50 YEARS OLD OR 44 YEARS OLD?

Sabah, Sarawak and Singapore did not join Malaya but they merged with Malaya to form Malaysia on 16th September 1963. If that's the case, why are we celebrating 31st August 1957? Is it because Malaya's independence day is more crucial and important to be celebrated and not Malaysia's independence day? I see this celebration every year as an insult to Sabah and Sarawak. It is like you are part of the family but your birthday is never being celebrated. Then, what meanings do you have joining a family which ignores your birth date?

REALISTIC RATATOUILLE

Just watched Ratatouille last night. The detailed and realistic renderings just took my breath away! My goodness, just notice the fur of the rat, the rain, the water and all the details of the textures of the ground, the wall and everything else, you will be amazed. Pixar did it again by producing another quality animation. This brings another level of realism after what Toy Story and Finding Nemo could do.

The 'Anyone Can Cook' slogan is the main theme of the movie. A rat which desires good food as well as having the passion to learn to cook dreams of becoming a chef. He constant sneaked into a granny's house to read the cookbook of the famous chef, Gusteau as well as watching his cooking program on TV. He, Remy, had his opportunity when a young boy came to the Gusteau's French restaurant to work. Remy helped the boy, Linguini to cook by pulling his hair as a way to give instructions to cook. I won't reveal much here as not to give spoilers. The rest of the story is about how they could sustain such a relationship as we know that rats are not allowed in the kitchen as they are dirty. I fully recommend this movie!

By the way, ratatouille is a French vegetable stew, usually made with eggplant, tomatoes, zucchini, peppers, and onions, seasoned with herbs and garlic.

NIKON D3 AND D300

It has been released and looking scarily fierce! As I decide on the Digital SLR to invest perhaps next year, I am looking at the Nikon D80 but will not forget about this two if their price is not crazily beyond my budget. I never own a Digital SLR before and it is time for me to invest, apart from a dream to own an Apple laptop as well. I am sure D3 will surely be out of my league so I will not consider that.

DPreview Nikon D3
DPreview Nikon D300
HardwareZone.Com.My

Some crazy features I should emphasize here are:
D3: Full frame (36 X 24mm) sensor, 12.1mpixels (FF), 51 point autofocus, 9.0fps, 64 frames (up to 11 fps with DX format (5.1mp), 3.0" 922K pixels + Live View LCD monitor, ISO 200-6400 (with boost up to ISO 25,600), power-up 12ms, shutter lag 41ms, black-out 74ms

D300: 12.3mpixels, 51 point autofocus, 6.0/8.0 fps, 100 frames, 3.0"922K pixels + Live View LCD monitor, ISO 200-3200 (6400 with boost), power up 13ms, shutter lag 45ms, black-out 100ms

I am sure photographers out there are rejoicing.

FOOTBALL: REAL WIN DERBY FOR DEBUT MATCH

For some reasons, Astro could not show the live match between Real Madrid and Atletico Madrid as scheduled. The reason shown was something to do with the advertisement agreements conflict. Just great when I was all ready preparing for the match!

Atletico Madrid scored inside 40+ seconds inside the match. I thought this is it, another painful night for Real Madrid will come true. Raul replied with an equaliser aroud the 15th minute. Sneijder got the winning goal for his debut goal for his debut match ten minutes from time.

Frank Lampard has been scoring the goals for Chelsea like a striker. His form of the the season before the last is back! Elsewhere, Manchester City finally got their first lost of the season courtesy of a Fabregas goal. The EPL season starts in the most wildest way possible but Chelsea climbed top at least before the Sunday matches. Juventus is winning with a Trezequet hattrick! Seems like they are adapting back to the Serie A well.

Hope all the three leagues will get exciting as the season progresses! Enjoy football guys!

POTHOLE COSTS A LIFE

Remember I wrote about an article related to Johor Bahru not long ago?
JB CAPITAL CITY OF CRIME

One of the complaints is the appearances of potholes everywhere. I can assure you guys that if I am paid RM1 to take a photograph of a pothole, I can easily earn RM100 in an hour of photo-taking. Sometimes a hole can be so massive I think it is equivalent to two or three in combination.

Just recently I read about how the pothole costs the life of a person. Then, there was a reaction to the incident. It is really sad to see that such a thing can cost the life of a human being and they are still leaving many of these potholes all over Johor Bahru. Imagine yourself being the parent of the person who died because of a pothole. Is the life of a human being so cheap? People die from many causes like accidents, sicknesses but potholes?

