Things like this should never exist. Not in my beloved country.

-gAvIn-

Chinese traditionnal music: Pipa

Pipa is one of the traditionnel chinese music instrument which is played like a guitar, held vertically.
Apparently, the player is a chinese woman whole immigrated to Canada...She played beautifully, with very good strumming technique, playing the pipa requires you to strum a single string with all five fingers and she is able to do that with the same amount of energy and precision for each of her fingers!


Another one is called the 12 stupid abeit-good-looking gals team playing
El Condor Pasa
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lETkMaTOkP4

It's very famous, I think you know the music.

The original version, sung in spanish
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fd3Qpr5jrxM



If you got time,
The piece is called 'The horse race', but he's not that good, i've seen better.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6V9JinlbpHw

-gAvIn-

i was just up to my mum’s waist and i was holding her hand...

As far as i can remember, i have always had a very high standard of “happiness”… a standard that i have yet to meet or find in the past few months...

I tried hard this morning to remember when the last time was when i was just plain and simple ‘happy’, and my memories took me back to one fine morning a long long time ago... i can’t really remember what day it was, or even what year it was but i can remember the ‘scene’... it was very early, the sun wasn’t out yet, my mum had me dressed for school and we were walking down the street in front of our house to the end of it where there was a kuih-muih stand... then, i was happy, i was content... i remember i was just up to my mum’s waist and i was holding her hand... oh how i wish i could go back to that day... or those days... when life was simple and mummy did everything for me... =)

The mornings we’re pretty much the same, i can remember gobbling down a bowl of cornflakes for example... every morning if my parents had bought a box of cornflakes, my brother and i had a bowl of it set on the table awaiting us and a cup of milo each that my mum would pour onto my cornflakes and my brother would do his himself... i remember being jealous that he could do it on his own... =)

That was a time when i could remember being content... i guess for me, happiness is something that i value in terms of quantity versus quality... as in, i guess i would rather be content every single day than have a chance of being very happy at one moment, coupled with the risk of being heartbroken the next... very much like i’ve been for the past seven months here in Bordeaux...

Sometimes i wish i never came here... never met the people i met, never known the things i know... never had the feelings i have... but all this is a part of life isn’t it? As we grow older, we realise that life isn’t just as simple as it once was...

-adriano-

Way Back Into Love
Hugh Grant & Hayley Bennett

I've been living with a shadow overhead
I've been sleeping with a cloud above my bed
I've been lonely for so long
Trapped in the past, I just can't seem to move on

I've been hiding all my hopes and dreams away
Just in case I ever need em again someday
I've been setting aside time
To clear a little space in the corners of my mind

All I want to do is find a way back into love
I can't make it through without a way back into love
Oh oh oh

I've been watching but the stars refuse to shine
I've been searching but I just don't see the signs
I know that it's out there
There's got to be something for my soul somewhere

I've been looking for someone to shed some light
Not somebody just to get me through the night
I could use some direction
And I'm open to your suggestions

All I want to do is find a way back into love
I can't make it through without a way back into love
And if I open my heart again
I guess I'm hoping you'll be there for me in the end
oh, oh, oh, oh, oh

There are moments when I don't know if it's real
Or if anybody feels the way I feel
I need inspiration
Not just another negotiation

All I want to do is find a way back into love
I can't make it through without a way back into love
And if I open my heart to you
I'm hoping you'll show me what to do
And if you help me to start again
You know that I'll be there for you in the end
oh, oh, oh, oh, oh

a beautiful song from music and lyrics by hugh grant that i went to watch with the most beautiful girl i know... =)
ermmm, forgot how to upload songs liao...

-adriano-

The Star has some news about some popular get-rich-quick investment scheme in Malaysia.

Since high school, I have seen lots of similar schemes, too many of them in fact that distracts students from their studies and destroys relationships.

The classical signs that the latest "investment" fad is a pyramid scheme in disguise:
-Schemes promising 2 to 3 percent interest per day.
-schemes promising 300% or you know, up to 1000% of gain per year. (mind mind, even Warren Buffet, the world's second richest guy has consistantly got returns in the mid 20s%)
-They use bombastic terms like investment consultant, leverage, natural resources play, credit default swip, derivatives, options that basically mean nothing in the context they're using.
-They claim that they are from Swiss/USA/UK/-insert your favourite advance nation- with a professionnel investment team but they actually are just from Malaysia.

If you really want to invest but don't know much about the stock market, bond market; no loads (or rather low fees) mutual funds are the way to go. A very good example is Fidelity (although their performance is not as good as before recently) and for people in Malaysia, TA Investment Bhd (I don't really like their high entree fee though).

If not, if you really want to get rich quick, join the pyramid scheme, but with the condition that you get in early and get out before it collapse. Or much better, start your very own scheme and name if after yourself .
If not, you can join UMNO and get rich quick.too :)


Gavin

I live in Bordeaux and what that surprises me is that the tram here are connected to an overhead power line in certain stations and nothing at all for the others.

