ye olde holiday season

the powers that be at work have decided to shut down the company for three weeks over christmas and new year... so everyone's required to take 12 days of annual leave. i'm reasonably happy to have the time off, but it means i'll have to go into negative figures for my annual leave balance :( or not get paid! oh well... nett result being that i'll be having holidays from 19 dec - 12 jan exclusive. now all i need to do is figure out how to squeeze some value out of that time :)

- - - - -

one of the good things about working so close to home is that on the odd occasion where i find out that a FOM could use something that i probably have at home, i can...

• drive off during my lunch break and pick it up from home
  
• drop if off at said friend's place for a quick test to make sure it fits the need
  
• hang out with friend and another visitor for about 15mins
  
• drop them off at the local shops on my way back to work, within an hour of my departure

ahh... local community... i think we don't get enough of it these days.

- - - - -

that was my day on tuesday. then at night i (and a few other yfers) went along to something that fatty had organised for two taiwanese students she's been meeting up with to do CE (christianity explained). we had dinner at montezumas, and then went to nene's house to watch the jesus video in mandarin. it was good to be able to help answer some of their questions, and to hear their interest and of things they remembered from what they'd read and discussed with fatty. they'll be going back to taiwan soon, but both have christian friends there so hopefully their quest for truth will continue.

- - - - -

after a brief exchange stemming from a game of cranium last night, i seriously think that the definition of "ubiquitous" should be amended so it doesn't appear so synonymous with "omnipresent". just leave it at 'widespread', i say.

music::streams cd (word records)

"what the heart loves, the will chooses and the mind justifies"

(a key Reformation principle, as quoted in an article from the latest issue of the Briefing)

which reminds me, i recently bought two books on the Reformation from Matthias Media... really should get around to reading these some day...

greener grass

FOM got a new canon digital camera (the powershot A80), and was mucking around with it thursday night when some of the prep for shteppi's 21st was happening. i like it better than mine! except that it's a bit bulkier... but certainly fuller featured. anyways, took some photos these past few days (shteppi's 21st, ivanson's baptism, YF thanksgiving night) and have posted them here.

work's been better with my supervisor back in the picture sharing the load :)

both my sisters have taken off for holidays, so the house will be rather emptier these next few weeks. as for me... no enough moolah + no enough leave = staying put in brissie this summer...

the fat lady

has sung.

the winner is patlabor

after spending some time trawling through the atlanticdvd site, i've finally decided to use my $10 credit towards the patlabor movie 3 special edition dvd. my first anime dvd :)

3 more hours to go. 3 more hours of me running the show. i'll be glad to hand it all back next week!

my phone's beeping at me. will it die before i reach home (and a charger)? oh what trivial things occupy my thoughts...

i want weekend. no actually i just want to hit pause for a while and do nothing. now where's that remote control?

i dream of simple things...

I dream of simple things
I can believe in
Like the feeling this day brings
True love and the miracle of forgiving
I believe in simple things

everytime i hear this song on the radio it takes me a while to realise it's an amy grant number.

every now and then i glance down at my feet (when i'm shoe- and sock- less) and i'm momentarily confused by the colourful toenails i see - then i realise that they belong to me! heh, i suppose the novelty will wear off soon...

every once in a while you experience a "hey, cool!" feeling upon finding a fellow christian among your colleagues.

every so often i watch a movie more than once. "my sassy girl" was better the first time around, but it did give me some food for thought. not real sure it was the best choice of diet in my current state though...

every once in a blue moon i wander in my wonder, and feel like i'm going round and round in circles. i find myself back in the haze of nebulosity, and i dream of simple things...

hanging with the girls

a bit of an interesting and unplanned kinda day...

started off with a early (for a saturday) kickoff. woke up late(r than i was supposed to) again, so only managed a few bites of breakfast before the my first appointment of the day - an 8am meeting with terry strong. he came over to follow up my dad and i, as we both recently became members of mannatech, thus entering the business aspect of the glyconutritional market.

that took a bit longer than i expected, so after it finished i only had time to brush my teeth and gather a few things before rushing out the door for a dental appointment. apparently i need to floss, esp between my upper front teeth :| my lower left wisdom tooth is still missing, so my upper left will need removing at some stage, either when it hits my gums or it starts growing out :(

and so, with the planned part of the day over, i dropped in to fatty's place on my way back from the dentist to return her adsl modem and continue troubleshooting their connection problems. managed to get things working, and ended up staying the rest of the afternoon, where i...

• got my toenails painted by val
  
• tried out some sandpaper hair shaver dooby (it really works!)
  
• assisted in some hairdressing as a bunch of girls prepared for a ball later that night (this was mostly holding / passing hairspray, and holding bits of hair!)
  
• saw and learned first hand how/why getting ready can take so long!

ahh the insights into the world and ways of women ;) (how little do i know!)

- - - - -

i've also put up some photos from last week's noosa outing.

(blank)

can't think of anything imaginative, creative, or even functionally descriptive for a title. i give up.

another friend recently announced her engagement and upcoming wedding. meanwhile i've recently been doing some (longish/hardish) thinking about my bgr. too early to say more, maybe. will be seeing her tonight. big long chat methinks... hopefully a useful/constructive/productive one :/

can't remember when/how i got on their mailing list, but after pointing out a privacy breach with atlantic dvd's latest newsletter, i've been given a $10 discount on my next purchase. no idea what to get, if i use it - too much on offer and nothing really standoutish. anyone want to save $10 on a dvd?

i like how survivor has evolved, and that the game has introduced new twists and surprises (eg the looting element, temporary tribe member swap, and now the outcasts tribe). then again, 7 series of the same thing would probably get rather predictable and boring. can't help but read ahead on the US website before the episode airs on australian tv though! but the way they've edited this series' shows feels different to some of the earlier series, which i thought gave a lot more airtime to the physical survival aspect of the contestants' time in the game. oh well, back to meeting my physical survival needs (aka lunch!).

relax...

(brings back scary memories of the rather un-funny attempt at a movie that was zoolander :| )

yes it's friday and another working week is over. i don't think i've felt so busy for a while... seems most other people are busy / snowed under / occasionally showing glimpses of stress cracks too. two more weeks of me being alone, i think i mostly prefer it when i'm not. except when the company's not really wanted, but i digress...

work hard, play hard, so they say. busy / fairly packed weekend coming up too... starting in about an hour's time :o where will i find the time to catch up on sleep? guess that'll have to wait till next week... *yawn* i don't think this is good.

gracenotworks is back in action - go check it out! i didn't realise one of the guys responsible for it is a brisbanite!

meanwhile, i can't be sitting here too much longer... *yawn* again... hmm...

stock (re)take

how hard can it be to keep a proper count of stock? mustn't be as easy as it might sound, or else some people aren't trying very hard / aren't following procedures very well.

but enough about work. meet gromit!

handling paper as a major part of my work has given me a few paper cuts... *furrows brows*

bleh...

ahhhh....

that's better....

1. 7.5 weeks since my last haircut. i think that's been the longest for quite a while. hard to find time now that i'm working, and most saturdays have been busy too, so went for the lunch hour dash. oh for the days of free home hair cuts - though without the professionalism :p
   
2. 2 down, 15 to go, and i'm done for the day. so far i don't think i'd like to be on my own doing this, so will be glad when it's over. meanwhile the monthly stocktakes are happening next monday - now that should be interesting... *gulp*

daily double::wed 29 oct
1. What is the scariest movie you've ever seen?
probably hellraiser (not sure what number). saw it in late primary/early high school, probably won't find it anywhere near as scary now, but my friend (at whose house i was watching the video) saw me so engrossed on the screen that he sneaked up behind me and went BOO! to which i literally jumped... hehe...
2. Have you ever encountered a celebrity?
unexpectedly saw 'ah niu' (singer from malaysia) at the halo cafe in KL a few years back, and had a photo taken with him and the other guys he was performing with.

d-day

for the next 17 working days, i'm running the show - supervisor's gone on leave... bring it on! (or not... :p)

misc

keeping the ball alive

previously i thought that i, as a pretty clueless participant of this competition, numbered in the majority. now that nike have decided to give some hints as to how to find the codes, i can safely number myself in the subsequently even larger majority of participants who now (assuming they didn't already) know what they're doing... does that help or hurt my chances of winning something?!

keeping banking interesting

might not win anything out of this, but could earn more money via better interest... happened across citibank's site, and noticed that their online cash manager account is currently paying 5.00% p.a. interest (as of 20/08/03). that's 0.25% p.a. more than ING direct's savings maximiser (which i'm using), which hasn't budged from 4.75% p.a. since 07/06/02! but i suppose that's better than dragondirect's directsaver which *was* keeping pace with ING until it went down to 4.60% p.a. on 30/07/03... furthermore, citibank's account looks to have a few more features, like access via EFTPOS, ATM, BPay, direct debit etc, which could be useful for some. hmm... on second thought, i reckon it's almost good enough for me to use as my primary transation account! especially given that my current account has account keeping fees tied to minimum balances, and a whopping interest rate of 0.01% p.a. note to self: definitely worthy of further investigaton.

