Enough...

"I'll be giving my old mate Big Sam a hug and a kiss when I see him, maybe two kisses."

- Ferguson, after Sam Allardyce's Bolton held The Special Team to a 2-2 draw that enabled United to open a five-point gap at the top of the Premiership standings with only three games remaining.

10th United goal

In his 11 seasons at Old Trafford as a United defender, Phil Neville scored only nine times in 386 appearances (five times, if you only consider his 263 league games as a Red Devil). He has just scored his 1oth goal for Manchester United, but as an Everton player. The Toffees captain sent the ball into the back of his own net instead of clearing it. It must have been hard on him, but United aren't complaining!

He stated: "We got ourselves into a good position by getting into a two-goal lead. But we let them back into the game with an individual mistake that they scored from. Then we made three more mistakes, including one from me, and we were punished. It is disappointing from our point of view."

Magic 7 (Part One)

"I've seen Beckham and Cantona — and films of George Best. Now I, too, have the No 7 and I will do my best to become a great player like those players from the past. They were entertaining players, like me, and perhaps there's a certain spirit about the jersey. The No 7 shirt is a legend's shirt at Manchester United, especially.

"Before I came, I knew it was a big club, one of the best in the world. Everybody, more or less, knows Man United, even those who don't follow football. Being the first Portuguese to play for them is a big honour. This is a club where you can grow as a footballer, reach as high a level as you want to. The manager encourages young players, Sir Alex has helped me a lot, supporting me through some difficult times. I think he's a very human person, very sincere."

Insensitive!

I've always believed in the benefits of National Service training. There is nothing like National Service to bring out the discipline and independence in our children. My daughter had hoped to be selected for National Service when she completed her Form Five two years ago but she was not selected. When arms training was introduced, I was rather apprehensive above this but I believe now that this will make the trainees more appreciative of the security of this country.

Of course, there are always the odd cases of mismanagement that we read in the newspapers. I wasn't surprised when the first cases of sexual abuses and bullying were reported. While the government has been fast enough to take action, it could still have been more efficient. For example, trainee deaths at the National Service camps can be avoided if the camp administrators are more careful, observant and diligent. Trainees themselves can be trained to notice warning symptoms among their fellow mates.


But what takes the cake is the sad news today that a National Service trainee was not allowed proper time off to visit her sick father and later, to attend to his funeral. And the camp was only 30 minutes away from her home. That's sad and reflects very badly on the camp administrators. Are they so heartless? After all, the trainee's sister had produced a note from the hospital about their father's medical condition. He had suffered a severe stroke. And two days later, despite producing a death certificate, the trainee was only given a few hours off to grieve. It's not everyday that a person's parent dies, you know...

He's free

Professor Stephen Hawking reached for the sky and he touched the heavens today.

"Zero-gravity is wonderful. I could have gone on and on. Outer space here I come..."

- Stephen Hawking, 65 -
after experiencing zero gravity flight in a specially modified Boeing 727
26 Apr 2007

That's telling him!

I just can't resist reproducing these delicious remarks from Sir Alex Ferguson:

"Jose Mourinho seems to be on some sort of personal crusade about regulations. I am surprised no action has been taken against him. He just seems to go on and on and on.

"He abused Barcelona in the past. He has accused the Swedish referee [Anders Frisk]. He put the German referee [Markus Merk] under pressure the other night. He insulted Liverpool, a club with great history. He suggested their players were going to hunt down Didier Drogba . . . Jesus Christ, it goes on and on and on. It's a rant all the time now. And that's disappointing. I don't think it's fair to the game itself. As for Cristiano Ronaldo, everyone is entitled to have a comment or opinion. That doesn't mean to say they are liars. He's on about changes in the regulations but I'd like to know who does he think has changed the regulations. Is it us? Or the FA? Or the Premier League? Who exactly is changing the regulations? I think the FA and the Premier League have let him off lightly on this because what he's saying is that our game is suspicious. And I think that's wrong.

