Kai, The Informologist

The Red Devils will be traveling down to Birmingham City tonight with hopes of revamping themselves after their latest shock which was surprising yet not shocked. The stability of the team has been undergoing scrutiny since the arrival of young starlets such as Cristiano Ronaldo and Wayne Rooney, both has yet to be consistent this season. Much is expected from this team on this away game.

On the side of Birmingham City, having achieved just 8 points out of 7 games, they are hanging on the thread right from the beginning. A draw to Liverpool and a lost to Blackburn left them scarred, and with the addition of Mikael Forssell added in the injured list, they are a little blunt on the striker zone.

This game should be easy for the Old Trafford team, they need to start raising their scoring ratio to avoid losing out to the top 4s who have grown their capability through the summer break. Let’s hope we get to see Owen Hargreaves on the bench and make an appearance tonight.

Footytube is one of the way to go if you fail to get any time on the game.

Image Courtesy of Cute Overload

I have been contemplating ever since I got Pipi last November. I’m still contemplating. The above picture and the post about 2 cats makes me ache.

Photo courtesy of Jon Read

There aren’t many different version of this stories, the only differences probably lies just in the wordings. This one, according to this website, belongs to Carolyn Joyce Carty.

One night a man had a dream. He dreamed he was walking along the beach with the LORD. Across the sky flashed scenes from his life. For each scene, he noticed two sets of footprints in the sand: One belonged to him, the other to the LORD.

When the last scene of his life flashed before him he looked back at the footprints in the sand. He noticed that many times along the path of his life there was only one set of foot prints. He also noticed that it happened at the lowest and saddest times in his life.

This really bothered him and he questioned the LORD about it. “LORD, you said that once I decided to follow you you would walk with me all of the way But I have noticed that during the most troublesome times of my life there is only one set of footprints. I don’t understand why, when I needed you the most, you would leave me.”

The LORD replied, “My son, my precious child, I love you and I would never leave you. During your times of trial and suffering when you see only one set of footprints, it was then that I carried you.

If you have ever experienced the genuine love of God, I pray that this will be an encouragement for your continue walk with God.
If you have yet to taste his unfailing love, stretch out your hands, whenever you are in your life, and He will come to you.

Glen Hansgard and Markéta Irglová in Once

Highlights: Horse-back riding and grocery shopping – my first time on horse (Big Red is the name). After the first half-and-hour mark, I kept wondering how the men from the Chinese Dynasties were able to ride them for such long period of time. I’m cooking long bean with minced pork this week.

Movie? Independent film ‘Once’ (received an amazing 97% on RT) – I enjoy the short intro without the need of naming producers, actors, executive producers, co-actors; as well as the relatively short credit roll (took about 2 minutes); and finally naming the main characters as ‘guy’ and ‘girl’ on the credit (unlike Layer Cake, this is not deliberate, its just unnecessary). Nice movie and all, but watching a movie made out of a camcorder with a growing headache did cause some motion sickness.

Bible study: Hebrews 1:1-3 – after an intense study of just the first 3 verses, we were asked, “how can you guys interrupt so much for such a short passage”. I wish we had done a little bit more though. Main point: Jesus was fully God and fully man, He was there from the beginning till the end. He was the creator, not the creation, even though his status was temporarily lowered during his reign on Earth. Trinity is the truth, but its roles are controversial. Pray for unanswered questions that God may reveal it to you.

Music? Awesome awesome solo recital by Li-an who plays the flute (PhD). I normally fall asleep on such occasions.

Food watch: To be perfectly honest, I had more expectation from ‘Great Wall’, just because it has the word ‘Great’ in its name. Chow Bar did its surprise on the Sunday morning buffet, very close to China House. I haven’t tried the now-routine Uta’s Bah-Ku-Teh from last night yet. I kinda wish I had that instead of the ‘Great Wall’.

Messi dedicating that beaut to Ronaldinho

For some reason, things haven’t been smooth sailing. It could be the Saturday night shift that has been throwing me off, or the lack of football (the real version) matches to ‘caffeinate‘ me for the week, or maybe just maybe, my disobedience. I had faith in the beginning of the semester to see smiles, and smiles multiple. Yet with each pounding, I feel less confident, more vulnerable, and more helpless. Faith is a hard word to keep reminding yourself, especially when nothing came back down the other way.

Messi scored one of the prettiest goals I’ve seen in a long while. A flip and a volley, spot on. I call it a beaut, other calls it ‘out of a comic book fantasy’. Or maybe I just haven’t been watching soccer for a while.

I don’t quite know what swamp I’m wading through, I just feel like being entangled all over.

Self-awareness biblical references such as Philippians 2:14 reminds me of the action paths that I should take. The words ‘all’ and ‘always’ indicates absoluteness. I know obedience will take me closer to God and in better fellowship with fellow believers. I know there is light at the end of the tunnel. I just pray for more reverence to see clearer, to feel comforted and to be closer to God. And then, the distance – how long the tunnel is, will not matter.

Jose Mourihno – former Porto and Chelsea manager

That’s a saying in football (the real football) – that anything can happen in 90 minutes.
Jose Mourinho’s departure should come as a shock and disappointment to all, including rival fans from Manchester United, Liverpool and Arsenal.

