Where were you...when Faker won his 4th Championship?

It's been a long road back to the top, and after a promising early year for T1 (followed by a rocky LCK Summer Split), the team made it to LoL Worlds 2023 where they breezed through to the knockout stage, only to be the LCK's last hope and having to run through the LPL gauntlet to finally raise the trophy and be crowned the World Champions last Sunday! I was at home, watching while the rest of the family was resting post-tahlil. I had already made them wait an hour and a half just to catch New Jeans in the Opening Ceremony, then everyone dispersed so I could enjoy the games.

And what a thrilling series it was! T1 played through the top triangle, with Keria pulling off some amazing moves in teamfights. Quarters and Semis were good series too, and this year's Finals didn't disappoint, even though it was a clean 3-0.

So SKT/T1 won their 4th Worlds trophy, and so did their Unkillable Demon King mid-laner, Faker. Congrats to the team!

Where were you... when Aung San Suu Kyi was freed?

This post is part-diary, part-momentous-occasion-noting. It’s like that Zen question: “if a tree falls in a forest and no one’s there to hear it, does it make a sound?” (Ok, I checked; it’s not a Zen question, just a philosophical riddle. Same diff.)

In today’s electronic world, if you don’t blog it, or tweet it, or FB it, did you have any reaction? Were you even aware of it, whatever “it” is? Certainly there are benefits to this. At least, years from now, if I can’t recall the story, I can look it up. This is what I was doing when “it” happened.

So where was I when Aung San Suu Kyi was freed from house arrest?

It was Saturday evening and I was home after having sent A’isyah back. She had her certificate presentation day in the morning where she had performed with all her schoolmates, and we had spent most of the afternoon making Play-Doh ice cream. So I was sitting and drinking some warm water with honey for my sore throat when my koi messages me a CNN headline:

Aung San Suu Kyi release after 15 years of house arrest

She was asking me to remind her who that was. :-)

The leader of the democracy movement in Burma/Myanmar being released after decades of persecution by the ruling military junta is certainly a momentous occasion. After all, Aung San Suu Kyi was the symbol of the human rights abuses of the Myanmar leadership. That, of course, was always a thorn in ASEAN's side vis-a-vis international relations. What a different world it would have been if her party’s victory in the 1990 general election had been recognized instead of nullified by the military.

Of course, just because she’s been freed now doesn’t guarantee a different future for the people of Myanmar. After all, they just had (a sham of) an election days before her release. So the military government probably feels they have a mandate to lead. And they could just very well place Aung San Suu Kyi on house arrest again in a few months. It’s not like they haven’t done it before.

Still, let’s be optimistic.

The shadow of the father

My sis sent me an sms earlier: "Dad’s on Wikipedia!" (Bored much? Hehe. Can I get my laptop back?) Soon after, there’s a short clip on TV about today in history. 10 years ago today, TiungSAT-1, Malaysia’s first microsatellite, was launched from Kazakhstan. And my dad’s picture flashed on screen. The timing of the sms and the "today in history" clip is coincidental; the Wikipedia entry is not a personal page, but just a list.

Still, it gives me pause. Nothing too mindblowing. I’ve thought about this before. It may not be a very big shadow, but there’s still a shadow cast by my father. Nothing I need to really crawl out of though. We don’t have that much in common, and I don’t operate in the same circle.

I wonder what others think though.

Meydan is open for business

Well, it’s done. The first race at the new Meydan Racecourse in Dubai was held on Thursday, 28 Jan 2010 (about 2 months later than originally planned). Fitting that the first race was won by jockey Richard Hills on No Risk Al Maury, owned by Sheikh Hamdan Al-Maktoum.

I worked on that project for almost two years. Never got to see the last year of it though.

I’m not surprised that the opening was low-key, and there was “relief among officials that the gigantic grandstand had passed the first test without any major glitches” (source: UK’s Telegraph).

Watch out for the end of March. That’ll be the big night.

So it’ll be ready after all

I was starting to wonder about the fate of the Meydan Racecourse. As confirmed by DubaiRaceNight.com, however, Meydan will indeed be ready for the 2010 Dubai World Cup. The Winter Racing Challenge’s probably gonna be held at a different racecourse. The Dubai International Racing Carnival will debut at Meydan, with a more compact schedule due to begin on 28 January 2010.

Typhoon Ondoy

The big news for me this weekend wasn’t Tiger Woods not winning The Tour Championship but still winning the FedExCup (though that was a great story; and lest we forget, Phil Mickelson had a great final round, winning the Tour Championship in style), or Lewis Hamilton winning his second F1 race of the season (and Jenson Button still edging teammate Rubens Barrichello for championship points). No, the big news for me was Typhoon Ondoy, internationally known as Tropical Storm Ketsana.

Ketsana started attacking the Philippines on Saturday morning, 26 September 2009, but people were as yet unaware of how bad it would get. Consequently, business went on pretty much as usual. It was only later that day that it became obvious that this storm was going to be more devastating than normal. Ketsana was historically the worst storm to hit Metro Manila in recorded history, and dumped more rain on the city than Hurricane Katrina did on New Orleans.

I only found out about it Saturday night, and I immediately turned to the net for news. Electricity was out in many parts of Manila, and the phone lines were mostly down. SMS’ took awhile to reach, but at least they made it through. Calls were difficult to place, but at least the Internet was up.

Clean-up’s gonna take awhile, that’s for sure.

