so all of u would know by now, jennifer lopez, only 5 months after breaking up with ben affleck, has married marc anthony, who juz got divorced last week.
heh. why am i not bothered or surprised? it could be another britney marriage, it could b another dennis rodman or it could be another chris judd.
celebrity marriages... heh.
ive got nothing to say. not that i wanna say anything anyway.
and i mean, its j.lo. what else do i need to say?
Sunday, June 06, 2004
yellow jackets baseball update
and so georgia tech beats texas tech 5-3 to advance to their second super regionals in the past 3 years. next round is a best of 3 against state rivals georgia. mmm, its gonna be good. if its best of 3, i think its pretty gd match up. however, im worried about the college world series, if everything goes the way its supposed to go, tech might face stanford after the super regionals...
nah, worry bt gettin past georgia first.
nah, worry bt gettin past georgia first.
farewell to reagan
former united states president ronald reegan passed away today. i was quite surprised at how quick it happened, since i read about him not feeling too well or something in the morning, just before i went out. and then when i came back, there, he was gone. he has been suffering from alzheimer's for a long time, but the two events happened so quickly.
i have no sentimental feelings towards him of course, he wasnt in my time, or should i say i wasnt there during his time. i would have had to notice him when i was 4 or 5. in fact, he was appointed president before i was born. but i have read a great deal about him, he's frankly one of the better ones among the presidents, well, how can you not say that after the whole watergate scandal that took place before his term.
but then here's to him, who changed the country for the good.
i have no sentimental feelings towards him of course, he wasnt in my time, or should i say i wasnt there during his time. i would have had to notice him when i was 4 or 5. in fact, he was appointed president before i was born. but i have read a great deal about him, he's frankly one of the better ones among the presidents, well, how can you not say that after the whole watergate scandal that took place before his term.
but then here's to him, who changed the country for the good.
etcetra
garage sales are interesting at times. you get to see what some families are trying to sell off, and you get great deals and such cheap prices. one place was selling bunch of cups for only a dollar. since we were in shortage of cups (the ones we had seemed to break oh so easily) i think we got ourselves 10 or 12 cups for just a dollar. and i found two novels, which were selling for 25 cents per book. obviously i got them. a pity i didnt get one by james patterson earlier on. now i have a robin cook thriller to read during the flight.
and i think i bought a CD after a long long time. i cant recall the last time i bought a CD? probably the last one was a chill out compilation that was on clear out sale, which happened to be a pretty good buy. the store, Best Buy, gives you 100 points for every dollar we spend, and every 12500 pts, we get a 5 dollars voucher. since we bought a lot of electrical good since we moved in, like the computer, TV and such, we racked up quite a bit of points to earn ourselves 135 bucks of vouchers. mom used bit of that for an iron, but the rest i got to spend it since the expiration date passes while we're away in singapore. since i wont be able to download music from P2P softwares once i get into tech, i thought it would be a perfect opportunity to get compilations or greatest hits. im v choosy of the CDs i buy now, since most albums only include at most 5 really gd ones. so obviously i resorted ot greatest hits. but i had such a hard time choosing which ones to get. in the end, i picked up greatest hits for enigma, sheryl crow, red hot chilli peppers, a tribe called quest. i also got coldplay's sophomore album as well as lauryn hill's unplugged. im not sure if lauryn's one was a gd buy, but its one of the best live acoustic albums out there, so im gonna give it a chance. i was pretty impressed when i saw the same one on MTV, so it should b ok. besides, i should be able to return it if i dont like it. only after i left i realized that i had forgotten to get tori amos' greatest hits. but hey, technically, i got those CDs for free. so no biggie. those CDs will keep me busy while i have free time in tech, im gonna be listening to CDs like never before.
tech baseball.. so they're through to the regional finals for atlanta by beating jacksonville state on friday and then texas tech today. texas tech won mississippi state so we'll face them again for the atlanta regionals tomorrow. NCAA baseball is funny. i think u can emerge as the national champions even if u were to lose 2 or three times. its a funny system i got to know only in the ACC championships. okay, so NCAA regionals, there are four teams, seeded, of course. first match between no.1 seed and no.4 seed and the other match between no.2 and no.3. even if u lose the first match, you will play the loser of the other match, and the winner of one match plays the winner of the other match. so the two losers play, to play against the loser between the winners match. and then the winner of that match plays against the winner of the winners match. and if the final match happens to be a no.1 seed who hasnt lost until the last match and loses, that team gets another shot at winning. so everyone is allowed one mistake, to cut it short. confused? lemme give you example of the atlanta regionals.
