether they get a 4th spot anyway! I hope Inter win tomorrow, and Fiorentina extend their lead against Milan to boot them out of the UCL. Forza Inter!

Jeon ji hyun NEW ASIENCE Ad

2008-05-02T21:11:00.001+10:00

This latest one has more scenes of her, and is gorgeous!

Jeon Ji Hyun's Asience Ad

2008-05-02T21:06:00.001+10:00

This Shampoo ad with Jeon Ji Hyun in it makes me want to use the shampoo! Ha..

Entertainers

2008-05-01T02:15:00.002+10:00

People say that politicians are good actors, and as good actors, they have to provide good entertainment. This is certainly served up when Malaysia's first parliament seating since the election turned out to be a real entertaining one, comparable to those seen in Taiwan, with a name-calling show by Karpal Singh and Bung Moktar Radin. Lim Kit Siang also provided a very vocal showing. All these contributed to the entertainment value of watching parliament.

Now why ain't many people watching the Singapore parliament? It is so boring, hours long, and sometimes members of parliament fall asleep themselves in parliament as well. It would be real entertaining if the Singapore parliament can introduce such entertainment factor into it, and we could expect more audience then. The politicians will also keep themselves awake as they would not want to be called sleepy pigs by the opposition. Now that's a show!

Change of topic. My macro econs lecturer/tutor is such a sucky prof that I wonder if his cert is a fake. Anyway, as the final exam is coming, I kindly emailed him to ask for some tips about the exam, as there was no past yr papers to refer to, so we have no idea as to the direction we should head towards. Without some guidance and hints, we would be like bobbing floats in the midst of an open ocean. I waited, he didn't reply.

Okay I thought. Was reading through the mid-yr exam solutions and had some questions about it. So I decided to email him. Was thinking of sending an email to screw him, a bit like how I did the bald manager or the guy selling the sliced-fish noodles but milder since it's an email, but then decided against it since he would be grading my final exam, so that would be a disaster.
So instead I sent a sarcastic email which usually works to get a response. And the reply to the hints and guidance was: I've already mentioned that the final exam would be comprehensive and includes everything we've covered in this course.

Hey thank you! What a wanker

To Become Paris' New BFF

2008-04-28T16:10:00.002+10:00

Hey peeps! Haha was rather bored of studying, so randomly looked for stuff and found this page where Paris Hilton is searching for her new BFF. So this the thing, anyone can participate and send in their videos (although this contest has already reached round 7 now) and people can vote for them and the top 20 finalists can make it onto the MTV show where Paris will pick her new BFF! That's Hot!
The page is http://parisbff.com/
Lots of dumb videos in it and kinda time-waster, but hey, ain't that what Paris is known for?

For those clueless about BFF, it stands for best friends forever!

One of the most talked about videos in SG right now

2008-04-22T12:54:00.001+10:00

A Cab Driver and Civilian scolding *fck* off to each other.
I must agree with the many other comments left on youtube that the person who's filming this video is super-annoying. He should film himself and put it online instead, think it would be funnier

singapore censorship! is funny u must see!!1

2008-04-22T12:32:00.001+10:00

Some mindless video about singapore censorship. Alright la, not really funny. But I can see my ex-classmate, zihan, at 39sec, haha!

Lost

2008-04-18T02:30:00.002+10:00

It was another day spent doing almost nothing. Well, actually only did two things today as far as I can remember.
1) wrote and sent my CV to Barclays. Tis a big one, and hope I can get this job.
2) Was supposed to begin exam preparations, but found out that Season 4 of Lost is out. So I spent the whole day unraveling what has happened so far, all the mysteries from Season 3, and began an 8episode mini-marathon of Lost Season 4.

Well I would say that Lost is getting more and more complicated, but the more you watch, the more the picture becomes clearer. And many twists in the stories that keep you wanting to find out more. Season 4 is getting exciting ( I don't want to be a spoiler so I shan't reveal anything) but the survivors finally seem to be able to get off the island. It seems likely that season 4 might be the last, but you never know, with a story like Lost. Also, the flashbacks of the characters in the series have begun to switch to flashforwards as we see what happen to them after they leave the island, and this is where surprises will grip you.

I have met many who didn't like the confusing storyline of Lost, but for people like me who began watching from episode 1 of Season 1, this is becoming more gripping and interesting. Looking forward to the coming episodes!

Skool's Out!

2008-04-17T00:45:00.002+10:00

Oh boy! I still can't believe it's the last day of school already! Last day of the semester for me, last day of my undergraduate days, and I'm not sure if it'll be the last day of studying in an institution for me. But wow, time really flies! Next week on, it'll be the reading week and then on to exams and graduation. I'm not sure if I should be looking towards graduation or not. But well, this last semester of school has been really boring I must say.

After spending 2 years away, you come back to an institution where old friends have mostly graduated, or are busily mugging away at home/in library (while I carefreely stroll around campus), or have moved on and have found their new groups of friends, or have totally forgotten who you are. And for those whom I have really been that close to begin with, I've found it hard to reacquaint with them since they might put me in a potentially embarrassing situation by saying "No I don't know you". So then, the lack of many friends to hang out with this semester, plus the droppppppppp in quality of the arts canteen food have led to the dearth of a fun-loving and joyous Don. I think I've transformed a lot since returning from Australia, becoming as much part of the worker-ants lifestyle of the NUS students as well as retaining part of the relaxed and take-it-easy attitude person who is unable to fit back into the fast paced mad rush of the others.

In a nutshell, I say that this last semester sucks and I want to graduate and get out of here. Now to find that company which would hire me....

Californication

2008-04-11T03:02:00.002+10:00

Spent the entire day watching Californication and it was a totally engaging series, but I wouldn't recommend it for the conservatives or the faint-hearted.
The story line was pretty good, and David Duchovny's acting as a writer trying to get back onto his feet was a pleasure to watch. Some pretty humorous moment include two grown men fighting over a packet of tampon, and scenes of Duchovny vomiting in his ex's boyfriend's painting. There were definitely many great scenes to catch but I'll leave it as that.
Was touched by the romantic moments in the show between Duchovny trying to woo back his ex, and the scenes of their daughter moving to stay with her father as "the man has nothing". Madeline Zima caught my notice too as this cute and bubbly lady, definitely with a good figure, who was attracted to Duchovny's character.
Well then, about time I got some eye-shutter. Good night, and You stay cool, readers!

End of the book of blood, sweat and no tears

2008-04-10T16:27:00.003+10:00

Yeeha! Finally submitted the much horrid and stressful item known as the Honours Thesis yesterday. It's been a long time coming, and put much effort into doing it for the last 2-3 mths. Had been waking up and sleeping to my HT everyday for the recent month or so. So felt an immense relaxation and joy when I finally handed it in to the department. All that's left is the hardbound copy to be submitted next wed. YesssshhHhh~!

Right now, catching up on stuff that I haven't had time to do before, like watching Hustle and other stuff. Been also watching episodes of Little Britain (yes again) on the BBC entertainment channel on cable, and Lost which is airing on Ch5. And more time to surf the net and do time-wasting stuff, but not for long, before the exam arrives.

Oh and I saw Daniel Bennett at the train station the other day, Singapore's National football team player. He's a good player and performed pretty decently for the team, which led to Spore qualifying into third stage (I think) of the world cup qualifiers. That's pretty awesome.
But one thing for Singaporeans to ponder about is the focus and direction of the country's sports scene. It must be said that the way conduct sports is similar to Singaporeans conducting business. How so? I may explain

The impatience to win, has led them to disregard nationality issues, and conduct big-scale, sorry, massive-scale imports of players from other countries who have shown quality. This is done thru enticing with the carrot. For the local players, they have mostly been overlooked, and I would have thought that a country should and would train local players to be successful, but unfortunately, country says no.... The quick fix method is to buy/import, not train and cultivate, where the former would be cheaper in the short-run but expensive in the long-run, while the latter is vice versa.

Regarding local players participating in overseas competitions, the onus is also on the player to raise their own cash/funding so that they can take part. So you're practically on your own. No money, no trophy so no reward. They said they are tired of sponsoring players who can promise medals and in the end they don't bring back the gold/silverwares. Do they think sports is like business when you can buy a piece of land by just offering the highest bid? Even the best player may stumble one day. So then, what? Impatience is not the way to go.

If we have to win the worldcup or whatever cup by having an entire squad of imported players, I'll rather not win anything. This is not the English Premier League.

Roddick def. Troicki Sony Ericsson Open 2008

2008-03-30T15:14:00.001+11:00

A totally unbelievable and almost impossible shot produced by Roddick

Djokovic-Nadal 2008 losing racket winner

2008-03-30T15:12:00.001+11:00

An amazing point by Djokovic after dropping his racket and still coming up with a winner!

Watch out when you eat your next packet of prawn cracker!

2008-03-19T21:58:00.002+11:00

Watch out when you eat your next packet of Nong Shim prawn cracker!

It was reported in the news yesterday that they discovered a rat's head in a bag of prawn crackers. Subsequently, the products are being pulled off shelves. So you gotta beware of what you eat.

It's really scary the foodstuff they product these days if you think about it. Recently there was the gyoza (dumplings) scare in Japan when they resulted in severe food poisoning for many people. Then there was Prima Deli in Singapore, where many people suffered severe food poisoning due to the existence of the salmonella bacteria in the food products. And then there are the many reports of fake eggs, fake milk powder produced in China, which are made of carcinogenic agents.

Gosh, the world is really turning unsafe. I think I will have to stick to eating safe things, such as shark's fin, bird's nest, abalone, caviar and truffles for my meals everyday...

And I will not be held to ransom to put up anyone's name on the next post just because of a pink pokka dot tie. So don't think about it!
Hi Jared, how are you doing?? :)

HK's Funniest Person 2007 - Vivek Mahbubani - Chinese

2008-03-13T10:15:00.001+11:00

This Indian speaks Cantonese!
Damn right, it's funny, and he has the Russell Peters style.
Haha, check it out for yourself...

