Sam Sam!

Happy birthday to my superhuman ex-flatmate, Sam!! Yay. He is 28 today, and celebrated by going for a run.

Yes.

My hair extensions dream looks to be coming true! My mother asked me last night what I wanted for my birthday, to which I replied "hair extensions! Hair extensions!". She actually didn't seem too adverse to the idea, which was unexpected. As such, tomorrow I will be going to Uphair Salon on George Street and inquiring about hair extensions! And prices!

If you follow me on Twitter, you will have no doubt seen the myriad of photos I have posted of Lady Gaga's Grammy outing. I just have one more to add. If you or someone you know has a hat like this one, I will buy it off you for a princely sum.

Ah, she is just magnifique!

I need some new shoes. And while I'm tempted to just run out and buy the Asics Gel DS Trainer 15, I've done that before (different shoe, but you know) and then spent the next six months suffering through run training. To that end, I'm going to get some fancy foot analysis done at the Frontrunner in Dunedin. Last time I had shoes actually fitted, rather than purchased on a whim because I liked the colour scheme, I clocked the fastest XTERRANZ run for my age-group, and later won a World Championship title. I think getting my new shoes fitted is the best idea I've had in a while.

It's a beautiful day in Dunedin. Sounds unbelievable - is in fact true. People are surprised to hear that in Dunedin - much like Coventry, England (a place which is considered my home by everyone except me) - the sun does actually shine from time to time. Fingers crossed for outdoor lectures today! Then I have an excuse to wear my extraordinarily large sunglasses.

To that end, I must depart and make trails to the joys that is COMP113. Roll on semester one.

Twit-dict

I've been a Twitter user since December 20, 2008. My first-ever post reads as follows:
"attempting to get out bed for another drive to cowtown"


Since then, my tweets have ranged from mildly entertaining, to downright depressing. Here are some of my personal favourites.


"eww, eye disease" - 9:12pm, April 4th
"I'm sick of SH1, it's always dark, foggy, rainy or 3am." - 5:41pm, April 20th
"I LOVE MY LIFE. In the way that I don't." - 10:57am, April 27th
"drinking cold hot chocolate. wait, if it's cold, does it just become cold chocolate? either way... wish it was still hot" - 6:38pm, June 18th
"@avantiplus plus cheers. about to throw current saddle into pit of hellfire" 6:29pm, June 27th
"going out for a casual drive in what might be a category 1 storm: not the best decision i've ever made" - 11:25pm, June 28th
"ahhh so freezing. never getting up before 6am again! until tomorrow, presumably." - 7:27am, July 2nd
"my back is soooo broken." - 8:52am, July 10th
"going back to sleep. i feel like a bike with no wheels." - 2:32pm, July 30th
"omg guys, did @Gary_Fisher just say LOL? love it" - 11:45pm, August 18th
"damn, i thought it said "china unicorn" on the trending topics. disappointed :(" - 11:34pm, August 28th
"Hello, Saturday. So far I haven't used you well. But it is only 8am so I have more plans for the rest of you. Love, Mim." - 8:10am, August 29th
"car: broken. bike: on its way out. me: still hanging on by a thread. yusss." - 4:10pm, September 2nd
"dear ticket website, you suck, all i want is to buy my bad religion ticket." - 5:53pm, September 16th
"workout + big mac = yessss" - 2:18pm, September 21st
"its official. the month of november is trying to ruin my life." - 11:09pm, September 23rd
"standing on an iPod jack: not recommended." - 5:30pm, September 27th
"he's not a man. he's a scrap of indian trash someone found in a pile in mumbai and tried to pass off as a person." - 5:32pm, October 2nd
"MIRIAM WINS" - 1:15pm, October 5th
"#beatbeingbasic? how? by being acidic?" - 4:58pm, October 19th
"my 23-year-old ex-boyfriend who has the IQ of my dog just told me he is pursuing a 34-year-old woman with a 14-year-old son." - 9:38pm, October 23rd
"met a guy from Dubai last night. talked to him for ten minutes and then he introduced me to his friends as his girlfriend. wtf." - 3:30pm, November 1st
"i am so tired. i don't know what part of my brain decided that 3 hours of sleep after 8 hours of drinking was sufficient." - 3:34pm, November 1st
"i just had a very uncomfortable nap on the floor of the UC library" - 2pm, December 1st
"i'm at uni without a pen again. it could be argued that i suck at life." - 11:58am, December 2nd
"haha, there's nothing like watching fashiontv to make me feel like a fat bitch. love it." - 4:36pm, December 8th
"my eyeball is not having a good day." - 2:47pm, December 26th
"hey, good idea willowbank, waterblast the apartments at 9:45pm! it's not like i wanted to sleep or anything." - 9:46pm, January 7th
"run, long-haired japanese man, run." - 4:55pm, January 9th
"afternoon activities: sit next to indian boy in central lib. become obsessed with him and stalk his fb. discover he is a fan of 123 pages. i need a new hobby." - 7:03pm, January 15th
"lost my pants... but found my shoe! a successful afternoon." - 7:30pm, January 15th
"well, our smoke alarm works. and our house smells like burnt pizza." - 6:13pm, January 17th
"i just drank a bottle of four-day-old apple juice. i wonder if i'll die." - 9:29pm, January 18th
"what can i say? i'm really just a fifteen-year-old punjabi girl at heart." - 11pm, January 25th

