How Did You Celebrate Merdeka Day?

I'm having a day off blogging today to pay respect for Merdeka Day! But since you're here you might as well sit with me while I pour you a cup of tea and we can chit chat.


Lai lai lai! Yum cha, yum cha! Talk cock, sing song we'll go! So how's your Merdeka Day's been? Were you patriotic and sang Negaraku all day long? Or did you just watch the celebration on TV? Tell me how you celebrated Merdeka Day..

I Also Want A Day Off Tomorrow!

Tomorrow is Merdeka Day and everyone in Malaysia is having a day off. I'm so jealous I have to work! I also want a day off tomorrow! As a former malaysian and to pay my respect to the big day I am going to have a day off on my blog tomorrow!


So like everybody else in Malaysia, I too will be having a day off blogging! Happy Merdeka Daying everybody! Please come back on the 1st of September when normal blogging will resume! Merdeka! Merdeka! Merdeka!

Happy Birthday Master Jedi Che-cheh!

In a galaxy far far away...

Peace continues into the second day as the 2 greatest foes in the galaxy agreed to a 2 day of non fighting while they celebrate their birthdays on the 29th and the 30th of this month.

Jedi Master Che-cheh is enjoying her birthday with her faithful companion Chester the wookie. This is a special day for her not because of her birthday but on this day many many years ago it was also the day she passed her trial and became a full-fledge jedi!

Che-cheh was a padawan learner to her Master Jedi Luminara a long time ago. She was a quick learner and knew the way of the Force so well that she didn't take long to finish her apprenticeship with Master Luminara.

She followed her master's teaching diligently and learnt the art of sabre fight with great enthusiasm. Soon she was able to do what her mentor could do.

Her skills were unquestionable and her powers grew stronger by the days. There were never any doubt that she would one day save the Republic from chaos or may even contribute to the rebuilding of the old Republic after the Empire was destroyed.


So a few months after graduating as a full fledge jedi she was promoted to a Master and led the Clone Army in the Clone War. When the jedi were betrayed and murdered Master Che-cheh was able to escape and went into hiding. Her whereabout is still unknown to this day but when the 30th of August comes each year people across the galaxy remembers her and wish her a big Happy Birthday Master Jedi Che-cheh!

My Upcoming Gastronomical Adventures

Tourism Malaysia has been pushing hard at getting overseas tourists to go visit Malaysia in 2007. Alright then, you've got me! I just couldn't resist! Too tempting! I'm too weak so I'm coming!


Yes, I'll be going back to Malaysia in 2007 and my tickets are booked and paid for! I'll be flying Austrian Airline but will be arriving in Singapore on the 28th of December before hopping across to Johore Bahru the next day to catch an AirAsia flight to Kuching, Sarawak where I'll be staying for 3 nights. My last night in Kuching will be spent counting down to the New Year's Eve Celebration before heading onwards to Sibu on New Year's Day where I will be staying for a week. After that I will be flying back to Johore Bahru and sneaking back into Singapore where I will be staying for a few more days before flying back home to Melbourne.

On this upcoming trip I'm making a promise that I will spend it wisely on food, food and more food! Yes I will be on my Gastronomical Adventures to my old country and promise to stuff myself till I can't fit my jeans no more! Making up for the lost years of deprievation of good malaysian foods, this will be my revenge!

Besides foods I would very much love to meet other bloggers and blog readers should you like to take me to all the good eating places you know so well! Blogger meet anyone? Let me know coz I love to see you all!

Walrus BBQ House

Friday after work Terese and I went to see Jessie about getting a hair-cut. After that we went to dinner together with Jessie and her 2 very cute daughters Shania and Alana.

We went to this restaurant in Springvale called Walrus BBQ House. I know, funny name for a restaurant but hey, the owner can call it anything he wants..even Turtle for all I care!

This is a good chinese restaurant, cheap and delicious foods just the way I like it! No fancy stuff like PJ in Glen Waverley but good old no frill chows! Is that Alana hiding under the table?