Random ramblings

2008-03-11T13:03:00.002+11:00

It's tuesday 10am! And I am supposed to be in school at 8am for my Micro III lecture, but I don't know why I'm still at home. Haha.
Well sort of evaluated that the lecture was not worth waking up at 6am and traveling more than an hour to school for. He mostly just repeats what is on the lecture notes, which I'm perfectly able to read on my own. The only thing interesting about him is he hails from the cold and not so developed part of Russia called Siberia, and speaks with a French accent which I like to imitate.
"You zee, zis is ze way we doo, ya.." - translated as "You see, this is the way way we do, ya"
Hahah

Glad to see comments on my chatbox from Daryl and Jay Shen. Hi to you guys.
It's great to hear than one of them has gotten my beautiful room D107 and the other is finally going to resign from the junior job at a Japanese restaurant which made him wash many many dishes a day. Oh well, miss you guys, and best of luck! I miss my pizza mates!

Celebrating 100years of F.C. Internazionale

2008-03-07T16:34:00.004+11:00

F.C. Internazionale celebrates its 100th birthday on 9 March 2008. One hundred years of passion, a sense of belonging that involves millions of people. I am so proud to be a fan of this great club since the past, for now, and into the future. I am sure all fans of Inter will be happy for the team as well, as they celebrate a century of beautiful Italian football, and enter the next with a wonderful team and management and fans like me. The pride of the Nerrazurri!

The world is painted BLACK and BLUE on the 9th of March!

Election fever hotting up

2008-03-05T01:24:00.002+11:00

It's mysterious that Mas Selamat is still at large after almost a week since his prison escape. Singapore is not such a big island, and the whole country is looking for him, from policemen to soldiers, to all residents who receive MMSs, posters and whatever forms of information, but he still eludes everyone. *Poof*

Well the Malaysian elections are definitely hotting up, with elections approaching on the 8th of March. Not that it has anything to do with me, but it's hard not to take notice due to the high coverage of this election in Singapore's media. There are daily coverages on the tv news, as well as in all forms of the newspapers. Somehow, I feel that the media coverage of the Malaysian election is even higher than Singapore's own elections couple of years back. I have analysed this, and derived few probable explanations for this result:

1. There are a large number of Malaysians in Singapore, and we want them to be in touch with their own countries. Also, the news reported that there are a large number of foreigners in Singapore now, and the majority of them are from across the causeway. And wanting to add on the list of hubs that we already are (e.g. medical hub, aviation hub, education hub, meeting and conventions hub, country with the most hub hub etc), this time foreign talents hub, we have to attract them by covering news of their country so they would feel at home here.

2. Another possible explanation is that competition was weak, meaning there was a lack of challenge from the opposition parties, which made the elections pretty one-sided, so there was no need to report much about it.

3. Due to the subdued nature of open political discussions, media reports of our own elections were hence, subdued as well.

4. It is cheaper to send our journalists to cover the elections in Malaysia than to send them to cover the one in USA. Hence we have such great coverage with all the journalists interviewing the many contenders for the many different seats. Also, it would be a good holiday for the journalists, to be able to take a break and travel to Malaysia on a company-paid trip.

For now, I would have to continue receiving coverage of the Malaysian elections through all the media coverage.

Prison Break....at Whitley Road

2008-02-29T13:56:00.002+11:00

Two days ago, a drama occurred along the Whitley Road Detention Centre when the leader of the terrorist cell, JI, escaped after he was allowed to go to the toilet. "Wow sounds easy..."

Despite more than 30hours of manhunt, up till now, he is still at large, on the run, despite having a limp on his leg. He must be real good, a chameleon I presume. Even though Singapore is such a small country, and jungles aren't plenty, he could still evade capture by the mass forces deployed to capture him. Is there a chance that he could have already escaped to another country? Or perhaps he is in disguise and walking among us?

This might be scary thought but it could happen, and residents are urged to be careful.
More information at: http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/singaporelocalnews/view/331726/1/.html

The time for Change

2008-02-25T15:27:00.003+11:00

On March 2, Russians will choose a new president.

On March 8, Malaysians will go to the polls.

On March 22, Taiwanese will elect a new president.

On Nov 4, Americans will choose a new president.

S.Korea just sworn Lee Myung-Bak as the new president.

As well, Raul Castro has been named as the new president of Cuba.

This is really the time for changes around the world.

Let me end this post with an article by Fidel Castro:

" 'Change, change, change!' they shouted in unison," he wrote. "I agree. 'Change!' But in the United States. Cuba changed a while ago, and will continue on its dialectical course. We will never return to the past, say our people. 'Annexation, annexation, annexation!' the adversary responds. That's what he thinks, deep inside, when he talks about change."

Edison Chen's apology for the photo scandal; 陳冠希最新道歉片段

2008-02-22T14:25:00.002+11:00

Hougang declaring independence

2008-02-21T02:42:00.002+11:00

Well, some of you may get a shock when you read the title, but don't worry, it's not true...

You see, recently, Kosovo declares its independence from Serbia. And this was widely supported by 18 members of the EU, and the US, while Cyprus, Romania and Spain have done the wise and right thing by explicitly refusing recognition of this illegal move.

Well, think about it. If one day, example Hougang, gets tired of being part of Singapore and decides to declare independence from Singapore, what will be your reaction? Can you imagine trying to visit your grandparents in Hougang and having to pass through customs? Or having a whole new set of rules over there?

And the disgusting part is Uncle Sam supporting that move and putting in humanitarian peacekeepers to keep up that independence even though nobody thinks it is legal? How will you feel? Well it's certainly not a good feeling, even though Singaporeans might just ignore it and let the govt handle the matter.

Oh well, why don't the whole world come together and support say California breaking off from the United States of America next time...

A funny remark

2008-02-15T01:11:00.002+11:00

Well well, time flies! The Chinese New Year is here and gone, well almost. It's already into the second month of February.

Recently, I saw on the newspaper an article about the ERP charges entering the heartlands, and the transport minister was quizzed by another MP for the reason. Among one of his replies, he said that Singaporean drivers travel quite a lot compared to their counterparts in other big cities. He said that Singaporean drivers clock 21,000 km per year compared to L.A. (19,000+km) and Tokyo (15,000+km).

Well, Excuse me, but first of all, where did he get this statistic from?? What's the backing?
And if that's the case, that means on average, a driver will drive about the entire length of the PIE EVERYDAY FOR 500DAYS! And there ain't even 500days in a year! so everybody stays in jurong work in changi airport? or vice versa?

C'mon, most cars don't even travel that much, and Singapore ain't that big a country. Are you adding the distance covered by taxis? Well that shouldn't count since those are public transport. Hmm and I definitely think that Americans travel mmuch more than Singaporeans due to the distance between places in the BIG land of yankees. So I can't understand.

And he said the govt ain't trying to make money from ERP charges, but then the gantries continue to increase, and they remove road taxes (obviously you need to make money from somewhere else to cover the loss of road taxes). If you do a check, you can see how much they actually make from the ERP in a year. And most people actually believe that the number of cars are not actually going to decrease even with increased ERP charges, but they still increase the charges anyway.

This minister really needs to remove the blindfold from his eyes, go take a ride around the country on public transport and see how it works. I really can't see how he can go about talking so much about this and that without really coming down to the ground from his hot air balloon way up in the sky.

If there are angel and devils, then the angel would come in the form of the finance minister with his $1.8bn goodies for the people. It's really a good welcome for the bonuses and stuff that we're going to get after a bonanza year last year! Although I thought more could be distributed since the govt surplus was $6.45bn last year. But nonetheless, it still is a good thing for everyone.

And they say we should take public transport...

2008-02-04T18:26:00.000+11:00

Well the global theme right now is to go green right? Which means to cut down on Greenhouse gases by reducing private cars on the road and switch to public transport. Sounds like great. Brilliant. That's an ideal!

NOT!

If you have not taken the public transport in Singapore, then I say stick to the car. Although Singapore is such a small country, I always used to tell my foreign friends that I take a minimum of an hour to travel to school, sometimes when it gets bad, even 2hours. And they were shocked. They always thought that with the size of Singapore, travelling to anywhere should be a zip. Well that's true when you are driving a car. But the bus system really puts you down, down, down......

Haha, recently, NUS came up with a discussion forum www.nussu.org.sg/151 for people to contribute ideas on how to improve the bus 151 which travels from Hougang to NUS. It's really a forum where people complain about the punctuality & frequency of the bus. Plus the dumb terrain on the school compound makes it difficult to have a bendy-bus nor a double-decker. Oh wow, so the bus is always packed as it serves, just to list a few schools along its route, NUS, SIM, NP, HCI and NJC, and you can't even increase it's capacity?!

Last wed, I tried for the first time to take this bus to school, with the ignorance of a person doing something for the first time. I always thought the bus was rather swift when it travels from NUS to Hougang, so it should be the same the other way, what's more it's 11am, past the peak hour. Well, I was ghastly wrong. The bus took at least 20min to arrive which already made me wanted to head home, and the bus was pretty packed. That was not a good first time.

Now the government encourages citizens to take the public transport, and penalises car drivers by erecting ERP (Electronic Road Pricing) gantries on many many roads, and now the prices of fuel have gone up too. But then since the price of fuel increases, so does the price of public transport. Now what?

The LTC or whatever relevant department should seriously review the state of the bus system and improve it, BEFORE trying to encourage users to switch from private vehicles to public transport.

Well right now, I say, the better deal is to stick to driving a car to school which would take probably half an hour (of comfortable seating may I add) to more than an hour on public transport.

Fascination with Italia

2008-02-04T18:11:00.000+11:00

Yes!!! It's fascination with Italia, and it's happening in U.K.!
First it was England, the "almighty" England, when she hired Fabio Capello as the coach of the Lions. Fabio, who has enjoyed great success with many big clubs such as Real Madrid and Roma, is going to face his first test when England plays Switzerland in an upcoming friendly.

Then it's the Irish! The F.A. of the Rep. of Ireland are looking for a new manager for their team, and the favourite choice is from......? Italy of course! Giovanni Trappatoni, a long time manager of the Italia national team, and also enjoyed a great spell in Fiorentina before they went down few seasons back, could be a good candidate to bring Ireland to success in coming competitions.

Watch out, the managers of Scotland & Wales!

A new life in a new year

2007-12-12T02:39:00.000+11:00

My my my... how time flies!~ Been back for almost a month, still feeling the heat back here. I can sweat immediately after a bath, and that's the worst kind of feeling. Prickly heat powder is very effective to solve this problem, keeps me cool and nice!

Dec 6th, is the day we broke up. Well, it's better to move on now to a new life. There's no point in carrying on something that I feel wouldn't work out. It was a rough two years really, probably due much to the fact that we were far apart, but the lack of chemistry just couldn't be patched by a few words & actions.

