Is Tagging that... errr... fun?

Once upon a time I was tagged, and I tagged someone to keep the game going. I wasn't particularly keen about this game actually.. Just playing along for the sake of fun, haha... But then, as the saying goes, what goes around comes around. So today here I am, hit by the boomerang that flies back on my face. Well, here it goes for those who love me so much... *shameless grins*

How To Tag :
- State who tagged you.
- List who you want your Santa Claus to be (the bearer of the gift).
- State the gift you wish to get
- Then invite a few friends to join the tag, and inform them by dropping a comment in their blog

Tagged by: Day-dreamer

My Santa: Who else except her? :D

Gift for me: An everlasting bliss and love with my loved ones, through thick and thin, in all trials and tribulations.

Who's next: (hate to do this!)
1. Ren Jie (the exams are over now, I guess? :D)
2. Seok Kheng (since you are free for the holidays... )
3. Zhe Jin (to add something non-sentimental to all your sentimental posts!)
4. Wee Loon (haha, someone's in KL too busy horr? :P)

Here we go!! An early Christmas greeting to everyone!

Puppies

Our 9-year-old family dog "An An" recently gave birth to her third batch of puppies... Haha, promiscuous as she is, we could learn some biologies in the process.

Hukum Mendel, anyone?

Motherly love (an illusion actually, An An neglects her puppy most of the time)

Human can't do this. Wonder how we are endowed with less breasts than dogs? (No malice intended, just a pure curiosity)

Doomed - Cinema in Alor Star

It's been ages since I last blogged, and the reason can't be simpler - I am having holidays! Haha, so sorry for the excuses... at one time, when exams were impending, I would say that I was too busy for studies; and with the 3 months holidays now, I claim that I am in too much holiday mood to write anything.. :P

Today was just like another ordinary day, except for the unique experience I had in Cineplex Alor Star. Well, Cineplex was the only surviving cinema in the 50-km radius of Alor Star city. Located high up in the City Plaza, it consists of two small showing rooms (too small to be called halls) and a little ticket booth which could only accommodate two person's volume.

This is the first time I complain about the Cineplex. It's not that I have never watched a movie in that cinema and got shocked by its long-standing condition. I remember I last watched a movie there in 2002, and I actually enjoyed it because there were so few audiences inside and I could put my legs on the front seat's backrest.. :P

Okay, let's talk about today. We (Yee Pin, Wei Yin, Winson & I) were half an hour away from the showing time (6 pm) when we reached the booth. Nobody's inside. Zero, zilch, nil. Okay now nobody's selling ticket for 6 o'clock, they must have run out of ticket. Bad luck then, we decided to wait for 9 o'clock's showing while having lunch dinner at the time being.

The dinner in the foodcourt nearby wasn't exactly first-class, but it was enough to whet our appetite (especially Yee Pin's). After the meal, we went back to the ticket booth - hooray, it was open!! The ticket cost 8 ringgit each, and there was no student price.. Haha, okay, you are operating a small cinema, I could understand the cost involved for such a small-scale business. Let you earn some pennies for this time... :P

We hurried into the cinema for the fear of losing out good seats, and we were grinning as we went inside - there is simply no chance for losing out seats!! Among the 15 X 20 seats available in the cinema, only slightly more than 20 seats were occupied! Hahaha... okay, so much popularity for the blockbuster we are watching, The Chronicles of Narnia. It's something good then, since we could have a clear and unobstructed vision in front of us. Hated those cinemas in which people in the front row are kissing each other, whispering on mobile phone or going to toilet every 10 minutes.

Next, the movie started in another 5 minutes' time. Haha, another good point: no 15-minute advertisements which are meant to "entertain" us (Read: TGV & GSC). Oh goodness... the movie started with such a horror!! Well, I don't mean the plot, but the picture quality on the pitiful screen was simply awful, to the point of me starting to think I was watching a show from the seventies... The display is fuzzy, the colours are dull, the edge is dim, and to my disgust, there are film grains throughout the show... Well, since the pictures aren't good, I hope that I could get at least some consolation from the sound effect. Haha, good dear, I was doubting my ears when I heard the spinning projector wheel's sound emanating from the speaker... Aiks... It persisted throughout the movie, so much an annoyance :( Could everything get worse? Haha.. sure it could! Half way through the movie, some noise burst out from the projector room, and it sounded as if two drunken guys were having a fight upstairs.. they yelled and shouted as if they were in the world of their own. Yuckk... Come on, don't you know we paid the money for Narnia, not for "A Night with Carlsberg"?

The horror ended after 2 hours, to my utmost relief. Well, the relief I had in the toilet afterwards wasn't nice too, due to the deplorable toilet condition, but I digressed. I am not exaggerating to say that I would have preferred watching a DVD to such an experience in the cinema. Cinema was meant to be entertaining, the moving pictures are meant to be captivating, the sounds are meant to be immersive, the environment are meant to be conducive. I am sorry to say, the cinema operator failed to provide us the entertainment we asked for. The movie wasn't as good as I expected, partly because I don't enjoy fairy tale as much as others do; but mostly, I think, due to the deplorable condition of the cinema. Alor Star cinemas are kinda doomed... Sigh.

p.s. To be fair, I couldn't see how the cinema operator could have made it better. They could upgrade the projector, renovate the cinema etc; but with the ubiquitous DVD in the market, people would rather watch their 3-in-1 DVDs in comfort at home, than to watch a movie on the 5th floor of a not-so-happening shopping complex. I even doubt that they could fork out the money for renovation while they are still struggling with their rental fees...

