.: ShaolinTiger - Kung-Fu Geekery :.

A friend of ours invited us over to try out some bone/muscle care, mostly because we're heavy computer users we tend to hunch and have bad postures.

Well mine was worse until I got the best chair evar!

Anyway, off we went to Kuchai Lama to check out Osso Bone Care to get pulled, whacked and scraped by the expert hands of Calvin Shun.

He's studied both Eastern (TCM known as Dit Da) and Western (Osteopathy) styles of medicine and understands how to combine both to treat most ailments, they even treat fractures, breaks and dislocations (provided you go to the ECU and get an x-ray first - they have x-ray viewing facilities).

He can treat muscle (strains/pulles), nerve (trapped nerve), bone (most bones are slightly dislocated) and stress related conditions. Some treatments can take a few months (such as spine curvature) and some can be dealt with in 1-3 sessions.

Before they start they'll ask you various questions about your body, stress level, how you sit, what kind of habits you have, what position you sleep in, if you have an particular pains or restriction in movement, if you have headaches and so on.

Read more

So tonight I'm flying off to UK for 3 weeks! Finally a well deserved quiet time, some time to do nothing, take some pictures of flowers and insects and nature (ok maybe some hot white chicks too if I find any..).

Time to relax, read some books, walk in the countryside, eat some cream cakes, pork pies, scotch eggs, mushy peas, fish and chips, full english breakfast, sunday roast, bangers and mash, bubble and squeak, toad in the hole, chicken cordon bleu, gammon steak, chicken tikka masala, crispy aromatic duck, strawberries and cream, apple and blackberry crumble, meringue...and the list goes on! I'm salivating already.

Bacon and Egg sarnies of course.

Fish and Chips and Mushy Peas with a nice cold BEER!

3 weeks with no parties, no events, no forced late nights, no meetings, no nonsense, no nothing except what I want to do!

I'm taking Emirates, my favourite long haul airline. The service is good, they've never been delayed so far, the planes are in good condition, the crew are very professional and polite and quite chatty, the food is decent, the movies on the plane are excellent, Dubai is a pretty nice airport to spend a few hours in and the prices are reasonable too!

Qatar Airways was slightly cheaper, but they only fly to Manchester, which is a few hundred miles further from my places than Birmingham airport.

The worst so far is still KLM, bad food, HORRIBLE staff and can be quite often delayed...the upside is you do get to transit in Amsterdam with all the PORN!

The last time I was back in UK was in 2006, I didn't manage to get back last year...so this trip is going to be awesome! The fact my photography has improved a little is a bonus.

I've persuaded my Mom to get a new computer too so no more Pentium II 333mhz for me! Hopefully will be able to upload some better stuff this time.

I'm hoping the weather is more like this.

And less like this.

Updates may be a little infrequent until I'm back on August 27th, but I'll do the best I can and I've drafted up a few things just in case.

I'll probably check back in when I'm in Dubai in the middle of the night and I'll reach UK around midday tomorrow (about 8pm tomorrow night).

So you may have heard about this Project Trafford from Nuffnang, basically it's a project bringing bloggers together and promoting collaboration between some smaller or newer bloggers with some of the more experienced bloggers.

And it's for Mister Potato! Well their contest actually, if you enter you stand a chance to win 30 tickets to watch a match at Old Trafford!

There's 8 teams each with 5 bloggers and one team leader so a total of 48 participants. The team leader for my team is me (for some reason) - Group F! The bloggers are:

a) preciouspea.blogspot.com

b) queerrant.blogspot.com

c) temptationsandambitions.blogspot.com

d) porcinusmay.blogspot.com

e) roeseann.blogspot.com

Anyway rather than do the same thing across the group (Boring!) each of our dynamic team has done something different within our Tactical Operation: Stealth Potato project. Our ultimate goal is of course to gather as many Mister Potato tags as possible and bag (excuse the pun) all 30 tickets to Old Trafford within 48 hours! Each Episode is based on the special ninja skills that member has and is in chronological order according to our countdown.

So we have 5 blogs, 5 posts, 1 objective!

Tactical Operation: Stealth Potato - Episode 1

Mister Potato meets KL Freeze from Frankie Tan - Mister Potato Day! Leveraging social networks and flashmob fad.

More here: Tactical Operation: Stealth Potato – Episode 1

Tactical Operation: Stealth Potato - Episode 2

Kong Ming robs the Mister Potato factory - why not go direct to the source?

More here: Tactical Operation: Stealth Potato – Episode 2

Tactical Operation: Stealth Potato - Episode 3

Go straight to the stomach? Precious Pea dominates with her Mister Potato Duck!

More here: TACTICAL OPERATION: STEALTH POTATO-EPISODE 3

Tactical Operation: Stealth Potato - Episode 4

Roe Seann is Super Ninja Girl! Better make sure your doors are locked because all YOUR Mister Potato belongs to her!

More here: Tactical operation: Stealth Potato - Episode 4

Tactical Operation: Stealth Potato - Episode 5

Ninja May is the decoy ninja finishing up the last part of the 48 hours with chips for chores! I really need someone to do my ironing!

More here: Tactical Operation: Stealth Potato - Episode 5

So go comment on their awesome posts! Go Group F (F stands for FTW!).

More details on how to enter and win at:

http://www.misterpotato.com.my

NANG MY POST OMG

I actually often get asked this, "Dude what's the difference between Britain and UK, are they the same?"

Actually they aren't there is a slight difference. There's a reason why it's called the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

Great Britain = England, Wales, Scotland + outlying islands (Wiki)

United Kingdom = Great Britain + Northern Ireland. (Wiki)

British Islands = United Kingdom + Crown Dependences (e.g Channel Islands). (Wiki)

British Isles = Great Britain, Ireland and a number of smaller islands (Wiki)

England is just that, England without Scotland, Wales or Northern Island.

