Money

Saturday, June 27, 2009

MJ - Michael Jackson

There was no sign of foul play in the death of Michael Jackson, coroners who completed a post-mortem on the singer's body have said.

But toxicology and other tests have been ordered, and the cause of the 50-year-old's death could take several weeks to determine.

Police also want to speak to Jackson's doctor who witnessed his collapse.

Jackson's body has been released to his family but no funeral details have been made public.



Michael Jackson's body moved to an "undisclosed location"
Seven hours after the post-mortem examination was completed, Jackson's family was allowed to claim his body, seemingly managing to elude the media crowd outside the coroner's office.

The body has been taken to an undisclosed location.

Announcing the results of a three-hour autopsy, Los Angeles County Coroners spokesman Craig Harvey said there had been no indication of any external trauma or foul play, but he said the cause of death had been deferred.

"It means that the medical examiner ordered additional testing such as toxicology and other studies," Mr Harvey said.

These would take between four to six weeks, he said.

"We know he was taking some prescription medication," Mr Harvey said, without specifying which.

Unconfirmed reports suggest the singer had been taking a daily dose of Demerol, a painkiller also widely known as pethidine.

Jackson, who had a history of health problems, collapsed at his Los Angeles home around midday on Thursday.

A recording of the telephone call made to emergency services has been released, in which the caller said Jackson was unconscious and had stopped breathing.

His personal doctor - who witnessed his collapse - was trying to revive him, the caller said.

The singer was pronounced dead two hours later at the UCLA medical centre. Jackson's brother, Jermaine, said he was believed to have suffered a cardiac arrest.

Former Jackson family lawyer Brian Oxman told US TV that he had been concerned about the star's use of pain relief medication.

A spokesman for the Los Angeles Police Department said investigators had briefly spoken to Jackson's personal doctor, named by US media as Dr Conrad Murray, but they wanted to speak to him again.

Police also said a car owned by a doctor had been towed away from Jackson's home.

A spokeswoman said the doctor was not under criminal investigation, but that the car could contain "medications or other evidence that may assist the coroner in determining the cause of death".

The star had been due to stage 50 concerts at the O2 arena in London, beginning on 13 July.

Entertainers, world leaders and fans have continued to pay tribute to the star.

Across the world, people have been voicing shock and disbelief at the news of his death. In Hollywood, thousands of people filed past his star on the Walk of Fame.

Friday, June 26, 2009

Tips for Travelers (1)

SAVE MONEY, shares suggestions on hotels, car rentals, airfare, destination travel, food, maximize discounts, comparison-shop, special offers, insider-tips and more to put more hard cash in your travel pocket.


AVOID COST and costly mistakes, deals with impulse buying, un-reputable travel service providers, traveling without insurance, always read the fine print, buyer beware and other insights that will help you hold onto your travel dollar or spend it appropriately on what you want.


ENSURE DETAILS , involves paying close attention to confirming details, fine-print, insurance and other travel-related issues


BE SMART, will be offering travelers, general travel tips, as not only formulated in SMART goals, but also translating well into being an informed consumer, making wise choices and decisions on all their travel endeavors. Our acronym below summarizes the advantages and of budget-driven, planned travel for your inference and reflection:

S - Smart, well informed and structured
m - Memorable, miles
a - advantage
r - Rigorous and regular
t - Thorough

Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Hong Kong International Airport

Hong Kong International Airport

You may find that it is large~

You can find a lot of Airlines Counters...
Terminal 1
SU, AC, CA, AF, AI, MK, NZ, PX, NH, OZ

BG, BA

CX, 5J, CI, MU, CZ, CO, CS

DL, KA

LY, BR, 8C, EK, ET

AY

GA

JL

KL, KQ, KE

LH

MH, AE

RA, NW

OX

PK

QF, QR

BI

SV, SC, FM, ZH, 3U, FT, SQ, UL, LX

TP, TK

B7, UA

VN, VS

MF



Saturday, June 20, 2009

View~

The view ~~~


Tuesday, June 16, 2009

Food~ Snacks

I love these snacks~~~

Chocolate chip cookies

Black Sesame cookies



Film - Night at the Museum 2

Night at the Museum 2

It is quite good~
I love this film rather than CoCo before Chanel.
Maybe I am not a fashion designer so I don't have interest in it!!!

It is funny~

An economic downturn is usually good news for comedy. Most of you probably don’t want to think about the Great Depression but if you do you’ll quickly find yourself thinking of Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton. In Britain during the Eighties, when unemployment was at a frown-making three million, the nation was rolling about every night to The Young Ones, Spitting Image and Blackadder. There’s no business like crap business for exposing the collective funny spot of a generation, which might be a way of saying Ben Stiller and his friends are about to take over the known universe.

