Saturday 24 May 2008

New kid in town

I've never been a religious follower of reality TV, though I do enjoy regular doses of *cough* America's Next Top Model, and sporadic views of others like American Idol, Amazing Race, Hell's Kitchen and Project Runway. So anyway, a few weeks back I caught some of this season's American Idol (AI), and got a bit hooked. I've kinda lost track of AI, only briefly aware of the winners once it's all over.

Anyway, I was deeply interested in one of the participants - David Cook. Yup, the dude who went on to be crowned the Idol title last Thursday. I watched the grand finale this week between the two Davids - Cook and Archuleta. A nail-biting and grand contest between a boy wonder of crooning ballads and a mature rocker.

Frankly, I can't see the fuss over Archulete - he's a great singer, I grant him that. But he's just a really good pop/ballad teen prodigy. Compare this with D. Cook who proves himself beyond a rocker. I mean, c'mon, any guy who can pull off a brilliant cover of a Mariah Carey song gets top marks in my books. Check out his performance here:



I didn't watch the actual episode for the Mariah Carey week, but some information net-prowling revealed that apparently the girls had a tougher time. I can sorta understand, it's a tad tough to match the diva's legendary sixteen-octave range. Most girls (and guys too) chose her power ballads, and well D. Archuleta chose When You Believe. It was quite good, but predictable and boring; and doesn't hold a candle to D. Cook's performance. He was smart enough to realise he couldn't match Archuleta's vocals, so he picked one of MC's most pop-ish song, rearranged it and came up with something totally awesome. And as Simon said, being really brave about it too, as usually most people would pick songs that allow them to show off their long breaths and glass-breaking voices. Like in the finale, D. Archuleta performed 2 ballads, and for individual choice, chose to perform 'Imagine" which he did a few weeks back. D. Cook started off with a crowd-rousing pop-rock "Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" by U2, followed by a power rock song, and finally for individual choice; chose a totally new song and performed an acoustic version of it. His choice song was panned by Simon Cowell, but thankfully it did not influence the voters much.

And as to proof himself that he's not a flash-in-the-pan, check out D. Cook's rendition of a song from Phantom of the Opera. Not that I'm music expert, but I think he has excellent vocal control. He sounds breathier and craggy during the rocks songs, and yet can sound polished and soaring for musicals. Just compare the craggy screech he did for Always Be My Baby and the rich, soaring vocals reverberating in Music Of The Night. I find it refreshing to see a singing contestant who exercises control and not try to shatter eardrums at every chance.

A more than deserving winner of American Idol; with proven versatility and star quality beyond that of just a singer. And I'll be keeping an eye out for this dude in the future.


p/s: Try checking his other renditions of Billie Jean and Hello too.


Friday 23 May 2008

New flash

Been a bit busy lately - research has been going well, so I've got some results and stuff to work on for a bit. And my college is also undergoing renovation, so I've to move back to my own place for the holidays at least. Which is kinda tiring, as I now have to drive to and fro everyday. Plus the extra burned cash on petrol and toll, not to mention the extra greenhousey-fumes. Not to mention it's a little more crampy, as I can't simply wake up a bit later - or do a quick dash to dinner or Midvalley for something.

And well, I'm also on a bit of a happy mood currently - working and playing with my BRAND NEW Dell laptop! I've been keeping an eye on this for quite some time, waiting patiently for a few weeks for the price to drop. I timed it with its estimated delivery time for about 3-5 weeks, as I need a laptop before I jet off to Spain for an initial discussion with my future attachment co-supervisor. So I placed an order last Tuesday, and lo and behold, it suddenly just turned up on my doorstep last Saturday.

This baby packs quite a punch, in my opinion, for a reasonable price - Intel Core 2 Duo 2.00 GHz, 3 GB RAM, and 160 GB hard disk space. And not t mention a dedicated graphics card - NVidia's GeForce 8400M with 128 MB. Woot! But of course, there's some things I need to get and do first before making this laptop fully-indispensable. Things like an external drive to transfer old files from my PC, partition the hard disk to run a Mac OS, and getting a pair of earphones.



Top view - mine's Midnight Blue skin.



Running on Windows Vista - takes a while to get used to. Some features are better than XP, some are a little worse.

Friday 2 May 2008

If there's one things I hate most,

It's packing or unpacking. Ok there's a lot of of other things I don't like as well, but that's for another entry for another day.

Right now, I'm (supposed to) unpacking the things at my lab. The renovation work for my lab has just been completed, so now it's the second phase of unpacking all the things we just packed hastily to be stowed away. And also throwing a lot of things that's not needed or used. I really hate throwing things away too, it's such a waste (pun intended) and simply disposing them like that is a burden to the environment. So far I try to separate the paper and cardboxes, though I've no clue as to whether they'll be recycled or simply discarded just like that with the rest. Sigh...Did I mention that I hate packing?

Yesterday I got an awesome surprise - an enjoyable lunch with a friend who's been AWOL for quite a long while and a cool belated birthday gift too. Totally made my day; well until I have to start unpacking things today. Sigh...