Guy Sebastian on Catholicism

so guy sebastian, winner of the first Australian Idol competition in 2003 and someone who "identifies himself simply as Christian"^[1], has written and recorded a gospel song titled "Receive The Power", chosen to be the theme anthem for the World Youth Day 2008 congress - the Catholic Church's week of events for youth and with youth.

He is quoted as saying:

I am not Catholic as such but I guess the fundamentals are in place, which is Christ-based faith.^[2]

i assume by this he's basically saying something like "I'm Christian. I'm not Catholic. But really they're quite similar aren't they?" now i'm not sure if he's being diplomatic or ignorant, nor indeed what type of "Christian" he really is, but if he means anything along the lines of protestant/reformed/evangelical christianity, then (despite the seemingly large area of similarities) there are some serious fundamental differences between the two. perhaps the biggest being that one believes in salvation by faith PLUS works^[3], and the other in salvation by faith ALONE^[4], a subtle but deadly^[5] difference if you get it wrong.

on a sidenote, i'm also not sure where the gospel is in the song itself. can you pick it?

though granted it's the journalist who uses the label gospel, not someone else whom one might expect to have a better grasp of what the gospel really is... anyways, for another look at the lyrics and some "theological reflection on the song by WYD08 Coordinator Bishop Anthony Fisher", check out this blog entry (this link/referral does not constitute endorsement).


[1] Guy goes gospel: Anthem moves Vatican, by Jonathan Morgan, The Sunday Mail June 24 2007 p. 29
[2] ibid
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Catholic_Church#Salvation
[4] http://www.carm.org/catholic/faithalone.htm
[5] http://www.carm.org/catholic/saved.htm

saving on CTP

i could have just saved over $15 on my CTP (compulsory third party) insurance renewal, if only i had bothered to check the CTP premium calculator at http://www.maic.qld.gov.au/ctp-premium/ctp-calculator/ctp-calculator.shtml before assuming my current insurer is already offering me a good deal, and proceeding to pay my rego/CTP bill.

wonder why there is a variation of around 5% in premiums between the various insurers, when CTP is a pretty stock standard thing (or so i thought). but i can't quite be bothered to look into any differences there might be in the actual policies... maybe i'll remember the lesson learnt when it comes to next year's renewal...

have psp, will travel

noodlez lent me his psp (playstation portable), the original intent of which was for me to be able to finish watching all the lost season 3 episodes so that he can discuss it with me when i get back from my overseas trip.

i have watched a few episodes on the psp - i never thought watching video on a small screen could be so nice (nice, if you had to watch anything on a small screen).

i have spent considerably more time playing lumines, the simple but addictive game he also passed me with the implicit challenge of wanting to know how i'd score. so far, i've knocked him down to #10 on the high score chart. i think i've been playing waaaaay too much, to the detriment of other things i really should have been doing with my time :|

anyhow, am about to head off to the airport, for my third trip to singapore in the past 6 months. meanwhile here are a few photo albums from my last trip, some of which i've only just recently uploaded:

• the first few days
• the day E took leave to spend with me
• miscellaneous shots from the first week
• an outing with E's bible study group/DG
• gourmet dinner party
• miscellaneous shots from the rest of march
• outing to sentosa
• miscellaneous shots from the rest of april
  

and no prizes for guessing what i'll be doing while waiting at the airport ;)

the ATA decorations

we had our site ATA presentation last week (representatives from the ATA came to view our entry to the ATA awards), and there was much activity from the teams putting up their decorations, which created an interesting tension between the need to service phone calls (after all, we are a call centre and we're there to answer phone calls) and the need(?) to complete the decorations in time...

my work was pretty hectic and i didn't manage to see the results until after the event. as i was on overtime duty this weekend i brought my camera to take some shots of the decorations that were still up - unfortunately most of the stuff in my section (with the star wars theme) had been removed by then.

well, i recently found out how to embed picasa web album slideshows in blogger, so am giving it a whirl :)

[edit 20070526] have just found out that there's an easier way to embed album slideshows, direct from picasa web album. slightly less functionality but less fuss... should have just read the help file from the get go :p
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related posts: darth vader's many siblings

by request: quop vader

this post is dedicated to mr DT, who is signing up for the briefing, and who came up with the quop vader sugggestion. well there's no mask, but i have wielded a more fancy looking lightsaber in the past. this video is from my trip to KL in september 2005, where i met my high school friend kampung chick, dropped by her house and found that her husband is a huge star wars fan, and had this fancy fancy lightsaber. it lights up and turns off with the appropriate sounds, also when you swing and make contact with something. it was fun :)

NB. original video was taken in portrait mode - i finally figured out how to rotate it but transferring to youtube has squashed it somewhat... nevermind.

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related posts: darth vader's many siblings

the "help us grow The Briefing readership and get your next annual subscription completely free" campaign

i'm a subscriber to the briefing, an excellent monthly christian magazine from the folks at matthias media. it's an irritating publication - and here's why (in their own words):

We know that sometimes we irritate our readers. In fact, we plan to.

Wisdom is a pearl born of irritation. We grow and develop not by having comfortable, familiar words wash over us like a warm bath. Growth comes through challenge -- through hearing something new, or grappling with something foreign, or discovering that an old comfortable truth has some uncomfortable sharp edges.

And so if The Briefing never makes your pulse quicken, your brow furrow, your brainwaves agitate or your blood boil, then we'll have failed.

If the only people who ever read The Briefing are people who agree with every sentence, then we might as well pack up and go home.

We want to provoke more thought and more passion. We not only want to encourage minds and hearts, we want to change them, so that together we all come to think more biblically about life and ministry.

So if The Briefing sometimes irritates you, do something for your friends: share the irritation around.

they're seeking to double their readership by year's end. as an existing subscriber, i have been given some subscription cards. if you want to sign up as a subscriber we can both gain by using these cards:

• you get $10 off your subscription
• i get 4 issues added to my subscription for free

i need 3 friends to sign up for new subscriptions (not renewals of current or recently lapsed subscriptions) to get my year's worth of free editions :) so drop me a line and i'll hook you up! even if you're not sold on handing over your money, you can still browse the site for some free articles (webextras) and the regularly updated CHN (couldn't help noticing) blog/column. highly recommended food for your mind from the guys who provide resources for growing christians.

buddha birth day festival

went along to the buddha birth day festival at southbank on the weekend. not that i have any inclination to celebrate or remember some dead religious figure's birthday, mind you. i'm happy to admit that my reasons are a lot more shallow - i'm simply drawn by the accompanying food fair :p since first stumbling across this annual festival a few years ago, (it's now in its 10th year), i've made it a point to try to drop by for a meal if i have the chance, though i think i tend to forget that the food is all vegetarian until i get there!

this year i went with a few clay people, watching a somewhat lackluster lion dance performance before searching for options to satisfy our rumbling tummies. there were probably around 20 stalls selling food and drinks, with a lot of signage in chinese which is always helpful for the majority english-speaking population... (though granted the bulk of visitors to the festival itself would probably be chinese). anyways, i always have trouble choosing, never knowing how to separate the good from the bad, or the good from the ordinary, until i hand over my money and taste the food for myself. bumped into an old high school friend who recommended a few items, and i ended up getting some fried dumplings, a drumstick (which was itself a smallish and fairly expensive piece of faux meat), a herbal tea drink, rice (pyramid) dumpling, and a "fresh roll" (like a spring roll, but not fried, and more like a spring roll than a popiah) for a total of $12. i was quite satisfied, at least in terms of quantity. quality wise, the fresh roll and a salt and pepper chicken item (recommended by my friend, and which i tasted thanks to the sharing of my dining buddies) were the yummiest. everything else was fairly average, with the "drumstick" the least value for money.