Stiller is 43 now and only getting into his stride. He rode the upturn very well, making people laugh at new things in Zoolander, There’s Something About Mary, Meet the Fockers and Reality Bites but it was obvious from last year’s Tropic Thunder that the recession is putting fresh vitamins into his juice. He is performing and directing with more brio than ever before, pulling the best out of that Frat Pack generation of comedians he stands at the head of, including Jack Black, Owen Wilson, Will Ferrell, Tina Fey and Steve Carrell. Stiller is also the kingpin behind a younger generation of comic actors associated with Judd Apatow — who variously produced, wrote and directed Superbad, Knocked Up and Pineapple Express — a friend who got his break producing The Ben Stiller Show in 1992. So as we go to hell in a hand-cart, will the journey be made most bearable — perhaps most excellent — by the company of an actor who knows what to do with his face when his dick gets caught in his zip?

Night at the Museum 2, directed by Shawn Levy, has the kind of laughs that might convince you that nothing is as bad as it seems: the movie is no masterpiece but if you could plug its good nature into the national grid you could probably keep Birmingham alight for a month. Stiller stars, once again, as Larry Daley, who was the museum night-guard in the previous (and much less good) film. He is now a rich entrepreneur, the man behind Daley Devices, a manufacturer of daft household appliances, and is of course lost to his former friends and associates. This is probably a good thing in a grown up man, given that his friends and associates were previously a bunch of toys and exhibits at the Natural History Museum who came alive when the lights went down.

But it always suits Stiller never entirely to be grown up and, in the new movie, we quickly find him called back into service when his favourite exhibits are moved from New York to the Smithsonian Institute in Washington. The items have become unfashionable and will be kept in storage, but by the time Daley receives a panic call from Jedediah, a cowboy figurine played by Owen Wilson, it is obvious that Daley’s imaginary friends are under attack from the Smithsonian’s hordes of ancient warriors. Not only from them, but also from Ivan the Terrible, Napoleon Bonaparte, and Al Capone, all brilliantly in character, so much so with the latter that he appears in black and white.

Sounds daft? But of course. Night at the Museum is so daft it makes Star Trek: The Movie look like the collected works of Bertrand Russell. The film is silly to the point of genius, it is brilliantly absurd, catchy, involving and irrelevant, which might make it the best Saturday night movie of the year so far. Stiller’s character goes to war with his friends’ enemies and he deploys all the stupidity at his disposal, ably assisted by one of the prettier Smithsonian exhibits to come to life, Amelia Earhart (sparkily played by Amy Adams). Director Levy makes great use of the Smithsonian’s flying machines and antiquities, while actors such as Steve Coogan (as the centurion) and Ricky Gervais (Dr McPhee) establish pretty high levels of laughter and chaos in small parts. It is an aspect of Stiller’s magpie talent that he should attract the best American and British comedy actors into the same movie under conditions of such silliness, but the fact that he does so should be seen as a service to the internationally down-in-the-mouth. Long after he stopped being baffled, Charlie Chaplin would be pleased.

“Comedy is acting out optimism,” Robin Williams once said, and in Night at the Museum 2, in the part of Teddy Roosevelt, Williams shows that the road to betterment is formed of jokes as well as tears. There is nowadays something senatorial about his sense of comic purpose, so he pronounces every line as opposed to speaking it, the sort of thing actors do long after they have passed the point of doubting their effectiveness.

The film does the traditional thing of sometimes putting sentiment in the way of invention —Chaplin did that too, sometimes disastrously — and you have to hold your breath and hope the romantic rubbish goes away before it spoils the atmosphere of anarchy and cheerfulness. Stiller knows when to stop, as does Levy, so the film dances through its clichés without pain.

The thing that gives this Night at the Museum its extra punch — and its four-star rating, as far as I’m concerned — is a sequence set among the Smithsonian picture galleries, where the artwork comes to life and plays a part in the shenanigans of Stiller and his girl as they struggle to find a way to help their friends down in the archive.

Not only do the paintings come alive but they get involved: it’s a good, old-fashioned example of American ingenuity to see the solemn farmer in Grant Wood’s American Gothic painting hand his pitchfork over to a duelling Stiller, while one of Jeff Koons’s red balloon dogs bounces across the gallery. On the other wall the people in Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks also come to life: I’m sure if you look closely you’ll see those iconic persons from some of America’s gloomiest days looking out at Stiller and beginning to crack a smile.


Sunday, June 14, 2009

CoCo Before Chanel

I have watched it before.

I expected to know more about the brand of Chanel but I can't watch it.

In fact, I think this film is quite boring...

I think it's mainly focus on the life of the man rather than the design of the hats.

My friend thinks it worths.