metway vs. my way

the same institution that takes care(??) of my general transactional money also handles my car insurance. i went with them for the sole reason that they gave me rating 1 from the get-go. now that i'm eligible for rating 1 for life with many other insurance agencies, i've discovered that i can save money by leaving my current insurer of 4 years. as my new insurer's slogan goes, lucky.... i'm now with AAMI!

back to the beginning

the reason why i was looking at citibank's site in the first place is... i applied online for the car insurance, and was about to pay for it with my debit card. then i thought i'd do my sister a favour and ask her if she wanted to pay with her credit card so she can earn points (since her CC has a rewards program), and i'll reimburse her in cash. that started me thinking... maybe i should check this credit card thing out more, so i asked both my sisters about their credit cards, and found out that my younger sis (whose card i used) has a card with a rewards program, no membership fees, and 55 day interest free period - not often that you get the last two in tandem, as far as i'm aware. now the bonus is that it (the APESMA/CBA Affinity Card) seems to be something for which i also seem to be eligible. note to self: another thing definitely worthy of further investigaton. so anyways, my older sister asked me whether i was thinking of getting a CC what with asking all these questions, and says: have you checked out citibank?

quentin's best movie yet

today's jumping around in time and action has been brought to you via the inspiration of kill bill vol. 1, which by the way rocks! if you like that sort of thing, that is :) and i sure DO! and that best movie thing? well that's from the horse's mouth. ok so the inspiration linkage is a bit flimsy, i only thought of it a few minutes ago and it seemed to fit at the time :p

daily double::
1. When was the last time you have gotten sick?
how timely is this? i'm sick now! (ref. last few entries)
2. Do you own a digital camera?
sure do :) carry it with me almost everywhere, but don't always pull it out to use...

iron chefs in kitchen battle

sounds like a worthy newspaper article title? hehe... caught the second episode of the 'new' show on sbs last saturday. watching the iron chef (the version screened is mostly dubbed and subtitled) reminded me of typical wacky japanese tv. maybe because it is :p check out the unofficial but fairly comprehensive iron chef compendium.

still sick, feeling the worse for it, and with no drool-worthy restaurants to fantasise about this week...

stoopid

is how i feel... because

1. i signed up for nike's keep the ball alive competition thing, but now i have absolutely no idea what i'm supposed to do...
   
2. mooks' world seems to be falling apart / caving in / some sort of seriously not good, and i have no idea how i can help :(

oh and i'm sick. not majorly (yet?), but nevertheless. bleh...

music::wow worship (yellow) cd2

disappointed

a potted review of dinner at the hairy lemon:

• wording on the enhancer section of the menu is misleading, so i didn't have my seafood
  
• had the chilli roast pork. the meat itself tasted ok, but the rest of the dish (pumpkin mash, mushrooms, vegetables) tasted weird. apple chips were interesting, but again strange to be eating savoury apple...
  
• nene had the sirloin steak, but reckons it looked and tasted like pork. and the mushroom sauce was too alcoholic.
  
• so for a place that markets itself as the "Brisbane's Finest Steak and Seafood Restaurant" (according to the website) and something along the lines of best function venue or similar (according to the signage on site/on the menu, can't remember exact wording), we both felt a bit robbed, at least expectation wise.
  
• though quiet when we first arrived, the place was got fairly full later on. maybe they were understaffed and thus took too long to serve customers, but people from two tables close to us left without ordering anything - just upped and walked out.
  
• though it looked like an interesting venue indeed, there wasn't really anything (beyond the cosmetic and aesthetic) that made it much different from any other restaurant.
  
• ah well, we scored one free meal out of it, albeit not to our palettes' fancy...

after dinner saw us grab some dessert at the blue lotus a few doors down the road, where we bumped into mooks and my sister. they (the blue lotus) might be franchising into sunnybank! there's already a BK31 and cold rock in the area - so i suppose ice cream lovers will enjoy the extra choice and variety.


throat's dry and sore. i don't want to get sick... :|

music::wow worship (yellow) cd1

*drool...*

i'm tucking into my lunch (nice sandwish, thanks mum!)

i'm also thinking about what i'm going to have for dinner :) will be dining at the hairy lemon steak and seafood restaurant (picked out of the entertainment book) and catching up with nene, which we haven't done for too long. i'm not that big on steak (maybe partially because i don't eat it enough to be confident of what i'm ordering!) so i'm eyeing off either the chicken or the pork, plus a seafood enhancer. *yummm* (i hope :D)

oh, my morish nuts arrived monday, enriched with a $5 discount voucher for a future order. good nutty value (and smart marketing) :p

music::you've got music (word entertainment promotional CD)

*thump, thump, thump*

that's how my head was feeling yesterday. not sure why, but it was hurting. not majorly, but enough to be annoying. so i tired taking a nap after dinner, but don't think i slept deep enough for it to be of any benefit. later on when i was trying to sleep i couldn't fall asleep. hate how that happens...

feel better this morning, so that's good. got to work, and my PC decided to be rather anti-social and not play on the network. got the internal support folk to investigate and they couldn't find anything wrong. took my PC away for a while, so i ended up spending the time rearranging and adding stock to the shelves. later on he came back saying it worked fine in testing - plugged everything back in and it's working again. sometimes these "self-resolving" problems are the most annoying cos you're none the wiser as to why it played up in the first place :-/

the 7th japanese film festival is coming to brisbane, but i'm not sure if i'll go see anything... sometimes i wished i lived in sydney (cos they get more asia-pacific films, JFF being a case in point). can't make waterboys, saw spirited away last year at japanime, and initially baulked at twenty-four eyes (upon discovering it was in b&w, and made almost 50 years ago :p) - but after reading the synopsis i've reconsidered. now to find some company to go watch it with, and in time to book some tickets... ? hmm...

friday five

1. Do you watch sports? If so, which ones?
yes. mainly basketball (NBA, but i haven't watched for ages because it's no longer available on free-to-air tv) and cricket. sometimes tennis (preferably doubles, preferably mixed), rugby union (the world cup starts tonight), rugby league (only if it's a state of origin game). occasionally (only because it's so rare to find it on tv) volleyball (indoor and beach), snooker/pool, badminton, table tennis...
2. What/who are your favorite sports teams and/or favorite athletes?
hmm... pass... don't really follow sports with enough fanaticism to have favourites. though i guess michael jordan was beautiful to watch when in action.
3. Are there any sports you hate?
not really / can't think of any. but some sports which i have zero interest in: any equestrian stuff, motor racing...
4. Have you ever been to a sports event?
yup. saw part of a sheffield shield game (domestic cricket) ages ago, went to one or two bullets (local basketball) games way back, and watched a few basketball matches at the goodwill games a few years ago.
5. Do/did you play any sports (in school or other)? How long did you play?
never anything in structured competitions, but in junior high i spent most of my free time at school on the basketball courts. when i first came to australia my class mates in primary school introdued me to the game of cricket, so i played a bit of that too. also handball (not the european kind) was popular during my primary school days, and i had a brief fling with squash towards the end of primary school.

misc...

just went to the local shopping centre during my lunch break and bought some blank double cd cases for a little project i'm supposed to be working on but haven't done much about. there were packs of 5 for $2.50, which is cheaper than i'd seen anywhere else. just as i was about to leave, i see some being sold individually for 40c, also marked 5 for $1.50... :-/ but there were only 3 of them, not enough for what i needed. but why would individual ones be priced cheaper than bulk? it doesn't make sense.

while at the shops, noticed signs saying that the new extensions to the centre are due to open on monday! haven't been there for ages and didn't realise it was almost ready. must return for a closer look.

before i left, my colleague had a call from her daughter (which happens quite often), and after a brief chat about her daughter she asked me in passing whether i had any children. my reply was almost a reflex - no i'm not married. i guess i live in a world where i equate having children to being married; the one follows the other, not the other way round, and not independently of each other. i wondered whether i had inadvertently passed judgment on her as i've never heard her mention a husband, so i've no idea whether she is/was ever married...

still bored.

la-di-da...

i'm bored. it's friday. i want the weekend to be here. hmm... no i think what i really want is some time to sleep and not work. a day or two will do... :)

not that work is that hard or stressful. in fact i kinda wished it were busier, so that i'd have stuff to do! but it's quite variable, and even though i'm getting paid so much less than my previous job, i still feel weird about sitting here with no work to do. fatty used me as a subject for a psych assignment last year, and that revealed some things about motivation linked to perceived worth. ie you're not as motivated to work if you feel you're underpaid (which is probably fair enough), but you're also less motivated if you feel you're overpaid. i don't think i'm feeling overpaid, i just think i'm being paid to do nothing. of course, i'd probably feel worse if i was getting paid a lot more to be doing the same kind of nothing... hehe...

i want the money; i want to be paid. but i want to work for it; to earn it by doing something of value.

