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.

friday night

my company had a get together yesterday. its a farewell gathering for one of the consultants that is going back to Netherlands. The night started out in the boardroom and we eventually ended up in a strip joint (but not before getting kicked out of one bar) . Went to Pure Platinum... girls weren't too bad i guess. But only 2 or 3 of them had nice bodies (i.e no spare tyres) There was this tall asian chick as well. Very nice. Best of all... everything under company bill :) Hehehe.. including some tipping dollars for the strippers.

Fun night. But feel damn buggered today... mostly because I came home to play WoW as well. I was half sleeping at the keyboar by the end of it. Ended up waking up at 2.30. Half my day gone...and I was thinking of going to gym & some shopping too. Oh well.

Speaking of gym... I've been going during lunch almost everyday for the past 2-3 weeks. Feels quite good. It actually makes the workday feel much shorter. Starting to cut weight now... so I've lost about 4-5kgs since I started cardio work. But then my muscle mass probably suffered a bit... cuz I haven't done weights since then too. Going to try to go next week. Cardio during lunch...and weights in the evening. Try to make it a routine to gym during lunch everyday...and weights 3 times a week.

sales sales sales

david jones and myers having a mid-season sale now. bought some new ties, a shirt and pricey underwear! well..pricey compared to the stuff I use to have anyway. About ~$20 each...which come to think about it is pretty effing expensive for underwear in Malaysian terms o_O

I was walking around david jones after work today as well (the actual shopping was yesterday). Was looking at their suits... and some Hugo Boss items. I soooo want the Boss cashmere coat! They actually look relatively normal as far as cashmere coats go...but it just ooozes wealth. I wannnnttt!!!!! But $800 is a bit much for me to fork out for a single coat... although technically, it is an overcoat.. Hmmmmmm

Nahh... save save save, and then invest! All for the sake of being wealthy in the future.

just an update...

to say that I'm not dead yet. I haven't had the mood/time to blog since I came back from Kuching. Not because I was depressed or anything, but just kinda lazy.

My grandfather's funeral was good? I guess...considering it being a funeral and all. Everything seems to have went smoothly. It was a pretty big chinese/buddhist funeral, a fair bit of money spent. I think around a 100K for everything? Oh wait..thats inclusive of the past hospital stay. The hospital was about 50K... so funeral also about there. Still pretty expensive...considering that some people don't even earn that much in a year o_O

I was only in Kuching for roughly 2 1/2 days? Didn't get much sleep during that time. I stayed up the first night was there to help burn the paper money. You are supposed to keep burning them until the day of the burial. We had a group of monks & nuns come every night to chant prayers. Kinda like the buddhist equivalent of Christians singing in a church. Praise to the Lord type of chants/songs... only for Buddha. There was also a lama who is (or more accurately, was) my cousin.

My grandfather got heaps of flowers were too. Close to 50 bouquets. The most interesting one of which had a card signed off as "20 Bangladeshi Workers" o_O. Workers from my grandfather's old construction company.

At any rate, 'ah kong' (i.e. grandfather) should be resting peacefully now. He has lived a good long life... and passed on without regrets. Incidently, he only passed on after all his sons were by his side. Apparently he held on until my eldest uncle flew back from the states. So yeah...all well and good I guess...

sad expectations

my grandfather has just moved on today. He passed away at around 14:30 Sydney time.

The funeral will be on the 25th, so I will be flying back to Kuching on Monday. And back to Sydney right after the funeral.

smashed...

...the window of my friend's car that is. With her waiting at traffic lights...and at only 7:30 at night. She got her handbag swiped. Redfern and its surrounding areas is really fucked up dodgy. Can't help but blame the inhabitants somewhat.

What do you say in this kind of situation? Poor girl was freaked out... and lost a lot of valuables too. Gucci handbag, LV wallet and dunno what else.

I feel somewhat guilty as well, since we just went for dinner and she dropped me home. It wouldn't have happened if we didn't go out. No reason at all for her to be in that area. The last time we went for dinner...she got a speeding ticket o_O Now I kinda feel like I'm a harbinger of bad luck... at least to her. Wonder if she is thinking of the same thing... Hmmmm. Can't really blame her i guess.

sucks man. This really hasn't been a good week. Guess theres not much chance of it being a good week when you start it off hearing news that your grandpa might not around for much longer. Been hospitalised since last Friday... and not really getting much better. I guess its a good thing that I went back Kuching for cny. At least I got to see him when he is still healthy...or reasonably so, considering his past ailments. I can't do much anyway... just call up and ask how he is now and then. My parents are over in Kuching at the moment... preparing for the worst case scenario *touch wood*

Hmmm. I was going to rant about how the work week has been pretty shitty as well. Having crap fuck up on me left, right and center. Pales in comparison to what I wrote about earlier. Bah...