Kampung Boy In USA...!

Friday, August 10, 2007

Going Back to Malaysia!!!!

finished packing everything at 1.30am. tomorrow's flight is at 2pm. cant freaking wait to go back malaysia. it has been 1 year and 5 months since i came to US and i havent been back since! god, i am gonna eat till i explode! i really need a break from school, i am out of gas already! this holiday will definitely do me good! aite, see you all in Malaysia i guess!

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Monday, June 25, 2007

This is my astrnomy paper.. Read it, I think it is very interesting.. hahahha... Well, at least my teacher thinks it is a good paper.

Astronomy and the Movie: Zathura

In today’s massive growing world of entertainment, more and more astronomical elements are being used as a way to entertain the viewers. Movies and television shows are made based on the ideas of space, astronomical catastrophe like a huge asteroid smashing into the face of the earth and killing millions (i.e. the movie Deep Impact), intergalactic wars among humans or between humans and other intelligent life forms (i.e. the famous trilogy, Star Wars), and many more. I really love watching movies but I think movies should be made entertaining as well as educational. There is no reason why science fiction cannot be made entertaining as well as informative about the things we do not experience and see in our everyday lives especially astronomy. However, movie producers only have one thing in mind and that is to make their movies as entertaining as possible to earn lots of money. To reach this goal, they are willing to bend the truth about science in every ways possible. One of the movie that I watched recently that fits the above criteria is Zathura: A Space Adventure.

Zathura is a movie about two boys, Danny and Walter, who went into a space adventure. It all started when the younger brother, Danny, found a space-adventure board game called Zathura in the basement of their new house. It turned out that the board game is magical and whenever a turn is taken by pressing a button, the token which is a spaceship, moves on the squares of the board and a card will pop out. Whatever it is on the card will happen in reality. So when the younger brother took the first turn, the first card popped up and it said ‘Meteor Shower, Take Evasive Action’. As they were reading it, a small meteor of a size of a ping pong ball went through the ceiling of the living room and the card and into the floor. Then the whole house started shaking and there was a meteor shower so the kids had to take cover inside the fireplace. The meteor shower destroyed the whole living room including the ceiling but miraculously the rest of the house was unharmed. This is a misrepresentation of meteor shower here. Meteor shower, also known as meteor storm or meteor outburst ‘is a celestial event where a group of meteors are observed to radiate from one point in the sky’(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meteor_shower). When a comet goes around the sun, it leaves a stream of debris particles along the orbit of the comet. When the earth atmosphere comes close to these stream of particles, their friction with the air causes them to burn and vaporize ‘leaving a streak of light that very quickly disappears’. That is what meteor shower really is. Meteor shower almost never hit the earth because of their small sizes; they disintegrate due to friction almost immediately after coming in contact with the atmosphere. Those which did hit the earth are no longer called meteor showers but are called meteorites. The common misunderstanding of meteor shower is due to the interpretation of its name literally: meteors from space showering down the sky, hitting the earth and cause chaos. That is exactly how this movie misrepresents meteor shower, meteors falling down and destroyed the whole living room.

Going back to the movie, after the meteor shower incident, Danny opened the door of the house and found out that they were in outer space. Their house with a little piece of land beneath it, was actually traveling along the outer edge of the rings of Saturn. One of the scene shows a boulder, almost the size of their house, flew past by their house. This is actually not true as the rings of Saturn are actually ‘composed of particles that are mostly ice crystals’ (http://csep10.phys.utk.edu/astr161/lect/saturn/rings.html). However, in the movie, they showed that the rings of Saturn are consist of chunks of rocks of all sizes. In that scene, a moon is also noticeable above the rings. This moon must be one of the two ‘shepherd moons’ that keep the outer ring in place by their gravitational force. When the elder brother, Walter, stepped outside the porch, he spat into space and his saliva float towards Saturn. Nevertheless, nothing within the house’s boundaries was floating in the air or flying away to space. Everything was intact to the house as though there was a gravity on the house. I would assume the same gravity also kept the air intact to the house because they were breathing fine. There are many things that are not true here. First of all, there is no air in space. That is why astronauts need air supply when they go to space. A thing as light as a house does not have enough gravity to retain its own atmosphere. Even the gravity of our moon which is so much heavier than the house is not strong enough to retain an atmosphere. What is gravity? Newton’s law of universal gravitation states that ‘every particles in the Universe attracts every other particle with a force that is directly proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them’(Physics for Scientist and Engineers, pg 390). Since Saturn’s gravity is much stronger than the house’s gravity, the house will actually fall towards Saturn. But as the movie showed that the house is orbiting around Saturn along the edge of the ring of Saturn, this mean that the house is not falling directly towards Saturn but around it. The force of gravity acts as a centripetal force that caused the house to orbit around Saturn. Therefore, if the house is falling around Saturn, everything in the house will feel weightless as how the people in the elevator will feel weightless when the cable snapped and they are free falling. So by law of nature, everything in the house should be floating.

