Wawawewow

I found this awesome looking animated short on Youtube via Digg:



All done by one person. Wow.

Anyway so I got a new phone yesterday, the Samsung SGH-G800.



User reviews vary of course, like many other things. The most important thing about this phone is of course its 5 megapixel camera which has been proven to be overall better than its main rivals, the Sony Ericsson K850i and the Nokia N95.

Some of my closer friends would of course be surprised by this sudden decision to purchase a Samsung product but a quick look at the prices and hearing the complaints about Nokia and Sony phones have put me off their high-end models.

I'm not buying it for the sake of buying of course, my previous phone had a few problems and the lad at the counter was thankfully a trade-in noob and didn't spot them. It cut the price down for this new phone by about a third, so it looked so much better.

It has a solid metallic look to it, and nice large buttons unlike the itty bitty ones on the K850i. It also helped that it didn't use a unique form of storage like all the other Sony products do, and uses a standard microSD card as storage.

The camera activates with a flick of the lens cover that would remind many of digicams. It's camera button on the side would also do that same thing, perhaps a reminder from the designers that it was a more camera than phone.

It's worked pretty fine as a phone so far. Keying numbers for dialing automatically sends a search for all contacts containing that combination, and I welcomed it as a new Samsung user.

Whether it will turn out to be a better phone than the ones I've used before remains to be seen.

*****

I went out to watch Jumper with Jo, Leo and Ivy today.

I'm sure you've seen it, but here's the trailer anyway:



If you haven't seen the movie, I'm sure you think it looks awesome. To tell you the truth, it does. It looks awesome. For those who were looking for any plot, you better jump somewhere else. John was right, it was ridiculous.

Spoilers ahead, so don't say I didn't warn you.

Say you're David Rice. You jumped all your life everywhere, living it up with money you stole from banks. Of course one day it catches you in the ass and now you have paladins after your ass. What do you do, as an obnoxious know-it-all American? Why, you take the girl of your dreams on a tour in Rome of course! But then they try to get you. Then you get away because you met a British jumper who has been hunting the paladins instead.

He manages to jump big things around like cars and buses because he practiced. He casually mentions another jumper who tried to jump a building and failed. What happens?

You find out that the paladins are going to kill your girl. You literally follow the Brit around like a kid, begging for help until he agrees. Then you find out about his base. Then you bring your girlfriend there from her apartment. Paladins arrive and end up opening a wormhole through your "jump scar" and after a big fight.

Remember when the Brit saved you? He used a baseball bat. And now? He has a flamethrower and at one point jumps a double-decker on Roland's ass but somehow never thought about getting a fucking gun.

So then the paladins catch your girl. They lay a trap. The Brit tells you that and decides he wants to nuke them while they are concentrated in one place. Obviously you disagree. You end up jumping around with his bomb with him following you going "Give it back!" like a couple of 5-year-olds until he gets stuck in a bunch of cables in the middle of Chechen.

Remember when he said the guy who tried jumping a building was fucking nuts? You brave the trap and do it of course! And being the all powerful American superhero, great success, you get the girl and you dispose of Roland in a random cave in the middle of the Grand Canyon.

Excuse me while I go strangle myself.

Youth Olympics 2010

It's official: Singapore will be hosting the first ever Youth Olympics, beating the other finalist Moscow of Russia in a vote by the International Olympic Committee based in Switzerland. Isn't it weird that it isn't in Greece? I mean, both the Committee and the Games. Since it was, you know, created there? Anyway, the evening news on Channel 8 says the country expects about 5,000 participants from countries all over the world to be here in the year 2010. The lodging of the competitors is being built as extended campus ground of NUS. The competitors would be around the ages of 14 to 18.

I'm sorry, what? "Yeaaaa" and everything but come on. If you'll do me a favour, walk out and pull out some random secondary school students and ask them what they think. No, go ahead. The most common response would probably be along the lines of "Oh, really? That's good then. Good for Singapore." But what they actually think would be along the lines of "Oh, really? So what?"

Honestly, I don't hate this country. I've actually tried to talk one of my friends who do to do otherwise, but to no result. Our youths don't hate this country either. But it doesn't mean they love it with a fervor that would make a rabid evangelist look pale in comparison. No offence to my Christian friends, I'm sure you know what I mean.

