Snakes.. and the last post of the year

An article in Straits Times today reports an increased sighting in snakes in urban areas, such as in houses and on the streets. An example was given of a Ms Marino who found a snake in her house and called the police, who then told her to call the pest control agency, who charged her $500 to remove the snake.

Excerpts from that article:
"Police... will respond to cases of wild animals found in public areas if there is imminent danger to the public. But if the snake appears in a private compound, the police will respond only when there is an "immediate danger to life". otherwise, home owners are advised to call pest control companies.
Pest control companies... prices vary - charges of $300-$600 are common. Rates differ on the situation, such as the size, species and aggression of the snake, and the amount of manpower and effort needed to catch it. "

(and example was given of a snake hiding behind a cupboard which had only a small gap, where the snake catchers had to wait 4-5 hours for a carpenter to come in order to remove the snake. The bill was $800)


Hmmm....

~~~~
On the phone-

Ms Oniram: "Help police! There's a huge snake in my house! Help help!"

Police: Please calm down madam. Firstly, what type of snake is it?

Ms Oniram: "I don't know! A huge one! It's like.. 5m long? With spots on it.. and it has a fan like head. Help!"

Police: Hmm that would sound like a cobra. Sounds pretty dangerous. But we only respond if there is immediate danger to life. Is the snake attacking you madam?

Ms Oniram: "No it's lying behind my sofa and making loud hissing noises!"

Police: Oh no, then I'm sorry madam, we cannot help you. Since the snake is lying there, there is no immediate danger to your life. We only respond if the snake is already up in an aggressive stance and making violent snaps at you. Of course, it would be better if the snake has bitten you, so that with the venomous poison running through your body, it's more life threatening and we'll have more incentive to come.

Ms Oniram: What?? Then what do I do!

Police: I would suggest you call the pest agency madam, they will handle the snake for you. Of course, if immediate danger to your life occurs like if the snakes wraps itself around you and starts squeezing you, feel free to call us again and we'll re-evaluate the situation. Have a niceeeeeeee day madam!

--
Ms Oniram: Exterminators Pest Agency? Help! There's a snake in my room!

Pest Agency: We will be right over madam!

15 minutes later..

Mr Tan (from pest agency) : Where is the snake, madam?

Ms Oniram: Over there! It slithered over behind the cupboard!

Mr Tan: Before I do anything, you must know that our basic charge is $300, and our fee varies with the situation.

Ms Oniram: Ok ok!! Just get the snake out of the house!

Mr Tan: May I know the size and species of the snake?

Ms Oniram: It is a cobra i think! About 5m long!

Mr Tan: Ooh ok, cobras cost 100 extra, and with our formula for length of snake, a 5m long snake would cost you an extra $31.40. Has the snake made any aggressive gestures to you?

Ms Oniram: When it saw me it hissed loudly and flickered its tongue?

Mr Tan: Oh that is only level 2 aggression. Hence only another $25 extra. How heavy is that cupboard madam?

Ms Oniram: ?? What's the relevance? Erm, i dont know, about 30kg?

Mr Tan: Hmmm.. ok that will be another $63 more. This is because our prices vary according to the amount of effort required to catch the snake. And 30kg is pretty heavy for me to lift, I'm only 63kg. Hence I'll charge you that $63.

Ms Oniram: Ok ok! But i was just wondering, how are you going to carry that 5m long python away? It must be pretty heavy?

Mr Tan: That's right... I'll call my colleague to come help me. That will be another $150 madam, because our prices vary according to the manpower required too.

~~~

I should soo start a mrbrown-type of podcast series.

does eating 5 ferraro rochers at once make you fat?

My theory is , no.

Why? Because of the concept of how bodybuilders gain mass! Yknow the whole tactic of gaining mass for weightlifters is to eat alot of meals. Like i think they eat 4-5 meals a day or something. Plus whatever steroids and vitamins they take of course.

Hence, this method uses a staggered-out eating habit to improve weight gain.

With my limited knowledge of biology i'm going to come up with my own theory about why this works. It's because the body cannot absorb so much food at once, so they stagger out their meals, their bodies have more time to absorb all the nutrients and stuff.

