Another time, another space

Something new

2010-07-10T16:15:00.002+10:00

So, I made the first 'move' yesterday by sms. That person is hard to 'call out'... But they did suggest that me and C go over to their place and cook and eat something... So I guess that's something that might occur within this year. Good or bad?

On other news booked mum's ticket to US. Her passport expires mar 2011 so less than 6 months validity (from oct). (5 months) So I asked her to renew her passport, then we can arrange for the ESTA.

I still haven't arranged my own travel plans yet...

And one more sales has left the company, due to her having a baby. So... there's only 1 female sales left. They even threw her a surprise 'departure' party, complete with cake! (but just one tiny cake...)

Hmm water rates is in, $150. steep!

new camera

2010-05-28T00:27:00.002+10:00

So I splurged out on the Canon Ixus 130IS... it arrived today, charged up the battery, plugged in a 16gb card I got a year ago, and then found out the card was a POS... piece of... bloody hell I paid good money for it, and it turns out to be a dud...

So plugged in a 4gb card and then was testing all these modes. I think I shall be taking a lot of shots with this camera for sure.

Tomorrow will be spending a lot of money. All for the privilage of calling a place 'my place'. Yay. (It'll sink in once I move in I think)

Need to rest enough, it's winter time so tend to get a little sleepy :P

Car service

2010-01-16T22:04:00.003+11:00

So I got my car serviced, regoed and CTP'd today.

Minor Service = $119
Registration = $31.70
Globes + Labour = $22.40
Air Filter = $35
Fuel Filter = $69
Labour R/R(?) Filter = $46
Brake Fluid Flush and Change = $56.50
Ferodo TQ Std Front D/Pad Serv = $169
Machine Front Disc Rotors + Labour = $109
CV Shaft (Not done today, next saturday) = $220
Labour CV Shaft = $92
Car Service = $969.60.

Originally there were other things that they said that I was suggested to do...
Transmission Flush
Power Steering Pump and Rack
Rear Shock
Tyre Rotation w/ alignment

But that would've made it go to $1800... so I said no.

Add on $285 for the RTA
and $413.04 for the CTP

Makes it $1667.64 I spent all on my credit card...

Plus $5 to travel home (because I wasn't gonna wait at the shopping center for 6 hours) and $8.20 for lunch.

$1680.84.

Damn.

And it's not even something that I like to do, unlike some of my friends :P

It's almost like the time when I first bought the car, it had so many problems that I didn't know about, and I spent the same amount of money as well. Can't they make cars better? Considering the average value of my car on a car sale website is around $7.5k... that's 22% of the value right there. I guess when the service costs more than 50% of the value of the car then I need to get a new one... or a near new one. Ahhhhh

Happiness ended

2009-12-25T20:52:00.001+11:00

And, now that happiness has ended.

Happy

2009-10-11T23:50:00.000+11:00

I'm happy. And I know why. :P

OT

2009-06-28T12:16:00.002+10:00

-_-"""

Stocktake of the warehouse isn't fun.

The last time we'd done such a thing was probably 2 years ago. At that time it was ok because I hadn't done it this way before. But now the whole warehouse is full of stuff.

Apparently the people that did it the night before went to 11pm... We had no wish to emulate them, so we were working really hard to get it done. We finished at 9pm. And we had pizza for dinner as well. I was the one who had to order the pizza... -_- The night before the person who ordered the pizza didn't order the 'correct' types, so they were praising me this time... C'mon, it's just pizza, how hard is it to order? (First time I'd actually ordered pizza actually, normally we buy our pizza from the supermarket and cook it ourselves - the website was pretty easy to use)

So I slept in today, which is good :D

Still considering my DSLR purchasing...

Salvation, Terminator

2009-06-08T22:56:00.003+10:00

So I went to see Terminator Salvation for free, because I had won a ticket. Boy was it good. lots of action, and yes, the future is bleak and well, dark and there's always hope. All I can say is 'go watch it' because I don't wanna spoil it for anybody. It does kinda leave a little room for a next Terminator movie, but because of the timeframe of Kyle Reese and T-800 (no, arnie wasn't in the movie - I sat through the credits...) they could have either a short timeframe (Kyle is kinda older in the first movie while he's a teenager in this one) or a long timeframe (T-800 becomes more obsolete and they first created technology to time-travel). Also there was the strange 'room' where Marcus was... why does it look like a command center for Minority Report? Robots don't need a command console like that... strange. Anyways the next movies coming up are "Transformers 2", "Public Enemy", "Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince", "Year One" and that's what I remember (there were others I'm sure) but were as memorable as these ones.

Public Holidays / Long weekends do go by fast. Also I tried to wash my car but knowing how bad the weather gets I decided not to wax it. :P

Spicy

2009-05-31T00:03:00.003+10:00

Yesterday I went with work colleagues to have dinner at Broadway, in the Sichuan restraunt there. It was almost all chilli dishes. One of the dishes we ordered was practically all chilli peppers and only about 20 slices of pork and peanuts. For a good 5 - 10 minutes I lost feeling in my tongue. After drinking down plenty of tea, I gradually regained feeling in my tongue. Apparently some westerners had a go at the chilli as well, and they were in the toilet trying to get feeling back to their tongue. Pfft wusses... :P It was an interesting experience, and if they say 'lets go to that restraunt again' I will have to seriously consider >:P

I sure can pick them...

2009-05-24T21:34:00.002+10:00

First it was a colleague that introduced somebody. That person after a few conversations said they were not interested in a relationship.

Then a good buddy of mine introduced this girl, and I even got to meet her in person once. Needness to say they were so busy with their friend that nothing happened.

Now, the person I was introduced while I was in bris turns out she's not interested in a relationship either. That's 3 / 3!

I sure can pick them...

The week in bris

2009-05-17T21:31:00.002+10:00

I had a week in bris, here's a rundown of what happened.

Saturday : Left syd early, 9am to catch the 11am Plane. Plane arrives in bris at 12:30pm, and I catch the Airtrain to the trainstation where my uncle has a shop. It cost $19.20. It was around 2pm by the time I got there, my mum and uncle was waiting there for a good 2-3 hours. I had lunch at his shop, and then we headed back to his home, which would be where I was staying for the week. Nothing eventful happened, met up with the other uncles and aunties who was there for tomorrow night's events.

Sunday: Woke up early and had a friend from colleage pick me up. We drove to the Kingston Park raceway, and raced 4 sessions. My times were improved every session, my times were like this -> 1:14.169, 1:06.055, 1:05.907, 1:04.393. So I improved every session, but I was nowhere near fast as the first 2 guys, they were having laptimes of 1:01.xxx - having the advantage of being there before. Wookie, (the guy who was getting married) always came third behind them, he just wasn't good enough. But still his times were 1:03.xxx so he's still faster by a long shot. Overall for $95, it wasn't a bad time to be had. But it was strange that they had a bucks party with that kind of entertainment. The college pal had to go and do some work, so I left with him early back to uncles.

There was a 85th birthday party for my grandma that evening. So after I got back, around 2pm, I was helping my mum and rellos cook. We cooked till 6pm when the guests arrived, and well, the party had around 70 people, and it was a good time had by all... that went on till around midnight since it was a sunday, afterall. But there was karoke and singing, and after the party my cousin had her friends come and had a party as well. That night I didn't have a pillow to sleep on, so I had a sore neck for a few days.

Monday: Not much going on, I was actually waiting for my friend to message me when he's coming to pick me up or something, but apparently he thought it was tuesday. So I didn't do much.

Tuesday: Not much happened in the morning, and I had a catchup with my uni friend at night for dinner. He bought his gf along, cos she doesn't trust him sorta. Well we had dinner in a twese restraunt, it wasn't bad, and then he dropped her home and then we went to have coffee and more chat. The Coffee Club closes at 10pm there, which is kinda surprising. But it was even more surprising when the whole shopping center was dead at 10pm. I thought it would be still lively at that time, but I guess I'm used to the syd nite life being a bit more crazy. Got home around 12.

Wednesday: Again, not much happened in the morning, but my mum was going back in the arvo, so I went with her and uncle to the airport after lunch. After dropping her off, my uncle took me to a little chinese supermarket, then a big chinese supermarket. after that we went home and I didn't do much until I caught up with an old net friend. This time we went to a soy tofu place, and it also closed around 10pm. What's with this place... :P Anyways it was nice to catch up with her, but apparently she got sick the next day, probably from the food or something. Lucky I didn't.

Thursday: I went with my uncle on deliveries today. We went to several supermarkets and then had lunch at a restraunt. Then it was a pretty quiet evening at home. (I believe we went to the other uncle's place for dinner, but can't remember that now...)

Friday: I got a lift to the train station so I went to my old uni for a quick look (by quick I meant 30 mins, it was a small campus afterall). A lot has changed since then, but still, I remember my old haunts and they are totally changed some of them. My uni friend told me later that more buildings will be torn down and made into bigger and better buildings. I wonder what it'll be like 5 years later. I then walked around the CBD area for a few hours. It was fun to see what's changed, and what hasn't. I went into practically every electronics store as well (just as I'd do when I go into a shopping mall in syd) just to check out prices. All the same, nothing special :P Caught the train after having Maccas for lunch, which I haven't done in a very long time either. Got my cousin to pick me up at the shop, then had a early night.

Saturday: Big day for wooks and momo's wedding, got picked up 30 mins before the event, and arrived just in time. Had a good time, 1 glass of wine and the rest was relaxing and pretty. It was 10am -> 2pm, they had a club thing after 9pm, but I was getting on a plane in the morning on sunday so I ain't staying around for that. Got home, packed up most of my stuff, and had a early night as well.

Sunday: Got up, prepared, and got ready to leave. Got some stuff to take back for mum, but the uncle was a little late in getting here, but we made it with plenty of time to spare. So got back home around 2pm and had lunch in syd. Then a normal evening of unpacking and chatting etc.

So it was a nice trip and holiday for me, I am refreshed and ultimately I have a goal now. Those who talk to me know what that goal is. And I'm trying to add oil :P

Watching somebody cry

2009-04-09T23:54:00.002+10:00

Our company had something big going on, and one of the staff directly involved with that project was chatting with me, and then she started crying. I was like... why are you crying, you don't need to get so upset but she was really upset and tired of all the crap that's going on. I am sorta involved in that particular project as well, but I didn't think it was that bad that she had to cry about it. Anyways, that was a pretty strange experience, I don't normally see people cry in real life, but there she was, crying and feeling frustrated at people being uncooperative. So I mentioned to another colleague that girl was crying, and she said I should've given her a hug or pat her on her back or something... to console her... and I was like... err... she was sitting down at her desk, and I was outside the office... so... no... and then she said that I just missed a chance... @_@ what chance... I don't know that girl well at all...

And if I went over to her side and patted her on her back, she might think I'm a weirdo. If I gave her a hug then definately I'm a weirdo... :P

But yeah, I know how she feels, I handled big things back in my old job and I don't need to cry, just do it to my best ability and if nobody else wants to help, then I can't go any further. Nothing to get upset about.

Happy easter to all.

Mar 2009

2009-03-26T22:42:00.002+11:00

Been a long time. Just finished Soul Eater 49. Minami-ke Okaeri 12. The Mentalist 17. Astro Fighter Sunred 17. Skip Beat 24. Work's crazy as usual. Car had a problem, it was grinding every time I braked. So my mum has a friend who has a person come service their cars once in a while, and we called him up, and he came over tonight. One of my brake pads were completely worn to the metal. So that's what's been making that noise. (I have many passengers who ride my car). Though I did think it was some bit of rock that got between my pad and disc. That was done in about 30 mins, and I had the peace of mind (even test drove around the block) that I won't be suffering any sudden brake misfunction.

I went out to a outing last sunday. We went to Auburn Gardens because there was a Japanese garden there. However it was closed due to some gang related shootings or something. So them being avid photographers, took photos of the surrounding park and themselves being the models. After the morning 'session' we had lunch at Ashfield. Meh it was ok, shit roads with shit traffic. Then we went to the Botanic Gardens. I was following my friend all the way, and he got a spot really quickly, unfortunately I had to burn more petrol looping around a second time before I found a park. Then I got slugged the high fees the park was charging. $4.40 an hour. Cripes. I can park in the city for $9 from 6pm-1am. This was $4.40 an hour, every hour. But I was there to go meet somebody who was introduced to me through a friend. And the funny thing was, she was so engrossed chatting with her friend that I think she's not interested in chatting with me at all. Oh well. I think if it was meant to be then it would be, but I don't see anything happening in the near future anyways.

Today I audited our company and it was kinda ok. It would need a few hours to rectify the major problems, but it would be worth it. Minor problems are usually gone by the end of the day anyways. Work's like that, it just comes up with problem after problem and nobody can or will give a stuff about it.

2009

2009-01-04T17:52:00.002+11:00

It's already a few days past 2009, but here I am, still alive and kicking.

What did I do for new years? Absolutely nothing. I didn't want to go straight after work into the city and be crushed by the crowds. So I went home after work and just relaxed. Work was basically up till Christmas, which I won some award at our company's party. Then I was back at work for the 29th till 31st. So I basically had 2 long weekends. They were the really relaxed long weekends, with one I went to watch a movie with a friend, The Day the Earth Stood Still, and the other is on the second long weekend, with the same friend, Yes Men. I preferred Yes Men, it was more of a laugh out and laugh till you cry kind of movie. Good and funny. The audience seemed to enjoy it too, most (if not everybody) was laughing their heads off. Especially some guy in our row, he was laughing at pretty much every second scene... loudly.

So I watched the two movies in the city, that makes it 2 trips in 1 week (or almost). I never go into the city, but in this year I've gone into the city about 4 times. Kinda funny, I drove in 2 times too. And because they are making the toll on the bridge cashless, I bought one of them e-tags. Installed it in my car and that's about it. Probably will use it 2 times this year too, depending on if there's any reason for me to drive into the city from work.

Also, while I was in the city, walking with my friend, this man chased me and asked if I was my father's name's son. I was rather surprised, and said yes, and he said that he was in syd after visiting tasmania, and just staying for that day (1st Jan) and going back to Bris the next day. So he asked for our number, I gave it to him, and we parted ways. My friend said to me I shouldn't give out numbers to strangers on the street, but I've met him before. And then I told him about the other coincindence a long time ago when I met my uncle after he touched down in bris from japan in the city. All a big coincidence. That's why I believe in yuan fen.

Speaking of that, I was chatting to a female friend that works in the city, and both times me and my friend were in the city we tried to stop by her shop, but both times we weren't able to catch her. First time the shop was already closed, it was the boxing day sales. Second time she already left, we were hanging out at the front of her shop and was pretty funny, we saw a girl who we think is her sis... and we were looking at her and her mum (we think) and this guy... she gave us a nod, but didn't really recognise us, and her mum probably thought we were creeps or stalkers or something. Needless to say I asked the girl online and she said 'yeah we have no fate'. LOL that reminds me of something else. My mum's been praying for me to find a good girl. And then she said that my uncle rang on the 1st and said that he's got a girl to intro who happens to be in syd. Well, I've met her before, and lets just say I'm not that interested in her. But it was really really funny because she's a good friend of my sis-in-law. Basically she hangs out with my sis-in-law a bit, and since she had a baby, that girl was around, and once even bought her parents (who live in 3 states, QLD, NSW and VIC) to see her. Well I go and pick up my mum on tues and fridays when she goes to see the baby, and that girl was there, with her parents. I said hi, how's it going to the parents, and they were sorta impressed with me, I don't know why. And that's why when they went back to bris they somehow chatted to my uncle and says that their daughter still hasn't got a bf blah blah and that's why he said to my mum about that girl... and my mum also knows that girl isn't that attractive... but she's got a good background or something, but I don't know, I ain't going to go into a relationship with that girl...

Lets hope the rest of 2009 gives better pickings for me :P even just 1 will do. Hahahaha :P

Goodl luck to us all...

Update again

2008-11-16T22:46:00.002+11:00

Well about the motherboard failing, that wasn't it. After that post, the two hard drives linked to 1 molex plug to the power supply failed. So, in a flash of inspiration I disconnected both drives from the power supply and bingo, nothing appeared to be failing. So tonight I swapped my old but trusty Antec Truepower 480 and replaced the shitty generic 500w that this computer came with and bingo, my drives all appeared.

Next computer that I get will have a trustworthy PSU, that's for sure. Can't have enough as backup. Unlike the company that I work for, the IT department goes through PSUs like toilet paper. Once he bought 2, 1 to replace and 1 for backup, well, turns out he needed to use both when they arrived because the other PSUs were failing. Granted a PSU of good quality > $80, he bought the generic PSUs which were < $40. But the failure rate is much greater...

Yesterday I went to help a colleague move bricks. I don't know why I was so kind. The colleague is new to the company, and she and her family (and bf) lives in a newly bought place, and they are getting a retaining wall built in the back of their house. There's a tennis court and a swimming pool as well. They had 13 pallets of bricks, each brick is around 20 kg, and they've moved a bit before we helped yesterday. Well, we moved 4 pallets yesterday, leaving 7-8 pallets behind, and I have sore back. I'll probably try not to stand and sit too much tomorrow... Standing all day or sitting all day... probably standing all day is better. Getting old :P

Random pics from my phone

2008-11-08T21:52:00.002+11:00

This week I was stuck in traffic for 1 extra hour. For about 1km. So it's around 16 meters per minute. That's 4 car lengths in a minute. It was like a car park. And there were helicopters flying too.And I had two passengers in the car too. Needless to say it wasn't fun.
However, I did rock past the point of accident. It wasn't a pretty sight.

This was at lunch some time ago.

A Kookaburra vs Magpie. Over a scrap of food.

The Magpie flew away cos he's a bit of an opportunist.

Colleagues trying to feed the Kookaburra.

Camera on the phone is a bit blurry. Oh well.

A word of warning

2008-11-08T14:37:00.002+11:00

My bloody motherboard is failing. Since I'm the type of running a computer 24/7 it's a good indication of whether or not a motherboard is good. Or maybe I'm just unlucky.

The problem first happened a month or two ago. One (then two) of my hard drives started to stop working. I thought, great, all that stuff died. But then I moved ONE of the sata ports to another one, and they worked. Amazing. So the sata port on the motherboard was to blame.

The same thing happened again today. It's another drive this time. The newest drive in this computer. I didn't think the MTBF for hdd was less than 1 year, so I was really pissed off. So I opened up the case, and swapped a sata cable. Well, I swapped it back into the one I had swapped it out of first time (in the previous paragraph). The hard drive started the 'ticking' sound... meaning that sata port is truly stuffed. So I powered down, and swapped that cable into another 1 out of the other 3. And lo and behold, it works. So out of the 8 sata ports I have, 4 are still fine after a year, 2 have died, and 2 I haven't tried (because they were purple in color, and I think have a different speed setting?). Damn.

I don't wanna upgrade my computer till the i7 is mainstream and cheap.... Oh well.

Apart from that, nothing else to report. The world is going to crap, and well... my world isn't getting any better :P.

Things I watch

2008-10-19T19:57:00.002+11:00

It's the new season of TV... So I've been watching quite a few things.

US:

Eleventh Hour
Fringe
Life on Mars
Knight Rider
Sanctuary
The Ex List
The Mentalist
The Office
The Simpsons

UK:

Merlin

Japan:

Soul Eater <-- My favourite.
Yozakura Quartet
To Aru Majutsu no Index
Kannagi
Nodame Cantabile Paris Chapter
Kyou no Go no Ni
Skip Beat
Yawakaa Sangokushi Tsukisase!! Ryofuko-chan
Akane-iro ni Somaru Saka
Toradora
Hyakko
Detroit Metal City
Clannad ~After Story~

As you can see, I'm quite busy when I get back home, with all the stuff that's available to watch >:D

Update

2008-09-18T21:46:00.002+10:00

I think I got a cold... *sigh*.

I've trained a guy to be my replacement, he's doing things slowly.

I'm also being trained by the person who's leaving. Technically their last day is tomorrow, but apparently they were told to come in as well. *shrugs* that job isn't that hard... dunno what will happen.

My niece's name

2008-08-11T22:57:00.002+10:00

English: Grace Kaylin Chiou
Chinese: 邱郁淳

And my bro can't type chinese so he drew it on his blog... it looks very very bad. :P

Hmmm....

I'm an uncle to a not-yet-named niece... how about that?

2008-08-03T22:07:00.001+10:00

Consumerism

2008-07-12T15:46:00.007+10:00

It's nearly Tax time. Well, it IS tax time. Since 1st July. I'm supposed to get a raise, but that hasn't happened for 3 weeks. So it was pretty terrible. Anyways, I decided to upgrade my mobile.

The Nokia 5310 XpressMusic was what I chose. It's a nice thin phone, the other phone I would have chosen was 6500 Classic, but it was bit too expensive. Samsung's U100 is also a good choice, but that was also expensive.

So I got it and it's great. I event took a few photos to compare it against my Samsung T10.

It's not as slim as the mp3 player, but it's still a heck of a phone. Runs on Symbian S40 5th Edition Feature Pack 1, and comes with 1GB built in. Has a pretty good battery life, but it's winter so the battery life isn't optimal. The Samsung T10 has 8gb of memory and I'm running it at full capacity... :P And it's got 32 hours of continous life, so when I get to and from work everyday it's about 10 hours - easily lasts the week.

Why am I showing you a phone which isn't the iPhone 3G? Cos I don't wanna lug around a huge heavy phone, that's why. I work all day, and I have something at home which isn't tiny. Sure some people may call iPhone 3G the "Jesus" phone, but it's around $800 here for 8GB. My 8GB T10 was $160, and my mobile phone was $250, and my new addition (since yesterday) was a cheap price as well. Definately less than $800.

The below is my new addition.

Yeah yeah it's only a monitor.

The below was my previous setup. 22" on the Left, 19" on the right. A wallpaper of a movie I haven't seen yet.

Replace the 19" with a 24" and what do I get? Monitor envy (from my bro).

It sure beats the iPhone 3G in terms of quality and value :D

My bro says it's a waste that it's not my main screen. 1680 x 1050 vs 1920 x 1200. I don't think it's a waste. I still can operate on the right side of my desk if I want to, but the monitor's buttons are on the different side. FP222W has the power button on the LEFT of the monitor, and FP241W has the buttons on the RIGHT of the monitor. If I changed my layout, the both buttons will be in the MIDDLE. Which will be a pain of the ass to turn on and off every time.

Ahh I love my toys :P

Charity work

2008-06-14T21:48:00.002+10:00

So two days ago I was upstairs at work because our computer network can't print, and the IT guy happened to be away. So my reputation preceeds me as the guy who can fix IT problems when the IT guy isn't around. So I go up with my colleague, and we get into the IT room and try to figure out what computer needs to be fixed so things can be printed... well I got into the IT room (which was locked) by jiggling a key I have in my posession... needless to say I couldn't fix the problem, but we managed to call the IT guy, he was having an x-ray so we managed to contact him after. Well he managed to fix it didn't he... just by remotely connecting it. But meanwhile I was out in the area with my colleague asking if he can print or not, and he could... and then the boss comes out.