... Right.

So I have a few more favourites than expected.

I haven't been to sleep yet...

Huitanguru

While I feel that this year is not traveling at the light speed with which 2009 passed (thank god, because 2009 sucked), it's already February so that's exciting stuff. It's my birthday in nine days!

Anyone do anything during January that they felt was particularly exciting? I know that for the most part, I didn't - but I did get my grade for the Te Reo Māori paper I sat at Canterbury (A+) and a $250 cheque from the uni. What? Yeah. That's exciting. I'm using it to get hair extensions.

Priorities? Power bills? Whatever. I'm getting my Lauren Conrad-esque hair at long last, bitches.

Unfortunately my new year's goal of cleaning myself up (well, my atrocious sailor mouth, to be more specific) is still in the works (you will have seen this when I referred to National Lady Gaga Day as "fucking hilarious"). I've also chowed down on the odd McDonald's binge feed. Which is fine, because I like McDonald's. I'm still struggling with the concept of restricting myself. It doesn't make sense. I do what I want!

January sucked for the people of Haiti. February is probably going to suck, too. Don't forget about them! Just because "Grammys" is the number one trending topic on Twitter right now, doesn't mean Port-au-Prince suddenly got better. There are still people who need your help. Men anpil chay pa lou.

Still, February is shaping up to be fun! And it's up to us to make it our best yet. Even if, like me, your resolutions didn't exactly pan out, you can still make an effort. I know I'm going to be.

Thankfully, the string of irrelevant posts regarding Taylor Phinney, the Mumbai attacks, and DailyBooth.com will not be continuing throughout February. There's only two weeks left of class! Hooray!

Oh, and one last thing! Congratulations to my g, Sophia who got engaged to her bee-eff yesterday! Exciting fun times.

I Like This.

It's from the MAC website and it is just ridiculously beautiful. Ahh!

I have a long-held obsession with eye colours other than blue. Apparently, blue eyes are a recessive gene and so less people have them, making me "lucky" (hmm?), but I am just not convinced. I see people everywhere with blue eyes. I want brown eyes, dammit!

And while the so-white-it-almost-looks-like-she's-been-painted-or-at-the-very-least-been-lightened-post-production girl in this photos does not have brown eyes, she has perhaps even more excitingly, green eyes. What fun!

And clavicles. Ah, how I love clavicles. I have some, somewhere. But they don't poke out, and dammit, if there's one thing in life I want, it's clavicles that poke out!

Wow, this post has involved a lot of "dammit"s and "I want"s, hasn't it? Well, my birthday's coming up. I'm allowed.

Teeth

Yep, it's "name-every-post-after-Lady-Gaga" day!

It is sort of relevant, though. My mum, worried that down here in Dunedin we are completely isolated from the rest of the civilisation (and recently, with the Telecom XT outages, some of us have been), sends me copies of the Listener and Your Weekend magazines for my perusal. The beauty pages of Your Weekend are our favourite. There's an interesting recommendation in the copy I received today (from last Saturday, presumably) which suggests my favourite OPI shade, "My Chihuahua Bites!" may once again be fashion-forward.

