Top 11

As always, I caught American Idol late last night. When I switched on the tv and tuned in to Star World, David A had already performed. Judging by his smiling face and the thunderous applause from the audience, I knew he had just received 3 thumbs ups (or 6) from the judges. Well, good for him considering how badly he performed last week – forgetting lyrics and all. He was lucky not to get kicked out. Other contestants who forgot their words were treated more harshly by the voters. They kicked them out (think Lindsay Cardinale and someone else).

Next, I think it was Michael (for some reason, I can never remember his last name – Johns? Yep, Johns), the Aussie, who sang. I’m not very familiar with all the Beatles’ songs so I’m not going to even try to tell you which song he sang. I thought it was an ok performance. The judges, however, seemed disappointed. I later read on Jennifer’s blog that one viewer thought that the judges were being too hard on him. Maybe. Well, I didn’t think he sucked but he wasn’t spectacular either.

Anyway, I can’t remember who performed next but all I remember thinking was last night was – based on the few contestants whom I saw, anyway – a night of mediocrity. I felt the show dragged on and on. And none of them made my heart sing the way Elliott Yamin did *gets all dreamy-eyed*

Anyway… I thought David C was getting more and more “smug”, as Simon put it. You’re a good performer, David, we already know that. So why don’t you give us something we don’t already know?

Syesha, I thought, sang off key. There was one part in the song where she hit a high note and I cringed. It was one of those well-concealed pitchy tone, so many people may not have noticed :P I have to hand it to her from trying “to do her own thing and be original” but she probably should have taken some notes from Boyz II Men who did a beautiful cover of Yesterday. Ok, granted they’re a group and they harmonised their vocals well for that song. BUT all I’m saying is that Syesha could learn something from them.

I still don’t get Carly. I still can’t connect to her — I think it’s funny how she tries to speak in an American accent but her Irish drawl is far too strong. I wonder what Simon thinks of this? — and I thought her red sleeveless top last night was hideous with a capital H. I’m going to sound really catty but I think Carly should consider toning her arms BEFORE she attempts to wear sleeveless tops. I don’t care if wearing sleeves will hide her tattoos. It’s not like she has to wear long-sleeved shirts or anything — actually, that’d be nice for a change :) — She just needs to cover her arms once in a while. Maybe she can try one of those asymmetrical tops. She should learn from Mel C of Spice Girls — a fellow tattoo lover — who said that her tats looked really good when she was slim and had shapely arms but once she gained weight, her tattoos looked yucky. I didn’t say it, Mel C did! So, remember Carly, tone before you bare! :)

I have no (good) opinion of Chikezie and Ramielle’s performances. I thought they were just mediocre. Ramielle is very lucky to still be in the competition after that ho hum performance last night. I’m sure she was better than Kristy Lee but she shouldn’t be performing as badly as Kristy Lee in the first place… coz Kristy Lee is… Kristy Lee… the girl who should’ve left the show a long time ago but hasn’t. I still think she (Ramielle) doesn’t have enough fan base to support her throughout this contest. She and Chikezie both.

Of course, Brooke White has enough fans to vote for her to go to the Top 3. But if she fails to shut up when the judges are giving her a less than satisfactory assessment, I won’t be surprised if they start leaving one by one. I mean, what was that — interrupting the judges — about? Boy, was she annoying! Well, now we know her Achilles heels — hers and Jason C’s. Without an instrument to hold and stool or step to sit on, she’s (they’re) nothing. She looked really awkward on stage without her usual props. So did Jason. Although I thought Jason’s performance was kinda cute :P But I was weirded out by how tight Jason’s jeans/pants were. I noticed this about him (or rather his pants) when he did Hallelujah a couple of weeks back. Give the guy some looser pants, already!

Anyway, did I forget to mention anyone else? I don’t think so. I’m not commenting on Amanda or Kristy Lee (or David A) because I didn’t see them sing.