Some of these potholes are so deep that you need bricks to cover them and so wide that you need at least 3 bricks laid beside each other.

FOOTBALL: MADRID'S CRAZY POLICY

I have been complaining non-stop since Capello was sacked. It is great now that Capello had reviewed behind the scenes of the things happening in Real Madrid when he was the coach. The signing of Heinze and Robben are the latest in the lists of players coming to Real Madrid this season. The selling of some players like Cicinho, Helguera, Emerson, Reyes and the great hope to sell Baptista is just making me extremely sad with the club's policy. It is as if you have rival members in the board aiming at dismantling the team to as many pieces as possible so the uphill task at hand will be achieved to be trophyless for another century. All the decisions that are done by the club's board is extremely without logic and sense.

I am left wondering what is the next crazy step they will take. The better the player performs, the more excited they are in getting the player out of the club. The worse the player, the more they want to guarantee the player an automatic starting eleven berth. You just cannot stand their decisions. They have Drenthe, Marcelo, Torres and now Heinze as leftback. Any club out there get 4 great players on a single position? As for Robben, I hope he will not dive, injure easily as well as selfishly attack alone. The president must be happy now that at least one of the three players he promised arrived in Madrid. Fabregas and Kaka will be distant dreams.

Some of Capello's remarks are really shocking. Now, I know it is not him who wanted to bench Beckham. Here are some of the things he said which is on the news.

"They appointed me to do a serious, tough and difficult job and we had a very difficult dressing room to deal with."

"There were many conflicting groups and each one had its leader who blamed the others when things weren’t going well."

"But we pulled the team together, recoevered the team spirit and they played with belief and enthusiasm."

With this, he admitted some level of respect for the players that won the league trophy. But he saved no such redeeming words for president Calderon.

He said of the boss, "What hurts is that I have never heard anything from Calderon. He has never called me. I think I deserved some respect from someone I helped win the elections and succeed as President."

The ex-Juve player went on to remark on the David Beckham saga, blaming the club's hierarchy for the English superstar's time out of the team in the aftermath of his signing a pre-contract with LA Galaxy.

"The decision was taken beacuse the club’s management said that he had negotiated with them when he had already signed a contract with Los Angeles."

"They said that they couldn’t count on a player who wasn’t going to remain at the club."

"When I work I always wear the team colours and defend my employers in every way I can."

Interesting words from Capello - particularly when compared to his utterances earlier in the year.Indeed, his take on the Beckham situation was quite different in January, when he said:""Beckham will train with the team but he won't play. He has always been a great professional but if a player has such an important contract with another club you cannot count on him. You can't have the same enthusiasm when your mind is on other things."

"The strange thing is that they only gave me 30 million euros to make signings," he said, compared to the Madrid total this year that's already topping the 100 million mark.

What's more, he said that, in the transfer market, timing is everything - and they almost got it wrong last year.

"We made a miracle in building the squad that we did.You can't form a winning team in July. That's what seems to be happening to them now," he claimed.

And with this, he reflected on a wider theme: the lack of planning in the transfer market."It's necessary to make signings in May," said Capello.

"We had everything prepared to sign players, but they are not signed, never signed."

"We had a 6 million (euro) bid for Chivu in April, with 3.5 for the player. [Franco] Baldini [sporting director] had it all sorted, but it wasn't possible to close the deal because they told us, 'We don't love players who come from the Italian league."

Seemingly, Italy wasn't the only problem. Brazil, was, too. Pato, Brazilian wonderkid who just signed for AC Milan, was apparently also a target.Capello said, "Beldini went to Brazil and saw Pato. He called [Pedrag] Mijatovic [sporting director] and said, 'I've seen a lad here, and he's an extraordinary player."

"With a bit of luck - and considering he shared a representative with Emerson - we could have got him for 2 million euros... but Madrid said, 'No, too young.' And now he's worth 20 million..."

Capello also revealed that he pleaded with Mijatovic not to sell Roberto Carlos, but this request fell on deaf ears. Equally futile, he claims, is anything relating to Kaka.The Italian coach blasted, "For me, we never even had the possibility of signing him. I have always said that to Pedja and the president."To [president Ramon] Calderon I said, you are failing here. [Milan president] Berlusconi doesn't lack money and has a 'pretty face' at Milan - who is it? It was Maldini before, but now it is Kaka."

