Novak Djokovic Impersonations - US Open '07

Everyone loves a joker, and this guy certainly has it in him. Presenting the clown prince of tennis - Novak Djokovic. Watch him imitate Sharapova and Nadal. Lol!

A quote that really made me go "Wow."

"Music expresses that which cannot be said and on which it is impossible to be silent." -Victor Hugo

Touché

Singapore - The unhappiest people in the world?

During my politics lecture last week, I learnt that Singaporeans were the most unhappy people in the world. It's really kinda incredible to be voted the unhappiest people in the world. I think this calls for a celebration. Let's start by complaining about GST and taxi fares.

But back to the topic, I don't see people breaking down in the streets, rolling around and crying, lamenting how the sky is blue and the grass is green. Although I do see people with long faces everyday, they are students from NTU, which is actually in Malaysia, so it doesn't count.

Its so uniquely Singaporean though, how we must be first in everything. Airport number one, city cleanliness number one, education system number one, queue for free things number one, even most unhappy also must get number one. Singaporean to random foreigner - I have one more teardrop running down the right cheek of my face! Who's the man?!!!

Ain't it retarded.

I mean like who judges these things? I tell you who I think are the unhappiest people. I think you're more likely to find them in places where they don't even have the chance to take surveys like this. Think North Korea, Iraq, Guantanamo Bay and Universiti Teknologikal Nanyang (Malaysia). I'll have you believe that Singaporeans are really a bunch of very happy people.

I really wonder how they carried out the experiment to determine that we were so unhappy. Maybe one of their researchers dropped a packet of tissue paper in different locations all over the world. Here's how I think the experiment went.

In the US, they ignored it. Just another piece of litter, plus they probably don't have enough intelligence to comprehend what tissues are.

In Europe, they sniffed at it, and walked on. Not worth the time and effort to bend down and pick it up because they are ATAS.

In the Middle East, they saw it, and continued shooting the crap out of each other and the researchers.

In China, they looked at it, and started making their own pirated brands of tissue paper.

In Malaysia, they picked it up and resold it around the street corner for 10 sen.

AND... In Singapore they picked the packet up and started crying.

Who am I kidding. Singaporeans probably picked it up and used it to chope seats in some hawker centre.

Fast Food Freestyle

Got a craving for fast food at night. This came to mind. Crispy.

Banned Commercial

I love this commercial! It's so clever! Piece of advice - Turn down your speaker volume.

funny baby

Check out this baby.
"It's so damn cute la." - Sarah.

Living by the day

Semester 2 has started, and if I thought that after semester 1 things would be easier because I am more used to the system, I was so wrong. Boy, semester 1 was a honeymoon compared to now. This semester I seriously feel like I am being thrust into the deep end of the pool.

But, I take heart in the little moments every day. Be it the really superficial like looking forward to watching my favourite Ch 8 show every night, or listening to my favourite song of the moment, or the feeling of relief I get when I slump into my hall chair after a long day in school, or meeting friends I haven't seen in ages, each day brings hope and joy renewed.

And it is really these little moments that keep us going, even when we think that life is a bitch. These little moments of joy break us out of our little moments of weakness, snap us out of whatever we are dwelling on. Because we are only human. If I were to live every day like it were my last, I'm quite sure that I wouldn't want the last thing I remember to be how I was feeling down because I have an assignment to hand in next week.

It's good to be alive. Even with a ton of shitty assignments.

Robot Chicken - Gummy Bear Trap

You'd think life would be easy if you were a gummy bear.

Reliving the past. Something from my JC class egroups.

Here's something I wrote 2 years back in the army for my JC class groups, when I was their resident humour columnist. I think its actually quite funny, although I might be mistaken.

To all you blockheaded bloggers. (Oct 2, 2005)

Recently there has been a spate of people who are crying out about a loss of privacy because their blogs got read by their teachers and they experienced a forced shutdown of their blogs.

The question I'm wondering about is, what privacy?
You put your stupid comments about your teachers online, on the beeping INTERNET and you're talking about PRIVACY?

Wake up you morons... has the education system dulled you so much that you've forgotten that the internet is not exactly PRIVATE? Or was that NOT IN SYLLABUS? I'd like to know why I went through the same system and I still know that anything you put up there is public property.