She says that I should go, along with my colleague, to the company's charity fundraising sale this saturday.

My colleague was so intently concentrating on his printing that he didn't hear her comment, and I gave him a nudge and he was like 'what?'. She repeated the sentence and joked that he pretended not to hear it so he wouldn't have to go, but he wasn't going to go anyways.

Well I asked my mum should I go, and she said yes, so I decided to go.

So another colleague also was going, and so I picked him up from the train station and we went to the designated place. We found a parking space about 5 minutes walk from the place... there's just too much construction work going on there. The weather was fine and sunny, then it got black and dark, then started raining a little bit, and by the time we finished it was back to light skies with no rain...

9am we assembled at the point, picked up the goods, and set up the stands... There was about 5 people from the company, and we set up the stand in about 40 minutes. The 5 people became about 10, with the other charity group joining forces. I think we got the first sale at about 10:30 or something, and then things started picking up. The weather got cold pretty quickly, I was in short sleeves t-shirt then I had to put on my jacket, it was that cold. Everybody else was already wearing long sleeves. Well, we moved the stand to the middle of the street mall because it had a cover from the rain. Then I had a veggie lunch from the charity group we joined forces with - it was quite nice. Well, originally we had 50+20+20+20 bags, by the end we had about 50 bags left. So it was a good fundraising event. Nearly $2000 raised... so it was a good day for all involved. Well, if they have another fundraising effort I would certainly go for it, it was a lot of fun :)

Another era?

2008-06-03T22:46:00.003+10:00

Well, hopefully the guy comes tomorrow, so I can go into IPQC on Thursday...

Been waiting for him to come back to work Monday, he was sick...
Been waiting for him today, he was still sick.

He better be here tomorrow.

On other news, my friend from brissie came back from a 3.5 week long holiday with his gf... and well his big news was that he's now engaged. Good on him! It's only been like 3-4 years since they've been going out together... :P

My other bro's planning to go to Japan to work for a bit... so it might just be me left in aus, with my parents... fun fun...

I've been listening to some new songs... and two of them are quite good (imho)...

Seamo - Honey Honey feat. Ayuse Kozue.

It's a love song, and well, Seamo is quite funny (with the hammer...) I saw this song because of xxxHOLiC: Kei's ED song.

High and Mighty Color - Hot Limit.

It's a high energy song, and the girl's pretty cute :P It's a cover of TM Revolution's song...

The guy better come tomoorow... :P

Nice Friday

2008-05-10T23:58:00.002+10:00

It's been a while since I went to see a movie at the cinemas. But this one I definately had to go see on the big screen - Iron Man. It's a great movie, and since I knew the story from the comic book that we had when we were little, it made it much more enjoyable. Overall a good movie, and I found Gwyneth Paltrow to be very cute in this movie.

Why did I choose to go see the movie on friday night? Because I was shafted by my friend, who said he'll be free friday night but had to do something, so cancelled. Lucky I was already at macquarie centre with time to kill, since I told my dad I wasn't coming home for dinner. My mum went to brissie for the week just that morning too. So I went to all the big department stores to check if they got Wii Fit. None of the big stores had it. Target, Big W, Kmart... So I went to JB Hifi. Not only had they have a copy available for me, but it was at a cheaper price! $119 - bargain (when Target had it at $124, and Big W at $139. Kmart apparently had it at $119 also, but dunno about stock availibility) RRP is $149, so it's a nice savings. I put it in my car, had a Chicken Katsu Don at Asukaze (I think that's the name). For $9.90 it's a pretty filling meal. Anyways, watched the movie, then went home. Then played the Wii Fit for about 1 hour (with my bro). It's a very good game system, Nintendo really has done it's homework.

I put my MSN comment as "I got WiiFit... yay :P" and I got several guys calling me gay, and asking if I was going to get fit now. Well, I did buy it to play with, it's got several fun games in there, but exercising more than 30mins a day will really burn your muscles. And I don't think I'll turn gay anytime soon...

Today I got the car's engine oil changed, it took about 1.5 hours and cost $80. The price of oil is increasing sharply, and soon I won't be afford the petrol anymore :P And my car insurance is coming up also... *sigh* money is short nowadays...

Will keep on playing the Wii Fit everyday (if I can help it). It's good exercise really, just that we don't have a big enough living room to play in...

Newness

2008-04-27T21:35:00.002+10:00

Well my bro was back on Sat morning (yesterday). They came over for dinner, so again I was the lonely guy at the table (everybody else had a partner...) Now it's just a waiting game for him, but he should be flying to the states in mid-May. My mum'll be going to Brissie in early May for a week. My bro will also go to bris sometime later this year (twice actually)... so everybody's going somewhere except me. Ah....

I've bought a MP3/CD headunit for my car, and installed it on friday/saturday. It's great, gave it a test drive, and it's working well. Glad to have spent the $200 on it :P I should start investing in something other than that, but hey, I don't have that special someone yet :P

Other than that... nothing really else to report. I'm training a guy to be the new warehouse supervisor, he's getting there, I still got about a month of training left for him, but that's because the warehouse guy is currently on holidays so I will fill in for him. That's pretty... ah I'm still a yo-yo afterall...

Surprised

2008-04-19T22:52:00.002+10:00

My bro's leaving for the US tomorrow at 1pm. Now, he didn't even know that on Thursday. They called him on Friday morning (just as he was waking up). So he's borrowing my laptop and digicam (cos his laptop doesn't have wireless, and his DSLR is too bulky...). So I charged both of them up and installed some software for the laptop. The battery (fully charged) is 3:46 mins but installing something from the USB drive drove it down to 9 minutes in about 5 minutes of usage... that's quite scary. No wonder USB drives like CD/DVDs usually have a external power adapter... But yeah, he's going to be in the states for about a week. Then head over again in mid-late May. So now I might have some place to go if I decide to tour US for a holiday. But he'll be in Minnesota. So hmm...

There's nothing else to report really, work's work, and well, I'm a yoyo. Pull here, pull there, I'll be training somebody on Monday, but I will also be receiving 20 pallets of stock on monday too. Sounds like fun huh. The warehouse is chock-a-block full, and it's going to be a task to train people and maintain the warehouse. When will I take my holiday? :P

Middle of Feb

2008-02-16T20:52:00.002+11:00

So I thought I'll blog this evening, nothing new really, just updated my photo and job... (long time no update).

My computer has been pissing me off lately... it's been rebooting, slowing down, and today, it decided not to boot. Turns out there was corruption in the files when it reboots randomly, and lucky I was able to recover it. I think it's nearly time to retired this machine, it's been about 3 years now... (bought in 2005). But I really don't want to spend the money, so I'm still trying to maintain it. Meanwhile my friend has bought not 1, but 2 Asus eeePCs... of course it's cheaper where she is, here it's about $500 AUD...

My friend has asked me to build a computer for him, I bought all the components except the CPU, the E8400 is out of stock, nobody has it in stock apart from people who's trying to sell it for $300 or so. For that price you can almost get a Quad Core Q6600. But that's not what my friend needs. So we'll wait for it...

Anyways, I've been in this new position at my workplace for about 3 weeks now, it's quite interesting... it's more difficult in terms of checking everything when it's just me and 7 areas. It was supposed to be 2 IPQC checking the 7 areas(8 if you count the warehouse) but it's the company just screwing us around, so only one person downstairs. Which sucks.

Movies, I actually won a movie ticket to see Jumper just this week. Watched it on Tuesday. It's a good movie actually, quite interesting but I think they will either make a sequal, or start a series of it. Either way it'll be a good show I hope.

Valentines day just passed, seems like not many people that surrounds me have had anything good in that department... Why... what's going on with the world... where's the love? :P

Oh well, I still have no news about a person I'm talking to... They are going to japan next week... meh...

Nearly there

2007-12-30T00:25:00.000+11:00

Wow, another year has gone flying by. What can I say, I've been to England for 2 weeks a few weeks ago, and then back to work, and now it's the holiday till I go back to work on the 2nd. Then hopefully things will be less busy, and my job will be another job.

I need to spend around $1700 for a secondhand engine. I did a very silly thing a few nights ago, practically ruined my car's engine, now it burns a lot of oil. It sucks, but the engine was bad already when I bought it.

The post xmas sales didn't really inspire me, however I checked out Apple's site, and they have refurbished ipods for cheap, and I managed to get one for a cheap price (I think). 4GB for $99, it's the first gen nano. I could have got the 2nd gen nano for $139 (still 4GB) but right now I'll see what the first gen is like. Also ordered a ipod touch ripoff, smaller screen but still 4GB. That cost a bit more though, $149. Well, it's got touch function, that's what I want to try out.

Work these past few days was quite good, since there was practically nobody at work, and only few people there in the warehouse areas. So I got a lot of cleaning up done, and that made me feel good about the work I did. I know my warehouse staff have a lot of things to do when it's busy, but using that excuse will make the warehouse messy, and I don't like that. So when I used this time to clean up, there will be a lot of surprised people when the new year starts.

I will post my travel of England soon I guess, after new years. I have around 7GB worth of photos to process, even compressed to jpeg it's still around 2GB. that's a lot of photos. And I don't feel like processing photos... I've been there, the memories are 'cold' and 'very cold' and 'I wish I was somewhere nice and warm right now'. But overall it was a fun and expensive experience (around $4000 all up - flights, accom, food, travel, and spending). For 2 weeks... and we weren't living in anything more than 3 stars.

My friend just revealed something terrible. His friend drowned in Tasmania. I was reading the article last nite and it said 3 guys and 2 girls went to a beach and then they were in the water, and the water was strong, and pulled a guy under and he drowned. I didn't realise that my friend was actually invited to go with them (would have been 4 guys and 2 girls) and the drowned man's gf was actually somebody I had probably talked to once before. That's called scary.

Ah tired, will have a nice sleep in :P

Have a great New Year!

Gaming time

2007-11-04T21:48:00.000+11:00

It's been a while since I've actually gone and bought a game... And this time it was The Simpsons Game, for my Wii. The previous game was Super Paper Mario, also for the Wii.

I can say that Simpsons game is fun, but I'm pretty unco to play it, because of the camera angle that changes with you, even in 3rd person view. I'm suck in the planetarium (to defeat Jimbo) and I can get onto the space shuttle, but then always fall off that trying to get onto the bloody planets.

So, it's only a short gametime for that. However, I spent approx 2-3 hours on Super Paper Mario. It's a really fun game.

I've gotten to open the third door. Now, when you beat the second door, you will get access to the dungeon. Every 10 stages of the dungeon, you get to leave the dungeon or continue on. In my stupidity, I kept on going to 041, (100 stages in all) but died on 041. I should've quit on 040... But that'll be another weekend's playing, I'm sure.

Why did I buy the Simpsons? It was available in a gaming store called "Game" and I saw that it wasn't available till Nov 8. So I thought, cool, and bought it. Otherwise I would've gone and bought something else, like a Nokia 6300 prepaid phone because it would've been $169 due to Target having 15% off most things in their stores. $199 is cheap, but $169 is even cheaper. But I don't talk on my phone often enough to warrant a new phone, and that phone is getting a bit old. Besides, people don't get amazed by slim phones anymore, the W880i is a tiny phone, but in a big guy's hands it looks like it could snap in half.

Movies, I've watched Good Luck Chuck, License to Wed. They are different types of movies, but both are about relationships. I think Good Luck Chuck was a bit more fun for me, Jessica Alba smiles better than Mandy Moore. Also GLC has more of a gross-out quality to it... plus a lot of naughty scenes. :P Overall it's an alright movie to watch. But definately not for kids.

Work is still work, will have 2 containers next week. This is because they don't want to buy stuff in australia, so they buy it from China and ship it here. Probably save them a few cents a bottle, but then there's storage fees etc etc. Might be better off to buy here. But I'm not the purchasing officer, I'm the warehouse supervisor. So all I can do is bitch :P

I should plan for my holiday soon... *sigh*. Oh where should I go...

I could go to TW (it'll be 5 or 6 years since I've been back...) and also buy an Asus eeepc... I simply love it... cheaper than a UMPC for sure. :P or I can buy a DSLR camera... possiblities are endless... :P But I only got one or two friends in TW now... so won't be much fun :P

I could also go to Europe (specifically England and France) but the tickets would be expensive...

or I can go to USA... but with all their problems, it wouldn't be a good time to visit.

so maybe TW is the go? hmm...

Time will tell... ahhh

2007-10-20T18:00:00.000+10:00

So it's been a month since my last blog... Time doesn't really fly when I'm not having fun :P

Work: Same
Life: Same

However, it's been an interesting day today, first time I've been really out on a saturday...

I was still sleeping at 10am (yeah :P) Then my friend calls me and woke me and asked if I wanted to go with him to buy a set of golf clubs. Since I have nothing else better to do, I said sure. He lives a bit of distance away, so I had breakfast before he arrived.

Anyways, he didn't have lunch, so we went over to Auburn and had maccas. After that, we drove around (through my surburb) and then on to Moorebank... That's a bit of distance as well, about 20km...

The golf shop was actually on a Army Barracks. We got lost and turned around, and had to go through a security checkpoint. After going into the shop, looking around my friend bought a set of clubs @ $400, + a putter + some covers and free balls for $450... Good bargain I guess.

Anyways, we left there, then since we had nothing else better to do we went over to Eastwood for the Granny Smith festival... there wasn't that much apples there... but around 50,000 people there. A lot of people... over 10 streets of stalls... so after spending an hour milling with the crowd we left...

After that we went home... my friend had to go home and go out with his gf... so yeah, that's my day.

We've spent the time catching up and bitching about our respective works... which is fun, but depressing at the same time :P Ah well, there'll be other times to catch up

Here's to wasting more money

2007-09-16T00:16:00.000+10:00

Well, I've bought a PS2. Not a new one, but one of the early models. Needless to say, it's a colleague's one. A PS2 is still a good item to play with actually, it doesn't lose out on performance with a Nintendo Wii actually, but Wii has definately more "fun" factor with certain titles. Although my bro seems to be enjoying his Guitar Hero II. Because my brother hasn't actually paid for the PS2, it's my property, and I can do anything I want with it.

Anyways, nothing new at work, some new girls, but they usually don't last 2-3 weeks... If they don't last that long here, I can't really get to know them, can I... :P

Considering selling my car sometime soon... after driving to pick up the PS2 from my colleague's place, I realise my car has severe problems in engine capacity. His area is quite hilly, and well, this car struggles on hills. I tend to have a light foot, so maybe if I really stepped on it the car will respond, but I don't add enough power then it struggles...

Holiday... damn that's a hard decision... I am saving up money for both a holiday and for my future funds. Not enough for both... *sigh*. I can go to either somewhere within Aus, but I prefer to go overseas. NZ might be nice, but it's really cold sometimes, and I don't want to be cold... S.E. Asia is also a good choice. Also Europe is a good choice, but that's expensive. Hmm... If I procrastinate anymore it'll be 2008 then I'll be stuck in this shitty job... for 2 years *sigh*. Make up my mind!! Argggg

Been SICK

2007-07-29T20:24:00.000+10:00

Damn... these past 5 days I've been sick... I got the Flu, and I had the muscular aches, tiredness, loss of appetite, and only now I feel about 90%. Hopefully with all the drinking of water and rest I've had I'll be back to normal tomorrow.

Lets see what's happened at the start of this month...

This picture shows that there was this fire at one end of a bridge that I have to use to travel to work. It's not very good, everybody was stuck in traffic for hours.

This picture shows that even though winter's not that cold, I have to clean the ice off my car in the mornings at 7am...

These 3 pics show the coffee festival I attended on the 22nd. It was actually called the "Aroma" festival. I estimate over 10,000 people packed The Rocks area. I didn't have any coffee to drink, because I'm not a coffee person. I know somebody who would love to have been there :P

This is the view of Manly beach at 4:30pm on Sunday just after going to the coffee festival... not many people there cos there was a little rain... (just look at the clouds)

The ferry ride was bloody cold, with the wind. That's probably the start of my Flu.

However, the Flu only kicked in on Wednesday, and I was sick from Wednesday till today. *sigh*

Anyways... all these photos are small because they came from my mobile phone...

Anyways, hopefully I have more stuff to blog about, but I'm just recovering and work will be horrible cos I had two days off :P

Spending the money

2007-05-26T16:43:00.000+10:00

hmmm... It's been so long since I blogged... almost a month aye... hmmm.

Went to see Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End. Now, that's something that should be watched at the cinema... apart from it being 3 hours long... -_-"". My butt was sore from that... plus there was a little kid who ran around in my aisle... which didn't ruin it for me but well, the people next to me were quite concerned...

Overall, I would rate the movie 9/10, it's great, but the hour is too long.

One thing about it that really amazed me was the thinking about Davy Jone's locker. I didn't think about 'afterlife' in that way, but it was a really interesting idea.

After going to the movie, I went to buy a mobile fone. I didn't want to spend too much, considering it's not a priority for me to have a kick-ass fone. The reason for the new phone was because my old one's dying, without a replacement battery... So this one was <$200, which is good. Samsung E250, haven't tried a slider fone before, but now I've tried 3 types... maybe next one will be a swivel, or something which I think is good.

Ah, the inspection for the company's going to have an inspection next week, I might have to OT on monday night... *sigh*. If it passes, there's only a few more months in it for me :P If it fails, time to go on a holiday and get a new job :P Either way... it's gonna be interesting...

Wii, revisited

2007-04-28T23:00:00.000+10:00

Woo... my bro bought over an unused wireless router.

We configured it, and now we can hop online with it.

Then, we got into the Wii Shop...

I just felt like splurging, so I bought 5000 points for $75...

$0.015/Point, so the games we bought first were Super Mario Bros, 500 points ($7.50)

Excite Bike, 500 points ($7.50),

Ice Climber, 500 points ($7.50),

and Golden Axe, 800 points ($12).

Still got 2700 points left, which will go into some games... but I need to get some "classic" controllers for it... so will stop the splurging for now :P

But still, it's fun to be nostalgic once in a while. >:D

Death of a car... and revival

2007-03-01T18:04:00.000+11:00

Ok, so this is something that I just got to blog about...

It started (well, probably) about Tueday this week. The weather was kinda crappy, raining now and then, and I ran through a big water puddle on the road. Needless to say, it made a HUGE splash. Anyways, that didn't do much, except the engine heat + water = steam, and I had steam coming out of the engine compartment for about 5 minutes.

Anyways, got to work fine. Work's always a lot of work.

After work, I drove to a petrol station just about 1km away from my home. Added petrol, paid, went back to my car, and tried to start the engine.

It didn't start.

It wouldn't start.

All it did was make a 'click-click-click' noise.

So I sat there contemplating what to do. I had NRMA roadside assistance. I could walk home, but that means leaving the car there. I didn't have much credit left on my mobile, and when I tried to call home, it wouldn't work. What the hell was all that, I wouldn't know. I was getting pissed off at the whole situation.

Thankfully, a few things happened. First, this guy was just adding petrol to his car, he noticed my futile efforts of starting the car, after he paid for his petrol, he came over and tried to help me start, by jumpstarting. Well, he tried, but it did not work, unfortunately. I'm grateful for his help. During that time, my brother called me on my mobile asking if he can have a lift home from a train station some 2km away from where I was at the time. I said to him, sorry dude, my car died. Can he walk home (1km away) and tell them to ring NRMA and tell them where I am? He said ok, and did so. I was then called by NRMA to determine what the problem was, and I should be serviced within 45 mins.

The helpful guy left after he couldn't do much, I think I thanked him over 10 times, and shook hands with him at least 3 times. Then comes the waiting. Waited about 15 mins, and the NRMA guy came. He checked the condition of the battery first, it was flat. Now, the guy didn't check anything else, he just put a set of leads from a battery, and told me to start the engine.

It started. He checked the condition of the battery, and said it was fine for the moment.

Now, he didn't check anything else at this stage either. I assumed that it was the battery being flat, but silly me, not being a car enthusiast, did not realise there's other components at work here. He just says, after you get home, if you cannot start the engine after letting the car sit there for about 5 mins or 10, then call NRMA for a battery. I thanked him, and went home.

I had dinner first, that took about 30 mins. Went outside, and started the engine.

It was fine.

So, I thought nothing of it, and went back in the house.

The next day, yesterday, I didn't know if the battery is going to die or not. So I crossed my fingers and started it. It started! Feeling good, I got to work and thought nothing of it at work. After work, I was approached by 3 colleagues to see if they can grab a lift with me. I thought, ok, no worries...

I was wrong, wrong wrong. The engine half started. Then went click-click-click... *sigh*

So I went into the office and called NRMA for a battery. I then waited outside. It was spitting, not full falling rain, but it was intermittant. Alot of people were going home, and about 80% of them offered me a lift. I said thanks, but I was waiting for the battery guy.

Anyways, the battery guy came. Checked the battery condition, it was flat, replaced it, charged my card, and I was thinking, it's all over! Done and done!

How wrong I was... >:(

Today, was when it all went... to hell.

I started out, it was a great day, great drive, not a care in the world. 10km away from work, my battery light is lit up in the display. My CD player was on the fritz, cutting in and out. I thought it was skipping or something, but no, it was an power issue. Then about 5km away from work, the 'system' light lit up. I was then in the precarious situation of climbing uphill, then stopping at a red light. When the light turned green, I put my feet to the accelerator pedal down. I was hooning along at a massive 20km/h! 20! The people behind me was honking their horns... I was trying hard to go faster, but it wouldn't... I then saw a right hand turn lane, and I turned into it... and the engine crapped out, completely.

The guy who turned in behind me went WTF, and honked, but he had to turn left, then turn right... and my emergency lights don't even work...

So... I called NRMA again, and they'll tow me and get it checked.

I got towed in about an hour's time, then the guy came about 40 mins after that, I told him about the battery, and he immediately knew it was the alternator. Needless to say, he organised to get an alternator guy up ASAP. At that time it was 10am. So I waited and the guy showed up at around 11:15... not bad at all. Anyways, after fitting in the alternator, and charging me, I decided that it was too late to turn up to work. A quick jumpstart, checking the battery was getting the 14 volts required (instead of 6volts with the dead alternator), and I was allowed to drive off in the midday sun.

Got home in half an hour to charge the battery. Now, if it turns out to be bad tomorrow, then I will probably kick the car or something, because seriously, this is worse than I bargained for...

I'm out of pocket $500... damn it...

What a day >:(

Happy New Year!

2007-02-17T13:16:00.000+11:00

Went with the opposite door's neighbours to a Chinese New Year celebratory dinner at Harris Park's Buddhist Temple. Lots of people there, even some dignitries from the local councils. Even got a red packet too... no money of course, but it's for luck! :D

Good luck to all for the Piggy year :D

Post

2007-01-14T17:50:00.000+11:00

Long time no posting, seems about a month, which is good I guess.