work is a strange beast. got to mooks' place last night, and arrived in the middle of an unhappy post-dinner table conversation. unhappy for her, as she was in tears. so i parked myself on the sofa and waited. the tv was on fairly loud, but i didn't want to turn it down in case that came across as me wanting to listen in on the conversation between her and her parents. so i'm kinda glad that her brother came and talked to me - that boy's fairly on the ball :)

anyways, the conversation was about her work/workplace. long and ongoing story that one... where to start? don't know, won't try. and so we didn't end up doing any of our regular stuff, but instead sat around a bit, then went and applied some face masks (i'm smoooth... hehe), and then made some popcorn (trying out the new popcorn machine she got for her birthday) and ate them with golden syrup.

music::felicity (music from the hit television series)

education gone crazy?

just got reminded of of something that came up when i was over at fatty's on monday night. she tutors these students, who also attend this extracurricular program called northshore(?) - something similar to kumon, from what i understand. anyway, the homework they get from northshore is pretty hard. fatty's role as a tutor is mostly to help them finish their homework, and so she wrote down a list of stuff she was going to bring to uni the next day to ask around. a few of these i knew off the top of my head, but some others were quite difficult. try this one on for size:

"SO DEDUCED RECEIPT"
fnd an anagram of the above phrase, to give two words that are antonyms of each other.

now the kicker is that this is for a grade 6 primary school student... ??!! even i had no idea where to start... so in the end pulled out my revo (which, incidentally, has been behaving fairly well of late) for a bit more processing power. it helped in the anagram department, leaving me the antonym bit to figure out, which i did :)

ah well, back to work i go...

gripe, gripe, gripe... and some less gripey stuff

ADVISORY: long and rambly... (skip the first 6 paragraphs to avoid geeky ramblings :p)

was going to blog yesterday... started with a few words during the day, and was going to actually write something when i got home. but i didn't count on the trials and tribulations of PC ownership to rear its meddlesome head. ended up spending most of my evening trying to unbreak my onboard NIC. this whole thing actually started sometime ago, when my brother fried both sticks of RAM in his pc, and so i had to help troubleshoot. well, he only fried one - i'm pretty sure the second stick only started burning after i came on the scene, but that'd be because the socket on the motherboard was already fried... anyways so then he asked to use his HDD in my pc, so i reluctantly agreed on the condition that he not touch my hardware for any reason (he's damaged a few pieces of hardware - both his and ones jointly owned - by doing things that really shouldn't be done). so i figure the easiest solution would be to try and get some dual-booting thing happening, but that didn't work. in the process of trying to get his hdd to work on my pc, my setup which was working fine had a slight hiccup. my firewall app reset itself and i lost all my rules. URGH. that's the second time it's happened, for reasons i still don't understand, so i uninstalled that app in disgust. how silly is it to not be able to easily backup or export/import rulesets?

so then i downloaded a comparable product (long story about how the orginal parent company split in two and each 'child' continued development on the same base product but now independently growing etc - i was using one and thought i'd try the other). i'd actually briefly used the other one when i was setting up this current PC, cos i thought the first one had disappeared. it was slightly different and i refound the first so used that cos i was more familiar with it, plus the second one had problems with hibernating in xp. anyways i'm all geared up to give this other app a second go, so i installed it yesterday (now a later version from when i first tried it), and again problems with hibernation. stuff it i thought, not worth the hassle cos i love my hibernation! uninstall. but now my network is broken.... ??!!!

major ARGH!!! ok no lights on the network ports... let's try to suss things out methodically... check the router port with another pc and cable - yep all ok. check the cable using another pc - yep all good. so it's my pc... alright... double check that it's all enabled in bios (no reason this should have been affected, but just to be sure) and it's all good as far as i can see. next step windows... it says the connection is all enabled and that the LAN is connected, but still no lights. DHCP is not working cos the ip is wrong/invalid. so i try disabling and enabling, then rolling back the driver for the NIC, then uninstalling and reinstalling the device in xp. all no go. did everything the windows hardware troubleshooter suggested, not that i expected it to come up with any gems, and it didn't. even resorted to using system restore and that created a few more problems of its own so i had to do it a few times, but in the end even when i restored to a point when i knew that network was working it still didn't. grrrr...

so now it's getting late, and my router is flashing away with other siblings surfing the ADSL highway, and i'm sitting with a seemingly functioning NIC which just happens to not be working. it's like it's not turned on, yet the OS thinks it's A-OK. i'm almost ready to give up with disgust and frustration, and call it a night. i think i need the sleep anyway.

but, a thought strikes me about hibernation and how the NIC is setup to allow power management by the OS (ie winxp will shut down the NIC when it hibernates or goes into standby). what if... what if maybe when i had that other firewall installed and had those problems with hibernation, that stuffed something up? now, my pc had been shutdown, restarted and reset a good number of times this evening amongst all the installing, uninstalling and system restoring that's occurred to try to fix the NIC problem, but not once has it hibernated... hmm... ok let's give it a try. hibernation should be fine now cos i've system restored to a time prior to this present saga. hibernate. all good. restart and come out of hibernation... and let there be light(s on the NIC)! hooray! but i'm still not happy that it took so long to solve (the symptoms were just a bit too sketchy and misleading), nor that the problem happened in the first place.

but what can you do? learn from it what you can and move on...


speaking of moving on, change of topic - what i was going to write about in the first place. but the momentum has been lost... so i'm less motivated and inspired (not that it'd make for very motivating or inspiring reading anyway).

so, in brief... mooks seemed to do ok with her exam. we had dinner at the manor, a chinese restaurant nearby. we were going to go for the happy hour special, but found out that it needs a minimum of 4 people. so we had steamboat instead, which was pretty good but probably a bit on the expensive side. i'm still getting used to the concept of using two pairs of chopsticks when it comes to steamboating, so for the first 5 minutes was using the one pair for everything... not that it really bothers me, but i guess other people might find it odd. towards the end of dinner, a waiter came to pack up and remove the dishes. in the process he knocked over a bowl of dipping sauce, and spilled on mooks. she later complained that his first reaction was to say sorry, and wipe up the table... and then offer her napkins to wipe herself.

so we went back to my place where she borrowed a pair of my pants (which weren't going to go with her new shoes! =|) and left hers to soak in some stain remover, before we headed off to the movies.

pirates of the caribbean. keira knightley is rather pretty, hehe. johnny depp i felt had a interesting role, and played it well. overall a fairly light-weight but nevertheless entertaining movie with a few genuine laughs and chuckles along the way. plus it was free, cos mooks had free passes :)

a few things i didn't quite get though... [SPOILERS warning, stop reading now if this applies]

1. was will's father also affected by the curse? he should have been, since he took part in the taking of the cursed treasure. so, that being the case, how could he die? ok maybe he didn't die and is still stuck at the bottom of the ocean somewhere, tied to a cannon...
   
2. in the scene where jack finally shoots barbossa, barbossa falls and an apple rolls out of his had. does this mean he was holding an apple in his hand *all* this time?? ie while duelling with jack with the swords and all?? now i know that the apple had some meaning and significance to his character, but this seemed a bit too convenient.
   
3. how come elizabeth's clothes dried so fast on their marooned island?? maybe she was wearing a different brand to when she fell into water the first time round... (okay so i didn't take that much notice of jack's clothes in either scene... but can you blame me?! :p)
   
4. stupid monkey... i thought it had drowned already. but if it too can be cursed, does that mean it also paid its part by blood the first time round?

hmm... all these questions... hehe

music::ginny again

it's a rainy day...

and the office smokers are gathering outside my window for their deadly pleasures. usually (ie when it's not raining) they're further away from the building. is that carcinogens i detect seeping through the walls? :p


finally fixed up fatty's internet access problems last night. thanks to a friend mr google introduced, attempt #3 (or has it been more?) was successful in restoring normal functions. IT troubleshooting is so much fun! but it does provide a sense of accomplishment when the problem is solved :)


yesterday my supervisor asked about the cd i was playing. hooray ginny! on a (musically) related note, i've decided that i don't really like norah jones *that* much. ie. her stuff is really good for mood/background music, but none of the songs in particular really grab me...


mooks will be doing her pre-reg exam soon/later this afternoon... and we're going out for dinner and a movie afterwards to celebrate :D

it's official - i'm a nutter!

it wasn't until recently (last year or so?) that i came across the term "morish", as used to describe something tasty that leads you to eat more. today i happened upon a company (based out of WA) called Morish Nuts... and so i browsed their site, thinking that their products may make for interesting gifts... and then i signed up for their competition giveaway... and then finally i parted money to become a member and receive some complimentary samples (hot cashews and choc peanuts) and permanent entry into their monthly giveaways (am i a sucker for freebies?!)

so yep, i've gone and joined the Morish Nutters Club.


