Lost Season 4

Lol, I just finished watching it yesterday, so I'll write some inputs on it here. Warning: Spoilers Ahead - Like Prison Break Season 3, Lost Season 4's episodes were cut down to 13 due to the Writer's Guild strike. Lost Season 4 continues from the point where the survivors of the Oceanic flight actually found someone who could contact the outside world. This someone, Naomi, was unfortunately killed by Locke but the communication equipment was still there. Three new additions were placed into the show - Daniel Faraday (an obvious allusion to physicist Michael Faraday), Charlotte Staples Lewis (pointing to author C.S. Lewis) and Miles Straume. There was a surprise return of Michael Dawson, who was unseen in Season 3 after leaving the island.

The mystery about the Oceanic survivors' "deaths" is debunked. Nope, they are not in purgatory or in a meta-physical world. Instead, some rich fella called Charles Widmore actually placed a replica and random corpses into the sea to divert the media and world attention from the island. As the story progresses, it was clear that the newcomers from the outside world were not there to rescue them. The survivors themselves were divided into two, one group following John Locke and the other Jack Shepard. There were flashbacks in Season 4, but instead of backwards flashbacks on history, it's future flashbacks, which is life after leaving the island. It was revealed that only 6 made it out of the island - Jack, Kate, Sayid, Hugo, Sun and Claire's baby - Aaron.

As usual, Season 4 has lots of twists and stuff. I think the one of the best episodes of Lost that is ever created is Episode 5 "The Constant", which deals with time travelling. The concept is intertwined with the romance of Desmond Hume and Penelope Widmore to give it a wonderful combination. Haha, the Scottish military slangs were nicely done =p. Totally loved it..lol. The producers were careful indeed not to get caught with the paradox of time travelling. It was reported that they took double the time to write this episode so as to ensure that the events won't affect or make it inconsistent with the future. So, in that episode, the viewers can see Desmond switching back and forth from 1996 to 2004, trying to search the constant of his life.

Lost and Prison Break has always been my top 2 English dramas to watch. Whenever I feel I'm in a philosophical mood, I'll tune in to Lost..haha. I think not many people outside America will have the stamina to follow Lost after the first two seasons. Lost itself deals with many interesting philosophical and scientific concepts plus American cultural reference. It's easier for many folks to keep tab on Prison Break instead. So, if you're just a common TV viewer with no interest to think further other than watching the stuff on your screen, Lost may seem to be too complicated and confusing. Not only that, if you miss one or two episodes, you'll miss lots of stuff and future plot lines may seem to be rather foreign. Haha, for me, I kinda get excited whenever I watch Lost because of the concepts and creativity that are present in the show. Some of the stuff reminds me of the things I read in my arts course. In fact, the general theme of the show is inspired from William Golding's Lord of the Flies and the movie Cast Away. Clever use of names such as Kate Austen (allusion to author Jane Austen), Desmond Hume (philosopher David Hume), Danielle Rousseau (philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau) and Juliet Burke (Edmund Burke) gives a new dimension to the characters. There always seem to be so much of talking points in the show..haha.

Of course, with season 4 concluding, viewers are going to wonder, how long are they gonna pull this islander thing on? 10 seasons?..haha. The producers gave a reassuring word that they have an end in mind and it was not made for the sake of extending it (unlike Smallville which doesn't seem to have an ending..haha). So, there will be a season 5, which is slated to be out next year and it will end with Season 6 in 2010. Wooo..I'll be looking forward to them returning back to the island (if they can find it..haha). For now, it's back to tuning in to Prison Break, with their own Season 4 now showing in America. =p

Ronaldo Returns

Ron's favourite past-time is diving but the United fans won't mind about that

Man Utd recorded their first home league win of the season after beating Bolton 2-0. It was always clear that Man Utd were under the pressure to win this game. It's a must-win game and there's no excuse for a draw. Ferguson chose to bench Rooney and placed Berbatov and Tevez to lead the front lines instead. Fletcher and Park continued their first team runs because of their form. Even Scholes and Giggs had to give way. Anderson started in the first eleven too.

