A Football Prodigy

I bumped into this piece of news about this new football prodigy, currently plying his shimmying and dazzling dribbling of the ball in France. His name is Madin Mohammed and really amazing bagful of tricks and skills this boy has. The skills he has is way beyond me, even if I spent every day of my working hours of 8am - 5pm 7 days a week, 365 days a year for the rest of my life. Simply incredible, that the media has begun to dub him as the next Zidane. Judging by the skills he shows in the video above, I can't deny that. He gave me thrill doing those mazy dribbles of his the same way I felt when I watched Zidane did a bagful of the same tricks in the Champions League final match between Real Madrid and Juventus in 1997.

Awesome!

My Virtual Kopitiam

I recently discovered something fun on the internet. It was actually advertised as one of the advertisements on my Adsense, and being the games buff I have always been, couldn't resist clicking the link and found out what it is all about.

It is a sort of management game, which from the look, feel and theme of it, I gather is created by a Malaysian. Malaysia Boleh! and bravo for that. It never ceases to amaze me the things the people in this country are capable of conjuring up, and this game is something quite to marvel about. I mean for a game that you can play online for FREE, I was somehow expecting a game with lousy interface and very poor playability. Well, it IS a management game so there's not much you can ask in terms of playability than the game already offers. I am no games expert but the game's options and variety of play can be rather addictive once you got the hang of how it is played, which also isn't that hard to learn.

The game is called iKopitiam, and the idea is to start and run a kopitiam (which is really a Malaysian-styled cafe or coffee-house. Like Starbucks or Coffee Bean, with an old all-Malaysian, village flavour to it) in a kampung area initially, with the option of expanding the size of it and eventually moving the whole kopitiam to an industrial area for the ultimate business expansion. You have the option of choosing the drinks to sell at your kopitiam, and the types of hawkers to sell food. And money is not the only issue in managing your resources; you also have to consider the space of your kopitiam and a range of other indexes to consider like popularity, cleanliness and the rate of services the kopitiam needs in order to staff it efficiently. I've only discovered the game late Friday night and have gone on to create my own virtual kopitiam called Kopiwan (how original is that?), and I have to say I have been rather hooked playing it since.

The most important aspect of the game it seems is popularity. And among other things, the popularity ratings of a kopitiam can be significantly boosted by VIP visits, which really are virtual visits by friends (or blog readers of mine) and family. You can help me to boost the popularity of my virtual kopitiam by clicking here, or simply click on the 'Visit My iKopitiam' link on the sidebar. You will only be asked to order a drink and a food / service from my kopitiam once you've clicked the link, and presto, my kopitiam's popularity will get a boost!

So come over to my kopitiam. I'm open to suggestions how I can make it better. I am already dreaming of a kopitiam empire in an industrial area!

Virtual kopitiam today. A business empire tomorrow... perhaps!

Finally… Launching of my Holiday Blog

It has been a long while since I posted anything meaningful in here. Well, it has actually been just over a month, but if my resolution for this year is anything to go by, the rate of update has been rather poor. But it feels like my excuses are more valid this time, because when I say that I’ve been busy with work this time, I REALLY have been busy with work. Work in my previous place now feels like child’s play in comparison, and I really have been slogging just to survive and meet what is required of me. But it has been a very fulfilling learning experience at the same time, and not to mention humbling. The hard learning experience has somehow made me more receptive to learning and my surroundings and I am happy to say I feel a much improved person altogether.

The last couple of weeks have been rather eventful, and from the look of things to come, so will the next couple of weeks be. In fact just about 3 weeks ago, my family and I went on a vacation in Cherating Kuantan, a vacation which I had planned for as long as last December. We had originally plan to go for the vacation in February, but given work commitments we had to reschedule for a month later. It was a memorable affair by any account, and I have dedicated a specific blog just to capture the experiences that we encountered during that 5 days vacation.

