Chatter Of The Squirrel

Back In KL

I blinked, and missed February completely. I worked for all of 5 days in the entire month. How sweet was that?

One week of Android training, and 2 weeks of CNY holidays in Victoria, Oz. Did exactly 5 days of actual work, and got a month’s pay. How sweet is that?

Took off to Melbourne on 13th Feb in the afternoon. Arrived in Melbourne in the dead of night of a Sunday morning. Not the most pleasant 8hrs on the cramped AirAsia X flight. And the BBQ chicken wasn’t much good.

Spent the two weeks in Australia between my sister’s apartment in Melbourne city, and her rural posting at Foster. I’ve already seen the city in my previous visits, around year 2000. More excited about Foster. Scouted out the area using Google Maps, and the aerial view of the landscape there is just amazing.

Achievements Unlocked:

Visited just a few of the amazing spots at Wilson’s Promontary, like Squeaky Beach, where the sand is so fine it literally squeaks when you walk over it.

Visited Tidal River, walked around the wetlands.

Hiked up Mount Oberon, 547m above sea level.

Hiked 10km to Sealer’s Cove, and back on the same day.

Shot a wallaby and a koala bear at Morwell National Park.

Saw Agnes Falls. Toora Wind Farm. Whelshpool. Sandy Point.

Drove around in my sis’ Honda Civic, which was kinda lame cos the speed limit is NEVER above 100kph. What’s the point? And with 2 back-seat drivers and 1 passenger criticizer. It’s not the most ideal driving experience. But I survived.

Managed to auction my Pentax K10D off on eBay. Didn’t get the price I was hoping for, cos there were a few similar sales just the week before. Still, I managed to sell it for almost exactly what I paid for it second hand.

Upgraded to a Pentax K-7. ^_^  Much glee~~~

Shopped at Bunnings and found a random piece of gear that will be useful for the random repairs or dismantling that I often inflict on my gear. Got a cheap siphon feed airbrush that will be suitable for spraying varnish and similar toxic stuff. I *heart* Bunnings….

And now it’s back to hot and muggy KL.

1.5 weeks here and it feels as if months had passed. The holiday a distant dream.

Has anything improved in KL in my abscence? Well, a number of politicians have walked a few weeks closer to their grave. Silver lining in everything…

January Madness

1st January, 2010.
Parents are here, in transit for a couple of days. Sending them off to Melbourne for 3 months to be with their daughter. The angpao damage they will avoid from being in Sibu during CNY will more than cover the airtix to Melbourne.

2nd January, 2010.
CheeKidd & Charis’ wedding. Am the ‘co-coordinator’. Which means I run around clicking mice and queueing music while claiming too much credit for involvement in the wedding. It was an amazing garden wedding and there was perfect weather. Lots of old classmates showed. The event really deserved a bigger chunk of InsaneSquirrel instead of just a small blurb in a list… Maybe later.

3rd January, 2010.
Sent parents off to the airport.

4th January, 2010.
Met up with SoonYee, an ex-colleague from ABRIC. Interesting fella. Claims to have run a Starcraft Academy in the old days, employing deep mathematics to train a clan of undefeatable Starcraft cadets. Discussed a potential online business.

5th January, 2010.
Kuan from Kuantan, posted in KL for a month. Dinner.

6th January, 2010.
Was supposed to watch The Imaginarium Of Doctor Parnassus. Was FFK-ed.

7th January, 2010.
Settled a dinner-debt with WeiYin from UM. And then, a second dinner with Ted at Jln Imbi. Primary school classmate from Brunei. Have only seen him one other time in the last 20 years maybe. He’s fixing his visa so that he can work in Italy stitching designer bags. Had a long chat about the impending dominance of China, and discussed the viability of various contingency plans in case our society devolves into anarchy. It will appear that knowing Chinese medicine and TaiChi will improve the odds of survival. Had to miss a farewell dinner with a colleague even. Figured that the 2.5 decade old classmate was the rarer event.

8th January,2010.
Me time on a Friday night. That’s one evening to myself all alone.

9th January, 2010.
Second attempt to watch Imaginarium with Suan. Couldn’t catch a movie cos she couldn’t catch a train. Then dinner with gamerz.

10th, January, 2010.
Guilted into skipping Kempo in favour of church. Then an afternoon with Moses looking at the 720p HD documentaries that he has been downloading but I can’t copy off of cos they’re such freaking large files!!

11th January, 2010.
My K10D isn’t reading my 16gb SD card. A little panicked, so went out to buy a new SD card. Luckily the issue was that 16gb card, and not the camera. *Phew* And while reading at Borders, I was buzzed by an unexpected call asking for help how to fix the strap on a brand new Canon 1000D.

