Champions League Final

The clash of two mighty English teams, Manchester United and Chelsea in the Finals is a sight to behold. Although surprisingly the England national team didn’t qualify for Euro 2008, their domestic league is still one of the best in the world. The money involved in the league is really out of this world and the football skills displayed are equally amazing.

In the finals, Manchester United’s Alex Ferguson once again displayed his arrays of tactics by deploying Cristiano Ronaldo on the left flank to counter Michael Essien’s playing at right back. Essien is essentially a central midfielder and with his lack of defensive awareness, his position is one to be explored. The next tactic was to employ Owen Hargreaves at the right side to prevent Ashley Cole from roaming forward and to protect Wes Brown on the right side. Hargreaves is a superb player who could play in many positions and his adaptability is just amazing.

Chelsea’s Avram Grant is still employing his usual tactic to have a strong central midfield to push the team forward. Seeing Ronaldo on the left side did not seem to bother him at all and it prove costly as Ronaldo headed in a goal in the first half with Essien close by doing nothing to challenge his glorious rise to score. But still Chelsea is still a team filled with plentiful of talent. The midfield battle is evenly matched but Chelsea was many a times outclassed in the flanks. Goalkeeper Petr Cech was simply too good. His many heroics save Chelsea from time to time and in the end of the first half, Frank Lampard managed to slot in the ball courtesy of a deflection off Vidic and Ferdinand.

The game went into extra time and more drama unfolds. Didier Drogba overcame with frustration slapped Vidic, his nemesis. The red card was flashed and off goes Drogba to the shower room in what could be his last game in a blue shirt. The penalty was nerve-wrecking for both set of supporters. Of all people, Ronaldo’s, Man U’s regular penalty taker, shot was saved by Cech. His usual tactic of stopping once did not fool Cech as he stood his ground and wait for him to shoot a lame shot. I guess Chelsea’s fans were really glad about this miss and their excitement was erupting. So when John Terry walked towards the penalty area for his turn, their fan’s hearts must be in their mouth. For the first time in Chelsea history, Terry, the captain could be in the honors rolls for firing the team into history books.

The rain continued to beat, the cold winds in Moscow howled, John Terry probably never took notice of them and as he run off to kick the ball. He probably regretted his carelessness of not perceiving his environment with assiduousness. The grass gave way and his foots slid a few centimeters off course. The ball flew and hit the post. Oh gosh
Chelsea’s advantage had disintergrated.

When Ryan Giggs, breaking the club’s records for most appearance, scored it was down to Anelka, Chelsea’s latest recruit to break evens.The experienced goalkeeper, Van der Sar saw his shot coming and leapt out a flying save to secure Man U’s third European glory.

Two David in the Top Three

Both David Cook and David Archuleta are in the top 3 for Season 7 of American Idol and they rightly deserved to be as they had impressed over the weeks with their fantastic vocals. They also had never been in the bottom 3 so far this season.

Really impressed with the 17 year old Archuleta, whose vocals was really good but as a person who like rock music, I very much prefer the raw attracting vocals of Cook. Image wise, I think Archuleta is too young to be crowned as the American Idol, Cook is a more suitable person.

But of course,fan base wise, I guess Archuleta had a slight edge, with mothers and young girls will be voting for him.

We'll see how it goes when it finally come to the end.

Here's the clips on the two Davids' performance.

David Archuleta



David Cook

Man Vs Wild

Man vs wild is a documentary show about survival in the wild.

It is hosted by the Bear Grylls, an ex-officer in the Special Force.The show featured him travelling through very hostile environment and trying to conquer them. The show is very similar in the way the plot move in all episodes except for the environment.

It's an interesting show which show the viewers on the floral and fauna found and some ways to get the best out of them. Bear also taught you how to look out for signs of dangers, various method of starting fire and building shelters.Some of the more important lessons taught are, throwing rocks into an empty cave to check for animals, elephant dung can hydrate your body at the last resort, use smoke to calms the bees and obtain honey.

He is not always successful which add realism to the show but of course, there are always criticism on him that he had additional help and some things are concealed from the viewers but still important and essential survivals skills are being show and it might save your life one day. Who really care if it's all fake?

Here's a link to his Blog: http://beargrylls.blogspot.com/

State of fear

This is a 2004 novel by Michael Crichton.

Compared to his past novels, I actually found it quite hard to get myself into the story. It begin with a series of scenes from different locations and it's get really confusing because readers will not know what's the story about until they finally pieced together at the end. From Paris to The depths of the jungle in Malaysia and then to London and Japan, each scenes seemed unconnected from each other. It's only when the story reached it's middle portion, that readers will have some idea what was going on.

State of Fear is techno-thriller about Eco-terrorist. An environmental organisation is trying to garner more funds to support its clause and had gone to extreme ends to as collaborating with an terrorist group to manipulate the climate and cause "natural" disasters so as to make it look like the world is in serious dire states and need quick remedies soon.

A young lawyer and the rich patron for the organisation are the heroes in this novel and with a pair of FBI agents, they tried to halt their efforts. There are two major parts of the story where I considered more exciting than the rest. The part where they went to Antarctica to investigate and nearly got killed and the last portion where they head over to the Solomon islands in a stand-off with the terrorists and the natives.

This novel is rather unusual from the rest of his novel where in which the entire novel is peppered with citations from real papers and journals in the field of climate science. It had been given it's fair share of criticism from this scientists over the misleading information and the misuse of their information.Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton had actually scolded him for views that "muddy the issues around sound science"

Overall I think this novel is quite average and thought-provoking in some sense

FAIRPRICE FINE BLEND INST COFFEE

This is quite good coffee from NTUC fairprice.
I was a bit surprised by the taste of this brand cause I never expect it to be that good.

It had the usual nice coffee aroma but the taste is smoother and richer than some other brands. It had the retro feeling too, a taste of the coffee from old coffee shops in the eighties.

The big advantage of it all is that this brand is cheaper than your usual coffee's big names. For the same great taste, it's definitely worth the buy