Since I'm at Ctrl + C and Ctrl + V

From Comedy Central...

Things I learned from watching movies:

1. If being chased through town, you can usually take cover in a passing St Patrick's Day parade - at any time of the year.

2. All beds have special L-shaped top sheets that reach up to armpit level on a woman but only waist level on the man lying beside her.

3. All grocery shopping bags contain at least one stick of French bread.

4. Once applied, lipstick will never rub off - even while scuba diving.

5. The ventilation system of any building is a perfect hiding place. No one will ever think of looking for you in there and you can travel to any other part of the building without difficulty.

6. Should you wish to pass yourself off as a German officer, it will not be necessary to speak the language. A German accent will do.

7. The Eiffel Tower can be seen from any window of any building in Paris.

8. A man will show no pain while taking the most ferocious beating but will wince when a woman tries to clean his wounds.

9. When paying for a taxi, never look at your wallet as you take out a note - just grab one at random and hand it over. It will always be the exact fare.

10. If you lose a hand, it will cause the stump of your arm to grow by 15cm.

11. Mothers routinely cook eggs, bacon and waffles for their family every morning, even though the husband and children never have time to eat them.

12. Cars and trucks that crash will almost always burst into flames.

13. A single match will be sufficient to light up a room the size of a football stadium.

14. Medieval peasants had perfect teeth.

15. All single women have a cat.

16. Any person waking from a nightmare will sit bolt upright and pant.

17. One man shooting at 20 men has a better chance of killing them all than 20 men firing at one.

18. Creepy music coming from a graveyard should always be closely investigated.

19. Most people keep a scrapbook of newspaper cuttings - especially if any of their family or friends has died in a strange boating accident.

20. It does not matter if you are heavily outnumbered in a fight involved martial arts - your enemies will wait patiently to attack you one by one by dancing around in a threatening manner until you have knocked out their predecessor.

21. During a very emotional confrontation, instead of facing the person you are speaking to, it is customary to stand behind them and talk to their back.

22. When you turn out the light to go to bed, everything in your room will still be clearly visible, just slightly bluish.

23. Dogs always know who's bad and will naturally bark at them.

24. When they are alone, all foreigners prefer to speak English to each other.

25. Rather than wasting bullets, megalomaniacs prefer to kill their arch-enemies using complicated machinery involving fuses, pulley systems, deadly gases, lasers and man eating sharks that will allow their captives at least 20 minutes to escape.

26. Having a job of any kind will make all fathers forget their son's eighth birthday.

27. Many musical instruments - especially wind instruments and accordions - can be played without moving the fingers.

28. All bombs are fitted with electronic timing devices with large red readouts so you know exactly when they're going to go off.

29. It is always possible to park directly outside the building you are visiting.

30. A detective can only solve a case once he has been suspended from duty.

31. If you decide to start dancing in the street, everyone you bump into will know all the steps.

Read it on Tremayne's blog and stumbled upon on the internet....

So, I read this on Tremayne's blog and was hit by this again on the internet... so, guess it's only fair for me to post it here.

"Here are the top nine comments made by sports commentators during the 2004 Summer Olympics that they would like to take back:

1. Weightlifting commentator: "This is Gregoriava from Bulgaria. I saw her snatch this morning during her warm up and it was amazing."

2. Dressage commentator: "This is really a lovely horse and I speak from personal experience since I once mounted her mother."

3. Paul Hamm, Gymnast: "I owe a lot to my parents, especially my mother and father."

4. Boxing Analyst: "Sure there have been injuries, and even some deaths in boxing, but none of them really that serious."

5. Softball announcer: "If history repeats itself, I should think we can expect the same thing again."

6. Basketball analyst: "He dribbles a lot and the opposition doesn't like it. In fact you can see it all over their faces."

7. At the r owing medal ceremony: "Ah, isn't that nice, the wife of the IOC president is hugging the cox of the British crew."

8. Soccer commentator: "Julian Dicks is everywhere. It's like they've got eleven Dicks on the field."

9. Tennis commentator: "One of the reasons Andy is playing so well is that, before the final round, his wife takes out his balls and kisses them... Oh my God, what have I just said?""

Skydive

So, finally, I got a video using blogger. Stupid youtube is acting up on me again! And Northwood III internet connection which is kinda unstable for me is not helping either.



Finally got this up after 3 attempts.

Tandem Skydive!!!

