Warranties

Warranties has got to be the one of the best things that come along with the products that you buy..haha. On Wednesday, I went to the Nikon headquarters at Fuji Towers to hand over my camera for servicing and repairing the damaged sensor motion. It was kinda efficient in the admin and stuff but it could only be ready 1 week later. So, Mama would have to collect it from me and I would have to figure out another day to get it from her. And the repair cost comes to zero dollars because of the warranty!

And then yesterday, I made a long walking trip deep into the warehouse areas of Yio Chu Kang to find the giant Apple retail center so as to get a replacement for my conked out earphones. It was quite impressive really the whole ambiance of the place. I was directed into the service center and I told the person there about the problems with my earphones. Hmmm..they didn't even bother checking whether what I said was really true. They had just replaced it with another set of earphones without plugging in and testing my spoilt ones. I'm sure those bunch of earphones are retailed at S$55 at the Apple shop..haha..and I got free replacements for them. I think I'm pretty darn right when I said that each earphone cost peanuts for the big corporation and just imagine the profit margin they make with each fella that "innocently" buys it from the shop. Anyways, I'm keeping those Apple earphones as spare ones as those white bunch of stuff can't stand prolonged blasting and usage. I would be relying on more on a new pair of Sennheisers which I bought today. I tested it for a while and it sounds really superb and way much better than the Apple ones. The old Sennheisers that I have were still working very fine but because of constant usage, a section of the rubber wiring had gone off and exposed the naked wire in the process. I was using it as backup until I bought a new pair today with my spare funds..haha. Anyways kids, remember to keep your warranty cards well and renew your warranties because you'll never know when your stuff is gonna get screwed up..lol. It seems as though companies nowadays don't really bother relying on exclusion clauses when it comes to warranties although they could do so considering that some of the damages brought to them by the customers were actually due to consumer negligence rather than poor workmanship.

Btw, I had a chuckle as I passed by a driving school while walking to the Apple retail center. Apparently, they use modern Honda cars as testing cars (Civic if I'm not wrong) and their internal training circuits in the driving school are all equipped with traffic lights. Ahhh..I guess that's where all the S$2000 of driving lessons fees goes to..haha. I just had the itchy urge to flash my P licence in front of the young folks handling the car. *grins* Another strange pattern that I see is that all those driving instructors wear black speckys as if to send the signal to the nervous drivers sitting beside them that they mean business..haha

Mhmm..I'm going back to Inti tomorrow and I'm pretty pleased to have completed a couple of stuff that I had set out to do.

Five Star Performance

Carlos punishes Carson for his blunder

Man Utd swept West Brom aside with a tornado 5 goal whipping and created a new Premier League record of 11 consecutive clean sheets at the same time. The miserly defence record was even more impressive considering that the backline was rotated quite often, with Van der Sar and Vidic being the only players to play in all 11 clean-sheets.

There were speculations that Man Utd would be winning another 1-0 scoreline following the huge amount of injuries and more matches to be played in a week. West Brom started brightly for a moment but Ferdinand was in the right places to shut them down. Soon, it was clear that United were having the lion's share of possession. Slick passing moves between Berbatov and Carrick in navigating through a crowded box lead to Berba in grabbing the first blood of the game. The angle was tight but Berbatov's superb technique and control enabled him to guide the ball past Carson.

The Baggies condemned themselves to hell when their very own captain, Robinson slammed a two footed challenged against Park from behind and Rob Styles promptly produced a red card to the dismay of the Hawthorns. There was no question about that lunge by Robinson and it looked pretty bad on camera considering that he didn't even look back after slamming onto Park. Not long afterthat, United increased their lead to two after Carson did a massive boo boo with his goalkeeping. Giggs crossed a ball into the box and Carson did caught it but for some reason or so, he let go of the ball with his butter fingers and Tevez punished him by smashing the free ball into the net. Haha..Carson had this "it's not my fault" look on his face, claiming that Vidic was obstructing him but in fact, the one which had contact with him was one of his defenders. Lol, his horrified teammates gave him no sympathy looks for that kind of boo boo.

United nearly lost their clean sheet record in the 56th minute when Donk broke free of the back four and gave a shot. Fortunately for United, the ball hit the crossbar and was deflected away. That would have been game on if that had gone in. Immediately afterthat, Vidic showed his appetite for scoring by heading in the third from Giggs' corner. For the fourth goal, Giggs showed yet again another superb assist and awareness on the field by setting up Ronaldo to score the fourth. Giggs had been fabulous in this game with his three assists, 2 coming from his trademark crosses and 1 from his quick thinking. Looks like he's doing pretty well with his secondary role in the middle..haha.

