Welcome Back...

It has been many months since my last blog post... Well I think it's about time I get into blogging once again, maybe even go rent a server and get a dotcom up and running. Let's see where this goes...

End of Term, End of Year...

The picture above is a wierd fruit which I noticed on a trip to pulau perhentians back in Malaysia in 2009. Never found out what plant/tree this was. I guess it shows how my work these past few years is starting to bear fruit.....

Not only has the end of 2010 gone by, the end of term has passed by for my work as well. Finally after working hard for 2 years, I have completed a small part of training that has to be had in my line of work.

The next step I guess would be to just continue picking up work when I can and save up for the future. Plus as I have mentioned before this ear will be a year of travel. 2011 is indeed going to be an exciting year ahead. Let the holidays begin! Somehow I feel my second 'mini' retirement has arrived again..........

Almost End of Term...

Well only 3 more days till the end of term for me. It will also be the end of my basic 2 years of training as a medical professional. Though I will still be doing medical work to feed the family, for me it is time to move on, on to things that are less brain intensive and more fun. In case you are wondering these are pictures from my food archive. Above is an omelet made with homegrown onions and below is a pot of soy bean soup with homegrown chinese chrysanthemum...


Indeed it has been fun to grow my own veggies at the current residence/house I am renting. We'll see how things go, hopefully I will be able to get a house of my own soon...

Lazy Sunday morning...

It's breakfast/lunch time here. This pic was actually from a few days ago. Wife made us toasted bread with hot spanish salami, plus a bonus fried egg for me. I never knew there were different types of salami. The sun is still baking hot as usual today, but at least that's better than the cold.

Not much will happen today. I will probably go for my long overdue haircut at the nearby chinese area of hurstville, if the shops are open today. Otherwise it will be another day of enjoying the warm weather but hiding from the skin damaging australian sun.

New Year's Day 1/365

Hi all, for the first time I am doing a new year's day post! :D

In sydney, new year's eve is always celebrated in a big way with fireworks (invented in china and probably made in china too) and for the first time, it was broadcasted in china on CCTV. Well I watched it on a big screen teevee down at the local club.

Good thing this year, new year's day is on a saturday, so I get monday off as well. So 2 more days of pure lazing around. My current downloads today are the new season 4 of Californication and Year End Hot 100 billboard hits, you can find them on http://www.freshwap.net/forums/ and on http://k2nblog.com/ both are websites I frequent for getting direct download links. My internet connection here at work doesn't allow torrent downloading. Gotta wait for next year after I move to better lodgings and get unlimited internet access before I can start crazy bittorrenting again.

In the meantime, I will just be watching my zucchini, spring onion and herb patches grow in the backyard garden. Enjoy the New Year everyone!!!

Online @ Hospital 2

No I am not in Japan. Wish I was though.

I am still stuck in hospital, finishing up Day 6 of my Christmas 2010 medical night shifts. Due to the holidays there has been less work, so I have had the chance to rest a bit more on the nights.

Should be catching  some Zs now but feeling a bit too hungry. So I am enjoying a cuppa tea with some pan-fried salmon rice in sambal. Mmm Mmm Mmmmm. Nothing like a good breakfast to start the day and end the night shift!

Hope I can get my circadian rhythmn back next week. I always end up being unable to sleep well for a few weeks at least. On the bright side, this will probably be my last set of night shifts ever.. 1 more night and 2 more weeks of work then Asia here I come!

Moving to a New Place

Have not been updating my blog enough. With the busy weeks at work, plenty of overtime and whatever free time left spent with friends it has been hard to find time to edit my photos. Well finally had to move out of my friend's nice little granny flat and into a house which belongs to an 'uncle' of one of the nurses I met at work. Will be talking about my new place in upcoming post. Above is probably the last picture I will have of a burning good time at the granny flat. This fire-place was a really fun addition to the cold winter nights. Spring is coming but not fast enough! :D


My trusty Hyundai Getz has finally reached a hallmark 30,000 kilometers! Wow have been doing so much driving. Though the steering is quite hard at times, this car has enough power to get me zipping around. Wish I had more money to upgrade to a Camry Aurion though. Went down to the Bankstown Peninsula Hyundai service center the other day to service the car, that place has good service and very friendly personnel.

Well off to bed now. Need to upgrade my camera....

Favicon

Tried putting up this favicon on my site the other day. The .jpg file shows up on google and other browsers but not internet explorer. For some mysterious reason, the favicon for my wife's site shows up in IE but despite the same coding it just doesn't show up on mine.

Well don't forget to bookmark my site...

Toadstools

Saw a clump of cute little toadstools, poking out by the side of a huge eucalytus tree whilst walking through the drizzling rain today.

Went down to the New South Wales medical board today to hand in my change of address. Apparently they will cease to exist come July 1st. There will be a national register which will make things easier for everyone. About time, to think it would take such a long time, just goes to show how weak some things are here. Well going there always reminds me of a garden. The whole place consist of quaint little buildings.