It was actually part of my own personal project really, i.e. to create a new blog specific for the purpose of this vacation. I wanted to capture every tiniest moment that we had, and to capture the experience of the whole vacation in the mode of a road trip. My personal project was probably inspired by some road trip movies I’ve watched like RV and Eurotrip (although the latter is not exactly a good example to model for a family vacation!), and I endeavored to make sure my eyes were open to the tiniest detail. It actually had the effect of making the whole vacation a most memorable one as I was driven to plan our activities more carefully than usual, and was also more receptive to the things we were doing and the environment we were in. It sort of gave me a fresh pair of eyes to view probably the same world that I had been to before, only now I was looking at the pleasures that I could actually extract from our environment if I looked carefully enough.

If there is anything that I’ve learnt from this little project of mine, I would like to be more prepared with my camera the next time. For instance, it only occurred to me that I should have taken more pictures of the scenic views that we encountered along the way of vacation after the event, and even some landmarks of our journey that would probably give the whole trip a dramatic feel. Insya-Allah there will be more such similar vacations in the future, and hopefully yours truly will be better prepared then.

You can find the link to my holiday blog in the sidebar to this blog, or just click here for access.

Of Mice and Men

I've been reading John Steinbeck's classic Of Mice and Men these last two weeks. The book can be considered to be a light read, with only 113 pages thick. An avid reader with better discipline and focus would probably be able to finish reading it in one sitting. However, I on the other hand suffers from the habit of wanting to take in word for word any literature that I read, hence I read very slowly. Coupled with the fact that I have a short term attention span, which means that my interest would quickly wane after about 30 minutes of reading, has contributed to the reason why it has taken me close to 2 weeks to finish reading the book.

I have had Of Mice and Men ever since I was in secondary school. In fact, I won the book as a prize for getting the best grade in the English subject in my school at the time (I have to admit standards were not high at the school at the time...). Although the book can be considered student-friendly in terms of its light content and size, I have to say the American colloquial language that the author uses in the book hardly makes it suitable for an English student who reads it with the intention to improve his command of the language. Not to mention some extent of vulgar language used in it. But apparently the book is required reading material in high schools in the USA, Britain, Australia, New Zealand and Canada, perhaps in part to bring awareness to the societal errors in which Steinbeck aims to bring into light in his book.

The Story

The book tells a story of two migrant workers in California, USA during the Great Depression in the 1930s – George Milton: small in stature, intelligent, and cynical, but caring; and Lennie Small: physically strong, but dim-witted. They come to work in a ranch in Soledad, California with the dream to make big money, with the hope that one day they get to fulfil their shared dream of settling down on their own piece of land.

However, Lennie's dim-wits threatens this dream of theirs, and George keeps having to bail Lennie out of trouble, even at the expense of his own potential and happiness. In the Malay language, the best phrase to describe someone like Lennie would probably be 'bangkai bernyawa', or the living corpse. As I read the book, especially when coming towards the end, I couldn't help feeling how troublesome he is not just to his friend George, but even to himself that he would probably be better off dead. It speaks a lot of George's own patience and loyalty to Lennie and in the book it explains a little bit how and why George came to have this sense of duty to his friend.

Would this odd-couple survive the odds and come out tops with their dreams? I have to admit I did not quite expect the story to end the way it does. But if you have not read it and you want to know what happened at the end, you can always find a copy of it and read it yourself. It only has 113 pages anyway.

Interesting Fact

One of the things that baffles me a little bit about the book is the title. Apart from a reference made to a mouse at the beginning of the story when Lennie was caught hiding a dead mouse in his pocket so he could pet it, the rest of the story had nothing that you could associate with rodents. So I looked up the internet on the background of the book a little bit. Apparently, the author Mr Steinbeck took the title from Robert Burn's poem, To a Mouse which is often quoted as: "The best-laid plans of mice and men go oft awry." He had originally intended to title the book Something That Happened. Burns's poem tells of the regret the narrator feels for having destroyed the home of a mouse while plowing his field; it suggests that no plan is fool-proof and no one can be completely prepared for the future, which pretty much describes the outcome of the story.

A good read.

Blogging Made Easy

Anyone who has been to my blog over the last couple of weeks would have noticed the significant changes that have been taking place here. For those who have not been here since forever (well, not surprisingly given the pathetic rate of updates here previously) would have felt like someone who only came back to Malaysia after having been abroad for over 30 years. I've made substantial feature updates here recently, that even I am myself impressed with how my blog looks like now.

