Archive for April, 2007

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Mika Nakashima

Posted in Uncategorized with tags , , , , on April 30, 2007 by mdjasrie

Though I’m not a big fan of Mika Nakashima , due to the fact that her voice is more suited for jazz/blues kinda songs, and those two genres arent really my cup of tea. With her rather soothing, smokey voice, its rather unique amongst the other Japanese music singers out there right now. Of all the songs that I’ve sampled from Mika Nakashima, there are only 2 songs that were exceptionally well done in my opinion and brings out her quality vocal.

The first one is entitled: Sakurairo Mau Koro (When the Cherry Blossom Colours Dance). It was her 14th single, released 2 years ago. Its a heartwarming song about love. Its a very simple song, with just her voice a piano accompaniment, and some strings accompaniment. The reason why i like this song is because her vocals really stands out in the forefront and you quickly realized how beautiful this song is. Adding to her soothing and slow paced singing, it brings the emotion of the song. Though it didn’t hit the charts when it debuted, it peaked at #5 on the Oricon Charts.

The other song was featured in a rather popular anime series, Blood+ as an ending song, entitled, Cry No More.

It has a very gospel feel to the song, with background chorus rising to its climatic volume toward the end of the song, but then again, it has really simple lyrics, her vocal was exceptional. Its not a fast paced song, but rather laid back, kinda slow and relaxing. When i watched Blood+, im quite surprised that her song would be featured in Blood+, considering that the anime is rather violent and dark. But then i understood the reason for this. It actually reflects the true nature of the main character, Saya in the series, as a kind, timid, and understand person. The ending song emphasizes these qualities, making it a perfect song choice. The opening songs however are the total opposite.

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NTU driveby

Posted in Uncategorized with tags , on April 29, 2007 by mdjasrie

I had no plans today, so i decided to take a peek into my future campus, NTU. I went for a driveby and i was pleasantly shocked at the size and the rather isolated location of the campus. The university is big! There are so many residences and apartments for foreigns students and such. It took a while for me to find my school, The School of Biological Sciences.

Located near the NIE building, id say that the building is pretty new and modern. I like the design of the school and I’m kinda excited to start my university life there. Imagine all the rather new facilities the building has to offer, and its a fitting design, after taking into consideration all the high tech research labs and stuff. It’s not as nice as the Biopolis but at least it has a nice surrounding environment to it. But i wont be starting school right away. I still have to serve my NS for 2 years then ill be enrolling in 2009. Ive already reserved my spot when ive finished my NS.

Im aware of the fact that bus transit services are available to take you from one part of the university to another part of the university, but i what i didnt realize is the fact that the campus is so big, you have to depend on the bus just to transport you to your intended destinations. I never expected it to be this big, till the point that it can be quite exhaustive if one were to talk from one end to another end of the campus. Im not sure about this, but it seems that the academic campus, are concentrated in more or less a particular area of the university, while the residences are spread throughout the campus. So probably if you were to live in a dormitory, your dorm might be at the other end of the campus, and thus you need to take a bus to get there. I can only speculate at this point, because i only did a quick driveby and i didnt really step out of the car to explore on foot. Furthermore,  i think it was my first time that ive ever stepped into the university grounds itself.

Ill be coming back again, on the 6th of May, invited by the School of Biological Sciences to get to know more about my chosen course. I hope this would be a great opportunity to take a look around the buildings where ill be studying.

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Death Note Parody (DebuNote)

Posted in Uncategorized with tags , , on April 29, 2007 by mdjasrie

Debu is fat person in japanese. A parody of Death Note, Debu Note, is available on youtube. Quite hilarious, especially the appearance of ryuk! and the intellect of oiru (fat lard) Yagami is the complete opposite of the genius Light Yagami.

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The Million Dollar Homepage.

Posted in Uncategorized with tags on April 29, 2007 by mdjasrie

Have a look.

Damn! I want to do just like him and earn 1 Million Dollars!!! How does he do it? Apparently, this guy, by the name of Alex Tew, came up with this creative idea of selling 1 million pixels of advertising space, for 1 dollar each. It seems that he needed the money for his university education, and came up with this idea while brainstorming one night.

The pixels comes in 100 pixel blocks, so there are 10, 000 of these 100 pixel blocks, making a total of 1 million pixels. From the website, its apparent thats its already been filled up with various companies and website intending to advertise on his space. so they bought the space from him, created an image that would be implemented on the space bought and he already reached his million dollar target. Nifty eh? I would never have guessed that such a “business” model would work and that webmasters would actually pay him for the space. There are literally hundreds of ads cramming into that 1 million pixels he had set up.

