Our dog

Rebel at the side garden before
i got him to the water tap

Rebel, our dog, is about 11 years old, biologically comparable to a human being
of 70 over years old. However he is still very alert, barking at every stranger
who appears at our doorstep or upon hearing any odd sound or noise.

His habit of digging holes at the garden does not seem to diminish as he ages;
in fact, the frequency of him doing it has escalated recently. Thus his fur
often gets dirty due to the digging deed.

I used to bathe him once a week but i have slacked in doing this chore in
recent months. The last time i bathed him was about 3 weeks ago and he looks
real dirty and as his fur has grown much longer his appearance is untidy too.

Gave his fur a trim and bathed him today. See for yourself the difference
between his look before and after the cleaning up.

Before bath

After bath

Amateurish fur cut

Yunnan stone forest

The entrance to the stone forest park
The two Chinese characters are Shi Lin

The stone forest, known as Shilin locally, is a park of strange
and unique rock formations in the province of Yunnan,
China.

The actual forest is a much huger area stretching tens of
kilometer out of the park.

The forest was once the ocean many million years ago.
The rocks were eroded by ocean currents into the sizes and shapes as they are today.

Cliffs and greens

Sea of rocks

Carps in artificial pond

Man-made pond in the park

A group of Japanese tourists
wearing hired traditional tribal costume
waiting for photo shoot

Poem by some dignitary carved on rock

Yin and Yang
( Female and male )

Republic of Turkey

Bridge across the Bosporus
linking the Asian part and the European part
of Istanbul

Turkey is an Eurasian country. Its territory spans from western Asia, 97% of its land, to South eastern Europe, 3% .
The sea of Marmara, the Turkish Straits and the Bosporus separate the Asian territory and the European territory.

The Sultan Ahmed mosque
(The Blue mosque )
One of the most famous legacies of
the Ottoman Empire

The interior of the Blue mosque

Central bazaar
About 5000 stalls inside the bazaar

Turkish delights

Turkish bread

Turkish women

Turkish carpet

Turkish bath
Messeurs use spiked sponge
to scrub body to rid of dirt and dead skin
of customers

Stall selling fruit juice
Pomegranate juice is a common drink
Six fruits are required to make a glass of
cinnamon juice which cost about RM 16

Pomegranate tree

Olive tree

Ruins of the Ottoman empire

Trojan horse, a dummy

Volcanic landscape in Cappadocia
Unique moon-like landscape

Wind and rain has eroded the volcanic rocks into
unusual rock formation

Houses are carved out of rocks

Rock houses

Camel for hire in the land of Cappadocia

Ronaldo sold !!!

There had been talks of Christiano Ronaldo changing the famous red Man Utd jersey for the white Real Madrid jersey last summer but eventually he stayed put in Manchester to help the red devils to win the premier league crown the third time running. Though the Spanish giant had bid an astronomical offer to try to prise Ronaldo away from Old Trafford, Sir Alex Ferguson was adamant in keeping him around in England.

Though many would not agree that MU should release Ronaldo for the cash, i thought it would not be a bad idea to offload him and use the cash to bring a couple of tougher servants in. Ronaldo might be voted as the ' best player of the world' last season and he did score many goals to help MU to win the league and the champions league but close examintaions showed that they were not as tough a team as Liverpool and Chelsea. Tough as to when most of the players were off form, they would not be easily outplayed totally like what happened in the champion league final in Rome this year. This toughness is associated with the physique of the players besides their skill. Most Man Utd players are very skilful but they some how lack the toughness of able to knock opposing skilful players off their stride. See how Chealsea contained the Barcelona players until the latter needed some questionable decisions from the referee and a last minute strike to get into the final. I always feel that Man Utd lacks that quality of toughness; they often play well against weaker teams but they would be out of wits when coming up against some real good team like Barcelona especially when they are not in form. They could only dream of beating Barcelona if and when they are in top form which does not always happen all the time in football.

Cristiano Ronaldo is a very good player but half his mind and heart has always been in Spain. He had an injury in the earlier part of this season and when he recovered at the later stage, he might have played well in many games, he was not as consistent as he was a year ago and he flopped on the most important night of the season.

I have always been of the opinion that Man Utd should cash in the high offer that the player is still worthy of and use the profit to get a few tougher replacements.

Just read in the Independent UK that the parties concerned had agreed on a RM80 million pounds deal on Ronaldo. Ronaldo is finally sold to Real Madrid. As far as i am concerned this is cause for celebration. This is the first piece of positive news on Man Utd after they have lost the champion league crown to Barcelona last May. Really hope that Sir Alex Ferguson would be successful in bringing in a few good replacements with the windfall of offloading Ronaldo.

Halong Bay Vietnam

Very busy harbour where tourists from
every corner of the world converged here
to board the cruise for the tour of
Halong Bay

We visited Hanoi and Halong Bay in May 2008. It was a short 4-day and 3-night free and easy trip. The trip was a very enjoyable and relaxing outing. The picturesque scenery of Halong Bay was especially beautiful and breathtaking.

The guy in striped T-shirt in the front left
of the ferry is the author of this blog

Sunset

Parking bay for junks

Taken from a cliff where a Buddhist temple
is located

From a different angle

English made compulsory subject in SPM

The Education ministry is coming up with the suggestion that English is to be made compulsory for securing the SPM certificate. Probably this is one side track that the ministry, or rather the new education minister, can use to show that they care about stopping the declining standard of education in our country from slipping further downward and that they are capable of coming up with some ingenious plan to improve the standard of our education. Surely this will receive approval from all quarters as this clearly and surely is an effective policy in getting the pupils to be more serious in learning the international language.

The standard of education has retreated a few bars below that in some twenty or even ten years ago that merely making English the compulsory subject may not be sufficient. The number of straight A's sudents in the SPM examination may have increased many folds in recent years but the abilities of these top scorers in exceling at higher level has such a great variance that it is impossible to judge the quality of the students by just basing on their examination results. In fact, from random observation of results of STPM ( not sure if there is any official research to find out how top scorers in SPM fare at higher level ), many who score straight A's in SPM lose out to those who just score a few A's in only science and Mathematics subjects. One inference we may be able to deduce is that the standard of science and mathematic in SPM is much lower than that in years back and it is much easier for any student to score A nowadays.

Apex University blunder

Universiti Sains Penang was allowed to process their own new intake of students due to their status as the only Apex university in the country. This is the best opportunity for them to show to the country the university is indeed the top of the lot in all aspects. However when they released the list of students accepted by them, they made a blunder by including a few hundred students who were unsuccessful in their applications to the university in the list of accepted students. When these students turned up at the university to register themselves, the acting vice-chancellor himself had to personally meet the students and their parents to apologize to them. He explained that it was a technical error and the error was corrected within the first day after it was posted.

It may be a technical error which the university authority may deem a minor error, it is still an error and it had caused unnecessary anxieties and inconvenience to the students and parents concerned. Surely such errors could be avoided if the university has taken the exercise of recruiting new intake a serious matter. The university authority has failed in its first assignment of the status of an Apex university.

( It was initially reported in the Sun paper that there were a few hundred students being misinformed of the result of their application of enrolment to USM but it was disclosed later that the exact number is 4574!!!!! )