Man Utd were dominant in the match but for some reason or so, the Bolton goalkeeper Jaasklainen had some Buffon aura boost on him and had kept United out time and time again. Bolton were ran ragged but managed to prevent themselves from being thrashed by using body blocking techniques to stop incoming shots. Bolton were shitty in defence, because even Ferdinand is acting out his secret dream of becoming a striker with a few shots..haha. One can see that United's attack improved tremendously with the presence of Ronaldo. He had a couple of on-target shots and his free kicks were as deadly as ever. There was one moment in the second half where his shot actually glided past Jaasklainen but unfortunately for him, it hit the woodwork with the slightest plop at a time when Man Utd desperately needed a goal to prevent a goalless draw.

United's break came when the referee pointed to the spot after Jloyd Samuel's tackle on Ronaldo. Actually, both managers were surprised that a penalty was given. Replays showed that Samuel had a slight touch on the ball and Ronaldo with his "skill", magnified the falling momentum to 10 times more than usual. Bolton were incensed but the referee's decision is final, and Ronaldo coolly converted it on the spot. Haha, Ferguson cheekily remarked that Styles still owes him 4 more penalties! Afterthat, Fergie unleashed Rooney who is like a trapped lion in a cage, onto the field. It was a vital substitute as Rooney went to grab a goal to open his scoring account of the season. The 2nd goal was truly a superb link up between Rooney and Ronaldo. Ronaldo dashed forward past the Bolton defenders and instead trying to dribble horizontally past, he provided a nice little flick and back pass to Rooney who was just behind him. Rooney twisted a little to angle himself and rams it past the goalie. Lol, one of the most fantastic assist I've ever seen. The ball control, speed coordination and back pass were great combination of skills from Ronaldo.

The question now is, to what extent is Ronaldo indispensable to Man Utd? Can there be life in Man Utd if he moves on to Real Madrid? Of course Man Utd would continue to prosper even after their best players had left but finding a replacement for him would be a hell of a problem. It's just like when United could never find another Keane or when they needed to search for almost 7 years to get a similar Schmeichel clone in the form of van der Sar. I would say right now, Man Utd's effective focal point of attack is 60% dependent on Ronaldo while the other 40% is team effort. Until dudes like Anderson and Nani matures, and Rooney+Tevez be consistently productive, Ronaldo will continue to be in Man Utd what Henry is to Arsenal, Lampard in Chelsea or Gerrard in Liverpool. Ronaldo's been an ass in trying to get into Real Madrid, but the fans can't deny that they'll love him the moment he starts playing again. There is certainly a fine line between arrogance and bragging rights.

Looking at the other results, it's a massive shock week again as Hull City BEATS the Gooners 2-1 right at the Emirates Stadium. Oh gosh, the Gooners lost to a newly-promoted team right at home...hahahaha!! The funny thing was that none of the goals is scored by them! Even their goal had to be a Hull own goal..haha. Arsene must be wondering what his "wonderkids" are doing. 3 points lost against a noob team meant that 3 points had to be won against one of the other 3 rivals.

Newcastle is hopelessly HOPELESS. Period. The Geordies lost to Blackburn at home in St. James Park and they are feeling the miserables without King Kev's managerial presence. Some unknown manager came up to take over King Kev instead while the club owner is desperately trying to sell the club off. Another hopelessly hopeless case, Tottenham Hotspur, LOST yet AGAIN and this time to Portsmouth, who had being whipped 6 goals by Man City and 4 goals by Chelsea in their last two matches. A draw would have been decent against a jellied pounded Portsmouth, but nope, Tottenham came nowhere in scaring Portsmouth. Haven't we seen this nonsense before at previous seasons? Tottenham is currently last while Newcastle is second last. How much did Hull City spend? Look at where the Tigers are. Compare them with Spurs. Lol. 67 million pounds worth of transfer for Spurs can't even earn them one win after 6 matches. It will be interesting to see how deep the rabbit hole goes for the Geordies and Spurs. Both of their fates inevitably tied together. Dumb and Dumber. Boumsong and Bramble..hahaha.

