So so soooo tired this morning. Its been getting more difficult to get out of bed. I usually attribute that to my diet. Don't know if its psychological or not, but when I go through the South Beach or Atkins diet... I seem to feel more refreshed in the mornings. Now wake up, stone in bed for about 5 minutes deciding if I should go back to sleep or get up. When I do get up, I sit on my chair in front of the com for another 5 minutes deciding if getting out of bed was the right choice. Aihs... I wonder if its cuz I don't have to wake up to get to work.

Jez like this morning. I wake up at 8.30, take my multi vits, and then crawl back into bed :) I would probably still be sleeping if my ex-workplace didn't call me up. They having problems doing some setup for the accounting software, so called me up for help. Maybe I should get myself an ABN and start charging them for $150/hour for every 5 minute block. Thats what the consultants do. Hmmm.... So far I've received an average of 2 calls a week since I've left work.

I'm going back to work tmr to fix things up. It shouldn't take me long. I think I know whats the problem. Should be able to fix it in a few minutes...and then I can charge them for 4 hours worth of work :) Kekekek. Sweet deal huh? I backcharge my travel time :)

My trades are a losing proposition at the moment. Its all still unrealised losses, but with the the US markets are performing, it doesn't bode well. I'm not exiting till the share prices hit my stop, but if they do... I will lose up to $500. Sounds like a small amount, but thats more than a weeks expenditure for me. Oh well. Live and learn.

I really need to think ahead more and not let my emotions get involved when trying to trade. Thinking "Oh man... if I don't pull this trade, I'm gonna miss out!" is probably among one of the worst things you can do to yourself as a trader. And I always just realise my mistake AFTER the trade goes through... sheesh.

Just like the day before... I placed an order of about $4K plus for some shares which I figure are going to breakout (basically prices going up). I put the order in about midnight after reading up just a little bit about it. BUTTT, prices dropped instead o_O 2 things I could have done to prevent that. 1st was to look at the US market, which I believe was the pressure behind the recent downturn in the Aussie market. At the time I placed the order, the US market was already in a pretty bad decline. If I had known that, I would have 2nd thoughts since the stock I bought is essentially a US company too. Mistake #1.

Mistake #2. I didn't want to miss the rally...so I placed the order the night before instead of waiting for the market to open and observing the prices. I was too eager and ended up becoming one of the punters who gets raped by the markets. What I should have done is be patient, and wait for a point in which I can enter the market confidently. Prices go up, but they always come down too. I shouldn't have been so anxious to jump in at the start.

What ticks me off is that the stuff I just wrote...is also mentioned in the books that I've been reading to a certain extent. It just shows how noobish I am in trading. A lesson well learnt indeed. I won't be making the same mistakes twice. Oh. I've decided that I won't disclose or discuss the actual stocks that I buy. A reflection on my purchases in general is ok. Its basically to prevent me from developing an ego regarding my purchases.

I like this:

God loves everybody, but I think what he does with fat people is stick them on a skewer and roasts them over hell.

From Awaken the Giant Within by Anthony Robbins.

With that said, I'm slightly less than 81kgs today :p Then again, I haven't had lunch...so my real weight is probably around 82kgs.

the trouble with knowing how to fix computers...is that ppl tend to call you up to troubleshoot their computer. Aihs. not referring to you jacq :p I left work last month, but I still get calls occasionally in regards to the stuff that I've set up. I really charge them for the advice. I got a wake up call this morning from the ex-production manager as well cuz he couldn't log in his computer o_O Haihs...

I don't mind it so much... but its bothersome when I was enjoying sleeping in. Its a cold morning after all. Its been raining the whole morning, and I think I caught a cold as well. My nose is leaking almost as much as the tap in the kitchen, which I really need to get fixed. The dripping is bloody annoying me, applies to both the tap n my nose.

I love the fact that its starting to get cold. Its a nice feeling to go out and be able to blow mist when u breathe :) And you get to wear jackets and scarves too! I still got a leather jacket that I haven't worn out. Can't wait to be able to use it. On the other hand... it sucks when you get out of a hot shower and into the cold. Or when my nose is constantly runny. Or that you can't go out without wrapping yourself up, which kinda contradicts what I said earlier :p Its a love/hate relationship. Sydney isn't too bad though. Doesn't get as cold as Melbourne, so its been bearable.

And best thing about winter... snow!!! I'll be hitting the slopes in just 3 more weekends! I'm soooo looking forward to it. I hope it snows when I'm there. I still haven't seen it snow... feel so jakun. Aihs.

K then... off to job hunt.

ZZzzz... its been a damn quiet weekend. Thos is in NZ, so no kaki at home. Can't be stuffed going out as well since theres nothing to do. And since it was a weekend, I didn't have the inclination to do anything productive. Thats kinda bad, I spend my unemployed weekdays laming around, and then I spend the weekends laming around even more. Must stop this pattern (watch me do the same thing next week!)

I think I ate a lot this weekend, even though I didn't go out and my larder is almost bare. I think I made some pasta on Friday night, and had it for lunch the next day too. Made a baked beans omelette, toppped with baked beans for dinner. Ended up ordering a large pizza with garlic bread and drink 2 hours later cuz I wasn't satisfied. Left half a pizza for lunch today, and then I made pasta for dinner again.

Hmmm. Doesn't really sound like a lot now that I wrote it out. Just sounds like a really sad diet o_O I think I better go grocery shopping tomorrow... I've been reflecting on some stuff that Jacq mentioned when she returned my call on Friday, but don't feel like writing too long a post. Maybe tmr if I remember.

p.s. Chun Li and Cammy have been more active over the weekend. I didn't take them out to play, but just stick my hand in the cage and muck around a bit. Quite nice to let them crawl all over your hand and sniff/gnaw your fingers ^_^ Oh..those are the names of the rats in case I haven't mentioned them.

I've got nothing planned today. Except for reading the book I got yesterday. Kinokuniya seems to be kinda lousy when it comes to investment books. Makes me kinda regret paying $15 to join the membership. They didn't have the book I wanted as well, would have take 2 weeks to order it in. And thats from a local distributor as well. Thats a really really crappy lead time. I might as well order it from Amazon. Sheesh.

I got the book from Dymocks in the end. $76.95, sigh. If I could have bought from Kino, it would have been 10% off. Its really bugging me... I hate buying stuff when I could have gotten it cheaper somewhere else. I would have gotten another book as well, but then Kino didn't even have it. And its a bloody classic investment book too. "The Warren Buffett Way" by Robert Hagstrom. I think anyone whos serious in the sharemarket would have read this book, and they don't bloody have it! So dissappointing. Made me pay $7.695 extra for a book. Ish!!

And to top it off, I didn't have to buy a new book to read after all! Jacq ordered one from Amazon for me. Supposedly an early birthday present :p (which is the 20th June!! In case anyone has forgotten. Thats 18 days away ^_^) Thanks again for the book babes! *muaks*

Just another 3 weeks before we hit the slopes! Nice!! I'm still excited about it. Still gotta buy some stuff. I didn't get my thermals yet, and I MIGHT buy a new pair of gloves. Gonna be about $100+ for that. Aihs...truly an expensive sport. Probably will go get them the next weekend. Thos left of NZ today. His fight is on Sunday, so hopefully he won't come back too battered. ^_^ Who knows... he might even win all his fights. He is aiming to win his first fight though, since he might not have enough gas to win his 2nd fight and beyond. Ah well, all the best to him. Its all good to me as long as he doesn't break any limbs.

81kg today! Woohoo. Its nice to weigh yourself early in the morning after taking a leak :) Makes you feel good about yourself. Heheheh

I'm off for an appointment in the city today. With soem business consultants, for lack of a better term. Its a small business advisory service. I wanted to find out what kind of services they can offer me, and maybe if they can help me find out some stuff in regards to my business idea.

After that, I might try to looking for the Billabong hoodie that I really want a 2nd time. The store clerk might have made a mistake when he couldn't find the size. Then I've got a book that I want to get, and after that I'll probably lame at Gloria Jeans or a while with a cappucino and a cookies 'n' cream cheesecake :) Mmmmm... sounds like a nice day so far. A bit tired of being cooped up at home during the week. Its been ok though, I'm occupied during the day with reading and just checking on the stockmarket.

A book that I'd fully recommend to anyone when starting out in the market is "The Aggressive Investor", by Colin Nicholson. Its based on the Aussie market, but his model can be applied to any investor. Its a great starting point if you don't know how to write an investment plan. Apparently its not that suitable if you don't have around $50K to invest in. It might still work out if you have enough capital, but you'd just have to take on higher risks, and the brokerage fees will eat into your portfolio as well. Even so, I'd still recommend the book to those without the recommended to start with.

Colin recommends "Come into my Trading Room", by Alexander Elder for those without the recommended starting capital. Incidently, this is the book I'm going to buy today. Not because I'm a lemming and want to buy it because he recommended it. It was already my intention to pick up this book after finishing with Aggressive Investor. So its a bonus that Colin recommended it as well.

I'm off then. Don't want to miss my bus.

