Brilliant Idea

It seems Adidas are going to team up with Lucas Arts to come up with some truly brilliant stuff.

For example:









Taken from igeektrooper.com

<3

42.195km bitch!

As of now, I am in pain. A whole lot of pain. I am also in a new found relationship. I love/hate relationship. With marathons.

I'm pretty sure I do not want to do another marathon. But the feeling that you get when you run it, well, you have to do it to experience it. The feeling of accomplishment when you complete it. The feeling of camaraderie you have with all the other suffering runners. The "runners high" you get for pushing yourself to the limit. I can see why people would run it again and again.

Shout outs to:
-Girl in pink top and white cap who some how always appears in front of me despite me overtaking her countless times.
-Guy in Santa hat, you made my day.
-Guy with hairy upper arms. I kid you not. I thought they were tattoos until I got close enough to see it was all long curly hair.
-Girl who decided to keep pace with me for the last 500 meters after I encouraged her to "Come On!"

All the other nameless strangers who were there running, walking, cursing beside me for the whole 42.195km.

Also thankful for the conspicuous amounts of powergel that I consumed that allowed me to push all the way to 30km before I hit a wall and had to run/walk/jog/curse the rest of the way.

It better be only half-marathons from now on. Someone stop me if I try to sign up for another marathon.

Running

It has sort of crept up on me unnoticed. 6th Dec 2009. D-day. Call it whatever you want, but that is the day I will fulfill my 2008 resolution. Yes, it's one year late, but better late then never, yah?

In 2008, I made the resolution to run a marathon. I wanted to do it before I got too old and sort of fell apart. Unfortunately, work dealt me a cruel blow, sending me into exile in Melbourne just before I was due to run the Run.

This year, I'm back and I've set a date for my showdown with the beast. All 42.195 km of it. And I realized I'm woefully unprepared. The furthest I've run is around 16 km. I don't really feel too bad doing it and to be honest it's a little no-kick these days, albeit really really mind-blowingly boring. I plan to do a 20+++ km run next week and then it should be time for the moment of truth.

If you don't see me after 6th of Dec, you will know I have fought the good fight. I will not go quietly into the cold dark night. I will go down fighting. Or I will emerge victorious, and never have to stare down a 42.195km beast ever again.

Optical Illusion

You all know how this works, but when you see it for that split second, it's seriously freaky.




Taken from here

Nice quote

"present perceptions of past people are not at all the same as past people's perceptions of their present"

Broke

I can forsee myself being dead broke in the months to come as I plan for 2 getaways.

One to Europe and another one to New Zealand.

Thankfully the Europe one is where I get sent there on course by my company and hence the tickets will be covered. Taking an additional one week to hopefully tour Amsterdam, Brussels and *fingers crossed* get to catch a match at Anfield. But the traveling within Europe is still going to cost moolah.

New Zealand will be to attend Unicon 15 in Wellington. This one, the tickets will be coming out of my own pockets leading me to come to the conclusion that I will be pretty much broke come Feb 2010.

Ah well at least it should be a blast.

South Park - Pun Hell

South Park came up with another pun that will send their writers to pun hell.

Firstly, they defined Fag, not as a gay person, but rather an obnoxious person who drives loud motorcycles around, much to the annoyance of everyone else.

Next they said that someone who was just intrigued by loud motorcycles, but had not bought one yet, and instead just checks them out in stores as... wait for it... bike-curious.

In case you haven't got the memo

My Primary School Teacher

I have no idea why I'm writing this post, but was just reminiscing about some stuff and my thoughts happened to turn towards my English teacher in Primary school. Her name is Miss Lean. She was pretty much an old spinster that was left on the shelf and probably decided to take it out on children like us.

I still remember her pinching this girl so hard on the cheek that the poor girl started to bleed from the nose. Imagine that, twisting the cheek skin so hard that something tore in the nose and blood started spurting out. But that was old school and teachers were welcomed to hit and beat submission into the students. I can't imagine what would have happened today.

I still remember her expounding her Christian beliefs. About how evolution is a load of tosh. The most distinct one being "Are you telling me that the monkeys in the zoo are going to turn into humans one of these days?!". A sad lack of understanding in evolution.

But still she was my English teacher and without her, I wouldn't have been able to write this about her. She gave me a percious gift, the gift of literacy. But she shall still haunt my nightmares forever.

