dancing screws

Goodbyeeee......

2008-04-02T17:05:00.002+08:00

All good things have to come to an end. And this is no different.

I have decided to stop blogging altogether for various reasons. Amongst other things, someone gave me a very nice notebook and by no stroke of luck I came upon a community that encourages journaling the pen-and-paper way. Seeing how people turn their own journal into a piece of art makes me want to do the same thing with mine and I can't wait to write my-story into a book that records my past, for the good of my future. Also, I realised that drawing little stick figures doing magic sleights is kinda fun too. So, I'll be doing a lot of that too. Okay, fine. That someone is me. So, what? Ish...

Also, blogging becomes tedious and boring when you don't know how to really express yourself through tappings of little keys on the keyboard. I don't know how well I express myself here on this blog, but I hope it's well enough that you can actually understand all the drivel that I've been writing since 2004. Yeap, it's been THAT long ago and I'm very proud that you actually stuck around. I'm glad you did and I'm lubbing you for that. (You people know who you are :) )

With a little black book(or pink or whatever), I can make it look which ever way I want without having to learn ridiculous coding to implement them to make it look some-what close to what I want. I'm such a pretentious little runt. Heh.

Still, thanks for kicking around and from time to time, I may post scans of my little black book just for the heck of it. Who knows? I might blog with the scans of my little black book?

"Good luck, gentlemen."

why so serious?

2008-03-25T19:28:00.001+08:00

Everytime I watch this trailer and hear that laugh, I know I can't wait. Can you?

Rowan Atkinson, the genius

2008-03-24T10:26:00.000+08:00

"Ice Ice BABY"

2008-03-21T12:38:00.000+08:00

Holy Shoot!

2008-03-09T00:37:00.005+08:00

This post has been removed and deleted by me for the unjust, unfair and definitely immature comments that I have made to the organisers of the event, which is the Magic Annexe, regarding the Shoot Ogawa lecture as well as the SOAR Magic Show, held on the 9th of March 2008 at the PanGlobal Building, Petaling Jaya.

My sincerest apologies to everyone involved.

- King Chai -

How to not kill yourself(and others) while driving

2008-03-05T15:18:00.006+08:00

Welcome to the first installment of the possibly infinite number of installments of "How to not kill yourself(and others) while driving"-series. This series was inspired by the numerous times I nearly got my car shoved off the road by blithering idiots or cupcakes who change lanes or merge lanes without taking the necessary steps required to ensure the preservation of lives, be it the driver's or anyone else's, on the road.

For those of you who stay in Kluang, I'm pretty sure you're familiar with how difficult it is to change lanes on Jalan Batu Pahat, especially during peak hours, to get from the Mengkibol/Taman Intan side to my school, which is Sekolah Tinggi Kluang/Taman Lian Seng area or vice versa. Even if you're not familiar with that area, I'm sure those of you who stay in Kluang would've been through that place at least once in your life.

Usually, what would happen is that crazy drivers would change lanes without looking at their side view mirrors to see if there are any cars coming their way.

So, I can't think of any better examples than to use Jalan Batu Pahat as our first installment of "How to not kill yourself(and others) while driving)-series!

From the picture above, you can see that I've labeled all the roads accordingly and circled 3 areas where accidents are most likely to happen as well as outlined 2 routes which new drivers will usually face problems while navigating through them. This 'guide' is not for the experienced drivers because if you're experienced, you would already possess the common sense required to get through this area without trying to kill someone else.

Althought I made the mistake of not labelling the 4 lanes, we shall now label them as Lane A, Lane B, Lane C and Lane D from the left most lane to the one on the far right.

As you can see(if not, click on the picture to look at the bigger picture), the 2 routes that I have highlighted in red and green are for getting from STK/Taman Lian Seng to Mengkibol/Taman Intan and vice versa.

Let's look at the red route first, for example. 2 common areas where drivers are most likely to get biff-ed are labeled 1 and 2. In area no. 1, drivers always stop dead at the line while waiting for all the cars in Lane B to pass before coming off the bend and follow through Lane A. That is NOT a good idea, especially during rush hour because all the cars coming from Jalan Sekolah will be stuck from bumper to bumper waiting for one numb-nut to get off the line and merge from Lane A to Lane B. You should never stop dead on Lane A just to wait for the opportunity to cut into Lane B because if you do that, chances of you getting rammed from the cars behind you is pretty high because since you're already on Lane A, all the other drivers are going to assume that you will be going straight rather than to stop dead in your tracks in Lane A.

What you should do is to follow through the bend and go unto Lane A. You don't have to drive fast on Lane A as long as you keep moving. While you're on Lane A, keep an eye on the cars moving along Lane B and when the opportunity comes, then only should you cut into Lane B.

In area no. 2, new drivers rarely look in front of them as they change their lanes from Lane C to Lane D to get to the Mengkibol/Taman Intan area. The drivers will then either a) crash into the car in front of them or b) drive right onto the road divider. I know it sounds ridiculous but trust me, I've seen that before.

If you look at the green route, which is to get from the Mengkibol/Taman Intan area to STK/Taman Lian Seng area, the only problematic area as I see is area no. 3. Certain drivers always think that Lane D belongs to them as they change lanes from Lane D to Lane C. What they will do is that they will stop DEAD on Lane D and then cause the rest of the cars behind them to stop as well and everyone will be stuck from bumper to bumper. So, it's always people like these that will cause jams/accidents.

What can we learn from this?

STOP DRIVING LIKE IDIOTS!

Think you wanna learn magic?

2008-03-02T00:36:00.003+08:00

Okay, so many of you on this blog have bugged me at least once in your life on how I do all my stuff and where can you learn them. Well, this is your chance! If you want to learn magic, you have to learn it from the best and the best is coming to Malaysia!

Shoot Ogawa, a fantastic magician from Japan will be strutting his stuff here by hosting a lecture and magic show for the very first time in Malaysia! By 'fantastic', I mean really really fantastic and awesome. More awesome than cherry pie topped with cream. Or the other way around. He also won the 2003 Close-Up Magician of the Year in Japan and to give you an idea of how good this guy is, watch the following videos:

As you can see, he isn't your regular "jack of all trades, master of none"-kind of magician like yours sincerely but rather he's a very well-rounded magician who performs magic with the sort of finesse and style like no other.

So, if you're really interested in learning magic, I would really suggest you to come with me to this magic lecture on the 8th of March 2008. It's going to cost you RM150, excluding transportation and food for the trip. It's going to be a one-day trip so, it's not going to be that expensive. The reason why it cost so much is because the lecture alone would cost RM100 and the magic show at the end would cost RM60 and if we get the combo package, we'll 'only' have to pay RM150. Compare to the other lectures hosted by this guy abroad in other countries, this is considered to be VERY VERY cheap already.

Here's the flier that I downloaded from the organiser's website:

So, if you think you can make it, leave a message here or email me so that we can come up with some sort of travel plan.

Think about it. :)

I have a cunning plan.

2008-02-22T15:55:00.003+08:00

Well, it's that time of the year again, where students all over Malaysia who are waiting for their results, bust their heads and rack their brains to figure what are the steps that they should take for the sake of their futures.

Well, I have a cunning plan. A plan that's more cunning that a cunning fox, mated from 2 of the most cunning species of animals in a cunning animal kingdom, born and bred in Cunningham, the most cunning place in this cunning world. Yes, it's that cunning.

Some of you have heard of my cunning plan and just because you know about it, doesn't mean you have to tell the whole world about it. Just give it time and let things fall into place by itself. Don't ruin the fun for others or rather for me, because cunning plans are the funniest. Because they have the double 'n' in the middle, like a tiddle in the piddle.

Anyway, that means my role as the Project Manager of Thinking Bulb Productions (fancy name and title, eh?) is coming to and end and I'll be free to talk a little bit regarding my experiences as well as some of the things that has happened along the way(Eh... lai jiang xing shi leh...). And also, some pictures!

Stay tune and no, this blog is not dead, like Ted!

Go Team Hoyt!

2008-02-03T15:14:00.000+08:00

I was going around the forums the other day and came across a thread about some of the most badass people in history. So, naturally The INTERNETS would post about people awarded with various medals and decorations throughout the two great wars as well as other wars. Then someone posted a short clip of Team Hoyt, which consists of a father (Dick Hoyt) and a son (Rick Hoyt), who takes part in 6 different Ironman Triathlon.

For those who are not in the know, the Ironman Triathlon is one of the most difficult and physically demanding competition due to the gruelling length and race conditions. Participants have to compete by kicking off in the US city of Kailua-Kona, Hawaii, and the race encompasses three endurance events of a 2.4 mile (3.86 kilometer) ocean swim in Kailua-Kona Bay, followed by a 112 mile (180.2 kilometer) bike ride across the Hawaiian lava desert to Hawi and back), and ending with a 26.2 mile (42.195 kilometer) marathon along the coast of the Big Island (from Keauhou to Keahole Point to Kailua-Kona); finishing on Ali'i Drive.

You're probably wondering what's so special about a father-son team taking part in a triathlon, which is an individual event?

Rick Hoyt, the son, was disabled at birth by a loss of oxygen to his brain because his umbilical cord was wrapped around his neck, and he also suffers from cerebral palsy. Doctors advised that Rick would spend his whole life in a persistent vegetative state. However, his parents never heeded their advice and went on to have a special chair built for Rick and the brilliant minds of Tufts University discovered that Rick, at the age of 12, have a sense of humour, which indicated intelligence. So, now Rick could communicate through the special computer by moving his head.

So, what does that have anything to do with the Ironman Triathlon? Well, the father, Dick, love his son so much that together they have participated in 942 events, including 216 Triathlons (6 of which were Ironman competitions), 20 Duathlons, and 65 Marathons, including 25 consecutive Boston Marathons. They also biked and ran across the USA in 1992 — a 3,735 mile journey that took them 45 days. I would like to also point out that in all of these races, the father was either pushing the son, who's in a special chair when he's running or putting him on a boat and swam across the water tugging the boat along.

They know that they are probably hours behind everyone else but to have a father carry his son through marathons upon marathons and triathlons is simply amazing and inspirational.

I don't think I've written well enough to justify what this man has done for his son; so, I'll leave you with this video of Team Hoyt in the Ironman Triathlon:

Also, one thing that's really touching is when Rich was asked what is the one thing he wished he could give his father, his reply was "The thing I'd most like is that my dad would sit in the chair and I would push him once."

Simply amazing.

And to think that God's love could be so much more.

Go Team Hoyt!

Eh... kawan... berapa?

2008-02-01T00:34:00.000+08:00

Part of our usual travel plans on Thursdays when we have to go to Ipoh by bus is to take a taxi from KL Sentral to Puduraya in morning before catching a bus to Ipoh. I know... RM7.00 isn't exactly the cheapest way to travel around KL but when you're lugging equipments along with you while you're feeling all groggy from the shakey train ride, I think the price sorta justifies itself.

Anyway, the same way when we come back from Ipoh at night, we would take a taxi from Puduraya back to KL Sentral. So, this is how the conversation went:

"Taxi... taxi.... taxi..."
"Sini ke KL Sentral berapa?"
"20, dik..."

*turns over to Cheng Yee*

"&$!@#$!%$#^!#$%^!#%&"

I guess both of us look way too tourist-y. Maybe I should start toting a cigarette and a shaved bald head with full sleeves of tattoos. Then I'll probably be offered free rides around KL. By the cops.

Umm... yeah.

xoxoxoxoxo

(x are the kisses and o's are the hugs)

tales of horror from ipoh...

2008-01-25T12:25:00.000+08:00

...and some other things in KL.

Like I've said before, traveling around all the time isn't exactly the best thing in the world because it is tiring and you're killing the environment along the way. Anyway, I'm really glad that I had the chance to go up to Ipoh to meet some of the nicest people that I've ever met and have the awesome and deservedly famous 'Taugeh Chicken'.

Anyway, you're probably wondering why did I title this as 'Tales of horror from Ipoh...' It's not so much because of the people or anything but rather the horror is from the public toilet at Medan Gopeng. I will spare you the gory and rather unsettling details but all I have to say is that one should be wary of all public toilets; especially the toilet bowls in the cubicles. Not all of them flush the way it should; ie downwards into the hole. What happened to me in Ipoh is that instead of the toilet bowl flushing the gunk down, EVERYTHING SHOOTS STRAIGHT OUT OF THE BLIMEY COW-RIPPING BOWL!

Thank God as I was fastening the zip on my pants, something or rather someone urged me to not stand in front of the bowl when I flush the bowl. And somehow my usually stubborn head decided to heed the advice and I stood a bit to the side when I pull the lever. The moment I pulled the lever, EVERYTHING SHOOTS OUT OF THE DAMN BOWL INTO THE DOOR IN FRONT OF IT. Good Lord, that was close.

If you want to know about the unsettling details, feel free to ask me about it.

Anyway, at the end of the day, the eyelids on our eyes are as heavy as a couple of 2-tonne trucks and naturally Cheng Yee and I crashed out at my auntie's place in KL. So, after a long and peaceful sleep, I woke up and I remembered that I have to iron my clothes before going to Brickfields to do some recording. So, I went to the back and saw Cheng Yee ironing his clothes and I thought, "Oh well... I'll wait for him to finish."

So, after Cheng Yee's turn, I had mine and I started to iron my shirt and pants. After struggling with it for HALF AN HOUR wondering why wouldn't the iron press out the creases then it hit me. I DID NOT TURN THE IRON ON.

*sigh*

Yes, I do know how to iron my own clothes.

I guess it's just one of those things that happen during one of those days. I have a feeling that this trip will be a lot more interesting than I thought.

some updates

2008-01-17T23:43:00.000+08:00

I can't believe I'm making one of 'these' posts now because frankly, these don't contain much information other than to let you readers know that I'm still alive and kicking around.

Currently I'm 'working' in KL with some of the nicest people I've ever met in my life and life's been a roller coaster ride. Just a little bit different because every trip is like getting on a different roller coaster ride without knowing which turn is coming on next or when the seatbelt is going to untie itself and drop you 200ft into the ground below. Hmm... that's morbid. Let's do it again.

Uhm... I'll be 'working' in KL every weekend for the next 3 months, on this awesome project with some of the nicest people I've ever met in my life and this has been a wonderful learning experience for me. Aside from learning the difference between a bread and 'mexican bun', I think the trip's been really wild and crazy for Cheng Yee and I. You'll never know what's going to happen tomorrow and we should always take things one step at a time.

Of course, that is not to say that you shouldn't plan into the future but rather keep in mind that however good your plan is, it will still boil down to that very day when you're going to have to take that drastic step of action. Some say believe in yourself and take it like a man in faith but I say, having people close to you to listen to you and get you through day by day really helps.

Maybe this will prepare me for other things in life or even life in big cities when I have to go off for my tertiary studies. Well, it's pretty much inevitable and it's time to learn to live away from home. Ahh... now I know how awesome my bed and pillow is back at home. Minus the blanket. Yeah, I hate the blanket cause it's tickles me at night.

Hmm... I'm rambling again.

S'all!

no. 1 on my birthday wish list

2008-01-08T13:50:00.000+08:00

I know my birthday is still a long time away (23rd March, woo) but I think I have found the 'holy grail' of magic apparatus, in my opinion that is.

As a magician, I always have this problem where my pockets, on my jacket and pants, bulge very obviously due to the number of decks that I carry on me as well as all the props(like coins, wands, elephants and rabbits) that I need to perform magic. So, to solve this 'common' problem that's faced by thousands of working magicians out there, a company called 'High Caliber Magic' built a HOLSTER based on a real-life shoulder holster for guns that are used by law enforcement officers around the world.

