danny’s space

They’re up! Thanks to Chris for uploading them.

Find them here.

If you want to make comments, you will need to log in (because I don’t know how to enable this for guests and because it provides extra security) using the username chrisha - the password is the Taboo hint that Chris thought meant implants (in one word, i.e. ‘g***p******’). If you don’t know the password, contact me and I’ll get it to you.

Anyway, to make comments, in the album view (with many photos a page), under a particular photo use the dropdown Item Actions box to select Edit Photo, and then change (or add) text into the Summary box. This ‘comment’ will then display on the album view.

Okay finally beat my laziness and decided to actually post about the cool Terrigal roadtrip that a bunch of us had. Actually it’s still going on, the rest of the gang is probably heading back to Sydney as I type - Sara and I headed back a few days early.

Last Saturday arvo a bunch of us from church (Amy, Chap, Chris, Sara, myself) and a few friends headed up to Terrigal (well, Holgate actually) to stay at a beachhouse (which was actually in bushland, but semi-close to the beach, within driving distance at least) and just bum for a week. Marcus, Cheuk and a few others joined us on Sunday. The place was really nice - lots of rooms, full-sized snooker table, pool, big lounge and kitchen, our own ‘private lake’ (which was really just a mozzie-infested swamp but still nice anyway), and close to Erina Fair (which was good because we ate a lot).

The 3 days that Sara and I stayed for were heaps fun. Lots of aimless bumming, board games, Mario Kart, dips in the pool, poolside cricket, eating heaps of nice food prepared by resident iron chefs Amy and Marcus etc, watching random episodes and movies thanks to Chris’ collection, playing Kris Kringle, walks on the beach - what a great few days!

Taboo gets boring after a while, especially if some people play it so much that they basically memorise the words. Playing Taboo in couples teams helps a bit I reckon, especially since some clues were like, “The name of the teddy bear I gave you!”. Lightning charades was also fun, although you need to read the words properly - acting out a bridge when the actual word was ‘bride’ gets lots of weird looks. The photo above is of Amy and Sara acting out ‘birth’. Mario Kart was great, but Chap ended up caning all of us anyway. He also wasted us in Texas Hold’em.

Poolside cricket was mad fun, with fielders in the pool and Marcus and Chap playing with a pool floaty that twisted them into compromising positions. You couldn’t run at all on the wet tiles which made fielding fun - all you could do was waddle around. The girls stayed inside to watch The Notebook while the guys (plus Helen) played cricket.

The food was another highlight. Luckily we had the great cook Amy and fantastic BBQer Marcus there to feed us. Mealtimes were slightly delayed (we were really operating on Hong Kong time thanks to the lazy laid-back feeling of the whole place) but so tasty! From simple lunches of melted cheese on ham and tomato and toast to the BBQ dinners with lots of meat, salads and mash, we ate like kings.

Kris Kringle was interesting. I never knew it was actually a ‘game’ you could ‘play’. I thought it was just okay everyone bring a present and everyone pick a present - who would have thought that it involved stealing? *Gasp* Anyway, presents ranged from a LED light keyring to edible underwear (*cough cough* Champsman) and candles to handcuffs. Lots of fun!

Avoca Beach was a nice 10 minute drive through unsealed backroads which the GPS thankfully navigated us through successfully. By the time we went (6pm ish) on the last day it was nearly deserted, but the sun was still up so Sara and I were able to go for a nice stroll along the shore, getting my jeans totally soaked and the car heaps sandy in the process. After making a makeshift tripod (out of lots of sand, see picture) we took a few nice OC-looking shots and kept walking, heading back to the house at around 8:30 (by which time dinner prep had just started).

New catch phrases to come out of the few days included “making pasta”, “playing taboo”, “champagne showers”, and “aromatherapy”. Really, you don’t want to know.

And now, for a photo that just has to be shared:

More photos can be found in my Gallery. Chris promises to upload photos from other peoples’ cameras soon.

Thanks to Chris and Amy for organising such a great holiday! We want more!

It’s been a while since my last post, mostly because I’m way too lazy to actually type something up because I know it’ll take me ages, but that doesn’t really do people justice so I finally decided to post. Quite a lot has happened.

