Pre-Bkk Transmission

We have approximately two and a half days until we leave for Bangkok. Without spoiling it for my family, I, for some reason seem to look forward to it less than previous years. I think it's because I'm quite happy with the rhythm I got going on in melbourne at the moment with things, esp. work and training. Plus I've been able to hangout with some good friends lately now that uni has finished (don't delete my Sam&Max! I'll be back to finish it). Don't get me wrong, tho. I can't wait to see the other three family members when we get back (the third being Mali, of course), and some old BPS veterans, esp. you Bauchi.

Anyhoo, I got a few things planned for the two months in Thailand. Among them is an art project that I very much look forward to getting back into.

The Hefty Metal Animals Project

To continue with what I had started during IB Art, I look forward to expand my clan of the Hefty Metal Animal sculptures. In addition to the already existing Spidian V1.1, and the Giraffe V1.1_Rust, the current idea in mind projects some sort of a gigantic Hefty Metal Spider Crab, of which the design should be based on a Japanese spider crab, which looks something like this...

Japanese Spider Crab

And here is an old picture of the Spidian V1.1.

Dimension: 27cm x 25.5cm x 30cm
Weight: 4.7 kg

Spidian V1.1

Just thinking about it gets me quite excited. I can't wait to get started.

Other things planned include writing some music and getting back into playing the Piano. I've left that to rust for too long and it would be a terrible thing to give it up. Also, these recent years I've been fooling around with the Guitar and coming up with songs, most of which I have already forgetten, which is a waste. So now that there's time, I would like to sit down and do this properly, and hopefully record some of it.

Other than that, I wanna look for a good Muay Thai camp. One which I know I'll survive in, considering how hardcore the native Thai boxers can be. I would still like to be able to drag my ass back here to continue training in Melbourne next year.

Another highlight of our time back in Thailand will be the trip up to Chiang Mai, which mother has kindly arranged for us to stay at The Mandarin Oriental. I have had a look at the place on the website and I can't wait to be there.

Villa Lobby

Royal Villa Spa

Farang Ses Restaurant

With the events I went through this year, I think I deserve to relax in a place like this just fine. Thank you, Mother.

*Hotel pictures taken from the website

Bush Inferno

With the intensity of the fire of this year's bush fire season, I got total respect for all the firefighters, who have been out there on the front lines, fighting inferno since last week. There had been a lot of coverage on the news, but as another city dweller, I kinda took it for granted how serious the matter can be for people, who are directly affected. That's until I woke up a few days ago and the sky was dark with all the fire smoke that the wind had carried into the city. Cake, Pie and I then could make sense of the mysterious burning smell we had experienced the night before.

Today seems worse than yesterday. The burning mist seems denser with stronger burning scent and the sky doesn't look too happy. It didn't help that the last weekend was one of the hottest and dryest weekends with strong wind to make the fire spread even more rapidly. Well, I do certainly hope the situation gets better, and that the firefighters get their very much deserved rest soon. Meanwhile, Go Go firefighters!!

What it looks like from our balcony

Mali and her goggles

So the lastest news on Ms. Maliwan is that she now wears goggles... Pink goggles. The purpose of this was not only to enhance her already bold and cheeky sense of fashion (take her pink checkered frilly dress for example), the vet wanted to make sure her ultra bulgy eyes don't get scratched by branches and things, considering how naughty and perky she can be around low bushes sometimes. And her eyes get dry quite easily, since her eyeballs are so big her eyelids don't shut completely when she blinks.

Whoa Whoa..I see everything in pink

Goggles off

You know..sometimes we don't know who she's really looking at. Can't really tell. I don't understand.

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On a seperate matter, I got meself a phone upgrade to the newly released MOTORAZR V3xx. Booyah! Alright I know it's very similar to what a lot of you guys have out there but hey... mine has two cameras and a three logo on the back lid aallrigghttt? So back off, aight?

Actually this phone holds a personal significance to me, as it marks the first piece of a newly bought electronic equipment, of which I decided the protective plastic sheets be peeled off the screens right away, without hesitation. Now, that's something I had never done before.

Black is beautiful

The three logo.. Now, you don't have one of those on the back of your phone, do you? No, I didn't think so (I wish there was a way to scratch it off somehow).

My new toy

Work work work

So the results for the semester were released last Thursday, which I found to be satisfactory. So that's all good. Now that this year's uni is out of the way, I'm gonna have more time for work and grow some moolah.

As some of you may already know I've been working as Dr. Cooney's research assistant at uni (yea, teacher's pet or whatever you wanna call it), one of the more frequent questions regarding the matter I've been getting is 'What exactly do you do for your lecturer, Jet?'. Well, I appreciate everyone's interest in what I do for work and would like to take this opportunity to elaborate on what actually goes on behind the office door, as to supplement my usually short and perhaps, inadequate response to the fore-mentioned question.

