faizuddindotcom

For the first time after many years of ups and downs, I can’t help but feel somewhat detached from my one and only club, Liverpool FC. I know this is such an embarrassing statement but that is how I feel for this season. Strange. I just can’t wait for next season to start. While most supporters are blaming Rafa for the poor season, wanting him to leave, I however think the other way round. I personally don’t want him out. Not midseason. He should stay but certainly there is something that he needs to change. I am not an expert but clearly he has been too cautious in many games, dropped many points for games that we should win. Even The Latics are now creating history on us. They have never won against us. Never, not until last night. How miserable is that?

Fourth place seems unrealistic to me if Rafa keeps being cautious. We need to attack more. We need not care about the opponent. We have some players who are capable for this. Rafa has the capacity to change things. Fingers crossed, this is the storm we were talking about and it is just temporary I believe. I know for sure, no matter what, I will still be standing behind my club. Well next match is against Lille and we’ll back to Anfield for Portsmouth FC four days later. Good luck lads! YNWA.

I might not be as fit as those sportsmen who can easily do 10km continuous running without taking a break. They do that for living. I am not. I run for fun, although I must admit that I am getting some sort of satisfaction from running. Running burns fat and keeps your fitness level. No denial. Apart from running I play footy too and it is kind of hard to play footy if you are not fit. Short of breath is one of the signs of unfit (I guess). I am no physician, but I believe running should help you to hold your breath longer..okay, unless you smoke

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I was going through my iTunes library last night and of all the sudden I got hooked to this old song once again. Weezer, man… it is highly unlikely for people to do not know this awesome Los Angeles based quartet and this particular No One Else from The Blue Album released in the year 1994, is definitely one of my all-time favorite tunes. Classic.

My affair with Weezer started a long time ago when most of the kids were still listening to those rubbish timed-bomb boy bands. It was by a coincidence. I was at this one music store looking for Silverchair’s Frogstomp (oh yeah.. I was a grunge kid back then!) when I saw this plain blue cassette (those days…) artwork with four straight-faced looking guys. While we have always been told not to judge a book by its cover, the album however had an exception from me. No specific reason though. I bought the album together with Frogstomp. I was sold after listening to the first song and thank god it wasn’t a boy band album!

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One of the kiddy Harry Potter scenes was filmed inside this building.

Oxford. I was there last Monday. Indeed, Oxford is quite a small city compare to the city I am living in now. The only difference is that, Oxford houses the oldest university in the world. Fascinating isn’t? Geographically, Oxford is a two-hour drive away from Southampton. Not bad I guess. Well if it wasn’t snowing on that day, oh yeah, I went there with my housemate who happened to have two free return tickets, I guess the time taken to reach Oxford should be shorter. Since we had no idea about what to do and where to go in Oxford, we decided to take the university guided tour.

No coed. No fun.

Apparently, Oxford uses some complicated academic management system. I don’t really understand how but it is quite complicated. They have a quite number colleges in which each has its own academic system and is separated from the main university management. Each college has their own schools to handle fees, enrollments, examinations so on and so forth. Simply put, it is like having a collection of universities inside a university. The main university (Oxford) on the other hand only handle the main management part such as examinations scheduling and probably to provide main facilities such as laboratories, theater halls and perhaps (my wild guess) to act as the “middle person” to the colleges. Having said that, if you want to enter Oxford to study engineering for instance, you may want to check directly with the colleges instead of applying through the university since most colleges in Oxford do have an engineering school. So technically, you may study engineering at college A and you can also study engineering at college B and so at college C. Now that is complicated!

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Agger, our long ranger sets to take the set piece

Liverpool FC may not deserve to play among this year European elites. They were eliminated in the first round and now playing in the second class European football competition. Who cares anyway. We had more downs than ups this season and that had cost us a lot, seriously a lot. As a fan who still see Liverpool FC as one of the best football clubs in the world, I decided to head up north to Anfield once again to watch our best eleven at the moment entertaining the Romanian side, AFC Unirea Urcizeni. To be honest, I never heard about Unirea before so I was not really sure if this club is going to be a real test to Liverpool or not.

We won! That explains.

Apparently it was for Liverpool. Liverpool won only by a goal different and it was pretty massive considering that we did not have Torres in the attack.  Although Liverpool had most of the possession, the Romanian side however defended quite well. Hats off to their goalkeeper who managed to keep the clean sheet until N’gog broke the deadlock in the last ten minutes of the match. Thanks Rafa. Your plan B to use Babel and Pacheco in the dying minutes worked. Now you realized how much we need to attack from both flanks to break into defensive Unirea. Second leg is in Bucharest and Torres is expected to return into the first eleven. A big relieve I must say.

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Today marks the the seventh day of me being ill. I never thought that this influenza virus would take me down for straight seven days. The last time I had flu was during last winter and it was really terrible. Flu is simply annoying. It causes you great discomforts. Runny nose, aching body and massive headaches to name a few. Nevertheless, I forced myself not to be too affected by these. Yes, I have a pile of work to be done and flu is just like every other problem that I have to solve.

There is a saying “illnesses wash away your sins” . I honestly believe in this. This is just a small test from the God and I am grateful that it was only a flu. I am still breathing after all, although sometimes I had to use my mouth to breathe due to stuffy nose.

I am feeling a little bit better today. Trying to get back into the track and get the job done. There are many things that I would like to share here, regarding my research. Especially on the embedded support vector machine which is definitely going to be my next post.

So long 2009 and welcome 2010. It is just like any other year. Nothing is fancy about the upcoming 2010. No ‘to-do’ list, no new year resolutions or whatsoever. Life requires you to move on regardless of when or where. Be a better person as time goes by. Learn from the mistakes. Evolve and win. It is continuous process thus waiting for another digit to be added to current year before making any actions is such a waste of time.

Oh well, I am maturing. No denial about that. Mom and dad were surprised on how well I’m coping with my life here. In fact I never thought that I could deal with it well either. My hypothesis is somewhat true. If you have the willingness to face the challenge, regardless of how big it is, you’ll beat them eventually. Even if you think that you would never make it in the beginning. The key is to be optimistic and keep everything else simple. Pessimist on the other hand… sucks.

2009 has finally come to end. 2010 is next. 2011 and so on. Nothing special in particular. Although I would like to wish whoever reads this, Happy New Year. Have a nice day and cheers.