Shania loves Honey Chicken so we ordered one, a bit too sweet for me but she loves it so why not. I had some too but I'll probably give this a miss next time.

We also ordered Chilli Prawns in salt & pepper, not as nice as Butter Prawns but nice nonetheless. It came more but we ate some already before I took the picture!

This is Kai Lang with tons of garlic! But very tasty leaving us with garlicky breaths when we left! Maybe they could go easy with the garlic.

Lastly we had the Chilli Japanese Tofu in salt & peeper cooked like the prawns which was just as good. A typical chinese meal served with rice just right for 3 adults and 2 childs.


But during the meal Alana and I had a photo snapping match going on until her mother stopped us!

Funky Architecture

I found these photos I took last year which I totally forgotten about but think maybe its time I post them. This post may only interest you if you were an architect so Unker Ho you better pay attention!

I was admiring the architectures of this building in New Quay when I notice on the left side there's something interesting that caught my eyes. Its the way it seems to be "moving" that caught my attention.


I don't know what this is supposed to be other than a funky decoration on the sides of the building. I've never seen anything like it. When the wind blows on it the whole thing will move like wave or ripple on the water. I think its pretty cool, what do you think Unker Ho? Check out the short video clip of it in motion below.

Chaos

Whoopie do! Won another pass to see another free movie! Its from the local newspaper again I think...can't quite remember but all it took me was 1 phone call.


The movie is Chaos and this time we can go see the movie when it comes out in the cinemas, any day, any session. Don't know what the story's about but I don't care for its another free movie!

Just Me Pondering...

Best invention of the 2oth century; airplanes until mankind discover teleportation so travelling can be as simple as walking through a worm hole to get to the other side of the world. Till then, airplanes will have to do.

Austrian Airline, never been on it before. I wonder what they serve onboard, how comfortable the seats are in economy class and how sexy the air hostess are. Hmm..

AirAsia, never been on it either but its the best thing to come to Asia since the introduction of commercial airlines. How will the service compare with the mainstream airlines? Only one way to find out.


Malaysian Airline, pride and joy of the Malaysian government but recently not doing so well. Let's blame AirAsia! I've been on it many times in my life but circumstances may prevent me from going with them nowadays...

What's The Limit?

Australian road speed limits are very strict, there's no "kopi-o" here so I always try my best to obey the speed limits on the roads or else if I were to get caught speeding then its money down the drain and demerit points!


But what do I do when I'm faced with 2 speed limits as shown in the picture above? On the left is 40 and on the right is 60! Which one should I follow? I'm on the middle lane so does that mean I should be doing 50? This is Victoria street heading towards Richmond coming up from the city. As far as I know the odd speed limit signs' been there for a couple of weeks now.

I'm Officially Overweight!

I weighed myself yesterday , its been a while since I weighed myself and I was in for a shock! Never in my existence have I packed on so much weight. All my life I've been underweight till now...

This is me on the scale in my bathroom, its all me..100%, no clothings! (settle down gals!) Last I weighed myself I was around the 72-75 kg but not today. Today I'm officially overweight!


My ideal weight for my height from somewhere I read before is 75 kg but now I'm 78.5 kg! This is the first time for me and I'm hitting the big EIGHT ZERO! Time to get off my butt and exercise if I still wanna stay healthy (look good). I used to have a six pack, now I just have 1 big pack. Time to work on that gut, don't wanna be like Suituapui or his cousins yet!

I Need New Hardwares!

I just love making DVDs, with so many software out there to choose from the possibilities are endless. Sure a lot of them are sharewares and trialwares that will expire on you as soon as the trial periods are over but thank goodness for cracks and key gens!
I came across this software called Apollo Divx to DVD Creator and I'm loving it! It converts and creates a DVD movie from any divx or xvid videos. I've tried other similar softwares but a lot of them don't stack up to this but they are some which are just as good but all the good ones are never free but I have altavista.com to thank for the serial numbers for this software! You beauty!

