This is the third book I have read authored by Steve Berry, the first being “The Third Secret” and the second being “The Templar Legacy”. This time, this book is about a fictitious organization called The Venetian League.

Like the previous two books, they have a bit of history in them. The Third Secret is about visions of the Virgin Mary and the Vatican and The Templar Legacy, is as it’s names suggests, something to do with the Knight Templars. This book though, has something to do with Alexander The Great, who conquered many countries, a bulk of it is under Asia.

Basically, it’s about a conspiracy between the current leader of the Venetian League, and the Supreme Minister of the Central Asia Federation (fictitious too). The Supreme Minister is this power obsessed lady who has been inventing biological weapons, and intends to follow in Alexander The Great’s footsteps in conquering certain countries near her Central Asia Federation. The leader of the Venetian League however, is more obsessed with making money and discovered a natural source of water filled with bacteria that instantly kills the HIV virus.

The book takes you through the same characters as The Templar’s Legacy, and you follow the exciting quest of going through many mysteries and getting near to Alexander’s grave and the place where the mystical water, also known as the draught, exists.

People get killed, people go missing and people are found. Elements like Greek fire are also inside and it’s a pretty interesting read. Like the previous two books, there are factual elements regarding the history behind the book and it’s all very interesting to me.

You can borrow it from the library!

The movie is actually Batman: The Dark Knight, but I thought it would be a great title to give it an alternative name, Joker: The White Knight, as a tribute to the actor Heath Ledger who died after the movie was done. The tribute is not something that I give out without merit. Seriously, the character Joker was portrayed so well that I feel Joker IS the main character, rather than Batman.

Why The White Knight then? White as in versus black. Similar for Joker’s white face and Batman’s Dark mask. Perhaps it should be called bright vs dark, but I thought The Bright Knight sounds weird. Anyway in the movie Joker tells Batman “you complete me”. In a way, Joker is the opposite of Batman. The balance of good and evil. The yin and the yang. The white and the black, whatever you call it. I find it alright to say Knight since in a way the Joker is fighting for himself, and is quite good at showing how corruptible the human beings are.

It’s a first, but I must write this here instead of writing this after I end off. I rate this 9 out of 10. It’s very good. Kept me captivated for the whole 2 and the half hours. If any movie deserves to be called action packed, this is it. It’s really packed with action from the first hour. I saw the Joker get caught, I thought it’s going to end soon, but it’s wrong. More action comes, more plot, more sinister Joker moves, plenty of chances for the Joker to show his power. It’s really captivating and great.

Jiahao reviewed this long ago and Waikit did too. Read their reviews for more information.

I fully understand why people have called for Heath Ledger to be given a posthumous Oscar. This movie allows him much room to play and display his brilliant acting skills. His portrayal of Joker is so good and so evil that I feel Joker is such a more interesting character than Batman in the movie.

By the way, Batman Begins is supposedly the prequel, but you don’t have to watch it to watch The Dark Knight. I haven’t watched Batman Begins before, but perhaps I should watch it. Time for some Batman maniac time.

Well I don’t believe in making only new year resolutions, anyway I believe if I have to wait to make a resolution, it’s going to be too late. Hence, I have a new mid year resolution, and that is not to get involved in any flame wars going on the internet.

Flame wars are really getting insane lately, and if you want to find one, its at you-know-where. In fact, I feel that there are not many mature people around the blogosphere who wants to discuss things in a more mature way, of which I feel we should accord everyone the basic respect. Everyone’s views are not wrong, because they have their reasons for feeling that way. It is up to a good discussion to filter out what is the crux of an issue, tackle it, and solve it. However, I’ve been pretty disappointed because most discussions end up with really childish people.

What’s up with name calling? What’s up with trying to flame and not really doing anything? What’s up with posting “Ex-****sters trying to ruin ****” when the author himself is the one who seems to be racking up the flame war? I had a discussion which ended sour because the other party was too childish to respect opinion. I understood his point and respected his opinion, but he called me names, so that’s it.

My mid year solution is to not participate in flame wars. When things go out of hand from discussion to flame, I will not comment any further. From now on, I will only day “Thank you and have a nice day”, and things will end that way. Any name calling just further demeans the author of that comment, and does not really hurt me in any sense. After all, it makes no sense to argue back and destroy my very own reputation, no matter how little that is, isn’t it? After all, winning a debate is not just having the last word, it’s about having everyone’s else’s recognition of your views as most appropriate.

