I'm back

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...

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...

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

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

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

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

Blogging is suspended indefinately.

That is all.

I'm tired... 

Back to work

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

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.

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.

Pissed... 

now they tell me...

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...

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

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?

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.

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

Happenings

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+

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

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

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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

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

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...

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

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...

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...

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

Funny stuff

This guy cracks me up... seriously I've not had a good laugh for a while before reading this... but one of the teachers in there sounds like somebody I know... (in some way...)

Unappreciated... >_<

Its been a day since the big boss left. There was a email thanking everybody involved, and they named those who helped. And me and my colleague's name WASN'T ON IT. !!!! What the? The other casual, John, has his name in the list, even though he helped out just as much as we did. I guess its favouritism. (Plus he worked at the same company as the managing director previously... almost 50% of the staff now came from the other company...) Needless to say, I feel pretty crap. They don't really wanna admit that there's other people who wasn't from their background.

Anyways, the party on the 5th April was a big success. I got to use a walkie talkie to direct traffic, but it was more fun when we were able to hear other people's conversations that were on the same frequency... But what was even funnier was that the supervisor played a trick from us. We were there on the driveway, when he goes 'what you guys doing' and we were like... err what u told us to do. And then a taxi drove by me and I moved out of the way, and he goes 'oh that was quick moving ken...' And then we go... huh where are you? Looking around... And he goes 'behind the tree'... we both look around at the tree... 'no, behind the other tree'... There wasn't another tree nearby... so we knew he was playing a trick on us... :P This was for 2 hours, then the press conference started at 12ish, and then question time and then lunch time at around 1:15. I was very full after lunch... lots of nice things to eat... some better than others. One of the best things were the Bacon Shimp... it had a shrimp on a skewer, and bacon wrapped around it. And a nice sauce. I had like 3 and was a little itchy, but after 3 more it was ok... :P There were other food, fish, chicken, lamb... And I had many many glasses of OJ... so yeah, definately full.

Yesterday, didn't see the CEO or other VIPs... but they left today, so it was strange there wasn't a farewell tour of the building. I guess it just isn't that important anymore.

Oh well... The food was nice... The aftertaste... well lets say, if no more appreciation, I guess I can't be stuffed helping them, since they won't be saying thanks. They probably don't even realise that I exist. All they know is that $$ is coming out of their accounts and into mine, and I guess for now thats what I can be thankful for. If I find a better job, its time to leave, no strings attached.

Head Honcho

Well the big boss is here, on a tour of most S.E Asia offices. This was a busy-yet-not-so-busy day. Half of the morning was dedicated to cleaning up. Then the other half was... cleaning up. Till it was clean. Then, orders were processed, whatever meagre amounts there were. Then the big boss came just after lunch, at around 1:30pm. The company meeting was at 2:30, except it was delayed for about 10 mins or so. And then we had this meeting with the man himself, the CEO of our company. It was very short. And there was some Q&A. The most memorable event out of that meeting was that he mentioned about his family. He has two daughters, ages 25 and 23, and one son, aged 10. Like... thats just funny... :P Me and my colleague was joking about how his eyes just went ()_() because of hearing that. :P And then some office lady came by and also started to rub it in to him. Except that I know that he likes his current gf very much, so it was just joking with him. He's the kind that can actually take a joke and then try to put the joke on you. Lucky he didn't put the joke on me... since I'm just good :P

The afternoon was pretty boring, no orders, so I was sorting out paperwork for the last couple days. Then before we were to go, it was 5:30, and we were closing all the gates, then they wanted some people to move some merchandise outside (into a big marquee (tent-like thing) that they were building all day after 10am. - and guarded by security guards at night...). So I did that with my colleague. Heavy lifting is required because we are warehouse staff. So thats what I did. I lifted a huge unit by myself... And the guy in the marquee goes "hey you don't need to go to gym if you do this all the time eh". Hehe I think if I did this for a living, I would get more than $40 an hour. Cos heavy lifting is... heavy. So there's 1/2 hour of OT for today. Tomorrow I might get to be the car park attendant. With a walkie talkie. Hmmmm :P Better to rest early today.

Breaking my PBOT

Personal Best of Over Time = 9 hours. w00t!!! Thats almost 2 days of real work. All done in one day. 7am start, 12-12:30 lunch (company paid for pizza), 4:30 finish. We sure cleaned up a lot of junk, and needless to say, the place should be sparkling when the CEO comes next monday - wednesday.

I didn't have to prepare orders today, so I helped move stuff around with the forklifts. They ran out of nails, so I had to go to the nearest Bunnings on Parramatta Rd and got them. Felt like an errand boy actually... and they didn't compensate me for the fuel... with it at $1.03 a litre, I think I used a little bit for that trip. Its ok, the lunch made up for it. Nails was $4.03 for a small packet... I drove 3 km just for a packet of nails... *sigh*. Anyways, for the lunch, out of 4 pizzas, I had about 8 slices and 4 pieces of garlic bread. Yum~ It was great to have fresh fluffy pizza, instead of soggy reheated ones. If we had to buy our own lunch today, I would've actually gone to Subways... I am hankering for sandwiches actually, I dunno why. KFC is also good, compared to maccas. Or we could've gone to get some Kebabs in Newington.

In the afternoon, it was getting slightly warm. And then when we were to go home, we found out that we had padlocked the front driveway with a metal chain so the public won't use our parking lot. That didn't deter the people who drove up on the grass. I told my supervisor that they should consider building a fence, because its just stupid. He agrees, it looks like a dodgy car yard. We're meant to be a technology kind of company, yet we got idiots who want to save parking fees and park in some company's carpark. Well, tough luck, I think it will change soon. We might even charge them entrance and exit fees actually. That'll be a way to earn $$. Seriously, how would you feel if you were to come home on a saturday and find somebody else has parked in your garage? You wouldn't be happy, would you? Thats how we feel about it too. So it was funny when we were trying to leave because the gate was still padlocked and 3 cars were waiting to get out... At the end, we had to call the supervisor to let us out... They should implement a boom-gate system... and have an intercom to reception or warehouse.

