13 Useless Random Facts

1) In the 1400's a law was set forth that a man was not allowed to beat his wife with a stick no thicker than his thumb. Hence we have "the rule of thumb".

2) Many years ago in Scotland, a new game was invented. It was ruled "Gentlemen Only... Ladies Forbidden"... and thus the word GOLF entered into the English language.

3) Men can read smaller print than women can; women can hear better.

4) It is impossible to lick your elbow.

5) Intelligent people have more zinc and copper in their hair.

6) Each king in a deck of playing cards represents a great king in history:
Spades - King David
Hearts - Charlemagne
Clubs - Alexander, the Great
Diamonds - Julius Caesar

7) 111,111,111 x 111,111,111 = 12,345,678,987,654,321

8) Question: If you were to spell out numbers, how far would you have to go until you would find the letter "A"?

Answer: One thousand

9) In Shakespeare's time, mattresses were secured on bed frames by ropes. When you pulled on the ropes the mattress tightened, making the bed firmer to sleep on. Hence the phrase... "goodnight, sleep tight."

10) It was the accepted practice in Babylon 4,000 years ago that for a month after the wedding, the bride's father would supply his son-in-law with all the mead he could drink. Mead is a honey beer and because their calendar was lunar based, this period was called the honey month, which we know today as the honeymoon.

11) In English pubs, ale is ordered by pints and quarts... So in old England, when customers got unruly, the bartender would yell at them "Mind your pints and quarts, and settle down." It's where we get the phrase "mind your P's and Q's"

12) Many years ago in England, pub frequenters had a whistle baked into the rim, or handle, of their ceramic cups. When they needed a refill, they used the whistle to get some service. "Wet your whistle" is the phrase inspired by this practice.

13) I cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdgnieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid aoccdrnig to rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.

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This is Insane!!!

I was just surfing around the Internet and I came across the World's Largest Palace. Actually, to think that it is so near, about 2 and a half hours flight from KL is not surprising but my initial guest is going to be some Sheikh's or Prince's palace from the Middle East. Have you gotten the clue??

If you've guessed the location, you'll find the World's Largest Palace in Brunei. It's the Istana Nurul Iman Palace which is the official residence of none other than the Sultan of Brunei, Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah. Strangely while I was there, I didn't know he had such a massive....palace even when he opened his palace to visitors once a year. Why in the world does he need to have such a big palace?? To lay down the facts, the palace has an insane 1788 rooms, 257 bathrooms and a floor area of 2,152,782 square feet (200,000 m²). That's something like 400+ m by 400+ m if it's a square. Amenities include 5 swimming pools, an air conditioned stable for the Sultan's 200 polo ponies. I was quite surprised actually by the 5 swimming pools. Why 5? So little?? Izit 5 Olympic size swimming pools or just normal swimming pools with golden tiles. Think about the servants or cleaners who are responsible for cleaning those rooms and bathrooms. I guess the price to pay for living lavishly is high maintenance which obviously..... isn't a problem.

The palace cost USD400 million and has 564 chandeliers, 51,000 light bulbs, 44 stairwells, and 18 elevators. Being extraordinary rich, the sultan himself has a collection of custom-made Ferraris and Bentleys and as well as 165 Rolls Royce. Ohhh yaa... and a 110-car garage which obviously isn't enough for the Sultan's collection. I guess security is gonna be a big issue here but with such great wealth, I don't think there's gonna be another problem.

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The End of the Beginning??

Is this really the end after 2 and a half years in Bukit Jalil? 5 Semesters, dozens of PBL and CSU sessions and hundreds of hours of lectures. Having spent 5 semesters, I realise that my first thought on studying medicine in Semester 1 until now hasn't changed much. I've always known that studying medicine is going to take lots of reading, time and brain power but what really surprised me was the ample time that we had. We have so much free time....really too much considering for a medical student. Even lecturers, will agree that medical students even have time to go shopping after lectures, which is without a doubt rare in other medical schools.

Even as we start our final semester a few months back, despite all the hullabaloo on the pressure on winning the IMU Cup (for the second time) and Convo Mag (me), surprisingly most of us can still handle the pressure of studying and extracurricular activities. Otherwise, I wouldn't have even considered singing for The Wicked Pitches, which has by far been one of the best experiences in my life. With just less than a months time to the end of our course here in Bukit Jalil, I really wander how other medical students in other universities care coping. Is time spent so freely and luxuriously on other extracurricular activities.

One thing I will sorely miss, would be the friendship that I've developed with my colleagues, most of whom will end up scattered all over the globe. Of course, some had great potential to be long-lasting friends. To avoid being long-winded and elaborated on why M204 one really great batch, these are some of my personal experiences which I believe will have long lasting memories.

