Monkey see, monkey do

I just thought this is a very cute article. I know some of you must be thinking this is a post about something absolutely hilarious that Weng did but these monkeys are real:Expectant fathers

Otherwise, there's nothing big about 21, 20 was pretty big and so was 19, and 22 will be even bigger so don't worry.

It cometh

Buying a present is probably one of THE hardest things anyone has to do.

Getting the right one is even harder.

You would think that having lots of money would solve your dilemma.

It probably does.

Having to work with an exchange rate of RM6.7:GBP1 doesn't.

Buying for the big two-one just compounds it further.

House M.D.

The Winter Olympics came and went in a flurry of national anthems, dramatic wipeouts, and missed chances. I shall miss the live feed over the internet, but have found an incredibly good series to fill the void.

I hadn't taken Cheryl seriously when she told me how good House was, then again do I ever (jk), but with distractions running out as the closing ceremony drew closer and closer with the end of every race, I gave it a shot. Besides, after Lester admitted to watching 11 episodes in 3 days it came with a strong recommendation, and the only thing I've found him to be way way off about was Sin City, so it had to be at least watchable.

So you have the sarcastic one with perfect delivery and timing, the hot chick, the stubborn one, and the goodlooking 'foreign' one. What's not to like.

Oh, burned.

It appears that some culture's finally arrived on the tagboard. Thanks to the advent of web-based translators, we are all multi-lingual. Bravo anonymous, and I hope you get past your injuries.

Getting closer

I'm nursing slight bruises and strains in my wrists and ankles, one of which is self inflicted. You should not slap the back of your hands for warmth when it's bitterly cold and you cannot feel them otherwise you might damage something. It was so cold yesterday that when I stepped into the shower after my match, it felt like my hands and feet were on fire.

Last night's CL matches were sensational. Oh I would've given anything to watch all of them at the same time.

As for IP addresses, so far I know is that anon here is working off of mynow.co.uk, "next generation broadband". I shall definitely be comparing subscribers and I fear I'll be horribly disappointed in that person's maturity when I find out.

Yes, I'm getting closer. Closer and closer to the end of the week. Mwaha.

Did you know...

Did you know that the font Verdana was created by a British dude and it's suppose to be the most widely used font on the Internet? It's on that 'Vote a BBC British Icon' or something along those lines, which you can find on their website.

Did you know that, "Just because the word 'Finance' is in the title of a textbook, the publishers believe they can slap a 40+quid pricetag on it" - from my finance lecturer. I kid you not...I guess you could say they are pretty thick but still, c'mon. BTW I meant the book not the publishers.

*sigh* I'm outta interesting 'did you know's'.

Oh yeah, with reference to the first 'did you know', Tomb Raider/Lara Croft made it to the top 10 icons that's up for votes. Amazing. Along with Grand Theft Auto.

How much more British can you get?

On a side note, the first settlers to have landed on this land mass, i.e. UK, must have arrived on a nice sunny day.

Netball

They always pick the coldest days to play a match. Have you seen the temperature? It feels below zero and now I have to go outside and prance around in a lycra dress.

(GMT -5:00) Eastern Time

So here I am at three half in the morning, ignore what the time-stamp says - it doesn't want to change for me - in the hope that these indistinct hours that are too far past midnight to call midnight and too early to be properly morning will bring inspiration to my flagging fingers and long gone mind faster than my crappy internet connection calls up my theasaurus searches.

And past year exam papers, but don't panic, downloading them with intent to print and gather remains, at this point in time, purely intent. Come tomorrow, I may find that I have to spend more time renaming files as I seek to track and make sense of the various pdfs which I will proceed to save all over my hard disk.

Sleep evades me and I fear it will continue to evade me for the following reasons:

1. I don't have the constant sound of Weng's gentle snoring to lull me to sleep
2. It is bloody hot. I've set up my tiny desk fan that has saved me over the summer months, and I think I need to turn my heater off
3. This is the second night I've done this so I think my body clock is starting to switch
4. I have watched one too many CSI
5. I have read one too many disturbing books, disturbing in the sense that none of them ended happily.

Which brings me to my next rant.