In general, I do whatever z boss would like me to (get your mind out of the gutter). The main project that I'm helping him with at the moment has been running for a couple of months. Initially, 5,000 questionnaires were dispatched to organizations across different industries, to find out more about the current techniques and frameworks used for teamworking. Around 500 came back, which is actually enough to keep me busy for the next few weeks, as they need processing.

As for what exactly needs to be done to process and analyze these returned questionnaires I should probably omit, as I wish not to bore you too much. But vaguely, I have to go through each question from each of the questionnaires and code them before the response to each question can be enter into a database, which will need to be constructed in the near future. After that, the statistical analysis itself is pretty much executed on a software called the SPSS.

As boring as it may sound, I actually enjoy coming in to work everyday. I think the best thing about it is the peaceful working environment, not to mention other really friendly staff. Academics and lecturers suddenly become so much more approachable outside the lecture theaters. Despite everyone having their own office, all seems to have adopted the open door policy (literally), which adds to the overall benevolentness. And above all, I get to listen to my iRiver all day long :)

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Z Boss

The Corridor: One of my favourite places at the office

My lunchbox: Cake's Sushi

Randomania IV

And it's time for another Randomania, where everything has nothing to do with anything. And bookoo pictures is always fun. So without further ado...

Woohoo!! Another Space Invader spotted.

Location: Meyers Places, Melbourne

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A tram derailed in the city the other day. No idea how that happened.

The tram from another angle with a lot of onlookers.

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There have been a number of protests lately, within the city of Melbourne and that has been getting on my nerves a little. Roads and trams were blocked so getting places was a bit of a hassle.

People waited ages for trams as tractors strolled at the speed of a snail.

Well, it was a change to see some farm tractors roaming the city.

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Where my eyes are when I daydream at home.

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My new toys

Pieces of the Kaleesh and the Jedi Master

General Grievous and Master Yoda about to get it on

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Can't decide how I should do my laces. Which should I keep? And yea, I'm still wearing my BPS PE shorts.

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The best chicken rice I've had must be from Montien Hotel in Bangkok. Everything about it is so good. The sauces are uber tasty.

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Just a random little doll someone had put outside an apartment on my way home.

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Lunch: Mmmm Lamb Rump and Tofu

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Mara: The best thing to sleep with.

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There's this tiger farm in Thailand not far from Bangkok, where piglets and tiger cubs are raised together. And this is what you get, lil piglets sleeping on a mother tiger. Notice how they've dressed the piglets up in the tiger vests. hehe.

A cub sleeping on top of piglets

Tiger cubs drinking from a mother pig's teats

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As you can you see, Pie and I have been going a lil crazy over DVDs lately. Well, may be just me. To add to the rapidly growing collection;

Iron Monkey: Action packed traditional Chinese Kung Fu movie with funny bits. And Donnie Yen is always a plus.

Peanuts I & II boxsets: Kinda grew up watching Snoopy. Mother's special request.

Little Britain Complete Third Season: One of my favourite comedies. The new characters are getting more and more disgusting. And there's that Thai ladyboy, Ting Tong (or is it Tong Ting?)

The NeverEnding Story Trilogy boxset: Probably the first proper fantasy movie I watched. Gets me a lil nostalgic.

Pink Panther The First Season: I think the best thing about Pink Panther is the music.

Dragon Tiger Gate: Corny..Very Corny. But good fighting scenes. Of course, it's Donnie Yen.

The Adventure of TinTin: For the last time, Dom, TinTin is NOT homosexual, alright?

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Our house seems blessed with weird strawberries.

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And finally, dinner: Roast Turkey (Potato popcorns are great)

DVD Galore

And my dvd collection has begun. I've decided I'm gonna start collecting movies I like and ditch pirated dvds. I've had enough of the frustration from a bootlegged dvd getting stuck half way through a movie and having to skip the whole scene to get the dvd going again. Plus, it's always a good investment to build up a collection of films I like. Well so far, here's what the stock's looking like...

Fawlty Towers

Ahhh good old Fawlty Towers. I was first introduced to this classic British comedy series by a friend, Infomatica back in the days at the dorms. After a few episodes and I thought Fawlty Towers was one of the most wittily humourous comedy series ever written..still is. That's because it's written and starred by the ingenious Mr. John Cleese himself.

My personal favourite character has to be Manuel, played by Andrew Sachs as the hotel's only waiter (from Barcelona, as Mr. Fawlty always says). The character is simply adorably funny, being constantly confused due to his limited English.

For a lil taste of what Fawlty Towers is like, here's a short clip off of my favourite episode, where Manuel's having trouble understanding one of the hotel guests.

The Neighbour No. Thirteen

This Japanese film first caught my attention with its cover with these two guys in identical urban clothes, one holding a samurai sword. I thought that was pretty cool. Its Jap name Rinjin 13, the plot follows young Juzo, who used to get bullied in school and develops an avengeful alter-personality, whose sole mission is to kill his childhood tormentor. The movie gets more interesting as the bully coincidently moves into the same building as Juzo, along with his young wife and his lil son. And when Juzo's split personality, #13 comes out to visit them at home :)

The other thing that got me picking up the dvd was that the guy on the cover with the samurai sword is Nakamura. If you have seen Fearless (Jet Li), Nakamura is the Jap guy, who fights Jet Li at the end. I like his style...

