HAPPY NEW YEAR

2010 is here. Alas, it is time to say cheers to another year of-more often than not-unfulfilled resolutions (eg: better grades, get a job, eat more vegetables, etc.). But resolutions and trivial pursuits aside, I cannot help but wonder at the start of each new year just how amazing it is that life is still being lived, that mankind is still surviving, and civilization just got another year older. The fact that our earth has just completed a full orbit around the sun safe and sound is already astounding to say the least, and that our planet has been doing so for the past 65 million years since the end of the dinosaurs is nothing short of a miracle.

Before we start filling those glasses with tequila to celebrate the new year by waking up on the toilet covered in vomit and other questionable bodily fluids, I think it would be worth the time to reflect and appreciate the astronomical factors and probabilities of how we're still here and why we need a planetary call for celebration every time a new year arrives.

• There is 1 chance in 140 trillion that the Earth should exist.
• There is 1 chance in 795 billion that life should have evolved on earth.

• There is 1 chance in 89 billion that life should have evolved into mankind.
• There is 1 chance 12 billion that mankind should have created the alphabet and thus civilization.
• There is 1 chance in 6 billion that our parents should ever have met and got together.
• There is 1 chance in 90 million that we should have been the lucky sperm that fertilized your mother's egg.
• Overall we're pretty lucky to be here.

(source: Carey, B., Delehag, H., (2009), 'This Book Will Change Your Life', pp.96)

But anyway, what is the start of the new year without resolutions right? Below are my resolutions for 2010:

Get better grades

Eat more fruits

Grow more hair on my axilla, thus making it look more manly than the hairless and sissy looking monstrosity it is now

Purchase a slave

Get the Pope and the Dalai Lama drunk (they apparently wore the costumes above 'sober')

Frankly I think I have a higher chance with the last one compared to the rest. But anyway, have fun, love life, and enjoy 2010 to the fullest. Happy New Year people!

MY LECTURER THE RAPPER

I just had a WTF moment listening to my Mangement Accounting lecture online. My lecturer had a sudden outburst of some hidden "KANYE POWER" in him he just had to release when trying to explain the difference between zero base and program budgeting. Listen to seconds 0:25 to 0:31...




"Very time consuming, very resource intensive, can cause severe.....urm....conflict within organisations. As I said a lot of times these organisations are committed. An alternative method of budgeting that is sometimes used is or HKHGKGHKHK fairly popular at the moment, following the fashion of the moment, is called Program Budgeting, so when I come back and do this lecture in about 3 years SDBGJSDJHBGB ZERO SDBDJBKSJGBJDBL BUDGETING SDFHSKDBNLL ZERO BASE BUDGETING FGKLJFDGNG @*(#%^*(@#%^*#^*@#^#&(^&@#^&#%^&@#%#@ ???!!!!" 

My face was like this after listening to that...

Then I went like...

Then I laughed uncontrollably...

Then for some reason I had an erection and felt a bit shy that people would notice...

Then I thought about how Anwar looks like Scar from The Lion King...

Then I realized I should probably go back to studying.

ISN'T IT OBVIOUS?

Why is it that people (especially Malaysians) just love stating the obvious? Like how it is when you see a friend, whose hair has surprisingly become shorter since the last time you met, and you go..."wah cut hair ah?"...it's amazing how at times like these we feel a sudden concern and need to make sure our beloved friend has in fact cut his hair, and not acquired the unnatural ability to grow his hair shorter instead.

So I was thinking, what if everyone else in the world could think and speak like Malaysians?

So why do we love stating the obvious really? Conversation starter? Quick ice breaker? Maybe there's that 0.001% chance the other guy really has no clue and we feel it ethically obliging to inform him? Whatever it is, it just makes certain quirky aspects of human behaviour all that more fascinating to observe.

MOON UNDER TERRORIST SIEGE

I kid, I kid. As many of you all may already know, just about 4 days ago, 2 spacecrafts were smashed into the moon. Although it's tempting to assume Al-Qaeda has declared holy war on the moon (you know, seeing that it does not abide by sharia laws, as it is...you know...a moon), the 2 spacecrafts were actually unmanned and part of NASA's LCROSS mission in an attempt to uncover the presence of water-ice on the surface.

