Euro-English

I don't believe I have posted this before, so here it is:

Europe English

The European Commission has just announced an agreement whereby English will be the official language of the EU rather than German which was the other possibility.

As part of the negotiations, Her Majesty's Government conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a five year phase-in plan that would be known as "Euro-English".

In the first year, "s" will replace the soft "c". Sertainly, this will make the sivil servants jump with joy. The hard "c" will be dropped in favour of the "k". This should klear up konfusion and keyboards kan have 1 less letter.

There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year, when the troublesome "ph" will be replaced with "f". This will make words like "fotograf" 20% shorter.

In the 3rd year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be ekspekted to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible. Governments will enkorage the removal of double letters, which have always ben a deterent to akurate speling. Also, al wil agre that the horible mes of the silent "e"s in the language is disgraseful, and they should go away.

By the fourth year, peopl wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing "th" with "z" and "w" with "v".

During ze fifz year, ze unesesary "o" kan be dropd from vords kontaining "ou" and similar changes vud of kors be aplid to ozer kombinations of leters.After zis fifz yer, ve vil hav a reli sensibl riten styl. Zer vil be no mor trubl or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi to understand ech ozer. Ze drem vil finali kum tru.

I've already seen it twice before, and this time I saw it here. Do check out the video in the same post (same link), it's great! :D

Penang and Friendster

I just came back to Kuantan after a few days visiting relatives in Penang. Nothing special there to write about...just food. lol

What's different about this trip is, now that there are direct flights between Kuantan and Penang with Firefly, my mother and I flew back instead of taking the bus. It cost about RM200 for a round trip (per person) and the journey lasts a little more than an hour. The Kuantan-Penang flight was pretty much okay, just a little shaky a while before arriving. But the Penang-Kuantan trip was very shaky, the plane was shaking from side to side and dipping up and down for almost the entire trip! And to add to that, the air-con wasn't working, so it was really hot. If it wasn't for the first journey that went well, I think we'd never take Firefly again...but as it is, taking a flight cuts an 8-hour journey (by car, it's longer by bus) down to an hour (if you don't count check-in time).

I have signed up for Friendster (finally, after being asked to join it about 4 years ago :P) So if you have Friendster, you can look me up...a simple search for my e-mail will do it. But I won't be updating it a lot...I've put enough info to allow my friends to know who I am, and now I'm just looking for a suitable image to put up (no, I'm not going to put a photo).

[Note: Events are not in chronological order. lol]

Don't worry, be happy

Why Worry?
There are only two things in life to worry about:
Whether you are wellor whether you are sick.
If you are well,
then there is nothing to worry about.
But if you are sick,
there are only two things to worry about:
Whether you are going to get well
or whether you are going to die.
If you get well,
then there is nothing to worry about.
But if you die,
there are only two things to worry about:
Whether you are going to go to heavenor whether you are going to go to hell.
If you go to heaven,
then you have nothing to worry about.
But if you go to hell,
you'll be so busy shaking hands with all your friends,
that you won't have time to worry!
So, Why Worry?
Be Happy

Just for laughs :P
(courtesy of Geok Ching)

Knitting

I mentioned in an earlier post that I wanted to try knitting. Well, I did, and I made a bag:

But before the bag was finished (before the last side was sewn shut) it ressembled a cap! Hehe, I took some photos...

The night before

I totally forgot about these photos that we took the day before our flight to Malaysia. My friends had gone walking around Paris earlier in the day (I joined them at the hotel later) and they had bought a KFC bucket...so here we are finishing the leftovers.


That night we had a light meal next door to the hotel (since we had already eaten a bit). The shop sells the kind of ready-to-eat meals that we can find in supermarkets, but the difference is that they will heat it up for us (if the dish requires heating up) and present it "beautifully" in a plate. Here's an example of a heated up meal:

Duh, I could make that pattern myself!
(but maybe I'd need some practice...)

I think it was called brandade de morue...but then I'm not sure, can someone confirm?
And here's a tarte au chocolat (that didn't need heating up :P) Looks good, huh? I can assure you that it was :D

After that we had coffee...or at least they had coffee (cappucino, I believe it was) and I had a hot chocolate.

The waitress arriving with the drinks (hehe, just kidding...my friends were kind enough to go and get me my drink, I stayed to "guard" the table!)

Their coffee

My hot chocolate came as a cup of milk plus sachets of chocolate powder and sugar.

Enjoying our drinks (posing la... :P)

Determining the height of a skyscraper with a barometer

Got this from ReCom:

The following concerns a question in a physics degree exam at the University of Copenhagen:

"Describe how to determine the height of a skyscraper with a barometer."

One student replied:

"You tie a long piece of string to the neck of the barometer, then lower the barometer from the roof of the skyscraper to the ground. The length of the string plus the length of the barometer will equal the height of the building."

This highly original answer so incensed the examiner that the student was failed immediately. He appealed on the grounds that his answer was indisputably correct, and the university appointed an independent arbiter to decide the case. The arbiter judged that the answer was indeed correct, but did not display any noticeable knowledge of physics. To resolve the problem it was decided to call the student in and allow him six minutes in which to provide a verbal answer which showed at least a minimal familiarity with the basic principles of physics. For five minutes the student sat in silence, forehead creased in thought. The arbiter reminded him that time was running out, to which the student replied that he had several extremely relevant answers, but couldn't make up his mind which to use. On being advised to hurry up the student replied as follows:

"Firstly, you could take the barometer up to the roof of the skyscraper, drop it over the edge, and measure the time it takes to reach the ground. The height of the building can then be worked out from the formula H = 0.5g x t squared. But bad luck on the barometer.

