29th April 2011: New trailers! iPad 2 out for sale! Royal wedding!

The title of this post which you can see above speaks it all….yes, there are three major things that happened on this day, dated 29th April 2011, second last day of the fourth month of the year.

As soon as I woke up in the early morning today, I checked on my facebook and have found out new trailer coming out for the two of the most anticipating movies of the year; Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 (the epic conclusion of the worldwide phenomenon as told in the trailer) as well as Transformers 3: Dark of the Moon (the epic robotic clash film). The two trailers look very promising and adds up my intention and desire to watch both of the films, scheduled to be released in July 2011, three months from now.

The next big thing of the day is of course the latest iPad 2 is now out for sale in Malaysia. If you bring an iPad 2 beginning today, people would be amazed and keep an eye on you, because you just brought and use the latest technology of the public…that’s cool, man! Too bad, it isn’t for me…what is the reason: No money! I don’t even have iPhone 4, and so I don’t wish more, for like this iPad 2. Okay…actually I’m not really interested on all these advanced thingy but these accessories really look good and cool…

Of course, last but not least, is the royal wedding of Prince William and Catherine as mentioned in my previous two posts…yes, previous two posts….you can check these out just by scrolling down below in my blog here to get a read on the highlight of this wedding of the century. I bet out of 10 people, over 7 people would probably knew about this thing…it caught the public attention in a very much intense scale including myself….

And here, it comes…the end of the day in Malaysia. 12 am is coming very soon…30th April would be just an ordinary day, the last day of April before new month of May 2011 comes…now I’m going to think on what kind of header should I put for my blog up here to represent May 2011….

The Royal Wedding Day

Back early to home today from campus and is able to catch the live broadcast of the wedding ceremony of Prince William and Catherine Middleton, whom are now Duke and Duchess of Cambridge. The venues for the processions include Westminster Abbey, the church where the ceremony is held, Buckingham Palace, as well as Goring Hotel where Kate leaved from there.

At the beginning of the live broadcast, there were already thousand of people surrounding the area tight with security measures. The atmosphere is very good and the side of the guarded streets are very happening with people cheering and celebrating the royal wedding. Many people from different countries like Australia, Canada and France also joined in the celebration alongside with the people of United Kingdom where today is declared as public holiday for the nation.

Luxurious cars are seen fetching the VIPs; the princes and princesses, the family of the bride, and of course Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II whom received the most cheer and applause besides than her grandson, Prince William whom is still the main character for the big day. Famous guests were seen in the church like the Australian Prime Minister, UK Prime Minister, David and Victoria Beckham, King and Queen of Malaysia (my country), and many others.

Finally, everyone is present in the church including the last one to arrive, Catherine Middleton herself from Goring Hotel with her dad and dressed with a beautiful gown which caught the most attention of the media as the design of it is not exposed till today. The processions in the beautiful long church go smoothly as planned and the couple is officially married as the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, with Prince William now solidify his position of second in line of the throne, just behind his father, Prince Charles.

Then, here came the much anticipated carriages which brought the couple, the parents of the couple, brothers of the couple, as well as Queen Elizabeth with Prince Phillip, Duke of Edinburgh. The carriages is part of the important tradition for British royal family which received full attention from the people waiting outside to catch a glimpse of the VIPs. I saw a lot of cameras with huge and long lens, all ready to take as many photographs as possible.

The day is quite gloomy and luckily there is no rain halting the procession. All the VIPs eventually reached Buckingham Palace after the church procession is settled. The public is then allowed to get closer to the palace around the Victoria Memorial, a grand looking sculpture in front of the palace overlooking a long wide royal path. They are all waiting for the time to come, when Prince William and Catherine finally walked out of the balcony at the center, waved to the crowd and kissed romantically twice with loud applause and cheer from the uncountable crowd. The crowd is then thrilled by the flypass that marks the end of the broadcast.

It is now almost 12am in Malaysia, showing that the day is almost over here in Malaysia but not for England yet because it’s only 5pm afternoon there. There are still quite a lot of things to do for them like the wedding dinner later as well as wedding breakfast tomorrow’s morning which are of course will not be broadcast as these are merely private functions. For the show, I watched majority of it and it is definitely a perfect grand wedding, now commonly recognized as the wedding of the century. Many people are now talking about it everywhere especially on social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook. There will be repeat of the show in a lot of channels too.