Christmas went, nothing happening there.
New Years came and went, went to the city with my friend Sam, and his friends. got screwed over in a way, they agreed to meet us at Darling Harbour for the 9pm fireworks, but then told us they were at Opera House. So, we headed over against a huge swarm of people, only to be turned away at 6pm, because 'the area was filled to capacity'. When it wasn't, at all.

Fireworks was great, took some videos of it on the camera I won from the Christmas party.

youtube, search for the username 'kenman2k', because I don't have other videos on there.

also posted some pics on my Wretch, Sam even bought silver membership... 1gb of space for his pics, compared to 60mb, along with no advertising. All for $20 US a year. Not bad I guess. But free beats paid for in my book :P

Work has 'quietened' down a bit, getting a bit more stable since I came here, there was literally one person leaving a fortnight, compared with my old company, where one person was leaving every few days. Went back to my old company, and found that they got around 30 staff left, from a previously massive 80. Not counting the casuals, of course. But at least here it was not as bad, they replenished the people from the 'not-so-bright' genepool.

This year, wonder what will fortune will bring me... hopefully a gf... :P But heard that it's not likely for my fortune for this year, which sadly means I'll still be single... poor me :P

It's that time of the year

2006-12-16T18:44:00.000+11:00

Ho ho ho... wow it's been 2.xx months since I've blogged. That says quite a bit... Work is the same, I can not describe the sameness because there's no difference of the day to day activities.

Here's a rundown of stuff that I did...

Bought a Wii. Base system = $399, Wii Remote + Nunchuck = $109, Call of Duty 3 = $90.
Nearly 600 bucks. It's fun and interesting... Will try to play it more, but seems to be more chance to be during the weekend... since work takes up a lot.

Now, Xmas party.

Yesterday. we had our company's xmas party.

4pm, at the company's reception/entrance area.

I thought it was gonna be crap, and for the first 1-2 hours it was.

It was raining, and windy. All the people who didn't wear enough was cold, so cold that they went back inside and got their labcoats. So half of the crowd was in white, which was quite funny... :P The event started with a couple of speeches, by the bosses, and the managers (production, and sales). Then there was the ceremonies of people who worked there since the 'beginning'. I think they got a bonus of like $50 each. Then there was the ceremony of people who 'contributed' to the company. That was dodgy as well... and I guess they got $50 as well.

Then we had food. That was nice, semi-buffet style. They had a pig. On the spit, so it was nice and crispy. Salads, hams, and fruit salad. Even had mochi. Not a bad meal for sure.

I had 3 plates worth, even though I had a big lunch before... >:D

Then came the fun and games.

The fun - They hired a belly dancer. Not sure of her nationality, they said she was a Lebanese, but she seemed aussie to me. She did 3 dances, trying to drag the crowd to dance, and there was a period during the second dance where she had about 5-7 guys dancing around her, but when she tried to drag the girls to dance, not many wanted to... only about 2-3 dared to dance. The third dance was even funnier, they pushed a guy and tried to take his shirt off, and then a guy jumped in and they took his shirt off... then the song ended, but yeah, it was fun alright... :D

Games, they had 5 games, which everybody can play for free, and get prizes.
1) Coin toss on a glass table. Sounds easy, but it's not. I just got too much arm muscles... :P
2) Toss a dart into numbers. 2 big prizes of 2.1 speakers. Some minor prizes, but everybody gets a prize of spray. Useless, but fun.
3) Toss 3 novelty sized tennisballs into the basket. Again, my aim was off, even though I had no beer. Just not my day for sports.
4) Guess the number of jellybeans in a canister. Obviously it's not my forte, by I had a hint from the guy who counted the beans, he couldn't play. I was about 20 out. The winner was 5 out. The prize was a 5.1 system.
5) The grand raffle draw.

5-6 minor prizes of bottles of wine. Obviously from $15 to $50... 3rd prize was a DVD player. I think it would be easier to walk into a shop and buy one for $50. 2nd Prize was a Digital camera, which I won. AHAHAHA! In your face suckers! nahh... It's a nice simple digicam, an Olympus FE-150. Simple point and click 5 megapixel camera. 2.5" screen. What else... It's probably around $300 new. But its probably not new. 1st prize, a DVD+ home theatre set. Probably $500 new. The funny thing was that the girl who hands out the prizes was holding the big carton of the dvd home theatre box. It was as big as she was, and then her name was drawn out of the carton, and people were going 'Vivian! where's Vivian?' and she's there holding the box... everybody claps because it was so coincidental... >:D So, by the time the whole event finished, it was around 8pm. 4 hours of half boredom, and fun.

It took us about half an hour to clean up the mess, and still a lot of drinks (beer, wine etc) left. Bosses took the wine home, but there's plenty of beer left.

I got home about 9, which was fast.

Then I slept at my normal time, because I had booked a service for the car at 7:30am.

I got up at 6 feeling crap, even though I didn't drink.

Went to the service centre, and only waited about 2 hours, got home about 10am. I was tired so I went to nap and got up at 2pm... :P None of my downloads finished, so I went and played a bit of Wii Play. It's quite hard I guess for me because I'm not good at holding still... But with training I'll get better, I'm sure :P

I'm back, baby...

2006-10-01T23:32:00.000+10:00

Um... so what have I been up to these past 2 months... first of all I would have to say that nothing has really happened, apart from the usual... Work has finally gone around to past 3 months, and I'm supposed to be off probation and be permenant, but only next week will I be signing the contract... fingers crossed they don't screw me over, cos if they do, I'll be outta there and bumming till I find another job...

So what has been happening... there was a company bbq for Labour day (sydney) but I didn't go because I didn't want to, I woke up about 11am and thought... they would be there for 2 hours just chatting, because they started at 9am... and I would've gotten up at 7am to get there at 9am... not worth it.

Spending my days like this, day in day out, knowing what I have to do, and what to achieve, but with no purpose and sense of accomplishment, it really kinda drags the day out. I can be busting my ass lifting boxes, or entering data into the system, and it's all the same. No result really, since it balances out. I'm just there to fill a position, to punch the card clock in, and to punch the card clock out. A machine.

Granted, I do try to vary the job a bit now and then, but then there's not much variety to be had. If I had further juristication, I could do another job to fill in the day so it won't seem as long, but then I'm not getting paid enough as it is, and if I were to do the other job, then they'll come to see me as somebody who they can depend on to do that other job, and it'll probably fall under my job description, and well we don't want that to happen now, do we...

So it leaves me no other option really. I can start looking for another job, and then apply for jobs, and go to interview at best. True, I want to get into a field which I have no experience in, but with the experience I have, I can't move anywhere, except to a Manager's position, and it's not very fulfilling. So what to do...

Anyways, enough rubbish of the work and all that, what's for entertainment nowdays... I saw the web advertisement for a movie called Crank, and boy am I waiting to see that one. It's gonna be a hit I think... but with a name like that, some people might not like it. Who cares!

My net's been a bit stuffed lately... sometimes slow, sometimes fast, and sometimes disconnects by itself. Apparently a big ISP, Veridas collapsed, leaving many customers stranded with no service, and the ISP I'm with, they want to get new customers left in the lurch, so they are forced to make changes to stay afloat. Needless to say, we'll be careful in what we download now, since we got a limit... 100gb / month, which is probably the max we've ever hit (99 gb), so it's around 3gb a day... but the problem with that is, my connections are fast now... *sigh* I think I'll easily pass 3gb a day, so have to limit the downloads... that means only anime I watch, I get... and xxxHOLic is pretty good... I watched the movie, it's a bit out there, but not too bad. School Rumble Semester 2 is finished, and 3 is coming. And while the Office (NBC) isn't anime, it's one I get because they are on season 3, and well it gets funnier and funnier... so much so I just love the antics Jim pulls it's not funny. I wonder if the calculator he put in jello would work after he takes it out...

Back to work issues... I get to be a driver for 4 people because of my position as a supervisor. How lovely. Waste my fuel, and get up early to get to the station. What a bloody company this is, they can't be bothered hiring a driver for the bus? damn I really should be getting a new job and not complaining about this job. Oh well.

The Nintendo Wii (pronounced We) is coming out in Dec! I know I'll be getting it, not on the first day I guess, but maybe after the prices drop for the first time. You know, that's the first console we'd ever have in this family? Not counting the Sony PSP my bro got, and my Nintendo DS, because they aren't really consoles, more handhelds, like my PDA I don't use nowdays, and a camera I don't really use, and a mobile fone which is dying (Plus the company I used to work for managed to lose 6 billion dollars (or something like that) to plug a failing mobile company in 9 months... how's that for impressive...) so I'm looking for a new mobile fone, not that I call anybody, but it's for people to call me, like somebody who called tonight and asked me to join them tomorrow to a meeting to see if I wanted to make extra money on the side selling stuff. Yes, I will go join them to see what it's about, because frankly I am always suspicious, but I trust the bloke who called me, maybe he's been brainwashed, I have to find out :P

Anyways, probably another couple of weeks before I blog again since nothing really happens, and I mean really happens. It's always the little details that I record, and well, now it's the big picture...

Nice day out

2006-07-30T22:18:00.000+10:00

Yesterday I went out, today I went out. It was a nice day, in the end I even got a "Brazillian" goodbye, a hug from a guy, and a handshake.

After getting home, I got a call from a guy I haven't met in as many years as I have met yuppy. This time, he's in syd for a holiday, same as yuppy, 2 days, same amount of 'free' time as yuppy, used to hail from brissie, same as yuppy, QUT friend, same as yuppy, but he's been spending around 3 years in Brazil, San Paulo to be exact - different to yuppy. So I asked where to meet and stuff, and he said Opera Bar. It was already around 7:30pm that time, I don't usually go out at night just to go to bars... so I said sorry, can't do it... lucky, ends up he went to another bar in Mosman anyways.

So this morning he calls up at about 10am, I was awake since 9:20, since I did set the alarm on, but was just lying in bed... enjoying the luxury... and I sounded I was still asleep, as you do on a lazy sunday. But he was gonna be going to Manly, and I don't remember when I was in Manly last, probably 2000 when I was doing work experience or something. So I said yep, what time, and he said 12:30. Well, I got there at 12:30, then he got "delayed" till 1:30, then 2pm. I was already hungry at 12:30, so when I found out 2pm, I went and grabbed a Chicko roll. It's fried and nice, but not filling.

While waiting, there was a busker at Circular Quay, juggling swords and fire sticks on top of a pole, which is strapped with a bike. Lets just say that buskers like that can earn a bit if everybody gave $5. Probably earns $1000 a day if he's good. He did many sessions, when I was waiting (1 hour), and we spent about 4 hours out at Manly, and by the time we came back he was still doing the shows... so yeah... it's a showmanship kinda job :P

Manly is nice, and lots of people there. We had a lunch of fish and chips on the beach, and then Royal Coppenhagen ice cream afterwards. Nice.

By the time we got back to Circular Quay it was close to 6pm. And getting dark. Since they are the tourists, they went to Bondi beach. I said my byes to them there, since I already been to Bondi before (with people... not by myself). The girl gave me a Brazillian bye, which was a *muah* kinda kiss on the cheek... I was a little surprised, but to them it's normal... then my friend gave me a hug... then his cousin, the tour guide shook hands with me. All very normal and weird at the same time. But then, I probably wouldn't see them again for a few years... so it's alright :P

By the time I got home it was 7:30, and dinner was almost finished. I actually saw my bro's car on the road just before he turned into our street, he just beat me home by a minute. So it was a nice Sunday night dinner.

I'm tired, but happy. All good for a new week. Bring it on! :P

Not so same day

2006-07-29T23:54:00.000+10:00

I went to see a movie today, everybody said that Pirates 2 was good, but they didn't say how long it was. about 2.5 hours, to be exact. Now that's 2 long movies I've watched on the big screen. Superman Returns was long, a little unexpected, but Pirates was great. Good plot development, good CGI, sometimes it felt a little drawn out, but the pace was fast and planned. However the cliffhanger wasn't a point that I liked, for a movie of 2.5 hours, I expect closure. Not unlike "Back to the Future I" where they hadn't really planned it from the beginning to be a trilogy, since it's now a franchise of Pirates... but it's good.

After that I had a personal pizza combo. Nice.

Coming home, there were strangers at our place. They were hooking up the security system we wanted, because somebody's getting paranoid. So it's a bit more secure. More hassle than what it's worth, but still, it's all good.

My friend from bris, who I haven't seen or talked to for a long time (4 years) called up. I forgot that he was in syd for a day or two, but since he called up late, I couldn't just head to the city for drinks. But if he calls up early tomorrow morning, I can head to the city early. I guess I'll go sleep early.

I am finally on Insane mode on Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan. It's just a little more intense, but not Insane. The icons become smaller, and you can't really point anywhere wrong, since a little mistake will mean you don't finish that section... So it's either perfection or try again... which is fine when I got time to kill :D But when I come home from work, I'm tired, so it's really hard :P

Peace out.

Losing It...

2006-07-26T21:54:00.000+10:00

I think my bro has lost it in the last week...

Dinner time, he came home from uni, and we were eating... he suddenly looks at me and goes "hey, when did you get your new glasses?". I just gave him a look of "wtf" and he just went... "oh yeah, you got them ages ago, when you wanted a new look". That was back in December... half a year ago.

I've recently been addicted to "Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan!" for the Nintendo DS. Don't ask me why, but the rythmic gameplay and trying to finish the final level for "Hard" is addictive. I managed to cruise through "Hard" after having a hard time with "Normal". I didn't even play the "Easy" mode. It gets easier because the beats match the song more, but still, theres a final mode called "Insane". So that's something to try to achieve first... No doubt many people out there have finished Insane. They are truly masters of the tapping genre. If you don't know what I'm talking about, just YouTube search for "ouendan" and check out Insane levels from people playing it. Then you'll know what I'm on about.

Work is... work, as usual. I wouldn't say I hate it, but I definately ain't loving it. One of my 'subordinates', a stubborn guy, was trying to finish off stocktake late on Monday night. He managed to get himself locked in, and tripped off the alarm. Needless to say, the boss ain't happy and it comes back down to me because I am his 'supervisor'. I ain't really his boss, since he doesn't care. So, this all boils down to my direct supervisor, and since they are looking into it, I can only report on what I think he's done. And they don't trust him or the other one, but we still need workers, even though they might be a bit on the shifty side.

Now, I actually look forward to the weekends where I can sleep in. Previously I didn't have to look forward to the weekends because I wasn't so tired after work, but now I am.

Big Brother 06 is finishing in a week's time. I guess David should win, but Camilla and Jamie could win easily. Max, I think he'll be out, unless he's got a lot of powerful and rich friends.

Ok, back to Ouendan, I've gotta scratch that itch...

Life, as I know it...

2006-07-04T20:01:00.000+10:00

So, my last post was about me starting the new job, and 2 weeks into it, I'm beginning to grasp the idea of what I'm supposed to do. Basically, I'm the warehouse supervisor, or coordinator, or just the warehouse guy who's accountable for everything that's good and bad in the warehouse. I have 5 people under me, I don't really consider that I'm the boss, because I tend to let them do what they need, and help out. I used to do that back at the old job, with 2 people that I 'look' after. But I was still an assistant. Now I am getting paid for the same with more responsibility. Such is life. I drive 64 kms a day, which takes about 2 hours. Traffic can be good and bad, and I dunno if the car has a problem or not, because the oil light came on for a second then disappeared.. So... I might have to get it checked out... What else... actually went to watch Superman Returns at the cinemas... costs quite a bit, $15 for the movie, then I paid a bit more... and yeah, it was an alright day I guess... but I probably won't go out for a while. :P

Getting used to it

2006-06-20T23:05:00.000+10:00

So now I wake up early, work hard, and go home "early". There's got to be more to this job, but right now, it's a very very boring and bland job. Needless to say, everything is slow in the start, and if I want to see results, it'll be ages before it happens. Oh, I sleep earlier too. Ain't that sad... :P

oops

2006-06-17T19:23:00.000+10:00

I was supposed to go get the car transferred into my name, but I woke up and drove there and managed to find a park after an hour. By which time it was already closed. So, till next week. However, I did get an insurance thingy set up, so I should be able to pay that off within the week. Ahhh... need to buy other stuff, but there's always more important things at hand. And it's cold in the morning, need to get that checked out as well. To many things to think off at once, but I'll get there eventually :P

Gnarls Barkley - Crazy

2006-06-15T22:12:00.000+10:00

It's a favourite of mine recently. I think I like the melody more than the words, but the words are still good. The MTV of it is like ink spot tests. Not bad. Anyways, it's my second day of work, and two things happened before work started. 1, I had ice on the front and rear windshields. Water diluted it, but it wasn't before work that it had defrosted. 2, some bird decided to relive itself on my car. GRRRR! So the first thing I did after coming home was to wash the big brown stains off my car. And thus it looks presentable again. I also bought comprehensive car insurance. That's just a little over $1000. But I don't plan to get into any accidents if I can help it. Then I will go get the rego transferred, and that'll probably cost $400. Then other bills here and there, and I got to pay everything. But the front up cost of this car was the good part. I think I'll get some mp3 reader/FM transmitter fitted to the car and then I can play mp3s... something to keep me awake every morning at 7am.

Work is work, it's not good, it's not bad, I can find many things to complain, but then I'm sure that there's people worse off with casual arrangements and all. But still, taking an hour to get to work and from work is kinda boring.

Tired. Will go sleep around 10:30, 11 at the latest. Why? Because I stand up at work almost 95% of the time. The 5% of the time is when I can rest on some pallet, because I've got sore legs and feet. It's a harder warehouse than my old one, that's for sure. So I stand probably 6.5 hours a day. That's quite a feat. :P

Am I impulsive or crazy?

2006-06-10T23:03:00.000+10:00

Why, do you ask? Well, I am going to start my new job next wednesday, and well, I need to have a good car. And well... I looked on the 4 major car websites. www.drive.com.au www.carsguide.com.au www.carpoint.com.au and www.carsales.com.au and found a Toyota Camry 2001, under 100,000kms, and it was below $10000. I saw others , and put them down on my list, but when I went to the first place, I had a test drive, and I decided to buy it. Well, I went with my dad, and he tried to bargain it down to $9000, but no dice... but it was a still good bargain. So we bought it, and well, I have to pay it all on tueday. So I can drive the 'new' car on wednesday. And I'm excited and scared at the same time. It's totally different way of driving... And I didn't even go to the other car yards and check out the other cars on the list because they are more expensive, and to cut it down to the price I got this one, it'll be hard. Also it was quite funny because the dealer deals with 4WD. So to sell this particular model, they must be quite desperate... But, I still need to maintain it, thats for sure.

A close call

2006-06-06T22:43:00.000+10:00

This is probably the first time in a long time that I didn't go to work. Except that it wasn't my idea. Basically, at 8:25am today, we had a couple of high school kids ring our doorbell. Wondering what did they want, since a lot of high school kids go by our place from the train station to the high school, they said that my mum was sitting on the footpath and bleeding. I just went "wtf" and then ran down the road, and my dad thanked the guys and came after me. The rain was stopped for a while, but the ground was a bit wet. She was looking for a pair of gloves in her handbag, but tripped over the uneven road, fell and scraped her knees (bleeding) and also managed to hit her head on the concrete. So, she was dazed, and was in shock. I tried to help her up but I was more shocked about her being shocked. She couldn't stand, so my dad held her up, and I ran back and drove the car. We then decided to go to the GP (general practitioner, the local doc). They weren't open till 9am, and well, the doc didn't come in till 9:30. Gave her a quick going over, and well, told her to go get an x-ray. So we went to Bankstown hospital's emergency department. It basically took around 3 hours to get a checkup and x-ray, and she's discharged. So yeah... got home after 1pm, and I had lunch, but was too stressed and so I called in work and said I can't go in. That was my day really. I took a 2 hour nap afterwards and woke up around 5. It's good that my mum is ok now, but the leg is still sore.

So, I met the friend from NZ on sunday. We had lunch at the fishmarkets, and then basically wandered around the city, and I got lost because... I don't walk around certain parts of the city... but she kinda got us back on George st and then I knew which way we were going. We then had coffee, then I walked her back to the place where she was staying with... no dinner. So it was a meeting, not a date. We didn't even take a pic together... that's kinda strange... and I don't know when she'll be back, because she doesn't know herself.

I went for an interview yesterday. It was at another Twese company, and took me 1 hour to get there. In heavy traffic, in pouring rain. The interview took about 1.5 hours, and well, I can give it a go if they decide to hire me. Permenant full time. Maybe advancement after a few years. I went back to work after going home in about 40 mins, and having lunch at home. But I am definately looking at cars because this car cannot handle longer than 1 hour's journey without overheating. So yeah... things need to be done, and done soon.

Change?

2006-06-03T23:08:00.000+10:00

Last week was pretty hectic. There was Thursday, where we shipped out 2 containers worth of goods, on two different trucks. Then Friday, my supervisor had to attend a funeral, so he left at lunch. Then calls up about 2:30 and says that we have to ship out this order, which was left from the end of may because they couldn't go. Well... that order turned out to add an extra 8 pallets. I can say that I slept soundly that night. It was probably the coldest day also, since the start of winter. :P Strong wind and rain didn't help... was pretty much frozen. But wrapping the pallets did warm me up. My colleague, he was very skinny and didn't fare as well, he was more frozen because he didn't do much, apart from at his desk. So walking around and doing a bit of manual labour helps in this situation.

I have a friend coming from overseas for a quick holiday, but apart from a few SMS, there wasn't any organisation. Tomorrow will be the last day that we can meet up, but I haven't got any messages. Oh well, I guess she isn't that excited to meet me, so that's probably why. She complained about the weather as well, because she arrived on thurs night and had the bad weather on Friday.

This coming Monday, I'm going to a job interview. Now, I didn't ask for this interview, the last 2 interviews I didn't really ask for, but I went because I wanted to see what they were like. And this one is a bit far from home, so if I was offered a permenant position and have the right pay, I will go... this will mean 2 things. 1, giving my supervisor notice, even though I'm casual and I don't have to give notice. 2, preparation for the new job. The preparation is also two-fold, 1, I need to have a 'new' car, something which can handle the long distance without dying, as is the case with my current car, and 2, well, if I do have to live so far away, find a closer place to live. It's definately cheaper to pay the fuel than to live by myself, plus I am helping paying off the mortgage for my parents, so the car is definately the priority... I'm looking at Toyotas because they are cheaper to run/maintain, and it's gotta be newer than the year 2000, and less than 100,000 kms, but below $15,000. My budget is around $10,000, but I'm willing to go higher, but there's not many cars that fit the description. Most milage around that era (2000) is averaging 150,000 kms, because they drive like 30-40k kms a year... when the average should only be around 100,000 kms. So it's hard to find one... need to search very hard.

I've got a headache, and I might go sleep early tonight.

Da di da...