The boy in all the photos is Kaka. And Berlusconi, who lives an aesthetic life, and loves the aesthetic players, will never let such a man go."

Capello closed by wishing new coach Bernd Schuster the best of luck and pledging his support to the side for the new season, but ruled out a third strike at the Bernabeu job.

He said, "I've returned once and made extraordinary work...but I won't return to Real Madrid to coach. Count on it."

At least now we know the Beckham matter was not his fault. He could be solely be responsible of the Ronaldo matter. Many blamed him for letting the talent go but I see no reason to keep Ronaldo. In fact, I wish he would go long ago because whenever he is in the field, he is like Raul, the club is playing with a player less. Lazy, not interested to chase the ball or help the team in defence when required. As for Schuster, he keeps asking for a player in a new position for every defeat he faces. I wonder what excuses he will give when all 11 positions are bought according to his demands. For me, he is totally clueless what they club really needs and I am fearing for the worst to come. Four years of suffering was a memorable painful experience. I cannot guess how long will this cycle last.

Whatever it will be, I really wish Capello the best in what he is doing and thank him for the great matches we missed for four years. Although it is a short spell, he is definitely incredible to be able to bring the spirit back and unite the club to win the league. Capello the Great! Let the nightmare begin in Madrid now!

FOOTBALL: EPL SEASON CHAOTIC START

Yes, I would say that the English Premier League did start very chaotically. Newcastle United topped the table after the first week! I watched the Manchester City VS. Manchester United match as well as the Liverpool VS. Chelsea matches. I enjoyed both the matches. It was interesting to see Thaksin at the stadium watching his Manchester City slaughter Manchester United, which was without Rooney and C.Ronaldo. They have a really bad start in their defence for their EPL crown. The only goal of the match is spectacular!

Of course to see Fernando Torres to score a nice goal against Chelsea was great too. However, that stupid penalty call by the referee was a huge mistake. It caused Liverpool 2 points as they have to settle for a draw. It was correct just like how Liverpool commented after the match. Chelsea players were all over the referee applying pressure to him. Finally, he gave a penalty to Chelsea, which is a massive bad decision! I pity Liverpool for the draw. The Mourinho remarks of them being naive is the best comment ever! Chelsea behave very nicely? That's the biggest joke of the century!

I did not make it for the Spanish Supercup between Real Madrid VS. Sevilla because I just could not wake up. I was expecting a lost anyway since I am supporting for the club to perform badly under the new coach. I'm sad to see how the club treat Emerson, Cicinho, Helguera and Baptista. I just cannot take it!

Meanwhile, it shocks me that Schuster is saying that he is not intending to play beautiful attacking football. I thought the reason they sacked Capello was because he played boring defensive football which made the football fans sleepy during matches. They said they will get someone who will provide more entertainment on the field.

The coach wants everyone! He is demanding a player after a player but his performance is extremely bad! If Capello, one of the most experienced and successful club coaches in the world, needed half a year to gel his team last season, how long will Schuster need? I hope he has enough time before the club drop too low in the table rankings.

"I never said we would give spectacle," quipped the German. "Everyone who's seen me or the team's I've coached play will know that my style has to do with playing proper football, and that's what this team is going to do in the end."

"I have faith in the quality of my players and I know we will end up playing well. My goal is to give this team a personality and a style of its own. We've only been working for three weeks, but I admit I thought things would have happened a bit faster, but I'm not worried."

ITALIANNIES FOR LUNCH

We were at Johr Bahru's Jusco Tebrau City to have late lunch as well as to catch Rush Hour 3. We went to have some Italian food at Italiannies. I heard the spaghettis there are quite good. I almost tried it when I was in One Utama last time. I think they have another one at The Curve. Anyway, I went there with experience eating one of the best in Singapore at Spageddies. I always wanted to try Michelangelo as many reported that it's the best place to dine Italian in Singapore but the pricing is too much for just casual testing. Someday perhaps.



OK, back to Italiannies. When we arrived, there is not a single soul in the huge restaurant. Ok, this is the Chinese's 7th Month so I won't talk rubbish here! When we sat down, they served us with some slices of bread. It tasted nice so it was a good first impression. We looked at the menu and the pricing is quite steep! No wonder the place is so empty! Even if we convert to Singapore Dollars, some of the dishes are overpriced. I can get a better price in Singapore in a more reputable restaurant! We ordered a plate of carbonara pasta and a pepperoni pizza.