12th January, 2010.
Dinner with the Technical Marketing Manager of Gigabyte. Another old pri school classmate from Brunei~!! What were the odds? He’s moved to Taiwan since forever, and was in KL to promote motherboards to the local techie media. Again, dinner in Jln Imbi and lots of talk.

13th January, 2010.
Third attempt to watch Imaginarium. Kuan made an excuse how seats were two rows from the screen, and went and bought tix for Old Dogs instead. Crap.

14th January, 2010.
SoonYee again. Portions at Williams have gotten bigger…

15th January, 2010.
Dinner with colleagues.

And January STILL has a lot more in store! This Saturday, an NJC-ian from S’pore days, whom I’ve not seen in 15 years, will be dropping by KL.

THEN, a roadtrip to Malacca on Sunday.

Oh, let’s not forget to mention the mountain climbing on Saturday too….

Finally done with 2009

Oh gosh that was a horribly long year… Although the last month flew by terribly fast.

Random exercise: Think about 2009, and what’s the first 10 things that pops into my head:

1. The WATCHMEN
2. Dead celebrities: MJ
3. Changed job
4. First paying photography job
5. Trip to China: Beijing, Tsingtao, DaLian etc
6. Built a fine Pentax lens collection ^_^
7. Zach Braff is done with Scrubs after 8 seasons
8. So. Many. Weddings.
9. Took up astronomy
10. Got back in touch with an old penpal

December blew by so damn fast, with a series of 3-day weekends, but I could not get a whit of rest at all. Attended an outstation wedding one weekend. Wedding photographer for an outstation wedding another weekend. And helped out a friend’s wedding another weekend. So tired now that my vision is bleary.

Gonna get some sleep before I start working on a huge backlog of blogs.

What’s to look forward to in 2010?

Hopefully the Hyperion movie gets made, and rock.

And I might get to see the Nine Gorges, and Urumqi.

Assets

Both are appreciating in value. And both are getting scarce.

Pentax just came out with a new 100mm Macro lens that’s Full-Frame ready.

Which is leading many to speculate that a Full Frame Pentax DSLR is on the way very soon.

The last time the K-7 was announced, these lenses sky-rocketed. If an FF Pentax finally comes out, I’m sure there’ll be another hike.

So I figured, I could justify getting one for my birthday+Christmas…

And the Maple, that’s something I had the good fortune to dig up using my half-day unrecorded leave. They’re getting very scarce. But every time the gold price pulls up a little, there’s always the chance that someone will want to cash in the profit and sell them back to the bank. And that’s the only time the banks will have any stock at all.

How to fill a 100Gb harddisk

So a colleague tossed me a harddisk to fill up with goodies.

That’s a bit like making a mix-tape. Without any parameters given.

I see this as an opportunity to impress some culture and introduce a healthy expectation of quality to the youths of tomorrow.

So, my insane media collection of diverse genre and periods. And an itteh-bitteh little harddisk.

Although there are no parameters, it’s probably not the best idea to put in too much self-indulgent geek stuff in there. Had to leave out Kevin Smith’s stuff. It’s with a heavy heart that I was unable to put Futurama and Family Guy on the list either. Can’t include Firefly, cos who wants a story that was left hanging? But what made the cut, should still be pretty good.

The following TV Series:

Coupling – best British sitcom ever
Dexter – season 4 ended BRILLIANTLY!!
Scrubs – I’m still walking down nostalgia lane

The following animations:

Avatar The Last Airbender – brilliant writing, for a cartoon
FLCL – most visually amazing anime, accompanied by music by The Pillows
Persepolis
American Tail
Fievel Goes West
Bolt
Coraline
Hoodwinked
Horton Hears A Who
The Hunchback of Notre Dame – still the best Disney cartoon ever
Secrets of the Furious Five
9
Over The Hedge
Ponyo
Wallace and Gromit
Wall-E

The following movies:

Departures
The Shaolin Temple – the first kungfu movie I ever watched and never forgotten, made during a time when I could afford to pay Jet Li’s salary
300
Assassination of a High School President
Before Sunrise
Equilibrium
Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind
Forrest Gump – I can’t just assume that everyone has watched this already
Hot Fuzz
Identity – great whodunit
Iron Man
Dr Horrible’s Sing-a-long Blog
Monty Python’s Quest for the Holy Grail – a vital component of geek references in these pas
SPL – drew my attention to Donnie Yen
Stranger than Fiction
Surrogates
Taken
The Butterfly Effect
The Emperor and the Assassin – most re-watched Chinese movie
Red Balloon
The Usual Suspects
The Cove
Watchmen
Zombieland