my very dead blog

I'm backkkk. But probably not for long, since I don't think anyone still checks my blog after a 3-month hiatus. Quite obvious why considering my last post mentioned that I got myself an Xbox. :)

Life has been same old since then. Wake up, work, come home, xbox, work on my share trading, sleep. Rinse and repeat for the whole week. Which is why I don't really have much to blog about. Although I did do some other activities. Went up blue mountains, went indoor rock climbing... and nothing much else actually. Not that I can recall anyway.

I've planned to go back KL in late August for about a week plus or so. Jetstar had cheap flights on sale (only $66!!!) and I needed to renew my passport before November anyway. I mulled over it, got my leave approved...and then forgot to book my tickets in time. The ticket sales was gone.... and its about 4 times the price now. Ugh.... now I have to consider whether I want to go back or not. Sigh.... stupid stupid stupid.

xbox'ed

got reminded that I've been meaning to blog a little bit more often after reading Jacq's blog. I haven't had the inkling to blog since my last post because I finally got my:

xbox 360!!!

I've been meaning to hold off till Boxing Day. Hoping I could pick it up for like 10-20% less or something, but got impatient when JB bundled it with a charger kit. Sold!! I'm actually sort of glad that I didn't get it last year when I mentioned it. Doesn't seem like there were many games that I would want to play. There isn't much now as well. I think I've got all the games I've wanted already. The rest aren't released yet.

I actually picked up Guitar Hero III as well. Not bad. Quite fun...although it'll give my fingers RSI after playing for a while. Not young anymore...aihs. Used to be able to play games for hours without feeling tired or have my fingers/hands/shoulders/back ache. Sadnesss.

Thats enough for a post... back to my Xbox gaming on a lousy ass tv. I want a HDTV dammit!

An uneventful Saturday

Nothing to report. No plans for the rest of my Saturday except for just playing games and what-not. Andy says he is getting a PS3 today.... so might go over later and check it out.

I just got my car serviced today. Inaugural 1000km service. Its running even better now :) Took up my whole morning though. But just spent it sitting at a cafe and reading a book. I'm trying to go through the books that I ordered from Amazon but haven't read. Still got quite a few. Catching up on them when I'm on the bus nowadays.

Had my weekly fix of pork and fennel sausage roll from the Bourke Street Bakery, which is the most absolutely yummy sausage roll I've had. 1st bakery I know off that has a queue lined up waiting for sausage rolls, fruit buns and brulee tarts. I've been going there every weekend ever since I found out about it... which was 2 months ago. And sometimes on both Saturday & Sunday mornings as well.... its that good! imo at least...

Going to play some games now...spent the early arvo cleaning up the house. Felt like I had to join in cuz Thos & Michelle were cleaning up as well. The place looks spick and span now.

not dead yet

Jacq reckoned I've died since I haven't been blogging for absolutely ages. Either that or that I'm not single anymore...which unfortunately isn't the case.

It has been a super long while since I've posted. Haven't really had the time nor motivation to write anything. Its almost 2 months. Should have waited till 1st December before making a post. Then it would be a full 2 months :p

Nothing much to update actually. I haven't been blogging partly cuz I've got a new computer as well. So been playing all sorts of new games. I've got 9 games currently on my computer now, all of them unfinished apart from Gears of War. So that should hopefully keep me busy until the X'mas period is over... which seems to be a fairly dead period for me. Got nowhere to go...and ermmm.. pizzas here. gonna chow down and blog later :)

blog blog blog...

its a long weekend, but didn't get to do much. Its been bloody hot too. Good weather for aussie people I guess. Bright and sunny. Great for the beach. I'd rather it still be winter :) Didn't get enough snowboarding imo.

I was planning to go to the Floriade on Saturday, but I realised that I had a seminar in the morning as well. Signed up for it a month ago and forgot all about it. And I only received an email reminder the on Friday. In the end... didn't go for the seminar as well. Woke up late and felt lazy to take the bus down to the city.

I went to buy new computer speakers instead! Finally got the 2.1 Logitech THX speakers that I wanted for so long

can't see nuts, I'm too lazy to take another picture :p

Apart from that... I just drove my car around for shopping etc etc. Got myself some photo frames. I actually wanted to use them to cover some holes that the previous tenant drilled into the walls. Theres like 7 holes just in my room. I just need to buy another one to cover the 2 holes that are on top of my bed. But wondering if its such a good idea to hang them on top of my head, especially since I have to use the removeable hooks. It won't be funny if the whole frame lands on my face in the middle of the night.

