Joy To The World!!

Joy to the world, the end has come! The last agony day of trials has finally ended at exactly at 10:10:000 a.m. today. However, I still have something to voice out! Why of all papers, the last paper of trial must be the hardest and most agonizing paper of all! Specialist Maths! OMG!!! It was really a killer. A side from that, it’s the end of trials so I’m not going to talk any further than that. Besides that killer paper, the rest of the day still kept many surprises for me to uncover.

Such an interesting and event-filled day! Full of fun, joy and surprises lurking from every corner. With more and more couples forming everyday throughout the world *cough cough*, I definitely feel there is an urge to celebrate for something unspeakable! Oh, besides that, we finally got half the class to go out! Yay-ness! It was really such a last minute thing. Everyone was undecided until it was time to leave! Well, got into 2 cars , the rest took the KTM to Midvalley. Then right after lunch, oh wait, right after having lunch at Nandos (that sounds more like it), we went straight for the movie! Flight plan…. Well, nothing much to shout out about but one thing I must say is that Jodie Foster is an exceptionally good actress. She acted really well, outstanding I can say. Oh yea, the storyline was also pretty good. It was really thought provoking, it makes you believe in something which wasn’t really true until the very end where they revealed the absolute truth. Really good thriller movie. Recommended for people that aren’t really interested in action movies.

Oh after the show, we started walking all around Midvalley like a group of foreign tourist that lost their way. We couldn’t decide what to do next. Well after running around, went into MPH digging through tons of books, we finally grouped back and at last decided to go bowling at Cosmic Bowl. Took a long time of persuading to persuade everyone to bowl together and get publicly humiliated. Well, it wasn’t really embarrassing but it was really fun. What you know, with such little practice in bowling, actually hardly any practice, I managed to pull off at second place with 87 points after Tian Chi with 96 points. What an unexpected result! Well, at least all of us had a great time, cheering and shouting everytime we hit more than “a” pin down.

Besides that, there were a lot of revealing of unexpected stuff (actually not really that unexpected la) too. Well really fun to find out new stuff! (Ahem…. you know who you are, if you are reading this!!) Well, finally to round up, it was a fun-filled day and it’s another day to add to my diary of unforgettable days in my life. The end….

The Malaysian Idol “Pageant”

The thrill of the year, the talk of the month, the finale of the season! The Malaysian Idol talent show has successfully retained it’s popularity in the hearts of Malaysians. For almost everyone, watching the Malaysian Idol Grand Finale is more important above everything else even those which are currently sitting for their trials (including me) would never miss it for the world! It was wonderful!

The pre-show was just ever so exciting as they brought back some of the Malaysian Idol hopefuls that auditioned in the early part of the year to win the judges heart to enter the contest. One of them was one my fellow classmate, better known as the Britney boy, they called him Raj on television. It really took me so long to persuade him to go it, he was left undecided for so long as he too was also going through the trials examinations. But finally, I broke through the clouds and he finally said “Yes, I’m going to go for it!” Wasn’t he just so good on stage, aside from the singing, his showmanship was there although it was his first time singing on a stage that big and being watched my thousands, if not millions of viewers both at the Arena of Star and those at home. I’m proud that an ex-Samadian and Taylorian is performing at the Finals.

Okay, back to business, in the results show, they really know how to give the audiences a good suspense. After like almost 2 hours of waiting, they finally announced the winner of Malaysian Idol Season 2. It was Daniel. Triumph over his victory against fellow contestant Nita, he definitely knows how to won the hearts of the crowd. With 1.2 million or 1,200,000 votes compared to Nita’s 500,000 plus votes, Daniel has conquered the voting tally with over 68% of the total votes of 1.67 million votes. Malaysia could not have gone wrong with 1.2 million votes.

Well, of course there are the skeptics that wanted Nita to win, but hey, people, the statistics of the votes revealed by the 8TV COO, Ahmad Izham Omar, it’s too obvious not to deny that Daniel definitely has a larger fan base compared to Nita.

At first, during the first few workshops and Spectaculars, I was on Nita as she was already very good compared to other contestants. As the weeks progressed and the gap shrunk towards the Grand Finals, I began to notice that it wasn’t Nita was going to win the competition but it was Daniel that is going to. It took me quite a while to think why this was happening as I also noticed that Daniel had a bigger potential. Then it came to me.

