Thought of the day

"Hard work doesn't guarantee you anything, but without it you don't stand a chance."

"A wise man will make more opportunities than he finds."
-Francis Bacon

Great finish...

I think I almost fell asleep in the first quarter, which Lakers came out flat at the start of the game. Still, they were sloopy till the end of the first half. The audience must be terribly disappointed at that time. Sometimes, winning is not really everything for the fan or audience like us.
Most important, we need a "good" game-"good" to have something to talk about. Kobe did it again. He has this ability to make the game more exciting, and dramatic. Even though he lost the game, still, "You have to give Kobe credit, he was unbelievable," New Jersey coach Lawrence Frank said.

Nets Top Lakers in OT as Kidd Bests Bryant!(What a great title from NBA.COM)
New Jersey 102, L.A. Lakers 96 (OT):

Another Bus....

Another Bus is coming to our building!
Gee...what were they thinking? Did they think of this place as a bus station?
A "Bus" is referred to someone who is Bad, Unskillful, and Slow at work!

"A diploma is no guarantee of efficiency."

Race against the time

How could you finish so many things in one day. One word to described yesterday's schedule-"exhaustive," which, in other words, meant that "I was old."

1.Unfinished NBA program (till the end of the third quarter).
2.Rode to saga's place-drove to "Kopi Bale" having lunch.
3.Back to saga's place for watching "The phantom of the opera" (better than I expected).
4.Took a look at Addidas' on-sale outlet(what a dissappointed place).
5.Rushed to home and headed to library for returning books and "friends" VCDs before 8.
6.Moved to "Kobayashi" for having dinner(damned it, it just happened to close the door).
7.Turned to eat "昌吉街豬血湯".
8.Headed to "B&Q".
9.To gas station.
10.To "welcome" for shopping
Finally...Home, sweet home!
The end.

No wonder I was damned beat "today"!

Ten of my favorite movie soundtracks

This is tough "homework" assignment. "Without finishing, I won't be able to hit the sack early soon," this was what Abu-adi jokingly told me the other night. Currently, what comes into my mind are only few of them, but which I consider to be my all-time favorites. Most importantly, they have to meet two criteria-excellent "movie" and "soundtrack" in my personal opinion.

The list will be as follows:
The Wall
The legend of 1900
Amadeus
Un Coeur en Hiver
Once upon a time in America
Cinema Paradiso
Gladiator
Lord of the Rings
The end of the affair
The mission

"Leadership is an action, not a position."
Donald H. McGannon

Another one bites the dust-Magellan Has Lost Its Head

Recently I've been keeping myself updated with the performance of some major fund companies. Today's Forbes news shock me the most-How come Magellan has underperformed the market for more than a decade.

Here is some info about this most famous fund in the world, which I search from the internet.

Fidelity Magellan Fund (FMAGX)
Mutual Fund Profile

One of the most popular mutual funds, the Fidelity Magellan fund is the largest actively managed mutual fund and traded under the ticker symbol FMAGX. The fund started on May 2nd, 1963.

Current manager: Robert E. Stansky (since 6/96)
Fund Family: Fidelity
Minimum Investment: $2,500 (IRA Min.: $500)
Minimum Subsequent Investment: $2,500

Magellan Has Lost Its Head (from Forbes)
I like to add something about why Peter Lynch is an outstanding guru in investing business:
Lynch was fearless. When he liked savings and loans, he bought 25 of 'em. Lynch overweighted any sector that he believed was underpriced. The man traveled religiously, meeting managers and uncovering mid-cap and even small-cap properties with traits that turned him on: good management and a propriety product line in a growth industry.

Why do executives ignore common sense?

Today I just read an article-the subject-from Forbes. It happens to mention about Stephen Covey's books, which are highly recommended by Saga and other sources I found on the net. A time magazine has a interesting commentary:"His genious is for complicating the obvious, and as a result his books are graphically chaotic..."