In addition, the content of these blogs are also nothing to crow about. Just when you were expecting an intelligent discussion about the advent of globalisation and the effects of multinational capitalism from our brilliant students, you see stuff like "mi tcher
is a biatch".

Perhaps our students aren't that smart after all. I must be an anomaly. despite my less than perfect grammar sometimes, I still can spell "my teacher is a bitch". If you don't want to appear all of 3 years of age, please use spellcheck. its F7 on winword. Leave your sms speak on your SMSes.

Surprisingly, everyone's jumping on the same stupid bandwagon and suddenly the bloggers should not be taken to task for their entries because they were not password protected, fully accessible to anyone with an internet connection, and without any subtlety as to whom they were offending. Can someone tell me why?

If you want to curse and swear at your teacher behind her back, be a smartass and put a password on that blog entry. If you leave it there without a password, hereby meaning I have no problem with my teacher reading this, why don't you just tell it to her face so that it saves you trouble and your shitty blog?

I can't say I feel sympathy for your blog because it was so stupid its shutdown just cleared the internet of some junk and prevented the onset of myopia in 100,000 kids worldwide who are unlucky enough to chance upon your blog and squint in bewilderment at your horrendous "speeling" and asinine comments.

The one good thing that came out of this is, next time when I google "idiots" and click "I'm feeling lucky", I know 100% that I won't chance upon your blog.

By the way, I assume the teachers who raised the alarm to be females because I simply can't fathom how guys will be petty enough to search their own names in the blog search function to find out about what others think of them. All you feminists out there, please enlighten me before you sue me for violating the women's charter.

I clarify that I have totally no problem with it if you want to bitch about your teacher online. I do it too. Its just the way that you do it that makes me feel like the world needs a few more good people, namely people like me who have that uncommon thing called common sense.

The funniest part of this whole farce is how these people claim that blogs are the only avenue of stress relief for our teens of today and shutting down the blogs is tantamount to the destruction of a healthy outlet of pent up frustration which may lead to disastrous outcomes.

I'd like to ask, what did stressed teens 10 years ago do then when blogs weren't around? Roll over and die? Explode in frustration? You don't need blogs to destress. If there's anything I can't stand other than idiots, its lying idiots, who are sinking deeper in the pits of moral decreptitude as I speak because they are probably lying about how many lying idiots it takes to change a lightblub.

Answer: idiots can't change lightbulbs. lying idiots like to say they can. but they still can't change lightbulbs.

To all you blockheaded bloggers: Heal the world. make it a better place. for you and for me and the entire human race. Stop blogging. (If you blog and take offence with this, you are a B.B.)

The world's cheapest car. The Tata Nano

The news has been abuzz recently with the release of the world's cheapest car, the Tata Nano, retailing at about US$2500 in India.

My first reaction to this report was, do they export this car? And I was kinda disappointed when I heard they didn't. I had the feeling that if they sold this car here, NTU would soon be flooded with hundreds of these. Then I remembered that in Singapore they have COE, so even if your car costs $1, you will still have to pay a bomb for COE, so its really irrelevant.

And here is a further note to NTU students: The car might not have enough power to go up the slopes in NTU. I don't think your lecturer would be amused if you told him the reason you were late for CS lecture was because you were pushing a Nano up the slope into the SCI carpark, only to realise it was already filled with Nanos.

Or worse, you don't see your lecturer anywhere because he's also pushing a Nano somewhere around NTU looking for a carpark.

I actually have a theory that the Nano is actually a modified golf buggy, you know the kind they drive on golf courses, but its actually cheaper than a golf buggy, which retails at on average $10k. You know why it's so cheap? Because it is Made in China. Actually I'm kidding.

It is really made by North Koreans who know nuts about economics, and hence they have no idea what to charge for making it. I think they charge somewhere between the price of a sack of rice and 10 rounds of ammunition. So Tata makes a huge profit even though they are selling it for peanuts.

By peanuts, I do not mean the Singaporean variety. Those cost $600k.

What the North Koreans do know though, is buying used golf buggies off golf courses and retrofitting Milo and Ovaltine tins to give the car a chassis. If you scratch the paint off you'll see the "Milo" and "Ovaltine" logos beneath the paint.

