Blue Chi’s

A quick post on recent music I’ve been listening to. I’m listening to more music these days than I used to a couple of years ago, probably because I now primarily purchase all my music from iTunes and rarely ever buy any physical disks. I can only buy music from the UK iTunes store because I have a bank account in the UK, but it is still annoying at times because there are some tracks which are only sold in the US or some other jurisdiction, but not in the UK. For example, only the standard version of OneRepublic’s “Waking Up” is sold on UK iTunes, while the US has also the delux version of the album which has four extra tracks. I always get the delux version if it has more tracks, I do not understand why someone would buy the standard edition which has four missing tracks when the whole purpose of buying an album is get ALL the tracks.

OneRepublic – Waking Up

“Waking Up” is OneRepublic’s sophomore album which got released a couple of weeks ago. I really liked their previous album “Dreaming Out Load” which I still continue to listen to from to time until today. For those who do not know OneRepublic, they are the group behind “Apologize” – one of the most downloaded ever on iTunes. The main man behind the group, Ryan Tedder, has produced many hits such as Bleeding Love by Leona Lewis, Halo by Beyonce, and Battlefield by Jordin Sparks.

I thought that Waking Up continued the same formula of Dreaming Out Loud with more grand instrumentals this time and a more positive message. I cannot say that I like Waking Up more than Dreaming Out Loud, but I love songs such as Made For You, All the Right Moves, Secrets, and Marching On which is without doubt my favorite track on the album. It has been also confirmed that Timbaland is going to have a remix of Marching On on his new album Shockwave Value II! I CAN’T WAIT TO HEAR THAT ONE!

Leona Lewis – Echo

The second album by Leona Lewis was one of my most anticipated albums of the year. It is also the first album I ever preorder in my life… and it did not disappoint. I fell in love with Happy (produced by Ryan Tedder) the instant I listened to it. The album has a good combination of power ballads and pop songs. My favorite tracks on the album are Happy, I Got You, Can’t Breathe, Outta My Head, My Hands, Love Letter, Naked, and Broken. (Isn’t this like the whole album? ) Surprisingly, I’m not really big on Leona’s duet with OneRepublic. Leona Lewis’ song My Hands has also been picked by Square-Enix to be one of the theme songs for the English language release of Final Fantasy XIII – That is cool!

Alexandra Burke – Overcome

Though I was a really big fan on Alexandra on X Factor, I was not very impressed by her first single Bad Boys, it was clear to me that an effort was made to distinguish her from Leona Lewis and make her have a more edgy and urban sound. I did not like her album the first time I listened to it, but it grew really big on me with time and NOW I AM OBSESSED WITH A SONG CALLED “YOU BROKE MY HEART” it is nothing like the music I listen to and it is sung in a really awesome British accent! Other songs I like on this album include the Silence, Dumb, It’s Over, They Don’t Know, and Goodnight Good Morning (which Brandy sang but never released). I must say that I am really pleased with Alexandra’s first album!

I started going to the gym last month for the first time ever in my life, I thought it would be the only way for me to gain weight. I’ve never been to the gym before so I thought I’ll read a book about it and use an iPhone application to make my gym experience more fun!

The book I read is the one you see above, it is Muscle – The World’s Most Complete Guide to Building your Body – by Ian King and Lou Schuler. The book is mainly written for those who want to get seriously into body building and weight lifting, unlike traditional workout books, Muscle takes a scientific approach by explaining how muscles work and goes into great detail into the function and nature of every single muscle you can think of. I thought that the book was helpful because it explains a lot of about how muscles grow, how to have a proper diet, and explains in a great detail many exercises for working the various muscles in the body. However, at many circumstances I thought that the book was an overkill for someone who merely wants to gain weight to look more normal than trying to be a big buff or a professional weight lifter (which the book seems to be directed at). The book also seems to focus on working with free weights more than using any machines (literally, I think only four machines were mentioned in the book).

However, in my regular trips to the gym I do not actually follow the workouts in the book, and instead I follow the routines specified in the iPhone application iFitness. This is an awesome iPhone application that has detailed routines for all training levels. In addition to the explanation on how to do the workouts and show you videos on how to do then, the application also enables you to log your training sessions for each exercise you do and lets you plot graphs to show your performance.

I really love iFitness probably because I am a sucker for statistics! Apparently I can also back up all my data online and send it by email as well. I haven’t tried these two features yet, but they should be interesting.

I’ve been going to the gym for a whole month now and I feel like I can have as a permanent item in my routine, but I’m away from Muscat for nine days for Eid and there isn’t a branch of my gym here in Sohar, I still got my shoes with me, so I might try going to any gym here. What’s even worse is that I’ll be traveling abroad for about two weeks after Eid, so again, I’m not sure what’s going to happen to my gym schedule.

So does anybody else go the gym around here? Have you read a helpful book on the topic or used a good iPhone application to help you with it?

Eid is tomorrow here in Oman, We got a nine day holiday this time and spending the whole break in Sohar at my parents house.

For everyone on Twitter please use the hash tag #omaneid when making any updates or uploading any eid pictures!

Eid Mubarak to all of you!

Went today on a super random activity: We’ve gone to Ruwi to shoot a short film!

A group of people on Twitter and myself decided to make a small movie about the search of a houseboy named Babu (it is supposed to be based on a true story!).

Our director, storyboard writer, camera man, and video editor is Maithams (you can check out his YouTube channel here and watch his latest short film here). The star of the film is Raideraid, and supporting actors are myself and Alucard187. Muscati and Conceptoo have also contributed in brainstorming and planning the project. We still need to shoot a couple of other scenes in the upcoming weeks before the project is completed.

Shooting in Ruwi was a very *unique* experience. That place on a Friday is like a whole different planet as it gets fully occupied by Asian labour hanging out on the streets on their day off.

Here are some photos of the sets we shot in.