Tiger won; Malaysian Danny Chia made his debut at the Home of Golf

The 2005 British Open at St Andrews is over, with Tiger clinching the title with a 14 under, a five stroke lead over runner-up Colin Montgomerie.

Interesting to note that the Open also saw the first Malaysian ever qualified for the final at the Home of Golf - Danny Chia. Despite missing 2 shorts for the cut, Danny quoted that he felt defeated, but not dejected, and he felt that being able to play at the British Open gives him the confidence to play in more of the international championships in the future. Now that's the Malaysia-Boleh spirit. Keep it up Danny.

	pos players holes par 1 Tiger WOODS 18 -14 2 Colin MONTGOMERIE 18 -9 T3 Fred COUPLES 18 -8 T3 José Maria OLAZÁBAL 18 -8 T5 Michael CAMPBELL 18 -7 T5 Sergio GARCIA 18 -7 T5 Retief GOOSEN 18 -7 T5 Bernhard LANGER 18 -7 T5 Geoff OGILVY 18 -7 T5 Vijay SINGH 18 -7

Birthday present for little Lydia at her 12th birthday

Me and my wifey are going to sponsor a child, in the povelty area of inner China!!!

Sometimes I find myself asking what's our perception of "value" in life? We are raised in a generation where we tend to take many things surrounding us for granted: Food and drinks we consume daily, the roof that we live under called house, ease of convenience (from cellphone to microwave), entertainment choices (from clubbing to gambling), indulgence (from chocolate to spa), sinful habits (from lazy-to-recycle-waste to compulsive shoppings)... even with all these goodies in life, we still can't stop complaining. And at the same time, there exist thousands and millions of others out in different parts of the world who could hardly afford a meal a day, and where clean drinking water is an absolute indulgence..

That's our little Lydia on the left of the photo, playing in her toys basket by herself (my naughty wifey put her in there!), and the left is the photo of two young kids in povelty. For RM50 a month, through WorldVision Malaysia we could sponsor a child to help him/her to live a better life. We could correspond with the child in writings, as well as visiting them in person. As a matter of fact, we are thinking to bring little Lydia for an overseas vacation on her 12th birthday (that's..errrr.. 11 years from now). We'd fly together with Lydia to inner China to visit the sponsored child and her family, and to spend a few days there together. That, and there, we hope our little Lydia would be able to pick up a thing or two about what's the right perception of "value" in life should be...

Dae Jang Geum

Went for lunch this afternoon nearby my house, this sign board caught my attention. It's a Korean restaurant named after a popular korean tv series currently being aired in Malaysia - "Dae Jang Geum" (english name is "Jewel in the Palace"). It has, since months back, took the helm of being the most watched TV series in Hong Kong (what happened to all the TVB series?!?), Taiwan and Japan. The show focuses on the life of Jang-geum, the first female royal physician in the Joseon Dynasty in Korea. The main theme is her perseverence, as well as the portrayal of traditional Korean culture, including Korean royal court culinary and medicine.
Now watch what the Koreans have achieved through making of a tv-series:
1) Export of local entertainment content, this is the obvious one.
2) Promotion of Korean tourism - A typical tour to Korea nowadays include a trip to the MBC Yangju Studio - the filming site of "Dae Jang Geum". The sets was built by MBC for the shooting of the series and have been purchased by the South Korean government and has since turned into a tourist attraction.
3) Promotion of Korean ancient culturs & customs - The series was filmed following close to the real ancient culture and customs that the Korean practiced. One would noticed that the ancient Koreans lived many similiraties to the Chinese, the language, character sets, dressing, formalities etc.
4) Promotion of Korean culinary - The series focuses most of its time on affairs and matters revolving around the kitchen of the royal king in the palace. From preparation of cooking recipes, cooking method, its nutritious/healing value, to its serving sequence, the producer made it a point to provide the audiences full visual enjoyment of the delicated korean culinary.
Well, we use Korean-made cellphones, drive Korean-made cars, staying/working in building with Korean-built lifts and escalators, watches our DVDs on a Korean-made TV/DVD Player, now watching Korean-made tv series, hmmm, what's next I wonder, speaking Korean?!?

