To thy happy children of the future, those of the past send their greetings

University seems so far ago for me. It's been two years now since I left university. I can remember, and even have the pics of my graduation to remind myself of how great life in university use to be. Now I'm all grown up, happily married, and I wonder how all my uni friends are doing?

When I was in university I didn't think about how I was going to pursue my career. Or life. Or what ever. I just wanted to get past my exams, hang out with my friends while playing video games at it. I'm still playing video games. But the friends are far away now.

Where ever you guys are now in your life, I hope you guys find what you are looking for. Whether it be a companion, or money, or power, I hope you guys find it.

Drop by to say hello once in awhile. I might not have many friends, but when I do make friends, or to the friends that I currently have, you guys should know that I believe in being friends for the long run. No "good morning how are you doing?" "well I'm fine thank you" for me.

Expectations

I've heard several times now about people who don't want to blog because they are afraid of the expectations that come with it. Those expectations can be in the form of regularly updating your blog, making the topic discussions interesting, making yourself seem flamboyantly verbose, etc.

The truth is, all of that doesn't matter. You blog because you want to blog. You write because you want to write. And that should be the premise of what makes up your blog. When writing, you can't expect yourself to write something interesting ALL the time. Everyone has their good days and bad days. Heck if you feel like it's your off day then you don't have to post. No one will blame you.

Of course, when you don't update your blog people tend to lose interest. Perhaps writing at least once in three days is the magic number? (side note: I heard that the magic number to giving someone a ticket is 50 bucks. If the traffic enforcement gives a ticket more than that, people will tend to contest their tickets).

Don't worry about how people perceive you. Write because you have something to say. That's all that matters.

Why Man U?

I hate it when people answer a question with another question. They probably think it sounds mysterious or intelligent, but in fact it doesn't. It just annoys other people. When people answer my question with another question it makes me think that - one; they can't explain their answer or - two; they are being defensive.

Just the other day I was in the office kitchen watching the Champions League match between Man U and Arsenal. While watching, one of the higher ranking bosses in the Chicago office comes up to me and asks me... Do you support Man U (Manchester United)? Then and there I said, "Yes, most definitely". Then I proceeded to explain why I supported Man U...

Now hold on, let's back up the story a bit. Ok. Try to imagine if he asked me that question and then I answered his question with another question. Imagine how that scenario would play out.

Scenario 1
Him : Do you support Man U?

Me: Do you think I support Man U? Is there anything wrong with me supporting Man U? Does it make you cringe if I support Man U?

Scenario 2
Him : Why do you support Man U?

Me: You got it all wrong buster. The question is, why not Man U?

These two scenarios are the most common scenarios when people answer a question with another question. The first one is because the person is being defensive. The second scenario is because the person can't eloquently explain their answer OR the person is just a dick and no one should be friends with him.

Either way, I would advise that people do not answer a question with another question.

Now, let's go to the topic that I really want to discuss. (Pretty long intro huh?). The real question, gents and ladies, is why do people support the sports teams that they support? Is there some clear algorithm that drives a man to become a Man U fan? Could it be that Arsenal fans support Arsenal because they like to speak French? Are Chelsea fans inspiring oil tycoons? How about Liverpool... OK I got nothing for Liverpool. As far as I'm concerned the team has no style or finest, they got nothing, nada.

The reasons I list below are reasons based on hierarchy. Reason 1 should be a stronger motivator for a person to support a certain team as compared to Reason 2... and so forth.

Reason 1:
Geographics. If you are from a certain city, you absofuckinglutely must support the team within your city. If you do not support the city team from where you live-in/are-from then you do not deserve to live within that city. Go pack your bags and move out. The land that you live on does not want you. If you are a plant on the ground you do not deserve sunshine nor water and you should perish.

Eg: I support the Malaysian badminton team. The Malaysian badminton team is my first priority as compared to the Manchester United badminton team.

Reason 2:
Family and Peers. If your family or close peers support a certain team, then you must also adhere to family/peer pressure and support the same team as well.

Eg: My brothers support Man U. My uncle works for AIG and gave me a Man U scarf free of charge.

Reason 3:
The team has one or two players that are too awesome to deny. If the team you support has exceptionally talented players that are extremely dominant, and plays the certain sport with such elegance that you enjoy watching him/her play the sport, you must also support the player's team.

Eg: Michael Jordan = Bulls. Eric Cantona = Man U.

Reason 4:
Winning. You do not want to support a loser team. A team that gets relegated to a lower division is not one that you want to be associated with. It is people's innate natural selection instincts to support a winning team. No one likes losing.

Eg: Amir should not support Newcastle because it has been relegated to a lower division. RIP.

Reason 5:
Being different. You do not always want to be like everybody else. Being different is cool. Why would you want to support the team that 90% of other people support? When the team that most people support win do you really want to be happy with 90% of the other people? Boring.

Eg: Ijai likes to support Liverpool because when Liverpool loses he is able to confide with 10% of his supporting friends. He feels special.

Ok I'd like to add more but I have a strict rule of writing fast when I write my blog entrees. If I get stuck it means I'm wasting too much time. Have fun everyone. Tell me what you think.

One of the best games ever

Haha cute song

Gaya lagu ni cam gaya lagu yang sesuai untuk kau Jai. Buat aaa cover.



haha gaya cam same kan

Scary Mary

I won't go into the details... I just bought my first stock today. It's a scary experience knowing that you could lose money. But I think I'll give myself a shot at this. Who knows what could happen. The market seems to be going back up from it's lowest hole. Consumer confidence is slowly returning. Job creation really isn't happening all that much, but give it some time and everything will be more manageable (I don't believe that things would return to pre-recession rates)

The fact is, the wealth that America has been accumulating before isn't real. Lending and borrowing. Fake money being pushed left and right. Money not backed by gold, but actually created from thin air by assuming demand and supply confidence. Creditors slicing your wrists with their 20% interest rates. Hedge funds lending out money 30 times what they really have. Madoff ponzi schemes.

But, you go with what you got. The system is there. You don't have the power to change its fundamentals. So what you do is you learn how to beat the system. Hopefully, the system doesn't beat me down instead by turning my investments into shambles.

Weaksauce

It is 11.30pm right now at my house.

It is too easy to give up now.

It is too easy to say "F it! I'm going to sleep!"

It is too easy to not look at my books when they are staring at me.

It is too easy to be average.

I don't like easy.

So I'm sleeping at 2am.

Camera forum for the win

I did it, I ordered a laptop. I decided I did not what to spend $1250 on a laptop (the Toshiba I linked) and that $1K was my MAX. I had a nice (less expensive) Toshiba picked out on Newegg for $1K when adamjohari sent me this link in a PM

http://www.dealsea.com/

I specking out a nice HP Pavilion with the same or better specs for $900 Free shipping too!

Here are the basics specs:
Monitor: 17" 1600x900 WS
CPU: Core 2 Duo 2.40GHz 3MB L2 cache 1066MHz FSB
RAM: 4GB DDR2 800MHz
HD: 320GB 5400rpm
Graphics Card: ATI Radeon HD 4530 with 512 DDR2 800MHz
Networking: 10/100Mbps and Intel Next-Gen Wireless-N
OS: Vista Home Premium 64 bit

I decided to go 64bit Vista to try it out despte not being compatible with Nikon software. Hopefully Nikon fixes that soon or at least makes things compatible with Windows 7. For now this computer is mainly for my wife.

Thanks again to all of you for the input. I checked out all your suggestions and It helped me think things through.

Cheers,
Andre