Decided on the new phone... Sony Ericsson Z200 and will be getting it soon (well, as soon as stock comes in). Went and looked at it in the store yesterday during lunch... they didn't have a working model though... but still.. *hopefully* will be ok and I seriously hope that the menu system is better now (from what I can see it is). I've been a Nokia person pretty much the whole time although there was that 18 month period using a T28. Started with a (now known as a brick) Nok 1610, then 5110 and post T28 8250. Wow... had this phone for like 2.5 years now... hmm.. didn't think that it has been this long... and it still works perfectly... my mum will be taking the phone cos the T28 finally decided to die after about 4 years :D

What else? Went to get a haircut last night... and it was like not too short... but alas... it was all in vain... so I look like I'm 18 again... hahaha. The worst thing is that I have to go get a passport photo done to take to the interview on Wednesday. Aiyah! Went for yum cha in East Doncaster today, wasn't too bad... but still feel so bloated with oil after an hour or two... then you start feeling hungry after that. Still good going down though :)

Tonight, not sure what is going to happen... have to see... feel like bumming I think (but then, I feel like bumming every night of the week)... :P

Hmm... Easter trip is all booked. Looking forward to getting away for a week :) Dunno what I am going to do during that week, but definitely meet up with Karen, whose birthday I have decided not to go up for... its just way too soon and the airfares are way too expensive now... :( Hopefully meet up with some other friends that I haven't seen for a while. But thats not for another 2+ months so I guess I'll plan it closer to the time! :P

Work was quite boring, not much to do... just usual admin stuff. I wonder if I'm going to be a PA for a long time :( I certainly hope not. I've got an interview next Wednesday for a job... they need two written references so I'll be needing to talk to my bosses to get that done. Also paid another $10 to Monash for an academic transcript because the "free" one that I get I won't be able to get until I go to my graduation ceremony... cheehhh... what a rip off :P

Back to work today... long weekend is over... at least the weather is playing its part... its raining today so I'm not missing out on good weather.. heh... and they call this Summer? :P Went out to have lunch down in the city... wasn't too busy even at 12:30 so that was good :) Of course, this being Melbourne, now the sun is out and shining away :P

Looking at going to Karen's birthday on the 7th Feb... oh crap.. thats like 2 weekends away. Internet at work has been playing up so I can't check the prices properly... but about $260 for an overnight/weekend trip... I guess its worth it. Also have to book for the Easter trip which will probably be like $150... even though its a busier time of the year. Hope to get away for a week this year but not totally sure yet.

Pffffffttt... my house got broken into this morning... I can't believe it... not because of the stuff we lost.. but because of the inconvenience and the mess created... must have been looking for something... something that doesn't exist in our household obviously... bah. We only left the house for a hour, so we're thinking they were watching us... O_o

Yawwwwnnn... had a good night last night at the Comedy Club, they had three comedians on... headline act was Dave Williams (no idea) and he was pretty funny :P All three were to various degrees... although, soooo politically incorrect... heh :P I guess you can't be politcally correct (completely) and funny if you're a stand-up comedian? Well worth the $6 (which I haven't paid to Chris yet!)... although luckily we got a table.. cos they pack people in like sardines... seats up along the sides that are elevated and look like you are "on show" :D

Earlier, work was a pain.. long sessions sitting with people trying to solve problems... until past 5pm... then, as I was meeting people in Lygon at 6pm, went to the pub with some work mates, one drink, quick chat and off... was late :P hehe Ended up eating at the "usual" place... Cafe Coretto (?)... the same place that we had the RBJ meet last year... and Su Ann, we didn't go for Gelati as we had to be back in the city... saving that up for you ok? :P haha... actually... the list of things to do is getting very long.. hahah.. :D The night was long.. and by the time I got home (around 1-ish am) I was completely tired... the end of a long day and week.

Slept in till around 10... then got rudely awoken by my godparents on the phone... it was good to talk to them :) ... trying to book for a trip to Sydney soon... dunno though, might have to put it back till April/Easter... trying to get flights and organise a place to stay, people being there, etc.. heh all that stuff :P

Watched an *old* cantonese Andy Lau film last night, I think it was called Needing You (or Needing Love?) that was on SBS... two of the three proper commercial TV stations had sport on... and while that was ok, the film was actually more interesting... haha bit stupid... but I guess that is how most films are :P So slept late-ish last night... about 12:30am but still managed to get up and to work on time...

