One from the collection

sibuxmas.jpg

Above is the Christmas tree at Wisma Sanyan that I took several
weeks before, but never posted up. It should have been taken down by
now though…at least I think it has. I’m feeling rather uninspired
today and went browsing thru my sadly sparse (due to an accidental culling
[sixthseal.com]) collection of Sibu photos for one which I haven’t
posted yet, since I haven’t taken much photos since I came over.
Hmm…I’m rambling. Anyway, I have a supervisor meeting at 8:15 am
again tomorrow, which means I’ll need to be up by 6 am for my daily
upon-waking-up bowel movement, so I’m heading to bed. Meanwhile, amuse
yourself with Trinity Methodist Church’s collection of MP3 sermons
[tmc.org.my]. Our family used to go to this church before we moved to
Sibu. Several of the (guest?) sermons are done by pastors which used to
be attached to Wesley Methodist Church in Sibu, like Rev. Lenita Tiong,
Khoo Ho Pin and Tie King Tai. For some reason, there has been no
recently added stuff though.

Ahhh…..

cleared.jpg

I went to the ATM straight after my 8:15 am supervisor meeting and
was very relieved to see that my bank draft has finally cleared on the
6th day (I banked it in on Thursday). Gone are the days when I have to
survive solely on instant noodles! Anyway, I withdrew some money and
went to Coles to get some much needed groceries. Much of it is junk
food, as you can see. πŸ™‚ However, I did get some food items too, like
the steak pies and the 1kg bag of rice. I also got some laundry
detergent so I can finally get some laundry done. Anyway, I had wanted
to go to McDonalds to get some nice, solid food inside me, but it was
still early then and the breakfast menu was still on, so I just had an
egg and bacon McMuffin.

Today’s weather was very naughty. It hit 38 degrees in the
afternoon. πŸ™ I was half baked (and it wasn’t the good kind of half
baked too) and the heat still hasn’t dissipated from my room.
Thankfully, the mercury has dropped somewhat since then, but it’s still
pretty warm. Summer over here sucks, it can get much hotter than in
Malaysia and the dry weather makes you feel the heat just that much
more.

Edit: Oh, it wasn’t a 38 degree summer after all…turns out to be 40.2 degrees! No wonder it felt so hot today. Read this [theage.com.au].

Link: Got the back to work blues? [theage.com.au]

Yes, yes I do indeed. This is part of the article:

“It’s a very real thing … the back to work blues is really
about people thinking they didn’t quite have enough of a holiday,” said
Dr Wilks, a professor of tourism, who is also a psychologist.

You pulled the words straight outta my mouth, buddy. I know everyone
is probably sick of hearing me say this already, but damn, it sucks
being in Melbourne when most students are still in Malaysia, about to
celebrate Chinese New Year with all the traffic jams and the reunions
and the visiting and the CNY songs and the firecrackers and everything.
I don’t even want to think about what I’m missing.

It would be great if I had a 4 month holiday though, I can usually
stretch my summer holidays to 4 months if my exam timetables are
aligned right. It’ll be nice to come back for a 3 month semester and
then graduate, coz then I’ll be thinking I don’t have enough time here
in Melbourne to visit all the attractions I still haven’t visited
instead of thinking about what I’m missing back in Sibu. πŸ™‚ I have
missed celebrating Chinese New Year in Sibu too many times…just too
many times.

Link of the day: Cannabis: The good oil on Jesus [theage.com.au]

Heal me.

The Ketchup Song

I caught this meme (if you can call it that) late. I didn’t even
know what the ketchup song was until roughly 2 weeks ago. The person
who told me was flabbergasted at my lack of erudition and acted like I
had committed a serious social faux pas. πŸ™‚ Anyway, I’ve heard bits and
pieces of it while in shopping malls but didn’t know it was the ketchup
song then. Look at this, it’s pretty good and there is a bit of
interactive stuff (erm…a mouse click) which explains the lyrics in
the middle part too.

