Perdana Park At Night

The park was really crowded this evening. I guess there were many wanting to enjoy walking around the park on a sunday and to enjoy the musical fountain.

Showtime is 7.00 to 9.00pm.

The Lumix FZ35 I was using was known not to perform well at night (small sensor, compromised aperture due to large zoom range).

I tried a mixture of increasing the ISO (noisier photo) and long exposure (using Image Stabiliser and self-timer to reduce camera shake).

Zooming in gave a different viewpoint for a different pattern.

A very long exposure gave a "ghostly" image,

There weren't that many variations, so the show rapidly lost its novelty. It was one of those "seen it, done it, been there" kind of thing.

There seemed to be a lot of lights at the park. It was good for the users' safety, but I hope that solar-power was one of the sources.

Borneo Headhunters Hat Frisbee Tournament 2011

The annual Frisbee tournament held in Kota Kinabalu is called The Borneo Headhunters Hat.

Its being held today (whole day) at The La Salle School sports ground. It was the first time I had ever seen such a game. The playing area seemed quite large for a game where each team consisted of 7 players (minimum 1 female in each team on the field).

The player with the frisbee cannot run with it; only throw it to another team-mate.

Each play started from one end-zone with the team attacking the other end-zone. A Point was scored for each "touch-down" pass made to the team's player in the opponent's end-zone.

A lot of running was involved; with the uneven ground, it seemed to lead to a number of sprains and leg cramps.

A close-up of one of the frisbees lying around. It seemed that the open tournament in Singapore in 2010 was named The Flyin' Cake Pans. The Singapore Open 2011 seems to be fixed for March 5 & 6 2011.

UPDATED (5 March 2011) - As pointed out by Eow (see his comment below), the "flyin' cake pans" graphic is a tribute to the frisbee inventor, who passed away last year. Also the competition in the frisbee graphic is NOT the same as the UPA Singapore Open. Glad to learn more, and also the danger of my simply googling.

Perdana Park At Hone Place

I paid a visit to the new Perdana Park At Hone Place this morning. Hone Place is the area surrounding the old (original) airport site which has a rugby field and previously had the government quarters. It is very near the beach at Tanjung Aru.

Perdana Park is the latest public park (with jogging track and makan stalls). It was launched by the Prime Minister on 28 January 2011. But "Don't Pray, Pray", this park had RULES!!

The Main Lobby and the "stalls". Not in operation yet, perhaps the management is still deciding. Check out the speed hump on the bottom right ...

... NOT the usual cement ones.

Around the boundary was an asphalt road (this showed the front side) ...

... the side ...

... and the back, with the morning glory growing on the fence ...

... and the BIG Bumble bees buzzing around.

Moving inside the park, there was a rubberised undulating jogging track.

It looked very nice. I will try it out another day.

There were rest huts at the far ends of the park.

Hopefully, the CCTV will reduce the possibility of vandalism and provide good safety for the public using the park.

Further in towards the middle, there was a pebbled walk surrounding the pond in the middle ...

... the outside edge with bigger pebbles providing a nice foot massage if you walked barefoot.

The pond in the middle held the musical fountains (only runs at night).

The Water Station offering free drinking water ...

... actually filtered water from the central pond.

I noticed a container-type trailer thingy. One of the stickers on it seemed to indicate it was a mobile stage ...

... what was interesting was; it had a Quebec License Plate! "Je me souviens" is the motto of Quebec City and it means "I remember".

All in all, a very nice addition to the public facilities in Kota Kinabalu. It also preserved a part of the Historical Hone Place from commercial development.

eBook - The Survivors Club by Ben Sherwood

I did earlier borrow 1 eBook from the Sabah State Library (SSL). It was "The Survivors Club" by Ben Sherwood (Published Nov 2009). The details also showed that the borrowed eBook will expire on 13 Feb 2011. I saw the book at Times Bookstore a few months earlier but decided not to buy it, so I was very glad to see it available at the library.

The author wrote the book in 2 sections; the first part dealt with "What It Takes To Survive" while the second part dealt with "Are You A Survivor?"

The books tried to answer such questions as "Why do some people live and others die? How do certain people make it through the most difficult trials whiles others don't? Why do a few stay calm and collected under extreme pressure while others panic and unravel? How do some bounce back from adversity while others collapse and surrender?"

The book had real-life examples to back-up what the author tried to convey. The book conveyed that there are certain attitudes (mainly learned and trained) that can reduce the chances of "accidents and disasters" happening to us; and those that can increase our chances of survival should these catastrophes happen to us.

There are emergencies where survival is impossible, but there are also those where survival is possible. Whatever the possible percentage chance of survival (whether 5% or 95%), the strategies and attitudes in the book enable us to get the most of the possible survival percentage (ie we can get 4.9% where the maximum is 5%).

After finishing the book, I was struck by the many interesting and useful points, including:

• All of us are (or will be) survivors (a survivor is defined as anyone who faces and overcomes adversity, hardship, illness, physical or emotional trauma).
• It is NOT relative (eg the survival from a plane crash is the SAME as surviving an illness).
• You are stronger than you know (in crises, you will discover more strengths than you knew you had).
• The heaviest lift by a weightlifter (5ft 9in weighing 313 lbs) was 586.4 lbs, but a little grandmother managed to lift the end of a car weighing 3,450 lbs a few inches and HELD it while her son crawled out after being pinned down by the car.
• Your body temperature is 98.6°F; at 91°F you begin to hallucinate, at 90°F your heart rhythm goes off, at 86°F you lose consciousness, and at 80°F you die.
• You should face reality and remain hopeful, but NOT be Mr Positive (eg in the lifeboat; Mr Positive kept saying "they will find us today, it won't be long", but each day the rescue didn't happen, he felt disappointed, he found it harder to say for the next day and he soon gave up and died).
• The Theory of 10-80-10; 10% will handle the crisis calmly and most likely survive, 80% will be stunned and bewildered (brain-locked statues), the other 10% will panic and freak out and mostly die in the crisis.
• Using the data in the US for aircraft accidents from 1983 to 2000, the survival percentage was 95.7% (ie 0nly 4.3% in all the planes that crashed, died).
• In a plane crash, you basically have 90 seconds to save yourself. Listening to the safety briefing, knowing exactly how to get to the nearest exit (in the dark or smoke), having the seat belt tight against your hips, and being braced against your thighs will increase the percentage that you are least hurt and most ready for escape after the crash.
• If you arrived at the Emergency Room (ER) with a knife wound to your heart and no vital signs, there's a 40% chance of survival. With a bullet, the chance of survival drops to 4%. While a car crash against a brick wall will reduce the chances to less than 1%.
• In the US, the BEST place to have a heart attack is in a casino in Las Vegas. Due to the high number of older people visiting and gambling, over-eating, over-drinking, under-sleeping, over-excited at the slot machines; there were many many heart attacks. The casinos basically agreed to install defibrillators (like having fire extinguishers) around the gambling halls and trained their staff to use these to restart the hearts. Getting the first jolt within 1 minute will give you a 90% chance of surviving the heart attack. The overall survival rate in Las Vegas is 53%; very much higher than in a normal city!
• The Rule of 3; You cannot survive 3 seconds with out hope, 3 minutes without air, 3 hours without shelter, 3 days without water, 3 weeks without food, and 3 months without companionship.
• The power of prayer, faith and miracles.
• The "Lucky" People are those whose state of mind (attitude and behaviour) more often put them in "The Right Place At The Right Time". They also persevere (sometimes seen as optimism) and furthermore, after any misfortune, they tend to try to look for a way to turn it around rather than accepting the defeat.
• The "Silver" medal is the worst of the three. The Bronze medalist see it as lucky since fourth place would have got him/her nothing (no podium placing). The Silver medalist is just disappointed!
• A study (US I presumed) showed among ten-year olds; 15% were left-handed (lefties), but among fifty year-olds; its was only 5%, then among eighty year-olds; it was less than 1%. Lefties die earlier!
• Sound entering your brain takes 2 routes. The shorter and faster one reaches your amygdala twice as fast, which triggers the fear alarm and readies you for "fight or flight". The longer route goes through your cortex and only passes the analysed and refined thought to your amygdala. If the "sound of a snake" triggers an immediate response, its better that a squirrel was treated as a snake than for a snake to be treated as a squirrel.
• There is a SMELL of fear.
• You can be FRIGHTENED to death (also the other extreme emotions of excitedness or happiness).
• The importance of The Will To Live in increasing the chances of survival.
• Those with bad Initials (eg ASS, BAD, BUG, DIE, ILL, MAD, RAT, SIC etc.. ) die earlier!
• Lastly the majority of those who survived grew stronger.
  

Part 2 of the book had the Survivor Personality Profiler; where you can visit their website and take a 15-minutes test that will give your main profile and your top three strengths. There are NO best answers. The scores indicate what are your main characteristics and your expected attitudes.

UNFORTUNATELY, this part of the book showed the PROBLEM with eBooks!

In order to access the website, you need a keycode to register. The keycode is printed at the back of the dust jacket to the book!

I have "returned" this eBook today (via the Aldiko Reader), so you can borrow it.

Sabah State Library - Digital Book Borrowing

I did a posting on 11 Nov 2010 on joining the Sabah State Library after they had publicised the availability of eBooks borrowing.

As mentioned there, I was disappointed that the PDF and ePub editions were only readable on the PC (using the Adobe Digital Editions reader) and on certain eBook readers (eg Sony eReader). Thus I could not download the eBooks to my Android phone as there was no android software that could handle the Adobe DRM.

In January 2011, Aldiko released Version 2.0 of the Aldiko Reader (free and premium editions - only for Android 2.1 and above), which could both handle PDF files and also Adobe DRM ePub & PDF books from public libraries. I quickly updated my Aldiko Reader to the new version from the Android Market.

Note that you need to enter your Adobe ID into the Aldiko reader. Also ensure you are on a wi-fi network or a cheap data plan, otherwise the phone bill maybe more than the cost of buying the book from the bookstore!

Now off to the Sabah State Library (SSL) ...

... there were some 900+ ebooks available to browse through. It was not that many (say half appealed to the opposite sex, some were for teenagers and others). Hopefully the library will increase their purchase of eBooks; more likely with increasing number of users ...

I selected Crisis Economics by Nouriel Roubini; and clicked [Add to My Cart] ...

... then clicked [Proceed to Checkout] ...

... which then allowed me to download the eBook (actually only the ACSM file - Adobe Content Server Message file; ie the Key) ...

... I needed a file manager that knew what to do with acsm files (I used ASTRO File Manager) ...

... which started the download of the eBook from SSL ...

... and knew to store it in the Aldiko Reader's Book shelf ...

... to be opened for immediate reading ...

... available for 14 days (the eBook will then expire and will not open in the reader). You can also"return" the eBook if you finished reading it before the expiry date.

It was all very convenient. As I mentioned in the November posting, I would only "borrow" one book at a time; keeping those eBooks I was interested in, in my Wish List (I am not sure how long they stay there).

Those of you with Android phones should take advantage of the eBook Borrowing from our SSL.

Wedding Car Cosage

On the way out jogging this morning I saw this decorated wedding car.

Nothing unusual at first glance, BUT ...


... a closer look showed; a definitely unusual pair of piggies on the front grill, in addition to the more usual flower cosages and ribbons.