I know what you're thinking, if you're at all like me you'd want to know when and how soon it is we'll be able to start drinking mineral water from the moon. HOW COOL IS THAT?! Well apparently not-so-cool according to NASA, because that is not at all what they had planned for this mission. But then why spend $79mil if not to consume 'moon-water'?

Well apparently, the main objectives of the mission are (taken directly from NASA's website):

1) Confirm the presence or absence of water ice in a permanently shadowed region on the moon.
2) Identify the cause of the hydrogen signatures detected at the lunar poles.
3) Determine the amount of water, if present, in the lunar regolith or soil.
4) Determine the composition of the regolith in one of the moon's permanently shadowed crater.

(PS: Regolith??? what the??? cool name for a Pokemon though, should GameFreak run out of ideas...)

So no new competitors against Spritzer or Evian? No chance humans are going to piss MOON-WATER in the future? Ugh. BORING. But anyway, in all seriousness, this opens new doors for space exploration in the sense that explorations on the moon can go on for longer periods of time now, seeing as the need to transport water from earth to the moon does not have to be a burden anymore. It will also give a better idea of how planets were formed. Sigh. No moon-water for me to drink then.

(Earth. 40,075.16km circumference. One Moon.)

(Record holder Sheyla Hershey. 38 KKK. Two Moons.)

Well anyway, here is MY reenactment on the LCROSS mission, with what I think closely resembles the moon (ie: rocky, round-shaped, hard, daft) :

BACK LIKE BRITNEY

Britney's back biatch. And no, despite what the title suggests, I did not spend the past year away from Sproogidiboo flashing my nether regions while getting out of a car, nor did I impulsively shave my head bald. It was after all the usual stuff -random documentaries/readings, countless encounters/conversations with uncanny people, oh and "studying"- that I realized I had accumulated too much 'haphazard' knowledge I need to share with what's left of my readers out there before I spontaneously combust from the pressure of keeping too much of these things to myself. So for you 1.618 readers of Sproogidiboo still out there, I make my return...FOR YOU.

SO it should not be a coincidence then, that my very first post of 2009, revolves around the topic of "Coincidence", which is an eleven letter word, same as the number from adding 2+0+0+9 together. Okay that was a rather foolish attempt to spook you, sorry. Before I begin, I think it would interest you to read the following (taken entirely from listverse.com):

"A German mother who photographed her infant son in 1914 left the film to be developed at a store in Strasbourg. In those days some film plates were sold individually. World War I broke out and unable to return to Strasbourg, the woman gave up the picture for lost. Two years later she bought a film plate in Frankfurt, over 100 miles away, to take a picture of her newborn daughter. When developed the film turned out to be a double exposure, with the picture of her daughter superimposed on the earlier picture of her son. Through some incredible twist of fate, her original film, never developed, had been mislabeled as unused, and had eventually been resold to her".

"The twin brothers, Jim Lewis and Jim Springer, were separated at birth, adopted by different families. Unknown to each other, both families named the boys James. Both James grew up not knowing of the other, yet both sought law-enforcement training, both had abilities in mechanical drawing and carpentry, and each had married women named Linda. Both had sons, one of whom was named James Alan and the other named James Allan. The twin brothers also divorced their wives and married other women – both named Betty. And they both owned dogs which they named Toy" (for further reading, head to the link on people.com).

Note: A huge part of what is written below draws inspiration from Richard Wiseman's book "Quirkology", a book I believe is a 'must-have' for anyone interested in or studying psychology.

