Month: August 2002

Sex It Up Week

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Guess what week this week is? If you said “It’s SEX IT UP WEEK” you are absolutely correct. It
happens every semester and it’s organized by the student union of Monash University in Caulfield.
Unfortunately, it’s not as interesting as it sounds. Heh. It is mostly a safe sex and sexual
awareness week. Today there was a massdebate (har har) in the student lounge. The most promising
event is on Thursday night, where there will be a blow job competition (it says so on the flyer).
Don’t know what that’s about, but I’m not going to go anyway. I’m absolutely swamped with
assignments and there are two due this week.

Queue is not just another letter in the alphabet

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I was late going to queue up for the shuttle bus to Caulfield today. I had to go to the
operations office beforehand to ask about one of my bills and there was this line already formed
when I got to the bus loop.

Good thing there were still seats left after this line crowded into the shuttle. I had to be on
this shuttle because there was an Industrial Experience supervisor meeting I had to attend. Anyway,
I have another meeting tomorrow – an ITPM one at the unholy hour of 9 am so that’s it for
today.

Life, the Universe and Everything

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In contrast to yesterday, I had a rather easy day today. I slept in until 4 pm and woke up to
get some dinner. A solid 12 hours of sleep. Jimmy was saying that it’s equal to wasting away 1/2 of
my life and I agree. Perhaps I should tone down on the shuteye a bit. Anyway, since I’m doing my
final year of university, I’ve decided to go visiting around this year. Thus, I’ll be going to the
Grampians [visitgrampians.com.au] next
Saturday.

It’s a day trip organized by MONSU (Monash University Student Union) so it should be pretty fun.
It will go through the big five of Grampians – Halls Gap, Boroka Lookout, MacKenzie Falls, Zumstein
and the ominously named Jaws of Death. I wanted to go to the Great Ocean Road day trip as well, but
it was already sold out. No worries, I’ll take one of the travel deals offered by YHA [yha.com.au]. I feel an urge to go around Victoria since it
will probably be my last year here. After I graduate, I’ll be going to the United States to do
my Masters, so it’s pretty unlikely that I’ll be coming back to Australia. To work I mean, of
course I’ll be coming back for holidays and such. I’ve always found it depressing that time
seems to pass by so quickly. Why, I can still remember the good times I’ve had in primary
school. That is life I guess.

South Yarra

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I’ve had a pretty busy day today. Woke up early to meet with my Industrial Experience group
mates in South Yarra and worked on the assignment for a couple of hours. I went to Soda Rock after
that to have a late lunch. Soda Rock is a diner near Jam Factory in South Yarra. I’ve never been
there before though. The food is okay but the service is really good for a diner. It has an
authentic 40’s feel, and it looks like Pop’s Diner in the Archie comics to me. Anyway, I had to go
to the library after that so I went back to Clayton. I’m really sleepy now, so I think I’m not
making much sense anyway. I am going to go and die my small death.

View from the counter at Soda Rock. The ketchup says he’s happy.

Spa is APS spelled backwards

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Well, now that the “catastrophic hard disk failure” (that’s the third time I used that phrase
today) issues has been resolved, I can write a bit about my day. I found this interesting drink
named Coffee Cola.

The lettering on the can suggests it’s made in Malaysia, but I’ve never seen this before in my
life. Perhaps it’s one of those “for export only” deals. The taste is…rather dismal, I’m sad to
report. It tastes like a cross between a cola sweet and a coffee sweet. In fact, the whole drink
tastes like barely carbonated melted sweets. Not very nice at all.

Anyway, I went to Doug Ellis Aquatic Center
[monash.edu.au] with Jimmy this evening. I just wanted to use their spa, sauna and steam rooms
but did a couple of laps in the heated pool since I have to pay for pool entry anyway. It was
chilly today and I was looking forward to some sauna action by the end of the day. The pools are
rather hard to swim in though because there are floating barriers (don’t know what it’s really
called) dividing each lane. This is because there are designated lanes for slow, medium and fast
swimmers. However, there are often more than 3 people in each lane, which makes swimming very
difficult. It didn’t bother me though, coz I wanted to use the sauna/spa/steam rooms only
anyway. =D There is nothing like walking into a steaming hot sauna after a cold winter’s day.
That sure felt good.

The church of mput

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One good thing came out of this “catastrophic hard disk failure”. I have found God and He goes
by the name mput. I would be lost without Him. If you’ve been following my blog for a while,
you’ll have heard me mention that I update this blog by manually uploading the files via telnet to
my uni’s Unix server and then from there to my hosting company. I have always used put to
transfer my files and that requires you to type the each and every file name after put. Due
to the large amounts of files I have to transfer today, I decided to dust off some Unix books
(actually I just did a Google search) and find out how to transfer files using wildcards and I have
been shown the light! Oh, Hallelujah, mput is almighty indeed.