Irritating Habit

Find myself replying to emails via phone when my laptop is just in front of me. Gah.

Star Jumps aren't easy

Mounting

Sneak Peek At Kota Kinabalu Pics.

More to come soon.

The universality of performances

I'm watching this TV show right now. It's a Taiwanese magic show.

Which brings back memories when I went to watch this magic show when I was in Melbourne. The show was pretty good, the performer putting on quite a show. However, there was something about that performance that was pretty interesting.

He did one whole section in Mandarin. He's Australian, so he has to put in quite a bit of effort. Me, being able to understand Mandarin, could tell what he was asking for. However, the majority of the audience weren't able to. And yet every time he did something, he was able to get an appropriate response from the audience.

Which I thought was really interesting as, a lot of it wasn't about what he was saying, it was about his body language. He could be speaking Gibberish and he would still be able to get a response out his audience.

Moon

Managed to catch Moon yesterday. I think it's going to be taken off soon and I'm really glad I managed to catch this movie. It wasn't really mind blowing, but in a sense, it gets you thinking about morality and ethics.

The basic premise is that Sam is on the Moon. He is working for this corporation that is harvesting stuff from the Moon to provide for clean energy on Earth. He has been here for close to 3 years, with 3 years being the length of his contract on the Moon. After that, he'll get to go home. He struggles through each day, and due to a communications failure, he can only receive recorded messages from his wife, messages that seem to be the only thing that keeps him going on.

On a routine maintainence mission, he hallucinates and sees someone standing beside a harvester. Being distracted by that, he crashes into the harvester.

The next scene shows him in the infirmary, in pretty good condition. How did he get there? Why does he not have any injuries? These questions are answered when Sam gets out of the space station to investigate the harvester. Beside the harvester, he finds a crashed space vehicle.

If you want to enjoy the movie, don't continue reading, just go watch it. If not spoilers ahead.

*SPOILERS*

In the vehicle, he finds a person. That person is Sam. He carries the body back to the space station and struggles with an identity crisis. He's a clone. What he knows are all memories implanted in him. How does he react? What should he do? Why is the company that hired him doing all these? Can he still go back home? What will happen when the other Sam wakes up? Is the other Sam a clone as well?

*SPOILERS*

Suffice to say, I won't be talking too much about the plot but it's really good.

But this movie does raise some interesting thoughts, especially regarding the ethics of cloning. Will there be one day in the future where corporations do this? Built clones and send them out to do work. Are the rights and feelings of clones of no consideration? Sam considers himself a human, but the robot that is working with him says that they're all just programmed. It's a strange moral tale.

Another interesting thing brought up is how much the clones differed from one another. They were all bases on the same person and at the point of creation had the same memories, but at the end of 3 years, they had wildly different hairstyles and mannerisms. It begs the question, if there was a clone of Hitler, but he was brought up in different circumstances, would that clone do what Hitler did?

The acting of Sam was top-notch, bringing out the desolation, isolation and eeriness of being stuck in a space station all by himself. The despair and anguish that he finds himself in when he realizes he is a clone. The overwhelming sadness he feels when he realizes that all the videos he saw were just recordings and that his wife is dead and his daughter is all grown up.

All in all, Moon is a gripping sci-fi tale, well paced and thoroughly terrifying.

Excited

I'm going Kota Kinabalu!

After another hair brained idea by JH, we entered this contest by Jetstar. In this challenge, we would be tasked to go to Kota Kinabalu and complete 5 things. We will be traveling there via Jetstar light where there will be no check-in luggage and only hand carry luggage is allowed. Using the money saved on what would otherwise be spent on paying for the check-in luggage, we will instead use this money to do 5 things in Kota Kinabalu. We will then have to blog about our experience and the winning entry will get a 500 dollar voucher.

We've checked out some of the previous entries and it seems that everyone just goes to eat. We've decided to be something different. Oh yes, we're going to do the opposite of eating! We're going to exercise! And on one wheel! So many exclamation marks!!!11one11eleven!!

So our plan is to actually try to squeeze a unicycle (20") into a bag that can be carried on. As mention by JH this is probably going to be as fun as the whole trip itself. The next challenge will then be to bring said carry on luggage on board, while simultaneously trying to convince all security we are not trying to clobber anybody with it. Happy days.

This should be lark and hopefully everything will turn out well. In the mean time, I've got a unicycle to disassemble.

