MYSTERIOUS SMS

I got a SMS last night from an unknown person. The message was:

5c bed 108

Anybody can decipher / decode it?

KOTEKA

My Indonesian friend shared with me that there is this interesting traditional costume that is worn by the people of Irian Jaya, which is at the west of New Papua island. This traditional costume is called koteka. How does it look like if you wear it? Well, it looks like this.

They are usually made out of gourds or woven fibers and decorated with feathers, beads, cowry shells, and small metal ornaments. In 1971-1972 the government launched "Operasi Koteka" ("Operation Penis Gourd") which consisted primarily of trying to encourage the people to wear shorts and shirts because such clothes were considered more "modern." But the people did not have changes of clothing, did not have soap, and were unfamiliar with the care of such clothes so the unwashed clothing caused skin diseases. There were also reports of men wearing the shorts as hats and the women using the dresses as carrying bags.

Missionaries in the 1950s attempted to alter the local customs by forcing locals to wear shorts. Many of the Dani of the Baliem Valley felt exposed without their kotekas and could be seen wearing shorts with their kotekas sticking out of them. Eventually the missionary effort and the Indonesian government's campaign were abandoned. Nevertheless, western clothing is required in government buildings, and children are required to wear western clothing in school. Kotekas are still considered acceptable attire in church, however.

After he shared with me the story, I told him I also want one!!!!!! He said he will try to get for me if there is anybody who will go there. After many attempts, finally he told me the 'good news' recently that a female friend went there and got me one. It is already in Singapore!!! I can't wait to see how 'handsome' and long mine is!!!!!

FOOTBALL: KEEGAN, MADRID, EPL AND PATO

As Newcastle United started life with Kevin Keegan, they have yet to get out of their bad form and still suffering from bad results. The Magpies need some fresh ideas and new players if they are seriously thinking of being am0ng the top of the English premier league ever again. They were among the top teams but have been disappointing since Keegan left them during the Shearer's era which has David Ginola, Les Ferdinand and Faustino Asprilla. Well, will that era ever return?

Real Madrid open a 9 point lead in the Spanish La Liga. It is probably the first time that they are using Gago, Guti and Baptista together in the midfield. It is an interesting idea since I prefer a more attack minded formation. With Diarra's departure to play in the African Nations Cup, there were initial worries of the defensive weakness at the front of the defenders. They had more problems since many defenders were injured. Fortunately for Madrid, Casillas was on fire at that period of time, going 6 matches with clean sheets. Robinho was again the man to steal the show with 2 goals while Guti was the mastermind plotting from the centre. While Guti can be a great midfielder when he is on form, he has no consistency and playing him is as good as predicting his form accurately. One day he can be the best midfielder on the field, the next day he can be the worst player on the field as well.

As for the English Premier League, all talks this week have been focused on Liverpool and their form. From the top management to possible take over from Dubai to Rafa to the players, there are speculations everywhere. I hope they can settle down soon because all these disturbance is not good for football. Anelka is doing fine in Chelsea during Drogba's absence, scoring once and assisted another. As for Manchester United, Cristino Ronaldo continues to shine, scoring two in the latest match. He will be the Player of the Year for the English Premier League if he continues like this.

Pato had already shown his worth during his debut. He scored two more goals in the latest match against Genoa, giving Milan some breath of fresh air into the Serie A campaign. All eyes will be on him for the remainining of the season to see just how good and consistent he can get. Ronaldo is again injured and joins Jankulovski, Inzaghi and Dida for further medical treatments. The future of Ronaldo is worrying as his injuries will not leave him alone. Sometimes I do pity him. With his vast talent, he could achieve far more records if not because of his injury woes.

BITTER GOURD / MELON

Bitter gourd or bitter melon was the only vegetable I don't know how to eat in the past. Yes, I can eat any vegetable available in the market but this. Well, it is not until I had tasted the best ever bitter gourd soup done by a man at his road side shop in Batu Pahat. I hated the bitterness of bitter gourd not because I don't know how to eat bitter stuffs. I drink black coffee, ginseng soup and other bitter stuffs without much problem but just could not appreciate the bitter taste of bitter gourds. The uncle who cooked that soup made me fell in love with bitter gourds, no matter how they are prepared.

From then onwards until today, I will easily choose it as my vegetable, be it cooked in soup or fried with eggs, a common way to prepare it over in Malaysia and Singapore. Bitter gourd has always been regarded as one of the most nutritious and healthiest vegetable in this region. Old people always like to eat it for good health and always recommend the younger generations to consume it. It is antidotal, antipyretic tonic, stomachic, antibilious and laxative. I know it is good for treating diabetes, piles, constipation, blood disorders, respiratory disorders, alcoholism and cholera. There could be more that I don't know.