Then, Danny and Walter went back to the board game because they reckon that if they want to go back to earth, they must win the game. When Walter took his turn, the card popped out and say ‘Your Robot Is Defective’. Suddenly a robot appears out of nowhere and started attacking them. They ran around the house hiding and dodging from being killed by the robot. In the midst of all these excitement, Danny took his turn in hope that something on the card will stop the killer robot. The card popped out, and everything in the house began to move and fall to one side of the house. And then the scene shows that the house was moving very near a star-like planet and some parts of the house was torn away and flew towards the planet. Apparently, what was on the card was ‘You Pass Too Close To Tsouris-3, Enter Gravity Field. ‘. On a side note, if something is not moving fast enough past a planet, it will be pulled towards the planet by gravity. The boys nearly fell out of the house into space but they held onto something. However, the robot fell into the basement and malfunctioned. Walter took his turn and he was promoted to a fleet admiral and his spaceship token moved 4 spaces ahead. When Danny took his turn, the card read ‘You are visited by Zorgons’. Soon enough, there was a spaceship and it started shooting at the house with its cannons. Again, hoping that it will help, Walter took his turn and he got a ‘Reprogram’ card. He tried to reprogram the spaceship but to no avail, the shooting did not stop. Then Danny took his turn again, and the card said ‘Rescue Stranded Astronaut’. When they look outside the window, an astronaut from space flew towards the house and slammed onto the window. They were scared and did not open the window but the astronaut let himself in through the front door. As it turned out, the astronaut was a good guy. He noticed the Zorgon’s spaceship problem so he told them to turn off all the lights, heater and put out the fire in the house because the Zorgons are outer space creatures who feed on fire. So they did, and the Zorgons went away.

A few more spaces left and they will win the game. And the astronaut was there to help them. Walter then took his turn and a golden card popped out and said ‘Shooting Star, Make a wish as it passes’. Minutes later, a boulder that was really bright like a fireball except that its fire was blueish white, slowly flew passed their house. It was the shooting star. As it passed, Walter closed his eyes and made his wish. Instead of wishing to go home or game over, he wised for a football signed by a famous player. The shooting star has been and still is misrepresented by the media. The name itself has fooled millions of kids, even adults. I remember when I was young, I thought that shooting stars are stars that fly by the earth and from what I saw on television, people always make a wish when they see a shooting star. A shooting star is actually a luminous path created by ‘large sand to boulder-sized particle’ of debris from outer space that enters the earth’s atmosphere and burns out very quickly because of the friction with the air.(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meteoroid) It is not a fiery ball that travels through space like what is pictured in this movie Zathura. In addition, from what I said earlier, space does not have air, so there is no friction between the boulder and air to ignite it and there is no oxygen to sustain the burning. What is depicted by this movie is totally for entertainment only and contains no educational purposes at all but rather information that isn’t true.

Skipping ahead a little of the movie, Danny took the last turn and his token reached the finish line. There were a little sparkles that came out of the board and then a card popped out and said ‘Game Over, Thank you for playing’. Nothing else happened and just when they thought that was it, the wall of the house was tore away and was sucked into a black hole. The black hole has a funny shape and fire around it as thought it was burning. The black hole is actually a very complicated theory. A black hole is said to occur when a star that is three times greater than the mass of the sun will collapse forever under its own gravity because nothing can stop the core from doing that.(Voyages to Stars and Galaxies, pg 344). The gravity of a black hole is so strong that the escape velocity is greater than the speed of light. The gravity also ‘curved spacetime’ that the collapsing star ‘has become trapped in its own pocket of spacetime from which there is no escape’(pg 346). Everything inside the black hole that tries to escape will end up going in a circular path and therefore not even light can escape from the black hole. Thus there is no light emitted by this collapsing star and therefore is invisible to the eyes which is why it is called black hole. It is also assumed that the black hole will take a spherical shape. The real theoretical black hole is so much different from the black hole depicted by the movie which has a funny shape and seems to be burning. The house was slowly torn apart and sucked into the black hole. Then Walter was sucked into it and when Danny was nearly sucked into it as well, he closed his eyes and when he opened it, everything was back to normal, to the time before the first turn was taken on the board game. That was the end of the movie.

