Sometimes I Forget

I don't have the best of memory, and oftentimes I forget things that I thought were otherwise 'unforgettable', so to speak. I can blame it on college, genetics, environment and a plethora of other factors but ultimately, forgetting is forgetting.

Yesterday was the birthday of a friend who is now studying under the brilliant UK education system that we always talk and gush about. I'm not quite sure how I forgot about it, perhaps it was the new semester. Or the Easter practices. But oh well, never too late if I follow the Chinese calendar I guess.

Happy Chinese Calendar Birthday man :P

Help, MSN is Gonna Charge You Money.

Just today, I got this urgent-sounding email from Tara and John who are supposedly the directors of MSN. That made me feel somewhat important, and since this one was linked to a real piece of news in the BBC website, it's gotta be *cough* real *cough*, I thought. All the 4000+ similar emails I received in he past certainly sounded dubious in comparison to this one.

This is Tara and John, the directors of MSN. We would like to sincerely apologize for the interruption, but msn is closing down. We know many of these messages have been sent out lately, and that they wouldn't be true. However, this one is in fact true, and it will occur soon.

MSN will begin to charge you money soon. This is due to the fact that too many inconsiderate people are taking up all the names (ie. making up lots of different accounts for just one person). Therefore, we only have 578 names left. If you would like to close your account, DO NOT SEND THIS MESSAGE ON. We would not reccommend this, because if in the future you'd like to use MSN, and you don't send this message on, you will be CHARGED to use MSN monthly. If you would like to keep your account, then SEND THIS MESSAGE TO EVERYONE ON YOUR CONTACT LIST. As we said this before, this is no joke, and we will be shutting down the servers. Please send it on. We do not want to be receiving phone calls stating that your MSN will not open, or that you are being charged for using it - because this will be your fauly for not sending it on. The estimated cost for MSN monthly will be about ten dollars CAN.

SEND THIS TO EVERYONE ON YOUR CONTACT LIST. NOW YOU
KNOW WHAT TO DO.

THANK YOU FOR YOUR
ATTENTION. In case you believed this is yet another of those 'prank' MSN shut down emails, go to:

http://news. bbc.co.uk/ 1/hi/business/ 1189119.stm

Once you've sent this message to at least 18 contacts, your msn icon will become blue.

Regards,
Tara and John
(Directors and Operators of MSN.com, Hotmail, Windows Live Hotmail, etc)

A lot of nice emails get forwarded around, and I know some of you make it a point to read every single forwarded email so that you can share the great pictures, stories and jokes with others. But I've never been too fond of pointless emails like the one above. If this was meant as a joke, then kudos to those who started the chain for wasting people's time, money and electricity around the world.

Anyway, I better forwarding the email so that I can continue using MSN when Tara and John finally decide to begin charging us. Otherwise, my face might turn blue when I find out that my account's been closed :P

Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron

7 years ago before Shrek 2 and a host of other animations from the same animation company made their way to the cinemas, Dreamworks released an animation that went by the title of Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron.

Now back then when I saw the promotional posters and videos, I thought it wasn't much of an animation. I remember how terrible Disney's Dinosours looked, so I cleverly avoided Spirit and watched other movies instead.

A few years down the road, sitting at home one night I was surprised to find Spirit showing on local tv. Curious to see what I had missed out on, I decided to give it a chance and see if it was as lousy as I thought it was.

For one, Spirit had no talking animals. No talking sidekicks, no talking ogres and talking what-nots. The show featured only horses that neighed on and on, and unless you spoke Bahasa Kuda, you would likely find it to either be weird or just downright annoying. Couple that with Dreamworks' decision to blend traditional hand-drawings with 3D instead of applying full CGI glory like it did with Shrek, it's not too hard to see why some reviewers happily laid waste to Spirit.

16 / Portland Oregonian / Shawn Levy

The animation is dull, the thought is fuzzy, the storytelling is vague and the music just plain stinks.

But at the end of the show, I was pleasantly surprised to find that Spirit was actually a pretty good movie. I don't know what was wrong with Shawn Levy, because I honestly thought that Spirit scored really well in many areas. Entertaining, exciting, riveting, and yet brilliantly contemplative all the way. In short, I liked it!