Sometimes when I'm making a DVD it can take a long time and the software tend to hog Windows' resources and slow it down to a crawl. Bare in mind I have an old PC, I'm running a Pentium III 800 mhz CPU, 512 mb RAM, 120GB & 80 GB HDD which is way past its use by date! Actually I have 4 PCs, apart from the one I mentioned earlier, I still have an IBM Aptiva running on an AMD K6-300, a generic PC running on a Pentium 233 and a Compaq Laptop running on a Pentium 133!


All my old PCs still work so when I need to, I'll take them out and fire up the old machine like on the weekend when I had to use the laptop for blogging while the Pentium III was creating my DVD. Not bad having all these old machines to use when I need them but they're painfully slow! I need new hardwares! Love to have a new laptop so I'm hanging out for sponsors! All I need is a laptop that runs on a Pentium IV CPU but not celeron or AMD chips coz I just don't like them, must have double layer DVD burner, WiFi and I'm happy! If you sponsor me I promise to advertise you for 3 years on my blog!

The House Of Chrysanthemum

OK, last night I managed to take some pictures of the restaurant we went before my friends tell me to put the camera away! LOL..can't help myself, once a blogger always a blogger.

We went to Chrysanthemum House in Doncaster. Its on 843 Doncaster road so give it a go if you're there. As the name suggests its a chinese restaurant but I've never been there so it was an experience for me as well.

I was told by my friends later that this place has recently been sold so its under new management which in a way is good because my friends notice that they have new sets of cutlery and table cloths! A good change from the chipped tea cups and bowls found in some chinese restaurants! Haha.

Don't know why its called the Chrysanthemum House because I couldn't find a single chrysanthemum there and the chinese name doesn't translate to chrysanthemum either. Eh, my chinese is poor but I do recognise the 2 characters on the right to suggest that it doesn't mean chrysanthemum alright!

We ordered the typical chinese dishes with rice like long beans, beef, crispy skin chicken, steamed barramundi fish, etc... The fish turned out to be a bit fishy but I liked the crispy skin chicken best! Nothing too extraordinary so not going to pin a medal on the restaurant! But we were there to celebrate my friend's birthday and he did pay for it and it was a good night out!


After dinner we adjourned to the birthday boy's house for cake and coffee. Happy XX birthday Mr.V! Will be my turn in a couple of weeks so better think of a place. Any suggestion anyone?

My Daffodils Are Blooming

My daffodils are blooming! They're nice aren't they? Unfortunately they only bloom once a year at this time of the year so must cherish them. This year Daffodil Day falls on the 25th of this month so buy a daffodil on the day. If you want to know what Daffodil Day is about you can read about it in my last year's post here.
So how's your weekend going? I haven't been out of the house all day coz of house and garden chores. But tonight we're going to a friend's birthday dinner at a restaurant I've never been before. I'll try to blog on the restaurant but I wouldn't hold my breath if I were you coz my friends are not too keen on me taking pictures of the foods in restaurants!

Anyway, enjoy the rest of your weekend and say hi to your mum for me! (I stole that from Rove)

Random Pictures

Its Friday! Yayness! Nothing much happening so I'm just going to post some random pictures I took yesterday near my place after work.

We went to the local shops for some groceries and look, its the 3 legged dog! Some people might find it sad but don't worry, I'm sure it has a better life than some people have in 3rd world countries. Agree?

Later we went to the park nearby to watch the ducks swimming in the man-made lake where people usually come to feed them with stale bread from home. I'd rather make peking ducks out of them if I could!

While watching the silly ducks waddling around I saw a little creature eating off a piece of bread that didn't get eaten by the ducks. Its so small with its black beady eyes staring back at me as I tried to take a good shot but with the bad lighting it wasn't meant to be. Looks quite cute but I keep reminding myself that its vermin!


As we head back home the sun was beginning to set and saw the skyscrapers of the city just above the treeline. It was a good day. Have a good weekend everybody!

Another Boring Fallen Tree Post

QuaVadis and Me made fun of my fallen tree post so I told them I will post another fallen tree just for the hell of it! So guys, this post is dedicated to you both. Enjoy!

