Uncategorized – Page 27

Captain’s Log

August 14, 2002 by HB

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.

Global Warning

August 11, 2002 by HB

I smelled what The Rock was cooking tonight. It smelt pretty damn good. =D
The highlight of the event is the three way match with The Rock, Triple H
and Brock Lesnar. The Stacy Keibler and Torrie Wilson one is fun to watch
too. Torrie won the Bra and Panties match by stripping Stacy down to her
bra and panties. It can be argued that the real winners of that match are
the guys in the audience though. Heh. I’m really sleepy now so I’ll write
up the event tomorrow after I wake up. Until then, I leave you with this
teaser.

Hurricane fans holding up signs.

Indo Calling Card

August 7, 2002 by HB

I’ve just discovered this calling card recently after reading a poster
 advertising rates of 6.9 cents a minute to Malaysia. This is the cheapest
 rates I’ve ever seen here. When I first arrived in Melbourne in 2000, the
 cheapest I could get is the Apple calling card at 20c per minute. But soon
 after that, the market was flooded with a deluge of calling cards and the
 lowest price dropped to 18c and then 15c and then 12c and then 9.9c just a
 couple of months ago. Regarding this card, it’s called Indo Calling Card
 and offers 6.9 cents a minute to Malaysian land lines and 9.9c to mobile
 numbers.

There is a green apple logo at the bottom of this calling card, which is
 the logo of the Apple calling card. Sure enough, the familiar and very
 annoying female voice thanked me for selecting Apple communications. Damn,
 that voice is loud and grating. This card also has the Apple calling card
 “feature” where you can’t key in the PIN number until the jingle is over.
 It’s not a short jingle too…so after a while you do get a bit tired of
 having to listen to a loud, grating voice reminding you to enter the
 number of the destination you want to dial “fashioned in double oh double
 one followed by the country code…”. I can’t complain about the prices
 though. 6.9 cents is about as low as you can get.

Four days?

August 5, 2002 by HB

I tried to get my photos developed today, but apparently Advantix (APS)
film needs a couple of days to develop. I bought a

Kodak Advantix Switchable disposable camera [kodak.com] at Mt Buller
when my digicam was recovering from death by snow. I dropped it off at my
campus bookshop this morning, and was told to check back again on
Thursday. I saw that panoramic APS film costs A$2 each to develop. I’m
being reminded again why I got a digicam. Film developing prices are
ridiculous. Oh well. I also checked the option for a

Kodak Picture CD to save myself from having to scan in those prints
manually. Four days seems like a long wait though, and on campus
developing prices are not that different from private places too.

Anyway, I also signed up for a one month membership at the campus gym
today. There was a promotion where you can get a membership at a renewal
price. The physical exams are all booked until next week though, and I
can’t use the gym until I pass the physical. They want to make sure
members don’t drop dead from a heart attack the moment they start using
the facilities or something.

This limited edition orange Crunchie is pretty good. Not only is the milk
chocolate covering orange flavored, but so is the honeycomb! Nice.

My mountain

August 1, 2002 by HB

I’m going to sleep now so I can wake up early tomorrow to catch the 8:30 am coach from Spencer
Street Station to Mt Buller [mtbuller.com.au]. I’ll be arriving there at
approximately 1:30 pm so there is still time to hit the slopes. =D If you’re so inclined, you
can try and catch me on one of these Snow Cams [ski.mtbuller.com.au]:

Chamois (FIS World Aerials Jump
Site)

Shakey Knees

WARNING – Looking at people on holidays having a good time could make you envious.

Anyway, I’ve done some laundry yesterday, so I’ll actually have stuff to wear on my ski trip.
Laundry day is always annoying for me. There are only 8 clothes dryers in the laundry room and 3 of
them are out of service at the moment and two of them doesn’t really dry clothes so everyone is in
contention for the remaining two dryers.

Roberts Hall Laundry Room.

I decided to head over to the Richardson Hall laundry room to dry my clothes. They have rows and
rows of dryers, all spanking new. It’s only about 100 meters from the Roberts Hall laundry room
too, so it’s pretty convenient. Heh.

Richardson Hall Laundry Room.

Well, it was warm today when I woke up so I decided to wear a shirt instead. Put my cell phone
into the shirt pocket and then decided to change because I wanted to wear that shirt tomorrow. But
unfortunately, I forgot to take my cell phone out of the shirt pocket so I didn’t have my cell with
me today. When I got back, my cell phone wasn’t in the shirt pocket as I thought, and my room is
really messy, so I had to get a friend to call me so I could triangulate the source and find my
cell phone. Note to self: Remember to bring along the cell phone charger and the adapter +
digicam battery charger. Anyway, I won’t be blogging until Sunday night (GMT +10) when I get
back, so in the meantime, enjoy the Snow Cams.

