Eugene's view on things

09 Perth city to Surf Annual Fun Run

2010-04-28T20:23:00.004+08:00

Well, its time I update my blog again after more than a month of stagnation.

Looking through some of the photos I had taken, it seems like I forgot to blog about the time when I participated in the Annual Perth City to Surf fun run.

The run starts from close to the heart of Perth city to the City Beach, and there were various options such as 16km, 8km run and 4 km run.

Since I had not train for this, I took it easy and went for the easiest option.

The 4km run starts in one of the suburbs closer to the finish line. The traffic going to the start line was pretty bad, but there were ample parking for those who are prepared to pay for it.

After I sorted my parking, I followed the masses to the start line. Its been a while since I last seen so many people at one place at the same time.

There were so many people that it took me 15 mins just to cross the start line after the start of the race.

Looking at the photo above, its obvious that the 4km run/walks were catered more for families. Maybe this year I'll try the 8 Kms.

It was a bit frustrating trying to clock a good time when there's so many people around blocking the way.

Fair to say when I reached the finish line, my time was pretty embarrassing. Some of my mates that did the 8km run were only a few minutes behind me.

Despite the poor finish, everyone was a winner that day. Everyone that participated and appeared at the finish line were given medals and merchandise.

Sometimes I wish I work for a big company as most of them have corporate tents with BBQ and and live entertainment.

There was a stage for the prize giving, and apparently some Aussie celebrity was there. Since I am still pretty new here, I have no idea who they were.

There you have it, if you are in Perth when the City to Surf fun run is on, its definitely worth doing if you are fit. The 16 and 8km runs were along the Swan river and the view throughout the run is simply amazing.

Perth Hail Storm 22 March 2010

2010-03-29T00:34:00.000+08:00

Just when I thought Perth is an uninteresting place, last week the heavens opened up and dumped its load ending what seems to be a 6 months drought.

Usually when its forecast-ed to rain here, it's pretty much a non-event with only a light drizzle at night that hardly gets noticed. But last Monday, it was different. Halfway through my afternoon meeting, the electricity went out and it started raining cats and dogs.

The rain came down with such fury that my street was flooded within 10 minutes.

Trees were falling in Kings park around cars,

This was followed by hail, and unlike any hail I'd experienced, these suckers were big, some of them close to 60mm in diameter.

Do not let the photos fool you. The sky was clear only for a brief moment after the first arsenal from the heavens. The heavier storms were just rolling in as I was driving home.

Extremely heavy rain soon followed and there were water everywhere. I could see people trapped in the rising water.. like this poor cyclist in Leederville.

Visibility on the freeway was very bad and there were traffic jam everywhere,

There were a few occasion when the hail came down with the heavy rain, and being stuck in traffic means that there's no where to run. The sound of the car being pelted with big tennis ball-sized hail was indeed a new experience for me. There were cars around me with their screens being smashed in..

Fair to say, I tried a different route through the city, to avoid having the same fate as the car above.

Wellington street was flooded, and so was Adelaide Tce, the main street that passes through the city.

It was a long and anxious drive home, anxious because I am curious what damage my car sustained from the hail. However, thank god I made it home safely. Lots of cars were stalled on the way home, but I was lucky.

I was stuck outside my house because there were no electricity for my garage door to work, so i took a photo of a rainbow.

The electricity didn't come back until a day later, and the heavy weather left Perth in a mess.

The media reported that this 4 hour storm caused more than 108 million worth of damage.

This is not hard to believe because a lot of cars and building were damaged, and the electricity was out for up to a week in some places.

Photos of hail damage from car yards were circulating around

I feel for the owner of this Porsche, all the panels had dimples from the hail.

I used to think they were exaggerating when they say Australia is a land of extreme, now I actually think its true.

Oh yeah, my car had a few dimples too.. but its a cheap car :)

Thoughts..and Fremantle Wharf..

2010-03-13T22:53:00.001+08:00

Its hot and muggy, been doing heaps over the past few months, but unfortunately my Sony Ericsson T650 died so i didn't take any photos. Perth still feels really new to me and i am still coming to terms with the fact that I'd left NZ and all my cars. I still feel quite foreign here and deep down, I still call NZ home.

Reality is, its time to move on, so i am trying really hard to make Perth my new home. I think I am still too new here to really appreciate Perth. I miss my Kiwi friends and the down to earth ways we get about doing our own things.

Times like this I would go for a drive and try to walk off my homesickness...

I drove for a while and ended up at Fremantle Wharf where the museum is. It was past 5pm, so the museum was close. Behind the museum, I noticed a big, matte black, gear knob shaped structure and decided to check it out.

It turns out that its the nose of a submarine that is usually part of the museum tour.

The submarine was pretty impressive. I am sure it is mentioned in some tourist brochure somewhere, but I prefer to stumble upon things this way, i think it keeps life interesting.

Further down the wharf, there was an old school sail boat called Leuwin.. something like that.

It was just docked there when i was there but from the looks of things, I think it takes visitors out on a cruise quite often.

I'd decided to take the long way home and drove through Kings park, Perth indeed is beautiful,.. maybe one day I can call Perth home

Out and about Perth-Mountain biking at Goat Farm

2010-01-26T01:10:00.002+08:00

Hello world.. my procrastination has reached epic proportion and i thought I should at least blog again to let you know that I am alive and well. Thanks Fred for giving me the nudge that I obviously need to get off my lazy ass and start blogging again.

I'd been bored and not been cycling much since I bought my AE71 corolla. However, while surfing youtube, I came across this clip;

Although it is a BMX clip, it instantly got me motivated again. I chucked my bike in my old corolla and headed towards the hills (Goat farm.) Apparently Goat Farm is a popular mountain biking venue.

Truth be told, I am a very lousy Mountainbiker. I only got into it because some of my NZ friends were into it but shortly after I bought a decent bike, most of them left NZ. I only went to Woodhill in NZ less than 10 times, so my skills were close to non-existant. (one of my friend actually went to Portugal to build a mountain bike track, how cool is that?)

There were downhill tracks at this mountain biking venue, but being a pansy, I chose the cross country route that rode around the park. Initially the trail was pretty easy

But it got progressively rougher, with big rocks everywhere

riding uphill over these rocks proved to be too much for me, i was powering over the rocks until one of the bigger rocks got the better of me and I flew over the handle bars

Unfortunately I did not see that there were barb wires in the bush. Luckily for me only my leg got cut.

I think once I get medicare here, I'll look into getting my tetanus shot up to date.

Eventually, I reached the top, you can see Perth city in a distance from there..

Going down was easy, I let gravity do its thing until I came across this

Well, unfortunately for me, I took one of the corner too sheepishly (yeap, I applied the brakes when I saw the drop,) i should have harden up and power through the corner. Again, i went over the handle bars and scrapped myself on the top edge of the drop.

Luckily my bike didn't fall over the edge.

It was then that I started to ride a bit more conservatively seeing that the bike track was very close to the edge

Over the course of the day, I had a few other nasty falls, and more cuts and scrapes

Overall, the mountain bike trail was not as great as Woodhill in Auckland,NZ, but its fun none-the-less . I would do it again, but i guess Its better going with someone else who is better than myself to show me the ropes.

Anyone in Perth keen to head out there? send me a msg. :)

Out and About Western Australia- Lane Poole camping prt 2

2009-09-01T08:47:00.001+08:00

As we continued our trip, the road got dustier and dustier,

The road surface was actually red dirt, and are very notorious for becoming dusty really fast and sticking on cars, we had to keep our distance to ensure that we can still brake effectively. I'd seen quite a number of Kangaroos appearing out of nowhere, and unlike possums or rabbits, hitting a Kangaroo can do serious damage.

When we arrived at Lane Poole, we were greeted by park marshals asking for a park entry fee of $6.50 per person at the gates. Upon handling over the money, we were given a park map and also a rubbish bag.

We decided to camp at Charlies flat because it had provisions for having a camp fire. There are other camp grounds like Chudith that does not allow open fires but has a sheltered BBQ area.

Anyway, we got there around noon and it was pouring down, so we hasten our effort to set up tents,

I'd bought along my giant inflatable flip flop to use as an air mattress.. again, having an old car was great, I need not worry about scratches :)

Since the ground was wet, we decided to check out Chuditch sheltered BBQ area and prepared our lunches.

After lunch, we went for a walk around Chuditch, the view was ok..

As the night drew closer, we prepared for dinner back at our Charlies flat camp ground

We started a fire in the fire pit, everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves.

The fire pit was well setup with a pivotable tray for cooking.

Cooking around a camp fire was indeed challenging as we could not see what we were cooking,

The night was really cold and with the sky being cloudy, it was really dark. At 9.30pm, we thought it was midnight. After playing a few camping games and telling stories, we went to bed. This was the view inside my tent.. pretty cool huh?

The night was really cold and I was really glad i had my air mattress to keep the cold from coming up from the ground. I was also lucky in that I had a double layer tent with an inner netting. In the morning, the interior of the tent wall was covered with condensate and it kept the water from dripping on me.

The next day, we explored the area, and found that the Nanga Mill campsite was heaps better than the one we were at.. arghh.. such is life...

We also did the King Jarrah walk, It was not as interesting as I hoped it would be. Its pretty much walking though some short tree forest for hours and hours with no interesting lookout or geographical feature. I guess coming from New Zealand, hiking here just do not seem that nice.

Anyway, as we finished the loop, we reached Nanga Falls,

The waterfall was not what I'd expected, its more like a drain. I was expecting a waterfall that I could at least go for a dip. To put it into prespective,..

Yeap, its pretty small.

Anyway, Camping in Lane Poole was great but that's about it.

Out and About Western Australia- Driving to Dwellingup (Lane Poole camping prt 1)

2009-08-11T09:14:00.000+08:00

After all those effort getting the car into shape, It's only fitting to take it out for a drive, so I rounded up some of my new friends in Perth and headed to Lane Poole ( a camp site not far from Perth,) close to Dwellingup.

Seeing that this was an overnight camping trip, we started early and filled the car with supplies and camping gears

The trusty corolla has an average size boot, but we still managed to utilize every inch of it.

The drive was rather sceanic, but it's nothing compared to New Zealand.

The drive to Dwellingup took about an hour and 30 mins, it was a great felling driving the old car.. reminds me of my childhood times when my mum had one of these,

When we arrived at Dwellingup, we had a toilet stop. Both of my other friends' cars were Toyota Camrys. My car sure looked old in the photo below.

We'd decided to visit the info centre since the toilet was just next to it. It had this scary sculpture with a guy and an axe in front of it, made from welded scrap metal.

: Dwellingup information centre

Apparently Dwellingup used to be a prisoner's camp, and they had a very big fire and there were quite a few casualties. As such, inside the info centre, they had this old Mack fire engine.

The photo does not actually convey the size of te thing. The wheels of the fire engine was actually as high as my my hip.

Anyway, seeing that we are on our way to a camping trip, we started to make up stories about ghosts, and how the scary scuplture will come to life and hack us to bits at night.. but we soon realize how immature that was and we moved on.

The road to the camp site was actually unpaved,

Times like this I was glad that I had an old car and not something new and precious..

To be continued....

Fixing the Mighty AE71 Corolla-Changing the Timing belt and tuning

2009-07-20T22:21:00.002+08:00

I don't know how the other bloggers find the motivation to blog as often as they do, especially when they have a proper job. I think its to do with dicipline, which is something I must work on. I am usually really easily distracted and checking something on the net usually result in hours and hours wasted browsing the net.

Anyway, in continuation with my previous 2 posts, and possibly the last one I will do about fixing my car, this post as per the title is about changing the timing belt. When I got the car, the mileage on the car was about 230,000 kms. Usually the timing belt should be changed every 80 to 100 thousand kms, and seeing the condition of the car, I doubt that the timing belt was changed when it clicked over the 200 thousand kms mark.

I bought a timing belt kit from a local auto shop Repco, surprisingly they still keep stock of these kit even though the car is 25 years old.

The item on the left is a crank pulley puller. Normally the crank pulley is seized on the crank shaft that a minor tap is not sufficient to loosen it, hence a puller is required.

Before removing the crank pulley, all the belts connected to it were removed, including the clutch operated thermo fan normally attached to the water pump.

When I tried to fit the crank pulley puller on the crank pulley, I realized that the radiator was too close to it, so I removed the radiator to clear some space

This is how you use a crank pulley puller :)

A quick turn on the middle threaded shaft will pull the pulley away from the crank shaft.

Anyway, the timing belt on the car was indeed a bit worn. It was a genuine Toyota item and small cracks were starting to appear on the face of the belt

Good thing I was bored and decided to change the timing belt, otherwise if the belt breaks while the engine is running, the engine would have been a writeoff.

After taking off the crank pulley, I removed the lower timing belt cover, cleaned it and marked the numbers with a white marker so that when I tune the car, I can see where the timing is at.

Normally, before taking the timing belt out, the proper way to change the timing belt is to turn the engine until all the marks on the cam wheel and the crank pulley points to TDC (top dead centre,) but I was lazy. Since I had my white marker with me, I marked the old belt and the position on the cam wheels, and then transfered the markings on the old belt to the new belt by counting the teeth, and fitted the new belt on. This way the fitment of the new belt should be as per the old belt.

After fitting the new tensioner and idler pulley, I reassemble the covers, pulleys, the belts and the radiator.The car is back to its usual self again. I can now drive on the freeway with the engine singing away, and not worry about the engine letting go.

I also bought a timing gun, dwell meter and a vaccum gauge for setting the timing and also adjusting the carburettor to ensure that the car runs optimally.

I realize most readers are probably bored with my car fixing blog, so I guess I'll skip that bit.

The car runs great now, but still guzzle a bit of fuel (13L/100kms,) not sure if thats normal, maybe cars around that era are not that efficient.

Fixing the Mighty AE71 Corolla-changing brake hoses

2009-07-09T09:07:00.000+08:00

After discovering that the brake hoses were perishing while changing the inner tie rod, I started to have this horrific thought that the brake hose might pop every time I apply the brakes. I guess i could always rip the handbrake and let the car spin to a halt should that actually happen.

Anyway, just to be on the safe side, I bought some brake hoses, brake fluids and a bleeder kit to change the hoses.

While changing the hoses, I realized there was only one brake hose in the rear, so I returned the extra hose that I bought.

The rear brake hose did not perish like the front brake hoses, but it was very stiff, so I changed it anyway.

Removing all the brake hoses didn't take long. All the hoses seemed to have hardened in some way or the other. The front brake hoses were particularly bad as the braided portion were starting to show

The front brake hoses were in 2 sections, but the one I bought only came in a single length. The coupling in the middle of the front brake hoses fitted into a bracket on the strut.

Since the hoses I bought didn't have any attachment points, I decided to use grommets in the bracket to prevent the hoses from being ripped to shreds by the bracket.

After fitting all the hoses, I topped up the brake fluid reservoir and bled the brakes from the furthest to the brake closest to the brake master cylinder.

I hosed off any excess brake fluid under the car and took the car for a spin.

The brake peddle felt really firm when depressed now, and its good to have that peace of mind again.

Fixing the mighty AE71 Corolla-steering tie rods

2009-07-06T21:12:00.000+08:00

My AE71 corolla seems to have a mind of its own when driven fast (100km/h) on the freeway, not to mention the 3 speed automatic seems to be geared a bit short making the engine sing along at that speed. The corolla would sway left and right and a turn of the steering wheel of up to 25 degrees would yield no response, making driving the car a bit challenging if not scary.

Thinking this was not normal, I crawled under the car and have a look, and low and behold, the right steering boot looked like this,

The left steering boot was no better.

Perth's soil is mainly sand and God only knows how long ago the boots let go.

For those of you who are not familiar with the mechanics of a car, the steering boot protects the tie rod from dusts and other contaminants. If contaminants manage to get its way into the tie rod, it would wear out the ball part of it. Simply put, the wear will cause sloppyness in the joint and this in turn causes play in the steering. Easy.

Jacking up the car and wiggling the front tires revealed that there was significant play in the steering joints.

Time to take things apart to fix it. First, I removed the wheels. (i made sure the car was securely on jack stands and the tires were under the sill, those who know me will know I had a bad experience with a car falling on me breaking my right arm about 2 years ago.)

Next I removed the outer tie rod bolt connecting the steering to the steering knuckle,

Then I used a tie rod remover to remove the tie rod from the steering knuckle (its amazing how tight taper fit can get. )

Once the tie rod taper "pop-ed," i marked the inner threaded sleeve of the outer tie rod and removed the clamping nut that keeps the thread from undoing.