Rob Styles launched a flurry of yellow cards around the seventy plus minutes mark. It started off with Bednar first and that fellow's reaction was caught on camera! Apparently, he did a gesture on his head indicating that the referee was a crazy fool. He was fortunate that the referee didn't see that...lol. Afterthat, Berbatov was involved in a contentious 5th goal when he looked to have beaten the offside line, and then passed to Ronaldo who have also looked to have beaten the line. Both occasions looked to be offsides but it was very close and the referee gave the goal to United. Obviously, the West Brom players were mad and a bunch of them started to crowd around Rob. And Rob flashed the yellow at Carson and Donk for being whiners.

Haha..this match is one of the moments when you have a "lol" defence and West Brom shows you how NOT to do a good defending. The centerbacks had little awareness of their teammates around them and they always end up clashing and bumping with one another when United started to attack. Communication was bad between goalkeeper and defenders and they were all over the place. None of them knew what the other was doing. Haha..the West Brom manager was just sitting in the stands with a bored look on his face and he was going "please get this game over with please. I had enough." Hmmm..I think the combination between Carrick and Berba is starting to look very delicious. And coincidentally, both are former Spurs boys..haha. Carrick had looked rather impressive lately and his passing looks to be deadly with the sort of vision and awareness to unlock defences. And with Berba popping up at the right places at the right time, it's another branch of arsenal United could depend on now that Carrick's all well again.

Things are looking to shape up very nicely for United after the second set of results. The Scousers continued to drop points after a 1-1 draw against Wigan. This meant that Chelsea would now be in second position after securing a 2-0 win over Boro. Ahhh..Rafa is having trouble stopping the rot at the Kop. Not only are they losing their lead position, they are going on a free fall position with Aston Villa waiting in the wings to leap over them. United's lead stretches to a possible 5 points if they could win their game in hand. Hmm..next game won't be easy though. Everton had shown the Gooners that they are no pushovers after holding them to a 1-1 draw. But of course, it won't be as fiery without Wayne playing on the field. =p

Hibernated CNY

While everyone was already gone by Saturday morning, one figure was sneaking out of Inti in the wee hours of 9 pm to catch a bus to the Seremban terminal. Thankfully, I managed to hitch a ride to Penang at 11 pm on Saturday..haha. Since it reached Butterworth at about 5 am in the morning, I went there to one of the mamak's stall (more like gerai than shop) to enjoy roti telur since the bus to my aunt's house is only operable at 7am. This year's Chinese New Year reunion dinner was held at my aunt's house where all my mother's sisters gather together with the rest of my cousins and my grandmother. It's unfortunate that my uncle couldn't join because he had to work on that day. I wish I could have stayed longer with my cousins but I've got broken stuff that needs to be dealt with and repaired using my warranty cards in the country down south. So, I've followed my Mama and brother down south where they're miserly with the CNY holidays even though the Chinese were the majority there. Or perhaps Malaysia was being too slack..haha.

For some strange reason or so, I had this compulsion to sleep during this festive period. On Saturday itself, I took a good 4hrs nap. Then, at the bus, i slept from 11 pm to 5 am. When I reached my aunt's place I slept from morning all the way till 2 pm in the afternoon. And at night, I turned in early at 10.30 pm and woke up only at 10 am. Gosh, those hours of sleeping are crazy and it's as if I'm some animal in hibernation..haha. I think it has something to do with all those deprivation of sleep as a result of the irritating thesis papers. Sleeping early is one of the crimes in Stan's dictionary. Mhmmm..I'm thinking of some late night activities since I'm all refreshed after paying off all the sleeping debts. And no CNY is complete without munching on those makan and drinking goodies. =p

Settled

Language itself is an imperfect constructive representative of one's intention. It cannot totally capture what one would mean because it has walls to dictate the limits of the unspoken meaning that is found in the mind. It does not necessary take into account everything that is going through a person's mind. My general writing style has been more or less consistently being the same from the beginning of this blog up till now. It is sarcastic and unbashfully straightforward but I'll never use it to target with malice on a specific group of people that I know personally. I made one careless complacent oversight in covering my emergency routes and everyone ends up assuming the worst. Different people have different ways in expressing their elation when they excel in something that they like. He or she may get carried away in a wave of emotions in expressing out their joy but they don't mean any harm to those around them.

I could only interpret the events that transpired for the past week or so as an instance of mass hysteria. One event triggered the other in a domino effect and there had been so many intersections that could have stopped the domino trip but, miscommunication kept delaying it from halting until the last minute. Silence had a part to play because it causes assumptions, thoughts and misconceptions to continue manifesting to the point that fact and perception becomes indiscernible.

