Dance like no one's watching

I was watching Grey’s Anatomy last night and a really old patient called Charlie (aka the "really old guy") dies in his wheelchair just before he’s due to check out of hospital.  When Izzy realises he’s not responding to her talk, she rushes to his side to take his pulse… by feeling his wrist.  Sigh.  What a big no-no.  The pulse on the wrist is so weak!  No doc would check for pulse on the wrist.

Anyway, I tried to justify Izzy’s actions. I said… erm, maybe she was checking for rigor mortis?  :P  Upon googling "rigor mortis", this is a cool fact I found.

Rigor mortis and the meat industry

Rigor mortis is very important in meat technology. The onset of rigor mortis and its resolution partially determines the tenderness of meat. If the post-slaughter meat is immediately chilled to 15 °C, a phenomenon known as cold shortening occurs, where the muscle shrinks to a third of its original size. This will lead to the loss of water from the meat along with many of the vitamins, minerals, and water soluble proteins. The loss of water makes the meat hard and interferes with the manufacturing of several meat products like cutlet and sausage.

Cold shortening is caused by the release of stored calcium ions from the sarcoplasmic reticulum of muscle fibers in response to the cold stimulus. The calcium ions trigger powerful muscle contraction aided by ATP molecules. To prevent cold shortening, a process known as electrical stimulation is carried out, especially in beef carcass, immediately after slaughter and skinning. In this process, the carcass is stimulated with alternating current, causing it to contract and relax, which depletes the ATP reserve from the carcass and prevents cold shortening.

Went to watch the movie today.  It’s sooooo good!  The plot’s really simple – Sophie (Amanda Seyfried) was raised by her single mom, Donna (Meryl Streep) and has always wondered about the identify of her father.  She finds her mom’s old diary hidden in a trunk in the house and the entries in the diary were recorded the year that she was born.  Donna was involved with 3 men 1 summer 20 years ago and Sophie was born as a result of that passionate summer.  Curious to find who her real dad is, Sophie invites all 3 men to her wedding!

And that’s essentially the entire plot… and told using ABBA’s songs.  Like what my favourite English teacher, Mr. Booth, told me years ago in secondary school – the best story is often the simplest one.  When the author focuses on the characters and detailed development of the story – that’s what draws readers in.  You don’t need a complex plot with 101 sub-plots to capture the attention of your audience.

How true that is with Mama Mia!.  The movie had us (the audience) laughing really hard and I could hear people singing along with the characters on the screen.  Meryl Streep is a fabulous actress too!  She really outshone the others in the cast (especially Pierce Brosnan who looked a little stoned if you ask me).  When she sang the solos "Slipping Through My Fingers and "The Winner Takes It All", tears couldn’t help but well up in my eyes.  She was sooooo good. 

The movie’s really campy, yet sentimental and the lovely, romantic Greek island backdrop was absolutely beautiful.

Here’re my favourite parts in the movie.

Honey Honey (The really funny start… and I think Amanda Seyfried was the best singer amongst the cast)

Slipping Through My Fingers:

The Winner Takes It All

Oh… and a funny tidbit about myself… when I was really really young… a toddler… my parents used to play the ABBA record and I loved the song Super Trouper so much, I would cry when the song ended and wouldn’t stop till they played it again, and again, and again, and again. 

Enough said.  Go see the movie now!

Horlicks’ the most daring of all my bunnies (ever).  All my other bunnies will run away in fear when my car stops at the main gate & the headlights shine into the garden.  Horlicks, however, will run towards the glare of the headlights to see what’s the fuss about.  Not your usual bunny behaviour. 

Ever since my dad started letting Horlicks come into the house for a nightly run, she has explored the entire ground floor of my house.  Bored with the ground floor, she has now taken to running up the stairs.  It started with a slow & tentative climb up the stairs.. now, she just bounces up and hops down.  Heh.  Here’s a video of Horlicks.

Pinky has always been afraid of going up the stairs but my dad tells me that he can now be persuaded to follow Horlicks up the stairs.  Heh.  Hope to get a video of him doing that soon.  🙂

Was prompted to do an auto Windows upgrade.  Not sure which product Windows was trying to upgrade but my MSN started displaying an error message everytime I booted up my laptop.  In the end, I uninstalled MSN and manually downloaded and installed MSN 2009 (beta).  The display’s not bad.  Each line typed is prefixed with a bullet point.  Makes the chat window a lot neater.