Chronologically first is Kao’s 21st. He had it last Sunday night at the Monkey Bar in Chatswood. That was fun, we got there a few hours early to hire some helium gas cylinders to pump up balloons and looked like chinese terrorists lugging around these tanks in Chatswood Westfield. We had to take a tank back to the shop because something was going wrong, and the shop assistant nearly exploded our eardrums and half of Westfield when he released the pressurised gas without any nozzle on the output hole thing - more about this on Chap’s blog. We snuck in some O’galo burgers for dinner before the party started because we were starving. The party went pretty well, seemed like most people had a good time, especially Kao. The speeches ran well, heard from his uni IT g33k friends, Nerd Con, and also Kao himself. He thanked everyone individually which was a nice gesture (but dangerous in case you forget someone). Then we crashed his place afterwards and had some hardcore Gamecube gaming action with Mario Party. Happy 21st Kao, good stuff actually having a party on your real birthday! Unfortunately Chap and I were too forgetful to bring our cameras.

The next day Sara finally finished her exams after 4 long weeks, hooray! We had dinner at the Eastwood Jap suhsi bar place - their teriyaki chicken is so good! Then we went to Sam’s MTS supporters’ evening at St Paul’s Carlingford in the evening, heard about how he was to embark on a 2 year ‘experience’ of full-time ministry. It was great seeing Sam’s family and friends there to support him - we’ll be praying for you Sam! Even though you’re deserting ND after so many years.

Then more bumming around for a few days, had a good bludge with the 180FM leaders on Wednesday night at Levina’s place playing Risk after a short leaders’ meeting at church which I spied on (unsucessfully because people saw me). Well I guess that’s what happens when you sit next to them. Andrew gave a good training seminar thing on leaders being servants with the role of leaders, but fundamentally everyone being a servant anyway. Risk isn’t the best team-building game I must admit, especially for those who really get into the game and take it a bit too seriously. But it was fun anyway, nobody won obviously because we wanted to finish and still get some sleep.

Thursday night we went to Temasek in Parra for dinner with church friends. It was fun as usual, although being Taiwanese (go Taiwan!) I didn’t understand most of the stuff they said in Cantonese. I guess that’s what you get for going to a primarily Honkie church. The food was great most people thought. I thought it was too spicy to be good - I like tasting the flavours of my food instead of tasting my tastebuds go psycho and fire off random signals because of the chilli or curry hotness. Then gelato afterwards (great for cooling down the stomach) at a nearby Lello’s which had a nice cosy second story area where we sat for a few hours and chatted. Walking around in Parra at night is scary stuff - lots of homie-looking guys with beefed up vroom vroom cars who are obviously compensating for something.

The next day I found out that Mozilla had finally released FireFox 1.5, so naturally I downloaded it. It runs pretty well, has built in tab-dragging support which is nice. Unfortunately some extensions didn’t work with the new version but updates were available for most. No gripes so far about 1.5.

Then yesterday night was Xing’s 21st at Castle Hill RSL. I was meant to pick him up at his place in Northmead at 6:30 but unfortunately I left late and also the GPS got me lost. I don’t know why, but the GPS seemed to think his address was 100 numbers away from where it actually was, and being on a main road, looping back to his place took ages. Can’t trust technology. Need to double check the physical location all the time, especially on big roads. So we got to the venue around 10 minutes before guests were scheduled to arrive - sorry Xing! We quickly set up his pansy-coloured tinsel and a few tables, the projector, etc. The party ran quite smoothly for something that wasn’t that fully planned out. Chap brought along Singstar which was great, Xing’s curry actuarial friends had a blast. The food was great, lots of oily stuff like quiches and spring rolls and deep friend fish thingies. The venue was pretty nice as well, we got a pretty decent room with the adjacent outside bar area as well. The service was excellent - the people there were so helpful in absolutely everything like getting furniture, finding a projector, finding cables and a TV for Singstar, cake preparation, everything. Speeches went pretty well too, with a few of Xing’s work buddies kicking it off with funny anecdotes about his antics at work. Then the typical Nerd Con speech about his fashion sense, gayness, safe driving, nerdiness, etc.