we stayed around for more performances at the suncorp piazza, including some martial arts demonstrations (which i think involved a certain "chik" i know) and a hip hop / breakdancing routine by planet fresh, from which i was hoping to see more breaking. i wasn't initially intending to record this, but thought that the name of the group sounded familiar (i think i know people who know them) so got out my camera...


after this it was time for the fireworks. we got there early enough to have front row position, which i don't think i've ever done before. good vantage point for more video recording. the ~15 minute footage is split into two parts due to youtube's 10 minute limit.


more photos on my multiply album.

darth vader's many siblings

because we (meaning my workplace) were a state winner last year, we're in the running again for the 2007 ATA (australian teleservices association) awards. the various teams in the call centre have been assigned themes for decorating their work area - this time round movie titles were picked out of a hat, and my current area drew "star wars". one of my colleagues brought in a toy lightsaber (with sound effects) and a darth vader helmet and accompanying gizmo that emits authentic darth vader noises and quotes, as well as modifying your speech to make you sound like the masked heavy breather. another colleague was playing with it, and i happened to bring my camera to work that day, so shot a little clip:

could he be darth vader's long lost brother??!!

for a dose of video fun starring darth vader's "real" brother, check out "chad vader: day shift manager" by blame society productions. it's a fan film series featuring the less well-known brother of darth vader, a guy who works as a day shift manager in a supermarket. the episodes follow his run-ins with colleagues and his boss, and his lacklustre love life. episode 8, which is supposed to bring season 1 to a close, is rumoured to be released this coming week...

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related posts: sorry dr. spin, i'd like a second opinion please

effortless improvement!

six months ago, i submitted an application for a role. i was told that my written application was quite badly done, and that i barely scraped through for the practical assessment. in the end, i made it to the order of merit, but was ranked fairly low in the pecking order.

a few weeks ago another round of application for the same role was conducted by the same person, using the same job description, selection criteria, and application format. i was on leave overseas at the time, so my superior (the one conducting the EOI - expression of interest) sent me my previous application for review. in the end i was unable to write a new application by the deadline, so i SMSed him to say if he can accept my previous submission then please do so, otherwise i would sit out from consideration.

this is the response i received today [with specific details removed]:

Thank you for your Expression of Interest in the [...] position within [...]. The position attracted a high quality pool of applicants and having considered all the applications [sic] advise you that, in this instance, you have been rated as "Fully Effective". Higher Duties will continue on a short term basis pending a permanent selection process.

We wish to thank you for the time and effort you put into preparing your application.

If feedback on your application is required please let me know.

Thankyou

so, by spending no time and effort on preparing my application (since i was reusing my previous one), i had managed to go from "barely scraped in" to "fully effective"! anybody want me to write their next job application?? ;)

(of course, there's a bit more beneath the surface which goes some way to explaining this farcical situation. hence i didn't bother asking for feedback. i'm actually not very good at writing job applications :p)

making sense of advertising

does advertising work?

It's easy for us to think that we aren't affected by the things we watch, but if that's the case why do manufacturers pay thousands of pounds every month for TV advertising? And why, now that technology exists to record TV shows while skipping over the adverts, are more and more manufacturers paying for product placement in top shows rather than sticking to traditional advertising? We are fooling ourselves if we try to claim that TV has no impact and influence on our lives.
-- Get more like Jesus while watching TV, by Nick Pollard & Steve Couch, Ch 1 (p. 4)

my agreeance with the advertising argument[1] is ironic for (at least) two reasons:

1. i watch a lot of tv, but disproportionately few ads. i tend to record shows, and fast forward through the ads when watching them later. i'm typically not interested in being sucked in by advertising. spurred on by my recent spate of travel (VCRs were just not meant to handle looking after half a dozen weekly shows for more than a week... yup, no HD/DVD recorder for this tv junkie), and now thanks to the combined powers of xvid, bittorrent, a broadband internet connection at home, and those nice(?) people in america who encode episodes from there which haven't even screened here, i catch most of my shows on a CRT of a different kind (yup, no LCD screens for this computer junkie). which of course means i miss all the ads, cos the encoders always edit them out to make the file smaller. even if the ads were left in, they're meant for a north american market, and won't typically be relevant to me.
   
   
2. i have started advertising on this site. which i guess means at least part of me wants advertising to work! i've signed up with google adsense, and spent the last few days upgrading my blog from the old classic templates to the new layouts structure (trying to reapply the few tweaks i'd added over the years took a bit of time -- i just know i'd never get a job in web design!) and incorporating a number of adsense products on the page. i have to be careful about what i say about the ads, eg i can't ask visitors to click on them, nor click on them myself (though i'm curious how that would be policed/verified). what if i go the reverse psychology route and say don't click on them?? haha. anyways, just trying it out to see if i can generate additional income. you can too, but i can't tell you how i can refer you so that we both benefit... (but maybe if you wanted to, you could work that one out for yourself)
   

[1] of course, "advertising" is used to demonstrate/argue that what you watch in general (ie not just the advertisements) does have some impact and influence on our lives. and i agree with the general statement. (hopefully) more on this later...

here today, gone tomorrow

it's been barely two months since i returned from my last trip to singapore, and i'm gearing up to return. thanks to the ability to take some leave without pay, this trip will be the longest i have ever stayed (and the longest i ever plan to stay) -- 5 weeks. within those 5 weeks i'll be hopping over to hong kong for a few days, catching up with YC, seeing some of the sights and maybe catching a movie or two at the hong kong international film festival. then island and i will also be joining up with noodlez, mellow yellow and slam man for a a week in kota kinabalu, including climbing mt kinabalu.

should be fun :)

i've barely caught up with the uploading of photos since the start of the trip... but here's a roundup in pictures of some of what i've been up to since late december.

• clay caloundra outing
• SWANS christmas gathering at oishii sushi and nza's place
• Singapore trip
• day 1
• day 2
• isabelle (my neice!)
• day 4
• days 5 & 6
• stillfishing DG retreat day 1
• stillfishing DG retreat day 2 + ARPC NYE dinner
• new years day
• week 2 (can you tell i was getting a bit lazy with my albums by this stage? :p)
• sydney pit stop for some nice ribs... hmm... yummm!
• BLT (brisbane leadership training conference)
• NBL finals game 3

phew!

got a few days left to get all my packing and other prep done... i feel quite disorganised and tight on time, so probably shouldn't be sitting here blogging! anyways, gonna go salivate at the prospect of eating some nice nice food, such as the likes of the fare featured on singapore food blogs like ieatishootipost. might even try to tag along as a makankaki if i get the chance :)

cccb.org.au

not quite a LAN party, as looks might initially suggest :p

cccb now has a website! MC conducted a workshop to brief content managers on how to add content etc. hope to see it grow into a useful resource.

the intricacies of airfares - part 2

i decided to add a hong kong leg/side trip to my upcoming overseas holiday to singapore, somewhat spuriously as a result of jetstar's sale fares from singapore to HK. after checking with YC - the only person in HK i know well enough to rope into the role of tour guide/interpreter - i changed my travel dates to be outside of the sale period, so as to coincide with YC's already planned leave from work. when i finally got around to booking the flights, i was pleasantly surprised to find that my outbound leg was again on (a different) sale. so in the end i get to fly for only a bit more than the original sale fares, and enjoy the availability of a local host. it was then that i struck another peculiarity of the world of airfares...