Although many people would love to attribute these events and others alike to something superstitious or "divine", there have thankfully been a bunch of people (who actually use their brains) to analyse situations such as these a little further. It basically comes down to the law of large numbers. Every week, someone wins the lottery jackpot, with the insane odds of about fifteen million to one. I know it is tempting for most Malaysian Chinese housewives to believe that all of the winners are advocates of Lilian Too, I am not a housewife, so I believe it is simply because a huge number of people buy lottery tickets, therefore covering most of the 15mil-1 odds, and occasionally, someone DOES win. Relating this to seemingly impossible events like the two stories above, is it surprising then that a genuinely unlikely event occurs when there are millions of people around the world living complex lives, in different situations and under different circumstances?

Maybe this is why sometimes certain songs or sentences can coincidentally contain hidden messages, like how the letters in the words 'US President Ronald Reagan' can be rearranged to make the words 'repulsed and ignorant arse', or how some people believe certain songs playing backwards contain messages that praise Satan (granted, maybe a few them actually are true, but I definitely believe some of them were either just coincidental, or incidences of apophenia, selection bias and confirmation bias).

My point is this, maybe sometimes simple science or maths can explain events that seem impossible, but not improbable.Or maybe certain things 'divine' and astrological are used to explain undiscovered scientific truths of today, just like how ancient civilizations of the Aztecs thought eclipses of the sun were a sign that some non-existent powerful being in the 'heavens' was pissed of because he wasn't getting any. Whatever you want to believe is entirely up to you, but I certainly hope reading all this has brought something new to your perspective.

To put it in the brilliant words of Sheldon Cooper from The Big Bang Theory, believing in astrology tells me that "you believe the sun's apparent position relative to arbitrarily defined constellations at the time of your birth somehow affects your personality".

Oh, and again, before I forget, Sproogidiboo is back, biatch...bow chika wow wow...

JASON MRAZ LIVE AT THE PRINCE OF WALES BANDROOM, MELBOURNE - 2008

13th August 2008, shall be remembered as the day I witnessed one of the best entertainers ever perform right in front of me. Trust me, you have no idea how good an artist he is until you've seen him live, one of those rare artists that sounds as good as they are, if not better, on stage than on the CD. His frequent hilarious and spontaneous bursts into songs about his surroundings and the crowd kept everyone entertained throughout the entire 2 HOURS he stood there performing. His humour, charisma, stage presence and musical ability will have you aching to throw your under garments at him in no time.

LUCKY-PERSON/FOOL # 1, yours truly, that went for the show

LUCKY-PERSON # 2, Stephanie Beh Sze Yee, that went for the show. Poor girl had to wake up the next morning at 5 am so she could catch the train going back to Clayton, which is like super far from the City, just so she could try and make it for her 8 am tutorial. It was good then that I was there to comfort and constantly remind her, that its okay because she's doing it for Jason Mraz, and he would do the same for her....well he must have definitely skipped lots of classes and tutorials right? Thats why he's making a living by performing for us now!...

.....plus SUPER-DUPER-EXTRA-LUCKY-PERSONS #3 and #4, Su Mei and Jia-Li, who by the way, got FREE tickets one and a half hours before the show started because NOT-SO-LUCKY-PERSON # 5 couldn't make it at the last minute.

Before I begin showing you guys the awesome pictures I took at the concert, please be appreciative and bear in mind that there was what I shall refer to as AYM (Australian Yao Ming) standing right in front of me the whole time, as shown in the picture above. Because of that, all of the pictures you see below were taken out of a great deal of effort to stretch my hands above the AYM. That picture was a Tat Ren's Eye View of the concert, by the way. Awesome.

Melanie Horsnell, the openning act. Reminds me of a mix of Dido and the lead singer of The Cranberries.

Yes that was how close I was to the stage. Awesome picture right? Or shall I say MRAZ-some??? Even with the AYM in front of me I still managed to get such a good picture. Toca lost quite a bit of weight I must say...

MRAZ-tastic.

MRAZ-nificent.

mRazda.

There were many more pictures taken of course, but I'm too lazy to post them all up here. I shall leave you all with a video of "The Dynamo of Volition" that I took, which is the only song I recorded fully. Steph took way more videos of other songs, but that's probably because she had no AYM standing in front of her.

A SLEEPING GIANT, YET TO BE AWAKEN......