You'll know from previous posts that my nails aren't usually in fashion. They're likely to be painted any colour that isn't considered stylish. Right now, they're sporting a shade from the 2008 OPI Holiday collection. Which was over a year ago. Last week, it was "Sahara Sapphire" - which was first introduced in the early 90s. Another favourite is "Curry Up, Don't Be Late!" - a tacky gold which has had some passengers in my car banging their heads on the dashboard. I'm not lying.

But now that obnoxious orangey-pinks are apparently back "in", this could be my time to shine!

Teeth? Oh yeah. Chihuahuas have teeth.

The Fame

I'll admit, I'm not actually as huge a fan of Lady Gaga as I make out. I know, right? Shock horror!!

I bought her album two days ago off iTunes (my first iTunes purchase!), which means my "Paparazzi" play count has gone from something like 946 to... about six.

I'm not going to lie - some of the stuff on The Fame and The Fame Monster is a bit shit. But hey, I don't think "52 Seconds" was Bad Religion's finest hour, either and I still love them unconditionally (we're currently on a break, but it's a long-term thing, my relationship with Bad Religion). My personal fave? Well, after "Paparazzi", anyway - which I love so much I want it played at my funeral - I'm going with "Speechless". It. Is. So. Good.

Apparently, yesterday was National Lady Gaga Day. Which I find just, fucking hilarious. National Lady Gaga Day. Obviously, had I known about the celebration, I would have rocked the leotard, six-inch heels and diamond-encrusted sunglasses to Moana Pool. You know, I just have diamond-encrusted sunglasses lying around the apartment. I probably made up for it by listening to her albums on repeat, though.

If you had any sort of decent upbringing, you will have no doubt experienced the amazing magic that is Walt Disney's Fantasia. Well, I tried to hire it last night. I have it on VIDEO at home, but unfortunately for me, you can't play videos on your laptop. Anyway, I was out of luck - the store's DVD copy is "damaged", so I settled for Fantasia 2000. And while it didn't have shit on the original, it was still surprisingly cool. Terry and I watched it at about 2am, and I'm not going to lie - we re-watched "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" several times - mainly for the half-second where Mickey Mouse starts chasing the broom and it RUNS AWAY. At 2am, there is nothing funnier than a running broom. In fact, it's 4pm now and I'm still laughing at the advent of a running broom.

Haven't seen it? Maybe you should. It's kind of good!

DailyBoredom: COMP113 Blog Assignment #3

DailyBooth.com

I joined DailyBooth, grasping at straws for an online community which I could document for this blog. It is a social media-driven site: one which users join after filling in a simple form (name, username, email address and password) and its purpose is to share a daily photo with "followers". It can be likened to the slew of sites for uploading photos to Twitter (twitpic.com, tweetphoto.com, yfrog.com etc).

I initially came across the site by way of Wikipedia - I was directed to a "List of social networking websites".

The rather disappointing "Welcome" page doesn't allow new users to "sample" the site. Personally, I find this an important aspect of a social media-driven site - I would like to know what I'm signing up for. Instead, I was prompted to "Sign up now" and once this was completed, referred to sixteen individual users I might like to "follow". These individuals are recommended for - one presumes - no particular reason, as the site had not yet been given any information about me or my interests (these can be edited, in a Facebook-like profile found elsewhere on the site).

The "Dashboard" page - something which seems to dominate sites like these now - is initially uninspiring. Your profile avatar is an emoticon smiley face, and as you have yet to upload any photos, you can feel quite bored.
Photos can be uploaded through a variety of methods: traditional upload form, through email or mobile, or by using a webcam. While I can't think of any solutions that would improve user experience at this point, as a new user I was bored and didn't feel as if I had much invested in the community - I didn't feel inclined to contribute.

My first submission

Upon uploading my photograph, I was disappointed to discover that it just sat, bored, on my dashboard. How then, did I get it onto the fun, "live" map? This remains a mystery, with the geo-tag function in an undisclosed location somewhere on the site. If it's not easy to find, I can't be bothered looking, and to be honest I think this is to the detriment of the DailyBooth community.

The live map itself was also not as much fun as I expected. At first glance, DailyBooth appears to be a site where people might post pictures of fun, exciting happenings during their day - to me this held the possibility of seeing photos from fun places like "that place", 17 minutes in to the film "Home" - but instead, the overwhelmingly most popular upload seems to be the self-portrait. I fail to see the point. I don't know, maybe some "followers" like to see half-dressed girls lying in bed with a caption such as "mE lying in bEd, LOL". Not really my thing.