ooh! today i got some stationery! scissors, staple remover, and small stickty tape dispenser. dispenser doesn't suit my large roll of tape, but at least i can now use scissors instead of incisors :)


daily double::fri 03 oct
1. Do you have any posters or pictures on your bedroom walls?
yes... A4 colour photocopy of a night photo i took from a plane window while on the ground at singapore international airport in the early 90's; two A4 sized movie flyers (for 'not one less' and 'galaxy quest'); an A3 poster for HKFF 1999 (hong kong film festival), which mark from heroic-cinema kindly sent me cos i wasn't able to make any of the screenings in brisbane (was working night shifts then); an A4 sized glow-in-the-dark postcard thing showing the nightscape from mt. hakodate (south part of hokkaido, japan) back towards the mainland; a printout of the prayer points from sem1 for the YF committee members.
2. If you had to give up one, which sense would you give up (sight, smell, touch, hear, taste)?
hard one... probably smell, partly because my sense of smell isn't all that sharp anyway.

music::ginny owens CD - something more

lost in the beauty of the moment...

i had driven that road a few times already, and knew the way well enough that consultation of a map was not required. but the last few times i'd been there i'd driven at night, and today i was travelling by day. things looked quite different - i could see what i was driving past! nice, out-of-suburbia quasi-farmland greenery on a bright and somewhat windy day. added to this that i was taking my sister's relatively new holden astra for a spin. then throw in a bit of norah jones, whose debut cd happened to be in the car cd player, and i was lost in the beauty of the moment...

so when i came to some rather unfamiliar territory at the end of the road, i realised i had missed my turn-off!

anyways, let's backtrack a little, and provide a potted photolog with commentary, on other parts of my day:

• earlier in the day i went to my second cousin's 21st birthday yum cha. [pic of invite - the few things i shot during yum cha were all vids]
  
• had to leave early so as to attend another cousin's wedding. [pic1, pic2] the band was really cool - they played boppy 60's pop, giving the proceedings a relaxed and lively party-ish atmosphere. there was "my girl" and "(your love keeps lifting me) higher and higher" during the signing of the registry, and "let's get this party started"? during the recessional. a nice change from the more typical classical type pieces one tends to hear at weddings :)
  
• it was after the wedding that i went on the drive above, to catch up with some of the folk from yum cha. they had gone to superman's house, and when i arrived they were piled on a little trailer riding behind a ride-on mower! crazy ppl... but i quickly joined in too :p [pic showing one person on the back, cos the other group stuff i took was a video]
  
• superman then had to go to work, so we moved on over to fatty's house. more norah :)
  
• one thing i find strange about the astra dash is the potentially confusing dual dials [pic]. usually the tachometer is a single digit figure showing x1000, but on this car it's a double digit figure showing x100. with the tacho dial being the same size as the speedometer, it could take more than one look to figure out which dial is showing your speed...
  
• at fatty's, i went and checked out porky's new family car, the 2nd generation echo. i was curious to see the differences between that and my first gen echo. while there i decided to take a couple of photos showing the dash layout, since i recently commented on this rather unique feature of echos. [pic1, pic2]
  
• then it was off again to return home and change before heading out to the wedding reception. i thought the flowers on the table were an interesting touch :) [pic]
  
• at my table i met a girl who remembered my name from high school! she was wearing some rather funky jewellery [pic], which, thanks to my 4 years of engineering studies, i recognised as featuring some electronics components!

ok that's long enough an entry... early start tomorrow - helping out at evangelistic service at church.

music::norah jones mp3s (legit and free from here)

whine...

yesterday my manager was getting angry at her printer. i don't actually know what was wrong with it, but today she has a new printer.

meanwhile my printer still works, most of the time... though it jams everytime i've tried to use the manual feed tray, and it's not particularly fast, plus recently it's occasionally printed funny characters.

and a few other stationery/consumables whines...

• there are no mechanical pencils available in the stationery supply
  
• there are normal pencils, but no sharpeners to keep them nice and pointy
  
• there's no sticky tape dispensers, and no scissors, so i'm using my teeth to "cut" strips of sticky tape
  
• i miss having a scroll mouse. the person in charge of stationery doesn't know what a scroll mouse is. okay maybe i should have used "wheel mouse"
  
• there are no fine point pens. i'm definitely a fine point pen person, which is why i'd be whining that there are no fine point pens. and also why i prefer mechanical pencils, and why i'd be complaining about the lack of them...
  
• the medium point pen i *do* have is one of those annoying ones which quickly and easily develop a build-up of ink at the ball point. that is a badly designed/implemented pen, and not one fit for writing.

friday five::
1. What vehicle do you drive?
metallic silver manual toyota echo sedan
2. How long have you had it?
almost 4 years now
3. What is the coolest feature on your vehicle?
the dash :) couldn't find pictures that look like mine so i've settled for some american version here - of course my car is right hand drive, and the dash is digital not analog as in these pics. but you get the idea...
4. What is the most annoying thing about your vehicle?
can you believe that there is no light for the boot? so stupid...
5. If money were no object, what vehicle would you be driving right now?
given that i don't actually know that much about cars, this is a tough question. but, also given that i watched "die another day" just a few nights ago, the aston martin vanquish (or rather, the souped up Q-branch special "vanish") is fairly fresh on my mind :)

meh!

(i think that's the sound some FOMs use in a situation like this)

i hate stuffing things up - making simple mistakes. i rate myself high on attention to detail when it comes to "promoting" myself to prospective employers and the like, so almost feel like a liar when i stuff up at work. yes i know i'm not perfect, but....

meh!

watched the first ep of survivor7 last night. seems like it's been a while since series 6 (amazon), so i once again find myself fascinatingly drawn to see what happens when you throw a group of strangers together and force them into various situations. not that i'm a blanket fan of these type of reality tv type shows - never got into stuff like big brother, or those "dating" games/shows. did watch a bit of the mole and the amazing race, but that didn't last. early favourite is on the drake tribe, and i'm liking rupert - the big ol' hippie looking dude! haha... but as they say - the game's unpredictable, and game is on as long as your torch is still burning.

REVOlution!

more strange noises from my revo this morning... discovered after sleeping in, because my second alarm (on the revo, naturally) failed to sound. so, in the mad dash to get ready and avoid being late to work again, i flipped open the device, turned it on, and voila - strange noises.

this time, strange noises = hard reset and shut down. likely to have been caused by total battery drain. lost everything. grrr... stupid me wasn't even smart (or paranoid!) enough to make a backup after the last set of strange noises a few days ago. so i grabbed the charger and rushed off to work.

at work, managed to do a bit of googling to discover this leading to a 'say... that rings a few bells!' when i came to the last two items listed under "possible problems", especially the last one about sounds causing the device to switch off. hmm... wonder how much that would cost to fix... wonder whether psion will repair it as a design fault, even though my unit is over 3 years old now...

well, now that i'm a bit more clued up on why my revo may be revolting, i've restored, updated, backed up, and installed ChaDis to help me keep an eye on things in the immediate future. but i have a feeling my woes have indeed been due to either the battery or battery connector (or both...) and it's going to be a case of live with it or spend more money (to fix, or upgrade)... *sigh*

humming along

i hate...
how my work PC is soooo slow. it's forever disk thrashing because it simply does not have enough RAM. trying to run Win2K on 64MB RAM? that's asking for punishment.

i love...
how i managed to score another 64MB, and now the PC is positively humming along :) so, even though it still has less RAM than my old Win98 system at home, it's still much better/faster compared to how it was half an hour ago!


daily double::mon 29 sep
1. Do you have a TV in your room?
no. if i did i'd probably never leave (except for personal hygiene and nutrition purposes :p)
2. What do like to watch on TV?
hmm... currently? the movie show, alias, survivor, plus movies, the odd special, and occasional channel surfing where i might watch bits and pieces of some sports, cooking, current affairs, news etc...

does not compute?

my revo just made strange noises at me as i went to move the bag it was in... please don't tell me you've gone and done a spontaneous reset on yourself! i grimaced. it had already proved itself capable of this feat some months back, causing much cursing from me and fuelling fervour to maintain a much more rigorous backup schedule.

can't think what should have caused anything to go make funny noices... in any case, i opened up the lid, turned it on, and prepared for the worst.