Some define insanity as doing the same things over and over again and expecting a different result. Kinda like me and my weighing scales. Its become a habit to step on them and weigh myself each time I walk into the kitchen, even though I did it 5 minutes before. o_O

its 31st May today. another 23 days before we go skiing! Woops. I mean snowboarding. Skiing is more wusses ^_^ Can't wait. I wonder if I can find work b4 then. Tho's aunt is helping me look for work as well. She passed my resume to her cousin who works for Kaz Group in Melbourne. Pretty big group I suppose. Deals in Australia and SEA I believe. Does the same kind of work as Accenture. She can't do much for me since I'm in Sydney, but passed on my details to the Sydney HR Manager... so something might still come out of it. Says I should wait for roughly a week before ringing up and ask.

In the meantime, I really don't feel like sifting through the jobs at Seek anymore. Kinda sick of it. Not that I've been doing much of it. I've just been watching movies at home (I've gone through Kill Bill 1, Zatoichi, Pink Panther so far) and reading alot. I'm even doing some speed reading programme thing. I don't know how that works though, its a program I got off the net. Its okay so far. The speed at which I can scan material is definitely a lot quicker. But then I can't commit the stuff I read to memory, which kinda defeats the purpose if I'm reading reference material or studying. We'll see how that works out once I finish the programme.

its been quite fun keeping an eye on the stockmarket. i'm able to understand reports and the crap they write about in the financials a bit better now. I've only made a single trade so far, and that hasn't really moved since I bought it. Well... its a paper loss of $50 so far, but I'm expecting the company to do better soon. Their US expansion plans seems to be going pretty well, and they are on target with their forecasts so far.

apart from that, I've just been observing a few other stocks that I've picked out. the prices on some of them has been dropping, and I actually want it to keep dropping ^_^ so that I can pick them up cheaper. hehehe.

so yes, I'm actually still enjoying my time off work. Its not that boring lately cuz I have plenty of stuff to read, and I can keep observing the market prices on my computer. I have a couple of job applications on my file; stuff that I've applied for but haven't followed up. I'm not particularly motivated to follow through as well. I suppose I'll get to it later in the afternoon. It wouldn't take more than a half hour or so, but still a pain to do.

I remember what Anthony Robbins wrote in his book (which I'm currently reading through as well). He had like a 100 phone calls that he had to make, but wasn't really looking forward to them initially. He took his phone & laptop, and then worked from his jacuzzi. Damn slack. I wanna do that too. Wouldn't mind packing up my stuff and then parking myself in a quiet little cafe and then make my calls from there. But then the phone bill would positively kill me... so its not a real option at the moment.

the weekend seemed semi productive. Thos got himself the pet rats on Saturday. 2 females about 7 weeks old. Both are white with brown patches, very cute. I don't have any pictures cuz they've been hiding inside their house. I took them out to play earlier this morning. They'll come and sniff my hand and gnaw on my fingers, but won't climb on me yet. Plenty of time for them to get used to me though.

On Saturday night, Shihan held his 50th birthday party. Dammn alot of ppl. I don't think I've seen so many people at a house party before. Got his relatives, friends and students as well, so his house was pretty packed. They even had their own DJ o_O I felt a little out of place, since I don't really know anyone there apart from Shinan and a couple of faces. But overall it was a decent night. They had a speech thing going so we learnt a bit more about Shihan's history.

Sunday..ermmm. What happened on Sunday? Oh yeah. Lunch with Tho's relatives and then watched X-men 3. I thought it was pretty decent. I don't feel like any movie had the WOW! factor in a while. I've been going to movies with minimal expectations. I suppose thats good in a way. You don't get disappointed by the movie. Like the Da Vinci Code. Ppl and reviews all said it was pretty crap. I didn't think it was that bad. A tad too lengthy perhaps, but could have been worse. Apparently the movie didn't explain much and it had plot holes n stuff. Honestly I didn't really catch any. I could follow the movie fine. Maybe its cuz I've read the book and just filled in the blanks automatically. Oh well.

u guys remember the show Minority Report? Tom Cruise had a monitor/screen of some sort which he could manipulate with his hands. Very cool. What about it? A part of that technology is out now. My cousin told me about it. She did some design work for a company in KL that was either selling these screens, or using it as a demo. Can't remember which.

I'm too lazy to figure out how to link the video on my blog, so you can watch it here.

The idea is that its a multi touch screen. Current, or should I say standard touch screens can only accept one input at a time. But with this screen, you can manipulate items at a whole new level. Watch the video, and you'll get what I mean. Very, very nice...and very expensive too.

Its not quite Minority Report level yet, but stil a very cool technology. And one that I believe will kick off once it becomes cheaper to manufacture. Another idea off the movie is a huge ass touch screen, like this one:

at the Chicago O'Hare Airport

Thats basically a huge ass touch screen. Its not a multi touch like the one in the video, but its only a matter of time before they decide to combine both. I wouldn't think its that hard to do, just a lot more expensive. Except for the problem its not very practical, since with a screen that big, you can't reach the top bit. Even more so if u'r a hobbit like person ^_^

i feel so stoned now. i played Heroes until 3 in the morning, and after that couldn't sleep until like 5 or so because of my stupid hives/rash/allergies/whatever-it-is. i think i need to swap my antihists for a different brand. its not that effective anymore.

to top it off, i got a phone call in regards to one of the jobs I applied for yesterday. just a short phone interview with the recruiter, don't know if I'll make it in the short list of candidates. its for the position of purchasing officer for IT products (and I left Favco because I didn't want to do purchasing o_O). Don't know how much the pay is, but the best thing about it is that its in Rosebery! I think it might be Corporate Express, since thats the only big company I know of in the area that might need a purchasing guy specifically for IT products.

Oooo..and I executed my first trade on the share market yesterday! And my portfolio is already down $50 :p I think I need to increase the amount of shares I buy though. I bought 5000 @ $0.41. Don't know if thats worth the brokerage fee. Oh well. Thats still $2000 worth of shares, so I guess I should go by the value of the shares.

woohoo! i lost weight! I'm 82kg now. Lets hope its the type of weight loss that stays off :) The scale is pretty crap though, but I guess you can't argue if its only $9.74 Have to calibrate it each time you step on it. Dunno why it always goes out of whack. Quite annoying.

my money problems has been fixed. the bank transfer thing. managed to cancel it in time, and the funds are already back in my account :) The only other problem is that the amount keeps going down regularly o_O Need a job soon...

I've applied to about 5 jobs so far (today) Got another 4-5 more to work through. Damn sien man. Maybe putting in a standard cover letter isn't that good an idea. But fuck it la..worry about it later. I think I shuold apply for an average of 5 jobs each day. Should be easier to keep track off. I've put together a spreadsheet to keep track of my applications as well. Hehehe. Its nice to be organised :)

omfg. i just transferred $6000 to Optus by accident. hopefully the bank cancel it before it gets cleared. if they don't, its gonna be damn bitchy to get my money back. not to mention I might have to pay for the mistake too. ugh.

i wanted to transfer the 6K to my eTrade. the account setup finally completed. taking bloody ages, and i think the information letter got lost. it will be bitchy if the customer service gave me the wrong account number to transfer my money to o_O I will not be a happy punter then...

I totally wasted the whole of yesterday. I started playing Heroes of Might & Magic 5, and its bloody addictive. I think i played it for like 10 hours plus yesterday. Its like I went back to the WoW days. At least I'm disclipined enough not to do it today... or at least not till I get some stuff out of the way. I need to apply for a couple more jobs, and also follow up on some applications that I sent out last Friday (which ain't looking too good so far)

fine day its shaping out to be...aihs.

i bought myself a new set of weighing scales (is that correct english?) today and I'm offcially 84kg. I want to get myself down to at least 80kg, or somewhere between 75-80. My ideal weight seems to be around that mark. So I guess I'm gonna go back to my 1st phase SB diet for another 2 weeks. I'll try to follow it to the tee this time, see if it really makes a big difference.

But first, I must finish my Balconi Mix Max bars...

yums

which is an ownage chocolate coated cake like biscuit. kinda like those korean/japanese snacks. except that this is Italian! and seems slightly cheaper

we watched the Davinci Code earlier. It wasn't too bad. I felt a little bored in the later part of the movie, but it wasn't as crap as what reviews made of it. Or maybe a movie is a lot better if you go in expecting it to be crap. It wasn't a badly made movie, just feels a little long winded at times. But then again, theres worse movies out there. Like Elektra...which is absolutely takes the cake for one of the worst movies I've ever watched.

*yawn*

its been really hard to wake up recently. becoming quite a slacker i suppose. 3 weeks unemployed and counting. the longer i stay this way, the more I feel like going back to university to study. aihs. its not horribly expensive apparenlty. For UNSW, its $337 per postgrad unit for a local student (which I am now... I think). For a Masters of Information Systems, its 48 credits. So total is only $16176, which is cheaper than the stupid Software Engineering degree I have from Melbourne U.

Dunno la. So annoying, I don't really want to go back uni to study. Feels like its a waste of time, but if I don't improve on my skills, I can't bloody find a job. Maybe I should do what Edmund did and do a SAP course. I think it costs even more than the degree. Or maybe a MBA program. Hmmm... it all involves time and money.