My Windows Live Writer was upgraded along with MSN.  Photos now can be done in various styles.  Really cool.  Hehe.  Best of all, there’s finally an option to have pictures aligned at the centre of the blog post.  Previously, Live Writer could only position it left or right and in order to get a pic in the centre of the post, I had to manually edit the HTML. 

I’m quite pleased with these 2 new versions so far.  Only drawback is that there doesn’t seem to be a compatible version of Msg Plus available for MSN 2009 yet.  *Sniff*.

My blog got hacked again.  Only discovered it last night when I tried to post the entry about my first day (which is Sun) in Bangkok and got the damn "parse error" again.  Logged into Yahoo webhost and true enough, my index.php and xmlprc.php file got edited on 4 Oct 2008.  Sky happened to be online so I told him about it.  Even he was surprised that my blog seemed to be getting hacked so often given that my password is really quite secure (consists of special characters, capital letters, numbers and with no proper word).  The only reason he could think of is there may be some weakness in my Yahoo and/or SQL database setup and I really can’t be sure ‘cos I have no idea how the technical aspects of it work.  Anyway, Sky happens to offer webhosting services too so I decided (on the spot) to switch to his.

The price he charges is very reasonable and he helped me shift my entire blog to his server.  Will have to work out with him how to upload files via FTP, as well as figure out a way to shift my email adds to his server.  He helped me sort out the entire migration till 4am last night.  (THANK YOU!!).  I sure hope he wasn’t working today.  Haha. 

Once everything is sorted out, I’m going to dump Yahoo for good.  Though convenient (and I loved the Snapshots Backup feature), it’s getting very costly to host it with them.  I got an email just 2 weeks ago saying that the price is going up by USD1 from USD11.95 to USD12.95 per month.  It’s ridiculous.  The biggest benefit I see about hosting with Sky is that I know him and I know I’ll be able to approach him for help.  At least with a friend as a webmaster, I don’t mind telling him my password if need be, for him to help troubleshoot and then changing it to a new password thereafter so I can’t hold him liable for any subsequent security lapses either.

As it is, I already noticed a few improvements to my blog/Wordpress interface.  For e.g., the "index.php" has been removed from my my pretty permalinks.  (This is probably ‘cos this is now a clean installation of the latest WordPress compared to the upgrade I did on my own).  Also, there’re more theme options in my WordPress admin panel.  Better still, the plugins that I deleted when fixing the damn 4 Oct hack have also been added back for me.  Whoopee!!

Anyway, I really hope this puts a stop to the hacking of my blog once and for all.  Damn you chao hackers!

First day in Bangkok… the only day with a bit of free time.  Went to the Healthland Spa at North Sathorn Rd for a really good aromatherapy oil massage.  Thb850 for 1.5hrs.  Really worth it.  Wanted to do the Thai massage initially (which costs a superbly cheap Thb450 for 2 hrs) but my colleague wanted to do the former and so I followed suit…so she wouldn’t have to wait 30min for me.

Went to Siam Center to shop for 45mins (tight, tight schedule) but that’s ok ‘cos I spent a whopping on face and moisturisers, eyeliner and foundation even before I left Changi Airport.  Bleah.

Think some of my colleagues are a little disappointed ‘cos it’s also elections day in Bangkok today… and no alcohol is served during the period from 6pm 4 Oct to 11:59pm 5 Oct.

Am supposed to prepare some slides for a presentation tomorrow.  Last minute kena arrow by Bigmac.  Sigh.  Slacking a bit before I start preparing.  Hehe.  Here’re my photos from today.  (I’m staying at the Royal Orchid Sheraton Hotel).

Patience is very pleased that she got her own bed.

Dressing area

View from my window.  (The water’s really brown).

Nice big sink.  Good for putting on makeup.

Toiletries provided.

Lots of small and big towels.  Heh.

Lots of free beverages (should be free ‘cos they’re not on the price list…)

Guess what’s a condom called on the price list?  It’s called "Gent’s amenity".  HAHAHA.

Wonder how many people will cave in to temptation and drink from the minibar.

What do you call someone who helps you with stuff?  Ans: Assistant Manager.

