The Grand Old Lady's farewell got marred by Singapore's defeat by Australia. Well, nice try, but it'll be hard for us to succeed given our small physical sizes. That match was a good example - a Singapore player running straight into an Aussie would bounce backwards and fall, but the Aussie wouldn't move a single inch.

Thus, the moment the game turns physical, we're totally lost.

That aside, I ponned the Literature Symposium today. In fact, I think only 2 out of my class of 28 bothered to go. The rest of us didn't give a damn, and besides, we'll still get the notes. Mr Johnson was trying to convince us to go by using reasons that you'll typically hear from a boys' school but the school next door has never appealed to most of us.

I ponned it for another humanity. We had to go finish the (dumb) Geog project which required us to visit a farm and interview the people there. The Prelims are knocking on the door, and we still have to do projects! What the ___!

Bollywood Veggies was in some mega super duper ulu part of Singapore that some how told me that if you want to dump a body, dump it there.

Alright, enough text. Let the pictures talk. Oh, before you say I post too many, I shot 129 in under one hour. Heh.

Self-explanatory.

We went down this path.

We found a lot of funky plants, but this one prompted us to discuss about the banana tree spirit. Does anyone want to try poking a needle and tying the red string to yourself?

"Bollywood Villa" "Beware of dogs". The dog inside was humongous and bloody noisy.

Mr Lizard jumped out of nowhere. Maybe he doesn't know that jumping around makes it more obvious. Anyway, it had something that looked like a large fly in its mouth.

Reverse psychology. It screams touch me please! Which we promptly did.

Some plants had names that were quite a misfit.

There wasn't any blackcurrants in sight.

Milk fruits didn't have milk. Maybe it needs an udder or something.

No oysters in the oyster plant.

Mother-in-laws aren't really loved. Anyway, to those taking their mother tongue orals, have fun!

Gold fingers without any gold or fingers.

Ahh, rice! Agriculture!

He found out that he didn't like farming.

He loved it though.

His hobby: watering the soil.

Pro at work. When I asked him to pose for a photo, he swung his parang and I thought I was going to die.

It's a bit weird talking about how hot the the actress in 200 Pounds Beauty is, in a damn farm.

No sunflower.

Dangerous!

Some people just need elevation.

Alright, we all needed some elevation. The dog helped us to take the photo.

Waiting, and waiting.

We were so inspired, we ate fresh later.

Bye!

"Alright boys, pack up your stuff now, we're going to the mosque."

"HUH!??!?!??!"

We weren't told that we had an RME field trip to the mosque today because of some miscommunication between the two teachers. Thus, half the class couldn't go there. But anyway, the rest of us went to this Harmony Centre at the An-Nahdhah Mosque in Bishan to learn about Islam. Or to put it rather bluntly, to correct the misgivings that we might have about them.

I didn't have my camera with me, so like everyone else, I used my phone, and the quality might be a little suspect.

A pano shot of the mosque, taken from Zul's blog.

We were basically going around reading the panels, listening to the guides and frantically scribbling onto the quiz worksheet.

Everyone's practising their note-taking and comprehension skills.

This was one of the more interesting panels IMO.

The bottom paragraph reads: "The important contributions made by Islamic scholars can be seen in many words still in use today: alkali, algebra, alchemy, alcohol, Aldebaran, Altair, Algol, alembic, algorithim, almanac, Almagest, zenith and zero."

Cool eh? Al is supposed to mean 'the' in Arabic.

Muslim artifacts 101.

The astrolabe. I'll probably describe it as an ancient GPS. Wikipedia entry here.

I can't really remember what this is called, but it's used in more rural areas for the headman to inform his village that it's prayer time, or to gather them for news, or to warn them of danger. Sharidan and I were reminded of those bells that were used in camps.

Islamic calligraphy on the mosque wall. This is the Kufic script from what I learnt there. I think it's the nicest. Haha.

Three levels for people to pray. The middle's reserved for women only.

Yup, so after that we watched a video and had a Q&A session, which I think was good and awful. Good in the sense that we learnt some new facts about Islam, but awful in the sense that they weren't able to answer some of the tougher questions since they were not religious experts. Questions about Al-Qaeda and Jemaah Islamiyah were treated rather carefully, and it didn't really help clear the air.

The Centre's open all the time for you guys to visit. It's quite nice, really.

I hate trying to write when I have absolutely nothing to write about.

Theses and term papers can go to hell.

It makes me damn tempted to copy, but:

Copying may result in serious consequence like

1. Not receiving a testimonial from the school.
2. The entire school being informed that you are lying, cheating, double headed serpent who is not to be trusted under any circumstances.
3. Being barred from Literature lessons.

