Nature has a peculiar way to show its power. More often than not it is shown in its destructive forms. Deadly hurricanes and catastrohpic earthquakes just to name a few. Sometimes, the fairer side is put on display. Stunning panorama, eye candy sceneries and lush greeneries often come into mind in that aspect. Then again there are just some phenomenas that are outright mind boggling and inexplicable. Freakish if you will. Combinations of the aforementioned three features are not uncommon. Beautiful, yet deadly.Weird and fatal. You get the idea.

I read an article on National Geographic website featuring white lions today. Yes, white lions.The article can be found here.

Majestic,beautiful, and cute but no problem whatsoever when it comes to mauling a 150kg-250kg wildebeest in group . The notion of deadliness usually do not come across the mind of most people once they come across white animals which are not so usually. No thanks to images of adorable and cuddly snow white animals conjured in our minds which have been imprinted over the years misled by many causes. There is no denying that animals with snowy white fur like rabbits and hamsters are harmless. However, there are unexceptionally high exceptions in the animal kingdom in which it's opposite.

To be different than others of the same species in the animal kingdom means invoking dangers. Survival is at the top of list in the animal kingdom, predators and preys alike. For a prey to stand out among its species means an easy target for predators while a predator which can be easily detected is as good in hunting as polices announcing who they are going to arrest tomorrow in the news today. In fact, these black sheep are often than not isolated by their own groups. Isolation certainly shaves off survival chances of those in the animal kingdom, more so for animals who are live in groups.

So when I saw the article, the first thing that came up my mind is how are these cats going to survive in the wild. It turns out that they live in captivity. In fact, most of these cases happen in captivity. Reason? It's the same reason as mentioned above. They don't have much survival chance in the wild. In captivity, these animals are safe from so many wild elements. They don't even do much of what their species do in the wild: hunting, roaming and etc. I wonder if they still retain their animal instincts.

Further probing at Wikipedia for the reason for these abnormal occurences shows that genetic condition known as Leucism. Unlike mutation where genetic information is altered, leucism is a condition where recessive genes are present instead of dominant ones. A simple example is albinism. You would think that evolution would have eliminate these seemingly defective genes from the gene pool and survival of the fittest should have taken its course long ago. However, evolution is not as easy as that. If all but the fittest meet their ends, wouldn't the process of evolution cease? That's something to ponder upon.

Adieu, graynut signing off.

I got divided by zero lately, hence my lack of updates. Anyway, here are more random pictures that I found. I do not own these pictures and therefore credits belong to their owners. I have included the links to the owners of these pictures whenever possible, with lack of meaning I could not locate the source of these pictures. If you happen to know their origins, please drop me an email at wn.fong.v3@gmail.com.

Aurora Borealis from the space. Also known as Northen Polar Lights or just aurorae. Source

Urm...Great moment here. Unidentified source.

If my memory does not fail me, this chap is said to prevent the fire engine from being frozen. Unidentified source too.

If the words on the sign are too small, here is what it says. Unidentified source.
1. Mass Ave Bridge Closed
2. Sunday 04/22/07 6am-3pm
3. To Appease Godzilla

Zombie attack! Be afraid. Be very afraid. Unidentified source.

Shoryuken Cat. KO-ed by his awesomeness! Source

LOLCAT + Emoticon = Win! Unidentified source.

The phenomenon is not exclusive to Apple products though. Source

I say, fire away USS Lincoln. Unidentified source.

It's no longer flies that go into your mouth if you yawn with your mouth wide open. Unidentified source.

I faces the risk of invoking wraths of the fairer sex by posting this one. Heh. Unidentified source. Definitely not from the periodic table.

Beats me why his genitals are in surgical spirits. Unidentified source.

Somehow I believe the mistakes made have successfully magnified the protestors' message. Unknown source.

...especially when stress is handed to you like desserts, if you catch what I mean. Unknown source.

The WTF panda. Unidentified source. Definitely not WWF.

This may come from WWF, the wrestling body. Again, unidentified source.

Okay, this is creepy. First we have pedobear. Now it's pedopanda. Or is it pedobear in disguise? Beats me. Unidentified source.

Stay tuned. Adieu, graynut signing off.

Taking a break from posting headache inducing articles. Enjoy this great skit which I foraged from youtube.com



Stay tuned. Adieu, graynut signing off.