Maybe the .gif below will give you a basic idea of what I'm talking about:

As you can see, it looks mighty awesome and best part is, it's not going to affect how the jacket and pants look, eventhough the magician is packed with enough materials to start a cult. It can basically fit 2 decks of cards, a roll of coins, marker pen, extra props, elephants and rabbits.

I'm not selling this product very well but if you want more information, you can go to the website here: http://www.highcalibermagic.com/original.html

However, these things cost a bomb. The Original High Caliber Holster, which is the full rig that you see above costs USD$300. :o

For those of us, who can't afford the full rig, they also sell smaller holsters called the Ricochet(USD$175) and Derringer(USD$80). It's still very expensive but it still looks pretty darn kickass to carry around. To give you an idea of how they look:

The Ricochet.

The Derringer.

Incredibly expensive, it is. Ah well, a boy can dream, can't he?

time to kickass

2008-01-07T17:47:00.000+08:00

Some of you can be a real donkey-stick about other people's illness. I blogged about it because I thought it is my responsibility to let my friends know about it and take good care of themselves. That doesn't mean it's funny to make crude jokes and witty smart-ass comments about my family.

Do them one more time in front of me and I'll open up a can of whoop-ass and make a sandwich out of you.

(Note: I wasn't talking about you, Jean.)

damn scabies

2008-01-04T16:39:00.000+08:00

Okay guys, I know this will raise a few alarms and tickle some fancies but I have scabies. For the past couple of weeks I have been having some terrible itching all over my body and it's been getting progressively worse from day to day. So, I went to see a dermatologist today and he told me that I've got scabies. Chances are, I caught it from Hotel Telang Usan from my recent Sarawak trip.

Here are some quotes from Wikipedia.com regarding Scabies:

"Scabies is a transmissible ectoparasite skin infection characterized by superficial burrows, intense pruritus (itching) and secondary infection. The word scabies comes from the Latin word for "scratch" (scabere)."

"Scabies is transmitted readily, often throughout an entire household, by skin-to-skin contact with an infected person (e.g. bed partners, schoolmates, daycare), and thus is sometimes classed as a sexually transmitted disease. Spread by clothing, bedding, or towels is a less significant risk, though possible."

"The symptoms are caused by an allergic reaction that the body develops over time to the mites and their by-products under the skin, thus the 4-6 week "incubation" period. There are usually relatively few mites on a normal, healthy person — about 11 females in burrows. Scabies are microscopic although sometimes they are visible as a pinpoint of white. The females burrow into the skin and lay eggs there. Males roam on top of the skin, however, they can and do occasionally burrow. Both males and females surface at times, especially at night. They can be washed or scratched off (however scratching should be done with a washcloth to avoid cutting the skin as this can lead to infection), which, although not a cure, helps to keep the total population low. Also, humans create antibodies to the scabies mites which do kill some of them."

"Preventing reinfection

All family and close contacts should be treated at the same time, even if asymptomatic. Cleaning of environment should occur simultaneously, as there is a risk of reinfection. Without a host, scabies mites can on average survive up to 48-72 hours away from human skin. [5] (In cases of Crusted Scabies, mites can survive up to 7 days.) Therefore it is recommended to wash all material (such as clothes, bedding, and towels) that has been in contact with all infested persons in the last three days.

Cleaning the environment should include:
Vacuuming floors, carpets, and rugs.
Disinfecting floor and bathroom surfaces by mopping.
Daily washing of recently worn clothes, towels and bedding in hot water and drying in a hot dryer.
Hot drying pillows for 30 minutes.
Overnight freezing, in a plastic bag: stuffed animals, brushes, combs, shoes, coats, gloves, hats, robes, wetsuits, etc.
Quarantine in a plastic bag for two weeks: things that cannot be washed, hot dried, frozen or drycleaned.
Drycleaning: things that cannot be washed, hot dried or frozen or quarantined."

The shitty thing about scabies is this: it has an incubation period of 4-6 weeks before the symptoms show and the problem with that is anyone who comes in contact with my personal clothings and belongings have a tiny bit of possibility of being infected with scabies. I'm fairly sure that I haven't been sleeping around with anyone so, that shouldn't be a problem. Even more crappy than this is that my whole family is infected thanks to me. So... yeah.

The doctor told me to apply some sort of lotion all over my body at night before going to bed and tomorrow morning I'll have a grand time cleaning EVERYTHING in my house. From bedsheets and pillows to sofas and stuffed toys. Haih.

So, friends. Please keep an eye out for your own body because if you start feeling itching between the crevices on your body such as between your fingers, armpit, underneath your knees or pelvis and you seem to have those mosquito looking bites on your body that itches the lemons out of you, then please get it checked out and take preventive measures.

If you caught it from me, then I'm really sorry. Just let me know and I'll buy you a drink.

Aww... damn.

art of quick changing

2008-01-03T19:58:00.000+08:00

I know this video is pretty old already but in case you have not seen it before, here's David and Dania doing a Quick Changing Act on America's Got Talent. Notice I didn't call it a trick because it's way more than a trick and it's an art by itself. This is so awesome:

Okay, that's it. I have to start putting up an ad saying:

ATTENTION!
MAGICIAN'S ASSISTANT WANTED.

Must be willing to:
Change into different clothes.
Wiggle hands and feet to the music.
Change into even more clothes.
Do all that within a few seconds.
All interested parties please call 1800-MAGIC-BOY ext. #3 to apply.

why read?

2007-12-31T15:33:00.000+08:00

I'm been doing some thinking recently all the while reflecting on the different crisis happening around the world as well as in my own country, Malaysia.

Coming from a small town, life goes on quite slowly around here and naturally, we don't really feel the impact of the different events going on around the country. This can be both a good thing and/or a bad thing. The good thing is, people are not easily affected by the recent events around the country and have their thoughts swayed to any extreme ends of things. However, the unfortunate thing about this is that people can also be incredibly ignorant about how things are going on around the country.

It's amazing how people would argue with each other over some issue written in the local newspaper for argument's sake without knowing the truth behind things in the first place. There is an old saying in Chinese that reminds people to 'think with their brains before they speak'. So, how are you going to think about what you're going to say if you are ignorant about the true facts behind the different issues on hand? The obvious answer would be to get oneself enlightened about the truths behind these issues but WHERE can one find the answers?

The answer, my friend, is in reading. As what Uncle Kok Hwee has said recently, "Reading can open up a person's mind" and I agree with him 100% beyond reasonable doubt. Personally, I would suggest reading anything that you can get your hands on, barring love novels because those things drive me crazy. From independent news website to that huge old encyclopedia sitting at the bottom of the bookshelf. Just grab something and read.

I'm now on a 6 month break and very soon I'll be getting my hands on a couple of books from Uncle Kok Hwee to read during the break because frankly, I don't know everything and I hope I can increase not only my knowledge but also open up my mind to understand different ideas.

Hmm... this will be interesting.

infiltration of the goths

2007-12-29T15:29:00.000+08:00

I was at Kluang Parade today with my brother and guess what I saw? For the first time in my life, I saw a Chinese dude dressed like a goth. Not just the emo hairstyle and/or glasses but complete with the black fingernails and everything. I would think that this guy a) Surfs MySpace way too much or b) Came from the planet Mars.

I don't know how common it is for guys to wear nail-polish considering I haven't been out for quite a while, but to see one in real life like that is kinda appalling. I mean, who am I to criticize what others are wearing, right? Still, you don't quite see things like that everyday. However, seeing how things are in Kluang, I bet that in a couple of months time, every 1 out of 5 'punk rockers' in Kluang would have black nail-polish.

Not a flattering thing to say but hey, it'll be something to talk about.

Oh dear, this is a terrible blog post. I should stop writing. Bleurrghh.

what am I to do?

2007-12-28T11:02:00.000+08:00

So, what am I to do?
Lie low and get myself kicked in the nuts and take it like a man?
Not sure if you know, but I missed you just as much.
If only you knew what to look out for.

Kuching Trip

2007-12-16T21:07:00.000+08:00

Hello everyone! Well, I came back from Kuching on the 14th but I have been so busy preparing the magic show for the CBC Christmas Celebration at the Public Library on the 16th. So, now that it's finally over, I can sit down and blog about pretty Kuching!

To be honest, I really didn't want to go for this trip because none of my friends are going and I was so close to rejecting the trip. Now that I'm back from it, I'm glad that I went because I learned so many things that I didn't know about Sarawak, especially about all the different ethnic groups in Sarawak.

Although the food and the accommodation was bad throughout the trip but all the places that we went to were awesome and very informative. At least I'm no longer as ignorant as I used to be about Sarawak! And now, unto the pics!

This is one of the many cat statues in Kuching. Interestingly, this statue, which is situated at the southern part of Kuching, called Kuching Selatan, have it's left paw risen rather than the right. Apparently, it's because there are many Chinese in the southern part of Kuching and Chinese businessmen who come into Kuching Selatan will be pleased to see this statue because to them, it's a symbol of wealth and signifies 'more money coming in'. I wish I can figure out the Mandarin han yu pin yin but my brains aren't really working now.

Here, you can see the administration building for Kuching Selatan. Yes, Kuching is divided into the northern and southern region because it's actually quite big. As I said earlier, Kuching Selatan is pretty much dominated by the Chinese and therefore, many structures around Kuching Selatan have lots of Chinese-influence.

Here you can see the old courtroom facing the 'waterfront' along Sarawak River. After it has been decommissioned, the state government decided to use it as a tourist information centre of some sort. I know, it's not even a week since I came back from Sarawak but hey, my brains haven't been working very well anyway. Rumour says that the place is haunted.

This is the Square Tower directly opposite the old courtroom building right by the Sarawak River. It used to be the holding place for criminals who did not commit serious offence. You know, cat-burglars, thieves, etc... Hardcore criminals such as rapists, murderes are sent to Fort Margarita instead, to be hanged. It's a pity that we didn't get to visit Fort Margarita due to the current construction of the new State Assembly building. According to Maggie, who is our AWESOME tour guide and 'mother', Fort Margarita is haunted and there are many ghost sightings and chilling experiences. Considering it's not only the holding place but also where the criminals are executed, I'm not surprised that it's haunted!

Interestingly, the British people used to hold dances at the top of Square Tower. I thought that was rather weird!

What you see here is probably Sarawak's most expensive wedding present. One of the White Rajah(Charles Brooke, I think) decided to build this building called the Astana for his wife as a wedding gift. What an awesome husband, eh, ladies?

Interestingly, eventhough it is now the official residence of the Governor, Rulers who visit the city would rather stay at the Merdeka Palace, which is a 5-star hotel, situated opposite Merdeka Park @ Central Park because of spelling of Astana is 'A' rather than 'Istana' because Rulers must stay in palaces.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is Maggie. Our awesome tour guide throughout the trip. I tried my best to help her because she reminds me a lot of my mom and how can I see my mom working harder than me by carrying all those heavy vases that my teachers bought(oohhh... I'll get to that later!).

We also went to a particular fantastic museum. However, we're not allowed to take any pictures inside. So, I'll just show you this picture of a cannon if front of the museum.

This place is a memorial park for the fallen warriors of Sarawak, who fought for independence against the British. We didn't get to spend much time there though.

Call me cheeky all you want but I thought a 'lactating' statue was rather funny.

Next, we head to the Cat Museum, which is situated in Kuching Utara. Here you can see the administration building for Kuching Utara and the Cat Museum is situated right in this building as well.

Interestingly, this building have lots of Malay/Islamic art influences because most of the people in Kuching Utara are Malays.

You don't really need a sign here to know that this is the entrance to the Cat Museum.

Bunch of crystal cats.

And also a bunch of cat eyes. Of course, there are many pictures of cats such as these...

Here you can see all the 'money calling' cats that the Chinese so adores. With all the luck in the world, what can possibly go wrong? There are also many pictures like these...

I see lots of souvenirs and T-shirts printed with pictures of these 2 lovey-dovey cats.

Cat statues.

Here, we can see the beautiful Mount Santubong. If you look closely, you can see the resemblance of a lady's face. Even if you can't, it's still a beautiful mountain!

Legend has it that one has to descend from Mount Santubong before six or before the sun goes down. Apparently, when the sun goes down, a rainbow will be formed joining heaven and earth together and Lady Santubong will come down to bath. Don't ask me why she doesn't have a bathroom in heaven but anyway, that's besides the point. So, being a lady, she hates to have people to peep at her when she bathes. If you're still up in the mountain by the time the sun goes down, the Lady will trap you in the darkness till the next day before you're "allowed to leave". That was before the invention of flashlight and batteries, I suppose.

Interestingly, you have to report yourself to the police station before climbing the mountain so that in case you're not down by nightfall, a search and rescue team will come and look for you.

For lunch, we went to this 'authentic' Malay wooden house to have 'authentic' Malay food. we had to eat with our friends and that was pretty much the first time I had belacan with ulam and boy, it was good! I think that was the best meal I had throughout the whole trip.

Next, we went to the Cultural Village, which is DEFINITELY a tourist hotspot.

Here's why: The entrance fee for a single adult is RM60 and for a child is RM30. I know it's ridiculously priced but trust me, the trip is WORTH it, if you have good guides such as Maggie and Kak Lin.

Interestingly, the whole idea for Cultural Village came about when the government thought it would be a good idea to have all the different ethnic groups live together in a 'village' with all their authentic long houses and huts so that tourists didn't have to spend 4-5 hours trekking through the jungles and rain forests of Sarawak just to get to one long house.

Some say it may not be authentic because the villagers are paid to stay there but having a chance to visit the headhunters without having the top of your head chopped off is rather nice and it won't take 4-5 hours just to visit one ethnic group. Rather, in the time span of 4-5 hours, we managed to visit more than 6 different houses and groups!

We had our first taste by having to cross this Jambatan Buluh or Bamboo Bridge. It wasn't very high off the ground but actually, the ethnic groups build these bamboo bridges 40-50 feet up in the air to join 2 peaks together across a valley. It's amazing how these people thought of such things.

I would suppose living in the jungle all your life would thought you that.

The first house that we visit is Rumah Bidayuh, or the Bidayuh house. This particular structure that you see us entering is actually called a Barok(sp?), that functions as a watchtower or fort to protect it's houses from enemy attack. That's why it has small windows or openings around the tower so that it can see the enemy from all the different direction.

Interestingly, women are not allowed into the Barok except to bring food in or to relay an important message. That means, the men are the COOK during certain festivals in the Barok. Even more interestingly...

It is also where they hang the heads of their fallen enemies. According to Kak Lin, the more heads of you have, the braver you are and the less likely you're going to have your house attacked by the enemies. I like to think that those skulls are real but I'm not sure if they are and no, I refuse to touch them to see if they are real.

At the bottom of the skulls, you can see this fire pit. The fire is there not only to keep the warriors warm but also to smoke the skulls. The masks that you see around the pit are so-called 'guardians' who give them 'semangat' before they go out to battle. The warriors would touch them before leaving to have 'luck' and also to bless them in the battle.

This interesting apparatus that you see Kak Lin use here is actually a sugar cane juicer. Apparently, these people LOVE their sugar cane juice and they would use this to juice the canes.

A Bidayuh lady showing us how she sifted through the paddy and the cylindrical thing beside her is a grinder of some sort that requires 4 people to operate.

According to Kak Lin, you need 4 things before you can get married: 1. heads or skulls of fallen enemies 2. gong 3. China pots/vase 4. I really can't remember.

Next up, the famous Iban longhouse!

I was standing in the middle of the long house and here, you can see an idea of how long the long house is. There is a home-stay programme that you can apply for to stay for a night with the Iban people.

Here we are, at the Penan Hut. Penan people are nomads and they don't have a fixed place of residence. So, each family will travel on their own and build their own huts. Here, you can see the large apparatus that they use to make 'sumpit' or blowpipes. Each one takes roughly six months to make the Penan people pride themselves in the making of these beautiful sumpit.

