After nearly a year of waiting:-


I am a happy man. :)

So, a cold blustery weekend passed by and here i am with an ice pack on my knee.

*big sighhhhhh*

This weekend was a super sports weekend where i so happened to schedule all my sport events into these 2 days. I "macho-ly" (if that is even a word) thought i can handle and fit 2 futsal and a squash session into the whole weekend. At the final session, i busted a ligamen in my knee. Yea. I stupidly played 2 hours of futsal after 2 hours of squash. Yay me.

Looks like i need to start acting like my age. :(

On a happier note, i got the government's stimulus package last week! Which i promptly spent in 15 minutes. I used 3/4 of it to pay off my credit card (i bought my flight ticket a couple of days before) and the remaining 1/4 i decided to splurge on a 22 inch monitor!


I've been waiting months to get a 22 inch monitor for my laptop but just never had any spare funds to get one. A government stimulus and 2 days later, i am a proud owner of a 22 inch monitor with built in DVD player and HD-TV(Thanks rayner!). :)

Maybe it is not such a bad thing i busted my knee. More alone time with my 22 inch. :)

Yesterday, i spontaneously decided to just walk back from my office!

I had absolutely no idea what prompted me to do it. All i did was just leave my office in the evening and thought to myself the weather was beautiful so i decided it will be a good idea to take a nice stroll to the train station (my colleague usually drops me off ). After walking to the station, i wanted to walk to the stadium nearby and so on. The next thing i know, i was halfway through walking to the city! Another half an hour later, i am back in my apartment.

Total journey: 7km.

Funny thing is, i really enjoyed it and today, i took another 7km stroll back to my apartment from my office.


Maybe i should do this everyday. :)

I'm at the Princess Theater watching STOMP and it is really packed! And it's only a Thursday.

Ok, show starting.

If only everyday in Melbourne is like this.

I'm so gona miss summer. :(

About 3 years 3 months ago, i made one of the most significant decisions in my life: to specialised my degree from electrical to telecommunications. It was a really really huge decision because, not only did i decide to change the "direction" of what i am studying, i also had to change my uni when i made that decision.


At that time of making that decision, i remembered a lot of people told me that i am crazy to change my degree since i am already 2 years in (which means i am halfway through) my electrical engineering degree. Plus, at that time, people said that an electrical degree is one of the best degrees to take as electrical engineers are always wanted and needed.

While i do agree that electrical engineers are always in short demand around the world, i knew it wasn't my passion. I did it for 2 years and while i don't absolutely hate it, i didn't exactly jump for joy when i did it. I am always an advocate of doing what you like and i knew that my passion will be in the telecommunications field and i knew that this will be a "hot" field when i graduate so i was pretty adamant about going into it.

I am now very happy that my family supported me when i made that decision 3 years 3 months ago. If i was a child of most other parents, they probably wouldn't have supported my decision to change my degree and uni so i am really grateful that my parents were very supportive and trusted my decision. I think they also raised an eyebrow when i wanted to change my degree midway but nevertheless, they supported me 100% all the way.

Because of that support, i absolutely enjoyed my time studying telecommunications at uni and i really do enjoy my job a lot now. I honestly can say i can't recall a time where i ever felt absolutely not motivated to go to work. Also, i think given the current recession, the telecommunications industry is probably one of the safest industries to be in at the moment. Who will, in their right mind, want to cut down on their internet? ;) Plus, with the Australian government's National Broadband Network plans annouced today, there will at least be money going around in the industry for the next 8 years.

So i guess that decision 3 years 3 months ago was a right one. A big Thank You for those of you who supported me. Especially my family. :)

I just came across this awesome way of taking pictures!

It's called Tilt Shift photography. Basically, you take a particular picture but you take it in such a way that it appears as if it is a miniature model. So cool! Here are some pictures of Melbourne:-









The last picture is actually the building right across the road leading to my apartment. So cool eh? Did i mention this is cool? ;)

I think i should rekindle my love for photography.

Ahhh. Finally my 2 hectic weeks is over.

For the past few months, my colleague and i have been working on a project at our client's place but for the past few weeks i've been working on it alone. 5 weeks back, my colleague went on a sabbatical and decided to head back to Europe for some family time thus leaving with me to do most of the development by myself. It wasn't that bad for the first few weeks since my colleague did a lot to minimize my workload before leaving for Europe but for the past 2 weeks, new stuff started coming in and i had to deal with it myself. Not that i am complaining, but *phewww*, it ain't a bed of roses to work by yourself.

Anyway, he is back from his sabbatical this week so no need for me to do double work any more. :)

With my workload at work now considerably lighter, i decided to peel myself away from my computer for the past week and indulge myself in some reading that doesn't involve staring at the screen: books!

I am still thumbing through a couple of books that i'll write about one day once i finish reading them but there is this book which i picked up at Borders 2 weeks ago that i just finished reading. It is Neil Strauss's newest book, Emergency.


Neil Strauss is one my favourite authors and the books he churns out never fails to captivate me. After reading "The Game", i knew that every book that this man pens will have a place in my bookshelf. So, when i heard that his latest book "Emergency" hit the shelves 2 weeks ago, i immediately head down to the book store to get it.

The unique thing about Neil's books is that there are actually, IMHO, factual books but written in non-fictional-story form from his point of view. Thus, everything he writes in his books, he has personally experience it himself. In Emergency, he writes about his epiphany that the world is becoming a more dangerous place and we need to prepare ourselves for any impending doom that we may face. He chronicles his quest to gain dual citizenships, offshore accounts, handling guns, surviving in the wild, flying a plane and so on. While this book lacks Neil's usual colourful words, it is nonetheless still entertaining. It certainly made me re-think my survival skills.

I give the book a 4/5. :)

Ahhhh. Finally high speed internet access!

For the first time since i came to Australia, i actually experienced a slow internet connection. Ever since i got here, i usually have blazingly fast internet access which is ADSL2+ and capped at roughly 24~32Mbits/sec. If that is too technical for you, streamyx in Malaysia usually runs at about 1~3Mbits/sec. So, basically, i surf the internet at x32 the speed of streamyx. Yea, i NEVER ever waited for a youtube video to download. The whole video usually loads by the time i click 'play'. Cool, eh? ;)

Even though internet access here is fast, we do have a limit and once we go past that limit, the connection slows down (shaped is the correct term actually) to a ridiculously slow speed of 64Kbits/sec. That is KILObits. Again, if this is too technical, dial-up (remember jaring?) is only 56Kbits/sec. So, that is only slightly faster than dial-up.

You can imagine going from 32Mbits to 64Kbits.

So my internet was crawling over the weekend and i now know what an absolute torture it is to surf the internet with those speeds. I also now realised that 90% of webpages on the web today already assumes that you have a broadband connection. Damn those websites. What happen to the days where you offer a high AND low bandwidth version of your website? Arghhh.

On the flip side, i got lots of sleep, exercising/sports and reading done. :)

Ok, i now know that i don't blog when i am too tired.

Last Saturday, i was at the Avalon Airshow and the weather was ultimately crap for the whole day which resulted in me having to stand in the rain for 8 hours.


Notice all the rain coats and umbrella? Anyway, i'll blog about the airshow another day once i get all the pictures from my housemate.

The point is, after standing for 8 hours in the airshow and a game of squash the following day, i was dead tired by Sunday night. And i STILL feel dead tired today.

Crap man. I am getting old. :(