I’m not involved on this wedding but the scale and grandness as well as the media attention of it really influencing me a lot. So, I kind of enjoying the wedding too. Congratulation to William and Kate! Year 2011 has been brought lively back with such a grand celebration despite the year is full of tragedies like natural disasters and wars. In 2011, we saw a grand royal wedding celebration in UK, and by 2012, we will see the Diamond Jubilee celebration of Queen Elizabeth II as well as the London 2012 Summer Olympic Games. There is so much important events going on and soon for England.

(The photos above are not mine and are from this Facebook photo album except for the first and last photos: http://www.facebook.com/media/set/fbx/?set=a.136593346405728.25291.134390929959303#!/media/set/fbx/?set=a.136593346405728.25291.134390929959303)

Wedding of the century: Prince William and Kate

I think many of us have known about this royal wedding between Prince William of Wales and Kate Middleton which is going to be held tomorrow at Westminster Abbey, London at 11am on UK’s time (6pm for Malaysia’s time). The royal wedding, or commonly known as the ‘wedding of the century’ is going to be watched live from over 1/3 of people in the world, including Malaysians as NTV 7 is broadcasting it live as early as from 3pm.

Why is it called as wedding of the century? First of all, the bridegroom is Prince William of Wales, the eldest son of Prince Charles, and the grandson of Queen Elizabeth II, whom is among the most important figures in the world. Hence, he is the second in line for the throne, and is even favored for it by majority of the people. Eventhough Kate is an ordinary woman living simple, but she had caught the attention of the medias few years back after being seen dating with the prince.

The second reason is that the royal wedding is going to be attended by most of the British royal families, dignitaries, politicians including the Prime Minister of UK, foreign royalties as well as some famous figures like David Beckham, Rowan Atkinson and Sir Elton John. Even the King and Queen of my country, Malaysia are also to attend the royal wedding as invited. It is a wedding definitely full of VVVVVVVIPs….too many V….

Due to the huge number of invited guests, the scale of the wedding is definitely huge which is the third reason for it to be called as wedding of the century. Everything is planned much earlier for this big occasion, as early as even before the announcement of the wedding is made in November last year.

The fourth reason is that it received wide attention from people not only from UK but also from around the world. I remembered few weeks ago, local newspapers have started to publish news regarding the preparation for this grand wedding including tight security check at venues and roads, selection of royal wedding’s meal for guests, rehearsal, etc. Every media is focusing on it, and I bet tomorrow there must be a lot of people writing about it on Facebook, the world most visited social networking site. Their wedding is widely received by the public. It is going to be a royal show of the decade and of the century!

Tomorrow is a big day for the couple, for the royal family, and for the people of United Kingdom. If I am free, I would probably go and watch the live broadcast of the royal wedding too eventhough those procedures thingy would be a bit boring. Anyway, congratulation to Prince William and Kate eventhough they don’t know me…it would be good if they are my friends,…if this is the case, I would be invited too and will be appearing on TV tomorrow…haha…just joking…

Radiance workshop made my days so hard…

This week is the week when me and my classmates have to attend the workshop on using radiance, a rendering software focusing on lighting stimulation. The workshop consists of two sessions for us, with total hours dealing with the software up to 7, not including the time for doing the assignment for submission soon. A lecturer from Curtin in Australia came this week to give us the workshop.

Yesterday, we were given chance to deal with the basics of learning on how to use radiance software without really going into very detail as we have not enough time for it. The first session is basically full of codes-writing and commands input to the terminal. Everything we see on the screen of the computer looks very normal to computer programmer, but not us, as the architecture students, noticing that radiance is not a commercialized software like AutoCad or ArchiCad…it’s a research software full of weird file types, etc.

Today, we are finally given a brief and first deal to the assignment, which is to render 6 images of a given gallery after putting light to all the displayed objects in the gallery. There is less code-writing today, but there is too many test-and-trial approaches which we need to adjust the lighting based on vantage point, object distance, camera angle, etc after undergoing several calculation and commands-inputing. It’s a day of madness for me, as I was trying to sort out whatever possible from this software that could really cause stress just for a correct lighting and rendering.

Anyway, I’m still glad that I finally get to know a bit more of this software called radiance, which is not quite popular compared to other commercialized softwares. I’m definitely still not experienced in using this, but at least, I knew the rough basics of it. If I need to master this software, I think I need to know more about computer programming instead, which I’m not interested at all. This is a hard software to use for lighting and rendering! Really, not recommended as the outcome still looks not so much promising or fantastic…We have to learn it just for the assignment under building science module…using this to render our design project??? definitely a NO….!

It’s Easter Day and end of my one-week holiday!