From Dusk till Dawn

One of my favourite movies. I remember watching it on VCDs in highschool, and thought it was a shit cool movie. I like to think of From Dusk till Dawn as like an everlasting gobstopper, with each scene dissolving to reveal a new flavour/mood. You get to see George Clooney be as crude as ever, starring as the elder of the crime-indulging duo, the Gecko brothers (nothing to do with the amphibian whatsoever).

This movie was the one that got me into Tarantino's work. In fact, I think it's my favourite from the Tarantino collection. Mr. Tarantino also plays one of the main characters in the movie; Clooney's character's younger brother.

A Nightmare on Elm Street: The First Three Nightmares

This dvd boxset contains the first three of the infamous A Nightmare on Elm Street series. The last time I saw any of these was probably when I was around 8 or 9. Wasn't exactly my movie of choice at the time but dad had me sat next to him while he was watching it, and I remember thinking Freddy Krueger's damned cool. He's just different from any other boogiemen out there. He's not another one of those slow-moving big stupid mysterious figures with a large knife in one hand and a mask to hide a disfigured face, who can barely walk but somehow always manage to catch up with the girl only to see her scream hideously and stick the knife in her stomach. Freddy's much more than that. He makes slashing wayyy stylish.

P.S. Freddy kicks Jason's ass any day.

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I have also just seen SAW III at the movies. Now, I would classify myself as a fan of horror flicks and usually, the bloodier the marrier. But SAW III did turn my stomach in that cinema. Well, may be it had been a while since I last saw a blood and guts film on the big screen so everything seemed so amplified. A brain never looked so big.

Dont get me wrong. I'm not saying the movie was bad in any way. In fact, I think it was very well made. The plot was clever as usual with its unexpected twists and turns. The concept behind each of the torture scenes was also very clever, with each of the excruciating machines that were so nerve-wrenching to watch operate, and at the same time, invigorating...in a way.

All in all, a good movie with some excellent make-up effects (well, they better have been make-up effects), and a clever plot. And if you're a fan of the good old blood and guts (and brains), SAW III will definitely not dissappoint.

A Day in the Life of Jet

Woohoo!! No more exams.

So today, there was this weirdo guy in the changing room at the gym. I had seen him before and thought he was very weird but today he was even weirder. In fact, the only place in the gym I've seen him is in the changing room. He's this lil Asian dude, who walks around wrapped in his white towel around his waist, low enough to make other guys rather uncomfortable. I mean it's normal for guys to walk about naked, just minding their own business in the changing room in a non-gay manner. That's ok. But this guy walks around half naked in an obscene way, constantly looking at himself in the mirror, and at other guys.

So anyways, fair enough if you wanna be weird then it's ok just leave other people alone, you know. After kickboxing, I walked in and he was looking at me. I walked to the basin to wash my hands and he followed and stood there. Then, I went to the aroma room and again, he followed and sat next to me. Then, he turned to me and asked if I had finished working out.

Me: 'Yea, I'm done' I tried keeping it at that. But he wanted to talk...

The weirdo guy: 'Haven't seen you here before. Have you just started coming here?'

Me: 'No.. I've been coming here a while.'

The weirdo guy: 'Oh ok. I come here a lot but I don't use the gym. I like the sauna and the changing room.'

Me: ?!??!

Some people are just strange.

Being a cheapo, I dropped by Borders to read some magazines and to JB Hi-Fi to check some DVD's on the way home. I found this digitally remastered dvd boxset of one of my all time favourite movies: Event Horizon. It looks something like this...

And this...

Awesome. I also stopped by this pet shop to look at some kitties they had on display. Very cute. Too bad we can't keep pets in our apartment.

I got home just in time before it started drizzling. I actually like it when it rains and I'm inside, especially at night. I sleep well when it rains, as long as there're no thunders to wake me up.

It was time to cook and roast turkey was on the menu. I opened the pantry and thought to myself that may be some of the vegetables had been in there for a lil too long. For example,

And...

I should buy less potatoes next time. Anyways, dinner looked something like this...

Half way through the meal, Pie barged in through the front door, screaming without sound 'Help! Help! There's a worm on my sweater'. FYI, worms are Pie's worst nightmare. Here's what the lil guy looked like after I flicked him off of Pie's stomach...

Poor guy. He didn't make it so we threw him in the bin. Well, I threw him in the bin as Pie went to shower and wash all her clothes she had on *roll eyes*.

Now that I'm about to go to bed, I've just seen a bruise on my right foot. Gotta take it a lil easy on the pads.. hehe.

Thanks for reading about my day. Goodnight everyone. ZZzzzzzzz

Woohoo!! No more exams..ZZZZzzzzz