in the atlanta regionals, the seeds are no.1 georgia tech, no.2 texas tech, no.3 mississippi state and no.4 jacksonville state. first match are between no.1 and no.4, so georgia tech vs jacksonville st and no.2 vs no.3 so texas tech vs mississippi state. both techs win, so they play against eachother, whereas the two states lose, so they play against eachother. now, georgia tech wins texas tech, so they proceed to the regional finals. the two losers play, and mississippi state wins. so now the loser of the winners match, which is texas tech, plays the winner of the losers match, which is mississippi state to play against georgia tech in the finals. texas tech wins against mississippi state, so texas tech will play georgia tech for the finals tomorrrow. now, georgia tech is the no.1 seed in this regionals, so if they are to lose against texas tech tomorrow (god forbid) then georgia tech gets another shot at winning the regionals because they are no.1 seed and were unbeaten so far. so that means texas tech will have to beat georgia tech twice in the same day if they are to win the regionals.
so there's good and bad about being the no.1 seed. there's not much pressure since u can lose, but u get another try, but once you lose, your morale goes down and its psychological disadvantage coz the opponents will be on a high and they might b likely to continue that to win the second match. lets just hope that doesnt happen, coz that happened for the ACC championship for georgia tech.
im not sure if thats for just the regionals or it actually continues that way for the second round of regionals, which is called the super regionals too. coz i remember some commetator saying that rice univ., last year's champions, lost 4 matches, but they still ended up being the champions.
i dont like the format, obviously. a real champion should be the one which doesnt lose. but then again, in a game like baseball, it could really go either way. not like soccer, where in cups, you rarely get a second chance. group stages of the world cup or european championships does allow you to lose, but then it makes progressing harder because you will be meeting stronger teams for the knockout round. but i dont think we've seen any team progress after losing twice or something.
its good in a sense that you are allowed something to fall back on, but this system strongly favours the teams that play well pretty consistently. its like giving stronger teams a second chance should something happen. thats not the case for NFL or NBA, even NCAA basketball for that matter.
i think playing by series, though it may take more time, is the best answer to the problem. i think even soccer should be two legged match for every round. south american football works like that and i think its a very good measure to see whether a team wins by luck, or really deserve to progress to the next round.
anyway....
im pretty much done with packing. not much things to bring to singapore, but a lot of things will nned to be brought on my return trip here, since i hav no idea whens the next time i'll go to singapore. i think i'll be too caught up with things in the university. marc called me last night and it seems even he wont get to go to singapore for another 2 or 3 years. once i return from this, i dont think i'll be back for 2 or 3 years too. but you never know. i just hope it wont be another 10 years until i make the next visit or something.
k its quite late now, and my eyes are burning. i better go get myself some sleep. if i can get plenty, that is.
and i think i bought a CD after a long long time. i cant recall the last time i bought a CD? probably the last one was a chill out compilation that was on clear out sale, which happened to be a pretty good buy. the store, Best Buy, gives you 100 points for every dollar we spend, and every 12500 pts, we get a 5 dollars voucher. since we bought a lot of electrical good since we moved in, like the computer, TV and such, we racked up quite a bit of points to earn ourselves 135 bucks of vouchers. mom used bit of that for an iron, but the rest i got to spend it since the expiration date passes while we're away in singapore. since i wont be able to download music from P2P softwares once i get into tech, i thought it would be a perfect opportunity to get compilations or greatest hits. im v choosy of the CDs i buy now, since most albums only include at most 5 really gd ones. so obviously i resorted ot greatest hits. but i had such a hard time choosing which ones to get. in the end, i picked up greatest hits for enigma, sheryl crow, red hot chilli peppers, a tribe called quest. i also got coldplay's sophomore album as well as lauryn hill's unplugged. im not sure if lauryn's one was a gd buy, but its one of the best live acoustic albums out there, so im gonna give it a chance. i was pretty impressed when i saw the same one on MTV, so it should b ok. besides, i should be able to return it if i dont like it. only after i left i realized that i had forgotten to get tori amos' greatest hits. but hey, technically, i got those CDs for free. so no biggie. those CDs will keep me busy while i have free time in tech, im gonna be listening to CDs like never before.