Becoming a day trader is out of the question. I'll probably lose all my money in the market. My own business... very tempting. But I need more capital than what I have. So my available choices:

1) lower my standards and get any job I can get my hands on;
2) take up some technical courses and/or certification;
3) go back to uni;
4) start my own business
5) bum until i run out of money, then go back kl and live off my parents

at the moment, option 4 and 5 looks very tempting. what to do..what to do?

i'm trying to persuade thos to buy some pet rats. He ditched work yesterday and we went to Eastgardens in the afternoon. Saw some really nice rats there. All sorts of colours. Golden brown, white with brown patches, white with black patches. They are just like miniature dogs ^_^

so lovable!

since thos is probably gonna stay in australia, he doesn't have an excuse not to get rats anymore (we looked at them before). Much less fuss than a dog, and more entertaining than fishes. And you get to put them in a ball and watch them roll around!

a roll-about ball

ok, so thats a ferret but the toy is for rats too :p

c'mon thos! buy the rats today. Thursday is late night shopping. quick! before they are sold out :)

i was so happy about finding a beanie I liked that I forgot to check the condition it was in. Some of the weaving is out of place already, and it pills pretty easily. I can imagine it going cacat fast. Sigh... wondering if I should return it. Don't think they have a similar one in the store.

I've been working on a business plan for the past few days. Have an idea in my head, but having trouble fleshing it out and stumped at obtaining market information. I've been browsing the net and came across this. It describes 'tips' on running a restaurant. The part in regards to food menus is quite amusing, and has some truth to it too. My favourite is "An orgy of wild berries raped by a topping of King Island Cream." ^_^

And yeah, I'm thinking of a F&B business. I might do it, I might not. I think its a good idea but I'm still in the resaerch stage.

shopping list

beanie, check

yay! i think my weight is back to pre-christmas days. still fat, but not as fat :p
roughly 2 weeks of South Beach dieting paid off, although my efforts were probably nullified by yesterday's meal.

jeremy's aunt held a small mother's day bbq thing. quite a fair bit of food. got fried chicken, roasted potatoes, pasta salad, steak and pork chops. Mmmmmm... the pork chops was bloody nice. The fat just melts in your mouth. Heheheh. Smoking the meats really does make them tastier.

Its starting to get a lot cooler lately. Theres even snowfall up in Falls Creek already (apparently, i read it in the news yesterday, but it doesn't look like much snow on the website's cam). I'm super really looking forward to snowboarding again this year. And so is Thos. I just pray that I don't fuck up my ankle even more. Its still no different from last year. It fucked up abit after a few light games of badminton last Friday. I should be getting more worried about it, but still slacking.

Snow gear is damn ex though, especially since it won't get used as much. At most 1-2 weeks in a year o_O And thats already pushing it considering my income (more accurately, the lack of it) I might get myself another pair of gloves. A proper one this time. The stitchings on the cheapos I bought last year split after only 2 days of boarding. Should have brought it back for a return. Aihs. But they aren't that great of a fit anyway. Last minute purchases.

So anyway, my shopping list is a new pair of gloves, a beanie, thermals and proper socks. Thats already like $200, if I get the slightly better stuff. Jacket and pants... no need to say la. I'd reckon around $700. What an expensive hobby. But then again, I forked out $800 for Kendo gear that I don't use anymore o_O Don't know when I will pick that up again. Come to think of it...my ankle and knee problems originated from there. Ish....

i was doing a google on 'chinese tea pouring etiquette' and stumbled upon something that I thought was amusing for some odd reason

"Putting food in other people's bowls even if they don't want it is NOT RUDE.
You are actually demonstrating your good nature by serving others instead of yourself. Usually, there is one person at the table who is an obvious target for any leftover food."

the part about there being a target for leftover food just amused somehow. one of my oddities i suppose. anyway, I was just wondering what is proper when pouring tea for other ppl during a meal. Is it okay to take the other person's cup and pour tea in it? Or endeavour to pour the tea when the cup is on the table. Can't figure it out or find any references in it.

I know you shouldn't do it when you pour wine at a table (as a waiter) but i'm not too sure when it comes to chinese etiquette. i figure its something interesting to know. I try not to pick up ppl's glasses when pouring drinks, and don't quite like it when ppl hold out their glass while i pour (just in case I spill it over their hands). Fatty tends to pick up glasses and pour irrespective on distance, since his hand trembles like he has Parkinson's or something.

Anyone know whats appropriate ?

another uneventful day. i followed up on a couple of my job applications today. i finally received feedback on the phone interview i had. didn't get the job, but they said I sounded friendly and well spoken, although I seem to lack the technical skills they are looking for. sadness. tell me something i don't know. if i want a career, i really think i should study part time or something. aihs. really have to figure out what I want.

at least my interview skills aren't that bad, although i find that I kinda botch up when leaving msges on ppl's voice mail if i'm not prepared. have to work on that. i should be sleeping soon, starting to get hungry again. i've been having a piece of chicken breast for a meal lately. part of the South Beach diet. Chicken breast actually isn't too bad. I rub in lots of herbs and some salt, and I douse it in tomato sauce (which I really shouldn't...) Quite tasty.

ugh...writing about that just made me pretty hungry. aihs. must resist! i only lost ermmm probably 2-3 kgs over the past 1 1/2 weeks. can't tell for sure. the scale we have at home lies. not particularly accurate, and too small for my feet too.

diet diet diet...

another day, but no dollar to go with it. i'm not spending much, but it does kinda suck not having income. I've been slack in looking for work too. Haven't really applied for anything or going to interviews.

...

after i wrote that sentence, i went on Seek an applied for a few jobs. blogging is quite useful, made me feel guilty about not doing anything. heh. i'll make another post later la. getting hungry now. need to scrounge up something to eat. oh, i'm back on my South Beach diet, about 1 1/2 weeks although I haven't been that strict on it. I still eat some of the banned foods, although not much la. Except for yesterday... couldn't resist a fresh sausage bun from one the bakeries in Chinatown. with cheese too! MMmmmmm...

seeing as how i'm unemployed at the moment, i have plenty of time to blog and do what-nots. a bit too much time in fact. the whole of sunday was just spent stoning around the house like a living zombie. quite sien. today seems about the same thing. i'm waiting for the PDS for the Merrill Lynch & Perpetual funds to arrive. I can download it off the net, which I already did, but I'm tired of reading stuff of the computer. Its rather annoying, especially since theres so much stuff to read. But then... if I can't find work, I might have learn trading to put food on my table or put myself in the gutter o_O

Jobwise, I don't think I'm being considered for the position that I had the interview for. Haven't received any feedback in regards to it. I sent the recruiter and email earlier this morn, but I'll call her tomorrow. Don't feel like ringing up today. Skimming through the jobs on Seek isn't exactly fun as well. So many jobs out there... but nothing that seems suitable or me, unless I start downgrading myself. See how it goes la. I honestly can't picture myself working for another organisation for more than 2 years, and that seems to be the timeframe for a person to build yourself from scratch. Bah... got to do some thinking.

i had a phone interview today. for a support engineer (i.e. fancy word for help desk) job at Kronos. i don't think it went all that well. i could give satisfactory answers to maybe 50% of the questions. seems to be a fair bit of technical skills that i don't have. aihs. oh well. i'll find out more on monday. if i do get considered... then i'd have to travel all the way to Pymble for a follow up interview, and thats pretty far. I'd say maybe 1 1/2 hours worth of travel by public transport. I reckon it would take 1/2 hour by car anyway, cuz of traffic and shit. Aihs... why can't i find work in a convenient location?

Its already May, and I was just looking at the photos I have up on Friendster. Theres the ones I had when I went skiing last year, and fucked up my ankle then. And its still fucked up now, and I still haven't been to the doctor to follow up on it. hmmmm... i'll make sure i go next week. i can go grocery shopping in campsie too. kill 2 birds with 1 stone. not a bad idea.

my first day of unemployment! third if you count the weekend la. I met up with a recruitment agency earlier this morning. Introduced by Tho's auntie. She doesn't specialise in IT, but she gave me pointers on my resume and says there might be an odd position here and there in the coming weeks.

She did tell me to ring up in regards for a job that I applied over the weekend. It was a good thing. I was thinking of calling up tomorrow, but she said it wouldn't hurt to just call even to ask if they have received my application. Anyway, I did call up and I'm not qualified enough for the job. The consultant did offer me more advice in regards to my resume though (I didn't put much focus on my technical skills), so its still good. Gonna have to update my resume, and send it back to her. Aihss... resume writing is such a pain. Especially since it feels like I'm lacking in updated skills.

