taxi ride...

... "kawan dari Malay  ke?"... the taxi drive ask me, as I returning from the office.  I am quite surprised, but not too surprised since in my kampung, we have about 20 Vietnamesse living and working at the nearby factory. I asked him ... "boleh cakap bahasa Malaysia ke? dulu duduk mana?". He replied with a smile "boleh sikit2... dulu kerja di Nilai, Pontian ... dah jalan2 Terengganu, Johor, Kuala Lumpur"...So we chat till I reached my destination, in bahasa Melayu of course. 

I would recommend anyone coming here to use Mai Linh taxi service (green color logo).... they have good taxi (Vios, Innova, cherry) and honest drivers...  Please bring map showing the destination and name of the street...  Our pronounciation is different from theirs, so for backup, bring the city map. 

In Jakarta, I would recommend Bluebird taxi company (light blue in color)... If you cannot find Bluebird, Gamya or Ekspress Taxi service should also be OK...  honest and good services.

In Malaysia, I could recommend one Malay taxi driver in Johor Bharu... charged me by meter, and even pay for my lunch.... 

In KL, there's a Chinese old man who drive the cab with good manner and charged me base on meter reading, no more and no less. And in Shah Alam, I normally called this Indian taxi driver who never overcharged me and very polite. Three of these guys, because of their honesty, politeness and good manners, make me forget temporarily my others bad experiences with my home country taxi services... 

May your honesty and kindness repay by God the merciful.....I might forgotten your names, but I will never forget your good deed and excellent job.... 

The rest... let me check my memory.... scanning... scanning... scanning..

...hmmm.... I cannot recall  many good experinces that I wanna write here......and I don't keep track on the negative ecounters.....

move to level 20.... ikan masak kari....

Last weekend I moved to level 20 from level 10... so it's consider as level UPgrade....  if calculate from the mathematical aspect. The nominal is 10, and the new is 20... 10 level UPgrade.... I need to kill lot of rival gangsters head if I want to reach that level in Facebook Mafia War...

I was so bored, probably due to the killing loneliness and mega boredom... (my appology if there's lot of mistake in my vocabulary,... I the spellchecking only work in Vietnam..).

Luckily, two of friends pay a visit and ask me to cook fish curry. I only had a frozen like stone mackerel fish, bought last 2 week. Amazingly, the cooking and the fish taste very good... probably due to the cold weather, longing hunger for curry, the Babas curry powder itself... or 3 of us just straving. The rice not enough...  since I normally cook for myself here, not expecting visitor.... 

Probably next weekend, sup daging style orang jawa... with sambal kicap......

Planet of the Apes... and speed of light...

This is a continuum from previous writing.....perhaps too much working with RF path analysis make my brain thinking of weird things... 

In Planet of the Apes film, the hero astronout (what his name is....Mark Whalberg) got trapped in time vortex anomaly deep in space, while chasing his estranged space monkey.... they were both riding small capsule spaceship each.  Both creatures trapped continously, frozen in time for maybe thousand of years.

Then one day suddenly this guy escape from the anomaly, thrown into orbit and landing on planet quite similar to Earth.. not knowing that he's been away for generation. For him, it's just a few minutes or hours passing by. 

As the story told, the research mothership crash landed on the planet thousands years ago due to some problem. The human colony try adapting to new environment, together with their space chimps and apes. As time goes by, these apes began revolting and showing aggressive behaviour toward human, probably due to their intelligence evolution or mankind become more stupid... I agree on the second, as we witness now. The apes lead by Seymour the chimpanzee I think began enslaving the mankind..... 

And then this captain came in, held captive, escape and lead mankind to fight for freedom... 

That second part of the story probably more toward biology, genetic, pschology, politic or behavioural science... I am more interested in the first part... the physic part.

Theoritically,  if you travel fast enough nearing or achieve the speed of light, time slow down and finally standstill for us. One hour or one minute of our time pass by, probably hundreds or thousand of year have gone by. It's like we are trapped and frozen in time, but still living.  

Space station cosmonaut, when they come back to earth, their body cell sample was taken and put under microscope, for measuring sign of aging. And it's found out that, they aging was on slower pace than normal human living on earth. The reason is, they are living inside space station which travel very very fast, orbiting the earth almost 16 times a day.

From Physic theory, this is possible,... but in reality, it's impossible, cause no living things can survive travelling to speed of light, even if we have the vehicle manage to do that... our body will just disintegrate... due to mainly our cell was bonded with forces or particles that travel with speed of light... when we reach reach the speed of light, the forces that binded us is no more effective.,.... we just disintegrate....no more glue to lock our body together....

On earth, speed also effect our age.... in reverse.....shortening it every time our leg press the gas pedal....or our hand squezzing the throttle... So if you want stay young, or old... go straight for the speed of light, not 180 or 220 km/h.... in space offcourse, where collission possibility is minimal....

Misconception on space station 'no gravity' condition...

When our first cosmonaut blasted to space and stay in the famous space station, almost everybody backhome (including me) astonished and amazed by the experience and condition in space. Cosmonauts and their things just floating around, defying the gravity that nail us to the Earth.

