When I try to start my car this morning, I got this slow-mo cranking sound..."鸟°Õ!!", dead battery. It's already given me some tell-tale sign these few days. i.e. slower-than-normal cranking speed. I checked the fluid level yesterday, though is low but still enough. But I noticed one of the cells is dying, a lot of solid (lead?) floating in the battery fluid. I thought it should last a few more days... hell not. This battery only last about 20 months, which is quite short.

But I still managed to start the engine after a few tries. I recalled maikauchai told me there's a shop in Section 17 selling batteries at cheap price. Called him and managed to locate the shop, named "Perniagaan Bateri Hup Soon", somewhere near the morning wet market.

Ask the boss to recommend me a battery, he said better get the "conventional" lead-asid type if drive a lot, because the heat under our weather condition will dry up the fluid inside a maintenance-free battery, and you can't top-up a sealed battery. So he said. Heard the same story that taxi drivers all prefer the normal battery, the more fluid the better!!

So, I got myself a conventional maintenance-needed lead-asid battery, in the name of Century NS60 (13-plate), at RM120.

I was shopping with paupau last Saturday, intended to get a present for suzette's 2-month old daughter. (A full-moon present supposedly ;p)

Boys will be boys... I ended up buying myself a present as well; a remote control aeroplane! Since this one only costs RM109, it's not difficult to get the "buy-it-if-you-like" sign from paupau...hehehe...

Did a "thorough" test flight earlier in the evening today, it's really impressive I must say! It can really fly!

Fabio Grosso, the hero of Italy for this World Cup.

He's the one who earned a penalty for Italy in the dying seconds of the Round-of-16 match against Australia, in which the spot kick was converted by Totti.

He's the one who sank millions of German fans' heart when he scored a last minute goal in extra time during the semi-final game.

He's the one who converted the fifth penalty kick against France...which brings Italy the World Cup for the forth time.

He's simply the hero for Italy!

This is the dust collected on my camera sensor after 1 month of usage. Look terrible, right? But fortunately none of them appear on my real-world photos.

This image is obtained using F/36, and increased contrast.

I'm curious how muke's Oly sensor will look like, since his has anti-dust!! :-)

I heard from radio this morning, that Pele was saying the Italians are the best team he has seen in the past decade... And they said Pele is famous for his 'wu nga hao' (crow mouth). Shit...don't tell me France is going to lift the World Cup...

For whatever reason, I would like to see Portugal go thru to the final. And an Italy-Portugal WC final is what I'm looking forward to. France...well, I just don't like them, I never supported them. No, not because they beat Brazil twice in recent WC finals!

May be I like to see C. Ronaldo play, or may be I like to see him cry, but not in the semi-final game... :-)

Let's be prepared for tonight... may be it's time to go home and sleep. :-)

It was really well worth staying up late to watch this semi-final game. Though the score were 0-0 for a full 118 minutes, but the game was easily one of the best I've seen during this WC.

The late, late goals by Grosso and Del Piero were really amazing to watch. I could see Klinsmann's heart break when Grosso sank in the first Italian goal. But he remained calm...

The second goal followed almost immediately, and the full-time whistle was blowed once Del Piero put the ball behind the net, beyond Lehmann's reach...

And for me, the full-time whistle was very much appreciated, because I could go to bed and sleep... :-)

Needed a flash for a special occasion last weekend, I bought the 430EX. This flash is really huge when mounted on my 'tiny' 350D, it looked really weird...and it's really heavy, my camera+lens+flash kit now easily weighs more than 1.5kg.

To understand how EOS flash works, read this site: http://photonotes.org/articles/eos-flash/