Anyways, I don't have to prove to anyone about anything. If you want to continue thinking that I'm an egoistical bastard that steps on those around him, then so be it. I don't wish to waste my time on people who are hell-bent on holding onto false impressions without taking the effort to clarify and understand the true situation. I'm only answerable to my close friends and no one is fit to judge what my heart is except for them and God above. If someone's motive is to find fault with another and have no interest in reconciliation, every single conduct or word would be construed to be offensive even if is not meant that way. For those who took the time to be understanding of the whole situation, thank you for your kind patience and rational calmness. God Himself knows the true nature of my heart. Everything that has happen in my life is done by God's grace and I give thanks to that. I take no credit for my successes because it was God himself who allowed it to happen in the first place. Like I said before, God can take away everything that I have with just with a snap of His fingers even if I were to try my pathetic best to hold onto it. I am only human afterall.

Everything happens for a reason and God may yet take this episode to teach me an interesting lesson on the nature of life. One of them is "Don't thesis and blog at the same time. Thesis blogging screws your life."..haha =p

Btw, for those who are being pulled into this spot in the cyberspace by nature of inadvertent advertisement, feel free to come back and visit again now that you know its location..haha. Browse through the past archives and you'll discover a kaleidoscopic array of topics that are being touched on. There's many other stuff to cater to your reading interests ranging from music, entertainment, gaming and football from one person's biased perspective. Enjoy your stay here, thank you and have a nice day..*beep* :)

Muahahahaha..it's done!

Ahhhh..today marks the end of thesis nonsense for Year One. Gosh, for the past 2 weeks or so, I've been rushing like mad to complete my ELS and criminal thesis papers. It's all because Stan has been slacking his arse during the hols and he has to pay for his slackness after school has reopened. Sometimes, I really can't help it but end up doing things at the last minute again..haha. Even though I always tell myself to learn my lesson from the previous time. But this time is better coz I managed to do some reading during the hols. But sometimes, I would always think while having a long dateline, "why do today when you tomolo to do"..haha. Can't help it..this is automatism..haha.

The most shocking horror happened when I discovered that all the readings that I do for criminal law during the hols for the thesis was irrelevant and almost useless. And summore I had only like 5 or 4 days to start from 0 words to 3000 words. So I rushed like mad, and to my amazement, I managed to complete it within 3 days or so even with me taking time off to fetch the worship team to church. Yea, I am really grateful to God for being graceful in helping me to complete the thesis paper and it never cease to amaze me how He won't let His servants fall behind when they are doing His works. Like in the last semester, even with the contract law paper being on the Monday itself, I went by faith to go practice on Saturday afternoon and serve by playing drums on that Sunday, and that took a lot of time off my revision. But God is good, and he blessed me with marks that ended up even higher than the papers that I had prepared harder for. Sometimes, some of these things are just unexplainable divine intervention.

Right now I'm feeling super relieved. Since I've didn't play games, watch dramas or even had a good night's sleep, I'm gonna go do just that for the whole week. I need to complete Call of Duty 5 and get started on FM 09 and FIFA 2009! Plus, not to forget, there's Battlestar Galactica and Prison Break Season 4 with many movies to catch up. Slack and slack is the way :)

Charging Upfront

Berba celebrates his last-minute finishing with Carlos and Michael

Man Utd moved to the head of the Premier League for the first time this season after their relentless 10th consecutive clean sheet in the Premier League. The defence has been something of a bad ass miser in the League for the past month and of course, games are not won with 0-0 draws. It threatened to look that way for United's match away at the Reebok stadium despite United's domination and good attacking play which pushed upwards very often. Many shots were on target but Jaasklainen was in one of his best days as goalkeeper as he stopped shot after shot. One of his best saves was when Anderson blasted one on target from outside of the box and Jassklainen prevented the young Brazilian from scoring his first for United.

I think Evra's absence is really felt in the game because while United's attack were excellent, it was one dimensional. Very often, the final ball was a disappointment because after all the possession, the finishing was just poor. With Evra in the team, he would act as an excellent support left wing back with pace to the left winger, in this case, Ronaldo. That was how the Chelsea defence was unlocked in Old Trafford. Evra is very skillful when in comes to wing attack. For the Bolton match, neither John O Shea or Neville could fulfill the role. Neville was once like that in his younger days but those old legs cannot be expected to perform the same way as he did 10 years ago. Scholes' introduction was refreshing to the squad and he had a few opportunities to use his classic outside-of-the-box-blast but he was closed down by the Bolton defenders on those occasions. Rooney was also another figure that was missed because his physicality would have aided in snatching those rough balls from Bolton.

A goalless draw would not look too bad on that occasion given that there were news that Chelsea were going down to a Stoke goal from Rory Delap. Well well, looks like Delap has other uses other than his hands eh..haha. Anyways, no win at Reebok will mean a wasted opportunity AGAIN to reach the top as what had happened many times this season. And it sounds like the same story when United left real late to win the game 1-0. It was a moment of brilliance from Carlos and his aggressive style in pushing forward caused two Bolton defenders to bungle up and bang embarrassingly into each other. He slipped through and provided a nice ball for Berbatov to connect a diving header. United fans can breathe easy afterthat because it was a kinda suffocating game where chance after chance were denied either by Jaasklainen or poor execution. United were clearly doing a lot of shots but it's frustrating that none of them were going in. Nevertheless, it's a fantastic result in the bag. 3 points is 3 points afterall. And Chelski rescued their season from a disastrous collapse when Lampard also left it late to provide a win for them at the Bridge. Awwww..I thought Stoke deserved to draw at least. But at least Scholari gets to keep his job for a few more months..haha.