Its like selling land in my opinion, buts its just pixels. Again, its an amazing feat. Just like that, he earned a million dollars to pay for his degree studies. Numerous testimonials were also on the website by various webmasters, stating that thier website traffic surged many times over just by buying that little amount of space.

Read the FAQ to find out more.

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Govt approves S$12b MRT Downtown Line to be built by 2018.

Posted in Uncategorized with tags on April 29, 2007 by mdjasrie

The expansion of the existing MRT network in singapore will boost its status as a public transport hub, and links commuters from different parts of singapore with great convenience, especially with the construction of the Intergrated Resorts and the New Marina Downtown.

Over $12 billion will be invested over the years and total of 33 stations will be built, intersecting existing lines, creating new interchanges. 40 kilometers of new tracks will be added, most of them underground. The new lines will be opened in phases, with the earliest serving the Marina Downtown area, where the intergrated resorts are. These will be opened in 2013. Other phases will be opened at a much later date, ending 2018 when the project is finally completed.

This is the current network map as of today, click to zoom:

You can see that there are only a few lines, mainly the North East Line, The East West Line and the North South Line.

This is what it would possibly look like in the future.

As you can see, there will be new networks added in the coming future. Several lines are not confirmed yet, such as the location and names of the stations. These are just concept maps of the possible expansion of the rail system. This is a huge difference between now and 20 years in the future. Overall, it looks pretty impressive that the government is really pushing the public transportation sector to new heights by invest a lot of money to connect the commuters to and from different locations efficiently, especially in accommodating a larger population in the future.

The circle line is in middle of construction, and should be completed in a few years time. The newly announced Downtown line have been revealed too. But then again, this is nothing compared to the Japan’s Tokyo subway system:

I cannot imagine Singapore’s MRT to look like that. This is just way to dense. But who knows, they might be as comprehensive as this. Time will tell. Still, im going to Japan in about a month’s time (hopefully) and ill definitely ride on their famous spiderwebbed, interlinked, ultradense subway system to get a feel for it. Its gonna be one hell of a ride.

read more | digg story

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Maroon 5, Makes Me Wonder.

Posted in Uncategorized with tags , , , on April 29, 2007 by mdjasrie

On May 22, look forward to Maroon 5′s latest album, entitled “It Won’t Be Soon Before Long” Almost 5 years have passed since their debut release “Songs About Jane“

They have released a single, Makes Me Wonder on March 27 to those who don’t already know. The video can be viewed here:

Adam Levine Looks really cool wearing the tuxedo in the video, and the song is quite catchy. Im already beginning to feel the unique Maroon 5 musical style and i hope that the other tracks are great as well. Their first album was really good, so its gonna be challenge for them to meet up to their fans expectations. So far the single sounds pretty good!

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Settlers Cafe

Posted in Uncategorized with tags , on April 29, 2007 by mdjasrie

Gosh, what a fun evening! 6 of my classmates including myself, went to Buona Vista to head to Settlers Cafe and had fun playing loads of board games.

Settlers cafe, like Pit Stop, and Minds Cafe, is a unique cafe, in a sense that you can have food and beverages there, and play loads of board games with your friends as well. They have a shelf full of unique and exotic board games, and its a great experience to play with your friends games that were never seen before. Its a pretty good place to go and have fun, without forking too much money on it. On a whole, it cost about 2 bucks per hour, per person. Excluding drinks and food (if you plan to have there) its a worthwhile investment to spend good quality time with your friends, families and loved ones.

Here are some of the games that we played, though we played more reaction games as compared to board games. I cant really remember the name of the games already heh :) The first one we played was this bridge game, where you have to cross to the other side of the board game by building bridges. Along the way, challenges by your mates will be met, and you must outwit them to get across.

We played a couple of other reaction games where we have to shout “ugly ugly ugly” if you are trying to snatch cards on the table and your friends are also snatching the same cards. Once you see three of the same kind of cards only then you can grab them. It was a really fast and noisy game. Full of screamings and shoutings.

Then we played “Apples to Apples“

We also played this childish dinosaur game. You have to capture the cards on the table by using the rubber sucker thingy. You have to get the correct dinosaur in terms of its colour to redeem a card.

We played a couple of other games as well.

It was my first time in Settlers cafe, and overall i think it was a good experience. The waiters and waitresses knew the rules of the game well and they explained to us in a really clear manner. The food was okay, nothing fantastic. I still prefer the desert from the Mind’s cafe that comes with the set meal better than the Settlers Cafe. The ambience and the environment is slightly better than the other outlets ive been too. We were a group of 6 and were entitled a huge table to ourselves to play the games. I would definitely come back again one day and try out more sophisticated board games. There literally tons out there on the shelves, and the number of session I’ve been to, it’s on the tip of the iceberg.