On another note, it's my 24th birthday tomorrow! Two cycles of the chinese zodiac have passed just like this. It's time to move on to another phase in life, the working phase. Well, I really wonder what I would have become by the time I reach the third cycle, meaning age 36. I look forward to find out...

By the way, I am really annoyed by this recent Nokia advert bus. I was on the bus 14 today heading home, and there was this screen right in front of me, which kept playing loudly (overshadowing the guy behind me who was snoring) these Nokia advertisements. I'm sure I watched the adverts close to ten times. And this same stupid phrase keeps popping up "the next episode is about to begin". Oh yeah, who cares?! who cares about the next episode of whatever is about to begin. It's real, i mean REAL, irritating!

Back!

2007-10-27T17:36:00.000+10:00

Hi, I know I haven't been blogging for a short while, and anxious people have been telling me to continue blogging. Kinda been busy with tons of assignments and exams are just round the corner. Panic week! Or rather, if you are well prepared, you shouldn't panic right?

Thanks to everyone who continue to tag here even when the blog gets quiet.

Below are some photos of stuff that happened during this period of no-post...

Spartos Night: 3 Tigers on our table, and 3 well-behaved and civilised people

Spartos Night: It was a happy night! And someone pretended to be cool

Spartos Night: The professional photographer telling his story

Spartos Night: Daryl and Mr Huh? (with the blur look)

Spartos Night: Me and my two nice neighbours. Yes we're going to have a good time

Valete: DL, the best initials!

Me visiting Uni of Sydney

What a magnificent university with a huge court yard

Diana and me in Sydney

And by the way to people who still haven't heard about it, I'll be going back on Nov 15th. Seeya then

Off on holiday

2007-09-02T00:22:00.000+10:00

Tomorrow, or rather today, I'll be off to Melbourne, the place where I had stayed for half a month in the beginning of this year, for another holiday. Melbourne is a very nice city and definitely worth another visit. But this time I won't be along, as I'm going with Barney, Ting Yi and Zhong. Should be a relax and chill-out trip with lots of jokes and stories to tell.

After that, will be going to Sydney to visit Diana for a couple of days. Haven't seen her in a while, so I'm looking forward to catching up with her.

Anways, been reading this article: http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/afp_world_business/view/297259/1/.html
and realised that the US would very likely cut their interest rates soon. This means the Australian dollar would get stronger due to their high interest rate, which also means that anyone with money should buy more AUS$ and sell US$ now. Just a tip, although I haven't got the money. But the AUS$ going up would mean that SGD$ would become weaker relative to the Aussie dollar as well. Thus I reckon one of my good moves this year was to bring over lots of AUD$ so as to gain on the high interest rates which would be more than sufficient to cover all transaction costs. Well done to myself. Haha!

Random Picture

Wide-eyed anticipation of entering the workforce for these graduates

Party On...and On...and On

2007-08-31T20:21:00.000+10:00

Mid semester exams are over and it's time to party. Had a party last week after the end of my first exam. Bought half a dozen of Strongbow Dry and another half dozen of Toohey's Extra Dry for my mates. Had some good music from our resident DJ Barney. Chips aplenty due to contributions by me, Jared, Tingyi (with his cuttlefish) and Jayshen. Thanks guys. It was a great party. Woot!

The arsenal of alcohol for the night

Having a drink brings out all the smiles, except Jayshen who was quite unhappy about Barney

The host of the party (me) enjoying the night

Jared drinking wine straight from the bottle (hmm...)

Had another party on wednesday this week after the end of my last exam. This time it was Barney's party as he contributed his McKellen whisky. There was pizza as well. In the beginning, it was a rather quiet and cold party. But as more people started to drop in, and the lighting changed from white to yellow, the people became more happening. A game of Indian poker made everyone very happy as we entertained ourselves crazy seeing people drink whisky, milk with water, water from Jayshen's (dirty) mug, and people eating a whole packet of wasabi peas, a large scoop of jam and peanut butter etc. Totally fun man!

Then it was onto Jiayun's birthday party yesterday, where we had a cake, chips and some orange juice before heading out to King O Malleys, a local pub. Great place to sit around with plenty of friends and just drink. Drank more than the previous 2 days combined, with pints of beer, stout, shots of tequilla and even absinth minded, this cocktail which contained absinth (green fairy). Crazy and fun night man. Woot!

The truth is out!

2007-08-27T23:23:00.000+10:00

Refer to: http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/specialreport/news/288515_8/1/.html for what I'm about to say.

It has been months since UNSW pulled out of Singapore within a short period of the start of operations, leading to shocks among many students who had enrolled in the university. However, I guess the largest shock had arose from EDB as it fathomed the consequences of this pull-out, so much so that it could not lift it's curtain of silence until recently, to reveal the amount of damage that was done. In a country like Singapore where actions by the government or goverment-related organisations would be sure to attract speculations and rumours, the amount of the loan is of great interest as punters rub their hands in anticipation.

A failed investment is common in the business world. A failed investment by a seemingly "solid and efficient" government in a culture where a poor child gets 99 instead of the full 100 marks in a test gets reprimanded is unacceptable, or at least to the people. The brings us to the saga of NKF again where a certain minister's wife was the patron. Now what went wrong in this case? Although a failed investment of around $15m can be considered small considering the amount of assets the EDB possesses, it is significant in the eyes of the common folks who may never see $1m in their lifetime.

I would speculate that it is the failure of checks within the system that caused the damage. Just as a factory needs a supervisor to supervise the entire manufacturing process, there needs to be someone to check if investments are sound before loans and grants are lent or given. Saying "Investors know their business better than the government. In this case, UNSW – as the investor and the operator – is in the best position to assess the viability of its business plan. (The) government's role is to facilitate and support investors in their decisions, not to second-guess or guide those decisions." is the sign of shirking of responsibility. When banks loan out monies to businesses, they too make checks on the backgrounds of the company. Is it too difficult for the EDB to undertake such a task?

Of course trying to forecast if an investment will be a success or not is not a straightforward mission, and you can at most allocate a probability to it. But signalling for a pull-out within less than a month after operations shows signs that this probability is close to 100%. How could this not be detected unless checks weren't even made in the first place.

Another source of fault lies in the MOE. The eagerness of the MOE to turn Singapore into an education hub [What's this thing about creating Singapore into hubs for everything from medical to MICE to education? I say just focus on what you can.] in recent times has led to the search for the creation of a 4th university after SMU. Maybe the market in Singapore is indeed too small for a 4th one? Has anybody considered that? And when UNSW comes knocking on the door, it is put into plan without market analysis perhaps. This would probably pressure EDB to fork out the enormous loan and grants to UNSW as an incentive for them to build the building just so that Singapore will have a 4th university. Again, is it needed? Look at the damage it has done.

Taxpayers' money goes into that building and now it is an empty shell waiting to be filled. Even though I have not joined the ranks of a taxpayer, I will in the future, and if something like this happens to my money, you will definitely want some explanation and a decent one. But so far, nothing of the sort. Just the usual concern for their reputation. After that, it is back to the search for another university to fill the gap. Sigh.

Ursies Ball 2007

2007-08-26T10:39:00.000+10:00

Ursies Ball this year was held on the 17th of August at Thoroughbred Park. Place was alright, food was good, free-flow red wine, white wine, champagne, beer, lemon lime and bitters, and sky juice, and the live! band was awesome. So nothing to complain about, except that there was too little time. But this once in a year event was definitely worth the go and perhaps more worth it than the international ball which was held on the same day. Anyway, below are some pictures of the night.

Ready for the ball

With an insurance salesman (Jay Shen and me)

Classmates for 7 semesters (Jia Yun and me)

Blue is the colour of royalty (Eun Hae and me)

Two hitman posers (black gloves sold separately)

From left: Barney, me, Derrig (Ursies President for 2007), John (my senior resident), Hannah (international representative 2007) and Daryl (Malaysian student of the year 2007?)

Morgie and his dance moves

Let the fire begin

Studs out for a puff

Black gloves have 2 functions: They keep you from feeling the coldness on your hands (they don't actually keep your hands warm), and they go with the hitman theme (notice the red tie as well)

Huw and me (He's learning Chinese and is really good. He comes to me for help sometimes)

Going back in the cool neon-lighted double-decker bus

ball video

2007-08-20T15:27:00.000+10:00

I just typed out a post and due to weak wireless connection, the draft was not saved. Kinda annoyed again. Now I have to recall what I typed..

But the stuff that I wanted to say is that (pardon my use of point form):

Roger Federer won his 50th title
I received letters from friends
Should not always just the bad things but should remember good things that happen. So keep those bird's nest with rock sugar coming!
Inspired and loved the Ursies ball video 2007 as this is my last year here
Inspired to produce a post ball video of my own. Throw in some pictures and videos, and interview people regarding their feelings about the ball, and of course the theme song.

Yep that's the gist. Hope this doesn't fail me again...

Irritated...

2007-08-20T00:57:00.000+10:00

Just read my 365 Inspirations quotes book and it says something about in life, we must give and then we will receive a lot in return. Is it really true? I ponder about this for awhile as I go through some of my friend's blog, And I realised that I bought popcorn chicken and wicked wings for them yesterday, and what did I get in return? Not being called to take the group photo at the Ursies Ball. Being left out in the cold. Geezzzz.... I feel disappointed. Sucks man.

This brings me back to the time when I tutored Hock in Maths C in A Levels, and in the end he got an A! Hooray. And what did I get for History? a "C". He got an "A". What did I get in return? Jibes and laughter from him. Sighz....I think it doesn't pay to be kind in this world.

And what's with the phone calls in the middle of the night but have no sound? Something's wrong with the phone, i don't know what.

And why did Man Utd lose to Man City? Despite all the domination and possession, we lost.

Irritation bugs me like a prick in the skin, or a piece of meat stuck between the gaps in your teeth.

2007-08-16T21:42:00.000+10:00

I waited and waited, but it never came. I'm disappointed :(

The REAL 40th post!

2007-08-16T00:27:00.000+10:00

My mistake. There was this autosave function that somehow created 3 drafts within my entries list, which made me think I had reached my 40th post, but NOT! This is the Real 40th post. haha.