The place is very well decorated so it does have the ambience and the sufficient and appropriate lighting for dining comfortably. Since there is not a single soul (I hope), it feels like you book the whole restaurant down just to dine. Sounds romantic like in the movies.



We were so hungry since we didn't have breakfast and it is almost 4pm that we finished off the bread. They offered to refill them which is good. OK, since the place is empty, we are given top class service with a top secret agent bodyguard style kind of service monitoring our table full time! I don't really like that since I prefer to be left alone, not being watched full time! There is even a copy of The Sun on the table for me to read.



The drink arrived and I love this strawberry drink and not the other, which is lime. It is extremely too sour for me to handle.



The carbonara pasta came and they gave us quite a generous serving of cheese. Well, it is great. Overall, I find it to be rather sweet but I still like it! The meat is just great! The noodle is just nice so it is not over or under cooked. The ingredients are just mixed well to correct proportions to give an overall good dish! Most of the time, the lousy pasta you eat is an overdose of wrong proportions, leaving you feeling sick and unable to finish it. For this, we could have ask for more. No, it is not the hunger. Remember we refill the bread!







The pizza arrived last and it is HUGE! I am glad I did not order anything else! If I had, we will not be able to finish them! We surrendered with two more slices left after loading ourselves up! It is baked to perfection! The crunchy areas are crunchy, the soft areas are soft, it is very well done! Again, lotsa cheese given and the meat is great, just like in the pasta.



Overall, Italiannies serves good Italian food by trying 3 items above. I am not sure with the rest of the dishes in the menu. If based on these 3 items, I have a good impression of it. The pricing is a bit crazy, very close to high end restaurant range.

We went to watch Rush Hour 3 later on. It was generally a good movie. The censorships are again spoiling the movie for me! Well, it is expected in Malaysia anyway. Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker are again giving us enough actions to laugh. It is good to release stress after a whole day of tiring work. It is a recommended movie to watch from me.

PROTON PERSONA

Can this car save Proton?











Well, I have no clear answers seriously.

Proton Launches the Persona.

HARRY POTTER AND FLASH POINT

No spoilers from me here so don't worry. Just general comments of the two recent movies I just watched.

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix is a so-so movie for me. I don’t fancy the battle of wizards where the magic wand is used to shoot lightning at each other, flying around in brooms and all those hostel and school stuffs. Overall, nothing to shout about from any aspects of the movie, including the storyline. ZZZZZZZZZ

The other movie I just watched is Flash Point. As you all know that the four most famous martial artists in Asia are Jet Li, Jacky Chan, Tony Jaa and Donny Yen. Donny Yen starred in this movie with Louis Koo. You would guess like me how Louis Koo ended up in a martial arts movie since he doesn't have the skills. Well, he is showing his acting skills except martial arts for the movie. I thought he did a pretty good job!

This movie has enough fighting scenes to satisfy all those martial arts enthusiasts. It is a very cruel movie of killing and fighting but has many humourous scenes here and there as well. I am very satisfied with spending my money on this one over Harry Potter anytime! This is a must watch recommendation from me. The storyline build-up is a little bit slow but who is complaining since all the great actions are focused along the way?

Bring on Bourne Ultimatum, Rush Hour 3 and The Simpsons Movie. I want to watch all three of them ASAP!

THE DELL INSPIRON 1520 LAPTOP

This is probably the first time that Dell is introducing colours to their computer systems after going for black designs in their XPS (The World's Thinnest 13.3" Notebook as of June 27th, 2007) laptop range. A good start I would say. I was waiting ages for them to introduce them as I am commissioned to find a laptop for my cousin who put importance in form over function. She was so negative about getting a Dell because they are all in so dull standard silver.











The colour kit choices are:
Jet Black with Matte Finish
Alpine White with Gloss Finish
Espresso Brown with Microsatin Finish
Ruby Red with Microsatin Finish
Midnight Blue with Microsatin Finish
Spring Green with Microsatin Finish
Flamingo Pink with Microsatin Finish
Sunshine Yellow with Microsatin Finish

I got her the Dell Inspiron 1520 laptop in Ruby Red Microsatin finish. I will compare the size with a NEC Versa E6200 which is of the same size. My laptop is a Dell Inspiron 9300 which has a 17” display so it will not be appropriate for comparison.