This was followed by a trip back to my old hospital workplace at bankstown, to get some documents and meet my supervisors for references. Had dinner with wife at our favourite vietnamese noodle shop Dong Ba. The Bun Bo Hue(Vietnamese Beef and Pork rice noodle soup) there is just fantastico. Plus there is nothing like a big bowl of extra spicy hot noodle soup after a day of freezing rain. My damn shoes were leaking as well. Left them too long unused when I went back to Malaysia last year, so the right shoe bottom split apart today and let in a torrent of water. Sure feels funny walking around with a wet foot, felt like half a duck.


Supper today were some korean made rice crackers, these taste much better than the china ones and are much softer than the malaysian made ones. Another busy day over.

Maxthon 2.5.13.166 update

Just upgraded my browser again. I use a combo of Internet Explorer 8 as a base and Maxthon as an add-on skin thing. It seems firefox is trying to push their browser with the new skins (a.k.a. personas) which is quite easy and fun to use. But maxthon has really good functionality like a drop down list that you can create to store passwords for different sites/forum logins.

Vanille from Final Fantasy XIII is shocked that I only update my browsers once every couple months, how often do you upgrade yours?

Move 2 completed

Finished moving yesterday night. Yes this is the 2nd move since I became an australian permanent resident and moved over here last december.

It's been a rather busy day helping my friend out, driving his wife and him to the airport in the late afternoon and gettting stuck in friday afternoon sydney trafffic on the way to the airport sure was fun. This is my desktop now. How uncanny, I applied for a desktop support officer job at the stroke of midnight today as well heh.

As you can see, I am still running my trusty 5 year old Toshiba Satelllite L30 on an optimized Windows XP SP3. Time for an upgrade, this bugger just refuses to malfunction.

The poor plant on the table has been struggling/growing for the past couple years, but the right mixture of potting mix this year has seen it growing well. I am hoping for flowers next year.

Lighting in the room is pretty poor still so I will post some pics of the place in a couple days. The fireplace here is 'awesome.sauce'. hah. picked that up from a malaysian chick's blog. Got a wierd japanese comment on one of my blog pages, I think its probably spam but allowing it anyway just for fun.

Pics of the nice fireplace will be coming...

Slow month

What a slow month this has been. Other than finally getting my driving licence in NSW last month, things have not been working out much on the medical job end in Sydney. Well just have to bite hard on the nerves of my teeth and hope for the best!

Now in the process of moving to better and nicer living conditions. Will be regularly blogging again once that's done.

Removed the chat box in the sidebar since it's not really being used, people can leave me comments if they want. I will be looking forward to setting up a platform where I can start trying out the new php 5 and practice writing some scripts.

Lucky day at Penrith South RTA

Say Say Say!!! As HardGay form Japan would say... I finally passed the NSW RTA Driving Test! Third time lucky I guess. I reckon its the thoughest driver's licence test in Australia. Seems NSW is the most stressed out state with their difficult tests and regulations. Imagine 45 minutes when other states still have the old standard 20 minute drivers test. Anyway good thing I passed, coz I bet it will just get harder.. Previously all one needed was to do the computerized test to know the road rules and get the overseas licence transferred. Now a driving test is needed. I bet next time all drivers from unrecognized foreign countries will have to get their P's too.

Booked my test last week at Penrith South RTA as it had a nice 3.05pm wednesday slot. Initially when I did a day of "stalk the ON TEST" cars last friday, didn't manage to follow them much, ended up just burning fuel and harming the environment. Did however scout out that Penrith south has multiple roundabouts, there is a big double laned one in the middle of town too.

Today, wife and uncle went with me again. This time got lucky, arrived there a few hours early, got a bite to eat at the local Subway, and went about preparing to stalk some cars. The weather was freakin hot and when we got to the RTA only 1 car was parked out in the tester area. So after waiting a while we decided to go into the RTA and see if we could register earlier. Well the nice lady there told us to come back 15 minutes before the test as we were too early.

Note : Penrith South RTA as with most RTAs do not have public toilets. I wish they did.

We walked out and saw a young girl go with the lady tester to the car. Her instructor waited outside and started lighting a cigarette. I quickly said hi and asked her about the exit of the RTA and whether we had to stop before exiting. She said there used to be a stop sign there but its gone now so its ok to exit as a normal intersection.

Note : Penrith South RTA exit has a give way line right at the start, always look left for oncoming trucks which just completed their emmisions testing and right after there is a white line dividing the road for exiting left or right, usually you exit left for the test.

When the time came, got the lady tester whom by now had come back. She passed the girl before me, so I was a little disappointed as it was just like my first test, with the younger driver before me passing.

Then it was my turn. We checked the car, did my usual in cabin check and drove off. We didn't talk much until the first traffic lights which was quite a wait so I just started a conversation. Lucky I did, she was quite nice and spoke a little to me and was very friendly. Did a kerb-side and reverse parallel park, don't know why I am so lucky every test get many maneuvers haha...  Anyways came back to the RTA in one piece but not expecting much and hey ho dairy oh, she said I passed. Final mark 100/107, not perfect but not too shabby, I had managed to see and responded to 7 hazards!