DailyBooth appears to lend itself to the ever-increasing number of social media-driven sites, but it's not one I would recommend. Yawn.

This is "that place", by the way. Know where it is? Tell me!

Fun With Skis

I am not even kidding, you guys: in some countries, they compete in what might be the world's greatest sport: Ski Ballet (or acroski).

This strapping young man was the World Champion in 1993. In 1988 and 1992, ski ballet was a demonstration sport at the Winter Olympics, under the freestyle skiing banner. Unbelievable. Where was I in these glory days?!

It's fizzled out since the mid-90s, presumably due to its non-inclusion at the Olympics, which is a shame. I'm sure you will all agree that ski ballet should not only be at the Olympics, it should be part of compulsory physical education in high schools across the world.

Double Layout. Off BEAM?

So, you probably know that I love double layouts. On, floor, off the bars ... but off beam? Wow, I don't think I could contain my excitement if I ever saw one of those.

Apparently, though, it's happened. And though the sources are a little bit sketchy at best, I may be willing to accept that it's been done. The problem, then? That it's supposed to have been done by Armine Barutyan Fong.

Fong?

Yes, yes. She's married to Al Fong. Fail.

Still, I'm okay with ignoring that minor personality flaw if it means I get to see video footage of a double layout off balance beam. There's also reports of a triple back off uneven bars, but that just doesn't seem as exciting. Bars, you know, you have all that momentum, you're 7 feet, 9 inches off the ground, it seems almost natural that someone would attempt, and possibly land a triple back. But beam?

Beam is unforgiving. You'll agree with me if you've ever walked across one. There is SO much less room for error on beam, it's almost unbelievable. There's a reason Carly Patterson is the only gymnast to perform her dismount (unless you cound Bulldog Bross, which I don't, because she butchered it). Why would you ever risk throwing something like that when you could just settle for a double back? And that is why there's about one hundred gymnasts out there throwing double backs.

Imagine then, something even harder than a double Arabian after 90 seconds on a four-inch wide plank, four feet above the ground. A double layout. The mind boggles. And then gets a little bit excited. If I'm honest? No, I don't think it really happened. Or, maybe it happened and she didn't stick it. Maybe she landed on her head, or her butt, or her knees. The fact that she might have tried is exciting.

Will anyone during this quad try it? It's unlikely. But once upon a time, it was "unlikely" that women would do Deltchevs on uneven bars. Hell, it was unlikely that I would win Sportswoman of the Year last year. So maybe someone - Murakami Mai? Deng Linlin? - will give it a whirl.

Murakami Mai

The triple back off bars I don't care so much about. But a double layout off beam? Call me.

What Were You Guys Doing...

On this day, last year?

One of the cooler aspects of having a blog (besides reporting on the excitement that stems from Kate Gosselin's latest hairstyle, obviously) is that you can - for the most part - pick a day, and have a look what you were doing a year, or longer, ago. Today's it's my grandmother's birthday (which, no - I did NOT have to look back and check up on. Happy 81st, Grandma!) and this time last year (okay, maybe not this time, since it's 10:51pm) I was floating in the water at Long Bay, on Auckland's North Shore! Ah, the memories! Those were such good days. I was also preparing for my longtime pal, Libby's 21st. Hard to believe that six days from now, she'll be 22. Time flies, kids. Make the most of it!

Take my day today, for example. As a result of the AIDS face thing, I refused to leave the house, except to buy a skin supplement and some strawberries. What I did instead has already been written about, except I can now happily report that we went for our run - almost an hour's worth, too. Not bad for a pair of sloths who, until yesterday, hadn't worked out this year.

look out

Making the most of it? Okay, maybe not. But there's always tomorrow. Tomorrow is going to be great. I just know it.

Peace and love.

If Only I Still Had Use For Sparkly Spandex...

Yeah, so I peruse the GK Elite website a bit too much for a 23-year-old sloth. Buuut their "Precious Metals" collection is just so cute, I'm willing to get back down to the necessary 35kg to wear one. Ha ha.

I've watched about a million different videos of Ivana Hong's uneven bars routine today, and I just kind of want to mention it to Valeri (her coach, and Nastia's dad) that maybe, just maybe she should consider a different dismount. Double layouts are my personal favourite, but they're just not for everyone. Including Ivana. I mean, if Ksenia Semenova, He Kexin, Beth Tweddle, Nastia Liukin and Bridget Sloan can pull off uneven bars without double layouts, so can Ivana.

