After getting back from my vacation last month, I haven’t jogged again. Work is still overwhelming and the rising heat (above 100 degrees) is blocking my motivation. I just stay inside and eat more. When I look at life, she depresses me. Fortunately whenever I look at Duke, he keeps me going even though I can hardly keep up with his energy.

I’ll be surprise if Uruguay could send the Netherlands home. Then again, I was so dead wrong about Argentina.

The World Cup this year has been quite unpredictable. Even Brazil lost to the Netherlands. The next match, Argentina vs. Germany, should be one of the best games in this World Cup. In fact, it could have been a final match. My prediction is that Argentina will advance. Then Spain will advanced over Paraguay. The Argentina will beat Spain to go the the final. On the other hand, Netherlands will have an easier win over Uruguay to get to the final. So next Sunday, the final match will be between Netherlands vs Argentina and my prediction for the 2010 World Cup will belong to Argentina.

I am still in the process of transitioning to a new Mac laptop. I migrated everything except for CS5, in which I am still waiting for the eligibility variation. I sent in both my GW’s ID and pay stub, but I was rejected. Now I have to wait for HR to write Adobe a letter to state that I work for GW in order for me to get the serial number. If I knew that I had to go through all these troubles, I would have stayed with CS4. If this is how Adobe continues to do business in the next release, I will not upgrade to CS6.

Sure I watch “So You Think You Can Dance.” I get to check out Cat Deeley’s outfit, some fine ladies with gorgeous physique and occasionally some great performances. Last night, Alex Wong gave a kick-ass hip-hop routine for a ballet dancer.

On the new release, Mot Khuc Song Hong, Le Minh Son offers his own sketches of Hanoi. After his failed attempt to sing in his last release, Le Minh Son has smartened up to know not to deliver the songs himself; therefore, he enlisted his veterans (Thanh Lam, Tung Duong and Ngoc Khue) as well as rookies (Hoang Quyen and Ha Linh) to help out with the vocals.

Tung Duong sets off the album with “Ha Noi Cua Toi Oi.” As always, Tung Duong delivers the tune with soul, power and individuality. Le Minh Son’s simple strumming guitar is a perfect complement to Tung Duong’s voice. The sensational, Miles-ballad trumpet solo heightens the vibe of the tune. Ngoc Khue continues with “Co Ve Pho,” in which she brings back her child-like signature in Ben Bo Ao Nha Minh. Again Le Minh Son’s accompanying guitar is marvelous along the distinctive sound of the Vietnamese flute. Although Hoang Quyen is new to me, I dig her dark, raspy vocals immediately on “Ret Dau Mua.” On here, Le Minh Son switches up his guitar for some Latin flavor. The best part is when he picks an obstinato in responding to Hoang Quyen’s upper register. The arrangements get more complex after the third track, yet they become less intriguing. Le Minh Son should have stayed with the simple acoustic throughout.

The Lam-Son collaboration used to be a match made in heaven, but now it’s a match made in hell. They should mesh well since Son likes his songs to be sings with authority and passion. Thanh Lam definitely has both. In fact, she is over-qualified. As a result, her vibrato on the big notes is unbearable, especially on “Truoc Giao Thua.” On the title track, Thanh Lam sounds like she’s in a trance and she uses vibrato like T-Pain uses Auto-Tune.

Ha Linh who is also new to me closes out the album with “Han Han.” The song sounds more like Ngoc Dai than Le Minh Son. Nevertheless, Mot Khuc Song Hong offers some refreshing new tunes instead of the endless covering of old tunes that currently dominating the Vietnamese pop scene.

Japan has packed up. It’s time for Spain vs. Portugal. It should be a great match.

Damn Portugal!

Why monkeys and apes don’t masturbate as much as human, Jesse Bering believes:

The answer for this cross-species difference, I’m convinced, lies in our uniquely evolved mental representational abilities—we alone have the power to conjure up at will erotic, orgasm-inducing scenes in our theater-like heads … internal, salacious fantasies completely disconnected from our immediate external realities.

And why men masturbate more than women:

And, perhaps not surprisingly, men seem to entertain more visitors in their heads than do women. In a 1990 study published in the Journal of Sex Research, evolutionary psychologists Bruce Ellis and Donald Symons found that 32 percent of men said that they’d had sexual encounters in their imagination with more than 1,000 different people, compared to only 8 percent of women. Men also reported rotating in from their imaginary rosters one imagined partner for another during the course of a single fantasy more often than women did.

A bunch of us, five couples and five kids, went camping over the weekend. All we did was BBQing, chit-chating, hanging out by the water, sleeping in the tent and watching the World Cup through my laptop. As you can see, Duke was having a wonderful time playing with the water. Here is an adorable rendition of “Hom Qua Em Di Chua Huong” by Susie, one of our friends’ daughter.

That’s it for the US boys. At least they made it to the second round. Better luck next time.