Here's a picture of the hut with Kak Lin explaining to us about the making of these blowpipes. Here you can see a smarmy Penan dude chilling in his 'pants'.

Look at that smarmy face!

Further up, we came to the Ulu Longhouse. The Ulu people is actually a bunch of different smaller ethnic groups, who decided to consolidate and move up the mountains. Behind this awesome Ulu dude playing a Sapit, which is a beautiful instrument, is a huge painting of the longhouse's Tree of Life.

Interestingly, each longhouse have its own Tree of Life and each one may have a different drawing of motifs. Each Tree of Life depicts life at all the different longhouses and each one will give interesting information about the residents of that particular longhouse. For eg, how many warriors, women, children, lazy people, free loaders, etc..

Even more interestingly is actually the Sapit. Legend has it that a particular warrior's wife fell sick and nothing could cure her. The warrior was begging to his guardians for a cure and the guardian gave him a vision to carve an instrument out of wood and the Sapit was born. Apparently, after playing the instrument to his wife, his wife got well and it was the love and care that the warrior put into playing the instrument that cured her. Interesting love story and the music that one can make is so beautiful! I wish I can find a CD or recording of the instrument.

The same Ulu dude carving something out of wood.

The Ulu people are head hunters too.

This is a picture of an Ulu longhouse, if I'm not mistaken. I really can't remember which because I carelessly forgot to take a picture of the signboard.

Here, I'm posing with an Ulu blacksmith. Apparently, the Ulu people were among the first ethnic groups who discovered metal and harnessed it to make things. And that makes them some of the most skilled blacksmiths around and this man here make beautiful swords.

Rumah Melanau.

Rumah Melayu.

After all the tours around the different longhouses and huts, we were treated to a fantastic cultural performance at the end of the day. I used to think traditional ethnic dances were boring but it's actually really good!

After the visit to the Cultural Village, we went to visit a very famous layer cake factory. The layer cakes or 'Kek Lapis' produced here are well-known around Kuching because of it's many variety of flavours and everything in this place are produced by hand and not factory made. It's also reasonably priced too. Some of the interesting flavours are chocolate-cheese, blueberry, blueberry mint, cheese, masam-manis, etc...

If you're reading this, Maggie, I want to say THANKS again. You know exactly what I mean ;)

Girl making Kek Lapis layer by layer. Each layer takes about 3 mins to 'bake' in the oven(green thing behind) before the next layer can be applied.

One really interesting thing about this place is that we can try all the Kek Lapis that we want before buying. That's how confident they are in their own product. It was really really good and being one who loves Kek Lapis, I ABSOLUTELY enjoyed all the different flavours.

Unfortunately, wherever there is free food given, the ugly side of human nature would come out inevitably. I have never seen any group of people so 'desperate' in wanting to eat and these selfish people would shove their way through without a care in the world, caring only their stomach. And if they find any flavours that they like, they would take the WHOLE LOT OF IT and eat it among themselves leaving none to be had by others. I elbowed one guy in the guts because he was trying to shove himself past a FILLED corridor.

Scouts, teachers, everyone are just as bad. It was ugly. Once everything was cleaned out, some of us had to go to the back where the kitchen is to have a chance to taste some of the better flavours and the moment these hungry muffins knew about the existence of this Kek Lapis haven, they would 'zerg rush' the kitchen and swipe all the cake. The ladies in the kitchen took out so many of cake to be cut.

Thankfully after a while, these hungry muffins had their fill and would slowly thin away to rest their stomach at the living room(it was a very home-y place). Good riddance.

Here, you can see a kick-ass middle-aged lady making Kek Lapis. If you look closely into the oven behind her, you can see the little blue dots in the oven are actually fire! She would gingerly stick her hand in and out of it skillfully to bake the cake.

That was pretty much the last place we go to before going back to the hotel.

The next morning, we went to Semenggoh to visit orang utans! It was actually a botanical garden cum orang utan rehab centre.

Rumours say that the orang utans here are caught from the jungle, blah blah blah but that's actually a load of fart, according to the owner of the place. Truth is, the orang utans here are actually those that are smuggled in or 'rescued' from pet owners who own them illegally. They are sent here for rehab before being released into the wild. Unfortunately, chances of them leaving the rehab centre is pretty small.

Here is yours faithfully in front of one of the orang utan feeding area as proof that I didn't rip these pictures from other people :S

Orang utans are lovely animals. They are smart, naughty and boy, do they love to pose when they feel like it! However, they are also shy animals. If they don't feel like posing or do anything, they will just point their butt at you and you won't be able to take a single picture.

Here is an example of an orang utan's nest. It's made of branches and leaves. The orang utans would build themselves a different nest everyday and each one of these nests can probably support a human being on it. The logic behind it is that most of the orang utans weigh as heavy as humans, if not more.

Here's a picture of a female orang utan eating with its young. I think her name's Analissa.

I don't know what's the name of this one but it sure is hairy. (Understatement of the year)

Besides the orang utans, the rehab centre also features many different kinds of wild animals such as crocodiles(oh, Sarawak is filled with them), porcupines, snakes, etc... The owner of the place told us that there are many crocodiles within the park and they are moving about freely minding their own business as long as we don't try to swim in the rivers in the park.

Interestingly, while I was there, I saw someone probably as smart as a bag of rocks sticking his hand and camera into the hole in the door to take a picture of the CROCODILE up close. I saw that he was trying to stuff is hand in and somehow I managed to stopped him in time. He didn't seem to understand Malay so in the end I took the picture for him. If it was one of the STK students, I'm pretty sure he would've been grilled to the bones for that.

And the moment finally came for the big guy to come out and eat. Ladies and gentlemen, this is Ritchie! He's the leader of the group and when the man eats, no other orang utan dare to approach this vicinity. According to the ranger/owner, he has 7 times the strength of a human being and for that reason alone, none of the rangers dare to hold him down to take an accurate measurement of his weight. They say it's roughly 100kg.

To give you an idea about how strong this orang utan is, it took Ritchie only ONE hit against the tree to break it whereas it took the others a couple of hits to get it open. He's badass.

An interesting thing to note is that the bigger the cheek is, it means the better of a leader he is and the stronger he is. That pretty much makes him the alpha male of the rehab centre. Also, he has many partners and lots of 'grandchildren'.

Note that in this list of orang utans in the rehab centre, you can only see the name of the mother because there is no way of determining the father of the child because male orang utans don't practice monogamy and they don't really bother who is their child. Except the female orang utans because they are extremely protective of their child.

Next, we went to a vase factory. (By now, you can probably notice that my comments are getting lesser and lesser because I've been typing for more than 2 HOURS!)

Here is a man 'sculpting' a vase out of clay and he made it look so easy! We got to try but yours sincerely chickened out because he only brought a pair of pants to Sarawak(don't ask) and he didn't want to get it dirty.

Here, we can see a lady carving the different motives on the vase. It was truly a work of art. To me, I'm starting to learn how to appreciate these things by looking at every stroke of the knife and the different pictures that they carve on the clay.

Same lady carving the same vase. She said that it takes her roughly 5-6 hours to finish carving a single vase. Fuh.

I asked her what to do if you some how carved wrongly. She laughed and told me that these clay gets harder as it gets drier. So, to fix an error, she would just put a bit of water to press the clay down flat and then carve again but according to her, chances of making an error is very small. *monocle pops off*

The carved vases would be sent here to dry before painting over the beautiful pictures with paint.

After painting, it would then be baked in these ovens.

Knowing that many of their customers are tourists, they actually have their own packing centre where the vase would be packed into cardboard box filled with newspapers to be checked in to the airplane. They work at an incredible place.

I can't believe my eyes when I saw the amount of vase that my teachers bought! :o Below are the finished products!

After an interesting morning at the rehab centre and vase factory, we went to the wet market to buy the infamous 'ikan terubuk masin'. Apparently, this kind of salted fish can only be found in Sarawak and I had the opportunity to have some with belacan. They taste fantastic!

Interestingly, in the same wet market, there are roughly 10 stalls selling the exact same kind of fish. It was kinda funny for me because the guys with stalls outside would be telling me not to go in because everyone else is selling the same thing and the guys with stalls inside would be inviting me to go deeper into the market because theirs is cheaper, better, bigger, fresher, etc...

I had a fishmonger offering me 3 of those fish for RM10. When I looked at the board it says RM10 for 1. The kind of discount that they give are really awesome and it's a win-win situation for the customers as well considering they get to buy good fish for less money and they would offer to pack them in air tight packages to be brought onto the plane because the fishmongers know that most of the people there are tourists.

Let's talk a bit about the place where I stayed in. It's Hotel Telang Usan, which is supposed to have a 3-star rating but it has the dirtiest bed I've ever sleep in. Just to give you an idea of how dirty and dusty my bed is, I can see holes in the blankets that I use due to being eaten by cockroaches. In rooms that are infested by cockroaches, you can see the curtains have many holes in them, also evidence that it's been eaten by cockroaches.

I know the school/government paid for everything in my trip so, I can't really complain much.

The owner of the hotel is actually an Ulu man, who married a French wife. He brought many of the artifacts from his own place to be placed in the hotel and displayed. Here you can see the hilt of a sword and it's actually carved from IVORY. It's probably illegal to buy something like that now.

Our day ended pretty much like that. Unto the last day! (finally)

Maggie, if you're reading this, please don't cobble me because I genuinely forgot the name of this rice again! According to Maggie, this meal is seasonal because it's actually cooked with a kind of fruit that can only be gotten from November to December. The rice taste a lot like our glutinous rice, actually and smells incredible. Good for me because everyone else in my table didn't like the taste but I love it! :)

After the early lunch, we went to this bird nest centre, where they will clean all the different bird nest by hand by plucking out all the feathers from it.

Sorry for the bad pictures but that's pretty much the 'assembly line' at the centre and everything is plucked and processed there. Including packaging, I believe.

Interestingly, according to Maggie, the different colours of the birds nest means it originated from different birds and locations. For example, if it's yellowish, it means that the bird was fed on fruits and if it's red, then it's due to some sort of rock, where they built their nests.

Here, we have Kak Lin in the centre, flanked by yours sincerely and Maggie. Check out Kak Lin's funky earrings.

Okay, I'll admit it now: I was very tired when I sorted through the pictures. So, naturally, some will looked like this. Just tilt your head a little, will ya? :v

Here, we have our awesome bus driver. He wears a ROLEX!

According to Azhar @ 'Abang Tabung Haji', this is the most hilarious thing he has ever seen in his life. For the first time in his life, he saw a package 'checked in' to the plane with a negative weight. The item that I checked in was a blowpipe that I bought for my uncle. Hehehe...

Well, that's all from me, I guess and I'll say it right here right now that Sarawak is a beautiful place with an identity of its own. Everyone should go there at least once in their life and if you and your family decides to have a trip to Sarawak, let me know! So that I can contact Maggie to have her plan an awesome tour around Kuching. Trust me, you will not be disappointed.

I know I probably sound like a broken advertisement for Sarawak or Kuching but it really is wonderful! For the boys, some of the girls there are very pretty!

Good bye, Kuching! And the end of this trip also pretty much means that's the last time I'm going to be considered as an STK student(I got cheated out of a deal at the end of form 5). I will miss STK because of all the great memories I had and all the lessons I learned.

First mobile post

2007-12-12T00:32:00.000+08:00

Here I am, posting on my blog all the way from Kuching, Sarawak. Yes, i know i should be checking out the local attractions right now but it's 12am now and this city sleeps early! To be fair, this is situated in the East and generally the sun will rise and set earlier than the rest of the country. It's pretty interesting to post a blog post from your phone. It's like trying to convince an ant, to run like an ostrich. After some heavy shopping. Well, GOOD NIGHT!

Pangkor Trip 2007

2007-12-09T16:56:00.000+08:00

I got back from Pangkor yesterday and boy, it was fun! Considering I've never been to an island before(Singapore doesn't count), I was surprised at all the different things one could do on an island in the span of only a couple of days. Much thanks to Woon Cherk(again), I'll be posting some of the more interesting pictures from the trip here. Do visit his blog. It's pretty and he did all the coding and designing himself.

Anyway, unto the pics!

The first place that we visited was the Dutch Fortress. It's more than 200+ years old and by the looks of it, it must've gone many battles and somehow the structure still stood the test of time. Amazing.

If you look on the left side of the picture, you can see Cheng Yee and I standing over a ledge. Apparently, it's just an empty square 'room' filled with trash and covered by a metal grating. I would assume that it was used to hold things, like prisoners or ammunitions during battles.

The view from the fort facing the sea. So, this is what it would look like if you were a Dutch soldier defending the fort. Well, sans battleships and angry people on boats.

Afterwards, we went to a temple called 'Foo Ling Kong', if I'm not mistaken and by this temple there's a HUGE piece of rock on the hill that says 'yuan' or fate.

Just to give you an idea of how big the rock is, here's Soon Siong and Kae Deng posing in front of the rock.

Next, we visited this little factory filled with goodies and delicious snacks. We were allowed to go in and take pictures of the people working on the food and packing them. Apparently, everyone have their own things to do, ie. packing, salting the fish, sealing, etc..., in the process of producing things like fish satay sticks, etc...

So, it's the dye that gives these dried fish snacks the taste and colour. Looks like blood, to be honest.

Then we came to this Kuan Yin Miao/Temple by one of the beaches in Pangkor. I found it weird to see cartoon characters like Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse chilling out at the temple. Actually, it was hilarious. I got a kick out of it. Here, you can see Jackie chilling out with a half-naked mermaid. The eyes are scary.

Yup, needless to say I was a very happy man for the 60 secs it took for Woon Cherk to take this picture. That's Hui Beng on the left and Lee Ping on the right.

This picture pretty captures my first impression of the island. I thought the waters are blue but turns out they are green, which isn't so bad considering all the beaches I've ever been to have brownish water. I thought it was beautiful.

You can pretty much see how clear the water is. Of course the water is salty but seeing clear water like this by the beach is a new thing to me.

"We should've stayed out of trouble."

True to the words of Woon Cherk, we are the Mat Rempit and Mat Pedlits of the day. I didn't know how to ride a bicycle and yet I was silly enough to rent a bike and almost got myself shoved off the rode a couple of times. It was fun though, trying to get to places on a bike. NOTE TO SELF: If you hear sounds of cars/vehicles approaching from the back when you're riding a bike, move INWARDS and NOT outwards towards the vehicle lest you want your brains blown to pieces. Point taken.

Water is fun. Playing games in water is fun. Almost have your so-called swimming trunks ripped off by homo-loving, embarrassment-inducing friends is not fun. "DAAANNIIEEELLL!!!!!" *shakes fist*

Pity Kim Wei. Fancy being turned into a mermaid.

Daniel's first foray into beach football.

First promotional poster. Don't forget to book your tickets today to see Daniel in action for the coming Beach Football World Cup.

Woon Cherk and Boon Kiat were so fired up to go canoing but too bad it rained right before they go out to the sea. You can also say that they were fortunate because they didn't get caught in storm while canoing.

It's nice to see pretty birds that you don't see everyday. One of the guys there threw pieces of bread/biscuits upwards and these birds will swoop down from trees and catch it mid-air. It was pretty awesome.

The obligatory group photo of everyone who came for the trip.

Woon Cherk and I at the back of a boat when we went island hopping. The boat 'driver' was a funny man and he was incredibly friendly to us.

Welcome to Turtle Beach, if I'm not mistaken. The boat dude told us that sea turtles would come up here to lay eggs in the middle of the night during the Jan-Mar season.