having learnt my lesson from the last time i almost missed a bargain, i made an immediate booking for the SG-HK leg of the journey, but decided against booking the return leg in the hopes that the price would drop. i then found out the reason for the cheaper SG-HK trip, and concluded my hope for the return leg might be in vain, so i proceeded to book the HK-SG leg. here's the thing:

if i had booked my return leg together with my outbound leg, it would have cost me SGD209 ($149 for flight, $60 for taxes). but if i book it as a single one-way trip from HK, it costs HKD906 ($628 for flight, $278 taxes).

converting to AUD that's a total of about $175 and $145 respectively. exactly the same flight, but with a variation of about $30 depending on where you book from. don't ask me why! i'm just glad i stumbled across the unexpected saving, as a result of trying to hope for a different type of saving :p

it's a bit like the travel between singapore and KL, from what i understand... the same numerical figure fare applies for flights from KL to singapore and from singapore to KL - the former you book/pay for in malaysia, using malaysian ringgits; the latter you book/pay for in singapore, using singapore dollars. at a conversion of roughly 2:1 for MYR:SGD, that's a significant difference!

the intricacies of airfares - part 1

i don't understand how airfares are priced. i'm sure there's some economic model that determines when they go up and when they come down, accounting for factors such as the busyness of the travel dates, length of time between booking date and travel date, fixed duration promotions, competitors' price movements and the like.

i also don't understand the value of travel agents in the travel industry when it comes to booking (simple A-to-B-and-back type) flights. i've long stopped bothering to contact travel agents for domestic flights, heading straight to the likes of the virginblue and jetstar websites when i need to fly. the last time i tried to book a domestic flight at flight centre, i was quoted a much higher fare on a qantas flight than what i had already found on a vb flight. when i mentioned this, the consultant checked the vb website, and i ended up making the booking with vb. but what really happened was that the flight centre person made the booking for me on the vb website, and when i asked what the difference was between her doing that and me doing exactly the same thing at home on my own computer, she muttered something about their lowest price guarantee and arranged a $10 refund to my credit card.

the web has also become my first port of call for international flights. i used to book through one particular travel agency because the boss/owner is a family friend, and has authority to give some discounts. however the last few times i've done the brisbane-singapore round trip, i've consistently found that the lowest price i could get was direct from the airline's website (in my case singapore airline). not even the likes of zuji or union shopper's travel service could compete in sourcing cheaper prices than what my buddy firefox and i found with a few mouseclicks. so the moral of this story is: book directly with the airline if you can, as this cuts out the middle man and associated costs.

having said this, i saw that zuji's price for the qantas flights were slightly less than the price you get from qantas' websitef! go figure... so the moral of this story is: don't immediately book directly with the airline, but first see if the middle man is offering discounts/incentives.

in the end, i went with british airways, as they happened to be having a sale (half price tickets!) just when i was about to book. so i scored :) the funny thing with this is that although these BA flights are actually operated by qantas, the equivalent qantas flights (same physical plane, different code/flight number) were still at about $11K. so the moral of this story is: when a flight has multiple personalities, seats may vary significantly in price depending on which 'person' you speak to.

i first found out about the BA special via an smspup advertising email. the prices it mentioned half shocked me from my morning not-quite-wakefulness, and i was rejoicing at such a find of cheap tickets available for the dates i wanted to travel. at $760 (including tax) for the return flights, who wouldn't be happy when every other airline's starting price was something in the $11-12K range. but i had to go to work, and didn't have time to check into conditions etc and make the actual booking, so left it for after work. when i got home, the cheap seats were no longer showing! i was spewing big time at the thought of missing out on such a rare bargain, particularly as the price of the singapore airlines flights i was originally intending to book had just gone up. thankfully, the next morning i saw the special prices available once more for my desired dates - this time i couldn't get my credit card out fast enough. so the moral of this story is: when you see a bargain, carpe diem!

remarkable customer service

"I'm using the word remarkable literally—the goal is to provide customer service so good that people remark."

so says joel in a recent article on the topic of customer service. i guess i'm not ignorant of the theories and principles in customer service, as mostly covered in the 7 steps joel expounds in the article. having worked in various customer service roles for some time now, i am much more aware of the occasional good and often ordinary or sometimes bad customer service that i receive as a customer - but i can't say that i set out to provide remarkable customer service. maybe because i'm getting rather sick of my current role, and because the 8th step to providing customer service seems to be somewhat lacking in my workplace...

and maybe if customer service staff were given the freedom to provide customer service without the constraints of having their performance measured by average call handling times and the like. one colleague, when asked by a customer as to what it's like to work here, answered:

"I have two words for you: battery hens."

i thought it was funny. if only it didn't sometimes feel too true!

happy new year?

there's never much of an atmosphere for chinese new year in these parts of the world. i wasn't even sure which day CNY actually fell on. in a more asian setting, one might break out the mahjong set and go a few rounds. but not me (mostly because i don't have a mahjong set :p) - i've been getting into a bit of texas holdem poker, so took the opportunity last night to break in my new set of chips after the clay intro/dessert party ended.


i thought i'd post the few pics i took at clay, since k seemed appreciative that her efforts at arranging the food did not go unnoticed ;) even the humble lamingtons were given a bit of a lift!

and of course there's a pic of my poker chips... thanks to some dogged and savvy ebay bidding, the beauty of multiple purchases with combined shipping, and a bit of onselling, my set are effective free - not bad for something that would retail in the 3 digit mark :) there's even some surplus that i'm puting towards better quality cards (the ones in the set were... let's just say not the greatest), viz. a double (duo-tone) set of classic bicycle 808 rider backs.

oh and i'm also getting a black tiger and ghost deck, mostly as a differentiation device (and cos they look cool :p) and as a bit of indulgence/spending of the ang pao money that i don't actually get anymore! i didn't realise these cards are used more widely for magic tricks than playing, until i found blank cards which you obviously can't play with but are handy for tricks like this:

neat huh? for the curious, here's how it's done.

chicago's... not famous for ribs!

i can't sleep, so i'm tending to my much neglected blog...

i can't remember if i've been back to chicago's piano bar & grill since my first visit for lunch over a year ago, but in any case i found myself dining there again on friday night when i met up with some clay folk for dinner. this time i sat outside, where a male duo on guitar and tambourine sang some pop songs, thus providing a bit more of an atmosphere than during the day.

perhaps spurred on by the fond memories of the ribs i had last month in sydney (see previous post for pic/details), i thought i'd try it from a local eatery. prior to tony roma's, the only other time i can remember eating ribs in a restaurant was some years ago when i tried some from a friend's sizzler meal... and so i went for the "smoky bbq pork rack of ribs".

well, this turned out to be probably the worst ordering decision i had ever made. the only point of redemption was to get the half rack with chicken rather than the full rack - at least the chicken was ok, and the combo was $1 less than getting the full rack. so i didn't feel quite as cheesed off as ST, who ordered the full rack...

now i'm not an expert on cooking ribs (ok i'm not an expert on cooking anything... except maybe 2 minute noodles??), but from what i understand, the aim of producing good ribs is generally to end up with tender meat that almost falls off the bones. this is certainly what i was served at tony roma's. chicago's on the other hand served a rather antithetical version, with meat quite unwilling to come off the bone despite the best intentions of teeth or knife (ST said her teeth were sore after getting through her rack). the meat was tough, chewy, and just unco-operative to the efforts to tear and pull off the bone and into the mouth. i did manage to cut up the ribs (never mind the tearing apart by hand idea of eating ribs though... you'd be building some muscle if you tried that method!), i tried to cut the meat off each individual bone. bad idea... whatever meat or non-bone matter that was, it wasn't coming off the bone without a fight. in the end i gave up and returned to the more primal means of hand and teeth. honestly, can you imagine ribs that are difficult to cut even with a knife? i'm talking proper meat knife here, not your butter variety.