Hotel lobby area

Interesting displays

Front desk area

I like the pop-up art!

Not sure why my pics turned out grainy and dark.  🙁

Not sure why either but by pressed and holding the capture button longer, I somehow managed to increase the exposure of the shot making it not as dark.  *Scratches head*

Am using the Panasonic FX33.  Toggling between the iA and night scenary modes.

Sigh.  Nothing interesting’s on TV tonight.  I’m actually watching Channel News Asia!  Pengz.  Okie… time to do my slides.  Don’t know what I’m going to talk about man.  Crap.

The approval for the new girl and me to attend our regional product conference in Bangkok was finally given yesterday.  Saw Upsize walking to the Managing Director’s room in the afternoon and I suspected it was to get a final yes/no to us going to BKK.  I’m glad it’s a yes.

Though I’m not that enthusiastic ‘cos I need to prepare a short presentation again and there’s hardly any time for R&R, I’m still happy that I get to go.  Poor Kid’s Meal will have to stay in office while Bigmac, New Girl (haven’t thought of a nick for her yet) and I go to BKK.  (Beanstalk’s not going but that’s ‘cos he has resigned).

Two things I need to decide now.  Firstly, should I go buy another t-shirt from Esprit during lunch tomorrow or should I go for a manicure?  Secondly, should I go for a massage when I arrive in BKK on Sun noon time or should I go shop around?  (Drawback about shopping is that my hotel’s near the river rather than the main shopping belt).  Thirdly, should I bring my laptop to BKK since I am unlikely to be able to charge any Internet usage on my office bill?

Decisions decisions.  Oh, but one thing that I did decide was that I prefer the MAC gel liner compared to the pencil one.  The gel liner is easier to draw (for me) and it seems to stay on longer too.  The pencil liner tends to get washed away by my tears.  Hmm.

Okie… that’s it for now.  Need to go brush teeth and sleep before I oversleep tomorrow again!!  Going to set 4 alarms!

Was invited by a friend recently to attend a "Landmark" seminar.  Didn’t want to reject a friend outright as I would a telemarketer.  So I went to check out the website for more info.  The layout of the website looked professional enough but I couldn’t figure out what the heck were they offering.  It looked like another of those self-help / motivational course type of seminars (which I’m skeptical of) but everything was just so ambiguous.  So I did a search online regarding "Landmark Education" and good grief!  France has listed it as a group with cult-like traits.

Sure, there were positive reviews of the seminar and how it transformed lives – but those testimonials were found on Landmark’s website.  Not very impartial I would say.  Other websites and forums had scathing criticisms of it… and there were even some lawsuits initiated by people who suffered mental breakdown after attending the seminars (allegedly due to the brainwashing techniques used).

To be fair, I think those who sufferered mentally already had emotional issues to start with… and these issues were exacerbated by the verbal abuse participants are subjected to at the forum.  That said… why would anyone pay money to get scolded? 

Anyway, I rejected my friend’s invitation to attend a seminar.  I can just see myself having a cat fight with any course leader that tries to scold me on stage in front of all the participants.  Hmm… if anything, I may end up abusing the course leader till he/she cries.  That would be funny.  Hehe.  Maybe I should attend on one of those bad weeks where everything goes wrong and I need to vent my frustrations.  :P 

Talking about venting frustrations… my mood is most foul in the morning.  I am so not a morning person.  Waking up early, rushing to get ready for work, getting stuck behind slow coaches at the MRT station and jostling for space in a crowded train puts me in an absolutely pissed off mood.  However, a new toy I bought over the weekend has made packed morning train rides a lot more bearable.  Please give a round of applause to the Nintendo DS Lite! 

I bought a deep red DS Lite over the weekend.  Found the games a little too childish/girly at first… and didn’t really like the fact that most games had to be played with the stylus.  That’s till I got hooked on Space Invaders!  Yes!  The (I think) 30-year old game.  It’s sooooo captivating that when I was stuck at Cityhall MRT this morning due to a train fault, I wished the fault would last longer (despite being late for work).  Heh.  I think the DS Lite is a good motivational tool.  It makes me more cheery and forgiving in the morning.  I’ve been brainwashed by aliens.  Woohoo!

Another catchy wedding song recommended by a friend.

Stevie Wonder’s "Signed, Sealed, Delivered (I’m Yours)".