Removing the outer tie rod and the torn steering boot revealed the worn inner tie rod. Yeap, that's the steering rack that its attached to.

To remove the tie rod, I had to straighten the locking washer,

Once the washer was straightened, I undid the inner tie rod from the steering rack using an adjustable spanner.

See what I mean, the grease in the tie rod was missing and there was significant play in the ball joint

I purchased a pair of new tie rods from WA suspension. The Repco and Supercheap autos that I went to didn't have the tie rod listed in their catalog for some reason.

Before fitting the new tie rods, I applied some thread locker to the threads to ensure they do not come apart.

The new tie rod was tight.

To protect the new inner tie rod, I also fitted some new steering boots.

I then bolted everything back. There was no more play in the steering now.

unfortunately, or fortunately depends on how you see it.. I discovered another problem,

The brake hoses were severely worn. Its hard to believe cars like this is still allowed on the road without periodic check. In NZ, WOF check would have detected all these issues. No wonder there were heaps of broken down cars on the side of the road here.

Anyway, I'll change it next time as I have to buy the hoses first.

Back to the Tie rod change. Since I changed the length of the steering tie rod, this would affect the Toe setting of the car. I placed some useless flyers under the front wheels as slip plates and use an old school tape measure method to set the to back to 0 degrees.

The car drives straight and steering was tight. The difference was night and day, and the car is so much safer to drive now.

Out and about Perth- Sculpture by the sea

2009-06-11T22:48:00.000+08:00

Back in March, My friend Liz came over from Adelaide for a visit (Check her blog out, apparently she started her blog after reading mine, and her's looks so much more advanced than mine now.)

Since I got my cheap run around car, I thought it would be a nice gesture to show her around Perth, and coincidently, Sculpture by the Sea was in town that weekend.

If memory serves me right, it was a particularly hot day, and the beach was really crowded.

I felt a bit embarrassed that my old clapper didn't have a working air conditioner, but luckily Liz was a cool sport and didn't complain at all.

Sculpture by the beach featured lots of very big artwork littered all over the beach, some of them were really hard to distinguish from junk, such as these burnt out containers

Others were quite obvious, such as this big trike made from tin, yeap that's me in the photo.

My personal favorite was this big watch, the strap was actually rusted steel but it looked the part, yeap, that's me again cam wh0ring

One other notable art piece was this big pencil. Despite having a "do not touch sign," the kids continued to touch it.. I always wondered how they anchor the pencil on soft sand, as it was pointy. It would be interesting if it fell.

Anyway, Perth was recently rated as the 5th most livable city in the world. I guess with free art shows like this (not including the $15 brochure explaining the artwork,) and free movies by the river, its not hard to believe.

Bought an AE71 Corolla..

2009-05-23T21:26:00.004+08:00

My time as of late had been spent fixing up a car that I bought for $600AUD.

Yeap, its a 1984 toyota Corolla AE71, with 1.6L 4A-C (Carburetted) Engine. The shape of the car is the same as the corolla DX or KE70, but with a different engine.

For a price cheaper than my bicycle, I thought it was a great buy. Sure the car blows a bit of smoke during startup, but it didn't smoke much when i am driving around and it still pulls hard for a 1.6L

The interior is surprisingly clean for a 25 year old car.

Unfortunately its an automatic. That means no happy skids for me (the corolla is a Rear wheel Drive). This could be a blessing though, as I had a history of over modifying cars and spending a fortune on them.

As for the body of the car, well, if you are not familiar with the corolla DX, AE71 or KE70 (chassis code,) its probably one of the squarest cars around and it almost seemed like the designer used a ruler to draw the car up.

There was a bit of rust on the body, but nothing structural, the rust were mainly at the bottom of the passenger door, below the fuel flap and on the rear arches.

The front seemed to have a light ding, which is why the bumper isn't that straight. Same goes for the rear.

Anyway, I do see potential with this car.. there are possibility that i could change the front to an early model japanese quad headlight variant and drop a 4age (injected) with manual gearbox into the car in the future. And possibly drop the car and put some deep dish rims on it, similar to an Australian example here.

That is the ultimate old school look that i will be going for if i do keep this car.

Why would i do that? well, because it has a potential to drift

Toffe Apple with a hint of JDM from MeZ Productions on Vimeo.

Eating Out-Big Bowl Noodle House, Northbridge Perth

2009-04-30T00:21:00.002+08:00

Perth has quite a lot of Asian food places for a small city. Quite a number of them are located in Northbridge, just across the railway tracks from the city.

One weekend, after walking around Northbridge around noon time, we decided to give Big Bowl Noodle House (408 William Street Northbridge,) a try.

The shop front was nothing spectacular, in fact, it looks really boring and tacky.

As per the shop name, the shop's specialty was noodle soup, but what makes this noodle house different from the rest was that they make their own noodle. Upon entering the shop, 3 noodle making machines can be seen sitting on the right hand side of the kitchen. There were signs not to take photos of the machines, so I didn't take any close up photos of them.

The menu was a simple laminated paper.

We had to wait outside and make up our mind what we wanted as this shop was really packed on the weekends. I always have this belief that a good restaurant is one which there are lots of people in it, and this one surely fitted that criteria. lets hope the food is as good as its hyped up to be.

I can't remember the exact name of the dish I ordered, as this was a few months back, I think its "wat tan hor fun."

My friend had a simpler fired noodle,

Yeap, the food tasted as good as it looked. I rate the food slightly higher than average. Not too bad for the price too. However, the portion served was a bit smaller than what I used to get in similar noodle houses in New Zealand.

Eating in this noodle house sort of reminded me of some of the common noodle houses in Malaysia. Overall, i recommend it.

Out and about- LotteryWest floating films

2009-04-21T00:23:00.000+08:00

Wow, I'd been quite a slacker as of late. I just had a quick look at my blog and I realized that I had not been updating my blog for a month now. Anyway, life is still the same here, still looking for that elusive professional work, joined a church group, brought a cheap car ( will blog about this later as i spent a lot of time on it.)

Anyway, back to what I was going to blog about.

I heard that there was a free movie by the swan river called the LotteryWest floating films- part of the Perth Festival 09 events (Perth international arts festival) back in March s0 I went to checked it out. According to their website, there were 3 free screenings, and I attended the one at the Riverside Gardens, Bayswater.

I arrived at the venue about an hour early to secure a spot directly in front of the floating screen.

Surprisingly, there were not much people there then despite it being a free event.

As the time grew closer to the screening time, more and more people came..

Being part of the arts festival, there were musicians there playing the bongo drums and some arty farty people on stilts walking amongst the crowd.

As the sun sets, the breeze started to pick up and it was really pleasant, for once there were no flies around. The movie started on time and being a family event, they showed a japanese cartoon called " kiki delivery service." Despite being out doors, the sound was really well set up and the visuals were really clear.

Overall, it was a very well organized event and a great evening out.

After being in Perth for 6 months, I think Perth is a great place to be. I initially thought its going to be a boring place, but there are heaps of free things like what I just blogged about, it just takes a bit of time to look them up. I also went to another event a few weeks ago called, "music under the moonlight" which again was a free event. Again the crowd was not overly huge, the event well run and there were no rowdy people in sight.

New Toy- Dahon Folding bike

2009-03-20T02:16:00.000+09:00

When my other half came early February, I didn't have a car and i figured I'll get her a bike so we can cycle together.

She initially tried riding my bike but she said the top tube was a bit too high and since she never had the privilege of riding a bike growing up in Hong Kong, learning on my bike was a bit daunting for her.

So off I go researching on the net as to what's the best bike for her to learn on, something that is low and small. I read on a famous Singaporean blogger's blog, MrBrown, that he had some folding bikes and they fit the bill. They looked funky too.

I checked the prices on these bikes at a local bike shop, unfortunately, for some reason, bike shops in Perth seem to put quite a large margin on their bikes, maybe they thought that because of Perth being the most isolated city in the world, they can do that.

So I'd decided to buy it online. I tracked down a website that's in Sydney that sell these bikes called Cellbikes.

They had the Dahon range of folding bikes too, and naturally because this was going to be a beginners bike, I bought the cheapest Dahon bike there, the Dahon 2009 Eco 3, for $449AUD. Cell bikes also had a promotion going on when I bought the bike, ie if i purchase more than $500AUD worth of stuff, shipping is free. Since it worked out cheaper for me to buy a helmet, locks, and lights at the same time rather than paying for postage, I added those to my cart.

1.5 weeks later, this arrived at my flat.

It was well packaged and quite small too compared to the packaging my Ghost bike came in.

Upon unboxing the bike, i noticed that all my side orders were neatly packaged and jammed into the Dahon box.

The helmet and the lights looked awesome, and come prepackaged with batteries!!

Anyway, the main course was yet to come. The Dahon box has a reminder that the bike needs adjustments prior to riding for safety reason.

I was curious as to how a bicycle can come in such a small package, and upon opening the box, it was almost unreal how they can fold the bike so compactly.

Pulling the bike out of the box...

The bike was partially assembled, all that was required was inserting the seat post into the bike frame, fitting the pedals and twisting of the gear change cable to ensure a smooth shifting of all 6 speed gears. 5 mins later...Ta DAA

The bike was a bit twitchy to ride compared to my bike because of the small 20" rims. My other half likes it heaps and she was riding it low rider stylez...

Anyway, another thing i read on the net was that these Dahon bikes can fit into a $1 IKEA bag...unfortunately, I think that only applies to the 16" wheels version.

Oh yeah, I bunny hopped the bike and because its really light weight, I get quite a bit of pop out of it.. obviously my other half did not see the fun side to it and was a bit upset that i was abusing her bike. Anyway, hopefully she will learn how to ride soon so we can terrorize the neighborhood. :)

Out and about- Perth Markets

2009-03-11T09:11:00.000+09:00

As some of you might notice, its been a while since I last updated my blog. No, its not because I've given up on Blogging or I am too lazy this time. A lot has happened in the last 3 weeks. My other half finally got her visa and she is here in Perth now. Since then, we had decided to move as my single room no longer cuts it. For some odd reason, we had also started going to church again, and I bought a cheap used car. I'll blog about that later. Anyway, I'm back and blogging again :)

Roughly about 2 months ago, I wrote about attending a Blog advertising network gathering organized by Nuffnang. I met quite a few interesting people and one of them was Tiang, who was apparently doing some volunteer work for a startup market called "The Markets." He gave me his card and asked me if i would like to help out at the Markets during its startup stages.

Seeing an opportunity to contribute back to the community and possibly meeting more people who might have leads as to where I can find work, I was keen to help out. Tiang was also the person who told me about the Thong challenge which coincidently was on at the same weekend the market was starting up. Unfortunately for the markets, I thought the Thong challenge was more interesting and didn't help out on the first week of the market startup.

On the following week however, I visited the markets to check things out and to see if they still need my help. The market was held between the museum and the art gallery every weekend on Saturday and Sunday.

The market was smaller than I thought, but its a good start. I see no sign of volunteers or Tiang, so I figured I missed my chance to volunteer.

There was a live jazz type trio there playing some background music as the punters stroll around checking the stalls. Apparently all the stall should be selling things that are locally made or grown, so there were none of the usual tacky generic chinese junk there.

One of the stall had a lavender theme going on. I think they were lavender growers from down south that I read so much about in tourist guide books.

Anyway, since i missed out on contributing, i figured i should buy something. Seeing that I am always sunburnt from cycling around, I bought an Aloe Vera plant for $3.50.

It took me less than an hour to browse through the Markets, but its well worth a look. Would have been better if they had some special local food there though.

For some readers out there who are keen to showcase their local craft, please have a look at their website www.theperthmarkets.com.au

Eating out- Perth Hawker Bazaar 2009- Burswood lakeside event

2009-02-16T12:18:00.000+09:00

Spending Chinese New Year all alone in a foreign land, not knowing anyone or be with love ones is always hard for me.

However, not to be dragged down by this, I'd decided to make the most of it and hunted down an event that might put me into the festive spirit. After work, In the 37C dry heat, i cycled to Burswood lakeside about 20 mins from my place to check out the Hawkers Bazaar that I heard over the TV a few moons ago. Actually, Bazaar was on the 31st of Jan, so it goes to show how slack I'd been.

Upon arrival at Burswood Lakeside, I was greeted with a red arch, actually, there were red everywhere... a colour closely associated with Chinese New Year.

Right inside the archway was a statue of what I assume was the Smiling Buddha, and there were lots of patrons burning joss sticks to this statue, and again, I assume they pray for prosperity and good Luck for the coming year.. as they do during Chinese new year.

Walking around the Bazaar was indeed a great experience indeed. For a moment there, i thought i was back in Malaysia again as there were more Asian than cocasion there. The excitement and festivities started to rub off on me and i didn't feel that bad anymore.

There were 2 sections to the Bazaar, one was the food section (pictured above) and one was the non-food section (pictured below,) mainly selling hand held fans, chinese massage (not the ones with happy endings,) Scarfs, and etc.

Anyway, enough about that, the main reason why i was there was for the food. For some reason, despite the Bazaar being held as a Chinese New Year Event, there were food from all around asia, like indian curries, thailand tom yams, indonesian food and etc. There were also a whole range of vegetarian food that were made to look like meat.. which i thought was a bit ironic. I also overheard one of the seller said, vegetarian cakes, taste like chicken... interesting concept don't you think?

As I explored the Bazaar, I came across a stall with the longest line, selling Malaysian Satay, I figured it must be really good as the fact that its next to the toilet didn't deter the patrons.

I joined the line as I am a firm believer that a stall with lots of patrons must mean that they are good.

It took about 45 mins before I got to the front of the line, by that time i was salivating and extremely hungry. The curry puffs and the mee goreng looks really good from where I was queuing, so i got some of those too.

For those of you who do not know what curry puffs are, Its a sack of curry meat and potato (dry-ish) in a pastry shell. Since I grew up in Malaysia, I had quite a few of these when i was growing up, but its been more than 15 years since i last had one. It did hit the spot and the taste brought back memories...yum

As my turn drew closer, the delicious smell of satay cooking on a BBQ was almost a torture.. so close and yet so far..

The queue was so long that it was dark when i got my food. I was starving too so I also got a punnet of Mee goreng (fried noodle in malay)

The food was really Yum.. but i guess anything would taste good as i was starving.

After finishing the satay and noodle, i decided to get some shave ice as desert.

They called it "ice Kacang (iced beans)" and "Cendol (dont know where this word comes from.)" These are a mixure of lychee, red beans, black jelly (gincau,) corn, red syrup, shaved ice and condensed milk ( sometimes coconut milk.) Again, it was yum.

As the night progressed, the stalls were lit up, and it was a beautiful and festive sight indeed.

Part of the Bazaar/celebration was a firework show. I relocated to the lakeside to watch the fireworks. There was a light footbridge that was suppose to only hold 20 people at a time, but i guess people do not care about things like that when they are more interested in getting a good spot to watch the fireworks.

Bang on 9 pm, the sky lit up and exploded..well, that's what it seemed like.

Anyway, it was indeed a great event to go to. Highly recommended if you are in Perth. Its amazing how something like this can reignite the feeling of Chinese New Year Festivities.

Happy Belated Chinese New Year for readers. :)

Australia Day- Thong challenge at Sorrento Beach, Perth

2009-02-03T08:03:00.000+09:00

I think i am slipping in my motivation lately, I guess it can be seen in my Blogging frequency.

Last Monday was Australia Day, and I heard from a person I met at the blogger's meet that there was going to be a Havaiana Thong Challenge.

When I first heard this, i thought it was a G-string challenge, as i have never heard the expression "Thong" used for anything else. However, to my disappointment, Australian call their jandals/flip-flops/slippers thongs. In fact, I was told that the Thong was as much an Australian icon as the kangaroo or the colour green and yellow.. or gold, as the Australian calls it.

Anyway, Tom and Ashleigh, my collegues came along to join in the challenge. The event was called a challenge because it was a world record attempt for the longest line of inflatable airbeds, and the airbeds being inflatable jandals. We got there early because Tom and Ash missed out on the online registration and they didn't want to miss out on getting an inflatable jandal each. When we got there about 10am, there were already a line at the registration tent.

I'd pre-registered online so I just had to sign in and collect my giant inflatable jandal

The scene was amazing as there were quite a few people walking around with these giant inflatable jandals.

Like any big events, there were a few tents giving away freebies, such as this tent, giving away free Nestea, a concoction of tea and lemon, and tea with peaches and mangoes.