As for today... was planning to go the beach. But took a bit too long when I went back to Campsie to do grocery shopping. Bought lots of fatty meat so that I can make bah kut teh tomorrow :-) Hope that turns out all right.

zoom zoom Zoom!


my latest toy :-)

not so cheap after all

after receiving my credit card bill, I realised that this RC helicopter hobby isn't that cheap after all... despite it being a PRC product. Turns out the invoice came up to around $185... for something I busted in less than a week I think. Ugh... its freight thats making it so expensive. That...and the stupid aussie dollar being weak at the time I made the purchase. If I bought the heli like a week later...I would have saved around $20

The heli itself was only US$80... aihs...ended up paying $185...ouch. Of course. That is inclusive of spare parts and the delivery. I'm still waiting on the part to arrive before I can start fixing the heli. But before that...I have to figure how to take it apart. Gonna have to buy some superglue debonder, and maybe even a soldering iron.

Wonder if playing RC cars is cheaper... at least it ain't as likely to break into tiny little pieces when it crashes.

not quite condemned...yet

it hasn't been a week, and I've already crash my heli a number of times. First thing to go was the landing skids.


Can't quite see from the picture I suppose. But you can just make out a wad of cello tape at the front left skids (the 'legs'). That whole is actually superglued and taped to the body as well. At least the cabin is covering that up. Oh, and the orange wire is actually the antenna.



Another crash yesteday took out the tail boom. You can see where I taped it back. It still flies though... but potentially dangerous if the whole thing comes apart. These things can go scarily fast if you aren't used to it.

At least now I can sort of fly the chopper around a little. I can hover it for a bit before it starts careening off towards the wall or a car (I fly it around in the carpark) Have to work on my landings though. I've just ordered more spare parts. This is going to be a pretty pricey hobby. Have to order my parts online from Hong Kong. The ones at the local hobby shops are bloody overpriced. $25 for training gears (think very thin chopsticks in a cross, with ping pong balls at the end) ...when I can get them online for $7. Absolutely ridiculous. Long live the Intenet and the PRC!

update update

almost 2 weeks since my last update. Whats happened so far? It was APEC weekend, so I went to Perth to visit my mom & kaima. Relaxing 3 days of doing nothing much but eat and play with the animals. Should have taken some pictures of Jessie (Jessy?), but too lazy to whip out my camera. She is a golden retriever cross labrador...supposedly. She looks more like a poodle cross though.

Other than that... I'll be getting my Mazda 3 soon, hopefully. Put in the paperwork already. So just gotta wait now. Woot woot! My 1st car! How exciting... now I just have to find somewhere to park it. Zzzz.

I'll stop blogging now. Kinda itchified to go play with my new helicopter. I just got it yesterday. Still need to set it up so that it can fly properly...without careening in every single direction except where I want it to. Pics later.

zoom zoom test

i test drove the SP23 this morning. Its really a nice car to drive. Can't wait for one to be mine! Since I'm getting the car via a novated lease, some guy from the fleet manager is taking care of all the quotes and stuff for me. At least I don't have to do the running around and negotiating myself. Seems like they will be able to get better discounts. Lets see how that goes. Should have some numbers for me on Monday hopefully. Apparently its difficult to get a hold of the car since its fairly popular, especially the colour I'm looking for. I'll be getting it in Carbon Grey. One of the more popular colours it seems...apart from the red. I don't mind red... but thats reserved for when I buy the RX-8 ^_^

Its a bit of a boring weekend. Just spent the rest of the day on the computer and doing household errands. Feel kinda broke since I've been doing a bit of shopping over the past few days. I got myself 2 new snazzy suits... and some shirts from Tommy. All on sale of course :) Its just not in my nature to buy overpriced items except when they are on sale. Now I just need to get myself a new pair of casual shoes. Shouldn't be wearing my sneakers anymore... might pick up a pair of Lacoste shoes. I'm thinking of this one:

still thinking about it though. $200 for something like this does seem horribly overpriced... considering other shoes in this category are around $100-150. Plus the fact that they don't look like $200 shoes. Another $100 and I can get a pair of Bally's that are on sale.

whats there to do?

nothing much it seems. I want to go out and buy my Mazda 3, but thats probably a couple more weeks to go. I'm going to package it as part of my salary, so gotta talk to a financial planner, and the consultants who do the salary packaging for St.George. After that, theres actually looking for the car, and the delivery of it. Seems like my car will be 1-2 months away. Sigh.

