Some latest happening!

Heaven and Hell

Recently, I was on a 1-day business trip to sydney. The meeting was on a Friday. Steve, Nilesh and I left Brisbane on Thursday. It had started with a mess when our flight was cancelled and we had to get on the next available flight. Next, there was supposed to be another Steve with us but he had to pull out due to personal reasons. The Admin personnel actually screwed up by cancelling the wrong Steve. But it was all settled and we managed to arrive in Sydney though two and a half hours late. We were put in a luxurious hotel called The Urban in St Leonards. We had our dinner in a good Indian restaurant (but I forgot its name). The meeting went well and blah, blah, blah... all is well until the meeting is over and I need to check in to the backpacker that I have pre-booked. That is when I was thrown from heaven to hell. Wanna know what I mean?

Spot the difference!

I'm Yours

I've been having the obsession with Jason Mraz's I'm Yours for awhile now. His voice is just so tantalizing (Yeah.. I know it sounded gay but who cares!). Hope you guys will like my breaking of the procrastination with this song. But you'll never know when I will sleep again.

NCG 08

National Conference and Games a.k.a. NCG is an annual event organized by the Malaysian Students Council of Australia(MASCA). It holds the annual general meeting of the MASCA National, games/sports amongst the MASCA States and conclude with a formal dinner/award presentation to the winners.

This year NCG was hosted by MASCA Queensland (where I am now) and it was held from 1st-3rd July 2008. I became a part of it by joining the (Ultimate) Frisbee game again. Needless to elaborate, with all the trainings and the ultimate team that the Queensland has, we emerged champion again (woohooooo).

The event was concluded with a grand Masquerade formal dinner at the Greek Club in West End but i did not wear a mask (shh... don't tell anyone). Hehe... Everyone was supposed to wear a mask and those who turn up without a mask would need to buy one at the reception or will be denied entry into the hall. Somehow I managed to get away and walk in without anyone realizing. Was it because they knew that my face was not my real face and I've been wearing one all the time? I thought no one knew!

Anyway, here are some photos:


Old mate from Uni


Johan (MASCA QLD Prez)


Hajar (MASCA QLD First Lady)


Lingesh (UQMSA Prez)


Kevin the great!


Another addition to my medal tally.. woohoooo...


Frisbee Champion

Here In My Home

Gold Medalist

It's been awhile since I won any medal.

I guess the photos are self-explanatory.

Kevin hebat! muahahahahha...

My two firsts over the weekend

First first is cooking crabs!

Here's the product!




Not bad eh?

But the taste was still not good enough. I will improve. As a first timer, considered ok la.

Second first is servicing my car DIY style. Changed the engine oil, air filter and supposedly oil filter but I screwed up by getting the wrong oil filter. And I realized I can't do anything since I've already drain the old engine oil. No choice but to use the old oil filter and get the right one next time. But then again as a first timer, considered ok la.

Hehe.. proud of myself! :)

Summons are waived in Penang

I wish I get that too! :(

Talk about effectiveness and high technology. This is it.

On a fine evening on 19th Feb 2008, I was driving home from work. The journey home is through different suburbs on arterial roads and i repeat, arterial road. Not highway.

It was a usual drive for me and it was getting a bit dark perhaps due to the cloudy weather. I was happily listening to my MP3 tuner while singing to it when i felt a bright flash from the left hand back corner of my car. I tried to look back and there seemed to be a car parked on the kerb of the road. I guess I know what happened but I just somehow wished it wasn't me.

Few days later, I received a letter from Queensland Transport. As I expected, it was an infringement notice. Ish, kena saman! It's AU$150 when I was driving at only 73 km/h. The speed limit at that area was 60 km/h. This will never happen in Malaysia. Speed trap in Malaysia is usually on highway or at least on roads with speed limit of 80 km/h and above. So how I wished Mr Lim Guan Eng can waive my summon as well.

