Go Rally Go Rally Go Go Go

I think this year is the first time I'm actually interested in hearing our dear Crown Prince New Emperor Lee National Day Rally speech. Ok, he tried to make some joke. Not funny. Only the ministers are laughing. -shrug-

He started off with all the talk about the rising cost through the world due to the high inflation brought about by rising petrol cost. Oh yeah, of course. I thought the whole world is facing that? The usual gahmen propaganda speech. After going round and round about the gahmen around the world facing major issues due to subsidies and whatsnot, he just says I take it that he meant we cannot do it. Oh yeah, nothing unusual. We never expected that though we can dream about it, can't we?

Then talk about the 3 billions the gahmen put aside to help the Sillyporeans. The GST Offset that they have given out in cash had helped Siilypore to pay for some of their home utilities bills. Oh yeah, definitely. I have known of people who use the offset to buy the latest mobile phone. Oh yeah, I can't remember what I did with mine. And of course they are going to be giving out more payout this coming October. Oh yeah, we did hear it wrongly. Indeed more. As the wise old men had said it, when ah kong gave out moolah to you, be very afraid.

Then the topic got to Sillypore infamous ERP. Not this, but this! Like he says, now the gahmen has made car cheaper to help Sillypore fullfilled their dream of owning cars, the gahmen had to increase the ERP to help ease the congestion. WTF? Did I see a paradox here? And they are just rrying to justify why the ERP had to be increased and more gantries need to be added. Oh crap.

Of course, the talk on making Siilypore a more gracious place is good. I definitely like the idea and hopefully, there are proper and good campaign to promote that. Then another hot favourite topic is more babies. Don't look at me. I'm guilty as charged but what to do. I cannot go around farking women, right? Finally the right one is the message our dear Crown Prince New Emperor Lee wanted to drive across. Oh yeah. That is so crap yet so true. Then all about the match making and many other tinies about it. Why are we not getting married? Talk talk talk and its not anything new that we haven't heard of. First he kicked off a good rapport by saying that the gahmen will push the family day leaves from 2 to 6. Lotsa claps! Of course but none of my business right now. Then next, he said they are going to introduce something new. 1 week of unpaid leave for either spouses and some claps are heard. I did say some, right? But did they hear the word unpaid? WTF? What is new about that? Passed you a glass of Cordon bleu first, then trying to get away with it by throwing in another glass of Hennessy Silver. Sighz.

Then all about kids and education. -yawn- Yeah, that is just so not my topic. Then all the talk about the new media, how things are going online. And US politics and how Obama fight his campaign online. And how a great M'sian blogger winning an election. Then he mentioned that there are 4.5 millions people in Sillypore but 6 millions mobile set out there! More mobile per couple than babies! Oh yeah, did he knows that its easier to maintain mobile than baby? No diaper change for mobile too!

Then the key about controlling media. No political related media. Red tape shall still be there. Excuse moi, is that new? Since when does Sillyporeans got the freedom of speech? Yeah yeah, podcast, videocast, cannnnnn, but still must be responsible. In simple words, beware what you post up there, it might come back to haunt you. And we will still be watching you.

And yes, we lost to China. Our lost hope of ever getting a gold has to wait for another 4 years.

And in conclusion, I'm dozing off.

Euro Cup 2008

The Russians has made it into the semi-finals in the Euro2008! So happy for them, and I always enjoy some upsets in the prediction of the game. The Turks won as well, after beating the Croatia in the quarter-finals. And guess what, I was going to bet on the finalist been the Turks and the Russians!

I din place my bet caused I lost my password to my account and the speed on the site was horribly slow! This was seriously like what had happened 4 years ago when I wanted to place a 10 bucks bet on the Greeks to win the cup. Back then, the odds of them winning was like 1:100 or 1:200. Because of that one statement, I lost that little bit of extra cash! And now, it had happened again!

Damn. Big guy up there just dowan to hand me that little bit of extra cash. The odds are no longer exciting now. Sigh.

FF3

Yeah, the brand new FF3 is available for download. No, its not Final Fantasy. Its Firefox. The little fury foxy that is appearing everywhere. They are attempting to break the world record for most downloaded in 24 hours. You can also view the different region on how much has been downloaded in each country. Damn. I had to zoom to 100% before I can blardie do a mouseover on Sillypore! Sad, isn't it?