I shouldn't really make any judgement on it, for I've just read a few pages before. One of the most important reasons why I just glance at really tiny pages is that it won't interest me much. Whenever I wanna give it a try, I can't help sleepy in the end. So I keep wondering if there are other way to dig into what he really means, surely I won't give it a second thought. Because I realize that "too" short and concise words combined might take extra time to absorb; however, plain and simple words, plus easy-to-understand example, usually do magic in normal human beings, like "me".

Still, I think I might give "those may-be-meaningful papers" a second chance, especially when suffering insomnia.

Why do executives ignore common sense?

Sabrina's Italian Restaurant-Friday's gathering

The first impression when you entering the restaurant was the dim light trying to make a warm and cozy atmosphere. Afterwards, you began to sense the chilliness around due to the air conditioning. And a-little-high special "white" but stiff chair surely won't heat you up a bit, even though I was sitting among those supposed-to-be "hot" women-there are five, actually. By the way, the water is cool,too.

However, "the hostess in black" hospitably and actively made her guests feel comfortable. I guess she and two other "constantly active" chefs, of course, were the only three who won't be affected by the cold air. And the only active part of our body was our "mouth".

Anyway, the meal was good. But maybe I shouldn't make any judgement, I was too damned hungry - anything "hot" will be more than delicious at that time.

P.S.
The other day (sat) "AbuAdi" told me that she "strongly" insisted on paying the bill for that day. Well, what can I say? She always hates being rejected!

Dream Theater + Stratovarius 2006 Live concert

Just bought 5 vip tickets(including two gigs)at The Wall on Thursday, which cost me 25000NT.

2006/1/21(Sat)1900-2200

2006/1/24(Tue)2000-2200

The never-ending email problems

The other day I just wrote something about the internet. But one of the big problems in E-mail, I think, is I will never be able to finish reading tons of daily mails flooding in mailbox, let along those spams and vicious mails.

I just gave my mailbox a check. There are still "3008" mails in my mailbox. I think more than half of them could belong to "uncheck" (not new) mails. And I find out that "junk mails" are usually efficiently being deleted in no time, which means they are the most noticeable targets among all the incoming mails. This really disobeys the rule about the imoporance of priority.

9 songs

It's not a porn. That's for sure!
Michael Winterbottom depicts the sex scenes and the relationship between two lovers in more explicit and "real" way.

I called them "real", which doesn't mean I agree that they show the truth nature of the real thing happening in your bed room. In real situation, there is no outstanding music coming at the right time to touch you so deeply in your heart. Also, the cameraman will make his best shot to beautifully glorify every angle. That's why the make-out scenes still make you feel romantic.

In fact, even though a real porn could be mostly "fake" (men are incredibly competent and women are amazingly horny all the time, and lotsa close-up scenes) due to the need to be entertaining. And it's just like almost every film that sometimes needs to be exaggerated or overly glorified to trigger your emotion. Otherwise, the flick will be too dull to watch or isn't worth a look.

The best part I like in this movie is that they are going to attend Michael Nyman's 60th birthday concert. The truth is whenever the beautiful sad melody playing, I was delightedly drowned and entranced by the delicate touch of the music flow.

As for other songs, I am not really into it, actually, even though I'm a heavy metal fan myself. I have no idea what those british rock'n'roll bands are singing about because I've never heard those songs before. so..."no comment".

Michael Nyman Rocks!

"Where there is a will, there is a way and a gain."
The long-awaited film-9 songs, finally came right before my eyes,but the most exciting part was that the soundtrack unexpectedly appeared at the same time.

Right now, again and again...I'm listening the most beautiful original score "Debbie" composed by Michael Nyman while adding my blog. It's a 8-minute piece starting with the lento. Just listening to the sound of piano quietly and slowly touchs the air in this room. It's sad. I just can't explain. But I can feel a sense of hope and a mixture of sad and joy. The weird thing is that I haven't even watched this movie.