Green Tea Candy

Mhmmmm...Wouldn't you want one of those? :)

Yesterday, I went to Mid-Valley with my classmates for some chill out session. Yay! The one week slack/study week is here..haha. After walking around for a while, we went to have tea break at Big Apple Doughnuts. Gosh, those doughnuts are superb, colourful and appetizing. This is my first time having it and these are really high quality doughnuts! Lol..I tried the green tea and chocolate nuts flavour. I think they're churning in big money, because the chefs are making it continuously like factory bots and doughnuts are being sold like hot cakes at every second.

Mid-Valley had some very beautiful Hari Raya decorations. One interesting that I noticed was how the Malays buka puasa in masses. What happen was that all the restaurants, KFC etc were filled with lots of people but nobody's eating after they had purchased their food. They were just chatting away in their seats. Lol, so all the restaurants were clogged up with people and nobody's moving. Hmmm..I'm just wondering who would be giving the signal to buka puasa. Does he/she looks at the next table to see if anybody's eating? I think that's where the radio comes in handy for the announcements..hehe.

Anyways, as I was walking around, I spotted the Purple Cane shop and I recalled my aunt telling me about that shop selling tea green tea candy. I've been trying to find it ever since I tasted it..haha. I think that's the only shop that sells green tea candy in Malaysia coz that sort of candy is made from Taiwan. It's pretty cool since that candy actually contains tea powder and it's not too sweet too plus I love the taste of green tea..lol. RM 6 is expensive for a packet of candies but hey, those are good stuffs..lol. I wanna buy like 2 or 3 packets as stockpiles to keep my sleepy brain awake in the morning but apparently they only had 1 left..haha. So, I can say I'm fortunate to have the last packet =p

UUCA forum

It's feels great to serve in drums for CF yesterday! The practice really went very well and I'm feeling lots of improvement in myself already. I could do some high-hats tip-tapping easily now along with the rest of the worship team..hehe. The CF drum is quite limited with only one cymbal where the crash and ride is combined together but I'm glad I could make the best out of it..lol. During dinner, it was pretty funny when somebody actually tampered with Kelvin's coke can and when it was opened, it started spraying juice across the table much to the sudden amazement by the whole table. For a moment, I thought somebody was toasting champagne..haha.

Anyways, we had this University and University Colleges Act forum today at one of the lecture theaters. As you've known, the UUCA is meant to make university students in Malaysia to be docile animals..lol. Uhhh..I had difficulty following the first two speakers because their language proficiencies are rather inadequate but I kinda have an idea what they were talking about. I disagreed a little on the first speaker's notion that some authorities think that students are too dumb to get into politics. Rather, they know that unis are potential birthplaces for radical movements. If you look at history, especially at the 20th century, most awareness movements stem up from the universities. The founding fathers of Southeast Asian nations like Sukarno, Tunku Abdul Rahman, Lee Kwan Yew, Jose Rizal and Aung San all had their awareness of politics and nationalism awakened in their universities days. They definitely know the potential threat that uni students could pose (especially disobedient and rebel law students..haha), so the UUCA is being enforced especially during Dr M's time to silence these bunch.

Haha, I didn't know that one of the Inti law lecturers, Mr Aru, is actually a DAP politician. He's also an elected state assemblyman in the DUN. Lol, his speech was the most entertaining and it was straight to the point. The definition of students becomes complicated when one considers about working adults who do part-time studying, overseas students, masters or PhD pursuers. Are they gonna get blasted by UUCA too? What about BN clubs in the UK?..hahahaha. One amendment that was made in the UUCA this year was that students would not be charged under the criminal penal code but instead, is left to the Uni's disciplinary board to suspend. Slight improvement, but more must be done to ensure that potentials of the universities don't get bogged down by politics. The UUCA over the years had certainly achieved its aim to some extend in creating generations of students who are blissfully ignorant of the political situation in the country until recently. Anyways, it was overall an informative forum although it would be nice to have more student participation.

Lol..btw, I'm kinda intrigued by the Word Challenge game in Facebook. I can't seem to stop playing it..hahahaha..

The Bridge record remains intact

Park Ji Sung draws first blood for Manchester United

Fair result. Both deserved a point. But I thought that Man Utd would have gotten the kill steal with a 1-0 win if they had held on. So many "would be-s" eh for Man Utd in the past two big match up against rivals. Both games also saw United taking the lead first but at least yesterday's game didn't end tragically for United.