With Man Utd having done their homework, the onus is on Liverpool to regain back to pole position with their match against Everton. As predicted, the derby was a stumbling block for the Scousers as they were held to a 1-1 draw at Anfield, courtesy of Cahill's last minute strike. Indeed, as mention before, there's nothing to worry with Liverpool being at the top even after they beat Untied 1-2 at Anfield. They always end up screwed up somewhere else. I'm still of the opinion that Chelsea would remain to be the strongest contender against Man Utd despite some awful displays recently. Ahhh..so now the Scousers are level on points but United have one more game in hand and technically, it would be a 3 point lead if Man Utd had won this missing match. Of course, it will also be nice if Man Utd could consolidate their position as soon as possible to have that 3 point lead. Hopefully, the partnership between Berbatov and Tevez be taken to one level higher now that Wayne is going to be out for a couple of weeks.

Transportman

Wahahaha..looks like I have officially join the list in GFS's transport ministry. Let's start off with what happened yesterday first. At around 8 am in the morning, I fetched Alvin and Li Lian for practice and it was my first time driving to Banting. The distance is obviously further than going around Nilai and even though the road is generally straight all the way, it's not that super easy considering that the road to there is filled with so many big lorries and giant tankers. So, there's lots of navigating and cutting lanes. And some of these lorries and even moving faster than cars and they can come out of nowhere at the right lane..haha. It gets irritating when I enter into Banting with a single lane road. Lol, and turning into the u-turn to church can be a screwed up for first timers coz out of nowhere there's like two lanes..haha. So, have to keep alert there.

When we reached the church, the gate was locked! So, we went to clarify stuff and apparently the drummer, Chandran, who had replaced me this Sunday had to go school and practice was shifted to the afternoon. There's was some miscommunication and this new message didn't go through. Lol, in the end, all three of us went to the McDonalds in Banting to makan and chit-chat before returning back to Nilai. Anyways, Chandran is a really good drummer, very composed and had good control in the volume.

Haha..then this morning, since word of mouth had spread that I had an automobile, Jason and Ben came to take the car too. It was very early morning at 7 and I just had 4 hrs of sleep after watching football on Saturday night. Lol, mama would have smack me for bringing a full load in the car under such conditions. But hey, everyone arrived safely for the two-way trip and I managed to keep a good concentration..haha. Since I'm not serving today, I had the chance to go makan Klang bak kut teh with the seniors in GFS. Wah, super shiok really and it's being a long time since I had that in the morning. Nilai bak kut teh just simply can't match up to that.

On a separate note, I managed to get both my criminal and ELS marks last week. Fortunately, I got 60 for my criminal law paper with some weird combi marks of 18,13,13 and 16. Next time must start very early to revise that paper liao. Apparently, last-minute rushing didn't work as well in that paper. The good results for ELS came as expected with me getting 72. Sometimes, I feel the nature of the class' preference in chit-chatting in Mandarin for an English-intensive course is a little unsettling. I kinda get worried that I end up being too complacent. You know the classic saying about the rules regarding areas where there's no competition..haha. I could end up not studying at all because of my complacency and then my grades drop instead because of my laziness and slackness. There's not a lot of people that I can turn to engage the discussion of the law, politics, gaming or stuff that I like in an advanced manner. The standards in Leeds are tough and I have to find methods to push my innate potential up. Sigh, forgive me for the rants, it just feels pretty frustrating at times working alone with my category of interests.

Busting the bank

Will he be taking the 120 million Euros flight to the Sky Blue fields of Manchester?

Here's a trivia : Where in the world can you get 120 million Euros to enable a man to change his working place from Italy to England? Well, in the blue-half of Manchester of course! The sheikhs have generously channeled their oil money for an all-out attempt to poach world-class Brazillian playmaker midfielder, Kaka from AC Milan. In addition to paying the whopping 120 million Euros to transfer Kaka out of Milan, the bosses in Man City are going to pay his papa 31 million pounds to push through the deal and Kaka himself is speculated to be given a contract worth 500,000 British pounds PER WEEK. That translates 71428 pounds per day and 2976 pounds per hour. Gosh, Kaka can go sponsor my one entire year of living and tuition fees in Leeds using his one day worth of wages! He can also sponsor another 2 or 3 years to include my LLM masters and the Bar Vocational Course..hahaha. Seriously,wth...I don't even wanna pay half of that sum of money to transfer ONE player in the fantasy world of Football Manager and they are doing this in reality..lol.

