Who Has The Biggest Brain?

I am never a Facebook freak unlike someone, who will spend hours and hours of my free time playing with the applications available there. Okay lah, I admit there was one time when I was so addicted into playing on my Fluffy friend for a few months, that I will make sure I feed my pet and race him to get more munnys daily without fail. But since then, I have never visited my Calbit anymore and only God knows what had happened to my poor little virtual pet. Haha, I know I am such an irresponsible owner of a bunny.

Anyway, apart from that and a few other common applications like Super Poke! and Compare People, which I play occasionally, I will usually just ignore the others I got. In fact, the tons of invitations I got have nearly reach 600 invitations. On my last check, it was 581. However, while I was just about to start to make myself study a little bit last night, Amalina MSN-ed me with a message, "sapa nak cabar aku". Just like any other guy which has that certain level of egoistic, of course I felt I was challenged and I decided to take a short break from my study and give a shot on this game.

Basically, this game is more to an IQ test which test on your ability in four different categories. It will test your analytical ability (they put two things together, say a rabbit and two carrots, then ask you which one is heavier), how your brain can calculate (2+3=?), how good your memory is (they put one row containing a few types of things and ask you to rearrange them again in the same order after some time), and lastly it tests your visual process ability (spotting missing pieces from a jigsaw puzzle). For every categories, there will be a time limit of sixty seconds and you will have to try to answer as many answer correctly as possible and in the end, your score will be calculated.

So, I gave my first attempt to see how big my brain measure up. The questions asked were not as tough as you thought and it depends more on how fast your impulsive reactions to every questions given. So, in other words, the faster you do the test, the more questions you will get to answer, and the higher points you will score. I am not sure whether there is a penalty for wrong answers though. Anyway, I managed to answer every question correctly in all four parts. I must have taken too long doing too much of thinking during the test because in the end, the score I got looked nothing like convincing enough.

Apparently, I got the best score at the calculation part. Can become taukeh kopitiam liao.

They will later calculate your score and it will be translated into the size of your brain. During that time, you will see your brain grow from a tiny little nut-sized brain and the size will increase gradually, overtaking brains of snakes, elephants, hippos, goats, birds, chimpanzee and many other animals. I hope you made it pass all those animal, otherwise I will know that you possess a smaller brain than those animals. And I will have every reasons to call you a person with a bird brain next time ;)

My brain is so big that it won't fit a 1.5 litre water bottle. Actually that's very small 'coz somepeople got more than 4 litre!

In the next stage, they will compare you with your other friends in Facebook who had played this game and compare you with them to see where you stand among the rest. As for me, I didn't make it to the Top 3 in my first attempt, but at least I didn't got the last place and even managed to overtake one person. I know. This is so damn pathetic, right?

Haha, just look at Joyce's tulan and heartbreak face.

Anyway, I gave a second try on this game and the score I got didn't give me a significant increase. Haiz, you all just wait lah. When I have found the time, I will make sure I will overtake all of you one day. Anyway, when I went to my Profile page in Facebook afterwards, at least I know I am getting smarter already.

There goes my time that I should have spend on doing my revision for my mid-term exam. I am so gonna kill you Amalina. You will be held responsible for my result this time, be it a good one or a bad one. If you think you can do better than me, give it a try and tell me your score ;)

*edited*: My best score at the moment is 1903cm^3, which means I have a scientist's brain.

Tulips From This Spring

Before I proceed any further, I would like to wish:

A Happy Wesak Day
Sadhu, Sadhu, Sadhu.

By this time of the year, the tulips' season is already over but if you were to notice, there aren't any entries related to tulips so far. Hence, this will be the one. More than a fortnight ago, there was a trip organised for us the international students to Echigo Hillside Park as the day happened to be Showa Day, a public holiday in Japan. It didn't start as nice as it should have been, mainly due to some irresponsible acts by some, which I shall not talk about it in this entry. Anyway, it was the same location that I went to last year.

The main section of Echigo Hillside Park.

Echigo Hillside Park park was opened in July 1998 on the Japan Sea coast. The basic theme of the park is "Learn from heaven, play on earth and meet people at Koshino-sato sanctuary". The park was built so people could pursue outdoor recreation or cultural activities. It is located on the West side of Nagaoka in Niigata prefecture on hills ranging from 80-260 meters above sea level. As a result, various land formations, snowy hills and many kinds of animals and plants can be seen in this park.

The spot where most of the children can be spotted - the playground.

Having been to the park previously, the only thing that made me going there for a second time was the tulips in the park.

This year however, there was a slight change on the location of the tulips as there were placed on slopes and it certainly gave a different effect as it really enhanced the beauty of the tulips. I reckon the numbers of tulips this year were much more compared to last year and the sunny day with cool spring breeze blowing through our body once in a while made it a perfect day for us.

That building is where some restaurants and resting area are located.

Colourful tulips decorating the park.

Some crossed-breed tulips I suppose.

I somehow heart the subtle colours combination of these tulips.

The view of the tulips is nothing less beautiful than the carpet of lavenders I witnessed in Hokkaido last summer. The tulips there came in a variety of colours and the view is just too nice for me to find any fitting words to describe them.

Rows of red and yellow tulips.

Orange and yellow tulips, with a cute pumpkin-shaped statue on the top right.

How could I leave without having a picture in the middle of the tulips =P

By the way, like I have mentioned previously, there were only four of us who went to the park.

From left: Aniza, Atikah, Kubota sensei, me and Hafiz.

Not only does the park offer the common type of tulips we usually see elsewhere, but there are some rare species of tulips which have unusual pattern of petals and colours in this park as well. Here are a few examples of the tulips which I guess we do not come across them very often.

Of all the tulips I saw there, this has to be the cutest one.

Looking at the shape and striking color, it appears that it is just like any other tulips.

However, they have a special name for it - Mickey Mouse.

We later went for a walk along the walking path through the deciduous trees which stretches for about three kilometres, and eventually came to an observatory deck in the middle of the walk. The observatory stretches to three floors and we decided to take a rest there before we continued our walk. The greenery of the forest beneath was quite some sight as we could see the different layers of trees and tones through the dynamic mountain range.

Here are the four people who took us to the park. Two of them have retired, after having taught in my kosen for more than thirty years, another one is currently still teaching in the same kosen, while the woman is the person who is in charge of the kosen's library.

From left: Yamaguchi sensei, Hafiz, Iwata sensei, Kubota sensei, me and Sato sensei.

Before we leave the park for the next destination, I spotted some kolam on the floor along the flower promenade along the way out from the park, which were made of dried petals of tulips. What was written there was ありがとう (arigatou) and it was to commemorate the 10th anniversary since the park was opened to the public.

Allow me to camwhore for one last time.

The mascot of the park was among the designs for the kolam and it was too cute that it attracted some attention from a little kid.

You would not want to know what happened after that to the flowers.