Random points

- my arms feel quite sore after going to fitness first Miranda. Its quite a nice place, with the usual characters in a gym: beefcakes showing off their muscles, sporty spice chicks who can lift as much as me, and weak asians (me!).

- teaching my lil bro how to drive right now, and its quite a challenging/stressful experience - why? cause you don't have any control of the car except for screaming "watchout!" and "there's no point checking the lanes AFTER you've changed lanes".

- went back to my old stomping grounds at Blakehurst and played bball and got crushed by the Croatians. I feel a bit rusty and not that confident at the moment, need to get back into my groove - or maybe its just Chuck's crushing defence?

- caught a bit of tennis fever on the weekend (bad luck to Hewitt - he'll be back) and decided to hit up the courts at Panania RSL with Dawen and lil bro. However it seems i've lost that Federer bounce in my step, my Agassi backhand, my Marat Safin forehand, and my Michael Chang hustle. Although i can still serve the ball in.........

- with all this time on my hands, it felt it necessary to watch three seasons of the prison drama OZ (24 episodes). One word - awesome. I and my lil bro was totally addicted as soon as we watched the first episode.


DJ HO's Question of the day: Is it wrong to download, copy, or buy pirated dvd's/cd's? I know legally its wrong but do you have a problem with it?

I really dont, seeing I have downloaded/bought my fair share of pirated goods. My attitude is like why buy the real thing when you can get a copy for free/fraction of the price. For me its like readily available, easily obtainable, i'm not really hurting anyone in the process. But on the flipside, if everyone downloads/buys pirated stuff the distribution/production companies/artists don't make enough profits or get the money they rightly deserve which may discourage them to produce further stuff or they can't plough the money back into other artistic works.

However, i guess pirated stuff has created an industry of its own - more CD/dvd burners are being bought off the shelves, blank cd/DVD's sell like hotcakes, ipods are fawned over by every kid with a mp3 collection, and playstation "repairers" have more PS2's to fix so you can play pirated games. So there are some positives that are derived from this illegal activity. ANd perhaps by downloading a few tracks from the latest CD, it MIGHT (but prolly won't) make me buy the actual album. In reality I reckon for most people (including myself) they don't think twice when buying the latest movie on a copied DVD in hong kong or downloading tracks from the new Snoop album.

I mean if we aren't supporting our favourite artists who is? the average joe/jane on the street that doens't have a optus cable connection set to Kazaa or understand how to use bit torrent. But I love being able to get my lil bro to download the latest NBA game or directing him to get this movie or whatever. Essentially, are people like me killing the movie/music/gaming industry? I think we are having an impact but not that disastrous. I have not bought a music CD in like yonks. I might have downloaded the latest movies on DVD however, i still go to the movies every now and then, becoz you go for the social experience. By instead of spending money on CD's, i can use the money which i have saved to see a concert. So perhaps i am redirecting money into other avenues for the music industry.

But ultimately its wrong though and we all know it. But does anyone really have any gripes with it except for the people that make money from the sales of legit stuff. The record companies are still standing. HMV is still there. EB world hasn't disappeared. Artists are still producing hot/crappy music.

Tell me what you think.