Close by, the local radio station, Nova was there providing some commentation and humor for the day, unfortunately, I find them more annoying than entertaining as the DJ was really obnoxious and was being a smart @ss all day.

Once registration was all done, we joined the cool crowd in carrying these giant jandals. All of them are the right hand side.

For $30aud, we each got a giant inflatable jandal, a small key chain, a small sample package of sunscreen and a postcard. Just as a comparison, I'd placed a small jandal on the side of the big inflatable jandal for size comparison.

We found a good spot at the beach and Tom got quite a few free odd tasting Nestea. I had half of this before going for one of the challenges and got a bit ill.

The first challenge was to run with the inflatable jandal and paddle on the inflatable jandal through the surf via a predetermined route. I was not last and i was not the first, so it was ok.

As the day drew closer to the actual record breaking attempt, there were more and more people a the beach, it was a good sight.

At about noon, everyone lined up at the beach and we awaited instruction as to what to do in order to break to world record. It took them awhile to organize the people, but it was ok because everyone was excited

We all got into the water and held onto a rope connected through a series of buoys. I am not sure exactly how many people there were, but i am sure there's enough to scare away any sharks. We were in the water hanging onto the rope for about 30 mins before they took 3 photos for the record attempt. The temperature that day was about 38C and despite the sunscreen that i'd slapped on, my back got a bit burnt and am currently peeling as i type this blog.

Apparently we broke the record that day, but was later beaten by the crowd at Bondi Beach a few hours later.

All in all, it was a great day.

Nuffnang Perth Blogger Meetup

2009-01-25T23:22:00.001+09:00

A few posts ago, i wrote about Nuffnang coming to Australia and what they could potentially bring to the Australian Blogging community.

Well, Nuffnang did make an effort and organized a Perth Blogger Meetup.

Unfortunately for me, the start time was slightly before my knock off time from the supermarket job that I labour for a temporary living, so i had to reorganize my work schedule a bit.

Justifying to the managers and peers were a bit awkward.. once i told them i was going to a Bloggers meet, they'd given me a new nick name- GEEK. Anyway, I don't really care, Nuffnang has setup a bar tab and also some finger food for the event, and I am not going to miss free food for a low level job.

So after work last Wednesday, I made my way to the Brass Monkey Bar where the event was held.

If you recognize this building from my previous post , you are right, its the same building that was at the background of the gay parade.

Anyway, i found the entrance and went into the bar to look for the nuffnang event.

I manage to find the Nuffnang crew with their florecent blue banner, and signed their register

in the photo above, the guy standing next to the banner was Martyn Thomas, the Director of Nuffnang Australia, and he had come all the way from Melbourne for this event.

Shortly after another Nuffnang Australia director, David Lee gave a quick rundown of what they are trying to achieve here in Australia, nothing not covered in their website.

Ming, the co Founder of Nuffnang was there too, apparently he came all the way from Singapore and was doing a tour around Australia

The Perth Nuffnang meet was not that massive. Looking around, the only blogger that i know was Karen Cheng

If fellow readers do not know who she is, well, she wrote about women's fashion and parenting. I know.. not the usual topic that i read but she updates her blog very often and sometimes talks about Perth, that's why i read her blog.

There were other bloggers too, but probably less than 25

The finger food was ok, just the normal pub food, I didn't manage to take a photo of it before it was almost polished off..

The meeting was actually awsome. Karen's Husband Andrew was there and we had a really good yarn about Perth and what's to do here. There were also other bloggers that were there and after hearing my sad story of coming to Perth looking for the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, they suggested networking more, as apparently the secret of getting a job here is not what you know, but who you know. I'll be joining one of them in a few weeks doing volunteering work, hopefully i will meet some people in the engineering industry. Fingers crossed.

Anyway, seeing that this is the first time i meet a famous blogger, i thought it would be a good place to cam whore.

From some of the other Asian blogs i follow, a lot of them throw up some gang signs when they take photos, so i thought i'll be an egg and do the same.. i am not usually like this.. promise.

Eating out- Dim Sim Cafe Northbridge, Perth

2009-01-19T21:39:00.000+09:00

Yeap, the heat finally got to me and I am no longer actively cycling around as much as I used to, so no interesting things to write about. A few post back i wrote about Kings park, well, quite a huge portion of it went up in smoke 3 days ago due to arson. I will endeavor to take some photos when the weather is not too hot.

Speaking of weather, it sure is strange here.. during the day, the temperature can get up to 42C, but the temperature rapidly drop to about 23C at night.. and last night, there were lightning and hail storms.. and this morning, the temperature shot up into the red again.. Crazy..

Anyway, a few weeks ago, My friend and I decided to have brunch at a Yum cha place in Northbridge called Dim Sim Cafe.

Apparently this place is a newly open restaurant here in Perth. I was trying to find it on the internet so i can post the address up, but i could not find any reference to Dim Sim restaurant in Perth. Anyway the ambience was really nice and the staff were really polite.

Its been a while since i last went Yum Cha because of the lack of people to go with. Yum Cha is best enjoyed with heaps of people so that a myraid of dishes can be sampled. However, because it was just myself and a friend, we didn't get too much.

We actually got a bit more than this, however, the food was great. Its similar to the ones I had in Hong Kong, so its not too bad, so if you are ever in Perth, check it out.

Checking out Cottesloe Beach

2009-01-14T22:34:00.000+09:00

I'd been a bit slack in updating my Blog, I guess the festivities got the best of me and I got a bit lazy.

Anyway, the weather here has been getting really good ( if its not good enough already) almost everyday. Extremely sunny days, above 30C made it a perfect time to check out the beach.

I'd been hearing from the local radio station that Cottesloe Beach has been refered to as the sexiest beach in Perth, and decided to check it out myself.

Cottesloe Beach, on first impression was indeed a great beach. It has fine soft sand and was really clean. As can be seen in the photo above, there's a massive landmark building that makes this beach distingushable from the other beaches. The picture was taken from a wave breaker rock barrier, and because of this barrier, there was a calm area for the punters to swim around without having to worry about the big surfs.

After visiting the night scene here, i was wondering where the pretty people hang out here, and i think i found it.

I final realize what people ment when they mentioned that the night life in Perth isn't that great. In my opinion, Perth made up for it with its beaches with lots of hot beach bods.

Time for me to tone up and join the crowd... or maybe not, as recently a big shark ate someone about 5 mins drive from this beach .

Still a good scenery no?

New Year Party at The Ruby Room club

2009-01-04T18:59:00.000+09:00

As the year 2008 comes to an end, my younger workmates wanted to go out to party into the new year. I decided to tag along as I have nothing to do at home anyway.

We started out at a quiet pub called Belmont Hotel and progressed to the Ruby room.

According to my workmates, Ruby room was the "in" place to be. Little did i know, it turns out that the Ruby Room was located in the same Burswood Entertainment Complex as the Casino where I went for a croupier interview a few months back.

Being New Year Eve, i guess The Ruby Room took the chance to rip their patrons off by charging $40 cover charge.. for that amount, i would have expected at least some special sort of programme for the night, but it turns out that there was just a DJ playing lame music from the 80's. No dancers like metro city, or live bands.. rip off indeed.

Despite the high cover charge, there were a lot of people there. In fact, we got there about 11.30pm and it took us more than 25 mins to get drinks as the queue was extremely long. Here's how the place look like while i was in the queue.

When i finally got my drink, i quickly made my way to the dance floor for the countdown. There was a screen showing the seconds remaining and the crowd was chanting the countdown, and as soon as we hit 2009, it was mad. People snogging all around me.. cheering, balloons dropping from the ceiling with confetti. It almost seem like was the only person not hugging or snogging.. :(

Anyway, the crowd got over it pretty quickly and continued to boogie on the dance floor.

Saying the dance floor was packed is an understatement

It might seem like fun, but let me tell you, partying that night was probably the worst night out i had because of the type of crowd that was out.

I am not sure if its always like this in Perth or its just that night. The patrons were a bit rough around the edges and aggresive. I think with the resource industry having a hard time and its the year's end, miners from all parts of regional WA spend their new year in Perth, and some of these people were acting like bogans and were starting fights.

I feel sorry for the ladies that were out trying to enjoy the countdown.. come to think of it, the quality of the ladies there were very poor too.. rough around the edges, a total turn off.

Anyway, I guess that's to be expected as Perth is the hub of all the action for the resource industry.

I think I'll give night life in Perth a miss from now on.

2008 reflection and goals for 2009

2009-01-03T01:12:00.002+09:00

Happy New Year everyone, we finally made it to 2009.

2008 was indeed a year of change from me. I didn't realize how much I had gone through until I sat down and had a good think about it.

Beginning of 2008, I was in Hong Kong for a formal matter and had a brief look around,

I also went to Macau and checked out the sights.

On the same trip, I stopped by Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia)

and also Singapore,

It was a great trip indeed as I met up with friends whom I have not seen for more than 10 years.

Back in Auckland, NZ, I participated in a fun run Half marathon, round the bays,

I'd never seen so many people run in the same general direction before

My passion for the past 7 years in New Zealand had been my cars, and in 2008 I carried out an engine transplant on my Drift AE86 toyota Trueno from an old and tired 16v 4age

to a newer 20v 4age, all by myself (yeap, I even surprised myself that it worked)

I even took my drift AE86 on drifting track days, grip days, motokhanas, and the occasional mid night and early morning backroad mountain runs. Ahh.. fun times indeed.

In fact, I had two of these cars, although they look similar, my red AE85 was a different beast, as it had a 3L twin turbo 2jz-gte Supra engine, supra gearbox, hilux diff and etc

In 2008, the timing belt idler pulley developed a sweaking noise, and hence I pulled it apart and changed the timing belt, water pump, idler pulley and crank pulley

Its amazing what we can actually achieve when we put our heart and minds to it, again, I did this in my garage by myself. After I put everything together again, the noise was gone, and i went Drag racing with it (legally of course, at Meremere Championship Dragway.)

Sad to say, the car only manages a 12.7s quarter mile running on 9psi boost. Power was no issue, its more the traction that was the problem.

I also took the car to Taupo Raceway, the same track that the A1GP cars drives on for testing

The car was oversteering, and although it was fun, it was slow.. The back wheel would spin up due to lack of grip. I could go sideway on a straight line and keep it there as long as I wanted.. but the novelty wears out after a while. I will miss driving my cars. I sold both of my pride and joy in 2o08

In an attempt to fill the void left by not having my cars, I took up kitesurfing

I had lessons, and am still not good at it.

And then, a big change came, I decided to resign from the company which I had dedicated 7 years of my life,

And took this plane to Perth

While in Perth, I started this blog, and i guess you can work out what I'd been doing since by reading this blog.. nothing substantial compared to what I enjoyed in NZ.

I'd lost a lot of weight, felt very alone, however found time to think things through with clarity.

One of my other passion is investing, and in 2008, I'd lost a lot of money. I'd since fine tuned my trading system, and in December, I'd started participating in the Market again after a few months break from trading.

Started with 3000AUD (1800+1200)

Made 3041AUD (144+710+525+210+852+600) in 6 straight win trades.

Slightly more than 100% return in one month (each trade do not risk more than 25% of the 3000.)

2008 indeed has been a stellar year of change for me, no doubt 2009 will bring its challenges.

These are the things I want to achieve in 2009 (although some of them are out of my control)

1. Find a Mechanical Engineering related job

2. Buy a car

3. Rent a place and set it up for comfortable living

4. Save deposit for a house

5. At least double my share/CFD trading portfolio

6. Go on an oversea trip outside Australia or New Zealand

7. Keep in touch with current friends and families

8. Make more friends

9. Pick up kite surfing and at least be able to do unhook kite loops by year end

10. Maintain weight of about 70kgs (2kg tolerance interval)

There you have it.. kinda personal but hey, its my blog and i guess it reveals a bit more about myself

Audioengine A5 active speakers

2008-12-30T00:22:00.003+09:00

Despite all the cool posts of me visiting various places around Perth, there are times when I prefer to stay in my room and relax, such as today, when the temperature soared to 38C. 5 months, that's how long I'd been living in Perth with just the content off my Macpac Utopia backpack and a laptop, and honestly, i am sick of listening to the inferior inbuilt speakers from my Lenovo T61P.

So, I'd decided that this silly season, I'll get a set of speakers to liven up my room. I'm not the sort that go for distorted sound as I personally find excessive deep bass without decent mid range and natural highs fatiguing. The reason why I said that is because that's what the plastic injection moulded Altec Lansing, klipsch and Bose companion speakers that I'd auditioned sounded like.

From previous experience, Its best to splash out a bit more to get some decent gear rather than go for mediocre stuff, especially for items like speakers that I have to live with for a while. After searching the net and reading various forums, I'd finally decided to get some Audioengine A5s. To be honest, its a big gamble as I have not auditioned or heard of them before, but I am yet to read a bad review about them. At RRP$699AUD, they were not cheap.

I manage to track down the Australian distributor for these speakers, but they are all the way on the east coast of Australia, and they didn't have the Black one in stock, which i prefer more than the white one, as i thought the white one looks a bit too pretentious.

After 4 weeks, the distributor ordered some from the States for me and they didn't even charge me for shipping, how great was that? :)

This was how it looked like when I got it off the TNT courier delivery guy,

It was rather heavy, but hey, that indicates a certain level of quality right? after all, it has thick wooden cabinet and inbuilt amp. Anyway, i ripped open the box, and it revealed a more colourful packaging box, which i thought did the product a disservice as it made it look like a toy.

Almost all of the reviews I read mentioned how well the speakers were packaged, and they were not wrong, not only did they use shock absorbing plastic foamy padding (no cheap polystyrene here)

The speakers where wrapped in soft draw string bag,

and the speakers were protected again with another layer of thin plastic foam,

As an ex product development engineer, I salute how much attention to detail the makers of these speakers put into packaging their product. I wonder how they justify the cost of it, no doubt it made parting with $699AUD seem worth it, and this was before i auditoned the speakers.

I patiently setup the speakers on my barren work desk and this was how they looked like

I'll write about the tv antenna and the little white box next to the computer next time.

In the instruction sheet, it mentioned that the speakers need to be run in for it to sound good. Initially when I played some Radiohead through the speakers, to my disappointment, the right speaker (passive) was not delivering any highs, and the sound imaging seems skewed to the left because of this. A bit worried, I decided to crank it up with a bit of Gorillaz, and all of a sudden, the silk dome tweeter on the right cleared its throat and man, it sounded good. There were no boomy-ness, and what i thought was noisy is now precise, quiet and pleasant. No matter how loud i cranked it, it still sounded awesome without being fatiguing.

Its hard to convey the difference via a blog, but I'll try.. its like switching from watching a low quality youtube video to a High Definition 120fps video like this (click on HD , let it load first and watch it at full screen for the best effect)

skate - shot on red #1347 - 120 fps from www.theglobules.com on Vimeo.

I can literary hear the stickiness of the lipsticks, the spit on the microphone, the breath taken by the singer, the thickness of the guitar pick, and the size of the hall the tracks was recorded in. As for sound staging, listening to hotel California, I can distinguish each of the members position, the type of guitar they are playing, and where the precussion were.

The Audioengine A5 are truely amazing speakers, worth every penny I spent on it.

Night out at Perth Metro City

2008-12-26T23:32:00.005+09:00

One of the things that I used to do while I was in Auckland was to hit town with my work collegues to check out the Scene. It was a great way to end the working week.

This week I'd decided to check out the night life here in Perth. I heard that Metro City was the biggest clubbing venue around and decided to check it out. Being one of the more popular clubs around with live DJs and etc, it attracted a cover charge, and on the particular night that I went, it was $10.

Like any popular clubs, there was a long queue outside the club, however, unlike the clubs that i had previously been to, all patrons were required to walk through a metal detector arch, similar to those found at the airport. As if that's not enough, despite not triggering the metal detectors, everyone was subjected to a pat down by the security guards prior to entering the club. At that point, I was not sure if i should feel safe or otherwise.

I found out later that this particular club had some bad history of gang fights and had previously been closed up to 5 months due to shooting and stabbings.

The club was surprisingly well setup, with a stage, big dance floor and 3 different serving bars for drinks.

My flatmates were there with me, one of them was an Irishman and from the sound of things he knows his drinks very well. He tried some tequilla shots with some of his friends, but he was not impressed. According to him, the tequilla was watered down, and its not worth sucking on the lemon after the shot. I do not drink, so i cannot comment.

Anyway, the scene was really great. The girl boy ratio was good, almost 60/40 at the start and flipped to about 40/60 towards the early hours in the morning.