Today is Sunday after the Good Friday, which means that Easter falls on today. In Malaysia, there is nothing much interesting today as Easter is not celebrated in big scale in the country except for some small parties organized by the Christians. Easter for me, means that it’s time for me to check back on my online game, Runescape and completes the special event quest.  I have completed it within an hour or two, and it marks the end of Easter to me actually.

This Sunday also marked the end of my one-week holiday. Tomorrow, I have to get back to campus to continue my classes till the end of semester which will be around end of June, yes…that’s around two months to go…For this holiday, to be honest, I felt that I’m very lazy to do my works, and so, the amount of works I have done is very minimal. I’m still trying to appreciate my holiday even until the last second. Anyway, I’m trying to give a break to myself from all these stressful assignments and stay away from architecture’s madness.

It’s been a quick one-week holiday. I have already spent the first few days of the holiday going for a study trip to Penang again and Ipoh too. In the midst of my holiday, I have enjoyed several movies and TV series. Facebook of course took part of my time daily too, not to mention some other personal things I have to do. Hence, all my time has gone and wouldn’t come back as wished too. Time continues, and so do life continues…

Anyway, Happy Easter Day to all once again! Enjoy the day!

Double: It’s Earth Day and Good Friday!

Today is Earth Day, originally founded by United States in 1970 and turned international beginning in 1990. It is established way back earlier than the Earth Hour but the level of popularity of this ‘Earth Day’ is not as much as the ‘Earth Hour’ which only stands for an hour! Basically it is because that there is no one clear mission to complete on the day itself, compared to the Earth Hour when we need to switch off the lights, which is firstly organized by Australia.

Anyway, the main objective is very clear and is the same; which is to create awareness among people on our surrounding environment within the Earth, one and only one. What we have to basically learn from Earth Day which is today or Earth Hour which had been organized last month is that we should love and care for the Earth, the only livable planet we have in the universe. It’s our home…

Ahh…today is Good Friday too, which is a religious holiday based on Christianity commemorating the crucifixion of Jesus Christ and his death at Calvary. This day immediately precedes another Western holiday, which is the Easter Day which falls on this coming Sunday…

In Malaysia, it is almost nothing to us, including the Christians, except that there are some missionary and English schools offering holiday for the day which falls on today too, including my former secondary school, Methodist Boys School. Some will have special prayer session today in churches usually filled with special events.  Anyway, it’s still a two special ‘days’ in one day!

Justin Bieber reached Malaysia!

When browsing my Facebook, my home page is flooded with my friends posting ‘Never say never’. Ahh…this is a famous quote by Justin Bieber, currently among the most famous singer in the world. Many of my friends posted this because Justin Bieber is now at Malaysia!!!….for his concert tonight at Stadium Merdeka, as part of his World Tour 2011.

I am not a big fan of him but I do like some of his songs, or to be exact, only two…which are ‘Baby’ and ‘Pray’. ‘Baby’ is the song that brings him to such a level of fame that everyone could never doubt about it. Do you know he is just 17 years old, and he had put a deep impact on the music industry. As everyone knows, many people loves him especially young girls and as well as many people hated him too. This is the nature of being too famous, either being loved or hated. I’m fine with him; his songs, his talent, his appearance, his attitude….and so I don’t like him and don’t hate him…fair…

His concert tonight must have been a sold out very much earlier, due to the craziness of Malaysian fans to him. I did not purchased the tickets as I think it is not worthy of attending his show just to listen to his two songs that I like. Furthermore, I don’t have that interest to get closer to him, watching his concert. Anyway, I have to admit that his level of fame is definitely on par with Lady Gaga, who stunned the world with her songs like ‘Bad Romance’, ‘Paparazzi’, ‘Poker Face’, ‘Born This Way’, ‘Alejandro’, etc. If she comes to Malaysia which everyone wanted to, I would definitely go for her concert as I love many of her songs and I wish to enjoy the atmosphere with her on stage no matter how expensive the ticket is. Too bad, I don’t think she would come here as there are too many restriction from the government here on outfit and concert’s content.

Back to Justin Bieber, my impression towards him gets better after I have watched the trailer of a documentary film on him, ‘Justin Bieber: Never Say Never’. The trailer itself changed my perception towards this new film, just released in Malaysian cinemas that coincide with his concert in Kuala Lumpur tonight. It’s nice to see how this young boy brought to fame beginning from when he was just 13 years old, added with some real clips of him performing when he was way younger. I do admire his talent, and it is kind of luck that music people have found him from YouTube. Now, you see…YouTube can be a very powerful and successful tool for you to get famous.

