Monday, December 11, 2006

Digital Fortress and The Host

Digital Fortress
So, yesterday I finished Dan Brown's "Digital Fortress". It was good. As all Dan Brown's books are. Now I'm just lacking "Deception Point" and I'll be a full fledged Dan Brown fan. Well, there were a lot subplots which kinda got into the way but were nonetheless important for the buildup. Am I contradicting myself here? Whatever. Still, "Angels and Demons" is my favourite. I've probably forgotten most of the plot by now, but I remember that I loved it.

The climax was riveting, but kinda anti-climax. See, they needed this pass-key, well kill-code actually to neutralize a worm destroying their (NSA, National Security Agent) security filters. And the clue was "the prime difference between the elements responsible for Hiroshima and Nagasaki" if I'm not wrong. Someone figured out it was chemical elements, instead of socio-political ones those people kept thinking of. Oh, I missed out that they entered the wrong kill-code once and it accelerated the attack, so things were pretty hectic and chaotic. So, chemical elements. First, they thought it was plutonium and uranium, which was actually a misconception.

As a matter of fact, they were both uranium, but isotopes. They were racking their brains trying to find the "prime difference". And I was sitting on my static ass thinking,

'wtf? they're freaking isotopes! The most obvious freaking difference of course is their nombor nukleon la! Nombor nukleon damnit! And you call yourself freaking geniuses?! Do you even know what isotopes are?'

And the likes, cos I was kinda pissed at their imbecility. Turns out, I was freaking right after all. They were U-238 and U-235, hence the kill-code was 3. *heaves a content sigh* It's good to know that one is better in saving the world than fictional geniuses. Those two years of education weren't for nothing after all. Hehehehehe..... syok sendiri betul. So yeah, that was too easy and predictable. Some other stuff were predictable too, like you know that the initial good guy would turn out to be guilty after all, because come on, it's Dan Brown you oaf. That's what happened at "Da Vinci Code" and "Angels and Demons" too. It was a good read nonetheless.

I'm sure it would be exciting for non Science students. Hehehehee.... just let me bask in the warmth of my own glory for a while.... Yea yea, I know I should cut those fictional characters some slack, because 'they're geniuses for God's sake, surely their minds wont be as simple as yours?' Ugh, What. Ever. Let me syok sendiri also cannot wor.

The Host
And, I watched "The Host". Not in the cinema, but in the petty confinement of my home. My bro downloaded it, so sue him. Firstly, there was a pretty lousy excuse to contaminate the Han River. The American was not fond of dust, and there were thick layers of them on loads of bottles containing toxic chemicals, so he just asked the Korean to dump them.
The Korean exclaimed," but they will go into the Han River"
and the exasperated American said sth stupid like," Look, the Han River is very broad..... so let's try to be broad-minded here"
Jesus Christ, who comes up with these shit?

6 years later, there's this humongous, hideous, voracious, mutated tadpole terrorizing the place. Which is pretty good at gymnastics, I might add. You'll know when you watch it. This monster abducted Hyun-Seo (if I remember correctly), leaving her family to think that she's dead. But, her father receives her phone call, saying that she's in a huge sewer. Hence starts their journey to rescue her. There were a couple of frightening moments, but only a couple.

And moments which will leave you dumbfounded, like the one where Hyun-Seo suddenly appears out of thin air when her family was having dinner, and they just kept quiet and fed her one by one. It's like 'Is it a message? Is it supposed to tell us sth? Or is the director trying to play with our minds?'

In the end, of course the monster's dead, Hyun-Seo's dead too, her grandfather died as well, her father appears to be alive, but.. you're not so sure anymore, maybe he's in heaven? Whatever.

My verdict is, just download it and watch la, not really worth RM10. Go watch Happy Feet or sth.

Friday, December 08, 2006

Book Review

From my list, I have only managed to accomplish one thing - read. Yesterday, I finished "The Curious Incident of the Dog In the Night-Time" by Mark Haddon. Cant believe it took me two whole days to finish it. It's only 226 pages. I'm a slow reader la.

Anyway, it was a book written from an autistic 15-year-old's perspective. I read good reviews about it, thus I decided to get it. And, I learnt some things from it too. There was the Monty Hall question, the homunculus, and er other stuffs la, I have a bad memory, k? So the main thing to be learnt from the book is what actually goes on in an autistic person's mind. With his "superbly logical mind", Christopher really sees everything literally. That's why he doesn't really get jokes or humour. Oh my, imagine a life devoid of laughter. How can??!