The clubbers there were a friendly bunch, a lot more than what I had previously experience on my day out in Auckland, nz. Its easy to strike up conversation with random strangers and they are not as mingas as the crowds in Auckland.

When I was there, they had a DJ rocking the house, and also a couple of dancers.. similar to those seen in the background of a boy band MTV.

It was by far the best club I'd been to so far.. mind you, I'd only been to a few in Auckland Viaduct and Parnell in Auckland.

I would highly recommend partying at Metro City just for the ambience and experience (the watered down drinks is another matter.. it does not affect me as much as i don't drink.)

Anyway, at the end of the night, going home was a very different experience too. Apparently there was a shortage of Cab drivers in Perth due to the more lucrative mining jobs around, so, we had to queue up for about an hour just to get a cab home..

Merry Christmas everyone!

Victoria Park Christmas Street Mall

2008-12-21T14:55:00.006+09:00

On my way back from the city a few weeks ago, I stumbled across a road closure on my usual route home.

Unbeknown to me, the Victoria Park Christmas Street Mall was being held that day.

I decided to check it out, as I got nothing else planned for the rest of that day anyway. There were lots of attractions there, despite the name suggesting that it might resemble a mall or a market, there were surprisingly not much street side stalls, and if there were any, they were tastefully done.

There were carnival like games that resembles clowns waiting for BJs..

Bouncy castles..

Street performers, like this recycle junk band..

this gymnast, involving the public in his stunts, while making subtle suggestive jokes...

and the one that interested me the most, mountain bike trials show by WA bike trials, if you are curious what bike trials is, just click on the undelined link.. it has a short video there showing what its all about. In short, its skillfully balancing a mountain bike and jumping from objects.. worth a click on the link ..

The photo above shows one of the performer jumping up the boxes to about 2m above the ground and dropping off.

Apparently these crowd offer lessons on how to carry out these stunts, i was tempted at first to try it out, but on second thought, the skills are pretty pointless and would loose itsnovelness after 15 mins.

Moving on, there were a small fenced off places with farm animals in it for kids to play with

There were goats, sheep, piglets, hen, roosters, turkey, bunnies, hamster, duck, goose , swan and etc.. unfortunately, they were really messy as they shat everywhere and the person running the show had to constantly sweep up the crap.

Overall, this street mall was awsome. It would be great for people with small families. In fact, at the other side of the street, there was a stage with a brass band doing their thing.

Perth is indeed a really nice place to stay (if i can find a proper job that is.) I am continously being pleasantly surprized by the events that I stumble upon here. Too bad being there alone was no fun at all.

There were indeed lots of people there by the time i was about to make a move on

i am sure there are a lot more things like this all across Perth, as this street mall was just for a small suburb of Victoria park.

Hot day in Perth- Point Walter and South Perth

2008-12-16T11:34:00.000+09:00

It was suppose to be a great summer day the weekend just gone, with the weather forecast estimating a temperature of between 17C to 36C. I was all geared up in the morning to sight see around Perth. Unfortunately for me, the actual weather was too good, and it was 38C. This is by far the hottest day I had ever experienced in my entire life. What's worse is that I was told by my flatmates that this is the coolest summer since more than 5 years ago in Perth.

Anyway, not to put my preparation to waste, I continue with my plans to sight see around Perth and went to Point Walter reserve.

Walter Point reserve has a sand spit that extend into Swan river that always morph in shape due to the current and the wind. Although being a river, there was a sandy foreshore and a jetty that gave it that beachy feel

Right opposite Point Walter reserve is the upper class suburb- Mosman Park. The mansions there were built on the hillside overlooking the river.

Awesome isn't it?

Well, I took a walk out the sand spit. I came across sea gulls laying on their bellies, trying to shelter themselves from the strong wind. It must have been between 12-15 knots when i was there.

As I walked further and further outwards towards the tip of the spit, i noticed there were a few jelly fish that had beached themselves and some puffer fish too.

In fact, there were so many puffer fish in the river that you can see them in the crystal clear, luke warm river water. From what i read, puffer fish are a pest in Swan river because nothing will eat them because they are extremely poisonous, and their population had exploded, threatening the food source for other fish species.

Frankly, its not fun sight seeing around Perth alone. There were free BBQ facilities there, but it would be lame for me to do that by myself.

I then made my way to South Perth, the park across the river from Perth City. I'd been here before and blogged about it when the red bull air race was on.

There were catamarans for hire there for $30 for an hour, not too bad. The operator told me that anyone can hire them and they give really quick lesson on how to sail them. These can take up to 3 small people apparently and can be absolutely fast when the wind is strong.

Looking across the river..

Majestic.

Reflecting on my time here so far, i'd been in Perth for 4.5 months now, and despite sending out resumes and application letters for engineering jobs, I am still yet to find one. I am starting to get familiar with Perth, and frankly I am not sure what my chances of finding a professional job in the short term going to be as it seems the economy has to do with a lot of that.

I'd also noticed i'd blogged about Perth quite a lot.. maybe i should blog about somehthing else next time.

Blogging for money?

2008-12-11T21:45:00.009+09:00

This is an Advertorial - Nuffnang Australia is running a Christmas promotion for Nuffnang Bloggers, and I am participating in hope to win a Dell mini9 Netbook. Check out their site here

Some of you might have noticed that my blogger.com blog has a new advert addition to it, Nuffnang. This is not the case with my wordpress.com blog as wordpress.com does not allow bloggers that it hosts to advertise for monetary reasons.

Its no secret that one of many reasons why i started this blog was hopefully one day I could get some money out of the adverts.

At the time when I started my blog, I just arrived in Australia and it seems that there were not much reputable local blog ad network. I had to resort to adbrite and also google AdSense.

These international blog ad network placed ads on my blogs about mortgages, loans, and other irrelevant content that does not interest my blog readers. As such, I am yet to earn anything from my blogs.

So, why have I added yet another blog advertising company to my blog, at the risk of over cluttering my blog and making it look like a spam blog (see example below?)

Well, most of the blogs i follow are either from Malaysia or Singapore (I am Malaysian after all) and the most of them are part of Nuffnang blog advertising network.

Nuffnang was started by Malaysian and had recently branched to Australia. Nuffnang Australia is a local blog ad network where Australian bloggers who sign up will run Australian ads on their blogs.

Most of my readers are from Australia and New Zealand. If my readers are living here in Australia/NZ, why the hell would they want to know about a product or a service all the way in the United States that is unobtainable here?

Since Nuffnang is new in Australia, I can't really say how great they are yet, but lets look at a case study of their (Nuffnang Malaysia) involvement with a famous Malaysian blogger.

Kenny Sia of Kennysia.com.

If you had checked out his blog from my blogroll, you might notice that he uses lots of photos in his blog.. something i am trying to mimic. One another thing that he does is that he always makes his blog post witty and has a tongue in cheek feel to it, something i am still trying to get a knack for.

From Kenny's blog, Nuffnang seemed to have helped Kenny secure quite a few interesting experiences, just to name a few,

-Networking with other bloggers: Nuffnang Penang Bloggers Meet 2007 , Nuffnang Pajama party March 08, and Nuffnang wild "live" party. (Nuffnang seem to throw uber cool large scale blogger parties.)

-Reviewed cool gadgets such as mobile phones, ipods, perfume and etc

-Became a judge on an online reality show called Malaysian Dream girl.

-got a cheque for his blog advertising (source)

And best of all, he got to travel. I am not sure if Nuffnang was involved, but he manage to go to Bangkok to film an advert for Mr Chips,

watched black eyed peas,

watched jay Chow (famous Asian singer,)

fly to Macau to cover the grand opening of the Venetian and various others.

From the case study, the money doesn't seem that important anymore does it? Its the network of people, the bloggers and the experiences that blogging brings that motivates me to blog more than anything else now.

I doubt that adbrite or google AdSense will send anything for a blogger to review, or provide a blogger with the above mentioned experiences.

Another thing about blogs like mine are that we are too small to attract any advertisers as advertisers find it too much of a hassle to source blogs out one by one. They'd rather just deal with the heavy traffic blogs and that's it. All the other small time bloggers are left out in the cold.

That's where Nuffnang steps in. Everyone gets a piece of the action and we will still be able to provide relevant local content for our readers

As a final plug for Nuffnang Australia, If you're a local blogger and you don't mind making a few "moolah" on the side from your blog without sacrificing relevancy, go ahead and sign up with Nuffnang. You'll get paid for your efforts and help a local start up company grow big in the process. At the same time you'll be joining a growing network of Nuffnang blogger community.

Heck, if you're lucky you could even win a $549 Dell™ Inspiron™ Mini 9.

As i just relocated to Australia not long ago, i do not have many Australian Blogging friends. I only know that Karen Cheng (woman's lifestyle blogger in Perth) has signed up with Nuffnang Australia.

Other Nuffnangers that I am aware of are:

Kenny Sia - Malaysia's celebrity blogger

Nicole Tan - A Travelling Malaysian blogger

Xiaxue - Feisty Singaporean blogger

0163286699 - My ex-schoolmate's blog

As this is my attempt to win the Dell Mini 9, Nuffnang Santa, if you are reading this post, I need to have the Dell Mini 9 because I travel a lot and i blog about my travels and i only have the opportunity to blog when i get home.

As the Dell Mini 9 is a small and light net book,

I can use it as a dedicated blogging computer when I am mobile, and if the opportunity arises I can blog live on scene, capture my exact thoughts at the time. This would be especially useful if I am lucky enough to be given the opportunity like what Kenny Sia had.

Also if i do win the Dell Mini 9, if needed, I can do a review on it and also have nuffnang stickers on it so that where ever i go, Nuffnang will get the publicity.

So, please Nuffnang Santa, grant me my Christmas wish and let me win the Dell Mini 9.

Perth-Earth from above outdoor gallery

2008-12-08T22:34:00.000+09:00

The sun is shining, and it would be a waste to spend it indoors. I heard that there's a free outdoor gallery exhibition outside the Art centre in Northbridge, close to Perth CBD, and I decided to check it out. The gallery is called, Earth from above.

The gallery consists of large photo prints, systematically placed in an open space, in front of the Perth Art Centre.

Almost all of the prints were arial photo shot of various interesting geographical feature, such as salt lakes, flamingo colony, tank grave yards, ship grave yards, farm lands, and etc.

The outdoor gallery seem to be a hit here. In the 30 mins i spent there, there was a continuous flow of art lovers enjoying the gallery.

I even met up with one of my friend's sister there, whom i have not seen for more than 10 years. Small world indeed. Its good to finally meet some familiar faces here. Unfortunately it was one of those "hi" and "bye" meet up, but its good to know that I have at least some friends here, as sometimes, it does really feel lonely in a new city.

Randomness- Photos from my blog got used.

2008-12-06T07:23:00.001+09:00

Wow, who would have thought that my crappy photo would be selected for an tourist guide site. Anyway, i got an e mail today

"Hi Eugene,

I am delighted to let you know that your submitted photo has been selected for inclusion in the newly released sixth edition of our Schmap Auckland Guide:

Waiheke Island
http://www.schmap.com/auckland/introduction_nightlife/p=50729/i=50729_26.jpg

If you use an iPhone or iPod touch, then this same link will take you directly to your photo in the iPhone version of our guide. On a desktop computer, you can still see exactly how your photo is displayed and credited in the iPhone version of our guide at:

Waiheke Island
http://www.schmap.com/?m=iphone#uid=auckland&sid=introduction_nightlife&p=50729&i=50729_26

Finally, if you have a blog, you might also like to check out the customizable widgetized version of our Schmap Auckland Guide, complete with your published photo:

http://www.schmap.com/guidewidgets/p=30404539N08/c=SJ51012889

Thanks so much for letting us include your photo - please
enjoy the guide!

Best regards,

Emma Williams,
Managing Editor, Schmap Guides
www.schmap.me/emma.williams"

Crazyness..

too bad i reached my 200 photos quota with flickr and now they are asking me to suscribe and pay for their service. Anyone knows of any free photo hosting?

Perth-abalone fishing part 2

2008-12-03T08:26:00.003+09:00

The weekend just gone, I went abalone fishing again as per my previous post. The tide was slightly higher than my first abalone fishing trip, and hence i didn't bring my phone camera to take any photos.

Previously, i only had a receipt as a license, but my actual license finally arrived in the post.

There's nothing new to write about the actual abalone fishing experience, however this time round, i did notice that the abalone was a lot more active.

Check out these crazy moving abalone

Pretty disgusting isn't it?

I didn't realize that they can move that fast.. anyway, now i know.

Visiting Kings Park- Perth

2008-11-29T00:43:00.002+09:00

Like most cities, Perth has a famous park really close to its CBD.

Before I came to Perth, While doing my research on Perth, I found lots of photos on the net taken at Kings park.

Heck, I even came across a short video on you tube showing some ghost sightings here.. unfortunately its in chinese.. but hey, i am sure you can work out what's going on.

Anyway, a few weekends ago, it was a nice sunny day and i was bored at home, so I decided to cycle there.

The park was indeed really big. Like any park, it had a big information board to match at the entrance to the park

The park was so big that they had to list out what the general public can do there.

In fact, it is so big that it had its own really formal rules and regulations listed out like a law text book.

Ok ok.. enough already..

The park was really well laid out and there were lots of lush greenery everywhere, even the streets were lined with trees

This park appeared to be really popular with the general public. There were heaps of people exercising there, some of them looked like coporate big shots with their personal trainers. in fact, i came across 3 groups with similar t shirts and they had something or rather bootcamp written on them. Perthites do seem like a health concious bunch.

As I made my way through the park, i came across a well landscaped war memorial ( which surprisingly resembles Bastian point in Auckland)

The view from Kings Park were indeed spectacular.. i am sure some readers would say i need some DSLR to fully capture the beauty of this place.. but hey, i thought my cell phone camera did a pretty good job :)

Remember when i just started blogging, i mentioned that there were no traffic jams here.. well i guess i was not looking at the right places

There were heaps of cars queing south.

Anyway, the park was beautiful.. i am not a writer, so i can't think of any flowery words to describe it

Anyway, I found the infamous DNA tower, It's made of glavanized steel, and was swaying a bit at the top due to the vibration of people climbing up it and the wind

Just to show what it looked like from the top

From the tower, i can see lots of healthy people jogging behind the tower in a long strip of grass land.

There were other attractions at the park such as a glass bridge that walks across the thick tree foliage, and a treetop walk.. but i was there around 5.30pm and the gates were closed.. so unfortunately no photos of those.

Anyway, curious as to where the ghost sighting was, i cycled around to look for the site shown in the youtube video. I thought i found it, but unfortunately as I approach the site, this happened..

My nose just started dripping again and i got blood all over my shirt and my arms. I got some concerned looks from the public.. As i cycled away, the nosebleed got worse.. so i stopped and waited for it to stop.

I must say, Perth-rites are a bunch of concerned people.. i got at least 6 people coming up to me and asking if i am ok.

Anyway, after about 15 mins, all is well again and i cycled home with my blood drenched shirt. :)

Perth- the great bike ride 23 November 08

2008-11-23T22:07:00.001+09:00

Woke up at 5am today and made my way again to Mettam's pool thinking i could go Abalone Fishing, but when I got there, the tide was at its peak, so, no abalone fishing for me today. Only the people with snorkeling gears manage to get something today. Interestingly, Fred, my ex-workmate commented that the tide will be low again next week... i only read this when I got back.. :(

I woke up really early today and made my way to the beach for nothing. When I got home, there was some time to kill, so I checked on the net to see what other activities I can do this weekend.

I found out that "the Great Bike ride"- Perth was on today.

I was a bit reluctant to go, seeing that i have not been training, and 53kms seems really far, but on second thought, I might regret not doing this as this is something that i would not normally do and its suppose to be fun. Remembering my previous post and my commitment to not being a boring sod, I decided to give it a go.

Anyway, I don't want to over estimate my ability so i went for the 53kms route.

Anyway, I cycled to Langley Park, right next to Perth CBD and i was a bit late. Most of the riders had started.

Not fazed by this, I started the course and there were still a few slower people around that i manage to catch up and pass.

Most of the participants were using road bikes, and i was on my dirt jumper mountain bike on nobblies.. i could hear the tyres whirlling away as I pick up the pace. Although i would like to say i caught up with the pack, unfortunately that was not the case. Despite that, the ride was along Swan river and being able to cycle on the road at a steady pace was indeed a good experience. No more swerving driveways and negotiating uneven foot paths/cycle lanes. The view was awesome too. Unfortunately i was too engrossed in my cycling that i didn't take any photos during the ride.

