Moving on to the land of the kangaroos and koalas, here’s a song sung by the National Boys Choir, Australia and Australian Girls Choir (a.k.a. the Qantas Choir) about their patriotism. Makes me want to go to Australia again!
And another of my favourites is the song I Am Australian by the Seekers.
Of course, after splashing my blog with Indian songs in my previous entry, it’s time to go more off-tangent and post, erm, “alternative” songs.
Which Singaporean (or those who stayed in Singapore during SARS) can forget that scene when the great uncle Phua sang a rap song about SARS? So for the benefits of those who are either not in Singapore, or too ignorant to be bothered, here’s the song again.
And thanks to me being reminded to Summer Nights in my previous post, I am also reminded of a bhangra song, Bhangra Nights, which I quite liked when I was in JC, when one of my friends lent me his CD after another song of the same genre was used for a performance:
Update: And of course, thanks to me being reminded to Bhangra Nights, I am now reminded of another Indian song which I thought was quite interesting too, Pretty Woman from Kal Ho Naa Ho:
Update 2: Ok, I think I’m going crazy over Indian songs, so I’m going to throw in some other videos of the Indian songs that I have in my collection. There aren’t many of them in the first place, but… enjoy anyway!
Dil Kabootar Khana Hai (from Bollywood/Hollywood)
Gur Naal Ishq Mitha (by Bally Sagoo)
DJ Sanj - Next Episode
Thanks to NTU’s School of Computer Engineering musical, Nicole is now hooked to the musical Grease, upon which the SCE musical is based. If you haven’t seen the SCE’s musical, it’s here.
And thanks to Nicole’s being hooked to Grease, I am now reminded of the song I used to like long time ago when I was still a young kid, Summer Nights, which is one of the songs in the musical:
Enjoy the video!
Do It Anyway - Mother Theresa
People are often unreasonable, illogical,
And self-centered;
Forgive them anyway.
If you are kind, people may accuse you
Of selfish, ulterior motives;
Be kind anyway.
If you are successful, you will win some
False friends and some true enemies;
Succeed anyway.
If you are honest and frank;
People may cheat you;
Be honest and frank anyway.
What you spend years building,
someone could destroy overnight;
Build anyway.
If you find serenity and happiness,
they may be jealous;
Be happy anyway.
The good you do today,
people will often forget tomorrow;
Do good anyway.
Give the world the best you have,
and it may never be enough;
Give the world the best you’ve got anyway.
Another song I’m currently hooked to…
And you see I can’t smile without you,
I can’t smile without you,
I can’t laugh, and I can’t sing,
I’m finding it hard to do anything.
You see I feel sad when you’re sad,
I feel glad when you’re glad,
If you only knew what I’m going through,
I just can’t smile without you…
I was browsing around in Wikipedia (I know I’m supposed to be working) when I stumbled upon a page describing a hidden feature in Mozilla browsers. It even exists in Microsoft Internet Explorer, albeit in a slightly different form.
Try it now for yourself. Click on the Location bar of your browser and type about:mozilla.
Don’t forget to press Enter.
Or, if you’re lazy, I’ve been so nice to provide you with this link. Go ahead and click it.
If you’re using Mozilla Firefox, you should be getting this quote:
And so at last the beast fell and the unbelievers rejoiced.
But all was not lost, for from the ash rose a great bird.
The bird gazed down upon the unbelievers and cast fire
and thunder upon them. For the beast had been
reborn with its strength renewed, and the
followers of Mammon cowered in horror.from The Book of Mozilla, 7:15
And if you happen to be using older Netscape browsers (which is very unlikely, I reckon) you should be getting one of these:
And the beast shall be made legion. Its numbers shall be increased a thousand thousand fold. The din of a million keyboards like unto a great storm shall cover the earth, and the followers of Mammon shall tremble.
from The Book of Mozilla, 3:31
(Red Letter Edition)
And the beast shall come forth surrounded by a roiling cloud of vengeance. The house of the unbelievers shall be razed and they shall be scorched to the earth. Their tags shall blink until the end of days.
from The Book of Mozilla, 12:10
See if you can figure out the in-jokes.