In all the night went pretty well, and Xing seemed to have heaps of fun and was very pleased. Chris got into a good conversation with Becca, showing her Two ways to live which is great - I don’t know how people just get into conversations like that. I sat down at the table when he was at the second diagram. Xing’s friend Khaled was also there, and him being a Muslim and me being a Christian, we had a great chat with Nathan (a Christian) as well about the Muslim and Christian beliefs. I think we all learnt a lot which is the important thing. Don’t bag out what you don’t understand. Joe and I went to Xing’s place after the party to bum around and we had a good chat about lots of things like worldviews and people and uni and work and things like that. We chatted until 5am in the morning after which we looked outside and saw the sun out again and thought it was about time to head off. Happy 21st Xing!

Anyway, NTE has started already this morning, but I’m heading down a day late because I’d be way too buggered to make the trip to Canberra. Too many late nights recently from all the 21sts and whatnot. But it’ll be fun this year I think. 1000+ students from around Australia, a few from Fiji and stuff as well. It’ll be on ‘The Church’ which was the EU Annual Conference topic, so we’ll learn more about it. The EU delegation to NTE this year is better as well, much larger than the dismal effort in 2004. Two mission teams, one to Belmore and one to Ashfield. It promises to be a great time!

Just found out off Chap’s blog that our pastor, Andrew Hong, has his own MSN webspace! That’s pretty cool. I wonder which uni lecturers have blogs, and whether or not they bag out their students on them.

Wow, that was a long blog.

Thought 5: HP devices are getting cooler and cooler. HP multifunction printer/scanner/copier/faxes are totally cool. They even come with free ink (well, to be expected since you can’t really print anything without it), free photo paper, a cool resealable photo paper storage bag (which I think is the best bit), etc etc. The installation went smoothly, even a banana could set it up. Included HP software looks pretty useful on first glance. Plus $100 cash back, what a deal. The black print speed is super quick. Only gripe so far is that the new Vivera inks from HP are a bit strange - there are 5 little separate colour cartridges (cyan, dark cyan, magenta, light magenta, yellow, or something like that) that look like they’ve only got enough ink for 2 decent photos. They must be expensive as well. Damn.

Thought 6: What’s with people and turning right? On Yanko Road a stupid van driver took a bigger risk than the police car earlier today, turning right from a side street onto Yanko Road when I was probably only 10 metres away going at 60. Of course, I honked him (twice actually). I like honking. There’s something about public humiliation and helping people to become better drivers.

Thought 7: Finally finished building a shelf-like thing for storage of large boxes other things like that (see picture). Unfortunately the thing isn’t exactly that well built, and it still sways a bit, but hopefully it’ll withstand semi heavy stuff. Hmm, actually, I worry… The thing was too big to assemble and then carry into the room, so I had to build the frame in 3 parts, lug it into the room, and then assemble it with the shelf boards. It’s 2.4m high and 1.8m wide, quite a monster. Needless to say everything smells like sawdust now, and there’s plenty of it all over the ground.

Thought 8: For those who leave their computers on all the time and don’t use it for much demanding stuff, visit World Community Grid and lend your processor time to science! This is another one of those distributed computing things where normal run-of-the-mill desktop computers in peoples’ homes are used to do big-time research by combining the power of thousands computers around the world. This particular one is non-profit and researches things like anti-HIV drugs and protein folding.

here come a string of random comments/thoughts whose only connection is that i have something to do with them.. how i pity them..

Thought 1: I think I’ll start typing in proper case in blogs, since most other blogs I visit do this. It seems to be easier to read but not easier to type.

Thought 2: For those who want to watch Saw II, unless you like lots of blood and torture scenes and general sadistic things then it’s not for you. There are good plot twists and red herrings as you would expect from Saw, but apart from that it’s more gruesome than the original, especially since there are more people involved and they’re let loose, so to speak, in a whole house instead of just a room. Definitely not one for the squeamish.