Just read an article about the most expensive football player, who comes from, surprise surprise, Watford. He costs 60m pounds. Marlon King is his name. Checkout: http://soccernet.espn.go.com/news/story?id=453289&cc=4716

Well then, 2 more days to Ursies Ball. One more day actually, it's past midnight now. Everyone's really excited and gearing up for it. Even the usually casual Jayshen, who initially said he was not going, has forked out about $100 to finance the hiring of a suit for that day. That speaks everything. Barney went for a pants alteration, Ting Yi bought a new tie, Chern hired a tux and Daryl borrowed a suit. The whole ball thing is getting exciting. With the most exciting being Jared getting rejected twice in his attempts to get girls as his date on that day. Ouch! But seriously, the first was dumb (get your facts right!) and the second was....dumb as well (nobody likes being second). The happy thing is, there is free-flow alcohol on that day. Yeahsss!

A Star-Studded Cast

2007-08-12T10:45:00.000+10:00

This could be the first time that I had such a dream. Many friends that I know were in this dream. I couldn't really remember the storyline, but it was really fun and a lot of people were there, even some people whom I rarely talk to. Nonetheless, such a dream reminds me of tv serials where they made it just for fun and invite many of the actors and actresses of the tv station to star in it. Some snippets of the dream which I can still remember are Kaixun peeing without flushing (sorry Kaixun, I know you wouldn't do that but random things happen in dreams), David tapping my shoulder and when I turn around he became Jiarong, and shaking hands with Giang, Alvin and Rayner (somehow he had a deformed fist) in the arts club room.

Went for a combined A1 & D1 trekking adventure to Namadgi National Park yesterday. It was about an hour's drive away from campus. Despite the strong winds warning on the met station website, we went ahead and were greeted with.....strong winds! I guess the winds must have blown away all the animals because any kangaroos, wallabies, different species of birds that we would expect to see on the hike were nowhere to be found. All that was present were some droppings along the footpath. Very nice. With hunger in our stomachs and fatigue in our muscles, we finally made the slightly more than an hour's trek and reached the lookout, known as square rock. Excellent view there but extremely strong (and cold) winds. Below are some pictures taken at square rock. We then had to make our way back to the vehicles, which we then drove to a quiet nice place (it was this year's IB end point) for a bbq. This concludes the A1 & D1 floor "party". The cool floors rockz!

Standing behind me was Square rock

There was a gorilla on the trip

Our Senior Resident John hiding himself from the winds

Beautiful view of the trees below. A little foggy though due to sleet

Elation at reaching the rock, so we can now turn back for lunch. Despite the smile on my face, I was really feeling cold, hungry, tired and hungrier

Happy Birthday Mom

2007-08-05T15:31:00.000+10:00

Today is my Mom's birthday, so I would like to wish her a very Happy Birthday! I haven't seen her for more than one and a half years, come to think of it. And just when I was typing this post, she rang me, what a coincidence! Happy Birthday Mom, love ya!

_______________________________________________________

Can you give me a break and stop calling me? I'll call you if I want to talk to you...

40th and counting...

2007-08-03T15:34:00.000+10:00

I have finally reached my 40th entry on my blog. I didn't think I would come so far considering I used to think blogging was rather boring, but I always liked to read someone else's blog though. Nonetheless, this is a milestone for me, and I hope I can still continue this routine for some time to come.

My laptop is getting too small for my needs, not in the physical size, but in the amount of disk space it has. Maybe it's time to get a new laptop next year, considering it'll be my last year in uni, the last chance to make use of student privileges and get a laptop at student price. This IBM is really good though, hasn't given me any major problems since I got it in Aug 2004, been 3years already. I like IBM. I'm not sure whether it's successor, Lenovo, would be able to live up to the standards. And I don't really trust other brands. Hmm I'll see how it goes. Hopefully can get a good and affordable one.

I'm caught onto the Hitman fever recently. It's a computer game about an agent 47 who's sent on missions to assassinate people. It's a really really very very absolutely cool game! Thanks to Jared for introducing me to the game. Now I feel like fiber-wiring people and taking them out with my silencer. Hee just joking (well maybe I would..) There was this mission where 47 had to go to Kuala Lumpur's famous twin towers to take out this target, and that mission was super interesting. You can disguise as the pizza boy, or a fireman to access the building. Uber-cool! The game is so popular that they made 3 follow-ups to the original. There's Hitman, Hitman 2, Hitman: Contracts and Hitman: Blood money. There's even a Hitman movie that's going to hit the screens in October, starring Timothy Olyphant, aka Thomas Gabriel in Die Hard 4. I'm definitely going to catch that show, regardless of how good/bad it will be be.

For information about the movie, checkout: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0465494/, http://www.hitmanmovie.com

For information about the video-game, checkout: http://www.hitman.dk/, http://www.hitman2.com/, http://www.hitmancontracts.com/, http://www.hitmanbloodmoney.com/

Stuart Highway

2007-07-30T23:08:00.000+10:00

Was looking through the photos taken during my central Australia holiday trip and I came across this photograph of me under a road sign that points to Alice Springs and Singapore. Thought it is quite interesting isn't it?

Pointing to the road home...

Movies watched recently

2007-07-29T12:15:00.000+10:00

Have been pretty free recently, and so watched a number of movies.

Letters from Iwo Jima - This is a movie about the war fought on the island of Iwo Jima during WWII depicted from the point of view of the Japanese. It's a very good movie I must say, and Ken Watanabe acted very well in the show. Although there were a couple of bloody scenes which you would usually expect from a war movie. But some of the grotesque ones like the Japanese commiting hara kiri with a grenade were not shown. The remains of their bodies were however shown in Flags of our Fathers.

Flags of our Fathers - This was the same war on Iwo Jima but told from the point of the Americans. However in this movie, the focus was not so much on the war as it was on the flag, that's why the title. It narrated much more on the famous scene where the Americans raise their flag on the soil of Iwo Jima, who these "heroes" were, and what happened to them. This was more of a political show. Maybe not as good as Letters, but deserve a review definitely.

Road to Guantanamo Bay - This movie is a docu-drama of an account of 4 British-Pakistanis who went to Afghanistan (apparently to travel and eat the enormous naan they have there) and became trapped in the country during the US bombing of Afghanistan. 3 of them were subsequently captured and treated as fighters of the Taliban forces, and sent to the US detention camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and tortured and interrogated as terror suspects. The last guy is still missing. It's a real eye-opener this movie, although some question whether it was real. But you feel very deeply for these people after watching it. I would say it's quite good.

Premonition - Sandra Bullock in this movie is the wife and she wakes up and learns that her husband is dead. The next day her husband is alive. The next day her husband is dead again. Then alive again. Sighz... In explanation, she wakes up (on alternate days) after her husband is dead, and before her husband is dead. so she learns how her husband dies, and also her husband is cheating on her. And in the ending, she wakes up on the day her husband is going to die, and rushes off to save him. Not really a good movie is an understatement.

Zodiac - This movie takes it's story from a real police case that dates back to the 1960s about a killer called Zodiac and how this young cartoonist working for the newspaper is obsessed with breaking this case and looking for the killer. The ending was rather draggy as the case dragged on for a number of decades. This show is worth the watch though as it is an interesting detective story and is taken from an actual bestseller written by the cartoonist himself.

Paris Je T'aime - A number of interesting stories strung together, some touching, some filled with love, some funny and some totally incomprehensible. I've always liked short stories type of movies so it appealed to me. Makes me want to visit Paris too!

Naked people running around campus

2007-07-26T16:16:00.000+10:00

Before I get to the exciting topic above, which might have drawn you to read this in the first place, I'll be talking about the recent flu bug that has hit me.

I think I caught the flu, and have a slight runny nose, chesty coughs, sore throat, muscle pains, slight fatigue and slight fever. Oh man, I hate getting sick, and it makes me very irritable. So, if I have appeared quite irritated or frustrated to anyone, I apologise now, it's the flu bug that is influencing me.

Structure of a flu virus

Well then, on to the story. Was walking back after classes today at 1pm and realised that there were many people at the centre of union court watching some live! entertainment. As I had to go to the atm machines at union court, I had to stop by and watch the entertainment. First, I saw a few people at a competition trying to guzzle down like a 1.5 litres bottle of milk. That was crazy man. And after that, they called for people to be naked. Initially I thought they were probably just topless and would still have their underpants on. No! There were these 2 guys who totally stripped naked and had to run around union court, not that it was embarassing enough in broad daylight with hundreds of people watching, but also it was winter and bloody cold.

So this one guy ran with his hand covering his you-know-what and ran but came back like within a short while and put on his pants. The other, the brave soul, gave it all. He did not attempt to shield anything and ran really fast and took some time before coming back. I think there was some prize to be won for the guy who could last the longest. What a sight man, it was hilarious. As I left the place, I saw a couple of policemen approaching the ground. Didn't know what happened after.

For a schedule of bush week, checkout: http://sa.anu.edu.au/?newsID=172

For pictures of naked men, do your own research. cheers

Recent happenings

2007-07-25T00:31:00.000+10:00

Recently, much has happened. First, school has already begun for more than a week now and I'm taking 1 level 4000 stats course, 2 lvl 3000 stats courses and 1 lvl 2000 accounting course. The last one as an elective. Initially took 3 lvl 3000 courses but then too much workload. I already have 2 assignments from my actuarial control cycle 2 (hons) course! Geez...

Something else happened in college last week. There was the sudden death of an ex-ressie, whom many said to be a resident from last year with the nick-name "Death". So do not give such nick-names like "Disabled" or "Death" etc. to yourself or anyone else. Anyway, the point is that the planned car scav-hunt was cancelled and the bus bar-crawl which I had signed up for has been postponed to much dismay. There is a nice glow-in-the-dark t-shirt to go with it as well!

Also, I've got a new neighbour by the name of Eunice, who is currently occupying Yunjin's old room. Eunice is a nice Singaporean girl and studying some science subjects. She offered me some coke zero today, so I have to say that she's a nice person. lol. No lah, she's really a nice and cute character on the floor. Just beside Eunice is Tracy, also a new resident who just moved in to replace Jeremy. Tracy is from Taipei, Taiwan, and so 3T's? She speaks good english though, wonder where she learnt that from. Haven't talked to her much yet as she doesn't talk much and haven't seen much of her around.

Tried to cook some porridge a few days ago, and it didn't turn out as nice as I expected. However, some of the people who tried it kinda liked it, so at least it made me a tad joyful. Shall improve on it the next round.