Thus, eating alot of food at a go does not make you fat! It would eventually reach a cap. For example, let's say a normal meal is 1 cheeseburger. (FOR SIMPLICITY'S SAKE K. I MEAN YOU CANT EXPECT ME TO SAY '1 plate of rice, 1 servings of vegetable, 1 servings of meat, 1 serv..... i'll take till next year to finish! .... which isn't very long considering it's 26th Dec already.. but you get the idea)


So I would say a person who eats TWO cheeseburgers a meal WILL get fatter than a person eating 1 cheeseburger a meal, let's say by 1kg.

However, what about a person who eats 3 cheeseburgers a meal? Does he gain 2kg more than the 1cheeseburger person?
All of us Economics students can echo now: NO!
This is because of The Law Of Diminishing Marginal Utility!

Omg the link which i took it from has a FOOD example to explain it! how relevant! i shall quote it here to reinforce my point.

This is the premise on which buffet-style restaurants operate. They entice you with "all you can eat," all the while knowing each additional plate of food provides less utility than the one before. And despite their enticement, most people will eat only until the utility they derive from additional food is slightly lower than the original.

For example, say you go to a buffet and the first plate of food you eat is very good. On a scale of ten you would give it a ten. Now your hunger has been somewhat tamed, but you get another full plate of food. Since you're not as hungry, your enjoyment rates at a seven at best. Most people would stop before their utility drops even more, but say you go back to eat a third full plate of food and your utility drops even more to a three. If you kept eating, you would eventually reach a point at which your eating makes you sick, providing dissatisfaction, or 'dis-utility'.

ok well that is based on satisfaction while my theory is talking about weight gain. BUT SAME THING I DONT CARE.

So perhaps a person who eats 3 cheeseburgers will gain 2.5kg. Then probably a person who eats 4 cheeseburgers a meal will gain the same amount of weight as the person who eats 3. So means 3 is the cap!


Thus, eating 5 ferraro rochers at once is actually good! it's better than eating 5 THROUGHOUT the day since THAT will make you FAT. FAT FAT like a snowman!



























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Now where's my award for Most Random Blogger of the Year?

avatar is AWESOME

i have to admit, when i first heard of the show, i didn't even think i'd watch it. I mean it's cool, with all the warcraft-like themes to it ('The People' are exactly like Night Elves?) but it sounded ordinary? and more importantly, the 'aliens' are ugly!






























I mean... you can draw a cool-looking yet fierce AND still chio 'alien' creature right! ok i shall stop calling them aliens cos alien has a negative ugly connotation that the following is not:


CHIO!!



Eerie, yet pretty!


I think this is the most beautiful non-human species you can ever draw. And any thing else will just resemble this! Avatar's model design art team first meeting was probably like that:
Head Designer: Here is our latest sketch for 'The People' (That's what they're called in the movie btw) Mr Cameron!

James Cameron: Wow! chio! but cannot! scrap it!

Head Designer: WHY?? Isn't this great?

James: Yea it is.. but it looks exactly like the night elves from Warcraft! Blizzard is sure to sue us!! Try to make them uglier.. with flatter noses and bigger eyes or something.

Hence, Avatar.

hahaha. as a matter of fact.. now that i look at them again.. The People look like really pretty aliens, just with their nose badly photoshopped!!! omgomg. ok let me try to play with photoshop.

ok sorry clara but yours is the only photo i can find with a big enough frontal shot with a nice nose bone to photoshop. Ok i dunno what you call the.. part of ur nose that's bone. yknow, the centre part of ur face. plus i also wanted to find someone good-looking so the effect can be seen.
HA damage control lolol.


SEE. She looks so Avatarish now right? lol. I tried to make her eyes like The People's one but i dunno how to make it glow or yellowish. So i just left it as big hahaha.
(ok clara if you get really angry with me cos of this.... i treat you lunch k!! ha. but i bet your days are already planned with someone so............)

In fact, let me photoshop the actual photo itself!!


OMG SO MUCH BETTER!!!
you HAVE to admit that mine looks SO much better. mine is the right one btw.

ok it was too nice so i went to photoshop another one:

You HAVE to admit that mine looks TOTALLY better!! he is so much more handsome like this!!
Besides narrowing his nose i also moved his eyes closer together as they looked too wide apart.

And all this is with my noob photoshop skills.. imagine someone with better skills than me. Maybe this WAS really the original art! but then the Art ppl had to make it uglier for the abovementioned reason!! muahahaha.



