Video Recommendation by Sylvia

It has been real busy for me in many ways for the past few weeks. But it has been mostly good. I've never written about what happened during the day or anything like that before and I think I will keep it that way. This video was recommended by Sylvia yesterday and I thought it was pretty awesome. I have always loved and admired musicians all the time and this video continued to prove to me that I was partly wrong not to continue with the piano a Very Long Time Ago. The piano is the ultimate instrument that touches the heart, hands down.

The video was done by a Jon Schmidt and his friend Steven Harp Nelson. They combined two of biggest hits in the past year, Taylor Swift's Love Story and Coldplay's award winning Viva La Vida. It took me awhile to really appreciate Viva La Vida until I saw Boyce Avenue do a cover which is very impressive.

The composition and creativity on of this performance is quite unbelievable. I shall leave it here with 3 videos.
1. THE VIDEO
2. Viva La Vida by Boyce Avenue <-- Check this out
3. Taylor Swift's Crazier for the Hannah Montana Movie.









Thanks again to Sylvia for sharing.
enjoy
~deyao~

Right On Track

Arsenal's win over Villareal this morning may not be very intriguing, but it was very convincing. Theo had a wonderful finish which turned out to be the match winner. Arsenal fans got to see Legend Robert Pires play. His contributions are not forgotten at all and Wenger's comment on him being the best player in his position at his prime is totally true.The return of Cesc and Ade as I mentioned before would be huge catalyst and indeed it was as expected. The most exciting prospect for Arsenal fans would be finally seeing a squad which has more room to stretch than before. Any team would be fearful of the Arsenal bench - Diaby, Eduardo, Vela, Bendtner, Ramsey and Denilson were all on the bench this morning. This is one hell of bench. Oh yea, we got red-hot Andrey Arshavin at our disposal too .

The team standing in our way next is Man Utd. It's a little history for me, not sure they have met in European Cup before, but I certainly haven't seen both teams clash in this competition. But more imminently, we got Chelsea this weekend. Chelsea has got an extra day off compared to Arsenal, but Arsenal were less worked out and this is when the bench comes in again.
Meetings with Man Utd
EPL - Away
UCL - Home and Away
FA CUP - Wembley final(probable)

Meetings with Chelsea
FA CUP - Wembley
EPL - Home
UCL - Rome final (probable)

We would be meeting them two more times than expected. And they will play the biggest role in preventing us from achieving anything this season, vice-versa. I've heard Alan Parry use the immaculate so many times this morning. On other days he prefers astonishing. Both Chelsea and Man Utd would start as favourites based on their league positions and past achievements but Arsenal might be giving them a real shocker.Not forgetting Arsenal's record against them this season has been immaculate...haha, totally tempted.

It's the 2nd time we reached the semi-final which is comparatively inferior to Man Utd and Chelsea. But the fact that we are in very good shape and form would definitely give us an edge ahead of the matches. The 2 John Carew goals for Valencia, a Steven Gerrard penalty, an Alex header, a Wayne Bridge sidefoot goal and Belleti's final match winner still drives so much frustration every time the Champions League is concerned. Can we finally do it....yes please.

~deyao~

Taylor and Fearless Win Big !

Read the good news in the papers. Congratulations to Taylor Swift for her 3 awards won at the 44th Annual Academy of Country Music Awards

ALBUM OF THE YEAR (AS ARTIST AND PRODUCER) and

CRYSTAL MILESTONE AWARD

The Crystal Milestone Award is awarded for Outstanding Achievement in Country Music. Only Garth Brooks,Tim McGraw and Faith Hill has won this award. Btw, she is also the youngest ever recipient of the Album of The Year at 19 years old.
Not surprising as Fearless has gone Triple Platinum (3 million copies) and is the best selling album in 2008!Videos from the event







More details will be added later like pictures.