I don’t believe in name calling and I don’t believe in making derogatory statements like your mom is a blablabla, which happened in one of the comments in my blog. Luckily, its from somebody to another person, and not to me, else I would have probably cursed that guy and hopes that his mouth grow thousands of little ulcers and that he will sleep and have a whole bowl full of salt filled in his mouth and when he is in unbearable agony I will pluck his nails out one by one and then I will blablabla.

So, if you believe in what I believe, repeat after me: “I will not argue with kids”.

Bascially, Kekkon Dekinai Otoko means “The guy who cannot get married”. Kekkon = Get married and Otoko means Guy. I don’t know the exact for Dekinai, but nai I believe is to show the can’t as opposed to can.

This is a twelve episode series and brings you through the life of this single man who is a professional and well known Architect with some weird personalities. (Sounds like me sans the professional and well known architect). This guy just always say the wrong thing, but when you think deeper, he is actually right, just that he has no tact. He doesn’t believe in getting married and has a small apartment of his which he termed his santuary and he doesn’t invite anybody to his house because its whatever personal space he has left.

When he got stomach pain, his neighbour sent him to the hospital and that is when he was acquainted with the neighbour, a girl, and the doctor, a lady nearing 40 who’s single too. He is just over 40, so just nice. But he isn’t interested.

Every episode you is different with different themes, mostly titles “Who says I can’t…”. Like “who say’s I can’t hate flowers”. It brings us through his every peculiarity and how he eventually changed himself.

But the funny thing is, after watching this drama, I felt that “Hey it’s not so bad to be single”. Especially with his posh apartment. Small, but nice and comfortable. I can envision myself doing that, and it’ll be fun too. Perhaps get the dog in the show. Kawaii ne.

The sad thing is you probably cannot do that in Singapore. Perhaps when I’m 40, but you have to be 35 to get a HDB flat. Else you have to get a private apartment. So there, sad isn’t it?

The ending of the drama is not so sweet, but sweet in Kekkon Dekinai Otoko’s way. He confessed that he fell in love with the doctor, who’s actually secretly in love with him as well. He invited the doctor to his apartment (wow..you know how much it means to him) and said something twitty like “If you insist you can come”. Which is -_-” because the doctor never insist. Is the architect invite one. So the doctor says “No. But if you insist I will come”. Eventually he got past his twitty-ness and said “Yes, I insist”. And hence happily ever after.

This is not a bad drama. 7 out of 10 points!

In the past few months, I have been reading blogs from Ping.sg, and I am also aware of all the fuss that arose from arguments over how shallow a blog post is, or over DK’s outburst, and even recently, Noctourne’s criticisms. There are a few things we can think about from all these outbursts, and they may be lessons, or they may be not.

The first thing that I thought about was “Can we blog personal stuff at our blogs”? I say, sure, we can blog personal stuff on our blogs, and we can even rant and rave and take little heat from our opinions because it’s all in the name of a rant. Why then, do we have a big hoo haa? My opinion is this: Ping.sg is like a collection of blogs. We know each other through our blogs. I know Kris the blogger from his blog, same goes for DK, Paddy, bla bla bla. I do not know them for who they are, but I know them for their blogs. Their blog has become a personal identity.

Hence, the problem begins because we all know Daphne as the community manager for Ping.sg, and when we read her blog, we read Daphne the community manager’s blog, and we don’t feel that it’s Daphne’s personal blog. It’s like the owner and founder of Ping.sg. If Uzyn blogs about Ping.sg on his personal blog, we read his blog as Uzyn the Founder’s blog, not Uzyn the person. Hence, it is very important to note that in this case, the blog becomes the sole identity of the person, and anything written on the blog must be written in due care.

Of course, I can write nonsensical stuff on my blog, since you’re reading Ignorantsoup’s personal blog and not Ignorantsoup the whoever’s blog. That’s the difference, because I don’t hold any special rank in Ping.sg, and hence when people read my blog, they treat it like a normal blog. That is what I think perhaps went wrong in this case. Perhaps when one holds a certain position, one cannot afford to be indulgent in one’s own thinking, and must think for everyone’s sake. This is especially so in managing a community.

The other thing that I have learnt is that we have to be accountable for our actions, especially so in a community, or even more so in a business entity. For example, in the corporate world, it is always good and polite to inform someone why the company is terminating his/her service. Be it reasons like “always late consistently”, or “not productive and keep taking breaks”. In the end, we have to account to everyone and inform the co-workers why so and so will be terminated. Same goes for a community. So when someone is “fired”, we have to do a few things.