OKKK i went totally off topic i didn't even plan to blog all that. anyway, the show was awesome!! totally worth every second of its 150ish minutes. (that's 2.5 hours for you math fails) The action scenes were superb, the CGI was SUPERB, the touchy touchy scenes were superb.
And one thing i really liked was the attention to detail! Like the shots of the indigenous fauna, even the insects and creepy-crawlies were beautifully CGI-ed!.
There are many many more of these kinda 'attention to detail' things throughout the show that makes the final work such a masterpiece.


I just didn't like how (spoiler-highlight to read) the aliens beat the humans in the end.. i thought it was too unreal? like yea suddenly 1108247 birds/dragons appear from nowhere and totally destroy the human copters. and how 129837 rounds of ammunition can miss those flying birds.
oh oh, but i loved how the female lead alien always protects the unconscious male by crouching over his body and baring her teeth!! omg super nice la that protective pose. She does it several times in the show and i think it's quite touching when she does it.
And i loved the ending scene when the humans were walking towards the plane to take them back to earth and the main character narrates: "And the aliens were sent back to their deteriorating home planet.."
I guess it's a matter of perception huh! hahaha. now the humans are actually the aliens.
(/end)



Ahh ok in short, it is an awesome epic movie and you don't know what you're missing if you don't watch it. AND GO WATCH 3D. I totally regretted not watching 3D la! there are so many awesome scenes of movement through the air, through the jungle,


On a totally random note, i just cut my hair! @ Jean Yip at Heartland mall. heh i seem to have a thing for expensive hair cuts lately. My previous haircut also at jean yip, but at Vivo. And i love it! The annoying thing is I will probably never be able to achieve the same style again on my own cos the hairdresser always seem to have some magic fingers to wax and style my hair.. like that time for JC prom i also loved my hair but i couldn't achieve the same effect!

ah okok, it's getting late, time to sleep . WoW raids reset tmr, time to raid again! and mahjong in the afternoon! whee my life rocks at the moment.

weiqin is wrong

in response to her post

BEST OC scene ever is definitely this one:


[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3umNk9nVxbQ&hl=en_US&fs=1&]

Featuring one of my favourite songs from OC, "Hide and Seek" by Imogen Heap!! I hate how its chorus was slaughtered by i dunno what band on radio.. there's some really bad remix titled 'Watcha Say' that was playing on radio awhile ago. Terrible!!

This scene is just totally awesome? the fight scene is VERY realistic, look at Ryan's red choking face lol. then the whole matching of the music with the scene rocks! 'mmh that is all for the best!!' when the blood drips out.. :o

the actors/actresses' expressions are just SUPER real also. like Trey's look of shock and betrayal when he turns around and looks at marissa. and her whole 'shit-what-have-i-done?!?!' face.

BEST SCENE EVER.

happy pill

ok i just watched the cutest, funniest, most adorable little kid on youtube!!
This is a MUSTWATCH k. Even if you totally hate kids for some weird unknown reason, you will LOVE THIS.

I think it's like a perfect video to watch when you're damn sad or something. cos he's bound to make you smile!!! CONFIRM!! if you don't smile at any point while watching this, tell me, ill buy you a drink. YES I'M THAT CONFIDENT.





his smile omg!! when his eyes crinkle up it's just SO CUTE!!! and he totally hams it up for the camera too! you can see him playing the camera. hahahha. damn talented and cute. i've watched it like 10 times already and i'm still not sick of it :p

MAI NA KE MAI NA KU MA LAH MEEH EHH EHHH!!
(or whatever he keep singing lol!)

john cullen

lol this is quite funny.

This is the actual twilight poster right:







Check out what my friend John sebastian did:
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lol! it's not that bad lor! apart from not blending in the background properly it's a pretty good job. The eyes and lips are totally photoshopped in case you don't know.

Man, if only i still had my Photoshop, ill go do something like this too. hahhaa. had great fun playing with photoshop in the past with stuff like this




I have actually tons more but they're all in Photoshop format!! so i can't open them!! ugh. i really need to find Photoshop.

movies vs books

Argh, i've had it.

I'm so very annoyed with the recent surge in movies that are adaptations of books -> A christmas carol, twilight/newmoon, angels and demons.