ok enough ranting. apparently the vast disappointment i had with the ribs was not repeated with the dishes the others ordered, with the pizza apparently worthy of repeat ordering. some say the meat might have been old, and hence my experience an anomaly. i don't know enough about food and its preparation to know whether i got a bum deal, but i know that it was frustrating to eat and i had no satisfaction for my monetary investment. the more i reflect on the situation, the more i think i should have taken the dish back, even if it was somehow meant to be served that way... oh well. live and learn.

previously on...

greetings from singapore. now that i'm on holidays, and internet access outside of APAC have been severely disrupted by the recent earthquake in taiwan, it seems a perfectly logical time to blog... right?! anyways, entries have been somewhat infrequent around here, so i thought i'd try to do a bit of a recap of what i've been up to in the last month or two, before a new year begins. here goes:

• saturday 04 november -- visit to the newly opened ikea logan. i was enticed by ivan's ravings about ikea's famous sausages which he regularly ate in KL. alas, this particular ikea did not serve them! anyways we went for lunch and a walk around the massive store. [photos]
  
  
• saturday 04 november -- went along to a surprise birthday party for ST, and subsequently hung out with a few unicellers for more surprises and dessert at the newly reopened (and relocated) blue lotus dessert lounge. [photos]
  
  
• sunday 05 november -- watoto childrens choir performance at a local church
  
  this is a video clip of their opening sequence. it's the second time i've seen the choir perform, and much of it felt familiar / similar to the first viewing. i guess the novelty wore off, but the message they bring still makes an impact. check out their tour dates to see if/when they're coming to a venue near you.
  
  
• thursday 09 november -- dinner at the ottoman cafe in west end with ST and HZ, catching up a year after we last had a similar meet and eat. [photos]
  
  
• thursday 16 - tuesday 21 november -- flew to sydney to meet ES and co. from singapore, visiting to attend MH's wedding. [photos]
  
  also caught up with my sister and BIL, who took us to bills surry hills for brunch. they have almost all of bill's cookbooks, and reckon his food is a goer - simple but tasty. my scrambled eggs with toast and gravlox salmon don't look as interesting as the sweet corn fritters sis ordered, but it was a fairly filling if not inexpensive meal. nice decor and fairly busy venue.
  
  photos specific to david and michelle's wedding on saturday 18 november are here.
  
  
• saturday 25 november -- visit to sirromet winery, as requested by ES. the shtes joined us for the winery tour and winetasting, followed by some scones for afternoon tea. a somewhat cultured feeling afternoon, leaving me as sure as ever that i just plain don't like wine. [photos]
  
  
• thursday 07 - monday 11 december -- went to sydney again for another long weekend to attend another wedding. flex leave is good :) a few of us from clay made the trek, and while there caught up with some other ex-brisbanites for a meal at tony roma's, famous for ribs. the collage shows the onion loaf entree my table had - a bit of a change in presentation from your usual onion rings - and also my regular slab of (what i think were the) carolina honeys ribs. i don't often order ribs but i have to say these were very nice indeed. anyways, photos of alex and jenn's wedding on saturday 09 december are here.

well that's about all i have up till about mid december. will probably post more about my christmas holidays etc when i get around to uploading photos and the like. which probably won't happen until after i return to brisbane. which means it'll be after i get back to work. which means i'll be slack again... ;)

out of the frying pan...

"But know this, that if the owner of the computer had known at what hour the hard drive would die, he would not have left his computer to be without a backup. You also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect."

-- from the apocryphal Lucan narrative (IT edition), chapter 12 and verses 39-40.

about two months ago, i spent about a week's worth of spare time during my nights and weekends trying to sort out an annoying problem my PC had developed with outlook, IE, and by association other apps that use IE to render webpages. despite plumbing the depths of google and trawling through the annals of microsoft support, no potential solution i came across (and there were many that looked promising) resolved the problem. i had ruled out the virus/spyware factor, having scanned my entire machine multiple times with multiple scanners. circumstantial evidence hinted at a possible bad patch - i had just completed a round of windows and security updates before this problem appeared on the scene - and i was close to the point of laying blame for the whole saga at the cashed up feet of the microsoft monster. but then i came across a detailed troubleshooting procedure on the MS site, and even though many of the steps involved had already been tried in various combinations, i decided to give this one more try. and by the books.

in the midst of this last effort, i was sprung by the dreaded BSOD. my PC rebooted past the bios and turned percussionist with mechanical ticking/clunking noises now emanating from my primary hard drive. this cannot be good, i said to myself. sure enough, after speaking to a few data recovery places and computer technicians, and doing some preliminary tests (which may have rendered the drive even more useless), i decided it was time for the professionals to take over.

nevermind the software problems, i now had some serious hardware issues to contend with. compounding the joy was the fact that my backup/recovery strategy for such disasters was... well, let's just say fairly minimalistic. hugely ironic for someone who has worked in the IT industry, and specifically dealing with aspects of backup/restore for machines whose power and value tower over the likes of my humble PC, the only backups i had were

1. "my documents" folder, done over 2 years ago, and
   
2. an outlook pst file, done over 6 months ago

everything else has gone the way of all matter when encountering a black hole. thankfully i did have much of my other data sitting on a separate drive, which is still running strong :) *knock on wood*

anyways, i was now faced with a recovery bill ranging from $5-600 through to several $thousand (assuming successful recovery). is my data worth that much? if it was, would it not have made sense to have some protection/insurance against this sort of thing happening? hindsight always oozes wisdom...

so i spent i think about a week sweating on the thought of wiping a few zeros off my savings, and vacillating between wanting to do (almost) whatever necessary thing it takes to retrieve as much of my data as possible, and wanting to live out a bit of the que sera sera philosophy (mixed with twinges of guilt about spending so much money on bits of ones and zeros, the benefits of having which don't spread too much farther than me myself and i). in the end, the damage to the drive proved to be unrecoverable. it was about 2 or 3 months out of warranty. having heard stories of successful recovery following much more severe damage, i was a bit surprised by the status of my drive. in any case it solves the dilemma of whether i should spend the money on getting the data back...

and so i've now invested in a couple of new (and bigger) hard drives, and embarked on a slow process of rebuilding my computer, coming across some useful and note-worthy tools along the way. i'm keeping a changelog of sorts, so that it'll be easier to repeat the build if i need to. but hopefully with my backup strategy in place (part of which involves a sleek looking Cooler Master X-Craft external HDD enclosure), i won't need to do any rebuilds unless i choose to, or until the next you-beaut version of windows is finally released.

recommended tools (all freeware):

• nLite - Deployment Tool for the bootable Unattended Windows installation (a tool for permanent Windows components removal and pre-installation Windows setup, with the option to make a bootable image ready for burning on cd or testing in virtual machines). I used this to create a custom installer CD for my OS - it wasn't quite as unattended as I would have liked, but it still made the installation a lot easier to manager.
  
