TOM YUM Soup for the Soul

Recently got my hands on the latest ERAGON series of book, BRISINGR. The whole book series surrounds the life of this young boy who was chosen with a unique destiny to be a Dragon rider, with a dragon, strong powers and an army of soldiers to defend the forces of darkness and unite the races on the face of the earth. Typical fantasy war, fighting story. I was drawn because of that but I thought to highlight the author because few would know how inspiring his story is.

Christopher Paolini was homeschooled by his parents. As a child, he often wrote short stories and poems, made frequent trips to the library, and read widely. The idea of Eragon began as the daydreams of a teen. Christopher’s love for the magic of stories led him to craft a novel that he would enjoy reading. The project began as a hobby, a personal challenge; he never intended it to be published. All the characters in Eragon are from Christopher's imagination except Angela the herbalist, who is loosely based on his sister.

Christopher was fifteen when he wrote the first draft of Eragon. He took a second year to revise the book and then gave it to his parents to read. The family decided to self-publish the book and spent a third year preparing the manuscript for publication: copyediting, proofreading, designing a cover, typesetting the manuscript, and creating marketing materials. During this time Christopher drew the map for Eragon, as well as the dragon eye for the book cover

Some question you might wanna ask yourself:

(1) What was I doing at fifteen?

(2) Did I ever thought about my dreams being accomplished?

(3) Do I know what I was good at doing?

These were the questions that came to my mind when I read about Christopher Paolini's profile. Sometimes we just need to know what our dreams are and even find means and ways to accomplish them.

You really won't know what your wildest imaginations will lead to.

Just imagine!!! *winks*

As the title reads....

What is "CYBERBULLIED"???

When my video gets posted up on the net for all to view and comment.

To find out, click here

A colleague just emailed me an article that men appeared to happiest when they are online as compared to women. Perhaps this has to do with the technology being more male-friendly and generally the guys are the tech-savvy ones. Come to think of it, it is quite true that I do spend a large portion of time on my computer, surfing, playing games, msn-ing, social networking, blogging etc etc. And I won't say that it is less fun then going out to do sports or spending some relaxing time out at the pool or cafe. In essence, there is a time for everything so at the right time and with the right mood, I do what I feel best.

Extracts from the article:
“Just over half of men said happiness meant surfing the Internet, playing online games or accessing social network sites such as Facebook, compared with only 39 percent of women.”

"Fifty-five percent of women said having meals and spending time together as a family made them happiest, compared to 45 percent of men. Women are also more likely than men to have been made happy by their pets."
(Read the whole story here)

However, there is one point of contention as well. Perhaps it has to do with occuptional hazards but I appear to see women getting very much into the computer as well, especially in terms of blogging and msn. For the sake of finding out, I shall put up a poll on my blog and have you net-citizens to vote and comment on whether you are happiest online or otherwise.

This post is a bit late because it is in celebration of yesterday's Hari Raya holiday. It was a much anticipated break away from work and time with family and friends to celebrate and have fun. (Though I'm not malay but I always believe in "SHARE THE JOY").

I wanna introduce two new games that I tried yesterday which was very good family and friend fun.

(1) Blokus

This shapes placing strategy game has won lots of awards and is styled as the most award winning game in the world! Basically you take it in turns to place the shapes on the board, following the rules for placement, and the winner is the one who gets rid of more shapes. You all start with 21 different shapes and sizes of pieces - though they are all made up of joined-squares.



Chooses a colour and grab your set of shapes, you then have to start from your own corner, and each extra piece must touch your own colour, but only at the corners! The aim is to cover as much of the board as you can, while blocking your opponents. The game's over when no one can go, and the winner is the player who has the least total area of pieces left.

This is a mind challenging game that breed a high competitive spirit and ideal for developing visual spatial intelligence, to visualize shapes and foresee the grids in your head.

To see more of the real action, please visit http://www.blokus.com/page.php?p=demo.

(2) Cluedo



The classic detective game! In Cluedo, players move from room to room in a mansion to solve the mystery of: who done it, with what, and where? Players are dealt character, weapon, and location cards after the top card from each card type is secretly placed in the confidential file in the middle of the board.

Players must move to a room and then make an accusation against a character saying they did it in that room with a specific weapon. The player to the left must show one of any cards accused to the accuser if in that player's hand.

Through deductive reasoning each player must figure out which character, weapon, and location are in the secret file. To do this, each player must uncover what cards are in other players hands by making more and more accusations. Once a player knows what cards the other players are holding they will know what cards are in the secret file.

This is a great game for those who enjoy reasoning and thinking things out, especially for me who happens to be a great detective fan. I grew up reading "Hardy Boys" and "Nancy Drew" that my mind is always about murder and detectives.

To get your hands on some online action, you can visit http://www.cluedo.com/the-game


In any case, I intend to purchase these two games for my personal collection. Anybody keen to join me and play?!?! (",)

The long awaited hype is finally here. The F1 racing 2008 has commenced tonight with the practice runs taking place on the tracks. As of now, Louis Hamiliton appears to be in the lead with the best time of 1:49:352 and the rest are still warming up and in the bid to close the gap. Now of course I am not some fanatic racing fan or here trying to promote people to go for the actual race on the 28 Sep. I thought I just wanted to highlight a few things arising from this event that I encountered in one way or another.

(1) ROAD CLOSURE

Most of the major city roads were closed since the cars need places to race. And it had to be the most busy city areas that were closed so there were some places that I couldn't go to. For example I had wanted to pop by Marina Square for a bit of shopping last week but was sad to find that the major roads were closed and having to made a detour that took a longer time. @_@

(2) TEMPORARY STOPPAGE OF BUS SERVICES

Yesterday was trying to get home from Dobby Ghaut Park Mall and went on my usual practice of taking the express bus home. To my surprise, after waiting for 5 minutes and then I looked at the electronic board, there were many bus services that were temporary taken off service due to the F1 racing. @_@

(3) TRAFFIC JAMS

Today while trying to get my way back from Marine Parade to Bukit Merah area, my taxi passed by the ECP area near the racing grounds. And you can actually HEAR & see the racing going on but there were also a lot of other cars that were jamming up the highway either because they were trying to catch a glimpse of the racing or genuinely due to problem (1) and all cars had no place to go but to jam themselves up on the highway. And the result of that is my taxi fare chalking up additonal $$$. @_@

Looks like though the government supports the whole F1 racing, it's causing quite a bit of inconvenience for citizens like me. Just hope that it will end soon and we can get our roads back. LOL

P.S. Anyway, looks like F Alonso has overtaken L. Hamilton with the better timing of 1:45:356. Stay tuned to channel 5 for more racing news. (",)