Being a last minute decision to join the ride, i was not registered and hence i do not know what my time was. Despite that, i was happy i joined the ride and now i can say i participated. :) I was also impressed that i managed to finish the 53kms ride without too much physical fatigue.

After having a good rest at the finish line, i checked out the corporate tents. The likes of NAB, Chevron, Rio tinto, BHP were all there. Like any community events, there were a few big corporate sponsors for this event

Attending events like this made me feel good and motivated again to continue to find professional engineering work here in Perth. Despite the market turmoil, it seems like there are still a lot of money around Perth.

Anyway, after the event, while cycling home, the heavens open up and dumped its load.

I had to shelter under a bridge until the rain stops.. Times like this i miss having a car. :(

Perth- Abalone Fishing

2008-11-19T00:56:00.001+09:00

Reading the local papers, it seemed like abalone fishing is rather special here. Apparently, its one of the only sustainable recreational abalone fisheries close to a major city in the world. Seeing that they made it sound like its so special,i'd decided to check it out. I got myself an abalone fishing licence from the department of fisheries, cost me $41.

Abalone fishing opportunity only comes around once a year, and it is only for a very limited time window. 6 weeks, only once a week on asunday from 7am to 8am. When i got my licence, it was already 2 weeks into the season, but the licence is no cheaper. :(

Anyway, armed with my abalone fishing licence, I went to Mettam's pool (close to Scarborough beach) very early in the morning.

When i got there, there were already quite a few people there. I even noticed a camping tent there. There must be some really keen abalone fishermen out there.

As 7am approaches, the crowd started to walk outwards on the coral reef.

At bang on 7am, when the fisheries warden signal the start of fishing time, everyone started digging for these abalone. There were 2 crowds, one on top of the reef,

and a group that came with their snorkeling gears

Its interesting that at 7am, they all submerged and swam out like a school of fish.

Being a newbie at this, i have no idea how abalone looks like. However, after observing some of the other abalone fishermen there, it was really obvious, they look like small round rocks on the reef.

To ensure that I do not cope the $1500 fine for taking undesized abalone, i took with me a gauge and measured the abalones before prying them out with a flat head screwdriver.

These suckers were really hard to pry off the reef, however, after one hour, i managed to collect the 20 abalone quota.

I used a fish net bag, similar to those used for washing delicates in a washing machine to collect the abalones to ensure that i was not bogged down in the 1 hour time limit.

To make doubly sure that i will not get fined, i remeasured the abalones with my gauge.

As you can see from my gauge, there are other fishing opportunities here in Perth like crabbing and rock lobstering. I am not sure where those can be done, but will keep an eye out for them.

Luckily I measured my catch as a fisheries warden did came up to me to ensure i did not breach the 20 quota and the size quota. They also checked my licence. So, if you ever do this, don't skimp.

When i got home, i had a better look at the abalones. Some of them looked really nice.. they would probably look really nice in a fish tank

However, i do not have an aquarium, so i gutted the flesh out and chucked the shell. The trick is to cut the muscle that attaches the flesh to the shell without bursting a sac full of green crap.

A lot of scrubbing was required to take all the dirt out of these suckers, and after a few hours i managed to do all of them. To my disappointment, I only managed to get a bowl full of them

Then came a problem. I do not know how to cook them. I tried pan frying and boiling them. But both resulted in really tough and rubbery texture.

Apparently the shops sells these at $5aud an abalone.. hardly worth it if they are tough and rubbery.. and the ones i had were fresh too.

If any readers out there know how to cook these, let me know.

I got 3 more weeks to go, hopefully the tide will remain low next week.

Temp job II: Working in Coles supermarket..

2008-11-16T22:58:00.002+09:00

Well, after my brief stint at the car detailing place, I manage to secure another temporary job to keep surviving until I find a proper engineering job. I had been working there for 3.5 weeks now, and the job is heaps easier and the money is better than the car detailing place.

I didn't realize its that easy finding random jobs here in such a short time. I applied for Coles supermarket and also BP (as a forecourt attendant,) after quitting my job at the car detailing place. Within 2 days, both of the companies came back and asked for interviews.

I was offered both jobs at the same time, BP forecourt attendant pay was not that appealing compared to Coles produce assistant role by about 3 dollars per hour, so i chose Coles. BP pays minimum wage during the morning shift, roughly a dollar more during afternoon shift and 3 dollars more for night, however being a casual staff, the amount of work hours was not guaranteed. I was under the impression that casual workers should get more, but apparently not.

Anyway, the Coles supermarket i am working for is just 45 mins walk away, or 5 mins bus ride and as a fresh produce assistant, I am required to ensure all the display cases are stocked up. The work is not really that bad as I get to interact with customers and also "quality check" the stock to ensure they are ok, and to allow me to give accurate feedback to customers should they ask.

The team i am working with is also a really cool bunch. What i love the most is that i am at least learning a bit and its a new experience for me. I now know names of herbs and random fresh produce, how to stock rotate to ensure first in first out, and etc.

The official working hours in Australia is 38 hours, unlike nz's 40. Coles signed me up as a full timer, so i work 8 hours a day, but i get a 3 day weekend every 4th week of work. Not too bad at all. Being a supermarket its also indoors and airconditioned, so its better than staying at home in the hot Perth weather.

The pay is not too bad either, taking into consideration the cost of living here, what i earn here is almost the same as what a graduate engineer will earn in my previous employment in NZ.

My mind is at ease now knowing that I can at least earn some money to keep going here and use my Oz earned money instead of paying with my nz earned money. No doubt i will continue to keep an eye out for that elusive Engineering role. Hopefully all these market turmoil will blow over after new years so i can have a fresh start then.

Perth Dining out-Toto Vietnamese restaurant

2008-11-12T23:10:00.000+09:00

After researching other people's blogs, it seems obligatory to blog about food at some stage.

Fed up with Indomee instant noodle, with fried eggs and boiled cabbage almost every night, I went out with a high school mate of mine who's in Perth to "To To restaurant," a Vietnamese Restaurant on Albany highway, in Victoria park.

The place was packed when we got there. I always assumed that if a place is packed, the food must be awesome. Anyway, we made our way into the restaurant and were seated. I was well impressed with the tidy and modern decor they have here. The Vietnamese restaurant I was more accustomed to when i was in Auckland was a dingy old place inPanmure (bad side of town apparently) next to the bowling alley. I always thought Vietnamese restaurant was like that.

Anyway, we ordered an entree, i can't remembered what its fancy name was, but to me its just fried won tons with a bit of salad.

See what i mean by nice presentation? Even the plates and saucers were square. Oh yeah, i also called a drink, not just any drink, but someasian drink with 7 tastes apparently. The drink was really sweet and had roots, some red things, some soft white things, some fungus, and etc. (i know, i am not a good food blogger)

Anyway, i ordered steak on rice (actually it had a fancy vietnamese name, but for the life of me i can't remember what it was.)

Looks great doesn't it. i think it cost about $13.50. Not too bad by Perth's standard.. don't be deceived by the look of it, it didn't taste that great. The egg was soggy, the steak was average, and the rice had too much water in it, making it like glue, over all.. i would not recommend it.

My friend ordered roast chicken leg on rice..

I had food envy when i saw the dish. Apparently it taste alright too. Maybe my friend was not as critical of the food as I am.

Overall, To to had nice ambiance, average food prices, great food presentation skills, but lacking in taste.

However, who am i to critique, i can't even cook a proper meal :)

Perth RedBull air race- Nov 08

2008-11-07T22:33:00.001+09:00

Like usual last weekend I got bored and i heard that the Redbull air race was in town.

Just in case some of you are unfamiliar with what an air race is, i found a you tube clip that explains what it is nicely.

Anyway, I went to South Perth to check it out. Apparently its a free event if you choose not to be at the grand stand. I was only there on the last day of the competition from afternoon onwards. Anyway, I was pleasantly surprised that there were quite a lot of people there, and the "scenery" was very nice, especially with the hot weather.

I finally found a decent place to sit and watch the race, and let me tell you.. to say that this place is packed is an understatement.

Looking left, there were heaps of people

and looking right there were even more people

The crowd here was different to what i am used to in New Zealand. There were lots of scantily clad ladies and every one seem to dressed pretty well. Unlike my experience in Auckland (Christmas in the park) where there were lots of young kids wannabes acting all gang like. The atmosphere was indeed very warm and nice.

I always wondered why the river was called Swan river.. yes, despite the sand in the above photo, its a river.. remember a few post back i mentioned there's sand everywhere here.

Now i know.

Anyway, from where i sat i can see the pillars

Not long after i sat down, I can hear the plane coming. It sounded like an rx7 being driven hard.

According to the commentator, the plane was going 370km/h. It did look pretty quick.

One of the move they had to pull was a vertical loop,

Apparently the pilot will experience about 7 G while doing this maneuver. I can only imagine how hard it is to continue to pilot the plane with such precision under such a load,litterally.

At the end of the air race, there were air shows. One of them was a formation show.

However, that's not the most impressive show. What was amazing was they had a fighter jet, doing high speed passes, apparently at above 1000km/h. The noise was extremely loud.. good to know that unlike NZ, there's not much of a resource consent BS and loud noise is tolerated here. The jet appeared out of no where, and within just a few second, disappeared into the sky, and the sound was lagging behind it.

This is how >1000km/h looks like

2008 Pride Festival - Reinvention (Gay festival)

2008-11-05T23:55:00.000+09:00

Being alone in Perth can get pretty boring, so i'd decided to check out the free events happening around Perth. A few weeks back, I went to an event called:

I want to get something straight here.. I am not GAY. Its a free event.. i am cheap like that.

Anyway, there were heaps of shows and activities related to this festival, however i only went to the parade as i'd never been to one before.

Seeing that it was a free event, i got there early but there were a lot of people there already, looking left

looking right,

I was under the impression that this was going to be a lengthy and well worth it parade.

Unfortunately, what the photos do not show was that there were lesbians kissing and gay people smooching everywhere.. its like i am in a queer world.. its a scary and disturbing sight.. no worries... i guess i am in their turf now. Its surprising that there are so many same sex couple around.

Now i know why they call it pride.. these people have lots of pride.. riding around, shouting that they are proud to be gay. According to the sign on the lorry, apparently Perth is a gay friendly city. All these time while i am in Perth, I was a bit uneasy because i thought what i heard was the Aussie Twang.. but now i know that they sound like that because they are Gay (JK).

Knowing that this event was going to be held at night, i took my camera there.. most of my other photos in this blog was taken with my phone camera.

Unfortunately the camera is too smart for its own good. It set its apperture and shutter speed to capture the most light.. unfortunately this means that anything moving will be blurred.

I took out my phone camera to see how it would look like

Hmm, my phone camera takes better photo than my digital camera...:( either that or i do not know how to set my camera for night shots.

Anyway, the standard of the parade was really low. i was hoping to see boobs on bikes and the like, but all i saw was tackily dressed people and their gay signs on lorries.

There were also cliches.. construction workers.. why are they linked to gayness? Anyway, i still recall an excited gay fellow with his male partner saying that his mechanic is one of the people in the construction suit and he looks hot.. ( yuck.... )

and there were some cross dressing trannies too..... i was hoping to see some hot lesbians.. but luck was not on my side that day.

Anyway, the parade only lasted 30 mins.. pretty short for a parade..the ending was also pretty sucky.. no fireworks or band or any interesting stuff... the spectators just started walking behind the last group in the parade and that ends the night

I was disappointed.. what a waste of bus fare...

Road trip: Bunbury and Collie

2008-11-03T10:37:00.003+09:00

Bunbury

Continuing the journey from Mandurah, we headed south towards Bunbury. Geographically Bunbury is located on a peninsula and surrounded by water. This in itself made Bunbury a beautiful town with lots of water views.

Apprarently there are heaps of activities to do in Bunbury, such as Dolpin watching, natural walks and beach activities. Unfortunately for me, i didn't want to spend too much $$ so we only climbed a watch tower.

As you can see, most of the properties there were quite new and large and from the lookout, the town of Bunbury was reasonably clean.

Looking north from the lookout tower, was the port. There were some silos there, and I think they belong to Dempsey salt, one of the subsidiaries of Rio Tinto (I applied for an engineering role with them, but the economic downturn and the BHP takeover bid of Rio made my chances really slim.)

I did take some more photos while i was Bunbury, but unfortunately again, my phone camera corrupted the photos- this is actually getting a bit frustrating as Bunbury was a lot more beautiful than the above photos especially the beaches.

A word of caution though, if you ever go to Bunbury, be aware to put on insect repellant. I was travelling with a friend of mine and was told that there had been cases of the Ross River virus infections in Bunbury. This virus is mainly transmitted by a vector-- commonly a mosquito. Being a virus, no antibiotics can cure it, and the most notable symptom is severe fatigue, to the extent that the infected person can't carry out small and light task, and this usually last for a few months. ---Australia is a scary place indeed..

Collie

After passing through Bunbury, we continue our trip inland towards Collie. The more inland we got, the greener the trees were. It was indeed a nice road trip.

Being a road trip, coming across road kill is quite common. In New Zealand, there are the odd Hare and possum, which is about the size of an average cat. However, In Australia, the roadkill that caught my attention was the Kangaroo.

The size of the Kangaroo was about the size of a 12 year old kid (sorry, i struggle to find an animal of the same size for comparison.) According to my friend again, apparently these Kangaroo would jump out of no where in front of the car and sometimes causes significant damage to the car. Other times, if the person is unlucky, the car could hit the Kangaroo mid jump and it could come through the windscreen and kill the occupants. Again, Australia is a scary place...

Anyway, back to my road trip, We arrived in Collie. There's nothing spectacular about Collie, it is a coal mining town that has pass its hay day.

Collie seem out of the way from anywhere, and chances of passing by tourist are quite rare.

To indicate how sad this town was, in its tourist brochure, apparently this abandoned old building, with its windows boarded up was an attraction.

There were various other pathetic tourist attractions there, such as a "hanging bridge." One would expect that being in a tourist brochure, it would be spectacular, but unfortunately its a really short bridge across a 20m stream. What a let down. I would have shown the photo but my phone camera corrupted the photo.

Not everything was as dreadful as i made it out to be in Collie. There were the few odd nice buildings around, such as this Church.

There was also a museum that require a $5 donation to get in. There were items from the coal mining days and also photos of how Collie used to look like in its boom days, however it is still not spectacular.

Enough about that. Bored of Collie, we drove on and came across a lake with skiers. There were people camping around the lake. Because the views were not that spectacular, i took a photo of the sign there instead. Apparently one can go prawning and also fishing there too.

Wellington Dam

On our way back to Perth, we stopped by Wellington Dam

This dam was put together for irrigation purposes and allow for agriculture around the area.

While at the car park, i noticed that the cars around this area was indeed a bit different from Perth. Before I came to Western Australia, I was told that WA appear to be 20-30 years behind the rest of the world. Ididn't believe it at first, but seeing this:

made me think otherwise.

Anyway, the dam was spectacular (finally something that's spectacular by my standard)

The dam looked small in the above photo, but its actually rather large

To give an indication of scale, the little specks above my watermark were people. They were not suppose to be there as there's a warning sign saying the 4 relief gates ( 4 other black dots on the dam) could open without warning.

Anyway, that conclude my road trip down south. It was a good break from the usual Perth atmosphere. Being in Collie made me think twice about applying for jobs in the middle of no where ( they pay well though, more than 120kAUD per annum.) It was indeed a good eye opening experience.

Road trip: Heading South from Perth

2008-10-29T22:55:00.000+09:00

Well, being unemployed is pretty boring, so i embarked on a trip south to check out Mandurah, Bunbury, and Collie. Check out my route map.

Mandurah is roughly 74kms south of Perth and is considered the gateway to the South West of Australia. The further south that i got, the greener the pasture looked. It does indeed feel a lot nicer seeing all the greenery around.

Mandurah can also be reached by the train, which surprisingly runs between the highway. The trip to Mandurah from the Perth Esplanade station takes about 45 mins.

Once i arrived in Mandurah, I took a few nice photos, but unfortunately my phone camera played up and corrupted some of the photos. Mandurah was indeed very beautiful and has a holiday feel to it.

My friend took me to Dolphin Quay, as there is a market in there and also a very nice boardwalk.

Everything there looked very clean and tidy. It looked like the developer spent quite a few $$ to make this place the way it was. Even the foot bridge looked like it's built to last.

