Mood: Annoyed
Currently listening to: Reptilia - The Strokes

*Aiks* Dammit, hit a few snags on my assignment due for tommorow so it looks like a long sleepless night... :(

Ah well, that's what i get for procrastinating... on the bright side, strange as it is, these last minute assignments tend to be pretty good when it comes to grading!

Time to distract myself! :)

Went for salsa dancing again today in the afternoon. Not sure if i mentioned this before but since last week some of the ladies there have started bringing their daughters along so... errr... things are looking up! (*ahem* No subtle sexual innuendo intended there mind you - they ARE 16-18 years of age) ;p

On the downside the dance moves have started to branch out into what i would think is a more 'intimate' form (think hands on hips, dancing closer to your partner, brushing your hands over them, etc...). How is that such a bad thing? Well for one, not only do i have to do it to my own mother (so wrong!), or to the other ladies who are old enough to BE my mother, but now i have to contend with performing such acts on their own daughters right in front of them (while strangely enough being cheered on by them - bizarre)! Yes, yes, Patrick is a little conservative in this regard (read: shy as heck). Ah well, on the bright side i am apparently getting a lot better at this - probably because of all the practice i get from being required to dance with each and every female in the class for each and every routine we do! Hehe, can't wait until Martin (that's the instructor) opens his salsa bar so that i might be able to strut my stuff! ;p

Went for dinner at the Manadarin Oriental Hotel just now with my Godfather and parents to see Michelin Star Master Chef Stephane Gaborieau in action. Seems that he's a very close friend of Bernard (my Godfather) and we heard him recount a few of the stories of his travels around the world... best one was of him getting arrested by internal security in Vietnam (!) for being caught sampling some exotic brew or the other... Food was good - i had (for Lou's sake since she seems to know her cuisine):

Risotto du Piedmont avec symphonie de jeunes fanes, crystalline de choux et marbre de sauce
Filet de Charolais en tournedos en croute de sel, sauce bordelaise a la maniguette et fricasse de poivrade avec olives
Geometrie variable de glaces et sorbets sur son fondant amande aux fruits de saison

Basically arborio risotto with cheese followed by a pan fried beef tenderloin and then an ice cream and sherbet composition on almond cake - Mmmm... :)

Unfortunately i also had about 4-5 glasses of wine which is not exactly helping me combat sleep at the moment...

Which brings me back to my assignment! *doh* 16 hours to go!!! :o

Today's Links:

Kazaa and co 'not cause of music biz woes', say Profs - "Oberholzer-Gee and Strumpf estimate that it takes on average 5000 downloads to reduce album sales by just a single copy - and that, they say, is a worst-case scenario. On that basis, US CD sales in 2002 would have fallen by two million copies. In fact, they fell by 139 million units between 2000 and 2002. If the professors' analysis is correct, file-sharing may have actually limited that decline. The professors' study suggests that for the top 25 per cent of albums - those with sales of 600,000 copies or more - one extra copy was sold on average for every 150 downloads. That said, downloads did tend to impact less popular albums - those with 36,000 sales or less. Overall, however, the effect is beneficial, since the music industry makes most of its money from the most popular albums." HAH!

Judge: File sharing legal in Canada - "In a far-ranging decision, the court further found that both downloading music and putting it in a shared folder available to other people online appeared to be legal in Canada. "This has certainly stalled (the record industry's) current round of litigation, and ... thrown into doubt whether there is infringement at all," said Michael Geist, a University of Ottawa law professor who closely follows Canadian copyright issues." Double HAH!

Police solve crime with bananas - "Cambodian police have found a novel way of making criminal suspects come clean - by feeding them bananas."

Universe could be teeming with life, says study - "The models also show that life could develop in about two thirds of the systems because the habitable zone moves outwards over time as the star becomes more active. "We now think that at least 10 per cent of stars in the Earth's backyard have planetary systems," he said. "If only half of these are able to sustain a rocky planet in the habitable zone, it means that one in 20 could harbour life. It is possible that the universe is teeming with life.""

Iraq was invaded 'to protect Israel' - US official - ""Why would Iraq attack America or use nuclear weapons against us? I'll tell you what I think the real threat [is] and actually has been since 1990 - it's the threat against Israel," Zelikow told a crowd at the University of Virginia on September 10, 2002, speaking on a panel of foreign policy experts assessing the impact of September 11 and the future of the war on al-Qaeda. "And this is the threat that dare not speak its name, because the Europeans don't care deeply about that threat, I will tell you frankly. And the American government doesn't want to lean too hard on it rhetorically, because it is not a popular sell," said Zelikow."

UFO like '50,000 spotlights' - "Residents of the outback town of Winton saw a flash 'like 50,000 spotlights' as a huge fireball crashed to earth somewhere in central Queensland late yesterday. Authorities are trying to track down the source of a large fireball seen in the sky over the state's north and central west." Aliens in Queensland? Scalar Weapons testing? Preparations for the NLC conference? Who knows... ;)