Man Utd showed their desire to attack right from the beginning. It's surprising to see Park or Fletcher starting but, I guess Fergie had put them there because of their good form. There's good variation on the right flank as Fletcher and Hargreaves could exchange each other's roles with ease. Anyways, because of Hargreaves' excellent technical crosses, he ends up charging on the right most of the time. I guess Brown got dropped because of his howler last week and in place was Captain Neville and young boy Evans who had impressed at the Villareal match.

Chelsea nearly conceded a boo boo goal when Cech awkwardly tried to close down Berbatov, leaving much space behind him. Before Cech could run back, Rooney tried a speculative lob over him. He was lucky there because the lob narrowly missed the goal mouth. Afterthat, another opportunity presented itself when Ferdinand was on the receiving end of a perfect opportunity and position to drill the ball past Cech. However, the Chelsea goalkeeper succeeded in saving it with his legs.

Man Utd were 1-0 up at the 18th minute as a result of an excellent attacking build up. Patrice Evra shrugged off Bosingwa to provide a ball for Berbatov to shoot. Cech managed to push it away only and unfortunately for him, it went straight to Park Ji Sung's boots who delightfully slotted the ball past the keeper. United held on nicely for a 1-0 lead at half-time. Chelsea tried hard to come back but I would say the United backline did well in closing down the shots from Chelsea. There were one or two panic moments, but Chelsea certainly had a hard time trying to break down the stubborn United defence. Anelka could have equalised but he helplessly watched as the ball glided across him without making contact with his boots into the goal. Btw, Evans did quite well for his starting line-up place. At the 80th minute, Rooney's clumsy challenge resulted in a free kick for Chelsea. Mikel floated the ball into the box and Kalou emerged out of a sudden unmarked by anyone and nodded it past off Kuszczak's reach. Ferdinand was late for a few seconds in realising that Kalou was unmarked. Well well, nobody would have anticipated that Solomon would whack one in his head cos he seldom does that. The score shouldn't have been 1-1 but instead 2-2 or 3-3, cos both teams had great opportunities to score. Joe Cole, in particular, was guilty of squandering two one-on-one opportunities with the goalies. Lol, I'm not sure how he could miss that.

Ahhhhh, Man Utd were so close in getting the three points! It was just 10 minutes more! Chelsea's unbeaten home record stays that way for now. Uhhh..Man Utd need some victories now. 4 games played and only 1 win. Fortunately, the next batch of games looks to be quite easy. Seriously, Rooney needs to get his scoring boots on, and so does Ronaldo, Tevez and Berbatov. For the other Premier League games, Tottenham's misery at the bottom of the table continues as they were held to a 0-0 goal at White Hart Lane. Newcastle continues to be hopelessly hopeless as they were beaten 1-3 by West Ham. Boardroom troubles and King Kev's self-induced departure are affecting the players' morale severely. Ohh..and the most impressive result of the weekend is Man City's 6-0 thrashing of Portsmouth. This is impressive considering that Portsmouth themselves are quite a decent team. Gosh, this is a sign of things to come. A 2nd Chelsea is emerging and Robinho is proving superbly well why he's worth 32 million pounds. 2 goals in 2 games. They are the team to watch out for and very soon, there could be England's Big five instead of four eh. I would say Liverpool's minimal 4th place position would be most threatened especially and their 0-0 draw against Stoke gives a little credit to the theory.

Hehe, I'm forseeing that the English Premier League will no longer be as clear cut in the past. The traditional Big Four will have to work hard for their points and emerging teams like Man City and Aston Villa are threatening to dislodge the comfortable positioning. The new boys of the block are not falling down as easily while Tottenham and Newcastle continues to underperform. Looks like we're having a rollercoaster ride of a season ahead of us! =p

Ok-lar...

Today is probably the earliest I've ever woken up in Nilai - 5.30 am. Jason's fetching us with his car, so by 7am, we are already off. Gosh, it really felt as if I'm waking up for secondary school again., and the weird thing is that that experience happens to fall on a Sunday. After adjusting here and there, we only managed to start practice at about 8am. This meant that we had less than 2 hrs to prepare.