tech baseball.. so they're through to the regional finals for atlanta by beating jacksonville state on friday and then texas tech today. texas tech won mississippi state so we'll face them again for the atlanta regionals tomorrow. NCAA baseball is funny. i think u can emerge as the national champions even if u were to lose 2 or three times. its a funny system i got to know only in the ACC championships. okay, so NCAA regionals, there are four teams, seeded, of course. first match between no.1 seed and no.4 seed and the other match between no.2 and no.3. even if u lose the first match, you will play the loser of the other match, and the winner of one match plays the winner of the other match. so the two losers play, to play against the loser between the winners match. and then the winner of that match plays against the winner of the winners match. and if the final match happens to be a no.1 seed who hasnt lost until the last match and loses, that team gets another shot at winning. so everyone is allowed one mistake, to cut it short. confused? lemme give you example of the atlanta regionals.
in the atlanta regionals, the seeds are no.1 georgia tech, no.2 texas tech, no.3 mississippi state and no.4 jacksonville state. first match are between no.1 and no.4, so georgia tech vs jacksonville st and no.2 vs no.3 so texas tech vs mississippi state. both techs win, so they play against eachother, whereas the two states lose, so they play against eachother. now, georgia tech wins texas tech, so they proceed to the regional finals. the two losers play, and mississippi state wins. so now the loser of the winners match, which is texas tech, plays the winner of the losers match, which is mississippi state to play against georgia tech in the finals. texas tech wins against mississippi state, so texas tech will play georgia tech for the finals tomorrrow. now, georgia tech is the no.1 seed in this regionals, so if they are to lose against texas tech tomorrow (god forbid) then georgia tech gets another shot at winning the regionals because they are no.1 seed and were unbeaten so far. so that means texas tech will have to beat georgia tech twice in the same day if they are to win the regionals.
so there's good and bad about being the no.1 seed. there's not much pressure since u can lose, but u get another try, but once you lose, your morale goes down and its psychological disadvantage coz the opponents will be on a high and they might b likely to continue that to win the second match. lets just hope that doesnt happen, coz that happened for the ACC championship for georgia tech.
im not sure if thats for just the regionals or it actually continues that way for the second round of regionals, which is called the super regionals too. coz i remember some commetator saying that rice univ., last year's champions, lost 4 matches, but they still ended up being the champions.
i dont like the format, obviously. a real champion should be the one which doesnt lose. but then again, in a game like baseball, it could really go either way. not like soccer, where in cups, you rarely get a second chance. group stages of the world cup or european championships does allow you to lose, but then it makes progressing harder because you will be meeting stronger teams for the knockout round. but i dont think we've seen any team progress after losing twice or something.
its good in a sense that you are allowed something to fall back on, but this system strongly favours the teams that play well pretty consistently. its like giving stronger teams a second chance should something happen. thats not the case for NFL or NBA, even NCAA basketball for that matter.
i think playing by series, though it may take more time, is the best answer to the problem. i think even soccer should be two legged match for every round. south american football works like that and i think its a very good measure to see whether a team wins by luck, or really deserve to progress to the next round.
anyway....
im pretty much done with packing. not much things to bring to singapore, but a lot of things will nned to be brought on my return trip here, since i hav no idea whens the next time i'll go to singapore. i think i'll be too caught up with things in the university. marc called me last night and it seems even he wont get to go to singapore for another 2 or 3 years. once i return from this, i dont think i'll be back for 2 or 3 years too. but you never know. i just hope it wont be another 10 years until i make the next visit or something.
k its quite late now, and my eyes are burning. i better go get myself some sleep. if i can get plenty, that is.