Sweeet. Download it guys!

Oh, I'm running it before the official release. Afterall, its appear inside my debian sid repository. Oh well. Got a couple of plugins not ff3 ready yet but on the whole, the major ones are good to go!

Will you marry me pleaseeeeeeeee?

This must be the a very exciting ring for a network expert couple! Now that it got me thinking, have this going-to-be-ex network security expert guy getting married. I wonder if he had bought his wedding band. Anyone else? For that price, its amazingly cheap!

Its been a long long while!

My last entry was so ancient ago. Someone asked me if my blog was dead. I said nope. Its just that for each day that I'm not writing it down, the amount of things to write gets longer and longer, and then when I think about writing them, I got very tired. Just like work, its piling up if you ever stop for that little coffee break. so maybe this is the starter and I will catch up on it real soon.

Saw this thing this morning. Amazing! Tempting design!



And it so totally remind me of this which is coming to a cinema near you soon.



I wonder if it will get too hot sitting in that panda chair. And then I saw this amazing design yesterday!



Another great temptation for me to waste my moolah on. Sighz. I'm so broke.

Sichuan - Part 2

Finally, its the eighteenth and the last day. We were going to make it an easy and relax day. No more rushing from one sight to the other. No time searching for transportation and bargaining for better prices. No more cheap hotel searching. We woke up late and had our breakfast. How could fans of the Romance of Three Kingdoms (三国志) novel or games or franchises not come to Chengdu (成都) and give the Wuhou Temple (武侯词) a miss? After our simple meal, I sent my buddy on his way to the Wuhou Temple (武侯词). Having been to it on my previous trip to Chengdu (成都), I had decided to give it miss. Afterall, entrance fees had gone up yet again. Damn capitalism. I headed for the Orchard Road of Chengdu (成都), Chunxi Road (春熙路). Not that I wanted to shop but was looking for some gifts for my family members, upon confirming their request.

In fact, I had a hard time searching for them. I actually walked for 6 hours, including all the way back to the hotel! Half way through, my buddy finished his tour of the Wuhou Temple (武侯词), took a cab to Chunxi Road (春熙路) to join me. Those damn mascots. Not all major departmental stores were selling them. After the 4th one and could not find what I wanted, headed back to where we had bought some of our gifts at the previous departmental store. We had to figure out our way back to the same departmental store. Once again, relying on our instincts and almost negative sense of direction, we just bashed ahead and bingo, we did managed to find it back. My buddy ended up buying more gifts for more people!

I wondered how much distances I had walked over the 6 hours. And with that, we had finally came to the end of our trip. Made our way back to the hotel, tried the local bread for the last time, then had a quick bite before collecting our luggages from the hotel. Hopped onto the cab and made our way to the Airport. Nothing big hooha over there except that someone seemed to run into some problem. She had apparently lost her passport and boarding pass after checking in and when got stuck at the x-ray scanning section. Well, curious as we might be, we did not stayed on to find out the end result. Good luck to her, if she's flying on the same flight as us.

Oh, the interesting food for last night was rabbit waist (兔腰子).Tasted a little like liver but the taste were much lighter. Hopefully the next time round, I would get to eat the fragrance meat, not that I were dying for it but I just wanted to bring exotic stuffs.

Bye bye China, but believe me, I would be back.

Sichuan - Part 1

Our 2nd last day, the seventeenth day, started without much of a plan, except we only knew we were going to fly back to Chengdu (成都). My friends wanted to buy me lunch, before sending me to the airport. In the end, he got held up at work until quite late. His german tourists were complaining badly about the lack of heater in their rooms. I never knew germans were that afraid of cold. I thought Germany was very cold as well. So we just had a quick bite across the street from the hostel before rushing to the airport.

