Eurovision 2010

I am watching this in the comfort of my living room. My favourite act so far is from Turkey, a band called maNga.

Last year, I was watching this in Hamburg together with my colleagues and the year before in Southampton with me exchanging messages with Song Yia on msn judging the acts. This shows how fast time flies.

The Eurovision song contest is now in its 55th year! It was the platform that launched the career for Abba when they won for Sweden. Every year, European countries would be represented by a music act to battle for the crown. The winners are based on votes and you can’t vote for your home country. (That’s the rules!) The winning country gets to host the following years event. It is the largest live music event shown with over 120 million viewers.

This years highlight included a stage crasher during Spain’s performance which granted Spain another opportunity to perform again after the final 25th act. France and Germany had upbeat tunes while Iceland and Ireland had standing ovations.

The show’s most iconic part with almost a cult status is the results announcement section in the end. Each country eligible to vote in this event will have their mini slot announcing the results of their local vote. It is also interesting to see that neighbouring countries will often vote for each other. (eg. UK voting for Ireland). Will be interesting to see who will grab this year’s glory.

Being nostalgic again, the first time I ever I heard about Eurovision was when Ruslana of Ukraine won with the following upbeat tune in 2004. Still a good performance in my records.

Well, enough for this time while I continue watching the remainder of the show.

Picnic Basket

My lucky day, I won this gift basket in a lucky draw after successfully answering two questions correctly in an office competition! It was in conjunction with a new packaging launch. Yipee! Thought of sharing my luck and celebrating it with a blog post!

Buddha Birthday 2010 London

Two weeks ahead of the actual celebrations and I have lost count of the times I was fortunate to be here to witness the proceedings. However, this year was extra special as I followed the mini procession from Leicester Square into Chinatown and back.

If you are curios what this event is all about, here is the link to Wikipedia.

Here are some pics of the event worth sharing.


Lion Dance
The Lion Dance Lead The Procession

Wesak Day London 2010
The Chariot

Wesak Day London 2010
Main Banner

Leicester Square
The Queue To Bath Baby Buddha

Here is my post back in 2008 and 2007 of the same event!

Stomp

As my parents are in town, I decided to spend the night in London. What better way to make their visit memorable by watching one of West End’s many performances. I decided to go for Stomp which was a performance that I have always wanted to watch since I was in University.

Stomp

Stomp is a show of rhythm, comedy and dance using everyday household items such as a box of matches, lighters, brooms, kitchen sink, tubes, pots and pans.

To show you what I mean, the below video is their opening act using brooms and I believe was extracted from their DVD.

One of the highlights was that the stage at the Ambassadors Theatre has a sign stating Penang Street. Penang is of course my hometown!

I highly recommend Stomp because it is easy to follow with no plot or heavy conversations. It made my evening!

Click here to find out more about Stomp.

Aylesbury Becomes A Ghost Town

Happy Labour Day everyone! Unfortunately, there is no day trips today due to a peaceful demonstration in the town center. Public transports are not running full service due to this.

Check out the Market Square in the morning where the town center looks dead. I pity the local businesses.

This was the picture I took using my Blackberry during my visit to the town center on Thursday evening. The lions have been boxed up to protect them from vandalism I guess.

There were sounds of helicopters hovering on top of my apartment all day which I believe was due to the close proximity to the town center which made it a good spot to capture footage. I was following the status of the march using twitter which was updated by citizen journalists, the local paper and the police. The whole event ended with a little bit of violence.

Both video recordings were produced by the Thames Valley Police which did a great job in maintaining the peace.

New VelocitySpark.net Website

VelocitySpark.net Logo
The site is finally up and in a presentable state. Took me two weekends because I wanted to make sure the site is running on WordPress. I experimented on Joomla a while ago but I am more familiar with WordPress. Visit the page now at http://www.velocityspark.net and let me know what you think. I still have bigger plans for the site but it will need to be parked aside until I complete the revamp of my other pages including my personal blog. I will be off to Dublin in the next two days. Till next post, take care guys.

Bareno Run 2010

Today is the last day of my one month trip back home and thanks to my dearest Song Yia, it was ended with the accomplishment of completing my first 10KM run at Bukit Jalil around my old apartment and workplace. I finished at just over an hour and am not sure when my next run is going to be but this will not be my last.

Here is a pic of us with our completion medals…

Winners!

With Our Completion Medals

The event kicked off on time and the route had a few challenging uphill climbs. I will sore on the flight back tonight and probably even more in the office tomorrow morning…

Till my next post… goodbye…

I Hate Snow

That is what I saw scribbled in snow on the front of a car. When I woke up this morning, I could see the owner warming up the engine. After breakfast, I took a peak at the balcony and saw that he has abandone his effort. Apparently the driver has given up as the snow became heavier. Oh Well. Am attempting to head to work as normal but am hoping the snow fall will be lighter before I head off.

Well, only less than 5 weeks before I return to sunny Malaysia. Can’t wait!