Hahaha. You probably envisioned that plagiarism will happen if you set a 1500-word thesis paper.

My family and our relatives went to Shashlik Restaurant to celebrate my mum's birthday. It's a Russian restaurant and the food is AWESOME. That speaks a lot, since I rarely ever blog about gastronomic delights.

Anyway, I'm feeling a little lazy (you will after an entire morning of intensive practicals), so I shall quote reviews here.

Here's Miyagi's review:

I am thankful for a lot of things, really. Like having enough money to give myself a treat after a reasonably crappy day at work. And what treat did I have enough money to give myself, you may well ask?

Well, I went and had dinner at that venerable Russo-Hainanese institution that serves the best borsch bar none: Shashlik Restaurant. If you’ve been there, you’d know the food’s real good, and you’d immediately forgive the late 70s lighting, the late 70s furnishing, the late 70s crockery and the late 70s waiters.

I’ve heard before about how rude and brusque the waiters at Shashlik were, and I’d like to clarify one thing: the waiters aren’t rude, they’re just Hainanese. They’ll stand around the bar and talk loudly in Russian because they think they’re the best Russian restaurant in town, and they’d be right.

And one of the fabulous things about the brusque borsch serving waiters is that even when there’s a bunch of them talking loudly in Russian at the bar, there’s still a couple of them brusquely pushing borsch, shashlik, and all manner of flambé on squeaky trolleys around the restaurant.

If you were to go there, on the 6th floor of the Far East Shopping Centre (not Far East Plaza, which is the cool and funky place with the funky clothes and the funky people selling funky clothes to funky people), I’d recommend you have the borsch to start with, then the shashlik beef/lamb, and then the flambéed banana/cherry/alaska for dessert, topped off with the best Hainanese Russian kopitiam coffee this side of Ya Kun’s.

I really think this is the best Russian restaurant in town, and I’m not saying this because I’m afraid the Hainanese waiters might flambée my backside if I said otherwise. Dinner was good enough for me to want to dine there again soon, which is significant in itself because before tonight, the last time I dined there must’ve been twenty years ago.

Haha, they didn't treat us badly at all because we spoke them to Hainanese. I'm considered rather abnormal for my fluency in the dialect, but oh well, it does come in handy some times.

Baked Alaska is a definite must-try, but don't go there on Tuesdays and Wednesdays since the Chef that makes it won't be around. Baked Alaska is ice cream set on fire.

Piakster said this:

Shashlik is also one of the few rare places in Singapore that still does the dying trade of table-side service which involves pushing a guriedon next to your table and serving the food from there. It's with this guriedon service that you can actually expect flambe items such as your steaks, cherries jubliee and baked alaska.

It's freaking cool seeing the alcohol erupting in flames! As with Miyagi, I recommend exactly the same stuff - Borsch, then Shaslik Beef/Pork/Lamb/Chicken with Russian Salad, and a super nice dessert of your choice to top it all off. They have the Russian foie gras called Tournedous Rossini, but goose liver really isn't my type of food.

The lighting was romantically dark, so forgive me for the awful quality of the pictures.

The menu.

If you drive, don't touch the one on the left.

The lighting's like this.

The panels have accolades or newspaper articles as this shows.

Reservations are a must.

SHASHLIK RESTAURANT
545, Orchard Road, #06-19, Far East Shopping Centre, Singapore 238882
Ph : 6732 6401, 6734 3090 ; Fax : 6734 3090

Revenge is a funny thing.

Daniel Ocean and his company of felons seem to have a rather unique view of revenge.

To them, revenge is an expensive thing.

(They were watching Terry Bendict on the Oprah Winfrey Show - they donated $72 million of his money to a charity, and he was trying to talk about how he could see the children's eyes and everything.)

The presence of Al Pacino in a suit reminded me of The Godfather, and I thought perhaps revenge would be done the Mafia way – a few bullets to the head so that the offender sleeps with the fishes. Well, maybe Pacino would have done that since his character said something about throwing Reuben off the roof. Daniel Ocean and his gang had a much cooler and stylo mylo way of revenge. Diamonds and half a billion stolen! It’s enough to make any macho man cry.

But then again, their method of exacting revenge is bloody troublesome and expensive. No wonder you don’t really see such heists being reported in the papers. Sharp suits and effortless style, woah! How much money do you need? Even with a richer than rich backer like Terry Benedict, thirty-six million to buy the machine that dug the Chunnel from France is a bit impractical.