1986 Vs 2005

 

Went watched "War of the World" (starring Tom Cruise & Tim Robbins), with wifey at MidValley GSC. Made a observation that both of them, then rookie, starred in my all time favourite "Top Gun" where TC was the stylo Maverick and TR, well, I couldnt recall he had much face-time in the show then. For that matter, TR didnt get much facetime in WOTW too. Ok, check out the picture, TopGun (1986) Vs WOTW (2005) - almost 20 years different and these two chaps are still going strong... p/s: Would someone go and tell GSC MidValley to turn up the air-cond temperature at the Gold Class?!?! I am wondering if they are trying to bread some penguins inside or something.

My bloggg

Caught up with SG blogger last week across the causeway, with James, Mr. Brown, and first time with the legendary Cowboy Caleb. Goodness, "THE" legend has a group of dedicated followers who hold parties, outings, get-togethers frequently on his name, and none of them have actually met him or known him in person! That makes me one of the priviledged person who actually got to meet the legendary blogger in person, not bad for a rookie blogger I guess. Coming back to my bloggg, from the short few weeks of blogging experience, I gathered that a serious blogger requires one thing, ie to carry a good pixel digicam with him all the time. I thought at the start that my O2 IIs 0.3M (you can tell I am a dino when come to gadgets) would probably do the job, which I am utterly wrong. Picture tell a thousand words, hence a good camera to a blogger is almost like a good engine to Michael Schumacher (yeah I always feel that he performs so well on the track is mostly because of his ferrari engine). So i wonder when is O2 going to come out with a 3G/Edge/GPS/WiFi/7MPixelCamera/DVB-H/DMB-T,S unit.

Nokia N-Series concept?

" This isn't one of those seven new objets du desire from Nokia, no, this is something new. So new, no one even knows what it is. It looks like a sleeker, shiny sequel to the 7710 (you know, the wide orientation and the stylus and all), but everyone seems to be putting it into the N-series range for some reason. This is actually a concept phone that Nokia showed off at a recent trade event and may not even make it to the market with a four-digit name, but rather just a peek into how the next generation of devices from Nokia could look. Isn't this what Future Watch really is all about? " Aalaap Ghag - Techtree.com's FutureWatch.

Seoul

Seoul in May is pleasant, and warm and a little rainy at time (~23-25 at daytime). It's the first time i've been to the Incheon Airport. Last time I came here was Kimpo Airport if my memories serve me right. It takes about 40min by road from the Incheon Airport to the city centre. The taxi fare cost me ~50,000won (USD50), well told ya that things are not cheap in Seoul. Traffic in town is a little less hectic compare to my recollections. The hotel I stayed at is Hotel Lotte, Seoul. A supposedly 5-star, USD250 per night (Deluxe), I find the standard unsatisfactory. Staffs' english fluency needs to be improved. Breakfast hour should extend further rather than the 10am timeline now. Staffs' altitude needs to be friendlier and courteous, the list goes on. Well, perhaps there wont be next time I stay here...

Phone with TV Tuner

This is a Samsung 3G phone that is built in with a TV/Radio (Satellite based) tuner. The twist-out is the TV screen. Full description of the technology is S-DMB, Satellite-Digital Mobile Broadcasting. At the time of the picture taken in Seoul, the satellite TV/radio service on a mobile phone is 17 days since commercial roll-out and they have already sold ~23,000 such devices/sign-ups. S-DMB is claimed to be a Korean developed technology, and the operator for the TV/Radio service is TU Media, a company of SKTelecom and also count Toshiba, Samsung, LG amongst its shareholders. One time registration for the service is USD20, and monthly access fee is USD13. According to the company's official, the transmission frequency is on S-band and hence has minimal discruption from rainfall, and that it also maintains transmission at the moving speed of up to 200km/h! This is a apparently the world-first (South Korean count many amongst its first, including the 1st to launch 3G service in the world), and it would be interesting to watch how the competing technology DVB-H would keep up with this. It's been at least 3-4year now since I last visited Seoul and it certainly looks like the country is keeping up well with its world leadership positions in ICTs.