Synopsis

Freely adapted from the Chanel biography "L'Irreguliere" by Edmonde Charles-Roux, this is scripted by Fontaine and Christopher Hampton, Tautou will star as Coco Chanel in a biopic about the legendary French fashion designer. The film, which will focus on Chanel's childhood and early womanhood. The woman who invented French chic was born into poverty as Gabrielle Chanel, the illegitimate daughter of a traveling salesman, in 1883. After the death of her mother and abandonment by her father she spent seven years in a Catholic orphanage, where she learned to sew. But fashion wasn't her first career choice. As a young woman, Chanel had ambitions to be a singer and it was while warbling "Who's Seen Coco in the Trocadero" in a cabaret that she acquired the nickname Coco. While working as a cabaret singer, she also took to sewing the stage clothes for the likes of French cabaret star Mistinguette before being taken under the wing wealthy Balsan. His chateau became Chanel's home and her gateway to a new life. Balsan introduced her to Capel, who played a crucial role in Chanel's rise to fashion fame and fortune.

Saturday, June 13, 2009

Shanghai Expo

Shanghai Expo
Some exhibits~



Friday, June 12, 2009

Night Scenes

I love these night scenes very much.
They are snapped in Hong Kong.

Disney

Victoria Harbour


Food - Chinese cuisine

Tea

Sweetcorn

Barbecue pork + egg + Carbonado + Roasted goose

string bean





Good view

The view ~ sky, building


Sunday, June 7, 2009

Chinese Cuisine

Shanghai





Have you heard about this cuisine?

Xiao Long Bao
A famous Shanghai delicacy is the Xiao Long Bao. Xiao Long Bao, or "small steamer bun" (literally translated) as mentioned above, is a type of steamed bun that is filled with pork (most commonly found) or minced crab, and soup. Although it appears delicate, a good xiao long bao is able to hold in the soup until the xiao long bao is bitten. They are steamed in bamboo baskets and served with vinegar and in some places, shredded ginger. A common way of eating the Xiao Long Bao is to bite the top off, suck all the soup, then dipping it in vinegar before eating.

Saturday, June 6, 2009

US wildfire man sentenced to die

A southern Californian court has sentenced a man to death for the first-degree murder of five firefighters by starting an October 2006 forest blaze.

Raymond Lee Oyler was convicted of starting the so-called Esperanza Fire in Riverside County as well as numerous other blazes in the county.

The Esperanza raged about 90 miles (150km) east of Los Angeles.

A fire engine crew was overwhelmed as it went to protect an unoccupied rural house and five members died.

Riverside County Superior Court Judge W Charles Morgan found that the aggravating circumstances in Oyler's case outweighed the mitigating circumstances.


"Mr Oyler set [out] on a mission... to wreak havoc in this county by setting fires by his own design for his own purposes and, as proven by the evidence, he became more and more proficient.

"He knew that young men and women would put their lives on the line to protect other people and property and he continued anyway."

Some 10,000 attended a memorial service for the firefighters who were all but one in their 20s.

Oyler, 38, a former car mechanic with a young daughter, was also convicted of 20 counts of arson and 17 counts of using an incendiary device for a rash of blazes in Riverside in 2006.

Defence lawyer Mark McDonald said the sentencing decision had been expected.

Asked how Oyler had reacted, he added: "He's been fine with this whole thing since he got over the initial verdict."

The jury recommended the death sentence after a month-long trial.

Judge Morgan could have sentenced Oyler to life in prison without parole, the Los Angeles Times notes.

Wednesday, June 3, 2009

Hong Kong - Lantau Island

Let me share some photos to you~




The first one

It is the old wedding ceremony.

The second one

It is the tea pot container in old fashion.

The third one

It is the copper basin.

Rest in peace - Ocean search finds plane debris

The aeroplane was found but it is plane debris...

Rest in peace!!!


Debris spotted by planes in waters 650km (400 miles) off Brazil's coast belongs to a missing French airliner, the Brazilian government has confirmed.

A Brazilian search plane saw a band of wreckage along a 5km (3m) strip, said Defence Minister Nelson Jobim.

A Brazilian navy ship is expected to arrive in the area shortly to begin the task of recovering wreckage.

Flight AF 447 was heading from Rio to Paris with 228 people on board when it was lost early on Monday.

France is to hold religious ceremonies to remember the missing, while three days of national mourning have been declared in Brazil.

Late on Tuesday, Mr Jobim told reporters in Rio de Janeiro he had no doubt the debris was from the Air France jet.

He gave few details of the wreckage, saying only that it included metallic and non-metallic pieces.

Earlier, Brazil's air force said it had spotted an airplane seat, an orange buoy and signs of fuel.


Mr Jobim's words will come as grim confirmation of the worst for the families waiting for news both in Paris and Rio, the BBC's Gary Duffy reports from Brazil.