2006-05-28T23:10:00.001+10:00

Wow... it's been more than a month since I last posted... that's to show that not much has happened. Just the last weekend has been a bit 'busier'. On tuesday the TV died. The other LCD tv is fine, just the 'old' CRT tv, which we had for about 6 years, decided to die. So, we weren't basked in the glow of the TV for dinner for 4 days, then Saturday, yesterday, me and mum went to try and get a TV we saw in the ads. 51cm, 20", for $199 at K-Mart. We went to 3 different places to start with, one was closed, then we went to Bing Lee, then Retravision, then finally K-Mart, for Teac's 51cm model, discounted. It's flat screen too. It looks smaller than the other 51cm tv, because of the black bezel, but it's nice and sharp... Anyways, I installed the TV, and then spent some time to muck around, before I left for a friend's birthday party. He turned 30, and I didn't know him that well, but it was his younger sis who set up the party. I did a count at one point, there was around 60 people at the party, and I probably only knew about 10. And it went from 7pm till 12 or something, but I left around 11:30 because most (80%) were already gone by then. Met up with the other camp people (birthday boy was from camp as well) and had a good chat for a while. Then I called up (organised before) my bro, and then he picked me up and we went over to their place. Their parents are overseas, and bro-in-law had 2 friends over and they were playing Fifa 2006 on the Xbox 360. I was too tired to play, so I watched them till they stopped about 3am, and then went to sleep. Woke up about noon today, and bummed around their house, played a couple games of pool, some xbox, and tried to watch TW satellite, but something was wrong with their satellite box, it freezes... should get it fixed. Back to work tomorrow. Another day another dollar.

It's another season

2006-04-24T20:12:00.000+10:00

Of Big Brother, that is. I still would watch re-runs of the simpsons though... on my newly purchased 32" LCD TV. It's got a little bit of scratch on it, plus a red pixel, but no drama, it's still very nice to watch, obviously. The 21" CRT TV goes into the kitchen, and the other 21" gets thrown into the rubbish of time. So far I've watched about 5 hours worth of TV on that, and my mum even more so. I've also bought a SDTV set top box, and it should arrive this or next week, and well, I can't wait. Also on other news, it's like 3 weeks I've lost 3 days of pay... *sigh*. But I will make up for 1.5 or even 2 days on Saturday, cos it's end of month... yay :P Too many holidays means I get bored... but I do some papercraft and it's time consuming.

Both my brothers have left Sydney. For this week at least. The one which got married went to the US for a week, for a conference, leaving his wife behind. The other one's gone down to Melbourne to shoot arrows at targets all week, taking his gf along with him, because she also can shoot arrows into targets. Meanwhile I'm busting my ass shifting and moving and wrapping and driving forklift and whatnots, while my supervisor and other colleage takes a holiay, then tomorrow is Anzac day, then we'll all be back on Wed for a big rush towards EOM. Fun fun fun fun fun. :P

So thats how it is...

2006-04-15T23:13:00.000+10:00

Well, after Easter Friday, people tend to go shopping. I went to shop for a pair of shoes, because my current pair has seen better days. So I asked if any other family member wanted to come along, and my dad said sure, why not. My mum didn't wanna go, but asked my dad to buy a list of stuff, and well, my bro had his gf over so he doesn't wanna budge. So, I drove to Bankstown, and then spent a good 30 mins circling the carparks trying to find a spot... eventually finding one. We went to "Payless Shoes", and found that it was pretty expensive, around $50 a pair. Then we went to a "Sportsco" and found out the shoes were around $30 a pair, for the cheapest. So lastly we went to check K-Mart, there wasn't much variety, but for $19, it was cheap. Also having a 15% storewide sale helped, which means it was $17. Yay :P Then we got out of there, there was a lot of people shopping today, we parked in a 1 hour zone, so we left 30 mins later. We then drove across to the other area, and bought some incense, meat, tofu, fruit and rice vermicilli. Then headed home. Pretty uneventful, I will have to add more petrol, but with the price being jacked up to $1.30/L, it's not easy to say "let me add some petrol". I watched a movie called "Hoodwinked", a computer animated story about Little Red Riding Hood. Funny and silly at the same time, it provided a time wasting opportunity for an hour and several minutes. Dinner was the rice vermicilli, and my bro baked a cake. Carrot cake. Anyways, I think there's something wrong with the person I've been chatting for a while... They normally talk to me as a normal person, but today... very rude and then finally told me to piss off... So that's probably it then... I don't think I will talk with them unless I have to, because well, I don't think I've done anything wrong and I certainly don't deserve that kind of rudeness.

contact

2006-04-10T22:09:00.000+10:00

so... I was talking about applying for a job that's similiar to mine, and well, I got called in for an interview. Wednesday, and in the morning. I figure it's better to be in the morning since people are still working, and I rather that than to subject my colleagues to stay behind and load up the trucks, like what I do. We did 34 pallets of tvs, 400 tvs... took a big truck (and a trailer, called a "B-Double") to load it up, and well, we did, and we had to scan them all as well. It's always an effort, but it's required. Hopefully I don't need to do that in my new job, but it might be necessary. On other news, the person who crashed their car getting out of the carpark, they have to carpool with somebody else, till they get another car to drive. They are rich, so they should be able to afford it. Me, I have my heap of junk which might actually die without crashing, I feel that it's starting to lose a cylinder... loss of power and all that... rather shite car!! If I do get the new job, then I will definately consider getting another car. Definately.

Weekend

2006-04-08T17:34:00.000+10:00

So... it's the weekend again. Nothing much to report, except that work's the same, and somebody crashed their car going out of work's carpark. They were in the wrong too. Easter show's started, and well, getting into work takes a while because of people trying to get to the show, at the same time. So I was late on Friday... also somebody saw a job online, and then asked why I wouldn't go for it. I checked it out, and well, it looks just like my ex-job. Or current job, if my colleague was away. Its also with another tech company, also in Homebush. So yeah... I might apply for it and see if I can get it. If not, then it's back to the daily grind... :P

Update

2006-04-02T21:55:00.000+10:00

With time back on my side, it's time for an update.

Daylight savings ended. Now we've "gained" one hour of sleep. Clock has been wound back one hour.

Weather has suddenly gone cold. It happened on Saturday early morning, brrrr. Friday was really warm and all. But now, it feels like autumn. So now I think I'll be wearing long pants now.

Bro got married a week ago. He's a married man now. Don't think that really bothers me though, I'm still single and nothing's changing. Haven't really gotten pics of it either, because they are on the other bro's computer, and in RAW format. about 3 gigs worth. I don't have that space free on my two drives. Considering getting a 300 g drive very soon.

I ordered and got an Ipaq H5550 for $200. No Cradle. So I got a cradle for it. It works, and I've been playing with it for a while. To some, it's a tool, but for me, who doesn't have a handheld, it's a games machine. I could buy a Nintendo DS which has a touch screen, but the games would cost a bit. Also I was "offered" a PSP for the princely sum of $350. It includes some videos and a 1 gb memorystick. Tempting, but I don't think I will get one yet. I had an invite for an XBOX360 Guiness World Record thingy, but I didn't wanna go to that either, it costs $20. But apparently u get $150 worth of gear when you do go (after paying, of course). Still... I'm not a Microsoft fanboy. Maybe when Sony or Nintendo does a launch I might consider...

Today was a weird day. 3 people messaged me on MSN. AT THE SAME TIME, asking different things. I haven't talked to them for a while, and well, one was to say hi, and told me she spoke with a friend she didn't talk to for 4 years. They had an argument 4 years ago and suddenly they are gonna make up... Good for them. The other guy, he was asking me about what LCD screen I got, I had an 19" ever since I upgraded my comp and well, he was asking about refresh rates and stuff. Weird. The third one asked me about a girl that we used to chat to on irc's surburb. The fact I know this was that I used to live a few streets away from her (almost a km away though...) and thats why he asked me, because he knew we were in the same surburb. I actually also used to live a few streets away from her too, on the opposite side (think of a straight line) but that was because we moved from a small house to a big house, in the same surburb. The small house was probably 500 meters away from her, while the big house was a km away. But I never met her, and I don't think I will. All three who msned me are brisbanites. First one was there, but lived in melb a few years, then moved back. Second one, he lived there till a few years ago and then went off to shanghai. Third is still there. Stuck there till he decides to leave the place. Which is probably never.

The friend I chat to who isn't in Australia, she's off to TW for 3 weeks. Hope she has fun there, she probably will, but sometimes when I chat with her, she doesn't sound happy at all... thinks too much. She probably wouldn't know what's going on till her sis gets married, then something something. Because I wouldn't know what would happen, but it's still fun to chat with her.

I got a haircut today, I asked my mum to cut it short, and she thinks that 10cm is short... Next time I wouldn't save the money, I'll go to a barbers and then they can decide on a style. I think I have the same hairstyle for the past 20 years, that's for sure. (Except the years I lived by "myself" (with cousin's family) and in college. I got my uncle to cut my hair then...)

Work... same as usual. One ex-colleague, he worked with us for about a week in the warehouse, asked me on MSN if I was interested in doing call centre work at his company. Now, I could've gone into our callcentre, except I don't want to, because I don't like to hear people complain all the time. So why would I leave this job for that job, where I don't know anybody else there, and have to listen to people complain? I think if I'm ready for a change, I will go, but not yet... by the end of this year probably. I do need a holiday of sorts...

2006-03-19T22:55:00.000+11:00

So, it's been another while since I updated...

I was offered a job by a guy who got retrenched. Well not from him, but somebody he met while out and about. I went and checked out the job, it was a very repetitive job, even more so than mine. And it was dealing with $$, which I didn't like to deal with already. So I had to politely decline the offer. I will have to call up the guy who got retrenched to thank him for that opportunity though.

Also another guy got sacked because of the person who backstabs everyone. She came in later than everyone, and guess what, she got promoted in less than 3 months. That's because she backstabbed the guy who got retrenched, and well, the guy who got fired was just next in her sights. She even warned my colleague in the warehouse because he sent something wrong once. Now then, if the company goes down, we know who was the cause of it. Stupid backstabbing biatch.

I did go and have a look at car auctions with our opposite door neighbour, however after that time I didn't go since (the saturday just gone) because I was too tired. But it's pretty cool just to check out cars for fun :P But what happened yesterday was pretty good... he came over and offered us his lounge suite, because he bought a new one, and couldn't afford to see the set go to waste. It's a leather set, so it's pure black, which my parents don't really like, but apart from that, it has no problems. Just a few years old, but still in good condition. They got a new set with recliners for $600, so thats why they had to let this one go. So now we got a leather lounge in our place. Comfy too :P So that means I had to relocate some of the speakers and such, because they were bigger. In fact, the long piece was too big to go through the door (our old one could, just barely) so we took the screen door off the window and it went through that instead. I got the speakers and so now I got a 4.1 solution. It's really a 2.1 + 2.0, but the subwoofer is for the front one. I have tried it on some AC3 movie, it does work with the surround option, but my motherboard actually supports 7.1 sound... so if I got a 5.1 sound set, I only need to use one set of speakers.

Work is a bit weird, sometimes we'll be busy, other times we'll be even busier. Sometimes we'll have nothing to do for a few hours. That sux. So then our supervisor is going under the knife, should be recovering by now, but he won't be in this week. And also, I won't be in this friday, or Saturday if we need to do OT. Which we wouldn't. So I lose 1 day's pay... but hey, it's my bro's wedding, if I don't go, I don't think he would come to mine? haha nah I just want to take a day off just to feel what it's like... NOT.

Daylight savings still is on. Then next week it'll be back to normal. That'll screw other people over for sure :D

not normal..

2006-03-06T22:44:00.000+11:00

As from yesterday's post, my car is dying. Today, this is what happened...

7am: woke up. did the usual wake up routine, and then had breakfast. wrote an email to my supervisor saying I'll be late.
8am: "drove" the car to the mechanics. This means pushing the gas pedal and not going faster than 10km/h... Lucky it wasn't too busy on the roads just yet. Nobody there. asked the servo attendant. Usually opens at 8. wait in car.
8:15am: Mechanic Apprentice rocks up in his yellow combi. Asks me whats the problem, I tell him, he diagnoses it's a gone cylinder. However, tells me to wait till boss arrives.
8:45am: boss arrives, I tell him the same, he tells me the same, I'm running on 3 cylinders. I leave the keys and I go catch the train.
8:59am: I get a quote on the ticket by pressing the station and pressing 'day return'. $6. that's pretty expensive!
9:01am: I redid the procedure. $3.60. much better. I buy a ticket.
9:20am: train arrives, travelling
9:45am: train arrives to the station where I gotta change trains.
9:46am: I leave the train, go down the concourse, find the timetable, it says the connecting train leaves in 1 minute on platform 6, I run up platform 6, and the train has just gone.
9:50am: sat down and baked in the sun for about 16 minutes.
10:10am: the connecting train arrives. yay.
10:15am: arrives at the station close to work. I walk 15 mins through the park.
10:30am: arrive at work, meet everybody, and they all asked how my car was since I emailed. worked hard for 1.5 hours wrapping up pallets.
12:00: had lunch for an hour.
1:00pm: return to my normal duties.
4:30pm: all the couriers decide to rock up. So I put 12 pallets on B, 8 on C, and I don't know how many for TNT, but they actually remembered to pick up the trailer before 5pm!
5:15pm: finished with all the couriers for the day, and colleague bought a TV, so loaded him up as well. Also asked him if he can give me a ride home since we're on the same street (possibly not now since he's married... maybe he's moved).
5:30pm: finished off what I can, and then went with colleague home.
5:45pm: driving through the surburbs, we were suddenly surprised by smoke on the road. I thought it was a car at first, but when we looked, a house was on fire. There was thick billowing smoke coming out. We decided to drive onto the footpath, and asked if anything was helpable. Like if anybody needs help or something. some woman screams that her baby was in there or something, but it turned out to be a dog or cat. and then 5 mins later the fire brigade rocks up. We decided to leave then since it's not good being onlookers.
6:00pm: got home. Then walked to the mechanics, the car wasn't ready yet, he's done a service on it. I think it'll be expensive... >:( I'm really starting to focus on what I'm looking for in a car, when we do fix it or something.

Then the usual of bumming around in front of the computer for the rest of the evening after dinner and all that. So it was quite a bit of excitement really. I gotta go work at 7am though... so need to sleep. And then get a ride with my colleague till the car's fixed or something.

Ah I can't wait to get a "better" car.

Oh.

2006-03-04T23:57:00.000+11:00

I had a bbq today, it was at 2pm. Needless to say, it happened at 3pm, because everybody was fasionably late. Lots of meat... not enough veges. Lots of bread too... The birthday boy got a little pressie from the couple that formed from camp. None of us really gave him a present, just our presence. He was playing handball with his brother, who's about 12 years younger. It's just really weird. Apparently he doesn't spend too much time with him, so he's doing that, on his birthday. What a great bro he is. Anyways, we bbq and managed to overcook... so that went into the bin. WHAT A WASTE!!! We had 'linner' for 3 hours, and then went for an hour's walk around the national park. Then the security guard kicked us out. There was a weir (google it if you don't know what it is) and basically these leb kids were using a row boat from the bottom and trying to move it to the top. We watched them, the main kid was rowing backwards, with the sharp end in front of him (and the flat end behind him). That's the way to give yourself more work than necessary, since it's creating the most drag. So it was pretty entertaining for a few good minutes. If they had fallen over, it would've been better, but unfortunately it didn't happen.

Now... I normally don't complain a lot about the car... wait, I do!. The car's dying. I had a horrible time trying to get home today. It was shuddering all the time, from 0-60km/h. Because the transmission is dying around 0-2000rpms. The gears aren't meshing... And the car's only got a secondhand engine, plus done 163,xxx kms. So I was in a real state of panic, I drove all the way to eastwood without realising that I had missed the turnoff. So I was driving around, hoping not to stall or anything, because if I did, it would've been bad. Thats why I am looking at cars in really desperate conditions now. Cos if I don't... I'm screwed. No car... means no job. Well, I could use public transport, but that means I'm screwed either way. *sigh*.

Mardi Gras (http://www.mardigras.org.au) is on tonight. I'm lucky I head away from the city after the bbq. It's always jammed packed. Thats how they like it.

ARGH what a shitty week

2006-03-03T22:08:00.000+11:00

Work was work. and then it went to pieces. Literally. I didn't realise that the dumb f**ks from the courier company doesn't know how to handle our transport needs. AND I HAD TO CALL THEM UP... TWICE THIS WEEK. Thursday, I left around 6:45. Today, I left around 6:30. Lucky I kinda guessed that they'll screw us over, and they did. So I called up around 5... and both the couriers had somehow 'lost' our despatch details. So I kept on chasing it and chasing it, and finally at 5:30 they said that they'll send somebody over in half an hour. That was one courier. The other one came about 5 mins after the 'first' courier, and picked up the trailer and left. All together that took about 10 mins. Plus my locking up since I'm pretty much the only one left. So you can imagine that I'm pretty buggered. The two hours of OT doesn't really do it justice... -_-;

My bro is getting married on the 24th. That's a Friday. And I got asked if I want to go and witness the signing and blah blah. I said sure, since I'm a casual, I can just not work for a day. And then my mum was talking to my bro, and goes "oh you can go to work, no need to see the wedding". THEN WHY THE F**K DID YOU ASK ME? IF YOU DIDN'T WANT ME TO GO, DON'T NEED TO TELL ME! Far out, I'm severely pissed off today. Nothing's gone right... first Dick Smith, then my colleague thinking that he's helping me but actually doing something which he shouldn't... then the couriers, and now this. The only thing I can look forward to is probably tomorrow, a bbq for a friend's birthday. Needless to say... nothing's exciting in my life, I can tell you that. I am in serious consideration in finding a new job. I'm fed up with the entire situation. I got some $$ in the bank, maybe I can go travel, but I like being comfortable, so that would mean that travelling is probably got to be a tour or something. And that would be expensive...

Anyways, I'll just have to take it easy... or else I'll grow really old really fast.

Lucky... or not so Lucky

2006-02-23T22:50:00.000+11:00

It's been a while since I blogged... not that I have much to update. Work is hectic as usual, but that hasn't prevented me leaving at 5pm for the last 3 days, due to my supervisor telling me to go if there's nothing (plus I only have 1/2 hour lunch...). Also I did get some OT in, which is ok. Nothing too flash. Anyways... I had an accident with a skid that nearly took the tip of my finger off. Basically, the guy said that the skid wasn't too heavy, and then when I put my finger under to pick it up, he moved it (because it was at an angle, and he didn't warn me he was moving it) and it trapped my 4th finger on my left hand. Very lucky that it was trapped for about 1/2 of a second or less cos it basically nearly crushed my finger and probably would've chopped it off if it shifted in the wrong direction. So I got a nice bloody finger for a while. It basically feels tender just behind the fingernail. The skin's split about 1 cm, and if I don't bandage it, it bleeds. It doesn't hurt now, even if I squeeze it. I guess it just got tenderised. But yeah, it was pretty scary when the skid shifted when I was trying to pick it up.

Anyways, about the word "bloody". It seems to be the Australian Tourist's new promotion, to ask tourists from other countries "Where the bloody hell are you?" and get them to come here.

Something tragic happened this morning. I wasn't caught up in it, but it was actually very close to where I work. I drive through Lidcombe to work everyday. There's an overpass, which is the M4 motorway. Apparently a woman got EJECTED out of her vehicle because of a crash, and well... she flew across the median strip and got hit by an oncoming truck. Died at the scene, and basically held up the M4 motorway for kilometers. I got to work pretty much at 8:45. Other people, stragglers, came in after 9... and most came in around 10-10:30 because they chose to go the M4. Of course, they don't lose any pay, but I think it's sad. They should lose pay because well, they aren't working. But that's just sad anyways.

There's a girl who I have no interst in at work, she sometimes just comes to annoy me because I process the orders. Anyways, somehow she was asking my colleague how was his holiday to HK, and he said it was ok, and I jokingly said that he was gonna get married soon, and she believed it for a second... then my supervisor said that I got a 'little woman' in queensland because I went up there for a HS reunion (all guys). Then, for some reason, the girl asks me this question. "Do you like guys or girls?". I was like WHAT THE F**K!!?! Naturally I don't like her, and never will. I wouldn't ever tell her who I liked. But I did tell my colleague who I liked. The thing is... I don't think she really has a liking for me, cos we're still treating each other like friends. But she showed me her webcam on MSN, and well, she's actually not bad at all. Though she does look a little fierce when she's concentrating, or has no 'expression'. She's got a diary on yahoo, and well, she says she likes these two guys (even got their names...) so... I'll just see if she's really interested in those guys, and if she is, I'll go find some other girl to lavish my attention upon. :P

Ahhhh Friday is coming up... I definately need the rest.

2006-02-05T23:52:00.000+11:00

So it wasn't meant to be... the flirting was just flirting, it won't get anywhere. She just treats me as a friend, nothing more. Oh well time to find the next girl... :P

On other news, Christians are rather evil and manipulative... especially one of the girls from camp, who I've been chatting with recently. I have no interest in her, she has no interest in me (ain't that the sad truth) yet she wants me to go out with her. Well I told her that why do I want to go out with her, and her friends, in a more than friends manner, and then I realised that she wants to convert me to Christianity... I realise this only because I've been in the same situation before, in uni... when a group of friends told me to come to a "party" and then I went and it was a church session inside an auditorium... and they tried to convert me but I am a firm believer of Buddhism... so it was a no go zone for them next time around. Needless to say I'm weary of whatever they tried to invite me to. So I am weary of what this girl from camp invites me to.

My parents can be pretty evil (in a good way). They went on a tour around Sydney to see the temples. Left in the morning, and I was supposed to receieve a call from them and go pick them up at a train station. 5pm came and went, I was sitting there in the lounge waiting... waiting... watching tv... and more waiting... all the way to 5:30... then I said stuff it, went to my room and surfed because I didn't want to chat to people and suddenly leave. Then my parents came back around 6:15... -_- They didn't call, they were actually dropped off about 1km away from home and they walked... 30 mins or so. I was worried at that time, I had locked up the house and it was stuffy... and they were a little apologetic but still it was ok, since they were safe.

Crazy, I tell ya.

Feeling emotional... or something like that...

2006-02-01T23:39:00.000+11:00

I feel like I'm beginning to deeply like somebody... previously I haven't really spoken to this person, but recently I've been chatting to this person at least once a day. Sometimes even at work, when I don't have any work. I don't know for sure if I really DO like this person, but there's the joking, and light flirting. Needless to say, if I ever meet them I will be able to make a better judgement. Hell, I don't even know if she really likes me or not, but if she flirts with me, it's probably a good thing? I'll probably see how far it goes... if nothing happens, then that was just fun... if something does happen, then its good... The only problem is that there's a 2 hour time difference... Ahh...