Lightscribe...

Wow. Finally, a technology that I wished I have. Why? Because it simply is cool.

http://www.lightscribe.com/about.aspx

It basically allows you to 'burn' images onto the label side. Previously, you have to use a program to design the label, and then print it or stick it onto the CD/DVD. Now you can burn the image on the DVD. Literally. So, you burn the data, flip the CD/DVD upside down, and burn the image. Its really cool! No more messy looking penmanship, its graphics all the way baby :P

End of the Month time...

Its the end of the month. This means 'busy'. How busy? Last month was a piece of cake compared to today. 3000+ boxes, which didn't fit on 2.5 trucks, more like 4 trucks. 45 + 12 pallets. And I did 2 hours OT (Even my colleague left at 6... the other guys left at 5, which was 1 hour OT for them...). w00t :P The thing is... there's like over 10,000 units awaiting to go out... and then 2 days next week when the big boss comes for the opening of the new place. And then my function is to be a car park director :P Maybe not me, but I have a feeling it might be me. Just before I left for home, we already prepared 1000 more units for tomorrow. Thats very impressive... End of the month. But I think its better to have an even flow every day instead of rushing everything for today... My poor fingers :P

I guess its the end, again.

Seems like somebody doesn't want to take my version of the truth. After what I've said, all that means nothing in the end. Sure, they apologised sincerely. I can apologise sincerely too. Its the action which happens at the end of the apology that also makes the apology work. I've told them I don't always want to be the first to message them. So, I've seen them come on twice today. Not a single message of "hi". Were they waiting for me? Probably. But I think its better for me to think that they have nothing else better to say. Otherwise I'll just make an ass out of myself for assuming too much, or misunderstanding. Oh how they love to say that I misunderstand. I wonder who the hell would say "oh I thought u were a friend" but never actually treated you like one. I might be wrong to say that they want to use me for English purposes. The fact is I never refused them if they asked me something. So if I asked them to go the first step and say hi first... Is that too hard? I guess so. And they say they can change. Hah I'll believe that when it happens. I guess it really is the end this time. If they don't wanna continue the friendship, I can't say that what they said was true. I am direct in saying that we were net friends, since I know that they don't really care about what I think. All my net friends are like that. Silence is natural in conversations. When they start saying stuff about whoever else you're talking to... That just makes it not cool.

It's the final week of March. March madness I think. Tomorrow will be the first day back at work, after 4 days of holidays. Heres a really quick summary of what happened.

Monday. I finally finished the translation of the script to "Double Zero". From French into English. Using Babelfish. Yay!

Sunday. Figured out that it was actually the end of daylight savings. Lucky Monday wasn't working day so had plenty of time to change all the clocks.

Saturday. Nothing happened to me. My brother, however, was stupid enough to leave his wallet at home. When he got to 1 stop to his destination, he realised it. Calls home and the wallet is right there on the table. So he misses out on kendo practice. Can I call him stupid? Yep. :D

Friday. Watched "Harold and Kumar goes to Whitecastle". Funny, full of drugs and stupid antics. Don't need a brain to watch this one, I assure u. Also watched Robots. That also doesn't need any brains.

Watched Ong-Bak. Its like the most violent movie because u know they actually hit each other. There is no way the shots are able to be angled to see that they pretend, because you do see them hit each other. I don't recommend this movie to people who are squemish.

All in all, I say its fair that this week was pretty bad. I've pretty much lost faith in a 'friend' because they think that I must do everything first. And can't really speak my mind either. And then get hurt when I do. And what else do I have to expect from them? None of my other friends treat me like this friend. Even the ones who I don't meet and never will won't treat me like this. If I have something to talk about, I will tell them. If I don't, I don't have anything to say. And if I say something about somebody, they get all upset for some reason.

I think I will cut back on the amount of blogging too. Seems like nobody really reads this anymore. I'll only update when I have some news to report.

Enjoy your lives. Its the only advice I can give you without me sounding like an idiot. I try to enjoy what I enjoy, and if thats not possible... I have to find other outlets. Some people just don't get it.

I'm good...

A conversation tonight... I asked if they've seen Hitch. They haven't. And since there's the cheap tuesday ($5 movies). They decided that they will go and see it on Tuesday. Woo a date! :P I'm so good :D

On other news... NO OT TODAY :D and next week too! So today I slept in till a leisurely 12 noon, then decided that the car's oil need to be changed. I, being a guy, wanted to get the job done by myself, but my mum thought it would be cheaper and easier if we took it to the mechanic in the next road. So we drove there and asked him if we could have an oil change + oil filter change. He said ok. Walked back home, one hour later, it was done. Quick job! And only cost $45. Now the car starts up 'quicker'. Yeah, no excuse to get a new car now :P

Friday arvo.

Me and colleague was working as usual, most of the warehouse staff had gone home (past 4pm and its pretty much empty...) This woman from Taiwan who was to implement a new system came down to ask some questions, except that our supervisor has gone home. Funny thing was she asked us all in Mandarin. Why? I don't know. But anyways, since I'm a casual, I don't know what will happen, nor do I really care. Since I'll probably be doing some forklifting soon and picking orders instead of allocating them. Such is life. But what was funny is that she wanted me to attend her lecture for some reason... next month as well. Well, a lot can happen in one month... who knows, I might quit and join another company? That's looking more and more appealing as well too.... -_-

Hi ho, its off to work we go...

Its been 2 days since I did any work. The system was down, and well... its down, no work can be done. The people in the warehouse was instead told to do other stuff for service area, which they cleaned up the mess that was there. And then the system is back up. So guess what? I'll be busy as heck tomorrow. Fun, oh what fun its to ride... (Yeah its weird isn't it... This guy starts humming a christmas song and now I'm in a festive mood. NOT).

I just realised that there's a uncanny likeness between "Sensei no Ojikan" and "Mahou Sensei Negima". Both star small teachers with a girl in their class who has gold/blonde long hair who absolutely adores them. Except that one is a 27 yr old female teacher who's in a small body and the other is a 10 yr old male teacher who's trying to be a man. Thats anime. Go figure.