Just so you know, by the time you read this, American viewers already know who’s out of the show. This week, it’s Amanda, the one trick pony rocker respiratory nurse. So long Amanda!

P/S: I can’t wait for the week when Mariah comes on the show as a mentor. Pressure much? Also, does this mean they have to sing her songs???? Or just the ones from the R&B, rap, hip hop genre? I can’t wait to see the Idol’s second rate Mariah “impersonations” :P I have a feeling Syesha or Ramielle (if both of them stay on the show long enough) will foolishly attempt to do a Mariah and fail. Hahaha *evil laugh*… I can’t wait!

The sweetest things

On Yahoo! News today:

Verizon recovers man’s missing recording

An 80-year-old man can hear his late wife’s voice again, any time he wants. Verizon has recovered a lost message recorded by Charles Whiting’s wife, Catherine, before her death in 2005.

When Verizon upgraded the man’s telephone service, his wife’s voice disappeared from his voicemail system. The message said “Catherine Whiting,” and her husband said he listened to it every day for comfort.

Company spokesman John Bonomo said Tuesday that a contractor found the recording in an archive and restored it to the new voicemail system.

Charles Whiting says he’s very happy.

Tell me this isn’t the sweetest piece of news you have read today *gets all teary-eyed*.

My colleague, As*wad says Obama’s speech (the last portion of it) tugged at his heartstrings. When I have the time, I shall read his speech too.

P/S: Tonight American Idol is on tv. Don’t miss it!

P/P/S: According to my pedometer, I took nearly 7,000 steps today. I walked and ran for 32 minutes this morning on the treadmill (warm up = 5 mins; switched between walking and running = every 1 min until minute 27; cool down – 5 mins). So that alone gave me about 3,838 steps. Cool eh? The daily number recommended by health experts is 10k steps. I got 7k. Not bad, not bad at all!

The fourth week

I can’t believe that the 2008 Self Challenge is already in its FOURTH week! That means, my birthday (the day the Challenge kicked off) was four weeks ago. How time flies!

Anyway, I thought that it would be nice to post a link to my fitness progress for the last three weeks HERE. I say three weeks because the fourth week (this week) has not ended. I hope you guys can see the chart, or else, I’ll have to find another way to make it work — either reproduce the chart or save it as jpeg and upload it here or something. I’ll figure that out later.

If you visit the link, you will see that there are no changes to my stats because I haven’t measured myself since the last time. I honestly don’t think there is any drastic changes to my measurement, so I won’t measure myself until at least the end of this month. My eating plan is basically empty because I really have no clue how to follow the eating plan since I don’t cook and all that.

But that doesn’t mean I don’t care about what I put into my mouth. I do — although I have been snacking on junk food (fast food, Chipster, cheese-flavoured Ridges and Sour Cream-flavoured Lays *getting really nervous and shifty eyed as I type the names of these sinful products) a lot of late. I was PMS-ing last week, hence the snacking. But I think I’m better this week, I promise! In fact, I have been to the gym twice just this week!

Yesterday morning, I did my 2-minute walk/jog interval routine for 17 minutes ( excluding 3 minutes of warm up and 2 minutes of cool down). After that, I jumped on the cross-trainer/elliptical machine for 10 minutes before heading for the shower. I weighed myself on the way to the locker room and was pleased to see that the scale hadn’t budged. I’m still 121lbs. Phew!

I know I said that the number on the scale doesn’t matter BUT after a week of snacking on chips, I was convinced that I would immediately put on a pound or something. To find that I haven’t just gave me a huge relief. Because, let’s face it, if I gain weight, I’ll have to make sure I burn the extra calories because my target was 120. I could still lose another 8 pounds and still be healthy — but a tad skinny and boob-less :) — because I’m still within my healthy BMI. But gaining another 2 pounds would put me back to near “overweight” (according to my BMI) category, which would be a shame.

