.: ShaolinTiger - Kung-Fu Geekery :.

Well here we are, 2009!

Screwed up any cheques yet? I haven't hoho, well I haven't written any cheques - but that's beside the point.

Hopefully it'll be a better year this year, more productive, more prosperous and more fun! It's been pretty relaxed and quiet so far, Mom is coming in about 2 weeks so that's something to look forwards too. Then the scorching hot part of the year we like to call Chinese New Year at the end of January, another quiet period to look forwards too and definitely the best time of the year to explore KL city (yay no traffic!).

I haven't really made any resolutions this year, as I don't any year...I think if you want to do something, just do it, why wait until a certain date to try and give yourself more 'incentive'. I do plan to exercise more though and I already have been eating less. I want to try and take more photos too! Must keep the passion alive.

I wish there less mozzies around though, it's like a feeding frenzy every day around here and I've heard quite a few people have come down with dengue lately - so be careful!

If you're up for some reading, some of the best advice I've seen compiled from 2008 can be found here:

Things I've Learned and Loved in 2008

And if you're born under the sign of Aries (as I am) and you believe in astrology (I don't, but hey it's worth hoping) it looks like it might be a good year for us:

2008 Aries Horoscope and Monthly/Yearly Astrology Forecasts

Anyway Happy New Year to everyone and hope your January has started off well.

Well it's that day again - December 31st! Time to usher in a new year and bid farewell to the year that has gone by. It's been quite a year for me, good and bad - ups and downs.

In all honestly it's not been a great year, especially the latter half. I'm fully hopeful however that 2009 will be much better.

I'd like to wish you all a happy, healthy and very prosperous 2009!

My first post of 2008 was part of my photography exploration with Krystal at KLPac - a great experience for me and a marked improvement in my portrait skill and processing (in my estimation anyway).

Last year I spent New Years Eve at the MidZone Countdown Party 2008 which was pretty fun. This year we'll be taking it easy though at a friends place playing Jenga again

In February I got involved with Malaysian Dreamgirl as one of the official bloggers, my coverage started with the MDG 2008 Auditions where I spotted most of the finalists.

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So after our previous day in Labuk Bay Resort we got up early for breakfast and glorious sunshine.

Yeah it was real hot!

Feeding time was around 11am, we already had plenty of pictures though so we just enjoyed the natural habitat. The turn-out wasn't as good as the previous day anyway (it wasn't that bad - they just didn't come close) and there were a few extra (and noisy) visitors. Took a bit of time to play with the wide angle and the CPL.

Mom was busy practicing taking macro pictures of some ants with her Panasonic.

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The life of Joe, an anonymous assassin, takes an unexpected turn when he travels to Thailand to complete a series of contract killings. Joe, a remorseless hitman, is in Bangkok to execute four enemies of a ruthless crime boss named Surat. He hires Kong, a street punk and pickpocket, to run errands for him with the intention of covering his tracks by killing him at the end of the assignment.

I was really looking forward to this film, maybe a revitalisation of Nicolas Cage's career after the dogs he's been in like Ghost Rider. The poster looked good, the concept familiar, directed by the Pang Brothers, the location exotic and the action assured..

Well so I thought, I don't even know how it scores 5.4 on IMDB - a lot of generous people I think.

In a way the movie reminds me of one of my favourite movies of all time, Replacement Killers...it's just about 1/10th as good. I love Nicolas Cage in The Rock and Face off (My second favourite action movie EVAR!).

Nicolas looks kinda old and out of shape, and his acting seems to be getting worse as he gets older. Why the love story with the mute 40 years old HK actress? WTF was that about - how lame.

The majority of the movie was slow, trudging along with no seeming sense, no character development and far too long between the far too short action sequences.

The plot itself was extremely dubious (ok let's say non-existent), the setting was ok - didn't really see much of Bangkok.

And OMG was it cheesy, what's with the final look on the motorbike to the mute lady? Funny much? Even the action scenes managed to be cheesy, it was almost trying to be arty and stylized like a HK movie but failing really badly.

*Sigh* when are we going to be treated to a good quality action movie with a little bit of brains - the heyday of action films was definitely the 90's.

I give it a tragic 4.5/10 - for the few action scenes, don't watch it unless you're willing to laugh.