Besides that, everything else about Ocean’s Thirteen is worth that seven bucks. The banter, gadgets, plot, storyline, bla bla makes it a superb movie. It also helped that the cinema was filled with office workers and not irritating teens that chatter non-stop throughout.

Must watch! I'll definitely buy the DVD when it comes out.

Oh, and Gramophone at The Cathay seems to have an opening sale now. While my cousins were captivated by the 200 pounds beauty, I was distracted by the CDs and DVDs selling at dirt cheap prices. Those DVDs and CDs aren’t the China-made parallel imports – they’re the real deal. Lifehouse released a new album, titled Who We Are, and going by the reviews on Amazon, it either sucks or is damn good.

Here's a song from the album - Broken.

Hmmm.

Today’s papers had interesting articles on Abdul Basheer, our home-made DIY radical. One sentence from Andy Soh’s written commentary was particularly resonating:

For instance, it is wrong to believe that a poor, uneducated, bearded male Muslim from a developing country “fits the bill” of terrorism more readily than… …

My encounter on the train a few days ago clearly showed that most of us, including myself have this warped idea that all terrorists fit a certain physical appearance. On the way to Dhoby Ghaut in the thick of the evening rush hour, I was standing opposite this youth. Like everyone, I was suddenly aware of his presence.

Skin colour? Check.
Goatee? Check.
Black duffel bag? Check.
Handphone? Check.

He didn’t help his own case much too – he was reading the Quran, the Muslim Holy Book. While the rest of the ageing train was packed like sardines, the area that I was standing in with him had plenty of breathing space. The many office workers eyed him with apprehension, and I guess they would probably start running the moment his hand strayed towards his pocket, where a cable trailed towards.

A further, keener observation told me that he was not a religious militant. His bag was wide open and I took the opportunity to run my eyes over the contents in it. There was nothing that looked remotely like an explosive.

Is the media at fault for our mindset towards that group of people? Why do we always think that terrorists are probably bearded Muslims?Yes, Abu Bashir and Osama all had formidable goatees, but the others like Dujana and Noordin have nothing but perhaps just a moustache.

Why can’t the others from other religions and races be extremists too?

They certainly can, as the female guard at Yio Chu Kang station showed yesterday. For the first time since the move was initiated, I was asked to open my bag for a ‘random bag check’. I obliged of course, and mainly because you can’t decline. Maybe she had nothing better to do since the station was rather empty at 11am. Or maybe she was hoping that instead of the thick hardcover foolscap book and calculator inside, she would find a slab of C4 and a timer attached to it.

Me, the terrorist? I admit that you won’t find me waving the national flag ardently with patriotic fervor, but I am certainly not the type to blow myself or others up.

Except online, lah.

Alright, alright, it will be less wordy after this post. I'm just getting too sian to write my own words, so I'm resorting to quoting the text of others.

I read about Apple's foray into Windows with Safari 3 yesterday morning with my eyebrows raised.

Heh, Apple's promise of security "from day one" for the beta version of its Windows-based Safari browser was broken in a short two hours. You might be secure on your own turf because you have a small market share, but hey! it's Windows here. Can you imagine how many hackers are hitting it everyday?

I'll just quote some tech blogs before i scarper off.

But researchers said that the security vulnerabilities they found in the browser indicated that serious flaws lay behind the chic façade of Apple's Safari.

Security researcher Aviv Raff also took a crack at Safari Windows. Running a browser integrity program known as Hamachi, he located a memory corruption within minutes that could be open to exploitation. Raff acknowledged that the program is still in beta, but said relying on that fact is "pathetic."

David Maynor wrote that he found "a total of six bugs in an afternoon, four DoS and two remote code execution bugs."

Researcher Thor Larholm, meanwhile, configured "a fully functional command execution vulnerability, triggered without user interaction simply by visiting a web site."

Safari Security Claims Ignite Controversy

Security researchers have already found eight bugs in the Windows version of Safari Apple released on Monday. They're blaming Apple's "hostile attitude towards security researchers" for the problems.

Wired News Benchmarks Show Safari 3 Is Slower Than IE 7, Firefox

Apple CEO Steve Jobs touted Safari 3's speed as one of its most appealing features. But in tests by Wired News, the first public beta of Safari for Windows is actually slower than both Internet Explorer 7 and Firefox 2 when accessing Ajax-intensive web applications.