On the other side of the Dolphin Quay building was a marina.

The boardwalk next to the marina was lined with cafes and pub style fish and chip shop. We had our lunch there but it was far from cheap. However, having said that, the view was to die for.

My friend who had previously lived in Mandurah for a period of time told me that the reason why the place was called Dolphin quay was because right after this place was finished and opened to the public, Dolphins would swim up to the board walk and interact with the people.

Unfortunately as time passed, the water got a bit polluted and the Dolphins gradually disappeared from the Quay.

Anyway, seeing Mandurah brings back some hope.. Perth was getting a bit boring for me and to know that there is a holiday feel sort of place just 45 mins train ride away bought back some hope. In fact, a quite a lot of Perth workers commute to work from Mandurah in the morning as the lifestyle is considered better in Mandurah. The houses in Mandurah were quite a bit cheaper than Perth too.

I will continue my tour journal in my next post...

Austin Fremantle car show..

2008-10-27T22:20:00.000+09:00

Not to be outdone by the French, the Austin (UK) car community also had a car show at the same esplanade as the French car festival.

There were heaps of Austins there. Again, my knowledge of Austin is quite limited so i cannot comment much about them, except for that the owner seem to take good care of their old cars.

Again, like the French, there were some mafia styled cars, some even have colour matched rim lips and white wall tyres.. vintage coolness

And there were even some post vintage Austins there..complete with the mandatory car clubs and associations badge on their grills. I must be the only young asian guy there.. most of the other spectators were old europeans.

There were some notable nicely restored Austins there too. Like this A40. The guy standing next to it must be its proud owner. I think he was waiting for me to talk to him after I took the photo, but I didn't because I do not know much about the car and to me that just looks like a morris, and i didn't want to ask stupid generic questions.. Again look at those badges on the bumper.. classic cars would look so much better without those badges.

I am a fan of clean and tidy restorations. Like this old turqoise and white morris. The engine bay was so clean and tidy you can eat off it.

Unfortunately the same cannot be said about this Austin military Jeep. The restoration was done well, but the engine and the hoses were just sprayed with some green paint.. that was just plain lazy restoration.

i would have expected the alternator casing to be polished, the hoses in their natural clean black finish, and anything metal to be polished. Shame.

Back in the days when I transplanted my engine in my corolla, I would polish as much as i can and bead blast any imperfect part and repaint them so they look mint.

I even noticed some rusty bolts on some of these classic cars. If it were me i would have used stainless cap screws to make them perfect..but that's just me. Maybe i should write about that in my future posts.

Fremantle French Car Festival 2008...

2008-10-26T21:53:00.000+09:00

Well, the application to become a croupier failed. Apparently they have more suitable candidates this time round. That's good though, at least I do not have to commit a month to training and take time out from what I am really here in Perth for.. Finding a professional job..

When I was at Fremantle, coincidentally the French Car Festival was on at the same time... ok ok.. i lied.. the reason why I cycled there in the first place was that I heard that the French car festival was on and i wanted to check it out. This was a few weeks back (12 Oct 08)

I got there a bit late because I didn't anticipate it will take me that long to cycle there. They were taking down the sign when i got there.

I thought there will be a lot of french cars there, but unfortunately, there were not that many and majority of them looks like they are from car clubs and consist of classic french cars.

Being a Japanese car person, i have not much exposure to european cars and do not know much about them. Of all the old cars, these older french citerion cars do look cool, sort of like the old mafia styled cars

The more familiar cars that is familiar to me are these 2CV cars, Top Gear makes fun of them all the time.

Not all the cars on show was as old as the ones above, some are newer and replicas of the iconic cars such as this Peugeot 205 GTI

Of all the cars on show, the one that catches my fancy was this rare Renault Alpine (world beater, taking the first 3 places in Monte Carlo Rally in 1971 and World Rally Championships in 1971 and 1973. Compared with its main rival, the Porsche 911, the Alpine A110 was a lot lighter because of the compact body that was made of glass-fibre. Although the engine was less powerful, its nimble handling made it better the 911 in rally races.)

Prior to this, i only read about them on the internet.. to see one in flesh was really a rare opportunity indeed

Cycling to Fremantle again..

2008-10-23T21:41:00.000+08:00

Well, one thing good about writing a blog is that it encourages me to do stuff so i can write about it. Normally i would just be a lazy bum and stay at home and surf the net instead.

The weather in Perth is currently very hot, daytime temperature reached up to 35C, and is usually around 31C. The high temperature unfortunately somehow increased the number of flies in the air, and according to the local radio, the snakes are also out of hibernation and are moving across land to look for water and food. Interesting times indeed.. The flies are the annoying ones, they seem to hover around people's head trying to get moisture out of their eyes, ears, nose and mouth.

Anyway, despite the hotness, being a cheap bugger, I decided to cycle to Fremantle again to look at the sights that i had missed last time. It only took me 1.5 hours to cycle from my place to Fremantle.

Around Bull Creek, the cycle path was in the middle of the highway, which was pretty interesting.

On the way to Fremantle, there was a hill that had some sort of monument which i took a detour to see what that was all about.

The sights were great, but for some odd reason, the photos I took were corrupt, and hence i got nothing to show for it. The monument was a memorial for all the fallen soldiers during the war with the Japanese. Apparently there were some submarine action from US in Perth around that time too.

Moving on, I finally reached Fremantle. I didn't realized it at first but I was at the other end of Fremantle market.

I was there around 2.30pm, and there were heaps of people out and about, some with plastic bags full of fresh produce. I thought about buying some, but they will just rot in my pack in the heat. Cycling further into the heart of Fremantle, I reached some coffee strip in Fremantle

I read somewhere that people say that Perth is boring. I was not expecting to see so many people out and about in Fremantle, but hey.. i think i found the "happening" place in Perth :)

Fremantle is indeed a place worthy of a visit in Perth, as they have heaps of old colonial style buildings, and coupled with a nice coffee strip, it almost feels like I am on holiday.

I did cycle to the foreshore that day, but again, my phone camera was acting up and the photos were again corrupt. Anyway, i manage to catch a nice photo of this light house.

If you look carefully, you can see my bicycle there too (for those of you skeptics that think i do not cycle.)

Nearby there are a few fishing enthusiasts teaching their children how to fish. Maybe once i get a job i will be able to kill time here if i am too bored...

Will continue tomorrow..

Back Blogging again..

2008-10-22T08:39:00.001+08:00

I'd been taking a break from blogging because I'd been physically exhausted from the car detailing. So much so that I am having chronic nose bleeds every day since the past 2 weeks.

Chronic in the sense that one moment I will be waiting for a bus or sitting in the train, and the next I have a torrent of blood gushing out of my nostrils covering myself and the seat i am sitting in with a sea of red bloody mess. Obviously this happened in public and caused a bit of stir a few times.

Also, this happened a few times when I was detailing cars and covered the car upholstery in a bloody mess. The manager of the detailing place was not impressed but he was a good bloke and didn't really make a big deal out of it. I felt really bad, the work was not the best in the world, it was physically exhausting, since he paid by the car, cleaning the bloody mess took a lot more time and reduce my hourly rate to less than minimum wage and with the temperature recently reaching 34 degrees C, I knew I had to find some other part time work.

I decided to stop working at the car detailing place yesterday, and I am back blogging again. Hopefully the nosebleed will stop. I am not sure what caused it, hopefully its just the heat.

Thoughts on finding Engineering Work in Western Australia

2008-10-09T19:58:00.000+08:00

Before I came to Perth, the NZ media pretty much portrayed that there is a shortage of engineers in booming Australia, NZders are underpaid and there's record exodus of engineers to Australia and Europe. Heck, I even observed that a colleague crossed the Tasman and landed 6 digits jobs in Brisbane doing operational work.

To make the decision to come over even more enticing, a career website indicated that the average minimum wage is more than what i am getting in NZ, even though i am an Engineering Manager. I figured if a graduate gets paid as much as what i get paid, why not move to OZ and become a junior and continue learning about the engineering industry.

After trying to land a mechanical engineering/ project engineering role/ junior-graduate role for more than 2 months in Australia, it became evident why there's a shortage of Engineers here. What the media do not tell us is that the mining industry only wants people who are graduates or people with at least a year experience in the resources, power or water industry.

There's no shortage of Engineers here.. just shortage of Engineers with experience in resources, power and water industry. This is exactly what 4 different engineering recruitment agencies told me. The story that there's a shortage of general engineering people is 12 months ago. The market has changed. And to make matter worse, the global recession does not help.

So what do the resources industry so special? Well, they are commodity based and hence their engineering operations are magnitudes bigger than any manufacturing outfit. They design machines that extract the minerals from the ground,

Identify machines to buy, such as the big dump trucks (4 storeys high) and sometimes design and build rails and trains to convey the payload. These payload is then stripped off the useless stuff to get the ore (an engineer would design a machine to do this too) and then they are stock piled near a port

Yeap, an engineer will design the stacker and reclaimer that does this. The stacker sometimes deposit the ores directly onto a ship

And the ship would then take it to a processing place in China.

All the above are pretty tricky stuff, but the basic of mechanical engineering or any other engineering still applies. The industry must have engineers that are born with resources background for them not to require new blood.

Despite all these, the engineers are usually required to stay on site to commission or to maintain the operations. There are usually two types of workers here, Fly in Fly out (FIFO) or resident. The fly in fly out people live in other parts of the country and are flown in to work say a few weeks on and a few weeks off. They normally work close to 12 hrs a day, and everything (transport, food, accomodation + danger pay) is provided. Sounds like a sweet deal, but it wrecks relationships and families

The resident on the other hand, are provided with accomodation on site and work a more normal 8 hrs day. However, living in a mining town is not cheap. These town are usually very expensive to live in, think 1200 per week for a crappy 3 bedroom house. Crime is usually high too because the locals cannot afford the high prices of daily groceries due to the high influx of demand. Doesn't sound that good does it?

Anyway, In all my applications, i mentioned i am prepared to relocate to remote sites for work.. and yet still no bite.. the mind boggles.. there must be heaps of people willing to endure the above for the money.

I can't remember why I wrote this.. possibly to vent my frustrations and maybe to document my thoughts at this point in time so that others can appreciate that its not that rosy as the media made it out to be.

The oil and gas industry is even harder to get in.. seems like its who you know.. not what you know..

From the job websites, it seems that almost every engineering job is mining, oil and gas related here in Western Australia, there's the odd commercial property job, building services and council job, but that's about it.

Stink for me..

Croupier/Dealer job interview..

2008-10-08T23:52:00.000+08:00

After having no luck getting an Engineering Role here in Perth, my stay here pretty much turned into an OE (overseas experience as KIWI calls it.) I am doing random jobs and it is a good humbling learning experience.

Anyway, not satisfied with my car detailing job (despite the owner being really accomodating and allowed me to take days off or go home early whenever i wanted,) I went for an interview for a part time croupie/dealer role at Western Australia's biggest casino, The Burswood Casino.

Although the place started out as a casino, it branched out to become an entertainment centre, calling itself Burswood entertainment complex. Chris Brown and Rihanna is going to have a concert here soon.

According to the person conducting the group interview, over 4.5 million people visit the complex every year, that's about 12,500 everyday, and they are the largest single site private employer in WA employing 4000 staff.

If I do get this role, the perks are pretty good. I can just cycle there, have a shower, chuck my stuff in my locker and the uniforms are maintained on site. There's free meal throughout the shift, discounts with affiliated hotels (apparently it cost staff $50 per night at a 5 star hotel in almost all big cities in the world,) and a few other benefits for long timers. The job is a pretty sweet deal, every hour there's 15 mins break (this means an 8 hour shift, i only actually only work 6 hrs,) and during this break, i can eat and drink as much as i want for free, however, this means that there will not be any lunch or tea time. The weight I shed might come back to haunt me again :(

Anyway, the downside is, if accepted, the training period is 4 weeks paid training, and they are not flexible with giving day off at all during this period. By the time they made up their mind and the training is over, it will be December.. which means I will miss out on any jobs should there be any professional engineering jobs that comes along this year.

Part time for them means rostered, and this means that i cannot pick and choose the time to suit my future interview commitments. I'll play it by ear and take it as it comes for the time being. The pay is not bad, and the highest a croupier can get after 12 months service is $50aud per hour on a public holiday (double time and a half.)

I thought the interview went well.

One thing that might jeopardise my chances of getting in is my pinky finger.

Yeah, i know.. i got short fingers and the crooked pinky looks gross for those not used to it.

The interviewer asked me to pick up some chips after noticing my short and crooked finger. I didn't know what he was looking for, but he was scribbling away after i picked up the chips. He did say it was ok seeing that I can pick up the chips, but he noted that I might not be able to do some fancy chip tricks. :(

Anyway, I am not really fazed if i get it or not.

I just found it interesting that a person with no qualification can be trained in a week to become a croupier and earn more than what a qualified teacher earns here, no wonder they are short of teachers.

Got a haircut..

2008-10-07T16:39:00.000+08:00

Yeah, I know. Haircut is pretty boring topic to write about, but hey.. life has been pretty boring here.

Anyway, since I landed in Perth, I had not had a haircut and my hair was looking really shabby and unkept. Almost everyday was a bad hair day.

Anyway, a friend of mine recommended St James Hair studio, an upmarket place where the proprietor is a Japanese Guy by the name ofKazu , and apparently he returns to Tokyo every year to attend hair conference to update his style. Talk about hard core. Anyway, this place must be really popular as I thought I could just call up and turn up, but no... I had to book a week ahead in order to get a spot.

Anyway, I got lost while trying to find the place so I didn't take any photos. However, thanks to Google maps street view, I manage to plunder a picture of the place. From the outside, it did not really look like a japanese business at all. The decor was fully European.

Once i was inside, i was greeted by a very nice looking chinese lady. It seems that almost everyone except of Kazu was from Malaysia in there. Anyway, the lady washed my hair and we got talking. This was really strange for me as I usually just want to go in, get a hair cut and get out as fast as possible, as anymore time spent in a hair salon is a waste of time. Back to the story, apparently this lady just arrived in Perth fromIpoh Malaysia. No wonder she looked alright, .. for the readers not familiar with Malaysia, I was told Ipoh has a high population of nice looking girls compared to anywhere else in Malaysia. When I was in KL for a holiday not long ago, one way to strike up a conversation with a nice looking lass was to ask " are you fromIpoh?" and they would normally be surprised and say "yes" how can i tell.. its a bit cheesy but hey, worked 63.5% of the time.

After my hair was washed, Kazu introduced himself and he proceed to ask me what style i wanted. Being an engineer, i don't really have style, and i just say "short and fluffy" like japanese style. He knew exactly what i meant and proceed to cut my hair. Again, while cutting my hair he went on to to talk to me and asked me where i was from and etc.. anyway, i turned the table around and asked him about japan and if is into drifting and etc.. he was not, and I think i killed the conversation then and there.

Anyway, 45 mins later, he was done. One look and i was happy with it. One thing i used to struggle with was finding a decent hair dresser, i am usually disappointed by the end result and by then its too late.

Anyway, next time i'll take more photos inside the shop to make my blog more interesting instead of subjecting all my readers to my ugly mug.

The haircut cost $43AUD, but hey I think its worth it because small luxuries like these makes me feel good and gives me confidence to continue with my job quest when at times i feel hopeless after so many letter of rejections.

Biggest loser..as in weight loss

2008-10-04T12:12:00.002+08:00

Eugene Feels good now, but still tired from labor0us work

When I was in Auckland, colleagues used to hassle me by saying I am fat (I am looking at you Denny, and maybe Mia for saying "the bigger one" maybe in reference to me.) I didn't realize I was fat at all, but the weighing scale showed between 78 to 80kgs, so i guess i am a bit on the heavy side. I am only 173cm after all.

I was cool about that, and i welcome honest opinions so I can improve on my deficiencies.

Erica used to hassle me too, by randomly pinching my waistline and sometime to the extreme of lifting my shirt in public area to show my fat tummy and waistline.

I put a stop to that very quickly and neutralized the threat with a headlock

Anyway, I must admit, with so many sources saying I am fat, there must be basis as to where this came from. I did realize that i was fat when I looked back at a photo of me climbing a tree.

Yeap, can definately see the fat bulge on the waist and the fat legs..

Anyway, since coming to Perth, i'd been eating indomee ( instant noodle) with boiled vege and eggs, and on occasion sandwhiches with tuna, lettuce, cheese and tomato sauce. Breakfast is the usual cereal on Soy milk. I had also been walking a lot and cycling around as per my previous blog post. And recently, I'd been doing a bit of physical part time work.