I never like to eat it when I was still at home. I guess since that bitter gourd soup in Batu Pahat, I can proudly say now that I begin to appreciate the bitterness of bitter gourd. I will always remind myself not to miss that uncle's bitter gourd soup whenever I drop by Batu Pahat.

Bitter gourd / melon

FOOTBALL: NEWCASTLE, MILAN & CHELSEA

Super underachievers Newcastle's coach was sacked again and later severely beaten by Manchester United. Sam Allardyce exit saw Harry Redknapp being linked but later he turned it down. Graeme Souness admits he would return if given a chance. Cristino Ronaldo was the hattrick hero which demolished Newcastle United 6-0. The result also saw them climbing up to the top of the table as Arsenal drew with a better goal margin difference.

Next, we look at AC Milan not because of the return of Ronaldo but the debut of Pato. They won for the first time in their own stadium since the season started. The 5-2 victory against Napoli saw Ronaldo scoring twice and Pato scoring his debut goal. Pato impressed the football world with his great display eventhough he did not get two goals as he predicted earlier. All eyes will be on him to see how he will perform for the remaining of the season. As for Ronaldo, all the best of luck for not getting injured again.

Finally, Nicolas Anelka debuted for Chelsea but was denied a debut goal by the woodwork in the final minute in a 2-0 win over Tottenham. It would be interesting to see how the offensive formation will be like when Drogba and Kalou return from the African Nations' Cup. It turns out even more interesting after Drogba insisted that he remains the star even after Anelka's transfer.

"I am not arrogant, but I do believe I am a big star for Chelsea," he told the News of the World.

"When I return, I will be going at it 200 per cent because I want to win some titles this season."

"I am not worried by reinforcements in the Chelsea attack. Anelka arriving is no problem for me. It will only make the team more competent."

"I've played alongside lots of other strikers at the club, and we could do the same," he added.

POSER AND RELUX

My Austrian friend, Daniel and Taiwanese friend, Nash, recommends me to explore Poser for its famous abilities in character animation and figure design. I must say it takes figure 3D modeling to such great details, I am sure those who specialize in it must be good! I am impressed with what it can do when I got my hands on to try Poser 7. This is the latest software I had been playing about while I wait for the shipment of 3dMax2008 to arrive. It is definitely a cool software and I will surely recommend it for people who are damn serious about character animation and modeling. You can model a sexy hot babe!

Much later, my German friend, Friedrich, recommends me to check out Relux after I had a talk with him the other day regarding accurate lighting simulation software. I am sick of the usage of Lightscape since it is such an ancient software and I was sharing with him that there must be some software out there today which is doing the job that is similar but yet more convenient, faster and more powerful. He later showed off the capabilities of the software on his laptop. It looks quite good to me but I am still curious how good it is to calculate extremely wild organic objects as well as wild organic lightings in architecture space. Well, definitely will want to explore it to see life after Lightscape.

Poser

Relux

NIKON AND CANON STILL THE LEADERS

DPREVIEW

'Big two' continue to dominate Japan

Friday, 11 January 2008 16:40 GMT

Nikon is expected to be Japan's DSLR market leader for 2007 says a leading Japanese market research company. But Canon's compact sales ensure it retains the top-spot for overall digital camera sales in the country. DSLR sales are expected to continue to grow as more manufacturers join the fray.

Nikon and Canon share the spoils of Japanese camera market

Tokyo-based BCN said that, having captured 43.3% of Japan's DSLR market between January and November, it expects Nikon to hold on to the top spot once December's sales have been calculated. Despite the successful launch of the 40D, BCN's research suggests that Canon will not be able to overcome its second place, having secured a 39.9% market share up to November. Pentax were positioned third, having taken 6.3% of the market to November.

However, taking compacts into account as well, Canon led the market for the fourth consecutive year. It took 21.2% of Japan's overall digital camera market, ahead of Matsushita (Panasonic), which jumped from fourth to second place with 14.9% of the market, mainly because of the success of the Lumix FX33.

With Electronics giants Panasonic and Sony both launching DSLRs in the second half of 2007 and expected to continue to engage with this relatively high-margin market, 2008 is likely to see the big two's market dominance challenged. The Japanese market for DSLRs grew almost 50% in the first 11 months of 2007, in terms of volumes and around 35% by value.