In the meantime, maybe I'll just upgrade my computer. I acquired a new game today, 'Overlord'. Started installing, and the message:

"Your system does not meet the minimum requirements for this game"

what the hell!? it hasn't felt that long ago that I had to get new parts for my computer... and now it can't play new games anymore. Zzzzz. Maybe I really should consider getting an Xbox 360. Then I won't have to worry about this systems requirements nonsense anymore. Ughh... but then even Fatts stopped playing his xbox liao. No real motivation to buy anymore. Aihs.. What to do..what to do?

Suppose to continue blogging about the NZ hor? It feels like so long ago, even though its only been 2 weeks. Feeling lazy to blog about it already. When I think about it, it doesn't really sound like we did much actually. 2 1/2 days were spent on the slopes and nights were spent recuperating.

The most exciting stuff we did (apart from the snow) was bungee and the shotever jet. Jumping off the Kawarau bridge was great. Damn good feeling. I'm going to go for the Thrillogy package the next time I go back to Queenstown. Jump off Kawarau, Nevis Highwire and the Skyline Ledge (not sure if it has Skyline in the name...). Real sweet! You basically get 3 jumps for the price of 2. Should have done that in the 1st place. Oh well.

looky at the camera...

shotover jet was good as well, but I didn't bring my camera so didn't have any pictures. Didn't buy the photo packs as well. Dom did take some pretty nice pics with his cam around the Shotever river though. SLR camera with wide-angled lens. Pretty cool.

team Queenstown!

I think I have these photos up on Facebook as well. Easier to publish albums up there, rather than in a blog. The other 'big' thing we did was go to Milford Sounds. What is it? A place with lots and lots of:

waterfalls...

and waterfalls...
and more waterfalls.

Apparently theres not that much that day either. Suppose to be thousands of them after heavy rain. Would be an impressive sight.

holiday blogging

didn't take me long to become lazy to update my blog's template. don't really know what to do with it now. just gotta put back the links section, and I think my non existent statistics collector too. Quite annoying how old those things go missing when you update the template.

I just joined Facebook a couple days ago. Looks a lot nicer than friendster. Seems to have a lot of nonsense on it. I've uploaded some of the NZ pictures on it. Seems easier than putting up photos on the blog. Not sure if the photo album on it is public. Can't seem to link to it, so if you wanna see it, you gotta join facebook too :)

Just a sampler:

@Lake Pukaki

The scenery there is absolutely gorgeous. 1st time I've seen so many snowcapped mountains. Thredbo is nothing compared to the snowfields in NZ. I'm rather tempted to go back there next year, but there are other places to travel too as well. This is one of the times you wish you were bloody loaded. I could just fly down to Queenstown for a snow weekend at anytime. Its gonna take about the same time as driving to Thredbo. Maybe add an hour or two for the stuffing around in airports.

Just a bit more about our trip. Theres 8 of us in total. The 4 of us in the picture about: me, thos, michelle and yenny (mich's friend). And the other group of 4 is mich's sister's (i.e. carol) gang. I reckon this is actually a good way to travel. Break up a big group into 4s or something. Makes it pretty easy to move around, since we can either do our own things as a either a big or small group.

Anyway, we flew in to Christchurch a day earlier than Carol's group so we could spend the next day doing the scenic drive to Queenstown. Lake Pukaki (pic above) was one of the stops we made. Lake Tekapo was another:

this was actually b4 Pukaki

Whole drive with all the stops took us about 9 hours, but it would usually be about 6-7 hours from Christchurch to Queenstown. We stayed at the Oaks Shores Apartments.

balcony view

I'd highly recommend it to anyone staying in Queenstown. A really nice apartment to stay in. Flat screen TVs, 5.1 surround sound system, roaring fireplace, modern interiors, lake and mountain views. I was bloody impressed since I wasn't expecting the apartment to be that nice. I took some pictures, but had to delete them cuz I was running out of space on my memory stick by the end of the week.

to be continued...