A movie adaptation NEVER works. In all my years of movie-watching i've never watched a movie adaptation of a novel that actually works. To define 'work', it means.. NOT FAIL and fall short of the book's standard completely by appearing too rushed or just plain terrible!
Let me just run through some examples:


The Notebook by Nicholas Sparks vs The Notebook (2004)

I read The Notebook when i was in the army.. and i was struggling to hold back tears while reading the book. ( I was with my men, quite malu if suddenly start tearing right) After finishing it i was left in a state of emo-ness and emo for quite awhile. haha. It's really that good! I cannot elaborate more on the story without spoiling you, so.. go get the book and read!

I watched The Notebook at home after DLing it off the net.. and i was struggling to hold back tears.. OF UTTER BOREDOM. Omg i really forced myself to sit through as much of the show as possible. But it was totally boring? I had to stop after about midway through the show.

I think one of my favourite scenes from the book was the scene near the end of the book in the hospital with Noah and his wife.. when they were both crying for different reasons. It was something like: "The aide rushed into the room and was greeted by two sobbing people - one woman cowered in a corner tearing and shrieking in fear, the other with his face buried in his hands, crying for the love he could never get."
SOMETHING LIKE THAT OMG I DONT DO IT JUSTICE. i really forgot the exact words and i simply paraphrased.

And another wonderful paragraph from the book was a letter from Noah to Allie.. i don't think any actor will ever do it justice, it's the kind of line that has to be read by yourself (like the twilight one which ill share later)
""The best love is the kind that awakens the soul and makes us reach for more, that plants a fire in our hearts and brings peace to our minds. And that's what you've given me. That's what I'd hoped to give you forever.""



Angels and Demons by Dan Brown vs Angels and Demons (2009)

What can i say.. despite the controversy, the uproar, the blasphemy... Dan Brown is a pretty damn good author?
I first read his 'Da Vinci Code' and i was already intrigued by the mystery of it all.. the anti-Christ stuff was quite bullshit but.. it was still interesting! haha.
And of course Angels and Demons was as exciting and thrilling and i LOVED the ambigrams !!


There are ambigrams. They are basically the exact same thing when viewed upside down. damn cool right!



Ok firstly i can't say this show as BAD, because it really isn't! It IS still very exciting and intriguing as Tom Hanks delivers his deductions convincingly.... to a certain point.
Then as with all shows involving clever deductions, it becomes TOO easy. Like 'oh the angel's hand is pointing in this direction .. oh must be this church !" when in the book it may take several pages, even chapters to arrive at the same deduction.

But the good thing about this movie adaptation is that things are a little clearer too. Because many of the clues are visual, you may have to re-read portions of the book to understand what the symbolic clue is about, but in the movie.. it is literally visual.

The limitations of a movie was clearly defined in the last 20 minutes or so.. it was so disappointing! The show was well-paced all the way till then. Then i think they realised they were running out of time (the whole movie was already 2hours) and started rushing things.
A helicopter popped out of nowhere conveniently, the camerlango conveniently could fly a helicopter.. etcetc and the rest of the stuff that led to the climatic ending.




Red Dragon by Thomas Harris vs Red Dragon (2002)


One of my favourite series of all time, the series of Dr Hannibal Lector, the genius, psychotic, cannibalistic mass murderer. The author paints such a vivid image of the character that you just can't help fear/be awed by him.

It's like.. there's this page which talks about when he was waiting to take a chest xray, so his pulse was monitored via the machine. Then suddenly he grabbed the nurse's head and pulled out her tongue (!!! lol yes) . He was quickly subdued by the other attendants. The startling thing - his pulse rate BARELY rose throughout this violent, sick act.

And he has VERY good lines too, he's not just a crazy killer per se, he's actually very very smart. So the whole story is full of witty lines and such from Hannibal.



Red Dragon is the 1 of 2 movies of the series (the other movie being Hannibal Rising, which doesnt have a book.. but it's like a prologue of the whole series so it was pretty good )

The show does NOT capture the intensity of the book. Many scenes were severely shortened and hence losing alot of its original value. One distinct scene I remembered was when Hannibal(or the other killer?) enters this photo room to retrieve something from a lab assistant. The scene in the movie was at most.. 20 seconds? But in the book it was a rather long scene, several pages long i think.

Ok i think it's not actually Hannibal but the 'Red Dragon' guy in the story 'Red Dragon'.
It was something like 'Red Dragon' always had people look at him with a slight pitiful look cos i think he has a cleft lip or something like that. So he strongly detests it and can detect it very sharply. Then when he was interacting with the assistant he didn't receive a hint of it from him.
And they develop some sort of small bond and he actually chats with the assistant for awhile.
At the end of the scene.. you find out that the assistant is blind.