Damn. The secret's out.

But I'm really kidding of course. That was really a lousy job of photoshopping because I don't have Photoshop so I used MS Paint.

The car is actually really very good for the price it is being offered at, and when I looked at more pictures of the car I was actually impressed. However, with all the nonsense allegations I have made about the car in this post, I bet you can't tell.

Day at the beach.

I spent a day at Tanjong beach in Sentosa today as part of my Dad's company family day celebrations, and it was reasonably fun. At first, I felt like I was being roasted, because the sun was that hot. I had the mistaken impression that since it was a family thing I should dress more presentably like jeans and a polo tee. And I actually wore shoes to the beach. So swaku.

The free unlimited supply of canned drinks and ice cream helped, and the sun soon disappeared, followed by the nice breeze that comes with all cloudy days.

Anybody here at this time would be able to get free beer, drinks and ice cream from these stalls without anyone knowing better. The people there didn't even look at me when I took 3 cans of drink.

The beach. Check out the grey sky. Unless you are really good at taking pictures, outdoor shots with cloudy skies generally look like shit. I swear its the dreariness of it all.

The event lasted the whole afternoon, and I spent most of it being introduced as my dad's older son and getting cursory glances from my dad's colleagues like meat in a butcher's shop. And in such situations, they all say the same things. Its always something along the lines of how I look like my parents.

One of them noted how I liked to walk around the beach taking photographs. Well, here's why. I wasn't involved in the staff games, and I can't exactly fit into the Tweety Bird enclosure in the Kids Zone. In case you were wondering what that is, here it is.

The Tweety Bird enclosure. Look at the size of that opening. No way I'd ever fit in there. For the kids that weren't into Tweety Bird, there was something else for them, as shown in the picture below.

This is actually meant for kids below 12 years old, but I guess these guys had other ideas. They also happen to be the bored jam band musicians waiting for their next performance.

The musicians grooving instead of horsing around in the Kids Zone. You can do a mix and match to see which ones were guilty of depriving kids of playtime.

Some interesting things I saw on the beach today.

Ow my eyes. Low slung jeans and butt cracks just don't work. Piece of random advice: Do not wear low slung jeans and build sandcastles around bored photographers.

Whoa. If I thought casual was overdoing it, these people certainly take the cake. But I guess they wanted to get hitched with a difference.

The same couple later in the evening taking some interesting couple shots in the water. This shot is kinda blurry cos I kinda stole it when they weren't noticing.

Little girl building a sandcastle. It's the same little girl in red from the butt crack pic.

The sunset.

The Golden Path (黄金路) - Episode 21 - Part 1/5

Check out this episode of The Golden Path. I'm sure CS pple will see somebody familiar. And I don't mean the Mediacorp actors. Hint: Just watch the first scene at around 2:30, and look out for the character playing "Alba"

A moment in time when you stop, and wonder.

I just had such a moment today, listening to Amy Winehouse's Rehab.

The first line goes like this:
They tried to make me go to rehab but i said 'no, no, no'

After singing it to myself awhile, I realised... THE IRONY.

The Golden Path

Before reading any further, be warned that there are massive spoilers ahead. So if you do not want me to spoil what is arguably Mediacorp Ch 8's best production in years for you, do not continue reading. Do not look at the pictures either, because some of them will really spoil the show for you.

The Golden Path is a Ch 8's latest 9pm drama, and boy is it gripping stuff. It revolves around a family of 5 children, 3 with the surname Huang, and 2 adopted with the surname Jin, hence the chinese name Huang Jin Lu, with the main gist of the plot being the fate of this family and the relations between the siblings.

Here is a picture of the family before I proceed any further so that you know who I am talking about.
The family, from left to right: Kaijie, Kaida, Xiaogu, Kaiqi, Jin Feng and Jin Long

I shall not spoil the roles of the characters for you, but those who follow the series like me will roughly have an idea of who's good and who's bad, although later in the show it gets more and more dubious, and the fate of each of the family members.

This drama makes for good stuff because right from the get go, the plot is full of twists and turns, loaded with betrayal, dark secrets and bad blood, and the bad guy never seems to get his comeuppance so you are left cursing and swearing, while totally gripped to this drama. Not to mention that the relations between the siblings are really COMPLICATED. I just had to caps it to show just how complicated they were.

