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| great advert for a serviced apartment. almost makes me pine for the weekend already, heh
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cddc, hid headlights, brembo brakes, sound proofing, hks hi-silent exhaust, hks sqv bov, hks racing suction, hks evc 6, hks Boost meter, greddy fmic, apexi turbo timer, rsm, tien super st w/edfc, unichip, hankook evo v12 typres :]
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| Nope, I'm not talking about val ;) After the 534th visit to the mechanic within the last 8 months (we're all pretty much sick of seeing each other on such a regular basis), i've decided to trade in the 17-year old, long-suffering toyota collora 1.6A LB, for something slightly more reliable. And have in fact settled on something... quite a bit more powerful. Heh heh. Here's a hint: 2.5L turbocharged boxer engine (simply mesmerising to listen to), AWD, and totally zenged up to belt out 300+ raw and unpolished bhps :D Can't wait. | | |
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Love this BBC drama about the wizard Merlin as a boy -- a medieval smallville, if you will.
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| Downloaded loads more iPhone apps, including Bridge Baron (invaluable in training up bridge skills), SG mahjong, texas holdEm, boggle, Scrappy (a scrabble word-buidling tool), SkyFighter (for val, she's a fan of scroller games) and Need for Speed Undercover. Also downloaded the bloomberg app for my stocks / news.
Watched 'Rounders' over the weekend, recommended by my card games-mad colleagues. Old movie, but pretty entertaining.
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Also, borrowed 2 more Chris Ryan novels fr the library. This guy is a decorated ex-SAS trooper and hero of Bravo Two Zero, so he knows his stuff.
I've read about 5 of his books now, and from them you learn all sorts of useful information. For e.g., from 'Blackout', I've learnt that:
In any battle between a pick-up truck and a motorbike, the bike was always going to win on speed and agility. But the truck, like a tank, could win on size and strength. From the right position it could attack. And that position was from behind.
Hurting people
I've also learnt that if you want to really hurt a person with your fists/legs/baseball bat, keep hitting him at the same spot repeatedly, rather than all over his body, like they do in the movies. Force applied repeatedly at the same spot (e.g., ribs, face, stomach) can hurt a lot more than wounds spread all over the body.
One way to attack a guy (or woman) by surprise, is to punch him hard on the side of his neck. If he's caught be surprise, the muscles wd be loose and relaxed, and his breath forced out of the windpipe, choking him. Then punch him in the gut, then smash your boot up his groin, which will send "a viscious bolt of pain searing up through the body at the same moment that all the oxygen empties out of his lungs".
When this dude crumples to the floor, grab his throat and squeeze the air out of him -- the shortage of oxygen to the brain would cause him to lose conciousness.
Explosives
I've also learnt how a remote-controlled car's controller cd be used to trigger a detonator from a short distance, and how soap can be mixed in with alcohol in a homemade explosive device to cause more widespread damage (e.g. if the intention is to spread fireballs and burn down a building).
Being tortured
In the 'regiment', one of the techniques they were taught to cope with being imprisoned and tortured: have a 'mental home base' - a mental safe house, "into which you could retreat to protect yourself against the inevitable fits of depression and despair. You need a 'Focus Word', either a prayer or poem that you can latch on to, to help get you through the day. You need to use visualisation to help you cope with the pain, turning the pain into an object such as a football that you can kick away.... use all your imagination and powers of imagery to try and construct fantasy worlds into which you can escape... you have to want to survive". Man, some of these lessons can be applied even to our normal lives.
Always shoot twice
If you end up shooting someone, whether from a distance or at close range, always make sure you go right up to the corpse and put another bullet in his head, just to make sure he's truly dead. Nothing worse than a corpse that's still alive to seek revenge or catch you off guard. The professionals are also trained to 'double tap' - that's why assassins always put at least 2 bullets into their target. Again, something they don't seem to do in the movies.
If you want to make sure you never hear from a man again, you need to put at least two bullets into him.
Etc
The AK47 is still one of the most reliable rifles around, hardly jams despite lack of maintenance - which is why it is such a favourite of terrorists and rebel forces the world over.
The most dangerous moment was just before an opponent died. The oxygen switched off in the brain, yet as the victim lost conciousness they knew that there was just one last chance of saving themselves, and they would throw all their remaining strength into it.
The crown... the skull there was the thickest lump of bone in the body, designed that way by evolution to protect the brain, and if you had to take a hard blow that was the best place to take it.
In London, if you're being tailed, picadilly circus station is a great place to lose your tail, because of it's round shape and many exits.
A face-to-face killing always brings mood swings and flashbacks, no matter how many times you've done it.
These are just the ones that jump to mind as well as the ones quoted directly from the book i'm reading right now. You'd also find many morbidly fascinating descriptions of how it feels like to get shot, littered throughout his books. This isn't tom clancy made-up stuff, this guy's the real deal, drawing on his life experience, and often it feels more like an military how-to book than a novel.
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On that military note, when i went to pick up my glasses at camden medical centre, i parked next to this G-Wagon. Timeless classic - have you seen a finer 4WD. I soo want one.
 
(Apologies to the owner for not hiding his number plate, i don't have all that fancy adobe software)
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