You see those things that look like poop on the sea floor? Those are sea cucumbers but they aren't edible though. Daniel threw one of those things at someone and I'm pretty sure it must've hurt.

I don't know what's this. I'm guessing it's some sort of coral or shell that's stuck to a piece of rock. Daniel found it and we both thought it's dead until we stuck it back into water.

It would open up it's shell and you can see these hairy things come out.

There are also hermit crabs and here's one in case you've not seen one before.

Now we know why our moms tell us not to drink water that are not boiled.

Snorkeling is awesome, eventhough I didn't know how and couldn't swim. Kae Deng taught me how to swim a little and it was fun to be able to look into the water and breathe at the same time.

Check out all of these fishes. They are pretty fierce and would eat almost anything that you throw into the water.

Banana boat looks fun but too bad I didn't get a ride because I don't feel really good about playing something like that. Well, maybe some other time, I guess.

Here's me with Tangga our boat driver. Awesome guy.

What's an island trip without barbeque by the beach? Food was little but the fun was plenty.

And like all good things in life, it has to come to an end. Good bye, Pangkor!

And most of all, good bye my friends! I will miss all of you. As we all lead our own lives after this, I wish all of you success in all your endeavours.

(Too bad I can't put all the pictures up here. There are roughly 400+ of them.)

My thoughts? I thought it was a fun trip. Although the journey took us more than 8 hours, but it wasn't dull because we're all friends and we have TONS of things to talk about and play with. The food that we had at this particular seafood restaurant was relatively cheap and very filling. Having the boss that looks a bit like my own father is a huge plus too. Pangkor people are generally very nice but they are some pretty nasty tourist trap, so watch out!

Star Wars: Force Unleased

2007-12-02T18:47:00.000+08:00

Ryan, check this out:

This just reminded me that we need to get some duel on again, man.

it's never too early...

2007-11-30T16:44:00.000+08:00

... to put up the tree:

Yup, I put it right in front of me to remind me that as Christmas gets nearer, exams are going to be over!

"Hyugen's principle states that every point on a wave front will behave as a secondary point source emitting spherical wavelets with the same speed as the original wave in the forward direction only."

before Elvis, there was...

2007-11-29T09:10:00.000+08:00

...Ol' Blue Eyes, Frank Sinatra:

Listen to that voice!

elvis presley - love me tender

2007-11-28T20:28:00.000+08:00

This is some good stuff:

Yes, I know I'm probably DECADES behind time but the man's a class of his own.

good CGI

2007-11-27T20:25:00.000+08:00

Want to see some real good CGI? Watch the below .gif
It's kinda huge but let it load and watch it in its entirety.

That's a lot of movie budget blown right there in ONE episode of Heroes.

time to go boom

2007-11-25T11:49:00.000+08:00

Heroes Season 1

2007-11-23T11:01:00.000+08:00

Sweet.

Score!

I'm such a nerd. :-/

1812 Overture

2007-11-16T14:05:00.000+08:00

I know it's weird to have me write about a classical piece, considering how much I like jazz, rock, pop and the like. Still, I've been listening to 1812 Overture, composed by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, a lot and feel the need to write a bit about it in case you have not heard about this song. Maybe I tried to listen too much into this song but hey, I find it kinda cool.

Imagine this, the song starts out slow and then it will go higher and higher as if it's going to reach it's climax. Just when you thought the song starts to pick up its pace,it will begin to slow down and 'decend'. And suddenly, out of nowhere just when you think the song is going to end and sound draggy, it goes batshit insane. Not just any batshit insane kind of insane but rather almost a victorious sounding and triumphant kind of insane. You know, like when they have won the war, which is true in this case.

Also, have I mentioned that this is actually one of the few songs(less than 10 in the history of music) that requires cannons? That's right. In case you didn't read it properly, IT REQUIRES CANNONS. 16 shots are written into this song with 5 shots in the middle and the other 11 towards the end. I thought Jaco's big band was crazy enough but to have cannons written into a song is simply all kinds of awesome.

So, I decided to look up Wikipedia regarding this song and true enough this was written by Tchaikovsky in 1880 to commemorate the turning point of the Napoleonic War at the Battle of Borodino at the year.... 1812.

Basically, the whole song is structured in such a way to portray how the Russians struggled against the French/Napoleon army. Hence, the draggy and slow intro of the song and slowly as it approaches the Battle of Borodino, which is the turning point of the war, the song picks up. Although it's still a little draggy but you can hear that it's going higher and at the right moment, everything break loose and the song became... 1812 Overture.

Here's an excerpt from Wikipedia on the structure of the song. It will explain a couple of things in the song and hopefully will help you to appreciate this song even more:

Sixteen cannon shots are written into the score of the Overture. Beginning with the plaintive hymn "God Preserve Thy People", which was the old Czarist Russian National Anthem, the piece moves through a mixture of pastoral and militant themes portraying the increasing distress of the Russian people at the hands of the invading French. At the turning point of the invasion—the Battle of Borodino—the score calls for five Russian cannon shots confronting a boastfully repetitive fragment of the Marseillaise. A descending string passage represents the subsequent attrition of the French forces, followed by victory bells and a triumphant repetition of "God Preserve Thy People" as Moscow burns to deny winter quarters to the French. A musical chase scene appears, out of which emerges the anthem "God Save the Tsar!," thundering with eleven more precisely scored shots.

Like all classical pieces, there are many different recordings of this song. In fact, rumours say that Tchaikovsky himself may not have heard this piece as it is written! So, Antal Dorati came along and decided to record this piece AS IT IS WRITTEN for Mercury Records. Wikipedia says:

Dorati uses an actual Carillon called for in the score and they are rung about as close to a zvon then known. The art of Zvon ringing was almost lost due to the Russian Revolution and the atheistic beliefs of the communists. The Dorati recording also uses actual period French Cannon for the 1812 period which belonged to West Point US Military College.

One thing to note about the Carillon is that it is so rare that only a handful of classical pieces uses the Carillon bells. Now, imagine how difficult it is to get the zvon.

Fortunately for all of us, the recording of 1812 Overture by Antal Dorati can be found on YouTube. Yup, with cannons and everything. 1812 Overture starts at 2:44. So, you can fast forward till there if you want to just listen to the song:

If you think I'm kidding about the cannon part, check out the performance of this song by the Eastern Army Corps musical band of the Japan Ground Self Defence Force (JGSDF) using 105mm cannons. Fast forward till 5:03 for the song and the hawt cannon action:

Enough talking and hopefully what I have written is enough to give you an idea and also allow you to enjoy this as much as I did.

(References: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1812_Overture)

Marching bands

2007-11-15T15:27:00.000+08:00

Here's a marching band from California, USA performing their 'half-time' shows at a football game versus Washington. Here's the list of games that the marching band did the music for:

1. Pong
2. Tetris
3. Pokemon
4. Legend of Zelda
5. Mario
6. Mario 'End-game' Music

What a bunch of talented people...

house

2007-11-14T12:27:00.000+08:00

Here are some 'fan-art' that I found on SomethingAwful. Some of it are borderline creepy, so that means you really don't want to search for them on Google. Trust me.

And.... my favourite of all, from a recent episode(click on it to view the animated .gif):

Music is so beautiful

2007-11-10T00:42:00.000+08:00

I was home alone tonight cause the family decided to run some errands outstation leaving me at home to take care of things. Anyway, I turned on one of the radio channels on Astro and after surfing around I decided on 'Opus', which is a satellite radio channel for classical music. Now, whenever someone speak of classical music, people usually think of the 1812 Overture by Tchaikovsky or rather the 9th Symphony by Beethoven.

Classical music is so much more than that, my friends. Although I have a crappy TV with crappy sound, I still got a huge kick out of listening to the sounds of different instruments and notes as well as chords mixing together into one beautiful piece of work. No, it's not that I'm high on drugs nor am I seeing colours or 'music' around me. It's just that when you listen to these works, as simple as they are sometimes, you can hear that there's a purpose behind everything. Maybe it's trying to accentuate another instrument or even making way for the coming lines.

It's almost like fine dining. Just that it costs next to nothing.

MPPPU Farewell Dinner 2007

2007-11-02T22:33:00.000+08:00

Well, yesterday's dinner marked our graduation from our Form 6 studies as we continue to prepare for our STPM Examinations(Oh God help me). It's nice to see everyone unwind themselves for the night and having the whole thing hosted in Prime City's Jupiter Ballroom, which is also the biggest and coldest, gave everyone and excuse to dress up; and for some, to dress down... till almost well, nevermind.

As usual, the food served at the dinner was less than spectacular but considering the price that we paid, RM30, there isn't much room to complain. Hey, you gotta "eat what's on the table", isn't it? I believe Jun Jiat, who is the new President of MPPPU, and his team did a good job eventhough there was a bit of a hitch here and there during the event. But things could have been much worse but it didn't and the team handled all their situations well. So, that's all good.

I personally believe the performances this year was certainly much better than last year's dinner, probably because most of them are my own friends. For those of you who were there, I'm sure you will agree that Cheng Yee's song was fantastic and incredibly hilarious. Also, Mohan did a flawless performance of Michael Jackson's dance. He was incredible. And let's not forget about Elween and Hui Mun's wonderful opera performance.

Man, so many great performances and things to talk about. Rather than typing a butt load of text and ridiculous nonsense, please allow me to post pictures from last night's dinner and much thanks to WOON CHERK (visit his fantastic blog @ panorazzi.com/colorfool) for all the pictures that you will see here. The pictures that I will be posting here are mainly taken before and after the dinner with friends and stuff. As for pics taken DURING the dinner such as speeches, prizes and awards, I will try to get them from Miss Neo or the new MPPPU board and then put them up here for everyone's enjoyment. I will probably have to pay for the pics though. *cross hands*

So, hope you will enjoy these pictures!

I present to you, my class: PU2 F3

Not very graceful, I know, but everyone's got to do it.

Here's Cheng Yee presenting his very own song about the Form 6 life.
Fantastic stuff.

From left: Cheng Yee, Mei San and I.

From left: Boon Cheik, K'Chai, Woon Cherk

Hui Beng and I. Hui Beng is possibly the best dressed girl in the event. Possibly.
She's also in the MPPPU 06/07 board too.

Lee Ping and I. Trustworthy Treasurer of ELS 2006/07.

From left: K'Chai, Woon Cherk, Lee Ping, Miss Neo, Hui Beng, Cheng Yee.

Daniel and I. I finally figured out what made Daniel looked so different last night.
It's his hair and he dyed it with a little bit of blue. Vain.

Chee Yong and I. He's a fantastic guy.

And once again, I present to you, PU2F3.

It's a pity that I couldn't take pictures with everyone. I wish I could. Still, there are plenty more pictures with the new board and I will try to get it from them as soon as possible. Woo...

Some of my final thoughts about the dinner:
I felt happy for everyone because one of the toughest period of our life is finally over and at the same time I'm so proud of everyone when I was up the stage giving my final speech. Being the President of the old board, I had lots of opportunity to speak in front of people and also be able to share my ideas and thoughts with all the students. Standing in front of everyone whom I have tried so hard to care* for and to be able to talk to everyone as a group for the last time makes me really glad that I have decided to stay in Form 6 and to take up the responsibility and the position on the board. I don't regret my decision and I'm glad that I stood by it and have my friends stood by my side and I struggled with all the different dealings and things that I have to put up with.

* Well, not in a motherly way or anything like that but rather more of wanting to protect, take care and stand up for them kind of way. You know what I mean.

WARNING: Some sensitive stuff below:
Having been the President of the board, I have never spoken about the cons of being in this position. So, I'm going to take this opportunity to take it off my chest and maybe some of you will be able to understand what I actually go through.

These 1 and a half years in Form 6 have taught me many new things. Things that are practical as well as the human character. Most of the people I know are great people but nevertheless one has to face the dark side of the human character sometimes.

I have made many new friends indeed. I can see some of these people as my friends forever but there's always this little thought in me that makes me wonder a lot about my relationship with others. I see so many of them as friends and I would go all out to help them and believe me, I have at times almost have to give up an arm or a leg to get some of them out of trouble. But do they take me as a friend? Or am I just some random guy that they will have to respect just because he's a 'president and smiles a whole lot than the other teachers'.

I know I probably shouldn't look at things like this but I would be really stupid and ignorant to take it out of the equation altogether. When I look back at the things that I have done, it's almost as if it's a "horse and a cart" situation: I have many friends and because of that I did my best and do everything to help and at the same time as I do those things, I made many new friends.

My dear friends, whether you really take me as a friend or not, I will still look at you and treat you as a friend. I will call you brothers and some of you sisters. 20 years on, when we all lead our own lives, I will still look back to these pictures and think of the wonderful times we had.

I guess that's what you get when you become a 'public figure'. You form so many new relationships but you will have a hard time trying to tie things up when things have to come to an end. I guess it all takes practice and to me, this is one of my first steps in life and I'm glad I have taken these steps well.

I have done my best and I hope that my best is good enough for all of you. Well, all the best fellas and let's kick STPM's ass together.

dressing well

2007-10-30T06:38:00.000+08:00

"Correct dressing is only another form of good manners, and good manners are only another form of mental comfort."

- Sir Hardy Amies, 1909-2003

So, stop laughing at me already! :waves fist wildly*

knock knock

2007-10-22T00:21:00.001+08:00

Insanity is knocking at my door,
Humiliation creeping outside my window;
Should I play the nice host to answer the door,
Or run like a coward, diving out the window.

band of brothers

2007-10-21T00:08:00.000+08:00

From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remembered-
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile...

- William Shakespeare,
St. Crispen's Day Speech, 1599.

Portal - Still Alive

2007-10-16T21:09:00.000+08:00

Such a catchy song:

Portal - Still Alive

Lyrics:

This was a triumph.
I'm making a note here: HUGE SUCCESS.
It's hard to overstate my satisfaction.
Aperture Science
We do what we must
because we can.
For the good of all of us.
Except the ones who are dead.

But there's no sense crying over every mistake.
You just keep on trying till you run out of cake.
And the Science gets done.
And you make a neat gun.
For the people who are still alive.

I'm not even angry.
I'm being so sincere right now.
Even though you broke my heart.
And killed me.
And tore me to pieces.
And threw every piece into a fire.
As they burned it hurt because I was so happy for you!

Now these points of data make a beautiful line.
And we're out of beta.
We're releasing on time.
So I'm GLaD. I got burned.
Think of all the things we learned
for the people who are still alive.

Go ahead and leave me.
I think I prefer to stay inside.
Maybe you'll find someone else to help you.
Maybe Black Mesa
THAT WAS A JOKE.
HAHA. FAT CHANCE.
Anyway, this cake is great.
It's so delicious and moist.

Look at me still talking
when there's Science to do.
When I look out there, it makes me GLaD I'm not you.
I've experiments to run.
There is research to be done.
On the people who are still alive.

And believe me I am still alive.
I'm doing Science and I'm still alive.
I feel FANTASTIC and I'm still alive.
While you're dying I'll be still alive.
And when you're dead I will be still alive.
STILL ALIVE
Still alive.

THE CAKE IS A LIE.
THE CAKE IS A LIE.
THE CAKE IS A LIE.
THE CAKE IS A LIE.
THE CAKE IS A LIE.
THE CAKE IS A LIE.
THE CAKE IS A LIE.
THE CAKE IS A LIE.

Meet the Soldier

2007-10-14T15:15:00.000+08:00

This one's a trailer for Team Fortress 2. The heavily stylized art direction is what's making this game one of the most unique and fun multiplayer game on the Internet right now. The trailers are really hilarious too. Nice to see more and more developers are trying to make games fun instead of taking themselves too seriously.

High Definition Version: http://www.gametrailers.com/player/23880.html

I especially enjoyed the kicker at the end.

breaking the law

2007-10-07T18:57:00.000+08:00

It's been a while, isn't it? Then let's get started, shall we?