Ended up being quite busy yesterday with work... writing database queries and other IT stuff.. bit of a change from the recent work which has been more mini-projects and admin stuff. Going off to see a performance at the Comedy Club tonight, meeting up with a few others to have dinner beforehand, the tickets were only something like $6! Not bad for a few hours worth of (hopefully) entertainment! :P Finally it Friday! :) Its also a long weekend... woohoo! :D

Its a new year! :) Year of the Monkey... May the new lunar year bring you luck, money, health and all those important things :) Hopefully this year will be better for me too! :P

Its not even 10am and I've already done most of the things that needed to be done today... hmmm... even called my grandparents to wish them a happy new year and all that :) Now just waiting for some data to come through so I can use it to analyse it. Other than that.. not much (yet)... I'm sure that I will eventually have something to do... hehe :P but for the moment... back to nothing... lol :D

Its starting to get ridiculous that our air conditioning unit (both, for the two sides of the building) cannot work reliably in temperatures of any more than 25 degrees it seems. Heard that the sun shines on a bit of metal that heats up and screws with the temperature equipment behind it... considering this building has been refurbed less than 5 year ago, its not very good planning... bah :P

Work itself has been slow (probably due to the heat) and everyone is just trying to get by and do the minimum amount of work and stay cool-ish :( I can tell you its not working. Tried to get the stuff done earlier when it wasn't so stuffy, but now... well... its sooo stuffy in here... at least I'm going to be drinking more than the 2 litres of water that they recommend... and all within about 6 hours.. lol... oh great... I just heard that its cooler outside than it is in the building.. sheesh...

Originally meant to go see a movie tonight, but no one has organised it so it has fallen through. Tennis tomorrow night isn't looking good as its meant to be raining tonight as well. Also, being Chinese New Year's eve, probably should stay home and all that. Hmm... wonder if anyone is free tonight?

Found this on my hard drive whilst trying to clean it of junk (no idea why when I still have like 90% free, just bored I guess)... someone sent it to me a long time ago... :)

Weekend was ok, sleeping in is the best thing in the world ;) Went over to Chris' last night to watch a DVD... thought there would be a few people there, but no.. just me, Chris and his gf Vanessa... felt so... uhh... third wheel/lampost-y... aihh... oh well. Watched "Two Weeks Notice" which was good, although, and maybe I'm just getting cynical (heheheh) it was just another typical story with a happy ending and everyone saying "awwww" Might be going to see a movie on Tuesday night (el-cheapo Tuesday) but we'll see how work goes first. I think I've caught up on sleep now so should be able to last till later in the night... heh :P

Came across this just now... it only takes 1min and 10 seconds to repaint a plane apparently :D lol

End of the week... its been quite busy for me... shuttling between the contractor's factory/office and home office... hehe 3 days in a row... we finished up this afternoon so its all good. Plenty of work that has been neglected is back at the office.. heh a lot of time next week for that though, boss is going on a conference on the other side of the country :P Got some "projects" to work on so that should keep me busy.

Weekend... no idea... probably try to catch up with people... and its Chinese New Year next week. Probably should do something for that too... dunno... just see how this weekend goes first...

Cheh....dunno what is going on with things today I tell you... early morning... 6-something... stupid magpie decides to camp outside my window and screech at the top of its lungs (do magpies have lungs? O_o)... I couldn't get rid of it.. even lifting the blind and throwing something at the window didn't make it move... pfft.. if I run across that bird again... :P

Second thing.. on the train, sat down (sense of deja vu as I sat in the same seat in the same part of the carriage) and tried to catch up on my interupted sleep... only to have some guy wearing an overdose of cologne/aftershave sits down next to me... the worst thing was.. he was sitting on a centre seat and there were aisle seats still available... so I'm dying from lack of oxygen... as I'm against the wall (not even a window to look out of) for the rest of the way into town...

It was an ok day today at work. Got to go out to the dreaded printing contractor to see if they had improved their accuracy or not. It was a change, and gave me something to do... there was a scheduled (another one) reboot/patching of the main file server this evening (at 5pm), so by the time we got back to the office... absolutely everyone had left (except for the IT dept of course) It was a ghost town... heh...

Hah, Donnie Brasco is on tv tonight... Forget about it :P

Spent this afternoon going through our new website which goes live (apparently) on Monday. For an organisation that should know how to write and express clearly... we have no idea about grammar, or logical content for that matter. I guess spending 5 years trying to tie two programs together means that when we launch a new website, we give each program its own section for EVERYTHING, even those things that are intertwined and closely related. Argghh

Its been pretty boring otherwise, just a few things that have come up. Nothing much else is going on. Still in holiday mood I guess? Organised to play tennis on Thursday night with Nick and Chris. Didn't get away this afternoon to the golf course though :( Hmm.. Karen got back from her holiday today but I didn't call to disturb her... probably would have gotten the rude secretarial staff anyways.. hahaha... maybe give her a call later in the week.

iPod's Dirty Secret is probably on of the best consumer-internet publicity actions that have caused a large company to do something about their unfair practices. The story behind it can be read here

Bah... got stuck on the train this evening coming home. That was about the most eventful thing to happen today though. Just work... scheduling stuff and doing stuff that needed doing... thats about it :P At least I'm not slaving away like Chui and her typing digitising job (still don't truly get what she does) :P She's apparently working 9a-10p... which IS slave labour. Meanwhile.. I'm still thinking about taking off early tomorrow afternoon to get another round of golf in with Chris :)