*stretches*

Ahh... its good to have a sunday.

I can sleep in.

Saturdays have gone out the window for last 4-5 weeks. True I get OT money, but that'll end soon. Why? Because soon we'll have moved all the stock to this warehouse, therefore it'll be less effort. Means I can sleep in on saturdays too. Waking up at 6am to get working at 7am, finish at 2pm (with 1/2 hour lunch... pizza) isn't terribly fun. And they're taking away the forklift too (the dodgy one) so that means I will be using the tall one while B uses the short one. And then when the TNT guy comes, he will hog the short one so only one will be picking then. That means more fun for me. Unless its something else, then its B.

Anyways, CSI tonight was rather... tranny. I drank a cup of coffee and here I am, still ready to go to sleep. My eyelids are heavy. Caffine really doesn't do much to me I guess... :P

And the new guy comes tomorrow, but he won't be data processing just yet. I still gotta enter all the data made on saturday into the database. Oh what fun it is...

That is all.

Relaxing

Its nearly the end of the week, and I'm relaxed for some reason. True, tomorrow will probably kill me, but hey... thats work. We're gonna reall consolidate all the stock into this warehouse. Now thats gonna require a lot of effort. Needless to say, Saturday will not be a day of rest this weekend. So I will try to endure tomorrow as much as possible. My colleague will go to the other warehouse to check the moving, and I'll be here to help with the moving in. Fun aye. Oh well I'll have to forego the order processing then... Or else... what will I be doing... Just kidding, I think some of it will be moving, others will be processing. Now I know I will be getting an extra dollar per hour it makes it all seem so... worthwhile? And something happened at the end of the day. The warehouse supervisor told me 'don't move' and pulled on my collar as I was sitting at the desk. What the? was there a spider or something? No. He was checking the shirt size. Maybe we're getting new shirts! Woo :P

I don't know if I'm coming or going...

This has got to be the most busiest days. Why? Cos I was stuck at my desk for most of the day. Just sorting about 1 week's orders into the folders. That sux. Really, they expect me to do EVERYTHING? -_- Its not terribly hard, but its very time consuming. Sorting the done orders into numerical order takes time. All of it. I had sorted about maybe 300 orders today... and then the folder was FULL. A folder can't take a full 500 sheet ream of paper! And they didn't provide me with more folders, so tomorrow I'll go harass somebody for some folders. And then the warehouse super will be leaving in a couple weeks to go to NZ for some scout thingy. And so next week there's this new guy who will process the orders. Which means I will once again switch jobs. To teach this new guy, and then to pick the orders. Isn't that fun... I don't know what I'm doing now... :P

Another week...

Today was another day of OT. This time its 6 hours worth (7am - 1pm, no break) (5 hours according to my colleague. Needless to say he can't count or he just didn't sleep enough again last night... I think its the second option.) This time we just put stuff on the shelves. How much stuff? Enough stuff. Didn't process any orders, or pick any orders. It was a pure cleanup operation. And the sun takes longer and longer to get up too, it was pitch black when I got up.... think this will be a permenant feature in the near future. Previously in my last post I talked about a raise, but I forgot that I finally got an Swipe Card. Woo :P Now I can swipe my card to get in and out all I want. The other casuals don't get that luxury... isn't that cool. Only bad thing is, I had to use that card about 20 times on Friday... cos the female processing orders was too lazy to walk to where I was in the warehouse... a good 30 meters. So I walked 30 meters to the door, she walked the 15 meters to the door, and she passed the orders on to me. Saved her walking 90 meters :P Aren't I a good guy :P But seriously, we need to have a better system... like tubes that pass the orders to my desk... easier for everybody!

When I got home, I had noodles for lunch and then watched Bleach 21, and School Rumble 16. Both are excellent. Then I watched Constantine. A few of the scenes reminded me of CGI gone mad (shotgun against demons in holy fire sprinkler water), constantine being dragged on the ground. Sort of like Kung Fu Hustle. That was CGI gone nuts. But its still good movie to watch, not too scary. I am normally into horror, but I do watch some... Maybe tomorrow I'll watch another movie, maybe not.

Woo?

So, its almost a year since I set foot in a 'fairly' not-so-well known Taiwanese company's branch in Sydney. Almost a year, minus about 3 weeks (when I was working in a t-shirt company). Apparently I started working with them in March 9 of last year. Its still a few days away, but apparently, me and my colleague (who came in before me 3 days earlier) will get a raise. I will get more than him apparently too, since I actually got a forklift license and drive the forklift too... So... will have to see how much I get the next paypacket. Other news, Samurai Champloo 23 is funny... sad but very very funny. I haven't watched it from the start, but from watching it with my bro and listening to him LOL next room is very disturbing. So I caught a bit of it and its very funny. Ok enough about the funniness. Anyways, today we had a slight storm, nothing to worry about... tomorrow hopefully will be nothing to worry about as well... but it still is humid and feels like gonna storm. There's a lot of lightning flashes and thats annoying... I thought something's wrong with my eyes again... :P

Bored

AnimeNfo.Com : Kuwatani Natsuki... Interesting... :P

Now thats weird...