HTC Hero - The sequel

As I alluded to in my previous post, I was eyeing the HTC hero. On discovering the exclusive price that www.singtelshop.com was giving (298SGD), I was ecstatic. However, I wanted to wait 1 day for me to think about it, so it wouldn't be an impulse buy.

When I checked again in the evening, it was sold out. Infuriating. What one cannot have, one wants more. And I was pretty determined to get one as soon as it was available.

A cursory check into various forums, indicated that there would be a restock within the next few days though no one had any idea if the price would remain as such.

Surprise, surprise. On an obsessive, compulsive check today, it was back in stock! I have since placed an order for a white version of the HTC hero that will be delivered on 1st Oct night.

I am beside myself with excitement.

Taken from here

HTC Hero

Surprise surprise. The HTC Hero with a 2 year plan with Singtel cost just 298SGD. Think I might get mine tomorrow...

Anvil

The tribute to 50 years olds in a 30 year old band.


Metal On Metal - Anvil

This is a documentary about Anvil. Who are Anvil? Anvil is the band that toured Japan with some the biggest bands, Bon Jovi, Scorpions etc. Anvil, with the front man Steve "Lips" Kudlow and drummer Robb Reiner, were one of THE bands at that point of time. While the rest went on to sell millions of records, Anvil fell to the side of the road.

This film chronicles what happens after that.

It starts by showing Lips and Robb back in their home town, now working 9-5 jobs. But they still dream, cause they made a promise to be rock stars. They still play and a manager offers to organize a tour of Europe for them, they jump at the chance. But it's tough and the manager is amateurish. Despite having the heart, she doesn't really make things work and the tour culminates in a hall in Romania that holds 10 thousand and yet only 174 people turn up.

Their disappoint is palpable and it tugs at the heartstrings. You look at them and you see 50 year olds and yet you cannot help but admire their passion. It's been 30 years and they're still fighting on and they continue to dream and to reach for that dream.

They get a break when the managed to get a producer to record their latest album. It cost a lot but with supportive people around them, they manage to raise the money and get the album out. But in a world filled with commercial pop, it was always going to be difficult to find someone to distribute their CDs. And their world comes crashing down when that is exactly what happens.

But their passion shine through, they did it for their fans and decided to sell it direct to them. And a miraculous thing happens. Some one from Japan asks them to go to Japan to play. They are happy yet scared. What if there is no one there again?

And in a really poignant scene they come out to thousands of screaming fans, reminiscent of their heyday when they toured Japan with some of the worlds biggest bands. They have lived their dream.

Wishlist update

As previously mentioned I've got a couple of things that I've been eyeing.

A trip to Hong Kong allowed me to purchase one of them, the Tokina 11-16 ATX. And it was really much cheaper then what I would have to pay for in Singapore. Had to search almost the whole of Hong Kong island for it as Mong Kok shops just did not carry it at all. But very happy with my purchase if a but burnt in the wallet.

Also, Sony has finally played nice and come up with a new iteration of their gaming console, the PS3 Slim. This means that prices for the PS3 will drop and more surprisingly and interestingly, the PS3 Slim isn't as expensive as the PS3 when it first came out. Need to think about this one, but I might want to get this when I have to go overseas again.

Additionally, the HTC hero was finally released in Singapore on September 4th. Suggested retail price is about 800+++ with suggestions that signing a 2 year plan will drop this price to around 600++. Again another toy to lust after as my phone contract is about up.

My wallet weeps gently.

Up up and away

Up started positively enough. A short film titled Partly Cloudy brought about giggles as memories of how we used to think babies come from was brilliantly put into animation. Funny yet poignant about how friends stick with each other. It was also interesting to look at how someone has to do the stuff that no one wants.

And then it was onto the movie proper. This was a story that talked of how a child, because of his idol, has big dreams. It talks about how he finds the love of his life that shares the same dreams that he has. But life is rarely smooth sailing. You live life and sometimes you get comfortable with it, so much so that you forget the dreams when you were young. And the next thing you know, it's almost too late. And Carl (the old man) only sees that when his wife (Ellie) is on her last breath.

But if there's a will then there's a way. Adventure has a way of finding people who need to escape. Stuck alone and with the prospect of being sent to a nursing home staring him in the face, he remembers his dreams and follow it. And tying balloons to his house, he goes up in search of adventure.

