Mood: Must try and sleep...
Reading: Malaysia haze crisis worsens as air turns unhealthy
Currently listening to: Jaded - Crystal Method
Quote of the day: "Progress isn't made by early risers. It's made by lazy men trying to find easier ways to do something." - Robert Heinlein

Well... its been a pretty boring week spent mainly at work.

And the haze is getting worse.

Its utterly surreal at times to wake up in the morning, to walk around, to do what you do, and be completely blanketed by this thick smelly fog. Its almost as though you're continuously dreaming because its beginning to pervade everything - the external environment, the house, even the gym i use... Its like i was telling Chen Hoe - when you're alone, it almost feels like a scene ripped out of Silent Hill. And sometimes, especially at night, you can almost see indecipherable shapes moving in the morass... A trick of the light? Birds? I don't know. But i'm betting that someone's bound to go nuts soon...

Anyhow, its been a pretty slow week all in all. Spent most of it at work and doing my various... 'routines'. Wednesday being Wednesday, i met up with the guys (Alvin, Albert and Chen Hoe) to go and check out this Saturday's dinner venue. Aero had closed down for renovations (thank Jeebus for physically double checking these things) and, after making a booking at Bom Brazil we checked out Frangipani. NICE place (refer to the restaurant post) - we didn't even hesitate in choosing it as our replacement venue of choice!

Went for mamak at the newly renovated Uncle Don's in Hartamas and... well... despite the revemped yuppie exterior (replete with tacky Kit Kat endorsements, waterfall, coffee bar and neon lights) its still the overpriced food outlet it has always been.

Pheh.

Hrm... was going to talk about the weekend but i'll save that for another post.

Its late.

And for once, i'm feeling the tender whispers of sleep beckoning me to the other side of consciousness.

Finally.

I realize that i've got a lot of catching up to do, what with the pictures we took of our Kuching trip, and the events that i have left unaccounted during the course of the last month or so, and the weekend of birthdays that just went by... but those can wait for another day...

In the meantime, my weekend plans include dinner with my dad for his birthday at the Bankers Club on Friday followed by (hopefully) Ghost In The Shell 2 at Alvin's place. Saturday should be the dinner and drinks affair at Chiangkat as outlined above, while i'll be spending Sunday playing golf and tennis prior to subjecting myself to the tender mercies of a group of female friends (or rather, Chen Hoe's MUISS kaki) who have taken it upon themselves to give the two of us a much-needed fashion makeover (at our expense of course!)...

I call it 'Girl's Fashion Eye For The Lazy Uncouth Guy'.

(hey if YOU can come up with a better one lets hear it!)

Oh, and i'll be playing tour guide to Peony and company of course...

Right.

Articles then sleep.

Elusive sniper saps US morale in Baghdad

Full article here.

They have never seen Juba. They hear him, but by then it's too late: a shot rings out and another US soldier slumps dead or wounded.

There is never a follow-up shot, never a chance for US forces to identify the origin, to make the hunter the hunted. He fires once and vanishes.

Juba is the nickname given by American forces to an insurgent sniper operating in southern Baghdad. They do not know his appearance, nationality or real name, but they know and fear his skill.

"He's good," said Specialist Travis Burress, 22, a sniper with the 1-64 battalion based in Camp Rustamiyah. "Every time we dismount I'm sure everyone has got him in the back of their minds. He's a serious threat to us."

Gun attacks occasionally pepper the battalion's foot and mounted patrols, but the single crack of what is thought to be a Tobuk sniper rifle inspires particular dread.

Since February, the killing of at least two members of the battalion and the wounding of six more have been attributed to Juba. Some think it is also he that has picked off up to a dozen other soldiers.

In a war marked by sectarian bombings and civilian casualties, Juba is unusual in targeting only coalition troops, a difficult quarry protected by armoured vehicles, body armour and helmets.

He waits for soldiers to dismount, or stand up in a Humvee turret, and aims for gaps in their body armour, the lower spine, ribs or above the chest. He has killed from 200 metres away... [Read]

Figured that Leonard might find this article interesting. Out of curiousity, i recall reading reports of a certain insurgent sniper stopping an entire Marine company for close to 2 days during the assault on Fallujah - apparently he used a bicycle (behind cover and over a significant distance before they saturated his position with fire) to quickly change firing positions in the urban environment which gave the impression that there were more insurgents than there were... Is it the same guy i wonder?

Clue to why some die during sleep

Full article here.

Scientists believe they may have solved the mystery of why some people stop breathing fatally in their sleep.

They say a cumulative loss of cells in the area of the brain that controls breathing is to blame - triggering a condition called central sleep apnoea.

However, they believe many such deaths in elderly people are misdiagnosed as heart failure.

The study, by the University of California, Los Angeles, is published in Nature Neuroscience.

The researchers had previously pinpointed a region of the brainstem they dubbed the preBötzinger complex (preBötC) as the command post for generating breathing in mammals.

They had also identified a small group of cells within this area as being responsible for issuing the commands... [Read]

I wonder what the evolutionary context for this could be... Fascinating though - its almost like a kill trigger of sorts. Is there a military application to this i wonder?

Blog Post Of The Day

Anita Sarawak [Zamil]



Wow, looks like Zams is really moving up in the world! ;)

Erm... eerily enough (dyed/bleached hari and blue contacts aside) they both look suspiciously similar... And yes LS, its definitely time for a haircut if your hair is standing up higher than Anita Sarawak's... ;p