Italy Trip

Everything is so familiar. The air is still dirty, polluted, but I don't mind, cuz this is MALAYSIA!!!

You'll know what I mean when u visit Italy yourself.

I know this post is really late but who cares. Have to write it down somewhere in case I forget. p/s just by looking at the draft for this post has already reminded me of some nostalgic moment in Italy..

Visited Italy from 29/5/2010 to 16/6/2010.. Colorful fortnight.

As I mentioned earlier, Italian are heavy smokers, and their streets are narrow and dark and littered with cigarette butt. And the weather is kinda predictable, quite warm by day and very cold at night. The night we spent at Roma Termini was so cold I fell sick the next day.

Their water is very dirty, dirtier than our KL water, and their food is very predictable too - Pizza and Pasta... They seldom take pork, fish or other meat, and if they do, they wouldn't adorn their food like we Chinese do, we have onion beef, mushroom with bamboo, bla bla bla, bla bla bla.. and thus their food sucks, and expensive too. There is rice, guess what.. it's just rice with some sauce.. and you eat like tat. WTF!


Rice with corn sauce

So I went to Rome first, the capital of Italy. When I first set my sight upon the airport my excitement came crumbling down, cuz it was so old and dark and very 1940s'. Perhaps the government wants to preserve the artifacts~ Then we took the expensive train to their Roma Termini, and walked the very user-unfriendly walkway to Linea A. But their train is really fast, 3 minutes for every successive train. But once in the train, you'll see that the locals have no ethic at all, they are not like us, offering seats to elders..they are just so mean.



So cut long story short, visited the Collosseum, Pantheon, Trevi Fountain, The Vatican, etc in Rome.




Trevi Fountain


Breakfast: Capuccino and bread


There is no place to sit in breakfast bar, so we had to stand

Then went to Milan, we spent the night at the train station, which was a fantastic experience, sleeping like a beggar. But it got so cold that night I fell sick the next morning. The journey from Rome to Milan took 8 hours, and 43 Euros...and I went to SAN SIRO STADIO WUAHAHAHA!


San Siro Stadio


The Duomo in Milan

Then proceed to Venice where I went watching the Gondolas without got onto it, it cost 80 Euros per person. o.O



Apart from the watery places Venice is so lame. By the way it would be the first victim of global warming should the sea level continue to rise.


The Ghetto in Venice

After Venice, went to Florence. Florence is really pretty and awesome. Lived in a hostel and it was really good; walking distance to all the major tourist spots; Palazzo Vecchio, Uffizi Gallery, etc..


La Pietà by Michelangelo

Uffizi Gallery is especially impressive because it is the largest of its kind in Italy, there are so many drawings I lost count of them. Leonardo Da Vinci spent some time residing in Florence in case you don't know, so I was walking on the same path he took few hundred years back =P



Next stop was Pisa, and you know what, apart from the leaning tower, Pisa has nothing to offer(even the hotel girl told me that).



So sad the entrance fee for the tower cost me 15 Euros, and I overheard one of the tour guide said to his followers: This is the single most expensive monument to visit in the world~~ so be it, I just wanna get in and see why Galileo Galilei once did his gravitational experiment here. =P


Emulating Galileo


Came across the University of Pisa. It's so small!~! Like an office building with different faculties scattered all across Pisa...

Finally went back to Rome, and visited the Vatican Museum. It is an incredible place to visit really, and the number of artifacts stored in the museum is mind-boggling. Went into Sistine Chapel and saw one of the most famous drawing in the world; The Creation of Adam by Michelangelo... and also the statue of David and his tiny d**k, also by Michelangelo.


During the final few days I couldn't take their food anymore. I sought out local Chinese restaurants and was surprised to find their price kinda cheap~ so ended up dining in Chinese restaurants... googling for chinese restaurants before heading to next destination.

Overall it was a good experience. Not many people went to Italy really.. and am proud that I spent some nights on the train and at the train station, and experienced first hand the cruelty of reality. The reality is, if you have no money then you're worthless.


Heading back to Malaysia. At Fiumicino Airport


Malcolm

Meteor Shower

Ah.. it's 9:12am now, I'm supposed to go to class at 9:50am, can I finish this post on time??

Last night there were rumors about meteor shower happening after midnight, but I was too tired to check it out though, and I guess many people woke up in vain cuz no one update their meteor discovery on facebook this morning.

How does meteor shower come about?



You know comets... the naughty rock that travel far into the depth of our galaxy...they circle around the sun in a highly elliptical orbit, in which they would move faster when approaching the sun. They can spend hundreds and thousands of years out in the depths of the solar system before they return to Sun at their perihelion.

When faraway from the sun, the comet would gather dust and ice, which could be ammonia, water, methane or water, etc etc. Then when coming close to the sun, the heat from the sun (mind you when facing the sun out in the space,even at Mars' distance, it is super hot! cuz you aint got no ozone or the atmosphere to filter the amount of sunlight that reaches you~) would melt the ice and thus creating the long characteristic tail of a comet.



The tail of a comet could reach the length of 1 astronomical unit(A.U,the distance from the sun to Earth)

So when melting, some part of the meteorite that make up the comet is exposed, and together with the melting ice they are broken off from the meteor.



So when coming near to earth, the debris from the tail of the comet is attracted by the gravitational pull of Earth and thus the dust fall into the atmosphere, brush against the atmosphere of Earth and created spark and BINGO~~ there you have meteor shower~!



Okay it's 9:26am now I better get off to school =P


Malcolm

info:
http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/~bds2/ltsn/ljm/JAVA/COMETORB/COMET.HTM
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meteor_shower

Safety in Numbers

This morning when I was departing for lab I saw some brownish thingy hidden within the bush. Went to check it out and saw a bunch of baby spiders, all yellowish and so small you'd thought they're nothing but dust. Then, nearby I saw mommy spider. Wow~~~


Baby spiders


Mommy spider, and it's huge~


They are already equipped with surviving tools, i.e. the silk producing thingy and so on, but they are still vulnerable so mommy is just a stone's throw away =)


A school of herring


A colony of bat

Safety in numbers, that's a common phenomenon in the animal kingdom. Herring, bat, birds, and even larger mammals like the wildebeest and zebra uses this tactic. This is a natural instinct. Solitary animals are usually at the top of the food chain, for example tiger, bear, and other carnivores. We are at the top of the food chain too, but why are we congregating together in such large number? It is because we were once somebody else's food~~





Then you might ask: why are lions living together in a pride? Lions are the only cat that lives in a group.


A pride of lion

Other cats are usually solitary animal, which comes together only during the mating season. They mark their territory by scent marking (rubbing their body against trees, rocks, etc, like your cat rubbing its body on your leg, which I loathe), scratch marking on trees, and shit or pee at trees (sucks to be tree huh??).







They usually shy away from one another to avoid confrontation which may lead to fighting.



Lions, on the other hand, live together to up their chances of hunting. For your information, only one out of twenty hunting attempts made by a tiger is successful... ah... poor tigger=P
Lions, on the contrary, have a success rate of 15%.





The most efficient hunter? Hohoho don't be shocked, it's the house cat~ which boasts a 45-50% success rate in hunting.



Living in a group provides plenty of opportunity. Breeding is easier, for example the elephant, in which other females would help guarding the female in labor against predators.



There was a case in which a female rhino got killed by two tigers when she was giving birth. This is a perfect example of how a powerful animal like the rhino could fall prey to smaller predator like the tiger.

Another example is the annual migration of wildebeest and other herbivores from Serengeti to Masai Mara in Africa.



Safety in numbers, and when coming together as a group there are more watching eyes and that limits the success rate of predators.



Even when crossing the rivers, where crocodile is plenty, the huge number dwarfs the number of victims claimed by the reptile.



We human also follow the same trend. We are prone to follow the rest of the group, try not to be funny and so on. Yet it was a bold move made by Homo Erectus 4 million years ago to apply bipedalism and leave the comfort of the jungle that has produced us today.



Now, within the safety of our concrete jungle, we are unafraid to do something alone; walking alone in the park at night, dine out alone.. we could be dead should we're still living by the way of Homo Erectus, or worst still, yet to tame fire.



Malcolm

Brainless Politicians

All of us, I assume, do not like politicians.

I'm being biased again of course, just because this blog is mine so whatever I say is true, even if it's an assumption =P



This morning someone (Ivy Har la..~ ops...) tagged me in a post in Facebook regarding a moron urging teenagers to get married if they want sex. Good idea my fellow countryman, you have just made another son-of-a-bitch headline.

Alright, Mr CM of Malacca~ I'm making it crystal clear here. This dude is either downright stupid or perhaps his brain is locked within his rectum.



An anak watan Melaka, he was born in 1949, so he experienced the hype of Merdeka in 1957, or perhaps he didn't cuz he was too young to understand what's happening. By 1969, he was already 20 years old so perhaps he understood the impact of the racial clash between Chinese and Malay at that time. He earned his degree in Economics and Development Studies from USM in 1984, and he was 35 years old o.O

This dude has made countless idiotic suggestions over the years as a prominent political figure. Perhaps he's just craving for media attention but that has also made him an ass-licking moron, putting forward statements that has since became household jokes.

He proposed to build a bridge from Malacca to Sumatra. That's a Rm38 billion - 52 KM bridge across the Malacca Straits. Good idea dude~~ you're wasting taxpayers' money to illuminate your glamorous thoughts.


The soon-to-be longest bridge in the world. Malaysia Boleh!

Currently the longest road bridge (note here there are also rail bridge, which could be longer) in the world is the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway in southern Louisiana, United States, with total length 38442 meter or 38.442 KM. That cost the US government US$26 million in 1969, which is roughly RM 90 million at that time.


The second longest bridge in China, the Donghai Bridge, has a total length of 32.5 KM

And this bridge proposed by Ali Rectum is almost twice that length, and 10 times pricier. America could do it, because it is the largest economy in the world, with their gross domestic product(GDP) reaching $14.26 trillion (2009 est.).
China could do it, because they are the most populated country and the second largest economy in the world in terms of purchasing power parity (PPP), which was a staggering $8.77 trillion in 2009. The gross domestic product for China was $4.99 trillion in the same year.



Kita pula camne? Our GDP in 2009 was merely $381.1 billion, or $0.3811 trillion o.O So the US was spending roughly 0.1% of its GDP for building one of the longest bridge in the world. But we are using around 10% of our GDP! That's a lot(in case you don't know~~~)... It's as if each of us giving 1/10 of our annual earnings to satisfy his towering ego.



And this Ali Rectum also proposed to help teenagers who want sex to build a happy family, again by using the taxpayers' money.
It is just like one day the Rectum come and tell u:

Ali Rectum:You nak sex?

Me: ya ya I nak sex

Ali Rectum: Oh, u kahwin la. Kalao dah kahwin maka boleh buat seks

Me: yakah? tapi I takde duit nak kahwin... kerja pun takde

Ali Rectum: takpe takpe. Asalkan u happy, jangan buang anak, kahwin je la. Kerajaan akan memberikan subsidi untuk keluarga awak.



Does that make sense? Using taxpayers' money not for development, but for paying teenagers who crave for sex, and without a job. If I ain't aiming to complete my degree, pergi kahwin lah~ wait for the government to subsidize my everyday need.

This Rectum was charged in 2009 for money politics, but the charge has since been dropped and soon disappeared into thin air. Job well done for washing away your dirty linen.



Ever wonder why politicians could be so stupid? Sorry I don't have the answer. If they are stupid, then the party in which they represent and the people themselves are even more so, because they proposed him for election and they gave him moral boost and encouraged him to be bold and be OUTSPOKEN (in other word; be as stupid as possible to gain maximum media attention).



Again, the followings are biased perception;



Politicians are stupid because they are given tasks that are not supposed to be theirs. The best example is Mr Abdullah Badawi. He graduated from Akademi Pengajian Islam Universiti Malaya, and was given the responsibility of handling this country. What was his contribution?



All I could remember is Islam Hadhari (sorry bro, though u are a kind person I heard, but I really cant remember any significant contribution of yours even after squeezing my coconut hard)

Then, there are a lot of politicians graduating from economic schools and given the portfolio of transportation, agriculture, science and development.. Alamak!!



How can you manage the government like tat?? How would they know the price of a machinery in the Physics department and plan the budget for all the science equipment in all the institutions of higher learning? How would they understand the impact of Carbon Nanotube and Graphene in our lives~!?

I remember there was a case where a male politician of ours ranted "parlimen tidak bocor setiap bulan" at a fellow female politician in 2007. He was later sued XDD


Our Parliament building is leaking

And also the former MB Selangor challenged by an opposition regarding the price of his villa, stating that he would sell his villa if there's anyone who could estimate the value correctly. He swallowed his words as a result XDDD


Villa of former MB of Selangor

Nevertheless, please don't think that Malaysia is the only country in the world practising this stupendous act~ When Taliban was in control of Afghanistan, the ministers were all illiterate.

They were not farmers, fishermen, they had no dexterous hands, they were nothing but a group of Imams capable only in the Koran.. They were no better than the farmers who worked their ass off in the field. And because of that, there were no book-keeping, budget was overwhelmed and soon the country was experiencing economic freefall. Even then the ministers were oblivious about the crisis and they continually purchased fire arms for their campaign.



One note: the ministers are usually religious fighters that fight alongside the rest of the group, because as I said, they are good for nothing else. It's just like a group of barbarians managing your country la, and they propose all sorts of stupid policy and try to make your life harder and they don't appreciate the fact that you are smarter than them and thus they eliminate you to prevent future revolt.


Taliban fighters. One of them could be the Minister of Education XD

The reason they were in control was because they are the largest ethnic group in Afghanistan and they violently suppressed other groups to follow their way. Afghanistan was a vain example of how a country could collapse under the rule of a group of illiterate morons.

Are we heading in the same direction? Even the always-at-the-top French are baffled by their scandalous president, Nicolas Sarkozy, whose wife is advancing for another man and he himself is finding comfort within his own Cabinet~


Nicolas Sarkozy and wife Carla Bruni

It's as if all politicians are scandalous... and stupid.
So it's a clever move by our ex premier Tun Dr Mahathir to prohibit university students from involving in politics. One way or another, it gives more benefit in the long run.





Malcolm

info:
http://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2010/07/can-sarkozy-survive-frances-latest-scandal.html
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/my.html
http://www.newsweek.com/2010/03/09/about-those-rumors.html
http://www.dailychilli.com/news/5523-teens-should-get-married-if-they-want-sex
http://www.economywatch.com/world_economy/malaysia/