What is beautiful?

What is beautiful?

Everything is. Take a good look around and breathe in the beauty of existence. We tend to associate beauty with something we can visualize but in truth, beauty is transcendental. A song may sound beautiful, emotions can feel beautiful and a book may carry a beautiful tale. In truth, beauty can be everywhere and anywhere. Pair the word 'beautiful' with anything and instantly it becomes beautiful. A beautiful house, a beautiful scenery, a beautiful country - the things we can beautify is endless. Thus, it all bears down to how we view things. Until we all can learn to look beyond worldly traits, beauty is bound by our earthly minds. Entombed and waiting to be set free by all of us, beauty patiently waits. When that time comes, everything will be beautiful.

What is beautiful?

Movie Review: The Prestige

The prestige takes us into the world of magicians and lands us right smack in the middle of a rivalry. The rivalry between sophisticated, Robert Angier and the more rough around the edges, Alfred Borden which quickly escalates into a deadly competition. They started off as friends and partners but that all ends when a blunder by Alfred causes the death of Robert's wife during a trick on stage. They then become enemies for life–each intent on outdoing and upending the other. It all culminates till the point where life and death is a price worth paying for the downfall of the other and science is brought on stage as new and wilder stunts are sought.

The twists and turns in this story are really something to look out for. Nothing is what it seems to be and nothing is final. What more do you expect when the story revolves around magicians whose whole life depend on trickery and sleight of the hand. The whole tale is like a magic trick performed on stage where there are three acts. Act 1, the 'pledge' where the magician shows you something ordinary, act 2, the 'turn' where that something ordinary does something extraordinary and act 3, the 'prestige' which is the part of the twists and turns.

However watch out for the 'reveal' for that is the thing about it all that is truly magical...

Selamat Hari Raya To Everyone

Muslims celebrate the festival of Aidilfitri – popularly known as Hari Raya Puasa, or simply Hari Raya (in Malaysia – to mark the culmination of Ramadhan, the holy month of fasting.

It is a joyous occasion for Muslims, as it signifies a personal triumph, a victory of self-restraint and abstinence, symbolising purification and renewal.

Happy Deepavali!

Also known as the festival of lights, it celebrates the triumph of good over evil, of light over dark. In Malaysia, it is celebrated with joyful vivacity, with bright lights and even brighter smiles, as though to underline the traditional meaning and message behind it.

To everybody who is celebrating Deepavali today, I would like to wish you all an enjoyable Diwali :)

Procrastination

Yes, I am procrastinating too. It is my study break and I am not studying. Hahaha. Have eight subjects to complete in two weeks and frankly I'm not in the mood to read em. Probably will wait until the exams loom closer and closer and I break out in hysterics before I can gather my wits and sit down to revise. Well, Calvin, I totally agree with you.

"That way the worktime is more miserable, but there's less of it".

Arrggghhh! I chipped a tooth

Bah! Talk about bad luck in the last post and it comes looking for me. I was rushing to get home this afternoon and the most stupid thing occured. I somehow manage to hit myself in the face closing the taxi door. Yeah, I chipped my tooth and cut my lip. As if my teeth isn't ugly enough. Now, it looks even more uneven.... The worse thing is that it is because of my own clumsiness > <

Friday the 13th

And I almost forget today is Friday the 13th... Well nothing bad happened to me anyway. I'm not too superstitious but Friday the 13th is kinda special. It doesn't come often and I feel it needs special mention. Happy Friday the 13th to you all out there. Hope everyone is ok :)

Word of the day...

The english language is getting more odd each day.... Today's word is ePenis !

Hush hush

Strangely... nothing much is said about the drop of UM in the university rankings. Compared to last year hoo ha, this year it is oddly quiet. When UM dropped out of the top 100 last year everybody went into denial and started blaming all sorts of things and people, except themselves of course. And this year, nothing much happened. Is it a sign of acceptance? Or has the authorities somehow suppressed the issue for the fear of embarassing the ex-premier university of Malaysia? Yes, take note. The ex-premier university of Malaysia, for UKM has surpassed UM in the world rankings. Congrats to UKM and I would say they are being rather humble about it in a sense. Either everyone is so stunned about it all that nothing is said or like I said, maybe the media is pressured to keep things quiet. I actually waited for the whole bomb of this issue to explode all over the media but it did not happen, or should I say did not happen...yet.

The death of me...