"We all get good and bad decisions. Nobody is exempt. But when he was the manager at Porto, let's remember we had a goal disallowed against them that knocked us out of the European Cup [in 2004]. We may have won it otherwise. Paul Scholes had a goal disallowed [wrongly, for offside] but we didn't go to war on it, did we? It's part of the game. You don't like it, you complain and you feel disappointed, but it's football. You just get on with it.

"Or should he be pointing to the fact Tottenham were forced to play on a Easter Saturday morning, a day and a half after their previous game, to allow Chelsea to rest before their European tie? We have to play Manchester City at 12.45 on a Saturday after a European tie in Milan next Wednesday. Is that fair? We don't think so but we are not going to start accusing and raising suspicion that Chelsea and the Premier League have got it carved up. We just have to accept it. We'll go to Man City and do our very best, because it's important for this club to do it the right way. There will be no complaints from us. We made a case to the Premier League [to get the game put back 24 hours] and it was refused - and we'll get on with it.

"It is a rant all the time now. I don't think it is fair to the game. Jose is a very clever man. Everything is calculated by him. I don't think it's the strain getting to him, I think it's calculated. In some people's eyes he is a hero. I don't know who is a villain and who is a hero. According to what I read in the paper, he thumbed his nose at UEFA the other day by hiding in a laundry bin to do a team talk. And then he’s gone on talking about it. Is that breaking regulations? I don’t know.

"The biggest fear for us is that by citing the fact we are not allowed to get penalties at Old Trafford - and we have had three against us this year and there have been none at Stamford Bridge - it puts a terrible pressure on the referees in future games . It is a calculated move. That, without doubt, is calculated by him. The referee who gave Bolton a penalty against us a few weeks ago [Alan Wiley] is our referee [at Everton today]. What kind of pressure does this put him under? We have four games to go now. If we get a penalty kick against us in that time, Mourinho wins that war. That is wrong."

Tax break

Hi, folks!

You'll have to excuse me these next few days if I do not make my opinions heard more often. It's tax submission deadline for most of us honest citizens who are trying to make a living in this country. As always, I've also to prepare my wife's too. So, it is double work.

E-filing. The government's been trying to push us along to use e-filing but I really don't know whether I want to go this way. What's holding me back is the need to do double work - writing everything into the Form BE and then recopying into the electronic form. Doesn't sound very efficient.

Either way, I'm struggling with the language. Everything is in Bahasa Malaysia and I have difficulty understanding that's being sad.

Ooops! Too many words already. See you next week.

Crowning glory

Trust firefighters to come to the rescue again. In Essex, they came to a boy's rescue after he got his head stuck through a toilet seat.

The two-and-a-half-year-old toddler walked into a fire station with his mum on Tuesday. She said the boy had put his head through a small trainer seat for the toilet and now could not remove it.

"His mum had tried to get it over his head but it couldn't budge. So they came down here and we went to work on it. We put some dish washing liquid on his head and ears and it slid off nice as pie," firefighter Chris Cox said, adding: "The boy was very brave and he toddled away as happy as can be."

They're coming!

A Bernama news report says that Manchester United will be coming here to play a friendly match with a Malaysian selection on 27 July 2007. The match is a government and private sector initiative as part of Visit Malaysia Year 2007 and in conjunction with our 50th year of independence.

Sumatran rhino unveiled

Here is the video footage from YouTube. It starts with the rhino foraging in undergrowth and then breathing heavily as it became curious and approached the camera. It was that close because the animal's eyes, horn, hair and wrinkles could be seen clearly. And then suddenly, the rhino was gone!

Rare breed

Here's a still photo of that rare animal known as the Sumatran rhino.


It's part of a very valuable video footage that captured the rhino (Dicerorhinus Sumatrensis) in its natural habitat in the jungles of the Sabah interior.

We know that most animals tend to be noctural so this two-minute video of an adult male rhino was filmed around midnight on 16 Feb 2007, showing it feeding, walking towards the camera and sniffing the equipment.

According to the World Wide Fund For Nature Malaysia, this is the first time the animal’s behaviour has been filmed in the wild.

The Sumatran rhinos are very shy creatures and almost never spotted. Moreover, they are solitary animals and there are fears that they may face extinction within 10 years if efforts are not made to protect their natural habitat. It is estimated that only between 25 and 50 of them may be left in Borneo.