However, I'm actually impressed. Take a look at my infringement notice.


First of all, I get to pay by instalment and I am allowed to pay a minimum of $60 for my first instalment.



Secondly, look at the quality of the pictures. So clear. So cool. You will never get to see this in Malaysia unless you pay and ask for it. They captured your number plate and they will send the notice to your house. Cannot run, man! So i guess it's worth the money la. Hehe..

A Day of Triumph!

Woohooooooo~!~! I did it! I passed my driving test!

It's been almost a month since I made the appointment and I was kind of nervous. I never expect I could pass the 1st time owing to my failure in passing the road rules test the first time and the speculations from my colleague who has failed the test twice.

Since I did not expect to pass, there was not much preparation done. It's just driving anyway. What can I do? I did not even comb my hair properly.

So I wake up early this morning, took a shower and got myself ready for the test. I drove to the testing centre and got there just on time. Filled up a form and there he is, my driving examiner, calling out my name. We went to my car and he asked me to switch on the signal lights and brake lights to check if they were working well. He then got into the car, gave me some instructions and there we go, hit on the road!

It was a pretty smooth ride and I was driving exceptionally slow compared to my usual driving. The two main tasks I needed to do was reverse side parking and 3-point turn (similar to Malaysia except they do it on the road). Otherwise, it was just a usual drive around and back to testing centre.

we got back and I parked my car. The examiner told me everything goes well. I was delighted. He then commented, "You drive very well. Have you been driving for a long time?" I proudly answered, "Eight years!"

Year of the Tikus

"May STUART LITTLE brings you comfort; MICKEY MOUSE brings you joy; RATATOUILLE brings you abundance of good food; most importantly MINNIE MOUSE brings you ultimate beauty & pleasure. Year of Rat with lots of laughter, love & optimism. Gong Xi Fa Cai."

I almost forgot it's the year of the Rat until I get the text above from my ever funny buddy kok hang. And so it's CNY again - my 2nd CNY abroad. I wanna be back! I wanna eat yee sang; I want ang pow; I wanna go visiting; I wanna gamble!!!! :p

It's the first day of CNY today and I'm sitting at home! Palat siew called and asked, "Australia got holiday meh?" I simply answered, "Self-declared la!" Hehe.. So I was home cleaning stuff and got ready for my 2nd road rules test. I wonder if it's CNY gift or what but they gave me the same set of questions as my first test. So if I fail this, I can jump into a well. Guess what! I'm not in a well right now. I passed! Not surprising la.

By the way, it's also my friend's graduation today. Here are some photos.

brian, sam, me

brisbane city background

brian, yvonne, sam, omega, me

so hiiiiiiiiigh!

yvonne, omega, me, brian, sam, sam, mrs. sam, sam

How come so many Sam? Sam is not first name. Sam is family name.


new found friends

poser!

After those never-ending photo sessions, we went to a Taiwanese restaurant on a back lane - it is really called Backlane literally. I had a "Three Cups Chicken with rice" (direct translation) and a large lemon pink guava drink.

Next, time for movie! I went to watch Fool's Gold - some guy getting a divorce from her wife but somehow went on to hunt for the Queen's Dowry sunk in the Bahamas together. It's not too bad but my friend fell asleep in the cinema. Haha.. Worth a watch on pirated DVD la. :p

That was it! My CNY in Brisbane! Kung Hei Fat Choy la!

I'm fucked!

I failed my road rules test!

How dumb is that?

Why?! What did I tell you about confidence? A little/moderate confidence is good to make you shine but not when it’s all over you. That’s over-confidence and you will tend to look down on your opponent or task. Didn’t they tell you about the rabbit and tortoise story?

