Flying Murder

Read this interesting article on The Independent online. To SUCCESSFULLY kill a fly, youshould ANTICIPATE where the fly would fly away when you attempt to swat it, rather than swat exactly at the place it was resting. This is because of flies' super duper reflexes.

This is true, as I usually do the same thing, which is to clap my hands OVER the fly rather than hitting the table. Try it - it works!



(graphic is the copyright of independent.co.uk)

Coming soon......

The new PSP!!

Other than my iPhone, the other device that I almost always have with me is my PSP. And being the Winning Eleven/Pro Evo Soccer addict that I am, the ONLY game that I have on the PSP is of course Pro Evolution Soccer 2008.

Anyways, Sony have just officially announced the PSP-3000. Admittedly it looks EXACTLY the same as the "slim and lite" PSP-2000, but what excites me about the new version is that Sony claim that the screen is better, and is actually useable OUTDOORS.

One thing that I don't like about the current version is that it's just useless outdoors, and on more than one occasion has led to me making the stray pass or failing to make the last ditch tackle on an opposing striker. Now if only the new PSP has built-in DualShock than it would be PERFECT!

Premier Fantasies

FINALLY, the new season is upon us! For some less succesful teams (Arsenal and Liverpool) you could say their season starts tonight with the Champs League qualifiers.

Anyway, I've joined the OFFICIAL fantasy league at http://fantasy.premierleague.com and set up my team for the season. Hopefully you can join me there, with just a few simple steps:

1. Register a team (it's FREE!!) at http://fantasy.premierleague.com
2. Choose your players - make sure to just choose all the stars as you have to stick within a certain "budget"
3. Join my league - my league ID is 568355-171013

That's it! Easy peasy lemon squeezy.

My very first treasure hunt!

I've always wanted to join a treasure hunt. And no, I'm not talking about real treasure here, the kind associated with pirates and Indiana Jones. But rather, the more urban type of hunt where teams drive around "hunting" for answers to riddles in a set amount of time. It's become a popular pastime here in KL, where even "professional" teams of hunters exist. I've had experience with a "walk-hunt", and also entered the The Sun hunt a few times (even managing to win myself RM100!), but when the opportunity arose, I made the leap to enter my first ever PROPER treasure hunt.

So there we were - me, the missus and another couple - at the flag-off point somewhere in the USJ area at SEVEN in the morning. The hunt's organised by Lexis Nexis and the KL Bar and unfortunately for us, there wasn't any separate Masters category - so it was a baptism of fire for us as we had to compete with the "professionals".

For those of you who haven't joined these hunts before, the questions are mostly "cryptic". The hard part really is to decipher the questions. Once you have (sort of) figured out what the question wants, it's then just a matter of looking out for the answer amongst the multitude of shop signs along the specified route. As an example, the first question that was asked was as follows:

Some trial with its logics revolutionized.

Some of you may be thinking "huh?????". Well this a typical cryptic clue, and you need to know what words to look out for to solve it. There are actually 2 parts for the answer here:

1. "Some" is a partial indicator, which means that a portion of the next word forms the answer. The next word is "trial", so the answer could contain "TR" or "IAL" or even "AL".
2. "Revolutionized" in the question is an anagram indicator, which says that the answer is made up of the jumbled up letters of other words in the question. In this case, "its logics" is the anagram.

Once you've deciphered the question, it's then up to everyone to stare at all the shop signs looking for a name or phrase that fits the question. Lo and behold, the answer was:

IAL LOGISTICS (MALAYSIA) SDN BHD

See how the answer fits the question? "IAL" is part of "trial", and "LOGISTICS" is an anagram of "its logics".

So actually, a LOT of thinking has to be done on the day. Worse still if you have NO IDEA on what the question means, and you end up trying to scrutinize EVERY single shop sign to see if it fits the question in some way!

So how did we do? Well, we got 30 answers out of 40 correct, but didn't get any of the four required "treasures" - more on the treasures in a future post. Including some bonus points, we had a grand total of 95 points. There were prizes for the top 30 out of a total 60+ teams. And guess what? Even the team that finished in 30th place got more points than us!! BOTTOM HALF!! All that effort for nothing!

