More Lego

Lego has released item 4184 The Black Pearl, Jack Sparrow’s favourite ship from the Pirates of the Caribbean movies. It comes with six minifigures including of course Jack Sparrow, Will Turner, and Davy Jones.

Sailing ships are my favourite Lego models, though I have never owned any. :( While the 804-piece Lego is interesting simply for being The Black Pearl, it is not that impressive. The model ship does not look as menacing as the ship in the movies, and the all black colour scheme while true to form gets a little boring.

More interesting is the 1097-piece Queen Anne’s Revenge, item 4195, from the latest Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides. This earlier release is a bigger model than The Black Pearl and comes with seven minifigures, which again include a Jack Sparrow. I particularly love the blood red sails.

Movies tie-in aside, item 10210 Imperial Flagship is the best. It is not only bigger with 1,664 pieces and nine minifigures, but also has a lot more detail. The full-featured gun deck has four cannons. There is even a full-featured galley, or kitchen for us landlubbers.

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All pictures from Lego.

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.

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.

Electrical Appliances

There are electric shavers, electric toothbrushes, electric pencil sharpeners, etc. I have none of those. I tried an electric shaver once but didn’t like it. I toyed around the idea of an electric toothbrush more than once, but decided that it’s too costly to justify any marginal increase in tooth-brushing effectiveness it would give. I would love to get my hands on an electric pencil sharpener, though.

An electric pencil sharpener (image from eHow.com)

One thing I would really like to see invented is an electric nail clipper. Though it really isn’t much of a hassle, I hate having to clip my nails every week, so think an electric nail clipper would be awesome. I imagine the contraption to look like an electric pencil sharpener. You’d stick your finger in it. The machine would scan your finger and fingernail and decide on the appropriate length of the nail, perhaps with some preset options, and trim off any excess edges with a fine laser. Voila, a perfectly manicured finger!

What office/home appliances would you like to have or have invented?

RM186.21

I went to the Bank Islam branch on campus today to deposit my two years’ worth of change. The machine rejected a 50-sen, a 20-sen, a 1-sen, and a US quarter coins; but I still got RM186.21 total. It’s almost like money falling from heaven, especially with the government saying that it is definitely not paying government employees a bonus this year, :-P.

The Coca-Cola Contour Bottle Bank, that’s the actual name of the thing, I bought at the Coca-Cola Museum (a.k.a. NEW World of Coca­Cola) in Atlanta when I visited Mon during the winter break of 2004. I preferred the larger 20-inch version but it wouldn’t fit my bag, so I bought the 11-inch ‘small’ version instead.

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PS: Mon, if you could buy me the large one when you come back, it would be very, very much appreciated. I’ll pay for it, of course!
;-)