Trudi Canavan argh. For all the trials and tribulations her heroes go through, nothing ever ends happily. Can she not, for once, just give the heroine the guy she's in love with or the family that she craves instead of killing off, crippling, and/or maiming every single person that she holds dear. Otherwise it's not a bad read, even if the book leaves you feeling a little unfinished with a nagging sense that Canavan could eventually come up with something as epic as The Belgariad if she worked a little harder.

Yea, I know I'm tired and I'm also thinking that love stories seem leave my head in a whirl especially compounded by that-time-of-the-y'know effects, and I should just reread "Does anything eat wasps? And 101 other mildly interesting questions for a slow slow Sunday morning" for its much more significant calming effect. (If you're seriously considering looking for the book, it's published by New Scientist and is just called "Does anything eat wasps?")

I hope this satisfies the people who might rely on this blog as a form of entertainment of any sort from time to time. Given the lack of posts across the whole blogspot front, this might actually get me hits and make Rudy a little happier although I don't see how it could live up to his news of having been making the dating rounds for the last six days (congratulations, I'm elated for you. Yes, feel it.)

Arhar. I think I shall try to sleep now, though I doubt I'll be making that 9am tutorial.

Pride and prejudice

Wow +sniff+ so wow

I'm hopeful, I trust

It's been quiet like anything on here.

It takes a lot to stop and look at where you're at in the year, in the term, and fight the urge to just carry on plodding through as the days slip past you. Suddenly we're in the middle of the term, five weeks or so from the end of year 3, not counting the exams that start immediately after the Easter break.

I have a lot of be thankful for. I'm enjoying this year so much more than last. They were right, it doesn't get any easier, you just get used to it. I've got wonderful housemates, a good bunch of teammates in school and out of, and Weng's been absolutely vital in away-from-home support through the last few months.

I only just shook off a two-week long, suffocating sense of depression on Sunday. Got my hair cut quite short - it's such a relief and so much easier to wash. It's amazing what a haircut can do for you. I feel so much more energetic and the curls were starting to get patchy anyway. Weng kindly 'gave up' his Sunday appointment so I could look neat for Tuesday's interview. Sunday was also the first time in two weeks that we were able to make it to church, so I can definitely say that God had a hand in giving me back some strength and positivity.

I'm really wary about talking about interviews. I don't want to jinx them and I'm far from confident. After putting so much time and effort into the application and the first round interview, it's horribly demoralising to come away from it with nothing.

But no matter, we'll see what the week brings.

So spoilt

It is impossible to watch speed skating on a patchy connection that's even slower than dial-up.

"You're watching the quarter finals of the team pursuit, and as the competitiors take their place... ch... a... you...ch..."
Ononononono.
"OH!!1! the Japanese have crashed into the.... ch... ii... ug..."
What?!
"They seem to have... cracking... sh... im"
Nonononono.
"And there are the results, the gold...ick...uj...na"
Argh.

I feel loved

Weng pulled off the surprise he didn't manage last year. He came in on Tuesday morning just after I got back from my interview bearing a gift, just in case the interview went horribly, and because it was Valentine's. He said he'd also planned a dinner but had to call it off because I had a SPAP exam the next day.

He makes me feel so loved, but I was so totally on to him.

I suspected it when I couldn't reach him at about 11am - there are almost no places you can be in Southampton where you'll get 'this person's phone is unavailable', so he had to be on the tube. QED.

I haven't really been affected by all the Valentine's advertising, having been completely engrossed in the Winter Olympics which BBC have so very kindly been streaming off their website. It's provided many hours of entertainment. Even curling is interesting, and probably the only sport in which GB has a chance. I also know why they don't have any iceskating representatives - the people used to make the 'Figure skating basics' video remind me of that Fantasia scene with the dancing hippos and crocodiles.

Life's starting to get more serious

More netball today has left me nursing niggling strains. We threw away a perfectly good lead, but credit to St. Georges' masterful tactics - every quarter saw players move positions and every quarter saw them getting stronger while we were flagging and panicking badly. It ended all square but it would've been ours if they hadn't wasted the last minute by knocking the ball out of court while we were on the attack.

There's no netball next week, but that's a good thing I suppose, with a test on Wednesday and a deadline on Thursday. Plenty of matches the week after.