Time warp back to July

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If anyone saw the main page revert back to July, fear not…you have not gone back in time.
Apparently, the server my blog is hosted on had a “catastrophic hard disk failure”. My hosting
company only does monthly backups because they want to minimize server downtime, which is fair
enough, but now I’ll have to re-upload one month’s worth of stuff. How fun. It’s going to take a
while so expect some pictures to be broken and not all links fully working. My apologies. Fun fun
fun.

Nostalgia

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I went to get some fish and chips just now and man, did that bring back some memories. It seems
that Australia/New Zealand fish and chips shops looks about the same. Greasy interior, a bench with
old magazines for people waiting in line and a slightly depressing ambience. I remember I used look
forward to eat one serving of fish and chips as a Sunday meal back when I was in New Zealand. Just
a pack of fish (NZ$1.10) a piece of fish (NZ$1.10) and a whole bottle of tomato sauce (NZ$2.40). I
will then absolutely saturate the chips with tomato sauce (about a 400 ml bottle) and eat the whole
thing with relish. Another “fish and chips memory” would be staying out in town late most weekdays
while still wearing my school uniform with a couple of my buddies. I was in high school then –
Riccarton High School in Church Corner, Christchurch. We would go to the city square straight after
class and hang around town until around 12 midnight. There was a fish and chip shop near the city
and we would always get something to eat there and play the old arcade games in the shop for a
while before taking the bus back to Church Corner.

This picture is from the Riccarton High School [school.nz] website.
Hmm…looking at the web page sure brings back a lot of memories. The circle shows my first home
stay when I was there. I was always late for school and to avoid the gate keeper, I would jump
over the fence which connects the school grounds and the backyard of my home stay. Pretty nifty
eh? =D It works both ways, but climbing into the school grounds is easier than climbing into my
home stay backyard. This is because there are lumbar supports on the backyard side of the fence
to use as footholds. If I wanted to climb back into my home stay backyard, I would need to pull
myself up and vault over. It was hard to do that in the beginning, but after a bit of practice,
I got really good at it. This is useful for an entirely different reason. I didn’t have a lunch
pass then so I couldn’t go out of school grounds. The backyard trick allows me to go out without
having to pass though the gate. Heh. Those were the days indeed.

Sleep is good

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I saw this Cultural Carnival going on at the campus grounds this morning as I was on my way to
class. I didn’t get to really check it out coz I was in a hurry, but there were some food being
prepared and a group playing bagpipes on stage.

The Korean booth at Cultural Carnival.

Anyway, I got my gym membership card today and a reciprocal card so I can use any of the gyms in
the campuses (there are six in Melbourne alone) of Monash University. Which reminds me (I won’t
know why it reminds me, it just did) I have to wake up tomorrow at 7 am to prepare for a client
meeting for my Industrial Experience project. That leaves…lemme see…about 4 hours of shuteye if
I prepare to go to sleep now. Sounds like a good idea. I had an issue very recently. As it turns out, it was bed bugs. Thankfully I was able to find do it yourself treatment options online so it wasn’t too much of a hassle, but still a little gross to find out. At least that’s taken care of now. I’m not sure how long I dealt with it to be honest, but it was a pretty long time if memory serves. I’m going to be more mindful of that from here on that’s for sure.

Captain’s Log

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I’ve been watching the DVR rips of Star Trek: Enterprise [startrek.com]
Season 1 and it’s pretty good. I’ve always been a bit of a Star Trek fan but I like to watch
episodes back to back. The opening is really good, quite a departure from previous Star Trek
openings. Another thing worth of note is that it’s showed in 16:9 aspect ratio. The Enterprise
seems to have an agreeable cast as well, with Scott Bakula (of Quantum Leap – love that show
too) as the captain and the delicious Jolene Blalock and Linda Park as the female bridge crew
members. The facial repertoire of Jolene Blalock (who plays a Vulcan Science Officer) greatly
reminds me of one of my friends back in Kuching. It seems rather interesting that Linda Park (a
Korean) is playing a Japanese Ensign officer in the series though. Incidentally, I have been
playing a bit of the Star Trek: Dominion War
[campaigncreations.com] mod for Starcraft recently. It’s okay, but the Defiant ships are way
overpowered.

Anyway, I’m feeling rather queasy now and have been visiting the toilet numerous times today
courtesy of “Hot Lemon Chicken”. Damn, that hot lemon chicken is helluva hot. Even writing this is
getting me started up again. Gotta go.

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