*phew* looks like it's managed to lose a few settings, which only took a few seconds to restore. but oh... also lost some data that i entered earlier today... though only from one application (that i could see) and not from another?! hmm....

don't die on me just yet. i'm not ready to afford a replacement, though a dell axim (like one my on-a-technology-spending-spree of a younger sister recently bought) looks to be the goods if i'm forced down that path anytime soon :)


daily double::fri 26 sep
1. Apple Juice or Orange Juice?
apple, cos OJ is *every*where. though given the choice (and the variety you typically get most places you go is oh so boring), i'd go for something more exotic. like... guava, coconut, watermelon, starfruit, soursop, lychee, sugar cane... give me malaysian hawkers, or a half decent asian grocery store / juice stand :)
2. Coca-Cola or Pepsi?
neither. coke rots your teeth (among other negative effects); that stuff is strong! soft drinks contain carbon dioxide - why drink in the waste product that our lungs breath *out*? i've cut down heaps on my intake of soft drinks, but i still occasionally go for lemondade, fanta, sars and creaming soda. almost never any type of cola.

congrats F & SL!!

newlyweds for the day... and a fairly warm one (ie day) at that! but yeah nice wedding and reception. really great too to catch up with some old friends/acquaintances from high school, uni and church.

but for now, sleep... *yawn*

don't bite your lip

there's a real sense of foreboding when you bite your lip (in the literal sense), cos you just know that it's going to lead to a nice little ulcer. pain. less joy in eating. bleh...

on the figurative side (though perhaps tongue is more typical than lip), i've been playing around a bit with adding comments to my blog. thanks to the useful help section of blogger, i picked out my comment host of choice (enetation), and voila! never knew it was so easy :D

and so, back to the topic, or not quite as it were, don't bite your lip :) ie. comment away, if that's the sort of thing you're into. not that i think my blog has enough of a readership base to really warrant comments... but you never know who might stumble across my nebulous thoughts and want to add some of their own...

sounds::thunder, and rain against the window

come again?

umm... wow... blogshares

just been spending my lunch break at work trawling blogs from RBJ, and came across the above... i guess it's time to get back to work and earn some real $$! (real as in non-virtual, as opposed to real as in serious/"lots of" - yeah, saw my first pay slip today and so now i know exactly how much i'm getting paid...)

the wedding march

how's this for a list of speedy couple FOMs and their movement from "dating" to engaged/married? all within 6 or 12 months...

1. met october last year, started going out soon after, engaged march?, married june
   
2. known each other for ages, started going out early this year? getting married this weekend
   
3. met november last year, started going out some time this year?, engaged in august
   
4. (i only know the bride) couple was apparently on, then off. back on this year and getting married next weekend
   
5. (i only know the bride) couple would have met august last year at the earliest. no idea it was even on the cards but found out after the fact that they got married in or before august this year
   
6. met last year?, started going out april this year, found out today that they had gotten engaged
   

as i wrote to one half of couple #6, i feel positively slow in comparison ;)

oh oh oh, i'm a working class man

... to paraphrase jimmy barnes ;)

alas, my days of unemployment have officially ended with my first day on the job at a new workplace. mixed feelings i must say... but it's good to be working and earning money (though it's not very much) rather than dipping into my savings or living off the government. lots of things to learn, and not so much free time anymore... snippet of conversation with a friend of mine:

me: oh well, it pays better than centrelink
FOM: but you'll miss the hours though...

true, true...

aim adjustment

'One day as I was reading 1 John 2 I realised that my personal life's objective regarding holiness was less than that of John's. He was saying in effect, 'Make it your aim not to sin'. As I thought about this, I realised that deep in my heart my real aim was not to sin 'very much'... Can you imagine a soldier going into battle with the aim of 'not getting hit very much?'
-- Jerry Bridges, in "The Pursuit of Holiness" (p. 96)

you can breathe now...

hrm. it's taken more than a year for me to start venturing into tweaking with the template. got motivated to do (or at least look into doing) this after seeing lots of other blogs and related sites recently. [read: they pretty much all look spiffier than mine] for now, i've just done some minor tweaking and customisation. tomorrow, the world?! :p

so just in case you were holding. well... maybe just take one quick breath ;)

music blind

a korean student told me at convo club last week that the word they have (ie in the korean language) for people who are computer illiterate translates to "computer blind". correspondingly, i am a "music blind" person. makes it hard and frustrating trying to learn a song in a choir... :(

hardly reason enough to feel glum, but that just so happens to be the case.

*sigh*

snippity snip

there's something therapeutic about cutting off bits of your body. no i don't mean in a masochistic sense of forcibly removing one's body parts. i'm talking about cutting nails and cutting hair. the act and the aftermath brings a certain sense of rightness, a la "now that's better!" which makes the seemingly choresome task of regular maintenance not entirely unsatisfactory :D

2 out of 3 ain't bad... ?

am in the midst of preparing a series of 3 talks, to be given this weekend at a small camp for international students. convo club is a ministry of es, and is something i've been involved with for the past couple of months.

never prepared, let alone delivered, talks like this before :o

so why am i blogging when i'm only two-thirds done? good question ;)

music::bossa baroque by dave grusin

ascii Star Wars "movie"

i really can't believe someone(s) actually did this... but if you're bored, telnet towel.blinkenlights.nl

apparently it's the whole movie. i wasn't *that* bored ;)

hmmm... if you live in Australia and you like your Christian reading bite-sized yet non-fluffy, check out the Briefing from Matthias Media and take advantage of their current special:

In September Matthias Media is celebrating its 300th edition of The Briefing. It's an issue not to be missed! Make sure you receive a copy by taking advantage of this incredible offer. Plus if you sign up for a full subscription, we'll not only extend it by 3 months, but we'll give you a $10 Matthias Media gift voucher as well.

* The free subscription is for 3 months only

surf to Matthias Media, or the Briefing front page.

i've been a subsriber since jan this year, and it's money well spent. highly recommended :)

goodness, it's been almost 8 months since my last entry! did anyone miss me? ;)

welcome to the wonderful world of ADSL, courtesy of the good folk at iinet and initial capital expenditure to the tune of nearly $500! (but kindly sponsored by a sibling with deeper pockets... hehe)

so, now that i'm off the dial-up mill, i've decided to revisit my blog. also because i've just been reading someone else's blog, so it jogged my memory/desire. check out pinkronnie - i met this girl when she came up north to visit my youth group camp in july. i think she's into the colour pink... in a BIG way!

ok. 'nuff procrastinating. it's good to be "back" though :)

i'm back! as of a week ago :)

after 3 weeks of not driving, i've driven 5 different cars in the week i've been back.

somewhat back on msn (messenger - finally decided to install it at home). blogging's not quite the same when you're having to dial in from home once every day or three, so i probably won't be doing too much of that.

so this is just a typically geeky "hello world" statement :)

so this is it. the last day.

i'll be more or less offline from now... duration indefinite. no more msn or blogging away... though i might make the occasional appearance should the opportunity arise.

'til next we meet... take care :)

just finished reading lost japan by alex kerr. a most fascinating and very insightful read, giving lots of filling-in-the-background info on various aspects of japan's society and culture. here's a review google found. wonder how much i'll be able to soak up while i'm there in person.

drove an 11-seater toyota "troopcarrier" 4wd yesterday. in peak hour traffic... :o

even though that drive only lasted less than an hour, i'm still re-adjusting somewhat to my much smaller, much lighter echo (even though i've been driving *that* for 3+ years!)

been listening to an album (soliloquy) by karin schaupp... classical music on the guitar. found it hard to appreciate, being somewhat of an ignoramus when it comes to classical music (and probably not helped by only ever listening to it in bits and pieces, while driving in the car). then the subject of sonatas and movements came up with my passengers this morning, and i thought i'd try to educate myself a bit more by google-whacking on the topic... found one site which looked helpful - incompetech's musical genres. maybe not the most in-depth coverage of the topic you could find, but suited me for now :)

and now i'm listening to more classical sounding stuff - vanessae mae's "the classical album 3: the italian album" (the original four seasons and the devil's trill sonata). i think i need a tour guide.

one for diehard nokia buffs, i gather:

"Want to get a higher score on Snake? Try out this new Snake Joystick..."

see it for yourself!

came across this site while browsing: gracenotworks.com. seems useful... shall have to return and have more of a read of their articles/past issues.

watched kate and leopold. amusing, mostly nice, fluffy... with the odd enjoyable bits of dialogue / one-liners from the antiquated mouth of 1876 leopold :) otherwise, i think i preferred meg ryan in her earlier romantic comedy roles, esp sleepless in seattle and you've got mail.

speaking of antiquated, i much prefer blockbuster to video ezy when it comes to dvd rental. pretty much all of video ezy's new rentals are overnight (return by 6pm), whereas blockbuster has a lot more new releases on 3 and sometimes 7 day loans, and even the overnight ones can be returned by midnight. with the amount of bonus/additional material you get on some dvds, you pretty much need >1 night/sitting to see it all. only reason i'm renting from video ezy is to use my free rentals... two left on that account. will have to see if the scenery changes after my freebies run out :o

resignation form: signed, (not quite) sealed, and delivered.

i think i hit a butterfly the other day, while driving... saw it fly across in front of me and then it went up. looking in the rearview mirror i saw the black coloured shape flutter to the ground behind me...

bowled (ten pin bowling) almost four games last night... now my arm is sore. i got progressively worse with each game, never bettering my initial score of 139. i was pretty happy, being a very occasional bowler who only aims to break a century with each outing! maybe i should aim a bit higher next time :)

found a new online photo album hosting site today, so did a little experimenting with it. generally speaking, i like it. comparable to what i'm currently using (imagestation), but much better in the sense that

1. it allows albums to be shared PUBLICLY, and doesn't require visitors to sign up/log in just to view albums
   
