Been a pretty quiet week so far .. not much crap from certain bitches in my lab (but that is another story). I've been trying to pick up tennis recently and have been to UKM's court for a few times allready .. I never thought I would say this about a sport but tennis is fun , when you are not looking for the ball in knee deep grass. It seems quite silly to me that for a game where the ball will tend to fly out and land in grass, the tennis ball is coloured GREEN ! (Ok greenish yellow , sue me ) When ever I spend a few minutes looking for that missing ball thanks to my "SUPAAA-POWAAA SHOTTO" I curse the idiot who declared that tennis balls must be green .. sigh. Why can't it be striking red or something .. makes it easier to spot.

I'm not coming down for DotA this weekend .. not like we've had any sessions recently. Hope the Ookies and Magnus have fun. I'll just stick to Hamachi for my DotA needs .. remember , if you wanna play DotA just message me : )

It is quite sad that when the game that I wanted to play for so long comes out, my graphics card dies on me .. sigh. Well guess I won't be playing Supreme Commander anytime soon. Shame. I was so hyped up about the game .. not too many decent RTS games out nowadays. I have to miss playing C&C 3 also ....damn damn damn damn damn damn.

Sigh

T_T

Now that I have been resurrected from the grave I can finally post again.. Yeay ! Erm ... stil have no idea on what to post. Guess this will have to be one of those random raving posts that I tend to spew. Not !

Now we all know that finally, finally they are making a Transformers movie .. not an animated one but a slam bang CGI laden real movie ! It started off ok with announcements like the news of Peter Cullen being confirmed as the voice of Optimus Prime how can we not want to hear Optimus spewing out those age old lines that so made the hair on the back of our necks stand like .. " Freedom is the right of all sentient beings " or the all famous "Autobots, transform and roll out !".

OK from this point on you'll probably be faced with spoiler (but nothing not discussed in the official Transformers : The Film forums)

Yeah ! They got the right stuff allright ...

.. or do they ?

I was starting to get a little worried when I saw some of the promo pictures because the transformers now have eyeballs ! No longer do they have their glass mirror eyes that blink on and off :P but they now have eyeballs. At first it was pretty shocking but after a while I realised that having eyes might not be a bad thing as the characters will be able to emote better. The producers said that the Optimus will be able to show more emotions because he will now have a mouth instead of the mask like thingy he has in the original cartoon. Don't worry dear Transformers fans, it seems the mask is still there , it will appear when he is about to go into battle mode. Phew .. so far so good.

Then they did it. They made the weirdest blunder .. of all the things they could do they screwed up Starscream. No they didn't turn him upside down and anally molest him but believe me he would have preferred that to what they did to him in the movie. Starscream in the movie doesn't look anything like the original in his robot mode. He looks like some bald orangutan with tubes for arms .. no kidding ! They didn't even keep the head for nostalgic reasons ..nope .. no sireee .. Starscream has an insect head .. sigh. I know they will find a way to screw up the movie. If that was not enough , leaks on the story indicates that the entire storyline of the Transformers crashing on earth in the Arc (and possible causing the extinction of dinosaurs and the emergence of man as the dominant species on the planet) .. nooo .. they had to do a damn reset of the story and screw up everything. Damn Steven Speilberg said that he wants the story to give the "a boy and his car" type movie feel !!!! Blasphemy !

Just when I was giving up hope on the movie I found this thread on the forum http://boards.transformersmovie.com/showthread.php?t=4930 and somehow reading this helped restore my faith in the fact that even though they may screw up some parts of the story the essence of what the Transformers are all about will be kept. Heres to keeping fingers crossed !

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What lines do you think MUST be in the movie ?

If you've been wondering where I've been the whole of last week , I was in Kelantan. As part of the Malaysian government's drive to promote biotechnology to schools and thus churn out tons of biotech graduates who can then sit around with their collective thumbs up their posteriors, certain elite researchers (like ME ! Bwhahaha) were chosen to spread the message to schools. So fortunate me got to enjoy an all expense paid vacation to Kelantan, complete with visits to schools where I get to harp on and on about how great biotechnology is going to become in Malaysia and everyone has to grab the opportunity (snigger).

The program facilitators were mostly comprised of Professors and PhD (Dr) people from UKM this time. Most of the technical people were from UKM with a sparse sprinkling of USM (Penang) people. As a side note, I would like to mention that Penang and Ipoh girls tend to be very cute : ) .. wanna run away to USM. Not many cute, single girls in UKM .. sigh .

Went to Kelantan by plane thus saving my ass from an 11 hour drive. Phew. Oh yeah, got on a plane for the first time : ) was nice. I found out that knowledge can be a bad thing sometimes. When I looked out of the plane as it was taking out I realised that the only thing keeping me up there on the air was simply the difference in air pressure between the air flowing at the top of the wing and the bottom ... pretty scary since the wings do look a bit flimsy and prone to shudders when taking off. Well, after the plane reached cruising altitude I managed to enjoy the scenery .. everything looked so small. Too bad i didn't have a camera handy .. sigh.