I am speechless. After watching the opening ceremony of the Olympics, I must say that some of the performances were simply phenomenal. I also have to say, that for the first time in my life...I AM PROUD TO BE A CHINESE. Okay Malaysian-Chinese actually, but my ancestors were from China!!! If they didn’t escape for what seemed to be greener pastures ( they were so wrong – if only we had this noodles called “ So Do Mee ”, then probably it would’ve been alright, ‘cause it would probably be the only Chinese dish the government just cannot get enough of ) in Malaysia, I might have been one of those cool guys banging on the drums or running on air to light the Olympic torch. Seriously, I think with the opening ceremony, they have almost made up for all the drugs they've put into children's food and toys......and our toothpaste.

I used to think that us Chinese possess the following qualities :

We tell mother nature to stop whining about her pollution problem. We're short, have small eyes, flat noses and there are a billion of us to look at. It's about time we took revenge.

Everything that moves is edible to us. Its no wonder nobody cares about how the panda became an endangered species. They came from China.

We do this to kids when they don't finish their homework.

No matter how hard we try, we will never look as cool with arrows as Orlando Bloom.

We just love coming up with scams and bogus inventions like this ' BABY MOP '.

...Well that was how I used to view us Chinese. After seeing the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics, I have a totally renewed perception of being a Chinese now. There are more than a billion of us. Of course we're going to have to find more things to eat in order to survive! And since we used to love producing babies so much in the 70's, why not throw in a little innovation in there and let them mop the house while they're moving about? So you see, there's a reason for everything we do!

On a more serious note though, here are some pretty amazing pictures of the opening ceremony taken from the Los Angeles Times website :

The synchronization, coordination and choreography kept me glued watching. Simply stunning to look at.

You think Orlando Bloom looks cool as Legolas shooting some lame ass arrows??? Pffffttt....we've got freakin' swords on OUR HEADS MAN (looks like it at least)....

We do what we do to little kids so they can do this.

What's that? I'll tell you what...It's a giant ball where random Olympic related clips are projected onto it that's holding 2 singers on top and freakin' people are freakin' walking on it OK...and its MADE IN CHINA...and bloody Harvey Dent thinks our guns don't work, we probably made Batman's suit you idiot...

The amazing fireworks display to end the night. Once again, we really don't give a crap about pollution and global warming do we. That's Al Gore's problem.

At no other Olympics ceremony have we seen a guy holding a torch, walking on an opening scroll in mid-air.

Even though he has no other superpowers....this guy is cool.

I need to issue a statement of apology to all my Chinese school friends whom I used to rip on. I may have called you guys "childhood-less people", "future communist leaders of tomorrow", "creatures with no soul", or "God's way of punishing fallen angels". I now officially take them all back and say I'm Sorry. We're all Chinese and we should be proud of our heritage.

- Leon Chew Jien Hoong, Spokesperson and Representative of the People's Republic of Chinese Primary Schools in Malaysia (PRCPSM)

- quote by famous Chinese philosopher, " I-Thing Ai Chong Ming "


Ok on an even more serious note though, really glad I didn't miss watching what was an amazing display of hard work and dedication finally paying off just for that one day when the world's gaze would be fixed on a country that has been through so much just to host this 2008 Olympics. Despite getting all the stereotypes from around the world about who we are and what we do as a Chinese race, we've proven that on the world stage we can perform well when we put our heart, mind and disciplined actions to it. There is obviously still a lot to be done and fixed in a country like China, no question about that. But just for that one day, they've shown that they are a force to be reckoned with whether now, or in the future. Even America didn't get to where it is today without first going through the Great Depression, the Ku Klux Klan phase, and other negative issues that have thankfully been dealt and over with. But just for that one day....that one day....through it's architectural feats, people, and countless other factors that led to a successful and certainly memorable start to the 2008 Olympics, despite all it has been through, China has shown that it is merely a sleeping giant, in its potential to be an economic powerhouse and a people that stands united when the need arises even with its internal issues. A sleeping giant, yet to be awaken...