Internet

It's so great to live a modern world. The best part I mean is the internet. Whenever you need answers to the problems bothering you. Check on the internet. Sometimes it wil give you quite unexpected results. Also, just a few click away, you can purchase a lot of stuff via credit card without even stepping out your door. However, I think the three most important applications for me are Email, Msn, and file-sharing programs like emule, kazza(I think "kazza" is officially "dead" right now).

Take "emule" for example, currently I'm trying to use that for downloading "9 songs" from some anonymous friends who are willing to share files with others. Let alone the quality of the clips compared to the rental movie and some legal or moral levels about the copyright, those file-sharing stuff play one of the important roles on alomst "up-to-dated" information sharing. And information, knowledge, and news are soon easily going globalized. The world has become smaller and are closely linked each other. That is what the spirit of the internet is all about!

Two kinds of movies

I think there are two kinds of movies in general. One is the excellent movie you really wanna give it a try and you will keep that in mind until you have a chance to see it(The Shawshank Redemption, for example), and the other is the movie you're dying to see at the moment, especially when you see the trailer on T.V. or the flick is so popular that every one is keep mentioning about. (Paris Hilton's home-made hardcore video, without doubt, can fit into this category.)

Right now, a movie just came into my mind-9 songs,which is directed by Michael Winterbottom. Actually, I didn't know much about this film, but I did like the background music played in the trailer. Besides, just think of the idea- "the explicit sex scenes in art form". Gee...what the hell is that??? no way! That's why it fancinates me so much to see how it goes. Could a movie with graphic, hardcore and erotic stuff be artistic and romantic? Just can't wait to see what they called-"probably the worst and the most hardcore movie ever". Hey..someone's garbage might be the other one's treasure, isn't? It rocks!

My trip to kuala lumpur(2005.11.1-11.5)

Just back from the exhausting trip to kuala lumpur.

"Exhausting" doesn't mean no fun. In fact, there are mixed feeling about this trip, which includes excitement, suprise and nerve-wracking stuff. However, above all, "no experience is a bad experience unless you gain nothing from it."

Still, we conclude that there are two things in this trip that really bothered us the most-mosquito and daily dining.

The first two days at Avilion Dickson Port are really a disaster. Piggy and I were constantly harassed by the vicious mosquitoes during our sleep. What the worst is piggy can't fall asleep because of the sea waving extremely hard in the middle of night, which that didn't bother me at all. But one thing I would like to point out is that "I really hate the chilly wind blowing when taking a shower, " especially when I was not feeling very well. What supposes to be the most wonderful thing (taking a shower) suddenly became a nightmare.

Except our free buffet breakfast, we got to figure out what to eat at lunch and dinner. It seemed we didn't have "too" much choice at the resort. 80 RM meal for each is really way too expensive. After gulping a two-day buffet, we had had enough of those "look-like-all-the-same" meals. Gee...we never like eating buffet in Taiwan, how come we would become the buffet-lover all of a sudden in this place. The reason why we tried our best to eat a lot is that we didn't have much food or snacks left in our room, unless we were crazy enough to go miles away for some garbage food.

The next thing in our mind was we made a quick decision to get the hell out of this place. Without the help of computer, the telephone with no doubt had become our savior. I made a few calls from our hotel to ask some info about the room rate and other details. And it seemed to us "Marriott hotel" is our best choice for its convenient location and inexpensive charge-287.5 RM per night without breakfast, which sounded like a good deal at the moment. So we checked out immediately the next day and took a long journey (about one hour and a half) to kuala lumpur's JW Marriott hotel, which taxi fare cost us 140 RM.


To my surprise, JW Marriott was way beyond my expectation, which is better than The Regent Hotel, in my opioion. But what I was most impressive was the smiling ,cheelful and courteous receptionist who was attentive to helped us check in at the front desk. I can strongly sense his heartwarming welcome with respectful attitude. He really made my day!