VOLKSWAGEN 'S NEXT CAR: THE WARTHOG??

For those who play console/PC games, you'd find this piece of news shocking indeed. It seems that Volkswagen has come up with the 'Concept T', shown at the recent North American International Auto Show in Detroit, and it looks like the - tada - Warthog from Microsoft's game Halo!

That's right! Check out the similarities!

Source: Gamespy's Fargo

FULL CIRCLE

Yesterday, I spent the evening with my childhood friends. These are guys whom I went through 'frozen wave' fringes, pink tights, 'high-cut' Reebok sneakers with silver trimmings, house parties and 'slow dances' with. 14 years later, here we were. sitting at Long Black, sipping coffee, giggling about old times.

There's the cigarette-toting LL, a newly appointed Account Executive in the fast-moving, back-biting KL ad industry after a decade of writing. Animated, sharp and always up for a good laugh, LL is a girl after my own heart.

She used to be the quietest, most demure girl in our group. Having broken off with another childhood friend of ours, she is now dating my husband's best friend.

And then there's YK, another nicotine-addicted woman about to settle down with another product of strict Malaysian Chinese upbringing who prohibits her from smoking while he tars his own lungs, simply because she's his 'little woman'. YK sneaks in smokes when she's out with us, her handphone constantly ringing from guess who. Some reprieve for YK is that the 'big man' is now in Penang, permanently. Still, she washes her mouth with a portable bottle of Listerine in her bag before she goes home because he's coming home tomorrow - and he might just come home tonight. And this is a guy she broke off with twice.

"LDR is good. We quarrel less," she says.

And then there's WS, communications exec at an MNC, probably the most serious of the lot. Fresh out of a relationship just two months back, WS is subdued and reserved. It is not something to talk about although we aired our thoughts about how she was too good for the guy. I still think WS deserves more.

And then there's YF, the blonde of the group and not afraid to show it. Flaky, pretty and hilarious, YF is the breath of fresh air everyone welcomes after a day of slogging and a decade of heart breaks. What's amazing is she just separated with her secondary school sweet heart of 15 years (yes, that's a lifetime!) and she's feeling pretty good about it.

And then of course there's me: the ex-'big sister', who's managed against all odds to get her fat ass hitched, pregnant and contentedly installed in a nice condo in the big city of KL.

13 years later, here we are, at 31. Excepting me (and I feel quite left out), everyone went one full circle in their love lives. Has over a decade gone by with nothing to show for it? Should my friends feel sad that they seem to have lost everything together, and almost at once? Careers, freedom, a chance to settle down?

All I can I think is that my pals are the brave new Malaysian women, if not some of the ballsiest. Unafraid of change, even perpetuating this change, they may seem a little lost at what to do at first, but they are nevertheless grabbing another decade by the neck and going, "Bring it on!"

And why shouldn't they? 31 is when it gets interesting!

TO MOOT IS MOOT. LET'S MOOT!

I'm sure there are more confusing words in the English language, but the word 'moot' is, wthout a doubt, one of them.

Having read law, 'moot' was first introduced to me as 'pretend', as in a 'moot court', where we as legal students fought out cases in a pretend court setting to train themselves to be future barristers.

As a journalist later, the word 'moot' then became to 'suggest something for discussion', as in "The idea of national service for women was mooted".

Moot also meant a dead end, where if a subject debated was moot, it was an issue without a resolution.

Today, I discovered yet another meaning for 'moot', used in a legal context, where a subject ceases to have practical use or meaning. In Cambridge's online dictionaries (an excellent tool if I may say so), a sentence was given to illustrate this meaning: "The district attorney said if McVeigh is given the death penalty and his conviction is upheld on appeal, the state prosecution would become moot."

And for us web-sters, pun intended, there is the online etymology game called Moot (well, just a fraction of the offline game, really)!

IP/MPLS, CPE-based IP VPNs and VPLS

It is not funny having to digest mountains of technical white papers and ppt handouts and competitive analyses just to come up with a press release that the general business press can understand.

This dabbling in the 'dark side' is becoming tedious. How do you do it, See Ming?

NEW LOOK

Since it's the new year, I did a little spring cleaning and redecorating with the site. The fella in red you see on the left here is from a wallpaper downloadable from Bioware's official Neverwinter Nights website. I'm actually almost at the end of my third replay of the game, trying to level my character up nicely for the game's latest expansion, "Hordes of the Underdark". You'll see my review soon in In.Tech (if I don't get TOO carried away)!

COOL TECH GADGETS - THESTAR'S OWN TECH TV-STYLE NET SHOW!

I just noticed this!

Check out Intech journos Ravind and Kit (who looks like Flyguy from afar - anyone else agree with me??) in The Star Online's new Cool Tech Gadgets show. Quite well filmed and the boys are all very pro, man! *swoon*

Check it out at here (look under the nav bar).