Doesn't mean I love her any less... just don't love watching her crash.

AIDS Face

I was excited the other day when I came across an article on Time.com about Dr. David Ho, who is one of the world's leading AIDS researchers. You can read it here, but the gist is that there's a new agent called ibalizumab developed in Houston which may be the key to the antibody to prevent HIV infection in the first place. Can you imagine the implications if something like this actually works? OMG. I can. I'm so excited.

I wasn't so excited, however, when I woke up this morning looking like I have AIDS. I mean, quite often when I look in the mirror, pre-makeup, I have a bit of grimace at the state of my face, but this morning it was really just... something else. Something else that became worse once I put makeup on. Yeah, you read that right. Yeuch. Suffice to say I haven't left the house today.

On a more positive note, Shaun and I finally got off our butts yesterday and not only went to the gym, we RAN there. I know, I know. I never thought I'd exercise again, either. But the fact is, the gaunt, malnourished look has been restricted to my face - that aside, I more accurately resemble a whale. AND we're going for another run tonight! (My thinking being that I look like a tomato hit a windscreen when I run, regardless of AIDS face, so I might as well do it.) We are so fit.

Also, I spent the time at home today constructively, which is something of a small miracle in itself. Yes, I wrote my entire essay for Linguistics, which isn't due for a week. I'm rather pleased.

Peace, love and the antibody that inhibits HIV!

SoKosuke

Well, apparently I forgot alllllll about the Southern California Grand Prix last week after Kosuke Kitajima smashed the 200y breaststroke (1:53.03!) on Sunday evening. I'm now (nearly a week later) very pleased to tell all of y'all that he dominated the 100y event, too - in 52.17.

The 100y event was held on Monday night (which is... strange) and was toted as a "showdown" of sorts between the Tsunami and comparatively average breaststroker Michael Phelps. Not really sure what that was all about, since Mike wound up fifth in 54.25 (that was comparatively average, after all). Oh, well. It just proves that Kosuke is still on top! Yeehaw, bring on London!

Uggh. Enough With The Red, White & Blue Wash Already

I can see where this is going.

The article, about gold medal hopeful Lindsay Vonn, is just a little bit blown out of proportion. The Vonncouver Olympics? Please.

We've heard it before - four years ago, in fact. In Torino. Some larrikin out of New Hampshire, Bode Miller, who "downplayed" claims that he might go five-for-five. It's eerily familiar. In fact, I'm pretty sure I've read these words - "her recent results suggest it's more than possible that she would fare well in every Alpine skiing event on the mountain at Whistler, B.C." - before, just replace "her" and "she" with "his" and "he", oh and "Whistler, B.C." with whichever mountain it was that Miller performed spectacularly badly on in Torino, Italy. Of course, his "downplaying" of these expectations involved stories just like the one about Lindsay Vonn, some bad behaviour on his part (drinking the night before races, living an RV outside the Olympic Village are two examples of this) and well, just generally being a jackass. Then he failed, and shut up.

Sure, next month I may be eating my words. Maybe Lindsay Vonn will win five events, and become the frost-bitten equivalent of Michael Phelps. But you only need to be realistic here: America just aren't that good when it comes to the Winter Olympics. The men's and women's alpine skiing events are usually dominated by good-looking Italians, Swiss, and Germans. The cross-country and Nordic combined? Well, Nordic countries. Even in figure skating, it's been a while since Michelle Kwan's heyday. Yup, they've got their "Flying Tomato" Shaun White, who I love love love, and Hannah Teter and Gretchen Bleiler aren't bad on boards either. And there's nothing wrong with dominating the one event! It doesn't mean you have to shove your mediocre "talents" in our faces, claiming they're going to not only sweep the Olympics, but that people may even start nicknaming the Games after them.

I am just going to crack up if a New Zealander wins a medal in Vancouver. That will be a fantastic day. One you're sure to hear about. Maybe not in the USA Today, though.

It's Three A.M.

I got sick of skating (seriously, "short" programmes are like, three times as long as floor exercise) and decided that instead, I'll post some photos of Ivana Hong. You may have noticed in previous posts (here and here) that I kind of love Ivana and especially love posting photos of her flying through the air. Seriously, she might be the best-looking airborne gymnast in the world.