Thought 3: Aren’t police subject to common sense on the road as well? Mum and I were driving back from North Sydney on Epping Road earlier today, and we were approaching this intersection without traffic lights, but with a right turn bay coming from the opposite direction on Epping Road. So we’re bearing down on the intersection at the legal speed and the police car, the next car in the turning bay to turn, decides to turn with an unsafe distance between our car and the intersection. I wonder what would happen if we didn’t brake and had hit the car.

Thought 4: I wonder if you could scam money back promotions. Say a company, let’s call them HP, offer a $100 cashback scheme for an item, let’s say a multifunction printer. If one was to buy 10 multifunctions for say $500 each, and then apply for the cashback, and then return the items to the store (being none the wiser to the customer’s cashback dealings), would this mean the customer is net $1000 richer?

Update to Thought 4: Ah nuts, it seems HP is pretty smart. They ask that you send in the physical barcode and serial number cut out from the cardboard box within which the multifunction is contained. Nuts.

More thoughts later when I can think of them.

and my holidays have only been running for 2 days..

i’m getting lazy about many things.. not bothering to reply emails for a few days (which says nothing about the recipient just the sender’s (my own) holiday-induced laziness).. general lethargy.. maybe the ’stress’ of the semester is finally catching up to me.. who knows..

been taking jaz for walks for the past 2 days.. wait, 3.. something like that.. my sister and i took jaz for a walk yesterday but she wasn’t satisfied/tired enough from one lap around the block so after she got to the gate of our house, she stuck her nose in briefly and then decided to keep walking, so i was dragged along for another half lap but successfully navigated (*gasp*) a shortcut that took us back home before both of us had heart attacks.. one of the houses in a neighbouring street had their front fence blown over by the recent winds (i assume) so the owner and his dog were in the front yard doing something.. this dog was a scary german shepherd who, every time jaz walked past (we walked past a few times since jaz was insatiable), would come bounding across the road and start snarling and barking at us.. needless to say jaz was scared but still wanted to play with the german shepherd whose idea of play obviously meant putting as many tooth-shaped holes into a friend as possible..

today we went for a walk around the entire block which took a good 45 minutes (or something, i was too tired to notice the time).. at least the weather wasn’t that hot though.. every time we go around a particular bend on wallalong cresent, i get reminded of the taxi incident.. scary stuff.. i think jaz is getting used to the smells of the roads around our house though because she doesn’t stop to sniff things as much on our usual route - only when we take her on an extended walk does she stop and start.. plus i’ve realised that everyone’s dog is better trained than jaz.. there was this black labrador (i think) who bounded towards jaz on our extended walk today, and after having a friendly sniff or three, was quickly recalled by its owner and actually listened! same with that scary german shepherd actually..

but i guess these incidents are also an indication of the number of retarded owners who don’t properly restrain their dogs and allow them to run after every four legged furry animal that waltzes past their house.. i mean, come on.. i would like to walk jaz without fear of being mauled by a german shepherd or sniffed by an overly excited black labrador..

anyway, today we finally got nash’s presents together and surpried him at his place.. too bad the poor guy has a biochemistry exam tomorrow! we got him a sri lankan jersey with his surname and ‘21′ printed on the back, which he was absolutely stoked about.. and also two stargate boxsets and a stargate keyring.. pretty cool! his two most favourite things.. so now between nash, becky and myself we have most of the 9 seasons of stargate on dvd, just missing a few of the earlier seasons.. but we’ll work on that! and have a week-long stargate fest sometime.. 120hrs of non-stop watching will probably get all of that seen.. well, ’seen’.. but yes, we had a good bludge at chap’s house as well, playing starcraft and foosball.. quite geeky, maybe this should be categorised under g33k stuff.. but it was lots of fun, chap and i laughed too hard (again) about stargate and baz’s balls of death..

why are my blogs so freaking long.. congratulations if you’ve read down to here and have not been placed in a coma.. speaking of comas, i need to go watch house i taped yesterday.. plus what’s with stupid channel 10 advertising next week’s episode as the last episode of the season? it so isn’t!! it’s like (i think at least..) the 5th episode of the 2nd season or something.. just because stupid australian tv channels show it as the last episode in a string of episodes doesn’t make it the ‘must-see shocking final episode of house’.. far out..