Firstly, inform the person why we are taking this action. This can be in the form of a formal letter, or an email.

We also have to inform the rest of the community or company why it has happened.

But the most important thing is, we must have a structured set of rules and regulations, such that when we dismiss any member of the community or company, the people around must be able to accept the reason wholeheartedly. For example, if we seek to ban someone because he has been putting up racist posts and disturbing members, we have a valid reason because we cannot tolerate race and religious flame wars. That is something we can all accept.

I must say, I’m not out to start a flame war or anything, but these is what I feel that we can improve, learn and reflect upon. If we can learn from past lessons and improve, we can become better. I do hope that the community can mature and grow, instead of sliding backwards. The first thing we probably have to decide is, is the community a monarchy or a democracy.

There seems to be much debate on organ trading recently after our Health Minister said that we should not reject organ trading entirely. I do agree though, because we can’t reject any solution outright without giving some thought to it. The main thing is, if we can tweak the system to accommodate various valid concerns of the public, then perhaps we may allow organ trading. Which brings us to a point on morality.

It has always been used as a stand against a particular action. 377A was like this. Majority minority. Majority saying it’s against morals blablabla. But I was thinking, what morals are then permitted to stand in debate? Which of the morals should we adopt and which of the morals should we not care too much of?

Singapore is a secular country, and we’re supposed to be having four happy races together. The thing is this, in Singapore, we have racial tolerance. Or religious tolerance for that matter. Which means, we tolerate your practices, even if they are different, and we respect them. We do not say your method is wrong or mine is superior.

So in this case, I was wondering, should religious morality be practised? In a way, since we do not use religion or race to impose values on other people, should we use religious morality to push for laws or used to state a particular stand? I think not. One good example would be abortion. The Catholic Church is against abortion, but there is no such “morals” or rules against abortion in some other religion. Hence, it is only right that abortion is not made illegal. Which is good that it’s not illegal in Singapore.

I’m not saying that there are religious morality in the organ trading issue. I’m just saying should any religious morality stand be made, talking about God doesn’t allow for organs to be traded, that they are sacred to humans, or that the human body belongs to God, it should not be treated as a universal moral. It’s perfectly logical to see why. If there is any religion that doesn’t explicitly prohibit the buying or selling of organs, then who are you to use your religion to impose on me and prohibit me from trading organs. Surely, in this viewpoint, using religious morals as a stand is surely wrong.

But I don’t get it. Sometimes the majority preaches morality, but they are preaching morality for everyone’s sake, but not everyone believes in that morality. If lets say religion X prohibits abortion, and someone in religion X aborts, that’s their problem isn’t it? But if someone in religion Y aborts, is it such a big deal?

Let’s move on.

Talking about organ trading, I did it as part of my Critical Thinking and Writing module in NUS in my first semester of study. I find that it is pretty interesting, and we are somewhat handicapped because we try not to be the first few countries to implement a particular controversial policy.

But I am very curious. If organ trading is allowed in Singapore, do you think Singaporeans will be the buyers or the sellers? I ask this because it seems to be an issue that people think the poor will be exploited. I somehow believe that there will be more buyers than sellers. The majority of Singaporeans are educated and will know that the risk of having one less kidney may lead to more chances of having renal failure. In a way, the majority are not so poor as to need to sell a kidney to maintain life. I do not know if people will sell kidneys to buy branded goods, but let’s not move into that.

If, we say that more often than not, Singaporeans are buyers and not sellers, can we take issue that the poor is being exploited? Knowing full well that Singaporeans are going overseas to buy kidneys for transplant, in China and many other countries. Plus, the government subsidies medicine to prevent Kidney rejection when these Singaporeans come back to Singapore with a new kidney. Hence, isn’t it hypocritical of us to claim poor will be exploited when it is perfectly find to buy a kidney elsewhere, just not Singapore? Hence can we say that the poor will be exploited? If so, then ban kidney trading in its entirety. Why encourage by giving subsidies?

In my stand in the paper I wrote, I believed that we can allow organ trading, but of course, with checks and balances. We must always have a well oiled system of checks and balances to prevent exploitation blah blah blah. One of the methods is to make the seller fully aware of risks involved. This includes a greater possibility of renal failure, as well as risks of the operation. The seller may not feel as fit as before since an organ is missing, and in some cases, it seems that people have difficulty lifting heavy objects after the operation. As long as the seller is fully aware of the risks involved, and makes an informed decision, I don’t see why not.