In summary, Zathura is a really bad movie that projects a lot of bad astronomical information. I find the movie not entertaining at all and has very poor educational values for those who has little knowledge about astronomy.


Interesting? Told you so... LOL

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Tuesday, April 24, 2007

Point Reyes





The wind was sooo strong that we could lean on the air.

Foams created by the giant waves!

Its the Pacific Ocean. Correct me if I am wrong, my geography is not good.

Lake Tahoe


I brought the dogs for a walk down to the pier. FRom the pier
to the cabin is about 20 minutes walk.



View of the lake. Its really beautiful!

Came in two cars: people, stuffs and dogs.

That's Roxy
The pier

The view from the lake
Look at how deep the snow is!

The veranda of the cabin filled with snow


Ski Resort

Physics Project: Bed of nails!
Rana(partner), Marasco(teacher) and me. So like I said last quarter was hell because of physics. that teacher, Marasco is a brilliant man, and he was my physics teacher and a very very hard teacher. Made my life a living hell last quarter for 3 months because of his class. Me and Rana built a bed of nails as extra credit in his class. We had to buy plywood, make measurements, draw lines, drill holes and nail 5 inch nails into the board. Its hardwork, seriously! Whats the use of this bed of nails? You lay on it and it wont pierce or hurt you. Hehehe. Its not as scary as it look. Anyway, good shit, that extra credit helped me and Rana get an A in his class. Oh this project cost me 36 US$ just for the nails.
I still remmember back in primary school there is this guy said that he is invisible and put out a show. He lie on a bed of nails. I was really amazed. Now I know its all lies! Even i can do it, anyone can. Haha

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Sunday, March 11, 2007

OMG!! MY Blog IS DYING!!

cant believe my last post was christmas... ZZZ..... i need to update soon. so much things has happened since. well, been taking 3 hard classes this quarter and they are really kicking my ass!! espcially physics!! omg, college physics is soooooo much harder than high school!!!
anyway, my finals is coming so i am still working my ass of towards getting A in chemistry, math and hopefully,pray to God, in physics. So cant really update my blog, now just writing something while waiting for Dao Wen to help him in his chem quiz.. ERm, went up to lake tahoe twice and snowboarded. omg, its so hard to learn but so FUN! Fell so much till my whole body hurts.. hahhaha... Got some nice photo but gonna post it next time.. Its very beautiful up there! love the snow...... alrite, i will update my blog properly in three more weeks!

Tuesday, December 19, 2006

Updates...... A nite in SF

So, I havent update my blog for like nearly 2 months liau. Hahaha... Was too freaking busy and lazy, as usual. Damn, how come my parents born me with a lazy ass?!! Anyway, I will try to write what have been up with me for the past 2 months....

Lets start with 2 weeks bfr thanksgiving. Two of my friends, Juanri(Indo) and Brian(Brunei), had a birthday, so they join- venture and treat their freinds, 10+ ppl, to a dinner in a Japanese cafe in San Francisco. The dinner was at 6 till 8, they had to make a reservation for the place, but we -- me,Rio, Alex, Thomas and the birthday boy Brian -- only began to go at 6 in one car.... zzz. ... obviously we were very late. On top of that, there was traffic. Preety bad traffic cuz it was a Saturday nite and everyone wanted to go the city. The worse thing is that we can only eat untill 8 pm and then we have to leave, and it takes 45 minutes to go to SF but with the heavy traffic and the car moving at 35mph, God knows how long! Juanri and his geng had already arrived and started eating. Anyway, took us 1 hour and 15 minutes to reach Japan Town in SF where the cafe is located and another 15 minutes to look for parking space and the cafe. Zzz... So by the time we reach and sit down and eat, it was already 7.30pm and he had literally half hour to eat! It was something like a buffet steamboat where you put vegetables and beef into the soup and eat them, you can eat them just like that or you can dip them in peanut sauce or japanese soya sauce, and the waitresses just kept refilling the vege and the beef. So I makan lah and after 20 minutes I got sicked of beef already cuz I ate so much. hahahha. 3 other people were suppose to come but they arrived in Japan Town at 8, damn slackers, so Juanri asked them not to come cuz there were no time to eat already so they went and had dinner on their own nearby. At the end of dinner, they served us ice creams and then we ciao.