Nikon was bullish about the additional competition: "Next fiscal year [from April 2008] our competitors will develop their marketing to full extent in the digital SLR market, and we expect this will stimulate market growth and contribute to sales." In November 2007, Nikon revised its sales projections, stating that it expected its DSLR sales to increase 43% over the previous year and account for 40% of the Global DSLR market in the financial year ending March 31st 2008.The Japanese market buys 14% of all DSLRs and 10.3% of all compacts made by Japanese manufacturers*.

* Figures from CIPA represent only cameras made by Japanese manufacturers. This makes them fairly representative for all DSLR sales, as Samsung is the only major non-Japanese DSLR manufacturer.

FOOTBALL: NICOLAS ANELKA TO CHELSEA

The player who change more clubs than you change your underwears is again making the move. Nicolas Anelka is a step further in fulfilling my prediction of playing for at least 11 clubs before he retires. He is already at the 8th club with Chelsea. He just need 3 more clubs to play with before he retires. Like I always said, imagine during his testimonial retirement match, he wears one of the 11 clubs he played before and you have 10 other players representing all the other clubs he played with before. It will be the coolest testimonial ever in football history. 11 different club jerseys playing for the same team! I have this wild idea that one of Anelka's mission in his football career is to collect jerseys and play for 11 clubs before he retires. Of course, his hot temper is helping him to achieve this goal much realistically.

His list of clubs played so far includes:
1. Paris Saint-Germain
2. Arsenal
3. Real Madrid
4. Liverpool
5. Manchester City
6. Fenerbahçe
7. Bolton Wanderers
8. Chelsea

With Drogba and Kalou busy with the African Cup of Nations and Shevchenko injured, Anelka will be a good addition. Apart from these 3 strikers, Chelsea also have Sahar, Sinclair and Pizarro.

FOOTBALL: PATO, MOURINHO AND CASILLAS

Well, after the world had witness the overhyped talk about Robinho and later Messi in their respective debuts, Pato will made his. Alexandre Pato signed from Internacional and will be eligible to play starting January 2008 with Milan.

His bold remarks of scoring twice against Napoli gave me a bad first impression of him. Robinho or Messi were a lot more humble than he is.

“On Sunday I will play and I will score,” Pato told Milan Channel.

“I will score a goal…actually I will score two goals.”

Let's just watch and see if he can live up to his hype.

Next, we talk about Mourinho. Where will Mourinho be going? Milan or Barcelona? The speculation is about him taking over either Frank Rijkaard's position or Carlo Ancelotti's position. Whichever of the two he is going, it will be interesting if it comes true. I myself think that he could fit into Barcelona better given that he is Portugese and had a stint there in the past too helping Sir Bobby Robson and Louis van Gaal.

Finally, let's talk about Casillas. His incredible performance against Real Zaragoza last weekend had caused him to be labelled as Saint Iker. People has been saying that the best goalkeeper in the world is Gianluigi Buffon for the fact that he won bigger things than Iker Casillas. For me, to really measure the ability of the goalie is to see how he can perform well himself. Casillas does not have the luxury of a solid defence in front of him since the era of Hierro. I can recall he is always left alone to take care of offensive attacks for many seasons now. Madrid are attack minded and always have the leftback and rightback in attack. Buffon in contrast has always got a great defence line for club and country. Well, if you ask me, Casillas has more one on one or one on two to one on three encounters than Buffon can ever imagine in his football career. That's how I distinguish a good goalie against a bad one as well as the frequency of careless mistakes he makes per match.

KOBUKURO

Well, first post of 2008. Sorry for the super delay. I have been busy doing bone rigging and skinning demanded for a historical architectural site for Direct X navigation using head mounted display, jacket and joypad detected by sensors on the ceiling.

Anyway, I celebrated my countdown on a highway flyover! How cool is that? My current home is just around 10-15 minutes drive away from the beach. However, the stupid JPJ created a road block on the flyover highway to collect money, erm i mean fine for those road tax which were overdued and not renewed. I am sure you guys have a more memorable and meaningful countdown than mine. I'm sure nobody can beat mine.

This post is about a Japanese band formed in 1998 called Kobukuro. Their band name is a combo of their names. Kentaro Kobuchi and Shunsuke Kuroda. Therefore, taking Kobu from Kobuchi and Kuro from Kuroda, they formed the name Kobukuro. The first song I ever heard from them in great detail was when I was watching the Jdorama, Ruri no Shima. The song title is ここにしか咲かない花 (Koko ni shika Sakanai Hana) which means A Flower That Only Blooms Here. I just heard the All Singles Best album and I do like their style very much. I do recommend you guys to hear them out for a change. There is life after all apart from Glay and Smap. Hehe!