1. Being introduced to one of the Most Fun Orientation Group. STD!!!! who came out with one of the Best Cheer..."I'm loving it.." inspired by McD. Chern Huay, our great group leader, the famous "Why Cows should wear Bras debate?" and of course getting 3rd or 4th in our overall group placing...:)
2. A wonderful IMCC champion, Ashwin
   
3. A sort of Batch Cheer " Fly Kite Fly Kite" which up to today some of us still remembers...
4. A fantastic batch with a good mix of brilliant people, sportswoman, sportsmen and always getting praises for being the Best Batch when it comes to academic results which some of us dreads. Look at the number of As on the Chart if some of you can remember.
   
   
   
   
   
   
5. IMU Cup Champs 2 consecutive times for the year 2005 and 2006 A feat unheard of in the history of IMU!!! Most outstanding in Football, Futsal, Cross Country Running, Athletics, Volleyball, Carrom, Darts Badminton and Netball. But terrible DOTA players...
6. Won Gold for Carrom this year and got silver for carrom and football in the previous year.
   
   
   
   
   
   
7. Great fighting spirit among our cheerleaders
   
8. Formed a band "Rubberband" for Friday Night. Composed a song for them too!!
9. Graphic Designer for our batch Convomag
10. Ganesh n Nana our batch rep. Very Responsible reps.
    
11. Koay Yeang Wee our funny man. Everybody laughs at him when he picks up the mic and says something even if it isn't funny.
12. Poh Sen the next most funny man, most entertaining and sadly most bullied also.
    
13. Loudest Person: Yoke Sin. Also very much adored by Francis Achiike for her intelligence.
    
14. Video Specialist: Kenn Fong. Plans and Edits video for our batch's events
    
15. Mac Freak: Tan Chern Huay and Iggy
    
16. PDA sepcialists: Alex and Iggy
17. The Wonderful CSS Bunch
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
18. Organized trip to KK and climbed Mount Kinabalu.
    
19. Wong Chee Keong, our most changed friend and library specialist. He spends most of the day lost in the realm of medical knowledge amongst the thick Harrison, Patho, Surgical and piles of lecture notes. He should be our source of inspiration. Became a changed man after one very important incident in his life. But also behind the pair of glasses and books, another personality emerges, the Chee Keong who talks about sports, friends and other non-related book stuff. SHOULD NOT BE REFERRED TO AS LIBRARY FURNITURE.
20. Photographer: William and Chern Huay with their expensive toys.
21. The Three Little Pigs: Stephen, Ding and Chun Peng for their humorous and entertaining performance on stage
22. Attention Seeking Duo: Ding and Diva (D&D)
    
    
    
    
    
23. Ball 2006 Marriott
    
24. Dance Master: Jay Lo who recently got picked to the finals in the Stepped Up dance competition and also performed at 1 Utama. Master of freestyle and hip hop.
    
25. Rajendra Rao also known as Raj to the batch and is known as the batch's Computer and Projector Fixer. Whenever, a powerpoint presentation gets screwed. The natural response would be "Raj....Raj...Raj" or sometimes Ding, oddly. Pls refer to 22
    
26. Organized a wonderful talk-show for our BS selective called "The Doprah Weedfree Show"
    
27. Events like Diwali Nite, Chinese Singing Competititon, Friday Night, Drama

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Malaysians: Bad Ass Drivers

You don't need a genius to tell you if Malaysians are terrible drivers on the roads. We have beautiful roads, wide enough for our needs and plenty of ways to get around to destinations around town. Even as we strive to be a better country, to achieve a developed nation status, most of us have underdeveloped mentality when it comes to driving. All the morality and well-mannered behaviour flies out the window the moment we hold the steering wheel as if the car suddenly took control of us and we start driving like an unruly animal.

I wish to highlight three common bad behaviours:

1. Switching lanes to go faster
2. Jumping lanes/queues
3. VIP/Ambulance tagging
   

I would like to refer the first one to a comment from my friend whom I visited just last week. Just after going to PC Fair, we thought that it would be a smooth journey back to Damansara. I thought I knew the roads in KL darn well so I didn't care which road I might end up when I exited KLCC. SO I exited at Jalan Pinang. After taking some wrong turns, ending up nearly in Wangsa Maju before finally ending up in the right direction. We got trapped in a traffic jam just when we travelled a distance after a toll.

The jam started there and was nearly continous all the way up to Jalan Pahang but there were breaks of smooth flowing traffic which lasted a while before we got trapped in another bumper to bumper traffic. I can't begin to describe the feeling. Was it agonizing, tormenting, terrible? To get stuck in miles of bumper to bumper traffic to PWTC from Jalan Ampang was terrible even before people ended work. My friend told me that the real problem is people don't want to stay in their lanes and they keeping switching lanes to cut time. If it wasn't for his observation, I will hardly notice it maybe because I'm guilty of it as well.

