上回儿泡泡茶谜底答案:

No. 1
Q: 草木中有一个人， 猜一字。
A: 茶。

No. 2
Q: 小明考99分，小华比小明多一点， 请问小华考了几分？
A: 9.9 分。

No. 3
Q: 流血的乌龟，猜一个食物。
A: 红乌龟。 (Ang Ku Kweh)

Received this in an email. It's to the tune of 'Yesterday' by the Beatles...


Yesterday,
All financial crisis seemed so far away.
Now it looks as though they're here to stay,
Oh, I was rich just yesterday...

Suddenly,
I am half the net worth I used to be,
with the markets falling constantly,
Oh yesterday I was wealthy.

Why the bubble burst, I don't know,
Leverage, they say.
Should I go short or long
It's gone wrong whichever way-ya-ya-ya. ..

Yesterday,
It was such an easy game to play
Now I need a loan to pay my way,
Oh interest rates, please drop today
How I long for yesterday...

Iraqi who threw shoe at Bush gaining fame
By Los Angeles Times
URL: http://www.leadertelegram.com/story-news.asp?id=BIKLRE58H84




BAGHDAD - In the few seconds it took Iraqi journalist Muntather Zaidi to wing a pair of shoes at President George W. Bush, the Middle East got its own version of Joe the Plumber.

Just as Joe Wurzelbacher’s gripes to Barack Obama during the U.S. presidential election catapulted him to fame, Zaidi’s burst of rage toward Bush during a Baghdad news conference Sunday has made him a household name across the Middle East.

To many people, Zaidi is a hero for engaging in the ultimate Arab world insult - hurling his shoes - at Bush, who ducked to avoid being slammed in the head. To others, Zaidi is an embarrassment for a society that prides itself on being hospitable to guests, even those who are not much liked. However his act is viewed, there’s no question that Zaidi, like Wurzelbacher, is no longer just another Joe.

That probably will create headaches for Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s government as it decides what to do with the 29-year-old satellite TV correspondent, who remained in custody Monday night. To throw the book at the shoe tosser would fuel anger toward al-Maliki and elevate Zaidi to martyrdom among many people in Iraq and the Middle East; to drop the case would amount to ignoring a security and social breach committed on international TV - and shown seemingly nonstop since - not only against Bush but also against his host, al-Maliki.

‘For anyone to behave that way ... is just too humiliating and unbelievable,’ said Tariq Harb, a leading Iraqi lawyer. He said there are laws against assaulting a foreign leader who is a guest in Iraq that would apply in Zaidi’s case.

By Monday, the burgeoning Arab online scene was bursting with positive commentary, poems and even an online fan club for Zaidi on Facebook, which quickly accumulated more than 280 members, with people weighing in from Tirana, Albania, to Fargo, N.D.

‘The famous shoes should be exhibited in a museum, as they resembled a rocket that talks on behalf of all Iraqis,’ a visitor named Zahraa wrote on another Web site.

Baghdadiya, the Cairo, Egypt-based TV channel that employs Zaidi, demanded his release from custody and urged other media outlets to do the same. Former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein’s lawyer, Khalil Dulaimi, called Zaidi a ‘hero’ during an interview on the satellite news channel Al Jazeera and offered to defend him in court. A charity group run by Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi’s daughter Aicha said it planned to give Zaidi an award for bravery. ‘Because what he did represents a victory for human rights across the world,’ Aicha Gadhafi said.

But across the Arab world, the reaction was mixed. In Iraq many journalists said the act reflected poorly on them, and some Iraqis who consider Bush a hero for ousting Saddam were mortified.

‘This is a serious precedent, that a journalist expresses his own opinion, and it will have negative impacts on other journalists working in Iraq,’ said Iyad Malah, a radio reporter in Baghdad. ‘I think we will be asked to take off our shoes when we are invited to press conferences.’

‘I had to take two Valiums,’ said pharmacist Abu Ali, who called the shoe-throwing an affront to his people’s dignity.

The government’s National Media Center denounced the act, and the deputy director of the Journalistic Freedoms Observatory, which advocates for media rights, also criticized Zaidi for acting in nonobjective manner.

L.A. Times-Washington Post

Seen on the plastic covers of bubble tea cups that we purchase last Sunday, at the Kopi Roti Central (your browser needs to be able to recognise East Asian text before you can identify the text, otherwise they will probably appear as hollow boxes or some form of gibberish)

Q1. 草木中有一个人， 猜一字。

Q2. 小明考99分，小华比小明多一点， 请问小华考了几分？

Q3. 流血的乌龟，猜一个食物。

Stay tuned for the answers!

Am back to music full-time until school re-opens! Am working on a couple of musicals (arrangements) as well as awaiting the arrival of the first episode of Milly, Molly Season 2.

Here's a modified setup of my workstation: I'm using a desktop for my music needs, which is much more powerful than my laptop. I can easily run a couple of programmes simultaneously on the desktop without causing any of the active softwares to hang. In the picture you can see that I am able to run Acrobat Reader at the same time as Reason, hence eliminating the need to make printouts when I have to reference sheet music whilst doing arrangements (saves some trees!)

The desktop does not have Internet connection (I intended not to do so), so I have to transfer files via thumb drive. My 2.5-year-old laptop thus serves as the portal to the world. I have to do a virus scan on the thumb drive before I take it to the desktop - the desktop does not have anti-virus software installed on it because it's absolutely useless when it can't be updated regularly since it is not connected to the Internet. Troublesome, but I've gotten by it.



Above: me working on the Beatles' 'Hard Day's Night' for Calvary Assembly of God's Christmas musical The Greatest Love Story Every Told. Yes, I'm still using Reason 3! I refuse to use Reason 4 as of yet because the sequencer's interface is massively different and I can't get used to it. So no go for work, can't spend time pulling hair trying to find this function, figure that button and suddenly realising that I've just wiped out an entire chunk of what I've just played!



Dang! My pitch bend malfunctions! If I do not tape it up, the pitch will go off by itself. So I'm really getting atonal music :P. I have to use the mouse to drive the pitch bend from the software. It's happened since The Tooth Fairy, I just need to replace the tape once in a while, the tell-tale sign appears when the pitch bend begins to run amok once again.


Audio hardware:
1. Digidesign MBox 2 audio interface
2. M-Audio Keystation 61ES MIDI controller
3. Yamaha MSP5 active monitor speakers

Audio software:
1. Sibelius 2.0 (music notation software)
2. Reason 3.0 (music programming software, using software-based samples)
3. Pro Tools LE 7.3 (audio tracking and recording software)
4. Cool Edit Pro 2.0 (audio tracking and recording software)