YHA Travel

July 29, 2002 by HB

I’m feeling rather nauseous now for some reason. The remedy for nausea for me is to eat Poh Chi
Kit pills. Now, you can’t bring this stuff into Australia because one of it’s ingredients (Radix
Angelicae) is a protected herb or something. I had to smuggle some in by putting it into my
pockets. Pretty sad to have to do this with legitimate drugs, eh? Anyway, I went down to the city
today to pay for my
Mt Buller YHA [yha.com.au] accomodation.

YHA Travel in Hardware Lane, Melbourne.

Prepaid Hostel Booking slip. Mt Buller [mtbuller.com.au]…here I come!

I also applied for a Hostelling International [iyhf.org] card while I was there. Thus,
I paid the members fee (for the accommodation) of A$50 per night instead of the normal A$55.
Actually, I’m only eligible to apply for a YHA card, which can only be used in Australia, but at
the kind agent’s discretion, I got a Hostelling International card instead, which is A$32
instead of A$52. A Hostelling International card can be used all over the world too, and it has
all the same benefits as a YHA card in Australia.

Hostelling International membership card.

Anyway, after all that, I went in search of a backpack. I went to 5 or 6 shops before deciding
to settle for the one I saw at Kathmandu [kathmandu.com.au]. It’s a large backpack with
a detachable daypack. Pretty nifty. The daypack is rather small though, but I have the option of
getting a larger Gluon daypack and attaching it to one of the straps. The original price of this
backpack is A$459.50 but I got it for A$229.75 (50% discount). That’s a very good price for
backpacks of this size.

Well, I had dinner at Hungry Jack’s after that and took the train to Caulfield. I managed to
miss my lecture and ended up in the labs reading today’s lecture notes instead while waiting for my
7pm tutorial. I was waiting outside the (locked) tutorial room for 10 minutes before decided to
recheck my allocated time. Sure enough, I’m in T317 and I saw another tutorial in the same timeslot
at B457 so I decided to pop over and check. Nope, there was no one there too. I think it’s because
the labs and tutorials are on alternate weeks for this subject. No wonder, I had thought 6 hours
for one subject seems kinda stiff. My laboratory is tomorrow, so I’ll have to read up on the tute
notes and get ready for the graded exercise tomorrow.

Bend It Like Beckham

July 29, 2002 by HB

I just finished watching this, um…brilliant movie. It’s about an Indian girl who is
living in Hounslow and her desire to play football. Being in a conservative family, her parents do
not approve and just wants her to be able to cook and get married to a nice Indian man. She meets
up with another girl who is playing in a local women’s team and the story goes from there. I won’t
spoil it for you, but if you like soccer, British humor or watching women soccer players changing
into their kits, then don’t miss out on this one. Oh, and if you have a foot fetish, you’ll enjoy
this one as well. Plenty of feet shots, and there’s even a scene where the coach massages the feet
of one of his players, if you like stuff like that. =D Interesting fact, IMDB [imdb.com] says that Keira Knightley (the girl
who plays Jules) was also in Star Wars Episode I as a handmaiden of Queen Amidala.

The Friday Five [fridayfive.org]

July 26, 2002 by HB

1. How long have you had a weblog? I registered sixthseal.com sometime in April and my
first post was on the 19th of April 2002. That’s just slightly more than three months. =D

2. What was your first post about? It was a message saying sixthseal.com is officially live
and the story behind my domain name. It’s based on a Revelation passage. Read the entry here [sixthseal.com].

3. How many changes (name, location, etc.) of your weblog have there been, if more than
one? The major change that I made ever since I started was to put all the images in an
images directory about a week ago to better organize things. I also started the weblog with
the intention of it being a webcam page too, but unfortunately my university proxy does not allow
off-campus FTP connections, so that idea was nixed after a while. I still have my
Logitech QuickCam Pro 3000 [logitech.com] though. The webcam image has been replaced by a
Picture of the Day (look above) and a POTD archive [sixthseal.com] which
has the previous 7 days worth of Picture of the Days.

An old capture from my non-streaming webcam dated 05/09/2002.

4. What CMS (content management system) do you use? Do you like it or do you want to try
something else? Plain old Microsoft Frontpage. I update my blog manually and FTP the files to a
Unix server on campus where I have an account. Then I have to SSH to the Unix server and FTP my
domain from there. This is because I don’t have direct off-campus FTP access. Everything needs to
be done through the on-campus Unix server. I’m not too happy about this arrangement since it makes
updating a bit tedious, but I’m stuck with it because I live on campus. I might look into some CMS
packages like Greymatter though.

5. Do you read people who have both a journal and a weblog? Or do you prefer to read people who
have all of their writing in one central place? I didn’t know that there is a difference
between a weblog and a journal. I read a couple of weblogs, around six, and I usually prefer all
the writing to be in one central place so I don’t have to browse around the menus.