Even the news today is flooded with his update, mentioning that he will be arriving in Kuala Lumpur International Airport by 2.30pm, which is 30 minutes ago. His girlfriend, Selena Gomez will be accompanying him during his World Tour 2011 in Asian leg including the stop in Kuala Lumpur. I believed many people would keep on checking on his twitter update too, and today is the first time I’m looking at Justin’s twitter and he had mentioned Malaysia as his next stop. Tonight’s show would thrilled Bieber’s fans, while I’m still waiting for Lady Gaga to come…haha…Still, no Bieber fever here!

A quick trip to Penang again and Ipoh…

I’m back to my home, my room, and my bed. As I have mentioned in my previous post, I have been to Penang and Ipoh for the past few days for a quick trip dealing with our design and culture assignments. It’s a quick 3 days 2 nights trip, one night in Penang and another night in Ipoh. As usual, I would say a bit of my recent trip down here.

Sunday (17/4/2011)

It’s 7am in the morning, and I woke up to get ready for the trip. This would be the first time I’m going to Penang by plane. This is how I go to Low Cost Carrier Terminal where AirAsia planes are and where I will be going on board to fly to Penang. First, my dad fetch me to Bandar Tasik Selatan. From there, I took KLIA Transit to Salak Tinggi. Then, I took the shuttle bus to LCCT. After taking the flight, it’s time to get through the busy roads and finally reached Hydro Hotel by taxi….a lot of different modes of transportation in one morning…haha…

Hydro Hotel is a beautiful hotel near to Miami Beach, the place where my site for design project is. The hotel room is large, neat and beautiful. The only one thing that made us upset is the several delay in providing us rooms by giving excuse like you have to come back an hour later, then the rooms are not cleaned yet, the checking-in time is delayed and the first rooms given are not connecting which we requested to be. Disappointment and upset for us, and so we did really complained to them at the lobby.

Fine, time to go down to the site which is just across the road. This is my second time to Miami Beach and it looks totally different in the morning when the water level is so high until it covers almost the whole stretch of beach. I never expected the high tide of the sea could bring such huge difference. Everything is like flooded there. Then, we waited till late afternoon and evening to take pictures after the water recedes. Even the low tide of the day scared us when we can reach further till the rocks far away from the beach.

At night, before a dinner in a food court at Batu Ferringhi, we walked down the happening street where many stalls are opened and businesses are operational, selling variety of items. That’s the night market of Batu Ferringhi, mainly visited by foreign tourists. Later, we walked down the beach at night, thick with sand before settled down in a very beautiful and poetic pub. The design of the pub is no joke, it’s really magnificent. They included water feature from inside to outside of the building until it stretches out to the beach. The spatial essence and the water features with lighting are great there. We are actually sitting above water having cocktails. It is such an enjoyable moment there.

Monday (18/4/2011)

It’s time to get up early too, had buffet breakfast in the hotel, then checked out early before heading to the mainland Butterworth bus terminal by ferry. We took bus from there to reach Ipoh, the next destination to do our site visit at St. Michael’s Institution. The hotel we are staying in Ipoh is Excelsior Hotel, quite a small one located in old town area. This one isn’t as good as Hydro Hotel definitely, but it’s of course cheaper. We rent a Wira car to facilitate our trip around Ipoh.

After lunch in a restaurant serving delicious dry curry mee, we went to St. Michael’s Institution, a very iconic long building in Ipoh. The façade of the main building block is very attractive and interesting and that is what captured our attention earlier before choosing the school for our culture assignment. We got the approval and we walked around the school taking pictures. This is a nice school with great history and architecture.

There is a lot of free time later, and so we went to Ipoh Parade, one of the two big malls in Ipoh, the other being the Kinta City. When we went in there, it’s like we are in IOI Mall, Puchong. Then, we had early dinner at Greentown, a newly developed area in Ipoh. At night, we went back there which is actually quite near to the hotel we are staying and had drinks and supper while watching ‘New Police Story’ aired on TV3. We chatted for several hours there.

 

Tuesday (19/4/2011)

There is no need to wake up so early today. After the breakfast in the hotel, we discussed a bit of our assignments before going for early lunch at a dim sum restaurant which is full of people. It’s a holiday here in Perak due to Sultan’s birthday. We ate until very full before going to bus terminal to go back to Kuala Lumpur. I think the bus we are sitting in has over 30 seats but there are only around 8 people in the bus….very spacious for all of us and the bus departed at the exact time scheduled…that’s good.