Stuck when it comes to buying a Christmas present for that special someone? Not really sure what to get for them?

Well here's one idea, LG has come out with a new reasonably priced full Touch Screen phone at less than RM1k!

It seems like when it comes to handphone technology, touch screen is the new big thing with every manufacturer coming out with some kind of touchscreen phone - most of them tending to be more towards the Smart phone and high end markets. Now if you are looking for a sexy special gift for someone, perhaps you can look for the brand new LG KP500 Cookie!

It looks good doesn't it, it seems to take it's design cues from the much more expensive LG Renoir as you can see from the picture above - it does look good and it's very slim at only 11.9mm!

The basic specs for the LG KP500 are as follows:

• Quad band GSM connectivity
• 3″ touchscreen display
• 3 megapixel camera
• Black, Vandyke brown, Anodizing silver, and Elegant gold color schemes
• Built-in motion sensor
• On screen QWERTY keyboard
• Stylus

The variety of colours gives you a bit of a choice so you can better match it your personal preference (and accessories for the girls). I think you could buy this for both your girlfriend or your boyfriend, it's not a gender specific design and you can inject a bit of personality with the colour choice.

It comes with a stylus as well meaning better support for handwriting recognition and therefore Chinese language (very important in Asian markets).

The places where it's been cut back are mainly the camera (only 3 megapixels) and the data usage (please note it has no 3G support). So this is aimed more towards those people that just want a phone, and want a touch screen. It's not so much a convergence device for those heavy data users.

The best part, it's retailing for less than RM1k! The LG KP500 will be only RM900. Considering that most touch screen phones are at least double (and some triple) that price - it's great value for money. If you're shopping for someone else, you might even end up buying one for yourself!

Join the Touch Generation!

You can find out more here at the minisite:

http://cookie.lgmobile.com/my/

Now I haven't really talked about music much on this blog before, but I thought I might...and well now I'm going to. I'm actually a huge music fan, especially in the electronica genre and especially in Drum and Bass. I was into hip-hop early on (Wu Tang Clan when it was Liquid Sword, Onyx, Snoop Doggy Dogg - Doggystyle still one of the best albums ever made and so on) then when DnB was born I was fast into that around 1994 - I was a big time Junglist.

I've seen most of the great DnB and hardcore DJs play around the UK and met quite a few of them too (DJ SS, Carl Cox, Goldie, DJ Rap, Grooverider etc.). Recently there has been a renewal in the DnB scene - some great new acts coming out of Hospital Records and the too-urban, too-male, too-hardcore vibe is being replaced with some beautiful new melodies. This has firmly renewed my interest in DnB and the scene as a whole.

Today however I'm not talking about DnB, although I will in another post.

Today I should like to introduce Squarepusher - just because he's so crazy. I think only a Brit could come out with such whacked out songs and gain so many fans. He has a genre which is a sidestep from Drum and Bass called Drill and Bass...because it DRILLS your head.

Squarepusher is the performing pseudonym of Tom Jenkinson, an English electronic music artist signed to Warp Records. He specialises in the electronic music genres of drum and bass, musique concrète, and acid, with a significant jazz influence.

He has a lot of trippy work and has a lot of jazz influence, he makes his own sampling hardware from weird stuff and makes the most CRAZY tracks you've ever heard - he also plays the Bass guitar himself. Come on My Selector is one of his more typical Drum and Bass tracks, if you want to really feel the Drill and Bass thing you gotta listen to this and preferably the whole of the 1996 album Big Loada.

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So we arrived in Sabah to rain sadly, we got there quite early in the morning direct to Sandakan from KL and were picked up promptly by our first guide Adam - a very knowledgeable local tribal guy from the Sandakan area (I forget which tribe he was from, but he said they were river people often farming the flood plains surrounding rivers and estuaries).

The weather wasn't great so I didn't really take any pictures on the way there and it was raining and muddy as hell so the ride (once we got off road onto the plantation roads) was pretty crazy...something like the rollercoasters at Blackpool. So we basically hung on for dear life for the hour or so it took us to reach the resort (we got stuck a couple of times but Adam had some l33t driving skills and got us out of there).

