HAPPY NEW YEAR!
Goodbye 2005, thanks for the memories! Overall a great year for me with some minor hiccups. Hopefully 2006 will be spectacular!

R.I.P. M Moorthy
'Muslim Burial for Malaysian hero'.
I didn't know him but I feel sorry for his family. Picked up this story from the BBC. This hero was a practising Hindu until recently, apparently. When he died, the religious authorities came to claim his body for burial against his family's wishes after former colleagues and religious authorities claimed he had converted to Islam. This follows the High Court ruling that it cannot interfere with the Islamic courts in matters of religious conversion. The family were not allowed to appeal at the Shariah court to dispute his conversion as they were not Muslims.

Where's the logic in this?

Came upon this add in the Daily Sport while doing my usual rounds of flicking through dailies for cuts (pics we send out). Been wanting to comment on this a few weeks ago but finally managed to get round it today. The Daily Sport is described on Wikipedia as a tabloid newspaper published in the UK with soft pornography making up most of its content.

One 'supposedly' local lass helping to put Malaysia on the map. ;)

FRONT COVER OF INDEPENDENT (UK National Daily)
I got my first front page on a UK daily national paper today. Today's front page of The Independent.

Vitamin D


2nd front cover on a paper, the first being the Stoke Sentinel. Well pleased. :D

Yeah..that's right, playing RISK & Mahjong on Christmas Day. We decided to call it quits after playing a few hours of RISK without anyone any nearer towards world domination. After all, everyone (13 of us) was waiting to open their presents under the Christmas tree.

One of my presents was a Smart Fortune Cookie, a novelty gift to help answer tough 'Yes' or 'No' questions, courtesy of my cousins, Bongface & Poobear - you know who you are.

Oh Wise Cookie - reveal your wisdom

Ask the cookie, shake it, answer revealed, up to you to follow it..etc.
And here's what you get if you mocked it:

Cookie's Reply:

Anyways, in true Chinese tradition (though a season early), my cousins and I, started our mahjong session. One of the luckiest ever rounds I've ever played in my entire life - not that I play a lot...probably twice a year since I was 15?

One of my lucky rounds, though I forgot to take a pic of my best round where I delivered my knockout blow winning with the first draw - a 'Chee Moh + Tei Wu'?

Dave & Poobear calculating the booty


For those who don't know what RISK is - it's a classic board game about world domination. As for Mahjong, it's kind of like Gin Rummy played with tiles but with lots more added twists.

2nd day of Christmas and I'm back at work. Birmingham felt like a ghost town when I returned last night, though I'm not complaining about it, hahaha. Bloody taxi fare home cost £8.00 from town thanks to the non-existence of public transport but thanks to my lucky mahjong round the night before, there was enough change for a meal, heheh.

Well, Christmas has come and gone and 2006 is just around the corner. Time to reflect on this year's achievement. I must say that 2005, so far, has been a very positive year for me compared to the crap previous four years. I've already started on listing out some goals for 2006.

- Eat as many different things when back home in Malaysia during the Chinese New Year photos.
- Snapshots...
- Rent a car and travel around Peninsular Malaysia.
- Return to fitness (unaccomplished goal since 1999 (ever since working life began).
- Conversation Mandarin & Spanish - two languages? Well, if I try for two, who knows, I might actually remember one!

What happened over Christmas? Here's a summary - hibernation for a few days before Christmas, followed by Christmas Eve dinner & Christmas Day lunch!!! Photos to follow...

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all.

Yippee! I'm technically on holiday from today until the 26th! Although I did cover the Villa v Man U game this afternoon. It wasn't even snowing or raining but boy, it was freezing. Couldn't find my gloves when I most needed it as well. Any longer in the cold, I would've struggled to find my ****..hahahah..

I was in Aston on the weekend for a magazine feature with Kiyoshi, who was helping me out. We were standing outside a house composing a photo and two black men in a silver mercedes pulls around the corner and gives us a shout:

• DUDE: King Kong!
• ME - not bothered, ignores them.
• DUDE: Kong, u got Kong?
• ME: Huh? What???
• DUDE: King Kong, u got him?
• ME: thinking to myself, this fool on drugs or what?
• DUDE: U selling DVDs?
• ME: No. U?

DUDE drives off in his shiny motor, I walk along carrying my imaginary stack of DVDs.

So every Chinese / oriental person is either working in a takeaway or selling DVDs on the roadside?

Anyways here's a photo of someone's garden sale, hahahah...