• DriveImage XML - program for imaging and backing up partitions and logical drives, with images stored in XML files (can be accessed and processed by third party tools), and support for "hot backups" via microsoft's volume shadow service. I use this to clone my whole OS drive to another physical disk, effectively giving me a reasonably up to date (depending on the frequency of backups) spare OS drive that's ready to swap in should the main one die. I'm also using this to create images of my two internal drives, on my external drive.
  
• SyncBack (free version) - backs up and synchronises your files and directories to a choice of destination media. With support for filtering, compression, and scheduling with Windows scheduler. Runs very quickly and efficiently (if not using hashing to check file changes). I use this to keep a backed up and synchronised copy of my data drive.

here's hoping i've learnt some lessons from this experience!

oh, i should add that despite the trouble this whole episode has caused me, not to mention the hours spent on the computer (hmm... actually i do a lot of that anyway), i am thankful for things like:

• the seemingly anal but nevertheless prudent decision i made in the days when gmail invites were scarce and a much sought after commodity, to forward a copy of all my emails to the welcoming and deep spaces of the gmail inbox. basically this meant i had copies of my emails which i could import into outlook, to replace those lost due to the crash.
  
• the goodness that is dell axim - i had synchronised copies of all my outlook notes, tasks, contacts and calendar items on my pda. again, a relatively easy way to replace the data lost on my pc.
• the competitive computer hardware market in this town, meaning i get to upgrade to bigger hard drives for cheap.
• learning to deal with the loss of something i wouldn't choose to give up, but when it's forced upon me to more or less get on with it. well, what else can you do really... if you don't have a choice, you don't have a choice.
  

lay-(american)Z

didn't feel like getting out of bed today, and it wasn't even a work day. just felt like closing my eyes and staying off the moving sidewalk of life a little longer.

after waking up a few times -- thrice due to phone call/SMSs, and once when the wind/air pressure forced my partially closed door to open, thus exposing me to the sounds of other human activity in the household -- i eventually succumbed to the increasing heat, hunger and wakefulness and rolled out of bed at about 1pm.

i think that's the latest i've gotten out of bed for a while. i did sleep pretty late last night though, having discovered a blog of someone i know, and browsing through the archives -- some good laughs there.

i feel so lazy.

which partially explains why i haven't blogged lately, and why i'm revisiting this space. though there are more factors involved than a general lack of motivation.

it's december already. man.. *yawns*

[photo: caught on camera trying to get a moment's rest]

waxing lyrical

back in my shiftwork days, we used to listen to the radio during night and weekend shifts. one of the girls on my team had an uncanny ability to sing along to just about every song that came on. she said she just listens to a lot of music, and remembers the words (and tune).

me? i usually get about as far as humming bits of the tune and maybe recalling some of the lines from the chorus parts. that's why i don't go for karaoke, cos i can never remember how to sing the whole song, even if the words are flashed up in front of me and in time with the music.

amazing thing this the human mind. great capacity to remember lots of information - other people i know are variously good at quoting quotes and reciting lines from movies, plays, and episodes of the simpsons!

the other day a quiz got circulated at work - the 90's lyrics music quiz, with the aim of identifying song name at artist from a given line from a song. my two immediate colleagues started naming answers, while i struggled to convert the feelings of familiarity to actual titles and names. i could vaguely hear some of the tunes in my head, recall the context in which i heard the song (eg. this was featured in the soundtrack of an animated movie), or half-picture what the artist looked like. i think i got about two artists and one complete boyz II men song right before i gave up. the next day one colleague came in with answers found online, and as i scanned the list there were a number of lightbulb moments as the memories of songs from yesteryear came flooding back... well, those few that i knew anyway... quite a few were UK ones which i had never heard of.

anyways, the whole thing got me thinking about how powerful songs can be. even when you don't necessarily mean or intend to commit a song to memory, if it comes wrapped in a catchy tune, into your memory it goes. and sometimes, you can't get it out of your head! often, you may not even really think about what the lyrics are saying, yet you sing along regardless. i remember a time in high school when we looked at pop songs and lyrics during english class, and i was quite surprised to find that the lines i had been repeating from a certain prince song was actually quite sexually charged - and really not the sort of thing a young teenager ought to be taking any pride in saying/singing.

it's been some years since i regularly listened to commercial pop radio -- partly because my tastes have changed as i grew older, and partly because of the power of music/song to ingrain lyrics in my head. often i have the radio on not so much to actively listen as for background music. and these hours spent (perhaps subconsciously) absorbing all those lyrics have quite probably contributed to a warped view of the world. at the very least, they're not doing anything positive for my mind. which is not to say that all pop is bad, but if you're not actively filtering and selecting the stuff that's going into your mind (ie choosing what you listen to), and just freely taking everything in... well, that's a recipe for easy corruption.

since those younger years, i've spent a lot more time listening to christian music - whether christian pop or the songs used for church/congregational singing. they often (though not always!) have much more meaningful lyrics, and especially good are those which remind us about God - his character, his deeds, his promises etc. one thing i've tried to do on occasion is to memorise the lyrics of a whole song, so that i can sing it from memory. i find this helps me to focus on the words, and to think about what i'm singing (what words are coming next?). it's too easy, when the words are in front of you on a page or a screen, to engage the autopilot of the mind and read/sing the words as they come, and not think about what those words are.

i'm not very good at memorising whole songs, and mostly i rely on the fact that i've sung the songs hundreds of times before, so there's more of an osmosis effect than active memorising. but when i can, i like to not look at the lyrics as i sing.

if you ever see me singing with eyes closed, you'll know why.

What Keeps Us Going?

because i can't come up with anything original, and because these are words i need to hear...

from the second quarter 2006 edition of send! - the gospel for asia news magazine, where gfa founder k.p. yohannan shares these thoughts:

I am always intrigued when I watch the start of the marathon during the summer Olympics. All the runners appear to be in top physical shape, excited to represent their countries and determined to win the gold medal.

However, it's a different story when I watch them 15 or 20 miles later. They look exhausted from the hot sun that beats down on them or miserable because of rain that makes their trail slippery. Some have trouble breathing when the race takes them over a mountain, and others struggle to keep up with the fast pace.

Although everyone, no matter how long it takes them to cross the finish line, is celebrated with cheers and applause, some runners will never get there. Somewhere along the route they drop out of the race due to exhaustion, injury or discouragement.

In the marathon race and in our Christian life, persevering until the end is what it's all about, not just starting well.

What am I talking about? Not giving up in our walk with Jesus and enduring in the call He gave us to win this lost world and build His kingdom. Both ahve to do with our inner life and with our commitment to serve Him.

Like the marathon runners, we, too, will encounter adversities along the way that have the potential to cause us to quit the race. Some of these trials include:

• Relationship problems with other Christians that severely threaten our treasured self-life and call us to humility
• Physical and financial setbacks that cause us to lose hope
• Lack of fruit and fulfillment in our service to the Lord when we forget that the sowing season must come before we can reap a harvest
• Facing our latent failures and sins when circumstances expose unbrokenness, pride, a selfish attitude, stubborn will or critical spirit
• Frustratin and a desire to escape when serving the Lord becomes hard work and the feelings are gone
• Feeling inadaequate and overwhelmed by the expectations our leaders and other Christians have for us
• Spiritual dryness that comes when God tests us to see if we will still walk with Him by faith, even when there is nothing within or without to support us
• Losing sight of our priorities -- shifting from serving the Lord to protecting our self-interests

With such a frightening list of adversities, what chance do we have to run our race and victoriously cross the finish line as the Apostle Paul did?

I have served the Lord full-time for the past 40 years. From my own life and experience I can tell you this: The godliest Christian leaders I have met, the most challenging sermons I have heard and the best books I have read on evangelism and discipleship have not been enough to help me survive in the race!