Yesterday was another windy day, infact it was more windy than last week and as always a windy day in Melbourne will results in fallen trees again. So what did I see when I got home? A fallen prune tree blown over by the gusty wind just a stone throw from my house!

This tree fell because of its rotten trunk just above its root system. As you can see a large part of the trunk is actually dead and eaten away which weakens the tree. So a tree with weak trunk is like a sail boat with a broken mast. All that was needed was a sudden gust of wind to bring it down. Thank you for reading.


On a different note, here's what Melbourne looked like last Sunday around 4.25 pm. This picture was taken from the Southbank. It had been a glorious day and Terese and I had a wonderful day down here, we went to Federation Square, had lunch at Southbank, movie at Village in Crown Complex and then went home when I took this picture. Till tomorrow, have a great day or night depending on when you're reading this.

What's Hot This Summer.

Some of you may or may not know the type of work I do for a living. Anyway lets just say I'm in the clothing industry and my company provides marker making and garment gradings for clothing companies around Melbourne. So suffice to say that we always know what these fashion houses will be selling in the coming Spring/Summer collections and what will be in fashion and what's out.


Today we received a sample garment from one of our clients who has a popular chain of fashion boutiques in town for gradings. Ladies, check out what's hot this summer! Its the tiniest of tiny denim shorts! If you want to fit in this come this summer you better start working on those extra pounds around the hip. Do you see yourself in this hottie? Its got ruffles on the cuffs too. When you slip on one of these and you're walking down the streets you're gonna stop traffic literally. Not even Jessica Simpson in her mini-short from Dukes Of Hazard will be able to compete with you! So are you in or out?

I Play Sherlock Holmes

Last week was a little windy, we had a day when we had a gusty northerly wind and with gusty winds comes falling trees!

Near my work a tree came down with the wind! I didn't see it fall but found it this way when I was leaving work. Looks like it just uprooted itself. So I played Sherlock Holmes to determine what actually happened.

I think the roots of this tree may be diseased which contributed to its falling over. Looks like the main roots is snapped and combining the gusty wind caused the tree to uproot itself. There is no sign on the tree trunk to suggest that it was hit by a truck.


Infact if a truck were to hit it from the direction opposite to where the tree fell, it would've had to hit the sign post too! So the Sherlock Holmes in me concludes that the tree was indeed uprooted by the northerly wind which explains why it fell towards the south side! Lucky for the parked vehicle that it didn't fall on the opposite side!

Melbourne Kayaking

You've seen and read about Kuching Kayaking with Unker Ho but its time you see Melbourne Kayaking in action! Come with me as I show you what real kayaking is all about!

Well, high school style anyway! Hehe..I knew of Ivanhoe Grammar School's own kayak team's been training at Dight's Falls every Thursday and Friday afternoon so I've decided to check them out last Friday.

Here are some of the students with their instructor as they carry their kayaks onto the waters. They will be practising their slalom skills today so I read from their schedule.

Before they jump into the waters the instructor briefed the students on what they need to do and to watch out for. You can never be too careful coz safety is number one!

Right after the briefing everyone was keen to jump into the waters with their kayaks. The instructor is on the far right directing the students where and how to paddle safely across so as not to get swept away by the rapids.

Here the instructor is getting each student to practise manuevering their ways in a rapid. Everyone takes turn doing it while the instructor guides them.

When the students are confident enough they proceed to practise their paddling up against the current on their own while the instructor watches on.

These students look like they know what they're doing so that takes a huge load off the instructor who's just there to make sure they're doing it correctly and safely.

There are times when the students had to learn how to move downstream with the flow as well as against it coz it takes some skill or else the whole kayak will go under! But fortunately I didn't see anyone go under that day. These students are good at kayaking. They're our future athletes!

So the more advanced students can get to practise on top of the weir where the water is calmer but they're here to learn how to jump down the water falls.


Look at them go! Looks damn easy but I think I'd have swallowed a few gulps of water if I were in those kayaks! Unker Ho, you're not going to see me in those!