I now have both a Facebook account and a Friendster account.

The difference between the 2? One has your profile and shows the friends you have, the other shows your profile, the friends you have plus some apps where you can poke/play/bite/fight/tase/race/etc with your friends.

It's like Facebook took the Friendster concept and added in extra stuff to do. The good thing is that both are completely free and to add apps you need not pay a single cent (unlike M$ Xbox Live service, pay for everything!!!!).

One thing I noticed on Facebook, some have their relationship status as 'married'!! So fast???!?! Maybe coz they dun want 'buayas' (male and female) to kacau them, but still, got married already?

Oh ya, gone are the days where ppl use ICQ anymore. Now everyone use MSN.

This morning I saw bout 5 super/rare cars at ONE intersection. Was at the Tujuan traffic lights, the one where you make a U-turn to go into USJ 3/4 and back to SJ.

First I saw 1 M5 silver color one to my left, waiting for the traffic light to turn green. I also waiting for the traffic light to turn green so that can make U-turn to go to SJ. Then opposite side a Merc CLK 200 turns right to Jalan Jengka. I though, hmm, Sunday morning everyone will bring out their Sunday cars. As the light changed the cars from Jalan Jengka turns right to Jln. Tujuan and lo and behold, a Yellow Porsche zips by me. Thinking there might be more, 2 more EVO 8/9 zips by soon after. Sooo.... everyone bringing out their Sunday cars...

On the way back pass by some of the bungalows in my taman, USJ2. The CLK earlier stopped by one of the bungalows and parked by the side of the road. So as I slowly pass by it, I saw a 350Z decorated with wedding decorations inside the bungalow. The best man in his CLK 200 visiting the groom? This orang kaya really kaya like hell.

Anyway one thing that irks me this morning was something on the radio. Was listening to Hitz.fm playing Rihanna's "I dun wanna do this anymore" when to my great surprise, they censored the word "gun" from the song!!!!! WTF WTF WTF!!!! You know the part she sings that she want to shoot the fella with the gun? well they silenced the word "gun"!!

If RTM I can understand, but this is a private station!!! Watlah this country!! Like mighty morphing power rangers, some idiot think 'morphing' sounds too close to 'morphine' , some drug. Geez, as if kids know wat morphine is.

In fact gone are the good old days when cartoons show ppl holding guns blowing each other up. Example: Transformers Generation 1 has both sides carrying guns and shooting each other to scrap. Now the latest Transformers Animated most of the "good guys" have melee weapons with only the bad guys have guns of some sort. Still they prefer to fight melee.

If that is not enough, I saw a DVD for the cartoon Thundercats with something you would not believe; an 18PL rating!!! Contains scary scenes etc. errr..... did the person who slap on that rating ever saw it as a kid? Or kids these days are too "soft" for big men fighting in their spandex against a very dark evil vampire? I used to see the cartoon as a kid, even have the "ThunderTank", but now cartoons are all.... boring. No gun fighting (the best part), no super cool vehicles, no real evil villains.

Ok, enough rant for today...

Tomica die-cast cars

My brother collects small Hot Wheels/Matchbox sized cars called Tomicas. These type of die-cast cars are different from the usual HW/MB cars in the sense that they are more detailed and more realistic. Unfortunately it is also double the price! Still I prefer Tomica compared to HW since HW tend to make weird or ridiculous cars. Toilet bowl car? Yup, HWs did make one.

The different between Tomica and HWs is that they are from different regions. Tomica is of course from Japan and is made my Tomy (which has merged with Takara, tainting Takara with its QC problems, but then Takara gains Tomy's distribution network). Hotwheels is from the US. Tomica has a more realistic approach to thier toys whereby their cars are based on real cars (like Toyota Passo, EVO X etc), their playsets on toll plazas in Japan (with no stopping Smart Tag lane to boot!!) and life in Japan.

HWs on the other hand is more the cars which will highly remain in the realm of fantasy of on the race track. Their playsets are all about... CRASHING. Jezz HW cars have such funny paintwork and to play them you crash them... rigghtt..

Anyway bought these cars yesterday from Sg. Wang. The Hummer and EVO X is very hard to find, so I was lucky they had stock that day.





The doors can even open!!

Binaltech BT-19 Bluestreak and BT-20 Argent Meister

After a few months of waiting, I finally got myself 2 new Transformer Binaltech number 19 and 20. BT-19 is Bluestreak who represents a Blue Subaru Impreza, while BT-20 is Argent Meister (Agent Jazz) who is Silver RX-8 with Mazdaspeed Body kit.



Both come in the usual Takara Tomy Binaltech box but with only the display stand and instruction sheet only. No more instruction booklet and collectible card like last time. The story is printed on the bottom of the box :(



But the instruction sheet is not really as bad as the Hasbro's one with some Nippon words to guide you.


As for the cars themselves.... let's say if you are expecting Takara quality then you'll be disappointed since it is tainted with Tomy quality. For Bluestreak different parts have different shades of dark blue while for Jazz the silver paint is not as perfect as one would expect, but still acceptable.

Bluestreak


Argent Meister


However if you are new to the Binaltech scene, and wish to own atleast 1 binaltech without paying ridiculously for the early Takara version which can go into range of RM 300-500 each, then this is a good buy. Just dun expect the quality of a Takara but not as bad as Hasbro. Atleast they still give you the box to keep you cars safe.

