Wednesday, November 28, 2007

The most amazing goal I've ever seen


Just a while ago I came across this most amazing goal I've ever seen in soccer, thought that it'd nice to share with you guys :)

(Man, the goalkeeper was so poor! I was a goalkeeper before too so I can understand how guilty he would feel..)

Sunday, November 25, 2007

0.4 second


What can you do in 0.4 second? Three years ago, Derek Fisher made a shot with 0.4 second left in the game and made Lakers beat Spurs miraculously with 74-73.

I remember I was watching the game at Ackerman Union in UCLA with a bunch of Lakers fans. When Tim Duncan made a tough shot and made Spurs lead with 73-72, everyone was silenced. What can one do with 0.4 second anyways? Right at the moment when everybody was giving up and preparing to leave, Derek made the impossible shot! People were cheering and hugging each other like crazy. They decided to review the shot and the crowd was cheering even louder after they saw that the ball did leave Fisher's hand before the clock expired.

It was one of the most excited moments I've ever had in my life. It made me realize that why it feels so good when you fight for the same goal with a team of people and finally achieving it, especially if there're barriers on the road.

Happiness more than doubles when it is shared with people around you :)

Wednesday, November 21, 2007

Target Thanksgiving Flash Game



Target created a little fun Flash game to promote their Thanksgiving sales and it sure did catch my attention, nice job :) You can enter their sweepstakes for a chance to win a $25 gift card too!

Thursday, November 15, 2007

Stingy of praises

I met Jenith back in the days when I played a lot of DDR. He was good in both technicalities (passing very difficult songs) and styles. Being an amateur, I always applauded after his "performance", and he would bow a little bit with a smile :) on his face.

When I went back to Hong Kong some years ago, I saw a great play of DDR by a guy in some arcade. As usual, I applauded after his performance and, suddenly, I felt that many people were staring at me. The crowd (including the guy I applauded for) made me feel that I just did something inappropriate (singing in the public?) and I stopped clapping and silently left the arcade. (Dang, I must look like some kind of bozo)

From these two events, you can see one big differences between the US and Chinese cultures. Chinese, in general, are pretty stingy of praises. I don't recall my parents or teachers ever taught me not to praise others in public but for some reason most Chinese just won't do that.

"Well, we applaud at real performances like concerts," you said.

No, you do that because everyone else is clapping. Will you stand up and clap when most of the audience think that the performance sucks?

Anyways, I think that there's nothing wrong in praising others when you truly think that they do a great job. A praise may be just a few words to you but it can be a sweet memory to the praised one for a long time :)

Saturday, November 10, 2007

"Too good to be true" :P

Just read Daisy's post 中女三級制, she said the following:
我Daisy的確是too good to be true,有誰會相信如此年輕的女子,竟能說出那麼有智慧的話來?
Translated that into English, it means
I'm just too good to be true; who will believe that a young girl like me can say something that's so full of wisdom?
This is one of the most arrogant claims about oneself I've ever head, and yet I just can't help laughing. For some reason I find that it's so entertaining when she says that. Maybe that's because so few girls that I've met are exceedingly confident like her? :P

Wednesday, November 7, 2007

Now you can get a @live.com email address

I suppose that most of you guys don't really like Microsoft's email service but in case you care you can get an email address ending with @live.com from the following page now:

http://get.live.com/getlive/overview

You can also link your other Windows Live IDs (@hotmail.com, @msn.com, @live.com) to one Windows Live ID so that you can access the services provided by those IDs once you sign into that Windows Live ID. Or, better yet, you can forward all the emails of the other Windows Live IDs to one email so that you don't have to jump around to check emails.

Yeah I still like Gmail a lot better but the @live.com domain is pretty clean and appealing to me :)

Sunday, November 4, 2007

Doing things the "right" way

Recently I've a chance to watch some episodes of Desperate Housewives and there's an interesting character called Bree Van De Kamp, who's one of the four housewives.

In the drama, Bree always insist to do things the "right" way: talking in an elegant manner, preparing nice dinner, keeping her home organized, asking her children to behave well, etc. Her obsessions in perfection plays a big part in her tragic family life. She's a classic example of "having a good heart and doing the wrong things".

This makes me think about myself and I realize that I think a lot like her. For examples,
  • I like to use a pair of scissors to cut along the dashed lines of a coupon while other people may just tear it off with bare hands
  • When I adjusted the clock this morning for the end of Daylight Saving Time, I looked at www.time.gov and made sure that my clock was accurate within one second
  • I usually set up meetings with friends using Google Calendar, since it specifies the event time, duration, location and list of guests precisely
Now that I think about a post I wrote before about how people don't like planning, I started to believe that I'm actually the weird one as I think that many people don't do things the "right" way. And probably it's such character that made me study engineering in the first place?

P.S. I can foresee that I'd have a hard time dealing with the chaotic behavior of kids in the future. Hopefully I could learn to cope with it :P