Melbourne

July 23, 2002 by HB

Melbourne again. GMT +10 again. I arrived at around 6:45 am but got delayed by a HORRENDOUS line
to the red exit. The red exit is for people who have stuff to declare. The line snaked all through
the baggage collection area. I was waiting there for half an hour and I had barely moved 10 meters
and the line in front of me was 50 meters at least. There was this one customs guy going through
the line to try to reduce the people going for the red exit. After a bit of questioning, some
people were directed to the green exit. Now, come my turn, I told the customs officer I was
carrying stuff for a friend and I’m not too sure what’s in there so I have to go through the red
exit. This revelation alarmed the customs occifer, I mean, officer, and he directed me RIGHT
THROUGH THE CROWD to the alternate red exit! Apparently, there are two red exits, the normal one
with a mini x ray machine and manual checks and the alternate one with an industrial sized x ray
machine and more stringent checking. There were only 4 or 5 people in the alternate red exit. The
only way to get to the alternate red exit is to bypass the cordon, and for that you must be
escorted by a customs officer. How nice indeed. I jumped the bulk of the queue just by saying that
I was carrying “unknown stuffs” (make a conspirational face while you say it) for someone
else. Oh what a tangled web we weave. Heh. Granted, the checking is more thorough, but hey, it
saves you from queuing up. So if anyone experiences a long red exit queue at Tullamarine airport,
it won’t hurt to try telling the customs officer that you’re “taking something for a
friend”. Heh. I was slightly worried coz I had a warez version of Photoshop 7 conveniently
concealed behind my legit Nikon View driver CD, but fortunately the customs guy did not care to
look through it. I’m starting to think that the intellectual property issue is becoming less
enforced nowadays. What of those horror stories about warez CD being fined A$1000 each?

Oh, something funny happened on the KL -> Melbourne flight. There I was, reading a newspaper
while an orange juice laid in the cup holder of my seat, conveniently within arms reach. Alas, I
accidentally tipped the nearly full cup with my newspaper and it poured unto the pants of the guy
sitting beside me! How embarrassing…I apologized and got the cabin attendant to bring us some
napkins. The guy was pretty cool about it, but I still felt bad coz it wet the whole left side of
his pants and I could see he was uncomfortable for he put napkins on his pants to try and absorb
the orange juice. Oh well, these things happen in sardine class. Speaking about fluids, the Sibu
-> Kuching and Kuching -> KL flight left me all st and uncomfortable due to the heat.

I finally caved in and paid RM 20 (!) for a private shower at the KLIA Airside Transit Hotel
[klia.com.my]. They give you a towel and you use the private toilet/sink/shower room. Bar soap
or liquid soap is provided in the shower. I still can’t believe I paid RM 20 (!!) for a shower,
but it sure felt good, coz I was st and uncomfortable by the time I reached KLIA. You know,
if you’re so inclined, you can actually bum a free shower if you want to. The hotel staff only
provides you with a towel and you leave the used towel in the shower, so if you bring your own
towel, I presume they won’t know either.

Well, I noticed that the in-flight entertainment system of Malaysia Airlines has improved. They
now have a larger library of games – even multiplayer games (chess, reversi, trivia) where you can
compete with other passengers. The trivia one is quite fun coz when the scores are tallied, it
displays all the current players and their seat number. But the best thing is that they have
Bejeweled! Apparently they have gotten a license from PopCap Games [popcap.com]. It’s not exactly easy to play
though, coz you have to manually move the square down the grid instead of using the mouse in the
PC version [popcap.com] and the Web version [zone.msn.com] or the stylus in the
Palm version [astraware.com]. Nevertheless,
it was very interesting to see it available in-flight.

PC Games on the in-flight entertainment system.

Bejeweled!

Ooh…

The Friday Five on Saturday

July 20, 2002 by HB

I forgot to do the Friday Five [fridayfive.org] yesterday, so here it is – a
day late and none the worse for wear.

1. Where were you born? Sibu, Sarawak. Sarawak is in Malaysia.

2. If you still live there, where would you rather move to? If you don’t live there, do you
want to move back? Why or why not? Well, technically I live in Melbourne coz I spend most of my
time over there. That is because I’m enrolled in a university in Melbourne. I come back to Sibu every time my
semester break starts, so I spend a healthy chuck of my time in Sibu as well. After graduating,
I’m planning to do my post grad studies in the United States before coming back and working
either in KL or Singapore. Tentative plans of course, anything could change.

3. Where in the world do you feel the safest? I feel safe everywhere.

4. Do you feel you are well-traveled? I’ve been to Malaysia (obviously), Singapore, New
Zealand, Australia and Indonesia. That doesn’t qualify me as being well-traveled but I do love
traveling.

5. Where is the most interesting place you’ve been? Rotorua [naturalnz.co.nz] in the Bay of Plenty, New
Zealand. It’s like a hot springs resort town and the air permanently smells of sulfur. I went
there for my first landing in ’93. I had PR status in New Zealand. Me and my dad went to this
hot pool and there were pools going up to 50 degrees! Unfortunately, there was a sign there
saying that it’s not advisable for people under 13 to use the higher temperature hot pools. This
puzzled me slightly, until it was explained that high temperatures might arrest the growth of
the testes and probably kill a bucket load of sperm as well. The horror.

This picture was taken in ’93. I’m in the spa equipped in every room of the motel we stayed in
Rotorua. I was around 13 at that time.