Thursday 28 May 2009

A’isyah’s first report card

Another milestone! :-)

A’isyah received her first ever report card yesterday, from her pre-school, Tadika Al-Hidayah. The report comes in a nice big blue booklet, with sections covering topics such as Social Development, Islamic Personality, Art & Craft, Writing, and others. Some topics aren’t applicable for A’isyah, so they’re not filled in. The school marks the students’ performance in basic “units”, such as cooperation,, use of art materials, participation in physical activities, recognizing numbers, and so on. The grading scale goes from 1 to 4, being Very Good, Good, Average, and Needs Improvement.

<proud parent mode: on>

A’isyah’s overall performance was Good, with only a few areas marked Average. Her teacher’s comment was:

“Alhamdulillah she is an intelligent and confident girl. She enjoys learning and is good at maths.”


<proud parent mode: off>

Hehe. I’m not really that kiasu, but this is a good result in my books.

Tomorrow is the meeting with her teacher to discuss the report and A’isyah’s progress. That would make it my first parent-teacher meeting.

Thursday 21 May 2009

Idol 8: We have a winner!

Rousing opening number with the top 13? Check.
Plugging good social causes? Check.
Mock awards ceremony? Check.
Performances from popular artists and Idol also-rans? Check.
Big, surprise result? Check!

Wait, what?

Yes, to practically everyone’s surprise, it was a come-from-behind win for Kris. I can say with confidence that the judges must have been surprised when they found out, since they’d practically crowned Adam last week. Simon’s even made predictions about Adam weeks previous to that, culminating in last night’s pronouncement that the purpose of a show like American Idol was to discover talent like Adam.

Which begs the question: did Kris deserve the win? Was it just a case of underdog votes, and complacency on the side of Adam’s fans? Did the majority of Danny’s fans move over to Kris? Maybe America just didn’t like the “screaming”? Was there a (gasp!) homophobia element to the voting?

Just shy of 100 million votes for the final show. Let’s take a moment to absorb that number shall we? [Waits a moment.] Ok, moving on.

I think most people agree that Kris represented the dark-horse of the top three, and then the final two. There’s no denying Adam’s vocal skill, and he is quite a performer. The judges summarized it nicely last night though. Kris has grown tremendously over the period of the competition, and has revealed a confident ability to put an original spin to different types of songs. And throughout, he hasn’t strayed far from his soft-rock vocal sound. His popularity has been steadily increasing, coming from behind and quietly overtaking other popular choices.

Yes, he deserved the win. Congratulations to Kris Allen on winning the eighth season of American Idol!

And before we say good night, how ’bout some highlights from the finale (all with a grin – just different kinds): encore performance from Norman Gentle; Black Eyed Peas!; the new and “improved” Bikini Girl; Kara’s wardrobe malfunction; Danny Gokey and Lionel Ritchie!; the masterful stylings of Carlos Santana; Kris’ surprise and humility.

Ok. It was a good show. Good night! :-)

Monday 18 May 2009

A(H1N1) flu arrived on Malaysian shores

Kinda ironic that after my first posting related to the A(H1N1) flu Malaysia reports its first confirmed case of the virus, quickly followed up with a second confirmed case. Both were students, returning to Malaysian shores from New York, arriving on Wednesday morning on a Malaysia Airlines flight. The second student took a second flight a few hours later, on Air Asia, up north to Penang. A few things of note about this story.


  • Both cases were the result of primary infections from an international location, and not a spread of the virus through domestic infection. That’s somewhat reassuring.

  • The Malaysia Airlines flight had a stopover in Stockholm, Sweden. Some passengers may have disembarked there. So have the Swedes been informed, and do they have any infections there now as a result?

  • Both students from NY, who know each other, were infected. Is the situation in the Big Apple that bad? Or did they pick up the infection from a high-risk individual, maybe someone who had recently been to a hot-bed of H1N1 infections? Or is their school the source?

  • How many persons from the original MAS flight have made secondary flights? That’s how the infection spreads, jumping from locale to locale. Hopefully they’ve already identified all the passengers, and the only ones traveling onwards were the ones going to Sarawak, and the one confirmed case in Penang.



This first week, until Wednesday, is probably the most high-risk time for a spread of the infection. It’s quite alarming to note that Japan now has 90+ confirmed cases of the virus, with the majority of those being domestic infections. From four persons bringing the virus from abroad, they’re now trying to contain a much larger outbreak centered on two prefectures.

Time to be careful. Wash your hands frequently. Carry one of those antibacterial handwash gels in the small bottles. By all means, wear a face mask (more especially if you feel you may be infected, cos at least you’re keeping from spreading it). And if you feel feverish or have any other symptoms of the flu get yourself checked out.

Friday 15 May 2009

Dyson – a neat little game, by independent game designers

I discovered this gem of a title from a Malaysian gaming blog, which has a section for free games. Being a rather poor gamer (sob, sob), with old hardware (sob, sob), I’m always on the lookout for good, free options to quench my gaming thirst.