Here are its specifications:
Intel Core 2 Duo T7300 2GHz
2GB RAM (2 X 1024MB) 667MHz Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM
256MB GDDR2 PCI Express x16 nVidia GeForce 8600M GT
15.4' Widescreen WXGA (Resolution: 1280 X 800 X Hz) with TrueLife
Intel 4965AGN Wireless-N Mini-Card
120GB SATA Hard Drive
Internal 8X DVD+/-RW Combination Drive with dual layer write capabilities
90W Primary AC Adapter (110V/220V)
9-cell 85Whr Lithium Ion Battery
Creative built-in Webcam
ExpressCard slot
IEEE 1394 connector
4 USB connectors
Wired Network connector
8-in-1 Memory Card Reader (SD, SDIO, MMC, Memory Stick, Memory Stick PRO, xD, Hi Speed-SD and Hi Density-SD cards)
Ruby Red Microsatin Finish
Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium

The purchase of this laptop gives me the first hand experience of Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium and the Microsoft Office 2007. The design is getting cooler and I love how the windows open up and close down. I hope it is not consuming more processing power and memory though. It is also my first hand experience of running Intel Core 2 Duo on a computer. It is surely fast and furious alright. We know that CPUs are practically stuck at the 3GHz mark with the current semiconductor technology so what they do is subdividing the cores with many marketing gimmicks like Hyper-Threading to dual and quad cores. Unfortunately, not all softwares make full use of such functions so it could be useless.









I like how they have this Resource Overview window where you can see how your CPU, Disk, Network and Memory is consuming the overall performance. This will give you a good hint on what is really the bottleneck in the performance from time to time. The internal design of the keyboard keys following the metallic surface around it is good. The old designs are always having black keys. The curves at the edges are getting better too and much nicer.

BUY DELL AND YOU WON'T REGRET

First of all, I wish to declare that I am not in any way connected to Dell in whatever ways and I don’t earn a single cent for writing this article. I just received the new Dell Inspiron 1520 laptop the other day and wish to share on why I always insist on buying Dell. This is the first time I am using Microsoft Windows Vista and it seems too user friendly that it behaves like a nagging mother who is reminding you on everything.

My next computer may be an Apple as I always want to move to the 'dark' side for once like how I did for switching to Sony Ericsson from Nokia. Furthermore, Apple computers are nowadays more affordable and has adopted the same Intel Duo Core 2 chips like Window based PCs. Therefore, I can even run Windows on them or have dual OS to switch around when I want to use the MAC OS. OK, let's get to the present now.

Many marketing strategies of laptops nowadays are just trying to lure people to buy laptops for the wrong reasons and for reasons which others already have. For example HP is having a heavy The PC Is Personal Again by telling you all the features their laptops can do which is what all the rest on the planet can do. Acer nowadays is showing off their Dolby Surround speakers as the thing to lure people to buy their laptops. Who on earth buy laptops for the sake of speaker systems? Get yourself an Altec Lansing or Bose speakers if you want good middle-class affordable speakers.

Why buy Dell? The 5 reasons why I choose it over other brands:

1. You have the latest hardware and software choices. When something is released, you will have high possibilities to configure the latest systems with it very soon – much sooner than any brands in the market. The flexibility of choices for each hardware part is just what I love about. Other brands do copy the same method but have very limited choices like the Apple online store. Dell does not have a finish built product from the start so you cannot try them in the shops. They only build your machine after you purchase it online or by cheque. It will take around 5 days or more to reach the destination of your choice by delivery. They always come with very new products to satisfy your needs. A good example is the Ageia Accelerator card which was supported once it was released to support 3D first-person games to the latest Intel Wireless-N Mini-card (up to 5X faster and get up to twice the range of 802.11g when used with a Wireless -N router) now.

2. The on-site next business day service is the real reason I always recommend it to people who are not good at self repairing the system when it fails and especially for laptops since the parts are not easy to chance because of availability and compatibility issues. It is always 3 years maximum, unlike Sony Vaio which even if you have all the money in the world to pay more and they won't give you more than a year. It is crucial especially if you have a deadline coming and you cannot afford time spent to bring your system to the technical support and wait for them to finish repair and bring back, yet not confirming whether it will definitely work. I have helped my friends through the suffering technical support of IBM and it took him over a month to get his laptop to be fully fixed. He had to wait a week each time for the repair to finish and yet the problem was not fully solved and was brought back for another week of repair.