Been looking through the NUS website a couple of days ago about the modules I have to study when I go back, as well as the lecturers. Will be taking Microecons 3, macroecons 3, 1 honours thesis and most probably behaviourial economics. Good thing is, I can avoid the lecturer Basant whom Chermaine once mentioned that tutorial participation in his class takes a large proportion of the assessment marks. Then there is this lecturer teaching Micro 3 who hails from the cold cold region of Siberia. What a remarkable thing, a lecturer from cold Siberia teaching in hot Singapore. Have to see what his class is like. Then there is this visiting professor who once taught in ANU for 2.5 years. Well, have to look him up and have a small chat with him. I also realised that there are many many Korean lecturers in the econs department! Is it just a coincidence or is there some economic incentive to teach in NUS? I counted at least 7 or maybe more. Hmm maybe I could based my honours thesis on that. Well, gotta start thinking about my thesis title already.

Damn, that idiot OSV8 or whatever that department is have not replied my email. I'm trying to enquire about staying in this hostel in NUS. Apparently I heard that most of the hostels are quite full now, so I'm not sure whether I can get a room in the 2nd semester. Maybe my "I don't have an house" plea might ensure that I can get a room. For some information about this hostel, checkout: http://www.nus.edu.sg/osa/housing/acc/rvr.html. There are some pictures there as well.

Christmas in July!

2007-07-17T18:10:00.000+10:00

Today is the celebration of Christmas in July in Ursula Hall. Yeahssssss!!!! Another occasion to have some better food and to take some pictures and make merry! Hope it'll be tons of fun!

Me, Daryl and Jared decorated my door with Christmas decorations

The end product!

Hope to win the best door decoration contest!

There and back again, A human's tale, by Doni

2007-07-15T17:00:00.000+10:00

Today's Sunday the 15th of July, the last day of the winter holidays. Today is also Yunjin's birthday, my ex-neighbour. Happy Birthday Yunjin! Hope you have fun wherever you are.

Been back from Central Australia on the 6th, and it was an awesome journey. Anyone should do it. If not for the spectacular view of Ayers Rock (Uluru), then for the vast Australian outback. I certainly know how big Australia is now. However, take note that this is during winter, so weather in that region is pretty pretty cold, especially at night, and rather hot during the day, as it is for a desert. I seriously wonder how the aboriginese live there in the past.

Well other than surviving the dryness and harsh cold/hot weather, and of course some pesky flies, there was also the steepness of Uluru which will send some faint-hearted turning right back. It was a really steep climb to the top, and we were amazed during the climb to see some parents bringing their young kids with them on the climb. At some point, the slopes could be like 70 degrees steep. And getting up is just the beginning, you have to get down via the same route too. Think about it. Another challenge on the trip which was generally dry, was the sudden strong rains and winds at Peterborough, one of the few pit-stops we made on the way back. Throughout the whole night, rain was splattering our tents, howling winds were attempting to rip the tents from the pegs, and the cold weather was adding to the misery of the situation. We, well mostly Zhong, the poor guy had to hold on to the only pole which was supporting the whole tent so that the wind did not topple our only shelter throughout the night. Kudos to him!

Well so much for misery, there were definitely great moments throughout the trip, hilarious moments which included a guy named Joseph, and new friendships forged. There were photo opportunities galore, that resulted in more than 4 gigs of photos in my laptop which I had to drastically reduce. Anyway, here are some of the better photos of the trip...

What a good dinner

2007-06-18T20:25:00.000+10:00

Dinner was lousy at college today, so me, Jay Shen and Barney decided to eat out at Izumi. That proved to be a very good choice as we had a fantastic dinner. We ordered one kimchi chi gae (kimchi soup), one yu gae chang (spicy beef soup) and one dumpling soup with rice. It was a really good meal, and I think the last good meal I had was maybe on Hannah's birthday lunch at Jimmy's in Dickson, which was some time ago. So really enjoyed the meal, and reminded me of the time when we went for food spree in Sydney. Had an ice-cream from Kim's Grocery after that to round up this hearty meal. Though it was really freezing cold outside, and it seemed like an absurd idea to have ice-cream, but that was one ice-cream that wouldn't melt and it tasted really cold.

Received an email from Diana yesterday and learnt that she was going to University of Sydney in July to study Masters in peace and conflict or something like that. That's good. Might take the opportunity to visit her in Sydney before next semester begins. Haven't seen her in a while. Can bring her to eat good food in Sydney.

Been watching some random stuff lately. Most random of all must be "Drawn Together", the reality tv for cartoon characters. They put a number of cartoon characters in one house a la Big Brother style, toss in some dumb, stereotype, sex, suicidal, racial, lame jokes and make it into a comedy cartoon. "Watching it will decrease your intelligence level" warned Jay Shen.

Also watched Victoria Secret's Fashion Show, or "The Greatest Show on Earth" as claimed by Seo Yeon. Well, the highlight of the show (for 2006) must be the dance by Justin Timberlake performed to "Lovestoned" and "My Love". Awesome man! Also watch it for Adriana Lima, Alessandra Ambrosio and Gisele Bundchen. Totally HOT

One more exam to go! yeah

Exams coming

2007-06-04T15:32:00.000+10:00

It's 3 more days to exams, so no time for blogging. Nothing of much interest anyway. Here's a couple of photos from the Hot air balloon fiesta some time ago. Cheers.

Me and the Mike Wazowski (from Monsters Inc.) balloon

Steven's Stories

2007-06-01T17:24:00.000+10:00

This is a post which I wanted to put up at the end of my semester and before the exams, but didn't get to finish it. Now here it is.

Well, exams are coming up pretty soon, so haven't had the time to blog. Today marks the end of teaching period and the entering of the crucial examination phase of the semester. What better way to sum up the whole semester than with stories told by my lecturer for Risk Theory STAT 3035, Dr Steven E. Stern.

To see how he looks like, checkout: http://ecocomm.anu.edu.au/people/info.asp?Surname=Stern&Firstname=Steven

The "Clearly" Story

This is a story about Norbert Wiener, the famous mathematician. During one of his lectures in MIT, he was writing down equations on the board and then he said "CLEARLY, xxxx = yyyy...". He then paused and stared at what he had just written for a while, and the subsequently exited the lecture hall. All the students were stunned and dumbfounded. "Why did the professor leave the room?" "Is he coming back?" So they waited, for a while, for some time, for a long time, but the professor did not reappear. The students were confused at this time, whether to leave or to stay. At this moment, Norbert Wiener came back into the lecture hall, and continued "Yes. Clearly, xxxx = yyyy."

For information and more interesting stories about him, checkout:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norbert_Wiener

The "Light is brighter" Story

One day, this policeman was patrolling this shanty part of town. He was walking along this dark alley, and along the two sides of the road were gutters filled with thrash, a whole lot of thrash. As he continued walking, he saw ahead was a man under a bright street lamp. This man was dressed in tuxedo, wearing a tall hat, and surprisingly, rummaging through the rubbish in the gutter. This policeman was rather intrigued by the scene and decided to ask the man what he was doing. "Hi sir, may I ask what you are up to?" "Oh I'm searching for my watch which I've lost," replied the man. So as a kind policeman, he decided to help the man search for his watch. After searching for half an hour through the piles of stinking rubbish filling the gutters, they still have not found the watch. So the policeman decided to ask the man "Are you sure you lost your watch here?" Which the man replied "No, I lost it over there [points to another pile of rubbish in a dark area], but the light is brighter here."

This story was used by Steven to describe our use of approximations to find an answer to various variables throughout the course.

The Pot Story

As a clarification, the pot here refers to pot as in pots and pans, not pot as in the other meaning, you know... Yeah, so before I start with the story, I must let you know that this story is not funny. It is as it is, just a story.
So there's this big financial company which is embarking on this project and needs to employ a talent in this field for the job. They sent out ads for the job, and received thousands of applicants for the job. So the selection panel decided to set up a test for them to complete, which helped them to eliminate the number to about a hundred. Which they then proceed to conduct a few rounds of interview which managed to land the final two applicants for the job. One is an actuary and one is a mathematician. So the selection panel was at a lost of how to choose between the two of them. Then this statistician who was among them, who hasn't spoke throughout the whole time, came up with an idea. The others who never quite took note of the statistician the whole time, decided to listen to him, since they had no other plans. So the actuary was called in the next day, and the mathematician the day after.
The next day, the blurry-eyed actuary came in early in the morning, and met the tester. "So what do you want me to do for the test?" The tester asked him to proceed to the adjacent room. In the room was a pot of water in the centre of the room, a window on one side of the room, and a boiler in one corner of the room, which was connected to a power socket on the wall. The tester said "The test is to show that you can boil some water." The actuary was rather confused by the request, but then since he has came so far, he might as well proceed with it. He took the pot of water from the centre of the room and placed it on the boiler, flick on the switch, wait for a couple of minutes, and showed the tester the boiling water. The tester put a tick on the sheet of paper. The next day, the mathematician came in, and proceeded to do exactly the same test. He too showed the tester he could boil the water in the pot with the boiler. So back to the selection panel who couldn't understand the test. The statistician came up with another idea for a test. So the actuary was called in the morning of the next day, and the mathematician in the afternoon.
The actuary came in the next day and asked the tester for his test. He was told to proceed to the next room. The room was the same as the other day, except the pot this time was on the window sill. So the tester told him to show that he could boil some water, again. He proceeded to fetch the pot of water from the window sill to the boiler and then heat up the water to boil. So the tester gave a tick on the sheet of paper. Then later on, the mathematician arrived. He went into the next room, and it was as the actuary has seen, the pot of water on the window sill. The tester told him to boil some water as the test. So gleefully, he took the pot of water from the window sill, and put it in the centre of the room.
The End.

FYI: The mathematician got the job.

That's all folks for this time. I'll be away in Central Australia for the next 12 days. So hope it'll be fun. will come back with loads of pictures. Adios

A Rainy Day

2007-05-18T16:33:00.003+10:00

A view from my window, of this dark and wet day

Today is a rainy day. It hasn't rained a lot in Canberra for some time now, but today it did. This is good for the water shortage that has affected this area of the world.

Another piece of good news (or bad news): My Investments lecturer fell sick and lecture was cancelled this morning. Had an additional hour of sleep to make up for rising early this morning. Yeah, I hope she doesn't give us a make-up lecture. Bet she must have overslept due to the rainy weather, and provided that excuse. Sneaky, but a good one at least.