 

Her most obvious competitor for that title would be Nastia's Pak Salto on uneven bars, of which I weirdly couldn't find the perfect shot of - but this is mainly because I couldn't be bothered trawling the screes of photographs on her website. Like Nastia? You can also follow her on Twitter. Personally, she gets my vote because she's one of a shrinking number of gymnasts who can kind of pull off the compulsory dance elements on floor exercise. Here's a particularly nice example, which I stole off her site.

And, just because I found it on Zimbio and it's not your average gymn shot, Hong again. SO glad she got out the Blue Springs ghetto that is GAGE. I heart WOGA.

Speaking of which, the WOGA Classic is soon! February 13-14, if I'm not mistaken. If short/long programmes with jumps that all look the same freeze your brain as well, check it out.

Maxims In Practice

Relation:

Yup, this picture is relevant to my previous excited posts about the Olympics. It's of US team hopeful Mirai Nagasu (who's fourteen in the photo) and her coach, Charlene Wong. Mirai, who's currently leading the US Championships with a short programme score of 70.06 considered herself a darkhorse going into the event, and wasn't really pinning anything on Olympic selection. She's sixteen, and totes herself as "the future of the US".

Anyway, I love the contrast in facial expressions between Mirai and Charlene in this photo. It's pretty amazing. I've made a few faces like Mirai's in my time.

A US Figure Skating committee will name the team for the Olympics on Sunday night, PST. *bites knuckles*

With Glowing Hearts

Eeee, I can barely contain my excitement: it's nearly Olympics time!!!

You guys have gotten off pretty lightly, given that my first-ever post was on November 21, 2008. If I'd started say, three months earlier, you would have caught the tail-end of the Beijing Games, which, like every other Olympic Games in my lifetime, captured my undivided attention for two weeks. So this is exciting: it's our first Olympics together! And I'm doubly excited because it's a Winter Games, a relatively new obsession.

My first instinct was to try and remember everything I've ever forgotten about figure skating, but the fact is, my brain just can't differentiate between Salchows, Lutzes, flips, and toe-loops anymore. What I have learnt is that Shizuka Arakawa's layback Ina Bauer could be the closest thing to perfection (after like, Nayuha, obviously) on the face of the Earth.

Let's have fun: bent in half edition

So, it may be that we'll go the entire Olympics without a critique of figure skating, but that's probably a good thing. Especially because you just know I'll be too busy salivating over the long-track speed skaters. Here's hoping for a massive Japanese turnout.

I have a new flatmate - who is Norwegian - and as such, knows more than anyone I've ever met about Nordic Combined, Biathlon, and Cross-Country. Which is good. It'll be like having my own compendium, right next to me on the couch, for the entire Olympics!

Yeah, wow - I'm excited.

The Bayswater Crucible

You really have no idea how long I've wanted to call a post "The Bayswater Crucible".

Today, it's in honour of Superhuman Sam, who I love and miss like crazy!!! Seriously, I hardly ever get to talk to him anymore, but I had the pleasure of doing so recently, funnily enough on the day that he chose to set his goals for 2010. (Don't know why this is funny? Read this)

We didn't really discuss his plans - I get the idea that he doesn't really parade them about quite the way I tend to, but we did get a bit reminiscent of our Bayswater days. There were the conversations about med school, the time I got hit by a car then lost my job, the time Sam went for a two-hour run in the rain (okay, that last one probably happened a few more times than once). And yes, he's still going about his action man ways - having recently competed in a 32km off-road run (yep - thirty-two kilometres. That's kind of a long way, guys) presumably with ideas to do more.

I miss Sam Sam!!

Strangely, I've forged a friendship of sorts with a guy in Dunedin who was going to be my flatmate (he told my friend Jess the other day that he realised I was a dick and didn't want to live with me, but it's actually because he got a job with accommodation) who kind of reminds me of Sam. We have similar conversations, and he's rather like Sam in that over-achiever kind of way. Sure, he doesn't run 30km with a smile on his face, but I kind of got the idea that he pursues excellence this morning after griping over the fact that he may have got one question wrong on his chemistry terms test (just to one-up him, I reminded him that I achieved a perfect score on mine). Which is nice. It's always nice to surround yourself with people who are also constantly trying to outdo everyone they know, too. But, he's not Sam... it's not really the same.