Friday, June 04, 2004
football dominance
have i mentioned i like to just read datas and statistics about soccer?
there's this game, called championship manager, arguably the best soccer simulation game available, and not only does it give you a chance to take charge of a team, but it includes history of competitions and such. i can spend hours looking at who won what, which team used to be great, etc etc. there's not much other than history of winners, runners-up and sometimes third placed teams, but when you go online, obviously you can find tons more.
i can look at these things for hours. there's no use, of course, but to mentally build up these database in my head is somewhat fun. it also gives me a chance to explore a new dimention of history in soccer. like for example, i know that there was a team in italy called pro vercelli who was a dominant force in the early days of italian league, but now are now playing in obscrity in the serie C2. or find out that aside from the 1966 world cup success, england has won nothing else on international stage. why? initially the english football association seemed to oppose the creation of an international football governing board. due to continuous disagreement, england didnt participate in the first few world cups nor other international competitions, resulting in their rather traditionally very poor performance in the world cup, primarily because they never supported the idea of having a world cup, or so i've found out. i can go on and on about useless facts that no ones needs to know, but it shows how much i love the game.
so, one trend i noticed, is that throughout the course of history, there's always a team in a domestic league that is dominating. as in, whether they win or not, there's always a certain team in contention for the title. most obviously, and pretty recently, manchester united and arsenal can be classified in that category. manchester united has dominated the english scene over the past decade. its funny to think that until alex ferguson came and won his first championship with them, they were in a stage of decline, being overshadowed by the likes of liverpool, everton, arsenal and leeds united. man utd were dominant forces in the '60s, well not quite, but they were powerhouses. for the record, since the english league began in 1889, liverpool have won the most at 18 titles, followed by man utd with 15, arsenal with 13 and everton at 9. (newcastle have won 4, but they were all in the early 20th century.)
and, i think between 1972 and 1982, 9 out of 10 champions league titles went to english teams. those were the days.
lets switch to other leagues. spanish primera liga. this is needless to say, dominated by the galacticos of real madrid. they have won 29 titles since the league inaugurated in 1929. barcelona follows with 16 and athletico madrid with 9. a big difference between the top 3. italy? since 1898, juventus has won 27 titles, followed by AC Milan with 16, city rivals Inter Milans won 13. Genoa follows after that, but current powerhouses AS Roma has won 3, with their neighbours Lazio, 2. Germany? since 1903, bayern munich has won 17, borussia monchengladbach won 5 times, werder bremen 3, borussia dortmund 3, VfB stuttgard 2, kaiserslautern 2.
some other major leagues. greek has been ruled by 3 teams, olympiakos with 32, panathinaikos with 18 and aek athens with 11. dutch football, needless to say, ajaz with 28, psv eindhoven with 16 and feyenoord with 14. portuguese football, has been won by only 5 teams, 3 dominant, the other 2 has won it only once. benfica leads the pack with 30, porto with 19 and sporting lisbon with 18. turkish football has also been clearly dominated, galatasaray with 15, fenerbehce with 14 besiktas with 10 and trabzonspor with 6.
south american football, argentina, river plate won 31 and boca juniors 19. mexico, seems america (mex) has won 13.
and the most dominated league in the world is scottish football. wanna know why? since it started in 1891, rangers has won a whopping 50 times, which is a guiness world record. celtic follows it up with 37. of 113 years, these two teams have won 87 years between them. thats almost 80% of the leagues titles won.
there are some leagues which arent dominated, but shared fairly well among couple of teams.
French football started on 1933, with St. Etienne winning 10, olympique marseille and nantes 8, as monaco 7, bordeaux 5.
brazilian football, which i think provides the most equal competition, has been won most by flamengo, but only 5 times! but then again, the official brazilian national football league started only on 1971, which is pretty recent. prior to this, they participated in regional leagues, the two biggest one are rio de janeiro state and sao paolo state. RJ state has been won 29 times by fluminense and SP by corinthians, 25 times.
okay, i probably hav wasted quite a bit of u readers time, but this is wat i mean. i derive pleasure in knowing and finding out these records, coz it improves my understanding of the leagues and teams.
like s-league, its always SAFFC or Home. japan, antlers or jubilo. US, LA or DC. Argentina, Boca or River, Scottish Ranger or Celtic. england, its either man utd, arsenal, liverpool or chelsea. german, usually bayern, spanish, real, barca, valencia and maybe deportivo. italian? juve, ac, inter, roma, lazio. there's always these few teams that are in clear contention.
the only useful knowledge i can claim is this. i seem to notice a change in the dominance cycle every 10 years. well, for english football. i havent observed or noticed obvious cycles in other leagues yet.
talking of most recent examples, it was liverpool and everton during the '70s and '80s, then it was man utd. i think with the appointment of jose mourinho to chelsea, they might be the next dominant force in the coming decade.