I'm gonna such watch some anime now... been working on it for the past hour. Lazy to think already.

omg... my blog is being spammed

i would like to go to sleep, but i'm too effing full o_O OD'ed myself on a roast chicken for dinner. Curse woolies and their $4.98 roast chicken! Should have stopped myself from finishing it when I was full... but I just felt like I had to keep going. Must not let myself be defeated by a mere cooked fowl. Although at this stage, I think I've lost the battle. Feeling both uncomfortable and guilty too... aihs

back to south beach from tomorrow onwards! have to restock groceries with the proper foods now. hmmmm. but i just bough meat pies and crap earlier! how how how. aihs. our freezer really crammed full of junk. especially with fatty still crashing at our place. its always stocked with pies, frozen fish and ice cream. what a wonderful diet we have o_O

diet aside, i'll be unemployed in 2 days!!! woohoo! its kinda exciting and yet stressful at the same time. don't know whats going to happen, or where i'll end up. it does put my property plans in the backburner, since i'm won't get a loan since i'm unemployed now (incidently, i just get preapproved for a $240,000 loan). but i'm gonna move into sharemarket investments for the time being. learning the basics at the moment. http://www.asx.com.au has great resources for those interested. i'm pretty sure the material they have is applicable in any market.

time to try to sleep. need to wake up early tomorrow. bringing the car for its service. about damn time too. the car couldn't start this morning. battery went flat. this always has to happen when i'm using the company cars. haihs.

i got a car from the company again! using the magna at the moment. woo hoo. although i honestly don't mind taking public transport to work. cuz i'm damn slack... not even bothered to wake up earlier so that i can show up on work on time. since the car broke down, i've been rocking up to work at about 9.30 - 10 in the morning. aihs. where can i find another job like this?

speaking of work, i still haven't completed my resume. its sorta done... but i think i should tweak it a bit more. haven't really put a lot of thought into it. but it just feels like such a waste of time to work on something that might not even be useful in the first place. i did manage to get interviews for jobs with my old resume... although not as much as i would like to think. can't remember anymore.

oh. jacq was asking why i had to look for work. thought i explained in a previous post, or maybe not. basically, my contract at the company ends on the 30th April. and i'm not renewing it because i feel that i should move on la. That, and the fact that the car I was provided broke down, and was sold off for a grand total of $150! if u'r thinking $150 is really cheap, think again. The car was valued at ~$500. but to repair it would cost at least $3-400, if not more. so $150 is actually pretty decent.

anyway. i'll still be going back to the company from time to time. couple of items that still need to be done in regards to the new accounting system. but other than that. theres zilch for me to do. so yeah, time to move on.

its good friday! which means its a public holiday here. woo hoo! hurrah for long weekends... even though we don't really have anything planned. should probably try to catch up on some investment stuff over this week. been slacking since I came back from perth.

i think i'm rather fickle... starting to think about shares again. i'm still interested in property though, but at this point, its gonna be hard for me to get a loan since i'm gonna be unemployed at the end of this month. i need to start investing soon though, before I lose steam and just say fuck it all. aihs.

waiting for thos to get ready now. getting really hungry. gonna go KFC for lunch. i haven't had KFC in a while, maybe 2 months or so? can't remember when i stopped eating KFC at work. not that it makes much of a difference to my diet. my lunch usually consists of half a roasted chicken anyway. and thats equivalent to 3 pieces of KFC chicken, only without the deep fried skin. and here i am rubbing my tummy...which seems to be getting rounder by the day o_O

aihs. today just ain't my day. wasted 4 hours of my life because my car broke down on the M5 highway. right in front of the toll too. called NRMA for a service. took 1/2 hour to come. 2 seconds to say he can't work on the car because its on the freeway o_O another 1/2 hour for the tow truck to come and tow the car to a 'safe location' so that the service guy can work on it.

45 minutes for the service guy to get back to me. 1 minute to tell me that the car won't start because the timing belt broke o_O. 1/2 hour for the tow truck to bring the car back to office. 2 hours to get back home. Hmmmm.. thats less than 4 hours.

aihs... i want better luck!

i'm in Perth now! currently 8:48am here, but I'm still working on Sydney time... so I woke up at 6am here.

Flying here wasn't too bad. There was an empty seat next to me, so it didn't feel too cramped. But flying to Perth seems like such a waste. 4 hour plus flight, and you still end up in Australia. Sheeesh. I think flying to NZ is faster.

I'm just gonna take a break for today. Do a bit of research online, and I'll drive down to Mandurah tomorrow. I think I'll just go down there for 2 or 3 days to have a look. I'm not exactly optimistic, but see how it goes la.

I'm on dialup modem right now. So damn awfully slow... after having used broadband for the past 2 years or so, I can't imagined how I lived with dialup last time. I'm never going back to the dark ages!!

the showerhead broke off...

o_O

its kinda gross inside. rusted to the max. the rust was actually why it dropped off... and I gargle my mouth with the water when i'm in the shower. eeewwww. ignorance really is bliss.

I would say its been a semi-productive weekend. I went out with my work colleagues on Fridy night. It was one of the project manager's bucks night. We had dinner at "I'm Angus" at Cockle Bay. Not a bad restaurant, but a tad disappointing. We were in a big group, so we were forced to have a set menu.

I had calamari for an entree, and steak for mains. The calamari turned out nicely. The batter was crispy and the saltiness was just nice. And the calamari was tender too. Although I expected better from the presentation. Using an oversized plate is fine, as long you decorate it. Leaving a third of the plate empty isn't. Should at least decorate it with some salads (not that I would touch that. Could have decorated it with the passionfruit dipping sauce (which was quite nice).

The steak was only so-so. The $5.95 steak from Shark Hotel looks and taste roughly the same. Not bad, but dissappointing. The meat was ok, but the chefs charred the outside too much. And the mash couldn't beat what I had at The Three Weeds. Oh! and since it was a buck's night, we had the buck drink out of a tit straw, and he had a ball & chain attached to him at the start. At the end of dinner, he had a blowup donkey strapped around his waist, and he had to walk around Darling Harbour looking like that.

Adjourned to Men's Gallery after that. No buck's night is complete without a naked females. Although honestly, MG is rather boring. Only 1-2 nice girls out of the lot. The rest not to my tastes. Aihs... I think the club that I went to in Melbourne was a lot better. Bar 29? Club 69? Can't recall the name. It had stage shows and most of the girls were hot, so it was a lot more interesting. At least I know I won't be the type to hang out at these kind of places much in the future. Much rather be laming at home rahter than pay a cover charge to go these kind of places. Or maybe it depends on how inebriated you are at the time. Hmmmm.

Saturday... had an appointment with another mortgage broker in the morning. Opened up some different avenues in regards to my property investing. I have to mull over a few things now. Good and bad I suppose. Might have to reconsider my investing plan. More on this, when I know more. The rest of the day... cleaning up the house, anime and WoW.

Sunday... nothing much to do. Read some comics that fatty left behind. Got my hair cut. Looked at property listings. Regular sunday stuff.

I got off work early today. Had to send a guy to the airport, so just went home instead of going back to work. Heheh.

I had an appointment with a mortgage broker yesterday. Aussie Home Loans. Not bad. The meeting took much longer than expected, so I ended up with a 2 hour lunch break ^_^ Learnt a fair bit from it. I should be able to get a loan up to $300K approved. Only problem is my employment status. I'm not really permanent with the company, but I'm not really a contractor either. It should be ok as long as the banks don't really question it. Even if they do, I think I can get get a letter from the company with ermmm... some details omitted. Heheheh.

See how it goes. I'm gonna lodge for loan pre-approval later this week, or maybe early next week. Don't really have much tiem in a way. It would be best to have a preapproval before I go to Perth. Wouldn't kill me though. After playing around with the program I wrote (to pull property listings off the web), I think the prices of the area I'm going to look at is pretty high. Oh well. I'm headed down there anyway, so its not a loss even if I can't find anything.

I'm gonna start looking at information services now. I need to have proper historical data regarding property if I want to be serious about this. Forums are so useful in this respect. Already found a few agencies that looks promising. Off to work then...

i've decided over the weekend that I'm going to throw myself on to the property bandwagon. and not just think about it. i'm gonna do something about it. I did a little research on WA property (mainly South of Perth) and decided that I'm going to start looking there.

I just booked my flight to Perth at the end of the month. Applied for a week's leave from work. And I'm lining up appointments with a couple of mortgage/home loan brokers this week.

I'm finally taking action. About bloody time as well. I'm not entirely confident that I can come away with a good deal during this trip, but its definitely going to be a learning experience. Plus I get to take a break from work as well! Getting quite excited over this. All the best to me! ^_^

its finally friday. it felt like the weekend will never come. work felt a bit stressful this week. a lot of annoyance that just ticks me off. thats the shitty thing about the work I do. I have to juggle both my purchasing role, my network/computer admin role, and also implement the now-not-so-new accounting system. And recently just finished organising the company's new telephone network. Switched over to a digital system. I'm actually going for the administration course in about 15 minutes, which is why I've got time to sit at home to blog.

In a way, I don't really mind the workload that I have. Its just that I can't hardly sit down and complete a task without being interrupted with something else. If I'm trying to work on the accounting system, some random guy will come up to me saying they need a part urgent! yesterday! now!... I get the goods in that day itself, and it often just sits on the floor for a couple of days o_O wtf?!

If I work on processing my purchasing paperwork, or work through my quotes. I get interrupted by someone saying printers aren't working. Printers are down cuz someone clogged up the pipeline with a few 100MB print jobs o_O ARRgggghhhhh!!! Check the damn print queues!!!

