WWF-Not-Friendly

Went to my senpai's wedding a couple of days ago. She married a Member of the House of Representative. Due to the fact that he went on 2 whaling research expeditions to the South Pole and his active involvement in promoting whale meat industry, the door gifts for the wedding was a box of whale meat related products!! :x :x :x

In the picture: 2 whale-meat sausages, 1 prepacked whale-meat curry and 2 cans of whale meat cooked in different sauces.. :x :x

When I first saw these products I thought to myself, "Oh no!! I am an accomplice in killing these whales!!" :o :o and "How could they kill these whales for meat??" :@ :@ Then the pragmatic side of me emerged. I couldn't possibly throw away these products, as it would be a unforgivable sin of wasting edible food!! The whales were already slaughtered and canned (to put it mildly), so even if I throw away these products, the whales would not come back to life.. The least I could do is to taste these products and spread the word that there is nothing fantastic about the whale meat, so that I would be more convincing in dissuading everyone around me from buying whale products.

R.I.P. :( :( :(
I will write about the wedding in another blog entry..

Let the game begin!

EURO2008 starts today!!

This year's EURO 2008 is being held jointly by Austria and Switzerland.. which will climax on the 29th Jun with the finals being played in Vienna..



One of the most obvious absentee in this year's championship is England.. With the world wide popularity of English Premier League, soccer fans, particularly in Asia, will miss watching players like Wayne Rooney, Steve Gerrard and John Terry in action. But personally I wouldn't be as I think there are far better non-England players in the world. So in a way this championship will forces soccer fans to take note of other soccer players that are not as glamorous as those England players who seem to be creating news with "talents" other than their soccer skills.

Having been a German soccer team supporter all my life, there is no surprise which team I will be rooting for in this EURO 2008.. :) I was mesmerized by the German team in Mexico World Cup 1986 lead by Lothar Matthäus. Then came players like Jürgen Klinsmann, Thomas Helmer, Oliver Kahn, Dietmar Hamann, Oliver Bierhoff and Bernd Schneider. And now the new generation players like Clemens Fritz, Christoph Metzelder, Torsten Frings, Oliver Neuville and Miroslav Klose.. Hopefully, Germany will perform better than the last EURO where they didn't even make it to the quarter finals..

As with any major tournaments, there will definitely be a handful of players who will emerge as play makers and dominate the matches. Some soccer players' fortune will rise while some will fall. Who will it be? We shall see in the next 22 days.. :)

Ever since soccer betting was legalized in Singapore, I would make a bet on the soccer matches during these types of major tournaments.. :P Although the odds weren't that fantastic, staking a small amount of money onto the game would greatly influence one's emotions and would actually enhanced one's viewing pleasure.. :P Usually I would set a amount that I would spend on each tournament, and once I have reached that amount I would stop. So there was never a danger of being addicted nor the possibility of incurring huge gambling debts..

Just for fun, I will make some predictions for matches this weekend.
Switzerland vs Czech => Czech
Portugal vs Turkey => Portugal
Austria vs Croatia => Draw
Germany vs Poland => Germany

Anyone know of any sites that I could watch these soccer matches for free????

Oh, how I miss watching soccer.. :( :( :(

Up and up and up...

Nowadays we are swamped by news of price increases or news caused by price increase.. Everything is going up, from petroleum to basic food items to average temperature.. The only thing that refuses to budge is everyone's salary.. :(

In Tokyo, Japan, the raining season was not supposed to arrive until mid or end of June, but a couple of days ago the Japan Meteorological Agency has announced that the raining season (梅雨) has officially started on 03 Jun!! :o So the weather condition here has gone from huge daily temperature fluctuation to huge daily temperature fluctuation AND rain... :x

Seriously, I don't like all these weather changes.. The last thing that I do before I sleep and first thing I wake up everyday is to check the weather forecast. Cos it will affect what I am going to wear and bring for the day... And more often than not, my mood is affected by the weather too.. Then with the craziness of the rush hour crowd on the train, ARGGGHHHH... How is it possible to not get any kind of mental disorder(s) living in such a cramped and "oppressed" environment????

Anyway, after experiencing all the 4 seasons in Japan, I think I prefer autumn more than the other 3.. :) where everything slows down, shows its best for the last time before hibernating for the long winter ahead..

Recap: Golden Week Outing (Part I)

Went to Ryōgoku Kokugikan (両国国技館), an indoor arena for Japan's national sports, Sumo during the past Golden Week. It was an outing organized by the RA (Resident Assistants, aka the Japanese students) of my dormitory. Well, I must say the planning and execution of the outing could have been better.. I had expected it to be much more organized.. but well, that's just me, the planning/control freak.. :p

A couple of Malaysians from another dormitory came to join in. So by and large, there are about 8 Malaysians, 5 from my dorm (including myself) and 3 from Soshigaya. We met at 10:30am at the lobby of Building 2. Other than the fact that we are going to see Sumo, we have no idea where the location nor the (train) line that we are going to take.. It was like, "Ok, let's just follow the RAs..." :x Seriously, there are about 35 of us, 外国人(foreigners), thus at least they should tell us the itinerary, which station, which (train) line so that if any one of us gets lost, we can still find our way there...