Ok it's not as powerful here but when you actually read the whole thing you'll just be :o from the revelation. Very good!!!


And last but definitely not the least.. probably the worst ever movie adaptation:

Twilight by Stephenie Meyer vs Twilight (2008)

Totally enjoyed this romance novel by Steph meyer, her exaggerated over-the-top narrative style is thoroughly enjoyable and it really makes you FEEL the story and the gaga-love-feeling that Bella has for Edward.
And of course, the picture that she paints of Edward Cullen, the perfect-looking vampire, alike a Greek God, etcetc.. wow it really makes you fall in love with this character whom you cant even see.
It is said that Imagination is the most powerful picture.. (actually i don't know if this saying exists i'm making it up) S.Meyer plays on this ALOT.
With lines like "He ran his finger down my arm and it felt like a trail of fire shocking me to live" (totally paraphrased by me, i forgot the actual line. but always got this metaphor with fire) "When he looked into my eyes, I tried to remember how to breathe, but i couldn't." (again terribly paraphaseed by me) ... how can you not enjoy it? ownage book.

And of course there's my favourite lines from the book which i blogged about before.. let me write it here again: (ok i just checked it was from New Moon, not Twilight. But yea same thing.)

" Before you Bella, my life was like a moonless night. Very dark, but there were stars - points of light and reason ... and then you shot across my sky like a meteor. Suddenly everything was on fire; there was brilliancy, there was beauty. When you were gone, when the meteor had fallen over the horizon, everything went black. Nothing had changed, but my eyes were blinded by the light. I couldn't see the stars anymore. And there was no more reason for anything"

A W E S O M E isn't it!?




Fail fail fail. I don't think i'll bother writing much about this as when i did a search i've already made 2 blog posts regarding this.
here's one slamming the movie.
And this one slams the ugly actor.

lol the 2nd link is quite funny you should go see. i compare robert with cam gigandet (james, the evil vampire)

Bad acting, bad camera zooming, bad looks, bad everything. bad bad. what the hell is with the hype about Twilight the movie huh? fail fail.

~~~~~~~~~~

On a side note, bestie just watched New Moon and i quote her: "IT'S 10000X better than Twilight. and 986234775214554466x better than A Christmas Carol!"
Really meh!!

I don't believe. =X but i can't comment on those just like how i'm not commenting on some obvious book-to-movie adaptations like HP or LotR because i haven't read the books so i can't be accurate in commenting. But i'm sure the movies don't do the books full justice too.

OK, time to go fix up my bicycle seat and go cycle out to buy lunch :)

a christmas carol and russian roulette

Bah humbug.

Went to watch 'A christmas carol' today with bestie.. and omg it was... ok let me put it this way, chris fell asleep TWICE during the show. lol. i had to poke her to wake her up.

If you've never heard of it before, it's a book written by Charles Dickens.. if you've never heard of him before.. i think you're from a different era or you just don't read books. Well surely you've heard of Scrooge before?? Yea it's the story of Scrooge. Chris has never heard of him before!!! i can't believe it (scrooge, not charles dickens)

Anyway.. i think the whole story can be summarized in 3 lines. Ridiculously simple plot, which is why i think it's kinda boring.


And i can't believe NOONE seems to know what is Russian Roulette!! Yes, besides being the title of Rihanna's newest hit... that's all everyone seems to know about it?

Ok firstly 'roulette' is a casino game where there's this circular game board which you spin then you throw a ball inside which will rotate around it then lend in a slot. There are like red/black slots with different numbers in them.. i think you bet on either the color or whether it's odd/even.

Next, Russian Roulette has NOTHING to do with that though. Though the similarity is the spinning part. Well firstly do you know what is a REVOLVER? I can't believe people don't know what it is?!?

Here, this is a revolver:



Yes, a revolver is a gun.
And russian roulette is basically a game that the Mafia play or sth.. they put one bullet into one of the chambers as shown above, they spin the revolving thing and snap it shut. So like there's a 1 in 6 chance that a bullet is actually chambered. Then they will point it at themselves and squeeze off.

If they 're lucky, it'll be blank la. so nothing will happen to them. but if they suay then they spin and the thing lands such that the bullet is chambered.. then GG lor.

Yes, that's russian roulette. Now you know. see, read my blog so educational right.