Only one thing has kept me in the ministry and following Christ -- and that is learning and practicing what the apostle Paul wrote in Hebrews 12:1-2:

"Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking only unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith."

The secret of our survival is fixing our eyes on Jesus and making Him alone our focus. Then our walk with God and our commitment to serve Him will no longer depend on whether or not people treat us right or circumstance are in our favor. We will no longer rely on our emotions to support us or on our successes to keep us going. Jesus alone will become our goal and motivation -- our prize -- and we will live for Him, run our race for Him and cross the finish line for Him.
My dear friend, unless you learn to fix your eyes on Jesus alone, you will have no stability in your walk with God or in your service to Him.

Jesus Himself said, "Follow Me."

Therefore, meditate on Him, consider Him and think about Him so that you may not grow weary in your heart. The answer to enduring until the end is not self-effort or rational attempt to figure out the answers, but to stop and look into His eyes.

If we do this, we will experience what this song says: "When I look into Your holiness / When I gaze into Your loveliness / When all things that surround become shadows in the light of You / ... I worship You". After all his struggles, Job found the answer he was searching for when he fell on his face and worshiped the Lord.

Today let us decide to fix our eyes on Jesus throughout the race set before us.

a feast of food and fireworks

last saturday...

after being woken up by a phone call mid-morning, asking for some IT help later in the day, i decided to roll out of bed and meander my way through the rest of the morning. in the end, it became a bit of a rush to shower and eat before dashing out the door to unknown challenges... which were really unknown cos it involved databases, in which i've little knowledge. besides the big DBs like oracle, sybase and informix that i had fleeting involvement with in my IT helpdesk days, i've only ever dabbled with the small fry of MS access.

well, to cut a long story short, after 60+ minutes of playing around with the installation of ppmp which was "not working", i serendipitously stumble upon the problem and it was all good from then on with the program starting properly (though i've since heard that it's playing up in other areas). can i just say that the installation guide was rather sparse... really not enough information to guide even the somewhat IT savvy. or maybe i just need a clue about mid-sized databases! or just select the right database from the drop down list, which was all that it was :$ but how's a guy to know that if the instructions don't tell you what to look for??

anyhoo... time for an ad break. so my friend sandra is staring up her own physio practice, which is why i was helping her out with ppmp... well if you're ever looking for a physio/acupunturist in the south brisbane area, check out holistic physio at 489 stanley st (3844 8202). it's actually inside a hair/beauty salon, so don't get confused. parking is available out back (entry via a driveway off graham st). hopefully the signage will be in place by the time people start rocking up :)

then it was off to meet up with the rest of the clay crew and mosey on over to the semillon and seafood festival which was taking place at portside wharf. this was the first i had heard of, let alone visited, this venue, so it was just a little bit new and exciting. the festival itself was somewhat disappointing, though i don't really have any baseline to compare it against. i don't drink, so was really there for the company and getting out of the house factor, and to try some seafood. that was even more disappointing... i think there were like 5 stalls out of the whole lot selling food. of these, 1 had nothing to do with seafood, unless there's something about mushrooms i'm yet to grasp, and 1 was the deep fried variety. the 3 remaining "real" seafood stalls looked rather rich for my blood. now i know seafood ain't the cheapest of foods, but really... at $15 per snack-sized serving, i went for the $9 seafood basket from the deep fryer. even then i was still hungry, and succumbed to ordering a $3 hot dog. yes. hot dog at a seafood and wine fest. the epitome of class. AND the breadroll was crumbly to boot... *sigh*

as the sun started to set, we wandered around the wharf and shops, taking pictures and browsing here and there. then headed back towards town to catch riverfire, the annual fireworks component of the riverfestival. thanks to D, i skipped the crowds below and saw the show from 10 floors up in a riverside office building, while some others decided to catch the action from ground level. i missed both fly-bys of the f111 jets with their afterburners - first time cos i wasn't ready, and second time i was ready but misjudged the height of the flight path. did manage to take some nice pics of the fireworks around the story bridge (though i'm sure the city reach / southbank area had more to see). some turned out a bit blurred... still i'm fairly happy with my handheld effort. here's one a more serious photographer friend took - what a difference a tripod and mega long exposure makes!

btw the streak of light across the top left corner is the trail from the jet.

after the fireworks show we walked to chinatown for dinner at cyber city 2002. this place was quite crowded -- we received a few hints to leave after we finished our food as there were still people waiting for tables around 9:30pm. i don't know if it's always like it here, being my first visit, but i guess if popularity is any measure, it's a half decent joint. one person cautioned that the food here is 'cheap and nasty', but i found it neither cheap nor nasty. we then capped off our time together with a pit stop for some gelati on the walk back to the cars. great way to spend a saturday :)

more photos of the day (from my camera) are available here.

there'll be no turtles here

so steve irwin, mr crocodile hunter, dies at the "hands" of a stingray barb, and the world mourns.

i found out not through the news media (of which i consume very little), but because people on my msn messenger contact list are paying tribute to the man by inserting the icon of a turtle in front of their display names. i saw it earlier tonight and thought little of it, but having just returned to my pc and seeing more turtles on my screen, inquired as to the reason.

i've nothing against (nor for, really) the man himself, and it sounds like a freakish way to depart this mortal coil. and death is never really a joyful thing to contemplate, unless you have the hope of life beyond death, in which case not even death is an altogether bad thing, and if you take (the apostle) paul's perspective on things, it's more than "not bad", but far better.

i reflect not on the man, his life, what he represented and stood for, nor what he meant to others (human and/or animal??), but on this wave (ok, maybe wave is too hyperbolic a word) of response i observe on msn. i opine not on specific individuals who choose to conform (ok, perhaps participate is a less confronting word :p) to the trend, for i cannot judge the motives and thoughts of their hearts behind the typing of "(tu)".

yet i wonder... who thought of starting this trend in the first place, and what does it achieve really? was the turtle chosen because it's the closest default emoticon to a crocodile? it's a dark green/grey coloured reptile...

more importantly, why choose such an arbitrary gesture to denote the payment of tribute? it may be well-meaning, but well... does it really mean anything? or is it another here today, gone tomorrow type of fad, more transient than the life (and death?) to which it's meant to point. does it even point to him, if people don't understand the sign?

the cynic in me thinks there's an opening for some clever marketing and promotions people there somewhere, do with a turtle what has been done with red noses, pink and red ribbons and the like.

but i digress...

in the end, if the death of someone, whether it be your closest friends/family or a celebrity on the other side of the globe, forces you to consider the fleetingness of your own life and the lives of others, then there's potential for good things to come from that. may you find a sure hiding place in the rock of ages, and bring others to him, such that you may all sing:

While I draw this fleeting breath,
when my eyelids close in death,
when I soar through realms unknown,
bow before the judgement throne:
hide me then, my refuge be,
Rock of ages, cleft for me.

BLT images

photos from BLT, posted by

• iggz
• js
• moi (along with a few i pinched from another camera)

i gotta say that i do quite like a few of js' creations. the group photo in my previous post was organised by him, and thus looks half decent -- i was happy to delegate that one to somebody whose interest in photography extends beyond whipping out a compact auto and pressing the shutter button without too much thought on lighting, composition, and all those other things that go into the making of a good shot.