Jean-Louis Borloo, the French minister for transport, said chances of finding anyone alive were now "very, very small - even nonexistent".

If it is confirmed that all 228 people on Flight AF 447 are dead, it will be the worst loss of life in Air France's history.

"The last bit of hope that we had no longer exists," said Aldair Gomes, whose son was a passenger on the plane.

"Before, a lot of us were hoping that the plane could have landed on an island or something like that, but no more."

The first Brazilian navy boat is due to arrive in the zone where the debris was found on Wednesday morning.

It is hoped that the ship will be able to recover wreckage which will give some clue as to why the plane fell from the sky.

Three merchant vessels are already in the area after being diverted to help with the operation.

Search teams are hoping to locate the plane's cockpit voice and data recorders, which will give the clearest information about what happened.

But Mr Jobim warned that recovering the devices could be difficult because of the depth of the ocean.

"It could be at a depth of 2,000m or 3,000m [6,500ft-9,800ft] in that area of the ocean," he said.

The US has despatched specialist radar equipment to the area to hunt for the recorder, and France is also sending a research ship equipped with two mini-submarines to the disaster area.


French Prime Minister Francois Fillon said the teams were "in a race against the clock in extremely difficult weather conditions".

He told parliament that the cause of the plane's loss had still to be established.

"Our only certainty is that the plane did not send out any distress call but regular automatic alerts for three minutes indicating the failure of all systems," he said.

Experts remain puzzled that there were no radio reports from the Airbus and they say that such a modern aircraft would have had to suffer multiple traumas to plunge into the sea, the BBC's Adam Mynott reports from Paris.

Most of the missing people are Brazilian or French but they include a total of 32 nationalities. Five Britons and three Irish citizens are among them.

Tuesday, June 2, 2009

Mystery surrounding Air France flight

It is a mystery of aviation industry!!!
Where is the aeroplane?
Where is it?
Any news???



The disappearance of Air France 447 is shrouded in an air of mystery that sets it apart from other aircraft disasters.

Nearly all air crashes take place at or near airports - during take-off or landing. But the Airbus 330 came down four hours out of Rio de Janeiro, somewhere in a vast area of the Atlantic Ocean.

There was no distress signal.

The first Air France officials knew of something being wrong was when the plane failed to turn up on radar in Senegal.

For many hours it was possible to think that AF447 had had a communications failure, or that it had made a forced landing at sea, or even that it had been hijacked.

For a time the arrivals board at Charles de Gaulle airport bore the word "delayed" - as if to keep alive as long as possible the dwindling hope of a miracle.

The suffering of family members having to face the appalling reality can only be imagined.

But it must have been made worse by the absence of any clear information about what has happened. Until wreckage is found, no-one is officially dead.

'Totally routine'

In the absence of news, the airwaves have been crammed with all the regular disaster coverage: the coy intrusiveness of the television cameras, the repeated interviews with experts, the desperate hunt for a new angle - like the miracle couple who missed the plane because of a late taxi - in order to vary the fodder.

Consensus quickly developed that the most likely cause of the accident was a lightning strike.

But as more than one expert pointed out, if lightning alone caused planes to crash, then few people would be so foolhardy as to risk flying.

"For a plane to get hit by lightning is totally routine," said Pierre Sparaco, a member of the French Air and Space Academy.

"That is not enough to explain it. There must be a missing link. It is clearly something and something.

"Accident investigators talk always of a 'sequence of catastrophic events', and sequence is the key word," he said.

"It is not this thing or that thing that went wrong. It is this thing going wrong, leading to that thing going wrong etc etc."


Danger zone

According to Mr Sparaco, even in a worst case scenario, with lightning wiping out all the electronics, a modern airliner is still flyable.


"Something kicks in called the RAM air system, in which a small propeller descends and because of the speed of the plane generates enough electricity to run vital instruments.

"So even if there is a total power failure the pilot can still fly by wire long enough to get to land."

Meteorologists have been called in to explain what else might have happened, the extra factor that might have come on top of the lightning.

The accident took place in a turbulent area along the equator known as the Intertropical Convergence zone.

The zone has long been feared by sailors and aviators. In French, it is called the "pot au noir", meaning the murky cauldron.

According to meteorologist Pierre Lasnais, the zone "is prone to storms and lightning, but also to mini-cyclonic phenomena, which create extremely strong up currents, as well as hail stones that can be bigger than tennis-balls".

"It's possible for a plane to be exposed to lightning, and at the same to be caught in an up current which can reach speeds of 200 km/h," he says.

"You can imagine the effect that has on a plane - complete depressurisation of course, almost uncontrollable," he said.

But all this is the purest speculation.

Because until they find it, no-one can talk with any authority about what really happened to Flight 447.

Hong Kong

The place in Hong Kong~



Tsing Ma Bridge

Elements

The Peninsula