wooooooo

no more dodgy undergrad lectures forever! (well, provided everything goes well with the exam marking and they don’t lose my paper…) (and well, except the coursework that we have to do for honours…) so what am i celebrating for anyway.. there’s still alot more uni to go.. but at least the honours and probably phd coming up is more research focussed with emphasis on doing what i want to do instead of getting useless information rammed down my throat..

so anyway it’s the holidays now.. good luck to all those poor UNSW folk who are mostly yet to start their exams! remember to write your chinese name and student ID on the cover of your exam paper, and sit according to your chinese zodiac and position your drink bottle and eraser at the optimal north-facing feng shui position.. also remember that from the mid 1990’s, UNSW has listed your seat numbers according to your chinese name.. if you do not have a chinese name, you can always talk to the person next to you - chances are they are asian, and chances are they will only speak cantonese, in which case you can just write down the first three words they say and use these as your new chinese name..

i guess nothing overly exciting has happened over the last few weeks.. stuvac is, well, stuvac.. nothing but sitting at home eating and studying and sleeping and watching a fair amount of tv.. the way i like to study is to type up notes, and once all the notes are typed up for a particular exam, to stand in front of a whiteboard and write down stuff, take a break, wipe out some stuff, take a break, fill in the wiped out stuff, take a break, and repeat.. it works well, especially the breaks.. i think they help me remember.. really! oh and drinking plenty of fluids (OJ, coke, water) helps, plus lots of sleep - it helps your brain remember stuff..

so i guess nothing much is going to happen until everyone else finishes.. which will be in a few weeks time thanks to University of Hong Kong, Australia Campus (aka UNSW) running their semester using the lunar calendar.. just plenty of bludge at home i think.. and trying to lose all this fat i put on during stuvac.. which probably means walking the crazy labrador again every day, although it’s getting hot so every time we come back from walks she looks and sounds like she’s going to have a heart attack even though she only just turned 1..

so good luck all who still have exams, especially for those who are in their final semester of uni!

ahh, meals with the church bunch are always such fun..

last night thanks to a last minute organisational effort from sara, a few of the church bunch (amy, chap, cheuk, chris, karen, sara, myself) went to the korean bbq place at eastwood for a nice dinner with gelato afterwards at lello’s in macquarie

needless to say, dinner was a blast.. apart from the smell of the place which is unavoidable, lots of loud talking and hysterical laughter came from our table to the dismay of the restaurant owners and other diners.. interesting moments include chap crying over baz’s balls of rage and the endless hole-digging mostly by the two couples that were there..

comprehensive coverage can be found at chap’s blog or amy’s blog.. no need to double up..

i think we were making way too much noise.. the restaurant people had interesting ways of kicking us out.. when they had noticed that we weren’t eating anymore but still making noise, a waiter promptly sidled up behind our table and said ‘yes?’ as if we had called him over.. so we had to ask for the bill.. which of course we took ages to pay.. so long that they eventually turned music on to try to drown out our laughter.. so we got the hint and left them in peace..

then outside, after dinner (a more appropriate time), mention was made of a recent smh article about a guy who had his butt cheeks glued together and his nether regions glued to his abdomen by an ex-girlfriend.. and chap (who hadn’t heard this story before last night) and i stood keeled over in laughter outside eastwood hotel.. not one of the best places to be seen..

then came gelato at macquarie at which point cheuky and karen sadly had to leave.. chap and amy were 10 minutes late because apparently they had ‘parked their car very far away’ and had to walk from the restaurant.. right.. gelato was less loud than korean.. rocher flavour is so good, but only in small amounts - it tastes like an ice-cream version of the inside of a ferrero rocher (well, duh) but gets revolting after too much.. taro is great though.. but yes, more sad jokes between amy, chap, chris, sara and i..

so fun! haven’t laughed that hard for a while.. had to reach for my lifesaving puffer as well..