2. the uploading tool works SO much better than imagestation's one, which is at best fickle

the only reason i've stuck with imagestations is that i had not found any other site with comparable features, allowed public viewing, AND offered unlimited storage. i'm yet to confirm whether this site has that, but so far i haven't seen any limits stated... so to test it out i have uploaded some photos from the wedding i attended on the weekend... congrats to ted & emi.

boy dental care is expensive! $105 for a basic filling... well that's what i *would* have paid saturday morning had i not known the dentist. sometimes it pays (or rather saves) to have connections.

had a lazy-ish rest of the morning and afternoon hanging out with some uni friends, including attending the wedding of another uni friend. it was nice and relaxing and refreshing in a way to catch up. oh waiter, x2 please...

and it turns out that my friends had all seen "my sassy girl" - fancy that! actually they were talking about it using the chinese title for the movie... which of course i didn't recognise (i think the translation was something like "my crazy girlfriend"... and of course i wasn't readily expecting that there were too many other fans of korean cinema out there). but when one person quoted "coke? you wanna die?! drink coffee!" the identity of the movie was unmistakable :) we all enjoyed it, so if that's not a good enough recommendation, i don't know what is :p

ahh... this is the life... internet to your bed :)

poor man's version of course - thanks to an long phone extension cord and the work laptop, which will soon be a distant memory of a luxury.

there are probably 15-20 people in my house at the moment. all downstairs. and i'm upstairs in my room connected online... yeah i'm bored. can you tell?

forgot to mention that i thought many aspects of road to perdition were quite predictable. granted, it's not meant to be a mystery/suspense flick, but still. i think that took a bit of the enjoyment out of it.

anyhow, off to do a spot of surfing and newsgroup browsing... have a full-ish day tomorrow and not in the mood for anything too mentally draining tonight.

no slow, lazy afternoon for me this friday! been on the go since i got into work 8+ hours ago... ah well, i guess you gotta take the busy with the not so busy...

watched road to perdition wednesday night. it was pretty good, but i think i was expecting more. maybe because of the whole "tom hanks" factor and implicit hype, though hype isn't really the right term. anyway, definitely passable movie viewing material, and has a few rather funny moments too. it's probably worth a re-watch to pick up on more of the father-son relationship themes, which is probably where the heart of the story lies. but that can happen via video/free-to-air tv - i managed to watch this for free too, so aren't about to pay to watch it a second time!

apparently my blog has had a few more visitors in recent days, how exciting :) speaking of blogs, i've discovered a fellow rambler and longer-time blogger at this peachy site: check the journals link for her blog.

the free japanese film festival is on this weekend in town... details can be seen here. i actually found out the details for it last week (at japanime 02), but wasn't intending to go. of the films on offer, i've seen postman blues (i think two years ago at biff), not sure how keen i'm on wrt lily of the valley, and would have gone to see princess mononoke, but found out that someone i know has it (along with many a other miyazaki films!) on dvd, so that sounds a much tempting alternative.

hmm... time to think about going home, perhaps...

heno toshi! you're reading me! hehe...

the nanae_2002 mailing list is alive! i've just sent my first message to it, to kick off the archiving. but... even though i checked it a couple of times before hitting send, i still managed to omit the subject line... *sigh* pretty sad considering i saw that the subject was still empty, but said to myself: remember to put in a subject before you send. moral of the story? don't bother talking to yourself ;)

"the rookie" turned out to be fairly ok... nothing earth shattering, but not a bore either. would make a good tv/video movie... but perhaps not one i'd jump at the chance to pay to watch in the cinema. good thing i watched it for free then :)

don't you just hate it when you encounter a slow, lazy afternoon, and you feel like hopping on your blog to tap out an update, and the power goes out?? well that's what happened last week. actually the power was only out on one of the phases to the building, so my computers were still on. but the outage did take out the local switch, so i had no network. i guess i could have typed out something and saved it to a file for later uploading, but that kinda defeats the purpose of blogging somewhat, so i played pinball and did a bit of reading instead :p

so... what was i going to say? went to japanime thursday night for the opening night (and queensland premiere of the) movie "spirited away". not overly impressed with the cinema itself (screen, seating etc) - i've been spoiled on the excesses of "senstadium" and "cinestadium" seating - but it was a full house and the atmosphere was positive. the movie started about 30 minutes late, and was perhaps a bit on the long side (i found myself checking my watch on more than one occasion), and some people commented afterwards that the ending seemed a bit rushed, coming too quickly. but overall i enjoyed the movie, though i'm still not entirely sure what to make of it as a whole. it was somewhat intriguing and interesting - probably not the sort of thing i'd automatically choose to see (especially at the price it was going for) but it's always good to watch movies in the company of others and be able to chat about it afterwards. the "after party" consisted of sushi and other tidbits of food, coupled with a few choices of alcoholic beverages.

didn't end up watching any other movies at japanime... was supposed to go to a concert at church on friday night, but that got cancelled somewhat last minute... and ended up staying back late after work anyway, so in the end i went home and veged out. while preparing to heat up my dinner i heard on the radio that they were giving away movie tickets, so on a whim i rang up the station to try my luck. the competition was called "battle of the suburbs" and i was pitted against another contestant in a best-of-seven questions quiz. in the end the score was tied 3-apiece as one question didn't get answered in time. so one of the announcers decided to give us both a half of the prize and not bother with a tiebreaker. and i still didn't quite know what it was that i'd won! but, picked up the tickets this morning and it turns out to a couple of free passes to a preview screening of "the rookie"... so that's what i'll be doing tonight :)

saturday was the word 25% off sale! rather handy for picking up a copy of sara groves' new album which i had been intending to buy anyway, along with some other items. then i did my tax return in the afternoon, and played more a bit more pinball at night - manged to break the 10 million mark... once.

sunday saw me getting wet on the way to the 96.5 festival of choirs, at the albert st uniting church in town. the special guests there was an a capella group called the idea of north, who performed two sets during the program. quite enjoyed listening to them sing, and using their voices to create a myriad of sounds. good fun (except for getting a little wet... :p)

and it's about time for lunch...

hmm... one of my fillings just "broke" and came loose while i was munching my way through a biscuit! how odd. needless to say, it's leaving a rather strange sensation in my mouth. guess i'll have to pay the dentist a visit soon :|

almost forgot... watched "my sassy girl" last friday night, one of the (two) free movies screening during the korean film festival. it was much more entertaining than i'd expected! funny, not taking itself too seriously, yet not too outlandish... at times quite poignant and ever so slightly verging on cutesy romanticism, all in all a throughly enjoyable and fun movie, one that i would have been happy paying money to see. here's just one synopsis/review.

japanime hits brisbane tomorrow night - am going along to the opening night premier of "spirited away". it's a hefty $25, including an after party with food and drinks, so hope it'll be fun!

uploaded pictures from brothers night, which took place two weekends ago. val has also put up some of her shots here.

wait and see

if you look closely at him today, you may catch him smiling to himself, or notice the hint of a goofy grin wriggling to escape to the surface of his person. his smile is not from a joke or amusing anecdote, though it could make for a nice story in years to come. he's not recalling a funny incident, or scheming up a practical joke. and he's not crazy - at least, he's pretty sure he isn't.

he smiles. mostly on the inside, but sometimes can't quite keep it from showing on the outside. he smiles because he's happy.

he might well have reason to be unhappy - there was the confirmation of a traffic infringement fine and associated demerit points a few days back, and that incident last night where his car was hit by two eggs, seemingly propelled with some deliberate force by persons unknown, while driving home. and things are not perfect at home, at church, with friends, and family... and the future is still quite uncertain.

of course there have been positives too - helping a friend celebrate their 21st birthday, and another couple their engagement, during the weekend. an enjoyable and entertaining korean movie last friday, and good conversations before and after that. other good conversations and prayer in the next day. and this morning, having a recurring problem with the car alarm identified and finally fixed.

but mostly he's happy because he can't help feeling that way... he's happy because God is good. he's found himself wrestling with a specific issue of late, and doing a fair bit of thinking, both by himself and with the thoughts, opinions, and counsel of a few close friends. though wrestle might not be the best word... since it hasn't seemed that hard. he's been wary of depending on himself and his own abilities, motives, and wisdom, and hence tried to bring the problem before the Lord in prayer, and sought the advice of trusted people. and he feels quite at peace with the ensuing decision. "trust and obey, for there's no other way, to be happy in Jesus, than to trust and obey." no doubt the trust and obedience is flawed and at best imperfect, but he's feeling a quiet sense of joy and contentment from the attempt.

the decision? asking a friend about the possibility of venturing into a more-than-friends relationship.

the response? wait and see...

read an interesting article (url from bloggerbuzz for october 17) titled "how to write a better weblog". some good points in there; food for thought indeed. if you have an opinion on this blog (and haven't already shared it with me) i'd love to hear it.

