Liverpool 1 Manchester United 0

Two things wrong about my title. First of all, it was played at Old Trafford. Second of all, the scoreline's the other way round. However, I sent this exact message through SMS to my housemate. What's the big deal you might ask? First of all, he's a big Liverpool fan. Second of all, he was on the way to Holland when the match was played. I could imagine his smugness when the first SMS he received was this score the moment he turned on his phone in Holland. Well, apparently this smugness was there till today (Tuesday) cause he didnt had the chance the check the Net. What a great housemate he has, isnt it.

Which brings me nicely to the enigma of the current MU team. In the 90s, they would always sweep aside all the lesser teams but fall victim to the bigger teams like Arsenal and Liverpool. However, the points they accumulate against the smaller teams would make them Champions by March or April. Well, the tables have turned, boys. Nowadays, it's the other way round. Dogged, determined and fantastic against Arsenal, Chelsea or Liverpool but dreadful against Blackburn, Middlesborough and Man City (of all bloody teams). Plus the scores of draws they accumulated.

What's lacking? Class and consistency. First half against Liverpool was atrocious and it's very obvious that the midfield just isnt working. Defending by Wes Brown and Rio Ferdinand (quite a "lazy" hero, according to that Sleazy Swedish Sven) was superb. Rooney and Ruud were trying their best. It's midfield that let MU down in the first half. I mean, it used to be Giggs, Scholes, Keane and Beckham. Come on, Richardson, Giggs, O'Shea and Fletcher??!! Doubt their names will strike any fear in any other teams. Second half performance was so much better when O'Shea was taken out and replaced by Louis Saha. Rooney's switch to the right-side of midfield didnt do much of a difference since he was everywhere most of the time.

And consistency. Great one match and grubby the other. The story of Manchester United 2005/2006. Wednesday's cup-tie against Blackburn at Old Trafford? Predictable? Not a chance, mate.

Anyway, I'm sure well Sir Alex is more aware than anyone of this midfield problem. Just hope the Glazers still have some small change to buy one or two good central midfielders despite the 500 million pounds debt they have by buying MU. MU fans, don't hold your breath unless the Glazers struck oil in Tampa Bay's stadium:P

Football Sites

Wanna start by sharing these two sites which keeps me occupied everyday (except days when United lose. In case you don't know what team I support, just look at the screenshots below). Everything you wanna know about football are in these two sites. Transfer deals, "rumoured" transfer deals, results, tables, fixtures, injuries. You name em, they got em.

Soccernet:

Ever since I've started using the net for soccer news in 1996 (in fact at that time, it was the only reason I was using the internet. Pathetic, i know), Soccernet has always been my source of information. Run by ESPN now (used to be maintain by British fans or a British company, hence the emphasis on EPL, supposedly the most exciting league in the world), it loads very fast, has very up-to-date news and has all the information a football fan needs. I like the bit where you can customize your favourite team so that news about that particular team appears in a separate column (great for quick scans on your team's ongoings).

Drawback:
Created with Microsoft ASP and runs on IIS. Therefore, rendering of pages on non-IE browsers can be very screwed-up. In fact, you cant browse the pages with Apple's Safari browser at all due to the way it handles redirection.


Teamtalk:

If Soccernet doesnt fulfill you, head on to Teamtalk. Teamtalk is more news-centric, they seem to pick up more details on nitty-gritty stuff. Just like soccernet, they have dedicated pages for each team and these pages seem to have more stuff on your favourite team.

Drawback:
Always loads some Java applet(s), which in turn runs the Java Runtime Environment if you've installed it. This eats up loads of memory and CPU. Especially with Firefox, where you tend to open many pages in multiple tabs at once. But nice about Firefox is that disabling Java is also straight forward: Tools-> Options-> Content->Enable Java (untick this). Do this and Teamtalk loads without any problem.

I'm sure everyone has their own favourite football sites. Please share them if you will:))

New Focus

Suddenly felt that my blog is very directionless. So, from now on, I wanna go fulltime into 2 areas, which I feel extremely passionate about. Football and cars (hence the new blog title:) ) . Will be posting stuff about these two stuff only. I really got a lot to say about these two things since they consume a lot of my attention. Of course, occasionally, I'll still blast about something totally out of the topic;)

Why Art Thou So Slow, Apple Malaysia

Apple US:



Apple Singapore:


Apple Malaysia?


One of the many reasons why I think I'm Stuck In Malaysia;)

Another Feather On Jeremy's Bird's Nest Cap

He has been known to make one's blood boil (think Transport Ministries, environmentalists). He has been known to destroy, annihiliate cars (think Perodua Kelisa, Nissan Sunny, Bugatti Veyron(well initially, at least)). Well, he's got another achievement now besides that honorary doctorate from Oxford. Read more about it here. And it's all due to my careless YM broadcast:))

The World is Watching the MacWorld

Hours before Steve Jobs monumental keynote at the Macworld San Francisco 2006. Got this screenshot of the Apple Store:)


There's also the new MacRumorLive page created by MacRumor specially to cover MWSF. Neat! Rumours are flying hard here and there on other sites as well. Stay tuned!

All Your Wall Are Be Projected

Found this interesting projector from Viewsonic through Yahoo's Consumer Electronic Show (CES) roundup. The PJ106D, "One-Pound DLP Projector" (for more effects, imagine Russell Peters announcing it in his Hong-Kee accent:P) is a battery-powered (rechargeable battery supposedly last 2.5 hours), lightweight (obviously, 1lb without battery, 3.6lb with battery) portable projector. Nice!

Be Cool

If you havent watched Be Cool, you should cause it's so blardy funny. John Travolta is cool as usual, Uma Thurman is hot hot hot as usual with dam funny antics by Vince Vaughn (Flea Diddy) and The Rock (gay actor-wannabe). Even Steven Tyler gives a cameo appearance and mocks himself. Full of funny quotable quotes as well, if you know what i'm saying, when i'm sayin it. Y'all dig that!

Aston Martin Rapide

If you always wanted an Aston Martin but dont want to look like a pimp for child prostituition when you bring your kids out, well worry no more....cause we now have the Aston Martin Rapide, a 4-door version of the lovely, absolutely fantastic Aston Martin DB9:


Photo was taken from Top Gear and article on the Aston is here. Beware, Mercedes CLS, Jaguar XJ and the lot. Here comes Aston Martin's winner.

What is backmasking?

Backmasking is a technique that supposedly implants sublimal messages into songs when they are played backwards. According to Wikipedia, it is used by Christian Rock bands , secular rock bands and even pop singers to send a message across to their fans. It such a pervasive technique that Sox, a commandline audio manipulating software, pokes fun of it as seen below:



Here are some samples if you really wanna listen. Do so after reading the link to wikipedia. Some guy even backmasked Jingle bells. LOL!

Test Your Love Compatibility

Found this interesting site to test your love compatibility. All the best!