Visit the World Wild Life Malaysia and learn more about their efforts in nature conservation.

Rampaging ... cow?

The farmer in the dell,
The farmer in the dell,
Hi-ho, the derry-o,
The farmer in the dell.

The farmer lost a cow,
The farmer lost a cow,
Hi-ho, the derry-o,
The farmer lost a cow.

25,000 euros is the estimate of the damage caused by a pregnant cow as it ran riot through the streets of Hanover in Germany.

As the owner, a camera crew, police and fire fighters went after the cow, which had escaped from a farm on Monday night, it became increasingly agitated and violent as it ran through the city in a three-hour spree, destroying or damaging property in its wake.

The pursuit ended after five hours when police managed to tranquilise the animal.

"She probably won't remember any of it when she wakes up again," said a fire services spokesman, "but the farmer will, because he's going to have to pay for all the damages."

Tales from Serdang

Serdang is a small, laidback town in Malaysia.

It's so small that there's only one main road passing through the town and possibly less than 10 or 15 smaller roads that are lined by residential houses or terraced shophouses. None of the shopping centres that you see in the cities. It's so strange to walk along a road that's fully residential and then you turn a corner and there's a row of old shophouses.

It's a quaint little place where everyone knows everyone else. The moment a stranger walks into town, all eyes are on him. The locals will want to know what's his business is to be here. Are you visiting someone or are you going to the Chai Sin Yah temple nearby?


The temple is quite popular, especially during the Chinese New Year period where people come by the busloads to ask the local deity for some good luck. For a ringgit, you can make a lucky dip and pull out a small, folded strip of paper written with a four-digit number. Surely, many people would have struck it rich sometime in the past or else the temple's reputation would not have spread far and wide.


Not quite so long ago, someone came to the town and borrowed the statue of the deity. That's quite unheard of. It created such a stir. Luckily, the statue was returned days later. It came back as mysteriously as it went. Perhaps the deity went on vacation, a little break from the hard work of dishing out luck to people 365 days a year even though it's only a numbers game.

The other attraction in this small sleepy town is the Serdang lake. I'll just offer you two photos of this place. It could have been a former tin mine but now it is a scenic spot for people to come and relax. A bit of a nonsense, actually, because everyone in Serdang relaxes 24 hours in a day. You can either retire to your beds at 9pm or join the men in some coffee shops to drink the night away and tell tales of who have come into the town today.



Anyway, back to Serdang lake. Really very quiet and scenic, isn't it? I loved it. Oh...now you know. I have been to Serdang and back. And yes, I was at the temple too. And yes, I invested RM1 and I'm still waiting to collect.

On the double

"It's a special night. It is amazing and a big honour for me to win trophies like this in the English Premier League. I am very proud. My colleagues have voted for me and that is fantastic because the players know the qualities of (other) players. I want to keep working hard and getting better because these trophies have now given me more motivation. This great team has helped me as well, because when the team win it is easier for us all to play with more confidence. Everything is right this season and I am really enjoying it."

Learning pains

I bought an 80Gb portable hard disk at the last PC Fair in Penang this month and I was struggling to set it up. It shouldn't have been a problem at all but in truth, I had never handled a portable HDD before. I've always thought all hard disks are very delicate and need to be handled carefully, unlike thumbdrives.

I did read in the manual that if I were to hook the portable HDD to my MacBook, the installation would be taken care of automatically. So, putting great faith in this suggestion, I connected the portable HDD to the MacBook through the USB port and just pressed Enter, Enter, Enter all the way until the end of the process. I didn't bother to read the step-by-step instructions clearly.

That was when my problems began. Accessing the portable HDD with my MacBook using its Mac OS X was easy. Heck, I was already transferring files to it and happily creating folders and sub-folders.

But I just couldn't connect the beast to any of my desktop home PCs. Sure, I could see a message telling me a new USB device was detected but I could not see it at all in My Computer or Windows Explorer.

My Mac sifu, Yap Kant, from CG Computers told me that I should've chosen MS DOS format when I first plugged the portable HDD into the MacBook. But never mind, I could still do it if I didn't mind losing everything that I had already transferred there.