I still have 2 more coming, BT-21 and BT-22. BT-21 is Arcee which comes in a S2000, while BT-22 is Convoy who comes in a Dodge Pickup truck. Both are die-cast, and Bt-22 will surely weigh a ton since the mould is very big (which may explain why BT-22 is currently delayed lol).

After that will get the Nissan GTR transformer. Too bad it is sized to 1:32 instead of 1:24. But still, it is a GTR!

Beijing Trip 3

Moving on to day 3 of my Beijing trip. Have not been posting for a while, so since I'm free today time to continue!!

So we when to this fresh water pearl factory to see just how many pearls are there in a fresh water oyster. The number of pearls in a fresh water oyster numbers around 20-30 instead of a sea oyster which we all know only has a single oyster. My bro bought a pearl necklace (not so biglah) for his gf. A just opened oyster showing the pearls.


The rest of the day was spend shopping though all the "Sg. Wang" type shopping complexes. Mind you, the level of customer service in M'sia is 1000 times better than in China. Out there, you have to bargain to kingdom come, otherwise you will get rip off. Its bad enough the product is a FAKE, but they still wanna charge a high price. Even worse are those sales person who knows english, since they can counter offer you.

Anyway at one of the places where my bro was shopping for a LV wallet (of course not reallah), the shop sales ppl hold his hand for a while when my bro was walking away from the shop. Btw, there are alot of fake goods such as; fake Ipod with similar packaging and casing (but lacking the signature apple ipod dial), fake nokia N95 (I got the real deal), fake Kingston 32 GB thumbdrive (which some of our members bought for fun, only to KONG when wan to use here), fake TF toys such as ultimate bumblebee, leader class movie prime, copy binaltech and the one I have, a fake alternator. Dun get me started on fake nike/reebok/(insert brand here).

For the taxis here, there is ALOT of Hyundai Elantras and Volkwagens being used. In fact due to the close proximity of South Korea, somehow the local gov bought a very large fleet of Hyundai Elantras to be used as taxis. Make out Saga taxis extremely outdated and lousy. Infact, compared with other countries, we have among the smallest and most outdated taxis. In Europe there are E-class taxis, Thailand Vios taxis, China Volks and Hyundai Elantra, Japan Toyota Crown etc.

Day 4 we visited the Summer Palace, where the Emperor pergi lepak during the summer period. It is like a big man-made lake resort with emperor proportions. One empress (yes, empress) even used money meant for the navy to build/renovate the place (using rakyat's money wrongly again).

The view of the lake and temple on the hill at the summer palace. Extremely hazy though.



The longest corridor in the whole. The pictures painted on the beams are all unique to one another.


The famous marble boat. Looks like in a very bad shape.

Another view of the lake front and the hill


The view of the 17 arches bridge when viewed aboard the dragon board. The lake has a dragon boat which shuttles between various gates in the area.


Later in the day all of us took a trishaw ride though the narrow lanes of a "hutong". Hutong is something like a village with narrow lanes and the houses are extremely near to each in the city. The trishaw have no suspension with some parts of the lanes unpaved and uneven makes the ride very bumpy but fun. Fun to ride in a hude convoy though.


So at the end of the last evening in Beijing, we had another glimpse of the Bird's Nest Stadium. The stadium is not very big when viewed from a far, but I think once you been inside a big stadium, then you will appreciate the sheer size of it. Ever wonder why the price of steel is so expensive? Well I think this is one of the reasons....


Nearby is the new media center in the shape of the Olympic flame and the countdown digital display to the opening ceremony. When we were there the number of days to the Olympics is only 60 days.


So the next day we depart from Beijing from the new Terminal 3 airport. It is VERY BIG. VERY VERY BIG. At the main terminal when you enter the entrance you can't see the other end. Equally amazing is that the roof have openings to allow sunlight in, conserving energy and cutting electricity costs.




So how was the trip? I would say I enjoyed quite well although there were some minor hiccups. In fact the start of the trip was a real eventful one and we thought it was a no-go.

The original plan was to meet up at my dad's office in Kelana Jaya at around 8.30pm, head to KLIA aboard a chartered bus and catch the flight at KLIA. But it didn't went smoothly in the sense that the day we supposed to depart is the eve of the petrol hike, so everywhere is jam like hell coz ppl were trying to pump in at the last minute (dun blame the motorist, blame the person who decided to announce it so suddenly). To cut it short, the bus sesat, arrive slighly late, then had problem getting out of Kelana onto the highway until finally we arrive at KLIA in time.. all coz the flight was delayed (hmm, now maybe we ARE supposed to fly off).

If that is not enough, the plane which was supposed to fly out to Beijing had some problem so the flight was cancelled! Stranded in our very own KLIA, the airline (Air China) put us in the Satellite Building hotel (yes, a hotel INSIDE the satellite building) and sort of upgraded us to the next MAS flight in the morning at 8am. I say upgraded coz the original plane was a smaller plane than the one used by MAS. Not to mention MAS serve better food. So in the end we did depart for Beijing and landed in Terminal 2, not the new T3 that our earlier flight was supposed to go. But hey, in the end we did depart from T3 after all :P

Here's a mural in Terminal 2 showing the sights of China.