I'm a bit of a dreamer and there are so many things that I dream of achieving and want to do eventhough they are impossible(like flying, teleportation, time stopping, whatever...) and they can never be done because these are these are the things that are bounded to the physical laws of nature.

Mentioning words like 'physical laws of nature' can make physics students around the world groan and gnash their teeth because to be honest, they are really bloody boring and brain numbing. Still, these laws, like Newton's Law of Motion/Gravitation, blah blah blah, gives us an understanding of our surrounding and because of that, we will know why certain things happen or behave the way they do.

Ever heard before a really cheesy saying: "You must know the rules before you can break them" ?

I believe that in the same way if we can truly understand the very laws of nature in this physical world that binds everything together, those rules can be broken. By understand, I don't mean through the definitions of the scientist and great thinkers of the world like Einstein or Newton but rather by the true definition of these laws. It is undeniable that these great pioneers of science have done a lot of research and so many experiments that causes the definitions of their laws to hold true and proven and when something is proven to be true, it is made into a law. The main reason why I said so is because humans being what they are makes mistakes and maybe there are a couple of variables here and there that they may have missed out on.

Who knows?

Maybe through these seemingly nonexistent or unknown errors, we can exploit them and use it to break the rules or laws and once these things are broken, the impossible becomes possible. It's like a 'loophole' or a 'backdoor' where one can 'override' the default rules and laws by twisting and turning it so that it can be molded and broken into achieving whatever it is there is to be achieved.

I hope you're getting what I'm trying to say because the more I think about it, the more ridiculous and far-fetched it becomes. But who is to say that I'm wrong and all these are impossible?

People laughed at the Wright brothers for attempting flight and Thomas Edison wasn't the brightest student in his class. (Haha... caught the pun?) Galileo Galilei was accused of rebelling against the church for suggesting that the Earth is not the centre of the universe, which was proven through the help of technology like satellite images and stuff. They were laughed at and ridiculed but in the end they are proven to be some of smartest people who enabled the human civilization to move forward and improve themselves.

There isn't a good way for me to conclude this because I'm still thinking about this. Still dreaming. Still wondering. So many things, so little time and gray matter.

more awesome music

2007-09-18T15:19:00.000+08:00

Here's another awesome trailer for World in Conflict - MAGNUM PI STYLE!

Hi-Res Version: http://www.gametrailers.com/player/23248.html

I must say that the developers for this game have a great sense of humour and good choice of music. Oh, and do note that the graphics in this trailer isn't pre-rendered, like the previous video posted but rather this one's done real-time on the player's computer. Pretty good graphics, I must say!

world in conflict

2007-09-17T19:47:00.000+08:00

Anyone know what is the name of the song in this trailer? You should really check out the high-res version of this video if you enjoy first class computer generated cinematic.

Hi-Res version: http://www.gametrailers.com/player/23744.html

for cheng yee

2007-09-08T16:03:00.000+08:00

I told Cheng Yee today in school that I will write something about him on my blog today. He doubted and I'm here to prove him wrong.

So, without further ado:

SOMETHING

I would also want to take this moment to thank Cheng Yee for all of his services in MPPPU, ELS and Tennis Club. Here's a tip to all of you other guys who are aiming for a seat in any committee: Make sure your best friend isn't higher ranked than you in a committee, ESPECIALLY not if he's a president. ;)

Despite all the inane things that I have asked(umm... read that as 'forced') him to do, he still did them anyway. Out of submission. And for that, he has my respect. Thank you, Cheng Yee.

(For the rest of you, wait for your turn)

promise broken

2007-09-07T23:32:00.000+08:00

I really stink at keeping promises. I would love to post the pictures of the new board for MPPPU, which I have promised you in the my previous post but I just couldn't find the proper pics. They either look too dark or too big. I'm sorry, mates.

I'll try to come up with something decent, next time round. Cheers!

well, this is it.

2007-09-03T15:18:00.000+08:00

Today is the polling day for the incoming MPPPU 2007/08. This means 2 things:

1. It's time for the juniors to take up new roles and responsibilities in Form 6, which is a whole new chapter in their life. Unique problems arises and all sorts of drama will come and go. Many things will happen, for sure. Even things that others outside of MPPPU will never know about. It's not easy, neither is it impossible. Anyway, good luck to all of you involved, as the results will be announced tomorrow.

2. I can't believe that my term has finally come to an end. This actually frees up much of the much memory in my brain and I probably won't get as many headaches and migraines again. Well, until it's time for me to plan for my marriage, I suppose. It has been a great experience for me to take up a leading role in the MPPPU Board and through this I have learned so much about myself and the skills that I have, which I never knew existed. I'm thankful to God, first and foremost, for this opportunity because I sure as heck wouldn't trade this 1.5 year of my life away for ANYTHING else in this world.

There are much to be said and even more things are better left alone. I shall announce my 'successor' tomorrow, I suppose. Yes, I shall do just that.

It's a nice feeling to 'tie up the loose ends'. No, really, it is.

so thoughtful of me

2007-08-28T20:33:00.000+08:00

My mom loves to send 'care packages' over to my sister and I felt the need to try on her newest pair of slippers without her permission. So, as an ever-loving and constantly thoughtful brother, I took a picture to annoy the bear out of her.

Why do I have a certain feeling that I'm going to regret posting this. But still, hah.

"Have at thee, blackguard!"

2007-08-20T10:51:00.000+08:00

Oh look what I found on the Internet today:

Click for more info

Let's get all hypothetical for a second. Pretend you're sleeping at home and some dude breaks in and is going to rob you/kill you. How will you defend yourself quickly? Enter the Safe Bedside Table, a genius creation from designer James McAdam. What looks like a simple, basic table at first, quickly becomes a shield and sword ready for your defense. We're talking King Arthur-style, though, because you'll be greeting those attackers with a medieval-style shield and wooden club. No sharp swords or maces here. Remember to call 911 first before you start screaming things like, "Have at you, blackguard!" The whole thing is made of cherry and steel so it won't look hideous, either.

Tell me, who ISN'T going to get a kick out of this? I am contemplating on going to a carpenter here and him to make something like this for me. It would be very awesome.

(I can hear Michelle giggling and laughing away at this)

it's showtime!

2007-08-18T00:23:00.000+08:00

Well, tomorrow's the day.
The day for the show.
My Church's grand opening.
Oh, Lord;
Hopefully things will go well.

With much love and anxiety,
K'chai.

combos

2007-08-14T15:18:00.000+08:00

I get combos all the time. But rather than getting one of those McD or KFC combos, which I really don't mind, I seem to catch those sore throat combos all the time. If I'm your resident illness salesman, below would be my sales pitch trying to sell you my 'favourite' combo:

"Ladies and gentlemen,
For just a change in weather and room temperature, you can have your very own sore throat combo! It's not just ANY sore throat combo but it's one of those that comes along with body aching flu and swashbuckling fever! Our suppliers had us all stocked to the roof during the June-August season so, there is enough for everyone!

Come get yours today! 100% body-breaking satisfaction guaranteed!

Terms and Conditions apply. No returns or refunds accepted."

Oh yes... I can hear those 'groans' and eyeball rolling sounds already.

How am I suppose to do my work and prepare for the church opening like this?

what to read

2007-08-09T23:16:00.000+08:00

I'm not much of a reader, but I sure like the illusion of choices.

Click for biggie.

Well, I haven't blogging lately because I am not able to put any of my ideas down into coherent sentences. For now.

blog tagged

2007-07-26T16:16:00.000+08:00

Welp, can't say I'm extremely excited being blog tagged by Michelle on this 'survey' because I have no idea what the outcome's going to be like. Well, here goes...

NOTE: Personal comments are smaller and typed in Itallics.

--------------

Name 20 persons you can think of (This was hard to do off the top of my head!) and do this survey and tag 5 people:

1. Michelle
2. Daniel Eh
3. Ryan Nair
4. Cheng Yee
5. Tien Li
6. ~~Yi Wan~~ Jeanette
7. Paulus
8. Samuel
9. Mei Qi
10. Xue Qi
11. Chee Yong
12. Jae Son
13. Yow Han
14. Woon Cherk
15. Eunice
16. Hui Beng
17. Soo Ling
18. Lee Ping
19. Jit
20. Isaac

Wow... That was random, isn't it? Note that I took out Yi Wan's name. Would be more fun having a list without any family members in it. Plus, to prevent... uh... complications. Yes, complications.

Questions:
1) How did you meet #14 (Woon Cherk)?
Well, we're classmates and I really got to know him after becoming the monitor for my class. Yes, Woon Cherk, if you're reading this, I can still remember what happened when I got you to do our class time table. Hahaha...

2) What would you do if you hadn’t met #1 (Michelle)?
Well, my taste in music wouldn't be as refined(haha.... right) as it is now and I wouldn't have come to know Hugh Laurie and his fantastic acting. Well, to put it bluntly, I would be a very boring person if I didn't know her.

3) What would you do if #20 (Isaac) and #9 (Mei Qi) dated?
Now, if age is just a number, which it REALLY IS, and there wasn't any objection from either one of the families, I think things might come out pretty well. But then again, I'm afraid to make such implications and imagine things that probably wouldn't happen. My brain hurts now.

4) Would #6 (Jeanette) and #17 (Soo Ling) make a good couple?
Well, besides the fact both of them are fine ladies and lesbianism is illegal in Malaysia, I REALLY don't think things will work out very well.

5) Describe #3 (Ryan Nair)
Also known as the Tubs amongst the 4 Knights of the Square Table, (5 cookies if you know the joke) I have known him for a very long time. To preserve my life for a slightly longer time, I will describe Ryan vaguely: Chubby, fluffy hair, good complexion and a fantastic friend!

I know, I didn't make things any better, did I? :(

6) Do you think #8 (Samuel) is attractive?
Oh, come on! He's a guy for goodness sake!

7) Tell me something about #7 (Paulus).
He is one great fella and I wouldn't hesitate to entrust many things and responsibilities to him because I know he is a very responsible person. He is also the President of the youth fellowship and one that's incredibly sociable. Do you know that Paulus can make friends with strangers much better than anyone I have known? Well, now you do.

8) Do you know anything about #12 (Jae-son)?
Oh yes! I know that he LOVES music and he can play his instrumentS so well! I also know that he cares a lot about the people around him.

9) What is #1 (Michelle)’s favourite food?
After eating out together for a few times I've never heard her complain about anything. Either that or I'm just plain hopelessly unattentive. I think anything that's clean and edible would be right up her alley.

10) What will you do if #11(Chee Yong) confesses that he/she likes you?
I will die.

11) What language does #15(Eunice) speak?
Oh, she speaks good English!

12) Who is #9(Mei Qi) going out with?
Definitely NOT Isaac (refer to question 3).

13) How old is #16(Hui Beng)?
This is easy! 75!

14) When is the last time you talked to #13(Yow Han)?
Today, in school!

15) Who is #2(Daniel Eh)’s favourite singer?
Michael Buble? Hmm... there are so many, actually. Let's just say he likes all the singers who can make the ladies swoon. Yeah, he's one crafty man.

16) Would you date #4(Cheng Yee)?
That is as good of an idea as the time when Abraham Lincoln thought he would stop toddling around his house and went for the opera on one particular night with John Wilkes Booth. Other words, no.

17) Would you date #7(Paulus)?
No! Oh come on... why do I always get these dating questions with GUYS?!

18) Is #15 (Eunice) single?
Aha! Nope! Booked by our dear Jae-son.

19) What is #10(Xue Qi)’s last name?
Teo.

20) Would you consider being in a relationship with #19(Jit)?
Jit is happily married. With a cute baby coming. Tell me, what do you think?

21) What school did #17 (Soo Ling) go to?
Same as mine.

22) Where does #6(Jeanette) live?
In a brick house in Taman Intan.

23) What is your favourite thing about #5 (Tien Li)?
Always so well-informed and well read.

24) What do you think about #13? (Yow Han)
I'm willing to bet that everyone's first impression of him is that he is a quiet and meek person who doesn't like to make new friends and would much prefer to live all by himself on a secluded island. Well, if you get to know him, he can be one of the most crappy, hilarious and suggestive person on the planet. One example: He came up with a sport called SKIN BALL. Now, you tell me what that is.

25) What do #4 (Cheng Yee) and #18 (Lee Ping)have in common?
Well, honestly, NOTHING! They are worlds apart, I must say.

26) What special qualities does #5 (Tien Li) have?
Incredibly hardworking at reading and keeping herself well informed. She's also one of the smartest person I know! Being smart is a special quality, you know...

I tag:

1. Ryan
2. Jit
3. Paulus
4. Woon Cherk
5. Jae-son (If you still blog... haha)

--------------------

Well, what an experience that was. Had any fun? Hope so.

"I'll say!"

2007-07-21T19:40:00.000+08:00

I think Hugh Laurie is a fantastic actor and those who watch a lot of TV will know that he's Dr. House, medical genius, from House, MD. For those who didn't know, Hugh Laurie is actually a Briton acting as an American diagnostician in the medical series but his American accent is very good.

I've been watching some Jeeves and Wooster and it's actually one of the first few series that Hugh Laurie did back in England together with Stephen Fry. And I'll say, it's a wonderful series eventhough it's pretty old already(filmed in the 80s or early 90s I believe) filled to the brim with dark British humour and sarcastic remarks. Sharp witty comments and hilarious come-backs and twist of events are the order of the day in the Jeeves and Wooster series. It is possible to watch a couple of episodes off YouTube by searching for "Jeeves and Wooster". Oh, and everyone is so well-dressed too!

Oh, I also 'came across' a certain quiz to see which character am I in the Jeeves and Wooster series and turns out that I'm Jeeves, the butler. Heh.

Which Wooster and Jeeves Character Are You?

You are JEEVES!You are to be treasured and rewarded. You are the Renaissance Man: knowledgeable, effectual, and smooooth! May you shimmer forever.
Take this quiz!

oh man, my nose

2007-07-17T20:36:00.000+08:00

My dad got some durians courtesy of a very cool uncle somewhere. I put it in my car and drove around for a bit. After I reached home, I forgot to take out the durians from the boot. Bad idea. Boo-hoo.

A couple of hours later, when I wanted to drive, I was greeted with this horrid smell coming from the air-conditioning of my car. I don't know what it is but if you put 2 and 2 together, it means that durian smell + freon gas = horrid smell from the bowels of doom.

Oh gosh, someone please tell me hot to get rid of it.

paper roses

2007-07-03T19:11:00.000+08:00

How's this for a paper rose?

I know it's hard to imagine a fumbling klutz like me can fold a paper rose that no one else in my class can(I tried teaching them how) but it's true. It's not that hard but it's do-able. I really hate making the leaves(or leaf, you English police) though.

You dig?

now showing #2

2007-07-01T22:18:00.000+08:00

"Transformers! More than meets the eye!"

Wow! I just watched Transformers at MBO and I'm really impressed with Michael Bay's work. The way the movie introduced the Decepticons in the beginning of the movie was really good and there was a bit of suspense actually if you didn't know who are good guys/bad guys. It was great seeing all the main characters from the old Transformers cartoon series in the movie. However, there are differences between the movie and the cartoon series, of course but they are such minor details(okay, maybe not) but hey, who's complaining?

Bunch of great quotes thrown around, as usual but one thing that really threw me off is this: The movie is actually FUNNY. I mean, the cartoon's funny(tell me, which one isn't?) but it seems like this one's funnier! It really pays to listen carefully to the robots' banter and how ironic some situations can be.

I know I'm typing almost incoherently but that's probably because I'm still very much blown away by it. I really really like it. Makes me feel like a kid again. How wonderful that feeling can be; like you start to think that your dad's old junk car might be more than meets the eye or if that radio of yours sitting on your table really yours?