- - - - -

someone at work recently changed the behaviour of some of the internal mailing lists we use - something to do with making it a closed list ie. only postings from subscribed addresses will be allowed. this was supposed to be a spam-fighting measure, but a couple of things got overlooked:

1. many staff have multiple addresses, and often the subscribed address is not the same as the sending address when posting
   
2. which can be worked around, if only people had been notified of the change!

quite a few emails had been sent to the various lists but not delivered. adding to the confusion was the absence of any bounce or other error messages indicating the failure to the original sender. it turns out that all the emails being sent from non-subscribed addresses had been delivered to an admin staff member who didn't know what was happening and didn't do anything about it!

communication - getting it right can be hard work.

speaking of which, i'm starting a mailing list for anyone who wants to receive updates/news/info regaring my short term mission trip to nanae in december. if that's you, you can subscribe to the list by sending a blank email to this address:

nanae_2002-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

it will probably start seeing some action in the next week or two, and last for a few months at the most. if you know me you'll probably hear from me soon on this topic, so consider this a pre-release bonus for my blog readers ;)

noticed a new album by sara groves in the koorong catalogue i got in the mail yesterday... so had to go searching for more info, seeing as i already own copies of her other two releases :) the album looks so good, i think i'll have to buy it soon! this is one CCM artist whose lyrics i've appreciated, and often identified with. i haven't even heard anything from it yet (there are realaudio samples available from her site, but i can't get it to work from my machine), but i'm sure it'll be worth it. go check out the lyrics and reviews for "all right here". i think my ears are starting to itch... :)

heh... my pay increment has finally gotten through... only about half a year late! oh well... i get the money eventually.

speaking of money... i was talking with some law student friends a few days ago, and they were working on this assignment where they were investigating a lawyer who had made a few questionable/inappropriate transactions with her money and her client's trust money. then i somehow managed to figure out that the minor transgressions could be used as a cover for the more major transgression of money laundering. of course, that was based on about 30 minutes worth of talking and background info, so i might have been totally off the mark! but... maybe all i've demonstrated is an example of the wickedness of humankind, ie the tendency towards perverting justice, ethics and laws etc for personal gain... :o

anyway, onto other financial matters... still gotta do my tax return before it's too late, and consolidate my super(annuation). feels like such a chore... someone commented recently that the ATO has an army of unpaid tax accountants - ie those who do their own tax returns! i'm an unwitting draftee... wouldn't life be simpler without the tangles of all these financial concerns?

ahh... back on the air... couldn't access my blog yesterday...

photos from glor's 21st are up.

attended part of the OMF prayer conference last friday/saturday - it's been a while since i've spent that much time in praying for other people in the space of one day. it was good, got to speak to a few people - some ex-missionaries, some current (on home assignment), and others who had done and are still involved in short term stuff. looking forward to visiting nanae in december - got an email from the omf missionaries there, so now i have a better idea of what i'll be doing during my time there, and how/what to prepare beforehand.

then on saturday i came back to brisbane for the yf brothers night, which was quite fun, and also full of encouragement and prayer. excellent stuff :) photos to come...

got another friend's 21st coming up this weekend, plus an engagement party. and two weeks later a wedding. should be good for catching up with some old friends and people i haven't seen in a while.

it's 2:30pm in the afternoon, and i am past being ready for the working day to end... TGIF? :)

it's actually looking a bit dark and stormy like outside. will be leaving town and driving up a mountain later today, so i hope my sense of timing will be off and i'll miss any storms waiting to hit!

*tick*tick*tick*

*twiddle thumb*

*sigh* might as well try and get some more work done i suppose!

happened to be driving near the previously mentioned intersection last night, so took a mild detour to scope out the lights... unfortunately they weren't behaving as they did when i passed through the other night. bummer. that'll be $135 and 3 demerit points, thank you very much...

onto happier news, i've just finished my cisco course! had the final theory and practical exam this afternoon, and managed 100% in both (had to guess a few in the theory MCQs) so i'm feeling pretty happy about that. should be sitting an official certification exam sometime soon, hopefully won't have forgotten too much by then! oh well... no more studying for a while suits me juuuust fine :)

more road stories of a different nature...

got my picture taken last night, while turning left at a T-intersection... during the approach to the intersection, i saw the turn arrow go from green to red, then the straight light turn from red to green, but the turn arrow must have stayed red (the one for going straight was definitely green, unless i've gone blind) cos i saw two bright flashes halfway through the turn... maybe i saw it and it just didn't register in my head cos i couldn't (and still can't) understand why one would not be able to turn left when one can go straight. the only thing i can think of is when there is a pedestrian crossing... and i'm sure there weren't *any* pedestrians around to have activated the signals... nor do i recall seeing any pedestrian signals...

i'm a bit disappointed about the whole thing as it wasn't like i was trying to beat the light and got caught. anyway, i guess i can't avoid being at fault, though i'd sure like to do the instant replay thing to have another look at the scene :|

pictures from the hksa ball are now up.

went to a friend's 21st last weekend, which proved more entertaining! pictures of that to come...

saw this signature in a newsgroup posting; thought it was pretty clever:

There are 10 types of people - those who understand binary and those who don't.

:)

more road stories...

last night on the way home i had a car try to cut in front of me three times in the space of about a minute. the first time attempting to cross a solid line when exiting a freeway - i braked to let him in. the second time peeling left on an added lane just after exiting the freeway - without signalling... i braked again. then after the peel was a left turn onto a double laned road. the guy took the left lane after the turn, and i went into the right to overtake... and just as i drew alongside he signalled and made to change lanes again. this time i accelerated. some drivers are not worth the trouble to be following behind.

speaking of which, i almost forgot about another incident the other day... might have been yesterday morning, or the day before. this time i'm coming into work, driving along the main road that leads in, and i brake to stop behind a car which is stopped at the lights. except the lights are green. no i don't mean the lights had just changed from red to green, which may explain why the car was still not moving. the lights had been green prior to the car in front reaching the intersection... she just stopped. as there was too much traffic in the adjacent lane, i had no choice but to stop also. but she soon took off again, travelling well below the speed limit. next intersection, she stopped again! not to make a turn, but to have a look around. then when she'd had enough of that, she took off again... by now there was enough of a gap for me to change lanes and overtake, an opportunity i was too glad to take.

how do people get their licences??

they say that most accidents happen within something like 1 or 2kms from your home... is that going out or coming back? last night on my way home some car (or rather its driver) nearly hit me. it was in the driveway of a townhouse block near home - i saw it, ready to make the turn onto the road, but waiting as there was traffic already on the road. the car in front of me turned into that same driveway, while i continued straight. as the car in front of me turned and i went closer to the centre of the road to go around, the car already in the driveway suddenly came out onto the road with a burst of speed! i don't know what the driver was thinking, but i'm fairly certain had i not swerved into the other lane (good thing there was no oncoming traffic) our respective bonnets would have collected each other in a rather non-amicable manner.

last friday a bus tried turning right on a roundabout from the left lane... while i was intending to go straight in the right lane. i don't know what was going on there either, but i suddenly saw a lump of metal crossing in front of me, cutting off my exit pathway. i wasn't going to argue with the bus (bit of a size mismatch there) so had no choice but turn. (or i guess i could have stopped in the middle of the roundabout...)

it's fun sharing the road with other vehicles... but i guess all i can do is try to make sure (as far as possible) i play nice myself.

japanime info is available online... www.japanime.com.au. it's a bit pricier than i expected though...

flexed off early on friday to have plenty of time before the ball... it was such a strange yet somehow liberating experience to be walking around in the early afternoon and *not* be thinking about work (at least for the rest of the afternoon and weekend). sat around with some friends over lunch, then ran some errands on the way home... don't make the mistake of leaving a girl alone in your car with a digital camera while you run an errand, for this is what happens ;)

- - - - -

the ball itself wasn't *that* good, but i did generally have fun hanging out with the other yfers - we comprised two tables of seven, so it wasn't all that big an affair. food was ok, entertainment so-so, dj/music rather ordinary... and things got a tad boring towards the end. it was funny (not in the "ha ha" sense) that many of the others chose to be segregated along gender lines for a large part of the evening - i'm not sure what the deal is with that, but when you go to a ball, and you (happen to) have equal numbers of guys and girls in your party, and all the girls decide to sit at one table, with all the guys sitting at the other table... something about that picture doesn't seem right. anyways, speaking of pictures... photos from the night are in the pipeline...

wow... almost a week without an entry...

work's been fun... spent pretty much all of my working day on monday and tuesday dealing with a breakout of security incidents. this basically involves looking at the reports that come in (mostly from external parties, some internal), trying to track down who owns/admins the machine in question, and telling them to go fix. some days i feel like a neutered monkey - it's about all i do and all the "power" i have. which is ok, if people are only expecting a neutered monkey... but that's hardly ever the case.

two more months, i say... that's when i get out of the frying pan, and into... hopefully not the fire! nothing official yet, but my manager knows...

still sick... bleh...

trying to organise transport for some friends, for the hksa "starry night" ball tomorrow. maybe i should consider a career in logistics? looking forward to it :) (uhh... that's to the ball, not the logistics!)

ok i'm definitely sick... again... *sigh*... currently sucking on a blackcurrant flavoured strepsils extra lozenge (for the sore throat part). dunno if it's helping any, but at least i feel like i'm doing _some_thing...

weekend coming up - sleeping time!

the news is not all bad however... i felt heroic-cinema's joy at the number of news items that broke this week, in the world of asian cinema down under. read this week's news (follow link within 7 days of this post) to find out why.

oh why don't i just share with you the ones that apply to me :p

• japanime 02 i mentioned last week, and found a few other ppl who are keen on the genre so bonus :)
  
• the 2002 korean film festival (free!), a few minutes' walk from my office!
  
