Sunday, 1 July 2007 marks the beginning of the 2nd half of this year. Time flies since we celebrated the 2007 New Year countdown with fireworks and other events or perhaps just staying at home, now we are half way through the year 2007 before 2008 greets us. Perhaps its time for us to do a mid-year review of our resolutions made at the beginning of 2007 to see how much we have achieved or perhaps forgotten, well, it’s common for everyone to forget their resolution on 2 January.

What happened in the past half year? Well, we have the launch of Visit Malaysia Year, followed by a major festival Chinese New Year on 18 February and various other happenings. Hot topics include the crime rate in Johor and the Altantuya murder case.

In the 2nd half of this year, we will have the ongoing Altantuya case continuing, and we will have the 50th anniversary Independence, major festivals Hari Raya Aidilfitri, Deepavali and Christmas. Not to forget the Mega Sale Carnival in August. And so, the year will end exactly half a year from now and well, what do I look forward in 2008? Well, first thing in my mind is… the Chinese New Year celebrations on 7 February 2008.

A bird in a cage and a fish in an aquarium.

OR

A bird who is free to fly in the open sky and a fish who is free to swim around the wide ocean.

What say you?

Tuanku Mizan Zainal Abidin will be officially installed as the 13th Yang di-Pertuan Agong of Malaysia today. He, who is the also the Sultan of Terengganu, took oath of office as the Yang di-Pertuan Agong on 13 December 2006, succeeding the 12th Yang di-Pertuan Agong, Tuanku Syed Sirajuddin Putra Jamalullail, who is the Raja of Perlis.

The installation ceremony will be held at the Istana Negara, Kuala Lumpur. It is said that today’s installation ceremony is expected to be the last to be held at the existing Istana Negara as the national palace will be relocated to a new building in Jalan Duta in 2009.

The display name in Windows Live Messenger (MSN Messenger) is used as a more personal way of identifying users rather than the unique email address. While some users mainly display their name or nick, others use it to convey their emotions, message and etc. So how do you use the display name?

This is what I do:

James Ooi 黄衍发 THU 7 FEB 2008: 292 days left

Guess what does this display name mean? The dog () and the cat () in the first half of my display name indicates that we all should be friends even though we may be different. The icon is what MSN claims will donate to charitable organizations for every message sent. In this case I put the *help tag where the donation goes to Stop Global Warming. And of course James Ooi 黄衍发 is my name in English and Chinese respectively.

The second half of my display name indicates the date of the next Chinese New Year and the countdown in number of days to Chinese New Year which I update manually each day. And the sun () or rather sunrise indicates a new beginning every new year.

This is the 2nd time I am posting about Friday the 13th. The first one was on Friday, 13 October 2006. Is it really true that Friday the 13th is really Black Friday? We probably have seen some bad events occurring on Friday the 13th such as the abduction of Canny Ong on Friday, 13 June 2003 which led to the rape and murder the following day. Perhaps it is just a mere coincidence?

The next Friday the 13th will occur in July this year anyway. So that makes two occurrences of Friday the 13th this year. In every year, there is at least one month with Friday the 13th. However, there can be also two and at most three occurrences. For three occurrences to happen, that year must not be a leap year and hence, if 13 February is a Friday, so will be 13 March and 13 November in the same year.