For once, Ch 8 has decided to do away with using dramas as an excuse for nation building or sappy love stories. (Except for the unfortunate example of Kinship 2 at 7pm, which serves as a gauge between a good and bad Ch 8 drama) I watched one episode of that, and I was left wondering why I had wasted one good hour of my life.

Another thing about this drama is, despite the relative youth and inexperience of most of the female leads, they deliver solid performances, lifting the show above the ordinary. The male leads are veterans, but the females don't do too badly either. I personally think Felicia Chin and Cai Pei Xuan (Bak Kut Girl) are outstanding, although Joey Feng also puts in a decent performance as Jin Feng.

One thing though, anyone thinks that the seniority order of the brothers is all wrong? The oldest brother, played by Chew Chor Meng, looks the youngest, and the youngest brother, played by Li Nanxing, looks the oldest. I have trouble believing baby faced Kaida is the oldest.

Here are some pictures from the drama

Jin Feng giving her best impression of "I hate big brother Kaida because he told on me." Check out the scrunched up nose. Reminds me of primary school.

Kaijie practices some police brutality and intimidation tactics on his sister Jin Feng. Check out that intense stare.

Kaijie driving Kaida nuts. If Kaida isn't nuts already. Oops.

Beware - From this section onwards its all spoilers. Do not read if you do not wish to have your drama spoilt for you.

A character map showing the relations between characters. It tells you who ends up with who. So don't look at it unless you're impatient and dying to know, or can't really care less.

NOOOO!!!! TMD! Ok, that's about all I have to say about this picture.

More dramas like this please Ch 8!

Trivia: The drama is actually set 10 years ago, so if you look carefully, you will notice replays of old Mediacorp dramas, the use of the old Singapore dollar notes, and the metal insignia on the uniforms of the Police force, which has already been replaced by stitched on cloth versions today. The attention to detail adds a touch to authenticity to the show, and it is much appreciated.

Tickle Me Emo/Elmo - MAD TV

This is freaking funny OMG. Tickle me EMO. HAHAHAHA. If life is so fair, why do roses have thorns? Hahaha. WTH. And check out the My Chemical Romance lapel.

PHD comics

I found this cool site and I thought I'd share it. Its www.phdcomics.com. Some of the comics are strangely relevant to our current life as university students, and if you have time to sift through the archives, you might turn up some gems. But anyway, here are some of the gems I turned up. If you can't see the comics clearly, click on them to get a better look, or better still visit the site.

Negation field
If you ever did science practicals in school. you will know exactly what this comic is talking about. I can't even begin to count the number of times this happened to me.

Email accounts
This is on emails. Personally I have such a situation too. I just created 3 email addresses that I know I will probably never use in the future much. Add that to my personal email and my NTUmail (why the hell does a certain Too Li Li keep spamming my mailbox?), and I wonder how people actually keep up.

Facebook
And this one is on Facebook. Which I still don't have, and I don't intend to get. But I thought the point was well made. A tool for notworking. Lol.

Eddie Izzard - Ich Bin Ein Berliner

Eddie Izzard is a British stand up comedian, and he's in drag just in case you don't understand why he has makeup on. If you can overlook the makeup, he is freaking funny.

This is just LOL, if you are into British humour, and you understand what Ich Bin Ein Berliner means. For your information, its not supposed to mean I am a donut.

Eddie Izzard - Do you have a flag?

Here's another one that I found hilarious. No flag no country. You can't have one. That's the rule that I've just made up. LOL.

Eddie izzard-cake or death

I love this video. I think its really quite freaking funny. And there are more where it came from.
Cake or death. Brilliant.

We look, but we are blind.

A new year, a new day, bringing with it the hope and optimism that this year will be better. But all around the world, there are those living the New Year as though it were just another day, another trial in the long slog called Life.

Why do we always seek an occasion to make a fresh start? Is it any less significant if we were to start afresh everyday, rather than only once a year? Must we only make resolutions in the New Year that we probably won't see out by the end of this week? And many times, do we really know what we are looking for?