Yes, this post is entirely on maths. You may hate it when you learn it, but you can't deny that it's part and parcel of life. But then again you can just ignore this post if you really want. I posted it out of my curiosity on this matter, and if you share the same with me, you might as well as read on. I tried to make the context as accurate and simple as possible with what I have assimilated after going through loads of information that is readily available in the net. I shall not assure you that it will neither be a terrific read nor a practical lesson, but I bet my non-existent three tonnes of bullion in Swiss vault that you will realize there is more to division by zero than a mere error that pops up at your calculator every time you attempt to divide anything with zero.

Division as we are know very well is an inverse of multiplication. You may know division as, erm, division, but the essence of this operative is to reverse of what multiplication can do. However, there is another approach to this. Multiplication can also be explained as repeated addition. Thus, division is naturally repeated subtraction. This method is not practical though, because maths is mainly about accuracy and speed, of which can rarely be found in lengthy solutions such as repeated subtraction or addition. Of course, that is not my focus in this entry. Sorry for the digression.

Learning by example is unarguably one of the most effective way. Naturally, that notion is practiced in school as often as it could be. In elementary maths, we approached division through examples that we could make sense. E.g. distributing x number of fruits to y number of people, donating k amount of cash to l number of institution. You get the idea. Initially all questions that we came across resulted in whole numbers. Everything was so simple. Other concepts came into play later, i.e. remainder, decimal places etc. Those posed no obstacles too, as their concepts are fairly simple.

At that point, division by zero meant nothing. It meant nothing because there was nothing to divide the numerator to begin with. How are we supposed to distribute 10 apples to 0 person? If we approach this problem using repeated subtraction, it simply suggest we subtract 0 apple out of the total indefinitely. Thus, it's meaningless.

Then we begun learning different branches of mathematics; algebra, calculus, statistics and so on. Division by zero thus rears its ugly head, or many heads as a matter of fact because it's no longer undefined in some of the branches of mathematics even though it still remains meaningless. However, meaningless stuff in mathematics do not equal to harmless kittens when applied in life. How so?

Stay tuned to find out more in the next entry. Adieu, graynut signing off.

Alas, it's the last post on reunion dinner held 2 weeks ago. All photographs that was taken by me which passed my self-imposed inspection and have been photochopped edited to the best I can, can be found here.

Enough talk there. I saved the bests for the last. Enjoy :-)

The two on the left are great story tellers.

Say hi to Wen Yi.

The four scouts. The King Scout is the one in blue, Jason.

Cheese!

Ladies of the night...

The guys were not to be outdone...

Only one third who attended were in this photo.

Dinesh with his right arm raised high, probably cheering for the match shown on the TV.

Best photo of the night! Could've made it look like a magazine cover if I know how. :-P

Group photo at the end.

Front row, L-R : Wai Yew, Wee Keng, Pn. Kwan, Ms. Chang, Mr. Ho and Mr. Leong

Middle row, L-R : Shi Wei, Kar Chun, Shin En, Pui Yee, Weng Khong, Wye Hon, Wei Shin, Yin Teng, Wen Yi, Adrian

Back row, L-R : Sook Shan, Deenie, Jason, Wai Kit, Kah Meng, Edmund, Hou Zzan, Chong Yi, Chun Ho and Dinesh

Candid version :-)

What is a reunion dinner without the latest news on everyone? So here's the latest (3 weeks ago, LOL) information on everybody, in order of the position in the normal group photo.

Front row : Wai Yew is already in UKM, while Wee Keng is in UM. And the teachers, well, they are at where they were, not going anywhere. Wye Hon secured a place in UGM (Indonesia). Yin Teng will enrol in University of Nottingham (M'sia). Wen Yi is already in UPM. Adrian on the other hand is in Sunway college.

Middle row : Shi Wei is in UniMAS whereas Kar Chun is in UTM. Shin En enrolled in Uniten. Pui Yee is in UMS. Kah Meng is in UTM with Kar Chun too. Weng Khong, well, he is preparing to go to Europe (read : JPA scholar).

Back row : Sook Shan is in UPM as well. Jason chose Uniten to be near her wife, Deenie, although Deenie is not in Uniten, just somewhere near. Sorry, no accurate detail on this. I will amend once I know. Wai Kit is in UMS also. Edmund got into UKM whereas Hou Zzan, he either accepted the offer from UTHM or he chose Uniten in the end. He was still undecided that night. Wei Shin has already been in UTP (note : Petronas scholar). Chong Yi is in the same boat as Weng Khong. Chun Ho is in UniMAS too. And finally, Dinesh, who is in UPM.