For Dell, you call in when you have problems with your laptop through their toll-free number. They will hear your problems and try to assist you through the phone support. If the problem cannot be solved, they will send engineers / technicians to your site the next business day. Normally, they have appointed some technicians for every major city. For JB for example, there are 8 working to cover the city. They will call you the next day and reach the destination of your choice to repair. They will test the machine and confirm that it is fully working before they leave. Soon later, Dell will call you to confirm that your system has been repaired and whether your problem is fully solved. They will normally send you a link later to fill in a survey to improve their service. Since the warranty is international, I can have repairs in JB or Singapore up to my choice so it is really convenient. Sometimes, they give you more than what you ask for! There was once when my motherboard died on me and the technician came with a new graphic card too to replace as well for free. I hesitate to take it but he said since he already carry it and getting a new one will be better, I just let him replace it.

3. Competitive pricing is the last reason. Yes, Toshiba is the best laptop maker in the planet. Fujitsu has cool designs just like Apple too. However, if you compare every single specification, most probably Dell is cheaper. I did the comparisons and nobody come close! As for many other brands, they don't supply you with the full details. They will just tell you for example that it comes with a 120GB SATA-2 hard disk without telling you the RPM or even if it is the ancient IDE type and 2GB RAM without telling you how many MHz it has. These small details can cost you a lot of difference in pricing and performance. This is always the case if you look at those promotional brochures you get in the city. I know because people always show me such brochures of even Toshiba and Fujitsu and telling me that they are cheaper. When I look through the specifications, much information is missing and you are risking buying lower performance hardwares.

People always love free gifts and the more free gifts worth how many thousands of dollars bundled with your laptop, you will be lured to buy the laptop for the wrong reasons. Be very careful when you go out buy something which comes with tones of free gifts because chances are such products cannot sell and rely on those stupid gifts to make you happy. Sit down and calculate as most of the time, you are paying more for junk! My friend was a victim and I reminded him at the end of the day that he is buying a laptop and not for all those free gifts before he realized how much more he would spend on the rubbish.

4. The new generation Inspiron and XPS (The World's Thinnest 13.3" Notebook as of June 27th, 2007) laptops finally come with more choices of colours. Dell is always behind their competitors when it comes to design and look. As for me, I always put function over form as I don’t really care about design if I have to choose between them. Normally you pay more for design. Now, you have the choice of colours which is not bad. Unlike the time when I buy my Dell laptop, it only comes in standard silver. This will win over more people who put design and colour choices over performance.

5. Contrary to rumours spreading around, Dell hardware parts are not cheap rubbish made in some unknown country somewhere on earth. I wonder where those rumours come from. Probably from sour competitors who are losing out on sales. Whatever it is, they always use the latest and best in each department. For example they use NEC DVD burner which is the best at the moment for DVD burning and even the latest Blu-ray disc ROM if you have too much money to spend on the latest. They use all the latest nVidia graphic cards and Intel chips just like everyone else. They use HITACHI hard disks which are at the moment among the best in the market (with Seagate who is having a good comeback) and very reliable.

It is therefore always good to buy Dell. I had experienced their technical services and am extremely happy with them after a few times, whether in Singapore or JB. You have assurance that someone will come and repair it for sure on the next day and you have nothing to worry about especially when you are chasing deadlines. Unlike the 90s, building your computer yourself is much cheaper than buying a branded PC. Nowadays, the price is of not much of a difference so you might as well just get a Dell. I had used their computers and recommended many to use them and so far, everyone is happy and no complaints received. I hope they keep up their good work and keep on improving. Their after sales service is what really impressed me the most which others struggle to compare efficiently.

HOW DO YOU ENJOY YOUR TEQUILA?

OK, I am not a hardcore alcohol fan but I do love the taste. I can appreciate and enjoy beer, stout, red wine, white wine, liquor to hard liquor like Vodka, XO, Whiskey and Tequila but at the minimum intake. My face turns red extremely fast after consumption while my brother has this unique alcohol level in his body. You can see the red level moving up and down his body during intake and after intake. In short, we are not good at alcohol consumption.