I'm imagining things. But then again, I do that all the time.

"AUTOBOTS! LET'S ROLL OUT!"

Note: I'm try to be subtle here but: WATCH IT! WATCH IT! WATCH IT! WATCH IT TWICE! NO, THREE TIMES! MORE!

marriage of a friend

2007-06-26T21:16:00.000+08:00

I had a dream last night: Ryan GOT MARRIED. I have no idea what happened the day before that caused me to dream about it but somehow I dreamt of our dear Ryan's marriage. I thought it was some sort of nightmare because I was a lot more excited that Ryan(don't ask) and I forced myself to wake up twice from it but somehow ended up in the same dream every time I got back to sleep. I remember seeing Ryan getting ready for his wedding and I was his best man. Is that the right term? I don't know... I'm not married.

I also remember we were both wearing some sleek looking black suit and everyone else was dressed very smartly. Unfortunately, I didn't get to see who the bride is because hey, since when did you ever hear about the bridegroom's best mate hanging out with the bride on the wedding day? That would so very wrong on so many different levels of wrong.

From what I remember, I think my dream was basically about me trying to get Ryan his wedding gift and in the end I gave him an original copy of a PC game called Star Wars : Dark Forces or something like that. I think it's the very first game from the Jedi Knight series. Ryan will know what I'm talking about. But yeah, I gave him a friggin' PC game on his wedding day.

Nerdy, eh?

opera

2007-06-16T14:49:00.000+08:00

Here's an awesome video of Paul Potts singing Nessun Dorma at a UK talent show, "Britain's Got Talent". Listen to Paul's own words before he went up to perform.

That was some intense singing, man. If you don't think that's good, you don't know music man.

hmm

2007-06-10T00:23:00.001+08:00

Someone I know will be very much heartbroken soon.

So, tell me. What do I do?

shows are fun

2007-06-09T12:36:00.000+08:00

It's great to have a show to perform in.

Well, I have one coming up in just about 2 hours or so but RIGHT NOW I HAVE HIGH FEVER.

*groan*
*passes out*

now showing

2007-06-08T00:08:00.000+08:00

I like movies. And I like them a whole lot more when I get to watch it in a cinema with a sounds blasting in your face in front of a big widescreen.... screen. The atmosphere, air-cond chill as well as that annoying punk sitting next to you who can't stop talking with his palz from da' hoodz, just make the whole experience DIFFERENT from watching it at home.

I never knew that I like going to cinema so much. My hometown never had one for a long time(closed down ages ago) and to be honest, I really didn't care when they said that they will be opening a cinema here a couple of months ago. I thought, "Meh... they're gonna go bust." Boy, am I wrong. So far, I have watched roughly 7-8 movies from MBO and I think they are all pretty kicking rad. Let's see, there is Ghost Rider, 300, Shooter, Spider-man 3, 28 Weeks Later, Pirates of the Carribean 3, etc... Just recently, by recently I mean JUST NOW, I watched a really cool movie: Ocean's Thirteen. Since I watch too much movie at the cinema, I thought why not put up recommendations here? You know... so that I don't have nothing to say ;)

My recommendation this time is Ocean's Thirteen. For those who didn't know who Danny Ocean is, I would suggest that you go and watch Ocean's 11 and 12 before watching it one because you may not 'get' some of the characters in this show like Terry Benedict and Toulor/Nightfox. If you have no idea who they are but are gonna watch it for the George Clooney/Brad Pitt/Matt Damon-awesomeness, then I guess you will be well pleased to see how an all-star cast of 'thieves' will try their best to beat the 'House', that is the term for Casino.

Things may seem a little bit too elaborate. Almost as wild as the 'lifting off the building' part in Ocean's 12 but nevermind. I won't spoil the movie much but if you really want to watch a movie about a bunch of excellent con-men trying to outplay the House, you should watch this.

For fans of Ocean's 11 and were disappointed by Ocean's 12 (hey, I didn't 12 was that bad) I really don't think you will be disappointed with this one. You get to see how Ocean's 'gang' gel with each other even more. MUCH more than in the previous movies. Plus, Linus(Matt Damon) plays a bigger role this time in their scam.

I'm not going to give ratings or anything. It's just too cheesy. Overall, I think it's worth the RM8 spent on the ticket and that 2 hours of my life sitting in front of a screen.

dieses ist so sonderbar!

2007-06-05T15:09:00.000+08:00

Okay, this is getting really weird and wonky. I have not been using the Internet for a while thanks to the great and mighty monopolizing Telekom Malaysia. That is not a weird part but this is:

Every single page that has my account tied to it, like Google, Blogger, Gmail, etc..., are now in GERMAN. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, every single page now is in German and I have no idea how to read them. So, I just guess my way through to post this and see if I can somehow get everything back to normal.

I love Germany and all that sausage and beer stuff but this is ridiculous.

Achtung!

today...

2007-05-18T17:19:00.000+08:00

...in Christ alone.

the truth about Orientation 2007/2008

2007-05-17T20:07:00.000+08:00

Here's the truth about the Orientation 2007/2008 for the juniors who just came into the school. I feel sorry for all of you and I truly apologise to any of you juniors who are reading this blog because Orientation this year is going stink.

I'm not one who pushes away his responsibilities and start pointing fingers at everything that goes wrong but rather I am one who cries over injustice and I try my very best to do what I think is right.

Last year, MPPPU 05/06 caught a lot of flak from the school's COUNSELING UNIT(HAHAHA) over the activities that they planned for us, the juniors back then. I thought the Orientation 2006/2007 was really good and I had a lot of fun. I made so many new friends and I think the Orientation planned by MPPPU 05/06 did what it's supposed to do.

So, fast forward to the beginning of the year, the school decided that the Counseling Unit will do it instead of MPPPU. Note that this has been decided WAYYY early in the beginning of the year. Then ONE WEEK AGO, the Counseling Unit wrote a memo to Miss Neo and told off one of my Directors for not preparing the time table for the Orientation 2007/2008. The said that it's MPPPU's job and not theirs and washed their hands off everything. Miss Neo was so angry, she went and had an argument with the 'counselors' about their responsibility that was given to them MONTHS ago. In the end, they decided to hold a meeting between the counselors, school and Miss Neo to settle this problem.

Turns out that the 2 morning session counselors who messed up disappeared and chickened out of the meeting and they got the poor afternoon session counselor to stand in instead. The GPK HEM, who is supposed to be in charge of this also pulled another disappearing act and got the GPK 1 to attend the meeting instead. In the end, there were only 3 people attending the meeting: GPK 1, afternoon session counselor and Miss Neo. Finally, it has been decided that it will be done by the Counseling Unit because it is their responsibility after all that has been entrusted to them since the beginning of the year and we, MPPPU will just help.

Fast forward till today, the 'counselors' didn't even bother to arrange the hall for the lower six students and from there onwards, everything went down the gutter. Loads of reshuffling of programs and talks because the main counselor was absent. I think he must have chickened out.

This one got me really ticked: MPPPU was supposed to teach the juniors how to sing the school song and my directors went around searching for the school song HIGH AND LOW all over the place and the lady counselor had the cheek to humiliate my directors and Miss Neo by calling Miss Neo 'rude' in their brief exchange of words and my directors passive and not proactive whereas they have been working their butts off. Bad case of false accusations and talking without using one's brain.

Then she(the lady counselor) complained everything to me again and said that she had taken the LIBERTY to look for the school song CD for us but little did she know, that SHE GOT US THE WRONG CD! It was embarrassing for us to have to fiddle around with the CD player trying to look for the non-existent track in front of all the juniors and I had to spend a lot of time 'stalling' and teaching the juniors a bunch of 'cheers' to lighten up the boring day(for them).

Finally, the AVA guys came to the rescue with the right CD. I think that's the first time these AVA guys ever did anything right. Well, any help is appreciate anyway, in times like these. Thankfully we got everything underway with the right CD.

I don't know what good came out of today. I think the reception from the juniors were pretty poor because they don't seem to like us very much. I think I talk too much but that's my job.

All in all, after everything's been said and done for the past two days, I have one conclusion to make: SOMEBODY IS TRYING REALLY HARD TO SCREW WITH US(MPPPU) AND HAVING A DAMN GOOD TIME MAKING US FRUSTRATED. Good job messing with us, but we are no where near the edge.

Well, here comes tomorrow...

what it takes to keep a cool head

2007-05-16T23:47:00.000+08:00

What does it take to keep a cool head in a tense situation? Funny that it comes from me because as a leader, it is one of the main prerequisites of being a leader. It shouldn't come as a surprise really, that when you plan an activity or anything with others that may not go along well with you, things will go wrong and tension will rise.

What a terrific day today, really. Today is Teachers' Day and a very big round of sarcastic applause to STK Prefects for screwing up my teacher's day. We're suppose to CELEBRATE our teachers on this day and thanks to our good friends in blue, today seems to give Miss Neo and MPPPU more drama than we can shake a TV tube at.

I have been told that sharing things will be good for the mind and the soul rather than to bottle it all up and end up with depression. I have learned to let go because hey, that's how I was raised; both in my family and in the youth group. I forgive these blue hippos but I need to rant. Bear with me or else click here and knock yourselves out rather than to read this useless piece of writing.

MPPPU('We' from here onwards) have been called to take part in the school's Teachers' Day celebration ONE AND A HALF MONTHS AGO. We were called for the very first meeting and rather than have a civil meeting between the the prefects and the MPPPU, the TEACHER-IN-CHARGE and the prefects treated us as second class citizens during the meeting. Making snide remarks about how MPPPU is soooo busy with their work and not willing to help the school, blah blah blah. We took it in stride because we know what we have done for the school and what they say simply isn't true. So, what the hell, we just let it go.

That was the first and the last meeting we ever have regarding the Teachers' Day because for some reason, SOMEONE thought that MPPPU didn't want to help out anymore and we washed our hands off everything. The blue hippos assured us weeks ago that whenever they have a meeting, they will call/update us on what we need to do. So, for many weeks no one came to any of us and until I asked one of the prefects and she said that we didn't want to help them anymore and we 'washed our hands off everything'.

Naturally, I wasn't happy that they said something like that which didn't make any sense at all. Miss Neo thought, "What the heck" and we were told to do what we were told to do in the first meeting WEEKS ago. I was told to be in charge of security and the arrangement of the students. I spent my time and energy to plan and notify the head prefect(another Forrest Gump but minus the sincerity and other goodness) that I need a certain number of prefects for the event, which is only 10 for the boys out of 120+ prefects that they have in the school. That is, ladies and gentlemen, 8.33% of the prefects.

I reminded him the day before the event, which is yesterday, about what we need and plans that I need to have prefects to do their duty at the gate and Forrest 'Head Boy' Gump said "Okay, no problem."

The morning came and what was supposed to be a fine day turns out to be one that will shorten my lifespan by 10 years. Firstly, once the students start to gather at the sports complex, I have to arrange them and get them to line up properly. The fantastic thing is this: NO ONE WAS THERE TO HELP ME. My MPPPU Directors were busy trying to register the lower six students that is understandable but I expected the prefects to be there. None of these blue hippos were there and they only came down to help me once the even got started. What is the point of coming if you come after everything's been done? I hate to arrange these boys because the lower form kids will never listen to us form six'ers. Probably because we don't speak the same language and think on the same wavelength.

Anyway, what's done is done and I thought, "Okay...let's move on." I went and tried to look for the person in charge and everyone said "No, I don't know anything about this. Don't ask me." This is Malaysian bureaucracy at its finest, ladies and gentlemen. We are breeding these prefects who are supposed to be leaders to pinpoint faults at other people and teaching them to apply 'bureaucratic red tape' to their menial duties. Referring one person to the other pointlessly until one sad boy told me that our dear Forrest Gump is in-charge of everything.

Fair enough, I went to look for him and I asked him, "What happened? WHERE ARE THE PREFECTS WHEN WE NEEDED THEM?!" He had the cheek to answer me, "Uhh...they weren't there? Well, I was busy preparing the 'gimmick'(which was a lame bullshit stunt that they pulled during the event to make the funnies)" And naturally, I was angry.

Right after all these rubbish, I had to run off with a couple more directors of mine to 'escort' the teachers to the sports complex because we are wearing blazers after all and we look a lot better than the blue bums. We ran to the place where all the teachers are gathering and what happened is that they took off without us! Obviously they are doing all these just to spite us. Stress, stress, stress.

To add salt to the wound, many seniors(upper six students) from PU2B2 and PU2B3 thought it would be a splendid idea to come late at 10:30AM because Teachers' Day celebration is a pointless event and they rather come late just to do their compulsory experiments. I had to rally for help from my own MPPPU Directors because none of the prefects who promised to be there at the gates were there to do their duty. NO ONE. ABSOLUTELY NO ONE WAS THERE.

These kind of things seems to happen to me all the time. I must be really unlucky or something. I'm sad to say that's only the first half of the story. If you want to, you might want to go and watch YouTube or something. Or else, here's the second part:

Another teacher who has nothing to do with Form 6 come and told Miss Neo and I that our own directors are letting the students go back early. The whole thing was a misunderstanding because the said student, who supposedly left early, never stepped into the school at all! Here's a fine example of teachers always trying to find fault with us.

I really cannot take any of these bullshit any longer and Miss Neo and I went to see the discipline teacher. We had a long talk about the general attitude of the prefects and the teacher in charge of them. We came to a conclusion that we will hold a meeting between the MPPPU and prefects in the presence of the principal and other administrative teachers. We want to solve this 'relationship' problems in that meeting to pave a new way for the coming generations of MPPPU and form six students to come.

I'm trying to be calm but the more I dwell on this, the more it's going to kill me. And I guess that's what the prefects want the most. I have 3 more months to hold this post and you can be sure as heck that I'm going to go out with a bang.

I really don't want to continue any more even though there are so many things that I did not share and should probably be left untold.

Oh and Happy Teachers' Day to all of you out there!

bad habits

2007-05-07T00:06:00.000+08:00

They say bad habits are easy to pick up but hard to put down. I say that is very true.

I have a very strange bad habit and in a moment you'll know why. I have read multiples articles, studies and discussions on the human habit and the psychology of the human mind because these things interests me a lot. Plus, as a magician, it gives me an invaluable advantage over my spectators to know what are they thinking and how they will react even before they know it themselves through mere suggestions of words and thoughts as well as their body language. Thus, bad habits and other psychological 'disorders' interests me as well.

I wouldn't call my bad habit a disorder. I really annoying bad habit maybe but not until the stage of a disorder. So, what's my problem?

I LOVE to rearrange my things. I really like things to be tidy but if you come over to my house and look at my living area you'll think I'm a messy hobo. In fact, I sometimes fail to even look for things that I have put down moments ago. That's how messy my drawers and even tables can get but that's not that point. The point is, I only rearrange everything when I'm nearing exam or a deadline.

Just ask my mom and she will tell you exactly WHEN will I be sitting for any exam or tests; that is when I start to rearrange everything in my room, desk and everything. Where I place my books and notes never bothered me but once the exam is near, everything will get some sort of new arrangement. I would sort all my notes out(which I usually don't because.... hey, it's MY notes!) and file them accordingly.

My mom decided to name this bad habit of mine. She said it's called: LAZINESS.

Heh.

it takes quite an effort...

2007-05-03T21:25:00.000+08:00

...to pull off the greatest illusion in the world.

This one's for you, King of Gags. :)

There's MAGIC everywhere!

2007-05-02T00:13:00.000+08:00

Tons of things happened today.