Link: The Ketchup Song [cutestuf.com]

Poring Hot Springs

poring.jpg

Man, this picture sure brings back memories. This was taken by Daniel
[mailto:] during his Kota Kinabalu trip. He sent me some beautiful pics
of Sabah yesterday. I went there at the end of last year too and also
went to Poring Hot Springs (the one in the picture). It’s this place
that has hot tubs with sulfur water and also some (icy) cold natural
pools. I had fun on the water slide in the cold pool when I went there
last year too. Hmm…come to think of it, my own KK trip was exactly
one year ago and yet it seems like that happened ages ago. I
guess my time perspective is a bit skewed by the fact that I resent
being in Melbourne when everyone else is going to celebrate Chinese New
Year back home soon. How I wish the final 5 months of my stay in
Melbourne will pass quickly so I can be back home again. It’s strange
how I prefer it back home now when I used to prefer it overseas last
time. The home is where the heart is, I’ve been told. Hmm…something
to think about.

No recess

I’ve just attended my first day of summer school. I’m taking a
summer semester subject – the intensive kind that finishes the
coursework in 3 weeks so I’ll be in class from 2 pm – 5 pm everyday.
It’s BUS3650 Business Applications of Neural Networks, which I am
taking as an elective. From what I see, it seems to be a fairly easy
class, so no worries about this one. The exam for this paper is on the
5th of February, so there is no chance I’ll be coming home for Chinese
New Year even if I didn’t have Industrial Experience to contend with.
Speaking of which, I have a supervisor meeting tomorrow at 8:15 am.
I’ll better get the stuff sorted for tomorrow’s meeting. It sucks to
miss Chinese New Year. I hear the CNY mood is pretty good in Sibu, what
with all the out of town people coming back and clogging up our
traffic. πŸ™‚

To default or not to default, that is the question…

billdef.jpg

I just received my cell phone bill which comes to a staggering
A$462.26. It seems that I have two unpaid bills from the past few
months which added to a total of A$366.11 and a bill for A$89.74 for
the November – December period. I don’t remember having that much in
unpaid bills. I thought I only had a A$195 (my highest bill yet) unpaid
bill so I don’t know where the other A$171 comes from, coz I distinctly
remember paying a bill before I came back. I’m thinking about
er…’defaulting’ on this bill since I’m going to graduate in July
anyway and I have another unused pre-paid SIM card from a different
operator (Telstra) that I can use should push comes to shove.
Anyway, to anyone who has done this before (on an Australian service
provider), what are the legal ramifications? They don’t have my account
number or anything like that, so I figured the most they’ll be able to
do is send letters threatening legal action, which they won’t actually
enforce, due to the number of defaulters each month. What do you think?

Nevertheless, a change in phone habits needs to be cultivated. I used
to call my girlfriend using a calling card and a public phone, coz
public phones have flat rates for local calls. I don’t have a house
phone coz the halls phone charges per minute as well, so every night I
end up using my cell phone to call because I didn’t want to take
another bath after using the germ infested public phones.
Those local calls to the calling card access number using a cell phone
can quickly add up, thus the large bills I’ve been getting recently.
Hmm…to default or not to default?

Junaco Park in Sibu (a last hurrah)

junaco.jpg

I went to Junaco Park (Sibu) a couple of days before I came back to
Melbourne – I think it was the evening of the 29th, but those last few
days have been rather hectic and I didn’t have time to write things up
since I was out so often. Oh well, I better do it now in case I get any
more ideas about deleting my precious memories (photos). Anyway, Junaco
Park is this place 30 kilometers away from Sibu which is like a mini
zoo. The entrance fee is only RM 1 per person. There are the usual
suspects like monkeys, horses, birds etc. We went to see the horses
(ponies?) first.

