Crash

Just watched Crash at home over the weekend. Definitely my choice for Oscar's best picture compared to Brokeback Mountain. Still trying to figure out why Brokeback is so highly rated.

Back to Crash, the movie... This tragically beautiful movie revolves around few people's lives from the diverse population of Los Angeles which collided within 36 hours. Crash shows the power of racism through all eyes of those involved, from the victims to the wrong doers.

The district attorney (Brendan Fraser) and his wife (Sandra Bullock, strikingly uncongenial) are carjacked at gunpoint by two black men (Ludacris and Larenz Tate). At home, the wife orders the locks changed and then changed again because a Mexican (Michael Pena) did the first job. A black TV director (Terrence Howard), getting a blow job from his wife (Thandie Newton) while driving home, is stopped by two white cops. One officer (Matt Dillon) gropes the wife to humiliate the husband, while the other cop (Ryan Phillippe) watches helplessly. A Persian store owner (Shaun Toub), taken for an Arab, buys a gun for protection. Don Cheadle plays a detective who ties these stories together when he finds a dead body in the road.

The acting was top notch, and each actor and actress delivered performances that brought out the true emotion and power of the movie.

Racism is everywhere, from developed nations such as US and UK to developing nation like ours. Many times in our lives we pass judgment on a person based on colour rather than content. I would like to agree with Martin Luther King Jr. (I have a dream) but in reality it's way more complicated than that. Can racism be eradicated? I highly doubt so.

Malaysia's first astronaut

I found this article in BBC rather amusing. Once again we are missing the big picture.

Malaysia considers Islam in space

A two-day conference on Islam and life in space is under way in Malaysia, in a bid to answer questions faced by would-be Muslim
astronauts.

Malaysia is due to send an astronaut into space with the Russians next year.

The country's first spaceman is almost certain to be a Muslim, which raises a number of practical issues.

For instance, Muslims wash before they pray but not only is water a precious commodity in space, but it is also impractical in weightlessness.

Likewise, the faithful face Mecca. However, that will mean pin-pointing a moving location while in zero gravity.

And Muslim prayer times are linked to those of the sunrise and sunset, but in orbit the sun appears to rise and set more than a dozen times a day.

Streamyx

After reading numerous posts online regarding Streamyx's poor service throughout the whole last week, I'm grateful that I'm using TimedotCom's Webbit which is nothing spectacular, but at least reliable. I'm quite surprised with Paul Tan's outburst on Streamyx's 'performance'. Not his usual calm and composed style.

The need for competition in this area is way overdue. Furthermore TMNet had left users in the dark over the whole matter. This is definitely no world class service. Buck up GLCs!

Honeymoon in Phuket

Finally I've got my actuarial exam out of the way... This is a long overdue post.

Johanna & I finally received our wedding photos from our photographers myBest and LesChang. We've posted most of them in our wedding album.

The day after our wedding, Johanna & I rushed back to KL to fly to Phuket for our 4-day honeymoon the next day. It's our first time flying together. The journey was shorter than I imagined - a mere one hour and fifteen minute flight.

We checked in to our hotel - Patong Premiere Resort upon arrival at Patong Beach. The hotel has a Balinese setting. Our room, a honeymoon suite, was tastefully decorated, complete with a bottle of Thai wine produced in 1948!

We spent our first few hours walking along Patong Beach, checking out the shops and looking for a restaurant. Finally settled down in Savoey, an air-conditioned Thai restaurant. We ordered 2 raw oysters, some clams, tom yum seafood and a plate of Thai noodles. A sumptuous meal indeed. The price was great too.

We spent our evening in a theme part called FantaSea. The main attraction was the cultural show in the Palace of the Elephants, featuring Thai culture, myth, magic show etc. Among the casts were a herd of elephants, a flock of chickens, a flock of pigeons and a herd of goats!

The next morning Johanna & I went for an elephant ride. Not the most pleasurable thing to do as we wobbled from one side to the other throughout the journey up and down hill. Nevertheless it was worth experiencing once in a lifetime. We also managed to capture the antics of a small monkey at the elephant trekking lodge.

In the afternoon, we're provided with a free half day tour of Phuket by the hotel. Our driver, Peter, drove us along the west coast of Phuket island, passing through Karon Beach and Kata Beach before arriving at the Phromthep Cape viewpoint. The scenery throughout was breathtaking. The view of Andaman Sea was definitely more pleasurable compared to Langkawi.

We proceed to a Buddhist temple called Wat Chalong after that. This monastry is about 500 years old. I was amazed by the details in the Thai architecture. Johanna and I ended up taking a large volume of photos, until Peter told us we were behind schedule.

Next we arrived in Phuket Town. There was nothing much to see and the only activity was to shop for souveniors. We managed only to buy some t-shirts and key chains due to time constraint.

Our last destination before heading back to Patong Town was a jewellery shop - touted as the biggest in the world.

We arrived back in hotel just in time for dinner. This time we went the other way along Patong Beach and arrived at a restaurant called Lam Phat. Another great seafood meal ensued.

On the third day of our trip, we took a boat trip to Phanga Bay, which has 42 isle. But we only visited 4 of those. The activities included canoeing, caves and lagoons visits. We were very impressed with the shapes of the isle. One of them is merely a rock - the famous James Bond Island, made popular by The Man with the Golden Gun. Johanna and I managed to know one couple from Findland - Timo and Linda who were in Phuket for a long holiday. We ended up having dinner together that evening.

The last day of our trip was merely checking out and travelling to airport. This was the most enjoyable trip in my life - the most likely reason was because of Johanna. But Phuket deserved all the credit as well. The tourism there was so well managed that we had seamless travel and touring services. The whole island was also very clean. I hope Malaysia can learn a lot from Phuket.

We managed to take more than 1Gb worth of photos from the trip. We have selected 10% of these to be included in our honeymoon album.