and then today in the morning for petra we had a great session on writing up our testimonies.. phil’s plan for writing out testimonies was very useful, got all the ‘necessary’ things in, in a logical order.. we were meant to watch a dvd with testimonies but alas it was never meant to be.. and then for service we continued going through 1 thes, doing the first part of chapter 5 today about how Jesus will return at unknown hour, and that the final judgement when he does will be unexpected and inescapable.. again reiterating the real need for our not-yet-Christian family and friends to know God’s grace..

and then we had lunch at macquarie after church.. that was also less loud than korean.. i think nothing can compare to the loudness of saturday night haha.. again (poor) chap was the subject of a bit of bagging out.. especially about his muscles and semi see-through t-shirt.. after which he stormed off and didn’t return for a while.. but when he did he was holding a box of wicked wings so i guess that explains the lengthy delay..

so these last few days have been pretty good.. again i’ve been giving myself a long break from studying after finishing a main set of notes for micro.. my gosh some lecturers suck so bad, naming no names until i graduate of course.. i guess it’s back to cramming tonight or tomorrow.. maybe tomorrow.. starcraft or half-life 2 tonight..

i snorted some rice earlier tonight as well.. eating too fast.. tomato fried rice with prawn bits is soooo good! now i’m paying for it by having a grain of rice lodged in my nasal cavity.. oh yay..

ahhhh i love the rain… the musty smell it leaves behind.. the muddiness of jaz’s paws on my pants.. and also it means that the damn BP demolition/construction site opposite our house ceases to operate - at least for a while, until the water dries up and it’s back to TUT-TUT-TUT-TUT-TUT-TUT-TUT at 8 o’clock in the morning.. it’s perfect timing, the time of year when everything is due and students need to work long hours..

cityrail seems to be slipping in terms of on-time running again.. what a pity, but not unexpected.. i swear, if cityrail ran the NYE countdown, it’d probably go: 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 7, 3, 2, 6, 15, 2, 3, 2, 2, 2, 3, 4, 2, 0..

okay, siesta over.. ah what am i talking about, i take a 10 minute siesta every 5 minutes.. it does wonders for productivity..

the 12 step program of how not to meet your potential honours supervisor

step 1: walk to wentworth in 50 degree heat and slouch on a chair, trying to get some papers read
step 2: get a call from a private number 20 minutes after the hour
step 3: find out that it’s the dean of science on the phone, and that you’re 20 minutes late for your first meeting to discuss honours projects for next year
step 4: apologise profusely for the confusion, saying his secretary had told you that the meeting was tomorrow
step 5: gather up stuff
step 6: powerwalk to carslaw in 50 degree heat, climb 2 flights of stairs, arrive in air conditioned corridoor outside dean’s office sweaty and puffing
step 7: walk into dean’s office, secretary greets you and says ‘oh so you’re danny’
step 8: walk into dean’s room, interrupting him as he’s planning his week
step 9: talk to dean about honours projects
step 10: get a call on your mobile from moo which you forgot to put on silent, feel embarassed, quickly whip out your mobile and turn it off
step 11: continue talking
step 12: thank dean, call him professor, walk out of office while he says ‘people call me david’

well… no okay it wasn’t that bad, david’s a nice guy.. and it’s good to see another plant scientist who understands the battle between biochemists and molecular biologists and plant scientists.. and he wasn’t intimidating at all, being the dean and stuff.. actually very friendly and talkative..

in other news.. on the way home on the train between central and town hall, another train pulled up alongside the train that i was in (because the tracks are parallel) running in the same direction.. this kid in the other train sees me looking out the window and puts his finger up and pokes his tongue out.. and i look at him weirdly, trying to ignore him.. and then he proceedes to get up from his chair, turn around, faces his backside towards me, and well, yes..

today was way too hot.. jaz was flossing her teeth with this length of garden wire she found somewhere.. just found out that a lecture on friday is cancelled, which means… NO UNI ON FRIDAY WOOT.. litty is luckier, having only a 2 day week thanks to thursday off and a public holiday monday and also this cancelled lecture..

hooray! i’m going to waste the whole day procrastinating anyway, but at least i get to procrastinate earlier..