 

We reached Chengdu (成都) without much hiccups except for my little hiccup of forgetting to place some of my airplane  forbidden items into my checked in luggage. Thought of saving a little moolah by staying in a hostel. Took a airport bus to the city, then took a cab from within the city to the hostel. What I did not expect was the lack of room when I arrived. When I called them from the airport, they actually had room, but by the time we arrived, all the rooms where taken up in that 1 hours! Arghz! The reception send us on our way to another youth hostel near the area but without giving us a proper direction. So ended up on a slight wild goose chase, kept getting redirected by the locals to somewhere else. Ended up at a 2-star hotel. They actually had a twin room for 40Y but without a bathroom and 100Y for one with a bathroom. We decided to pamper ourselves on our last night here in China, so we took up the room with the bathroom.

 

So once again, after settling our luggages, we went out to hit the street. Started walking in a randomly selected direction, we ended up at a buddhist temple which surrounded it were rows of 2 stories ancient looking building which sells food and stuffs. Its either a tourist spot of some sort or some kind of more expensive food for the locals to spend their moolah on during the weekend. Tried some of the food found there. There was one that display Goose Egg (天鹅蛋). Was debating with myself if I should tried that. Was calculating the amount of colesterol in it, and finally given in to my desire to taste exotic food. Damn, when did I became so health conscious? And I felt conned! Its actually deep fried flour with some sesame on the outside. Arghz!

 

Then we continued walking until we thought we lost sight of where we were going. I only had a general direction of where our hotel was supposed to be. Anywhere we just continue walking until we came across a big departmental store. Ended inside it shopping for some gifts for some friends, and looking for the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games mascots dolls for a colleague. And after we left the departmental store, we tried to find our way back to the hotel and we ended up in the direction, and then we finally came across that youth hostel that we were supposed to go as directed by the previous hostel!

 

We had the local steamboat for dinner. Its was flaming hot and numbing to the mouth. Almost could not take it anymore but we were closing to finishing our food already. For the 1st time I did not finish the plate of pomfret I ordered. Their pomfret was very small compared to those we ate in Sillypore. I tried the Harbin beer but found it no big deal. The beef was very nice though.

 

And with that, we ended up at an internet cafe to finish off our seventeenth day and final night in China.

 

 

 

 

Qinghai - Part 2

Xining (西宁) was very very cold right now due to the raining for the past month. In fact I had put on 4 layered of clothes. After breakfast, we headed to Guide (贵德). We scaled to the base of Laji Mountain (拉鸡山). It was snowing up there, with the summit covered in snow. I had finally seen my real snow! Went out to take some photos and felt the snowflakes fell onto my face and melted away. Even used the snow to wash my hands though it left it a little frozen after that. Along the way to Guide (贵德), we came across Yellow River (黄河). We reached Guide (贵德) shortly after. Went to visit Jade Emperor Temple (玉皇阁). Inside it was statues of many taoist deities. Even Yue Fei (岳飞) and Guan Yu (关羽) had theirs there too. Of course, the Emperor of all deities (玉帝) had his there as well. Afterall, the temple was dedicated to him.

 

After finishing the temple, we made our way back to Xining (西宁). Along the way, we pass by Chengnan (成南), a new district that the real estate developer were trying to develop. A lot of residential housing were available and its relatively cheap but many of them were vacant. It was still some distance away from  Xining (西宁). Reminded me when Sillypore Gahmen tried to get people to buy up HDB properties in Sembawang and Sengkang back then.

 

Today is the breaking of their month long fasting of the islamic Hui tribe (回族). Their mosque should be pretty packed with Hui people (回民). Along our way to and fro Guide (贵德), could see quite a few number of people bringing their kids with them to do visiting for their new year. I guess we were a lot physically and mentally tired. So we reached back to our hostel by 1500hrs. Dun feel like walking to the mosque to see the human mass orgy. So took a break, staying inside the hostel, relaxing away by surfing the net and watching The IT Crowd Season 2. Afterall, going to be flying back to Sillypore in another 2 more days, and thinking of the mountain of works waiting back in the office was sending the shiver down my spine. Sigh.

 

After that we had dinner by roaming the food alley (小吃街). Had some BBQ squid and pork ribs, and finally tried the ancient candy (冰糖葫芦). Its actually maltose poured over their particular plum or peach type stuff. Now they actually pour the maltose over fresh fruits or dried fruits. And after dinner, we ended our sixteenth day of no excitement.