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Wednesday, 18 March 2009

  • holidays are finally over and so is already the second week of uni. once again i have settled into the same old wonderful routine of random classes, early morning bus misses, sweat inducing long walks up to mathews, daily telegraph sports sections, daily telegraph puzzles, long bouts of basketball and jigging my own lectures to instead go to someone elses better ones.

    sports is one of the main features of my uni life and to cater for my athletic cravings, in addition to wednesday basketball there is now the thursday afternoon social tennis gathering. i must not let my sbhs 2nd grade tennis skills (which doesn't say much) go to waste!

    there is also the occasional passing of the american football which is under tri dual ownership, namely myself, T_T and QMB. however the problem with this is T_T now has the ball and is always hiding during his 2 days of uni. also, a good day for throwing the ball around is thursday which everybody jigs. wednesday? basketball's more important. hence the decision to now hit some backhand winners until further notice.

    the gym. i go there at least twice a week to keep my rock hard biceps in check and burn off the excess carbohydrates gained from junk food consuption. i see a lot of familiar faces whenever i'm working out and that can only be a good thing. there's also newcomer robin who i am currently helping out. as everyone knows, robin is a stick. can you imagine him a little bulked up? stay tuned.

    uni is great for other things and that includes being able to meet up with and see friends on a regular basis. much preferred over the occasional outing during the holidays and erratic opportunities to get in touch. it does amuse me however that being a "friend" is so subjective. i say this because "friends" should be talking to each other and doing things, or am i wrong? so it is only natural that when people decide to not bother with a "friend's" decision to meet up or whatnot it both amuses and bemuses me. in fact, why worry about it all? if putting up a fake façade is what you choose to do, it's up to you.

    finally, gaming. i haven't played a pc game at home for a while unless you count emulating ff7 as that. for some reason i've picked up ff7 again and need to beat it so i can finally say i've finished the damn thing. also, a freshly won copy of ff8 off ebay recently arrived in the mail, giving me more reason to dust off the old ps1 and start enjoying crappy graphics again.     eventually, ff9 will also be in my hands. what next, a ps3 and ff13?

Sunday, 15 February 2009

  • hope everybody had an enjoyable single awareness day valentine's day. it should come as no surprise to anybody that i found myself in the city in the early evening with my usual saturday partner in crime QMB. could not help but notice the increased amount of couples walking the city streets and filling up the galaxy worlds despite the gloomy weather (meeting up in the city on saturdays does not make QMB and i a couple. if only he were a female instead).

    i celebrated the occasion by spending money on both my current and previous loves, namely vt3, gf/dm and ddr. ddr serves as my weekend cardio exercise since it kills the feet along with the hands due to my bar raping like a noob. it also makes me sweat enough to warrant bringing an extra shirt the next time i decide to play it.

    also i now have a 5% discount on games at the george street galaxy world since i am such a good customer.


    ^best song in anime history. WATASHI NO KARE WA PAIROTTO~~
    time to acquire and watch the rest of the macross titles.

Tuesday, 03 February 2009


  • as predicted, the PITTSBURGH STEELERS won superbowl xliii thanks to some last minute santonio holmes tiptoe heroics. a 100 yard interception return for a touchdown isn't too shabby either. larry fitzdragon was being his usual pro self, but being pro isn't enough since troy polalmalu is a G.

    it might seem like i am a pittsburgh supporter but that is not the case. i merely said pittsburgh would win the bowl. the only time i'm ever interested in the nfl is when the playoffs come along or when T_T decides to randomly talk about it. else i couldn't care less. there's other things to worry about at this time like the detroit pistons or roger federer or pothead phelps or the australian cricket team losing to the new zeelundurs.

    one more month until uni starts. not counting down the days but i wouldn't mind if it started next week so i'd actually have something to do. until then i am simply keeping fit by going to the gym and playing ddr again. i also must join the unsw tennis club to satisfy my hunger for the sport and be able to relive the glory day(s) of 2nd grade tennis.

Tuesday, 20 January 2009

  • first of all, i am backing the pittsburgh steelers to win SUPERBOWL XLIII. to be honest, i don't really care if the cardinals win instead because they are also a good team. at least it's not the ravens in the final. a certain Q. Bui and T_T were rooting for baltimore to pip the steelers but... not when you have TROY "the samoan headhunter" POLAMALU running around. funnily enough, polamalu was a USC Trojan.

    also, RYAN CLARK K.O.'d WILLIS MCGAHEE (and injured himself in the process), T_T called it a dirty hit. more like dedicated defence. even the refs said it was legal.

    lun and nelson had their fancy "amazing race" gathering on sunday which i like to call the "unamazing walk". not because it wasn't fun, quite the contrary, but because... we walked it. no rush, no race, and still managed to finish early. instead of a race, it was a list of objectives that we had to complete with each garnering a certain number of points. team with the most points wins!

    all the participants met up at maroubra beach for some socialising time and a bbq. everyone met their teammates, talked to old friends, chilled for a while etc. soon, the race was on.

    my team completed every task bar the bonus consume-korean-chicken-dish-challenge. no appetite! did the following in order:

    1. find the bust of eugenio (wong) de santa cruz y espejo around central, then call lun/nelson and tell them a bit about the guy (read off the inscriptions).
    -bit hard to keep the bust location private. since every one of us were on the same bus, when we stood up, so did the others...
    -BONUS: go to capitol and win a soft toy for extra points. won some weird thing.

