Does anyone still even play English chess anymore? I mean, other than the old folks after their qigong session in the park that is. I used to play a bit when i was small, my brother taught me how to play. Never really had patience for it though, he used to whip my a$$ at it. He always maintained that really good player always looked 10 moves ahead, and a player like him looked about 3-5 moves ahead. Me? I only think of the move i’m making. In the age of PC and Internet games, chess isn’t winning any new converts. I tried googling ‘play online chess’ and there were…

I’ve probably watched more Michael Jackson videos over the last weekend compared to the last two decades combined. With the deluge of tributes and obituaries to the Gloved One, watching the iconic ‘Beat It’ video reminded me of Weird Al Yankovic’s extremely funny parody song and video ‘Eat It!’. Back in the mid 80’s it was the first time i’ve heard of the curly haired comedian, and as i recalled won a Grammy in 1984 for this song. Eat It! by Weird Al (sang to the tune of Beat It by Michael Jackson) How come you’re always such a fussy young man, Don’t want no Captain Crunch, don’t want no…

Let’s see… good book made into crappy movies – lots of them. Dune, Stardust, The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy, are only some of the recent ones that come to mind. Good book made into good movies – well, Lord of the Rings, and umm… ah… anyway I can add another one to the list – Atonement. The book was written by Ian McEwan, and the 2007 film stars James McAvoy and Keira Knightley. I read the book 3 months ago while i was on holiday, and watched the movie soon after returning. Initially I was a little disappointed with the movie, mainly due to three reasons. Firstly i thought…

My father-in-law uses Brylcreem every morning after his bath. The same Brylcreem i used when i was in Primary 1, getting ready for school everyday. It still comes in the small blue cylindrical plastic can, with the lion logo. It still has that blue consistent texture that leaves a sickly sweet smell on your hands long after you washed it. I couldn’t find a pic of the classic Brylcreem online, but the pic of the current packaging is very different. Once in awhile we used the slightly cheaper Code 10, which I think doesn’t have such a strong odour. When we were older we moved on to Vitalis, which isn’t…

Was at a the leader’s meeting some time back, Melissa was leading worship on the keyboards, very low key due to the small gathering. On the last song, she started on a refrain that sounded familiar, but i didn’t seem to know the words them. When we reached the chorus, i realized what song it was – the hymn To God Be The Glory. The reason why the starting didn’t seem familiar was because when i was small my home church only sang the chours, without the verses. A few days later i was looking for the video of the song and lyrics, it was tricky coz there is actually…

The 5,000meter race. On the road, its commonly as the 5k. Men’s world record – Just below 12 mins. Women’s world record – About 14 mins. Both held by Ethiopians. Men’s Asian record – Just below 13 minutes. Held by a Qatari. Women’s Asian record – 14 and a half mins. A Chinese national. Malaysian men’s record – Just over 14 mins. Since 1994. Malaysian women’s record – More than 16 mins. Since 1997. *** I tried doing it seriously the first time two weeks ago. Clocked 44mins. Geez, at 15 mins i hadn’t even reach 2km yet! Last week i paced faster and i dipped below 40mins. Tomorrow will…

Back when i was in Primary 2, we had this Indian classmate (of Tamil descent). He came from a very rich family, one time he took a week off school coz his family went back to visit their ancestral homeland in Ceylon. By that time Ceylon was already long known as Sri Lanka, but somehow our parents and us still referred to it as Ceylon. So for weeks we kept teasing him about “balik Ceylon“. The funny incident was one day when he had already left for the holiday, a teacher asked, “where’s that Indian guy?” to which the joker of the class Azmi replied “kena tembak robot Cylon“. The…

Remember this? It’s the same type of shoes we wore to school when we were younger. Well, almost all of us. The richer kids had the Pallas velcro shoes, the ‘mat rock’s wore the high cut variety but this is was the standard. Saw this vintage series at a shoe store recently, good to know Bata is producing it again. I remember it was a lot cheaper than RM29.90 though. Brings back memories of me painting it with Kiwi Blanco shoe whitener in front of my house every week… and using the teacher’s chalk to cover the black scruffs during class.

This is really cool. In the picture below there are 100 famous people through history, done in a beautiful caricature style. How many can you name? I got until about 50 then i gave up. Click on the picture or the link below the full size image (its VERY big)… Click here to see the full size image. I don’t know who the talented original artist is (I got this mail from Boone), if anyone knows please let me know so that i can credit him/her for it. I’ll post the answers in a few days if anyone needs it 🙂

There’s a small town somewhere in Perak called Malim Nawar, I’ve no idea where it is nor have I ever been there. But that i’ll always remember the name of that town because there’s where my pal Looi came from. I say ‘came’ in the past tense because 17 years ago at the young age of 20 he passed away. He was my classmate and friend during my first year in university. He was actually roommates with my good friend Ray, so the three of us became pretty tight. He was a simple guy, from a humble background, a typical Perak guy of Cantonese descent. He was frank and funny,…