- - - - -

i think one of the most valuable things from something like BLT, is the presence of servant-minded Christians who get alongside the delegates, have meaningful conversations, encourage, spur, and pray with them.

not that i experienced or even noticed much at the time, but that's the impression that i get from talking to other people and seeing some of the pictures afterwards.

great that it happens during the camp, not so great that the greatness is perhaps accentuated because it doesn't happen (much?) every other day of the year (even every other weekend/sunday of the year) at the local church level?

BLurT

it hasn't always been the most enjoyable of rides... after being involved in organising the inaugural Brisbane Leadership Training conference in 2004, i opted out in year 2, before being drafted back to do more in 06. i had a few very late nights leading up to the camp held last weekend, and was surprisingly alert for the whole thing - awake enough for tasks, if not necessarily people. speaking of whom, a quick glance through the group photo below finds me looking at lots of faces i don't even recall seeing!

maybe it's a tendency for me to zone out when i'm focussed on something (or perhaps being distracted or otherwise occupied also does the trick), but i think i don't really look at people when i'm "working". i barely remember snippets from the talks and the one seminar/workshop i did manage to attend. while i did meet a few new/unfamiliar faces, i don't think i had a single fruitful conversation with anyone, including old friends. in fact, probably the longest conversation i had with anyone (not counting my visitor) was the security guard, who came into the dining hall to get a cup of coffee while i was clearing up, and we probably chatted for a good 15-20 minutes.

and so the whole weekend was a bit of a blur. i'm glad that it's over, and that initial feedback indicates that most other campers found it a good time of networking and learning. i can only praise God that things didn't fall apart, despite my knowing that a lot of preparation was lacking or done somewhat blindly.

i look forward to doing nothing for a while. it won't happen, of course... but at least that one big thing is over and done with (mostly) for now...

recykled material

i suppose i could go and recycle the sort of thing i say/blog about, around about this time of year. but i'm too lazy to start. instead i'll do two things:

1. say that sunday, though not really anything spectacular, was nevertheless nice. i'd say that pretty much anything is enhanced by welcome company :)

2. on a pretty much totally unrelated note, commend the boys and girls from team CCCB who took part in recykle 2006 on saturday, raising funds for the leprosy mission. i went along and watched what looked to be fairly hard (and painful?) work... here's a clip of some of them in action - bear in mind that this is about 10 minutes into a 60 minute riding session, so they all look pumped and rearing to go now ;)

ronnie - iron chef dessert

i don't consider myself to be someone with much of a sweet tooth, and that generally precludes indulgence in things dessert. but faced with the vast array of tempting treats that ronnie recently served up for his 21st birthday celebrations last sunday night, i just had to try out at least a representative sample of those offered.

yum, yum! full photo album and a short video clip are also up - maybe one day we'll see him dance ;)

i remember first seeing him as the (at one time) youngest person to join our youth group, and playing cricket at the mansfield oval. seeing how he has grown and matured in Christ over the years has been a blessing and encouragement. spoke a bit to his mum and found out that their whole family is now attending church in the one place, which is awesome progress and an answer to much prayers - praise God :) may He be pleased to continue moving in that family, drawing the lost to Himself and building the found for the glory of His name.

maranatha!

because it's all very ambiguous

Maybe I'm just growing old;
Losing my mind and getting bald.
Maybe it's a growing fear
Of never ever getting there.
Where is it I am to go?
My Lord, my Lord, won't you please show...
In His word He's told the way:
Child follow me, trust and obey.

mirrorman

there's a guy at work who is allegedly known to "look into" a lot of things, but never getting much of an outcome. one colleague had dubbed him "mirrorman".

i have a tendency to spend a lot of time looking in the mirror. not that i look in a mirror very frequently (as could relate to vanity issues), for i don't have a mirror in my room, and usually only find myself in front of a mirror when i'm in the bathroom. it's when i need to be here that i can on occasion spend large slabs of time standing in front of my reflection... reflecting. i don't know that the reflecting takes me anywhere.

tonight, while and after staring at the man in the mirror, this came into my mind:

Unable to fight
I sink
Slowly I'm pulled by
quicksand

Perhaps unwilling
in truth
What is wrong with me
I ask

That I do not know
sadly
It's all in my mind
perhaps

The words, they don't come

Silence.

it may be winter but this ain't no sonata

recently a friend recommended the popular korean tv series 'winter sonata' for me to watch. the last asian tv drama series i watched was over a decade ago. the only thing i really remember was watching the vhs tape on 2x play and skim reading the subtitles, wanting to finish the whole lot but couldn't be bothered waiting with the slow pacing of the drama itself to unfold.

and i've seen plenty of bad/over-acting in asian tv, from the bits and pieces glimpsed in various visits to the region. so i was a bit hesitant about whether i would like this particular series. however, given my penchant for the odd romantic drama, i proceeded to do a bit of research into getting hold of a copy.

taken somewhat aback by the high cost of new units selling on yesasia, i turned to the global marketplace that is ebay, hoping for cheaper alternatives. what i found were very cheap options (though still probably more than what i'd like to pay for something i'm not sure i'll enjoy). anyways, long story short, i picked up on a listing from a seller, and even though i suspected it to be a fake from the start i thought i'd try to ask the seller about the item and see what sort of response i get. i've posted a transcript/screen cap trail of our exchange, along with some of my accompanying thoughts.

i like how s/he tries to turn the tables on me towards the end... i almost get the feeling that they were saying that if i want to play in the sandpit of ebay, i should put up with so called less safe products from china, or not play at all. and don't cause trouble for those who want to profit from trading in such products.

there are those who probably don't care that a product is pirated, and buy anyway. then there are those who are the too ignorant to know the fake from the real. but what really gets me is those who think they're getting an original, find out after the fact that it's an illegitimate copy, and still give the seller positive feedback! makes a mockery of ebay's ratings/feedback system, which was probably a good idea at the time but is of considerably less use and value than it could be. maybe they're all just too scared of getting negative feedback themselves, as tends to happen when you stand up to a pirate -- funny how there's a trend i see among those accused of piracy turning the blame back on the victim. and who's going to help you or take up the fight against these profiteers? ebay? daryl kerrigan would tell you you're dreaming!

and i will borrow from wiser heads than mine and say forewarned is forearmed, and caveat emptor. looks like i'll be holding off on any long forays into soppy melodramas for the moment...

- - - - -
related sites:

• wikipedia entry for winter sonata
• the endless love series
• korea tourism org's page on the filming locations for the series
  

related posts (on ebay/piracy):

• oiav? someone's got this back to front...
  
• when your opponent gets persnal...
  