Then we went nearby, we stand around talking and take pictures. Actually there were kinda like two groups that nite, one is Juanri group and another is the group I came with. Among these people, only me, Brian, and Thomas (Myanmar) are not Indos while the rest are. We all know each others just that some people are closer and some are not, well you know how it is. And they all freaking speak Indo when they are talking so I really dont understand what they talking about so I was very sien, I hardly talk. Lucky got 2 more who doesnt speak Indo so I wasnt alone and Alex and Rio stayed with us. After awhile we called it a night, Juanri and his group went back and we met up with the slackers, Owen, his gf Sheila, and 'Small' Chris. Talked for half hour deciding where to go and finally we decide to hang out in Ghirardelli Square.
Ghirardelli is a famous chocolate brand like Hersheys and Cadbury. The place is actually a tourist attraction in Fisherman's Wharf where there are stores and other things.


The whole group...


Brian, Thomas, Me, Rio and Alex


Anyway, we went there, past through Fisherman Wharf and it was so quiet cuz all the shops were closed and there were no people around, so unusual when compare to daytime. When we reached, the line in the ice cream shop was long, yeah there were actually alot of people at that place at night, so we walked around and took pictures first. After there was no more line, we ordered ice-creams in the cold night and sat down, ate and talked. Some of my frens bought chocolates. After awhile another group of people came. Remember the incident on Halloween night, where we went to fetch two girls in Oakland and got lost? So it was this two girls again, Mary and Benedact, and their frens. Apparently they were nearby and Chris asked them to come, he wants to chase Benedact. So they sat down and we talked for awhile and decide what to do next.... and they decided to go sing karaoke. Problem is Alex and Brian didnt want to go but Rio wanna go and it was his car that we came here with. Me, I dint mind going to karaoke or going home to sleep, either way works for me. So there were alot of debate whether to go or not, Thomas and Rio kept persuading them to go but they really dont want to. Brian dint want to go home late cuz his brother will scold and Alex dont like singing. Rio really wanted to because he wants to see Benedact sing... hahahahha. After nearly 20 minutes decideing, sien!, Alex and Brian decided to tag along unwillingly. They said that they are gonna wait in the car or walk around while everyone else is inside singing. -_-! Swt! Anyway, while walking to go get the car in the car park, Rio, nice guy, say he also dont want to go lah so that Alex and Brian can go home. Thomas went with Owen cuz he want to karaoke. I went with Rio they all cuz I wanted to sleep and save some money :D So thats how the night ended. Quite an interesting nite, yet, truthfully, I was actually preety bored and moody the whole nite. :P


Alex, Chris, Brian, Owen, Sheila, Me and Thomas



Saturday, November 18, 2006

Halloween

Alright, I am suppose to write this half a month ago, but, you know, I am always procrastinating. Anyway, that halloween weekend,when all the halloween party is held, I dressed up as a doctor and my friend, Andrew, brought me to crash a party. He dressend up as Jack Sparrow from Pirates of the Caribbean. Woah, he look damn real. Too bad dint have a picture of him. Anyway, we went to Santa Clara Uni and met up with his friend. He dressed as the guy from the tv show House. So later that night, we walked around the uni campus. There were alot people walking around as well and we get to see alot of wicked costume. By wicked costume I actually mean women wearing slutty costume, i.e, nurse, cowgirl, fairy,policewoman and etc. Best!!!
Anyway, there were quite a number of party going around the campus at that time, music were booming everywhere. While we were walking on the street there was a girl that was so drunk that she just come hug Andrew's friend. Hahaha. So finally we crash a party but could not stay long cuz Andrew had to go back to take care of his sick girlfriend. That was a very fun and a new experience night for me. :P Too bad i cant bring camera and snap pictures at the party.

