i'm still alive

Yes I'm still alive. I've just been bogged down with work. The days are long and it's been very tiring and trying at work at times.

Suffice to say, I'm trying to make the most of my weekends. I've been riding a lot and I've been trying to exercise. Work doesn't do any favours for my health. Well, since it's taking so much time away, it's doing no favours what-so-ever.

Anyways, I bought Metroid Prime 3 for the Wii. Been hanging out for this game since the console was released. It plays well and the controls work quite intuitively too. I've finished the first two games and I'd rate them as the best games I've played on the ol' GameCube. Hopefully I can invest some time into playing this one on top of all the other stuff I have to do. It took me 6 months to get into playing Metroid Prime 2 (yes, it sat on my shelf un-played for that long).

I'm dying for a holiday again. Which reminds me, I still have to finish posting up the China leg of my trip. The blog is written now; I just have to sort through my photos. There's over 700 of them to go through! Once that's done, I'll post them together.

bout bloody time

Congratulations to Kimi Raikkonen for finally clinching the championship in Formula 1. It's about bloody time really. Kimi should be 3-times world champion by now; were it not for the dogged unreliability of his '03 and '05 seasons in McLaren Mercedes. It must be heart-breaking to have the fastest car, the utmost pace, and yet you can't do anything about engine or mechanical reliability.

The only sad thing is he got his world title in a Ferrari. I am a huge McLaren supporter because they're the only team that can really serve it up to Ferrari consistently. That and they have a cool silver/black livery. Were it not for the tifosi (formerly the schufosi) and the bandwagon-ness of every other F1 wannabe supporter, I wouldn't mind Ferrari at all. Never-the-less, it marks an end to a good season in motorsports.

caught-up with uni friends

Tonight I went to have dinner at Squires Loft. It's a steakhouse and it's apparently one of the best in Melbourne. Well I certainly enjoyed my porterhouse steak and even though it was pricey, it was not as pricey as another famous and established steakhouse on Bridge Rd, Richmond.

Anyways, the reason for the dinner was to meet up with two uni friends - Nelson and John - that I haven't seen in four years. We didn't realise it had been that long; but then we didn't necessarily feel that it was all that long ago. I only stayed for the dinner, but that was enough to catch-up and to also strike-up conversations with Nelson and John's friends. Hopefully there will be occasion in the future to catch-up more frequently than once-in-every-four-years.

rayage.age++;

Well it's my birthday today. I didn't get up to much today. I'm just happy I managed to get some rest.

I did celebrate my birthday with a dinner at Hog's Breath yesterday night with a group of friends. It was a casual affair that was organised at the last minute. We were at a friend's housewarming and we decided to eat out (since there was no obvious dinner plan). I was a bit tired when the day started out, but it turned into a nice day with lots of laughs and a filling dinner of BBQ ribs at the end of the night. I just want to thank everyone (Steve, Sandra, Guaran, Chai, Sannie, Jeff, Fung and Yuen Yen) for shouting me dinner!

a good season for sports

It's turning out to be a good season for sports. Firstly, Casey Stoner won his first title in the premier class of MotoGP. Now, I must admit I'm not an avid follower of Stoner and I'm still a Rossi fan at heart. But Stoner's family sacrificed a lot (and gambled with their futures) when they moved to Europe to get Casey into the 'big league'. Given the mountain they had to climb, it's nice to see the battler getting just reward for those who sacrificed to get him there.

Now, this weekend has been especially good for footy. Geelong Cats won the AFL grand final; thumping Port Adelaide by a massive 119 points (that's almost 20 goals). I'm not a follower of AFL, but I do enjoy watching finals footy (cos let's face it, finals footy is where it counts) and it's good that the cup is finally returning to Victoria after 7 years.

And to cap-off the weekend, the minor premiers Melbourne Storm trounced Manly to win the NRL grand final. Melbourne was also the minor premiers of last years season and they lost to the Brisbane Broncos in a heart-wrenching game. This year, they made amends by coming on strong, off the back of last years defeat, to clean up the grand final.

What is especially good about this weekend is Victoria now holds the two biggest football cups in Australia. We have both the AFL and NRL flags and that just brings a smile to my face. Nothing is sweeter than denying Sydney-siders of their NRL flag!

