EURO 2008 Finale

A quote from Gary Lineker, "Football is an easy game. 22 men chasing 1 ball and in the end, Germany will always win". See how true this quote will end up tomorrow.

I've never been a Spain fan, because they look strong on paper but always fail to deliver. But looking at the way Fabregas penetrating the defend line with short passes through the middle, the trick often or traditionally deployed by the latins, exposed the secret of their winning streak.

But the Germans are strong tactically, they can revamp and execute their strategies efficiently, that's why they can pace-up their game whenever required.They can win against any team, as the manager will customize the prescriptions according to the problem. If they play double layer defend, with 5 in the middle, then they have a good chance of blocking the Spaniards from scoring. Else, Lineker might have to come up with a new quotations!

Is it a jinx or a curse?

We (Mudin, Anbo, Mat, Pendekar, and I) had a 'ngeteh' session last night from 9.00 PM until 1.30 AM. So, I decided to stay up another few hours for the Holland - Russia match. My kid's PSP will keep me busy while waiting for the match to start.

Well, Portugal is out. The Croatians who beat a three 'star' team was stopped by the die hard Turks. The Dutch who thrashed other teams in its group level is at the best 8 only. Thanks to Guss Hiddink's russian roulette. It appears to me all group winners can't campaign any longer in this Euro 2008 edition. It is like a jinx or a curse of being the group winner. One more match to go Spain vs. Italy. Put on your bet, who will march on?

If it is Italy, then I see a lesson, you got to beaten to go further or you got to fall so you can bounce back higher...

Cenggini baru best....

Thanks Azam for your time. I really hope more of us can spend some time contributing their materials to this blog, as we have members from various background, residing in different region, culture, climate etc. It believe it would be nice if each of us could write something here.

Anyway, talking about the economy, I think its going to take sometime for the economy and especially the KLSE to go back into high gear. This is because the situation right now is not about the region, like the previous one, but something of a global scale, the inflation.Imagine people around the world losing their monies and all are being sucked into the middle east.The richer the middle eastern governments are, the more monies they can hand out to the hedge funds, and the more monies handed out to the hedge funds, the higher the petrol price is going to be.The higher the petrol price is going to be, the richer the middle eastern government will be and the cycle will start all over again and leaving us with less money!

The only opportunity to reverse the cycle around here is to make the speculator start making money by "shorting" the market. Then only we can have some breathing space. I hope the media could start playing the negative song about the global economy soon, so as to hint to the speculators to start selling and create a negative cycle.

One thing I can say about the government is that they are not creative and entrepreneural enough to take care and solve our problems. Obviously they are not leveraging sufficiently on our resources to combat the rice price hike, gasolene price hike etc. In short, they are not thinking enough.

Anyway AY, thanks for the material. Pendekarg, Ron, Kodiang, Pak Salih and others, please dont hesitate to publish your materials here. Just send them to me.

Rgds.

Confusion and uncertainty

Apologies for the lack of postings. As usual, work is still a priority so I couldnt write much. But there were plenty of stories to tell, most notably the fuel and electricity price increase and more political twist this week with the SAPP's no confidence on the PM saga.

The KLCI today closed 10 points higher at 1206 points. But that comes after a series of declines over concerns on inflation and political uncertainty. With the energy price adjustment, the market is worried that inflation might exceed 7% from its usual 2-3% range (from what I last recall), which could also lead to interest rate hike of between 25-75 basis points (from what brokers been telling me).

For an average guy on the street, all this means higher cost of living. Suddenly your take home pay is not worth that much any more. You may need to adjust your lifestyle and cut leisure spending, dining out etc. The low-income bracket might not see direct hit on their electricity bills, or will only see a small increase in petrol expenses on their motorbikes, but prices of other products are rising too because of the general increase in energy cost. So all in all everybody is affected, both direct and indirect way.

The political drama is not helping either. Foreign investors often ascribe a premium to political stability, though the exact premium amount is still debatable. With all the noises of political defection and power transfer, investors are likely to take the sideline and wait for things to unravel. Shorter term investors might even decide to sell first and worry later. Perhaps one might not see rampant selling by all of them, but clearly there's no reason to favor this market when there is political and social tension on the ground.