Well, because I want to do something insane before I graduate, I decided to attempt skydiving. And, to do it, the easiest way is by doing a tandem skydive, where you are attached to a tandem master, and off you go. Not much training, but almost all the same fun, actually, even better since you dropoff at a higher altitude, at 14,000 ft. So, I pitched the idea to my friend last semester, and then, because of the winter season, the idea got shelved, until a week ago, when I sent out a mass email to them and asked who's interested. And, got a positive reply from Ivy right away! Then, Jason too. But, that's all I got. Instead of like 2 carloads of people, we only got 3. But, as we are really determined to go, we decided not to let the lack of number discourage us.


So, after looking at weather forecast and all, we decided to go on a Saturday. And the weather turned out to be amazing. Great spring weather. A little breezy, but a whole lotta sunshine.
I was freaking out.... neh... just kidding.

We left Ann Arbor for Tecumseh (about 30 miles South West) at about 1.30pm. With my newly purchased GPS, I managed to get to this place without any problem. We were surprised to find that many people were there, and most of the people there are experienced skydivers.

So, after signing a bunch of released forms, waiving virtually all my rights, and paid a hefty price tag of $294 ($195 for tandem, $99 for dvd), and watching a video (what we learned from the video was we can still ask for a full refund if we decided not to jump at that point). After the video, a guy showed us generally, what we should do and all. Because all three of us wanted video, and they only have 2 video guys, we were separated into different flights. After a long wait, Ivy and Jason set off, and did their thing. My flight was 2 flights later.
Ivy in her suit.
Jason in his.
And me in MAIZE and BLUE!

So, after a really long wait, it was about 5ish pm, I met my tandem master, Larry. A really experienced tandem master, he's like a big old teddy bear. So, the camera guy, Marshall popped by while I was waiting to put on my skydive suits and all. Did a short video of that. Coincidentally, both my skydive suit and my canopy were of matching Maize & Blue color. How cool is that?

Then, Larry kinda prepped me up, asked me how I want to jump off, how intense I want the whole thing to be. And how I can steer the toggle, how I should land. Most importantly, I needed to arch my hip forward and tilt my head back.

So, soon after that, we were ready to take off. Before I stepped onto the plane, I got harassed by Marshall with the camera again. And again while I'm on the plane, and then, while ascending, Larry pointed out the direction of Ann Arbor, Saline and other places, and also, reminded me about all the things he wants me to do. After a tic tac and a long ascending, it takes quite awhile for the plane to reach 14,000 ft. Right before I was ready to jump, a small accident happened, my goggles' strap broke off while Larry was adjusting it for me. Fortunately, there's a pair of spare on the plane and after a minute of delay, it was time for me to jump.

We did a flip while jumping off the plane, then, managed to hold onto my Marshall's leg, then, some spinning, then, poof, Larry pulled the parachute, and felt a huge jerk. After the parachute was full launched, we did a sharp turn, and then, steer around, practiced landing motions, and then, we landed nicely, right in front of Marshall for him to continue the video capturing and some photo shooting.
No looking back!

Off I go!!!A flip.
And still completing a flip.
Almost there...
After stabilizing with the pilot chute...
There we go...All smiles!
Here's another look.
Holding on to Marshall's foot.
And Larry pulled the plug...
And the jerk!!!
And Marshall was going down much faster.

So that he can take pictures of Larry and I landing...
Descending...
And more...
And almost there...
Slide...

Touchdown...
And AMAZING!!!

We had to wait for about 40 minutes for the DVD to be ready. As we were hungry, we decided to go grab some food. And, relying on my GPS, we found quite a number of fastfood places nearby. At first, I decided on Burger King, but, while turning into BK, I saw a KFC and really wanted KFC instead. So, I drove to KFC instead. The KFC was really shorthanded, with the guy in front of us waited for more than 30 minutes before he get his food. It took about 15 minutes for us to get ours.

Then, after a good ol' KFC meal, we headed back to the dropzone to collect the DVD, and then, back to Ann Arbor.

Overall, it was a great experience, even though it's not as scary and as thrilling as I hope it would be, still, it's quite something. And I can announce to the world that: I went skydiving! So, I'm better than you! Or, as Nike put it, 'My better is better than your better.'

But no, there's more to that than just paying and skydiving. It's more about doing something you really wanted to do. Even though there's some risk, after considering the risk, you are still willing to take the risk and do it. Because, we can't be afraid of doing something risky by not doing it. You can't avoid risk all the time. Assuming some risk will add more spice to your life. Oh yeah, my parents didn't know about this. Think I'm gonna tell them later when I call home. :P

Hopefully I can get the video up here too.