Milan is obviously happy to receive 120 million Euros for the coffers to replenish their old horses, but that decision lies with Kaka ultimately on the prospect of joining a club that is languishing in 15th place and has trouble beating West Brom and Middlesbrough. The football market is gonna get screwed if this goes through. Thanks to the sheikhs, the inflation rate in the football market is gonna gallop a few times fold more than usual. About 15 years ago, during those old days when Roy Keane was just a young lad, 4 million pounds was already busting the bank. And now, Man City had to inflate the benchmark limit by almost four times of the average 30 million pounds nowadays to desperately secure a good player. I understand that some cash stimulation is needed for the state of economic deflation now, but this is extreme stuff! Hmmm..perhaps maybe Milan will be the first city to get out of recession..lol. I think half of Africa's poverty problems could be eradicated if the sheikhs were to direct the 120 million Euros there instead. Well, we live in the world of inequities afterall..haha. And that's why we have something called inefficient allocation of resources :)

Sounds familiar

Today I read from thestar about a Subang Jaya girl studying in CHIJ scoring 10 A1s in the Singapore O Levels exam. See...that just proves my theory that Subang Jaya folks have some of the most brilliant brains in the whole of Malaysia. (ok, don't flame me if you're from other places..lol) Haha..the thing that caught my eye was that apparently, she actually told her teacher that she opted to continue studying in Malaysia (Taylor's) instead of going on to junior college. Ehhhh...look's like I'm not the only Malaysian making such choices ehh. It must have been shocking news to the whole island republic or her friends that the she wanna balik Malaysia instead. Lol, it could possibly that she don't wanna do Sg A' Levels Science which is already notorious for it's 100% stress, kiasu grinding and hardwork label. Hmmm..If it's A' Levels Arts, I would opt to stay for that and then consider doing my degree elsewhere..haha. Anyways, it's not confirmed but if she still sticks to her choice, I'll salute her for going down the road less travelled, just like I did.

There was a Leeds University briefing today and since I had already made up my mind to enrol there in the future (most probably), I went to attend it. The whole room was very crowded because it was made up of law and engineering students (haha..the vast difference between the two of them). Hmmm..I saw a couple of the senior law students there but I was the only one from my class attending it. From what I hear at the briefing, the place sounds awesome. It's 45 minutes away from Manchester, 1.5 hrs away from Liverpool and 2 hrs from London. Nice..I can imagine the amount of stadiums I can visit..wahahaha. Another thing is that the Law faculty's new building is only ready in late 2010, so for those Sem 6 going this year, they would have to bear with the little Victorian cottages..haha. The entry requirements are quite tough, A Levels minimum is BBB and a further average of B grades and IELTS 6.0. If A Levels requirement don't make it, it's a very slim chance to enter. At that point, it dawned upon me that I might be going through the same phase as before, which is always being the only odd one out who ends up drafting my life journey somewhere else from the rest. There's virtually nothing that I can entrench myself to. I need 'the constant' that will help me make some sense in this whole never-ending equation of flux. I don't think anyone in my class even fulfilled the A' Levels grade requirement (maybe there's one or two,but I'm not sure bout their results). Hmmm...I really hope I won't be the only one from my class going to Leeds.

Anyways, while I was walking to the briefing, my Apple earphones conked up on me. Ahhh..speaking of the quality of mass-produced earphones by cheap labour..lol. Seems that the somewhere among the wires, the connectors got loose and the result was the screwed up (but interesting) sound where only the instruments were heard but the voice went missing. In other words, one layer of audio was not connected through. Actually, if you wanna just wanna hear the instrumental part of the song, these pair of busted/spoilt earphones work great for the purpose...haha. I was kinda glad that the problem was not with the Nano and it was the earphone's problem after cross testing it with my very old Sennheiser earphones. Well, yet another defective device that needs to get repaired or replaced. Darn, all of these repair bills just had to come at the same time! Since my Nano is still under warranty, I'm sure a massive corporation like Apple will find it cheapo puny peanuts to replace me with another free earphone..haha.

Ruthlessly crushed

Berbatov leaves Cech biting the dust

It was yet another exciting coming together of the two gigantic behemoths of the English Premier League. The draw at Stamford Bridge left an unsatisfactory feeling for the United players and they look forward in going for the kill with Chelsea visiting them at Old Trafford. Nobody would have expected the scoreline gap on Sunday to be such a massive difference with Man Utd romping 3-0 past Chelsea. There were some selection surprises on both sides, but Ferguson turns out to be the better wily old fox than Scolari.