horse.jpg

I had wanted to take a picture of the famed horse phallus, but
unfortunately none of them felt that it was necessary to erect their
organs to their full potential, so all I got was this:

horsepen.jpg

Oh well, next we went to see the monkeys:

monkey.jpg

He’s pretty tame though, contrary to the “Beware – Monkey Bites”
sign on the cage. We handed it grass from outside the cage and he’ll
reach out and take it from us. He has soft hands, which was pretty
interesting. One of my friends thought it was a good idea to try and
trip him with an umbrella (hope no one from RSPCA is reading this) but
the nimble fellow managed to dodge the umbrella every time.
Fascinating. He also loved this bunch of fruits that grows from a tree
to the side of the cage and it was fun to watch him try and eat it
through the cage (coz he couldn’t pull the whole bunch thru the wire
netting).

monfruit.jpg

Next on the itinerary was the sheep (or are those lambs?). Lemme
tell you, those creatures are hella fierce. I wanted to climb over the
fence to hug one of them and pose for a photo, but one of them, which I
assume is the alpha male started making loud baying noises and stamped
his feet to voice his displeasure at my attempts to violate his mate.

sheep.jpg

I reckon he would have bit me had I went into the fence. It probably
wouldn’t have hurt but his head is about the same height as my genitals
so I decided not to risk it, seeing as I was the only son in our family
and protecting the family jewels should be a priority.

Anyway, we also saw some wild boar:

boar.jpg

an eagle or a hawk:

hawk.jpg

big ass fishes (you have to squint a bit for this one):

bigfish.jpg

a peacock (I think):

peacock.jpg

and a porcupine who wanted a staring match with me, despite my obviously superior physical size:

staring.jpg

Anyway, we had wanted to go fishing or go for a ride on one of the
boats, but it was getting dark so we just had a drink at the canteen
and headed home. All in all it was a fun and memorable day. Junaco Park
is pretty big and there is a lot of hilly terrain, so be prepared for a
bit of physical exertion should you go there. Man, writing all this
made me miss Sibu. I can’t wait to go back again in July.

The Pain!!!

I’m so fucking stupid, so fucking stupid, so fucking stupid! I
copied my photos from the main directory over into a new directory, but
then changed my mind coz I wanted everything in a single directory so I
cancelled and shift-deleted the new directory. Well, guess what? It
seems I have fucking CUT instead of COPIED and now I’ve lost all my
pictures from the 7th of December to the 25th of December. That’s more
than 2 weeks worth of daily pictures, and most of them are very
memorable ones. To my poor memory, the photos ARE my memory and I just
lost more than 2 weeks worth of it. Well, thank you very much! Perfect
timing buddy, right after I stopped feeling sorry for myself for coming
back to Melbourne so early. If I wasn’t given a Y chromosome, I would
be bawling my eyes out right now. I really must check before deleting
next time. It really is a must, especially with photos. I’m so bummed.
It’s like that two weeks never happened. When will the hurting stop?

Fixed (fingers crossed)

Okay, I reposted a couple of previous posts that went missing and
let’s hope that this is the last of the strange-ness resulting from my
host’s data center migration. *fingers crossed*

P/S – I know some of my posts, comments and email went into a black
hole recently, if there is anything important (or un-important for that
matter), please resend coz I didn’t get it. Thanks!

Green AK47s on NYE

ak47g.jpg

Pill Review: Green AK47 circa late December 2002

Availability: Malaysia
Pill color: Light green with dark green blotches
Pill appearance: AK47 imprinted on one side/doesn’t have a dome from what I remember
Beveled?: Not sure
Other: Solid pill, didn’t crumble well
Price: A gift from a friend
Substance: Not tested (I don’t have reagents here)
Probable substance: Methcathinone or ketamine/amphetamine combo