Review: Safari for Windows Offers No Compelling Reason to Switch

At the Worldwide Developers' Conference Monday, Apple CEO Steve Jobs touted the increased speed of the new Safari -- up to 2 times faster than Internet Explorer and 1.6 times faster than Firefox, he claimed. Initial tests weren't promising. After installation, the browser took a full 20 seconds to load the Apple start page (its default homepage). A first visit to Google Mail took about 40 seconds, and Google Calendar loaded in 1 minute 9 seconds. Visiting www.microsoft.com actually caused Safari to crash.

Shit, that's damn slow. Anyway, try it here.

Oh well, as we always say, NTNT.

I know I'm a little WOLS in posting this video. I saw this on YouTube's most viewed plenty of times, but I never bothered taking a look, until it appeared on Time's website.

It's stunning.

Here's the video:



It it doesn't load for you, here's the direct link: http://youtube.com/watch?v=LU8DDYz68kM

The text from Time.com, shamelessly copied.

When Animals Attack—and Defend By Jeffrey Kluger

Not that you ever planned to mess with a cape buffalo, but if you did, here's a thought: Don't—especially if the way you were going to do it was by picking on one of his kids.

Cape buffalo aren't usually the stuff of news, but in the last month they've become the heroes of blogs, newsgroups and fan sites, ever since YouTube posted a video that may be the hottest upload in web history that doesn't include a naked famous person or a politician saying something career-ending. The 8-min., 23-sec. clip is a three-act play of attack, counterattack and rescue shot three summers ago in Kruger National Park in South Africa and posted only this May. Since then, it has been viewed more than 3.8 million times—200,000 times in a single day this week—drawn more than 6,000 comments and been bookmarked as a fan favorite more than 20,000 times. And a single viewing of the thriller in Kruger (though you're unlikely to watch it just once) shows why.

The smackdown took place at an ordinary watering hole where a small herd of cape buffalo were drinking and idling, wandering dangerously close to a pack of concealed lions that either did not smell very lion-like or, more probably, were crouching deliberately upwind. On the other side of the hole, six tourists and a guide watched in a parked range vehicle. The lions waited until the buffalo got close enough and then pounced, seizing the baby and scattering the adults. That's usually a game-ender for a baby buffalo, but things got even worse for this one as he struggled backwards, splashed part way into the water, and got his hind legs snagged by a pair of crocodiles. He somehow yanked free of them, but remained in the jaws of the lions until suddenly the adult cape buffalos stormed back in much greater numbers, dispersed the lions and made off with the remarkably unharmed baby.

"The guide told us that in his 15 years of doing this he'd never seen anything like it," American tourist Jason Schlosberg tells TIME. Schlosberg shot still pictures of the battle while a travelling companion, Dave Budzinski, shot the now-famous video.

The response from the YouTubers was less measured.

"Mess with one bean, you get the whole burrito," one posted.

"This is a disgrace for the lion family! Beaten by a cow!" said another.

Still others saw a larger message in the encounter. "A democratically elected government formed the LEMA (Lion Emergency Management Agency) which takes a little time to organize, but seems to come through in the end. We could learn something here."

"Majority rule, plain and simple," was how another put it.

Human geopolitics aside, what many wanted to know was just how common this kind of gang war is among species. Does such comparatively organized thrust and counterthrust occur routinely in nature or were these unusually clever critters?

Certainly the battle for dinner between the lions and crocs was nothing unusual. Plenty of animals subscribe to the are-you-going-to-finish-that? school of eating, rarely waiting for the answer before trying to help themselves to someone else's meal. Even top predators like big jungle cats may spend as much time defending a kill as eating it, one of the reasons some of them will carry a carcass up into a tree before tucking in.

"It's common for two species to fight over a third. That's not unusual," says veterinarian and animal behaviorist Katherine Houpt of Cornell University.

What really surprised and delighted web viewers was the cavalry charge of the returning buffalos, who put themselves in the path of the predators to save the good-as-gone baby. Cape buffalo, after all, are not the MacArthur Fellows of the animal world. They're lumbering, quarrelsome and predictable in their movements and, says Houpt, "40% of them wind of them up in the belly of lions." But that means 60% don't, and the rescue that the Kruger group pulled off was actually nothing particularly special among herding species.

"These kinds of animals collaborate all the time," says the University of Pennsylvania's Sue McDonnell, also an animal behaviorist and vet. "The larger herd is broken down into smaller harems, with a domanant male and several females and their babies. If a youngster is threatened, both the harem males and bachelor males—which usually fight with one another—will get together to try to rescue it." You don't even have to travel to Africa to see such herbivorous first-responders at work. McDonnell specializes in studying wild horses and has occasionally seen the rough—sometimes lethal—treatment feral dogs receive when they're foolish enough to spook the group. Huzzahs for the heroism of the Kruger buffalos are fine for the web crowd, but for the herding males themselves, it's just part of the job description.