• the 6th japanese film festival (also free!), details TBC. saw sabu, one of the program screenings, a few years back. it was pretty funny.

so i'm basically like... ooh, ooh, can't wait... hehe

but wait, there's more... last sunday night i went to this wierd sounding show called "sticky", which turned out to be quite entertaining. photos from the night have been placed online; i took a few mpegs / short movies of it too, but am yet to find (ie start looking) for somewhere online where you can upload stuff like that, besides which they're somewhat larger than my scaled down photos...

umm... i think that's about it. back to work now.

pop quiz: how easy is it for someone to delete stuff on your hard drive(s), without them requiring access to your computer?
answer: if you're running windows xp, and you haven't installed service pack 1... VERY! thanks to the help centre flaw.

i first heard about this last thursday afternoon, and couldn't help thinking that this is too easy. and apparently microsoft have known about it since june. so now there's a fix (included in SP1), but most people wouldn't even know that there was a flaw to begin with, if not for the media picking up the story recently. still, how many people out there don't follow IT news, use XP, and would be inclined to click on a link or two during their web/newsgroup/email sessions?

speaking of SP1, i installed it on my work laptop last week, and it took all of nearly 3 hours... and i'm on a 100Mbps network. imagine trying that at home, over a dial-up modem connection. fun.

i love microsoft. not.

hmm... looks like i need to retract my comments on my friend's sunglasses - they're not just an expensive pair of fashion lenses, they do actually provide 100% UV protection, but they still aren't a great fit :p

- - - - -

valley finally sent me the pics from her camera, so i have updated my birthday photo album, 26 red, with the extra shots.

also up are some shots from yf's sisters night 2002, which took place on the weekend. didn't manage to capture everything, as some of the shots turned out to be too dark and/or too blurred... guess my hands ain't steady enough :( 'twas a good night for one and all, methinks :)

- - - - -

mooks has been car shopping/browsing, i think the honda jazz would be a goer :p

- - - - -

my head hurts... my throat's feeling funny... might have a slight fever? *sigh* i have a sinking feeling i'm starting to get sick again... will be aiming for an early night tonight...

japanime 2002 hits brisbane at the dendy next month... looks enticing :)

life is nebulous.

i'm falling asleep in class...

away, heavy eyes!

was harassed by a bird while walking to the carpark on the way home last night... was ready to swing my bag at it as it came in for a second close fly by, before it decided to leave me alone. 3 minutes later i realise my sunnies had fallen off... so i hurried to my car, got in and drove back to the place of the "attack". couldn't see much (it was dark, and the area not terribly well lit), and my torch battery had died... so was about to return to my car to turn on its headlights for assistance, when i stepped on something... yup, you guessed it... my sunnies. except i didn't really step step - more like clipped it with the toe of my shoe... so it's safe and sound. don't you love happy endings? :p

- - - - -

more photos are online (now that i've got the hang of things)... if the listings below don't mean much to you, then the photos in the respective albums probably won't either. up to you...

• August 2002 graduations
  
• dav & irene's thank you BBQ
  
• CCCB garage sale (the night before)
  
• some of grace's handiwork (jewellery)

finally... a new photo album is up... check out 26 red if you want to see some birthday-related stuff. unfortunately you'll have to sign in to view them, which means you'll need an account with imagestation if you dont' already have one. more (albums) to come, hopefully... if you're really bored there's two older albums there as well, both from last year.

friend of mine got some new sunglasses the other day. i was much saddened to find that they appeared to be nothing more than a very(!) expensive pair of fashion lenses. fashion lenses meaning that while they look good, they contribute nothing in terms of protecting one's eyes from sun damage. more than contributing no positives, fashion lenses (with no UV protection) typically contribute negatively to the health of one's eyes.

how do i know this? because not too long ago my optometrist told me one of my eyes was showing (unexpectedly early) signs of sun damage, which was enough to stir me into doing some serious research into sunglasses, and thus i am now significantly more enlightened in this matter than i would have been a few months ago. i ended up going with a pair of maui jim sport sunsets from sunglasshut, because they were about the only pair i could find which fit my minimal criteria of must haves:

• 100% UVA and UVB protection
  
• polarized
  
• wraparound frame/lens
  
• tough, durable, lightweight
  
• fit my face very well and be comfortable to wear

... and then some! the technology in maui jim lenses are actually quite impressive... take a look for yourself, i was pleasantly surprised and in the end quite happy to invest in the product :) (and mine still cost significantly less than this other brand name fashion lens... go figure)

spring has definitely come quickly this year - winter's all but a distant memory with the warm weather that's accompanied the last few days. i've quite enjoyed and appreciated the comfortably cool breezes that were about earlier this week - they were especially refreshing after a wearisome day at work. it's good to be able to "stop and smell the roses" every now and then.

i think i'm stressed... my face is breaking out...

and now to subject myself to more of the same, since i'm not getting paid to post my blogs all day long... *sigh*

some guy (a self-proclaimed "MacGuru") in the states (with a "IV" appended after his name, ie mr so-and-so, the fourth) emailed me from my old (ie hasn't been touched in years) website, and tells me he has a new casio g-shock watch for sale on ebay if i'm interested. gee... thanks but no thanks. (one of the pages on my site was on the few watches i had at the time, one of which was a g-shock) i don't quite know what to make of it... i'd like to give him the benefit of the doubt, but struggle to class this as anything other than "what the.... ?!"

my car parking world is turned upside down...

it's 9:25am. i pull into my usual carpark to see one car exiting, and another getting into what turns out to be the last available spot. damn. what's going on? i think to myself... it's never been this bad all year. so i hook around to the other main blue zone (blue being staff-only access) carpark which also used to be have plenty of free space up to, and even past 10am. no go - it too is full. so is every other spot i pass. the only spaces i could see were red zone ones (red is only available to staff above a certain pay-scale; i don't earn enough to qualify for a red) and casual parking, ie pay by the hour. looks like i'll have to join the rat race and come in earlier, dirtying my wheels in rush hour traffic. not happy.

skimmed over an article in the local newspaper - something about (local city) council news, and how they're patting themselves on the back for the "success" of the busway which opened last year. funnily enough, they base this conclusion on results from surveys handed out to commuters using the busway. now i'm no expert on statistical analysis, but isn't that what they call a biased sample?!

you might think i'm sounding a bit negative. that's probably because i am.

a few poems by Tadashi Maekawa, as translated in 'The Wind Is Howling', an autobiography by Ayako Miura (originally in Japanese):

Walking together through a grove of trees in the park,
I had the impression that we were lovers.
I walked along the dark road with an innocent girl,
Wondering what would happen if I suddenly embraced her.

- - - - -

When I cautiously kept my distance in friendship,
One after another the girls left me.

car park was rather spacious this morning... or so i thought for a split-second before realising i'd come in early and it wasn't yet 8am. and i've been pretty much on the go since then. some days i really think i suck (big time) at my job, and wonder why people would ever hire me for this type of role. some days you are the nominated fill-in for another person who manages the high performance supercomputer (while he's away for a week), which might sound kind of interesting except that the pleb users on the system probably know more about it than you, as a systems administrator, do. that's bad. especially when a server (which i spent half a day tracking down) mysteriously died early sunday morning. if i had tears of frustration aplenty, i'd shed them. then i'd go finish eating my lunch.

on a totally different stream of consciousness... today i feel for garfield, who hates mondays.

to start, the carpark at work was unusually full this morning - when i entered, there was another car about to take the second last spot. i circled, and saw someone leaving from a better spot, so waited and took that one. as i was walking out, another car entered to take the last remaining spot. so... full carpark at 9:35am. let's just say i've never seen that carpark full... ever... close to full yes, but full, no. and i've been in later than 9:35am. not a good sign.

then, i get to my desk, and immediately have to attend to problems. people can't login to the high performance supercomputer. neither could i. but i find an existing connection, so i spend 2+ hours trying to figure out something of which i have close to zero knowledge, all thanks to being the nominated "stand-in" for a colleague on leave. finally i call his mobile, and he suggests a fix which seems to do the trick. all so easy when you actually know what you're doing! meanwhile, another guy from a different group continues hassling me about stuff carried over from previous weeks. i'm so ready to give this up.

anyway, it's lunch time... chance to breathe a little...

a quote from serendipity that i liked:

If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid. -- Epictetus, philosopher