This is an equipment for radioimaging used in the nuclear medicine deparment. It's for scanning patients to obtain images of their brain, lungs, etc. I hate it! I have to learn all the components of it in my nuclear medicine class. Scintillator, photomultiplier tubes, collimator and such. Imagine, those words already sound boring, learning about them is even worse. To make matters worse I'm a biology student not a physics student. Almost everything in my nuclear med class sounds foreign....

DOTA crazy

Fans have really gone all out to bring their favorite characters from the game into everything else. One example is this adaptation of the characters into the ever-popular card game, Magic the Gathering. Of course these are just fan fic but they really look good, and genuine to boot. :) These were some of the best taken from the DotaPortal site.




Life devouring soul keeper.




Razor - lightning-speed killer.




Purge and kill - Medusa



The sexy drow ranger with frost arrows. However, in the original frozen throne she was the undead, dark ranger. The ultimate fantasy of necrophiliacs :)




Er... How bout this necrophiliacs? Any takers?




The almost indestructable Purist Thunderwrath.






















Luna the kick-ass night elf with annoying lucent beams.

I am ashamed...

UKM now ranked way ahead of UM

BY SIMRIT KAUR and HARIATI AZIZAN

PETALING JAYA: Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM) has supplanted Universiti Malaya (UM) as the country’s highest ranked university in the latest survey conducted on world university rankings.

In World University Rankings 2006 published by the Times Higher Education Supplement and conducted by QS Quacquarelli Symonds, UKM rose by 105 places to break into the top 200-ranked universities for the first time, climbing from 289 last year to 185.

UM, however, continued its downward spiral, by dropping a further 23 places to 192. Its ranking fell from 89 in 2004 to 169 last year, causing a national debate on the status of the premier university and the validity of the criteria used for the rankings.

The British newspaper's annual rankings are based on measures like peer review (40%), employer survey (10%), international faculty (5%), international students (5%), staff to student ratio (20%), and the number of times research is cited by other academics (20%). Details of this year's criteria are not yet available.

Former UKM vice-chancellor Datuk Dr Mohd Salleh Mohd Yasin, who retired in August this year, attributed UKM’s current standing to the joint effort by everyone in the university.

“We focused on raising the university’s profile internationally. We also made a concerted effort to improve UKM’s website and consolidate the information there,” said Dr Mohd Salleh, who is currently chairman of the National Accreditation Board.

Universiti Sains Malaysia and Universiti Putra Malaysia also improved in this year’s standings – UPM rose by 102 places from 394 to 292, while USM climbed from 326 to 277.

When contacted, current UKM vice-chancellor Datuk Dr Sharifah Hapsah Syed Hasan Shahabudin and UM vice-chancellor Datuk Rafiah Salim declined comment, saying that they would speak at a press conference at UM today.

Opposition Leader Lim Kit Siang described this year’s results as a double shame for UM.

“Not only did it slide further but UM also fell behind UKM. This is unacceptable for Malaysia's premier university. There is need for a shake-up,” he said.

He added that although UKM should be commended for its place in this year’s rankings, Malaysia’s top public universities should rank among the top 50.

It has been reported that the Ministry has set a target for two public universities to break into the top 50 by 2010.

Lim attributed Malaysian universities' poor ranking to the failure of the institutions “to practise real meritocracy in academic appointments and promotions, as well as in student intake.”

Higher Education Minister Datuk Mustapa Mohamed could not be reached for comment.

At the top of the rankings is Harvard University, which retained its position. However, Massachusetts Institute of Technology lost its number two position to Cambridge University.

British and American universities took all the places in the top 10. The highest placed Asian university is China’s Beijing University, at 14. The University of Tokyo and the National University of Singapore were joint 19th, the only other Asian universities in the top 20.

The Sylish Devil

I enjoyed the movie inmmensely. It's full of wit, sarcasm and a whole lot of bitchiness. The story is all about Miranda Priestly (Meryl Streep), high-end fashion magazine editor and her new assistant, Andrea (Anne Hathaway). Andrea is simply given hell by Miranda as she tries her best to cope with the fashion world that her new job, as second assistant to Miranda, revolves around. She initially resists changing to suit her job but when she does, she finds herself doing immensely well up to the point she displaces Miranda's first assistant. She begins to become more of a workaholic and soon starts to neglect her family, friends and boyfriend. That is when she has to choose between her new career and her old life. The ending is of course sappily good, making sure you will leave the cinema with a life lesson learned.
I love the movie so much I am going out to buy the book. Well, it is always known that a movie will pale in comparison to the book it is based on, so I am expecting much more enjoyment from the book.
Everyone should find time to catch this wonderful movie.