There I was working hard. Some units had came from overseas, they were unloaded, and then it was discovered that there were 3 empty boxes. First thought was that they were stolen from, but then on second counts, they were all there, the empty boxes were just stuffing to make the pallets 'full'. On the way to make that discovery, me and the guy was standing outside in the 2pm Sun. For about 10 minutes, we were counting and swearing because it was the only pallet that didn't have a cardboard top and yellow straps, and therefore it could very well be tampered with/stolen from. Anyways, after it was confirmed that there were indeed the right amount, I went inside to get the paperwork, and then when I picked up the paper... all I saw was GREEN letters! All the paperwork was green! The paper itself was white, all the colors were normal, but the letters were all green. Confused, I asked my colleague, 'is this green?'. He looked at the paper and looked at me confused, also. "no... its black...". I thought so. Yet my eyes say its green!! And this lasted for maybe 2-3 minutes... So, maybe I suffered some eye damage in the bright sun? Or was it the stage before heat stroke? I told what happened to the guy who was checking the units with me, he said 'you make sure you sit down fast, otherwise u might faint'. I think I was a little tired at that stage... but I must admit, my brain was going... 'hang on, this text isn't green? but why is it green???' Something to freak me out after a day of staring at the computer and entering about 3cm worth of single paper into a database. And of course, I OT till 7pm. Woo. Maybe I will get to pay $1k in taxes this paycheck... -_-

Tomorrow I get to start at 8am! Even more -_-. *Need sleep... and water?*

P.S CSI:NY is ok I guess... CSI was an old ep.
P.P.S: My bro went to watch House of Flying Daggers with his gf. How stupid is that :P Apparently it was packed 85% with asians too... -_-. Lucky its only $5. But I think it would be $5 better spent elsewhere, like on food. :P
P.P.P.S: Petrol is getting expensive at 99.9 cents per litre. When just 2 days ago it was 96. Damn! I should've added it 2 days ago, but at that time my tank was about 50%. And on the way home, the car started making weird noises. I drove into a side street, checked the tyres, and they were alright. Then I drove again, and this time, no strange noise, even at 70km/h. hmmm I want a new car.

Life just got interesting...

For the first time in months, I finally knew the meaning of 'busy'. Saturday was the first of (possibly) many days in the future of 'worked off your feet' day. I was literally just sitting there for a good 4-5 hours entering data in the computer. Truly, I have became a data-entry operator? It seems my job became shifted, once again. Before I was just the duty warehouse guy. Doing warehouse stuff. Then I became a warehouse mover, just moving stuff. Then I became a order picker, just picking stuff. Then I helped out with sticker/label sticking. Now, I have been given the privilage of making the labels. Its bloody hard work, just sitting there and entering data into the database. And the printing labels, when all the computer wants to do is pop up a message saying 'installing office...'. Office (microcrap) has nothing to do with the labelling software! WHY is it activating? *kicks computer*. The other computer had the same issue, I just went and uninstalled the 'office update sp1' and it doesn't ask for this crap, but with this computer, I just didn't dare to. Plus they will hopefully get a new computer soon just for database and printing purposes. Since we are one computer short, the other casual can't do the RMA right now. And the scary thing about saturdays is, we did all this stuff, we had one wrong label, and it took about 10 mins just trying to rectify the problem. 10 minutes! If we had 2 labels wrong... grrr it may take 40 mins due to the size of the orders being so bloody big... in fact, it may take a few containers in the future just to get stuff out... *sigh*. The paperwork, once finished, will be approximately 2cm thick. Now thats a regular small book size. And if that goes missing... well I guess its not my problem, is it. I've entered all into the database, and I hope I don't get any wrong. If they get any wrong, its them who put the labels on, and thankfully its got nothing to do with me :D

Monday will be fun, because we'll have practically no room to move. Yay. And I'll be processing more orders! What will I be doing next? Maybe cleaning rubbish. Oh wait, I DID THAT BEFORE TOO! I should be paid $40 an hour or something since I can do so much crap for this company, yet get paid so little. Oh well. I am severely considering changing to a different company, one that doesn't care for its profits, but for its people. If they just want some forklift guy, they got one quick smart, they overlooked one guy who was here for a year. So what does that say? It says the company is pretty slack.

Oh what fun...

Tomorrow it'll be a saturday. What does that mean? It means that I will be working, but this time, it means I'll start work AT 7am. At the rate we're going, in 2 weekends time, I'll be skipping sleep and working at 5am. Woo.

On an interesting note... Bleach ep 20... They enter the gate of Soul Society on my birthday! How cool's that :P

P.S. I wanna msg people like that... throw and explode... cool :P

P.P.S work is crazy... We've got literally mountains in the warehouse now... sux to be me... :P

P.P.P.S I'm going nuts... and need to sleep early too :P

And you thought I was bitchy...

Today, it being a nice and humid/hot Saturday, I didn't sleep in. In fact, I got up early again just so I can get to work at 8am. Except that there was somebody already there, listening to arabic radio/music. Who he was, I didn't know. All I know was he was pretty important. 'Gary?' he asked. Nope, not me. Gary'll be around shortly. The only problem is, the automatic gate is on a slant, looks like... oh no... don't tell me... we've been broken into. Yep, we did. Oh f*ck. Who else knows about it? The warehouse supervisor of course. Not my supervisor anymore, he has to obey the warehouse supervisor also. Gary came around at 8am. He took one look and had exactly the same reaction. Oh f*ck. Our security doors and locks were pretty shite. They managed to take a lot of stuff. Some of them are old, others were new. All in all, it was disruptive. We were meant to do some picking and preparing for delivery, but all we got to do was to wait for the police and clean up stuff. But 'lucky' for me, I got sent to the old warehouse to do the final cleanup. That was funnnnn. (sarcasm). But then I got praised as 'forklift driver #1.'. So all I had to do was get there and put pallets (wrapped) on the trucks. And then these racking which were wider than the doors. Had to do some 'jigging'. That means turning the racks left, then straight, then right, and then left, so that they go through the door. Lucky this forklift is a bit more manageable, so I managed to get it through, no dramas. Then its back to the new place, and putting that on the shelves. Amongst other stuff that we might not need for 124312915 years. We went to Flemington to get lunch, at a viet restraunt, $7.20 for fried pork steak with rice and noodles plus soup. Its not too bad. We bought a beef noodle thingy for the warehouse super, cos he was still busy with the break-in stuff. Afterall, when the thieves broke in at 2am, he had to go there and talk with the police. He got home at 3am (same as my colleague when he went out last nite, thats why he rocked up late). And so he couldn't wake up at the 8am morning call Gary gave him. Needless to say, when my colleague came in, it was 'oh f*ck'. Yep... it was just the start. After all the crap was put away, heaven decided to play a game with us. It started raining. Now, the warehouse super had been to this particular warehouse when it rains and IT DIDN'T LEAK. SO NOW IT DOES. We (5 people + 1 security person) were running around finding rubbish bins to catch the water. In the end, I think we had over 10 places leaking. Oh dear god, when will the nightmare end?