Dyson was developed by Alex May and Rudolf Kremers, and was entered in this year’s Independent Games Festival. The 26.4Mb installer is downloadable from www.Dyson-game.com. It doesn’t require much in terms of computing resources, and, although there’s some delay on loading the game, it runs fine on basic hardware even when there are hundreds of little units flying around.

The premise of the game is simple enough. It most closely resembles an RTS in gameplay mechanics. The game map is a mix of different-sized asteroids, each with different levels in three attributes. Your units are “seeds” that fly around, orbiting asteroids or flying from one to another. But you don’t directly control the seeds. You can only give them instructions to fly from one asteroid to another within range, or to plant trees (two types: unit producing, or defensive) to colonize asteroids. The seeds behave according to pre-set mechanics, and have the attributes of their originating asteroids.

The minimalist design, both in terms of gameplay and aesthetics, is very pleasing and engaging. There are currently only 6 levels, and no multiplayer (not even planned), but it still promises a challenging experience. The developers promise that they still have further plans for the game, expanding the possibilities and improving on the AI. Even as it is, though, it still offers up a fun gaming experience, and I’m sure even after you complete the game you can still come back to Dyson for an occasional rush. After all, watching hundreds of seeds asteroid-hopping and crushing all resistance is fun!

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to figure out how to beat level 5. You can check out a review of Dyson here.

Thursday 14 May 2009

Idol 8: To the home stretch!

Wow. So Paula was only half right. Was this a shocker? Hmm. I’ve already blogged that I felt Kris has been getting stronger and stronger as the weeks went by. So, even though I’m a big fan of Danny, I’m gonna say that I’m still pleased with this result. There was no escaping Adam making it to the final, what with all the love he’s been getting from the judges week after week. Heck, even Katy Perry had his name stenciled on her cape (what’s with that?).

Kris is a good singer, and he’s quite versatile. What I like most about him is his ability to interpret a song, and put a new spin on it. He’s done that time and time again. I think that’s what he’s being rewarded for. There’s no doubt that Danny’s got skill. His final performance on Idol showed us the range of his ability. And I’m sure there’s a future in the business for him, so it’s not the end of the road. Not by a longshot.

Could Kris mount a challenge to Adam? Interesting that he was the first one saved.

We’re finally at the home stretch! (So, Lin, you gonna vote for Kris next week?)

Preventing the spread of H1N1

Do you call it swine flu? That’s apparently a misnomer, since Influenza A (H1N1) is actually a combination of swine flu, bird flu, and human flu. What about Mexican/North American flu? Or is that too discriminatory? In Malaysia, people are referring to it by its full name or shortened to H1N1, so I’ll go with that.

Now, even though H1N1 isn’t headlining the news the way it did a few weeks ago, we’re still getting updates on the progress of this flu epidemic (pandemic yet?). Confirmed cases are cropping up in more and more countries around the world as the virus spreads from human host to human host. (No, you can’t get it from eating pork. I wonder if that silly fear has died away yet.)

When the virus first grabbed the world’s attention in a big way, one of the first things a lot of people did was don face masks. It was a common sight in Asia a few years back during the SARS scare, and lots of people fell back on a “tried and tested” control mechanism. But does it really help?

Slate’s Explainer examined whether surgical masks are effective at protecting against the flu virus. Quick take-away: The masks can’t filter out the viruses, since the viruses are too small. (Although, the masks would still filter larger carrier molecules, so there could be some benefit.)

So what’s the best advice? Well, it turns out that the best advice is both simple and harder to carry out. Harder, because it’s not as simple as slipping on a face mask, even though it is a simple enough thing to do: wash your hands frequently.

Sounds easy enough, right? Hold on! Did you know there’s a method to it? Yup, there’s the right way to wash your hands, and then there’s the “quick n easy” method. You know what I’m talking about. Turn on the tap, rinse your hands for a couple of secs, turn off the tap, wring your hands out.

So here’s the lowdown on how to wash your hands properly, courtesy of the Mayo Clinic. And if you need to get through to kids, try sending the teens here.

So if you see me humming Happy Birthday to myself, I’m probably washing my hands at the sink.

Wednesday 13 May 2009

Idol 8: Top three

First off, yes, this is an amazing top three. Never mind that all the judges basically said to Adam, “We’ll see you in the finals!” Maybe it is just a matter of who shares the stage with him in the final, before his anointment as the next American Idol. I’m less certain about Kris’ billing as “the darkhorse”. I think he showed his chops tonight.

Ok, wait, let’s rewind for a bit.

The judges’ song choices for the Idol hopefuls were actually kinda appropriate. But their personal picks were spot on! It was more noticeable for Danny and Kris though, which kinda says something about Adam. Kris doing an acoustic version of Kanye West’s Heartless? Brilliant! Absolutely brilliant! My fave performance of the night. Danny’s “vocal masterclass” performance of You Are So Beautiful comes a close second. I won’t comment on Adam’s performances, since I’m not a huge Aerosmith fan, although his rendition of U2’s One was good.

So, the judges all loved Adam, no surprise, but Simon reminded everyone not to assume that he’ll make it to the finals. He basically reminded everyone to vote for him, so that he gets the chance to prove himself in the final.

Let’s just come right out and say it then. Who’s gonna accompany Adam to the final then?