    2. head over to capitol and get... STICKER PHOTOS.
    -eugene looked stoned in every pic.

    3. find a "play me i'm yours" piano, many scattered around the city. take a photo/video/whatever of someone "playing" it.
    -used the one outside market city for convenience.

    4. go up to 2nd level in market city and into smiggle. each team member needs to find a heart shaped eraser and put it on their chest. photo as proof.

    5. take a group photo with easyway staff. follow this up by playing ddr at galaxy world and pass a 6-step difficulty song, note down score, photo as proof.
    -took the easyway photo at the one outside galaxy world but uncooperative employees ftl.
    -naturally i did a 9-step to pull a small crowd and impress the ladies (and guys)...

    from L to R: eugene, andric, katharine, easyway employee, lame easyway employee, margaret, serena (kat's sister!)

    6. make your way to darling harbour, to the water feature outside harbourside plaza. take a group photo.

    7. take a photo of the group at the playground nearby.

    8. at kinokuniya or dymocks, find the book "Dim Wit" by rosemarie jarski. flip to page 339, call lun/nelson, and state the comment about the world's favourite president george w. bush by dennis miller.
    -at kinokuniya we couldn't find the book cos another group's mischievous member decided to hide it somewhere or something, i dunno.
    -found it at dymocks instead. "George W. Bush surrounds himself with smart people the way a hole surrounds itself with a donut."
    -a massive horde of people were making their way down george street and other areas of the city, waving their signs and chanting crap, all protesting against the war going on in the middle east. good luck people. your protesting will amount to nothing.
    -BONUS: go to kobow and order some spicy chicken dish with cheese. we couldn't be bothered/didn't want to eat it, and that proved the difference between 1st and 2nd. meh.

    9. go to any clothing store along pitt street. two team members must dress up as either fobs, emos/goths or gangsta/b-boy/b-girl. take a photo of the store.
    -we decided to hit up frat house. grabbed a random hoodie and a cap. result:


    10. rock up to the opera house and get a photo of the group doing star jumps.
    -too embarrassing so we did a star jump while rooted to the ground.
    -photo of richard's group doing the star jumps is too pro.

    11. guess what the prizes are.
    -no chance.

    done. finish was at the hyde park fountain. soon all of us were gathered together on the grass, socialising or playing with the soccer ball. a few people came and went and soon we headed to musashi for dinner, after the awarding of the prizes. turned out to be small books, each having their own assortment of pictures. as stated somewhere above, the difference between 1st and 2nd was the korean chicken dish. that ain't a challenge...

    musashi is just another japanese restaurant in the city. having too many japanese dinners has resulted in a clouded sense of taste, so it all tastes the same, the difference instead being the effects on one's wallet. the restaurant's non-alcoholic cocktails are great though. fancy-coloured drinks each made from a variety of random syrups, toppings and other interesting ingredients. the one i ordered was an awesome purple colour.

    once again more time was spent socialising during and after dinner. no less than about 20 minutes was spent loitering in the carpark as we all tried to come up with suggestions for stuff to do, since it was only 7 something. eventually everyone just ditched.

    i must say it wasn't a bad outing, pretty enjoyable actually. the only sausage fest occurred at dinner time, which is a vast improvement.

Monday, 12 January 2009

  • overseas antics

    no pics because i left my phone in the taxi on the way to changi airport. also means i won't have a phone for a while so unless you want to waste your time, don't bother calling or sending a msg to my number.

    boarded singapore airlines flights instead of malaysia this trip so we could experience a return trip on the a380. i must say their in-flight entertainment system is very appealing. a wide range of movies, both in english and foreign languages is a highlight, as is a nice selection of albums to listen to, new and old, featuring artists like ne-yo, pink, bee gees, elton john, phil collins, miley cyrus... and basshunter. the screens on the a380 are way big, with acceptably more seating space and fancy orange backlit controllers.

    is it just me or is the food served on singapore airlines flights actually quite tasty? i managed to clean up each and every main served to me. yum. nice ice creams too, and i couldn't get enough of the bread rolls.

    saw ip man in penang, malaysia and red cliff & igor on the flight back to sydney. ip man is packed with edge-of-your-seat wing chun awesomeness and humour while red cliff is simply well made, expected from a john woo film. i only watched igor since it was animated. not saying it's terribly bad but it's not a masterpiece either. the penang cinema complex i watched ip man in is pretty sweet, good seats, visuals and sound. i couldn't stop chowing down their caramel popcorn either. malaysian food prevails.