When my contract ends in April, the company is gonna have to give me a huge pay rise... or I just don't do purchasing anymore. But even then, I'm gonna have to get a pay rise if they want me to stay. Put myself on a 60K package ^_^

Enough of a rant, have to leave for my training course liao.

today was an enjoyable day at work. cuz I was only in the office for like 4-5 hours out of the whole day. Drove one of the managers down to Parramatta to do an xray for visa. The drive takes like 40 minutes each way. The appointment was quick though. Couldn't even finish reading an article in Times. But then we lepak in the area after that. kekekek. went to have an early lunch, so just walk around the shopping area to look for a place to eat :) found this mixed chinese place and had nasi gorend. it was quite nice. tasty, but very oily (not that it ever stops me from eating...)

work the rest of the day was normal la. the new accounting system really bloody annoys me. a lot of random bugs and crashes and things you can't do. oh well. you get what you pay for I suppose. I have the consultant coming in on Friday for a meeting. Gonna bloody grill her for answers and solutions. Don't think i'll be very happy with the results... its gonna suck if I know more about the program than she does o_O If I do, at least I know where to work after my contract finishes ^_^

just killing some time right now with the blog. decided that I'm not going to play ps2 tonight. Gonna try work on my rentcrawler program later. really need to complete it. i've got roughly another month to muck around researching real estate. have to start taking action in april liao. if my contract doesn't get renewed end April... i'm gonna have a tough time taking out a loan to buy a house. aihs.

thos is back home in kl, which means i can grind WoW as much as i want! :) this whole week has been nothing but playing game. andy brought back a bunch of ps2 games from back home. took some dvd movies and Suikoden Tactics from him last saturday. And everyday after work I've just been playing Suikoden almost non stop. And was playing WoW till about 5 in the morning on Saturday. Add to that the super world event on WoW that happened on Saturday night. The Gates of Ahn'Qiraj. Its suppose to this epic world event take takes place in of the regions. Suppose to be something on the scale of Starship Troopers style zerg. And the enemies are giant bugs too, scarabs and anubis etc. Its pretty cool... in concept. The execution of it was pretty horrible. I stopped caring after 2 server crashes, and impossible to play lag. And that was an hour before the event even started.

I manage to sneak in an hour of play later in the night, but by then most of the keng stuff gone already. poo.

As for today... I was just watching this korean drama that I downloaded, Dating Now. Quite nice... I prefer japanese dramas though, cuz I don't really like the korean language. Had dinner at Lynn's place after grinding thru about 4-5 eps of the drama. We made dumplings for dinner! Yumsss... makes me feel like going back to Ashfield for lunch again next week.

The drive back from her place was absolute hell though. There was a bloody storm earlier. The vision is bad enough in the rain, but the windows in my car totally fogged up. I had to keep wiping the windows every 3-4 minutes just so that I can see the road. most dangerous driving i've ever done. Ughhh. who could imagine not having a/c in the car could actually be deadly o_O At least I made it back home in one piece. God still loves me, even if no girls do :)

just came back from morning training. i try to go for kickboxing in the mornings with jeremy during saturdays now, although this was only my 2nd time. i'm still quite slack in regards to training, but at least i'm doing it.

waiting for my turn to shower, so might as well blog a little. just to show that i'm not dead yet...although i felt like it after training. damn unfit. but with each time i go, I can last longer. I still look as fat though. sigh...

fongie came back from kl liao. brought my camera back as well. yay! rm212 to fix it. ouch. just for the stupid power button. but apparently they changed part of the casing. dunno la. i don't remember how it looked like originally. they used parts from a different model camera to fix it. as long as it doesn't look weird, i'm happy. Plus, if i decide to sell the camera, i can pretend its a super limited edition release ^_^

nothing much else. fongie is coming down sydney again with some of her friends. gonna crash at our place. i'll probably just stay at home kua. gonna be playing WoW in the afternoon. they can layan diri :p also, i'm lazy to go out cuz i don't have my house keys. left them at work on friday. aihs.

ooops. time for shower.

Zzz.. damn sienz. stoning at home the whole day. Thos bought his computer liao, so he is playing WoW in his room. Fatty is outside playing inside...and I'm in my own room being sienz. Aihs... I'm not enjoying my lazy Sunday much.

I've been pretty busy at work. So not much time to blog. Plus nothing particularly special to write about. Even if there was...all old news by the time I blog, so kinda lazy.

My contract at the company is over liao, but i'm still working there. Its being extended to at least another 3 months, but nothing has been drawn up yet. I've been OTing shitloads lately. Staying at work till about 9.30 on some nights. Annoying, but its not like I have anything really productive to do at home. The new accoutning system is sort of up and running. Even if it isn't, we'r using it anyway. Deal with the problems one at a time. Means more work for me la, since I'm the one who is supporting it. At least its more interesting than doing purchasing.

I started my own mini programming project as well. Looking at property listings online is quite annoying, so I decided to just write a program that will take the listings off the net, and put it in my own database. At least this way, I won't have to go to 3-4 different property sites. I can even do some data processing as well. For example, I can find out what the average rent is for 3BR places in a particular suburb. This should help when I start investing in property. I might even sell this program :) Although the legality of it is questionable, since I'm ripping the information off websites. Hmmmmm...

i've still got a bunch of photos that i uploaded but still haven't put up. been sort of busy lately. plus its so old news...don't feel like putting them up anymore. I need organise my blog better, but lazy to put more effort into it.

fatty is back in sydney, if i haven't mentioned that already. crashing at our place now. hes gonna move in to his sis's place on the weekend. gotta pau all his anime dvds b4 that happens. heheh. it feels like its been a decent weekend. can't quite remember what we did. i went training with thos on saturday morning. tortour... i KOed after the warmups were done o_O At first i was bloody exhausted. tired till i felt like puking. and then after that couldn't continue cuz my ankle started to fuck up. still haven't seen the doctor for it. aihs.

i think i just slept for most of the day after that. hehehe. no wonder my weekend felt so short. sheesh. saturday...ermmm. went for lunch at Ashfield. Shanghai food. very yums dumplings. yums dumplings and fatty pork ^_^ I went to Strathfield after that. Lynn (from sidewalk) invited me over to her place. At first I thought it was a housewarming thing with the rest of the ppl from sidewalk cafe, but turned out to be the 2 of us. Wouldn't mind staying in Strathfield. Korean suburb. Got a fair bit of pretty girls walking around :) And best part is that theres cafes there that open till late. But no place that sells siu yuk, so Campsie is better in that respect ^_^

Lynn stays in a nice apartment. Doesn't need to pay rent too. 3BR apartment, but she rented out living room as well. She provides most of the common furnishings, so gets to mark up the price a bit. Pretty good deal. I think the whole place was $450/week. Quite ex considering its not that big. The apartment i had in melbourne was about 1.5 times bigger, or more. I think we paid roughly $500/week then. Can't remember liao.

Photos continued. Taking damn long to put up stuff from the trip. Its already old news, almost 3 weeks ago lioa. Oh well. I'm doing this at work, so probably not gonna type much captions.

Chef Ken!

the food...

the view...

and the house

theres a swing chair thingo too ^_^ I think we forgot to take it down after we left. It was kept inside the house, there was a hammock too! Pretty cool.

Had a nice, big meal. Food was the bbq regulars: chicken wings, steaks, prawns, sausages, 'leng lui's (some kind of taiwan sausage thing one of the girls makes), salad and can't remember what else.

after dinner, there was a present exchange thing. forgot to take pictures then. Basically each of us had to buy a $10-15 gift and exchange. We took turns choosing the presents (assigned by a deck of cards. You open up the present, and if you don't like it, you can exchange with the people that got pressies before you. Girls could exchange with guys, and vice versa. Can't remember the conditions lioa. I got a winnie the pooh towel at first, and went back with a set of photo frames at the end of it. Sweefong got a winnie pooh sock filled with chocolates, and Thos got a floating bed (for the pool).

we played musical chairs after that. quite nonsense. but fun. heheh. like small kids only.

DJ Ken

Losers sit aside. I was taking most of the picture of I lost by the 3rd round

Winner! The last 2 remaining was a couple...so quite cheating :p

The winner got to decide who the group gets to interrogate. Sorta like truth or dare, but without the dare ^_^ Been ages since i've played that.

The victims. Ronald and Bennie (?). No idea how to spell her name. Heheh. Usually refer to her as 'sister' in cantonese, since thats what the group calls her.

After the q & a, we had a session of spin the frying pan and fortune telling. Ronald knows a bit of chinese fortune telling, so that was quite interesting. Thats it for the day I suppose. Better get back to work liao. Lunchtime over and I've got plenty of crap to do.

sweefong left Sydney today. i took took half a day off and sent her off to the airport. shes been here for almost 2 weeks, but it sorta feels longer than that. already starting to miss having her around. things are starting to get back to normal now... holidaying season is over, have to start work again. sadness.

it was a bit of a drama for sweefong at the airport. she was 7kgs overweight and couldn't get checked in at first. its $20 for every extra kilo, and it wasn't worth paying that much for the stuff she had to bring back. i couldn't do anything about it cuz i only just dropped her off at the airport. i was actually buying myself a new chair at that time ^_^ got a really nice mesh chair for $150. its not in the best condition, but the chair retails at around the $500 mark. Got it from a factory outlet type of place. anyway, she managed to sneak in her luggage somehow. Don't know how she did it, but she probably went on the plane with extra hand luggage or something.

Alright then, gotta blog up on the 2nd day of the Kangaroo Valley trip. The activities for the day were bush walking, the beach and a bbq later at night. Bush walking was just an ok experience la, not a whole lot of different stuff to see. It was mainly just hiking along the track, looking at the same view, but from different angles. The first lookout point was the nicest, cuz it was only 5 minutes from the start and closest to the waterfall

ta da!

rainbow!