Well, this is just a start, and there are a few more hunts on the horizon. For the next ones, hoping to enter a Mercer team with the name "The MERCERnaries". Hopefully some luck from our 5-year winning streak in the annual Actuarial Society of Malaysia quiz would rub off!

Staying put - for now

Well, well. Who would've known. Seems that the Ronaldo-Madrid transfer saga has ended - at least for now. And seems that he's staying at Old Trafford - at least for now. The full transcript of his interview with a Portuguese paper can be found at Guardian's football site.

Short of a press conference with Fergie by his side, the interview is the closest you can get to a concrete statement from Ronnie on his future. He says all the right things, that he takes full responsibility for wanting to move, that he didn't want to move because of money, how he's "grateful" to United (reason why he sees a potential world-record transfer fee as his "gift" to the club), and his denial of his support of Blatter's slavery comments (though it was said during a TV interview), bla bla bla bla bla.

Personally, I still don't forgive him for the way he has handled this. To be fair, I accept and understand his reasons for leaving, as I've pointed out in an earlier post. What I CAN'T accept is the timing of him letting us know of his intentions - on the triumphal night of United's Euro win in Moscow itself. The whole summer (or at least the couple weeks after Moscow), the backpages of newspapers worldwide should be filled with praises, analyses and reports of United's unprecendented double triumph. However what we get are "will he or won't he?" articles on Ronaldo. So much so that - together with the Euro tourney - people have all but forgotten the TEAM'S achievements. The least Ronnie could do was to wait until the Euro started, better still AFTER Portugal were kicked out. You get this feeling that the transfer saga even affected his own performance at the tournament.

In the meantime, even if he is staying - say it with me, at least for now - he's still crocked until October, and United have an injury crisis for the first few games of the season. Nani's still banned for that stupid red card last season, Rooney and Carrick both have a "mysterious" African virus, Hargreaves, Saha and Park are all injured (what's new?), and Anderson's at the Olympics. And it's been quiet on the transfer front with United and Spurs stil not agreeing on a price for Berbatov. Oh well, at least we're only playing unlucky Newcastle at home on the first day - my outside bet for relegation this season.

PC Fair

Went to the PC Fair today, first time in a couple of years in fact. Needed to get me some proper speakers for the iMac, as everyone knows that the built-in ones just dont cut it. So after Friday prayers at the KLCC mosque, straight I went to the Convention Centre, thinking going then would be the best time with the less crowd, and should be a half hour, MAX one hour trip. Oh, how WRONG was I.

• Punters were treated like MICE, we could only go in through the main entrance and were guided through all the exhibition halls using a combination of barriers and OVERZEALOUS "jaga"s.

• To make things worse, nowadays the PC Fair takes up a whole TWO floors from one end of the convention centre to another.

• There were just too MANY promoters, at least on this first day, seemed that there were more promoters than visitors. Saying that, I have NO PROBLEMS AT ALL with the skimpily dressed doll-faced promoters (well most of them anyway) who are happy to pose for any old FART with a massive dSLR.

• Speaking of which, I just DESPISE all these promoters who stick leaflets into your face asking if you have broadband. In the past, it only used to be Streamyx, but now we have to face wave after wave of ATTACKS from Maxis Broadband, Celcom Broadband, etc etc etc. And then there are the mobile phone companies promoting their postpaid plans and banks asking us to SELL OUR SOULS by signing for a credit card for a stupid free bag/cap/umbrella. They should sell signs for people to put round their necks saying "I HAVE STREAMYX!!!", or "I'VE GOT A MOBILE PHONE NUMBER ALREADY, HOW MANY FREAKIN' NUMBERS DOES ONE NEED?!?!?!". Maybe that would stop getting bugged by these PESTS.
  

So did I get the speakers then? Yup, bagged myself a set of Edifiers. As you can see, the satellite speakers are not too big and go well with my iMac, yet give a more than decent performance. The subwoofer - not seen in the photo as it's on the floor - though not massive, still manages to RUMBLE MY INSIDES so much that makes me want to use the toilet! Not bad for a set that costs less than RM120, eh?