By Chewxy, on March 24th, 2007%
I watched Mr. Bean’s Holiday last night, and yes, it was good. It’s the freshest thing I’ve seen this year (Pan’s Labyrinth was last year’s movie, so not counted).
To those who have been living in a well for the last 15 years or so, here’s a fast recap of who or what Mr. Bean is. Rowan Atkinson plays Mr. Bean in a TV comedy, where Mr. Bean is thrown in a couple of situations and tries to overcome his problems with many creative and humorous ways. Then came his movie debut a decade ago, in Bean, the movie. While Bean, the movie wasn’t completely too bad, I felt it was a mere rehash of TV comedies, complete with reuse of material, only that the story was longer and bigger. Then came Mr. Bean’s Holiday. It’s new and fresh.
I guess one way to describe this movie would be, it’s the same old Mr. Bean, but also a very fresh and different Mr. Bean from the TV series.
Continue reading A Fresh Bean (A Review of Mr. Bean’s Holiday)
By Chewxy, on March 22nd, 2007%
See the cameo in the picture? No?
That is a picture of Hashie with a book on his chest. It’s the same book as this:
And it was used in the filming of Abel‘s second movie, Life is an Illusion. I claimed to have helped him much, but this is what I really did:
I sat in . . . → Read More: Cameos, Cameos
By Chewxy, on March 20th, 2007%
In continuity of the March Muchly Miscellaneous Materials series (a series of random miscellany in my life posted starting from Miscellaneous to Miscellaneous Stupidity to Miscellaneous Much?), today I shall post a list of miscellaneous blog titles that I would post, if I had the time, or the capacity to blog. So, in today’s post, it’ll be a series of mini blogs in one post
Here goes the list:
- Like Father Like Son
Concerns my younger cousin who was staying at my house for the past few days for the school holidays. His father, when he was younger, had cut off a cat’s whiskers. My cousin had to stupidly follow his father, and cut off some of Tigara’s whiskers. Grr
- Why the World Needs Superman
Because I’ve decided to be Lois Lane and write that article. Basically, what I had in mind was something along the lines of superheroes, both in comic books, in real life, and their spiritual equivalents.
- O Great TV!
The great idiot box hath granted me unholy knowledge. Like Discovery Channel using the opening introduction of Numb3rs (“We all use math everyday, to predict weather, to tell time, to handle money… using numbers we can solve the biggest mysteries we know”) in their advertisement for their new Million 2 One program (which happens to be a show that I watch); or like Andy and Laura’s advertisement for AXN’s showing of CSI season 7 appears on every other channel except AXN; or finding out from Elizabeth Tai‘s article in theStar that Adele Lim is Malaysian, so watch it when you watch Las Vegas or One Tree Hill.
- Happy Birthday Monty Hall
This post would have nothing to do with anyone’s birthday, but with my little fanatic obsession over the Birthday Paradox, since I believe no one in my old school class, 5 Kempas ever had the same birthday. And it was a class bigger than 23 people, and having 89.1% chance that 2 people has the same birthday. Just for fun, but it seems to me that I’ll be devoting some time to this mathematical nonsense (I’m not too good in Math, I must agree). And the Monty Hall Problem (which I didn’t know there was a name to it until cfgt told me about the name) as well. Fun stuff. And no, I haven’t been watching repeat of Numb3rs on TV (But there was an episode where Charlie explained this theory to his class in an extremely simplified manner).
- When Nerds Talk
Julian Sark says:
I’m in love with Elanor. Tell me more about her
Chewxy says:
She works at [censored], and drives a [censored], earns more than you in a year…
Julian Sark says:
How did you know all this?
Chewxy says:
My Chewxy-sense is tingling again. Hmm…
Julian Sark is not the guy from Alias. This Julian Sark is none other than zcer himself. Of course, the above conversation has been dramatised by me a hundred times over to create controversy and gossip so that Antworten zum Universum can continue to sell itself. Continue reading Miscellaneous Titles
By Chewxy, on March 17th, 2007%
Today, I’m taking a break from the Miscellaneous series, a series of posts about random miscellany in life. Instead, I will delve into some more serious economic topics like Elanor (hah! I wish!). More specifically, I’ll be talking nonsense about WiMAX in Malaysia.
In the year 2000, the United Kingdom decided to auction off 3G airwaves. Designed by Ken Binmore (his book, Fun and Games is a good read, but way too expensive. Go to the library to read it like I did), Paul Klemperer and team, the UK auction of 3G airwaves ended up as one of the most successful auctions in history, raising £22.5 billion. The auction had been surprisingly simple – based on simple competition theory: You can’t compete, out you go. It was an open auction, so the general public and the competitors to the 4 licenses know who was in the race, and how much each bid.