We took Chuo Local Line from Yoyogi Station and alighted at Ryōgoku (両国) Station. Unfortunately for us, it was drizzling, so the added hassle of carrying an umbrella. After walking a few blocks from the station, instead of going to see Sumo, we were lead to a temple, Ekoin Temple (回向院).



There was a 両国賑い春祭り, a kind of spring festival going on. The main hall was filled with people as the memorial service was being held.



All around the hall, there are miniature statues of bodhisattvas hanging on the walls.. but because the service is being carried out, I didn't use flash while taking photos, so all of my photos are blurry..


After a while, we got out of the hall and started to wander around the compound of the temple which proved to be more interesting..

There are several statues that seemed to be dedicated to the souls of animals, and finally I saw the statue which confirmed it..



Other than the memorial statues for animals, there is also a cemetery behind the compound..

A statue of the 地蔵菩薩 is seen here on the left of the entrance to the cemetery..

The whole place is serene and well maintained. If not for the kanji that identified the place as a cemetery, one would just assumed that the whole place is just an extension of the temple..



Unlike the cemeteries in Malaysia and Singapore, the Japanese tombs are nicely aligned and although seemed narrow, but are clutter-free..



Other than cemetery for humans, there are also rows of wooden tablets for pets that have passed away.. If you could read from the photos, most of them were for cats (猫) and dogs (犬).


There is also a site for aborted fetuses... they called it 水子塚.


It was lunch time. We were given 1 hour to eat and then meet back at the train station to proceed to the main attraction of the day, Ryōgoku Kokugikan (両国国技館) to see the sumos..

To be continue in Part II..

Being part of the statistics

From the media (main stream or online), everyone seems to accept the fact that the security situation in Msia has been deteriorating.. everyone gripes about it.. we all seemed to know someone who knew someone who had been a victim of crime.. unfortunately last Sunday, my parents fell victim to the growing crime rate in Malaysia.. :@

When it was time for our weekly family conference call, my dad was not online. So we called our home's land-line phone instead. It wasn't anything out of the ordinary... Imagine our surprise when my mum picked up the phone and told us that our house was broken into!! :o :o And dad was at the police station at the moment making a police report!! All the three of us were shocked beyond words!! :o :o :o

Coming back from KL and reaching home around 9.30pm, my parents were shocked when they opened the main door and found that the house was ransacked!! After much hesitation, they decided to make a report so that there would be a record with the police. The police who came advised my dad to go to the police station personally to make a formal report and not to touch anything as they would need to come back to photograph the crime scene.. so my dad went to the police station leaving my mum alone in the house..

Thus there was nothing the three of us could do except to keep my mum company over the phone.. :( :( And since making a police report is well-known to take a long time, we decided to keep talking with my mum until my dad comes back.... Then I decided to call my dad over his hp to check on his status. Luckily as a decorated air force veteran, he was attended to immediately. So he has done with the report and was waiting for the chief inspector to go with him back to the house..

More than 45mins after our first call home, my dad was back at home with the police to take photos.. The lady chief inspector told my dad that there has been an increase in crime rate the past few months, everything from drug problems, house break-ins, vehicle thefts, snatch thefts, etc. Crime has been increasing and the lock-up/jail is over-crowded.. :x Even the local magistrate is having problem keeping up with the charges and proceedings.. The local policemen are all over-worked, underpaid and very demoralized.. with the rampant illegal immigrants problems and deteriorating economic situations, the crime rate would only go northward... :( :(

From the look of crime scene as described by my mum, there might be more than 1 person involved in the crime here.. They came in via one of the back windows and went out the back door, sawing through some locks.. All drawers were wrenched open and their contents thrown on the floor.. The thieves did not take any valuable things, except cash and jewelries..

Sigh.. This is the first time our house has been burglarized.. but luckily my parents weren't around when it happened.. Thus they were safe and unharmed... only cash and some jewelries were taken.. and going by the messiness of our house, I think the thieves had a hard time looking for money.. :P but still it was very unnerving to be hearing about such news and yet not being able to do anything to help.. :( :( :( There was a lot of knee-jerked reactions from the three of us, but none helpful to the situation at hand.. I think all of us felt very helpless and guilty for being away from them.. not to sound unfilial, but this is life.. since Msia is unable to offer a better fairer life to us, we had no choice but to go out to the world to find one for ourselves.. and for now, we are still looking and evaluating the pros and cons of living away from our parents.. by next July, my sis would be returning to Malaysia, hopefully things would be better then..

I really really do hope so..