No problem with me, as long as I'm able to get it to work on both the MacBook and my Windows desktops. I must've gone through the process about 10 times but each time, my desktops would only smell the portable HDD. Nothing more than that. Exasperation. Couldn't anyone help me?

In desperation, I thought of one final trick. Could it be that the 2.5-inch drive needed more power? I connected a power adapter to the four-port USB hub on my desktop and then plugged in the portable HDD.

Suddenly, it worked! All that it needed was that extra juice. I'm now the happy owner of an 80Gb 2.5-inch Western Digital portable hard disk drive.

English football

Wow ... I never realised the extent of the English football system - how far it penetrates society - until I saw this entry in Wikipedia. It's a whole industry all by itself!

Zero points

Ever heard of the Lancaster City Football Club? No? I wouldn't blame you. Until last week, I hadn't heard of them either.

What makes Lancaster so special is because this season, with only three games to go before the end of the football season in England, the team is languishing in the Conference North league with ... zero points.

After playing 39 games, Lancaster do not have a single point and are 41 points behind second-from-bottom Scarborough.

Early in the season, they actually started off with two wins and three draws. That's worth nine points. Then the club went into administration last December. Pok-kai. Bankrupt. They were punished by having 10 points deducted. Because of this, they were suddenly thrusted into negative territory.

"Zero makes us look as though we have lost every game this season but we haven't," Lancaster chairman Mick Hoyle said. "We had nine points but all the players left because we couldn't afford to pay them.

"After we released our big stars and those on higher wages, we went looking for players from the local leagues. We brought in local boys and they picked up a point. That would have taken us to 10 but with the deduction we are on zero. But we would like to finish with plus points.

"Morale is good and spirits are high. The lads may lack strength and a bit of confidence but they go out there with a great sense of pride. We just pay them basic petrol expenses to get to the games, so we have gone from a club with wages of £5,000 to £500."

Hoyle intends 's to reach further into the local community by recruiting some players from Lancaster University. "We will keep going," said Hoyle.

Note: They've now also lost their 40th game on 21 Apr 2007 by a 0-2 score. So still at zero points.

International Earth Day

21 Apr 2007, 8.07pm (Malaysian time)


Two quotes:

Astronaut Walter Schirra (Gemini 6 mission): “I left Earth three times. I found no place to go. Please take care of Spaceship Earth.”

Astronaut Bill Anders (Apollo 8 mission): “We came all this way to explore the moon and the most important thing is that we discovered the Earth.”

Ghost ships

This has got to be an unsolved mystery of the decade.


Last Thursday (19 Apr 2007), the Australian Navy boarded a 40-foot yacht off Queensland to find it mysteriously empty of its occupants.

What could have happened to its three owners - all retired West Australian sailors - who had purchased the yacht and were planning to sail back to Perth via Cape York, Darwin and Broome?

A few days later, their boat was found drifting 80 nautical miles off the north-eastern coast with its engine running, saloon lights on and sails set, a laptop computer turned on, radio and global positioning satellite (GPS) working, food on the table but without a crew. Three life jackets and survival equipment, including an emergency beacon, were found on board, but no life rafts.

Indeed, the only two things found amiss was the absence of the three-man crew and a sail which was badly shredded.

Night sky

I am rather upset this week at events which have been happening around me. So do excuse me if I'm not my normal self.

But luckily, today is the weekend ... a time for me to recover and to reflect on how best I can channel my anger and frustration into more useful activities which admittedly have taken a back seat these past few months. For my own sake, it's time for me to look into them again!

First, I've gotta calm down. I will calm down. Tonight, at 8.50pm, I was taking a breather outside the house and I saw a wondrous sight in the western sky: the three-day-old crescent moon hanging low in the sky with a small bright light to its left. It's Venus, our nearest planet. Beautiful...

Note: The picture was taken with my Dimage Z5 with ISO set to 100, aperture at 4.5 and shutter speed of 1/3 second. The camera was handheld, but resting on a pillow to sturdy myself. I'm quite used to low-speed photography.