Reminds me to be thankful that Malaysia is safe from most natural hazards. Sure, we still suffer from floods, and landslides, and even took a hit from the Asian Tsunami. But Malaysia doesn’t get anything on this scale.

The King of Pop has passed on

Just over two hours ago, Michael Jackson passed away apparently due to cardiac arrest. Heard it on CNN this morning as I was leaving the house, and Mix FM carried the news too. It’s gonna be tribute weekend, for sure.

So many memories linked to him and his music. Set aside the controversies surrounding him for a moment, and you’ll remember he was a good performer.

He practically pioneered the music video as mini-movie. The release of his Thriller video was an event of note. I even remember when the Bad music video was released.

He may have belonged to a particular era, especially when he couldn’t stage any meaningful comeback in the past decade. But his music will live on.

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! :-)

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.

Setting records in by-election nominations

Ok, this is certainly interesting. One of the three scheduled by-elections for next month in three far-flung constituencies has just seen 15 candidates qualify the nomination round! This, for a constituency with 5,140 registered voters (as per The Star’s reporting). Let’s assume a 70% voter turnout. At that rate, each of the thirteen independent candidates only needs to guarantee about 240 votes to make it interesting for the two main political parties vying for the seat. Seems doable for an independent.

PPS no more

Boy, am I glad I stopped pinging PPS some time back. (Leave aside the fact that I don’t have many posts in the first place. Hehe.) I just visited PPS recently, and have discovered that it has a new owner. I figured there was change, what with the addition and re-arrangement of ads on the site. And I don’t think I like the new direction the site will be headed. So, I’ve started my search of alternatives. First up is blogged.my, which seems decent. I’m not gonna start pinging again, but I’ll “vote” with my clicks. I’ll be visiting that aggregator instead, for updates on the Malaysian blogosphere.

News from Dubai starting to hit home

Big news today. Just found out from the local paper (NST) that Meydan have cancelled the construction contract for WCT and Arabtec to build the world’s largest horse racecourse. It’s all over the Gulf news. A sampling can be found here and here.

Interesting to note that the reason given was “because of non-adherence to the agreed time schedule for construction”, as mentioned in Meydan’s statement.

Hmm. No further comment from me.

Convene the Council so I can get you kicked off the island

In some alternate universe...

DSAI: You have to get the group together. Call a special council.

AAB: Why?

DSAI: Well, I want to call for a vote to kick you off the island, and since you're the only one who can call a Tribal Council, I need you to get the group together.

AAB: Oh.

DSAI: And do it soon.

AAB: Uh... no?

DSAI: This just proves that you're scared to get kicked off the island.

AAB: Sure. Whatever you say. Why don't you just wait for the Tribal Council scheduled in a couple of weeks?

DSAI: No no. It has to happen on my terms. I've already got all the votes I need to get you kicked off the island anyway. It'll just be a formality. So, are you going to call the Tribal Council or not?

This goes under "Paying more attention to the local news"

It's old news by now. I'd actually heard of the accident on Sunday evening, at a friend's barbeque get-together, but I didn't get the details (like who it was).

I'm talking of the freak accident that cost Dr. Liew Boon-Horng his life. Check here and here for the story. I can't say I knew him, but I've met him, and I know one of his (new) colleagues.

Bit of a shock when something like this happens to someone you know. That's just the way things go. It's not inherently sadder than if the same thing happens to someone you don't know. It's just that the event connects with you more when it's someone you're connected to.

Remembering the Tsunami

It was a year ago today. Malaysia was one of the countries affected, albeit only slightly. Some homes in my wife's kampung, in Parit Buntar (northern end of Perak), were flooded with the river waters. No lives lost; just things getting wet.

Malaysia had it's share of grief, though nothing in the scale of other countries. Of course, the real story in Malaysia in the days following the tsunami was the lack of good local news coverage of the story.

The tsunami hit our shores in the morning of 26 Dec 2004. It was the morning after my company's X-mas/annual dinner, and when I got up, it was a normal Sunday morning. I only heard about the tsunami from foreign news programs (CNN, BBC) during the day. Which was strange, considering our northern states got hit. The news media really got an earful from the public after that.

I count myself lucky, not having been directly affected by the tsunami. But it did shake our world. Malaysia's no longer safe from the big natural disasters...

Yachting in the monsoon

Ok, so maybe this Monsoon Cup is an interesting thing. And apparently, Pulau Duyung, the host of the event, has a tradition of boat-making.

Here's the VC of USM writing about the "creative thinking" that gave rise to the whole idea.

And the organizers are expecting between 10,000 to 15,000 spectators at the inaugural event.

So maybe it's a pretty good thing for the State, and maybe even the country.

Still, don't forget the turtles.

Putting Terengganu on the world map

Caught a sound bite on the evening news tonight. The Chief Minister of the state of Terengganu was saying something about how he hoped "this event would put Terengganu on the world map". "This event" is the Terengganu Monsoon Cup.

A yachting event.

Terengganu - Land of Turtles. That's what the state used to be known for, and what it should be known for.

With the dwindling number of turtles coming ashore, the place itself became less and less of an attraction. Rantau Abang itself has fallen into shambles with many of the outlets and some resorts have been abandoned.

As usual in this part of the world, realization and actions to remedy the situation is most always delayed or too little too late. One wonders if the title “Terennganu (sic) – Land of Turtles” is still apt.

Quote from http://www.abcmalaysia.com/tour_malaysia/trng_plcs3.htm; visited 10 Nov 2005.

A bit sad really...