Scolari's decision to leave out Anelka from the starting eleven raises some big question marks as he decided to play Drogba alone upfront. Perhaps he thought that Drogba would be better equipped to handle the physical nature of Vidic and Neville. On the other hand, Fergie's decision to start with Giggs turns out to be a tactical genius as the good old Welsh winger torments the Chelsea backline with his set-pieces. Experience enabled him to waltz his old legs past the crowded midfield.

Man Utd took authority in the first half in ensuring that they push upfront against Chelsea as much as possible. Quick passing and moving of the ball ensured that Chelsea would see as little possession in their half and thereby limiting their shooting chances. It was a pretty much dirty tackling game with boots flying all over. Lampard was already booked at the 4th minute. Bosingwa was in the referee's book in the 27th and weirdest nonsense is both Portuguese buddies Ronaldo and Carvalho ended up squaring up with each other and both were duly cautioned by the referee. Lol, ditch those nationality loyalties..it's the Premier League now..haha. Several handball appeals were up and some of them appear legitimate in favour of United but the referee refused to give them.

At the 45th minute, there was a bungle up after Ronaldo headed in a goal from Giggs' cross. On the first look, it seemed that the reason was that Giggs did not place the ball on the D for the corner before he floated in the cross. Giggs and Rooney raced to the assistant referee to protest incessantly. On the second look, it was revealed that the referee got it really wrong coz that was some ingenuity on Rooney's part which was taken straight from the practice ground. The person taking the corner was actually Rooney and he took it quickly by pushing the ball slightly out from the D first. So, the ball was in fact legally in play by then. Then Giggs took his own sweet time to jog to the ball, nobody realised it and that probably gave the impression to the referee that Giggs was the actual taker. Ok, so the referee orders for take two and Giggs swung in another corner into the box and this time it was picked out by Berba who flicked it to Vidic. The Serbian nicely connected it with a diving header passed the helpless Cech. Apparently, Chelsea looked too bemused in the whole episode to organise themselves and they left out people to guard the posts. Well, I think it's a goal of justice and at that moment it's just fated that United WILL score..hahahaha. Maybe they could retry 3 or 5 times, but it will still go in..lol

On the second half, Scolari decide to change things around by taking Deco out and putting in Anelka. Wrong tactic again I would say, he should have taken Drogba out coz he was pretty much below par the whole match and didn't even get a shot at van der Sar. Anelka is a solo striker and obviously he wouldn't stick it well with Drogba. Anelka had always worked best alone as shown in the previous matches. Actually, the whole Chelsea team was shitty and they don't even look threatening at all. Defensive mistakes were plenty and Terry was there occassionally to close down a shot. Joe Cole looks rusty all over because he hasn't being playing for a long time. It didn't look like the Chelsea that everyone knew about. Since Man Utd are 1-0 up already, they had a way much easier job and one more goal would suffice to seal the game. At the 63rd minute, Evra raced down the left and cross a ball into the box where Rooney was left with a simple tap in. The night was over by then coz it's a massive job to come back from 0-2 away, unless of course, United does the Gooners' generosity way of gifting two goals in the last minute..lol. Berbatov ends the night for Man Utd brilliantly in banging in the 3rd. It was technical expertise as Berba connects to Ronaldo's free kick cross using his perfect first touch abilities. Absolutely humiliating for Chelski. I think even Derby could cause more threat than them..haha. Scolari and his dudes were forced to eat humble pie as Jose Mourinho looks on from the spectators. Scolari is in deep trouble, because not even Avram Grant had produced such a disastrous run of results. Draws against folks like Fulham and Southend were really uncalled for. I think that moustache fella is losing control of his squad already.

Hmmm..I'm ruing on the fact that I did not put Vidic as the captain in my Fantasy Premier League team when he's got a goal and a clean sheet plus a bonus. Actually I did put him as captain before I went back to Nilai but I changed the captain to Zaki on the last minute when I reached my hostel. I was thinking that it would be hard to keep a clean sheet against Chelsea but I was wrong..haha. And Zaki did not score in his match. Ughhhhh..if only on that day I didn't come back that early. That would teach me not to dally too much with stuffs and trust my instinct rather than my brains..lol.

Overall, it's a brilliant result for United considering they have been goal-shy for the past Premier League matches. It would be interesting to see how Chelski would pick themselves out of the mess. Man Utd would probably have avenged the ghost of the 0-3 drubbing at Stamford Bridge a couple of years ago..haha. On a separate note, a couple of days ago, Ronaldo was involved in a Ferrari crash in the tunnel and it was most fortunate that he escaped unhurt. Lol, van der Sar was driving behind him and he ended up giving Ronaldo a lift to training. Chelski fans of course took to the opportunity to take a jab at him by chanting "You should have died in the tunnel"..haha. Sorry folks, he lives and Chelski will have many more years of nightmare with him around..lol. As regards to the typically quiet Benitez's bizarre outburst at Fergie, the Spanish probably felt the heat now that United are closing in on the gap. With two games at hand and if Man Utd were to win both of them, they would technically leapfrog over Liverpool. And I foresee the Scousers dropping many more idiotic points in the future..lol.