Work's been really dead. Today there wasn't anything really, it was all yesterday's orders. There was a mad rush to push them through, because it was EOM, but the first day back and it's DEAD. So we're gonna have a stocktake soon. That'll be easy, since we don't have that much stock. :P I'll be able to do most of it by myself because of the fact that my supervisor has kidney stones or gall stones or some stones, and need to get a scan. The other guys will be doing it in teams, and if we really don't have much to go out, it'll be smooth sailing. All the new stuff will be coming in next week. Yay. Everybody that comes into the warehouse goes 'where's the stock?!?' because it's EMPTY. Well, you guys did a great job of clearing out the stock, we're just waiting for new stuff to come in :P Then it's the cycle of clearing the stock. And that's the way it goes.

The weather's giving me the shits lately. Like cool and cloudy one day, and blistering hot the next. And it looks like it'll be blistering hot tomorrow. Damn... sweating like a pig, when we're not doing anything. What happens if we started working hard? Sweating like a... river... :P Lucky it seems to be dead in the orders, but... the warehouse gets hot no matter the situation :P

2006-01-27T00:16:00.000+11:00

It's not really something special, but this year it was a different Australia day. I actually went out and had yumcha with friends! ...from the camp. Three friends, Thomas, Mark, and Cathy. Thomas bought a friend, Bensin (that's how he spells it). Mark bought two friends, Tommy and Sullivan (maybe from Monsters Inc?). Cate, James, Susan and Arthur didn't turn up. I did try to invite Mary, but she never got my message. MSN acts up, again. Anyways, all in all, the total amount for each person was $23, which is pretty average I guess. It is an expensive meal, and I wasn't really full, but yeah... I don't do it terribly often. After that, we checked out Market City's upstairs... wasn't much, except that there's alot of people. Mark also had some friends in the city, namely Chris, Forrest (Gump, Forrest Gump), and Elsa. They seem a nice bunch, Tommy is a doctor and will be going to Japan, and then Chris seems well knowledged in Japan, so they started chatting quite a bit. Meanwhile we're just sitting there sipping tea. Kinda weird situation. Then they headed out to Starbucks, and we spent around 10 mins there seeing if there's something that the collective group wanted to do (9 people), and the latter 3 wanted to go south 45mins drive away to a national park, the rest just wanted to go home...

Spent the rest of the day doing jack because I was so tired. I walked about 1-2km home because I realised I got off at the wrong stop, the train doesn't get to my station via the Lidcombe line, so instead of getting on a train to Birrong and then go to my station, I decided to leg it. Took about 15 mins of solid walking, and it was quite quiet along the street. Not too bad, but the flies really annoyed me.

Back to work, then the weekend. Maybe will go out again for the weekend, who knows...

Sporadic New Post!

2006-01-19T22:08:00.000+11:00

Well... nothing much to report, except that I'm running on low gear. The weather is perfect for sleeping in, except I don't have the luxury. Maybe 5 mins. Unlike one of the casuals, he said something which I find perfectly reflects the idea... He woke up 7am... thought he could have 5 more mins... closed his eyes, next thing he knew, it was 8:40. Hm... if I did the same thing, I would've slept till 9:40, and didn't get to work till 10, at the earliest.

Never Assume...
I drive a bomb. It's a 1989 Mitsubishi Magna... So naturally, people think that they have the upper hand, and try to overtake me. *BZZZT* Wrong. This f**kwit decides to chase me about 1km away from work. Like going 80km/h down a 60km/h zone. So I increased my speed, and then had a race. For some reason, he decided it was his right to try and overtake me, at this speed. And then the lights were red, so he slowed down, I went across, he followed me a bit late, but still had the f**king nerve to come back and yell at me through the window. Well, he's a idiot for driving that fast, and trying to think that he can overtake me. Alot of times this has happened... I don't know why, but this car can definately accelerate if it has to. Sydney drivers are crazy, I am almost there.

Media, media, all over...
For the past 3 days we've been filling orders for Media. It's one of them "monthly" things, where they push out all the media they can. CDR, DVDR, and the like. (Lucky no Blueray or HD-DVD media yet). I guess me and my colleagues are sick of media, but its a job. Tomorrow, supposedly, there's more media coming in from overseas. Joy. I've been doing the pallet jobs myself while the other 2 blokes were doing media. Sure beats boredom.

It takes two...
to tease. I mean my colleague(s). If they don't respond back, like they are busy or something, then I can't tease them, because it's no fun. The colleague who sits behind me, he's always either busy, or surfing the net. Some colleagues I get to tease maybe once a week. Depends on how much they come down to the warehouse. So... , I get bored enough that I surf around looking at mobile fones and seeing which one is the best "bang" for my buck. I'm considering switching to a plan, because I am almost running out of credits. Now, that means 1) I get a new fone which might be better than the crap I got now... (even though it's a 3G fone that you can't get in Australia legally (i.e no legal support)) 2) I can call whoever I want, whenever I want. However, I don't have anybody to call and nobody calls me. So I will just make this last $x last on my prepaid. I've had this number for a long time, I guess I wanna change it for a better one.
the number ends on "44" and it's not a good number in chinese. :P http://www.stop.com.au is the site I am looking at, it has the Nokia 6111 (slider fone). Looks interesting... Otherwise I would get the Nokia 6101... http://www.stop.com.au/ms2/phonefinder/PhoneCompare.aspx?ID1=414&ID2=444

Crapertainment... or lack thereof...
Now, Simpsons is my staple diet. For some reason Bleach 64 and 65 isn't done by Lunar yet. Futurama has been expanded to 3 days a week, Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. And Supernatural has taken off, or so Channel Ten would let you to believe. I spent an hour oogling at nearly naked chicks last nite, the "Victoria's Secret 10th year Fashion show". There were some good outfits there. But I don't even have a gf to buy some for... so it's all moot, really.
I got some episodes of Pimp My Ride... now, I wouldn't get a free pimping for the current car, because simply, it's not worth it. I rather get an engine which is less than 5 years old... then pimp the outside. Yeah. I have to say that the US version totally rolls over the UK version. The UK are conservative. Their 'pimping' wouldn't be on any of the same level as the US guys. Well that's my assement from watching some of the shows.

And there you have it boys and girls... another boring and pointless update to my life. Yay. :P

I'll **** them.

2006-01-09T20:33:00.000+11:00

So, it's the start of a new week, and what does my colleague and ex-supervisor do? They take a sickie. So, there's absolutely nobody in the service section, so I was forced to go and be the service guy for the day. Pretty much the entire day I had people asking me to do this and do that... and I'm flat out trying to receive in RMA, and then picking and packing, and then shipping out spare parts and RMAs... it was all hectic. I even had to pick a part for somebody upstairs because their laptop's power supply died... sucked in... :P But she wasn't nice to me at all, kept on hitting me... -_-. Till I got her part. Next time I wouldn't even pick a part for her, she can go hit somebody else. But alls well because I took 1/2 hour lunch instead of a full hour, so I left at 5pm. Except that I didn't really leave at 5pm, but I can say that I did get home at 5:30. Which is a record... since I left around 5:15. There was something going on at homebush bay, some sports I guess but I didn't know what, all the parking areas are full of cars lining up to get in... Hopefully nothing will happen to the company (people usually park in our parking spaces in times of sporting events held at the stadium).

I Totally didn't do anything on the weekend. Absolutely nothing. I did change the rego sticker, because it was due in a couple of days. Same day as my friend's birthday, they had a "party" on the weekend... but I know she'll be having a nice day on her birthday :D. Yeah, apart from that, cleared a few things off my HDDs... now got a nice little space... around 30gb free. This was from having 4gb free across 370gbs. Still... HDDs are getting a little cheaper... and it's nice to keep stuff on the HDD for quick access... but I'm always getting stuff (anime) that it just chews through my HDD. I do still have 6 more SATA ports... having bought a top-notch mobo with 8 SATAs... Might start using them eventually... But I felt very very lazy.

Got some chinese horoscopes about 2006. Seems like I'll still be getting "tao hua" till June. After June, it'll be hard to get a girl. So.... what's the chance of me getting a girl before June? Hopefully good. :P

You know what's worse about my job... even if I'm sick, my colleague and ex-supervisor wouldn't lend a hand, they're f**king pricks when it comes to that. I can be expected to help them when one of them is away, but noooooooo, when one of us (on the new goods) is away, they don't give a flying f***. That's the sort of attitude that won't see them last long, if some people had their way :P

HAPPY NEW YEAR Y'ALL!

2006-01-01T23:03:00.000+11:00

And it's the start of a brand new spankin' year. Seriously, I have great expectations for this year. NOT. Right now the weather is probably around 35 degrees. 2 hours ago, it was probably around 39 degrees. 5 hours ago, it was 42. You can get the idea. The max today was 43 in sydney, don't really wanna know where, but we sure felt it, when we 'woke' up this morning.

Judy, our host, hasn't slept well because she's been out for 3 days and had around 8 hours sleep for the 3 days. This morning, she didn't sleep at all. She managed to catch about 3 hours shut-eye this morning, but still... That's not really fair for her because I was chatting with her till 5am, and then another friend kept on going till around 8am... by then we only had 8 people left. 2 people locked themselves in Judy's bedroom. So she couldn't really sleep either. But yeah, the heatwave made us all stay in her apartment for a long time. We originally had a bbq to attend, but since it was 42 degrees, we decided to aim for somewhere better. Airconditioned comfort. So we brainstormed where to go. Airport, Hospital, somebody's place with aircon, Cinema, and finally Karaoke. So we went karaoke, but I didn't sing. I never sing when I'm at karaoke... just don't feel like singing... I didn't sing at camp either, thats why they didn't like me... but yeah... I don't know why I get dragged to karaoke. It's not my type of activity.

So, the day before. Saturday 31st, there was a plan to go to Judy's and celebrate NYE there. Other people said they would either go, or go watch the fireworks. I couldn't be stuffed going to the city and mingling with the massive throng of crowds there. But obviously some people did. And I'm not happy about that, because they did say they were gonna go to Judys. But anyways, nobody really started drinking because they were running out of alcohol. So they did the next best (or worse?) thing. They started mixing.

Mixing? Is that bad you say? I should think so, even they were disgusted with some of the concoctions they mixed. The ingredients were....

Beer.
Pepsi.
Coke.
Lemonade.

Not bad enough yet?

Soymilk.
Vinegar.
Chili Oil.
Soy Sauce.
and Coffee. Instant grind.

Beer is the main part, then they got crazy with the ingredients.

The game was the same as the xmas party. You either do the dare, or you drink. They tried to make the dare as 'dangerous' as the drink. French kissing, etc etc. Which made me very bad because I managed to drink the mixed evilness 5 times. I drank them for some girls because they wouldn't touch the drink. I even had one go out of my nose because I was laughing. After washing my face, I could still smell soy sauce in my nose... now that's gross.

But I believe that fate is very strong that nite. Or at least Yuen Fen. Basically one of the gals like a guy, and has told the girls so, and they told him, but he's been keeping it as an option. However, both the guy and girl got the cards, and the dare was to French kiss for 1 minute. Now, both they didn't wanna do it, but you can tell they wanted to, but not with 10 people watching. So they drank the wine. Except that both doesn't have a good alcohol rating. So half a glass of wine, and they were pretty much gone for a good 2-3 hours. They officially became a couple in the group's eyes. Sleeping next to each other, holding hands. Cute :) When they were still out, we were waiting for Midnight. Except that Judy's clock is fast, and then we managed to miss the countdown. So we toasted the New Year, and yeah, nobody really wanted to play after. Some people went out to get more wine, but they didn't come back till 2am. They basically left before 11 and went to watch the fireworks and came back because they decided they wanted to. At least they came, unlike some people.

I have an iron stomach. I'll live. But if there's another heatwave, I rather stay home and not go out with a bunch of crazy people. I need to hang out with a different group.

Anyways, Cheers to 2006, and hopefully everybody will have fun and a good year. I will try my best to make 2006 a year to remember, since 2005 was pretty good since camp.

Xmas, 2005

2005-12-27T09:25:00.000+11:00

It's like the best Xmas ever.

2 Parties, a week after another.

First the company party, now, a party held by friends. Both had its own way of fun. The Company party was fun because it was entertaining. The friends party is fun because its full of friends. And strangers, but the friends make it fun. Anyways, here's how it happened.

One of the girls from the singles camp invited all the guys (except me I think) to her party. It costs $100, and well, no girls will be there. So, naturally, when the guys asked the girls from camp if they were going, they didn't know, and got pissed off. So Mary said that she'll make the party for the camp people. It'll be better because it's $30, and you can buy a pressie to swap with people. The $100 party was at the American Club (or so I heard), but the $30 party was at the W Hotel. Basically there's many groups of people from the camp, each type is different. One of the groups is the Cate group, they have their own people from either before or made really quick during the camp. Mainly girls, but now they have a few guys in there as well. I'm not in their group, I'm not elite enough. Anyways, they organised it within a week, which is pretty good of them.

So, December 23, I've been working the whole week. The end of the week, and I managed to come to work everyday before 8am (8am on wed, 8am on thurs, and 7am on fri). Normally we finish at 5:30, but since it's the last working day before xmas, it's the tradition to leave before time and enjoy the rest of the day. So most left around 2pm. I had to stay behind and leave around 3:30pm. However, I was given a dozen of beer by my supervisor as a present, but the beer in fact came from one of our courier companies. It's still good, because I didn't really give him a present... maybe next year, if I still haven't left yet.

I got home and changed, and then got stuck answering a guy's question on msn... I don't know why, he always msgs me asking questions. He's either shy or strange, I guess it's that he's shy to talk to girls online. Me, I'm not shy talking to both sexes online, but when in real life... hah it's a different story. That's probably because I only got brothers, and no sisters. Anyways, I left home around 5:30... the train pulled out of the station just as I got there, and I had to wait another 20 mins for a train. The train got to the city around 6:45. I got out, and I had a copy of the map, I STILL managed to get lost 4 times. Turned the wrong street, and then walked up the wrong street, backtracked, and managed to cross a bridge which wasn't on the map, because it was so darned old... but I still managed to rock up to the place at 7:30. Only David was there... we were there for a few mins because we didn't know where it was... Turns out it was at the back in a place with white curtains. We saw others who also went to the camp, and we followed them in. The gang who organised it was already there. So thats when the party 'started'.

Most people were fasionably late. That's to be accepted, especially when it's a Friday. Some even came around 9pm... But it was good to catch up on the people who you didn't see for a few weeks. Everybody was given something to put on their heads, cute stuff like that, and only finger food was served. Needless to say, I wasn't really full by the end of it, but still... I wasn't expecting to be.

Everybody just talked and had fun, which was good. There weren't any games, which was good as well. Everybody who talked to me or knew me better than "total stranger status" wondered why I wasn't talking as much, and well... I DID start work at 7am. Most of them didn't work on that friday. Lucky bums. So I tried to make it a good evening. Presents were drawn, and I had the pleasure of drawing from one of the gang. It was a set of shot glasses. Thanks Judy, they are pretty nice. (I don't think I would show anybody from camp this blog because I might say something afterwards...).

So, because that gang already decided to go to Judy's place afterwards, they already had the cars filled. I was left to go with Mary and Thomas to Judy's place. We managed to get off the wrong place, but STILL got there before everybody else. They came a good 10 mins later, and we met Canny outside Judy's place in the carpark of KFC. She just got there as well. She couldn't go to the party because she works the night shift. After that we all got into Judy's place, and more and more people came, but nobody really drunk anything... it was Friday night afterall, not a night of fun. We watched "Dreamcatcher" and then that was about it... the rest was either talking or just mucking around. The night ended around 3am. And only a handful stayed behind at Judy's place.

The morning was even worse, I guess I should've sorta just left at that time, but I didn't... I wanted to see what they would do. Most people left, there were only a few of the gang left, and they started cooking dinner way before dinnertime (after lunch). After that, people came back for dinner. And then after that, for drinks and games.

I won't go into the details of the games, except that most guys suffered humiliation. Especially Thomas, because he wouldn't drink since he had to go home. So he was basically a drag queen for 3 times. All in a row. The other notable dare was that some of the guys had to french each other. Now that's gross. But the girls LOVED it. Guess no guy and no girl wanted to really french just yet... but there's signs of couples forming soon. Maybe before NYE!

I was unwittingly a light bulb that evening. I only had 2.5 shots of vodka, and since it was my first time with strong alchohol, I was dizzy, and couldn't stay up... So I went to crash in the spare bedroom. James, he loves to drink, he had maybe 7-10 shots of vodka, but he was semi-wasted, way more than me. That was ok when he was sleeping next to me. But then, Cate comes in and then they started kissing and shit. I was like OMG they don't mind some guy pretending to sleep besides them? I kept on trying to fall asleep but with them making sounds besides me (no they didn't go all the way) it was very awkard for me just to get up and leave. They would definately know for sure. So when it was 8:30am, I just got up my stuff and left. Elmer walks in and finds them on top of each other (Cate on top of James) and just kicked Cate because they had satisified looks on their faces. I can't blame them because they sure had a fun night. Thats when I decided that I can't stay in that place any longer, and called my parents to come pick me up, because it's been 2 days since I've left home. And that's the end of that.

After that, I had a chat with friends on msn, and they figured that they (James and Cate) were having something already. And we postulated that theres a few couples in the making... around 5 or so. It's already been 5 weeks since the camp, and with them hanging out every weekend, of course something's bound to happen. I didn't hang out with them enough, so nothing's happened. And their circle is bound to get smaller and smaller. Till it's a couples circle. And then I'll be looking for another circle to join. But who cares, they are still friends, and if they want people to have fun with, I can have fun with them, but if James ever crashes in a bedroom... Hell I'm getting out of there. No way I wanna become a lightbulb.

These past 2 days has been pretty relaxing. However, I helped moved our wooden fence stack and also gave away 4 of the xmas pressie beers from my supervisor to the guys who removed them, from the council. And also topped the car up with oil, it was running low. Then tomorrow (Wed) I'll be back to work, from 8am to 4pm. Yay. Work. Yay...

Hmm when will I like a girl enough to ask them first? I don't know yet. Everybody sorta been asking me that question... especially about people from camp. I'm too picky for my own good. It's not about standards, it's about the consequences... I know the consequences of making a wrong choice...

The Company Xmas party

2005-12-18T15:38:00.000+11:00

Saturday... I had arranged with my brother to go meet his friends for xmas lunch... so I woke up early and tried to figure out what I'll be doing. 8am, then surfed the net for a while... then breakfast, then left the house with my video player and camera (which didn't get used). Then I caught the train to the city, $4.80 return. There, I was supposed to meet my bro at town hall, but he didn't arrive till much later. By that time, the train was coming, so I rushed to buy a ticket to milson's point. Just made it too. Anyways, we made our way to the friend's place... didn't know anybody there, but it was a nice lunch... And we ended up failing to karoke (because nobody really wanted to) but we played "Scattergories". Its to think of the answer to the questions based on the first letter (roll of the dice). Our team came last because people didn't like our answers. Like nobody there knew who Armand Asante was. And they didn't like Honey Hazlenut... Anyways, left there around 4:30 because my bro and his SO has to go to another thing, and so I walked back to the station, and got to Town Hall. And from there, it only took me about an hour to walk to Star City casino, and then another 15 mins to walk to the place, Dolton House.

Dolton House is in fact a pier. The second last pier opposite star city. The last pier is a park. With some nice art. I was there around 6, one hour early. So I walked around the park, it took 10 mins. Then I sat down and listen to music and watched Simpsons. Around 6:30 I started walking over back to the entrance of Dolton House. The entrance is in fact stairs, since the dining areas are all on the top. Already one couple was there, Ernest and his wife. Then Tim and his friend came, and then I saw my colleague. This is what happened. He came Right to Left (along the road.) He saw that there was Dolton House, and so he semi-stopped (in the middle of the road). Then he drove up and turned around, and then drove back across Left to Right, and stopped short of the Car Park ($10 for the evening). He then turned the car around and drove Right to Left again, this time I actually pointed to the car park, but he didn't see me. he went past again, then Left to Right, stopping before the car park, and then DID ANOTHER RIGHT TO LEFT! This time I was beyond belief, he's already gone by twice. Then he turned around and went Left to Right, and finally went into the carpark. That wasn't the end of it. I was still waiting. He comes out, and then I got a fone call. IT WAS HIM! The conversation was as follows :-
Him: "Man where are you?"
Me *looking directly at him*: "Right in front of you man"
Him *looks up*: "F**king hell". *Hangs up*

He didn't recognise me because I was wearing a pair of black pants and a shirt.
Talk about being a good friend. I recognised him and his gf when he first drove past... -_-

Anyways, we went up, we were still 15 mins early. So there were 7 people there... Then more and more people arrived. Then more and more. So, 7pm, there were around 30. Finger food was served, it wasn't too bad. Some seafood, some not seafood. 8pm, we could go in. 12 tables, each hosting 10 people. Max 120 people... one table was only 4, so totally around 114.

Entree was either calamari (not rings) or some sort of bird wing. I had the calamari, it was nice.
Then the main course was offered. Either chicken on soft yellow rice, or beef steak, well done. Of course I chose the chicken. Then they had the prize draw. my colleague got one of the prizes, a pack of 6 latest CDs (something they had bought before, but played to get the music). Another one also got a CD pack... more about her later. She seems to get prizes every xmas party... Then it was a LCD monitor, a notebook, a 32" LCD TV, and the grand prize, a Projector. Daniel got that... lucky bastard... But he got the wrong side of the books with the lady who drew the prize... basically called her old... but she begrudgingly gave him the prize anyways.

Still during the dinner, other events unfolded... Apparently my supervisor betted one of the waiters that he couldn't sing a bit of opera. $50... but he did. Then one of the girls Allison bet another waiter that he couldn't sing a song in French, and he did... $100. Then it turned out to be a heated argument about french vs italian, and then another waiter stepped in, spanish style. Turned out they were the "Three Waiters", who can sing classical opera style. They had big voices, and well they can pretend to be french and italian but they are indeed aussies. The one who pretended to be French, in order to prove that he has passion over the italian, kissed the hand of the girl who won the CDs before my colleague. For a full minute. Heh that's pretty funny. I guess we'll ask her if she got that guy's number or something :D

So after that performance, we finished our main course. Then it was dessert. Two choices... 1) Ice cream on top of a pudding. 2) Fairy Floss on top of toffee apple on top of almond icecream. 2) was what I got, and it definately tasted better than number 1) (so I think... :P) Then the magic show started.

What a great magician! He's fairly low-class (rude) but he's pretty funny. Did some tricks that I've not seen before, but some that I have... and some I can figure out. But some were pretty good... Most of it was slight of hand, plus the confidence that most people were drunk... So, after that show finished, everybody was cheering... he's that good... Then it was the end of the night... it finished around 11... some people left... then I got a ride with my colleague and his gf... to central. I just missed the train, so waited 20 mins, and thus got home around 1.

My bro Don was home from India by then, and thus ended the day. Needless to say, it was a fun evening out. And I drank 4 glasses of alcohol... 2 reds, 1 white, and 1 champagne. I was thirsty this morning... :P

'tis the season for cherries...