Haven't had a lot happening, just some small random stuff. It's "random act of kindness" week, so the rules of the games are: we are assigned one person to be kind to, and what you do is up to you. Well at least what I did was to give my RAOK some chocolates and biscuit and sweet. Well I received plenty of stuff myself from my RAOK, will show you guys the picture sometime, after I gather all the stuff I received.

Read news about the Inter's win against Roma in the 2nd leg of Coppa Italia, but it wasn't sufficient for them to turn round the 1st leg deficit. Pretty upset about that, but well, we have held the trophy for 2 years consecutive now, time to give others a chance. Hopefully Man Utd will win the FA Cup this weekend, against Chelsea.

Well, rain has stopped now but still seems pretty wet outside. Media player is playing "I don't know you anymore" by Savage Garden. A slow nice song to go with the general mood of the day. Would be better if I was sitting by the fireplace with a mug of tea/coffee to go with it, but it ain't happening. Gotta be contented.

We are the Champions!!!

2007-05-07T09:40:00.000+10:00

Manchester United are the newly crowned CHAMPIONS of England!!!

The 9th Premier League title by Alex Ferguson, and first title since the Londoners stole our title after 2003. A whole season of consistency has paid off with sweet success. Congratulations to the whole team! Ole Ole Ole Ole.....

An Interview of Sir Alex Ferguson after winning the title can be found at http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x1wsp1_sir-alex-interview-title-wining

[And thank you Wenger and team for a job well done]

Sweet Victory!!! What a comeback! On sight for the title

2007-04-29T00:30:00.000+10:00

I know this has nothing to do with the theme of my blog which is a travel journal and I'm deviating, but this is important! If you read the title of this post and still not sure what I'm talking about, let me tell you, wake up!

Down 2-0 against Everton, Man Utd came back to score 4 goals and win the match! O Shea, Rooney and Eagles, and thanks to old boy - Phil. This is one of the sweetest comeback created by Man Utd, and all the more sweeter with Chelsea's draw with Bolton. Go sing the Blues idiots!
Now 5 points adrift of Chelsea and 3 matches more to the end of the season. I'm keeping my fingers crossed!

This is the first live football match I've watched this year and I'm glad that I got the chance to watch it entirely. Really worth the time to watch it even though I got some scares in the first half. Was screaming the whole time man. Phew sweet victory at last!

Alright then back to some updates about my life. Been really busy recently due to some assignment deadlines. Had 2 assignment deadlines and 1 mid-sem exam on fri 27th april. Really hectic. 1 more presentation this coming friday and 1 assignment the following friday. So haven't really got time to blog.

Have been playing a lot of ping-pong aka table tennis and pool lately too. The after lunch and after dinner games help me to "exercise" and digest better. Otherwise it's hard to start work after meals. Also had a wine + chips + beer + tim tam + biscuit appreciation session with some friends on friday night after submitting all those assignments. Well just another reason to drink and unwind after surviving the week I suppose.

Hopefully I can post some recent photos of the Hot Air Balloon Fiesta on my blog soon. They had some really nice balloons this year, like the one with Mike Wazowski from Monsters Inc. Well then, ta!

Bateman's Bay: 18/02/07

2007-04-19T19:32:00.000+10:00

Today's post is about the trip to the beach at Bateman's Bay, about the nearest beach from Canberra. I know this happened some time (about 2 months) ago during Oweek, but good photos are worth displaying anytime right?

On a good sunday morning, we packed everything into the bus and everybody was really excited about the trip, raring to go. Hmm why was the bus not moving? Oh, we are still waiting for one sleepyhead by the name of Chern who woke up late. Sigh, as usual... It took a tiring 2 hours of bus journey before we arrived at the destination. Oooh the weather was just perfect for a day at the beach.

Upon arrival at Bateman's Bay

Time to put on the sunscreen

And then to relax by the beach

Zhong and his crazy antics again. Seaweed man this time?

Poor Hannah was the 2nd victim to be "thrown" into the sea, well, we didn't really throw her in, just pretended so as to scare her. Guess who was the 1st victim? Lim-peh

Along came an unknown sexy girl

I tried sending this big parcel out to sea in the hope that someone on another coast can receive it...

But it came back at the next wave

Idea for the next Survivor: Contestants will choose who to bury next

Hannah discovered something unusual lying on her seat

Yunjin wins the bragging competition

The male and female lead for the next James Bond movie

Remember the scene from Finding Nemo?

And Finally my favourite shot of the day....

Day at Melbourne Uni

2007-04-18T21:47:00.000+10:00

Visited Mebourne University on one of the days during my stay in Melbourne. They had a really huge campus. Didn't really take many photos of it though. Below are just a handful of shots.

Somewhere near Melbourne University was this really huge Australia flag with many smaller ones below. Feel my love for this free land

University of Melbourne

Met this couple from Kaohsiong, Taiwan, who came here for a holiday with a friend (from Brunei) from their university days, who took this photo. Both of them are university lecturers in an university in Taiwan

The campus buildings are so ancient

A nice cottage-looking building is the University House

Sights of Melbourne

2007-04-09T11:47:00.000+10:00

Bringing up some old photos (well 3 months old) from my Melbourne trip. It's a nice city and worth a visit. It's listed as one of the world's most livable cities according to Wikipedia. Checkout:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World's_Most_Livable_Cities

A boat cruising along Yarra River which runs through Melbourne city. In the background is the Rod Laver Arena

No it's not a castle, it's the RMIT University. Can we do something about the architecture of universities back home?

A good foliage covers the paths running to the Royal Exhibition Building in Carlton Gardens

The Royal Exhibition Building

Filming of an MTV along Chinatown one morning

There are big screen tvs everywhere screening live tennis matches to satisfy the avid tennis fans

A little girl dances to the melody of Pied piper

A two storey Nike house. It is so huge it has different departments selling gears for different sports, of course casual wear as well

Melbourne Central, the largest shopping centre within Melbourne city

A piece of artwork doubled as a bench

Cute doggie

Queen Victoria Market

Saw this sculpture along the road, I wonder what it represents?

Telstra Dome, a multi purpose stadium, as well as the venue for the State of Origin

Apartments along the water front. You can park your yachts on the front lawn

Food Part II: Melbourne

2007-04-08T11:46:00.000+10:00

This is a continuation of Food Part I, describing the food that I've tried in Melbourne. Anyway if you are intending to visit Melbourne, I'm sure you can find much better food that maybe what I have to recommend. There are just so many places to eat in Melbourne. As a non-local I wouldn't know the right places to go. So if you know better and think the places I have pointed out sucks, please keep the comments to yourself. Thanks.

In the Greek Precinct, along Lonsdale Street, I came across this Greek pastry shop that had so many pastries that it would probably take a man a year to finish them, without them being spoilt and moldy in the first place.

This Greek pastry which looked very nice but was actually too sweet

This chocolate puff tasted just right!

The below two photos are taken at this small cafe near where I stay, at Flinder's Lane.

Their chicken schnitzel panini was really marvelous!!! Good with a cup of cappuccino too

I found this small Dutch pancake restaurant along Exhibition Street, it was a tad expensive but it was good.

Look at the beautiful lines made with chocolate on the latte

And my salmon pancake

Random stuff

2007-04-08T11:22:00.000+10:00

Today's post consists of a few random photos put together. The Law of Randomness??

Two mummies escaped from the Louvre

But the fiercest of them entered my room. The Chinese mummy or whatever you like to call him

Posters found around the campus when LKY came to Canberra to receive an honorary doctorate awarded by ANU

Mr Poser doesn't forget to pose even during a game of ping pong

This man is a walking stereo set, complete with head-shaking-dance-moves.

Skyfire: Canberra 10/03/07

2007-03-28T20:11:00.000+10:00

On saturday the 10th of March, the annual fireworks display by lake Burley Griffin was held. This is the event we call Skyfire. It is a beautiful display of fireworks for an entire 20mins. Well, it can be considered a rather big event in Canberra, considering that nothing much interesting happens around here. So every event that can be entertaining will be a big event. It was certainly attended by many people. The estimated figure was about 30,000 people, around 10% of the population of Canberra.

Beautiful evening sky

Me and Yun Jin, my neighbour

Stunning fireworks

Awesome ain't it?

Food Part I: Melbourne

2007-03-21T22:43:00.000+11:00

Food is the one of the basic necessities of life. Today's post will be about the food that I've tasted in Melbourne city. Be prepared to pay around A$10 for a decent meal. Food can get expensive anywhere around, so remember to at least check out the menu before you order. Also check out if it's a vegetarian restaurant before you enter. I entered this restaurant with a friend, and we took a seat and checked out the menu. I was wondering why every item on the menu is a mixture of some vegetables until I realised it was a vege restaurant. It was a straight line for the exit after that.

Having a meal at the post Deng cafe at chinatown

The post Deng cafe was one of the first restaurants that I visited after arriving in Melbourne. There are many reasons that make this a restaurant that shouldn't be visted. Initially I was attracted by them having this novelty idea of a communist theme restaurant, and also having two chinese girls dressed in red qi-paos at the entrance enticing customers to enter. Then they had a set meal which seemed like quite reasonable. But the experience didn't turn out that good after all. Well, it didn't affect me much except that the food didn't turn out as delicious, as sufficient and worth the money as it seemed. The main problem in the restaurant was they had a shortage of workers and food couldn't be served quickly, plates couldn't be cleared quickly etc. I saw this couple who waited quite a long while before their orders were taken, and another some time before food was served. While some plates were left on another table for at least half an hour after the customers were long gone. As customers kept streaming in, even one of the girls at the entrance had to act as a waitress. Then there was some problem with another customer demanding her food to be vegetarian when they served her some food which wasn't. The manager talked to her and after some time, I saw the manager lost his cool and just slammed the pot of food onto another table. Then there was some problems with the cashier, someone got a wrong bill. Anyway there was just lots of problem.

Brunetti in Lygon street is good

A latte and some pastries from Brunetti. Just looking at them is delicious enough

Il Doce Freddo is a highly recommended gelato shop along Lygon street

A wide selection of ice-creams

I chose the lychee flavoured gelato and it was YUMMY!