First of all, many supported Nita because she was already very good in the early stages of the competition. However during that period of time, Daniel was still a novice little boy that doesn’t have that much experience compared to Nita. As we progressed into the Spectaculars, I began to notice that Daniel was constantly improving week after week, similarly Farah was also progressing fast. As for Nita, her talent rating remained constant and didn’t improve as significantly as compared to Daniel and Farah. As I could recall, Nita hardly improved at all, it’s just psychology that many supported Nita because she was already good from the beginning. Week after week, Daniel made little but significant progresses. He at first suffered diction problems for English songs he sang, but soon he slowly improved his diction and now his words are more pronounceable and more clearly heard. He also found out that he could sing Malay songs better that English ones. Especially when he sang Angin Malam, it was just wonderful.

In the finals, Heaven Knows by Rick Price, the song that got him into the competition, they played the video of him singing the song during the auditions. Then when he sang the song again during the finals, it was too obvious that he has definitely improved a lot since the auditions. As for Nita, her inconsistency has let her down many times, her song titled Big Spender by Shirley Bessey, she sang the song much better during the Spectaculars compared to the finals. When they played the tape of her singing during the auditions, no doubt that she was already good since the auditions, I noticed that she hardly improved since then. Just because she has a powerful projection, many think that’ already good enough. No it isn’t! It’s all about who can improved, who has more potential and who can win the heart’s of the crowd. No doubt Daniel has done it, Nita has done it from time to time but not all the time.

Well, Malaysia, you have made the right decision by putting Daniel on centre stage as the second Malaysian Idol. Many congrats to him and well done to the voters that voted. I wonder who’s next next season…

The Malaysian Idol Experience

Finally after 3 agonizing days of waiting, I finally got all the pictures me and my friends took during our Malaysian Idol trip last Friday. It was an unforgettable experience. Together 5 of us, me, Amy, E Ling, Yuen Han and Yean May, has the most wonderful, unforgettable, heavenly, exciting, adrenaline pumping, tiring, exhausting, memorable, inspiring night of our lives! It sounds like I’m exaggerating (a little) but I’m telling the truth! It was like I described it previously. Screams of joy and laughter and tears of happiness and friendship. That night really brought us closer together as close friends. However, the night was more towards seeing the idols themselves with our very own eyeballs without the help of cameramen and television stations. It was exciting, in just one night, we took almost 100 pictures and we hardly felt that we took too many. The whole decision of going for it really paid off! And before I leave, I’ll also leave behind some still memories of photos in my photoblog where you too can experience what I’ve experienced on Friday night.

Star Signs

I’ve been reading through astrology sites the other day and I came across a site that says that there is another star sign in the sky and a new star sign. It was pretty interesting to actually read it but due to this, many of our star signs are not as accurate as we think it should be. According to the website, I am supposed to be a Virgo, the “Virgin” but all these years I have been considered under the star sign Libra, the Scales. This change is due to the 13th star sign, Ophiuchus which is supposed to be in between Scorpio and Sagittarius. Haihz, now it seems that we trust our astrologers too much but now it seems that they are not actually 100% correct. Instead they are only 92% correct. Due to this, 84% of us have a star sign that is off by one constellation and another 2% is off by two! The rest of the 14% are lucky enough to be still under the same sign. Unfortunately I’m one of the 84% of people that have their star sign off by one constellation.

It was kind of interesting reading astronomy. They explained in detail for a layman why this is actually happening in the first place. It is basically caused by the Earth wobbling at its own axis. Means that the geographic North of the Earth doesn’t point to the North star all the time which is now Polaris, it changes from time to time and this process takes thousands of years to complete one cycle. According to the website, it takes 25800 years to complete a “wobble”.

Well, if you don’t understand what’s a wobble, just imagine a gasing (malay for top) spinning on the floor, where the top represents the Earth and the spinning represents the Earth’s rotation from West to East on a daily basis and the pointed edge of the top is the North pole of the Earth. As the top is spins so very fast, that’s the Earth spinning in a thousand years. Then as the tops slows down its rotation, the top starts to lose it’s central of gravity and starts to spinning unsteadily, so that is called a “wobble”. As the top continues spinning unsteadily, the pointed edge of the top which represents the Earth’s North pole moves around in a circle. So that is what the Earth is experiencing currently. And as the spins unsteadily, it’s still spinning fast, and so it also shows that the Earth is still spinning around many times which takes thousands of years to complete a single “wobble”. Pretty easy eh? Even things on Earth can substitute the incidents happening in the universe.