On Halloween , Tuesday, Diane put up the Halloween decoration. She carved two pumpinks and make two 'people' sitting outside the house. Very nice! And she get ready the candies for tricker treating. Children started coming to get candy at 7pm at night. Wearing costumes and walking from house to house to get candy, damn, I wish I was a kid here. While waiting for kid's to come, I was also eating the chocolate and sweets. Later, I carved a small pumpkin togather with Chris. Quite hard to carved leh, nearly cut my finger. LOL. wah, my pumpkin looked so good after I put it outside in the dark and lit it up with 2 candles in it.

Made by Diane.

The house

Chris's pumpkin of left, mine is on the right.

The house

At 11pm, my asians friends come and fetch me to bring me to SF. Apparently they wanted to hang out in Castro street cuz on Halloween, thousands of people just wear their coustume and hang out in that street. oh, Castro in SF is actually a gay neighbourhood. I went with my sis once and I was scared the shit out of me. Guys were holding hands and walking everywhere there. But on Halloween, everybody, not just the gays, hang out there. So, yea me and friends wanted to that but I dont know what they do untill so late only we went. anyway, there were two cars going. A Mercedes and a Nissan, freaking rich Indonesians. I was in the Nissan and we were to follow the Mercedes (they have the GPS) to pickup 2 girls first in Oakland bfr going to SF. Walauwei, with GPS also they got lost and had to make alot of unnecessary detour. And at one point, the Mercedes went so fast around the corner and took an exit that we lost sight of him. So we got lost in Oakland and dint know where to go. So we stop at a place, called the frens in the Merce and tell them the address where we were so that they can find us to lead us to SF again. After 45 min, finally they came. Everybody in the car very very beh syiok liau. After misleading us again, twice, into a resident area instead of SF, we got fed up, asked them to give us the GPS and let us lead instead. So, I read the GPS and direct my fren who was driving. We got to Castro without trouble! FinallY! By the time we reach SF it was already 1.30 am, we actaully can reach SF at 12.30am if it wasnt for all the trouble we ran into. By that time, everyone have cleared from the street and only the police left, people cleaning the street, and mostly gays who were still partying outside bars and clubs. Saw alot of gay guys dressing in women costumes.. So scary! Guess when i go back to Sitiawan, no need go aqua hunting liau in lumut. hahhahaha

In Castro they decide to go Fisherman Wharf to find a place to eat. So we went, took us more time than usual cuz the police block some roads so we have to take some detours. Anyway, reach Fisherman Wharf at 2.30am and everything was freaking close, go figured! Anyway, luckily my smart friends suggest we go eat at Denny's which is open 24 hours. Search in the GPS and luckily there is one near Fisherman Wharf,only 5 min away. So we makan and talked in Denny's. Halfway eating, a group of people came into the restaurant and they were still in costume, probably just off from a party. There three women and they, as usual, were in very slutty costume. I still remember there was one dressed up as a bunny. I am telling you, US can see alot things in Malaysia cannot see. LOL. We went home at 3.30am and I went to bed at 5am.
Freaking thing is, that morning I got class at 10am, thank god only 1 class, and i have to wake up at 8am. So i slept for three hours only, when i woke up, i can still taste the toothpaste in my mouth. hahhahaha. Damn it I was so tired that day!!! Couldnt really think straight. But I still can pay attention in class, do my quiz and got full marks(luckily not too hard of a quiz), study with my chemistry classmates for our lab quiz the next day from 1.30pm till 5pm, when i got back, i study again and only slept at midnight! Chun or not?!!! Thank God I got A for my very hard lab quiz! hahahahaha... That was my first halloween in US. :P

Friday, October 27, 2006

My New Hair Cut

So I went for a hair cut last monday near my place. Took me 15 minutes to cycle there. Oh yah, that morning I woke up at 8.30 am and it was sooo foggy outside... When I looked out the window as soon as I open my eyes, I only see white colour... Scared me nia! lol



So back to my haircut; I told the aunty, I think she is Thai from the language she spoke, I want my hair to be short and spiky. She say ok... and start cutting. I cant really see what was going on with my hair without my specs so I just laid back and let her do her job.. At the end when I put on my glasses only I realized she cut my hair botak and make my head look so round!! @#$%
I see already also nothing to say so i just pay her 11bucks and gave her 1 dollar tips and got the hell out of there.. Am not gonna go there anymore!!
So now my hair look like this: