Happy new year!

Well, Chinese New Year to be exact. Of course it's not a very big deal in western countries but in China I'm pretty sure everybody's celebrating. Me? I'm not celebrating anything today.

For one I'm Vietnamese and even though us Asians look kinda the same we have different Lunar New Year days. From what I know, the Vietnamese have a different way to calculate the lunar year from the Chinese. That's why Vietnamese New Year started yesterday. Oh gee, one day!

So you might ask what's the big deal with this new year stuff. Well, it's pretty much the equivalence of Christmas in Asian Culture. Everybody gets a holiday, kids get presents in the form of lucky money. For adults, well, it's pretty much the time of the year when you have to go all out to kiss people's ass.

Actually, when I come to think about it, there was a lot of ass-kissing every year around the end of the Lunar New year in Vietnam. My parents used to have a business when we were there so every year, even though they didn't do anything wrong, they had to give bribes to the tax people, the police, the local council... just so that they wouldn't make things difficult. It's a dream job to be in the police in Vietnam, it's not because of the piss-poor government salary, it's all the bribes people give you. Anyway, I digress, those aren't the only people whose asses you have to kiss, you have to be on the good side with your kids' teachers too so that they don't make things any more difficult for your kids. But then you can hardly give the teachers money, hence the very expensive presents.

Anyway, what the hell am I doing telling corruption stories on this special day? Let's see if there is anything more cheerful to talk about. Oh yeah, have you heard, Britney Spears wanted to get this awesome haircut


But the haircut didn't turn out to be that good on her so to save the situation she had her head shaved completely and get some tatoos too.


Ok, I was only joking about the first picture. What I really think is Britney's gone off the deep end. This girl needs serious help. No actually she needs to be away from the media and people should just leave her alone to figure her stuff out. And that includes me. So how's about this, I will not mention Britney on this blog again this year. Is it hard to believe that I used to like her back in '98? No, it's not that hard really, I used to like Backstreet Boys and N'Sync too.

Talking about N'Sync, I just have to post this video, I have no idea why I used to like them that much.

Happy Valentine's Day

I must say this is not my favourite day of the year, my usual favourite day of the year is the day before Valentine's day. Why? It's quite obvious really. Guess, I'll give you a hint: my star sign is Aquarius.

Back to Valentine's day. It's not my favourite day because I think it's over-rated. Why do you just have to be extra romantic on a designated day every year? If you're in love any day can be a romantic day.

Also, I believe that Valentine's day is just an excuse for people who have somebody to rub it in for single people. Like we haven't had enough with putting up with you kissing and groping on the train. One good thing about being single though, you don't have to worry about the romantic gifts and meals for the other possible half. We can wallow in our singleness with discounted chocolate [hey, is that why single people are fat?].

Anyhow, here's my Valentine's Day gift to all those people who are in a relationship.

It's morbid I know but look at it this way, those skeletons are about 5000-6000 years old, they are believed to be the remains of a man and a woman and they are found "locked in an embrace" 40 kilometers south of Verona, the city where Shakespeare set "Romeo and Juliet". The good news is so far no Creationist has stepped up and say those are skeletons of Adam and Eve as the time frame fits the 6000-year-old Earth story.

Happy Valentine's Day!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Yeah, bring on 2007!

Boxing day

Do you know what's the best thing about Christmas? Boxing day.

I'm not one of those shopaholics. In fact, I hate shopping and I usually spend the least amount of time possible to shop. I love online shopping though since you don't have to spend that much energy finding things. My approach to normal shopping in 3 easy steps is:

Step 1: walk around. This is the most time consuming steps and I hate it but it's an essential step since the rest of my shopping are based on this.
Step 2: pick what you like. This might include try whatever it is on to see if it fits.
Step 3: pay for it. That's it, just pay and get out of there.

Please note, there's no thinking involved in here. I hate going shopping with people who think too much and just keep changing their mind, before you know it, half the day is over and they're still in the same shop agonizing over what to buy.

Boxing day is the best time to shop really. You can't stay anywhere long enough since people will actually PUSH you out of their way. It's a wonder the Myer building in Melbourne City didn't crumble to dirt today with so many people flocking into it. I almost became the victim of a stampede by a horde crazy girls trying to find the shortest route to the reduced price table. I really should give credits to those girl, they did figure out the shortest route to that table: over my body. Too bad I succeed in getting out of their way in the nick of time by stepping onto some old lady's foot. It seems that the new fashion this summer is stripy t-shirts. I expect I'll see hordes of girls wearing those. Why would you wear something that make you look like a zebra? Albeit a very weird zebra considering the colour combinations like green and red, blue and gray, orange and white stripes.

Apart from that incident in Myer, my shopping trip went relatively incident-less. I got myself a late-Christmas present: a pair of kick-ass headphones. It actually blocked out everything. I really appreciate not having to listen to some girl bragging about a pair of G-strings she got for a song from some adult shop, thank you very much. People just talk about all sort of weird things on trains.

Christmas Day (yawn...)

I know I should be more excited on Christmas day but I'm not. There's no presents to be opened (they're already opened about 2 days before Christmas day and no they're not from my parents or anyone else, they're from myself and I).


I found that people don't usually give you something useful or something that you want for Christmas. Let's get a run through with 2 brilliant Christmas present ideas I've encountered:

1. Candles. This is the present that wins my "most sarcastically practical present of the year award". What possible use can you have for candles in this century? Please don't tell me they're relaxing because every time I have to light up a candle scented or not it's because there's something wrong with the electricity line and the power is cut right when I'm doing something important on my laptop. So every time I light up a candle I'm stressed about losing what I was typing. And that's not the only thing I have to worry about. Do you know how easy it is for houses to be on fire especially in Australia in summer? The damn candle can fall, set the carpet on fire and then the whole house's gonna be on fire. I can really do without these worries. Scented candles are worse and nowadays people only give scented candles. Not only I have to worry about losing data and setting the house on fire, I have to deal with the nauseating, supposedly "relaxing" scents. Relaxing my ass, they set my sinuses on fire and give me sneezing fits.

2. Bath stuffs. You know the, again, scented bath stuffs like bath salts, bath oil, etc... Again, they're supposed to be relaxing and again their purpose just fails me completely. I don't take baths. It takes at least 20 L of water to fill the bath and frankly that's a waste of water.

Those are the big no-no when it comes to buying Christmas presents for me and luckily I didn't get any of those this Christmas. Maybe you're wondering what I got. My family are a practical bunch and we don't usually give presents. If we do it's usually money or gift cards so people can get what they want themselves. It saves time and energy. You don't believe me? First you have to have an idea about what to buy, then you have to go buy it and it doesn't stop there, you have to wrap it in preferably Christmas wrapping papers, which are sold at heavily inflated prices. With gift cards, you just have to buy them and then pop them into an envelop and Voila! a present to please anyone, albeit a very lazy present.

Ok, back to my family, we don't usually give presents. Birthdays: definitely, Luna new year: definitely, Christmas: nah. There you have it, I don't get any presents from my family. It's not that devastating anyhow. I've never gotten anything on Christmas and I don't expect to get anything. This year however, I decided to start a new tradition. I got myself presents and am I happy. So these are what I bought:

1. Books. I bought Sam Harris' "The End of Faith" and Richard Dawkins' "The God Delusion". I've been looking for them in Australian book stores for a while and they're actually available at Christmas. From what the bookstore cashier told me, many people bought them as Christmas presents for their friends. That's actually a good idea. I might even do that next year.

2. An USB flash drive. It's not just any USB flash drive. It's one of those new released Toshiba flash drive. It was quite a stressed experience buying flash drives from eBay. After I paid for the drive and was waiting for it to arrive by mail, I found this article: "Beware of fake flash drive on ebay". While reading that I did a mental check list: Toshiba - common counterfeit brands on eBay: check; misleading slogan - new product not yet available in your country: check; high capacity flash drive: check; low price: check. So chances are I bought a fake and I was worried coz I paid more than a hundred bucks for that USB flash drive. The drive arrived 2 days before Christmas and it wasn't fake. I'm just too lucky, aren't I? From now on I'm not gonna buy USB drive from ebay.

3. Battlestar Galactica pins. These are also bought from eBay. I think I'm gonna start a collection of these, they're quite rare maybe one day I'll sell them for ten times what I paid.

Yup, that's it I think. May be I bought a new Xbox game but I can't really remember now, I think I did. It's really quite hard typing a post off the top of your head while you're still recovering from a mini-hangover. I'm still recovering from my Christmas Eve dinner. I think I drank too much beer + wine. Anyhow, Merry Christmas everyone, maybe I should say Merry fictional character's birthday, that's more fitting.

For the atheists out there, here are 2 links I think you would enjoy if you haven't stumbled upon them already:
10 ways to qualify your atheism this christmas
Religion does more harm than good - poll