Pan Admun Republic of Western Blog

As seen on many blogs. You can try it here.

You are attracted to good manners and elegance.
In love, you feel the most alive when your lover is creative and never lets you feel bored.
You'd like to your lover to think you are stylish and alluring.
You would be forced to break up with someone who was insecure and in constant need of reassurance.
Your ideal relationship is open. Both of you can talk about everything... no secrets.
Your risk of cheating is zero. You care about society and morality. You would never break a commitment.
You think of marriage pessimistically. You don't think happy marriages exist anymore.
In this moment, you think of love as something you thirst for. You'll do anything for love, but you won't fall for it easily.

I can tell you it has certain truth in it, you can guess which parts match.

Disclaimer: Never _EVER_ try to start a campfire with white gas or any kind of flammable liquid. Start a fire properly, else serious injury or lost of life might resulted.

Disclaimer: This is NOT professional advice. The information here is based on own experience. For educational purpose only.

Actually, this should be titled "How NOT to Start a Campfire"...

Enough disclaimer, let's shoot to the point. Here's the steps to start a fire with any kind of flammables.
1) Stack up fire woods as you would normally start a fire properly (ie stuff with dry leafs, paper and etc.)
2) Pour a good amount of fuel on the woods, the fluid should be on the base of the stack so the flames will light up the rest of the stack.
3) Quickly light up the fuel before it evaporates. Ideally, light up a piece of material (ie twisted paper) and feed it to the woods. If there is no choice but have to light up directly from lighter/matches, stay away as much as possible and stay low while igniting. Move away quickly from the fire once the fuel ignited.
4) Let the fuel burns to start up the woods.
5) If very unfortunately the fuel is not able to start the fire, repeat steps 1 to 5.
6) As a LAST resort if repeats does not success on starting the fire, spread fuel directly into the flames by squeezing the plastic bottle to shoot a stream of fuel. Be sure to shoot from a low-to-high angle from a distance (at least 2-3 feet) and only shoot in short burst. A continue stream out of the bottle might draw the fire back into the bottle, which is very dangerous to say the least.....
7) Hopefully, now the fire started.....

These are just the luckiest failure consequences of using flammable to start a fire:



There's many things to be aware of:
- White gas (stove fuel) seem extremely volatile, compared to rubbing alcohol and special fire starter fluid. Use it with extra caution.
- Never pour fuel onto top of a burning fire. The heat will ignite the fuel and create a upward blow, it will resulted in burning fuel spread all around. You will get burn this way!!!
- Make sure to keep the campfire area clean of any items, you may cause wild fire.
- Do not use water to kill burn fuel, the fuel is lighter than water and flow on top of it.

Pictures: stay away from fire and shoot low-to-high

[Note: no spoiler, unless you read the references external links]

I used to be a military freaks. I like to read books on military hardware, tactics, units, things on guns, and etc., as well as collect military items. I still do that these days but no longer as crazy as before.

One of my main interest area is Vietnam/Post-Vietnam era. I always kind of thinks WWI/WWII is a very inhuman war (not that any war is....), as often troops are advancing under fire without any kind of fire support (you know, those scenes of soldiers screaming running forward and then cut down by machine guns). It's take a brave man to run across a open field toward someone firing on you. I think it's during/after Vietnam that US able to put combined air and ground force to coordinate better to protect (as best as possible) the canon fodders (no offense...).

So, when I read about the new series called "Over There". I'm looking forward to it, even my expectation was not high.

This series is somewhat controversial since it's set on a current affair that still on the news everyday and mostly about people dying over there. There is a lot of emotions on the whole thing. The series producer claims that they will stays natural without making a judgment call on the war and the story is mainly about people "over there", in another word: all is fiction and likely not reflecting much of the real world.

For me, I'm mainly onto seeing the actions, the fighting, the equipment of current G.I. issue, may be a bit of tactics. I don't expect them to be accurate to the finest details, but as least they will get the outfit right to certain level. If they have a decent "military" adviser (usually ex-military type), the actors/actresses should look more realistic.

As to whether this series will fly, I doubt it..... it's lucky if they finish first season. I just don't know people will be very interested to see a fictional stories of something that happen daily when there is a hell out there. It is especially when this is not a very popular war as we know the public opinion is not really with Bush and his gangs. Also, if it is not handled carefully, it could backfire the network and might cause pain to those lost someone there.

War is hell, as usual.

Some extra links:
tv.com
USA today
antiwar.com
American Solider
TCS

Finally bought "Lost in Translation" from Best Buy and watch it. I've been hearing positive reviews about this movie and enjoy watching part of it at Francis's place back in July.

The movie brings back a lot of memory from my Japan trip back in 2003; The many same places in the movie that I was in; The small cultural/Japanese-way things; The comedy.

It also remind me of Jackie Cheung's 男人40; middle-age man, young girl, fall for each other. It builds up the mood of loneliness, lost, foreign, and culture differences in the movie. I felt the same way when I go to Paris on business trip. Everythings just so curiously interesting, yet puzzling since I don't speak the language.

BTW, Scarlett Johansson is just incredibly cute and sexy in the movie.

It's creeping out of my mind from time to time recently about going on the road again. I guess it's a withdrawal from the Boston business trip. It's certainly a lonely road to travel for work, even you got to see a lot of things, and it's hard to stay balance when you're not at home. I know I fell apart during the trip somewhat. i.e. not keeping up with things on the net, eating too much/slightly unhealthy, lack of exercise, etc. Sometimes, I just envy my friend Dixon able to pull up all the sticks and move to Japan. He's now happily living with his wife in Yokohama.

Meanwhile, I need to go Japan again... to see Fuji San.

It's been reserach after research on the topic and still no answer. I guess at least now we have more data on the subject. Oh well, limit your phone calls talk time for now.

I've been working in the lab a bit lately, the good news is I have not notice I grow green light at night.

BBC NEWS | Health | Mobile phone cancer link rejected

A bad storm hit Toronto and Southern Ontario last Friday and cause quite some damage.

I was struck in the car dodging the heavy rain and hails for 15 minutes. The news reported we got over 10cm in one hour. A lot of cars and buildings are flooded. The traffic through out GTA is halted. It took me over an hour to go from Pacific mall to my Aunt place near York Mills and Leslie. cellphone is down, luckily SMS still works.