The book starts with Christopher finding his neighbour's (Mrs. Shears) dog, Wellington stabbed by a pitchfork in his neighbour's garden. Hence, he decided to "play detective" and find out who's the killer. He records the process in the book, which was supposed to be a murder mystery novel. But in sleuthing around, he discovers that his Mother was still alive (he was told she died of a heart attack), she had an affair with Mr Shears, and is now living in London. AND, who killed Wellington. Okay, maybe that was a lot of spoilers. But who cares, nobody's reading anyway. And that is why, boys and girls, I'll totally fail at book reviews.

Well, I kinda pitied Christ's father too, cos it's evident that he loves his son A LOT, but since admitting that he killed Wellington (tadaa!) Christ ran away to London to live with his mother, is completely terrified of him and refuses to speak with him even when they are in the same house. That must hurt a lot. But in the end, things looked up just a little. That little was just enough to assure that things would eventually be better between father and son.

I didn't actually cry while reading this book, but just cos it's really hard to make me cry through books. That was a totally redundant sentence, so ignore it. I would say, get this book even if it's RM30+. It would bring some understanding towards autism, why they react the way they do and you may even discover some facts you've never come across before. Plus, there's not much big a difference between human and computers.

Conclusion, this book was easy to read since I didn't have to check the dictionary every few minutes. And I can't believe I took two days to finish it. This was a crappy review brought to you by yours truly.

Sunday, December 03, 2006

Things I Wanna Do After SPM

1. Draw

2. Read (devour novels)

3. Rollerblade (at least try to, I swear my skates have cobwebs in them)

4. Work out and acquire Gwen Stefani abs (pffffttt... like THAT'S gonna happen)

5. Pamper myself in all ways possible

6. Catch up with all the TV shows I've missed

7. Customize my template

8. Search for a long lost friend

Er, that's pretty much all I can think of right now.

Shit, I really should be studying.

Edit: OMG totally can't concentrate can die. Just think of it, in a few hours time, all these shit will finally be over!!! OH GODDDDDDDDDDDD!!!! I'm too hyper right now. And I truly think that I'm gonna flunk my Bio. Oh well...

Friday, December 01, 2006

Whatever III

*gaspppp!!* A mosquito bit me in my lip! Yes, in my lip. It wasn't outside, now my lower lip is swollen. My mouth must have been gaping when I napped. Stupid mosquito! I'm always bit in the weirdest places. When I woke up, one bigass bite was on my left cheek too. *grumble grumble grumble*

Sigh, yeah, a mosquito bite is probably the most exciting thing in my life right now. What a freaking loser.

But then hor, just now I also had a weird dream. The kindergarten I went to held a gathering of some sort. I reckon it was exam related cos we were all in our uniform, or maybe every dream I have these days are school related. Whatever.

The weird thing was, the people there were not ex-kindergarten mates. Not even one of them was supposed to be there. And my friend, who was supposed to, was not seen.

Ok la, that sounded so lame. Lately a lot of dreams have involved school. Most of my dreams are disturbing, but at least this one was only weird, not disturbingly so. And I woke up when my lip began to itch. I wish there's someone to decipher my dreams, who can be at my side when I sleep, so when I jolt awake with a dream fresh in my mind, he/she can analyse it for me. Yeah, I wish.

Again, I am fully aware that I'm ridiculously lame. But I can contradict myself sometimes, I'm narcissistic about my looks (well, bcos I'm simply ravishing *cough cough*) but self deprecating about other aspects simultaneously. Like, about my lack of personality, lack of wit, lack of leadership skills, diminutive grey matter... well these things are as important, if not more, than looks. And having above average (*cough cough*) looks just doesn't balance my deficiencies. I just can't help but wallow in self-hatred sometimes.

End rant.

People! There's only one more day of SPM to go!!!! My worst Science subject of all times...... Biology!!!! Technically there's only memorising to do, no calculations (actually got a few), no ass cracking formula, so should be easy right?

WRONG. Ugh I just hate it. I hate hate hate it. Tell me, how to finish two years' syllabus in two days?? I think I have forgotten all that I've revised before exam, so much for preparing early. Dad, as badly as you want me to be a doctor, I swear I'm never EVER EVER gonna be one. I fear that my brain will explode in overload.

Seriously, I'm not too optimistic abt how I've fared so far. What happened to "I don't care, I don't wanna care"?? Bitch, I do care I do care! Everybody does. It's either care less or care more.

Possible non-A subjects:
Physics
Chemistry
Biology (haven't took, but seeing how the other 2 have been...)
History (almost sure die liao)
Pendidikan Moral (the world's most pointless, useless, redundant subject. Well, aside from History)
Chinese (gosh, I hope I didn't steer off topic! I sure as hell hope I didn't *gasp* FAIL! ARGHGHGH!)
and all the others

The mentioned six have more chances of flunking, I think.

One more day of exam to go!!!! And then it's liberation!!!