The greenest place i've seen in Aussie so far

There were suppose to be more stuff to see, we walked past rivers and smaller waterfall areas, but they were all dried up. Dunno if its just cuz of the time of the year, or something to do with Australia's drought.

the bushwalkers

and again...

the same waterfall from another angle. Its actually prety small.

taken on a bridge over a dried up river

oh yeah. there actually more than 1 waterfall. The Twin Falls! very puny looking.

The whole walk was about 2 hours or so. Can't remember how long. We had lunch at Oporto's before heading off to the beach. I think it was Hyams Beach or something. Supposedly the "whitest beach in the world". Doesn't really live up to the name.

Me, Swee Fong, Thos, Ken and Betty

I didn't do much at the beach. Just sat on the beach on played a bit of football. The beach was ok la. Places like Manly or Coogee were more impressive.

Went back home after that. It doesn't sound like we did much, but it was already late afternoon when we got back. I think it was an hours or more worth of travel between all the places above. Kudos to Thos, me and Swee Fong just slept. ^_^

And thats it for today. I'll put up the pics of the BBQ tmr.

Its about time that I do a recap of my x'mas/ny holidays. I've had a good end to the year, and absolutely not looking forward to going back to work tomorrow :'( Its been a good week and a half off, but it kinda feels that I've been away from work longer.

I can't remember if I mentioned what my holiday plans were. Let's see... first of all, fongie came down to spend her xmas in sydney which was pretty cool. She was spose to stay till the 9th, but shes gonna leave a couple days earlier. Getting sick of Sydney already, and probably of me too :p Anyway, the big event of the holidays was going down to Kangaroo Valley. It was a jam packed couple of days but really good fun. The rest of it was just going aroudn with Swee Fong and then seeing the eve's fireworks. Everything seems like sort of a blur. My memory getting kinda bad...

So first up, pics & comments from Kangaroo Valley trip. The trip was made up of a total of ermm..18 ppl i think? I'm lost on the exact numbers unless I actually count names, but lazy to do that at the moment. Rented a house for 2 nights. Surprisingly big and comfy. Pictures to come. We went canoeing, bushwalking, dolphin cruise, the beach and an amusement park. It doesn't sound like a lot, but it was a fair bit of stuff to do.

We (or fongie to be more exact) didn't take any pictures of the canoeing place. Didn't want to bring the camera to the water. Some of the other guys did though. Must get the pics from them later on. Canoeing was pretty good. Relaxing and tiring in a way, but unfortunately my legs got sunburnt. I applied sunblock on my hands and face, but forgot about my legs. Aihs. Got pretty red, and I'm actually shedding right now. Quite fun to peel the skin off my legs ^_^

We had the best pies in the world for lunch after canoeing...

at least thats what the sign said

The pies were alright, pastry was very good but can't say the same for the fillings. At least they have very nice milkshakes.

The dolphin watch cruise was next on the itenary. We went aboard the Tekken III Tekin III at Jervis Bay. Its supposed to be very good. Excellent chances of seeing dolphins and what-not. They even got awards for being the best dolphin cruise before. Pity all that doesn't mean jack since we didn't get to see any dolphins. Although I did enjoy being on a boat for 2 hours. Its quite fun. Instead of snapping photos of dolphins, we just took photos of ourselves.

Outside...

and inside.

and a dead Thos. He was napping for most of the ride.

It was about 5-6ish when we were done with all that (we set off from Sydney at about 8.30 in the morn). After the cruise, we went to collect the keys at our house and then head off to dinner.

The house

That pic was actually taken during the BBQ on Saturday, but fongie didn't take any pictures of the house from the outside.

Dining room

Part of the living room

it has a fireplace too!

and nice bedrooms

our room for the weekend.

Thos took the top bunk and fongie and me had to share the bottom. the house had another 3 rooms with double beds, but all taken up. Some people had to sleep in sleeping bags as well. The house was meant for 12 ppl, and we had 18. Oh well. At least we had a bed to sleep in.

Dinner was at a Thai restaurant in town (ermm..which is just a street with nto more than 10 shops ?) Its a pretty fancy place considereing its remote location.

called Jing Jo Thai

almost the whole gang, minus fongie and 3 latecomers

I reckon the food was so-so. Nothing much to shout about. Definitely can't beat Doy Tao. I don't really recall what we had as well, so i suppose thats 'nuff said.

Didn't do much after dinner. Everyone was pretty tired. I didn't have to drive and I was tired ^_^ Got to sleep in the car while Thos drove. Hehehe. We watched a Jackie Chan movie (there was a dvd player at the house). I think its called The Myth. Not bad la the show. Typical Jackie Chan show though.

Okla. thats enough of a blog. Took me almost an hour to get this far. To be continued...

happy new year everyone! its a bloody 40 degrees in Sydney, so thats all I'm gonna blog for now.

back from kangaroo valley, and i'm back at work too /cry. its not too bad though. i'm in only for a couple of hours, but i haven't been doing much since i came in apart from reading http://www.ctrlaltdel-online.com/, which was what I've been doing the past week at work. i've read about 2 years worth of comics. not bad huh?

i don't have any pics of the trip yet, my camera is fucked. have to ask swee fong to bring it back to KL for me, hopefully it won't be too expensive to fix. its just the stupid power button thats stuffing up. I'll upload some pics when I get them from fongie. i'll blog about the trip the same time i post the pictures la, lazy to do it twice.

aihs. i want to go home. not doing anything productive at work. the manager hasn't come in yet, so I can't even set up the new accounting system for him. think i'll leave at lunchtime if he doesn't come in.

nice and simple, merry xmas to all!

wanna know how to write backwards? take a writing pad and just write on the other side.
don't think about it, else you'll just get confused. try it out.

its been extremely hard for me to get out of bed lately. i literally have to force myself to fall out of bed in order to wake. dunno why. i've been getting plenty of sleep i think. possibly my diet. what you eat really affects your body. when i did atkins and south beach, i did notice that i feel more energised in the morning. not that i really kept to the diet. max was about 3 weeks i think. the only thing i've stopped eating is bread at home. i feel that its too easy to eat a lot of it, cause you get hungry fast even though u ate a lot. kinda like porridge.

went for dinner with Andy last night. ashfield again. had like the best dumplings i've ever eaten. dumplings that are actually juicy. bloody good. and the place is cheap too. so its doubly good :) the english name is Shanghai Nights... i think. I just remember that it was a dodgy name la. after dinner, we went to watch King Kong with Jeremy, Ken and a whole bunch of other ppl. From Ken's badminton club. I reckon Kong was good. One of the better movies out this year. I feel that its better than LoTR though. Some parts of LoTR was just kinda gay. Anyway, I'm lazy to say anything about the movies. I'm not a good reviewer and plenty of other sources out there.

Gonna have lunch and finish reading my book.

friday is finally here!! not that i have much to do over the weekend, but at least i don't have to work. even though its been a 4 day work week for me. and it might even be half day today. company xmas party is tonight, and a lot of ppl took off earlier last year. but its a fair bit more busy this time around. so maybe we still have to work the whole day. boo!

we got our new accounting system yesterday. pretty neat! installed it and got it running. who needs a $180/hour consultant! all i need is a user guide and google. i really should work as a consultant. get paid shitloads for doing stuff like this. easy peasy.

Arrgh. So annoying. feels like theres something stuck in my eye. can't get it out. starting to hurt. and my eye is already red from all the rubbing. not a good start to the morning. i'm walking around with one eye closed now. not that if makes much of a difference to me. my left eye is practically blind anyway. thinking of maybe doing laser eye surgery one day. maybe when i get enough money. it gets advertised over the radio fairly often. kinda scary though. theres still a chance that you can go blind, or that your eyes go cacat.

man...can't wait till xmas. holiday period ftw! tomorrow might be a unofficial half day too. cuz the company having it's xmas party. not that I'm going la. Can't be stuffed. kekeke. If there were hot chicks, then I might make the effort. Unfortunately...roughly 150 employees at the company and only 3% are female. I need to work in advertising. Or accounting. Or the porn industry.

[edit]
its payday!!! Totally forgot about it. A nice surprise. I think its damn sweet how I still get paid $3K after tax even after ditching work at least once a week :) I don't even remember OTing all that much. I had 20 hours of OT and 15 hours sick leave. So i got paid for not working too. Nice!

fatty showed me a power recipe.

1 large ripe watermelon
1 bottle of vodka

What to do: cut a hole in the top of the melon, wide & deep enough to wedge in a funnel tightly. Pour some vodka into the melon through the funnel: leave to sit for a day, then top up. Do this for a few days, keeping the melon chilled all the while until it is saturated with drink.

slice, serve and grin.

one of Jamie Oliver's recipes. Must try...

[edit]

ugh... the heat is horrible. 40 degrees. feel like passing out now. but have to go out. what a day to pick to go watch a movie. aihs. could really use some vodka watermelon now.

[edit again]

no movie to watch. kena conned by website. ish. spose to watch Elizabethtown at 8.45 but movie got cancelled or something. oh well. at least i can stay home now.

Hmmm. WoW is making me neglect my exercises again. I intended to go for a swim yesterday, but ended up going straight home to play WoW. Wanted to complete a couple of instance quests with Nic and Andy. Ended up failure. Wasted like 2-3 hours because the the other 2 persons we went with were dodgy. Not to say I did great la, but lets leave that aside :p

I don't know what to blog about, so I figure I should explain WoW a little bit. I go on about how much I play...and how much I regret playing it sometimes but I don't think I've blogged about the actual game before.

Anyway, theres a super article on it on wikipedia (duh?) Thats on the entire warcraft universe, not just WoW. All the games, books, etc etc. I'll just just give a basic of basics on WoW, since I'm blogging while I'm doing work as well. Kinda hard to maintain a proper flow of thought when I keep getting interrupted.

First of all, WoW is an MMORPG (short for massively multiplayer online role playing game). Basically means its a game that you can only play online with people all over the world. and WoW is the mother of all MMORPGs to date. 4.5 million subscribers as of November 2005. roughly US$10 a month. Thats a fuckload of money.

Oooo... someone brought cake. Continue later.

Mmm.. yum. some cherry blackforest cake thingy :p Dunno if its a good thing that I'm sitting in front of the kitchen area. Can see whenever the lady brings in cake to work. Have to skip lunch today. I think i'll start eating salads from now on. Hmmm.

Neway, back to Wow. The game is made up of 2 factions. Horde and Alliance. The 'good' guys are Alliance consisting of Humans (you and me), Dwarves (short people), Gnomes (even shorter people) and Night Elves (pretty people). The Horde made up of Tauren (cow people), Forsaken (dead people), Orcs (ugly green people) and the upcoming Blood Elves (pretty people for the Horde).

My undead warlock on an epic mount

Night Elf druid, Lulufei. Ah Fei's character

Both characters don't get play cuz we all made new characters on another server to play with Fatts and the rest.

Blood Elves will be a new addition to the game when the expansion gets released. Too many ppl were playing alliance because horde were too ugly. So they needed something to fix the imbalance. The new alliance race hasn't been decided yet.

You start the game by choosing a race you want to play and then your class or the type of character you are. Depending on the faction and race, you can be a Warrior, Priest, Rogue, Mage, Warlock, Druid, Shaman (horde only) and Paladin (alliance only).
You create your character and set off in the world, killing monsters, completing quests, saving the world that kinda thing. Theres a fair bit of stuff to do. Theres professions to choose from (engineering, blacksmithing, alchemy etc) and you can even learn fishing and cooking too.

Theres no real objective to the game. Just lvl your way to 60, collect more powerful weapons and armor, killing bigger monsters. Doesn't end until you decide to cancel your subscription :p You can solo the game for the most part, but theres a lot of stuff that you need to do as a group. You can enter dungeons called instances with party of 5 (and eventually raids of up to 40 ppl) The mobs in an instance are elite, meaning they are much stronger than a normal mob for the same level. Obviously, you get better rewards as well. After you reach 60, you'll mostly be doing instances to get better equipment and stuff. Either that or you PVP (player vs player) a whole lot. WoW has special instances called Battlegrounds (BG) where they match up horde and alliance players. You can pvp in the BGs or attack some towns or cities in the game.

Fark..wrote quite long lioa. Better start concentrating on work :p I'll put up some pics when I go back home kua. Put up some ingame screenshots or something [ed: put up some pics liao]. Make this post more interesting. Too much text can kill.

had my blog window open since i came in to work, but been too busy to write anything. its lunch time now, so got a bit of time to rant. i think i slept too much over the weekend. napped in the afternoon on both satuday and sunday. damn lazy weekend. just stayed home, played wow and read my book. i dloaded some movies to watch too. madagascar and 40 yr old virgin. heheh. too cheap to go out and rent. its cinema vcd quality though. the type where u can hear ppl laugh and see ppl walking around. should only dload movies after theres a dvd release.

what else? i think thats it. quite a sien weekend, like every other :p Now i'm thinking what I should eat. Easiest place to go is KFC. Aihs. And I wonder why I can't lose weight o_O My usual meal is a twister or fillet burger and a pack of wicked wings. $4.45 + $1.95. Reasonable meal ah. keeps me satisfied till dinner time. I'd prefer to have 3 packs of wicked wings...more chun n cheap. But then scared i kena stomachache.

i just called up MAS just now. check on airline pricing. The promotion thing ah fei told me about macam don't have liao, or he just quoted me the wrong price. If I fly b4/on the 15th of Jan its $900something. between 16th and 29th its $736 and after the 30th its $681. Tax not included of course. Tax is around $243. Almost $1k to fly back. Aihs. Dunno if its worth it. Can do a lot with that money. I think I'll take half day off tmr. Go down chinatown and see if i can scrounge a cheaper ticket. chinaman ticket agent should be cheaper kua. Anyway, earliest available flight is 21st Jan, so see how it goes.

Kla. Off to lunch.

its 1st of December. Almost end of the year liao. Feels damn fast. It doesn't feel like I've done anything useful during my time here. Especially this past year. Most of my resolutions also went down the toilet. Cis... useless me. Nvm, make brand new ones for next year ^_^ I kinda like planning and working out schedules and stuff. Did I mention that I made a timetable for myself? Not that I've really been following it. Included stuff like exercise, study and reading time. When u plan things out that way... it really feels like you don't have much time to goof around. I followed it ok in the first week I did it. But then it went down the toilet from last weekend onwards. Stupid WoW weekend :p My druid is lvl 58 now though ^_^ taking extremely long. Which is sort of a good thing. I think when I hit 60, i'm gonna be playing even more. Especially since I can finally join the rest in all the pvp and high end stuff. Aihs...

Mann... my computer at work is bloody annoying me. Have to give it a whack every 5 minutes. The power supply making a damn annoying noise. I think the fan bearings are stuffed or something. Stupid old computers... maybe I should move it to the floor. Yeah. Think I'll do that. Can get more space on my desk too.

i had to go to the company's computer supplier yesterday to exchange a psu unit that blew up. They had a couple of plush monitor covers on display. its basically a soft toy that wraps around your monitor. so cute! heheheh. they had a website printed on their label, but i think i wrote down the wrong one. it was sungmin.co.kr, or sunming, or something like that. can't figure it out. wanted to find some pictures of it. i tried googling, but could only turn up a cacafied product



that looks damn shitty though. the ones in the store much brighter. but anyway, i turned up something pretty cool when i was searching. i found a company called Hanspree that makes pretty cool tvs. Makes a great novelty item. The site is all flash, so I can't find any images to link.

Anyway, got to figure out what to eat for lunch. Getting a bit sick of KFC. Actually, I'm not sick of eating it, but just getting the stomachache that comes with it the next day. Must be something in their wicked wings man. I eat regular curry and stuff also no problems. Haihs... might end up going KFC to eat again though :)

i was sooooo tempted to skip work again today. slept late playing wow last night. i think i've played for around 15 hours plus over the weekend. stupid double honor weekend. makes everyone kiasu, including me. We can get twice the amount of honor and/or reputation points when we play battlegrounds in WoW. Something new they put whenever theres an American holiday. So we've been sort of playing alterac valley like sor hais. andy says it will last till tuesday, so gonna go home today and grind some more :) probably won't come to work tomorrow :)

other news, tho's godsis came down to sydney yesterday. so i tagged along when thos brought her to the pancake place at the rocks. I've been craving to eat the pancakes there for ages. but alwez lazy to make the effort to go :) i think the last time i went was almost a year ago. wow. never noticed, time really flies by. i had beef ribs, and then pancakes. bloody full after that. the pancakes were nice, but i think i was too stuffed to fully appreciate them. must go there and take pictures next time. they really look pretty good.

Ooo.. the restaurant actually has a website up. Thats the page with all the pancakes. Pity the pics are so small. but yah, still looks delicious. oh man...making me hungry liao. think i'll go for lunch now. probably kfc. hope i don't get stomachache again. oh wait, that might be a good thing. then i have a real excuse for not coming to work! yay! KFC it is then ^_^

its a relatively quiet day at work today. not a whole lot to do considering that its friday. its been more interesting at work the past few days or so. moving forward with a lot of new stuff for the company. we'r getting a new phone and internet system thats to be implemented next month. its not like i have a real say in the issue or what not, but at least i was consulted on the matter. which is sorta fun. nice change from what i usually do around here.

We started looking at ERP systems too. I think I mentioned that a couple posts ago. Its pretty interesting researching the matter and finding out information about ERP systems. Called up and talked to a consultant as well. Makes me feel important. Heheheh. I guess anything is better than doing purchasing paperwork. Wiki is fast becoming one of my favourite sites. Quite useful even when I want to research ERP systems. Not bad weii. Should have used it more often when I had to do papers in uni.

Enough about work though. I tend to blog more about work when i'm at work o_O Wonder if I should take off early today. Its only 2.45 now, but its such a "don't feel like work" day. Its been raining the whole morning, but the weather is starting to clear now. No plans for the weekend, except maybe go Kino to buy a book. Maybe go for yumcha on Sunday, and then Kino. Sounds like a good plan since we don't have anything else to do. Or might just stay home and play WoW full time. It is (or was)Thanksgiving holiday in the States, so this weekend might have double honor/reputation when you pvp. See how it goes.

at work. feeling lazy. nothing new to shout about. i shouldn't be feeling so lazy though. i ponteng work yesterday. forgot to set my alarm and woke up at 8am. stoned for about 1/2 hour trying to decide if i should turn up for work or not. in the end, decided to just play Wow and watch anime the whole morning ^_^ how blissfully irresponsible.