even when u go to international stage, brazil seems to dominate throughout, but there r traditional powerhouses, france bein the recent one, holland used to be, then italy, etc etc.
i hav no idea why im posting all these data, but i just wanted to blog about it. but as with everything, statistics dont speak for themselves, because there's always anomalies and surprises, which is what makes soccer the most popular sport in the world, and also the nickname, the beautiful game.
there's this game, called championship manager, arguably the best soccer simulation game available, and not only does it give you a chance to take charge of a team, but it includes history of competitions and such. i can spend hours looking at who won what, which team used to be great, etc etc. there's not much other than history of winners, runners-up and sometimes third placed teams, but when you go online, obviously you can find tons more.
i can look at these things for hours. there's no use, of course, but to mentally build up these database in my head is somewhat fun. it also gives me a chance to explore a new dimention of history in soccer. like for example, i know that there was a team in italy called pro vercelli who was a dominant force in the early days of italian league, but now are now playing in obscrity in the serie C2. or find out that aside from the 1966 world cup success, england has won nothing else on international stage. why? initially the english football association seemed to oppose the creation of an international football governing board. due to continuous disagreement, england didnt participate in the first few world cups nor other international competitions, resulting in their rather traditionally very poor performance in the world cup, primarily because they never supported the idea of having a world cup, or so i've found out. i can go on and on about useless facts that no ones needs to know, but it shows how much i love the game.
so, one trend i noticed, is that throughout the course of history, there's always a team in a domestic league that is dominating. as in, whether they win or not, there's always a certain team in contention for the title. most obviously, and pretty recently, manchester united and arsenal can be classified in that category. manchester united has dominated the english scene over the past decade. its funny to think that until alex ferguson came and won his first championship with them, they were in a stage of decline, being overshadowed by the likes of liverpool, everton, arsenal and leeds united. man utd were dominant forces in the '60s, well not quite, but they were powerhouses. for the record, since the english league began in 1889, liverpool have won the most at 18 titles, followed by man utd with 15, arsenal with 13 and everton at 9. (newcastle have won 4, but they were all in the early 20th century.)
and, i think between 1972 and 1982, 9 out of 10 champions league titles went to english teams. those were the days.
lets switch to other leagues. spanish primera liga. this is needless to say, dominated by the galacticos of real madrid. they have won 29 titles since the league inaugurated in 1929. barcelona follows with 16 and athletico madrid with 9. a big difference between the top 3. italy? since 1898, juventus has won 27 titles, followed by AC Milan with 16, city rivals Inter Milans won 13. Genoa follows after that, but current powerhouses AS Roma has won 3, with their neighbours Lazio, 2. Germany? since 1903, bayern munich has won 17, borussia monchengladbach won 5 times, werder bremen 3, borussia dortmund 3, VfB stuttgard 2, kaiserslautern 2.
some other major leagues. greek has been ruled by 3 teams, olympiakos with 32, panathinaikos with 18 and aek athens with 11. dutch football, needless to say, ajaz with 28, psv eindhoven with 16 and feyenoord with 14. portuguese football, has been won by only 5 teams, 3 dominant, the other 2 has won it only once. benfica leads the pack with 30, porto with 19 and sporting lisbon with 18. turkish football has also been clearly dominated, galatasaray with 15, fenerbehce with 14 besiktas with 10 and trabzonspor with 6.
south american football, argentina, river plate won 31 and boca juniors 19. mexico, seems america (mex) has won 13.
and the most dominated league in the world is scottish football. wanna know why? since it started in 1891, rangers has won a whopping 50 times, which is a guiness world record. celtic follows it up with 37. of 113 years, these two teams have won 87 years between them. thats almost 80% of the leagues titles won.
there are some leagues which arent dominated, but shared fairly well among couple of teams.