One question that's not answered—and probably not answerable—by either the video or the scientists is how well the beaten-up baby fared after the cameras stopped rolling. Certainly the right bite to the neck would have caused the baby to bleed out fast—which did not appear to happen—and the right hold on its hind legs would have broken them, making it impossible for him to trot back to the herd as he did. Buffalo hide is tough, and perhaps this baby was even tougher and scrappier than most—or perhaps the crocs and lions simply had their B-teams out that day. Whatever the answer, one of the best thing about the alternate-reality, user-driven world of the Web is the freedom it provides—in the absence of alternative evidence—to invent the endings we'd like to see. Judging by the 6,000-plus responses, in the YouTube world at least, the baby's doing just fine.

I played Pokemon Sapphire for the past few days and it’s still quite fun! (Yes, I know I’m 16). It brought back fond memories of primary school days where the only purpose of going to school was to discuss how to catch them all. But the one thing that I found, and still find distasteful with Pokemon, is the need to ‘grind’ or constantly fight to level up your creatures. It gets mundane after a while.

So knowing me, I cheated and used plenty of rare candies and master balls. I recall fighting Brock (the first Gym Leader in R/B/Y) with Articuno. Articuno! It’s a rare legendary bird that you aren’t supposed to have until the very late stages of the game, but gameshark said I could have it so... …

I blizzard-ed them to death.

But try not to cheat lah, especially online. Cheaters and hackers ruin the fun of games.

And speaking of games, it’s quite jaw-dropping to see so many people flocking to stake their claim in Granado Espada. Very fun meh? The last time I heard, the graphics sucked and the game play was so-so.

Alright, I admit I am biased towards FPSs. Nothing beats a barrage of bullets from a Bianchi into a wall, causing some adults behind computers in Australia, Japan, Singapore and Korea to run away and scream for cover. It’s a really stress-relieving experience, and the best thing is, games like BF2142 have a very small percentage of children playing. I totally dislike egoistic kids who play online games and think that they’re invincible. Spank them, please.

Since when did kids understand the value of cooperating in squads, and the squads cooperating with the appointed commander? It’s quite amazing actually, to see people who have never seen each other before to combine their skills into six man squads, and then follow the orders of a squad leader or commander that they know only by his online nickname.

Being a commander is a stay in hell for me though. I find it a pain to direct squads around, launch UAVs, start Satellite Tracks, drop supplies, designate EMP and Orbital Strikes. It’s no walk in the park. Okay, the strikes are fun. You get to see people frantically trying to move their characters away when you decide to pound that area with shells.

The top view of them looks like ants on a hot frying pan. (I stole that from the Chinese saying).

Or whatever.

And speaking of whatever, I think the ad campaign for whatever and anything is one of the best so far. You might find it distasteful and low-class, but hasn’t it done its purpose? It made you aware that there’s such a drink called whatever and anything.

And speaking of anything, the iPhone’s going to be the in thing man. Pity only AT&T users get it – it could have launched a tsunami of iPhone madness all over the world if everyone could get one regardless of their telecom.

I watched Steve Job’s keynote address on the iPhone, and for once, just once in this sixteen years, I got besotted with something from Apple. iPod? Nah, flash memory please. Macs? I want to game leh.

To end, here’s a funny advertisement about the iPhone by NBC. Use the penultimate function at your own discretion.



Here’s one of the official few. Beautiful.



Before you flame me, I admit that the iPhone has many cons too.

I twisted my neck while trying to be a monkey on the pull-up bar.

That means I can’t turn my neck rightwards and if I try to force it that way, it’ll hurt like hell.

That also means that whenever I want to look at something on the right of my field of vision, I have turn like Robocop. Eh wait, even Robocop could turn his head. So what does that make me?

Hmmm.

Anyway, I was bouncing around the internet just now, and I saw something that was rather disconcerting.It looks like Bon Jovi’s latest album, Lost Highway appeared online before its official retail release – in the same fashion as Linkin Park’s Minutes to Midnight and Maroon 5’s It Won’t Be Soon Before Long.

Here’s a screenshot of what’s floating around online now:I can’t find out if it’s a proper release and not a dupe, so that’s some food for thought for you before you start clicking in earnest. One thing’s for sure though, this album isn’t a proper Scene release. It wasn’t distributed by any of those groups.

So yup, if you’re going to download it, listen to it and tell me whether it’s worth a small hole in the pocket.

Before I log out, here’s Bon Jovi’s not-so-new single, Make A Memory.