In Malaysia, however, airwave licenses, including the licenses for WiMAX airwaves were awarded in a “beauty contest” of sorts (unfortunately, there are no official websites where I can confirm the method of awarding the licenses, a sad case of the lack of transparency in Malaysia – something to be addressed in another article). [other sources: theEdge Daily Article | theEdge Daily Interview]
They call it a “tender evaluation” though. And what happens is that the prospective licensees submit their proposals to the Government (or in this case, the MCMC – Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission). The MCMC will then evaluate each proposal based on the technical capabilities, price offered for the licence (or maybe the price for the licence is fixed) and various other factors. Then the MCMC decides who to award the licences to.
Not a bad idea, if MCMC knows truly the individual capability of each company. But as with information asymmetry goes, there is no perfect information about the true capabilities of the companies competing for the license. The MCMC will have only information from the tender proposals, which can be skewed. An example of such a failure would be the 3G licence being awarded to MiTV, which to this date, has no updates on how it plans to use the 3G licence.
Then there is also the fact that in this closed-door decisions, you (meaning the general public as well as the competitors) do not know what is behind the closed doors. Anything could happen while the committee is making decisions on who to award the licence. Corruption, for one, could happen. It causes controversy. For example – the Spanish 3G airwaves licensing caused many legal and financial problems that spanned a few years. Another thing that could happen is favoritism. Paul Klemperer noted that
…some governments make no secret of choosing beauty contests precisely because of the possibilities for favoring their ‘national champions’ over foreign firms. But such protectionism is unlikely to benefit consumers or taxpayers.
If you thought that sounded familiar… think DiGi, which is partially owned by Telenor, and their failed bid to acquire a 3G licence and a WiMAX licence.
Continue reading WiMAX, Auctions, Beauty Contests and et cetera
By Chewxy, on March 16th, 2007%
Here is another post in my March Muchly Miscellaneous Materials series (which so far includes Miscellaneous, Miscellaneous Stupidity)
Of course, I was encouraged by Zcer to post such miscellany, since he seems a little addicted to it (and to Elanor as well, it seems)
Anyways here goes a list of miscellany:
- Remember I said in my post Miscellaneous, that I was most capable of royally screwing myself? Well.. here’s what happened: I missed my Law101 exam. By a year.
- That’s fixed now, though. I just came back from
time travelling taking a supplementary Law exam.
- Today’s opportunity cost for using the toll is only 60 cents instead of a dollar for 30 minutes worth of extra time
- I’m suddenly tired.
- Abel is an extremely good and capable cinematographer.
What if I don’t have a floppy disk drive?- Tengku Adnan has made his first move – Denial and claim misquote. His next will be to sue Sin Chew Jit Poh for libel/defamation of character.
- And of course, should he win, bloggers will be responsible for Sin Chew Jit Poh’s losses. Continue reading Miscellaneous Much?
By Chewxy, on March 14th, 2007%
Right… following on the Miscellaneous theme… In 2004, if you had read or followed my old blog, I posted a rant post about how dumb some college students can be. It involved a student bragging to another student that 4 Megabytes worth of data is larger than what a DVD-R can contain – he obviously . . . → Read More: Miscellaneous Stupidity
By Chewxy, on March 11th, 2007%
Every once in a while, I’ll post some miscellaneous stuff about me. Today is one such day. Everything I post is either about me or connected to me. Not everything are connecting, and there is no central theme around which I post. The last time I did something like that was in Ho-Hum. Not wanting to reuse the same title, here goes my combined thoughts in a few days:
- I think my hearing is really going the way of the dodo. I hear base better than treble. And it’s beginning to bug me. Either a) my subwoofer is really super powerful, or – b) I am really losing my hearing. Scary.
- I am most capable of royally screwing myself. Story is worth a post by itself and will tell some other day.
- BBC has 10 steps to happiness. I have my own Eight Steps to Happiness. And far cheaper steps than BBC’s, and more cost effective, and longer lasting too.
- I think I pissed off Princess Xingyi yesterday night.
- I seem to have a near perpetual bruise on my right thumb. Everytime the bruise heals, I will be almost too sure to slam something on my thumb and cause yet another bruise
- When in a very very packed food shop/hawker centre, nasty thoughts certainly arise, and I have a few ways on how to get people to vacate their tables faster. It involves sneezing into their foods and staring at them with a baleful stare. Other methods include talking loudly in front of them on how some people can be so inconsiderate to hog the table to themselves
- I’m Reinvigorated. I love reinvigorate. I love reinvigorate. I love reinvigorate. I love reinvigorate. Repeat Ad Nauseum.
- I had lunch with a cousin yesterday. She said I reminded her of Dr. House. I take it as a compliment.
 I hope she was talking about the good looks part. If you know me in real life, you’d know it’s a FAT chance of that
 Continue reading Miscellaneous
|
|
|