The table below shows the “actual” constellations of the zodiac.

Astronomical Constellations of the Zodiac

Constellation Dates
Capricorn - January 19 to February 15
Aquarius - February 16 to March 11
Pisces - March 12 to April 18
Aries - April 19 to May 13
Taurus - May 14 to June 19
Gemini - June 20 to July 20
Cancer - July 21 to August 9
Leo - August 10 to September 15
Virgo - September 16 to October 30
Libra - October 31 to November 22
Scorpio - November 23 to November 29
Ophiuchus - November 30 to December 17
Sagittarius - December 18 to January 18

So what’s the Ophiuichus sign represents? It’s actually a serpent bearer. This constellation is actually discovered thousands of years ago, just that many astrologers today has forgotten about its discovery. And because of this constellation, many things in the world isn’t what it’s supposed to be named after. Everything has all gone hay-wire but nobody seems to notice it because nobody actually knows its very own existence! An actual case of chaos in a world of order.

Click here and here for more info.

Dear Mr. Allen Smith

Dear Mr. Allen Smith,

Whoever you are, you sure are great and I do look up highly upon that. You not only control the world renowned friends network Friendster but you also have control over major email service providers like Yahoo Mail and Hotmail. It is fascinating how you actually get to control three big companies all at the same time. You must be very stressed out.

Recently, I’ve heard from email forwards and bulletin posts that ALL your three companies are deleting all inactive accounts in all three service providers due to the sudden burst of sign-ups. I am drastically horrified to hear that your companies will be deleting all inactive accounts. I felt rather awkward, however, to the method your company is using to detect inactive users. I thought that service providers like Friendster, Hotmail and Yahoo Mail all uses state-of-the-art technology to provide high quality and excellent services to its users. On the other hand, your company is resorting to mail forwards and tracking them down to each and every user that forwards it to his or her friends.

I thought that in today’s modern world, computers and software are able to detect inactive users in just a press of the button at the finger tips. But it was and still is surprising that you and your company resorted to such old and obsolete method to detect inactive users. I do sympathise your company for not having the technology to do so which would have saved an age of time.

Moreover, I have been repeatedly receiving the message that your companies are deleting accounts and the message states that I am obligated to forward the message to as many friends as possible in order to keep my account active. However, I have not forwarded the messages that I have received, not once and I am amazed that my accounts in all three service providers are still up and running actively. As I could recall, I started receiving messages similar to those stated above since I could remember, which was a long long time ago. However, no action has been taken to delete my account.

I hope that your companies will soon upgrade their systems as it is obvious that the technology used by your companies is definitely obsolete. In this way, your company does not have to resort to traditional methods of tracking down forwarded messages to detect inactive users of your service providers. It is either that or you improve your services and provide more space in cyberspace to cope with the every increasing number of users in your million-user service provider. In this way, users will have to go through the trouble of forwarding messages that look like spam to their friends.

Thank you.

Friendster, Hotmail and Yahoo Mail user;
Qi-Guang.

The letter above tells you what is the situation currently happening in Friendster, Hotmail and Yahoo Mail. Whoever this Mr. Allen Smith is, he is obviously not real as he controls three of the world’s largest network or service providers which have a chance of one in a million gazillion chances. And yet, people still are fooled by the forwarded message they received from their also fooled friend and they forward the message to other friends that are going to be fooled again where the process repeats itself again and again like a chain reaction.

One thing people, when you receive these kinds of messages, make sure that the message doesn’t look like a spam message because most of the messages I’ve received are messy with arrows that you get whenever you forward a message to another person. Secondly, don’t just read it with an empty mind, read it using your logical skills and interpret the message properly. If there is the slightest sign that your brain tells you that the message is actually a scam, you can just ignore it and delete it.

This situation once was such an annoyance that it really got on my nerves and posted a bulletin telling all those fools that it’s actually a prank. The situation finally improved for a short period of time. But then, peace doesn’t lasts for eternity and it comes back again! And again I have to post another bulletin to enlighten those annoying and brainless fools that are fooled by the prank message.