I apologize for the extremely poor quality of the picture. You can’t
really see shit, coz I didn’t actually plan properly to have a pill
tonight. I was planning to go to a party sober on New Year’s Eve.
Imagine that! πŸ™‚ A friend of mine told me about this new batch of AK47s
which are green instead of orange. I’m not too enthusiastic about the
AK47s because of the poor quality of the orange ones, but another
friend who also hangs around pill-heads assured me that the green AK47s
are good stuff and totally unlike the orange ones, which are barely
noticeable.
Anyway, I didn’t pay for the pill (it cost the usual RM 45 though), it
was a gift from a dear friend. Thanks! You know who you are. πŸ™‚ Anyway,
there were 4 of us, and we stopped by a street light to take a photo of
the pill before we went to a disco. The light conditions were not
favorable to macro shots so I just took a photo with flash and crunched
up the pill at 11:00 pm.
It tasted mild compared to the salty orange AK47s and I started feeling
an “alert” about 30 minutes after crunching up the pill. Three of us
were dropping, I took a whole pill and the other two girls shared a
pill and the last one was sober. It seemed to be very ketamine like at
first and I felt disorientated and slightly disassociated coming up
about 45 minutes later. I on a scale of Blur As Fuckβ„’ from 1-10, 10
being the most blur, I felt like a 7.This was confirmed by the other
two, one of whom was driving and said she was feeling a bit too blur to
drive.
Anyway, we went to a disco and started to dance. I didn’t feel much
like dancing at first, didn’t have any energy and saw that my pupils
were slightly constricted (?) even though the disco was dark. The three
of us who dropped shared a beer and continued dancing. After an hour
had passed, I felt VERY energetic and speeded up. Heaps of energy and
you couldn’t pull me off the dance floor.
Unfortunately, 15 minutes after that, the sound was cut off and the
lights started coming on. Uh oh thought everyone and looked towards the
entrance. Sure enough, about 6 policemen with flashlights were coming
in. The four of us sat down together and stopped all movement. I did
felt my fingers unconsciously start tapping along to the music, but I
managed to control it. However one of our group starting rocking her
head again…geram-nya…:) Thanks goodness, the police weren’t there to
sapu (haul everyone in for mandatory urine drug tests) the place but to
“check for minors”. That’s what the manager of the disco told me and
said it was safe to continue with our amphetamine fuelled shenanigans.
I’m pretty sure some money changed hands at some point, but thank God,
the place wasn’t sapu-ed. Anyway, funny thing was, there was this other
girl who wasn’t part of our group and yet stood with us (facing us),
with her back to a pillar to avoid the police from spotting her. I’m
not sure that would have helped if there was a real sapu operation, so
I’m not sure what she was thinking?
Anyway, soon after the police left, we started to dance again, and I
didn’t stop moving until 4 hours later. I had a really, really good
night, lots of lip chewing (chewed it almost to bits), repetitive
movements and other Good Stuff associated with amphetamines. I didn’t
stop moving and chain smoked the whole night. The atmosphere was good
too, the place mostly plays Cantopop songs infused with a steady and
strong bass beat. Some people dis these places but I have to say, this
kind of places are the best places for amphetamine fun here compared to
the pretentious trance clubs.
Well, regarding sleep, I could sleep about 7 hours after I dropped but
it was a very, very fitful sleep and I kept on waking up and I wasn’t
really sure whether I even had any sleep at all. I didn’t have any
appetite the next day too, and I developed a persistent but hopefully
not permanent case of tinnitus from the extreme bass of the venue. I
swear, the volume was so loud you can hear the bass beats rush past
like a wind past your ears. Great fun for amphetamines, but not so good
for your aural health. I wasn’t tired the next day though, still had
some energy but I just took 2.5 mg of Xanax sublingually to help me get
some restful sleep tonight. I’m fairly certain this is a
ketamine/amphetamine combo pill and I must say I have to give it a
thumbs up. Green AK47s are great pills. Green = go!

Postnote: The crash was very bad, I’ll say more so than that
(meth)amphetamines. It seems sorta like an MDMA crash in that there was
severe depression (with anxiety) and a feeling of helplessness. I’m
still wondering whether the crash was associated with the pill or
because I stopped taking benzos after daily recreational use.
Nevertheless, cannabis didn’t do the trick, but some good ol’ caffeine
in me and I was feeling fine again. I’m starting to suspect that this
could be Methcathinone due to it’s effects. I’ll sure love to hear it
if anyone tested this with a reagent.

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