2005-12-13T23:00:00.000+11:00

I am sick of cherries. Some people might think that cherries are the bee's knees, but to me, they aren't the best. But still I would have one or two, just to give the impression that I still like cherries. Why? Because of the trip... to cherry land.

Saturday 10th of December... Was still in a sleep state when I heard music... ah crap it was my phone... who would call me up at this ungodly hour? Of course, the person who invited me. She was worried that I wouldn't be waking up on time... but never fear, she underestimated me... I always has two sources of alarm... one's my watch, the other's my alarm clock. They don't ring at the same time, of course, just to keep things interesting (kinda like a snooze function...) Anyways, I got up, dressed in jeans, and even though some thought it was gonna be hot, I still wore jeans... then had brekkie, after what my dad kept on saying... to pick the good ones, blah blah... then I drove to strathfield station. I had to find a parking space which wasn't timed... So it was quite far from the station. Turns out that there were more than one group going to Young to pick cherries... because at 7am sharp a bus pulled away with only 10 people on board... I got called about 10 past to find out I was on the wrong side of the station.. there was a xmas tree on the other side and met the crew... two michelles, one jean, one chao, then more people came... one jenny, one mihiro, one jiro (some name), and some other people... and then the bus came at half past 7... they were late from the city. When we got on the bus, it was about 3/5ths full, we had filled up to 4/5ths... then it was a 15 mins trip to liverpool to pick up the remaining 10 people... the bus was full with 52 people...

Once full, we were out to the countryside... via hume highway... 5 hours with 2 pitstops.... drove past the intersection to yass... the pitstops were for food and breaks... food was hungry jacks, and it's fun to see people rush to order food and scoff it down... when they could eat on the bus...

Once at Young, it was to a farm called Wombat farm... plenty of flies... some guy even swallowed one... but yeah, we had 2.5 hours to pick, and well, I picked the big ones so I had quality... 3 kgs... other people went crazy and picked around 8-20 kg... but at $6 its considered cheap... also I had a stomach ache in the middle, so lost some time there... but we were glad to get out of that place... the flies were EVERYWHERE... anyways... to cut the story short, the bus trip back was also uneventful... except for the guy who went out to take a leak... and half the bus took pics... I think he's not gonna live it down... it was a company outing for my friend's (who invited me) company... and they are very mysterious about it too...

After arriving back in sydney, it was around 9... then we had dinner (me, two michelles, one jean, and michelle's bf, johnny) at a korean restraunt... 10pm finish and I drove them back because they were on the way... so got home around 11... and that was a day I won't try to repeat in a long while...

So, cherries... I'm sick of it but I'm really not gonna say anymore about it...

week in review

2005-12-06T20:10:00.000+11:00

So, there was a bbq last saturday. I offered to bring mochi, and they said ok. Then the day just before, they told me to bring steak. So I was kinda conned into bringing steak. Anyways, that aside, I got told to change my glasses... so I kinda only had one day to do it, and that was saturday. Basically, the bbq was at 2pm, and so I woke up early at 8am (on a saturday... wah... that's early :P) and then got to the shopping centre to check out the optometrists. There were two, but since I've dealt with OPSM for most of my glasses wearing life (which is pretty much since grade 7) I decide to go check them out. Turns out the frames are rather expensive... easily passing $200. I chose the cheapest frame there, for $160 or so... STILL TOO EXPENSIVE! I thought the lenses would be like $80 max, but turns out after the consultation (on sunday) it turns out the lenses cost $209 for the cheapest polycarbonate! The hi density ones costs EVEN MORE! CRAP! That's over my budget already... so I had to pay a deposit and they will call me back in a week... Then I will look different... and hopefully be more attractive... :P

So, I bought $40 worth of steaks. 8 pieces of pork, 6 of beef, and 4 of lamb. Turns out I did most of the bbqing as well. I turned up at 2pm sharp, found a place to park, and immediately got called over to cate's car who just pulled up and helped her with her bbq foodstuffs. Then once settled inside, we planned our attack... to cook food now or later? and other trivial stuff like that.. I got delegated to help make some fingerfood, which is quite easy since it's just copying a master biscuit. Cheese, then salmon, then onion, then caviar, and a different caviar, and finally a piece of green vege(basil? or some herb) It's nice seafoody biscuit. Then the next one was a mixed cherry + tomato + cucumber garnished kinda biscuit. The last one was a fruit one, it had fruit cheese, then blueberry, then sliced strawberries, then halved grape, then cream on top... all nice finger foods. Then basically, more people and more people rocked up, and everybody started eating and chatting... one of the girls had to leave for a wedding, so we started cooking at 4, she had some food, then left... I became the unofficial chef for most of the day, cooking all sorts of stuff... steaks, korean bbq meat, prawns, octopii, and sausages. People had their fill. Well if they didn't, they didn't complain to me... But the food was satisfying enough. So the other events were: cards, chatting, mahjong. I had played cards and chatted, but didn't play mahjong. What else was there... Thomas was the unfortunate soul of the bbq. He basically got dragged into some activity, and well, it was licking cream off his arm. Had the guy won, the girl had to lick off his arm. But the girl won, so the guy had to lick it off Thomas's arm. That wasn't the end of it... the girl had to lick cream off the finger. But the guy had to lick it off Thomas's EAR. So he was a victim. Also, at the camp, he made a bet with a girl called Mary. If mary can throw a small piece of rubbish about 2 meters into a bin, Thomas will jump into the pool. What he didn't count on was Mary scrunching up the rubbish into a tight ball and threw it in like a rock. And he didn't jump into the pool at the camp, so Mary was calling him chickenshit for a whole week. Till he decide to jump into the pool once mary came back from the wedding. So to get mary off his back... hahaha I think there might be something going on there, will see if anything does happen between anybody who went to the camp for sure.

So work was kinda weird... I get dropped into the service role for the morning and then back to shipping goods in the afternoon. And there's like work on and off, which makes people wonder what's going on in the sales department. Tomorrow I'll get sent back into the shipping department. Yay.

There's talk of a xmas party organised by the camp people... so I'll have to see how that one will turn out... ever since the camp, I think I've spent more per week than I'd spend in 6 months. But it's all good, meeting new people is always a good thing, in my case.

Ahhh I'm so tired nowdays... sleep is not coming to me easily, I get woken up sometimes 4am for no reason. Maybe it's too warm or something. Working in the warehouse when it's humid isn't good, especially when I walk into the offices and it's nice and cool... and coming back out, I almost caught a cold. Lucky I didn't. I just had the sniffles for about 10 mins but after that I was fine.

Also another fact I found interesting was that I've never really properly drunk alcohol before camp. The highest alcohol % I had was 4.5%, which was a vodka cruiser. Beer was only 3% or something... Then at the camp, when we snuck out and I had scotch, that was pretty high. But nothing as high as what I had on saturday. I had baileys (12% a/c) before they bought out the big guns, an alcohol called "Mou tai" from China... it's supposedly the best spirit they got, for dignitries and such. It's 45%! That's pretty high. It burnt my throat as it went down, but it's nice and sweet before it burns. I will have to say that with these new friends, I'll have to build up my alcohol tolerance. Not that I will drink too much though... so I should be ok :P

In my spare time, I've been playing Need for Speed Most Wanted. While most people think it's 'so-so', I didn't really feel that way. They probably don't get the point of chasing and shit, but hey, I enjoy it quite a bit... it takes all your skill to dodge the cars...and crashing into cars and not dying, that's simply the best. I shall play it to completion I hope... :P

Adventure in the wet

2005-11-28T21:51:00.000+11:00

This is gonna be a long entry. However, it will document what has happened from Friday till Sunday, of the weekend
just gone by.
It was the day of Friday. Everything was fine and dandy. Work was fairly easy, it was a near end of month week,
and I managed to get everything finished before 4:30. So I said to my supervisor I will go early, he agreed and
said I can leave when it was quiet. So, it was quiet at 4:45 and I left. Nothing bad happened on the way home, I
got my stuff and then dropped my bro off at the station. It was weird that I was fighting traffic on the opposite
way from work though... people must leave work early on a Friday I guess. I stop-started for about 30 mins then a
good run, then stop-started the rest of the way. Arriving at 6:30, there were plenty of cars in the carpark at
Naamaroo, but I managed to find one space to park. And so the fun begins.
Dinner was a lunchbox. There were two flavours, one was 'ru ro' (baised pork), the other was 'pai gu' (pork steak).
Immediately when we got there, I almost had a bond with several guys there. They were in the same boat as me,
being told to come here and no questions asked. So they were as 'what the f*** am I doing here' attitude as me.
One of them was Jimmy, and the other was Tom. They are both very funny... Like 'funny c**t' funny. We basically
just hung out through the rest of the camp. After the dinner, we got told to sit down and they told us what cabin
we got to live in for the duration. I was in cabin 4, with Jimmy. We were separated from Tom. Still, that doesn't
prevent us being smartasses in the camp The cabin was basically 4 sets of 4 bunk beds, 16 beds in total. Our room
contained 9 people max, the other would only have 12 people max, but with the people that didn't turn up I think
they probably also had 9 people as well. After that, we got back to the hall, and played the 'lets get to know each
other with 1 minute each time' game. Essentially, it's speed dating, except there's 21 (supposedly) guys and gals
and the time is much shorter. It became a shouting match because everybody was trying to chat with everybody, and
then swapping to the next person. So that was pretty fun but hectic. And repetitive as well, since you repeat what
you say essentially 20 times. But sometimes the girls didn't seem to be interested, and well, that's disheartening,
but hey that's life. I wasn't interested in most of them either, but I tried my best to make some friends. After
that, we played another game called 'Guess what'... It involves you writing your name on one piece of paper,
location on another, and an action on the last piece. This can have either weird or strange consequences. I was
REALLY out of it. I got second last, and it was singing. I don't sing. So I got forced to do a pole dance, except
I didn't want to pole dance. So I really made it a bad impression. But remember, I didn't really want to be there
in the first place. So I think I put the nail in my coffin. The next event was another guessing game, except this
time there were only 10 guys chosen. 5 guys in a row, all masked by Batman, but blinded. Looked really cool,
because there's different colors for each guy. Then there's 5 girls, who are gonna massage the guys, and the aim is
to massage the guy you're assigned. And the guy has to guess who massaged them the best. The first 5 had 3 guys
guessing right. Then I got chosen to go into the second group. Now, I had not known which girl was which at this
stage, so it was difficult already. Then the massage begins. Now, 3 girls were actually nice to me. One ticked
me. One was ABSOLUTELY EVIL to me. This girl basically slapped me hard. Like *smacked* hard. Also I got punched.
Almost as if the girl was out to get me. I nearly died of shock because I was being smacked so hard. Then she got
swapped so I was spared. None of us got it right though... and there wasn't another round after that -_-". I asked
around to see if they remember who slapped me, and NOBODY can remember! Geez... talk about a bad start huh. We then
got separated into groups for next day's activities. I was in group 3. We had 4 girls and 3 guys, since one of the
guys had to leave... So for supper, we had to think about what we're doing tomorrow, which was saturday. We had to
think of a group name, and a catchcry. Well... the second nail was in place, we couldn't think of anything cool.
So we chose "JJ". Why? because we happened to have both of the guys (excluding me) named Jerry. Hows that for
planning, or lack of? The girls couldn't think of something interesting either. So it was pretty bad. We were
doomed to fail. Of course, winning isn't everything. It's just some movie tickets. That you can go with your
group. I didn't need to go watch movies with people, since well, it's not something that you would do in a group
situation, with people you hardly know. It would be better in, say, a dinner or party situation. But that's the
prize. Anyways the catchcry was rather lame as well. Compared to the other groups, they really put a lot of effort
into theirs.
Anyways, our camp coordinators were called Caroline and Michelle. I don't know if they are actually sisters, but
they act like it. Also there were another sister group in the camp, but I didn't realise that till later. Caroline
hates me from the start, because I didn't put 100% into participating. I can't blame her tho, she's already
engaged, and she wants everybody to have fun. I tend to not have fun in these kind of situations... By that time
(midnight) it was raining, and we went back to our cabins. Except nobody wants to sleep. So there was a big game
of cards. Of course, some guys were already tired, so they tried their best to sleep, and succeeded in one case.
They played some games that I didn't know, then it got bigger, even some girls joined in. One of them got my
attention... but I was too tired to join in the fun. One of the games was "Snap", which each player gets a stack of
cards, and if the number in sequence was the same as the card put down, you had to slap the card, and the last
player gets the cards. The one who has to most card loses. The girl who got my attention was very funny, she kept
slapping even though she lost. The girls didn't like getting slapped that many times and their hands were red to
show to the guys... hehe expecting sympathy of course :) I was on the top bunk just looking down, because I
actually worked really hard during the day and have no energy. I think they finished around 2am. Then they left
and we tried to go sleep. Except two guys in the next cell (each 4 bunk beds = one cell, each cabin has 4 cells)
decided to talk about female anatomy and facial features for the next hour or so. We (me and Jimmy) didn't get to
sleep because we were trying hard not to laugh... those guys (James and Jerry) are also funny. So, after they shut
up, we slept. Till 4 hours later when we were woken up.
Saturday. 7:30. Damn it's raining and humid. AND COLD. And the lack of sleep isn't helping. So we got up, and
used the amenities, and then had breakfast. The free time after breakfast was used to think of what we were gonna
do for the catchcry. Ours was just to scream it out. But even that's lame. So we had the games straight after.
The games is the process to get scores to get the prize, which is a movie ticket. That doesn't interest me at all.
That means I actually have to find time to use it. And then to get to the cinema. And then watch the movie. When
all I have to do is... um... look it it from a different alternative.
The thing about this camp was that the girls are a bit perverted. They want people to pole dance. "Tiao gung wu".
And the first event was to see which group can pole dance the best. Except that there's no pole. The guys (and
girls) are poles, and they swap and dance. Again, our group was the lamest, because we had the least people. One
group, who had James, was the best. James basically did a flip and had Stephen spin him around (while he's upside
down) so he actually looks like he's spinning down the pole. Except the funniest thing happened. His pants
actually pulled down (rather, he slid out of them), and then his underwear too. The girls literally screamed
because they can see his a$$. Hahaha I think everybody laughed. They got full marks. Then the catchcry came, and
well... it was bad as well. Ours I mean. We got that out of the way... and then played some games.
There were 6 games originally. One game got cancelled because it was deemed too dangerous. Holding a spoon in your
mouth isn't good, OH&S wise. So there were 5 games. 1) Pick up rubber bands with a toothpick. 2) Step on other
people's balloons. 3) Three-legged race 4) Mime-Guess and 5) Blow ping pong balls. 1) was easy, just try to
manipulate the toothpick to pick up the rubber bands. 5) was to blow ping ping balls on a bed of flour (nasty) and
try to land it to the next bowl. To get points. 4) was to guess what the person is miming. The best one was our
group, Jerry can really mime. He got spiderman down pat. Of course, the guessers were good as well. 3) is self-
explainatory. 2) was the event where I hurt my leg. I have been hobbling along for 2 days now, my foot still
hurts. Of course, I don't whine too much, but it does hurt when I walk, and I walk alot in the warehouse. Needless
to say, each competitor has a balloon next to their foot, and the aim is to pop the opposing team's balloons. We
won, by 3. One team was so good that they survived with 6 balloons. So it was a fun but rather suicidal game. We
were jumping around and stomping, it was that crazy. Thats why I hurt my foot because we stomped so much and so
hard. But it was fun. Our team, after the score tally, came equal last. Then it was Lunch time. Then we had a
presentation about posture and etiquette. Pretty interesting stuff. Then it was a short discussion about why we
were getting married later and if we were for/against having a de facto relationship/having sex before marriage kind
of thing. Most of it was boring, but you can see who thought what. Some were straight laced, others were casual.
It's interesting. Then after that, we had dinner. I'm telling you, there's like 5 meals a day here. Too much food
and it's fattening. After dinner, we had 1.5 hours to get dressed for the main event. Dancing. Taught by some
parents who goes dancing. The difference between guys and girls are... Guys can take 10 mins shower, and 10 mins
dressing up. And is ready. So we literally were waiting for 20 mins before 7:30 before we went and showered and
changed. But the girls... well they literally took 1.7 hours. Shower, and then dressing up/makeup. All the guys
were down there practicing the first dance for 10 mins before the girls rocked up. Then we danced for 1.5 hours,
had 3 kinds of dance, and then it was supper. Except it was so boring that we all left the centre and went to the
city. Except the straight laced people. They stayed behind and played cards, or went to bed early. Jimmy however
had to work on Sunday (like wtf man, why work on Sunday??? crazy mofo). So didn't catch him later. I was with the
group that went into the city to drink and dance. I had my first hard drink. Scotch and coke. It burns your
throat but after a while you'll get used to it. And I don't get drunk as well, which is weird. First I don't get
awake with coffee, but tired (and some of the guys has the same effect at the camp, I'm so relieved that I'm not the
only one) and now I don't really get drunk unless I drink a lot of hard liquor. Except that's what happens to our
family. My grandfather apparently can finish a bottle of the stuff and not feel anything. That's either strong or
weird. Anyways, after that, about an hour later, we came out and I was nearly deaf. Couldn't hear a thing. After
that we went to Wolloomoloo (sp?) and everybody except a few had hotdogs and pies. I wasn't hungry and one of the
guys actually slept in the car because he was tired after dancing. But the time was 2:30am, there were around 50-60
people around this place, called "Harry de Wheels". There were also seagulls awake at this place, because they can
eat the scraps and not sleep. Or maybe they can sleep during the day. Being nocturnal. NOT. After spending half
and hour, we went back and got to sleep. For 4 hours. This time, it was raining and I got woken up by the rain.
Sunday morning. 7:30 am. Lunch finishes at 9:30. I got up nearly an hour after waking up. And had a quick brush of the teeth and wash of the face and I was the 4th guy in the dining hall/kitchen. 1 guy already had 1 plate of breakfast, 2 girls just starting. "Where's everybody"? "Sleeping" was the answer. I got a plate of food and sat down. Then one of the 2 girls gave me a present. I was surprised to say the least. Because of the games, we had to buy a present for the opposite sex. This was a thank you present, because you're supposed to look out for your guarded 'name' on the paper when we first arrived. I think I talked to her once at the intro, but didn't get to talk to her much later. But she obviously knew who I was... so I thanked her and rushed back to my room and got her present, because she wasn't staying after breakfast. After that, about 9:20am, the girls all came in. Then the guys. In the end, it was 9:40 and then we were supposed to have another presentation about 'life' in the hall. 10 mins already gone by, and he didn't have so much pressure to tell everything he knew. But it was an interesting talk again. It's about how to make your world a more interesting place. I got asked who (girlwise) I liked in this camp, and I said nobody. I think I got more people to not like me... which is ok I guess. Tom though I was pretty evil there too... Which is funny because I thought I liked some girl... but they weren't that interested in me. So after that, we had to pack our stuff out of the cabins and into our vehicles. And then we had lunch. Originally it was to be a bbq, but then it was raining, so they bought some food which they cooked at home (they = parents, and the women's association who arranged the camp) and we had a chat and ate. Then it was time to go. My bro actually got dropped off by his gf, because they live close, and since I was that tired, I let my bro drive. So I got home around 1 and then unpacked, and surfed the net etc. Then crashed out for a nap, waking up around 8:30 and taking an hour to eat dinner because I was telling my parents generally about the camp. Overall the camp was pretty good, but I think they could've organised it a bit better. Somewhere remote would've been funny because we wouldn't be able to sneak out and party. But that means you'll be spending more time with people that you might not be interested in. But the main purpose of this camp was for them (the same definition as above) to find bfs for their daughters. I think maybe not this year. Better luck next year. Meanwhile, I was thinking about this girl who got my attention, but I didn't get hers. Even the girl at work knows her and how she is a christian and stuff. She's defiantely not in my list to chase after now :P The more I hear of her, the more it seems like there's more things I don't like... like my bro knows her sister, and that their mum wants a doctor to be her bf/hubby. Well being a doc to chase a girl seems like something stupid to me. But then I'm not gonna chase her so it's alright... She might be a nun or something in the future...
Monday. Back to normal. Or not. It seems like one of the casuals is heading back to HK for a holiday, and I will get put into his position, which was my old position, more than 10 months ago. John will be put into my position, and Bruce will stay in the same position. Therefore, it will be hell when it gets busy. But apparently it won't be too busy, so it's alright.
And it's raining hard now. 12:12 and I'm still awake. Damn I'm so stupid to start this marathon blog so late. Oh well. Till next time...

Hot Saturday

2005-11-19T19:55:00.000+11:00

It's hot today. After a couple of days that were cool, it's been hot. Lately I've been playing Need For Speed:Most Wanted demo, and it plays fine, because my computer is cool. But then when I played it today, it rebooted my machine. It simply put my comp's temperature (inside the box) to above 60 degrees. The average temperature in there on a normal day is around 37 or so, but when I played NFSMW, it got around 60 and basically the computer just couldn't handle it, and rebooted. I need better cooling I guess.... but I turned up the fan in the computer, still that couldn't take away the heat? Strange. So I won't play the game during the hotness of the day I guess.

This is the weekend before I will be going to a camp. Needless to say, it's gonna be a weird experience. Will they expect me to be able to understand all the chinese/taiwanese spoken? Or to speak chinese/taiwanese? I have no idea. I can speak mandarin and listen to taiwanese... but both aren't good at all. And the camp is for volunteering... ah... I wonder what will happen to me.

Last week Saturday, my bro got engaged to his long time gf... I think they were going out for less than a year but got told they were going out for more than 3? Is my memory really that bad? I remembered there was another girl in that bro's life, and that wasn't more than 4 years ago. Or has time really gone by quickly? Anyways, the ceremony was that we got there at an auspicious time, showed them the pressies (that my bro and his fiance bought together, of course) and then had a tea drinking ceremony (can't drink all of the tea...), then they put rings on each other's fingers, and then the opposite parents (my mum to her, her dad to him) gave them pressies as well. Matching watches and etc. Then after that, we went to a restraunt. Just before the end of eating, we left without saying a word. It was pretty weird... We just stood up and left. It's meant to say that we're now officially together as a big family, and thus no need to say goodbye or anything like that. Of course, the guests (around 20 odd people) also got told of this before the day, so they were pretty quiet when we left... rather cold I must say, but then again, this 'big' engagement is rather weird. Most people get engaged without pomp and ceremony, and have a big wedding, but chinese have a big engagement and they can have a small wedding, if they want. Or a big banquet/traditional chinese wedding. I don't know what they'll do tho. It's just weird that they want to have a big ceremony.