Once you’ve attempted to figure out the in-jokes, you can go to Wikipedia’s entry on The Book of Mozilla to find out more about the jokes.
The Book of Mozilla is a well-known computer Easter egg found in the Netscape and Mozilla series of web browsers. The Easter Egg is viewed by having the browser go to the page about:mozilla.
[…]
There is no real book entitled The Book of Mozilla. However, apparent quotations hidden in Netscape and Mozilla give this impression by revealing passages in the style of apocalyptic literature, such as the Book of Revelation in the Bible. When about:mozilla is typed into the location bar, various versions of these browsers display a cryptic message in white text on a maroon background in the browser window.
According to Wikipedia’s entry on the about: URI scheme, if you’re using MS Internet Explorer on a PC which has Windows XP SP1 or older and try out the about:mozilla trick, you will see a blank HTML document with blue background color. This is possibly a joke reference to the Blue Screen of Death. In Windows XP SP2, it can still be shown by typing “res://mshtml.dll/about.moz” instead.
There’s even a compilation of extracts (official and unofficial) from The Book of Mozilla, which has been collected all over the Internet!
I’ve been hooked to this song by Katie Melua ever since it started playing in my Pandora playlist.
Sweet vocals, interesting mix of Chinese and Western styles and instruments, and you get the song.
Interestingly, Wikipedia has this to say about the song:
On September 30, 2005, an article appeared in The Guardian newspaper in which physicist Simon Singh criticised the song’s lyrics. Singh said that with the song Melua “demonstrates a deep ignorance of cosmology and no understanding of the scientific method”, and objected to its second verse, where the song’s protagonist “[contrasts] such guesswork with her own confidence in her blossoming long-term love”:
We are 12 billion light-years from the edge,
That’s a guess — no-one can ever say it’s true,
But I know that I will always be with youSingh interpreted the first lyric as a statement that the observable universe was twelve billion years old, which he said was incorrect; according to “the very latest data”, the universe was actually 13.7 billion years old. He added, “the next line in the song is unforgivable. To say that the age of the universe is “a guess” is an insult to a century of astronomical progress. The age of the universe is not just “a guess”, but rather it is a carefully measured number that is now known to a high degree of accuracy”. He wrote replacement lyrics which he believed would, if used, remedy his concerns:
We are 13.7 billion light-years from the edge of the observable universe,
that’s a good estimate with well-defined error bars,
Scientists say it’s true, but acknowledge that it may be refined,
and with the available information, I predict that I will always be with you
The article also mentions that Katie Melua actually sang the replacement lyrics.
So I followed the links in the article, and lo-and-behold, I found a segment on the BBC radio (not bcc hor) where she actually sang the part!
Click here to listen to the song.
You can also listen to the entire radio segment, or read an article about it.
This post will talk about shit, so please don’t read this if you’re eating now.
Oops, a bit too late, isn’t it?
It’s that time of the year again!
It didn’t start too well, with my first shower after midnight in my new year being graced by complimentary Shit Vapour Spa (SVS) from one of my neighbours staying on top of me.
Wait, that sounds wrong.
What I meant was one of my neighbours staying a few floors directly above my unit.
So what’s this exciting and new SVS?
Thanks to a possible fault in the plumbing system in my block, everytime someone staying in a unit directly above me shits and flushes, stinky vapour will come from the drain. I think it’s because of a faulty valve that is supposed to seal the septic tank away from the main pipes. I don’t know when we’re going to report this, but it’s annoying to try to relax and lather up soap all over your body, only to be greeted with SVS a moment later.
Well, after the shower, things just went down the hill. Things happened, and the next thing I knew, I couldn’t sleep until 3 or 4 a.m. and three chocolate bars later (I’m so gonna have pimples outburst).
The next thing I knew, I woke up at 7.30 a.m., having to get ready for a long day at work.
And lo and behold, SVS was the thing that accompanied me when I was showering.
To cut things short, I decided to do a good deed by waking up a guy who overslept as the bus I was taking reached Boon Lay Interchange.
That’s all for a beginning of the new year for me, and I have no idea how things are going to turn out today.