Anywho, today I decided to do the 25-minute Self Challenge Strength Training workout for Month 1 (after having downloaded the files weeks ago). It was fun to listen to instructions on how to perform certain strength moves, instead of following a video, for a change. I was doing fine until the Chairmaster — where I had to go on a (man) push-up position with my legs on a bench and was required to tap my left foot on the floor and then my right foot on the floor. Try doing that for 10 repetitions (1 rep = left foot and right foot tapped on the floor).

Beads of sweat from my forehead dripped down to the floor almost instantly. I really felt the burn on my arms and stomach as I tried to maintain good posture. I actually had to stop on the 8th repetition to gain back the strength on my arms!

I did the last two reps without Megan’s voice cheering me on to complete the rep (sorry Megan, I needed to do those last two reps one on my own). That was when I did something to my phone — I use my mobile as my mp3 player. I thought I had pressed the pause button to un-pause it. Turned out that I had unwittingly played the whole mp3 file from the beginning.

When I realised what I had done, felt like looking to the ceiling and scream: “Nooooo!” (like in the movies).

This is not an mp3 player where I can just forward or rewind to my heart’s content. Once the audio file has stopped, you have to listen to it from the start *groan*! Thank god for the short video of the Self Challenge, which I downloaded from the website, which allowed me to copy the remaining exercise moves and end the 25-minute strength challenge on my own. According to the website, I burned about 70 calories in that 25 minutes. Not a lot but it’s still something.

So, that’s my workout progress so far.

You know, it’s still not too late to join the Self Challenge workout. You can register HERE. If you start now, you have 3 more weeks to follow the programme. That’s still something. At the very least, you get to download FREE exercise videos and mp3 files which were created by American fitness experts just by signing up.

Ok, enough blogging. Better get back to doing “actual” work. Later, alligator!

Politikus

I added another blog to my blogroll. It’s called Jongkang Jongket by Mat Jan, a UiTM law grad. I first read his blog about six years back. And then I don’t know what happened. I think it may have something to do with my migrating from diaryland to blogger and from blogger to wordpress. When I found his blog again recently, I discovered that he hasn’t changed; still as funny and as witty as I first read him six years ago.

Happy reading!

Bulgarian Music Idol 2 (bg) – Without you (aka Ken Lee), Mariah Carey

I first saw this video on Appear Offline. I thought only children below 7 make up “languages”. Rupanya, adults also do the same :P

Too much fast food ain’t good for ya

I’ve been eating a lot of fast food of late. I had Big Mac for dinner Thursday night and then Quarter Pounder for lunch yesterday after my assignment because McD’s was just next to the college I went to. Today for lunch, my husband wanted KFC. I didn’t have the heart to tell him, no I don’t want another fast food lunch, because it’s not often that we have KFC anyway.

I think I wouldn’t mind so much if I had been strict with my exercise regime but my hectic schedule this past week made it near impossible to slot in even 20 mins of exercise. I woke up early two days in a row but both occasions were to make time for work. I was thinking that I could start again this morning but I woke up at 11am. By then, I had to start with the packing (we’re shifting house some time end of this month). Now is my one hour break from packing.

It shocked me that I may need to do something equivalent to mowing the lawn for an hour to burn off the calories from the Quarter Pounder I ate yesterday. I read that here.
Guess, I should really start finding a full 30-minute today to fit in some cardio *lol*.

Well, as long as I get my butt off the chair or bed, I’m good right? Better get cracking now.

Only in my dreams

Ok, I went to youtube to see Mariah’s new video for Touch My Body. She was steamy alright but the video in general is a comedy. The video starts with a car driving into the driveway of a huge mansion. It’s the broadband technician nerd and he rings the doorbell expecting the helper to answer the door. Turns out Mariah herself — clad only in a shower robe over black lace lingerie — answering the door. When he saw her, he was like Mmmmaariah Careyyyyy (ending the “e” sound in Carey in a “whistle register” complete with Mariah’s hand gestures. Mariah just looked at him as if to say, “Right”. It was so funny!