"Or if the sun is shining you could measure the height of the barometer, then set it on end and measure the length of its shadow. Then you measure the length of the skyscraper's shadow, and thereafter it is a simple matter of proportional arithmetic to work out the height of the skyscraper.

"But if you wanted to be highly scientific about it, you could tie a short piece of string to the barometer and swing it like a pendulum, first at ground level and then on the roof of the skyscraper. The height is worked out by the difference in the gravitational restoring force T = 2 pi sqrroot (l/g).

"Or if the skyscraper has an outside emergency staircase, it would be easier to walk up it and mark off the height of the skyscraper in barometer lengths, then add them up.

"If you merely wanted to be boring and orthodox about it, of course, you could use the barometer to measure the air pressure on the roof of the skyscraper and on the ground, and convert the difference in millibars into feet to give the height of the building.

But since we are constantly being exhorted to exercise independence of mind and apply scientific methods, undoubtedly the best way would be to knock on the janitor's door and say to him 'If you would like a nice new barometer, I will give you this one if you tell me the height of this skyscraper'."

The student was Neils Bohr, the first Dane to win the Nobel prize for Physics.

CDG vs KLIA

Who's the winner? WiFi-wise, it's KLIA! ;)

When we were waiting for our flight at CDG (Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris) we tried to use the WiFi connection, but couldn't 'cos we have to pay for it (and we're too stingy for that lol) And now I'm here in KLIA waiting for my connecting flight to Kuantan, and there's free WiFi! :D

I guess the KLIA people know that Malaysians won't pay for WiFi :P

And well, while I'm at it, I'll write this as well: Cuti-cuti Malaysia! :D I'll be here till mid-September ;)

Le talent suprême

Le talent suprême est de faire croire qu'on en a.

- Yvan Audouard

Translation: The supreme talent is to make people believe that we have one.

INSA bowling championship

Last Friday, after our final final test (no, no mistake with the two "final"s ;) ) we had a competition for some of the 2nd-years. We had had to build a machine for one of our subjects, and some groups (like mine) built a bowling machine. It wasn't classic bowling, of course; it was actually a pétanque ball that we were to shoot at, um, pipes :P (you'll see in the photos)

We had to come up with a design, and then actually build the whole machine from scratch (working as a team, of course) My group built 2 machines, this one, which I essentially worked on:
and this one, which is almost undeniably the most spectacular machine in the competition, 'cos it's a pretty unique idea
but unfortunately the chain came off...and here they are trying to repair it...
They didn't manage to put the chain back on, so in the end they had to settle for an alternate solution (sorry, I have no idea how to write it here without going into too much detail)

Here are some other machines:





I couldn't always get photos of the machines alone...





This is the one that beat us in the semi-finals :/








And this is the most dangerous (supposedly) It uses compressed air, so the ball is shot out really forcefully.

The first face-off; we won!

One pin left, and that ball hit it!

The finals

Just stuff (again)

Yesterday I went out of my way to go to a shop (which, by the way, was closed, wasting my time) and I crossed this:

(didn't notice that my finger was blocking the lens a little...)

In Angoulême there are a lot of painted walls (or murs peints as they call it, it means exactly the same thing but somehow it sounds better lol) and we see them quite often. I found out pretty early that Lyon had a lot of them as well, but somehow we don't come across them so often. Maybe it's because Lyon's too big... Anyway, I don't come along this road often so I've seen it before but forgotten about it :P

Here's another photo without the shrubbery blocking it:

Please note that there is a part of the wall jutting out, and it is painted as a pile of boxes/crates being pushed by a man!

I'm not sure which photo is nicer, or gives a better optical illusion... I think I should have taken a photo from further away, so that the building on which it's painted isn't seen so clearly. But I thought that it would turn out too small on the photo...too bad, I'll have to remember to try it next time.

Along another road, I passed a florist and noticed that there was "hibiscus" on its "flowers of the day" chalkboard outside its door. So I looked around for the hibiscus, but didn't see any (I didn't want to go into the shop since I wasn't going to buy anything) But what I did see was this:

and this:

(Anyone know the name of this flower?)

I wonder whether they're considered seasonal flowers around here...maybe they're sold just to put in a house as decoration and thrown away in winter when they droop? (I'm supposing that they will droop...but then I don't really know!)

Anyway...today I made pain perdu (French French toast, so to speak :P) Whenever I buy a baguette (the famous French loaf) I will surely have some left over because it's so long, and that it loses it's fluffiness very quickly (before the next day) So instead of forcing myself to eat half-stale bread the next day, I freeze it to make French toast another day. (I've learnt that you should either freeze it or cut it up before it gets too hard, 'cos once it's rock-hard there is no way you can cut it into nice slices) When there's too much for breakfast, I'll usually heat the rest up in the microwave for lunch (or just do brunch :P), but today somehow I didn't feel like eating plain French toast again, so I did a little "improvising" (if you can call it that)...and ta-dah!

(For the curious: I added a prawn, a bit of olive oil and parsley on each toast.)

It wasn't bad...but it was a little weird... maybe plain bread would be better :P