The first song was easy enough, cos it's a slow song. But the fast songs scheduled for today's service is probably one of the hardest and complicated in terms of technicality in the Christian songbooks. They are Hillsong's "I'm not ashamed" and "Break Free". When I heard about them in the song list, I already knew about the uphill challenge that I'm about to face. These two songs require lots of two-handed 16-beats high-hat style, especially Break Free. Not only that, these two songs don't really fit into the conventional rock song pace bars and is pretty unpredictable and uneven. So, one moment it's one style and the other moment, it's a completely different set and the change has to be done in a smooth transition and not abrupt. Ack, I really need more than 2 hrs to experiment and practice on that if I were to play well. In order for it to sound decent in the rush of time, I changed the two-handed 16-beat into a single-handed one which is similiar to the Ramones' Blitzkrieg Bop high-hat section coupled with frequent cymbal claps. And man, it's freaking tiring doing one-hand 16 beat! There needs to be lots of mental focus also to prevent myself from derailing. Gosh, I thought that the 1 hr practice before CF on Wednesdays was bad enough, but the pressure in this case was multiplied ten folds. Lol, it seems that God is raising the minimum bar for me quite often ehhh..before I could even catch my breath. =p

Another challenge on playing for the main service is also to constantly watch the worship leader's hand signal. Concentration is important there so that I don't end up drifting away doing something else from the others. Haha, when the bassist starts looking at me out of a sudden, I know that I've screwed up somewhere while playing..lol. I'm the newest guy over there while the rest are pretty much acquainted with each other and have some chemistry on playing together. So, I kinda get a rather weird feeling when all of them started staring at me at the moments when I accidentally drifted away. In a short time, there's also lots of stuff to keep in mind and that could result in information overload. Unfortunately, my mind blanked out for a moment towards the last part of Break Free and I was temporarily off-course for a few seconds. I hope that wasn't too obvious..haha. Btw, it's definitely most useful if one has the skill to put up a blank face when one screws up so that people won't know he/she screwed up halfway..lol.

Of course, there are plenty of positives to be taken out from this first time experience. Hehe, for the slow songs, I'm pretty pleased that I had great control over it and managed to come up with a few variations. I've noticed that I've improved tremendously also on the high-hat clapping. High-hat clapping requires a lot of work on the left leg so, I need to practice it often to prevent it from becoming the lazy leg..haha. Yup, it becomes less monotous and more creative with high hat-clapping. In order to achieve the richest sounds, the drummer needs to ensure that all four limbs had to be autonomous from each other. Gosh, this means that my mind has to be splitted into four..lol.

Anyways, the GFS folks are very encouraging. I really wanna thank those that gave me those encouragements and yea, I hope I could have more opportunity to serve in the future :)

CF Picnic!

The entire CF gang (about 30 of us) gathered at the bus-stop at around 8.30 am to wait for the bus. Lots of stuff to be carried there which included food, chairs, mats, a guitar, balls, frisbees..haha. Once we reached Seremban park, we found a suitable spot to place all our stuff and the view's absolutely beautiful with the fountain and the lake. We played a couple of starter games first before proceeding to makan.

Lol, some of us ended up using some of the sandwiches to feed the fishes in the lake. Those fishes are quite huge and they could swallow the chunks of bread in one gulp. After we had enough of the food, we have another set of games, this time more physical ones like dog and bone and captain's ball. Haha, I think all of us were baked thoroughly by the blazing sun. Esther was saying that she is no longer "little miss shanshine" (her msn nick) and is changed instead to "little miss very afraid of shanshine"..lol. And the funny thing was that the silly volleyball fell into the lake TWICE and we had to wait for like 20 minutes for the wind to push it to float to the opposite side. Anyways, I also took the opportunity to experiment with some photographic shots with my small digital camera. It was tiring and crazy but I enjoyed myself today..lol. Hehe, it was also a great time to know more about a few of the CF members, both old and new, after chatting with them. :)

Bless me tomorrow Lord! Help me get the beats right. :)