Along the way he picks up a virtual menagerie of characters ranging from a young and overly enthusiastic Wilderness Explorer (think scout cub), a talking (!) dog and a weird bird. He learns about friendship and ultimately needing to let go and move of to better things. No sense grieving for what has left when there are new opportunities ahead.

Up is a feel good movie that has enough of a story to keep adults entertained and some parables inside to get some people thinking, while at the same time having enough jokes and visual gags to keep the young uns giggling away.

Tram rides

Was taking a tram home last night and despite it being close to 9pm, tram conductors decided to pop up.

To give a bit of background, in Melbourne city itself, trams are the preferred mode of transport. You have to buy a ticket to ride on the tram. These tickets can be purchased either on the tram, where they are instantly validated or you can purchase them before hand and validate them when you're on the tram.

It's not perfect, and there are numerous cases of people cheating the system. There have been numerous ad campaigns urging people to validate their tickets. But still, the common method is to ride the tram with a ticket but not validate it. If they see a tram conductor, they will then have to try to validate the ticket before they get caught.

So anyway, there was this girl sitting across me in the tram. No kidding that she looked something like this:

which may or may not have been the reason I sat opposite her.

So when the tram conductor popped up, much to her horror, she desperately tried to validate her ticket before he could get to her, Unfortunately, she was sitting next to the door and was stopped by the tram conductor before she could do just that.

The poor girl was then quizzed and asked for her address so that the fine could be sent to her. But since she was from Hong Kong, hence not having a local identity card and address, the conductor was adamant about confirming her address, least she was giving a fake address. She was asked to call a friend so that that person could confirm her address. However, the friend on the phone gave the conductor his own address as he doesn't know where the girl stays.

The conductor was fuming now and inistent that the girl was trying to cheat her way out of a ticket and that it was now TWO offences. 1 for travelling without a valid ticket and the other one for lying about her address. At this point of time the girl was close to tears and trying to desperately explain her situation. Added to that, she was missing her stop. Another conductor had to come along to try to calm the situation down and ask that they get off and settle it off the train.

And that was the last of what I know of that.

Moral of the story? Nothing, though the girl was awfully cute.

Update wishlist

New toys that I want to get my hands on if I had money.

HTC Hero



Newest Android phone to be coming out soon.




Playstation 3

Being marooned in another country with nothing to do makes me want this so much.





Tokina 11-16mm

I want to take pretty pics.

FML

The lady that sits opposite me is now singing in a terribly off key voice. My music from my ear phones is unable to drown out that terrible canaphony. FML.

Absentmindedness part quatre

This is getting ridiculous.

She's now lost her notebook and is looking for it.

Absentmindedness part trios

And today she has managed to lose her ring.

Just wow.

Absentmindedness part deux

Update: The lady has just claimed to have lost her phone again and is now searching for it all over the office.

However I hear it ringing in her bag.

Oh my.

Absentmindedness

This lady in my office managed to lose her handbag and handphone (twice!) in one week.

And all those times she left it in the toilet.

Makes me wonder what the female toilet smells like.

Weird sleep habits.

I got back from Gold Coast at about 12 last night. The flight was approximately 2 hours, of which I spent the majority of it sleeping.

I think sleeping while sitting up for that period of time really messed with me cause I was having this really weird sleeping pattern that nigh.

I would sleep peacefully, wake up all of a sudden, sit up and try to fall asleep doing that. Some part of me, that wasn't sleeping would shout at me "What are you doing?!"

I would realize how stupid it was to try to fall asleep sitting up on a bed and promptly lie down and fall properly asleep again.

ONLY TO REPEAT IT AGAIN.

Flying is really messing with me.

Overheard today

"THE TRAM CAN TALK!"

Small boy

After the tram driver used the intercom.

Socks

I need a new pair, the current one I'm wearing is so small it keeps slipping off such that I'm left with half a foot covered.

Irritating.

Awesome

2 guys stuck in a browser

So cool

Velociraptor Trophy

Superpowers

Darkness.

Icy coldness.

No! I don't want to get out of bed!

Can't I sleep another 5 more minutes?

Stupid clock is not working again. Why's it showing 8.45 when I set my alarm at 7.45 and it hasn't made those god awful noises that literally wake the dead?

8.45

OH FUCK! I need to be at work at 9!

I sit down at my desk.

It's 9.10

I've got superpowers.

RIP the 96. YNWA.