It’s a bit of traffic jam in KL eventhough it’s still early afternoon. We finally reached the newly renovated Puduraya bus terminal. The exterior still looks quite the same but with new coat of paint, but the interior totally changed from its previous look. Anyway, it’s still not as great as the Terminal Bersepadu Selatan in Bandar Tasik Selatan. I had to take LRT from Puduraya to there, then my dad came to me. That’s the end of the quick trip. I need to get back on my works already.

It’s 600th post!!!

Having over 100 posts in a blog is considered a lot…however for my blog here, I have written exactly 600 posts till this point of time. YES! It’s 600!!! Not 60, not 100! It’s 600! Oh..so by now, each page of my blog consists of 10 posts, so…my blog now has 60 pages…wow…

The number itself is a bit frightening already. There are very few blogs around the world with over 600 posts, and my blog here is part of it, part of the record-breaking milestone. There seems to be quite a number of interesting stuff for me to write either about architecture, world events, cities, wonders, movies or even about myself. I think in average, my blog is updated at least twice a week eventhough I’m very busy this year for my final year of degree in architecture.

I would never abandoned my blog here. Do you know that everyday when I woke up and turn on my laptop, there are few websites that I would certainly open including my blog to check on the dashboard, comments, number of visits per day, deleting spams, and sometimes updating it with new post too. This is how I work with my blog everyday. It’s like part of my life now and I’m glad that my blog now is filled with enormous 600 posts! It’s another great achievement to me and my blog.

I’m not like complimenting myself, but it’s true…do you think it is easy to write over 600 posts since the creation of this blog in September 2008? Definitely not…Many hard works have been put in making this blog as successful and as updated as possible. My level in English language is certainly not that very good, but I really write my posts in effort, so that a clear message is given out to everyone around the world in simple English. Not far from now, will be another accomplishment of 700 000 hits and 700 posts!

Movie review: Source Code (2011)

I have watched the trailer of this film before not long ago and by that time, I already had the wish to watch this film. After this film is released, it received mainly positive reviews and good ratings. Perhaps, it’s currently among the movies released in 2011 with highest rating from Rotten Tomatoes, IMDB, and even from myself. It could be almost on par with film in 2010 like Inception with similar quality and sci-fi based.

It’s an action thriller centered on a soldier portrayed by Jake Gyllenhaal who wakes up in the body of an unknown man and discovers he’s part of a mission to find the bomber of a Chicago commuter train.

For me, this is the best movie in 2011 so far. There are quite a lot of repetition on the commuter scenes with Stevens (by Jake) which will never get you bored as there are several interesting things going on each time he is directed back to the 8-minute mark of the source code in the train to find out the location of the bomb and the bomber. There are some hilarious things going on too despite in the midst of the serious mission on finding out the culprit.

This movie is mainly a one man’s show, by the main character, Captain Stevens portrayed by Jake Gyllenhaal. His brilliant and incredible performance adds up to such an amazing film with great storyline. The story might gets you confused especially at the end, just like the film ‘Inception’, but this is what made a film so successful…a film that makes you think….it shows that the storyline of the film is complex, well crafted and fascinating! It is a film of a fresh idea of getting time travel as a frame to such an interesting story like this.

Somehow, there is a part from this film that moves me…sorry for the spoiler…the part when Stevens tried to make every second count, showing his love to the girl and having passengers in the train entertained and happy before the end of their lives due to the bombing. The time when his life-aid switch is turned off, everything came to a stop motion in the train and it’s great to see every passengers in smile and laughter as well as the kiss between Stevens and Christina (the girl). It’s a simple but a very beautiful touching ‘stopped’ scene. So what you learn from here:  ‘Make every second count’ from the movie poster itself too.

I personally had a hard time trying to understand the ending of the story and after I checked out the full synopsis of it, I finally got it. There are basically two timelines, the original one when the bombing has occured and the alternate one when Stevens and Christina leave the train happily in a beautiful morning in Chicago. The movie is also intending in showcasing the beauty of the city of Chicago through its distinctive skyline and modern-looking Cloud Gate sculpture that reflects the city. It’s a beautiful city.

This is a movie not only for the audiences to watch. The movie brings the audiences together into the story, bringing us along with Stevens’ mission in uncovering the bomb and the bomber. This movie is definitely a lower budget film compared to Inception but certainly it can be that successful too. Anyway, Inception still looks better than Source Code, but let me assure you that Source Code is by far the best film in 2011. It would definitely goes into top 10 for Oscar next year. Out of 10 points, I rate this one 8.0.