OMG×2!

I received the latest email newsletter from Lego earlier on Friday that they are releasing a new Lego Star Wars Super Star Destroyer—the Executor! To jog your memory, the Executor is the massive 19-kilometre long ship that crashes into and destroys the second Death Star in Return of the Jedi.

Item 10221 has more than 3,000 pieces, measures more than 1.2 metres long, and weighs about 3.5kg. It goes with saying, I want one. Of course, it is not in the same scale as the recent Millennium Falcon. If it is, the Super Star Destroyer Lego will be over 270 metres long!

Looking at Lego’s current line of Star Wars Exclusives, there are two more items that I really like. The first is the Tantative IV, the ship that carries Princess Leia at the beginning of Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope. That’s item 10198.

The second is item 10195, which consists of a Republic Dropship and an AT-OT Walker from Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith.

But then, I want all of them, of course.

Read: Dreadnaught

Dreadnaught is a follow-up to six-book The Lost Fleet (TLF) series that ended with Victorious last year.

TLF is set against the backdrop of a war between two space-faring human civilizations—the Alliance and the Syndicate Worlds that has lasted for a hundred years. Captain John Geary succeeds in bringing home the battered Alliance fleet from deep inside Syndic space, leaving behind the Syndic fleet effectively decimated. The return of the fleet, however, is not wholly welcomed by the Alliance government. Now that the Syndic threat is behind them, the powerful fleet is viewed with suspicion by the civilian authority, especially with Geary’s immense popularity. In Dreadnaught, the fleet is ordered to go to the other side of Syndic space to gather further information about an enigmatic alien race it encountered earlier.

What I like best about TLF is the detailed battle scenes, which no doubt benefited from author John G Hemry’s experience as a US Navy officer. They are also very realistic: Logistics and energy management is always a factor. A message from a ship two light minutes away takes two minutes to arrive. In short, the battle scenes are nothing like what you see in Star Wars or Star Trek. Throughout the series, the characters spend a lot of time discussing their problems and options. A common complain about TLF, however, is the author’s tendency to recapitulate, which he explains as to help new readers of the series.

The next book in the new The Lost Fleet - Beyond the Frontier series has already been announced for a May, 2012 release and I am definitely looking forward to it.

I Want One

Lego recently released its latest edition of the Millennium Falcon, item no. 7965. Fully playable, it comes complete with six figurines of Luke, Leia, Han, Chewie, Obi-Wan, and... Darth Vader?

At over 38cm wide and 10cm tall, this 1,254-piece Lego is nowhere as complicated as the epic 5,195-piece ultimate collector’s item 10179 released in 2007. I saw the latter offered at Amazon UK for a jaw-dropping £1,400! Item 7965 sells at £133.

Astonish Me

In conjunction with its 50^th anniversary, WWF (that’s the World Wide Fund for Nature) UK has released a short film directed by writer Stephen Poliakoff and director Charles Sturridge, starring Bill Nighy and Gemma Arterton, titled Astonish Me.

Click to see full-size, in HD.

Read: American Gods

I discovered Neil Gaiman quite late a few years ago. American Gods (AG) was only my second book by him. The first was The Graveyard Book (TGB) back in 2009. Unlike TGB, which was written, or at least marketed, for children AG was definitely meant for adult consumption. Both, however, are fantasy works with a rather dark theme that qualifies them as horror. And for that AG won the 2001 Bram Stoker Award, among others.

A man called Shadow was released from prison two days early when his wife died in a car accident. Nowhere to go, he accepted an offer to work as a bodyguard to a strange con-man called Wednesday.

It turned out that Wednesday was really Odin, or rather an incarnation of the Norse god of old in America. The premise of AG was that people’s beliefs and superstitions manifest into beings supernatural powers. As people migrated to America from all over the world, they brought along their beliefs, and hence their gods. However, as their believers dwindled in number, so to the power of the gods.

Wednesday was working on a big plan rallying the ancient gods to prepare for a war against the gods of new. Along the way, Shadow met Wednesday's unusual friends—tired old gods and other mythical beings—while at the same time pursued by the other side. He was also visited from time to time by his wife Laura, who was neither quite dead nor alive.

The copy that I bought was labelled “author’s preferred text”. It was published as Gaiman originally wrote it, which was 12,000 words longer than the “original” multiple award-winning 2001 release. I enjoyed every word of the book. It was claimed somewhere that AG was Gaiman’s best novel yet. I haven’t read enough of his work to say anything to that effect, but I could definitely believe it is so.

The First Time

One of my favourite songs, best known as sung by the great Roberta Flack.

The first time ever I saw your face
I thought the sun rose in your eyes
And the moon and the stars were the gifts you gave
To the dark and the empty skies

The first time ever I kissed your mouth
I felt the earth move in my hands
Like the trembling heart of a captive bird
That was there at my command my love

The first time ever I lay with you
I felt your heart so close to mine
And I knew our joy would fill the Earth
And last till the end of time
The first time ever I saw your face

Just because.

Our New Hero

The expected due date was June 23. We were both so excited. So were Grandpa T and Grandmas J and K who arrived from Malaysia on June 21.

June 23 came and went, but nothing happened. An induction appointment was set for July 6. One week on, still nothing happened. The grandparents were getting restless. Meanwhile, Afi and I went out for a last Italian lunch and joked about a July 4 delivery.

We finally went to the hospital that very Sunday. The doctor decided that we might as well get on with an induction. The process began that evening at 7. Thirteen hours later, at (almost) 3 p.m. GMT on July 4, 2011, he was born.

We call him Omar.