I was over-confident and thought that I don’t really need to study everything. I have been driving for 8 long years anyway and I scored a perfect 50 out of 50 in my Malaysian theory test. How could this hinder me from passing? I just need to pick up a few things here and there in the road rules booklet and it should be fine. In fact, I only spent about 45 minutes browsing through the 183-page-booklet. Minus the cover, table of contents, introduction, indexes, and all the irrelevant stuff, there are still about 160 pages. So I was like going through 3.5 pages per minute and that’s 16.875 seconds per page. Smart huh?

And the result is… “Kevin, you didn’t make it” said the test invigilator.

In other words, “You suck!”

And do you wanna know what my mistakes were?

Here are the culprits. Look at these and see who should give way

Q1.

A) Vehicle 1
B) Vehicle 2



Q2.

A) Vehicle 1
B) Vehicle 2 & 3
C) Vehicle 1 & 3

Tell me your answers.

Life

Life should not be taken too seriously all the time. I'm not saying we should take things for granted. I do believe that we should appreciate life and enjoy it while we can. That is why I think sometimes (or most of the time) we need more bullshits than we can actually handle to move on and stay happy. This is especially true if we are in a community where we need just each and everyone around us to help each other.

Compromise. It's a strong word but sometimes we just need to take things more lightly. Cheer up and remember that someone who give you bullshits is not necessarily harming you and someone who pull you out of shit is not necessarily helping you.

So let's chill and live life unto the fullest together!

Hari Kebangsaan Australia

Merdeka! Merdeka! Merdeka!

hehe...

Actually it's not for that! Coz Australia never kena colonized! So it's not about independence.

It's actually to commemorate the establishment of the first European settlement on the continent of Australia.

But to me, it's a public holiday and another day to see fireworks in Brisbane. I might soon get sick of fireworks!


While waiting for traffic light to turn green!


Brisbane Nightline


Fireworks


More fireworks


Housemates


Friends in Brisbane


Dinner at Cyber City


Who's the Monopoly?


Show me the money!

A little love bite from my little friend

It was a usual day at work on the 14th January 2008. I've been working at site in Bribie Island - approximately 1 hour and 15 minutes drive North of Brisbane (if you drive according to the speed limit).

Like usual, I checked my emails and started organizing my work of the day. I was working on marking up drawings to As Constructed status so I would need to find the relevant drawings and make copies of them.

While looking through the drawings folder, I felt a kiss on my neck. She gave me a love bite and it happened so fast I couldn't see where had gone right after.

I'm still stunned.

This is too intimate to be happening in the site office.

I went to the toilet to check if there is any mark left on my neck but I could not trace anything.

I can still feel the kiss on my neck but I thought it would go away soon. So I forget about the kiss and whoever the kisser was and went back to work. I got the drawings that I needed and went to the photocopy machine.

I was having this feeling that she's gonna come back. And as I expected, while I was doing copies of drawings on the photocopy machine, I felt that she was creeping behind my back and caressing my neck again. This time, I couldn't help but to grab her and give her a SMACK!

So who is she?

I found this picture of her on the net!







This was what really happened.

I got a sting. Ouch! It was real painful. But I'm not sure what was it. I thought it was a spider because my friend got bitten by a spider on her thumb not too long ago and this whole "get bitten and turn into spiderman" thingy was still all over me.

I didn't realize this little creature was still on me when I went to the toilet to check on it. Then I felt it crawling on my neck again. So I grabbed it, slammed it on the floor and realized it was a mud/paper wasp.

I got a little first aid treatment of antiseptic spray on my neck. It was a little swollen and my colleague advised me to rub some ice on it every now and then.

The sore went on for another 2 hours before I could get back to work properly again.


So here's a message to my little friend:

FUCK YOU AND HOPE YOU GOT BURNED IN HELL!

Test Your IQ

What are these?



10 seconds and counting...

9

8

7

6

5

4

3

2

1












Any idea?




















Well, they are Australian bananas!

More specifically, rotten Australian bananas!

What are they called in mandarin?

Xiang Jiao?



Nope!

They are called...

"LAN JIAO"


Cool eh?