Dear Mr Todt

I read this funny article about Jean Todt (also known as Michelle Yeoh's fiance and the tyrant who ruled the Ferrari team with an iron fist and led them to multiple F1 championships) and thought that I would share it here.

View from a Balcony

I looked out my balcony around 7pm last Saturday and rushed for the camera to take photos of this sunset.

We've built a sort of mini journal of scenic views from our balcony but I've not yet been able to say that any particular one is clearly the best of the lot.

Bedtime Stories

There's this girl who grew up with stories. From the time she was old enough to understand, or maybe even before that time, she has been listening to stories. Those stories weren't from books (although they had their basis there), and they most definitely were not about princesses. They had horses and bears and fish and whatnot. 

The threads of the stories were spun out of memories and mixed and matched with other stories and given a twist here and a turn there until they seemed almost quite familiar .... but only almost.

Nowadays, that girl still likes to listen to stories but now she can add in her own story lines and ever so occasionally she makes up her own. Nothing really complicated, just stuff that a 2-year old would make up, but it's something that she likes especially just before she goes to sleep.

Her favourite story right now ? The girl who eats porridge. NOT the girl who ate the porridge in the home of 3 bears but the one whose mother cooked it for her. The porridge has fish balls and chicken and meat and fish. The story seems vaguely familiar, but I've never been told who that girl is.

Sheet....

There were two occasions when I said "Shite!" last night. The second occasion was when the Porto net bulged from Ronaldo's wonder goal. The first was when Susan Boyle crooned the opening line of "I dreamed a dream".

I've looked at the video a few times since - mainly to listen to her sing - and I've been wondering why it's so compelling. It's not just me who's enthralled. Catriona's beside me 'singing' along (take a bow, Milli Vanilli) and Susan's been installed as the favourite to win Britain's Got Talent 2009 by the British bookies. And she's a viral hit on the internet.

Looking at it objectively, you don't expect 47-year olds to join a talent show and sing their socks off. So there's the age factor. It's not ageism, it's just that you'd expect talent like that to have been discovered sooner.

Then there's her appearance, which is like totally ........ decent. Exactly what you'd expect an aunty to wear to church. So no raised expectations there either.

But looking at the video again, what really lowers expectations is her voice. Listen to her as she's being interviewed by Ant & Dec and Simon Cowell. Her speaking voice is nothing remarkable. Nobody's expecting great things after listening to her speak.

That's why, when she starts to sing, you get the raised eye brows and the dropped jaws. I was going "Where did THAT come from ?" . Her singing voice is completely different from her speaking voice. And even though the history of talent shows is littered with more misses than hits, I feel pretty certain that Susan Boyle will be a success. Even at the age of 47. I know I'd buy her album.

deja vu

Man United player comes on as a substitute and then scores equalising or winning goal.

Now, where have I heard that before ? That used to be the modus operandi of one Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, otherwise known as the "Baby-Faced Assassin". Or as he is frequently described, "Manchester United's greatest ever substitute". Best remembered for his injury time, Champions League final-winning goal against Bayern Munich in the 98/99 season, Ole is now the coach of Manchester United's reserve team.

Fast foward to the present.

Man United player comes on as a substitute and scores winning goal within 1 minute - with his first touch. Federico Macheda has repeated his trick of last week and once again scored the winning goal after coming on as a substitute.

Not bad for a player who until last week had never even been named as a substitute for the senior team. Pretty sensational when you consider that he's only 17, and is playing for arguably the world's most popular football club.

Solskjaer is Macheda's coach in the reserve team. Macheda has learned well from the master.

My take on American Idol 8

Having missed the first 7 seasons of American Idol, I wasn't all that interested in AI8. Then Michelle started following it because of some Gokey guy......

I must admit that my knowledge of American Idol contestants had been pretty much limited to Carrie Underwood, Kelly Clarkson and William Hung. All the other contestants and winners have passed through my mind like water through a sieve. I simply hadn't heard any songs that I could readily recall about them.

AI8, though, has thrown up a rather interesting singer in Adam Lambert. He's got a pretty good voice and his vocal control is pretty good and he's a decent showman, but the feature that really strikes me about him is that he's shown a penchant for singing really unique versions of songs.

In that sense I've been using Adam Lambert as a reference point to check out the original cover versions of the songs that he's sung. Take this cover version for example :

It's not that easy to think of it as a country music song, is it ? Well, the song was originally written as a country music song and was a big hit for country artist Johnny Cash.

Adam has also done Smokey Robinson's "Tracks of my tears" (verdict : good) and Wild Cherry's "Play that funky music" (verdict : average). Nothing much for me to check out there as both versions are pretty famous.

But this week Adam again uncorked a gem. He sang "Mad World", which is one of my favourite Tear For Fears' songs. And since it was a stripped down version, I searched for the reference and found this :

About Plumbing

Finally......... after a period of some xxx days, I think that I have recovered from the dire rear.

It was a mild case, and not really that much of a big deal, but still - it was a pain in the arse.

Instant Gratification

Some things have really changed the music industry. It used to be that if I wanted to check out a song I would have to go to a CD shop to try to find the artist or album - that's if it was available at that shop.

Nowadays, it's very different. I just heard this song on the Hallmark channel on Astro - thought it was interesting - went on Youtube - and, voila :

Yes !!!!!!!!

As sheer drama and edge-of-the-seat finger-nail biting nerves go, Man United's 3-2 win against Aston Villa today was right there at the top of the charts.

Not quite at the absolute top (that would be reserved for injury time/penalty Champions League winning nights), but certainly reminiscent of the jangling nerves suffered in the 92/93 season when Steve Bruce scored two late goals against Sheffield Wednesday - a game which proved decisive in Man United winning their first Premier League title (I still remember where I watched that game).

Step forward United's latest kid hero, Federico Macheda.

Hitherto unknown, Kiko Macheda's name will now elicit groans of despair among Liverpool supporters. To make the subsitute's bench must have been a thrill for this 17-year old. To get on the field would certainly have been unimaginable given how crucial this game was in United's bid to retain their Premier League title. To score the winning goal is the stuff that dreams are made of. And that's exactly what he did ! In the 93rd minute, no less !

There are some games which you just know are going to be remembered in Man United's history. This is one of them.

Look at it this way : It's been 15-20 years since Steve Bruce scored against Sheffield Wednesday and Mark Robins scored against Norwich City but those games are still regularly quoted when Man United are mentioned. So will this game and Federico Macheda's goal in it. It remains to be seen whether it will be quoted in the context of a title winning season. If it is so, you can bet that Macheda will still be remembered by the Man United fans in 20 years time.

ps. Sublime piece of skill to create the space for the shot and sublime shot for the goal.

pps. With Danny Welbeck coming on as a substitute in the 88th minute, Sir Alex had a 17-year old and an 18-year old as his stikers at a time when United wanted a goal. There have been a few recent articles about how United has more strength in depth compared to Liverpool - I'm pretty certain that the columnists were not thinking of Danny Welbeck and Federico Macheda.

ppps. These two guys would be considered young for reserve team football let alone leading the line for the first team in such a crucial game. I guess it just shows how dire United's situation is with regard to strikers at the moment.

Bookshop

Everytime we go to the shopping mall, bookshop is one of the few places that we will definately drop in. The other one being one of the dining place. Besides the normal free book reading excersice, Catriona had found some new love in MPH.

Well I am not sure what is the name of this buddy, but she sure like it very much. Normally she will carry it around, hugging, kissing and playing before finally mom convinces her to let the "sun" (as she called it) rest on the cabinet.

So once a while, she will come back and visit this buddy.