~deyao~

2 New Albums

It's been awhile since I updated since I updated on Marié Digby. Well she hasn't updated a lot recently so I was quite clueless about her whereabouts compared to a year ago. A recap of my previous craze is here. But she did explain her absence on YouTube . Well it's very good news, she has come out with 2 new albums. The first has released on the 4th this month and it's called Second Home. It's a full Japanese album consisting of covers of songs by Japanese artists. The album name Second Home clearly refers to her being half Japanese. She spent several months in Japan mainly to record this album and probably to catch up on her family which is half way around the world from where she lives. Well as a huge fan of hers, the album certainly had to be on my collection. So here is it.Thanks to my Ah Chi again.
COVER
BACK .Really like the expression.
INSIDE

I know none of the songs she covers, which is not surprising. I don't understand a single word she sings unless it's in English. For a cover album, it's pretty good. I can't rate her pronunciation, but it sounds pretty authentic to me. A real Japanese could have rated this album more accurately. As for me , there's obviously bias to everything I like. Lol. But the truth is, some tracks are pretty good, all the credit to the original singers of course. 4th track caught my attention so. The chorus sings "Don't you think,I wanna be with you, and then something something...lol".

Live performance of her first song in the album


Some pictures from her photoshoot for the album and promotion of her album.
















FULL CREDIT TO MARIEDIGBY.ORG for the pictures.
Go to the website for more of the pictures.

Can't help but notice the really cute hair!! Marié, pretty as always....

Before I forget, the 2nd album would be out on 27/5/2009 , its called Breathing Underwater. You can check the preview on her YouTube channel (linked on the sidebar). Four CDs in over a year, some accomplishment for the girl on YouTube.

Here's her preforming her song from the album "Come to Life" in Japan.

~deyao~

Final Dash

The season's most painful wait for Arsenal is about to be lifted IF we get through the next 3 games. It's almost something so inverted like a sea-saw, you just can't be up at both times (read further). But this season has been different in too many ways especially in the worse side of things. This is the worse season I've seen Arsenal played in all my life but something really special is on its way.
The next 3 games
Roma - Champions League
Blackburn - Premier League
Hull City - FA Cup
If we do win this three games, the bonuses gained would be priceless. What am I talking about?
The return of Cesc Fabregas and Emmanuel Adebayor in April. This painful wait as I mentioned earlier still drives agony down Gooners' hearts when we recall the goalless draws and worse of football played this season. We have sorely missed the Spanish maestro this season. The loss of vision in passing and bossing of midfield by this genius has once again dealt the biggest blow to our League hopes.

But hold on, we have 2 Cup competitions left this season and one of them still eludes every single Arsenal fan and player in history. Cup competition would be the biggest redemption for Arsenal as the mostly average season form guide can be thrown out of window. What has been played before does not matter now, what we have ahead of us is real.

I started the season with full of optimism citing Arsenal could challenge for the league (Which Arsenal fan would have done otherwise). I forcasted the intrinsic value of the team has finally grown to a level whereby it was no longer the so called "grace period for development".
80% of the team has now at least played 4 years of the highest level of competitive football and there was no reason that the team could still be labeled "Young" or most commonly "Inexperienced". Fabregas, Van Persie, Adebayor and Eduardo with the mixture of Walcott and Nasri absolutely convinced me this is it. Not sure how many times lightning (injuries) can actually strike the same club again, but it did hit us again and we could no more than mediocre.
Critics say we lacked depth but come on.... 4 of your best players out ???
Hmm.Man Utd without Ronaldo, Rooney, Tevez and Berbatov? Liverpool without Gerrard, Torres..oops..that should be enough. Go imagine what sort of team is put out.

We MUST get through these 3 matches if there's any hope in salvaging the season. The surprise form of Van Persie and Bendtner plus recent bloomers in Arshavin, Vela and Eduardo can be no coincidence with the return of Cesc and Ade for the final dash. God bless the Gunners!

~deyao~

The Biggest Cover Yet

Taylor Swift will be appearing on March's edition of Rolling Stone !! This is surely her biggest one. It is definitely in my radar..haha.