making some changes

figured i'd make some changes to the look of my blog now that the adsl is back. was thinking of putting some NZ pics, but at the same time kinda lazy to figure out how to implement it into the blog templates. can't remember my CSS and HTML coding anymore, and not too bothered in putting too much time into it.

was hoping I could cheat by modifying some of the existing blogger ones. but its already time to sleep. maybe next time.

still alive

didn't realise i haven't posted since the thredbo weekend until jacq complained to me. thats actually lots of stuff to update, but i'm feeling quite tired now. Just got back from New Zealand a few hours ago...feeling a little depressed now. Absolutely loved it there...but now I'm back home. Back to the routine of waking up early to go to work...instead of waking up early to hit the snow. Sighhh...

More on the holiday later, when I get the pictures up. Work-wise. I've already handed in my resignation about 2 weeks back? So I'll be starting my 'new' position on the 27th. Can't wait till I get my 1st new paycheck! Definitely will be needing it after the NZ holiday, and the recent sharemarket madness. Lost a lot of money over the past few weeks. But not too bad I guess. Hmmm, its weird how I can think of losing a few thousand as 'not so bad' nowadays. All in perspective I suppose. I'm fairly confident I can make that money back, so I don't stress about it too much.

Waiting for dinner now (pizzalicious pizza!) so I'm just going to bum around till it arrives. On a downside to the holiday, I'm 2-3kgs heavier now from just 1 week of eating good food & not gymming. Ouchh....

a snowy weekend

I recovered from my flu just in time to have a rockin good time at Thredbo. And this time, I didn't come down from the mountains with any broken/twisted appendages. woot! I didn't take as many pictures since I only brought my camera up on the 2nd day. Michelle took quite a few, but I haven't seen most of them yet.

Anyway, kinda hard to take pictures when u'r busy boarding. I was thinking when I get really good, I'm gonna get a helmet cam and shoot my runs down the mountain :) That'll be bloody awesome.

me...

and Thos with my board in the background

the coolest pic I took of some random boarder. Check out the powder!

almost knee deep!

as you can probably see in the last picture, the snow was really good at Thredbo this year. Its obviously not that as deep as in the pic on all the runs, but if you go off the trails a little bit you can have a really great ride. Doesn't even hurt when you wipe in the powder.

And only 2 more weeks before we head off to NZ for what might be even better snow! woohoo!

out of commission

took 2 days off work cuz I wasn't feeling well. Finally made use of my sick leave. I think I've accrued about 8 days worth. To be honest, I wasn't feeling so bad yesterday. Just a bit of a sore throat and a bad bout of laziness. Thought I could just stay home and watch GTO all over again.
I still went to the doctor in the afternoon. Needed to get MC as well as a 'scrip for some asthma medines. After 2 hours waiting at the clinic, I came home with an MC for 2 days, cough medicine & a fever. GG.

I think it might be the stupid air conditioning/heater and all the sick people there. It was a reverse cycle air conditioner set on auto. Bloody annoying. One minute its blowing cold air..the next hot. Ughh. Felt totally dead by around 7-8 and I just went to bed. Woke up at bout 4 in the morning. Internet a little bit, then went back to sleep. Ended up waking at 10 in the morning. Fever was sort of gone, but didn't bother going in to work neway. Especially since I already have a cert to cover for it. Doctor said I could get one for tomorrow if I wanted to as well. Just need to ring up and pick it up :) Hmmm.. interesting proposition.

Anyway...have a craving for char siu and wantan mee now. All cause of stupid muns. Suddnely tell me she has a craving for me. I ended up looking for recipes for it. Char siu looks simple enough to cook. Kolo mee as well. Going to try to cook em both next week or something.

resignation time... and a new phase

don't believe I've blogged this yet, but I've received a job offer from my client to work in their team on a permanent basis. And the money is much much MUCH better (x2 better) than what I'm getting paid now. So hell yeah, I'm accepting it. I can't quite disclose who I'll be working for yet. Some confidentiality clause in my contract in regards to client details and stuff, so I can't post it online. Its amazing how even a site with low traffic like mine can get googled for random terms (my previous company name for instance).