Took the day off today... slept in which was soooo good, well woke up but didn't get up till 9:30am. It seems as though I can't sleep in at all... not even on weekends... *sigh* Chris dropped by to pick me up and we went to golf.. just 9 holes today. started around 11am and didn't finish till almost 2pm. That was mainly because the people 2 or 3 groups in front of us were SLOOOWWWWW. Played some good shots, some not so good shots... and some... really really bad shots... hahaha. I'm thinking of taking another afternoon off to play another round next week... muwahhaha :P

Discount is the word for today :P

Went to the "Clarion Canterbury" (which is not in Canterbury I might add) which is a hotel thingy for dinner. It was like a "fine dining" esque restaurant that would normally not be patronised heavily except for hotel guests (prices were around $25 for a main)... except... tonight it was almost full. They recently advertised on the back of shopping dockets at nearby supermarkets and the like. So it was full of people using these vouchers... I mean... EVERYONE was using them... lol.. I'm sure they still made money from it :) After dinner, it was off for a bit of shopping... at K-Mart... they had 15% off everything today and tomorrow. Once again, it was packed... there were people (mostly asians :P) loading up on all sorts of stuff. Hmm... ended up buying $60+ worth of stuff... :D What I was surprised was that my mum was the one that said.. lets buy lollies... muwhahahahah :D

Tomorrow is a day off (just means more work to do when I go back to work on Monday) and I'm off to smash a few golf balls with Chris. We're playing 9 holes at Morack at 11:15am. First time in a long time that I have had a holiday whilst everyone is at work :) Had another outage at work today... one of the people there (not really up with technology) asked me this morning... "was there an outrage again last night?" lol.. I had to smile at that.. cos its true :P They rebooted the server in the afternoon, because I'm sure they stuffed something up when they migrated it last evening. So yeah, everyone log out for 15 mins... surely that would be enough time. Knowing that it probably wasn't, some of us gathered in one of the areas and sat around eating chocolate (left over from Christmas) and chatting for about half an hour... went back.. server was still down. Got a call from the TSU manager about 15 mins later saying.. its all working... lol.. so about 50 mins downtime to reboot a server... sheesh! :P

Pfft... server maintenance tonight at 4pm... just when I needed to do work... oh well... early night tonight... it was that kind of day, just another day at work. They kept sending emails telling us to log off... sheesh... 1 hour, 30 mins and then about 2 mins before they shut the file server down... same again tomorrow but at 5pm. Bleh... Tomorrow is a migration to a Windows 2000 server apparently... tonight's was a hardware relocation... surely they could do it just a bit later.. say 6pm... bah!

Oh... big congrats to Cor and EG who recently got engaged... New Years Day actually... awww.. how romantic :D

Holy Crap... its the end of the weekend already? Where did the time go O_o *sigh* work tomorrow... but only a half day :) Also taking next Friday off to hopefully hit the golf course with Chris (first time in >6 months, apart from that one driving range about 3 months ago that I'm not allowed to talk about) so that is going to be a bit of fun :) Its also pay week, and boy... do I need the money... hehe :P

Hope all of you out there had a good weekend and all :) Oh, I got a late Christmas present/card from Enrica, a book titled "Tomorrow"... very appropriate for me I think :P

Back to work today, didn't get that much done, although did all the things that I had to do :) Still working on my databases... need to work out how to use the autolookup function properly, the "help" is not much help at all :P Went to meet Fel in the city after work, just bummed around whilst they went shopping but at least we went to get Lucky Cup (as opposed to arch-rival Happy Cup)... that was after I had already got a frap from Starbucks... they started giving out those "buy 8 and get 1 free" coffee cards this year... not bad considering how often I end up there during summer... she even gave me 2 stamps for my frap today ;)

Tedy has some of his pictures up at his site from NYE. :) Fireworks photos came out better on his camera :P I still think it is GiN Palace although he says its Jim Palace :P Doing a search on Citysearch for Gin Palace turns up a map for it but nothing for Jim Palace... so Tedy... :P lol

Its the weekend already? Soooo did not seem like Friday today. Might actually have a busy weekend... its all depending if I can be bothered actually doing stuff... think I need the sleep... :) Bah... w.bloggar (the CMS I use to blog) doesn't seem to be wanting to connect to blogger lately... anyone know how to fix it? because the blogger "help" is also non-functional... *sigh*

Yay.. Happy New Year... went to the city and stood in a park, watched fireworks, found a place to drink for a couple of hours (one of the few places not to have a cover charge last night) then got crushed standing on a bridge and saw more fireworks at midnight... the worse thing was the crush to get home afterwards... no way of getting onto the platform let alone to catch the train, but luckily we were able to get a tram and then I got a lift home from Camberwell.. got home around 2:30am I think :) All in all a very good night! Hope that everyone had a good night too! :)

Ooh... started putting photos up... but not all are up and there's no descriptions yet... they're here! Enjoy!

Edit: ^^^The pictures that came out are on there... along with the descriptions :)