There is a reason for the sudden flurry of changes here of late. I noted in this blog a couple of weeks ago about my mother in law starting out a new blog, to supplement her writing hobby / part time career. So, knowing that I already have a blog myself, she requested me to create one for her. Up to that point, I've never quite cared to find out how to upgrade the look of my blog, or even the features available out there that I could incorporate in it. Imagine my surprise when I ventured on creating a blog for my mother in law and finding out that the blogging world has taken a quantum leap ever since the days I started blogging.

Blogging has become significantly easier to do now compared to as recent as 3 years ago. I remember how I was struggling to even put up pictures in my posting, let alone to cosmetize its looks. There were not as many websites that offer applications (not to mention excellent and free too!) as there are now. In the 3 days break I had over the Hajj and Christmas holday, I explored and discovered applications to create a new blog, and my did I find myself into a totally new discovery. It did take most of the hours of my 3 days break then, but just like riding a bicycle, once you've learnt it, you won't be needing the tricycle anymore and be cycling without having to hold the handlebars anymore! It is easy to go overboard with adding new features given the stuffs that are available out there, and at certain points I just had to pull the reins and know where to stop. Otherwise it'll be like a street with too many light streamers that you could barely notice the traffic lights! Moderation is still virtue...

So after the end of the 3 days, and with further cosmetising over the last couple of weeks, my mother in law and I managed to create this blog for her. For good measure, she has gone on to create an english version of that same blog for english her english readers.

So what do I do next after having made all these discoveries to do with blogging? Upgrade my own blog of course! My blog has been in a sad state of neglect for a long time, that you could almost sense virtual cobwebs streaming all over it. And I've made a pledge to have more regular updates here this year also, so with hope and luck this blog will not be so dormant. The question is, will there be readers and visitors here after all these years? There might just be me and family members coming by. That's a good start. Until I can be certain of more regular updates, it feels like a false dawn to an era of new beginnings here.

I feel good about the changes I've made here. The blog feels brand new and grand to me. I hope you like it too...

Movie Outing: Spiderman 3

It has been a long while since I went to watch a movie at the cinemas. Ever since Insyirah was born, trips to the cinemas can be counted with fingers in one hand. Well to be precise, before Tuesday's trip to watch the latest of the Spiderman movies, the only other time I had gone to the movies post-Insyirah was to watch the Da Vinci Code. Even then I didn't go with wifey who chose to stay home and babysit our daughter. The Spiderman outing was kinda spontaneous on my wife's part, being our first movie date in close to 2 years, so it felt kinda special.

The movie was great. The thing that I like the most about Spiderman is how human they try to portray the hero. In other words, Peter Parker lives like most of us: life as a college student, struggling to make enough to pay for rent and food, relationship related problems, etc. He lives a life that most of us could pause, reflect and relate those moments to our own. And it touches a lot on the themes of friendship and relationship. So working on such potentially emotional themes, it was always going to be more than just a superhero action flick.

I would probably rate the 3rd Spiderman movie as the best of the three. To begin with, there were more villains in this instalment that our webslinging hero had to get himself busy with, and then the plots were considerably richer and more complicated compared to the 2 earlier instalments. Not surprising given that the screenwriters had originally written the movie so long with so complicated plots, they were considering to break the story into Spiderman 3 and 4 at one point. That plan didn't materialise however when the writers couldn't come up with a satisfying intermediate climax, so they scrapped the idea. You can check more fun trivias about the movie from IMDB.com if you wish.

Strongly recommended.

If

I love this poem by Rudyard Kipling. It is a good poem to lift the spirits when you're down in the dumps and self doubts begin to creep in. Something classy to recite when you want to reassure someone who needs upliftings words. A good reminder for one not to lose his/her head in the hardest adversity, or even when in the grandest of triumphs. It is a poem that tells the differences between a boy and a man.

Enjoy.

If...
by Rudyard Kipling

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;

If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with wornout tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: 'Hold on!'

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings - nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;

If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run -
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man my son!

Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith

Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith



No, no... this is not a movie review. I think I could leave that part to a lot of other websites on the internet dedicated to the movie. I am not that good at doing reviews anyway, and I might just end up spoiling the story for you given my lack of story telling skills. But just to be on the safe side, there might just be accidental spoilers ahead. So those who have yet to watch the movie, you've been warned.

My general feeling about the movie: it was great, and much better than the first 2 instalments. As I have yet to watch the last 3 episodes of the Star Wars series, I would stop short from saying that this 3rd instalment was the best of em all. Most of you Star Wars fans out there would have figured it out anyway that the 3 prequels were made to tell the story of the making of Darth Vader. So most of the people flocking to the cinema to watch Revenge of The Sith would be anticipating how Anakin finally succumbed to the darkside. Which probably explains why the first 2 intsalments were relative bores. It seems to me like George Lucas might have come up with the story for Revenge first and struggled to make up stories for the first 2 movies to come to the climax. The plot was more purposeful, and the storyline more solid. And the light sabre fighting scenes were awesome.

I could sense how much awaited the Revenge was when the movie started rolling, everyone in the cinema was applauding it. Hehe... to be quiet honest, I actually felt like applauding myself. Before the movie started, I could see some people talking to strangers sitting next to them discussing the movie. It felt like a Star Wars convention of sort, and it was going to be the last. Unless George Lucas comes with more sequels or prequels after this one. Personally, I was thinking it would be rather fun if prequels were made of the making of Yoda. Hehe... just a passing thought.

Possible spoilers ahead. All in all, the movie ended giving me a feel of melancholy. The thought of someone succumbing to the darkside through sacrifice and love for someone does make a great story line for a tragic love story. History have shown in the past how good people have turned bad through sacrifice for loved ones, confusion, and other bad elements taking advantage of other's helplesness. But it does make a great story line. And for that, I think George Lucas have done a great job in making this latest and probably last instalment of Star Wars a very watchable one.

Go and see it!

Of Competitions and Beauty Pageants

Of Winning Competitions and Beauty Pageants

I can't work. I can't even begin to focus myself to get down to serious work this morning. I feel more like surfing the net in the office (big offense ooo..), or just sit down and do nothing. And the fact that 60% of my colleagues are on leave today probably doesn't help either. And goodness no one has been looking for me yet this morning. It feels kinda tranquil at the moment, though I suspect it's just another calm before the storm. That typifies the job in accounts and finance where our task is pretty much cyclical. Middle of the month, especially the early months of the financial year is whe I'm relatively idle, and it's the perfect time for me to start tidying up my ever-untidy cubicle. When I feel like it...

I guess I know why I find it so hard to focus today. Been a bit side tracked since yesterday when I found out that I am one of the lucky winners of 2 tickets to watch the 3rd part of the Star Wars Trilogy: Revenge of The Sith at KLCC TGV cinema tonight. There was a competition to come up with captions for a picture of Obi Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker slugging it out with their light sabres. Since they were giving away 100 tickets, I just thought, what the heck... I'll just send an entry. They are giving out a 100 tickets, so there's always a good chance of winning anyway. Sent my entry like 2 minutes before the dateline, and wallaa... today I'm one of the lucky winners to the show tonight. Had I have to buy the ticket myself, I would have waited at least 2 weeks after the movie opens in Malaysia before I go and watch it. You know la what the queue is like when a movie of Star Wars' following opens in Malaysia...

Another interesting matter that came to my attention recently which has a slight relation to the subject of winning competitions is the subject of Malaysia's Miss Malaysia / Universe 2004, Ms Andrea Fonseka. I've never been a follower of beauty pageant show, and when they do show it on tv, I would usually catch the end of the show to see who's won it. Since Miss Malaysia in the past (with exception of a few, I think) has rarely managed to progress anywhere beyond the first round, I never got to know how our Miss Malaysia look like. So when I received pictures of her yesterday in my mailbox, I almost thought the picture was a spoof. My first response was, this can't be real. So I made some sleuthing work this morning and surfed the net a bit to find out more about her. My, my... could this really be the most beautiful woman in Malaysia last year?

Malaysia's Most Beautiful Woman in 2004?