I've spent too long looking for acceptance by people who do not value everything I have given, or my gifts and strengths, without realising that there are still those who appreciate me, who love me on a daily basis, for what I am, and for who I am. And I've spent too long punishing myself for what I lack, much of it unfair because I am what I am not because of them, but despite them.

I've spent too long ashamed of what I was, because I never saw what others valued in me, only because I was looking for value in others who didn't value me. I got myself caught up in a web of superficiality and insecurity, and now that I've had some downtime in the holidays, I see more clearly now.

If there is one thing I took away from 2007, it is about not being the guy who was just nice to everybody. From now, I will focus on being nice to those who matter. It is not about being mean, being insecure, or being stupid. It is about being kinder to myself. No one can give without getting something in return, and no one should be expected to. And it can get very tiring. Sometimes, people do not deserve that much kindness. It is better spent on people who do.

No longer will I punish myself listening to a voice telling me I'm not good enough in any way, or that I need people to confirm my own self-worth. I have always known what I am, and no longer will I listen to people who do not appreciate it, or thoughts telling me otherwise.

My resolution for 2008 - Be kinder to myself, and to those who matter.

Dammit I think I'm crazy about heroes.

This holidays has been a fantastic time to catch up on living. Not being expected to mug does have its advantages, and I love the fact that in university your modules don't carry over so after every semester you can reformat your laptop, and junk everything. Well almost everything.

It would be a pity to throw away whatever French I've learnt in semester 1. J'aime apprendre le francais. I have to admit that learning French has added colour to my life, and the lessons were fun when I wasn't being grilled on verbs. "WHAT IS THE VERB! THE VERB IS MISSING. WHAT VERB IS IT?" The stuff of nightmares. And apparently the French don't find many things interesting. But that's a story for another day.

Can you identify the people in these 6 pictures? If you can, you are a Heroes nut like me. I love the Parkman doughnut one. It kinda explains how he got so fat. Its a police thing.

I'm crazy about Heroes as I find the powers really cool. Ok some of them. The power to paint the future is really sad in my opinion because you can't really use it to save your life. Sylar comes along, and you start painting? Lol. Not to mention the white pupils thing is really kinda freaky.

No point though asking people which hero they would want to be, because if they had half a brain, they'd pick Peter Petrelli. I mean like duh. He's IMBA. He absorbs powers just by being near people who have them. He's Supermarvel man. The result when Marvel comics decides they should just concentrate every imaginable superpower into one guy. I bet the people at Marvel are kicking themselves for not having thought of him first.

In fact, the theme of the show shouldn't be saving the cheerleader, but saving Peter instead. I bet Sylar hates him because Sylar actually has to kill to do what he does. Life sucks when you're the bad guy. But that makes a really bad slogan, plus people would rather save cheerleaders. Its that whole damsel in distress and gorilla in heat thing. Plus cheerleaders look better when they are being saved. Yes I am biased. So what.

Despite all his powers, Peter makes a really lousy hero at first, cos he actually lost to Sylar when they met in Mohinder's apartment, despite the fact that he can actually stop time, walk over, smile at Sylar, sing him a nursery rhyme, moon him, then smash his head in, then throw him out of a window. And no one would even know about the mooning.

A picture of the Heroes cast. Guess which one is Sylar, the bad guy. No prizes. I swear its the eyebrows and the unshaven look.

The series actually plays out quite well, although it starts very slowly at first. If you survive the first 2 episodes, you're hooked. I like the numerous plot twists in it, and the ending for season 1 was really good.

The only thing I'm really uncomfortable about in the series is Hiro's voice. When he says "Yata!" or "Flying man!" in that shrill voice of his, I'm sure I'm not the only person who cringes and wishes he could stop time too. If only to stop it just before he says "Yata!" and stuff something into his mouth. Actually I do stop time. I pause my video slider, and I move it slightly forward. My attempt to alter the space-time continuum.

And when he talks about saving the world, you can't help feeling that he's a little crazy sometimes, even though you KNOW what he's saying is the truth. I actually think post-apocalyptic Hiro is much cooler. No geeky glasses, and no annoying mannerisms. But he's a bitter little fart cos his best friend died. Boohoo. Well you can't have everything.

If you are really bored, watch Heroes. It makes a good time killer.