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Why must Arthur Guinness choose September 25th, 1759 to sign the lease for his Dublin brewery?

As to cause, 250 years later, a poor guy names James to stop studying in the middle of a night, in the last few days of his crucial study week, to go out and have… beer!!

It was Arthur’s Day yesterday! And it’s gonna be my final exams the day after tomorrow! RAWR!

I had been anticipating September 25th for quite a long time ever since the ads of this incredible ‘worldwide celebration’ were flooding cinemas and TVs and websites everywhere…

Friends had been inviting me to join partying with them on Arthur’s day and everything was all hot and going… And then only to realize a month ago that it would be only a mere couple of days before my final exams!

3 days before exams… That’s so great, Arthur. 

But then suddenly, it was announced that the Black Eyed Peas were coming to Malaysia as KL was to be one of the five cities in the world to host this celebration!

And the greatest and most unbelievable surprise of all, our dearest government, who attempted to ban alcohol sales in certain parts of the country, who fined and caned a model and mother simply for drinking beer, and who had initially banned all Muslims from attending the concert, had suddenly gotten to their senses in the last minute and allowed anyone above 18, Muslim or non-Muslim, to see the concert!

(Although it was approved on the grounds of encouraging tourism LOL, but that’s beside the point…)

See that’s the power of the Black Eyed Peas and Arthur Guinness’ black beer combined!

So if a huge miracle like the government compromising and allowing beer concerts and not arresting Fergie for not wrapping herself up all the way from the neck to knee should happen, who the hell cares about exams??

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For two-hundred-and-fifty remarkable years… TO ARTHUURRR!!!

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*Drinks…*

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*knock*

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P.S. Whoever named Arthur should be very happy on Arthur’s Day. When do we get a James Bond 250th anniversary?

This weekend, MMU is host to one of the coolest events ever held in this city.

And this time it’s not some boring cultural or academic event. It’s an event with a magnitude that has never been seen before in this country.

The dream event of all gamers.

Ladies and gentlemen, but gamers in particular, behold – Cyberfusion 2009!

The event is set to break the Guiness World Record for the single longest LAN Party in the world!

The previous record was held by Nvision, a 2008 LAN Party held in San Jose, California, sponsored by graphics cards industrial giant Nvidia.

This year, the record-breaking attempt is, unsurprisingly, sponsored by none other than AMD, parent company of ATI Technologies, and generally seen as a vicious counter-attack by Nvidia’s ‘most-hated’ nemesis in the GPU industry!

With almost 500 computers in a gaming event set to run for 38 hours non-stop, this is an event that’s totally against the disciplinary and academic culture of a university, but who cares!

This is an event that pwns evry n00b hard lol gg.

It’s a friggin’ cyber cafe of monstrous proportions!

Sadly, I did not participate in it, because I didn’t think I would be able to take out the time for it…

You have no idea, participating in an event such as this drains every single ounce of energy from you after it’s over!

You would need, at least, an extra 12 hours just for sleeping – and still feel utterly exhausted after that!

Alvin had gone to the event on the first day, and told me that it was really exciting!

On the second day, to make it a bit more special, we visited the event at 12 midnight on the second day, exactly 24 hours into the event, to see what was really going on after all the initial hype died down!

(For a brief coverage of the first day’s excitement, Alvin has got an entry on it here.)

After gaming non-stop for 24 hours, some gamers simply couldn’t tahan anymore and were taking quick, stealthy naps.

Some were taking refreshing naps openly:

And some curi-curi tidur:

Anyway, besides their own computers, there were also many gadgets and stuff that the gamers brought themselves!

Steering wheels for racing games:

‘Instruments’ for music games :

And control pads… played on a very nice sarung too! I guess at LAN Parties its all about comfort!

And speaking of comfort, since we were there at midnight, we had the entire viewing gallery to ourselves, comfortably watching and taking photos from above!

Haha!

Cyberfusion will officially end tomorrow at 2PM, breaking the world record by two hours. I know two hours ain’t a lot, but hey, it’s still a world record!

Yes, I know what I’ve said before about setting stupid world records but this is simply such an awesome event that I have nothing bad to say about!

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Bali Trip part 2 coming up in the next entry!

P.S. Got new poll on the left sidebar! Go vote! =)

Yo, yo, whassup people! I’m back from Bali!

It was a sooo marvelous trip and I’m gonna blog about it in one of the next few posts after I’ve got the other photos from the other friends!

P.S. Unfortunately, there was no bombing in Bali.

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Meanwhile, check this out – I went to the International Hot Air Balloon Fiesta 2009 in Putrajaya!

It was an ‘international’ event, kinda like the International Fireworks Competition held near Merdeka Day every year in Putrajaya.

What’s the big deal about ‘international’ events anyway?

Gigantic balloons from countries like France, Germany etc. were lying dead on the floor at 5PM, and under the scorching late afternoon sun it was not entertaining at all…

… not until the large round thing in front of us started inflating and revealed its green nipple-like thing…

… did we realize that it was an orange!

It was one of the first to be fully inflated and became so big that it looked really menacing to the poor inflating blue balloon beside it.

I think it could crush the blue balloon with a long beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep sound (like a high-pitched, long fart) if it decided to fall on it.

One by one, as the other balloons were starting to be pumped, everybody was getting pumped too!

There was also the super cute pink elephant balloon! I think it was the balloon that caught the most attention in the entire event…

… because it was really cute and charming!

… and also because the trunk was inflated last. Everyone stared at the long, dangling ‘thing’ and, as the (crowd) ‘excitement’ grew, it slowly became bigger, longer and harder in front of the cute, smiling elephant face.

Somehow it reminds me of the, er… election happening next week.

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Check out the happy and sad balloons!

Sad balloon being set free into the air…

… becomes happy!

Cute, isn’t it?

Look! A huge Nescafe mug floating in the air!

Seems like a blissful illusion sight of a coffee adict!

Sadly, the Nescafe mug never really lifted off, due to some technical problems. We waited for quite a long time in hopes of seeing the Nescafe mug float up to the sky, but we were disappointed in the end.

Perhaps this could have done better.

Last but not least, there was the grand peacock. Which was the single most enormous balloon of all.

I bet standing under its uh, butt, would feel like an alien mothership descending on you.

Although it lost to the pink ‘errecting’ elephant balloon in terms of cuteness, but this is surely the grandest of all balloons!

It also has the most un-balloon-ish shape ever for a hot air balloon!

Watch the bird fly!

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On that day we also went on the Putrajaya Tasik Cruise, which I had had my eye on the first day I came to Cyberjaya, but had yet to have a chance to be on.

Now I finally got the chance to be on it… really happy! Because  I’m entering my final year in Cyberjaya soon, not many chances already!

The cruise basically makes a tour around the man-made Putrajaya lake with a guy introducing to us the buildings and landmarks that we could see along the ride.

For the boat, there was a choice between the cheaper ‘perahu’s…

… and the slightly more expensive cruise ship.

We chose the latter because the ship had decks at the front and rear for sight-seeing anyway, and it seemed to have less risk of throwing its passengers into the lake.

During the cruise we had the opportunity to see and capture sights that were rarely seen along the river bank or anyway else on land in Putrajaya.

Like the Seri Wawasan Bridge in the close up angle:

and the bottom of it:

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It’s April Fool’s day tomorrow! Watch out!