My uncle was having his annual cleaning of the storeroom the other day and found a 1 liter bottle of Conquistador Tequila. He gave it to me and taught me ways of preparing it. I know Tequila is also a name of a town in the western Mexican state of Jalisco. It always comes in between 38-40% alcohol content (86-92 proof). The bottle itself comes with two recipes called Margarita Cocktail and Tequila Sunrise. There are many other ways to prepare the tequila but the famous ones are Tequila Slammer and Tequila Cruda. Well, I can’t wait to find the time to prepare the recipe and enjoy my tequila. I hope I will have a great time appreciating it!

THE SIMPSONS MOVIE

Well, with the fever of The Simpsons Movie, we decided to purchase 2 t-shirts from the many designs in the collection by Bossini. Matt Groening, who is famous for The Simpsons is also the artist behind Futurama. I am a big fan of Futurama and extremely love it to the core! However, in the spirit of The Simpsons coming to the big screen, we picked two t-shirts to wear. There are two sets of designs. One for adults and one for children. I prefer a lot of the designs for the children but none will fit me!

I got myself the t-shirt of Homer and Bart going fishing with a quote that says Fatherhood: 99% Dedication and 1% Humiliation. I wanted to get something with both of them but this is the best I can find under the adult set. The other t-shirt has two sides, with the front showing Bart writing ‘I WILL FINISH WHAT I START.’ on the blackboard with the intention of escaping detention class I suppose. The back portion is the action of him escaping with speed, leaving behind the duster and chalk.







Well, hope I have the time to watch the movie soon and enjoy myself!

FOOTBALL: THE SEASON WILL START SOON!

Now, what a good way to start the season for Manchester United for beating Chelsea in the Charity Shield. The new season is coming and the football fans are rejoicing. Chelsea are extremely quiet in the transfer market this season, extremely quiet by their standards. I wonder why and I don't know it will stay that way until the season starts. Arsenal look positive with the win against Ajax that got them the Amsterdam Tournament. The goal scorer, Robin van Persie has this to say about Ljungberg.

"If you play nine years at a club like Arsenal you can say some nice words,' he told the News of the World."

"If you're coming up with excuses about Thierry's departure and about promises from the club it's a bit weak."

"I was disappointed and I know a few others were as well. He had a fantastic period, he was once the best player in England, so come on and say some nice things for this club, which is fantastic."

As for Real Madrid, I just need to shake my head everytime I hear them struggling through the matches now as it is expected from me when they sacked Capello. When Capello came, the team started from ground zero and was built in one season with all the team work and confidence fully back after 4 years missing in the club. I would expect the board to be patient because it took Capello one season to heal a club and perhaps another season to play the attractive football they are so crazy of. To me, Real Madrid played enough heart attack football in the last stretch of the league last season and I could not agree with the stupid excuse that he was sacked because the team is not playing attractive football. Capello did not play defence as the club went into those last few matches with many goals scored by the oppositions. The club scored a lot of goals too to win matches. It was to me the most exciting period for the past 4 years. It has been ages since such periods were around where the club just cannot lose matches.

Now, the throw Capello out and wanted to start all over again from ground zero. It is so pathetic. They think this unknown German coach can do what Capello did in 1 season? There are so many coaches between Del Bosque and Capello who came and failed. Are those failures not enough to justify how incredible Capello is by doing what he did in 1 season? I am expecting another season without anything and the board will go through the same cycle of getting a new coach, he fails, fired him, find a new one, continue and repeat the cycle.......

They just never learn from history and past experiences. I rather have a difficult coach with me than someone who cannot handle the players. Now, they go all over the market wanting to buy any player anywhere and risked throwing out talented players like Cicinho and Baptista. The only thing I can be positive is Saviola is scoring, which is good. I hope he won't turn into another Michael Owen like how he was treated when he was here.

Real Madrid have one big problem. They don't respect good coaches and good players. They rather put their money on some players or coaches which I have no sensible ideas why they do it rather than political connections with the board or president. The good players ended up on the bench or played in wierd positions and finally will have their sufferings ended and sold out cheaply elsewhere.

ANOTHER FOOTBALL DREAM

Believe it or not, after the Wenger and Mourinho dream, I dreamt about Robinho and Baptista! This time it is even more crazy, they came to visit my home in Sibu. I was rushing upstairs to get a clothing (t-shirt) for them to sign their names on! I remembered it took me quite some time to decide which t-shirt I should give them to sign on! Crazy dream yet again!

Back to reality......