First of all would be Eden's Open Day at the Kg. Paya Community Hall. It's a pretty big place and I believe that other than the rain, everything went pretty smoothly and there seems to be enough space for everyone, which is usually a problem at big fairs like these. Many different churches and NGOs come together to bring awareness to the community around Kg. Paya about Eden's Community Centre's existence and overall I think the even was pretty successful.

I had the opportunity to do something I have never done in my entire life: TO BUSK! After standing and doing magic for 8 hours straight, I have a great amount of respect for street buskers now. It isn't easy, alright... I have made a grand total of RM39! That's not even enough to cover the cost of the props! Hahaha...

I stuck a piece of polystyrene in front of my little space at AYA's stall that says "Any contributions are WELCOMED!" to let people know that they can pay me whatever amount they feel I'm worth. Well, after this experience, I think I should change the words into something that says "GIVE ME YOUR MONIES". Hehe... I think I have done magic to roughly 150+ who drop by our stall and out of those only 30% contributed with an average of 2 coupons. So many times when the kids wanted to give me their monies(Okay.. okay... it's money, I know...) their parents would urged them away.

lol.

I think this is another great experience for me because doing magic for friends is one thing and it's an entirely different thing to do magic for monies. A friend saw my 'earning' of the day and told me, "It's alright. We live in Malaysia, anyway, where buskers aren't really appreciated." Now, don't get me wrong here. I'm not complaining. I'm just a little disappointed with the general attitude of Malaysians(I may be over generalizing people here). So many of them come up to me and ask if they need to pay after watching me do my thing and once I told them they can 'pay me whatever amount they think I'm worth', they walked away. Fantastic.

It's really boring for me to do the same thing over and over again(I think I did my Ambitious Card Routine for a million times today) but to everyone else who drops by, it's brand new thing that people usually have not seen in their entire lives! So, everytime I get a new group of people, I would need to put on a Mr. Charming smile and start afresh. What a challenging experience, I must say...

Other than that and the rain, it has been a great day for me. Gave out my cards to a lot of people. Maybe I can expect some calls from some hawt girls sometime soon. Hehehe... In fact, I'm very much surprised that a lot of my teachers dropped by. It was fun fooling around my very own teachers.

After the event, Yi Wan and I thought it might be a good idea to check out the old haunted hospital situated along Jalan Hospital (haha) but that's a post for another day. Promise! :D

"People always ask me... whether I do this for love or for money. I say it's for LOVE! *cheers* The love for your money!"

exciting...

2007-04-28T21:16:00.000+08:00

I know... I'm getting all distracted by this already.

ESUM Public Speaking Competition GRANDFINALS 2007

2007-04-22T16:12:00.001+08:00

NOTE: This is going to be the longest post ever in the history of my blogs for a very long time. There will be a lot of pictures so, if you're still on 56k, I would suggest that you go and have your lunch and dinner while the pictures are loading.

A little background information: I went for the preliminary round of the ESUM Public Speaking Competition 2007 on the 7th of April at Malacca's Stamford College with Daniel, courtesy of a ride by Mdm. Chan and her husband. We originally signed up for the JB centre but apparently the organisers(The Star Publications and HSBC) decided to close down the JB centre because the response from Johor is very poor and we had to go to the Malacca centre for our preliminary competition.

I had a great time then. Both of us went to the competition without any hopes or wishes that we may win or anything because this if our very first public speaking competition of ANY KIND. We went there and was blown away by the number of quality speakers at Stamford College. People like Amanda and Nimisha were fantastic in their presentation. We didn't think there would be any hope of us entering the Semifinal considering the amount of quality speakers we have at Malacca. Somehow or rather I made it into the final 8(Semifinal). When it came to my turn to present my piece on "The Straw that Broke the Camel's Back", I went up and spoke about how Teacher's Day is coming and we should be good students, etc.. etc.. Halfway through I forgot my script and proceed to '[i]goreng[/i]' my way through. After that I thought, "Sure die wan. I forgot my script." Nimisha and so many others were better than me and I thought all hopes were lost. After all 8 of us have presented our piece, we were told that the results for the Semifinals around the country will be announced in a week's time.

Fast forward a week later, on the 13th of April, Umal from The Star Publications called me up and told me that I have been selected to go for the Grandfinals in KL! By then, I only have 1 more week left to prepare for my speech for the Grandfinals because I really didn't expect to make it this far and apparently, I'm the ONLY ONE from a tiny town! All the other 12 finalists are from various places such as KL, Penang and Kuching. Oh, and there is this other guy too, Koh Siang Boon, who is an excellent speaker and he's from Segamat! Apparently the only 2 guys selected from Malacca are JOHOREANS! Woo... hooray for Johor, eh?

Anyway, I had a lot of trouble trying to prepare my Grandfinal speech based on the theme "Dynamic Earth". We are supposed to prepare our speech based on a topic that is related to the theme, "Dynamic Earth", but it must not be totally about the that. Confusing, eh? So, I decided to base my speech on unity because Raja Nazrin's address on unity really inspired me. The first script that I prepared sounded too much like a National Day speech by some minister, it seems. Well, that's what my teacher said. Mdm. Presanna thought that script didn't have my style at all. So, I went on and changed it on WEDNESDAY(18/4/2007) just 3 days before the Grandfinals and based my new script about my form 5 class 5ST1 and united we were back then. This one's really funny according to all my teachers and said that it contains my style, alright.

I had to fly from Senai to KLIA on Friday and then be picked up by members of The Star then we will all proceed to Berjaya Times Square Hotel and Convention Centre for our briefing and accommodation. It was too bad that I didn't bring my camera along for the Prelims at Malacca. So, I learned my lesson and decided to bring mine along for the Grandfinals. I have documented my whole trip below. Hope you will enjoy the commentaries of a small town boy on his experiences of his very first public speaking competition coutesy of English Speaking Union of Malaysia(ESUM), The Star Publications and HSBC Bank!

Note: The pics look a bit squished up and weird because it couldn't fit the size of my blog. So, if you want to take a better look at the pics, just click on it and you can view it at a much better ratio.

My ugly mug moments before I board my very flight in my life.

This is what they call the "Boarding Gate". Apparently it's supposed to be connected to an aircraft. But I see no aircraft. Am I at the wrong gate?

This IS Gate02! So, I guess I'm at the right place. But.. where's the plane?

Looks empty...

Here we have our pilots who arrived late in style. Looked frosty.

Suddenly the gated started to 'descend'. Hmm... I wonder what's going to happen.

Oh lookie.... a plane.

Is... is.... that my... plane approaching?

OH NOES! A PLANE IS APPROACHING! IT'S GETTING NEARER BY THE SECOND... IS IT GOING TO CRASH INTO THE WALKWAY?!

And then it came to a complete stop right in front of the Airport workers. lol

Here's the part where they would refuel the plane before allowing us to board the plane. I didn't know they were supposed to stick [i]that[/i] into the wing.

Shortly after that, we took off from Senai heading towards KLIA. I couln't take a pictures on the plane for obvious reasons and I must say that for my very first flight, it was incredibly fun and I really enjoyed myself.

Once I reached KLIA, I was greeted by Yuan Ni, one of The Star's staff and she took care of us 'foreigners' who are not from KL.

Here we have Derren Sim. One of the Final 12. Also known as the guy with the biggest picture in the newspaper.

Ooohh... what's this on the Arrival/Departure board?

Virus. lol

After everyone has arrived, we were chauffeured to the total by a very nice guy. In a van. I wanted to take pics of everyone but due to someone who's dying to play oneupmanship with me in the van, I politely put my camera away. I was too frustrated by then already because I really didn't want to fight with this dude but he insisted on playing that silly alpha male game with me. Which was annoying the bejeebers out of everyone. But, nevertheless. These are the things that we may face in our lives in the future.

After an hour or 2 ride from KLIA, we finally reached Berjaya Times Square.

Nice hotel, yo... It's a 5-star hotel and convention centre frequented by many foreigners. ESPECIALLY people from the Middle East during 'Arab Season'.

Here, we have Leah talking to Derren in the lobby. NOTE: I really wish I could have taken pictures of everyone but too bad I didn't get to. So, if you're reading this, my fellow public speakers, please email me or send me a picture of yourself so that I can have a record of all the awesome people I met.

The hotel lobby.

A 'group' picture with Derren and Siang Boon. WHY DID YOU HAVE TO CLOSE YOUR EYES? :(

[i]"C'mon, Peter! Paint me a pretty picture!"[/i]

MORE PICTURES!

I wanted to check-in right after getting my 'keys' but I was told that it wasn't ready yet. So, they gave me a complimentary drink at the Broadway Lounge. What a pretty place.

Here we have the 'house wine' used to make cocktails and stuff.

Ah.. this is Joe. He's the bartender there and he's EXTREMELY friendly. He explained to me what are liqours and liqures, etc.. etc.. What a great character. Friendly dude.

BEHOLD! MY ROOM!

Big, big toilet...

...big big bed.

Big big sofa...

...and a big big jail. :( I had this view right outside my window. lol

After taking those pictures, I went off for the briefing at the Manhattan III hall. Eric Lee was the last guy there for the briefing and he brought all of his luggage along thinking he had a place to stay in the hotel. He didn't know that the accommodation is only for outsiders who live outside KL. Anyway, I offered him to share with me in my room because I'm not used to staying in such a big and fancy place by myself. I know it's going to sound and look really weird because I offered a stranger to share a room with me and then only introduce myself to him.

CONTRARY TO POPULAR BELIEF, ERIC AND I DIDN'T DO ANYTHING BUT PRACTICE OUR SCRIPTS TILL 11:30PM AND THEN STRAIGHT TO BED. THERE WASN'T ANYTHING GOING ON. Just don't listen to Victor, Sue-Ann(sp?) or Jackie, of The Star, okay? :p lol

About Victor, he's such a funny dude. Too bad I didn't manage to take any pictures with him because he looks a lot like our very own Yoshua and behaves a lot like him too. Oh, and he's a really funny guy and very very good with English. Hence, he's one of the organisers. Still, he can get really high at times. We all think it's the hunger.

The next day...

Eric and I had to part ways(lol... Victor is so going to jump on this immediately) because the breakfast coupon that was provided was for me alone only. Imagine the look of a small town boy when he gets the chance to have buffet breakfast at a 5-star hotel. If you can't imagine, it's okay. Just look below:

The Big Apple Restaurant at the hotel is such a pretty place too. There are lots of cute waitresses and all of them kept on smiling at me. *ahem* *ahem* Maybe it's the friendly service but still, I missed the opportunity to take pictures with them because I was rushing to get back to the hall for the competition.

Loads of food there and I some how took all the cold food available.

Welcome, to the Grandfinals.

From left: Eric Lee, Nadia, King Chai and Siang Boon(YOUR EYES! Again.)

Once the competition was on the way, I asked my kind uncle who came to help me to take pictures of the finalists speaking. He only took a few. Here, we have Wan Xin. She has a natural sounding accent and pretty friendly, if you ask me.

Here's Nikita.

And Temily!

This one's Jia Hui. His topic is "Attack of the Clones" and it was a very unique take on the theme "Dynamic Earth". Great job, dude! I really admire your creativity and efforts!

And the moment all of you been waiting for.... ME!

Here's more of yours sincerely trying to be funny on stage.

I know you guys want more of me. So, here's me looking really creepy on stage while receiving my 'prize' from Mr. Andrew of HSBC.

The winner is....

ERIC LEE! I'm so happy for you, dude! You were humble and always ready to help.

Group photo!

Mdm. Chan and I.

Uncle and I.

Eric and I.

From left: Umah, K'chai and Madam Faridah.

Umah's been the one I've always been in contact with for this competition and she has been such a wonderful help to me because of all her encouragement and support. If it wasn't for her, I would've pulled out of the competition long time ago. Then, there's also Madam Faridah(or Puan Faridah, as we all call her). She was the head judge for the Malacca centre and she told me that she picked me out of the 44 participants at Malacca because she said my facial expression's very good. I must thank her because without all of her last minute tips, I wouldn't have made it so far. One look at both Umah and Puan Faridah and you can see that both of them have a very friendly and kind face. Whenever I look at both of them, I always see them as someone who is very comforting. Almost like a mother to be. I was so tense and terrified before the Grandfinals until I spoke to Puan Faridah. I really appreciate all the help and support given by both Umah and Puan Faridah. You're GREAT!

We had 'fine dining' for lunch. It was a weird yet hilarious experience. The weird part is this: I've never been to a high class restaurant before, let alone 'fine dining' at a 5 star hotel. So, monkey see, monkey do. I do whatever the person next to me does. That explains why I'm always 1 course behind everyone :p Too bad I didn't any pictures during lunch because it was hilarious the way everyone kept on ribbing on each other. Well... I get ribbed the most. But still, Jackie(Man... wished I got a picture with her too) and Umah insisted that I should be honoured because I keep getting 'personal attention' from members of The Star. Yeah... thanks Victor. lol

Anyway, right after lunch, I had to leave for KLIA because it's quite a distance away from Berjaya Times Square. Here's the 'board' at my boarding gate, B05:

The strange thing is this. If you look at the picture below carefully, you can see that there are roughly 50+ people waiting OUTSIDE the seating area, which is practically empty. My boarding pass said that the boarding time is 4:50PM and by the time I reached the gate, it's already 5:00PM, because I was late due to the rain. What I don't get is that why don't they allow us to seat at the waiting area? Strange people making strange decisions that I may never understand.

The pride of Malaysia. The KLIA Air Traffic Control. The highest in the world, baby...

This is Hamid. What a friendly staff of MAS... I did magic for him and in return he shared with me some of his stories and explained to me interesting facts about the airport that I never knew.

My ride home.

Overall, it's been a great trip and experience for me. Eventhough I didn't make it for the London trip but I felt that I have won more than I have lost. Yes, losing sucks and the flight home was painful because so much hopes were placed on me. But still, if I really think about it, I have gotten myself priceless experience that couldn't be gotten anywhere else and have made so many new friends who are all wonderful and friendly people. I really thank God for this wonderful opportunity.

Keep in mind that this is my very first public speaking competition ever and next year would probably be my last due to age limitations. I was told to try again next year. Well, I will try my best to participate again next year if I'm still alive/around. Now that I have made it so far, ESUM Public Speaking Competition will be well known throughout Kluang and I suppose next year there will be an influx of participants from Kluang. The Star, if there's anyone you should blame for the influx, blame me, alright. ;)

Thank you all for reading my trip report and I hope all of you had as much fun reading as I had during the trip. There are so many things that I couldn't take pictures of and even write due to my poor writing skills. I'm sorry to all of you if I have missed out on taking pictures with you because I didn't have the opportunity to do so. I really hope I could.

Till then, take care everyone!

PU2F3 and magic

2007-03-30T21:46:00.000+08:00

Here's what happened when you put PU2F3(my class) with a camera and a magic trick. It got so funny with all the weird acting and reactions, that things got out of hand pretty quickly. Then Pn. Woon came. lol

visualDNA

2007-03-29T19:24:00.000+08:00

Got this from Mich's blog:

Read my VisualDNA™ Get your own VisualDNA™

Apparently, I'm sophisticated. Like... James Bond.

labelled in Malaysia

2007-03-25T13:19:00.000+08:00

Here's a little effect that I did Church today after service:

Somehow I looked and sounded like a douche. lol.

IT'S MAGIC

2007-03-24T18:19:00.000+08:00

I've been searching for this for a long time. Enjoy!

lol

birthday in school

2007-03-23T17:37:00.000+08:00

Yay, I celebrated my birthday in school today during recess with my school mates. They gave me a SHIT(more on that later) and a nice white polo T(which is what I'm wearing in the pics below). When you have a bunch of teenagers and a shit-doll, hilarity ensued. We would play with the shit during classes as well as after classes. It was even better when the teacher's not around and we get to play around and pose with the shit.