Overall, we had so much fun, that everyone was drained and tired by the look of their eyes.

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Wonderbra ad Gone Mad!

Posted in Uncategorized with tags , , on April 28, 2007 by mdjasrie

I dunno if this is intentional, but it seems that this rotating ad couldnt get past the next ad because the breasts are too big. Pretty creative if its intended this way, if not, its a big coincidence.

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Seirei no Moribito [Guardian of the Sacred Spirit]

Posted in Uncategorized with tags , , , on April 28, 2007 by mdjasrie

Seirei no Moribito is another newly released anime series, that would probably be among the best in the this year’s Spring lineup. It tells of a story of a wandering bodyguard who in a suddent turn of events, was forced to protect the son of the second wife of the emperor from assassins. The assassins however works for the emperor, thus it is the emperor who wishes the boy dead. For whatever reasons within, it is very vague at the moment.

Seirei no Moribito originates not from manga, but from the “guardian” novels penned by Nahoko Uehashi. 10 volumes have already been written. I wonder how much of the material will be in the anime series. It is quite likely that the series will just focus on one of the “guardian” novels.

Opening of the series:

Only a few episodes have been released, but by judging from the first 3 episodes, im quite amazed by the quality of the artwork, as well as the animation itself. There are many detailed scenes and fluid animation throughout the episodes. For one scene, in the first episode, the camera pans across showing what looks like a part of a city, offering many food shops lines along the streets with loads of people enjoying thier meals. What you would usually expect is just the normal pan and scan of the camera, across the entire scene, with no animation at all. However thats not the case. I was quite stunned when they acutally made the effort to animate movements of the background “extras”, walking and chatting, and eating while the camera pans across. This is very evident in other scenes as well, such as the bull on a rampage on a bridge scene.

The anime also incorporates 3d animation to the landscape, such as the mountains, the grasses, and the paddy fields, adding to the overall depth and epic feeling to it. I originally though this to be another average anime, but it turns out to be quite a surprise. Im really interested to know how this story unravels itself.

“I want to shine on you, and always like the dazzling sun…”

When i first heard this line, i instantly knew that it is L’Arc~en~Ciel

Its an amazing opening to the series, and i really liked it after listening to it a couple of times. you can listen to the 1.30 sec version by clicking on the first line of the song above. After knowing that L’Arc~en~Ciel provided the opening song to Seirei no Moribito, it just strengthens by hunch that this is going to be something big. Ill definitely be following this anime series closely. As for the single release, the date hasnt been set yet as of writing, but ill be keeping my eyes on them for a while. Im quite a fan of thier works, expecially the “Awake” album. Most of the songs in there are really great, and its quite rare for me to generally enjoy the album as a whole, without any particular dislikes to any of the songs.

One of my more favourite titles include JOJOUSHI and LOST HEAVEN.

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Yui: Can’t Buy My Love

Posted in Uncategorized with tags , , on April 28, 2007 by mdjasrie

Midnight shopping every last Friday of the month at Orchard, i managed to buy Yui’s latest album! Entitled “Can’t Buy My Love”, its her second full album to be released and its been met with tremendous success, surpassing sales records of her first album entitled “From Me To You”.

~Tracklist~

1. How crazy

2. Rolling star

3. It’s all right

4. I remember you

5. RUIDO

6. CHE.R.RY

7. Thank you My teens

8. Umbrella

9. Highway chance

10. Happy Birthday to you you

11. Winding road

12. Good-bye days

13. Why?

On the first week of her second album released, it sold more than 290 000 copies, easily gaining the number 1 spot in terms of physical record sales. Thats quite impressive indeed for a rising star. Her popularity must be attributed to her iconic song that was featured in the openings and endings of the popular anime, Bleach. Her catchy tune and rock inspired melody must have been a hit for younger generation of fans and im certainly one of them. Whats even more impressive is that it still maintained the number 1 spot on the second week, selling another 100 000 copies, before dropping to number 3 on the third week. With that being said, ill truly be supporting Yui from now on. She really needs a lot of support, after having gone through this far.

This is her first album:


~Tracklist~

1. Merry Go Round

2. Feel my soul

3. Ready to love

4. Swing of life

5. LIFE

6. Blue wind

7. I can’t say

8. Simply white

9. Just my way

10 Tomorrow’s way

11. I know

12. TOKYO

13. Spiral & Escape

LIFE from the first album was featured in bleach as the 5th ending, while Rolling Star was featured as the 5th opening. In my opinion, the 5th bleach opening is by far the best i’ve seen. Not only musically, but the opening animation and effects.

Yui will be releasing a new single soon, entitled “My Generation/Understand” You can read more about it here and a short preview is also available.

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