On the fun side, my colleague told me (jokingly) that maybe he can step on two boats. *wink*. hahaha woooooo go mate :D

Bitch bitch bitch...

Somebody complained about my bitching. Woop-de-doo. It's so much fun when you get called in to do 3 saturdays in a row. Thats right, one day of break per week. Guess that somebody doesn't really know what 'work till you break your back' means. It means that you get to stand and use the forklift for 7 hours a day (including saturday) and take maybe 5 mins break per 2 hours. That 5 mins break means walking around so that you can actually circulate your blood through your legs, cos you've just been moving approximately 40 pallets. True, its not that they force me to do this job, but if I don't do this job, I don't get $$. They might be luckier to have a good cushy job sitting in an office all day just yakking on the phone, or having a break every 10 minutes yakking with other people. Well, I'm so sorry, nobody is forcing you to read my blog or to make you post crappy comments. I think I shouldn't post nice comments on your blog, since it takes you about a month to update anyways.

Anyways, ranting aside, something funny happened... I log this in the chronological order because its better to start at the beginning.

Everybody in the warehouse... that means me, my supervisor, other casual casuals, and my colleague... well my colleague is the one who's the main character... knows that the colleague and this girl from upstairs have a thing for each other... the girl comes down the stairs at the old place and always yells out his name... and he will go help her no matter how busy the situation is. Anyways, after we'ved moved to the new place, we've been busier than usual... yet he will happily drop whatever he is doing whenever she comes and finds him. Thats called... :D

Anyways, it was the end of the day. The girl was to attend a show somewhere on the NSW coast the next day (today). She had to get some stuff ready. So she got the colleague to prepare it before we finished. Then, about 5 mins before we were going home, she calls the warehouse phone, and the warehouse manager picks it up, talks a few sentences, and says in a loud voice, 'XXX, its your girlfriend'. I just laughed out loud... bwahahaha that was the funniest thing, since they weren't really... but its really funny how the warehouse super thought the same. Anyways, she drove her car up about 10 mins late... made us wait, all because of our colleague agreeing.

The warehouse super didn't know anything, he even asked me 'isn't xxxxx yyy's girlfriend?'. Of course I said no, since my colleague didn't have that relationship with that girl yet. But from just looking at those two together... you'd think so. So, today, saturday I arrived at work at 8am and started the work... and the colleague also came. The warehouse super started to shitstir. He winked at me first, without my colleague looking, and then said to another colleague from upstairs

Warehouse super (WS): Hey you know xxx is dating a girl upstairs?
Colleague from upstairs (CU): No... really?
WS: yeah... its yyyyy.
CU: Really?
WS: Ken, isn't that true?
Me: Yep!
Colleague (C): No!
Our original supervisor (S):
C: Why do you guys think so?
Me:
WS: Because you look like you two are dating.
Me: Yeah I think they should be. Lets start a rumour.
CU: Don't worry, we'll let everybody know. Just tell zzzzz and everybody'll know for sure.
C: Oh shit.

Hahaha I wish the guy would get a new gf, because he was playing a depressing song on the way to KFC for lunch (He put it on repeat, I think I got sick of it after 1 song, but I heard it about 6 times...). Get his mind off things, its better that way. Plus, they do look like they should be together.

And I got a 'Free Chips' cap from my softdrink for the next KFC. W00t :P

What am I?

I think my life sux... my back is sore from standing up all day. Real sore. If I lift my leg up backwards, it cramps. Why me... why oh why did I get the forklift license? This isn't work, its torture. And the other thing is, we're meant to be doing this, or are we meant to be doing other things (i.e for service)? I have no idea, but I wish they would tell me. Fire me or hire me, I don't care, just put me out of my misery.

First day...

First 'official' day in the new warehouse. Got there just 5 mins to 9, all the undercover parking were taken. Bastards. Worked my ass off all morning, there was a full on 2 hours where I didn't leave the forklift once. New shipment came in, 20 pallets. And to clean up the mess left behind on sat. Had lunch at 1:30pm, and at nearly 2pm there was a presentation on the new phone system. Of course, I didn't know that, but lucky I alway wolf down my lunch. We left the presentation when the presentation was nearly ending. Just so I can hop on the forklift and do more cleaning up. At 5:30 the place was fairly presentable. Got home in the hot car. Bastards. Tomorrow I get to take a casual (I'm a 'permenant casual') and go back to the old place and do some cleaning up there. WTF, why me? It seems like because I have a forklift license... oh well... more work no extra pay. Sucks, right? That seems to be what happened to me. The other 'permenant casual' doesn't have a forklift license, so he doesn't get to do all the fun things I do. *Sigh*. Hopefully I have energy. :P

What a fun day... woo...

Its the second day... 8am start... 5:30pm finish. What is going on. Good thing that more people turn up... bad thing is that I crashed into somebody's side mirrors.... with the forklift. It wasn't my fault, cos they saw me but I didn't see them. I was doing a turn, and they drove up behind me, then beside me, and then I was too late (or shall I say, the bloody forklift wasn't responsive enough. It takes a full 2 seconds for it to change from reverse to forward, and vice versa.) I wasn't to blame, honestly. I think its also stupid that vehicles were allowed in the warehouse. But we'll see how it goes. Best scenario = both have insurance, it'll get sorted out. Worst = I pay all damages. Lets hope it doesn't get to the worse scenario.

Since today was such a fun day, lets make the weekend funner! How? BY STARTING WORK AT 7:30am! woo what fun! Lets see if I will get more than 1.5x pay. If not, this company can see me bitch. I ain't paid enough for this kind of work actually. People who do my kind of work get heaps of $$ per hour. But not me. Oh well. Apparently Aus is in a time where there's plenty of jobs on offer. Maybe one of them is better for me. If they make me permenant after the move, I won't bitch... or would I... :P

8am

I will be working at 8am. Fun. on a Friday too. What have I done to deserve this??? :P Needless to say, I did a 9am-6:30pmer today. And most of it was just unloading the truck's pallets of stuff. Fun fun fun. Geez I have a headache and I don't know why. Anyways... it means more $$, whatever it may be.