Goodness gracious me!

I got my contract law marks and I'm very surprised once again but couldn't hide my glee when I found out that I scored a staggering 80/100 (82 initially, moderated to 80) for that paper. Considering that I didn't write much for some of the questions, I gather that it's part of those Stan's precision engineering at work. It's a classic tactic brought from the old days of English Literature where I can still get 15/25 for a slacko 1.5 page length of work..lol. Less words to beat around the bush, aim directly at the point like the sniper :)

Anyways, it was a quick and efficient trip down south. Since my Friday class ends early at 11am, I could pack up quickly and head off to Seremban to take an afternoon bus so that I won't reach my destination too late at night. The bus ride was comfortable, and the Plusliner bus has an interesting outline where the last half of the bus was divided into single individual seats. So, when I reached back in the house, I started to search for my camera at the usual spots that I put but it was nowhere to be found! I strained my memory very hard because I was pretty darn sure that I didn't bring it back with me to the Taiping funeral and there was no where else I would put in the house except for the computer desk or the outside coffee table. The other possibility that I thought off was that my brother could have borrowed it from me and I had forgotten to ask him to return it back to me. I didn't think that was a high possibility either but I should give it a try nevertheless.

I got the horror of horrors revelation when my brother came home and I asked him about the camera. Apparently, that pesky fella actually gave away my camera to one of his friends, thinking that it belonged to one of them, without checking the contents of the camera! Oh gosh..he gave it away just like that and the camera stayed in his friends house for a week without even his friend realising it. He didn't know about it, I didn't know about it and fortunately, his friend realised the mistake later and returned it back to him. It so happened that I was back today. I was going like *TOOOOT!* Just imagine if his friend wasn't that honest coupled with my klutz brother still in daydream world and I had no idea on his apparent "generosity". I would have spent an eternity searching aimlessly for something that was given away by my brother in the most klutz fashion. Sigh..It's not that good news even when I got it back because the camera sensors appeared to be damaged and I'm receiving screwed up pixels in shooting mode.

After an exhausting day of travelling, I had no mode to do any typing on my thesis paper and I just dozed off until 7.30 am this morning. Anyways, I didn't wanna leave too late to go back to Nilai, so I left the house at the late morning so that I could catch an early afternoon bus in Larkin. It's cheaper to take from Larkin compared from the island itself. It was so fortunate when I reached there, I was just in time for the 1.30 pm bus. Hmmm..I would have stayed longer with Mama but I plan to go back today because I wanna go GFS for church tomorrow..haha. Overall, this "inconvenient trip" turns up quite useful since I realised that I left quite a few of important small bits of stuff at the house like my guitar tuner and old handphone charger. Uhhh..5 more days to dateline and I'm still less than halfway in my thesis...

Imba..lol

The first result from the mid-sessional exams were given out today and it was constitutional law. Personally, I anticipated a result of maybe 60-62 because my last question essay was only 2 page long and it was rushed. When it was my turn to get the result, I was a little surprised but very pleased indeed. Haha..I got 76/100! Thank you Lord! I thought that she was marking leniently but actually she was marked stricter than usual. So, if she had been more lenient..hmmmm..

Those were seriously imba marks. The rest of the class were in the 40s and 50s and out of nowhere, an anomaly of 76 pops out. Somebody please nerf me...hahahaha..

Based on my calculations, it may be possible that my English Legal System paper would get higher than 76 since that was my best paper and I wrote really a lot for that exam. If I get my Contract Law paper tomorrow, I predict it to be in the low 60s. Then for my criminal law paper, I'll be thankful if I even hit 60 marks..lol. Hopefully my ELS marks would hit as high as possible to make up for the deficit in contract and criminal law to ensure that I get 65% average across all of them. Then, Inti would owe me RM539 of scholarship money for the next semester..haha..

Just now I actually drove down to Uncle Tan there to eat! That was a landmark considering that I walked up and down in the previous two semesters. I just had a tickling feeling when I see people walking down the slope using manual labour when I'm sitting at the driver seat. After makan, I went to take the car for a little spin around Nilai town to get the engines moving. Mhmm..if I don't start it regularly, the batteries would be in trouble. Well, today was an improvement with less mistakes or sudden jolts. Parking was aimed much correctly this time. Aye, today's guard was a meanie when I wanna turn into the hostel campus. When I showed him my ID card, he barked at me "I don't care about that. I want to see the sticker!" I had to explain to him my little "complication" of leaving my JPJ form in my house..haha. Anyways, this makes it even more vital to make the trip to find Mama tomorrow.