• assorted video tales
  

oiav? someone's got this back to front...

was browsing ebay for hdd enclosures when i came across this unit, with a logo which upon first glance was strangely familiar yet disturbingly not:

after a closer look, all i can say is that vaio it ain't, and "it's a sony" it ain't neither!

ok. now that this amusing little distraction has gotten all (and perhaps more than) the attention it's worth... can all the pretenders puh-lease get out of my way so i can focus on checking out those with a bit of quality and class about them?

sorry dr. spin, i'd like a second opinion please

so we (as in my workplace) took home some prizes in the recent ATA state awards. personally i couldn't really care less, other than the fact that it meant even fewer people on the phones taking calls (because they were busy putting up decorations and preparing for the judges site visit etc) when we are already understaffed. which just means more calls for the rest of us... joy.

what i really found amusing was this quote which appeared in a recent internal newsletter. it comes from a senior person from our site, who reportedly said the following in relation to our wins:

the excitement is palpable and the entire centre is ecstatic to the point where they haven't even noticed that there is a peak workload - they're just attacking it with renewed energy.

that's funny. maybe i'm blind (or just cynical :p) but i noticed no palpable excitement of any kind from a centre level, nor was/is there any ecstacy or renewed energy.

the peak workload? that i do see. i'm just glad that i've been put on temporary "higher duties" which takes me off the phones, and i'm hoping to ride this wave for as long as it lasts.

it's a very different looking hive depending on whether you speak to the queen bee or the worker bee...

i'll do it myself, thanks!

a few months ago...
dad asks about getting a replacement vibrating alert gizmo for his mobile phone, as his phone doens't have a vibrate feature and he misses calls due to the nature of his work. i gave him one of these devices a while back, but he's misplaced it, and asked if i had another one. i give him my old vibrating battery instead.

meanwhile...
younger sis passes her old optus pre-paid mobile to mum. it's still locked to the optus network.

a few days ago...
dad asks for the return of his original battery, cos the vibrating battery is playing up. dad also asks about using newer phone from younger sister. problem: his sim card is on the vodafone network... the phone won't take a non-optus card. well how about i take this phone (since i'm still with optus) and dad you take my old phone... unlocked and ready to roll. but... i'll still need sister's old phone unlocked for any overseas travel and local prepaid sims... hmm... back to the drawing board.

today...
enquire with younger sis about history of phone. eligible to be unlocked for free, but she no longer has prepaid sim card and cannot recall the number. nevermind, i'm sure optus can help... after all, phone is almost 2 years old and well past unlocking fee period.

ring optus after midnight, wait 5+ minutes, CSR claims cannot help as original owner of the phone is no longer with optus. hang on i say, phone is locked to optus, bought ~2years ago, can't you look up the imei and arrange for unlocking? further questions to try to clarify the situation results in CSR saying sorry cannot help anymore good night. no no no don't you hang up on me i say... the nerve... but click went the phone regardless.

lodge complaint via optus website about appalling lack of customer service -- accuracy of information notwithstanding, getting hung up on while i'm in the middle of trying to clarify is just plain bad service. back on the phone, different CSR, better service but still not the result i'm looking for.

plan b. search on ebay for phone unlocking service/info... could be an option... DIY for ~$10 or less... hmm...

but let's ask google? google says have you met my friend unlockme? no i haven't, but i'm glad for the introduction... and such a promising referral! download software to try, but wait, there's more! how about an online solution? oh yes thanks, unlock nokia free indeed... worked like a charm :) all for about 60 seconds of effort in typing in the phone imei and model, clicking a button and entering the resulting code in the phone. and all $free too.

if it's really that easy to do it myself, why do the corporate biggies make things so hard for the unsuspecting?

moral of the story? if you need a phone unlocked, don't waste your time ringing a call centre to wait in queues in the middle of the night only to speak to operators who can't / won't help (or even explain why), just google it!

and you could have been in bed that much earlier... *yawns*

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related posts:
swings and roundabouts - part 2
Optus, you suck!

maranatha!

one old friend spoke of my presence as a 'stalwart' figure;

one newcomer had me pegged as a "senior", even before we met/talked;

and another newcomer thought i was too young to be having a younger sister in the mid-20s ("how old does that make you?" came the question).

thus went yf camp 2006, which was on the theme of "kingdom come", and hence the increase in usage of the early new testament greeting "maranatha!", an aramaic term meaning "come, lord jesus".

in the back of my mind somewhere i had the idea that last year's camp was supposed to be my last -- after all, it's getting to be a bit of a stretch to be calling me a youth, and i'll have to change the current wording in my "about me" box... so i don't know why i actually registered for this year's camp! partly out of habit, and partly to hear the speaker (bill colyer) again i think. i remember the first time he spoke at yf camp in 2000, and the talks impacted me a lot at the time.

couldn't stay for the full camp this year, and it was a bit different going as a regular camper with no "responsibilities" per se. lots of new faces, both of current yf folk and some of their friends. lots of young people running about during free time while i retreated to the dorms and caught some sleep. all of which contributed to a greater feeling of disconnection, which is not necessarily a bad/negative thing. anyways, i don't know where i'm going with these thoughts, so i'll show some pictures :p


more media:

• photo album
• video of the balloon and toothpick game
• video of the basketball drill
• video of the trumpet group skit

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related posts: encouraged from reflections

urban truths - watch your wheel nuts

this is the sort of email which i would immediately flag as being an urban legend, except that this time it's a first hand account of someone i actually know, as opposed to a friend of a friend... even that "disclaimer" sounds like how many of these type of emails start, but i guess i can't force anyone to accept my credibility... anyways, here goes (actual names and places have been edited by me):

Hi all

Just letting you know of what has happened yesterday, after [meeting], as I don't want what happened to me to happen to any of you.

What happened was that my car had made a strange bumpy & rattling noise from the left side as I drove off from [church], after [meeting] finished. The car had not previously made that noise. Thinking that the noise may have been caused by something stuck underneath the left side of the car, I drove back to the church & asked the [people] still there (S, Y) if they had a torch I could borrow to check under my car. I also had thought maybe there was something wrong with my tyres, as they looked a little bit underinflated in the dark. It was then suggested that I get to a fuel station & pump in more air. This I did, & off I went to the Caltex station [nearby].

Under the bright lights at Caltex, as I set about pumping one of the tyres, I saw what the problem was, & I was rather alarmed. The tyres were fine, they were not flat by any means. But some wheel nuts were missing! All up, 4 wheel nuts were gone! (2 from left front, 2 from left back - the wheel nuts on the right side were still there). My thoughts were that someone had tampered with or loosened those wheel nuts, & they had fallen off after I drove off from [church]. With the missing wheel nuts, the wheels were not as secure, & was most probably the cause of the noise. Because it was unsafe to drive my car like that, I got the car towed home. More alarming developments was that this morning, it was discovered that pretty much ALL (or almost all) the remaining wheel nuts on my car were also loose!! Obviously, not as loose as the 4 which did come off yesterday....

Now, I don't know exactly where or when the wheel nuts were tampered with - it could have been last Sunday at the bbq at [GP] (I parked the car well away from [GP]), or it could have been last nite during [meeting] (the car was parked in a very dark spot). But anyway, I think it's rather disturbing that there could be someone out there who's so twisted & cruel as to do something like this - it's very dangerous as accidents can easily happen. This shouldn't be happening to anyone, & I absolutely do not want it to happen to any of you or anyone else.

That's why I'm sending this email out to you all, as some sort of a warning to be careful & be wary in case you experience something similar when you next drive off your car. Maybe it's an idea to check your wheel nuts & make sure they are not loose next time before you drive off - I certainly will from hereon in. I just thank God that nothing serious happened to me & that S & Y were still at church when I drove back.

can't imagine how the majority of a car's wheel nuts could come loose under normal driving conditions, and to think that there are people out there conjuring up this sort of tampering, whether as a malicious act or some form of misguided practical joke... it's all a bit sad, really.

new nibbles

i got sent some free nuts, courtesy of a nut company (morish nuts) which i joined as a member some 2.5 years ago. i had almost forgotten about it until i saw their name/logo on the package which came in the post today. i had been chosen as one of their monthly hamper winners, and so i get to try some of their goods


aren't freebies nice? :) even better when they're unexpected, hehe. alas, while i don't mind my nuts (cashew, macadamia and pistachio being some of my more favoured varieties), i don't feel particularly motivated to spend money on these "gourmet" ones (even the plain ones aren't that cheap...), but feel free to keep sending me samples :D

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related posts: it's official - i'm a nutter!