Work has been very quiet lately. It seems to have died off this month. Next week is still not EOM, but the week after is. Now EOM actually ends on the ACTUAL date of the month. Not the weekend. So it shouldn't impact my camp in anyway. I told my supervisor already. He can't force me to come... and I can't come anyways, with the camp going over the weekend. However I got to tease my colleague because he's been giving rides home to a girl that has managed to crash her car, trashing her radiator and perhaps the engine or something. He's gotten sick of it, but I haven't... This week he's given 3 rides, however he didn't give a ride on Friday arvo. I'm dissappointed. However, I believe that I'm such a nice friend >:D He told me to give her a ride, but with her living the opposite way away from work, no frigging way. Petrol prices aren't cheap. And I have the camp to look forward to... even my colleague thinks I should take one to the xmas party. Hm... would that be too soon? I don't know, it seems like I'm going ahead of myself too much. From nothing to something... it takes time.

Musically, I've been listening to Jay Chou's "November's Chopin"... it's quite alright to me. I also like Younha's "Go! Younha" album. Other than that, the English market isn't quite as interesting to me.

Anime, Bleach is still going good. I also watched some others, like Animal Yokocho, Karin, Lamune (which actually supposed to be "Lemonade") and Ginban Kaliedescope. A healthy mixure of the weird and funny.

J-Drama, well, since Densha Otoko has finished, I decided to take on a new one which is also starred by the actress who played "Hermes". This time, she plays an older sister who's like an airhead, but enjoys life, to a younger bro who's cynical and doesn't know why she's there to piss him off. It's pretty funny to see the "serious" Hermes play a funny girl. Will be watching this one till it finishes, of course. Also, in DO, there's the evil girl who I called "evil sl*t" because she is evil and well, "eats" with anybody who's in a position of power. However, she also acted in a movie I watched sometime this year, called "Swing Girls", the story about a jazz band made up of nobodies. I got that movie out and watched it again, and saw her as a not so evil music teacher. However, she still has the weird evil smile. Guess she can't change that... But at least she didn't "ROAR" in Swing Girls.. Phew.

Ah one more week... then who knows what will happen??? HMMMM...

Aftermath

2005-11-07T23:27:00.000+11:00

Um.. so what's new in the world of me? Saturday gone by, worked from 7am till 2:30pm, to stocktake. There were about 4 pairs of people there to stocktake, and the process still took that long. Last time we had 2 pairs and it was up till 5pm or something. The reconcilation of the stock against the system takes the longest time. Things have to be added and removed, and well, I wasn't the one stuck with the job this time around. It's been 2 weeks since I got my Creative Zen Vision - a deal which to me was pretty good. $660 including shipping. Considering that it costs $700+ in the shops, it's pretty good. The only problem I had with it was that... I took out the power in our house on Saturday morning. I left the charger of the Vision in, and when I unplugged it, it went 'poof' and a big spark jumped, and all the computers and shit turned off. Oh-oh, I thought, this isn't good at all... I turned on the lights, they worked, so I had to go outside at 6am and find the safety and turn it back on. Lucky everything turned back on. I think I'll have to find another way to charge my player. The charger is of the dodgy design. Made in China, what do you expect? It was making a loud buzzing noise before I unplugged it as well -_-".

With less than a week to go to my bro's engagement, my bro is still in the states at a dodgy conference (he said so himself) and I just find it funny that they have such bad organisational skills for an international gathering. But he seems to be ok, afterall, it's his second time there. I've never been to the states *sobs* and I have no reason to, yet. He'll be back on thursday, have friday to prepare and saturday will be the big day. Or whatever day. Sigh... no sleeping in that day either.

Today was a strange day to say the least. Not that I didn't expect it, but having both the pickers away (one had business, the other had to help pack up shit at a convention). So then I had no delivery to process till when they came back... And then when they came back, there was a heap of stuff... -_- Talk about weird stuff like that. There was also a big problem with one of our customers. We sent them a pallet of stuff for a show, and they've signed for it and everything, and they are denying that they've got it. After my supervisor's left for the day, he got called up 7 times. And each of the 7 times, he called back to the warehouse. I think I got fustrated after the 5th call -_-. He asked me about the connotes and all possibilities about the particular customer, what we shipped on the days surrounding. It was all good on our end. So I ended up a bit pissed off. But it was nothing compared to the end. We called up for our courier to drop off our convention stuff from the morning, and they literally came in late. After the finishing time. So I had to unload everything, and that made me OT till 6... sigh. Even if it was good money I wouldn't wanna OT in this way... Pain in the ass.

Hopefully it'll be ok tomorrow. The weather is getting cool... Weird isn't it... but it's nice. I washed the car on Sunday, and now it looks 80% already (meaning it's already dirty 20%). Parking under a tree that has birds on it during the day is not good. I really don't like taking care of the car, since it's not my pride and joy... my Vision however... it's my baby... Plus my computer of course ^^.

It looks like my Vision does charge via the USB port. I'm glad. :D

It's gonna be a busy month

2005-10-31T23:22:00.000+11:00

So... the weekend shortened one hour of sleep for me, daylight savings kicked in. Then today, the last day of October, 2005, I spent a fruitful 3.5 hours doing orders. Past 5:30 pm, of course. Then at the end of this week, we're gonna have an End of Year stocktake. No sale, just stocktake. With shipments coming and going, a whole 3 or more months has gone by and we didn't do a stocktake. Several stock has indeed gone out of wack, as with the usual problems, short shipment, mislocated stock, and general stupidity on part of the stores. That will be the first weekend used up. The second weekend will be just as fun. This time, I will be putting the suit in the last blog post to good use, at my bro's engagement party. Yay. It's gonna be hot, and we'll all be sweating our asses off in the hot sun. Maybe not. Then the weekend after that, it's pretty much a free time I think. Then the last weekend... I think everybody who I've told it to had a REALLY GOOD LAUGH at me. I get to spend $70 for 2 nights and 3 days with some of my own countrypeople right here in sydney. Except that they are the same as me, in the marital sense. Originally I heard it was 20 guys and 20 girls, aged between 25-30, and now I saw the ad in the paper, it became 25 guys and 25 girls, between 23-32. So, I think because of the lack of male interest (my colleague seems to wanna go, even tho he is attached... I told him that the girl at work is available, and that shut him up straight away :P) They are trying to broaden the spectrum so more guys will be attracted and attend. The girls spaces have already been filled up. I guess they are more worried about the girls not getting a bf/hubby or something... So yeah... I've told some of my work colleagues, and they had a good laugh, I told a couple of online friends, and they had a good laugh as well. The whole problem isn't my fault, my dad signed me up... I told him that I'll start looking for a gf next year... but seems like he's worried about me not finding a gf or something... and thus taken this drastic measure to take away my weekend away from me :P Not that I do much on the weekend, I usually catch up on my sleep. Being a workaholic and all. So, I shall do whatever, and hopefully something interesting will happen on the last weekend of this month.

All dressed and not going anywhere...

2005-10-24T00:06:00.000+10:00

For my bro's engagement, which is happening soon, there's a load of activity. And one of them involves me buying a suit, which I did today. We went to DFO, Direct Factory Outlet, which has a lot of discounted goods, mainly clothes. My suit cost $130, and my other bro's suit cost him around $200 or so. The quality is apparent because mine was more gray, and his was more black. Doesn't really matter, since I hardly will use this suit anyways in the future... *sigh*.

And in case you were wondering, I am wearing shorts :P

what's going on?

2005-10-18T19:01:00.000+10:00

It's been a good while since I last put my thoughts to keyboard... Work is work, and well, I'm always home around 6pm... that is, after the hustle and bustle of End of Month (EOM). Every EOM, I always have to do OT and well that makes more $$, but I'm tired. But now I don't make as much $$ and is less tired, I get to go home on the dot at 5:30 and enjoy relaxing at home. Then EOM arrives... soon :P.

Tomorrow, both the guys that deal with the in-out of service stuff have a day off. That means it's bad news for me. Since I am the only other guy who knows how to do it (apart from the worthless guy who wants to pass on the crap that he gets) so I have to help out with the service shit. Needless to say, it should only be tomorrow. Great, I haven't done any service roles for about 10 months or so now... so I might not be able to do well. Oh well it's their problem, not mine. Meanwhile, John will take over my position, and Bruce will do all the manual labour.

What's with people and relationships anyways? My bro is getting engaged (isn't he in a hurry... the other bro (who's younger than him) got a gf earlier but still no sign of getting engaged, but these 2, they are gonna get engaged... after maybe less than a year together? hmmm...) sometime in the second week of November, so I have to go and buy a suit. Yay. I am getting asked by my parents why aren't I getting a gf yet, and my reply is that I'm helping them paying off the house... if I get a gf then how will I help then... :P The other 2 brothers, though they help in paying off the house, are hardly around. The one that's around, he pays the least. The one getting engaged, he's at his gf's most of the time because of reasons which I can't say on this blog. Also my colleague wants to hook me up with a girl. And my brothers also. And then my future sis-in-law also wants to as well. And... it's just weird. I can't be getting old and requiring a gf? I like my own space... :P Plus the girls at work... they kinda freak me out... I walked past them and they asked why I walk through that section of the building... I find that's the quickest way out of the building, but they just find it strange... well they are strange themselves. WHO CARES ABOUT WHICH WAY I WALK THROUGH THE BUILDING???? weirdos.

Also today was a quiet day, till 5:20. This massive, 2 page order came down. Knowing my luck, it'll hit the fan tomorrow and I will be a busy, busy man.

I reckon that I might start looking for a gf next year, after our debts have been paid. Watch out, wallet. You won't be the same...

I'm back

2005-09-13T23:07:00.000+10:00

So, what else is new? I've been back 2 days and it doesn't really felt like I've left. Brissie isn't such a different place, especially with the hustle and bustle that is life, on the weekend... I still can't believe I was in Bris... Anyways, this is how it went down...

Friday, I didn't do any OT... was out of there like a rocket bang on 5:30pm. Got home, about 2 mins before my brother got home. Had a quick dinner, my bro didn't have dinner, he just had some focaccia (dunno spelling) with his gf. He didn't want to drop me off at the airport too late, even though I was catching the 9:30. So it ended up that I got there at about 8 or so... had to kill time for 1 hour and a bit. I checked in my bag, and then walked through the security gates. No problems there. Then a few meters on, I got called up by one of the security people to have a random 'explosives' check. I guess I look like a terrorist. Or something. Being asian and all. But yeah, the guy scanned my hands and pockets for explosives, and then my bag. I'm clean. So I walked to the designated gate, and it was still 10 mins or so before the flight before mine leaves... Still a lot of people there. I went to sit another gate's lounge and watched a bit of the rugby. Also to listen to my mp3s. Recently I'm addicted to Ayumi Hamasaki... Don't know why, but she's really cute, but hey, I don't understand a word she sings. Her album "My Story" has some nice ballads in it, and the concert even shows her crying during one of her songs. Must be a sensitive subject for her to be crying while singing... Nice songs include "Carols" "Moments" and "Walking Proud". Rocking songs include "Humming 7/4" and "About You". The rest are ok. Anyways, the plane arrived on time, and departed on time. And then arrived on time in Bris, without any problems. Which is good.

Brisbane. Arrived at 10:30, and got out of the plane and down to baggage claim. Saw my friend which I haven't saw for 4 years and his gf, who is also my friend, that I probably haven't seen in about 2 years. As he commented in the car, its the first time that us 3 met in real life. Amazing isn't it. Considering that I knew momo for a long time, and wooks for a fairly shorter time, but in the college it felt like a long time. Momo drove and dropped me off, she went back to her place cos she was tired. So it was around 12 before we really started to chat. I also met wooks' flatmates, Joey and Roy. Then I crashed on the mattress thinking that the temperature was nice. Except that at about 4am, the upstairs neighbours came back from whatever they were doing. A bunch of noisy gals. And it was suddenly cool, so I wore more clothes. I was caught out that evening, pretty bad isn't it. Lucky I didn't catch a cold. Woke up about 9ish, but still felt a bit crap from that 4am wakeup... So tried to catch a bit more catch eye. Except the flatmates were awake and offered me breakfast... which I accepted, since I was a bit starved. Very generous of them. Then wooks decided to take me around to other college people's places, since they all practically live on the same street... So we had a mini reunion of sorts, also around 4 years that I haven't seen them. Except that most of the time I didn't get to hang out with them. But it's still cool to see some familiar faces. We hung out at around 3 different places, going here and there and meeting about 7 people all up. Then we went to have laksa nearby, 4 people went, then we went back to one of the people's place to decide what to do, and finally decided to catch the Citycat (a Brissie Ferry) to Southbank and check out the markets. I was at that time a bit anxious, since it was about 15 mins to get to southbank and 15 back, so had to get back earlier to change and get to the reunion at 5pm. Which didn't happen, because of the fact that they decided to drink at 4pm in a pub at southbank. I didn't drink, but I did tell wooks that it's getting late, but he said "we'll go at 4:30"... -_- Well, we went at 4:30, and I didn't get to the school till 5:25. I walked around trying to find people, and the last place was the 'new' Gymnasium. And I managed to find them. Spent about 5 mins touring the gym, then the tour ended. So we had to make our way to The Regatta. We had 5 people in our 'mini-group', and we couldn't get a big taxi, so 2 went by taxi, and 3 got a lift with one other who was going to the reunion. He's a lawyer, so he was driving a nice set of wheels. We got to the reunion early, so people started buying drinks and well, drinking. Then the reunion started officially at 7pm, and it went till midnight, where our function room was closed and we had to go back downstairs to the general pub. By then, it was full of people having a good time, and well, I was really tired, plus I didn't drink, and well, I didn't feel like dancing or picking up any girl. So I walked back to wook's flat. It was (strange coincidence) right opposite the Citycat stop. So I knew how to get back. Plus being sober helped. If I was drunk, maybe I wouldn't remember anything. Never tried drinking till drunk, so there's still any sort of possiblity it can happen.

Sunday, it was such a lazy day in, we went out to have lunch after waking up late, then came back to his flat to play PS2. Burnout 3 is a fun game, makes me almost considering getting a PS2 plus the game, just to play it. But it would be such a waste... -_- So maybe not. We played for almost 3 hours or so, unlocking many levels along the way as well. It truly is a fun game. Then it came around to 6pm, nearly time for me to go. I packed my bags and we had the final dinner at a Coffeeclub, I had calamari and chips + ice mocha, while momo had pasta and wooks had pizza + lemon spider. It was pretty good actually. Then I actually couldn't believe it, me and wooks hugged... I guess he's pretty keen for that kind of stuff... He walked back home, while momo drove me to the airport. I shook hands with her and thanked her and him, and got back into the terminal. This time the flight wasn't on time, because it was raining hard while we were going to the airport. But it departed 5 mins late, but still arrived Sydney on time. And I had to wait for 30 mins before my bro can pick me up (slow ass driver). Also it was funny because we managed to beat the rain in as well. Got home about 11:30, and that was the end of the trip. All in all it was fun, I met people that I haven't seen in a while, and I would definately go back for a 20 year reunion. Hey I might even drink by that time :P

Statistics... 240 students in year 12, 50 turned up for school tour, 70 turned up at reunion, one smart guy stopped being a Physiotherapist to become a priest. Go figure.

A week to go...

2005-09-04T00:34:00.000+10:00

So, in a week's time I'll be up to my old haunting grounds, where I was for 5 years. My Alma Mater. The other place that I was at for 5 years, well they have a monthly meeting in sydney for all the sydneysiders, so it's nothing special, but for my HS, it's a 10 year reunion. So, I've got my plane tickets pre-booked, my accomodation hopefully remembered (I'm crashing at a mate's place) and my reunion... ready. I haven't really seen them for more than 5 years actually... not since I got into uni...

So what else is new about me? I got a haircut. Though I do get a haircut once in a while, it doesn't really change me. My computer is still good, the HDD space is getting less and less, but then again, HDD are cheaper and cheaper nowdays. If I max out my system, I can get a total of 4TB. 4000 GB. Thats if I buy 10 x 400 GB drives. But that's overkill, for now. (Yes, my motherboard has 8 SATA plugs and the standard 4 IDE ports.) But my bro has bought a new HDD today, 300GB worth of goodness. He's still not at the 1TB stage. Still, he's maxed out at 4 HDDs, 2 SATA and 2 IDE... being a older mobo and all... I'm glad mine is a little bit futureproofed... for maybe 1 year? :P

Anime, I haven't been really watching the new ones, but I started getting into Initial D again... so now I'm nearly finished season 4. What I've got of it, that is... The rest, is out there somewhere. My bro has other anime and thats why he needs the HDD space. It'll be about 2 months or so before he starts complaining about space again...

Also I've been playing with models... paper ones. From the "entertainment" section of the Yamaha website. Soon I'll have a bike! yay! After nearly a month of cutting out tiny parts and gluing them together... I'll have this paper bike. Pics will come, if I want to take them. :P

May the people of New Orleans have peace once more, it's terrible.

Hows this for cool...

2005-08-25T23:21:00.000+10:00

This is a keyboard that outputs and inputs. Talk about a boy's toy, it looks to be very interesting. Only problem is, the software will have to provide drivers to actually change the pics on the fly. What happens in games, for example Battlefield, is that when you get into a vehicle or plane, the controls change. The software will have to change the keyboard's graphics, which for now is pretty radical. But it might be normal in the future. Very interesting indeed.

Oh and work sux, blah blah blah. I'm still wondering if I'll be able to go to ATI's launch event on saturday... because I'll be doing some OT...

Trials and tribulations

2005-07-24T23:18:00.000+10:00

Ah... it's the second day of my new computer, and well, it's been one hell of a build. Bios, memory, and the general shebang. It's not too shabby, if I say so myself. I haven't fried any components (yet) and I won't do it just yet I hope. More research will be needed, and well, it'll be an interesting experience. If I don't come back on after a while, you'll know that I'm A) too engrossed with the new computer and not doing much online B) had my computer hijacked by something C) still trying to move stuff across the drives. I shall be back!

I knew I saw that face somewhere... and other stories

2005-07-17T21:00:00.000+10:00

I watched the Initial-D live action movie a couple of days ago. The main female in it was very familiar. Then I was surfing around some websites (as you do when u're bored) and I saw 'Return Future (Korean version)'. What's that? I thought it was a sequal to Returner, a movie from 2002 but I watched either this or last year. And then it hit me. The main female in Returner is the same one as the main girl in Initial-D! The girl is Anne Suzuki. Not too bad, but I thought she was a little chubby. Oh well.

War of the worlds wasn't too bad. Lots (and I mean lots) of CG and it's very well done. The snake looking thing reminded me of "The Abyss".

Sin City was very violent, bloody and good. Lots of near naked chicks. If u're the type to wince at blood, stay away.

Batman Begins wasn't what I expected, but it was ok. It was more 1 person vs 1 person, rather than Batman kicking a lot of asses. Then again, he was trying to take on many many jail prisoners in the beginning, so it was ok.

On Anime watching, Bleach was great, Ichigo kicked Ken-chan's ass. Don't know how, but it's always left as a cliffhanger.

Gokujou Setokai is a funny story concerning a school president who will become an arrogant and snobby woman if they don't win a futsal practice match. Of course that's not it, its more to do with this girl who has a puppet on her hand which isn't controlled by her.

Yakitate!! Japan's newer episodes hasn't been released... I wanna see more...

Shuffle! is about a guy who lives with his neighbour since his parents and the neighbour's mum got killed in an accident. And then finds out that he has the choice to become a god or a demon. Funny, but needs to see more before I can comment.

Full Metal Panic! The Second Raid is a new one, I haven't watched it, but it's a continuation of the other Full Metal Panic series. It's back to the serious style rather than the comic style of Fumoffu!. I'll watch it soon.

Kamichu is also a new anime, and it has a very cute girl that says that she became a god one evening. And is not sure of what kind of god she is. But it's a cute anime. I'll see how it goes on, but I'm enjoying it so far.

Honey and Clover has already hit the 12-13 episode mark, and I look forward to every episode. It is that interesting and silly and funny that I can't wait to see what happens next. Of course, there's some drama involved (thus the OP is named 'Dramatic' and sung by Yuki. I was looking for Yuki stuff on Yesasia when I found that Return Future was Returner, and surprised that the main girl was the same one in Initial-D... you get the picture?)

He is My Master is a silly and funny series about 2 girls that work as maids in a kid's mansion. His parents died, and they were rich, so he dreams all day to make the girls his. One of the girls is extremely cute, but weird. She owns an alligator/crocodile. She can also jump straight into a death metal rock concert. Singing "I am a cute maid" and the audience going 'die! die! die'. It's really weird. But funny at the same time.

There's a lot of anime but I can't be stuffed typing it out.

On other news, I've commited to buying a new computer. Previously, I've commited $1500 to the parts. That then blew out to $1800. Now I'm actually gonna spend over $2000. Am I crazy? Yeah. I sit in front of a computer all day at work, and I'll do so when I don't work. I don't have a gf, so yeah, spending this amount of money is justifiable :D (or justifyable...).

CPU: AMD AMD64 Socket 939 Venice 3200+
Motherboard: DFI Lanparty UT NF4 SLI-DR. I hope this has some rounded cables, if not, I'll have to spend more $$... *sigh*
Memory: Previously I wanted to get some OCZ Performance CL2 for around 185. It would give me the supposed timing of 2-3-3-6. Corsair has the Twinx-3200C2 with the same timings. But it was around $195. $10 more, and I don't know how much it will overclock. But the OCZ has sold out, so I will get the Corsair modules. They offered me OCZ Winbond UTT Value ram for 180 but I think the timings are 2.5-4-4-8. So I think I will try my luck with Corsair...
Video Card: I will get the Leadtek 6600GT Extreme edition. Simply because I want to. It's not futureproofing, since it's in the lower bracket. Any 6800 version card is simply too much $$ for my tastes. If I wanted to save money, I could go for a dodgy card, but I want to be able to play games decently.
HDD: 250GB SATA. Doesn't matter which brand. 300 if cheap. 'nuff said. Will get more in the later stages. Same as the video card. If they go out of stock, too bad.
Case: I had a really big toss-up between Antec's P160WF and P180. There were only 8 bucks difference. P180 looks sleek and really good. Like a fridge. P160WF doesn't look that good in my books, but it's meant to be quiet, and comes with a clear side panel. Since my motherboard is UV reactive... I'll get some lighting in there and make it look cool. JUST BECAUSE I FELT LIKE IT! My bro says that it's a waste, I'll never go to any Lan party to impress anybody, well, I don't mind. It's my new baby when I build it and I'll get 3 years from it. I hope. :P
PSU: Antec's Trueblue2.0 480W. Simply because it has a blue light. Nah, it's cheap and it has ATX2.0 specs. 480 might be a little less, but I think it'll be ok for now.
HDTV Card: Compro DVB-T300. Simply it's accepting both analogue and digital signals. And it's not bad, at 130.
Cooling: Coolermaster Aquagate Mini 120R. Plus Antec's Artic Silver 5 thermal compound. So I can overclock.