The stations whom the tram is connected to an electric source is numbered at around 4 stations while the rest, like 20+ of them is without any connection.

Is this possible given that the on board battery looks inexistant to me?

And after some research: (from wiki)
[quote]
There are other methods of powering electric trams, sometimes preferred for aesthetic reasons since poles and overhead wires are not required. The old tram systems in London, Manhattan (New York City), and Washington, D.C., used live rails, like those on third-rail electrified railways, but in a conduit underneath the road, from which they drew power through a plough. It was called Conduit current collection. Washington's was the last of these to close, in 1962. Today, no commercial tramway uses this system. More recently, a modern equivalent to the old stud systems has been developed which allows for the safe installation of a third rail on city streets, which is known as surface current collection or ground-lev.el power supply; the main example of this is the new tramway in Bordeaux.[/quote]


and http://citytransport.info/Bod.htm

Apparently, the tram here is the world's first second-generation tram that draw's power from the ground, instead of overhead electrical cables. The choice is mainly due to aesthetical reasons (to not distrupt the architectural views) but the drawback includes frequent distruptions (as the techonology isn't perfected yet), which really do annoy people here.
The manufacturer, Altrom signed a contract with CUB (communauté urbaine de Bordeaux) which promises to share future profits from sales of this kind of tram in return for us being the guinea pig.
Recently, the on time rate is getting better and better, and according to a website, reaches 99% already.
Cities like Anger, Reims and Orléans will have this kind of tram soon.

Gavin again

Recent news:

1. Ijok is up for by-election
2. The Selangor government has allocated RM36 million for various development projects to be implemented within these two weeks in Ijok.
3. Our MB, Datuk Seri Dr Mohd Khir said the projects were not aimed to fish for votes as claimed by the opposition as they had been planned by the state government for quite some time.

Hmmmmm...how come I have this feeling that this idiot thinks that we malaysian are stupid and bribable?

Another tragedy of an indian man being seperated from his family (wife and six children) because the local Islamic police thinks that his wife is a muslim. *_* His family is now in a reeducation camp I believe.
How can barbaric things like there still happen in Malaysia?

I quote a well know malaysian lawyer:

Sad as it is, and as difficult as it is to say, we are no longer the learned or mature society that we perhaps once were. In place of sophisticated and objective analysis of crucial issues, there is now a regime of sensationalist ignorance and belligerence.

Worse still, we live in a state of denial, insisting that we are more advanced and intellectual than we really are. Look at the issues that figure prominently in the arena of public discourse. How many of these relate to the fundamental aspects of our lives as Malaysians. Admittedly, civil liberty issues such as nude squats and burial rites are important, but where do a lack of coherent economic policy, a lack of coherent governance, a lack of political foresight, an overemphasis on vested interests, institutionalised and crippling corruption and a lack of direction for this great country of ours figure? They do not, in any meaningful way. In having allowed these crucial issues to fall by the way side, in having allowed ourselves to become more interested in being titillated by insane billionaires, sex scandals, Mawi and Academia Fantasia, we have begun throwing away our future.

I used to think that this was due wholly to a media block by the authorities, implemented in tandem with a policy of de-education. I have reconsidered my view and believe that a large part of this is due to an inability, and a lack of desire, on the part of Malaysians to articulate themselves anymore. This is why our media is devoted to gossip and our broadsheets reduced to tabloids. We are all to blame.

Malik Imtiaz Sarwar

The least we can do is to voice out our opinion this coming general election.

Gavin

Foreign products

I bought a bottle of hair shampoo and body shampoo back in Prague because I thought that prices were cheaper there. Recently, when I moved house, my current shampoo/body wash was with Adrian, and wanting desperately to clean myself, I took the 2 Czech products and happily went into the bathroom.

The hair shampoo smells weird, and it doesn't produces foams. Ok, nevermind, maybe it is a shampoo for coloured hairs, as it says in it's label: vivid colours.
The body shampoo is even more weird, it smells nice, too nice to be a body shampoo, and mind, it does not spread when you rub it. @_@ I took a better look at the bottle and I saw some polar like house surrounded with ice and hot sun. SUNTAN LOTION!
It took more than 30 minutes trying to rub the cream off my body.

Trust me, it isn't nice at all when you're all smelly and you desperately wants to be clean, next time, don't buy some foreign products if you're not sure if you understand the label.

Gavin

Long time no post already hor

This few photos that I've put are from Nice and Monaco that I went with Wani and Adrian. I didn't take much photo there, not even 1 in Tours for Chinese New Year, maybe I just got tired of snapping photos.

Anyway, will be going to Paris this 22 for a career talk by some Petronas GM, will head to London this Sunday for the annual scholar's meeting. (which in my opinion, more pork barrel spending :p) Seems glamorous? Nope when you have lots of homeworks and tests hanging down your back.

-gAvIn-