But I believe that Organ Trading will raise implications for the current system. For example, how will it coexist with HOTA? If we allow organ trading, who will remain in HOTA? People may end up selling their kidneys instead of giving it. For example, a youth is killed in an accident, his parents sold his kidneys instead of donating it to HOTA. How then, shall we overcome this problem? That’s for the government to decide.

I believe that there are many problems and I also believe that there are many people who have written letters giving suggestions and raising questions, and I think that’s good. Hopefully the government takes into consideration the various issues pointed out and come up with a solution that can benefit and coexist with HOTA. Perhaps we should put down our so called personal morality and think for everyone. For not all morals are morals to everyone.

Imagine having the perfect love robot. A male robot dedicated solely to love. To please you and make you happy. Engineered just to how you think a perfect boyfriend should be. Should he be easily jealous? Adventurous in bed? What looks should he have? Should he come and pick you up from work? Blablabla.

Zettai Kareshi, literally Absolute Boyfriend (Zettai = Absolute and Kareshi = Boyfriend), is about how a Japanese research company created this so called perfect lover, in the form of a male robot. They wanted someone to test the robot, hence they tried to find someone.

Izawa Riiko is the lady that they found. Apparantly she’s too serious for people to like her, and she has just been unsuccessfully trying to attract the guy she likes. Sadly that guy doesn’t like her at all.

A namecard was given to her by the research scientist, Namikiri Gaku, and she went to the company to look around. In the end Namikiri convinces her that he is able to find the guy of her dreams and asks her to fill up a computerised form of characteristics her boyfriend should have. Soon enough, the robot prototype 01 was sent to her.

Frankly, the robot is really nice to her. If he is human, perhaps she would have liked him, but it’s a little weird to like a robot knowing that it’s a robot. By some unfortunate chain of events, she eventually “bought” 01 at 100 million yen, payable in instalments of 70 years. Thankfully 01, whom she named Tenjo Night, is able to work and help her share the burden.

The robot does many nice things for her, including helping her patch up her strained relationship with her father when her parents came to visit, and even gained the approval of her father. He once went to search the entire forest for torn pieces of a photo, just because the win blew them away. He tells Riiko that he loves her constantly and always says he is her ideal boyfriend, of which Riiko will cut in halfway and tell people he is just her cousin.

Eventually, Tenjo Night had his own mindset and stopped following the program he was programmed to do. He becomes quite “human” because he has feelings and his own mentality and plans. The research company sends someone to recall 01 back to reformat him, because a robot that doesn’t follow the program is dangerous. Namikiri informs Riiko of what the company wants to do, and Riiko runs to the company only to discover that Night is being reformatted.

However Night resists reformatting, and Riiko successfully intervenes. During Namikiri’s call to Riiko when Night was “in custody”, Riiko learns that Night has his own consciousness. Riiko starts to appreciate him and love him back, but a very sad thing happened.

Spoilers!

Night’s human’s instincts is causing the computer to overheat. His main chip eventually burns out, and before he “dies” he did many things for Riiko, and even recorded his memory in his main chip. When he dies Namikiri gives Riiko the main chip and let her see the video of Night’s memory, and Riiko cries because she loved Night too. I feel very sad after watching the ending, but I guess that’s the best ending. It would be weird if they lived happily every after and Night doesn’t age right? Not to mention fornicating with a robot. Hmm.

End of spoilers!

Anyway this is an absolutely good (pun intended) drama series. Do watch it. 8.5 out of 10 stars!

Before anybody thinks that the word Strip is something suggesting and not safe for work, let me clarify that this book has nothing to do with Stripping. Strip just refers to a general area in the book, or where the plot is located in.

I borrowed this book from the library and this is the first William Bernhardt’s book that I have read. I must say that he is a good author and I will definitely be finding books that he has authored.

Strip Search is actually of the “Thriller” genre. Basically it’s a detective book, where you have detectives running around trying to solve this mass murder that is happening all over town. The main protagonists are the criminal psychologist (in charge of getting the criminal profiling done), as well as the Chief of Police’s son, who isn’t nomal. If I remember correctly, he is autistic and is super brilliant at mathematics.

The criminal or criminals have been going around killing one person at a time, and every time one part of the body is left at the murder location, like an arm or the head or the skin of the skull or the heart. Everytime when the body is found, it is discovered that the body is branded. Which means the victim was forced to endure hot iron on their bodies which gave them a scar in the form of a letter in the alphabets.