Learn more at Hillsborough Disaster

Oh what fools we mortals be

I've been recently hooked on my DS playing this new game called Suikoden Tierkreis.

It's a pretty fun game, with simple gameplay to bring in the younger crowd. I kind of like Suikoden games cause they tend to have pretty good storylines + the OCD in my can't help but want to collect all 108 heros every time.

So there I was playing. As you can see from the box art, it's for ages 12+, meaning it isn't particularly difficult most of the time. Also, the experience system means you can level your characters pretty fast if they're underleveled. I wasn't having any problems with the game till then, happily progressing the story and gathering charaters. Saving was an unwelcome disruption and a severe jerk from the gaming experience.

Which meant all in all, I hadn't saved in  over 3 hours of game play.

And then I met it.

It, in this case was some gloriously overpowered monster. It knocked out half my party with one blow. I tried to run.

FAIL.

The next blow came and I was dead.

The dreaded words floated on my screen.

GAME OVER.

I wanted to just curl into a ball and cry right there and then.

How cruel the RPG gods can be.

Footballers can do magic

Know how they sometimes say that footballers can do magic with their feet?

This one can just do magic, plain and simple. One minute there, the next minute, disappearing into thin air!

I'm going to UniNats2009!

For those that still don't know, I'm currently in exile in Melbourne, Australia.

And since I'm here, why not take part in a unicycle convention (first ever for me).

I hereby present: UniNats2009.



Signed up for the event, and booked my accommodation. Baring any mishaps, I should be there come Easter weekend.

Woo hoo.

Brain explodes.

Bah humbug.

This will go down as a legendary day.

You know how Friday the 13th is supposed to be unlucky? Never really was for me. Till 13th February 2009. Black Friday for me.

Things didn't start out too well. I was supposed to shift apartments that day, which the operators of the apartments assured me would be relatively painless. All I needed to do was to pack my stuff and leave it in a corner. Well I had more then a few things so I emailed one of the employees telling her that I had left some food in the fridge that I need moving as well.

I waited for confirmation for the whole day but to no avail. About knocking off time, I was starting to get a wee bit worried as there was still no news on either the shifting being completed or what the new key code for the next apartment was. So I sent an email to their general email and almost immediately I got a response telling me that my luggage was too big for them to move. They then asked me to go to the apartment to move it myself.

Being the nice guy that I was, I decided to go over to shift it myself. This despite the new apartment being a 8 min walk away. I reached the apartment block and couldn't find anybody. I ended up calling the apartment people and they told me they would call over and ask what was happening. Just then, a guy how was standing there came up to me and asked if I was the one about to shift apartments. Giving him an affirmative, he told me that the lift had brokedown and the cleaners were actually stuck in the lift. Luckily they had left the luggage up on the second floor. So I had to drag my luggage down from the second floor.

To my chagrin, the actually threw away all the food in the fridge. Sigh.

So I went to meet a bunch of friends to drown my sorrows in alcohol. Idiots ordered way too much (which is kind of the point most of the time I guess) and I ended up drunk and trying to get home. I don't often get that drunk and have to travel back so it was pretty much an alien affair. Getting on the tram and being too drunk to stand, I stumbled onto a seat. Unfortunately it was facing backwards. Things didn't start to well when after a particular violent stop by the tram, I pretty much puked all over myself, much to the disgust of the person sitting next to me. Mumbling a simple sorry, I reached down to grab a Macdonalds paper bag that was lying there, in preparation for the next puke.

It didn't come.

Reaching my stop, I managed to get off and immediately started puking again. Into a paper bag. That is made of paper and gets really flimsy when soaked with water. Which promptly exploded in a shower of alcohol, meat patty, lettuce, tomatoes and god knows what else.

Somehow, in between all that, I managed to get back home, dump all my clothes the washing machine, puke some more, take a bath, brush my teeth and fall into a drunken sleep.

When I woke up, I realized I had managed to lose my denture somewhere along the way. I have no idea where. And thus I am severely unpresentable right now, a sullen husk unwilling to talk least my gap is exposed.

Black Friday indeed.

For those that are wondering

why I haven't been posting much;

Awesome celebration

IT WAS A HOAX!

In case you were living under a rock and had no idea about one of the viral videos of 2008, then I present "Where the Hell is Matt?"



But sadly, it was all a hoax as explained by Matt Harding himself.



Awww.....

Good to see him have a sense of humour.