When I landed in Perth, I knew i was going to lose a bit of weight, so as a datum, I weighed myself upon arrival using a standard bathroom scale. Yeap, back then it was 78kgs, similar to when i was in Auckland.

Today, I weighed myself again, and I am 68kgs, still using the same scale. I thought the scale was broken, and reset it a few times, and also loaded buckets of water to calibrate it. There's nothing wrong with the reading. I can hardly believe it.. 78-68= 10kgs. That's massive... that's (10/65) x 100% = 15.3%

I took a photo of this momentous occasion. In the photo, i was not sucking in my tummy.. I did a body check and yeap.. ribs are quite prominently showing, tilting head downwards and the double chin is hardly there anymore, jumping up and down, the cheek fat is not moving at all, and jawline is a bit more prominent... so definitely losing weight.

I know on the show, the biggest loser lost a lot more.. but hey, i didn't have much kg to begin with.

So for all the people aspiring to lose weight.. relocate to a new place where you hardly know anyone, walk a lot, eat crap food, and weight-loss just happens.

Got a Temp job..

2008-10-02T23:15:00.000+08:00

Well, i didn't update my blog yesterday because i was too tired after day 1 of my Labouring job.

I listed an advert on Gumtree saying i am looking for a job and available anytime. After a week, i got an e mail asking if i wanted to become a car detailer. Since i am bored at home, i said , yeah, why not.. but only temporary as i need the time to go for interviews and time for applying for jobs.

Anyway, yesterday was my first day there.. and man.. it was really tiring. I think its due to me not doing labour jobs for so long. Unlike a normal job which pays by the hour, this pays by the number of cars. Say for example, if i do a late model toyota corolla, I will get $70 when i finish it, however, if i do a landcrusier, i will get $140, and if i do a lease 4x4 with lots of red dust from the desert, i will get $500 per vehicle.

Not too bad at first thought. Anyway, I manage to do 2 $70 cars yesterday and 2 $70 cars today.. not too bad. Unfortunately for me, the place is in Wangara, which is about 1.5hrs public transport distance away. I had to take bus-train-bus to get there. I leave home at 6am and comes back at 8pm. There's quite a bit of waiting around with public transport.. The car detailing role does not have any fixed time.. so pretty much leave when you finish.. but i'd been slow too..so that made my hourly rate lower than min wage as i worked 10 hours per day both yesterday and today.

Well, i also got another call from my ad on gumtree.. its entertaining kids.. not too sure about this role as i tend to be a bit sarcastic and i had previous incidences where my nephews fought because i asked them to jokingly. My cousin was not impressed. kids has no sense of sarcasm.

Seeing that this car detailing role is quite laborious, and i am earning less than the min wage of about $15aud per hour, I am thinking of trying some more laid back but fun jobs.. so i applied for a croupier (card dealer) casual role at Burswood Entertainment Centre (Perth's Casino.) Min wage for casual in Perth is 17.60AUD per hour.. so it should be good if i get in.

I am having an interview with them next Tuesday. If i get the role, i might keep it even if i get an Engineering job, as i am free weekends anyway. Also, I'd lost close to 25k AUD in last week's market crash. For once, if i do get this role, i should be on the winning side.

Don't get me wrong, i am still trying to get Mechanical engineering roles here, but no resources company would give me a chance so far, so I figured might as well try different things on the side to survive.

Can't believe it... such fall from grace.. from a glamourous Mechanical Engineering manager to a car detailer.. :(

Memories: Soccer Team...

2008-09-30T23:08:00.000+08:00

I was fortunate enough to be part of a social soccer (well, i can't remember if its sub-football or futsal as i played both) team when i was in New Zealand. This is not to say i am any good, i pretty much joined it for the social aspect.

Our captain was very well organized and we even had matching jerseys. It was pretty cool.

Anyway, as part of the season, one of our game was held on Waiheke Island. For readers not familiar with New Zealand, Waiheke is about 45 mins ferry ride from Auckland, and is a great tourist spot during summer. The venue for our game was quite picturesque, with hills surrounding the soccer fields.

That's me, initally running, but because of fitness issue, it became a really slow walk towards the top of the hill.

The view from the top of the hill was awesome. Everyone looked like ants from there.

The main point of having a game on a holiday island was so that we can have a great outing with the soccer team for team building. As you can see, our captain did a good job booking a great holiday home for us to stay on this trip.

The place we stayed at overlooked a sheltered bay and was elevated. The view was to die for and despite this being just a weekend away, it really felt like i am on holiday.

At night, we cranked the BBQ and sing star... it was awesome.. typing this entry made me miss those moments.. Friends, joking around, playing games.. getting drunk.. ..good times indeed.

To cap the night off, one of our team mate, Colette entertained us with a fire show on the beach..

Missing those times already..

Memories: Fun and adventurous friends

2008-09-29T23:51:00.001+08:00

One of the things that i missed most about New Zealand is the extremely fun and adventurous friends. I never experience the freedom of doing so many crazy things until I went to New Zealand. It seems that Kiwis indeed do have the can do attitude and would give anything fun a go.

Take for example my peers at my previous workplace. A group of them came up with an idea that they could buy cheap second hand bath tubs from Trademe, an online auction site and retrofit it so it is like a dinghy and paddle it to a nearby volcanic Rangitoto island.

Obviously the drain hole had to be sealed and they had to fit a keel to ensure they do not tip over. Some of the participants bought steel bath tubs instead of the cheaper fiberglass ones and that made fitting a keel and welding the hole shut a loat easier, but unfortunately, the weight of the bathtub was more than the water displaced, Archimedes law took over and the metallic bath tub sank to bottom of the sea.

Only a handful of the bath tubs managed to float successfully, but crossing international shipping channels on the way to Rangitoto island was indeed tricky and unfortunately none of the bathtubs successfully made it to the island. No one was harm though, as there were heaps of support crew.

One of my friends that participated in the above while traveling through Europe on a shoe string, decided to buy a cheap inflatable dinghy and paddled around Venice to explore the canals.

Unfortunately for James, he got lost big time, and after paddling around for 3 hours, he ended up in a main canal and got some odd looks from other tourists on ferries and gondolas.

Looking back, i wished i wasn't that tight with my money and i should have joined them. Money comes and go, but opportunities like these are few and far between.

There were quite a few motor enthusiasts at my previous workplace. We sometimes join local car clubs to participate in gymkhanas. Unfortunately for my friend Dave, his CV broke and he could not get his car onto a car trailer in the normal way and decided to improvise. Mind you what we did were very dangerous.

We managed to get the car on the trailer, with not much dramas.. which was lucky for us, as the trailer was never designed to be loaded like how we loaded it.

Before I came to Perth, i realized that i had not been doing as much fun stuff as my peers, and started to think about things i could do to make my stay in NZ more memorable. Unfortunately for me, i am not so creative. I realized that there were some cows in a local park, Mt Eden, and i went there to interact with them.

That didn't really felt that adventurous or fun at all.. in fact, I stepped on countless cow dung just to get close to the cow.

Anyway, unimpressed with my attempt, I went to Mt Hobson, next to New Market Basin just to see what i can do that's fun. I saw an old rope with a stick on it, and i decided to make the most of it, and hung off it.

That was fun.. but it was not as cool as what James and his friends did.. James did invite me down to the south island once to build a raft using milk bottles and freestyle down a river.. but being a boring sod, I didn't take up the offer. It would have been fun and memorable... I guess that's some of the things that I regret not doing while i was in NZ.

Memories: Work related parties...

2008-09-29T00:00:00.003+08:00

The great thing about working for my previous workplace was the people. Majority of my colleagues were around my age and naturally most of the colleagues got on really well and we frequently had great outings together.. This is also one of the things i miss the most from my previous workplace.

The company organizes annual long service celebration, which most young engineers treat it as an annual ball.

These annual occurrences reminds me of the good ol' days in University.. and i guess my experiences at my previous workplace was like an extension of university because of the peers. Obviously at company functions such as the ones pictured above, we can't really cut loose too much because of "Monday repercussion." The rules of "what goes on tour stays on tour" does not seem to apply because most people are from work anyway. Another thing about these function was that the big bosses were there too and impression needs to be upheld.

Anyhow, outside the company organized parties, there's also the privately organized parties.. by fellow colleagues of course.. And these were normally really colourful, and for some creative few.. themed.

And in the photo above, the theme was "anything that starts with T." I am in red, wearing a Toyota technician Shirt.. not really creative, but hey, it was easy.

Usually, at these privately organized parties, anything goes..

Its normally not what we drink, but how we drunk. For those not familiar with the above, I am skulling diet coke ( unfortunately i get rashes if i consume alcohol.) Other punters weren't so lucky and had to down a lethal mixture of spirits, beer and wine.. Yuck..

The most memorable outing for me was my own farewell gathering, organized by myself.

Being a lazy bugger, i just called up a place called Pizza Pizza on Queen Street Auckland, and said i got 40 people coming. Pizza Pizza was the only place i could find that would do a fix cost of $40 per person for unlimited fresh baked oven pizza and any alcohol including spirits and mixers.

I was really touched by the number of people that turned up. It was cool that they spare their time and parted $40 just to see me off.

Anyway, despite not being able to drink Alcohol. I am usually a good sport and can be quite entertaining.

Ahh... miss all those great times... hopefully once i build up my circle of friends here in OZ, they would be as cool as the friends i had back in Auckland

Memories: Previous workplace...

2008-09-26T20:31:00.002+08:00

Part of the reason why i started a blog was to capture all the good memories i had before i forget. So i am going to write quite a few entries on what I used to do and my experiences before I arrived in Perth.

An obvious start for me was where i spent majority of my 7 years when i was in New Zealand, my workplace. It shall remain nameless to prevent any breach in confidentiality.

Believe it or not, before I started work, when i was still in my teens, i actually visualized that i wanted to work for an ideal company. This company would have a top class building site in a cooler climate (when i visualized this, I was in Malaysia, which was really warm) and would be next to a lake.

I didn't realize it then but looking back, I got what i visualize and hoped for..

I was there at what I thought was my end of the rainbow for 7 years.. which was/is quite a long time for a first professional job.

Every morning tea time, I enjoyed the awesome view of the lake and a fountain.

It was almost perfect. Unfortunately, like any good story, there must be an end. Someone once told me, if I am not learning/growing and its not fun anymore, its time to move on.

This was my workstation, in an open plan office. I do miss it heaps.

On my last day, during my farewell presentation, a lot of my acquaintances drop by my desk to bid me farewell, it was a touching affair... 7 years of friendship.. faces i see everyday which i will no longer will see after that faithful day.

On my way out, i reminisce the great time i had there as i enjoyed the view while i walked to my car.... while at the same time coming to terms with my decision to leave.

Knowing that that day would be the last day of my daily routine which i had so much certainty for 7 years was a bit daunting, i can't put words to it.

As i drove home, It slowly sank in and i sat back and live in the moment..

No regrets....

Boredom...

2008-09-25T23:03:00.002+08:00

I am actually running out of things to write in my blog..

Its been close to 2 months, and i am still yet to find a job. After appying for more than 60 jobs, my impression is that most of the resources company would only either hire graduates, or experience personnel from the same industry. As day passes and i am still jobless.. i am getting more and more worried. Finance is running really thin and boredom is starting to kick in. I guess all this free time makes me think a lot about things and makes me worried.. and as they say " idle mind is the devil's playground."

Anyway, i went for a walk and i came across this ad..

and the first lesson is free... Hmm.. should i join a ninja school or not? what can i do with the skills? I actually been to a ninjitsu class before.. and it wasn't really that interesting. They do not throw stars around or throw smoke bombs and disappear.. Anyway, as tempting as being a ninja sounds.. i doubt i will be able to find a part time job with the skills that i am going to learn there.

I figured since i need to up my effort in applying for a job, i need to start printing out my cv and also start scanning in my certificates and reference letter. With this much time on my hands, i checked out www.pricespy.com.au. If its anything like the NZ site that i go to, this site actually trawls through all the online shops and list the cheapest price for computer, cell phones and cameras. Unfortunately, it wasn't as good as i thought, shopbot.com.au sometimes has cheaper printers listed. Despite all that research, i found the cheapest price was from a local post office.

Anyway, i went and got one, and it was pretty decent for the price i paid for it.

What i got was a multipurpose unit, ie it scans, copies and print. Its a Hewlett Packard Deskjet F2275.

The printer came with a colour and a black ink cartridge. I was happy with what i got for the price i paid, especially considering that the ink cartridges i saw cost more than this printer.

Want to know how much i paid for the printer?

If you look at the two compatible ink cartridges listed, its not really worth refilling this printer with new cartridges when it runs out.

Anyway, as you can see, i am running out of things to write about. I will start writing about what i did back in NZ before i came here from tomorrow onwards until something interesting happens here...

Getting dessert in perth- Icey ice

2008-09-24T20:56:00.002+08:00

One thing i found facinating when i was in New Zealand was that joints selling "bubble milk tea" and the likes tend to be almost the only alternative for the young asians to hang out and chit chat at night. I was also facinated by how expensive a glass of milk derivative can be sold for, sometimes up to $8nzd. I always thought it would be more worth it to go to a pub, as my preception was for the price they are paying they can get a pint.

Anyway, one day after dinner, my friend took me to a place called icey ice. For those who are in Perth, at the time of writing, this shop was at Shop 2/ 342 Albany Hwy, Victoria Park.

My first impression was, "oh no.. not another one of those asian bubble tea place." The shop had blue lights, similar to those in nz public parks.. Maybe they have similar problem of people shooting up in the shop. The blue lights in NZ parks were suppose to make it hard for intravenous addicts to see their vein.

Anyway, first impression aside, once inside, I was surprised that there were quite a lot of patrons and there were no seating, and this was at 9.30pm, and i thought, man this must be the shizzle.

Anyway, we lined up and hogged the first table that came free and had a look at the menu..

From the photos around the shop, i think the main desert was shaved ice.. so i ordered a mango shaved ice and my friend order a twin tower shaved ice.

When they arrived, i was pleasantly surprised. It's quite a big serving. Anyhow.. mine was mango flavoured. The ice that they shaved must have mango flavouring in it too as its not coming from the syrup. Unlike the shaved ice i am used to, there were no crystalized ice in this. Its all really soft and fluffy, and surprisingly delicious.

Anyway, long story short... It was good and if you do come to Perth for a visit, i highly recommend trying this out. YUM..

Cycling around part 2

2008-09-23T22:35:00.001+08:00

Continuing from yesterday, after cycling for about 4.5 hours, I finally arrived at City beach,

The sea here is surprisingly clear and clean. The sand was really fine, like powder.. i attempted to cycle along the beach but despite the knobbly tyres, it dug in and made it impossible to cycle. In the photo above, in the distance, i think its a lighthouse.

cycling another 10 mins, i arrived at another hotspot, the Scarborough Beach. One thing that stood out on this beach was a grandstand with canopy

It almost seem as though this would be a venue for concerts in the high seasons. Another thing that stood out were these cylindrical lookout features..

I guess they will be handy for old man to perve on the hot ladies during summer. Come to think of it, i didn't notice any ladies in skimpy bikinis that day. Maybe the season was not right yet.

Scarborough had really decent waves and there were a few surfers out there. Unfortunately the wind was onshore and was blowing the crest of the wave, collapsing the wave prematurely.

One would think with beaches so beautiful, more people would be swimming and playing beach sports.. but no.... they seem to be more fascinated with playing with this pile of sand.

Strange ozzie people...

Anyway, since it took me close to 5 hours to cycle here, i didn't stayed long.. for obvious reason. :)

I really like the beaches here.. hopefully if i do get settled here, i would frequent the beaches more often. I heard that the beaches further south are even nicer.

Cycling around part 1

2008-09-22T23:15:00.000+08:00

In order to keep my sanity, i need to do something other than sitting in my room, so over the weekend, i decided to take a ride to the beach. I'd split this into two parts as I don't want to run out of things to write tomorrow.

Anyway, one of my university and workmate, Christian, told me that I should check out the beaches here, particularly City Beach and Scarborough Beach, as the "scenery" was really nice there. I figured why not.

I am splitting this over 2 days worth of blogs so that i won't run out of things to write about.

Someone mentioned to me that i seldom take picture of myself in my blogs.. Well.. I don't really Cam Wh0re that much.. and my looks is kinda "low resolution," ie looks ok from far away but not close up. Anyway, to please some of the readers..