Don't get me wrong. I am not saying that she's ugly. On any other stage, any male could easily warm up to her typical oriental good looks. However, her physique is not one you would imagine to be strutting on the Miss Universe stage. Some harsh comments have been made about her in the media, and you could also find some bloggers having a field day writing about her. Makes you feel pity for the lass. But come on la, would I ever enrol myself in Mr Malaysia, if I already know so well the only thing that protrudes about me is not even a muscle but some flabby fat hanging above my abdomen? You'd know the answer to that already...

That raises the question whether she knew what she was getting herself into. Or perhaps the more popular question, how did she ever become Miss Malaysia that year? Stories are rife about her connections with the organisers of the Miss Malaysia contest, and that the supposed most beautiful woman of the contest did not win. It's either that, or the standards of the women participating in the contest that year had plummetted to a historical low. The good thing about it though, is that it must have made anybody who is anybody feels like even they could become Miss Malaysia. But on a negative note, imagine the impression that the world audience gets from the globally televised Miss Universe, which is advertised as where The World's Most Beautiful People meet, and find that we're represented by Ms Fonseka. Again, I have nothing against her. I would say again that I think she is an attractive lady in her own right, but a Miss Universe material? Hmmm...

Exploding Toads

Exploding Toads

Get this. Taken from the UK daily The Independent Online on 8th May 2005.

Stone the crows! Exploding toad case solved
By Ruth Elkins in Berlin
08 May 2005
After weeks of flummoxing scientists, Germany's great exploding toads mystery has been solved. They were gruesomely murdered by crows with a taste for foie gras.
Health officials in Hamburg started to panic after some 1,000 toads puffed up and exploded last month, their entrails splattering an area of up to a square metre. The tabloid press went into overdrive, dubbing the carnage site in Hamburg's Altona district the "Pond of Death" and warning children and dogs to stay away. Theories ran wild that toads were committing suicide or were croaking because of a virus spread by South American race horses. But now one of Germany's top experts on amphibians says he's cracked the case. Frank Mutschmann, who examined both dead and living Hamburg specimens at his Berlin research centre, found all had identical circular incisions on their backs, small enough to be the work of a bird's beak. Then he found something strange: their livers were missing. "There were no bite or scratch marks, so we knew the toads weren't being attacked by a raccoon or rat, which would have also eaten the entire toad," he said. "It was clearly the work of crows, which are clever enough to know the toad's skin is toxic and realise the liver is the only part worth eating.
"Only once the liver is gone does the toad realise it's been attacked. It puffs itself up as a natural defence mechanism. But since it doesn't have a diaphragm or ribs, without the liver there is nothing to hold the rest of its organs in. The lungs stretch out of all proportion and rip; the rest of the organs simply expel themselves."
The toads' grisly deaths are, in fact, a well-documented phenomenon. First recorded in Germany in 1968, exploding toads have been reported in the country, as well as in Belgium, Denmark and America. Hamburg's toads started to explode during their week-long mating season. Dr Mutschmann believes the crows went in for the kill when the toads were too busy enjoying the heights of sexual excitement. "They would have noticed something as the crow pecked at them, but it wouldn't have been particularly painful," he said.
The riddle solved, the question now is whether to exact revenge on the crows. Toads, much-loved in Germany, are a protected species. But so are crows. "I've had several angry emails," said Dr Mutschmann. "But there's no reason to worry. It's just a part of nature."

How gruesome. Death in the midst of the ultimate excitement. Hehe...

I miss reading the UK papers.

For the original source, go here...

http://news.independent.co.uk/europe/story.jsp?story=636520

How To Make an Izwan

How To Make an Izwan

How to make a Izwan

Ingredients: 1 part friendliness 3 parts silliness 3 parts leadership

Method: Combine in a tall glass half filled with crushed ice. Add a little lustfulness if desired!

Username:

Personality cocktail
From Go-Quiz.com

Loser Test

Loser Test

I feel kind of a loser doing this test, but being in the office at 6.46pm waiting for my brother to finish work before I could go home, I just had nothing better to do. (Lots to do actually, but not gonna think about it now...)

So here's the result of my test. I'm kinda cool it seems. Really? It kinda make me kind of a loser as well, doesn't it? Hah... who cares.