Mariah asked him if he could make it quick because she had somewhere to go. She led him upstairs, showed him where the computer was. He sat down in front of the flat screen — I think it’s a Mac — while she went into her room to change. That’s when the song starts and we are taken into the fantasy world of the broadband technician nerd featuring Mariah Carey in various cleavage-bearing shirts and thigh-skimming skirts *lol*

Btw, the nerd in the video is the same guy who plays the nerdy male receptionist in 30 Rock. He was hilarious!

Anyway, go to youtube — the website is incidentally mentioned in the lyrics of the song — and watch the vid for yourself. Night, night!

Phew, what a week!

First there was the elections on March 8 and then the full results all over the papers the next day. Hmm… isn’t that something? But I’d rather not comment on that. Not that I don’t have an opinion about it — I do? hehe — but I’d rather keep it off this blog.

Yeah, as I was saying… first it was the elections and then I got busy with the SPM results and a certain scholarship scheme that the company launched on the same day as the results. If you just got your results (SPM/STPM), come from a low income family and looking to study in a private tertiary institution OR know someone who fits the bill, do apply or encourage them to apply. You can read all about it in this newspaper from March 13-19 and March 24-30. Or you can visit this website. Good luck!

So, what’s next for me then? More work, of course. As if I don’t have enough on my plate already, I accepted a part-time gig which I won’t discuss in detail here. It’s one of those things I do to get some extra income. So, yeah, I’m juggling two deadlines now. Great! More pressure, just what I need!

For some reason these past few days, I feel very hormonal — like I can laugh one minute and cry the next. Is it that time of the month again? So soon? Now, I totally understand how this blogger (who’s expecting and naturally hormonal) who otherwise loves green veggies now feel like gagging even when she waters her (green) plants. No, I didn’t suddenly become averse to veggies but just now, I actually told my husband to take off his shirt because I hated the feel of the fabric, boleh? It’s a shirt he has worn many times but I’ve never had a problem with it until today. I really hate feeling this way — I feel like a a 5-year-old diva, not at all like myself — so I hope this ends soon.

Speaking of divas, I heard Mariah Carey’s new song, Touch My Body, on the radio one morning on the way to work and told my husband, who is this girl (singer) who’s doing a second rate “Mariah Carey”. Turns out it was Mariah Carey herself *lol*. I hardly recognised her because she didn’t do her usual whistle register or adlibbing. Some parts of the song actually made her sound like a better version of Nicole Scherzinger — and that is hardly a praise, ok, because I’m sorry but doing a Nicole is so beneath Mariah Carey ok?

Alas, she sang that song like it was meant for the PCDs’ album. It’s a bit weird actually – Mariah sounded like a one-member girl band — pretty much what the PCDs is, isn’t it? I mean, who can actually name the other PCDs members? The band should be called Scherzinger and her back-up dancers. But I have to say Touch My Body is a breath of fresh air. I mean, Mariah kept it so simple, it worked.

Ok, I’m going to go to youtube and watch the video now. I heard it’s suite steamy. Well, what do you expect from a song with that title? :P Later!

P/S: Note to self: Blog about chef from hell, Gordon Ramsey. What’s the deal with that potty mouth cook anyway?

P/P/S: Someone actually left a comment on my video, told me I had talent and requested that sing a song by Mar*sha (A*F). How cool is that? I got my first request, yay!

Honey, have you seen my MacBook Air?

It’s so thin, it vanished into thin air. Or you could check the trash can because this reporter accidentally throw his paper-thin laptop out with the old newspapers.

Guess who’s coming for dinner?

The below is an excerpt from an interview with American Idol judge, Randy Jackson, on Yahoo! Music.

REALITY ROCKS: Speaking of people with industry experience…can you reveal who the celebrity mentors will be this season?

RANDY: We’re going to switch it up a little bit this year. We’ve got some of the older ones coming back, and we’ve got Mariah Carey coming in. We got some flavas for ya!

So I guess we can say that it’s confirmed? Coolness!