My point is that nobody cares. At least not the ones who should. It's the bloody Youth Olympics, and the only people who are excited about it are the old people who are spending all their time organising the committee and sending the proposal and everything. Granted, it's supposed to be like this but I really don't see any enthusiasm from the youths. If anything, I'll bet at least some of the local competitors are going "Oh fuck there's goes my trip to Russia." At least two of my friends agree and one of them said it should have gone to Moscow just because it'd be interesting to see all the sad faces on the Padang.

Sports has never been an imperative in our society and culture. Sure, there's the whole keeping fit thing like every other country has and the Singapore Workout but there's no national sport. Okay, maybe not that much but at least a sport where you have local teams and everyone would watch every week and talk about it in their office or in the coffeeshop or in school.

There's not a single sport that this country has monopolised, and especially not when we have ESPN. Soccer? The English Premier League. Golf? The PGA Tour. Tennis? All the different 'open's. Basketball? The NBA. And all we have is the S-League and in comparison it's like watching a bunch of barefooted teenagers playing with an old ball in a state field, and all the spectators are their friends.

The real reason behind the unpopularity of sports is the career prospects. It's just like pursuing a career in art. First of all, it's vague. Second, if you wanted any income whatsoever you have to be at least the top quarter of the country. Third, even if you were the top in the country you're not even earning what the middle half in other countries earn. To put this in perspective, an English Division One player earns maybe a thousand or two thousand quid a week. The top S-League players earn about three to four thousand dollars a month.

All this effort into sports this country is putting in is like the neighbourhood rich kid who sucks in basketball but uses his money to build a basketball court to let the poorer kids play even though he knew he'd just end up buried in the middle of the spectators anyway. Everybody would be saying how generous he is and how he is contributing to the neighbourhood but they'll all be sniggering behind his back, knowing all he wants is people to like him.

But you have to eventually admit that it is good for the economy because of the tourists that it will definitely bring, and for the guys my age entering NUS after NS that means a whole bunch of hot 17-year-old gymnasts wandering around the campus when they're not balancing on a piece of wood or doing a number of somersaults that would make an average man faint.

Love Actually

I just finished watching the movie with my sis. Now I have an overwhelming desire to practise my English accent on someone. And I don't even know which part of England I'm from. Now I'm just reading everything I see to myself with the accent.

Well I'm sure you all know what today is. Valentine's Day is just that. A day. Plenty of people say it's overrated, plenty more treat it like the only reason to ever do anything for their... Significant others.

And I'm not even in the position to say these things. For fairly obvious reasons.

Well that's all I have tonight. See you... Soon.

I feel you... Joanna...

The first day of the new year. Same as every year, but that doesn't make it bad. Well, almost the same.

This year I managed to play a bit mahjong with the cousins. It was smaller than the eve's session of course. This time I won a bit, but winning is winning.

Spent the rest of the afternoon and the evening taking a nap, before heading back out to Causeway Point for Sweeney Todd with Cat and Christel. I went early to get tickets, and spent some time in Timezone before Cat arrived first. I realised how crappy a driver I've become, because it was either that or I still can't get used to the lower steer ratio of Tuned.

Anyway so Cat came first and we (she) spent some time bitching about school, and then playing Bingo while we waited for Christel. Then Christel arrived and we played another quick one before heading in for the movie.

They. Are. Phenomenal.

For about a third of movie, the two of them were busying giggling and laughing at everything Johnny "omg-marry-me" Depp was doing, and at Cohen's bump among many other things, like the part where the girly chap sings about feeling Joanna from street to graveyard to asylum.

It was a great movie honestly. It's been a long, long time since I watched something this long that had so many songs in them. Johnny Depp is still bloody good, but seeing his face twitch during one of the scenes just had to remind me of Captain Jack Sparrow.

Here's the trailer:



Go ahead and watch it, if you can handle watching a movie where everybody sings (yes, even Alan Rickman) and a lot of fake looking but nevertheless messy blood.

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare - Zero Punctuation

You can see the original here.

The sequences in the game also blew my mind when they happened. The ending wasn't very bad, but it was rather abrupt.

Kingdoms Lost and Won

We're about heading into the new lunar year very soon and let me state one last thing: I suck at gambling.

Phenomenally.

I lost about hundred dollars in about three hours, and times where I actually run out of chips and I have to borrow them. From the person I actually lost the money to in the end. Who is my own mother. So now I owe her a hundred buckaroos and here's to hoping she forgets about it. *cross fingers*

I've never really researched (I have noticed of course) the skill involved in gambling and I have been told I have a lousy poker face. That's because I don't actually have one, so you know. Apparently every thing's written all over my face.