This shark fin house is supposedly the best yum cha spot in Melbourne city. There was a long queue outside the restaurant at half an hour before it opens. It was really good and it costed me A$30. I had to make the most of my time, so I dilly-dallied and spent 1.5hours in there

Daniela Hantuchova: Melbourne 18/01/07

2007-03-19T18:15:00.000+11:00

Due to my friend, Weili's request for pictures of Daniela Hantuchova, I have decided to put a few of her pictures up. She was playing at the Australian Open against another player by the name of E. Loit. Sorry but I don't really know who she is. Anyway, on the morning of the match, it was raining, so I had to hide in some sheltered area. There were a number of Australian guys behind me, and apparently they were there for this match due to one of the guys' request, even though Wayne Arthurs of Australia was playing over at the next court. That guy just wanted to catch a glimpse of Daniela. That's how attractive she is. So, here are the pictures. Enjoy.

Daniela vs E. Loit. (I don't know her first name)

Daniela in a cute yellow skirt

I don't know why I have 4 photos of her doing the same pose

Ain't she leggy?

Commencement Dinner: Canberra 08/03/07

2007-03-18T19:25:00.000+11:00

On the 8th of March, was our hall's (Ursula Hall) commencement dinner night. It is a semi-formal dinner where the head of hall, the President of the URC committee and other important people will give a speech about the beginning of the year and the direction which our hall is heading. Well....it can be summed up also in another way. It is the first of many occasions where we can dress up nicely, take some (or many many) photos, enjoy good food and drink free wine, followed by a night-out at the local pub. Well there are too many photos to post, so I'll just post a selected few here.

This is John, my floor's SR (Senior Resident)

Me and Leonard, who is from Kuching

Me with the lovely and affable Hannah, who will be performing on the cello

Entertaining everyone with their music are Hannah on the cello, Tim on the piano, and Samantha on the flute

Me and Hanyi, who is doing the same joint degree programme as I am. With the irritating Zhong behind, who tries to spoil most of my pictures

Borat wanted to be part of this picture, with me and Weimin.

Shauna, from Sydney, and I

And finally my favourite picture of the day, no explanation required. The expressions are just classic. From left: Dale, Me, Barney and Eugene.

It's all about the supporters

2007-03-13T09:21:00.000+11:00

In any competition, it's very much about the supporters, the spectators, the fans, the crowd whatever you would like to call it. Without them, competitions would just be lifeless events. Think of Italian football after the Sicilian tragedy this year. Many teams were, and some still are, forced to play their football behind closed doors due to security problems. It was such a quiet weekend for Italian football and community. It's all about the supporters.

Fans queuing up to enter the Vodafone Arena in Melbourne Park

Supporters of Ana Ivanovic, from Serbia

Fans waiting for Andy Roddick's autograph

Not that many people turn up for Nikolay Davydenko's autograph though...

Thousands of supporters turn up to catch a glimpse of Maria Sharapova. Notice most of the fans have their gaze and cameras towards Maria, who is on the left, and not too many towards Anastassia Rodionova.

Cute fans are my favourite

Fans who are more interested in getting free Garnier products than watching tennis

Fans getting an autograph from Tommy Robredo. I got one too!

The Berdych Army - Fanatical supporters of Tomas Berdych. They chanted and cheered throughout the entire match, topless.

Thousands turning up for this exciting encounter between Tommy Robredo and Roger Federer

A. Rodd: Melbourne 18/01/07

2007-03-06T09:33:00.000+11:00

Due to a special request from my good friend Adeline (How are you Adeline? If you are reading this, email me some time ya?), I will post some pictures of Andy Roddick here. Though I'm not a big fan of him, most people will know I'm a Roger fan, I took quite a number of photos of Andy for the sake of a couple of friends like Adeline and Fen who are big Andy fans. Hope you like them. Roger rules.

On this practice show court, there was a huge crowd of people. As usual, a crowd meant good stuff, so I went over to check it out, camera-in-hand. Without disappointment, another one of the superstars in the tennis world, Andy Roddick.

Brief summary about Andy: He was born in 1982 and became world number 1 in 2003 with the capture of the US Open title. Thereafter, his fortunes dipped and his rankings dropped, while simultaneously, Roger Federer's star kept rising and became world number 1. In the last 14 matches that they played against each other, Andy has won 1 and Roger 13, most recently at this year's Australian Open where he lost 6-4, 6-0, 6-2 to Roger. Andy's current coach is tennis legend Jimmy Connors. For Andy Roddick's official website, checkout: www.andyroddick.com

The many faces of A. Rodd

Andy Roddick at a practice session

Receiving serve

Crowds throng to watch him train, and get autographs afterwards

Lots of hope as his form seemed to improve tremendously after a change of coach to Jimmy Connors

Andy doing a serve. Clockwise from top left picture: In position, toss, coil, serve. The man with the fastest serve in the tournament.

That's Andy Roddick for you fans...

The morning after

2007-03-04T00:04:00.000+11:00

Notice of the closure of campus

Unmelted ice in Union Court

Footprints in the deep ice

Among the fields of snow

The next day was a happy day for all as lessons were cancelled throughout the whole campus. We later learnt that the storm caused damages to many buildings, and hence the cancellation of classes. We got a 3 day holiday from wednesday till friday! Suddenly we were comtemplating options for the next few days. Should we take a trip to Sydney? Or should we slack the days away? The latter option was chosen. Yeah, I like...

Checking out the aftermath

2007-03-03T22:42:00.000+11:00

At about midnight, when the hailstorm had already died down for some time, I decided to go inspect the extent of the hailstorm in the ANU campus. Gathering a few other guys, we headed out on an exciting excursion of ice-covered ANU.

Well, for a start, there was practically ice everywhere. No more worries for trying to get an ICE cold beer. Not only do they have free beer at the pub, now they have free ICE as well.

Flooded Sullivan's creek. Ice on the road. The group of us staring at the aftermath.

The ground is covered by ice

Pretty legs in the ice. Whoever who leaves it there the longest wins

The exploration party had to eat ice for supper

Tun Min's COOL present for Yeam

Man of the night, Zhong, stuck in the snow, and Barney throws away his slippers to rescue him

Zhong and his foreign employee searching for his lost Billabong slipper in the pile of ice

The exploration party having a light-hearted moment

Hailstorm in Canberra!

2007-03-03T22:05:00.000+11:00

On Tuesday night, the 27th of February, some selected parts of Canberra were hit by a hailstorm, and ANU was part of the "lucky" parts. Hail started raining down at around 10pm while I was watching some video in Jay Shen's room. I heard some sound outside which sounded like pebbles falling on a surface. Wasn't sure what it was until Zhong ran into the room and exclaimed "It's raining ice ah."

What followed was a real surprise as the 3 of us rushed down to the courtyard, and I forgot to wear any footwear, to look at this rare phenomenon. Ice was falling from the sky, the size of each varies from diameters of less than 1cm to 3-4cms. In the beginning, the frequency of the ice falling was not high, and we could go out, pick some ice and throw at one another, or put them down one's neck. Then it started to rain so heavily that it was pretty much impossible to head out there, except for a few crazy nuts. There is a guy who decided to run the breadth of the courtyard in the hail, and all for a slice of Tim Tam? Nuts...

The size of the ice

Another ice

Tom and Huiling with a whole bucket of ice. All of that ice eventually landed on Steve. No picture unfortunately

It's like finding Kryptonite!

It so happened that it was Random Tuesday Night and quite a number of people hit the pub as we were informed there was free beer there. FREE BEER? REALLY?! I felt really excited to go that night, but I was deterred, fortunately, by two things. First, I followed some of the guys to the sexuality talk as we wanted to know how we could get free sex. Didn't realise it wasn't about that. Got some free candies though. Secondly, I heard some rolling thunder at 9pm and decided it was better to stay back. So I was saved.

Some residents from Burgies who braved the hail and ran the way. The ice broke one of the straps on the girl's dress. But the most amazing thing was they saved the wine from utter destruction. Hurrah to them

Barney braving the hail. Steve in the background with the fire warden's helmet.

Ice is everywhere!

For verifying the truth of this article, checkout: http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,21299940-1702,00.html

and http://billboard.anu.edu.au/news.asp

Credit to Jayshen and Genevieve for providing all the photos for the hailstorm

Ale Richard!: Melbourne 17/01/07 Part V

2007-02-26T20:06:00.000+11:00

The French teenage sensation Richard Gasquet is one of the players whom I like very much. Though not as much as Roger Federer, I'm quite impressed with his tennis skills actually. First got to know about this young fella because he defeated Roger Federer who is world number 1. That is very impressive at that time, when Richard was not really famous yet. So he stunned me as well as the world by doing such a task. Another young player whom I have already introduced, Rafael Nadal, also managed to do that, many times over. But somehow Nadal's style of play doesn't seem to impress me that much. Anyway, here's the prodigy Richard Gasquet...

Richardssss

More Richardsss

sidetrack - Oweek and Chinese New Year

2007-02-20T20:30:00.000+11:00

A sidetrack from the Melbourne postings. Just some updates about Oweek in Ursula Hall, also affectionately known as Ursies. This year Oweek was from 11th to 18th of February. The theme for this year's Oweek is Saints and Sinners. So we got this nice t-shirt (actually we have to pay for it, no not free) that had the 7 sins printed behind. You can even write your name on the white space at the back. In front is a print of a devil and some words.

Oweek t-shirt; On the left is the front, and the right is the back of the t-shirt. Nice colour eh

Anyway 18th of February happens to be Chinese New Year too. A very Happy New Year to all readers! On the 17th, we went to Alex's new place at UniLodge. Chern brought yu sheng and we also had steamed dumplings over there. Played some Big 2 with Ting Yi, Jay Shen, Zhong and Eun Hae too. It was great fun just gathering around for some fun, even though there's nothing quite special. Hannah, Yun Jin and Sol Yun were captivated by the racing game on PS2 at Alex's place. On the 18th, which was the 1st day of the Lunar calendar, we went to Bateman's Bay, a beach. Photos will be up soon hopefully.

Other tennis stars: Melbourne 17/01/07 Part IV

2007-02-12T17:04:00.000+11:00

Filled with excitement after seeing Rafael Nadal, I went around checking out who's playing in the other courts. At showcourt 3, there was Thomas Johansson from Sweden playing David Ferrer from Spain. I was going for David Ferrer to win this encounter. David is a very big hitter, not a very good all-rounded player, but he still has enough tricks in his bag to show Thomas to the locker room. Thomas Johansson is pretty much past his prime I feel. Sure enough, David won, albeit in 5 sets.