If you've been wondering why I've kept quiet on the "here's another foreign university I want to attend" front, it's because I've found a real "doozie". Is that a word? Doozie? I'm sure I've heard it before. It's Lomonosov Moscow State University, back in Mother Russia. Have a look.

It looks more like a palace than a university. That's Russia for you. It's the tallest educational building in the world, which kind of begs the question: how many really tall educational buildings are there in the world? I mean, until they start teaching English as a second language on the top floor of that new 828m-high monstrosity in Dubai, Lomonosov probably isn't going to have a heck of a lot of competition. Anyway, to its credit, the school ranks in the world's top five universities, and has a medical school. So you know, a natural choice. And I love love love Moscow *touches heart and wipes away tear*.

Have you guys donated some coin to relief in Haiti yet? I hope so. If you haven't though, there's still a long way to go for everyone involved, and you should never think that any small amount of money will go unnoticed. Right now in Port-au-Prince, looters with knives are wreaking havoc on the already devastated capital, people are burying amputated limbs, and little kids are going hungry. You can, and you should, help out. Like tshirts? Threadless are donating 100% of the profits from this tshirt to the American Red Cross efforts in Haiti. Not fussed? Visit Google's page to donate some money you would otherwise spend on manicures.

Speaking of manicures, my nails are ruined after doing the dishes without gloves this afternoon. They're in dire need of some OPI loving, so I'm going to shoot off and take care of them.

Peace, love and relief for Haiti!

"Bomb-Bay" And Viral Transmission Of Information (COMP113 Blog #2)

"In a few short generations, a viral population can explode." (source)

In "real life", viruses transmit by attaching to a host cell, then replicating exponentially. Similarly, information online can be shared "virally" - if information is given to two people, and each receiver tells two or more people, the information has the potential to be incredibly far-reaching, especially given the global nature of the internet.

1

11

1111

11111111

1111111111111111

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An example of information transmitted "virally" online is that of the Mumbai Bombings in November of 2008. It is estimated that witnesses to the attacks sent around 80 "tweets" every five seconds during the siege, which lasted three days (source). The subjects discussed ranged from actual accounts of the events ("Mumbai terrorists are asking hotel reception for rooms of American citizens and holding them hostage on the floor") to calls for aid, including the broadcast of emergency telephone numbers and locations for people to donate blood for victims.

For many people, the first news they heard of the Mumbai attacks was via Twitter. Since the service is free, mostly uncensored and incredibly far-reaching, new information - however biased and unconfirmed - was readily available online.

The Taj Mahal Palace and Tower, South Mumbai

(source)

Facebook allowed users to "check up on" friends and family who may have been affected by the attacks. My partner at the time was on holiday in Hoshiarpur (admittedly, nearly 2000km from Mumbai - but the fact that he was in India at all concerned many friends here) and was able to alay our fears by posting the following Facebook status update: "alive and well, far away from "Bomb-Bay" (haha, get it?)" which drew a mixed response from our friends - some who commented "too soon" on his rather offensive play on words, to some who were relieved and passed the message on - another form of viral communication - to other friends. He became the guy that was "almost in Mumbai during the attacks".

In the wake of the Twitter explosion following the siege, the Indian government released a statement requesting that live Twitter updates from Mumbai "to cease immediately. ALL LIVE UPDATES - PLEASE STOP TWEETING" via news websites. This is comparable to the after-effects of the Sichuan Earthquake in China, where the Chinese government "shut down the social media" used to inform and co-ordinate the protests that followed the quake itself (source).

The internet has fairly revolutionised the "word-of-mouth" method of information transmission, and with the constant advances in technology and social media, this is likely to continue.

Yes, I Do Care About Haiti

A huge amount. And this is going to sound uber-lame and cliched, but it seriously upsets me to write about it. I've tried to read every story I can find about it, and I have the .kml auto-refreshing on my Google Earth, but damn, that is some heartbreaking shit.

What should you do if you care about Haiti but aren't in a financial position to donate relief? Um, donate anyway. Fact is, if you're online and reading this, you're better off than everyone affected by that earthquake. It means I have no food in my cupboard for the next eight days, but I'm alive, and online, so you can too.

Google's Haiti Relief Page

Peace, love and sending all the best thoughts in the world to those affected by the earthquake. xxx