Thankfully, if I'm going to be playing for the next few days, it's not going to seasoned pros like the ones I faced earlier today who gave me a thorough ass whipping, but seasonal rookies who play for the heck of it during the holidays. Unfortunately all they ever play is a weird distorted local version of Blackjack where no real skill is involved and I have the worst luck in the world.

Hopefully I'll be enjoying the home ground advantage over the poor losers. Of course, that being if there are actually people who are going to come.

And it so happens that I have received my awesome letter from CMPB! I have a medical checkup scheduled in March and pray that I fail and I can skip NS okay? Thanks a lot!

Also, I am not gay, never attempted suicide, and do not have any tattoos.

Mixed

The Chinese New Year is coming! What are your plans for the super doubled weekend? If any of you would like to drop by my place, feel free to tell me and you will most definitely be welcomed.*

****

So everybody knows about the Edison-Gillian-Bobo thing I suppose. If you don't, Google is your best friend. I'm not going to question their intelligence or whatever regarding this because whenever somebody does something it is for a reason. And also because I love scandals. More please!

Then yesterday morning I had a laugh - well, a slight chuckle - when I saw the headlines on today's New Paper. Taiwanese celebs were on a popular TV show and they started making fun of Singaporeans' English.

I mean, come on. The Taiwanese? If it was, you know, at least a generally English speaking country I wouldn't really say anything but come on. We're talking about a country that has English teachers with worse standards than normal students. And most of them who actually speak the language do it like they were possessed by an American.

It's like me making fun of, say, Ronald Susilo for his badminton. Sure, he may not be the best in the world and every athlete has some pretty awkward positions they go into but hey. He'll whoop my ass in the court any day.

You know, they can't even speak it right, they can't freaking spell the words on TV right (and apparently nobody cares), and they dare to do this shit? You know the last time something like that happened on the newspaper was an episode of House, which is an awesome show by the way, where Dr. House said something about Singapore that, alleged by "furious Singaporeans", made it sound like the country was filled with sex-crazy nuts.

It is not. However, I don't have to rave all over some local forum about it. But this one is just insulting. That's all I'm saying.

****

I've been into American politics recently, well for a long time actually, because I think it affects the world and not just the US who ends up as the next president.

I'll admit that I've been on Digg for a very long while now and the internet is filled with Ron Paul supporters, but I like him because of his arguments. He makes sense. I can see that he really woke many people up with his points that really make people go "why didn't i think of that?"

But despite his popularity online, it hasn't been translating into support in the primaries. It's a process of getting the citizens to vote who they think in each party (Republican and Democrat) should represent theirs for the election.

Now I remember not like Democrats back some years ago because of some of them and their stands on video games. It was the usual crazy argument that games were causing everything bad in society, and it was a major turnoff.

Recently I've seen the results of the voting (called caucuses) and it generally favours John McCain for the Republicans and Barack Obama for the Democrats.

And because of the Ron Paul activism online I've seen how crappy the other Republican candidates are, like those stupid smirks when Ron Paul starts talking about how the war never should have happened and the idea of staying in Iraq as suggested by McCain was a load of bullshit.

And now because of Obama's wins in various states there has been an increase in news about him and the many endorsements he is getting from various newspapers and websites, and I came across this video:



I'm sorry if I bored you or maybe you had lost interest somewhere in the middle. I still think it's important who the next leader of the US turns out to be. The war has torn the economy apart, and that in turn affects economies all over the world. The rise of China is a bitch because I'm Chinese and I know how Chinese people can really make people hate them for being such bitches.

****

*Visitors, by entering my residence, agree to the following terms: People who hate me and people I hate are excluded. People under those lists are under my discretion. Subject to availability, will only be available when I'm home. There might be a lack of service because I am a lousy host or because I'm on my computer. All visitors are welcome to try out the Wii as long as 1)they promise to not spoil anything and 2)not scream each time they do something. Failure to comply will result in application of a Grade-B noogie (one grade lower for females) to the head of the offender. Repeat offenses warrant noogies of higher grade (A or S) to a maximum punishment of tickling his/her weakest spot until incapacitated and of course being banned from the Wii. Visitors are also welcome to try out other pieces of equipment, if they dare to ask me and if I agree. Visitors who criticise my wall of Jay Chou posters or my new Marvel Heroes bedsheets will receive a Grade-A noogie on the head and be forcefully extracted from my room and offenders will be banned from entering.