Disconnected...

I think I'm so reliant on some net services that when they conk out, I am without entertainment, or friends. Today it happens that my yahoo mail stopped working, msn refuses to connect, and hinet has connection time out. Plus tomorrow I'll be by myself in the new place, since today I didn't go there because there was no forklift. And my answer to your quiz, is '148'. Ahhhhh got a hailstorm today and I got soaked loading stuff onto a truck. What a tiring day.

Plan...

This week will be full on... Wednesday I get to run SOLO in the new warehouse. Thats right, by my lonesome. This is great, except that I'll be doing ALL THE WORK. Why me? Its because I am the one with the forklift license, ain't it. The other one is my supervisor, and well, he has to be over there supervising the moving of parts. Can't be in two places at the same time. That means I will have lunch by myself, no microwave (tho there's 2 stoves), and 3 days of isolation. Fun fun fun. Anyways... need sleep. Big day tomorrow... will have more and more broken stuff coming in (30+ today!) and it seems like it'll be more and more soon...

Weekend...

Its the final week before the big move, next week. I did some OT on saturday, from 8am till noon. Thats great. I did it moving rubbish. Thats not great. Officially the warehouse people are just rubbish collectors. Even the normal rubbish collector went over there to... peel plastic off windows. Lots of the non-company people (who do the rubbish collecting, re-doing doors and building/painting) were there... Being busy. The new offices are big and luxurious, the cubicles are big and the warehouse is 2.5 size our normal size. Except that there's a lot of police here, and well... Its a big big place, walking around actually takes time now. Good and bad points... bigger kitchen, lots of room. Bad points... all areas have security coding on the doors, meaning to get from one area to the other requires swipe card access. I think one area will be the designated smoker area, which is outside the lower kitchen. Oh there's like 3 kitchens! 3 kitchens, what are they, food eater company? @_@. A couple of boardrooms, and plenty of offices. Needless to say, it'll cost a lot to be renting there, I can tell you that. Next week will be hell.

Also, I managed to cut my little toe. My bro went out to buy a computer Case and HDD. And a power supply too. We came back and started assembling it. All was well, until after we put the computer on the desk, and it won't boot properly. So I removed the side panel, placed it on the side... and it fell down and sliced into my little toe. Where the toenail meets the flesh. No pain was registered, I lifted the panel off, and then, blood flowed out. And then there was pain. Blood sharp side panel... Made out of aluminum... scary... mum stemmed the flow with some red medicine fluid, and it seems to work. So bandaged it and I'm walking around fine. Except when fitting into a shoe.

Went out today to do some shopping, the toe hurts when crammed into the shoe... thats to be expected, there's a huge cotton bud on it... thats why. It doesn't feel like it's bleeding, but still, even after a new cotton swab it still looks like there's blood coming out. Anyways, shopping was buying rice and milk and other stuff. And there was the HUGE dog in the supermarket (wollies). WTF? It was walking around and looked like a huge FAT wolf. Snow/Grey in color, and salavating. One of the staff (3 were walking around trying to chase it out but scared it might bite them) was telling shoppers to be careful since it bites... and mum was like standing there while the dog was sniffing her... I thought that she was stupid, since I told her to move back but she just stood there -_-. But lucky the staff had shooed the dog away. We finished our shopping, and went to the fruit shop, which was just closing. The shop keeper just decided to sell all the 'remaining' display stock for 1/2 price or less. Meaning 3 punnets of Strawberries for $1, pot of nectarines for $1, pot of grapes for $1, and 3 mangoes for $1. Lots of bargins there. Mum was gonna change one of the punnets of strawberries but I told her not to, its not wise to pick and choose. And I was right. This other woman, after choosing 3, tried to change one and the shop guy just told her 'NO SWAPPING!!'. Either get these 3 or don't buy. So she drop them and didn't buy it. I think its wise. You're already getting a bargin, if u don't like it, don't buy it. Simple enough. Some people want perfection for so little (reminds me of the f**cking idiots who buys computer parts. When they know there's not 100% chance that the product will be perfect. But they expect perfection for that price. No wonder people lose faith in the electronics industry. Just make more products and hopefully they have a lower failure rate.). Anyways, after that, did some photo editing for my dad, see if he wants me to put them up on an album somewhere or print them out. Big W sounds good, at $0.33 per pic into a 6x4" print.

Ah work work work! :/ And its a new month :P yay. :P

3 days of fun and excitement?

Friday.

Work was normal... then went out to meet friend from overseas... went to the chinatown and night market there... and then had dumplings for dinner. After that, we went our separate ways.

Saturday.

I am sick of sitting in a car all day... Got up at 8:30 to catch a train to Parramatta for 9:30 departure (via car) to the Blue Mountains. Except that there's no train to Parra. So had to catch the bus. Friend + companion came later.Fun bit was sitting in the car for 2 hours... we arrived at the Three Sisters at around 12. Spent around an hour or so. Then the friend wanted to go to the Jenolan Caves. Thats an extra 72km out from the 3 Sisters... which is already 120+ km out from Sydney.Extra hour in the car... We had lunch prior (some chicken wings) to departure... but we still ended up arriving there just before 3pm... After arrival, we parked up a really full carpark, and walked to the visitor's center... and found out that in order to see the caves actually cost $$! How much? $15 a cave. There's like 7 caves, but they run on different schedules... each cave runs for 1 or 1.5 hour tour... So, it being a saturday, and 3:00pm, we managed to catch the "Lucas" cave tour. Very amazing, that it has formed so long ago, and well, you'llhave to visit it to see what its all about. After all that, it was around 3 hours back to the city, cut down to around 2 hours (thanks to the highway). Something funny (to others) happened to me, and it was written on the friend's page... "回程ㄉ路上累極ㄌ　躺在朋友膝上　一路睡到ｓｙｄｎｅｙ 可憐ㄉＫＥＮ　坐在前座　沒地方可以躺 睡到一半頭去敲到窗戶　醒ㄌ過來"... Sigh... poor me :P After that we went to a restraunt and had dinner. The friend had a itchy eye, so after that we dropped her off at a chemist with her friend, and I went home.