There was hardly anyone at the resort when we got there, actually I think for the morning feeding time we were the only people there and there was a fantastic turn-out of both Silverred Leaf Monkeys (Lotong) and the Proboscis Monkeys (Monyet Belanda) we went to see.

If you don't know about the Proboscis Monkey they are actually an endangered species and if you haven't seen them, you should! People come from all over the world to visit the wildlife in Sabah and Sarawak. You can read more at Wikipedia here: Proboscis Monkey.

The other monkey we got very close to was the Silverred Monkey or the Silver Langur/Lutung which LOVES to eat long beans.

They have the cutest little orange juveniles too, even though this mother was too busy eating her beans..and almost lost her baby.

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Earlier in the year I went for a 5 day trip to Sabah, you might remember I posted a picture of Jackie the Orang Utan when I got back.

Well now I think it's time I started writing about it.

We started out by asking around for a good agent, as we had a limited time and the places we wanted to see were quite far apart it made sense to get a good agent to arrange the accommodation and a knowledgeable local tour guide. I found out an agency based in KK that could help me about, the company is named Labuk Bay Nature Tour Sdn. Bhd. They also own the Labuk Bay Proboscis Monkey Sanctuary which we wanted to visit.

We went back and forth a bit sorting out the options, my Mom (as usual) was pretty clear about what she wanted to see and what she didn't want to see. Plus there were a few times we didn't feel the need to spend so much time there, and some we wanted to spend more time.

The finalised itinerary looked like the following, it comes in two sections - Sandakan and KK.

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You may remember I wrote about the new short movie series by Johnnie Walker called "THE PACT" a while ago, when episode two came out.

Go check out episode 3 now!

After struggling with finding some inspiration and getting into his stride in Part 2 Jason's friends pulled him out of the whole and got him back onto the right track.

That didn't stop him running into serious trouble in Part 3 however! His friends are there for him this time though, all the way in.

It's a good feeling when you're having a hard time and someone is there for you not just with words but with action - especially if they are willing to give up something that's important to them to help you.

That's true friendship.

You can find out more at:

http://www.blackcircuit.com.my/

In conjunction with this Johnnie Walker have also selected 6 local characters to represent this campaign locally, these six individuals, (also known as the Johnnie Walker Personalities) come from different career paths and each tell a story depicting themes that see the individual living the Johnnie Walker’s ‘Keep Walking’ way of life.

Next up is Eugene Fong Kien Cheong who had the drive to pursue his lifelong love of music and turn it into a successful career.

His parents decided that they might have a budding Jimmy Hendrix on their hands and thus nurtured Eugene’s passion for sound by signing him up for piano lessons. Eugene unfortunately dreaded attending his classes but eventually grew to enjoy them. He did not consider himself the greatest student, as probably testified by his piano teacher, but he worked hard to get to Grade 7.

“Thanks to my passion for music and those piano lessons, I decided early on that the music industry was where I was going to make my mark, and hopefully, become among the major players in the local scene,” he added.

“There are a lot of talented people in Malaysia. I would love to see them known on a worldwide scale! Plus I would also love to win an international music award,” he said.

Lofty goals but he credits his parents, friends and girlfriend on being very supportive in allowing him the freedom to choose his own future.

Follow the continuing journey of Eugene Fong Kien Cheong as we delve into another inspiring story next post. Keep Walking!

http://www.blackcircuit.com.my/

Every Sunday it was tradition for my and my homeboy Chiu to go down to Lower Wick driving range and have a round on the Pitch and Putt (when I used to live in Worcester). It's a pretty effective use of space with the driving range in the middle and the short 9 hole course around the outside, each hole is basically a short par 3 of around 70-100 yards or so.

I enjoy it more than golf as it's much easier and much less time consuming, I don't get bored or frustrated by the end.

I had a warm up on the driving range first before unleashing my skills on the Pitch and Putt.

Chiu teed off..landing the bloody ball on the green almost every time with his first shot.

Teeing up to whoop my ass towards the end, I lost of course - but not by too much.

After that we headed to a nearby pub for some Sunday lunch - the steak and ale pie was really good!

Anyway that was about that for my UK trip, I took it easy for the last few days, spent some time with my Mom and ate loads!

I had some lovely home made chicken pie.

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