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http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7772902.stm

Chinese girl gets ‘kiss of deaf’

A young Chinese woman was left partially deaf following a passionate kiss from her boyfriend.
The 20-something from Zhuhai in Guangdong province arrived at hospital having completely lost the hearing in her left ear, said local reports.
The incident prompted a series of articles in the local media warning of the dangers of excessive kissing.
“While kissing is normally very safe, doctors advise people to proceed with caution,” wrote the China Daily.
The doctor who treated the girl in hospital was quoted in the paper explaining what had happened.
“The kiss reduced the pressure in the mouth, pulled the eardrum out and caused the breakdown of the ear.”
The chorus of warnings was echoed by the Shanghai Daily, which wrote: “A strong kiss may cause an imbalance in the air pressure between two inner ears and lead to a broken ear drum.”
The young woman is expected to regain her full hearing within about two months.

Just in case you haven’t seen the ridiculousness that is my elder sibling.

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=940105

Where we lived and went to school etc! Craziness!

They have no orange unfortunately.. so:

Red – sadd3j
Blue – YFA
Green – JasonC

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The perfect game for wasting a few (read: many) hours on a lazy Sunday. So yesterday I spent the whole afternoon/evening sleeping and playing Fallout 3 (picked up used at Rogers, also got Ocean’s 13 and The Kingdom for $2 each). It’s a really cool game, I’m not sure if anyone else in TPX would really take to it, but it’s pretty amazing and quite a lot of fun.

I played the original, or more accurately, watched my brother play the original. Fallout? No.. the original on which Fallout was based was Interplay’s 1988 computer game, Wasteland.

Anyhow, the graphics are great, and can’t complain about the surround sound. Also re: 360 over the PC version, I figure if I’m going to spend hours on an adventure game, I’d rather do it in a blanket on my couch than sitting at a desk. I’m not usually a fan of the free-roaming-do-anything-you-want games like Oblivion etc. due to the aimlessness feeling, but Fallout 3’s starting story is really interesting and so far has kept me in it.

That being said, out of the 8 hours I played it yesterday, after maybe the first hour and a half of the story, I spent the other 7 hours doing side quests from the starting town. The degree of freedom (or at least perceived freedom) has really impressed me. For reference, the game is post-apocalyptic so everything is poor and run down. The starting town, Megaton, and is shantytown built around an atomic bomb which didn’t go off but was still armed. Once you’ve talked to some people, you get some quests, and so it’s all typical so far and follows the typical rpg recipe:

1. Starting town.
2. Get quests.
3. Complete quests.
4. Do story quest.

For reference, it’s post-apocalypse and everything is run-down, poor and dirty.

One of the quests I picked up from the sheriff/mayor was to disarm the a-bomb in the middle of town, sounds pretty typical so far right? I fix the BIG problem in town and then voila, story progresses. Anyhow, I walked into the bar and picked up another sidequest, deliver some message to family in another town, go strongarm some druggie girl for money etc. etc. Then I talked to some suspicious, well dressed character in the corner. This is where the game REALLY turned it upside down for me (and I will admit, caused me to have to reload a prior save).

The sketchy guy said he worked for some powerful people.. who wanted to basically get rid of the town.. wouldn’t give many details, just said that it paid really well. The quest was basically to detonate the a-bomb in the center of town. I turned it down because I’m inherently good :p and I had picked up all these other quests.. what would happen to all of those? I said I’d think about it and headed back out. I talked to the sheriff again as I was walking past to leave the town, and a new dialogue option had appeared to tell him about the guy who’s offering money for someone to blow up the town. The sheriff told me to follow him.

He ran up to the bar and confronted the guy with his rifle. After some initial questioning at gunpoint, to which the guy denied anything of the sort, the sheriff told him he was going to put him in jail for questioning. The sheriff tells sketchy guy to follow him and he leads him out of the bar. As he was leading him out of the bar.. sketchy guy pulls out a silenced 10mm and blows away the sheriff and then starts attacking me for ratting him out! This left me gah.. now BOTH disarm and explode the abomb quests are gone!

So I had to reload.. but due to autosave the sheriff is already confronting the guy.. so I had to shoot the sketchy guy to save the sheriff. Anyhow.. now I’m just doing some other sidequests which are pretty fun so far and leveling up some and gain some skills. Of course there are so many skills, that you have to specialize, I’m kinda specialized in small guns, sneaking, and hacking.. but yeah.. not sure If I really need the “big guns” skill later or what.

Really a cool game so far.

So, went to FS on saturday.
To my surprise, FS offered me the SX10IS right off the bat.
Dunno if it’s mistake on their part or not, cuz the dude there that was from the camera section is the guy that tells the manager which one I “should” get replaced with. And he said for my “S5IS” I should get replaced with the SX10IS. Could be that he just said it wrong…or just read it wrong all together….S2/S5 looks somewhat similar…in the lettering…
After being offered the SX10IS, I asked the staff if I can get the store credit for its worth, but she said no, I can only replace it with another thing.
Being stuck having to find a replaceable camera, my choices are the SX10IS or the G10.
After listening to Terry and Jon about all the glories of the G10, I paid the difference and got the G10 ($23 difference, tax incl.).

Though, after thinking about it some more…with the some $429 worth of the SX10IS, technically I could have replaced it with ANY other thing.
So technically…I could have been able to get $429 worth of wii system plus accessories…
But I didn’t think about that at the time…and got the G10…oh well…if it’s that great of a camera, it should last me a long time with awesome pictures.

On to the G10. so it does have the lens adapter tube thingy like my S2IS. Unfortunately, it doesn’t fit the same tube as the S2IS. And the filters that it takes are 58mm, not 52mm. So all my lens filters and stuff for my S2IS can’t be used with the G10…
Probably when I’m in HK, go buy some cheap adapter tube and some basic filters if they’re cheap. The camera though doesn’t really need the tube and UV filter to kinda protect it as with my S2IS. Cuz the G10 does have a lens shutter cover thingy when it’s off. So it’s more protected in a sense than the S2IS. But having such an awesome camera…not having filters for it is kinda wasting it…somewhat…
Anyhoo…I shall see how it goes.