Happy

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

OT

-_-"""

Stocktake of the warehouse isn't fun.

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

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

So I slept in today, which is good :D

Still considering my DSLR purchasing...

Salvation, Terminator

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

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

Spicy

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

I sure can pick them...

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

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

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

I sure can pick them...

The week in bris

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Watching somebody cry

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

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

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

Happy easter to all.

Mar 2009

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

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

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

2009

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

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

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

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

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

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

Goodl luck to us all...

Update again

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

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

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

Random pics from my phone

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

This was at lunch some time ago.

A Kookaburra vs Magpie. Over a scrap of food.

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

Colleagues trying to feed the Kookaburra.

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

A word of warning

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

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

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

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

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

Things I watch

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

US:

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

UK:

Merlin

Japan:

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

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

Update

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

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

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

My niece's name

English: Grace Kaylin Chiou
Chinese: 邱郁淳

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

Hmmm....

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

Consumerism

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

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

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

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

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

The below is my new addition.

Yeah yeah it's only a monitor.

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

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

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

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

Ahh I love my toys :P

Charity work

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

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

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

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

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

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

Another era?

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

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

He better be here tomorrow.

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

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

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

Seamo - Honey Honey feat. Ayuse Kozue.

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



High and Mighty Color - Hot Limit.

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



The guy better come tomoorow... :P

Nice Friday

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

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

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

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

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