Observing traffic from where the jam started until it ended, it turned out that he was right after all. In fact, if it wasn't for those jumping queues and switching lanes, I don't think the jam wouldn't be so bad. Many people thought that by switching into a faster lane would actually make you go faster but what about the people behind you, they would have to slow down because you just switched into their lane. Mind you, this is what happens if one person switches lane. Let's factor it by 20-50 times when 20-50 cars start doing the same thing on a busy road in KL, cars behind would then stop and then move and then stop before coming to a stop when sometimes 2 or more cars decided to switch lanes. Even, when their intention is to get to a faster lane, people who are now in the fast lane would become slower suddenly and then the slower lane becomes faster and then people start switching back to their original lanes again. What a vicious cycle....

IN medical terms, if a situation arises like that in any blood vessel, it's call a thrombosis. So here, on the roads it's like a thrombosis and then an emboli. (An emboli is a dislodged thrombus.)

All this from Jalan Ampang up to PWTC, Jalan Pahang. Even with all the traffic notifications on the electronic billboards, it wouldn't make much of a difference if people start behaving like that on the road.

Sometimes, I wander if Malaysians are bad drivers due to the busy metropolitan area in KL. But what about bigger metropolis or Megalopolis like Seoul, Beijing. Are there drivers like that?? My friend from New Zealand told me that over there nobody would practice this form of driving. I thought..."Sure, there are more cows than people there" IF they were living here in KL, would there transform to be us? That's the million-dollar question....

One very favourite spot where drivers love jumping queues, is at the Chan Sow Lin roundabout. IF you were somehow there between 7.30 and 8.30 be ready for one of the worst jam of the day. Bad road planning is one of the reasons. Five lanes try to squeeze into a three lane area, made worse by people who jump queues especially those coming from the Sungai Besi airport. Its actually a daily affair to be stuck in a jam there, sometimes that stretch takes about 30 minutes to move 500 m. These "jump queuers" will start coming from the side and go out into the main road going to Jalan Istana as if going there but actually taking a detour to squeeze through a space at the left lane. The situation becomes worse when buses and lorries follow suit so that all the "bullied" legitimate cars behind them would have to stop and let them pass. Sometimes, drivers take the opportunity to tag along them, because it's an opening or rather a shortcut from the big thrombosis (jam) behind them.

VIP tagging is also a favourite among Malaysian drivers. It is common to see VIPs or ambulance making an open path for them even during jams. VIP taggers by my definition are drivers who trail a convoy or an ambulance so that they will bypass all the jam. If you have seen one, suddenly from behind, lots of motorists will join the convoy or ambulance from behind and happily make their way through the jam. Though some may find this as OK, but personally, I find it unethical. What about the people who have to wait behind or had to move to the side because they were giving way??

So there you go...bad behaviours on the road. I'm guilty of the first 2. I think naturally anyone would be guilty of the first of second one but for the third. I think it's a rising phenomenon.

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First Time Fishing and the Deer Farm.

Just yesterday, I went back to my grandma's hometown to celebrate her birthday. Talking about eating, the previous day was another feast which was also another birthday celebration that resulted in a very bloated me and a heavy stomach. I never felt so full in a while and the meal portion was huge. Luckily, for me I don't have to go through the same trauma yesterday, when the meal portion was smaller but the food quality compromised. Maybe that's why I was so full on the previous day, food was much better and the environment.. great.

After having an OK lunch, went back to her house just for a little while before going out again to my uncle's deer farm and apparently a fishing pond. Actually I'm quite excited about the fishing pond when I heard about it. All the talk about going fishing was repeatedly resonating in my head after hearing the fishing pond. I didn't think that the pond was going to be crystal clear where you can see fishes swimming right under the surface. What do you expect from a kampung man....?? So in my mind I thought it's either going to be quite muddy, not very big with many fishes though. I heard there was tilapia and some catfish and a whole lot of other fishes which I simply don't know the name but have no problems eating them. :)

We drove off in our car to the place which is weirdly located where you have to travel an unusually long distance before actually getting there by making a U turn. The alternative would be to drive in the opposite side of the road against traffic which my uncle always do to cut the distance by more than half. For me it's cool but to my father and uncle it's a crazy idea but still I thought what the heck there are so few people driving on the other side of the road like 1 car every 3 minutes. Getting into the place, wasn't a problem with the 4WD, it was a breeze, even with the muddy terrain and narrow path into the place.

After stepping out of the car together with my sister, we slowly made out way towards the pond just behind the deer farm. Walking on foot, isn't that easy when you have to negotiate across muddy paths, sometimes obscured by lalangs, weeds and some rocks. Finally after a short distance, I managed to catch a glimpse of the ponds. There are actually 4 of them. As expected there were muddy and you can hardly see fishes except if they come too close to the surface. One thing I didn't expect is the amount of dragonflies. Quite a lot were flying around and we actually tried to catch one while we were there.