I've been struggling with career decisions lately, not really knowing which field to go into. Competition is fierce for the 'good jobs' and those ultra-coveted internships, but I'm leaning more and more towards wanting to spend summer closer to home. Banking and finance looks like it’s drifting further and further out of reach and engineering or accountancy looms. All this pressure to land a job makes me want to just go home and be looked after. The Toys R Us theme plays on and on.

Our hoverboard's coming along beautifully on the whole and we're due to start designing it within the next week. The leaf blower we ordered is perfect, so once they've finished taking it to pieces and designing a mount for it, we'll order three more.

There are a lot of things to be happy about, but sometimes it gets difficult to see them.

So much excitement

I went to see the Chelsea vs. Liverpool game on Sunday at Stamford Bridge, courtesy of Tish and his family (thankyousosomuch), and as a first premiership game, it was incredible. I have to admit that seeing the players in the flesh felt more 'live' than real life. I don't know if that makes sense, but they're really big, like a different species of human altogether.

Watching them warm up was surreal, and shooting practice even more so since we were seated three rows from pitchside behind the shed end goal. The atmosphere was hellishly intimidating, and I think the away supporters spent a lot of time with their backs to the pitch singing songs at the Chelsea supporters, pausing only to hurl obsceneties at any Chelsea player that came within spitting distance, the mildest curse being "fat bastard", aimed mostly at Lampard. Then the first goal was scored. Liverpool seemed to deflate slightly, and the three sides of Chelsea crowd turned towards us and sang more songs.

It was really strange watching a match without replays. You never really know what's going on or why the referee stopped play, and I completely missed the part where Robben 'won his Oscar' because it was down the other end.

Yesterday saw me in my first game since the end of November. They weren't a particularly good team, so we were quite relaxed, maybe a little too relaxed at some parts, but it was great being on the court again.

Phantom of the Opera II

I thought I'd review our Phantom outing properly seeing as we don't get to go to musicals very often and we only get visitors from halfway across the world every so often, the last one being Cassie, who we also took to a musical.

We were ushered into our seats after five or six ticket checks (the theatre has over employment issues) and after the nauseating sense of vertigo passed, there I was squinting down at the stage hoping to high hell that the scenery wasn't going to stay like that because there was an incredibly huge grubby curtain obscuring everything but 2 square meters of stage. Thankfully I, in all my musical-going naivete, was very relieved to find out that the curtain was merely a prop in the first scene, and soon disappeared in a flash of lights at the chandelier was hauled up to the ceiling (i.e. level with us), to be replaced by several obstinate heads and the backsides of several more late arrivals.

After the first half of spectacular stage effects and so-so singing, we jumped out of our seats at intermission and lurked at the back until the ushers got lost in the confusion of toilet-desperate people before making a run for the empty seats three rows from the front of the tier. About six rows closer, slightly fewer heads, and from the opposite side of the stage, the supporting actor, Raoul suddenly went from looking young and gorgeous to tubby and old. The singing continued in the same vein but the effects just got better as the Phantom got hoisted up and down in a peculiar cherubic swing that descended from the ceiling. For someone who had the potential to generate Batman-like mystery and magnetism, it was a strange choice of vehicle.

The best scene in the whole show was the masquerade. The worst was probably the pivotal moment in which the Phantom appears behind the mirror in Christine's dressing room. From where we were sitting, he was just a hand. What an anticlimax.

Then when he ripped off his mask, I just didn't get it. How come the hair on his entire head goes all tufty and patchy? He just had a full head of well-greased hair that definitely wasn't waving around with his half mask - where did it go? And it's also really cool that he gets to play with a funky cane that spits fire, but he should just stop faffing about and zap Raoul's ageing ass.

I fully recommend it though. It's a must see, if just for the effects.

The Phantom of the Opera

Phantom was pretty good, very cool set with smoke and fireworks and everything. The first half was good, the second half maintained the momentum quite successfully, and intermission entertainment was provided courtesy of Jer and Weng.

Me: So how do you think all these performers break into these musicals?
Jer: Break in? Huh, what would they steal?
Weng: I think once the music starts, they go.
Tish: These guys are not a representative sample of Malaysians.

Tish answered with the above disclaimer followed by the very sensible answer, "They apply", but to be fair, we didn't give him an equal chance at an original, unbiased answer because I was laughing hysterically at the first two. At least you can't fault them for being helpful.