So, am I a geek? Or I'm just somebody that has too much time on his hands? *rubs hands gleefully* ho ho. That's $2000 of sweet loving already. And I'll get some UV lights and decals. It'll be a mean machine when I'm done with it. I swear.

Also, the newest Harry Potter book has been released. People has been lining up since the break of dawn to get their copies in their cold hands. But some other people just walk into Myer (a store franchise) and bought the book $3 more than the normal bookstore. And walked by the 200 people lining up and saying 'Suckers!!'. Even one of them considered reading the last page aloud in front of the 200 people. That's pretty funny :P But what's even funnier was that I did a torrent search for the book, downloaded the torrent, open the torrent, and had the book within 1 MINUTE. All without breaking a sweat. Of course, it's illegal, but that's the power of the net...
My bro would probably get the book soon too...

ElectricNews.net:News:Sharp develops incredible dual-view LCD

2005-07-16T16:46:00.000+10:00

ElectricNews.net:News:Sharp develops incredible dual-view LCD - Very Interesting

Blogging is suspended indefinately.

2005-06-16T23:54:00.000+10:00

That is all.

2005-06-14T22:42:00.000+10:00

I'm tired...

Back to work

2005-06-14T22:24:00.000+10:00

Another day, another dollar. Work is work. And some people commented on my haircut. One even said 'you dropped your ears?' haha funny :P Some others called it Funky. I dunno. Anyways, I'm tired for some reason, by not doing anything at all I guess. Or the lack of sleep, one of the two. Also I had to stay behind, because somebody forgot to put the keys back. They took the keys home. So I stayed behind to guard the warehouse, till somebody found a spare set in the office. Then I went home. The bad thing about today was that they were digging up the front of our 'strip' of land, to build a garden. And they were using some powerful manure. Really strong, when the wind came and blew it into the warehouse, everybody went 'phwoah!! what the hell was that!!' It stinks. But you get used to it. Well, at least I got used to it. Having lived on a farm before. But alot of these city slickers don't know how to block out the smell. So they were complaining for many many hours.

Public Holiday

2005-06-13T22:20:00.000+10:00

Well it's a public holiday. The queen has a birthday, and all her peons celebrate her bday. What happens when she leaves us, does the date get changed? Only time will tell. So, it's a lazy day. Watched Hostage. Yesterday, watched Unleashed. I think Unleashed is more fun than Hostage. Though, Unleashed is not for the faint of heart. Lots of ultra-violence. And asskicking. Definately ass kicking. Thats why it was more fun. Hostage was more thriller, and well, there were some surprises there. Bruce Willis is pretty good, and the girl who was a hostage, she was a bit overweight. Thats just my observation.

Anyways, on Saturday I did OT from 7am till 6pm. It's a record I think. It makes up for today's pay.

Yesterday, talked to somebody who I've not talked to for a long time. She moved house, thats why I didn't see her for a couple of weeks. She was talking about how she is getting scared that she's getting older, and still not in a relationship. And she doesn't wanna be single when she's 30. And then saying that I (me) am alright until I'm 40. Yeah, if I'm still single at 30, I'll be a monk then I guess. I also saw a net friend's pic of her trip back to Taiwan and France and now she's in London. In France there was a pic of her bf, and she quickly deleted the pic. Saying that she hasn't asked him yet. I don't know if they had taken pics together yet tho... If they did, she doesn't dare to put them up yet. But a cute canadian boy and taiwanese girl... thats nothing to be ashamed of... maybe she's scared of her parents... But then I know somebody else who's been telling me of her friend who's also in a relationship with a canadian... and she's taiwanese... so it must be a popular choice? I dunno :P

F0oking Biatch.

2005-06-10T22:18:00.001+10:00

Before I had one other time in the warehouse that I had a shouting match. Today was the second time. This time, it was with a service support person. There is only one female support person, and well, she thinks she's top sh*t. She always uses the excuse 'combine with *name* order', and even if there's no order to combine, she'll raise a big ruckus. And this time, she yelled and screamed, so naturally I yelled back. Needless to say, the 4 other people in the near vincinity were trying to either A) calm us down or B) trying not to notice it. What makes me amazed is her attitude. She says I got an attitude problem. Well, I'm not the person to get stuff from other people and not return any favours. I've let her borrow my anime, and she has not done anything for me at all. And she has the guts to say I got an attitude problem. Well f*ck that. She can go get f*cked. And I mean it. If she wants to say she will talk to upstairs people and my supervisor, feel free. She can't control me, only my supervisor can. She is just a little potato, but she felt like she can control people. So, she can get screwed. If things come down to me, I will quit. Simple, they can get John to take over, but hell I'm doing so much shit that I'll be wondering how well the next person to take over my position (it's not a job) fares. And the fun thing about it is... Tomorrow I have to OT. at 7am. And they didn't give us Double time for the last month, but they gave it to the other casual. My colleague says that we got 75ed. And then when I came home and told my mum, she said exactly the same. We got 75ed. Only problem is, the payroll guy goes on hols till 20th June. Damn this company. Damn it to hell. Going into Complementary Partnership with a failing mobile fone maker doesn't mean that its great, it treats the people in the warehouse like dogs. And the people in service have more of an attitude problem than the warehouse people. If I leave, I leave with no regrets, since I done nothing wrong. And they'll get their Karma.

2005-06-10T22:18:00.000+10:00

Pissed...

now they tell me...

2005-06-07T20:02:00.000+10:00

I've been using the 'new' system that they had for couriers for about 2 weeks now... or maybe 1 week. But needless to say, it's a bi*ch to use. Labels don't stay landscape, and manifest are only available if u choose the sender. Our company. and that was only when they told me today. So the past few days/weeks I've been manually creating a manifest just for the normal day. Each day. Also I've started saving the connotes onto the network because somebody was complaining about the amount of emails they get for... nothing. Fine. They don't want my kindness, they can get my coldness instead. Also I think I should have my own phone, because almost all the warehouse calls are for me! Like what the hell is going on, if the fone rings, "Ken!" they'll yell out. F*ck can't u see I'm busy? No? Tell them to bugger off. Also they're trying their best (and not succeding) in trying to hook me up with this girl. No way, she's definately not my type. And they'll keep on going. But they will never succeed. Because I'm the master and they don't know how to turn things around :P

Hectic...

2005-05-27T23:20:00.000+10:00

It's end of month. What else to expect other than 'to ship everything out'. That means practically 400 orders. Today. Except this time I had somebody stay behind to help me. If I was to do it all by myself, it would've probably taken me past midnight... -_- But lucky we got all the orders under control and we were outta there by 9. Except that we had some problems because some of the orders weren't shipped out... But the orders were never given to us. So yeah, it was very weird. Needless to say, we invoiced the orders, so now the next step is to... pick and sticker them. Yay. Thats what saturday is for. OT. Start at 7am. Fun oh fun. And I thought I didn't have to OT ever again... boy was I wrong. I need to take a holiday or something... *sighs*

An addition

2005-05-22T19:20:00.000+10:00

Congratulations! It's a brand old car! My brothers went and got a car. The older one is well... old. It's been backed into by some other driver, and the back bumper has almost fallen off. Thats why they've been looking for another car to replace it. Well, now they got a Subaru Impreza LX. In green. 1995 model, which makes it 10 yrs old. For some price which I don't know about. Anyways, they will get the old one taken away for free, maybe for some $$ as well. It's crap. I don't think anybody would pay much for it anyways. But this new car looks ok, except that A) it doesn't have power windows B) It doesn't have CD. It's a very basic model. Also I got a talking to by my dad, to wash and wax the car. I'm too lazy to wax the car, so I washed it. Then I'll get some wax next week maybe. Then it'll be waxed. But I think I cleaned enough today...

overworked?

2005-05-21T23:54:00.000+10:00

I'm not a lazy person by nature. Well, I can be lazy if I really wanted to, but when it comes to work, I'm usually not lazy. So it was with great (?) surprise that on Friday (Yesterday), I overslept. 1 hour to be exact. How? I got shaken awake by my dad. I looked at him, and looked at my alarm clock. He says to me, it's 9am. I thought he was joking. Naturally I wasn't awake, but when I looked at my clock, it slowly registered that I was late. I quickly got up, and both my clock and watch was saying 9am. My dad had got up 8:30 and noticed that the car was still at home... so he went to my room and woke me up. Lucky for me, otherwise I would've slept till 1pm or something :P I called my colleague and said that I overslept, but due to bad mobile line or whatever, he misheard me and told everybody in the warehouse I was in a car accident! Like hell I was! he called me back 10 mins later and asked if I was alright... I said huh? I only overslept! And he goes oh! shit! and goes tell everybody later. So when I turned up at 10am, half of the guys I met asked if I was ok, and if my car was ok. The other half asked if I had woken up. My supervisor even called me "Noddy". *Sobs* such is the life of a warehouse guy. :P Work then was normal, one of the slower days. Hopefully next week can be slow, but I think it'll be a loooonnng week. Anyways, what I think happened was that I was doing many days of OT, going home late, and simply staying up too late. And I had told myself, if I went to bed at that time, I wouldn't wake up for a long time. That night, I went to bed an hour earlier than usual, and still managed to wake up late... Guess something's wrong with my body, or all the work's making me really tired.

Today, my mum came back from Brissie, after one week visiting friends and rellos there. My uncle from Japan also went, because his sons are now both studying there in Brisbane as well. He goes back on Monday, and my bro wants to buy some Kendo gear (he's taken up Kendo now...) and since its near where my uncle lives, send it there, and get my uncle to send it as a gift. No tax, which will save I don't know how much $$. But yeah, they went to Tangalooma (www.tangalooma.com.au I think) and had fun for 1 day. Except my mum, who had a mouthful of sand when she sand sled... and rolled... everybody was worried but she was ok, just has sand in her mouth and throat... -_- Should've given her a face mask (like SARS) and then she would be ok. Because she (and everybody who goes sand sliding) yells... with the mouth wide open. hahaha :P

My mum bought back some goodies from my uncle. There's some snacks, but I don't know if it's savoury or sweet. Looks like chips...

One of the things that I did wrong today was to use the wrong spoon. My dad made some 'cover rice', which is just making vege and meat in a thick soup, and then pouring that over rice. Then you mix the rice, just like curry. And eat it. Well, my bro bought some Tapioca starch balls, and cooked them. Then, when my mum called, he took the spoon with him to the fone, and since the water was still boiling, I went and took the spoon for the 'cover rice' and mixed the Tapioca with it. It's oily, and well, I couldn't taste any difference, but I think that was one event my family wouldn't forget... Sad isn't it... :P And the Tapioca (zen zhu) were nice, fragrant. My mum even got a 3kg bag of it from the Brisbane uncle. He was going to give her more than 3kg... but 3kg is pretty heavy afterall... :P

I watched "The Jacket" today. It's an interesting story, about a guy who can travel to the future in his mind, and then use the information gleaned from the future to help the present. Except that he knows that he will die, so he tries to see if he can survive in the future without dying. Interesting idea, and not bad. I give it maybe 8/10.

More stuff will come soon, but I'm tired.

2005-05-17T19:32:00.000+10:00

$128... got me this. And I look like I'm still sleeping... -_-

Happenings

2005-05-15T00:16:00.000+10:00

I'm tired...

Woke up early to go for my drivers test. 8am. Went to the place at 8:45, and asked if I can sit the test today. No, they were fully booked. There's 2 free places right there. Obviously they don't wanna let me sit the test, but since I can only go on Saturdays (and next week I might have to OT... hmmm) I asked if there was any alternative. There was free space at 10. So, I went and did some shopping, for some light bulbs. 3 x $5.08 (8 cents extra? what the...). That ate up some $$. Went back to the motor registry, and a police car pulls over this guy... I drove by them and I see the car is moving weirdly... like the suspension was tweaked. Anyways, the booking for the license was $32. The actual exam takes place all on the computer, touch screen and all. 15 mins and I was done. Checked, and passed. Quite simple really. Then I paid $96 for the 3 year option. So yeah, it was the end of morning when I got home. Then the trouble starts.

My bro had gotten 2 drives from uni, they were 'supposedly' ok. So I wanted to test them. I turned off my Server computer. Big mistake. Now, it won't turn on properly anymore. Seems like 2 capacitors had leaked, and it was running on pure willpower alone. Afterall, it's been on for nearly 1 year completely. 24x7. The invoice was 19th of April 2004, which is already past one year. I had spent the better half of the afternoon and evening trying to get the HDD to work. To no avail. It's pretty much dead, it won't even spin up. And the mobo (my trusty (or not so trusty anymore)) - my beloved EPIA-M acts up. Sometimes it detects the HDD as random characters, or a DVD-Rom as random characters, or doesn't detect them at all. I'm a bit pissed off, since there's like 3 gb worth of stuff on there which I haven't got off -_-. Well, time to redownload I guess. Except that I don't have a dumping ground to do it on.

So, I've been spending time to relocate the ADSL modem to my bro's PC. Took some time but it works. Otherwise somebody'll be a bit pissed.

I think there's only 2 options here. One is to get a Router. That way nobody will be stuck without the net. Second option, to replace the broken server with another one. Either a Mini-PC again, or I buy a new PC for myself, and put the accessories on the new machine, and dump the old one as the server. I given it alot of thought... considering I spent a lot today...

I want to get a new PC. Justifiable? I hope so. I could save up and we can pay off the mortgage earlier, but I can splash out $1500 on myself for a spiffy new machine. Which will probably last me a couple of years. I've checked 3 online computer sites in sydney... prices are around the same, some are cheaper and closer to me, and others are a little more expensive but in the opposite direction. Here's what I've come up with...

Essential:
AMD 64 Socket 939 Motherboard $153~874
AMD 64 Socket 939 CPU $222~792
$164 for Gigabyte GA-K8NF-9 - PCI-E
$222 for AMD 64 3000+

---
Video:
AGP: 256mb Minimum $115~200
PCI-E: $96~300
$234 for Leadtek Winfast 256MB PX6600 TD PCI-Express

---
HDD:
IDE: 250GB $194
SATA: $199
$199 for Western Digital 250G 7200RPM 8MB SATA (WD2500JD)

---
Ram:
$84 for 512mb Kingston
$134 for 1GB Hynix DDR3200 400MHz
$153 for GeIL DDR400 1GB Kit Value w/Heat Spreader
$169 for 1GB KIT DDR PC3200 400Mhz KingstonChoose
$153 for GeIL.

---
Case:Max $150 (I don't care as long as it's quiet)

Spending the least amount: $768 (no case, no router)

Need to get a Router. ($80~120)

Spending what I want to get: $972+120+150 = $1242. *whistles*

Spending the best: $2335... Nah I won't spend that much...

So it seems like I should put aside $1500 if I wish to go for a new computer. But first I need the router. Planning...

And the OT is limited now... oh how cruel this is...

I need sleep.

Oracle sux

2005-05-13T00:03:00.000+10:00

It does. It so does. muahahahahah!. Yep, I've been driven to madness by how much it sux. It takes me literally 2 mins to ship an order by clicking through 5 different menus. And that's if I click somewhere in advance, because it lags like hell. At 9am in the morning, of all times. That doesn't mean that I hate it. It gives us time to relax, contemplate how much you wanna bash the computer in. Oh and the mouse cursor acts funny sometimes, it just goes all over the place. Even when you've not touched the mouse. It works fine in other applications... just lags like a b*tch in Java.

Anyways, I had previously called myself 'No more OT', but seems like today I OT'ed two hours five only. That's funny, because the program engine seems to make a weird error. $786.54 said out in numerical terms is 'SEVEN HUNDRED EIGHTY SIX CENT FIFTY FOUR". Seems like the Dollar is gone, and well, Cent is the new currency. Why? I guess they don't use Cents in TW, that's why it's all fooked up. I guess they'll sort it out later when people go 'hey you charged us HOW much? Woohoo!! :P

Today, we shipped out exactly 200 boxes. Thats a record. Not because it's small (we've sent out 0 items before), but it's an round number. Truly amazing. But then, tomorrow, we'll have a guaranteed 100 orders, because thats what I've spent 2.5 hours doing... processing orders into invoices. Thats approximately 1.5 mins per order. Damn it... it's not worth the effort. Oh well, they'll have something to do tomorrow, that I promise...

And the paperwork is around 2 inches thick this time. MUAHAAHAHAH!. I really need to get out more.

Oh yeah and my mum is going to bris for a week for gran's bday. Plus my uncle (from japan) is also going to bris. It's a family reunion (her side). 4 guys will fend for themselves in sydney. Take-away, anybody? :P

Boom

2005-05-03T21:40:00.000+10:00

The TNT guy, out of all the days that he's been loading up the goods, decides to drop a pallet worth of goods onto the floor today. In front of his boss (not immediate boss, but somebody from TNT who's higher ranked than he is), no less. Needless to say, our supervisor + TNT guy + TNT higher-up guy picked up all the stuff off the floor and put it back on the pallet. But when it happened... it made a really loud boom... and everybody in the warehouse basically just turned their heads to see what happened... really funny :P That guy couldn't have chosen a worse time :P

Hmm...

2005-05-02T23:43:00.000+10:00

Its been 12 days since I blogged... I just felt a bit pissed off. I don't know why.

So what if I can make friends? Anybody can make friends. I told that person that the nature of the room isn't exactly 'friendly'. They then tell me that this and that happened. So what? I don't care what happened to that person. I told them that I think they are complaining, but they don't think they are. So then they decide to say that I can make friends. Well... what, I go somewhere just not to make friends. Well that's very good. I guess I shouldn't go apply to something like yahoo, because I'm not gonna make friends there. *shrugs*. Something is weird in that person's thinking. SO WHAT IF I CAN MAKE FRIENDS?

Anyways, the warehouse supervisor is back. And only some people are happy. Me. my two pickers. The rest aren't, because one can't get any more power now. And the other, he couldn't be bothered wether or not that he's back. Now we have the fun task of moving 860 * 20kg... 17.2 tonnes of old technology. In one day. Fun.

Getting pissed will reduce my life, but with certain people, online and offline, I tend to get pissed with easily. So I'll die earlier. So what. People tell me not to get pissed... But I'm f*cking pissed.
I should take up boxing or something. But that'll make me more pissed. So I'll just vent my fustrations here.

Oh great... now I've got a headache. Yay. My life really looks good now.

F**k

2005-04-20T23:32:00.000+10:00

I had a very strong emotion today. At lunch time, well, before 'my' lunchtime, which was 1pm - 2pm, things were so bad that I felt like just standing up out of my chair, grabbing my bag, and going home, never to return. I was severely pissed off. Really pissed off. F**king pissed off. That was how I was for about 5 mins. Then an email came to say that training has been cancelled for this afternoon, and then suddenly I was feeling alright. I even took 1 hour lunch today, unlike yesterday where I took half hour...

Why did I get pissed? I'm not one to get pissed off at nothing. It was because all morning, orders came down from 4 different people, and each were about an inch thick, I'm not kidding. And they say that they had to go today. Like urgent. And then by lunch time, couriers were delivering packages and I couldn't do my work, since ALL THE PEOPLE WERE AT LUNCH! I couldn't even answer the phone. It was going crazy, and I thought... why the hell am I the only one suffering? This is totally f**ked up. And then my ex-supervisor tells me that he doesn't wanna deal with my part of the warehouse, yet he still f**ks around with my database, because some girl is going to melb tomorrow and needs the goods. So he can say whatever he likes, but he's pretty useless. Delegates his job to practically anybody who he sees isn't 'busy'. And he says that he's willing to help print labels if I'm too busy. He's done mistakes before when he printed labels, and I'm not willing to take a chance with him at the helm of my computer. When my colleague was away, he did several things wrong, but wouldn't own up to his mistake. The evidence is right there, but he would blame it on something or errors on the computer. He is very very useless. My supervisor is much better, he wouldn't deal with the part my ex-super does, even if there wasn't anybody there. He'll leave it for whoever will do it, because he doesn't understand it, and therefore doesn't wanna f**k things up worse by meddling around. But the ex-super feels like he should be doing shit that doesn't concern him. Anyways... with the urge to leave the company subdued... I processed the orders to the best of my abilities... still ended up with about 2 inches thick worth of paperwork. Thats why I OT 2.5 hours tonight, to process the orders. The end result is around 1.5 inches thick left of paperwork. The expanded/processed paperwork was over 5 inches thick, because of the labels created... That should keep the buggers happy in the morning. :P

Anyways... sleep is good. Nites.

Shattered...

2005-04-19T19:22:00.000+10:00

I took some time to talk to the HR/finance guy... he said that casuals don't get Leave. -_- So what was that on our payslips? An Error. ARGGGGGGGGG!!!!!!!!

Today, had to go to 'class'. For the Oracle training. Except that the lady didn't have everything set up, and alot of the stuff was... stuffed. Meaning that by 4pm people had wandered away from the class and back to work... And I had to leave twice, to handle the couriers... talk about it being sucky...

Tomorrow will be the same, more classes, then 1 day of normality, then Friday is class. Then saturday is... stock take. -_- No long weekend... *sigh*. More $$, but no leave. That's life. I wish I can just leave and fu*k them up. They obviously don't want any good permenant staff... Me and my colleage wanna just leave for 3 days, and see how they like that, in their face. Since we're casual, they don't get any warning. And the replacements are screwed, since they wouldn't know jack. Yay. :P

I'm a being... slowly but surely...

2005-04-18T22:33:00.000+10:00

I haven't got a personal email address in my company yet. But the good thing is that I now have Annual Leave and Sick Leave. Glorious, isn't it? I have about 2 weeks of Annual Leave and 4 days of Sick Leave. This was for 1 year of non-stop working. Wow. Strange thing is, my colleage, who only worked 2 days and 3 weeks more than me, has an extra 4 days sick leave. Don't know how much Annual Leave he has, didn't bother checking with him... Now, when I got a personal email address at work... it means I'm a human being. I sure hope so :P But its nice that I can take days off now :P (Not that I intend to...)

Today was a bloody hot day... news said it was the hottest April day, Ever. They don't even have any comparison to how hot it was. It truly felt like summer was upon us. Lucky I wore short sleeved t-shirt. I always do, its just habit. If it gets really cool or cold, I wear a light jacket. But yeah, we had the fan going at one stage, it was that hot.

Tomorrow I go for lessons. In the new Oracle system they are implementing. Fun? 3 hours x 3 days... lucky I didn't have to do 3 hours x 14 days. If so nobody will be sending anything.

On Saturday (or was it Sun?) I watched all the last episodes of Mai-Hime. Its not bad at all... I think I should start watching Samurai Champloo Season 2... But I guess I've been too tired to watch anime that I have not 100% interest. I watched Mahou Sensei Negima, and Bleach, and now Ichigo 100% religiously... hmmm :P

Also, been watching the first couple of episodes of the new Doctor Who. I've not seen the previous Dr. Who(s), but its interesting, nevertheless.

And Sleep is always good. I need sleep. Work, no matter how busy or quiet, is still hard. Strange how I don't mind work now... before I never worked in uni or high school... :P