SuperGolfie's Blog

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

2005-07-18T18:58:00.000+08:00

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

2005-07-14T18:55:00.000+08:00

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

2005-07-09T21:38:00.000+08:00

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

2005-07-04T15:51:00.000+08:00

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

2005-06-23T17:40:00.000+08:00

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?

2005-06-18T17:07:00.000+08:00

" 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

2005-05-18T21:24:00.000+08:00

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

2005-05-18T20:38:00.000+08:00

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.

Does the future belong to China?

2005-05-10T11:36:00.000+08:00

Sorry folks, have been away of late, couple of unexpected events (unpleasant) popped up at home, anyhow, life/blog must go on...

Saw James' post on the growth of China today, wanted to put up some observations. Check these out (source: NewsWeek May,9 '05):

1) Wal-Mart imported $18b worth of goods from China last year. 5,000, out of its 6,000 suppliers, are from China.
2) There're 60,000 supermarkets in China in 2003, 10 years after the 1st one opened. The US & Europe took decades to achieve similar growth.
3) In a recent UN report, stated that by 2007, Chinese will surpass English as the most used language on the Internet. *Perhaps James can verify this? :)*
4) China will soon produce more Ph.Ds than the US. They may not be as good as American Ph.Ds, but numbers do matter.
5) In 25 years China has moved 300 million people out of poverty and quadrupled the average person's income. *Note: 300 million people is about the population size of US*

The answer to the question (Does the future belong to China) is obvious.

Oh by the way James, good work you got there at Tomorrow.sg.. Cool stuffs, salutes!

Tiger out of the Woods

2005-04-21T23:24:00.000+08:00

Tiger has come out of the Woods!

Masters 2005, Augusta completed for almost 10 days now but I still can't get over how dramatic it ended. Chris DiMarco has been putting up such wonderful golf at the finals that makes it one of the best performance made in the Masters, but wait till you see the return of the Tiger. Call him fluke, luck or whatever you want, Tiger just took away everyone's breath with his birdie shot at Hole 16, a 15ft running chip, hanged over the edge of the hole for 2 seconds, before dropping into the hole, sending the audience into a complete frenzy. Tiger finished winning the Masters title - his 4th, marking the "Return of the Tiger". Check out the video clip for a view of the magnificient chip here at Jaffe Juice. This is probably the best shot I've ever seen in golf...

Borders Bookstore at TimesSquareKL

2005-04-19T18:33:00.000+08:00

A snap of the frontage of Borders in TimeSquare KL during their official launch. The VIP crowd is moving into the store for a tour. Dignities attended include Malaysian First Lady Datin Seri Endon, Deputy Finance Minister Dato Dr Ng Yen Yen, Deputy Chief of Umno Youth Khairy Jamaluddin, Embassador of America to Malaysia Christopher LaFleur.

1st in many things

2005-04-19T18:20:00.000+08:00

This is 1st in many things: 1st Borders bookstore in Malaysia; Largest Borders in the world (60k sqft floor space); Largest bookstore in Malaysia; 1st ever franchise of Borders in their history. This is a snap of what's inside, beside books and musics, there's also a feng shui corner - WOFS.com as well as a Starbucks inside (yes, with free wifi access). This store is located in TimesSquare KL, and there will be another Borders up in The Curve within the year. Malaysia BOLEH!

KL <-> SIN. To Coach, or not to Coach?

2005-04-18T16:44:00.000+08:00

Had a good lunch with SG bloggers James Seng & Mr. Brown this afternoon in KL. These are two veteran bloggers, so learned quite a bit from them and also had some good laughs during the meet up. They took the AeroLine coach up from SG, departed 8.30am, and arrived KL at 12.30noon, door-to-door for 4 hr, talk about speed! I guess next time I shall consider taking a coach rather than taking the flight to/from SG. But one thing I forgot to ask them is whether they have pretty stewardess on board of the coach in serving the passengers. Hmm, AeroLine's stewardess vs. SIA's stewardess..

2005-04-17T22:04:00.000+08:00

SuperGolfie saying "Hello"! - photo taken at Feb'05 at Tallinn, Estonia, with temp ~ -20C..

Virgin blog.

2005-04-17T20:20:00.000+08:00

After much influence by some blogger friend (yes, James it's you), here I am putting up my virgin attempt. While I have done personal homepage before years back, I am kind of rusty now when come to hands-on stuff like this. Well, perhaps it's the coincidences that play a role in this, parents not at home, wife and daughter went back home town, my right shoulder is injured (from sports), weather's too humid to hang out, got a bunch of Xbox games and DVDs stacking up unwatched, bought a domain name I like last week but don't know what to do with it.. etc etc. Alone at home on a Sunday, pulled out my notebook to do some email and RSS, then got a call from James checking if I am joining in the bloggers gathering tomorrow in KLCC. I was actually looking forward to go and to meet some new friends, but at the same time kind of reserve as well as I am not sure if I could blend in. But then, how could I attend a blogger's event while I am not even a blogger myself? So voila, here I am, SuperGolfie joining the blogging world.