For those that don't know the history of Ireland it's somewhat segregated into Northern Ireland (part of UK - capital Belfast) and Republic of Ireland (independent country - capital Dublin).

Read more on Wiki about Ireland.

Everyone also assumes I'm from London (no that's NOT the only place in England..) and every football fan asks "Dude is Manchester near London?"..

No it's not, see map above..there's 3 main areas South (London etc), Midlands (Birmingham) and North (Manchester/Liverpool). There are other divisions too (East Midlands, West Midlands etc.) but those don't really matter so much.

Anyway it's all rather complicated but there you go.

No pictures for once

Quite a weekend...I think I need another weekend to rest from this one! Last week was busy work wise too as we rushing for a tender...Friday was spent doing that and calling vendors.

Then Friday night rushed to James place to help stick/cut arrange the stuff for World Lupus Day on Saturday. Friday night at Starbucks until late...then Saturday morning up too early to head to 1-Utama to help with the final setup and start of the event.

The event was a great success mostly thanks to James! He did an awesome job and did almost everything, second would be Kim with her great PR coverage.

YB Dato’ Liow Tiong Lai was a great sport and really seems to care about the Lupus cause, which is the whole point of us doing the event in the first place - to raise awareness about the issue in the long-term.

Then straight after that - home, shower and out again to nearby KYs place for a quick dinner then off to PD for Freedom 08 with Cosmic Gate and DJ Tiesto!

It was freaking awesome! Cosmic Gate got things up and going - they have some classic trance tracks so they know what to drop.

And then Tiesto really rammed it starting out with tunes from Elements of Life (obviously as it's his Elements of Life tour) then playing all the classics from Just Be, Parade of Athletes and In My Memory).

Got back to PJ about 5am had some food and passed out until about 6pm the next day.

Lots to catch up with, so expect pictures soon...I tried to upload one of the videos to Youtube for this post but it kept failing - no idea why.

World Lupus Day is a global awareness effort and is coming soon on May 10th, Malaysia is participating with a charity initiative driven by Shutter Asia in conjunction with Persatuan SLE Malaysia.

Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE or lupus) is a chronic autoimmune disease that can be fatal, though with recent medical advances, fatalities are becoming increasingly rare. As with other autoimmune diseases, the immune system attacks the body’s cells and tissue, resulting in inflammation and tissue damage. SLE can affect any part of the body, but most often harms the heart, joints, skin, lungs, blood vessels, liver, kidneys and nervous system. SOURCE

You can read more about Lupus here at Lupus Malaysia.

To raise money for we will be running a photography contest with the theme of "Anything Butterfly" - this is not limited to macro so go wild. It's up to your interpretation.

First Prize:
Nikon D60 DSLR Camera with kit valued at RM 2,588

Second Prize:
Nikon D40x DSLR Camera with kit valued at RM 1,888

Third Prize:
Coolpix P5100 camera valued at RM 1,048

Five Merit Prizes:
Nikon CF Sprint IV binoculars valued at RM 198 each

Fifteen Consolation Prizes

Download your entry form here: World Lupus Day Entry Form

You need to submit the entry form with a minimum donation of RM10 before April 30th.

Photographs for entry MUST be taken between May 1st and May 7th and entered by May 8th 5pm. An exhibition and prize giving ceremony will be on May 10th and the exhibition will continue until May 18th. More details here.

So do enter, and keep May 10th free to support Shutter Asia and Lupus!

If you don't mind please blog about this too, even if it's just an aside and forward this to any friends you have that are interested in photography.

Sorry Streamyx has been down intermittently since last Thursday afternoon...it just came back up this evening and appears to be fairly stable...*fingers crossed*.

Anyway as it was my birthday last Friday I got a few presents which is always BEST!

Thanks to Tim and Wen Qi for the mug!

I also got some lovely bubble from my Mom!

Some very nice perfume from CK.

And a beautiful bouquet of flowers from Hannah Tan (lucky me eh!).

And a Diamond ticket to the Petronas Grand Prix F1 Malaysia 2008! Which I of course went to, the rain held off and there were record crowds of over 126,000 people! Insane, no wonder the traffic was so bad...the parking was sold out and it was generally nuts.

It was quite an experience indeed!

More on the Party, the F1 and Sabah later...let's hope StimX stays up! Anyone got some broadband viagra?

Thanks to Nazrul - I'll be there in the Diamond section! Upper tier grandstand, best seats in the house!

I'll have so many pictures to process this week haha (Sabah, birthday party and now F1!).

Thanks to Mike for the picture! Loads more to see on Facebook too.

The party was great too and the presents, thanks so much everyone for coming and keeping it hush..quite a surprise.

Ah it's that time of year again, my birthday!

Don't forget to wish Terence and BryanBoy happy birthday too as both of them fall on March 21st like me.

I'm not sure what it means to hit the big 3 oh...just like they say it doesn't really feel any different from any other day, I guess when the age is a multiple of 10 it's somewhat of a milestone - a definite realization you aren't getting any younger.

Older and wiser? I hope so. Perhaps richer too...some day hahaha.

Who wants to buy me a Nikon D3 for my birthday with a full set of lenses Ok...too expensive? I wouldn't mine a PS3, a Wii or even just an iPod Touch.

Happy birthday to anyone else whose birthday falls on this day.

I wish you all a prosperous, healthy and enjoyable 2008 for you, your family and loved ones.

Enjoy the food and celebrations!