Some people say, this is due to the no gravity effecting the space station and the occupants. I also believed this is the explanation, until someone ask me...  

"If there's no gravity, and the cosmonauts floating around... then why the spacestation does not float around also??''..... hmmmm.. there's logic in the question... 

So, as usual.. I  googled for the explanation...  

And I need to read the explanation a few times before my brain unfreeze and understood. 

Basically the space station is orbiting the Earth hundreds km above our head, and our Mother Earth gravity does have effect on it. Otherwise, it will just flown away out of orbit and into space.

The Earth gravity force pulling the body, keep the space station in orbit. 

Then why the cosmonauts and all the things inside floating around? If the gravity pulling the space station, the logic is, the force is also pulling the occupant. So why are they floating around??

The explanation is, since the space station always moving in circle, orbiting the Earth almost 16 times a day... the occupants may it be human, monkey or things will always be in constant free fall condition. They are constantly in state of free fall, not "no gravity". No gravity if you flown out into space..... what they experience is microgravity.... 

It's like being inside a lift... and the cable snapped and keep falling down, till terminal velocity.... everbody inside will experience weightlessness... 

space and time... and movie...

Last weekend, I actually planned to visit the Museum of Literature or maybe the infamous Prison during the French colonization, but was cancel as I hooked to the idiot box, showing movie ... The Groundhog Day... and later .. Planet of the Apes... 

I can remember last time, when I took the subject of Quantum Mechanics as one the subject for Physics... I didn't have any clue. Total clueless. Most of the time during the lecture, I wrote down the lectures and formulas without knowing...  and don't ask me about the application.

I don't know is it just me or my other fellow friends also face these problems...   I am just writing down, and try memorizing the weird formula in my head and hopefully with Mathemathical knowledge I could answer the exam. That's the only reason I memorize the funny and weird looking formulas. 

Just memorize a few of Shroedinger equations and hopefully they come out during exam. And as expected, my result was ... a failure. I didn't put much hope anyway, it's better for me to focus on potential subjects.

I just couldn't grasp the idea, when the lecturer said that we're now living with 4 dimension... not 3 dimension. Where's the 4th come from? I only know 1 is X, 2 is Y and 3 is Z.. the xyz dimension that can easily be plotted on graph. Perhaps I am not paying attention or he failed to give simple example, i failed to understand why time is the 4th dimension. Time is just unit measurement ....a mean to measure event from A to B. What time got anything to do with xyz (space)??

I had all almost all the weird formulas, memorize it (for the exam of course...) but i still fail to relate Time and Space.

Then, after I watched a movie.. can't remember the title... but definitely long after finishing my study... I got revealation... finally my brain understood... 

The example given is easy and very practical... the example is us, human..   we start from baby, grow up to children, then teenage, adult.. and finally old .. before the ultimate death.

As we grow, our body expand and grow in xyz  axis (depth, length, width)... and that is space dimension. Meaning we have some event in space dimension.. the 3 dimension side.

And we also grow from baby to adult to old .... this is time dimension... only time can measure this event, not space.... and this is the mysterious 4th dimension.... xyz cannot measure when we are young, old, birthday or any time related event.

For me, this is a simple enough example of space and time continum... And I cannot imagine living in world with only 3 dimension, where time just standstill... or probably time move, but we only have xy, yz, or xz dimension..... 

Next I will be writing on the usual misconception of 'no gravity' in the space station condition ... like experienced by Sheikh Muzaffar... 

Ha Long Bay ... series 2...

Hạ Long Bay (literally: Descending Dragon bay; Vietnamese: Vịnh Hạ Long) is a UNESCOWorld Heritage site located in Quảng Ninh province, Vietnam. The bay features thousands of limestone karsts and isles in various sizes and shapes.

Perhaps this photos justify why this location was chosen by UNESCO as one of the 7th Nature World Wonder....

Congregation of tour boat, slowly entering the secluded, hidden local floating fishing village....
It's just like discovering new civilization....
The local floating fish farm....you could buy the seafood here and cook on the boat... but the price quite premium...  
the boat goes deeper into the bay....

Ha Long Bay....

A fews weeks ago, my friends and I managed to visit Ha Long Bay... famous natural tourist attraction not so far away from Ha Noi... And since every nature wonder have their own local legend... I just attached the information from Wikipedia.

Local legend has it that long ago, when the Vietnamese were fighting Chinese invaders, the gods sent a family of dragons to help defend the land. This family of dragons began spitting out jewels and jade. These jewels turned into the islands and islets dotting the bay, linking together to form a great wall against the invaders. The people kept their land safe and formed what later became the country of Vietnam. After that, dragons were interested in peaceful sightseeing of the Earth and decided to live here then. The place where Mother Dragon flew down was named Hạ Long, the place where the dragon children attended upon their mother was called Bái Tử Long island (Bái: attend upon, Tử: children, Long: dragon), and the place where the dragon children wriggled their tails violently was called Bạch Long Vỹ island (Bạch: white- colour of the foam made when Children Dragon wriggle, Long: dragon, Vỹ: tail).

 
Bird of prey.... 
Captain and boat crew....
Nearing the location...
We are at the entrance of the fishing village..