Even though hatred fuels much of the his EPL rivalry, yet I’m certain many folks look up to Jose with admiration not just because he can win games, but more so of his personality. He believe in what he can do for the team, he believe in the team, and he rarely let anything come in the way of realizing that believe.

One way or another the season will go on, for Chelsea, and for all its rivals.

Jose Mourinho will be missed by all. (I miss him already)

Marshall McLuhan

At one point or another, you might have heard of the term “the medium is the message“. I’ve learned about the term through multimedia class, that renamed itself as a new media (as a comparison to the old media). New media consists of development from Web 2.0, social networks such as MySpace, online sharing communities such as YouTube and Digg.

The expansion of the idea “the medium is the message” according to the writer of the article, Marshall McLuhan (which I haven’t yet grab hold of), is that the medium of transmitting message and content, is the message itself.

It is a hard idea to grapple with. Most of the time we think of a medium as a ‘device’ to transmit message or content. However, accordingly to McLuhan, it is the form of medium to changes our consciousness. It comes in a chronological map of development. First comes the medium, then message, then content and finally effect.

Author of Theory is the Reason, Kevin Lim wrote a post about Facebook, and through the post, analyzed the use of various social network in our lives.

Here is a table that he drew up that draws his view of the social networks.

Although the motives and idea seems different, it portraits the variety of social networks. Regardless of the content, message, it ultimately depends on the medium (purpose of the social networks) to draw its definition.

This is a difficult 6 pagers to go through and failure to comprehend = failing of mid-term. So I’m just writing it out there. This post doesn’t start covering the depth of the paper, and it is by all means not an accurate account of my understanding since I still don’t quite understand it.

Love theory paper. Simply love them.

Click on image to enlarge

If you ever read the PhD, you learn about the lives of graduate students (somewhat), and you can see a difference between them and the MBAs. Especially the way they wear their Polos.

Click on image to enlarge

If you ever read the PhD, you learn about the lives of graduate students (somewhat), and you can see a difference between them and the MBAs. Especially the way they wear their Polos.

Courtesy of Hamish Williams
So most of us should have heard about online banking. Not just online banking through your local banks, but more so of online banking through online banks. Higher yields, higher interest rates. Lifehacker provides excellent briefing on the subject. So I’m extracting bits for references both for you and I.

This is for savings account. Even though this post was posted almost half-a-year ago, most of the content should still be valid. One that I think I will get into is the E*Trade account with 5.05% APY and just $1 minimum to open and no minimum balance required.

For checking account, which is not on the list, I’m thinking of the Electric Orange (again recommended by Lifehacker, its turning into a culture of its own even if the news is 4-month old).

And learn how to save too!

So yea, for 3, 4 even 5% APYs, trying heading online. It may feel a little strange and insecure in the beginning, but you can read a blog, you should be able to live with the tech.

For some reason, I’m kinda excited about preparing for GRE.
It’s been awhile since I took one of those standardized exams.

Pray that God will provide.

In the news, England won their 2nd qualifier game this week with a 3-0 win over Russian. 3 is the magic number for now.

For some reason, I’m kinda excited about preparing for GRE.
It’s been awhile since I took one of those standardized exams.

Pray that God will provide.

In the news, England won their 2nd qualifier game this week with a 3-0 win over Russian. 3 is the magic number for now.

From Apple.com

For all that’s been asleep for 24 hours and have just woken up.

Apple has a new series of i-Products, not entirely new, but mostly a revamp – check it out at Apple.

And on WSJ today, in just 5 lines with no expansion – from the Pentagon officials, A B-52 bomber mistakenly armed with six nuclear warheads flew from North Dakota to Louisiana. Wow, we are borderline close to being mistakenly x-ed.

My marketing professor was pleading for us to read the newspaper, reminds me how we pleads to people to read the bible. So I picked up one and read and its actually pretty entertaining (so far).

Picture courtesy of Casey

One statement was repeated several times during Pastor Dan’s message was that, there is always more in/through Jesus.

There’s got to be more. There’s got to be more that we can do to learn about him. And there’s got to be more that he can do in our lives to amaze us. There’s got to be more than just the seeking comfort in gatherings. There’s got to be more.

There’s so much more possibilities. We just have to lift up our eyes and look up the skies, just like Abraham did and see that God is bigger than our problems, He is bigger than statistics, He is bigger than the situations that we are in, He is bigger than that person who refuses to believe in Him, He is still bigger than all the sorrows, troubles added together and multiply it ten times.

For anybody who knows God, please, know that there’s always more coming from Him.
If He desires a group to gather, it is not so that they can feel warm and fussy, but so that it can be scattered in the end and His name be lifted high (Acts 1:8).

Seeing things from God’s point of view is so hard, but when the frequency is tuned just right, everything will fall into its place. And it won’t be an option to have little faith.

School seems to be a long stretch in most of our lives. I have spent almost 15 years reading from textbook and preparing for exams. (Photo courtesy of Katya)

If managed well, one can get a MSIS (Master of Science in Information Systems) degree by 2009 Fall. And with all the ‘lucky’ coincidence, it might just end up being that way.

Pastor Wendell said this a few times – you got to give yourself up first before God can show you what He desires of you in the future. I feel like I’m ’seeing’ things.