I've finished reading the Cash Flow Quadrant book yesterday. Didn't glean a whole lot from it, but I suppose it makes a decent read. All it does is just reinforce ideas that I already know, and give you some rather ambigious steps to get started.

Hrm.. I better get back to work instead of thinking of something to write about. Paperwork beginning to pile up on my desk.

i'm still undecided as to whether I should go back to KL during CNY. Andy says MAS flights are really cheap if I fly past mid January. Something around $6-700 for a return flight. Problem is, I don't know what I'll be doing back home apart from holidaying and spending money. It would be nice... but I won't be working which equals even less money. Aihs. Maybe I shouldn't think about holidaying until I'm rich. Aihs.

workwise, i've mentioned that my contract ends in mid january. after that, i can choose to stay on at the company, but i don't want to be doing purchasing anymore. maybe 2-3 days a week is okay kua. the company will be doing an overhaul of their systems next year. modernise the whole company and how we do things, supposedly. We'r gonna be getting some form of ERP system in to handle at the very least the accounting, purchasing and payroll side of things. And how does this relate to me? I might be put in charge ^_^ cool huh? well.. i don't know how true that will be, or the extent of my authority. Most likely i'll oversee the project, make recommendation etc etc. If it works out that way, it'll be something really good to put on my CV. BUT... its all hot air at the moment. See how it goes.

cis... this Thos worried me a little last night and this morning. Didn't come home last night, and this morning was still missing. couldn't call his hp summore. Was thinking to myself "oh no! did he kaput in an accident? shit...need to find someone else to pay rent."

Anyway. i even went downstairs this morn to check if his car was around. it might be time to really get worried if it was. But then i realised halfway that he had grading at some karate camp this weekend. cis.

Lunchtime at work...and I dunno what to eat. It used to be a pretty easy choice when I didn't have a car. I'd just buy a burger at the station and have that for lunch. $3.60 for lunch. Nice and cheap. And it sorts of lasts me till dinner time :p But I haven't been bringing any food to work lately, so i've been eating a fair bit of KFC. Nothing much else to eat...except for McDs, Subway, Hungry Jacks and a chinese place that we go to every week. Everything else around here is pretty crap. Aihs... wish I worked in Chinatown. Plenty of stuff to eat, and girls to watch ^_^

I think i'll just end up eating KFC again. Just waiting till I get hungry b4 I go off to lunch, which is usually when everyone else isn't at lunch :) its quite nice to have such a flexible workplace. Or maybe its just me.

Nothing new to blog. I had dinner with Farah at Tengoku last night. Farah is my godsis if I haven't mentioned it before. Thos was spose to come along originally, but then he decided to stay home so he could play WoW o_O Food was good as always, but the seaweed used on the california roll not crispy, so that was the only substandard thing last night.

Thats about it I guess... gonna head for lunch now

its fairly quiet at work today cuz theres this huge strike protesting the new industrial relations law going on. so i think theres only like 4 ppl in the factory, 2 of them being apprentices. the ppl in the office still have to work though, which means me :`( Sometimes it sucks not being a union. Some of these blue collar workers actually do much better than those with office jobs. Ah well... I guess it only happens in Australia.

Hrm..feel lazy to work and blog at the same time la. Nothing much to say anyway. Feel like going home early tonight.

I've been listening to the radio every morning now that I drive to work. Just heard something that kinda amused me. I usually listen to the breakfast show on Today FM. Kyle and Jackie 'O' (or something like that). They make a good combination, quite funny and they have good radio voices. Anyway, the station's big thing at the moment is their gay news reader's wedding. His partner came on air a couple weeks ago and proposed to him. Obviously accepted la... and its a pretty popular event. Alot of listener's wanna get invited to the wedding etc etc. Excellent marketing material for a radio station.

Anyway, they were discussing what to do for the wedding (one of the djs, Jackie, is a/the wedding planner) and taking ideas from callers. The groom/bride wanted to release a dove at the wedding. Romantic but rather cliche and it could backfire too. Jackie mentioned that she knows of this wedding where the couple wanted to release a dove too. They had a little girl carry it, and when the time came, she threw the bird in the air...and the dove went *plop* on the ground o_O

The girl was holding the bird too tightly and killed it. Not the best thing to happen at a wedding. The whole event would be quite amusing... in a funny, horrible kind of way ^_^

i'm at work rather early. 8am, as opposed to my usual 9.30-9.45am Quite a good improvemen huh? The wonders having a car can provide. I wake up a little later nowadays. 6.30am, used to wake up at 6 or 6.15 leddat. Didn't feel like mucking around at home, so might as well come in to work and bludge while getting paid ^_^

For some reason... I was thinking that last night was Thursday, and that it was a Friday today. I was so dissappointed when I realised its only Thursday this morning. Aihs... Not that I have anything to look forward to during the weekends. Just wanna finish up a book that I bought. Cash Flow Quadrant. Hehehe. Starting to read all these type of books again. Better than reading novels imo. I get enough fiction from all the anime that I watch. The next book I might read is "Millionaire Next Door" by Thomas Stanley. I still want to get the property books by Steve McKnight though... he has 2 books out, but apparently theres some conflict between the ideas behind his 1st and 2nd book. Might still be worth a read. Its a good place to start at any rate.

Hmm...starting to feel a little guilty about not doing work. Heheh. Better find something to do. More later...

I wonder if it is just me. Aren't guys supposed to be the womaniser/philanderer/playboy when it comes to affairs of the heart? You see or hear of this a lot in movies, books and other forms of literature. Boy meets girl. Boy and girl falls in love. Boy meets another. Boy dumps girl A for girl B (or for some, dates both of them). That standard fare ain't it?

My own relations seem to dictate otherwise. I use relation in the sense of me and my friends. For some reason, I feel like I know more guys getting dumped by girls or getting their hearts trampled on by the fairer sex. I'm just blogging this because I just found out a couple that I've always known as a couple have split up. I can't name names...but suffice to say, they've been together for a period of time that I can't imagine. The cause? A long distance relationship that was going on fine until... the girl met another guy who she has a good feel with (on an emotional level, not physical...as far as I know). He found out, quite by accident, they talked and decided to break up. It seems they are still on good terms with each other, and I'm sincerely hoping they get back together... don't know why, but they just make a good couple.

Thats just the latest event that led me to blog this. Another super long relationship that I know of (lets say... at LEAST 6-8 yrs) also broke off. Why? Because the girl had a wandering eye for some guy at her company (same thing happened for the above. Man... how come I can't find love at the workplace?!?) I'm not sure of the details... but I think she was cheating on him both physically n emotionally. THINK being the operative word. He found out partly by accident and thorough some dubious and illegal means (think of phone tapping, phone network hacking. very CIA stuff ^_^) He isn't too proud of himself, but at least he does it with style :p

oh. in case u'r wondering. these blokes are pretty cool. good to their gf's. take care of them. all that jazz. definitely didn't do anything that 'deserved' dumping. unlike me ^_^

Yet again, the girl was at fault. I'm pretty sure I know another 2 or 3 relationships that are similar, but can't recall them for some reason. Even Jacq found another guy relatively quick after breaking it off with me. Althought that point isn't entirely true to the topic of this post, and its also due to my own inability to meet other girls (attributed to my unwillingness to socialise as well. vicious cycle. my favourite phrase)

Anyhoo...enough of this. Getting me down thinking of relationships and the lack of it in my own life. Just a note, the 2nd friend I mentioned got back together with the girl. Decided to forgive and forget. See! Such a big hearted person. Women = Evil. Meh

aihs. I think i'm fucked... in terms of a career in software development. Its just been too long since I've actually completed a program or database. Have to bloody relearn everything.

but ermm..blog about it abit later. i'm actually spose to be working now ^_^

my blog has been kinda sad lately. suffering from a lack of updates, and a lack of visitors, caused by a lack of content, caused by a lack of updates. such a vicious cycle.

i seem to have a lot more free time lately. since i don't work a 2nd job anymore. i planned to start going training again, but not particularly looking forward to the punishment that will be dished out by shihan. just gonna work out at home until my body gets used to the pain :p i just did a short workout session a couple days ago. only about 20 minutes or so, but my body was sore and creaky for the next few days o_O i'm really getting old.

anyway, i've got free time. but it feels like i don't have anything worthwhile to do. i'm bored of wow. probably cuz i'm in the grind to lvl 60 phase and everyone else is already 60 and doing stuff that i can't do yet. aihs. i'm 52 now, so that makes it a minimum of 64 hours of game time to get to 60. and thats if u'r really efficient too. it just doesn't seem worth it... i can watch 153 episodes of anime in that amount of time :p Or read 3 novels. I can even study enough to obtain a H1 in any subject too :p I don't think I've ever spent 64 hours studying for a particular subject. Hmmmm. WoW is really a hugeass timesink.

I'm gonna go shopping today. Going Birkinhead Point (spelling?) with Andy later. I wanted to have breakfast in the Balmain area. Try out one of the cafes over there, but the fugger is busy playing WoW. Aihs... Hope I get to buy a pair of jeans. I only have 1 pair left. Need to buy another pair b4 I wear this one out. Need a pair of slacks too. Hmmmm. Maybe I should wait till Xmas sales. Its only another month plus away.

no events = no blog