    video game arcades... i hit up a couple in malaysia, let's just say they are way stacked. a billion generic game cabinets with an entire assortment of whatever you can think of. the latest racing games are everywhere with no less than about 30 daytona machines combined. hilarious nba game in one of the cabinets, put up a decent shot and you won't miss. sadly, no virtua tennis 3 here but that doesn't mean there's no virtua tennis 2 or even 1... other highlights include ParaParaParadaisu 2nd mix, random percussion games, random dancing games and six-lives-for-one-credit house of the dead 4. played ddr for the first time in whatever for the hell of it.

    hong kong - less machines, but better selection. finally, a virtua tennis 3 machine in causeway bay! the arcade in silvercord centre in tsim sha tsui is quoc's type of arcade, featuring taiko 9th and 10th (10th has the op from nodame cantabile wooo), drummania 9th and v4, ddr, ParaParaParadise, POP'N MUSIC, KEYBOARDMANIA... and the cherry on top, THE TYPING OF THE DEAD. 'nuff said.

    how do south-east asians manage to serve up such quality food? hong kong soup noodles are always enjoyable, so are the fish balls. the milk tea that gets served up there is real nice too. nothing needs to be said about malaysian/sinaporean food however. best shit you can ever hope to taste. everywhere you go in malaysia there is char koay teow = culinary awesomeness. at the end of my malaysia trip we got a whole bunch of relatives together and fed on crabs, prawns, char koay teow and fried rice. heaven.

    my basketball hunger was satisfied when staying for a while out in alor star, an hour from penang. my aunt's old house had a sizeable bit of concrete on the side, on which a pole and basketball hoop and backboard was erected. played for a couple minutes there. that night i was invited by a couple of my cousins to watch the final of some nationwide basketball tournament featuring what appeared to be under-20 state teams. we grabbed some seats during the 3rd quarter of the womens final. there's always a couple of players who try too hard to create opportunities for themselves only to fail. the men's game was somewhat better, one team had some 199cm stick who wasn't very spectacular, but was named mvp at the conclusion. since when do mvp's put up open airballs from downtown? by open, i mean miles of space between him and any defender.

    crystal clear was the fact that three pointers make up a sizeable chunk of a team's points, both mens and womens. learn to defend please.

    new year's eve was spent back in penang at queensbay mall, one of malaysia's largest shopping centres. cheap anime is available in the video stores - same price as the titles you can get in asian stores here in sydney, but in ringgit. stayed away from the shifty 1-disc-1-series sets and bought me vandread and... the melancholy of haruhi suzumiya?

    as new year's day ticked over we attempted to leave the carpark, only to become stuck in a massive jam going nowhere. drove around in one big loop before we finally managed to head home.

    that same day i hopped on a flight to singapore and spent a night there before jetting to hong kong the morning after. checked into the executive suite of the panda hotel in tsuen wan. only reason we chose it was because of some huge online special i noticed a couple months back. great hotel, 30 floors of goodness. top floor houses the exclusive executive lounge, with free breakfast, afternoon snacks and drinks and free net. my room was very comfortable, the tv had nba games screening in the morning and the randomness of honkie comedies at night. the hotel also had a fully equipped gym including a rack of weights which i sadly did not use since sleep is a better exercise.

    the days in hong kong were spent shopping, running around the place looking for fashions and doing a bit of sightseeing. headed right up to the top of the peak using the funicular tram for an impressive view of hong kong below. also in the peak is a madame tussauds and their incredibly lifelike wax models. cecilia cheung and bruce lee greeted people at the entrance while jackie chan was busy smiling down at the bottom of the tram line.

    met up with eugene one day for some mischief. we went to central, causeway bay and tsim sha tsui to hunt for discounted summer fashion. ventured into the bathing ape and billionaire boys club/ice cream stores in central for the hell of it. the stuff on offer though was way too expensive for our liking, only someone like gary would ever consider purchasing their items... we managed to get shooed away by an attendant when trying to take photos of the bape store. after a big walk around causeway bay and tsim sha tsui, we ended up with various pieces of clothing and no money left, making use of the savings on offer.

    gotta love mongkok. you can spend many hours on sneaker street searching through what's on offer, only to end up with one pair at the end of it all. langham place there is really impressive, a very funky many-leveled shopping complex with long ass escalators. another place of note is ho king shopping centre, famous for having cheap games and adult material. try to walk past an adult store and a shifty attendant will block your path and try to push you in.

    at the end of it all though, hong kong is boring after a couple of days. jetted off to singapore on the 6th, the flight back to sydney on 7th night. a fair bit of time to do a bit of sinapore exploring right? wrong. that day and a bit was disappointing.

    and to those who half expected a souvenir from me?