Sunday.

Got up late, colleague apparently got up late too. I arrived at the Rocks market at 12, after spending an hour on the train. Colleague arrived about 30 mins later, but in the city. He got up at 11:00 or something... Anyways, it was raining and I just walked around, wondering if I willsee them before I have to call them. And I did. So I suprised them... Sure, the Rocks market is a street's length, but there's well over 300 people there... So we finished walking around the Rocks, and the friend also had a friend which she met online. We were waiting for my colleague at Pier 2 at Circular Quay, and then we decided on where we were gonna go. In the end we decided on the fish market. Colleague parked somewhere around, and we got to the fish markets. Had lunch there, my shout. Afterall, they've been shouting me the previous 2 days...After the lunch, there were three options... Beach (bondi or coogee), Museum (not sure which one) or KTV. We ended up going to KTV. Even going to the KTV was hard, since it was a street that none of us were familiar with... even my colleague, who claims to know the city like the back of his hand...We sang for 3 hours (4 hours for $10... Plus a free drink! :P) and then everybody just was tired... After that, since the friend wanted to cook her crabs which she bought, we just went home. Kinda silly, isn't it... but she's probably that kind of person... want to cook food instead of eat out... :P

Anyways, that was 3 days worth of going out... pics will be up on wretch soon (and sorry there's no pic of the friend... just of the cave...):P

Life...

I don't have a life... its sad... even sadder it was told to me by a lebanese woman who processes orders all day... who still has a 486... and a 2GB HDD. I don't know who's sadder there. But anyways, she said I am sad because I have a 160GB hdd and its filled to the brim with anime... -_-. Like she'd know. Anyways, today was meant to be the day the engineer comes back from his month and he happens to be sick. So he'll be back tomorrow. Hopefully, fingers all crossed.
Life sux.

On a funnier note, I think something always makes me feel the world is VERY SMALL. The 'service coordinator' guy, who's been here for about 1-2 months already, was talking on the fone, a bit loud... and then he spells out the letters of my street... 'x x x x x x, xxxxxx ave.' Since there aren't many streets with the same name as ours, I went over and went... xxxxxx? whats that, the street? and he goes yeah mate, its my street... and I go... no way!! its my street, in yyyyyy! and he goes :O you're f**king with my mind man! Turns out he's 5 or 6 houses down...
:O And we didn't even know. Its like the other time in the t-shirt place, me and this other guy used to live in the same house (but at different times, of course...). I believe in something which is messing with my mind... :P

Saturday~~~

Oh how I am lucky that a thing such as a weekend exists!! The week is just so... tiring... lucky I can use the weekend to recuperate. And I got my hair cut too... since its too hot and I don't want to be even hotter with hair too long... Pics are up on my wretch.

I talked with my colleague, he went and bought a Mazda3 Maxx Sport. Not the SP23, but they are practically the same, just SP23 is more expensive. Me? I won't be buying a new car anytime soon, thats a fact. But he's gonna be poor now... poor guy :P

Woo 12 days of non-blogging-goodness

I've been for all intents and purposes, dead. Tired, that is. I have been doing the temporary engineer job for about 4 weeks now... and next week the guy'll be back from his holiday. And I will be back to normal. I hope. Then again, the company is moving premises soon... who knows... I might be out of a job then? If so, there are more jobs out there... Sure, I might have to look around, but there's more sentences that I can add in my resume now... 'able to diagnose and fix products blah blah'. Yay. Anyways, a funny thing happened. I was working inside, and my colleague was working outside in the warehouse, he came into the service area and then went to talk with the call center guys... and I went over there and started chatting as well. (it was nearly lunch). Anyways, about 5 mins, my mobile rang. I jumped, since I don't expect fone calls... And I take it out, and it's stopped. A prank call... but from who? I checked the name... (not written here to protect the innocent) and went... huh? why is he pranking me??? I walked out into the warehouse, and looked for him in the office... not in there... then I hear this faint voice... 'Help me ken~~'... ahaha he was stuck on the forklift, right on the top tier (which is over 5 meters high). I went... 'haha ok let me get u down', lowered him down, he was soaked because he was up there for a while... lucky he had the mobile, he actually called out our names quite a couple of times but nobody responded, so he did the next thing and called my mobile. About 3 mins later, colleague comes in... ROFL he was very apologetic... Ah thats fun :P

Also, talk about impulse buying... or premeditated price planning buying... The guy (who I've posted on my wretch under 'misc') is not really my apprentice, but he helps me out by checking units for me... We were sitting there after having lunch, and he's talking about getting the Canon IXUS 40... how its $699 at Myers, and he can get $100 discount because he has the Myer card blah blah... and we just open a webpage which had it at $549... and he just goes 'where's the shop???!?!!' and we say... less than 5 mins drive from here mate... and he just goes 'LETS GO!!!' 15 mins later he is back with my colleague with his new toy... Thats what I call impulse buying... :P Its alright, 4 megapixels, only includes 16mb SD and 3 modes... Auto, Movie, and Playback. also has a 2" screen... I guess mine is better :P For now :P But I admit, its small and cute... Not bad for $549....

Happy 2005... and the events preceding it...

Only a few days ago, an Earthquake and Tsunami occured. And now, we are in a new year. It didn't feel right, but the festive mood was undampened by alcohol and crazy people. Its now two days into the new year. One more day of holiday and I'm back to work. But I did manage to go out to watch the fireworks on NYE and come back very late the next day... Let me tell of my story (whatever I can remember)...