So, that's all for the reunion this time. Just a simple gathering organized at the eleventh hour. Thankfully, the response was not as lukewarm as dreaded. I will see to it that another reunion be organized in the near future. I shall take the chance to bid everyone farewell and the best of luck. Kick asses in your new places alright?

Stay tuned for the next entry as I revert my mode back to wacko and get my crazymotor running in my brain once again : Division by zero, not as simple as an error that you know. Adieu, graynut signing off.

This series is getting really boring. So, I've decided to wrap it up with the next post instead of continuing it for another four entries with photographs accompanied by witty comments which I am seriously running out of. The remaining photographs will be stored here, along with those that I've posted before this.

Here goes.

The loaded Fortune Deity giving out moolah while shaking hands with recipients a la VIP.

No, this photo was not smeared. It was the steam rising out of the pot.

Somehow this shot reminds me of those couples shot. Okay, that was so wrong.

Wen Yi and Dinesh in discussion. Dinesh was the only non-Chinese to join us. I am not being racist here. Rather, I was disappointed that he was the only non-Chinese there.

You can see Adrian showing er, whatever sign that means.

Mr. Ho helping himself to those fresh crustaceans while Mr. Leong looked on.

Shin En caught unaware.

The guys were having a great time exchanging news among each other. Don't forget about the bullshitting part too when Chun Ho was in the photo. Trust him to blow your logic away with his mind numbling stories with the occasion help from Wye Hon.

There was one incident during the dinner that warrants a special mention here. First, have a look at the incident.

Unfortunately, this is not a guess-what-is-that game. This is the clearest shot I could get of that incident.

Just in case you still can't figure out what's that, those are oysters. In a cup of Chinese tea. How did those oysters get into the tea? I'll leave it to your imagination. It was totally unintended though.

Stay tuned for the last part. Adieu, graynut signing off.

This is part 3 of the 8 parts series on reunion dinner. Don't you think this is getting boring?

Everyone helping themselves to those delicious food.

Jason and his girlfriend/wife Deenie.

The teachers were not to be left behind in eating too :-D

Wei Shin and Weng Khong posing, while Adrian was busy messaging.

Wei Shin and Weng Khong, again :-P

"v" for v, Edmund and Kah Meng.

No, Wai Yew was not looking sideway at the camera. In fact, his eyes were fixed at the steamboat. Drools...

The surprise Santa/Fortune Diety, Ms. Chang, handling red packets with the most powerful charm in the world, moolah.

Yin Teng receiving her charm.

Santa/Fortune Diety doing her round, giving everyone a packet.

That's all for the time being. I'm back to more editing.

Stay tuned. Adieu, graynut signing off.

My mind was taken over by kiasu mentality and I promptly went to this site.

Stay tuned. Adieu, graynut signing off.

This is the 2nd entry on the previous reunion dinner. The first post can be found here.

As the clock ticked away, more and more arrived. I was really glad that so many people turned up in spite of the short notice. However, we were really had a lot of empty seats until the very last minute. In the end, the number that turned up was nearing 30, way beyond my expectation. You can say that I have low expectation or whatsoever, but then again you don't really know what kind of responses I got from some of those that I've invited.

'Nuff with the boring details, and feast your eyes upon these sub par photographs.

Wai Kit chattering away with Pn. Kwan before dinner began.

The guys were doing the same across the tables.

Chun Ho and Hou Zzan, with hint of excitement in their eyes, though you can't see Chun Ho's from this angle.

Wai Kit indulging himself in university entrance guide.

Pn. Kwan and Mr. Leong. They are this friendly all the time mind you, not just in front of the camera.

Wye Hon, it was hard to get a good shot on you despite all your previous efforts until now. Really.

Wai Kit may seems reluctant being alone in front of the camera, but it's different when he's with others.

Yin Teng with, er, some meat (?) between her chopsticks. Abymsal focus, this one, yes.

The two Koks, Adrian Kok and Kok Wee Keng. Close buddies since young.

Everybody was busy sinking their teeth into something.

These guys prefer a la carte, and so they have to wait while those eating steamboat feasted non-stop. Chun Ho was peering over his university entrance guide, while Hou Zzan tried to catch a look.

So, that's the end of this entry. It is not even half way yet.

Stay tuned. Adieu, graynut signing off.