Semester 3

Haha..I just managed to get my internet up at my hostel room. It's being a hectic past 1 week but with the end of holidays, it's time to get back to studying. I drove back from Taiping to Inti on Saturday and then on that night itself, catch a bus to Singapore to collect the stuff that I had left there in the rush. Driving from Taiping to Nilai is kinda challenging coz I had to go through the hilly road areas in the Ipoh-Gopeng area. The worst thing was that it was raining very heavily and I couldn't really move too fast in those condition. Then the other thing is that driving from the Peninsula North to the Central requires lots of stamina since I need to stay awake and keep my seated position there for a very long time. Hmmm..Mama was commenting that the highway now makes driving way easier compared to long time ago when she had to use the old roads to travel.

Anyways, I managed to come back yesterday to Inti only in the evening and I had to miss the two lectures on that. But ain't something serious coz it's only the first week and the lecturers were not going heavy on the lessons. Hmmm..it seems that the mid-sessionals results will only be released after Wednesday because there would be reviews and moderations for the marks. It's not that good news for my class since we heard that a good number of us had failed some of the subjects. I hope I don't get screwed for my contract or criminal law papers...On the good news side, I scored 7/10 for my constitutional law thesis paper! Lol, my consti lecturer had nothing much to comment on my paper because there really was nothing bad in it. She probably would have put 7.5, but it would look suspiciously imbalance to the rest of the class. There's still an inspection by the external moderator and hopefully, the marks would be pushed slightly up (and hopefully not down!..haha). Another strange thing is that my consti lecturer became yet another person to add to the list of people who commented that I've become thinner since the last time they saw me. She joked and asked me if I've being taking drugs..haha! Honestly, I didn't notice anything different, I ate the same amount and same type of stuff as I always did. Hmm..perhaps I DID become thinner, maybe I didn't pay attention? 5 to 6 people saying the same thing voluntarily can't be wrong right? lol..

Yesterday I also managed to drive around Nilai with Vincent as my guiding eye instead of Mama. It was kinda smooth and night driving in Nilai is comfortable since there are not many cars. And for the first time, we managed to eat fresh McDonalds, without the need for slogging and waiting for the green bus..haha. I wanna get the sticker for my car so that next time I won't have trouble entering the hostel vicinity, but it seems that they need the original JPJ certificate for the car registration. Oh well, looks like I gotta make a dreadful trip to Singapore this weekend. Might as well because I realised that I left my Nikon camera back there too.

End of a legacy

Hmmm..lots of stuff has being happening for the past week or so. Gong gong (my maternal grandfather) passed away on the 27th. On that Sunday night itself, we took a bus back to Taiping since the cremation is happening on Tuesday. It all happened really fast. Just 2 months ago during the September semester break, he was just receiving me at the bus terminal. I think somewhere in the middle of October, it was found out during the medical examination that he was at the terminal stage of pancreatic cancer. He wouldn't have pulled through to December if not for a bypass operation. After the operation, his whole body strength just siphoned away from him, and the jolly rounded old man became quite skeletal (just like Ah Yeh [my paternal grandfather] in his last days).

I'm not exactly say, a fan of my maternal grandparent's way and outlook of living as compared to my paternal ones. I just find my paternal grandparents to be much more vibrant and full of life and their culinary skills were a source of inspiration. My maternal grandparents on the other hand, were dull, boring and business-minded like, unwilling to take risks and seldom look beyond the world outside their small town. Nevertheless, Gong gong's absence is do felt. Somehow the optical shop doesn't feel as like before because of the master of the house is not in there. It's like a body without a soul. Both are synonymous to each other and their existence was tied to each other. All over the place contain his handwriting on pieces of papers and price tags, but somehow, there's just a heavy emptiness in the shop. Usually when I stare at the walls of the aged shophouse, it's almost instantaneous that you will think of that aged man being somewhere around the house doing one of his fuzzy business. But right now, he's just nowhere around and would never be there.

Honestly, this was the first time I've actually came face-to-face with the dead body of a family member. My paternal grandparents had passed away 3 to 5 years ago, but family circumstances prevented me from attending their funeral. Anyways, it's just a weird feeling inside me when I see Gong gong inside the coffin. Perhaps he would finally get the answer to life's ultimate question on afterlife. All his life he had an extreme paranoia to preserve his own security and has a high opinion on his well-being. But I guess in the hospital, he would have realised in the end that there's nothing he could do when the time really does come calling.

I've never cried once all these years but when his coffin passed by the optical shop, tears started to flow quietly from my eyes. It dawned upon me that it was symbolic when it passed by because that was the last time the master of the house would have his physical bodily presence there. I guess he would have wanted the last look on his fortress. All the memories, the history and a legacy in its own way had halted. Amidst the stocks of spectacles, lens-cutting machinery and the testing room, they lay silent without the master wielding them. The optical shop would never be revived again. Its story ends there with a good 30 years of operation. The curtains have come down on the empire.