But anyway, went on to catch fish. I was introduced to fish bait which was chicken's intestines which smelled wonderful on the stench scale. My hands were smelling like them and there were so many flies fighting for the bait. NO...there were no flies on the bait when I put it on the rod. Took a rod which was...sadly....not fully functional or should I say a little bit spoiled. The turning mechanism for the reel was spoiled , sorry I don't know the jargon for it. So I had to swing it into the lake after manually pulling out some string. My best effort only managed to place it slightly more than 6 feet into the lake which was pathetic. Looking at a pro nearby, fishing looks so natural to him and for him having to swing the rod with the turning mechanism fully functional makes me look like a whim. AARGHHH!!!

After standing there for half and hour, I had no fish and the other guy had two really nice looking fishes. Both..tilapias. EEESSSHH!!!

Is this because, it's the first time for me or is it the rod?? Maybe, if I used the better one I could get at least 1. Sad to say, the other rods are in use by my other uncles and they also managed to catch a few back. Some tilapias and some catfish. My father intervened, so I thought maybe this will make a difference with all his fishing experience in his life while he was a kid. He took the "not so good" rod, and used the same method to throw it in and guess what... He caught one, but it was too small so the "Pro" guy told him to throw it back into the lake. I heard that fishing requires lots of patience. So I waited and waited, then I thought maybe it was the way I held the rod, or maybe that corner I was standing wasn't fish-friendly or maybe it just wasn't my day.

I really wanted to feel the fish tugging on the rod like my other cousin did. My father was somewhere around catching dragonflies and he decided to use one that he caught as fish bait. Eewww, it was still alive when my father perforated it with the hook. I can still hear the chilling shell piercing sound. Maybe this "live" bait will make a difference. There was one that came so close to being caught that but when I threw in, the fish swam away. Darn it.

I was half satisfied with the whole fishing thing then. But it was great knowing about the little details of fishing which may someday help me get lucky.

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A Surprise and Some Food Issues

IT has been quite a great week and weekend. Met up with an old friend from New Zealand, who is back for a while before going back again. Haven't seen him in a long time and, goshhhh.. he has changed. Not the change that I quite expect from him. But it did happened and talking about The change that happen.. is still today, quite unbelievable but then again after listening to his explanation, it sounds quite believable. Puzzled..??Confused...??Nevermind

Went on to have lunch at McD at Centrepoint. And just a few days back, Alex was mentioning something about clearing the table after eating in McD on his blog, coincidentally, my friend asked me the same question. Do people in Malaysia clear the table after eating?? And my response was, NO. People in Malaysia hardly cared about clearing their table after eating and throughout my entire life eating in McD, only a few occasions where I recall people clearing the table. Actually, I can still count with my fingers. And then he told me that in New Zealand, everybody clears the table because they are required to do so. So should McD here enforced the same regulation so that people here follow suit??

And then I asked him if the value meal portion is much larger there. Surprisingly...no. I always thought kwai los portion will be much bigger just like in US and UK where the pizza and burger portion is considered quite big by Malaysian's standards even for a small meal. Even a medium pizza that costs US$15 is like the large pizza here in pizza hut or Domino's, packed with cheese and real filling stuff that can really make you bloat and wander how these Americans have the stomach to eat them. Actually the answer to this discrepancy here is because in New Zealand, the labour is not cheap and so the portion there is about the same and you pay more there but dollar to dollar, there's no difference actually.

So relatively speaking, is it because the Kwai Los, are larger and the Asian's are smaller hence the difference in sizes of the meal?? Does that mean that because of size difference, Caucasians eat more than us or is it simply in their diet to eat large meals. I can't conclude about that because maybe the portion in McD is bigger than other fast food restaurants overseas and furthermore I really did not have the chance to eat at all the fast food restaurants. But still based on what we all know about Western Diet, it is usually high calory and high fat. Even without the size factor here, high calory and high fat can cause a person to put on weight than normal. I say that genes does also play a factor in determining our overall physical appearance and most of the time when we meet Caucasian's they are usually taller and bigger but still proportionate in size.

Talking about snacks, I asked him if it was true that their snacks are bigger. Indeed it was and it confirmed what my father said about their chips and snacks which puts all our keropok and snacks into the small category even for the large. So eating chips there can really be your dinner or lunch...Errrrrr, that is if you really want to.

Not that I'm specifically implying the food issues to him, but I was just curious about some happenings in New Zealand which includes food. After not seeing him for close to two years, I guess after eating lamb, beef, snacks and a whole lot of other food plus being a mouse-potato definitely does spring up some surprises.

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