Just felt pretty good after and satisfied that I had passed the driving test without having to hire a driving instructor! Neither did I have to resort to going to far away places like Bega or Shellharbour. Places with really high pass rates >70%.

Good luck if you are having your next test there and came by and read all this!

Two tests

This week I will have 2 tests, just completed one today, a job interview test. Only got asked 4 questions. One medical, one ethical, one employment and one was about past mistake on the job. Probably did not answer all of them that well but I am positive about this interview. Short interviews mean they already made up their mind to hire you or fire you hahahaha...

Tomorrow afternoon will be my driving test once again. Hopefully I can get my licence this time. Let's see if there is such a thing as third time lucky... Don't really care too much about it now.

Was feeeling kind of under a little the past few days, but now really looking forward to the rest of this year!

"Any plan you have often doesn't work out, in which case always have a backup plan..."

Ebay I Am

I am now officially an Ebayer! :D Did my first little purchase using paypal and my credit card to get a small little cable for repairing the Samsung D880 mobile phone my dad gave me last year. Cost me only A$3.8 and I will be repairing the phone myself. Wonder how long it will take for it to get here from China.

Also winning a bid on another item. An Xbox 360 game called Dynasty Warriors 6, I am not usually into period or classic stuff, but the Romance of the three Kingdoms era in China has managed to really romance me. For me stories of chinese ancient times definitely beat western medieval folklore hands-down. I am now winning the bid at $13.10 with 7hours to go :D

Sydney is Cold again...

Here in Sydney the weather usually warms up after a session of rain. Think its a warm front moving into a cold front that causes precipitation and the resulting rainfall. Thing is the weather has been pretty warm and nice, up till this easter. This is probably the turning point, and the end of summer here. Is raining on and off now but the temperature has really dropped quite a bit. I have to go around wearing me new white and blue adidas sweater now.

Yes I failed my second driving test again on wednesday. This time the lady tester at Richmond was fair and I only got marked down for the way I held the steering wheel when I turned, so not going to rant too much about it. Damn.. Well try again I suppose.

TPG Internet Down...

Well I should be perfectly happy with free lodgings at the moment, lots of good food (damn forgot to take a pic of the baked mackerel we had last night) and not to mention free wireless internet.

Last Friday, the internet went offline unexpectedly. Most probably got turned off for the weekend. Good thing is it has been turned on again yesterday. So I am back online and downloading. I guess the wife and me went through a short period of internet withdrawal :D

At the moment reading through another blog. This blog has good graphics and belongs to one of Malaysia'a top bloggers. Will do one read through first and see about commenting. New word I learnt this month, "play-through" which means to complete a game once. In some games players do 2 play-throughs and sometimes even 3 play-throughs.

Sigh.. kinda miss Malaysia now, despite being a permanent resident in Australia, still feel kinda foreign. Only good things here I guess are my friends, the easy availibility of good food and the possibility of racking up good credits by working.

Well its lunch time now, time to eat some stuff first. Tomorrow will be a hectic day as I prepare some paperwork for my job application. Applied in the morning and got the interview booked in the afternoon, just have to settle some paperwork by getting previous term assessments copied and sent in.

New Viewing Dimensions Here

Have decided to expand the width of the main display area to fit 1024 pixel width monitors. What this means is just that youtube videos in wide screen format will be fully viewable and pictures will now be in 640x480 format! Maybe I will increase the page width further in the future, lets just see how this goes. Enjoy the nee pulau perhentian banner!

This pic here is from an iPhone/iPod Touch game called Pocket God where you are the god who decides the fate of these cute little pygmies... What glee...

My investment in plantation stocks

Have been a fan of oil palm plantations, at the moment can't own one so the best i can do is to buy some shares in a company that does. Found this beautiful picture on Palm Oil HQ website.

Singapore plantation stocks this weekend..

FirstRes -- 1.120 +2.8
GoldenAgr -- 0.605 +3.4
IndoAgri -- 2.420 +2.1
KencanaAgri -- 0.310 +1.6
Wilmar -- 6.900 +2.1

Rego Renewal

Had a home made ham sandwhich for lunch today. Made of sourdough bread, ham, ketchup, some lettuce, tomatoes and cucumbers. Easy but very yummy. had 2.

In Australia, people call their annual car registration REGO. As my car has been sitting in it's nice little garage for almost a year now, I had to renew its registration papers by mid-Jan 2010. So went down to the Parramatta road transport department hoping to renew my rego. They call it RTA here.

Unfortunately they moved, so I had to drive to their new address down at Argyle street, luckily I could park easily and for free at the nearby Westfield shopping center. First counter guy told me to fill in some forms to change my address so they could send a replacement form to my new address. So I went off to my old residence to see if I could get the renewal notice that was sent out. Found the new tenant, she had just come back from work. She said she had sent all letters for previous tenants back to sender.

Another trip back to RTA, I filled in the forms there and the next officer lady i got was clever enough to help me renew my registration.. Finally my car will be registered till JAN 2011 yeah! Have to sign up for my Aussie license in the next three months though... boohoo...