French football started on 1933, with St. Etienne winning 10, olympique marseille and nantes 8, as monaco 7, bordeaux 5.
brazilian football, which i think provides the most equal competition, has been won most by flamengo, but only 5 times! but then again, the official brazilian national football league started only on 1971, which is pretty recent. prior to this, they participated in regional leagues, the two biggest one are rio de janeiro state and sao paolo state. RJ state has been won 29 times by fluminense and SP by corinthians, 25 times.
okay, i probably hav wasted quite a bit of u readers time, but this is wat i mean. i derive pleasure in knowing and finding out these records, coz it improves my understanding of the leagues and teams.
like s-league, its always SAFFC or Home. japan, antlers or jubilo. US, LA or DC. Argentina, Boca or River, Scottish Ranger or Celtic. england, its either man utd, arsenal, liverpool or chelsea. german, usually bayern, spanish, real, barca, valencia and maybe deportivo. italian? juve, ac, inter, roma, lazio. there's always these few teams that are in clear contention.
the only useful knowledge i can claim is this. i seem to notice a change in the dominance cycle every 10 years. well, for english football. i havent observed or noticed obvious cycles in other leagues yet.
talking of most recent examples, it was liverpool and everton during the '70s and '80s, then it was man utd. i think with the appointment of jose mourinho to chelsea, they might be the next dominant force in the coming decade.
even when u go to international stage, brazil seems to dominate throughout, but there r traditional powerhouses, france bein the recent one, holland used to be, then italy, etc etc.
i hav no idea why im posting all these data, but i just wanted to blog about it. but as with everything, statistics dont speak for themselves, because there's always anomalies and surprises, which is what makes soccer the most popular sport in the world, and also the nickname, the beautiful game.
random visits
i must say i was surprised to see that right after i posted the previous entry, which was about me talking about whether religion used fear to bind followers to continue believing in it, i had two unique visitors who left messages on my tag board.
i think its blogger's partnership with google. i think our blogs are so easy to locate, or be one of the results of a search with the simplest of the right keywords. its scary in a sense, i have no idea who might be reading it.
then i went to my netstat basic page. to find i had visits from someone who was in the Texas A&M University -Commerce, Cornell University among other universities. not to mention so many other US networks.
so now this blog is easy to track, be listed, blah blah blah. it was helpful when a certain person named 'dave' left some references for me so that i can read up on the issue, but kinda worried when someone who left the name as 'be' left a link to another blog, which seems to be a site that compares the quran and the bible. i have yet to read in detail, but what scared me was that the person seemed to know us? i say this because that person left the exact same message on my brother's blog too. i dont think i've mentioned specifically who my brother or what my brother's name was, so it would be or should i say should be difficult for a random visitor to find out which one of the links i have on this page was my brother's, unless the person knew my surname, of course. that can be obtained from this page, but why would anyone wanna search for it and post the exact same message?
i wish the person could have left what he/she implied by leaving the message. if you're seeing this, please let me know. im open to opinions, just to let you know.
i think its blogger's partnership with google. i think our blogs are so easy to locate, or be one of the results of a search with the simplest of the right keywords. its scary in a sense, i have no idea who might be reading it.
then i went to my netstat basic page. to find i had visits from someone who was in the Texas A&M University -Commerce, Cornell University among other universities. not to mention so many other US networks.
so now this blog is easy to track, be listed, blah blah blah. it was helpful when a certain person named 'dave' left some references for me so that i can read up on the issue, but kinda worried when someone who left the name as 'be' left a link to another blog, which seems to be a site that compares the quran and the bible. i have yet to read in detail, but what scared me was that the person seemed to know us? i say this because that person left the exact same message on my brother's blog too. i dont think i've mentioned specifically who my brother or what my brother's name was, so it would be or should i say should be difficult for a random visitor to find out which one of the links i have on this page was my brother's, unless the person knew my surname, of course. that can be obtained from this page, but why would anyone wanna search for it and post the exact same message?
i wish the person could have left what he/she implied by leaving the message. if you're seeing this, please let me know. im open to opinions, just to let you know.
Wednesday, June 02, 2004
accidental discovery
i was so bored, i decided to look for anything that has my name, walid in it.
first result, www.walid.com a site im not entirely sure what it does, but tries to convey the message that the internet users around the world are not all english speakers and such. i found it ironic, since im a person who speaks multiple languages and here it is, a site, with my name, providing multilingual domain names for convenience.
a man by the name of walid badir scored for israel to give them a 1-0 victory against georgia. if i recall correctly, it must be the same walid badir that played for wimbledon or something couple of years back.
but the real discovery came in the unlikely testimony of a palestinian who wrote a testimony about his conversion from being a muslim to christian. very interesting. i was engrossed in it. and more surprised to find out so many other testimony from other people. if interested (i recommend you guys to check it out, even if you are a muslim or not, its certainly an eye opening read), check it out here.