It was an eventful day too. Got to know my MUET Speaking Trials result(Band 6, woo..) and then at the end of school, I also found out that EVERYONE who parked their car along the small road by the police station(STK students would know what I'm talking about) got a summon slip from the police :p I didn't get one because I parked right in front of the police station and everyone who parked by the small road got a little white slip.

The school will have to settle this for the students or else "Somebody gonna get the hurt..."

Anyway, here are some pics of my birthday swag from my school mates:

I present to you.....THE SHIT:

ala the burger advert:

OH NOES WHAT HAVE I DONE?

It's been fun, guys... thanks!

telekinesis

2007-03-12T22:13:00.000+08:00

This guy can only use his telekinesis power on biscuits:

Now I wish I can have one too.

being all that I can be

2007-03-11T20:39:00.000+08:00

I work really hard to juggle 3 president-ship at one time. It's not an easy task but I'm doing my best here. A few of us were out last night for supper and someone said that it was a joke(about me being a president of MPPPU) and no, I don't take such comments lightly considering how much effort I have put into it. In fact, I am so confident about myself and the work that I have done, that I don't think anyone else could have done a better job than me.

Arrogant? Maybe. Confident of my own abilities? You bet.

I can lead a horse to water; heck, I can bring the lake to the horse if you so fancy it but there's no way I can force the horse to drink from it. If the horse still refuses to drink from it, I can't take the water away and let it die of thirst. I would have to untie the horse and let it run back to wilderness. That or I can lie and trick the horse into thinking that water is the best thing since sliced bread, still what's the point?

Who am I proving myself to?
No one. If there is, the future, perhaps.

Who do I answer to?
God. If there is something wrong that I have done during my term, let He smite me if He so wishes.

Why all the trouble?
I do what is expected of me. Sometimes, a bit too much. Sometimes, too little. But at least I know I'm being all that I can be.

heavy metal dudes

2007-03-07T22:57:00.000+08:00

I can't get enough of heavy metal guitarists playing More Than Words:

No, this one doesn't have any insane Japanese guys.

yatta!

2007-03-06T18:56:00.000+08:00

Now I know where Hiro Nakamura got his "Yatta!".

lol

tread softly

2007-03-01T20:48:00.000+08:00

He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven

Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

- William Butler Yeats, 1899.

What a great way to celebrate the 100th post of this blog... I first heard about this poem while I was watching 'Equilibrium' (some kickass show with great gun-tana fighting) a year or two ago. I really liked it but never thought about searching for it. After watching the film again, I went on and googled some lines of the poem and found it.

What a beautiful piece.

I have this strange feeling

2007-02-24T16:38:00.000+08:00

Somehow, I find myself very much interested in matters concerning investment, properties, financial planning, etc... I don't know whether this interest is short term or it may even leads to a bright future. I don't know but I will definitely seek for answers.

If it is the latter, it means that I have made a terrible terrible choice to stay at where I am right now because I somehow don't see myself as a man of science(or rather "MAN OF SCIENCE!!"). Maybe I don't see the bigger picture yet. I don't want to rush into conclusions about myself and then having to rectify that in the future. I guess we will just wait. And see...

And so the truck ran over the boy and he died. The end.

so...what am I?

2007-02-09T20:16:00.000+08:00

I am moving away from the usual trickery that I used to do. Things like card magic, sleight of hands, blah blah blah are starting to bore through my skulls. Not that I have mastered them but I really wish to expand my talents beyond what is the 'mean' of this area.

I'm hoping to be able to experiment more in areas of mentalism where the unexplainable could happen. Things like, thought reading, psychokinesis, achieving great feats through methods of suggestions and psychological subtleties and so much more. The danger in this is that people who don't understand the nature of this work will start be disillusioned about this mysterious realm of mentalism. People will start to think that I'm in league with the Devil, Satan, Hilly-Billy, Cowboy BeBop, the Fantastic Four or even Sylar!

Anyway, if anyone ever come up to me and ask me about how I achieve my effects or whether I'm psychic or anything, I will say this: "The effects are achieved through suggestions and psychological subtleties which influenced your actions into allowing these effects to be achieved."

So, there you have it!

Some things that certain people just won't get

2007-02-03T18:50:00.000+08:00

There are some things that only a few people will ever 'get'. I don't mean 'get' as in physical possession of material things but I mean "get" as in understanding and being able to do something.

There are many things that I could never 'get':

1. Spit-and-Shine
Okay, I've just spent the past ONE hour trying to shine my black leather shoes the 'hardcore' way with wax, spit and cloth. Dang, is it tough as heck. I just can't get it right. Sheesh... It still looked so dull without much shine; although it did help in covering the scuff-marks at the tip of my right shoe.

2. Clowning
Yes, I know. I can be very silly at times with my outrageous behaviour but if you put me in front and told me to entertain a bunch of people with my meaningless banter, it wouldn't be very funny. As all the ELS member would have know after today, I would seem a lot more pretentious and being so 'full of it'.

3. Stuff
*Insert some controversial things that I shouldn't speak about unless I would like to be flogged in the public.*

Umm.. yeah.. flogged. Public.

TV

2007-02-01T21:13:00.000+08:00

I don't watch much TV.

No, really. Instead of watching TV, I would tart around the PC. Some of you may have known about my strange little 'obsession' with this TV show called "House", which features this ridiculously sarcastic doctor. Well, I still like the show a lot but there's a NEW show on TV that really interests me. It's... HEROES.

It's about this bunch of dudes, each of them with different superpowers(or genetic mutation as the show calls them; for eg, flight, teleportation, invincibility, etc... etc...) destined to save the world. Well, as far as I know, it's a whole load of drama. In the first episode, there's this one artist that has the power of premonition, which allows him to paint pictures of the future(aka predicting the future) when he's high(great moral values, I know..) and he painted a picture of a nuke exploding in downtown New York. He was saying, "He must be stopped... he must be stopped..." after he OD-ed.

What an awesome scene.

Then there's also this Japanese dude who can bend space-time continuum, which allows him to teleport to ANYWHERE. Yes, he 'accidentally' teleported into the Ladies' lavatory. The next day, on one of his usual monotonous trip to work on the Japanese bullet train, he kept on thinking about his power. He stared into a poster of New York City and wished that he was there. He closed his eyes and BAM! He appeared in the middle of Madison Square(I think). Fantastic.

It's REALLY REALLY GOOD!

Catch it on Astro, Star World, Channel 70, on Wednesday from 9:00 to 10:00.

any vets in the house

2007-01-20T21:37:00.000+08:00

Saw something really strange this morning that really grossed me out. I(my mom actually) found the HEAD of a KITTEN on the walkway. It was detached from it's body with blood stains all over the walkway. As if the front of the kitten's head literally popped out of it's skull. You can see the muscle strands of the kitten's head sticking out from the back. To make things worse, the other parts left are the intestines and ONE miserable hind leg with the rest of the body is MISSING. So, I kick-start my day with a miserable sight of a kitten's head, intestines, a hind leg and a mess of a blood stain.

There could be a few possibilities on what might have caused this strange... happening:

1. It was in a fight with another cat much bigger than it.
2. A dog sneaked into the house and 'stumbled' upon the kitten.
3. A monitor lizard; wait; A REALLY BIG monitor lizard that sneaked through the front gate.
4. An owl? Unlikely but mother nature can be pretty mean at times.
5. A hobo(homeless dude) that broke into my house compound and found 'supper'.
6. A zombie outbreak. Unlikely as well, since I'm moaning and groaning right now with an insatiable hunger for BBBBBRRRAAAIIINNNNSSSSSS.
7. WORST CASE SCENARIO: One of us Woons woke up in the middle of the night and sleep-walked our way into having a kitten in one of our mouths.

If any of you have ANY idea on how this would happen, don't hesitate to post in the comments. The more outrageous it is, the better.

from Mother Teresa...

2007-01-17T23:05:00.000+08:00

...with love.

People are often unreasonable, illogical, and self-centered;
Forgive them anyway.

If you are kind,
people may accuse you of selfish ulterior motives;
Be kind anyway.

If you are successful,
you will win some false friends and some true enemies;
Succeed anyway.

If you are honest and frank,
people may cheat you;
Be honest and frank anyway.

What you spend years building,
someone could destroy overnight.
Build anyway.

If you find serenity and happiness,
they may be jealous;
Be happy anyway.

The good you do today,
people will often forget tomorrow;
Do good anyway.

Give the world the best you have,
and it may never be enough;
Give the best you've got anyway.

You see, in the final analysis
it is between you and God;
it was never between you and them anyway.

hawt magic

2007-01-13T13:42:00.000+08:00

Some of you may have gotten sick of my doing magic for the past 2-3 years. Heck, even I got sick of myself doing the same things over and over again. So, I'm going to do something different by putting some hawt hawt magic videos up on youtube.com for everyone to see. These are BRAND NEW stuff that I personally have not shown to anyone. Well, besides Daniel, who just saw it last night when he came over to my place.

For all of you technical dudes out there, I recorded these with a Nokia N73 and to be very honest, I'm very surprised with the quality of the video. I will be turning off sound for all my videos unless they require me to talk.

Oh, by the way, please rate my videos! Thanks!

Yay! I'm now a YouTube superstar!

....right.

Grandpa's Aces

2007-01-11T22:47:00.000+08:00

*ogles at David Copperfield's mad skillz*

for the house fans

2007-01-08T18:39:00.000+08:00

Can you believe that this guy's a Brit?!

Fantastic.

weener waggin

2007-01-06T09:53:00.000+08:00

One of the things that really irks me is that how people sometimes talk down on each other in front of others just to show how he/she is a better/smarter/hotter than the other and the other person just won't give in. That can be described as weener wagging. As it usually happens to guys with excessive testosterones and/or the inability to know when their "Alpha Male"-ness(who the heck believes in that?) is stepping on other people's toes. People will feel insulted, ashamed and generally disheartened.

I have caught myself to be inadvertently guilty of this as well and as part of my New Year's Resolution, I want to get rid of that. Completely.

No point arguing over something that benefits no one besides slapping each other around with overly pretentious egos. It's just, well, rubbish.

mmm.... stress... yummy

2007-01-03T22:38:00.000+08:00

After a one and a half months break, I kinda forgot how stress taste like.

It's yummy, I tell you.

Yummy.

a beautiful year ahead

2007-01-01T19:04:00.000+08:00

2007 will be a challenging year; no doubts about it.

But I just can't wait to give 2007 a swift kick in the arse and nail that one year that may very well change my life forever and possibly determine my future career(and family *sniffs*) life.

Here's a toast to a beautiful and great year ahead!

Cheers!

blogger beta does wonders

2006-12-18T20:13:00.000+08:00

If you have a blog hosted on Blogger.com, make sure you run over right now and activate the Blogger Beta service. It's so easy and stable to use. Even someone like me, who is artistically deficit can come up with some sort of template like this. Just click a few buttons here and there and Blogger Beta does it all.

It even has NewsFeed function(check the bottom of the sidebar), although I had to settle with Reuters' News because I couldn't find the RSS link for BBC News. (Psst.. for the record, I DON'T LIKE REUTERS)

"We shall now return to your scheduled programming."

hahaha

2006-12-15T18:10:00.000+08:00

*tickle* *tickle* *tickle*

Hahahahahaha....

the greatest magic trick of all time

2006-12-13T00:37:00.000+08:00

"For a few brief minutes, I strive to pull off my greatest trick of all: to make them forget they are ill."

- Daniel Sokol

I just read an article on BBC(link: here) about a guy who does magic in hospital and he calls himself a Medical Ethicist. I find the article that he wrote very interesting because it spoke to me in a pretty deep way.

It's no secret that I do magic. A lot. And I always try my best to offer to do a bit of tricks here and there, at children shows, etc.. etc... but I never seem to really put my thought into why I want to spend my time doing these things. Reading that article that I mentioned above sort-of opened up 'something' in my heart. I can't really put a finger to it but as I think about that little moment of joy that I can put into someone's life, it makes all the effort worth it.

So, I urge all of you, YF-ers(if you're reading this at all), who are involved with the Christmas Outreach Program to think carefully about what you will be doing for the kids this coming 17th as well as Christmas.

Cheers!

that school of thought

2006-12-12T20:49:00.000+08:00

I remember this thing that I said last year when I had to skip DNA '05 (Petronas...! *waves fist*) but went for ESP4, in the end:

It doesn't matter what camp you go to if your intention is to learn from what God wants to teach because camps are just a premise for a person to learn. So, even if I missed DNA '05, God used ESP 4 to teach me new things. In fact, even if I didn't go for ANY camps, I will still learn what God WANTS me to learn because if He wants me to learn, He's going to teach that to me any how.

In short, that's pretty much what came up to me last year and I thought, "Since I only get to go for 1 camp this year(2005), I hope next year(2006) won't be worse."

Yeah... right. Me and my big... uh... thinking inner monologue. *cross arms*

routine

2006-12-08T23:56:00.000+08:00

This is my routine for the 17th December show. It's a short one. 15 minutes, maybe?

1. Is this yours?
2. 3 ropes become 1
3. My favourite card trick
4. Burger King
5. Escaping shackles

Yes...yes... I'm late by 28 minutes but hey, I was busy! Reaaally!

tomorrow

2006-12-07T17:30:00.000+08:00

Tune in tomorrow into this blog as I reveal the routines which I will be performing for YA's Christmas Outreach Program.

Well, not "reveal" as in showing you how it's done but "reveal" as in you know, let you know what I'm doing.

No, this is not a marketing ploy to get more people into this blog. No, really, no!

Just tune in tomorrow, dang-it!

Notice how I didn't mention what time? So that you will keep refreshing this page *wink*

humbled 24/7

2006-12-05T22:29:00.000+08:00

For the pass 72 hours, I've done almost a million(overly exaggerated, of course!) insanely stupid things(not-so-overly exaggerated, though...) and I'm tearing my hair over it constantly. So, what does that mean? Well... that means, I'm reminded daily that I'm a HUMAN and I make mistakes; although sometimes it may seem as if I make more than an average human being. Still, God, I know You are there. You can't hide. Even if You could(I'm sure You can), why would You do that? No.. don't say, "Why not?"... :-/

Plus, that ever growing list of TO-DO things are growing(magic show, I'm looking at you), which means more time will be spent at home doing things that I should be doing AWAY from the computer.

I did a major hardware overhaul of my PC though. It will probably last me another 2-3 years and that would be enough before I go off on my studies somewhere. My new rig, dubbed The RIGGED DOOM:

AMD Athlon 64 3000+
Asus M2V AM2 Motherboard
1GB Kingston PC5300 667mhz DDR2 SDRAM
256MB Asus EN7300GE with TurboCache (which bumps the video memory to 512MB)
Cooler Master Centurion 5 Case with 380W PSU
40GB Maxtor HDD
Creative SoundBlaster Live! Value

It's....cool. But too bad wireless internet refuse to work on the machine for some reason and I need to call up Chipsoft to help me out on this.

Cheers!

away

2006-11-23T13:46:00.000+08:00

Will be on holiday for a while soon.

See you all when I see you soon.

derren brown

2006-11-21T18:27:00.000+08:00

This man makes things look like real magic. But actually, it isn't. It can all be done with cold reading, hypnosis and/or NLP.

DISCLAIMER: Some of the videos may be a bit mentally disturbing. Nope, no gore or sex or any sort of things like that. It just makes your brain go 'hoo-hoo' for a bit.

Derren Brown put a guy who's playing a zombie video game into a trance and then literally put him on a 'film set' as if what he was playing is happening in real life:

Do you REALLY want that as a gift? Think again.

How some people get scammed easily:

There are a lot more but these three stuck out the most, for me.