Back to the topic at hand, which isn't much of a topic really. I'm getting crap pay where I am, but decent experience. My client actually approached me a while back. A month ago? I then had a chat with my boss, to see where the company is going, what I can expect next year... blah blah. All the warm and fuzzy stuff. Obviously wasn't too happy when I asked about salary expectations. Goes on about how my current contract is for a year, and that my review is in september, but it was only june etc etc. So I just left it as that. Would have been happy enough to wait till September, since I want to do the right thing by sticking to my contract.

But thennn.. about 2 weeks later, they came back to me with a small raise. About 5% and I think it was across the board for all the graduate consultants. Normally, that would have been really cool, but I had to sign a new contract with them if I accepted it. And theres new clauses in there that state I can't work for anyone introduced by the company. Not only that, it pushes back my review for another year. Which means I would be paid pittance for the work I do for another year, so stuff that.

Initially I was thinking maybe the amount they paid me was what my skills are worth. But I had a chat with a consultant who recently left the company, and he said that I should have been paid much more than that, especially in today's market. So yeah... long story short, I got the ball rolling to start working with my client. That was about 2 weeks back. As of Thursday, we've got formal approval from the division head to hire me. So all we've got left is all the fun legal stuff in regards to our contracts, and then I can tender my resignation.

woot! And 4 weeks after that... or earlier if my company wants to cut me loose. Its on to my next phase in life. The phase of having 40% of my salary gobbled up by the Australian government. Ah well.... at least that means I'm earning more money.

a post just to post

running out of things to do at home, so just figured I'd post on my blog. Can't download anime to watch since I've almost used up my 12GB quota with Unwired... and the connection isn't good enough for WoW. Sadness. At least 1/2 my day was spent sleeping, so I haven't been all that bored.

Went clubbing/drinking last nigt. First time in what feels like a very long time. Zzz. Figured I'd go since it was fatty's belated bday thingie, together with his sis & her friend, Nicolai (also an ex cempakan!). Fatty reckons she is Sharon v2, and i suppose there is a slight resemblance. Hmmm. Anyway, crashed in bed till almost 2pm today. Haven't slept till that late in ages.

Just waiting to go out for dinner now. Going to have some black linguini with a friend from the cafe/bar I used to work at. As you can tell, my diet has been put on hold for the past couple of days. Taking a short break this week from calorie counting and stuff. Didn't manage to go gym this week either. Too busy with work the past week. I did go swimming last Tuesday though. Nice change of pace. The heating in the pool was actually working this time, so it made for a good swim.

Ermm.... oh! Here are some pictures of Thos's new pad.

Balcony view, left

balcony view, right; and

the living room

I was standing next to the entrace when I took the living room picture, so the place isn't as big as where we stayed. But its dood enough, especially since theres a hugeass storeroom downstairs in the carpark. Tho's room is to the left (door next to the coach), and my room will be to the right. Best thing is, the living room is still as neat as when this picture was taken :)

alive again!!!!

omfg...finally got internet at our new place. Sort of. The adsl application for the new place has been so so so fucked up. Dragging on till foreverm and we have up to another 8 weeks to wait. GG.

I'm using Unwired right now. Its a wireless internet provider here. Decent enough for normal use, but apparently crap for gaming. Andy was using it before, so I got the modem off him since he doesn't need it anymore. Save $190 for the modem at least. The plan itself is quite ex. Can't be downloading anime 24/7 now. Sigh... Its $90 for 12GBs, and its shaped to 36Kbps after that. Damn sick..thats worse than then I was on dialup last time. But expensive internet is better than no internet.

Been positively dying for the past month. Bored shitless staying home... played some old PS2 games, and even started playing Warcraft 3. And rewatched some old anime. Anything to kill time. Oh, and watched TV too...lots of it.

Anyway... I'm going to catch up on some anime downloading.

moving time

Thos got the keys to his apartment on Thursday, and we've been moving bits and pieces of stuff over since then. We've got movers coming in on Tuesday, so that'll be when we officially move in the new apartment though.

I should take a picture of the store room later on. its HUGEE! Just about the size of my bedroom, maybe just a wee bit smaller. I know its definitely bigger than my room in KL though. My new room is slightly bigger too..i think. More wardrobe space, but not too sure how to place my bed & desk. Kinda stupid how the door opens into the center of the room.

Nothing much else to say... just been packing up and stuff. We'r getting professional cleaners to clean our apartment up, so don't have to stuff around with that. Now it feels like we have so much time to move out.