now i dont feel so bad about having this idea that i have about religion, not just islam, but everything else. i might gather the courage to blog about it sooner or later, but one very important view that i had was confirmed in that article, that religion uses fear to bind believers to their respective religions. in my earlier entry about 'material wealth', i mentioned that 'the mind is a very powerful tool that can make you believe in things that arent true.' well, this kinda touches into that.
by using fear, its so easy to manipulate human. but im not gonna go too much into that for now. its quite late and im feeling very sleepy.
first result, www.walid.com a site im not entirely sure what it does, but tries to convey the message that the internet users around the world are not all english speakers and such. i found it ironic, since im a person who speaks multiple languages and here it is, a site, with my name, providing multilingual domain names for convenience.
a man by the name of walid badir scored for israel to give them a 1-0 victory against georgia. if i recall correctly, it must be the same walid badir that played for wimbledon or something couple of years back.
but the real discovery came in the unlikely testimony of a palestinian who wrote a testimony about his conversion from being a muslim to christian. very interesting. i was engrossed in it. and more surprised to find out so many other testimony from other people. if interested (i recommend you guys to check it out, even if you are a muslim or not, its certainly an eye opening read), check it out here.
now i dont feel so bad about having this idea that i have about religion, not just islam, but everything else. i might gather the courage to blog about it sooner or later, but one very important view that i had was confirmed in that article, that religion uses fear to bind believers to their respective religions. in my earlier entry about 'material wealth', i mentioned that 'the mind is a very powerful tool that can make you believe in things that arent true.' well, this kinda touches into that.
by using fear, its so easy to manipulate human. but im not gonna go too much into that for now. its quite late and im feeling very sleepy.
more pictures
ive finally finished converting all the pictures i took to small jpeg files. well, not exactly, some go to 100k to 200k so its not that small. but think about converting 160 pictures one by one. it took a lot of time, but im glad its finally done.
and here are some of those that i think stand out from the rest.
The Sears Tower
I think its a theatre by the lakeside at Navy Pier, didnt get to confirm whether it was.
Beautiful Chicago metro skyline.
Another one, when it became a little darker going into the evening.
A building as we were driving by.
and here are some of those that i think stand out from the rest.
The Sears Tower
I think its a theatre by the lakeside at Navy Pier, didnt get to confirm whether it was.
Beautiful Chicago metro skyline.
Another one, when it became a little darker going into the evening.
A building as we were driving by.
Tuesday, June 01, 2004
'america'
i was watching the match between boston red sox and baltimore orioles and they kinda had a pre-match clip, combining some baseball action with the whole memorial day theme. and they used that song by santana feat. P.O.D., 'America' and i thought it was an excellent decision to play that song. it matched the memorial day theme and santana's electric guitar cry tied in well for the baseball bit.
now that song is stuck in my head.
now that song is stuck in my head.
countdown
woke up to a blaring siren, only to realize it was the first of the month, a scheduled routine. sleep was disturbed, i know i couldnt get back to it, since i have such a problem falling asleep.
anyway, it is 1st june today. 8 more days til the flight that takes me halfway across the earth. 20+hrs of travelling. i gotta start packing, make final confirmation on arrangements, make sure nothing is left undone.
i just hope that the recent thunderstorms wil not hamper any of our plans. for that, i need to call SIA, see what can be done should that happen.
SIA flies from SG to NY everyday. that's an awful lot of flights for such a distance. but it works out for me. i'll be stepping into europe for the first time. pity it isnt england.
its sunny and warm after a long time. i wonder how im gonna cope wit the temperature after getting used to living in 16 degrees celcius condition for such a long time.
anyway, it is 1st june today. 8 more days til the flight that takes me halfway across the earth. 20+hrs of travelling. i gotta start packing, make final confirmation on arrangements, make sure nothing is left undone.
i just hope that the recent thunderstorms wil not hamper any of our plans. for that, i need to call SIA, see what can be done should that happen.
SIA flies from SG to NY everyday. that's an awful lot of flights for such a distance. but it works out for me. i'll be stepping into europe for the first time. pity it isnt england.
its sunny and warm after a long time. i wonder how im gonna cope wit the temperature after getting used to living in 16 degrees celcius condition for such a long time.
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