Thomas Johansson

David Ferrer

The Swedish contingent of supporters for Thomas Johansson. The man in the red circle couldn't bear to watch any longer

After the Johansson-Ferrer match, it was about time for lunch. So I made my way to one of the many food stalls within Melbourne Park. I have to say that the organisers of the AO really knew how to bleed the fans, because I got a stupid ham sandwich which costs a whopping 7 bucks! A stupid hotdog costs about $5.90 too, a stupid bottle of coke costs $4.20 and sushi was also up there in the price rankings. So bled, so bled. Unless you exit the grounds, take a tram to the city and get your lunch and then travel back, the best you can do is to have your lunch there if you're hungry.

Walking around the other courts, I got to see many other tennis players.

Elena Dementieva, from Russia (with love)

Max Mirnyi, from Belarus

A junior doubles match featuring two Taiwanese girls

The guy circled is Michael Llodra, one half of the successful doubles team which won the Australian Open twice and the tennis masters cup. His partner, Fabrice Santoro, is not in this picture

The next match will be one played between French young talent Richard Gasquet, who has a history of defeating Roger Federer, and an American, Amer Delic.

Rafael Nadal: Melbourne 17/01/07 Part III

2007-02-07T18:55:00.000+11:00

Rafael Nadal

Yup, I saw Rafael practising on this open court, and many fans were crowding around, for photos as well as for his autograph. He's still pretty young though and he's already world number 2! For more information about Rafael Nadal, checkout: www.rafaelnadal.com his official website. Below are a few more photos of Rafael and his big bicep.

Big bicep boy

Nadal on the serve

Why is he frowning? Because he can't become world number 1

The hitting begins: Melbourne 17/01/07 Part II

2007-02-04T16:06:00.000+11:00

I entered showcourt 2 which was a rather large arena which could probably accommodate 2 thousand plus spectators. The arena was relatively empty as I entered, as it was still early. There were 2 players training on the court.

Using the court for training before the match begins

The crowd, waiting for the match to start

As I saw on the scoreboard, the first match of the day, beginning at 11am was a match between the once great player, Juan Carlos Ferrero, and a relatively unknown player by the name of Danai Udomchoke. Juan is Spanish, and Danai is Thai. Wow an Asian player! I hope he doesn't choke (u don't choke - udomchoke). Just a joke. Anyway he's got many supporters in the crowd, mainly Thai, and there were in fact 2 behind me. This is looking pretty good for Asian tennis I suppose, especially with the recent rise of female Chinese players.

Here comes Mr Ferrero, nicknamed the Mosquito

Udomchoke and Ferrero face-off!

Here is Juan Carlos

Doing a smash

On the serve

A rare shot of Juan Carlos's opponent, Danai from Thailand

Ferrero on the receiving end

Danai on the serve. Well he's certainly not choking

The result turned out to be quite an upset for Ferrero as Udomchoke won in 4 sets 7-6, 7-5, 4-6, 6-1. Well bye bye Ferrero, and Hello Udomchoke! Could he replace Paradorn Srichapan as Thailand's number 1?

Yeah the result turned out to be quite surprising, but this is good for Asian tennis I suppose. Some of the spectators who turned out to watch Ferrero win were quite disappointed and left halfway during the match. I even heard someone commented, "I can't watch this anymore, this is spastic!" Well, the match was quite good, and it's nothing close to spastic.

Danai had many supporters in the crowd, and the Thai supporters were shouting for him, something like "Nai susu" which I reckon they want some milk? Because Nai in Mandarin is milk and susu in Bahasa Melayu means milk as well! So Danai.....got milk?

After the match, I walked out to one of the courts where many people were gathered. Ooh, my first glimpse of a top ten player on the court doing some training. Guess who?

To The Games!: Melbourne 17/01/07 Part I

2007-02-04T11:48:00.000+11:00

The beginning of a new day! I headed for the Australian Open today, getting a groundpass for $29 at the Ticketek booth at the Visitor's Centre at Federation Square. The groundpass allows a person to enter Melbourne Park and view tennis at all courts except the Rod Laver Arena. Which means I can get to enter the Vodafone Arena, which is the only other court which has a closable roof but subject to available seating, and other smaller courts like the Margaret Court Arena, Show Court 2 and 3, and the rest of the smaller courts. To get tickets for the Australian Open online, checkout: http://premier.ticketek.com.au/

Had breakfast at this cafe which sells many cakes. A bit pricey though

Queuing up to get into Melbourne Park. Don't these people have to work?

Getting ready for reporting

Rod Laver Arena in the distance

IBM updated scoreboard

Sneak Peak of the Australian Open: Melbourne 16/01/07 Part III

2007-01-31T21:07:00.000+11:00

After exploring the city, it's time to take a sneak peak at Melbourne Park for what I came for, the Australian Open. Melbourne Park is the venue of the annual competition held during summer. This year, the Australian Open was held from 15th till 28th of January. For the official website of the Australian Open, checkout: http://www.australianopen.com/en_AU/index.html.

For some of you reading this who have no idea what competition I'm referring to, the Australian Open is a tennis competition and it's one of the four most prestigious competitions (Grand Slam titles) in the world of tennis. The other 3 are the Wimbledon Open, French Open and US Open.

Without any intention of entering Melbourne Park as it was almost evening time, and people were already on their way out of there, I decided to take a stroll down Batman Avenue to check out the surroundings of Melbourne Park. Batman Avenue (what a cool name!) is the road leading to Melbourne Park from the CBD area.

Signs leading to the Australian Open

Peering over the fence from an overhead bridge. There were many others doing the same thing, there was even a tv station crew placing his camera on the bridge. So if you are thinking along the line of "cheapskate", don't even think about it

Entrance to Melbourne Park. The board on the right shows the matches that would be played on the main courts for the day

After that, I proceeded to Federation Square to watch some live tennis on the big screen with other folks. This concludes my first day in Melbourne.

Catching tennis on the big screen under the stars

Wonderful Architectures: Melbourne 16/01/07 Part II

2007-01-31T16:48:00.000+11:00

Walking around the city, one can see amazing architectures, of old and new. It's a really beautiful city!

The old St Paul's Anglican Cathedral

The Old Forum Cinema with gargoyles on its facade, probably intended to spook horror film-goers

Another old building that makes you go "wow!"

If you like to view architecture, then this is the right place. Everywhere you go, there is something interesting to see. And hence I shall dedicate this post to architectural lovers like me. I am no professional architect though, just like to admire nice buildings that people have come up with. Aren't they amazing?

Princess Theatre along Spring Street

Trees that are taller than buildings, aren't they amazing?

Fascinating wall art that is 5 storeys high!

Alright then, that's about enough for architecture. For more pictures of amazing buildings, checkout: http://www.greatbuildings.com/

Arriving Destination: Melbourne 16/01/07 Part I

2007-01-25T17:14:00.000+11:00

Ahh... Finally I have arrived at Melbourne. Upon alighting the plane, I was greeted with a gust of warm air. Correction, hot air. It was the peak of summer season, and boy was it freakingly hot. For weather forecast of Australia, checkout: http://www.bom.gov.au/

Getting from Tullamarine Airport to Melbourne City isn't difficult at all. Hop on to the Skybus city shuttle which costs $15 one way, and $24 for return. Checkout:http://www.skybus.com.au/. But the bus gets pretty crowded very soon, so be sure to get on quick to set down your luggage and grab a good window seat.

Entrance to Greenhouse Backpackers

My first stop was to check in to my accommodation, the Greenhouse Backpackers accommodation. It's a pretty cool backpackers tucked into little Flinders Lane, and it's safe, because it's neighbour is the police station. It has also won several awards for tourism etc. For those who are interested to know what awards it has won, checkout: http://www.friendlygroup.com.au/greenhouse_home.asp

After settling in, it was then time to explore the neighbourhood. If you need information about the city and maps of the city, checkout:http://www.melbourne.vic.gov.au/info.cfm?top=23&pg=966

The backpackers accommodation was just a stone's throw away from the victorian Flinders Street Station, as well as the visitor's centre located on Federation Square.

Historical Flinders Street Station

An Australian Open information booth set up on Federation Square

A Garnier Girl gladfully allowing me to take a photo of her. I got a free Garnier visor as well

Watching tennis on the big screen at Federation Square

Land Ahoy: Sydney 15/01/07

2007-01-25T13:34:00.000+11:00

Sydney was a transition stop on my trip to Melbourne, Australia. For some of you who aren't familiar with either of these names, Australia is the largest island in the world, and located in the southern hemisphere. Checkout: http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/WF1.WORLD.JPG

And to zoom in, Melbourne is the state capital of Victoria, which is a state in the south-eastern part of Australia. Sydney is the state capital of New South Wales. Checkout: http://www.sweetmarias.com/map.australia.jpg

For some brief information about Australia, checkout: http://go.hrw.com/atlas/norm_htm/austrla.htm

Continuing on, I was really lucky to get an upgrade to business class for my flight which was fully booked. Lots of drinks (water, juice, alcohol beverages) were offered and I got to dine restaurant style, which means I eat from a plate instead of the usual economy class meal trays. There were after lunch desserts as well, which includes fruits, cheeses and Ben & Jerry's ice-cream. The seat was pretty spacious too. Service staff were really attentive too, making it a real joy to fly. This must be a good beginning to my adventure!

An upgrade to Raffles class

The accommodation which I was putting up for the night wasn't that business class-like though. I was staying at the trusty Wake Up backpackers in central Sydney which I had stayed before, so there was not much of a surprise. It was clean and fine alright, but I didn't mind the lack of space in the 10 person dorm as I was only there for a night. Checkout: http://www.wakeup.com.au/

Wake Up backpackers accommodation

Inside the room

There was no problem with waking up the next day. I headed to Chinatown for some breakfast. While there, you should try 2 restaurants, one selling Taiwanese food and the other for yum cha. I've tried both, and they are good. But remember to make reservations for yum cha. Checkout:http://www.eastocean.com.au/

East Ocean which sells good yum cha, and Mother Chu's which sells yummy Taiwanese food.

After having breakfast, I returned to the backpackers to collect my luggage for checkout. It must have been an awkward time to return. As I entered the room, there was this girl (maybe Korean or Chinese, I'm not sure) who was in the midst of changing, and was thus caught with her pants down. Well not totally, still had her panties on though. No photos for this story though. Then I left for the airport to make my way to Melbourne.