Ok, enough about self publicity. Anyway, i had to pass through the city in order to reach the northern suburbs beaches.. it took me about 30 mins to get to the city, and cutting through the city, i came across the Perth Supreme court house, i thought the architecture was pretty old skool, so i took a photo..

According to a travel book i have, this court house was built and designed in the classic style in 1897. The Court house has a really nice garden..

I stopped to take a drink from the drink fountain, but for some reason, the water taste foul.. yuck.. anyway.. the garden was surrounded by mature trees and according to my travel book again, the back garden pictured above is the venue for many open air concerts and other functions,...

I continued my journey and i came across a cool skate park..

Being an ex-skateboarder.. obviously this interest me..Maybe i should get a skateboard and hone my skills again...hmm.. nope

I am always a fan of street art.. especially those that i can relate to

Anyway, will continue more tomorrow...

Visiting Fremantle markets...

2008-09-20T22:32:00.001+08:00

I visited Fremantle one weekend to check out what the Hype is all about. Even before i came to Perth, i heard people telling me about Fremantle and its famous "Doctor." However, the doctor is not a person, the doctor is the sea breeze that blows onshore everyday around sunset. And believe me, having experience it, it is actually quite strong.. possibly in the high single digit in knots.

Fremantle is also famous for its old colonial looking buildings and its port.

The above picture was taken when i was just strolling about Fremantle, this place has quite a lot of old skool european feel to it.

Another famous attraction in Fremantle was the weekend market. Unlike other markets that i'd been to.. this market was held indoors when I visited it. From the sign at the entrance, apparently the building was opened in 1897. The ornate design shows how prosperous Fremantle was at the time of the gold rush. The market has over 150 stalls selling seafood, gourmet items, clothes, jewellery, fruits and Vegetables, antiques and souverniers.

There's heaps of fruits here.. but unfortunatly for me.. fruits are rather heavy and its not really worth me buying any here as i had to ride close to an hour to get back to my flat.

After a while, walking around the market gets a bit boring especially when I am there alone. It was a great experience visiting Fremantle.. there are heaps of other museums here too.. but it would be very sad to visit these places alone, hence I passed on that and went home instead.

Perth houses..

2008-09-19T23:44:00.003+08:00

One of the things that annoyed me when i walked around Perth was the amount of sand that gets into my shoe, you know, like when you walk along the soft sand on the beach with your shoes. Sand is everywhere here. There's hardly any dark top soil around. And because of this, the grass here are really tough and not nice to sit on.

I think because of the sand too that the heat capacity of the land is not that high and the infrared light absorbtion is low, hence why there's such a vast difference in temperature between day and night.

Anyway, i had always been interested in houses and naturally, I was quite curious to see how people build houses here.

Unlike New Zealand, they do not erect a wooden frame first. They would lay the foundation first and then they would get bricklayers to build up the house, effectively the walls of the house are structural.

There's still a gap between the walls for insulation but they do not use any wooly pink batts here. I think they do not use wood because of termite problems. I'd cycled past quite a few power post that seem to had been attacked by termites. Even the door frames are made of some sort of metal.

Another thing I do not get is how they get away with not fencing off construction sites here. They would build houses in an establish suburb where there are kids playing around, but they do not erect any barriers. Surely this would be an Health and safety Issue?

It also sounded like they have problems with people stealing from construction sites. On the radio, there's actually a government funded ad to request the public to dob in anyone that is seen stealing from construction sites... What do they expect if they do not fence off their construction sites?

Anyway, another thing i noticed was that some of the houses here have "roller shutters" on their window, similar to those found in shops. They shut their window fully and i am unsure why they need to do this.

At a guess, i think its either really unsafe here, or the people here are paranoid. My friend told me that its because of the sun glare.. i just wondered why they do not use curtains instead? its so much nicer.

Anyway, Perth is indeed rich in minerals.. if you look at the fence above, the one on the side is made of wood however it has rust stains on it. The irrigation system was made from plastic, so no chance of iron leaching into the water. The water itself, is causing the staining of the fence and they call the water bore water.

I am not sure how exactly bore water work, weather they have their own water system or they share the same piping as the potable water...

Ouch...

2008-09-18T21:21:00.002+08:00

Today is a really bad day for me. Emotions were running wild and stress levels were up.

What is the reason? you may ask. Well, let me tell you..

Being unemployed gave me an opportunity to try day trading full time. And believe me, it is a lot more exciting than any work i had ever done. Don't get me wrong, i guess i am just passionate about it.

Yesterday, i must say, is the most exciting day on the market. There was a technical crash, as trader calls it.

If you have never seen the type of graph above before, it is the ASX 200 CFD dec forward contract. What it does is it tracks the Australian top 200 companies and chart it. I trade this market because it is more immune to company specific influence. The main chart is japanese candle stick style and the bottom 2 graphs are MACD and RSI (relative strength index.) Both these indicators would indicate when to enter the market.

Before Wednesday, as you can see to the left of the drop, the market was Bullish (going up.) However, that flipped to downward trend (bearish) on Wednesday.. and because the gap was quite big technically, the market got spooked.

That's the technical side of things. Anyway, the fundamental side of things.. the US problems with Lehman Brothers, AIG bail out and etc sparked all these.

Watch it on Reuters here and here

The Reserve Bank (RBA) in the US didn't bail Lehman brothers, but they bailed AIG (an underwriter for insurance that bet on people defaulting on their loan payments.) The RBA thought they helped prevent a market meltdown, but in reality, it opened a can of worms. Does this mean that bad management of companies will be bailed out by Tax payers money, instead of the players? ie the company and the speculators? The market was unsure how to react and the market dips.

Anyway, i lost 5 digits worth of equity on Wednesday (the CFD magnifies any profit or losses 100x), and it was not a good feeling.

But hey, i should count my lucky stars, and most reserve banks in the world poured Billion to trillion dollars into the market.

And Warren Buffet lost a lot more than i did and he is no longer the richest man in the world.

Enough about my rant. I feel bad and couldn't blog like i used to. Will try to continue as normal tomorrow.

Exploring Perth by bicycle

2008-09-17T23:14:00.001+08:00

After assembling my bike and checking that everything works well, its time for me to explore Perth away from the contraints of public transportation routes.

One interesting fact in Perth is that cyclist are encouraged to cycle on the footpaths, so much so that there's a cycling man painted on the footpaths. This is in stark contrast to what I'd experience in Christchurch, NZ, where when I was a student, I got yelled at by Cops for cycling on the footpath and was fined $30.

Anyway, first port of call was Victoria park, as it looked like a cool place to chill out being next to Swan river and all.

There's a dedicated cycle lane here and it spans most of the parameter of the river, although not all of them are as nice as the photo above. There were random gym gears along the track, i guess if someone cycles and feels like doing bicep curls or power air walking, they can do so.

Crossing the river and heading towards the city, the cycle lanes/footpath runs along the main motorway. Surprisingly, as mentioned previously.. this photo was taken about 3.30 and there's not much cars on the road.. unlike the Auckland that i grew accustomed to.

Feeling a bit tired from cycling, when i reached the city, i took a break and visited the Library. In front of the library, was St Georges Cathedral. Apparently the foundation stone of this Gothic style cathedral was laid in 1880 and it took 8 years to build. I didn't even realise Perth was that old as everything looked so new and clean and the infrastructure seemed well planned.

After a good rest, i continued my journey along the north side of the river. The north side of the river is the more upper class side of town. Properties and rentals were a lot more expensive than south of the river from my brief research. Anyway, with view like this, who can blame them. The picture was taken looking back at Perth CBD.

Cycling further along Swan river, i cycled past University of Western Australia. I didn't take any photos because there were quite a lot of people around and I do not want to look like an asian tourist, even though I am. Anyway, close to UWA is Swan Estuary, and by the looks of things, its really shallow, ideal for kite surfing. Speaking of which, at this point, it was time for me to head back home as I was about 2 hours bike ride from home.

One thing i do not like about Perth is the drastic change in temperature between day and night. It was about 27 degrees C during the day and it dropped to 3 degrees at night. And around sunset time, the wind would pick up and it was rather unpleasant cycling home in the cold.

Bought a new bicycle!!!

2008-09-16T21:19:00.005+08:00

After being here for a few weeks and walking everywhere, I was getting a bit sick of walking. It takes ages to get anywhere and waiting around for buses and trains were not really that fun.

I went online and searched for any bike shop in Perth, trawled through mountain bike forums to see if there were any cheap bike deals, and also physically visited bike shops to see what they have that's worth the money they were asking for. The bike shops here, and I guess anywhere for that matter, were not really centrally located, so more walking for me just to get a bike. After spending about 1 week looking for a decent deal.. I gave up on Perth online shops and physical shops and decided to go with what I am familiar with. Torpedo7.co.nz a New Zealand no frills bike shop.

The bike arrived in a big brown box, with "Ghost" written on it. I was anxious so I opened it:

The bike was partially assembled but i had to buy some tools to fit it all together. The bike did come with user instructions on how to put it all together too, but alas.. too bad i do not read German.

After assembling the handle bars, the pedals, seat, disc brakes and wheels, i had to carefully setup the disc brake clearance so that they do not rub all the time and also adjust the seat and handle bar position so they fit me perfect.

The brand of the bike is "Ghost" and I think it is really cool, especially in matt "duck poo" green.

As for specs, its a Ghost Dual Comp 08, and yes, its a dirt jumper..why? because my previous bike was a dirt jumper and the angled top tube looks cool

7005 T6 DB DRG frame
RST Gila Plus T8 shocks
SHIMANO ALIVIO componentry
SRAM TRX Shifters
SHIMANO 485 Disc, 180mm front and back
GID LIGHT stem
GID RISE LIGHT, 600 mm handle bar
AHEADSET STS headset
GID LIGHT LASER seatpost
GHOST VL 2064U saddle
GHOST LIGHT Pedals
ALEX DP17 rims
DT SWISS 1,8 spoke
Schwalbe Albert Sport 2.25 tyres

Its not the top of the range componentry, but it has shimano hydraulic disc brakes and what sound to me like a good branded components. Its not like I am going to compete in races with it, so it will suffice.

After 1 hour, I finally got it all assembled and it does look cool.

I must admit, it looks the business with the white contrasting adjustable shocks. I was contemplating changing the tyres to slick so it would be more efficient on the road, but hey, its a cheap bike so i figured i'll use up the tyres and get some nokian next time.

All up, it cost me about $1000 AUD for the bike, crash helmet, tools, rear flashing light, bike lock, and hand pump. Not bad at all considering that a bike of similar spec would cost more than $1000AUD in the shops here.

I took it out to terrorize the neighbourhood and adjusted the gears and brakes further.. and it rides mint.. despite the cheap shimano alivio components. Thanks Torpedo7.co.nz for making it affordable!

Will write more about riding tomorrow.. what do you think of the bike?

Ikea Yeah... :)

2008-09-15T22:13:00.002+08:00

Well, not knowing where i am going to work, i have not bought a car yet.. so everything is going to be on foot. Kinda sucky since i need to buy furniture.

Trains in Perth are quite convenient. I got one of those smart rider cards that "bleeps" when i get on and off, so its very easy. Anyway, the nearest train station was 45 mins walk away.

The train ride to Perth CBD took 25 mins but only cost me $1.25.. cheap cheap

In order to get to ikea, i have to switch trains at the Perth Station. The Picture above shows how the train looked like. They were super comfy and quiet. Apparently the old trains from Perth were sold to NZ and the trains servicing Auckland is the old Perth trains

Anyway, after changing trains, I arrived just outside IKEA, Inaloo Perth. I never actually been to any Ikea, and I must say, It's hard to miss with those colors. Once inside, they had these reusable bags for their customers to carry around, apparently that's suppose to save the planet somehow. Anyway, it was big shop, with many different themed rooms showcasing their products. Their products looked really nice, well thought out, good quality.. but.. somehow cheap (pricewise.)

Take for example this bed here, it was only $199, not including mattress of course. I don't think I will ever be able to get a similar quality bed in Auckland for that price. See the bed in the background, it was so well thought out, it had lots of storage.. so it works in small rooms. After just a few minutes in here, i was thinking.. man, if I get a job in Perth, my house is going to look so mint once i kitted it out with ikea stuff!!..

And look at this table..

$179... and it was robust, rigid.. and looked nice. Fully customizable too, ie the bottom 2 square things can be replaced with drawers and etc...

Anyway, enough about that, I was pretty hungry after all that hard work looking around, and to my surprise,
IKEA has its own food court too!!!

The foodcourt was actually quite big.. and those trolleys that people push around when they buy stuff makes it look like an airport food court.

After having a few feeds in Perth CBD, i was under the impression that things here are really pricey, ie cheap meals are more than 10 bux... but IKEA changed that impression. I got this..

The Swedish meatball salad was $2.00 and the chicken breast with potato, gravy and Veges were $4. I was well impressed. The food here kinda remind me of the food at my previous work place but nicer. Thank goodness I live far away, else I might put on some pounds.

Ok, enough about that... after lunch, I bought my bedroom essentials (left out on purpose just in case someone might judge me on my taste) and went home by train. Man, i must admit it was hard work carrying a flat packed bed, duvet, pillow, sheets, and covers on the train. Good thing I got no shame. That's it for today...

Found a flat...

2008-09-14T19:42:00.003+08:00

Well, after a few weeks of crashing at one of my friend's lounge, I manage to get a room in a share house in a suburb really close to Curtin university, WA (5 mins walk actually.)

The room is nothing too fancy, but for basic survival, it'll suffice. One thing about house sharing is that I have to get some bedroom essentials. As luck has it, there was an Ikea catalog lying around the flat and being bored, I had a quick browse and was surprised how cheap and nice looking the housewares were.

Ok, I'd made up my mind and will visit Ikea the next day to have a look at the actual item just to be sure they are as good as they look in the catalog.

Exploring Perth CBD

2008-09-13T13:32:00.000+08:00

I'd been checking out Perth on Google earth ages before i got here. Everywhere seem quite close. However, after my first day walk around Perth CBD, I quickly realise that Perth is actually quite spaced out. I got lost walking around Perth. Yeah, for those that do not know me that well.. i tend to get lost quite easily.

Sick of getting lost, I figured i should get a map and thought i can get one of those fold out maps... but alas..the only fold out maps available are those of the CBD and no where else. The closest multipurpose map I got was this big street directory.

Its a bit bulky (~1.5kgs,)... guess i have to lug it around from now on. Oh, and for good measure... i got one of those free "what's on" guide.

Sick of walking after getting lost, I figured its probably more time efficient for me to take the free buses to do loops around Perth. All buses within the CBD appears to be free. They also run on LPG so the city doesn't smell like diesel fumes.

The picture above is not a CAT bus, but there are free buses in the CBD are called CAT (Central Area transit.) that do loops around the city for free.

Hmm, it seems that i sat in the wrong place to get a good view, so after the old man at the front left, I took his seat instead.

There are some good sights in Perth, but i can only take that much in. So i hoped off the bus and headed home

Looking for a job in Perth

2008-09-12T22:21:00.000+08:00

Seek, careerone, my career, linkme... these were the few sites that i thrawl through everyday since I landed in Perth about a month ago looking for a Mechanical Engineering or mining/oil and gas role. Unfortunately for me, the resources industry appear to be a bit reluctant to take in someone without any prior experience in this industry unless you are a graduate, at least that's how it seem to come across to me.

Being unemployed isn't necessarily a bad thing, this just means that I have heaps to time to explore Perth.

On my first day here, the first thing that made an impression was an Arcade called London Court.

The London Court is a shopping arcade built in the 1930s to recreate part of Tudor London. This is the only arcade that gave that old skool feel. The rest of Perth, is fairly modern.

This is Hay St, one of the main shopping strip that is tiled and closed off for punters to walk about.

Overall the vibe feels good and there's a good blend between the new and old buildings.

Unlike Auckland, the city streets appear clean and surprisingly, the streets are not as gridlocked as you would expect for a main centre, (picture taken on weekday 4.25pm.)

As first impression goes, Perth got the thumbs up as a clean and livable city.

Back to the original topic, if anyone reading this from the resources industry in Australia wants to talk.. feel free to contact me (free plug for myself... haha)

New life, new beginnings..

2008-09-12T22:18:00.000+08:00

After long deliberations, i finally got off my ass and started a blog to capture experiences, memories and events in my life so hopefully i can look back in the future and realise how far i had come. In this blog, I will capture what i had previously done and what i am doing at the time the blog is written. Feel free to leave comments, but please be constructive.. not just slagging