Problem is, I haven't yet heard of anyone else who's actually fond of the show. Which is why I thought of putting up this post, to see if there's anyone else out there who had seen the entire show and thinks it's a great piece of animation too. Anybody??

Or am I indeed one of the few oddballs in the world who actually found a liking to Spirit? :D

In Comparison

I remember how my dad always told us that when he was in his late teens, KFC was a sort of luxury eat-out place that was way way way more expensive than other normal restaurants. Back in those days, you wouldn't have gone to Kentucky just to get a free Chicky Meal toy or a fancy plastic container, unless you (or your father) owned a rubber plantation or two.

Of course, times have changed and now KFC is just another regular makan place offering the same tried-and-true wholesome family meals that we all grew up with. What's different now however, is that food in ordinary chap fan restaurants have steadily gotten more expensive, and interestingly enough it seems that right now it's most likely cheaper to have lunch at KFC than anywhere else outside.

This is taking into account all the promotions KFC had been churning out of late :


Don't look at Set D, Colonel Burger's only for small children and people with half a stomach xD But check out Set A instead.

Just this afternoon, I had lunch at SS 14. I ordered chap fan, with one piece of fried chicken and and an egg dish. That's all. *kaching* and I was RM 4.50 poorer. Sat down, ordered teh ais, *kaching* and I lost another RM 1.70. Total spent was actually RM 6.20 for lunch today. In a hot restaurant.

In comparison, if I ordered Set A at KFC instead, I would have had the same sort of food, had a drink, and have a nice air-con place to enjoy my food, all at only RM 6.00!

And even McD offers the same price for its value meals now.


I guess when the economic recession hits us in full force, we'll know which two places to go to for lunch :P

What I Wouldn't Mind Doing

It would've been too long to put as the title for this post, so I had to shorten it from the original "What I Wouldn't Mind Doing After I Graduate". This, of course pertains to the degree in Psychology that I hope to procure from Sunway in two years' time. A good number of people have left me either befuddled or confounded or both when they ask the inevitable "So what do you do one ah?" question. I'll admit the shoulder shrugs were honest because it's pretty hard to pick out some good contoh-contoh aktiviti at a moment's notice, but here's one pretty interesting example of what people in my field of study do for a living.

Taken from Newsweek, an article titled IN OUR NATURE described, among others, the work of environmental psychologist Peter Kahn in finding out how nature and high-definition digital representations of nature influence our levels of motivation.

In one of his experiments, the researchers used High-Definition Plasma TVs to act as digital 'windows' in workers' otherwise windowless rooms and spaces. Then they proceeded to monitor various psychological functions and measures. The result? Simply having digital views of the great mountain ranges and lush rolling plains, even though only in digital form, improved the workers' general mental well-being. Cool huh?

Then they went further on to compare HDTV nature and real mother nature. When given a small stress load, workers having HDTV windows reported no differences compared to those given a blank wall. But those who were given real, authentic windows with a natural setting reported a calming effect that helped to ease the stress load. Double coolness, I thought :D

The proposed theory by Marc Berman, another psychologist is that our brains engage in two forms of information processing.

One is the Focus Mode whereby we delegate a lot of thoughts and effort to analytical information processing, much like the kind of attention we need to solve a mathematical problem or figure out the tax-submission procedures. We can't stay on Focus Mode all the time however, and relaxing interactions with nature is one way to help our brain shift into Passive Mode to help the brain recover the energy used in Focus Mode and just basically recharge. How do we know if the theory works? He tested it of course.

Using difficult cognitive tests, Berman and his colleagues purposely exhausted all the attention and concentration abilities of a group of volunteers. Then they sent them out for a three-mile walk, but split into 2 groups: One group walked along the busy Huron Street, while another took a leisurely stroll along a secluded part of Ann Arbor. After the walk, they were tested again back in the lab for their focus and concentration. The result? Expectedly, the group that went for the quiter walk along Ann Arbor's natural surroundings performed significantly better in the tests.

To put it in one sentence, what these psychologists are saying is that using the science of psychology, they've discovered that interacting with the natural environment plays an important role in maintaing our psychological health and also in boosting our mental fitness levels.

Now that's way cool right? Right? :)