The Other Side

From...


to



p.s. Winson, don't spoil it. :D
p.p.s. It's not as complicated as it might seem. Just refer to the post title. :D

14 Jan 2008: Answer revealed here.

Finally!

Yes, finally I am going home!!

Haha, there I was writing a post in my message board saying that I have no time to update my blog anymore, a thought dawned upon me that I shouldn't abandon this blog just like this. (Read: irresponsible and undetermined) I can still remember how erratic I am when it comes to blogging - not blogging for a full month, then one post per day for the next month. :P It's no wonder that the number of readers I have is dwindling.

To begin with, my exams ended on 15 November, but on that day, the reason I felt happy was not because of the redeemed freedom. I had a fantastic celebration for something else on that day, and you know, the end of exams just doesn't compare with the joy of this. I kinda regretted over the day because I didn't make much preparation for that particular day, but the event turned out wonderful. I know that the better is always in store in the future, so I will just work hard for the next time.

**grin**

Damn it, if anyone has been online for the last few weeks, they would have seen my nick called "X days to Nasi Lemak". I have been craving for Nasi Lemak since last month, when I stumbled upon the wikipedia article about Nasi Lemak. Sigh, the worst thing about reading that article is not the description, it is the pictures that is so alluring. Tell me, how can one resist looking at this picture when you are away in Melbourne? And if this is not bad enough, what about, another sorethroat attack before going back?!!

Sigh. Now that the packing is finished, I am here writing the blog post in this corner for the last time - where I sat for endless of online conversations and routine reading. Where I write almost every single post of this blog since I came to Melbourne. The feeling is kinda mixed.. on one hand I am so eager to go home and enjoy my three-month holidays; on the other hand I feel so reluctant to leave here. The apartment, the people, the friends... I want to go home, yet I don't want to leave...

Things have changed, I would say, but I am running out of time to tell the stories now... I will keep everyone updated when I am back, and I look forward to visiting friends like Winson, Yee Pin, Swee Sing etc after months of separation. And this is only one of the many plans I have for this wonderful holidays.

Au revoir, Melbourne! I shall be back soon. See you later.

Gosh. I Am Not as Guyish As I Thought

Exam is almost over, tomorrow I am going to write the last 3 pieces of essay in this year... The past week has been rather gruelling for me, all the fault of not doing proper revision in the past 3 months. :P

In my boring schedule of HP revision, I stumbled upon this interesting blogthings - "How Boyish or Girlish Are You". Throughout years, rumours abound that I am not as guyish as a guy should be, as partly acknowledged by my close one in her teasing and acqueisceing acquiescence. While I shall remain totally defiant of this false accusation, I decided to have an honest go at this simple test to show my masculinity.

Oh yea, so I saw the questions, and it's quite simple and straightforward. It seemed to me that some of the questions are common to both genders, not attributable to a particular sex. Eerm, so *pick pick pick*, and out.

And I have got this result:

You Are 50% Boyish and 50% Girlish

You are pretty evenly split down the middle - a total eunuch. Okay, kidding about the eunuch part. But you do get along with both sexes. You reject traditional gender roles. However, you don't actively fight them. You're just you. You don't try to be what people expect you to be.

How Boyish or Girlish Are You?

Heck, see, I am 50% masculine!

p/s: The above rambling is just some signs of a syndrome called HP frustration. It is going to resolve in 28 more hours, and yes, this post is not interesting at all. So blame me not if you felt that you could have spent your time more meaningfully, like reading 50 things you could do in the exam. Have fun!

Nokia Secret Code

In the Internet, there is a circulating forwarded email claiming that pressing *3370# on your Nokia mobile phone will activate your so-called spare battery which will give you 50% extra battery life.

Being the usual "inquisitive" guy, I decided to give it a try. So I pressed, *, 3, 3, 7, 0, #...

"Change active speech codec?"

What the heck?? Since when a battery is called "active speech codec"? Well, there are only two options there, "OK" and "Back".

Being the usual "inquisitive" guy again, I decided to press on OK. 一不做,二不休 marr... DONG! Off goes the light, and the whole mobile phone restarts and the same screen reappears. Nahh, no change in my battery bars also, it's still at its original position, no "increase in battery life" as claimed by the e-mail.

So I decided that this is a hoax, just like those claiming that you can elongate some part of your body with some daily exercise. Some googling on this issue proved my guess: This code indeed does *something*, but it doesn't give you some magical power boost. In fact, the activated "speech codec" mode actually consumes more power of your little battery!

At the end of my daily dawdling, a lesson is learnt: Never trust anything in the Internet so easily. If not, your some parts may suffer. :D