We're lucky in the odd sense that the rest of the world are also facing challenging times. So the impact on Malaysia is not isolated. China market, for example, has fallen over 40 percent ytd. But this makes their market no longer expensive when compared to Malaysia. US is still unravelling the sub-prime losses on its financial sector and now coming to feel the effect from the spiralling fuel cost. It is a worldwide phenomenon not unique to Malaysia.

I think it is going to be a while before we see market recovery. Right now there are so many theories on how the market will react. Any data releases can have double meaning. Even further increases in oil price can be seen as a positive sign that demand is still strong. Less than three months ago the US Fed was cutting rates, now there are talks of a rate hike soon. May be the market is confused. I know I am.

-AY-

Anti Ghout Cocktail

Assalamualaikum friends.
Kepada kengkawan yang suffering from Ghout, please try this at home.
Kawan aku yang dah kena dan sembuh yang mengajarkan resepi ni...

Segenggam Ibu Kunyit
Segenggam Ubi Cekur
Segenggam Lempoyang

dibersihkan dan dibuang kulit.

1 Cawan Air Masak

Blenderkan semua ramuan di atas dan minum 1/3 resepi ini setiap kali, dan minum 3 kali seminggu,i.e Isnin, Rabu, Jumaat selama 3 bulan dan pantang makanan yang boleh trigger ghout seperti kekacang, daging, ayam, telur, tomato etc. dan banyakkan ulam, ikan dan banyak air kosong.

Semoga Allah taala menyembuhkan penyakit anda.

orchestra vs band

I don't know the difference and anybody care to show or tell me the difference?

From wikipedia orchestra is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orchestra, and band is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Band_%28music%29?

Anyway, check these out. I personally think they are impressive. Playing instrument while doing the formation, it is awesome. You guys can search starwinds at youtube and get more clippings.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kfq0riLOtxE&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-llinmEZGc&feature=related

I recommend us to promote them and try to get them more opportunities and avenues to demonstrate their talent...

Enough about health, now the fever is on.

Euro!Euro!Euro!

Traditionally I would be supporting Germany, but
looking the way the Dutch whacked the Italian, proved
that beside Germany, the Dutchmen are much more
leathal than any other team, at least for the time
being.

The secret of a champion, just like MU, is to have a
revolver like goal blaster with a pair of hands that
can cover the goal mouth completely. Yes completely!
That is the different between MU as compare to
Liverpool, Arsenal or even Chelsea with Cech at the
home.

And now Van Der Sar is at the goal against even Buffon
and Lehman. Cech's team is a little bit full of oldies
therefor the nearest contender perhaps Germany or
Greece.France look like a strong team, but, but, but,
I dont see the mighty pair of hands that can cover the
whole goal mouth there...

In attacking, the Dutch has Van Nistelrooy, Robben,
Snyjder, Kuyt and the have the luxury to keep Van
Persie reserved. What a line up! On paper, The Dutch
is the team to beat, but who knows, "Bola tu bulat!"
The Orange spirit!

This one is from Survival of the sickest.

As usual, this article is from Mat. bekam vs beckham?

Remember in our kampong, old men used to do "bekam" to
release the so called dirty blood.I believe this
practice is a very old as agreed by the author as this
practice can be traced back to ancient Egyptian
civilization. This is an interesting phenomenon that
was later described by Sharon Moalem MD in his book.

As a young boy he was confused by his grandfather who
used to bleed to relief himself from some sort of pain
that was unexplainable in the 60s.So when he become a
doctor he studied about this so that he can treat his
grandfather. He found out that his grandfather was
suffering from Haemochromatosis, a rare phenomenon
where a person has too much iron in his blood stream.

He concluded that this syndrom is a genetical problem
based on the significant different in the number of
patient from people originated from the western part
of europe, but I doubt his sample size is global
as Asians also getting the same sort of problem. If I
were him I would subgroup it to Age (before drilling
down further) for the T- Tests.

The problem with iron overload is that, iron can
neutralize the effect of antibiotic thus exposing
ourselves to all sorts of external threats. For
instance if you are on antibiotics and at the same
time you are taking iron supplements, the risk of your
antibiotic becoming malfunction is very high as
microbes are feeding on iron to fight the antibiotic!
The same with cancer cells which also feeding on iron
to grow.

Going back to the solution, the act of bleeding
himself, was the natural solution as it will
immediately cut down the iron viscosity in the blood
thus relieving himself from external threat.This finding
proves to the author that ancient medical practices
worth to be explored for modern science to find more
solutions.