Dec 31st, 2004

I wasn't sure if I was going to watch the fireworks. The noise, the people, THE CRUSHING. Its always a charged up event, no matter how you look at it, you might get crushed when the throng of masses decide to surge towards the front of the shore. Certain places simply has no room - you will be standing for a few hours. Other places you can actually enjoy a picnic style seating arrangement. The standing area is usually just around the bridge... and places where people just decide to stand up... otherwise u can just sit down and rest/chat for a few hours... wake up at 11:59pm... count down... and go back home. And that marks a few hours spent celebrating the new year. Now I have to write "05" in every signed document... I think some of us might still write 04... since you do spend around 365 days using 04. It just might take you a few days to adjust...

I woke up the usual time... 11am... bummed around, hopped online to see if anybody has any plans (in syd). My colleague didn't come on till very late (I checked the logs). So I wasn't sure. Anyways, at around 3ish my bro comes back. Previously, he wasn't coming back until the new year... but today he just came back, along with his road trip people. 3 girls (one is his gf, the other two are in his faculty). At that time, I was using my new laptop... installing some software for my parents... And he goes 'you wanna come to see fireworks with us'... hmmmmm... I ain't anti-social... but I don't know... the crowds do go crazy. (And I wasn't proven wrong). My last experience of the crowd crushing was in 2001 or 2002... I was in circular quay with my mum and auntie... and we were watching the fireworks... and this drunk guy just tackles me. Like wtf... I wasn't doing shit, this guy just takes me down... he mutters sorry, and squeezes through the crowds... and I was just... hurt. And my mum didn't even see it happen... So I was considering if I should go or not. In the end I just said why not... couldn't possibly go any worse. And lucky nothing bad happened.

We got into the rent-a-car my bro hired for the trip... he went down south through country towns and went to Melb, and to see some penguins on phillip island or something, and then comes back. (Did 2,997 km in 7 days...) I sat in the front with him, the three girls were in the back. My bro dropped his stuff first, and then we headed off to USyd to drop off the girl's stuff... (we were gonna crash at the college there later...) and returned the car. By that time it was 5pm. Then came the decision... what to get for dinner. I was hankering for some Subway... but the closest one was about 10 mins walk... so in the end I got Hungry Jacks. Its not very satisifying, since a Subway can fill me up for dinner. A burger is too small. :P Bro and his gf got something from Woolworths, the girls got sushi. And so we made the walk to the Botanical Gardens.

Botanical Gardens. A weird place to be revelling in the new year, but with 50,000 other people there it might not be wrong... We got there in about 30 mins... just before 7. Apparently there's a special reserved section for fee paying people with tickets... and we lined up along with about 300 people... then somebody asked what was the deal with this queue... and we found out, and got out of the queue... and found out the gate for the free access closes at 7:20pm... so we were lucky...

We actually walked through and around the massive crowd of people and it took around 20 mins to walk to the end of the gardens... where there were already approximately 1,000 people or so crammed under some huge trees... And there were 2 'sets' of toilets... about 20 toilets in a row... and people were waiting in a big group to use them... -_- My bro tried to call his friends but none of them picked up. So we were tring to find space for 5 people. We found a place... and sat down... and when my bro looked up, 3 meters away... there were his friends... all playing cards... WTF. haha they didn't hear their mobiles and 3 of them had many missed calls... Talk about coincidence. :P Anyways, we still sat 3 meters away since there were no room... And then we waited...

Waiting is no fun when all you got is your bro his gf... the other two girls were also 3 meters behind us, since there were no space... so I passed the time with my camera, which was bought back with many pics... so it was nearly out of room :P. Tried to take shots of this and that... but since the light conditions were dark... hard to take good pics... so didn't take any good pics at all.
9pm came... The fireworks were alright... 10 mins or so... after that, it was very dark indeed... Punctuated by flashes every couple of seconds (digicams)... and incorherent singing, shouting, and other behaviour. Digicams are very popular now... almost one in 3 people have one... or even 1 in 2... as later I will describe. 3 more hours....

11:30pm... We decided, as along with couple of hundred people, to stand up and move towards a better vantage point. This of course, is met with staunch resistance from the old drunks who think that since they've been sitting there since 3pm, its their turf. No, who gives a shit what u think, its not your turf, soon people will be standing up all around you, and you have to stand up too. But there were some shouting matches because of that... but as time goes on, more and more people get placated... and there was a minute of silence with a lot of 'shhhhh'...

11:59:40... "The Cult of Raised Arm" appears. Thats the term coined by my bro... when he turns around and sees all these raised arms with digicams in the air.... and the light show at the ends of the bridge starts counting down from 20 - 1. I was one of the cult members :P Lots of clapping, wooing, and screaming Happy New Year! This lasts for approximately 20 mins...

1st Jan, 2005. Happy New Year folks... now its time to head on home. Or to a 24 hour pub. or whatever...

00:20amIt gets very crowded here... and the air is very thick... like seriously thick... all the smoke from the fireworks drifts across the city in a yellow haze. We follow the crowd... takes 40 minutes to walk (when entering, it was about 15 mins) in the crowd to the exit of the gardens... the crowd is just massive. Pity I didn't take a pic of the crowd... its just a mass of party people.

1:00 - 1:40amWe make it to a bus stop and catch a bus to the college and crash there...

2am.Sleep is good. Unfortunately I was deprived of it -_- (7 hours sleep)

9am.Wakes up with sun in my eyes. We head off to Central station after saying goodbye to the girls. Of course, we didn't sleep in the same place. In a empty room ok. Its still the holidays for uni students :P It's a co-ed college :P Caught the train up north. Since it goes via the bridge, I managed to take a snap of the Disco ball hanging off the coathanger. (The harbour bridge :P). Amazed that it turned out clear, since we were in a moving train :P

11am - 3pmGets to bro's gf's place. Played some table tennis... had lunch (pasta). Bro + gf washed the dog... I just sat around... Then bro decides to help them set up a LaserDisc player that somebody gave them... that took about an hour... all their setup and cables... Then we got to the car... its been very very neglected... :P A week under a tree and under attack by birds and such :P

4pmBack home... tired and ok... and thus its a new year. Yay :P And still got some more time before going back to work. Its all good :P

I guess its not much... but I think its been an ok NYE celebration. Lets just be glad it only happens once a year? :P