We checked into Rennaisance hotel in Kota Bharu. I liked the hotel a lot. Very well equipped, the only complaint that I have is that they didn't have and bubble bath shampoo for the tub but it was ok cause I didn't have anyone to share it with. Had buffet food and BBQ's throughout the entire weekend .. probably put on a few kilos T_T , cannot say no to buffet food .. they are all so pretty.

My impression of Kedah before going there was that it was a gay-assed place with people who looks like Osama walking around. Surprisingly it wasn't so bad, besides the strong feeling of being in a Malay village it was actually ok. I even saw a few people walking around with long hair and black jackets :P .. Went to have a look at the type of clothings sold there and I found that the price of stuff there was quite cheap .. of course they were having sales so maybe it was only cheap because of that. I even found a t-shirt with a pentagram and a goat head in it .. WICKED ! Was tempted to buy it and walk around but figured being beaten to death by an overzealous religious teacher was not in my list of ways to die. I would like to state here that the best way to die is of exhaustion in bed with a group of hot models and actresses when you are 65 years old.

Went to 2 schools one on Sat and the other on Sun. I found that compared to the usual crowd that I am used to in other states the kids in Kelantan seem to be a bit more on the slow side. Probably something in the water. Got to eat some local delicacies like nasi kerabu and stuff. One thing about food in Kelantan though .. it's bloody sweet ! They dump tons of sugar into everything they can eat ... even the drinks are sweet enough to give you instant diabetes. The spicy sambal was sweet, the vegetables were sweet, even the fucking fried chicken tasted sweet ! Argh ! But if you don't mind dying of diabetes, Kelantan food is ok.

Didn't get to use most of the facilities in the hotel due to time constraints but managed to use the sauna for a bit. It's been quite some time since I used one and it was very relaxing especially after a hard day's work, brought back memories of the good old days when Adole and I will run into the sauna then jump into the swimming pool and repeat the cycle again and again. Was really tempted to go swimming on Sat night but since the dinner was by the poolside things could get a bit weird. The last thing I want is for people I work with to walk into the poolside fully dressed up for dinner and I'm walking around in my trunks :P

Got to meet some really nice people (read : hot chick ) from USM .. I so want to go there now cause , I repeat again, Penang girls are hot. Unfortunately, due to certain factors ( I was a pussy) I didn't get her phone number T_T .. sigh. Besides finding the t-shirt with the pentagram and goat head nothing much was of interest in Kelantan. Too bad I didn't bring the camera with me , a certain lockjawed monster took it to camwhore : )

Ok, I think I've rambled on enough. Erm, let me know if anyone wanna DotA this weekend. I'll be down with Sai and Siriuz (if he is still alive) . Oh yeah, did I mentioned I get paid for doing crap like this .. he hehe .. i so love the way the government is dying to give me money. Ciao

Ok people, the blog has been forced to move to the new GoogleMail-Blogger account. I am sorry for the trouble but you have to get a Google Mail address and then use it as your log-in name. If you allready have one you can use it to log into Blogger too. I wouldn't have moved it but Blogger practically forced me to do it so there we have it ... I am sure after the discomfort of your first time everything will be smooth again (snicker).

Sorry for dissapearing for so long. Been a bit busy with finishing Xenosaga 3, watching The Prince Of Tennis, training for DotA and of course my dreaded lab/thesis work. Chinese New Year is just around the corner so remember to get nice bright red coloured clothings with ample space for all the red angpau packets :) , don't forget the poor Warlock who probably won't get any because he looks so 'uncle'ish nowadays and channel some funds this way.

Been thinking long about getting an MP3 player cause it just sucks to listen to the radio in the lab (I can't stand the Malay radio stations - I feel that their choice of songs suck) and stare out of the window in the bus. After long consideration of cost vs looks vs battery life and the whole shabang I have decided to get the Sony NW-S203F/B also lovingly named by me as the Sony Stick since that is what it looks like (well, I can say Cigar but images of Bill Clinton tends to pop into my head when I do , so it's the stick). I want my SonyStick . . I wan't it back .. but the problem is that it'll cost me a cool RM 499.00. I know it is more expensive than most other mp3 players in the market that aren't IPod but what the hell I just like the rugged look and the functions. It's water resistant so being the sweat tank that I am I don't need to worry about going jogging with it :) . With the amount of mass I've been adding (read : putting on weight) having a calorie counter and pedometer will be a good motivator and a way to keep count of the amount of exercise I'm getting. It's made of aluminun and not plastic so that is a plus too. So it's gonna be the Sony Stick ! Sigh, now if only the damn university will approve and release my cheque quickly .....

Well, wish me luck !