Well, to all of you reading this post, I hope that you too can understand that many messages that you receive are actually just nuisance and shouldn’t be taken seriously. So next time you receive a message similar to the message stated above in the letter, think before you do anything to it. Verify its authenticity then only you can forward it to your friends. Thank you for all your cooperation to make cyberspace a more peaceful place.

Ignorance

I can’t stand it anymore! My maths teacher is confirmed a total irritant! The character should be condemned by society! I don’t even know why in the first place she is a teacher when her attitude towards her very own students isn’t very good indeed.

I’ve already blogged about her utterly unbearable annoying acts on us before, but now, it seems that she has never changed a bit. Not a single thong of her changed! Nothing!!! Okay, here’s first. Being a teacher, you must always listen to your students. Whenever a student raises his hand, ask him what he doesn’t understand in the class. However, my maths teacher does otherwise. Whenever a student puts up his hand, she’ll just ignore it as if nothing happened at all. Even when a student shouts out that he doesn’t understand a thing she’s teaching, she appears to be deaf and just continues teaching the class. This attitude towards the class isn’’t so nice and since the starting of the year, she’s been telling us to change our attitude of not copying notes down during lectures. How ironic can this ever get?! She’s telling us to change our attitude where she is the one that needs the attitude change!

Besides that, she never fulfils her duties as being my group’s mentor. Never ever she’s done a wonderful job. We were supposed to receive a new timetable since last Thursday but however only today we received the new timetable where the timetable states that the changes take effect today! The more ironic thing is that, she wasn’t the one to pass the new timetable to us. It was another teacher, our English teacher to be more specific, that passed us the new timetable. She gave us a totally lame and unacceptable excuse of being too busy to pass it to us. What nonsense! She practically sees us everyday for lectures and she will be able to pass the timetable to us, but she comes, no she asked another teacher to represent her to pass us the timetable and to inform us of her lame excuse of being too busy.

Why can’t she ever just do her duties, such a simple job of just passing us the timetable and announcing announcements is basically what a mentor is supposed to do. However, she never does it correctly or timely. It just pure lame excuses that are so obvious that she isn’t that passionate of do her duties as a teacher and a mentor to my group. Well, as some say, “some people never change”.

Translation or Typo Error?

Lately I’ve been watching Astro and I noticed something very peculiar about it. Nothing out of the blue or absurd but, something peculiar. Notice the subtitles in every single show you see on Malaysian television? Yeah, the peculiarity’s there. Well, it’s nothing outstanding if you don’t pay any attention to it, but if you just take 5 minutes to read some of the translations, you too will be fondled and confused like me.

Okay, here goes. I was just reading the subtitles of a documentary show on Discovery Channel that day and I noticed that the translations all contains everything but correct translations! I was listening to the commentator talking and the translations at the bottom. The commentator said “the crater is 3 miles wide” while the subtitle translated it as “kawah tersebut mempunyai diameter 3 kaki”. I was shocked to read the translation. How can 3 miles be 3 kaki?! 3 kaki in the Malay language is 3 feet! Logically speaking 3 miles is not equals to 3 feet. We al learn Mathematics and we are taught that 3 miles which is 1.6 kilometers or 1600 meters is never the same as 3 feet which is equivalent to 80 centimeters or 0.8 meters. No! No! No! The translator must be having a very illogical mind.

It seems that this mistakes continues to happen time an time again in almost every documentary. There was once that the commentator said “up to 70%”, the subtitle translated as “sehingga 77%”. OMG! This is a serious problem. Besides that, I also noticed several other kinds of mistakes such as grammatical mistakes and spelling mistakes which are so simple that even a 8 year old kid that has learnt the Malay language would spot the mistake.

I believe it’s time for Astro to find a new translator for themselves. The current one is already rusted and his translation capabilities has all vanished and deteriorating by the minute or maybe his or her hearing abilities has rotted! Even those translators in TV2, TV3, ntv7 and 8TV has much better translator which don’t make such silly and obvious mistakes. If you don’t believe me, just turn on any channel on Astro, preferably the ones in the learning package i.e. Discovery Channel, Animal Planet & National Geographic, and in just 15 minutes, I assure you, you can definitely spot at least 3 mistakes which are so obvious that even a kid can spot.