Full Story and more exclusive photos below.
http://www.rollingstone.com/issue1073

Mind the Taylor madness
~deyao~

Taylor's New Video

"The Original Video got banned by YouTube"
This song is called White Horse and it was said to be her favourite song in the album. And also the song she cried most to while singing it.
Btw, she will be on the cover of Teen Vogue this March.
And..........here's a link to a video of an interview and photoshoot with Women's Health
INTERVIEW LINK


~deyao~

Arsenal Roundup

Haven't written on Arsenal for awhile so I thought I put an update on them. Title hopes are out of the question so I'll definitely skip this part. There will be no suggestions put up on how Arsenal can get themselves back in the race because there is no chance at all (except mathematically). Predictions can come from everyone and I certainly had some predictions gone really wrong. Even my fantasy premier league is hanging on the mediocre level because of some predictions that were really not meant to be.
This will be an overview on Arsenal's season on where things have gone wrong. I'll make it a little interesting. So this is the

TOP 10 REASONS ARSENAL HAVE FAILED TO MOUNT A DECENT CHALLENGE FOR THE BPL
10 : EMMANUEL EBOUE

I had to include him in the list somehow because he has been absolutely terrible. He is showing no signs or hints of what he was capable when he arrived back in 2006. The pace and passing is all gone. He is creating a mess in the team and I do not know what earns him a starting place.


9 : BUST UPS

There is never a good thing about bust-ups. The Toure-Gallas bust up which cost Gallas his captaincy was never good for the morale of the team. Toure even handed in a transfer request. Plus, the uncertainty in the dressing room after conceding 2 late goals against Spurs was always a challenge to the confidence of the team.

8 : SEALING THE DEAL
This has been happening for years and it still happens today. Killing off matches, I really do not know how Arsenal always allow teams back into games. Two goals up against Villa and Spurs and only settling for draws is no good for the team. Plus many other draws which could have easily been wins.

7 : UNITY
There used to be a lot of togetherness in the team. But nowadays, the team looks pretty divided. There's not much communication with each other as it used to be especially when Henry was around. The comments by Gallas on Walcott and Van Persie is not helping the situation.

6 : ACQUISITIONS

Samir Nasri is the only major acquisition in the summer and this equals "NOT GOOD ENOUGH". He is adapting pretty well but the most he could do at the moment is just insufficient. Silvestre isn't that good of buy so far, not good enough for the first team. Ramsey very inexperienced despite his potential. Arshavin should have arrived in the summer. "Monsieur Wenger, you screwed up".

5 : FLAMINI

I would pay 20mil pounds to bring him back to Arsenal. I do not know how the f*** he was allowed to leave when he was only the third best player of the season behind Ade and Cesc who were clearly having their best seasons too. Arsenal clearly need a player like him to muscle and outrun players in the middle of the park. His incredible workrate is sorely missed. Another screw up.

4 : DEFENSIVE WOES

This could be easily number two. But a good defence prevents you from losing not directly winning games. Sagna, Toure, Gallas and Clichy is our best back four and still we fail to keep clean sheets. Root of the problem: Gallas. Get him out out ASAP as far as I am concerned. Best performance from him is not good enough.

3 : ADEBAYOR

Shebby Singh is right. This guy is acting like some sort of superstar the way he plays. At first I didn't believe it but after watching him play, there is truth on what Shebby said. What I mean by superstar : Too casual and not being serious enough. He hasn't scored enough goals this season, don't blame Fabregas' passes, Ade's really got a lot to improve on. Maybe the hair is a true taboo after all. He's no Thierry Henry thats for sure but he can do a lot better.

2: STRATEGY
This one is within the control of Arsene. It's quite the mother of the problems. The failure to kill of games and score goals is very much down to strategy. Squad selection could have been better in many games. The team just fails to integrate most of the time. Is Arsene running out ideas, I am starting to believe so.

1 : INJURIES

This is the top problem almost every season. Injury-prone players is just pure bad luck. I don't have any other reason for this.
Players missed this season
1. Fabregas
2. Walcott
3. Eduardo
4. Rosicky
Only four players, but the impact of these players is indescribable. Any one of them changes the entire complexion of the game especially the heartbeat of the team - I'm sure I don't have to mention who. Cesc- The passing and creativity. Theo - Pace and square balls. Eduardo - Exquisite finnishing. Tomas - Creativity and shooting.
Arsenal are missing those players a lot this season.

~deyao~