Today, the world decides whether Pluto should be a planet in our solar system or otherwise. Below are interesting facts about other planetary objects.

Mercury, Mars, Earth and Venus are the first four planets of our currently known solar system. There is much debate on Pluto whether to consider it as a planet or a rounded asteroid.

The giant planets are separated by an asteroid belt right after Mars. If Jupiter had not stop spinning too fast it might had been another star. Most of the known galaxies are populated by binary stars.

The sun account more than 99 percent of the solar system's mass. Theory states that about 74 percent of the sun's mass is hydrogen, 25 percent helium and other heavy elements. It's radius is 110 times larger than earth.

In this picture Jupiter is one pixel in size and earth is invisible to this scale. Sirius is the brightest star in the nighttime sky. Those living in the northern part of the earth can see it. Pollux is located about 33.7 light-years from our sun and it is the brightest star in the gemini constellation. Arcturus is the fourth brightest star in the earth's night sky and located in the Ursa Major constellation.

Jupiter is now invisible in this scale. Rigel is the brightest star in the orion constellation, approximately 733 light-years from our sun and classified as a super giant star. Aldebaran is visible in the taurus constellation and a binary star system with a distance of 65.1 light-years from the sun. Betelgeuse is a super red giant and about 427 light-years away from our sun and visible in the orion constellation. Antares is classified as class M super red giant with is approximately 600 light-years away from earth.

Sourced with permission for Patchay@Blogspot: Incredible Heavenly Bodies by Ulysses R. Gotera

Tags: Milky Way and Pluto.

Cell Harvest

What happened? Earthquake Struck!

On the night of August 11, it was "Cell Harvest". Most of the time, we sat around in the living room playing some ice-breakers while chatting with each other. The food served this evening was simply awesome. We ate our meal slowly, savouring every mouthful. All in all, we enjoyed ourselves and this fellowship once again brought all of us from various backgrounds closer again.

For more pics, visit http://patchay.multiply.com/photos/album/56.

Tags: Patchay-Blogspot, GTYC, GTPJ and gtyac.

Monash Business Club's (MBC) Networking Party was held on August 4, 2006. **The author was a participant in this event.

Was it an event to remember? Well of course at least for this semester's theme - 'Flower Power'. The event began at around 7.00pm with the usual registration of participants. Guess what? All participants had to show something with flowers - attire or any belongings with flowers/flowery pattern on it.

Marathon Drink

Before dinner was served, we had an ice-breaker game. Cannot really remember how the game started, but my friend, Hiresh Tan was somewhat the most sporting guy on stage. He helped another friend of mine to finish a can of Coke in less than 30 seconds? Maybe not. By the way, just two days ago another senior managed to finish 3 cans (uncarbonated drink) in a record breaking time of 21 seconds in front of Red.FM deejays at Monash. >>Can you believe it?

He's shakin' baby. Dirty Dance by Hiresh Tan.

Bill Them All

Back to the story. During dinner, MBC's business clubbers had a chance to mingle around with old and new members alike. We continued with a classic ice-breaker right after our pleasant meal. We were divided into groups, mine was called the "Swift", named after the sporty Suzuki compact car.

We encountered a 15-minutes delay in the first game, not too sure what actually happened though. Still, we waited patiently and listened intently to the game organizers. Finally, the game started and we had to guess the actions presented by the organizers. The actions may come from famous movies, music videos or simply referring to a proverb or phrase. To cut short, my group finished second and it looks like we're going to be the overall champion!

Two Blind Mice

Well, the second game was about blind-folding. Two representatives from each group were blind-folded. The fist rep had to walk from one end to another and choose his/her partner sitting at the other end, and bring his/her partner back to the first rep's starting point. The first group to have two reps at the starting point wins. Thinking that it was an easy task? The organizers put barriers along the path, imagine someone blind-folded and had to overcome these barriers.

Next was a skit presentation. We had to play a scene based on the selected movie. Astonishingly my group had chosen a movie called "Broketanic". What movie is that? It is a combination of Brokeback Mountain and Titanic. Gosh...all group members had to perform some acts that depict romance and homosexuality between the same sexes, not just between males onboard the sinking ship Titanic.

The Swift

In the end, my goup was proclaimed the overall champion. MBC President, Sher Leen handed out hampers to the winners (in fact every group got one, but in different sizes). We all mellowed down and rejoiced as we unwrapped our prizes.

And that was the meaningful end to the night's festivities.

For more pics, visit http://patchay.multiply.com/photos/album/55.

Tags: Monash University and Monash Malaysia.

It's Day 23 of the Israel-Lebanon conflict. According to CNN, 642 Lebanese civilians and soldiers have died and 2,303 have been wounded. As of the same time, Israel has reported 68 deaths, including 27 civilians. Now I wonder how many more civilians from both sides will have to pay for this on-going conflict.

When will the war end? Will there be a cease-fire any time soon? When will the Hezbollah militia disarm? When will the Israeli military stop killing innocent people?

Obviously, I can't answer these questions.

Tags: Hezbollah, Israel, Lebanon and Middle East.