The weird thing is, at every location, there is a particular mathematical formulae written down, which makes the detectives even more puzzled. In the end, the psychologist and the autistic son finds out many things that allow them to know when will a person be murdered, and who will get murdered. A spoiler, the victims are murdered on days where the date is a prime number. Everything is linked to mathematics, and it is a good book to read.

If you have time, just go down to your local library and borrow it.

This is seriously a good JDrama. I enjoyed all ten episodes very much and I must say I watched it within 3 days and now it has left a void inside me. This belongs to a comedy kind of drama and it’s based on school life, like Dragon Zakura, another great JDrama that I have watched during this three month university holiday.

So what’s this drama about? This drama is about this guy Makio who’s 27 going on to 28 in this year (2007). His father is the boss of a Yakuza, meaning gang. However, his father wanted to do his part as a father and hence forces Makio to go to school before he will consider him to be the next boss. Makio, whose wish is to become boss, had to agree.

The problem is that his dad got him into the high school through the back door and he has to hide his identity. No one must know he belongs to a Yakuza, so no violence blabla. In the end he gets bullied and has to hand over money occasionally to the class bully. He fails his exams, attends supplementary classes and ends up attending preparation courses for university entrance examinations, something he need not take since he is not going to university.

Through the 10 episodes he matured and learnt more things about love and friendship, and even fell in love with a 17 year old girl. (He hid his age and everyone thought he was 17). This story is pretty funny because he has to pretend to be a nice guy and not get violent. But actually he is a pretty nice guy to his classmates. He becomes the class leader and led the class in many activities.

This is a pretty good JDrama so watch it if you have time!

9 out of 10 stars.

This special is the continuation of the Nodame Cantabile JDrama, and has two episodes. Previously, Jia Hao has done a review on the special. The two episodes are 2 hours each, and they are continuous episodes and not stand alone, unlike Densha Otoko’s Alternate Ending Sp and Indiana Jones Sp.

And so begins the spoilers:

The story takes place in Europe now, when Chiaki has managed to be able to sit on an aeroplane and fly there with Nodame (Noda Megumi). The main story is about Chiaki deciding to only contact Viera Sensei when he has won a prestigious conducting competition. Chiaki meets another person who’s Viera’s pupil, as well as another Japanese, and together they enter the competition. At the same time Nodame is alone with 2 other house-mates (live in the same “house”) and trying to learn french. Nodame found herself to be weaker than the rest of the students in terms of analysing the background of the music.

Chiaki finds himself getting the perfect score along with Viera’s other pupil, and in the 3rd round, they are both going to perform the same song. Chiaki is performing after the guy, and he became stressed out when he discovers that the guy performed well. During his own performance, he screws up by making the orchestra dislike him, and the orchestra played the piece without even looking at the conductor. Despite that, Chiaki managed to enter the fourth and final round.

Chiaki enters the Nodame depressing mode, where he has a whole hair full of “flies” blabla to signify he didn’t really have the heart to even bathe. Nodame arrives to cheer him up and because of certain events, he cheers up and gears himself for the final round where he corrects his mistake. He reminded himself to respect music and hence then will the orchestra respect him too. With his superb performance in the final round, he emerged the winner. It is also declared that Chiaki intends to contact Viera and possibly enter his performance tour. However..

Stresseman, henceforth knows as the DOM (Dirty Old Man), is doing something behind Chaki’s back. Chaki gets kidnapped by Oliver, a bodyguard I think, and subjected to cruel torture of tickling, of which Chaki succumbs by signing the dreaded contract, of which he will immediately go with DOM for DOM’s performance tour. Chaki actually doesn’t mind, because it’s a great opportunity, and he leaves Nodame alone for about 3 months.

During which the DOM sent Nodame photos of Chiaki in bed with skimpily clad woman, whom Nodame Cantabile’s watchers should know that they belong to DOM, and Chiaki is probably there in the wrong place at the wrong time.

DOM got sick in the Tokyo leg of the tour and Chiaki takes over and leads the orchestra with a piano performance by this young girl whom I forgot the name. Nodame got jealous and her piano playing got screwed up. Her own tutor asks her, “What do you come here for?”, and she cannot answer that questions.

Chiaki came back for a short half day and caught Nodame in a jealous and bad mood. He didn’t have time to do anything and continued with his tour.

When the 3 months ended, Chiaki came back and had a fight with Nodame. They patched back after some manga style fighting, and everything goes well. Nodame does her first piano recital to great success, and Chiaki did his Europe debut with success too. They share their first kiss and things go happily ever after (unless they do a 2nd SP and break them up).

Heartwarming story. Do watch it.