God be with you till we meet again

Well, it's time for me to go and serve my Lord and consecrate 2 years of my time to Him. I'll be away from the internet and all other forms of modern day communication.

The only way to contact me is by writing to me. I shall depart on the 28th of March to Provo, Utah for missionary training where my letters can be received for 3 weeks.. till approximately late April.

My address then will be:

Elder Trent Lai

California Oakland/San Francisco Mission

Provo Missionary Training Center

2005 N 900 E

Provo, UT 84604

United States.

If you do write to me, I will definitely write back!

Thereafter, I'll be posted to the area I was called to, in the California Oakland/San Francisco Mission. Why there? I do not exactly know but all I know is that there are people waiting for me to teach them the word of God and it's my responsibility to find them. All letters and parcels (if you do intend to send anything :p) can be sent to this address at:

Elder Trent Lai

California Oakland/San Francisco Mission

4945 Lincoln Way

Oakland CA 94602

United States

Thanks everyone for being there for me before I left and making time to converse with me/wish me all the best/meet up. Deeply appreciate it and I shall be praying for all of you on this island or wherever you are or will be.

God be with you till we meet again.

She sells shishas by the seashore

Haji lane's teens who comfortably play cards and smoke shishas don't realise the effect of the activity on their lungs. A friend of mine who smokes told me there's less kick in shishas than in cigarettes. Funny how shishas give less of a high feeling and harms the body more - a strange inverse relationship here.

According to BBC, "measuring carbon monoxide in exhaled breath showed a normal non-smoker's level to be three parts CO per million parts of air (ppm) (less than 1% of blood not working properly), a light smoker to have 10-20 ppm (2-4% of blood not working properly), and a heavy smoker 30-40 ppm (5-7%). The study found shisha smokers had 40-70 ppm of CO in their breath - affecting 8-12% of their blood."

So people, clear your misconceptions.

Asobi Seksu

I can't believe I missed this band last year in November when they performed in Zouk. Dream pop gives that airy fairy floaty feel; not surprising given its genre name.

Turtle power!

So there I was in my cave scanning through channels and I stumbled upon an exciting encounter between a turtle and tiger shark. The voice in the documentary compared the turtle to tortoises- strong beaks and unretractable heads whereas tortoises had not-as-strong beaks and heads which could withdraw into their shell. The sea turtle was swimming ashore ready to lay her eggs but nearby, laying in wait of prey was a young tiger shark. Tiger sharks have razor sharp teeth capable of penetrating the turtle's shell. As the turtle inevitably drew closer, death seemed nigh.

You probably guessed by now, the turtle survived the attack. How? It struck first, lunging at the tiger shark's gills and bit it really hard. The shark attempted to circle it and assault but the turtle measured its movement, refusing to let its guard down. This sea turtle wasn't simply aggressive, it was amazingly intelligent (like donatello in the picture above). The weakest point of sharks are their eyes and gills. No way, the turtle would go head on so it smartly went for the gills. Eventually, the tiger shark retreated, acknowledging the strength of its opponent. I was highly pleased with the turtle's victory as it's seldom to chance on episodes when the prey manages to overcome the predator.

With some maternity instinct, aggression and astute decision making, the turtle beat the odds. THIS is seriously what i call turtle power.

Longer hair

In the interview on Inside the Actor's Studio, Johnny Depp cited that he once "stupidly thought that when" his hair is down, he's "hiding" and "invisible". Although I don't share the exact sentiment, growing my hair to its current bowl shape,- the longest I've ever had my hair at- I do understand and somewhat feel that personal sense of security. While I was walking through the streets under the drizzling rain, I realised my hair didn't feel as soaked as it'd normally be. I know this sounds dumb but it's like my hair is this special helmet of protection. It felt as though my hair has become an integral part of my being which I greatly appreciate for its functionality and individuality it gives me. Having my hair at this length, has given me some personal space and probably, identity.

Nah, i'm not going to be emo and grow a long fringe to cover my face and expression. The point, however, is that I believe I can understand the value people place in their hair. I think I can empathise with people who've their long hair cut. It removes away their identity, their personal security- that's why some cry when that happens. Sounds superficial but consider this, superficiality has this special connect to substance and meaning. Why else do we place so much value in inanimate objects and symbols as reminders?

Search engine for more websites you love

Somehow the internet gets a little monotonous with facebook despite its infinite applications and endless comments one can make. Wanting to have more than my usual scope of websites - facebook, gmail, designboom.com, ted.com, iht.com and probably some soccer news sites, I looked for a search engine to find similar sites to the ones I currently hop around. I came across moreofit.com but discovered that there's a more popular one called similarsitesearch.com. So which is better?

According to comments on hacker news, it appears that moreofit.com has a better user interface than similarsitesearch.com whereas similarsitesearch.com generates more results than moreofit.com. When i tried it out myself, moreofit.com reaped more search results plus, it has this really neat sidebar that allows you to toggle between the level of popularity and similarity of the list of sites you want. So my preference leans towards moreofit.com. Given the popularity of similarsitesearch.com, it seems it has a headstart in connectedness as it has facebook "like" buttons and the whole lineup of social networking sites to link itself with. But because I'm not an active user of these social websites, it doesn't quite boost itself in practicality with me.

Holy cow. I was suspecting that google would either buy these websites up or do something similar and it seems like I'm right. Google chrome has this extension called "Google similar pages" in its beta version and also, it always had the "similar" button in the search results next to the search item. I tried it out and they're fairly accurate but users mention that moreofit.com derives its data from delicious.com (where users manually bookmark their pages according to categories) so that makes it superbly accurate as the preferences of users are more effective than gathering results from common words.

Hence, the verdict - go try moreofit.com

UPDATE:

Eric: You're right. I didn't compare moreofit and similarsearch that much to give a fair comparison. The quality of similarsearch is far superior.

Coco

I had spent most of my 2nd half of last december in thailand. Beach activities in krabi and thai city life in bangkok. One thing in common was that both places had plenty and plenty of coconuts. When we touched down in bangkok airport, we came across an ingenious dessert- coconut ice cream served on half a coconut husk with its flesh.

The scoop lady would scrape off the flesh on the husk before serving so there's no need to worry about flimsy spoons to do the job. It was really refreshing and coconut at its best. After having one, I had to have another as the portion wasn't that big. I tried to find this dessert in the main land but couldn't, apparently the airport seems to be the only place I know of that sells this dessert.

Although I'm not a coconut fanatic, going to bangkok has allowed me to appreciate this water-filled fruit. I deviced a way to best enjoy it there :D Previously, I used to drink up all the juice before I scratched off the flesh. Having the flesh last gets a bit jelat especially with no fluid left to down it, so thinking about how everyone loves to drink the canned coconut drink with its coconut pulp floating in it, I thought it best to grate the flesh into the drink itself. Using the thin metal spoon, i gently grated against the flesh to get thin pieces of pulp - ones that can be sucked up by the thin straw. Drinking it was coconut heaven. Imagine fresh, cool, sweet liquid with smooth thin slices of flesh sliding down your throat. Yes, that is coconut heaven.

Maybe I'm a bit slow in coming up with this way of drinking the coconut but I'm glad to have made that discovery. At least when I see a drinks menu next time, I won't hesitate to ever order a fresh coconut.