Now, the only thing left to cap-off is to have the Formula 1 world championship stripped from Fernando Alonso. My god he's such a tool. I used to like him because he was able to defeat Michael Schumacher. But it has become incredibly obvious that the spoils of victory has gotten to his head. Currently Lewis Hamilton (the stellar rookie and teammate at McLaren) is leading Alonso by 12 points with 2 more rounds to go. I really wish Kimi Raikonnen would take the championship this year (he should have been double world champion by now) but he's 17 points adrift of Hamilton. But right now, I don't really care who wins the F1 title this year - so long as it's not Alonso.

angels & devils

I treated myself to the new Fuel album today. It's called Angels & Devils. I haven't really had a good chance to listen to all of it, but my initial impression is the majority of the songs on the album are a bit generic. The two tracks Gone and Wasted Time are probably the best (and are the most popular) songs on the album. Hopefully I will warm to the other songs with more listening.

As for the band, well at this point I don't think Toryn Green, the new lead vocalist, is as a good as the original lead vocalist Brett Scallions. I'm not saying that this is bad, though. It's just that Fuel is now 'different'. No matter what they've become, I still find myself liking their music. Their lyrics, in my opinion, set them apart from other bands that seem to only churn out generic dumb rock.

trip to Kuala Lumpur and Beijing - the KL leg

I didn't really achieve much during the Kuala Lumpur leg of my trip. I just wanted to go back to Malaysia to visit some relatives (mostly cousins), chill-out and just eat the local food. I didn't do any real sight-seeing; it wasn't my objective, although there are a lot of nice touristy places to visit on the peninsula side of Malaysia. I hail from the island side (the east side) from Sabah (north Borneo region), so even the peninsula side is all 'new' to me.

The one thing I do like about KL is that almost everyone speaks English. I even heard a couple of Chinese people speaking English like Chinese was going out of fashion. I guess I'm just too 'jungle-boy', as one friend put it, since I come from a much more rural and backwards area of Malaysia.

Food was certainly the highlight of my holiday in KL. I mean I didn't stuff myself crazy. I still had 3 standard meals a day. So it's not like I got to eat everything I wanted to eat. But at least I did get to eat a lot of my favourite foods. As you can see from the attached picture, I'm chowing down some fine char kuay teow. There's also a nice cold beverage of Iced Kopi-O. I also had the pleasure of eating a number of other local foods such as steam boat, bak kut teh, nasi lemak, curry laksa and beef noodle soup. Incidentally, I had KFC as well. No I'm not crazy. KFC is so much nicer in Asian countries, and Malaysia is no exception. I recommend anyone visiting Malaysia to actually try KFC - especially the Hot & Spicy variety.

Meeting up with my cousins was a major objective of my holiday. I haven't seen some of them in half a decade. It was certainly nice to catch up with some of them over a nice steam boat dinner. I actually intended to treat them to a western-style dinner at a Steak house. However, my elder cousin (who is at least 15 years my senior) objected to me paying for dinner, and insisted on having steam boat. It was for the best; the steam boat was simply fantastic.

I did manage to treat one of my younger cousins to a Steak dinner. His name is Patrick, and I would say we are probably the closest out of all my cousins. I figured that just eating local food would probably be an anti-climax to him. Obviously it's a treat for me to have local food; but he (and the rest of them) eat local food all the time. I invited him and his girlfriend to a meal at The Ship. They serve a reasonable steak, but the cut of meat isn't as good as what you get here in Australia. I also tried the ox tail soup on a recommendation from a friend.

Another thing I really enjoyed was the local fruit juices. I haven't had a decent star fruit juice in a long time, so I had to have one. The star fruit juice was simply heavenly. I also had honey dew juice as well.

I filled my time away from my cousins with shopping and some limited sight-seeing. I went to KLCC shopping centre - probably the most upmarket shopping centre you can go to in KL - and basically window-shopped. I wasn't really interested in buying anything; although a friend of mine tasked me to find a Canon 580EX II professional flash for his DSLR camera. I did score myself a couple of t-shirts and some Lot100 lollies that my mum likes.

Here's a link to my photo album of my trip:

trip to Kuala Lumpur and Beijing - the KL leg

one of three

I have a fairly uncommon surname. So, it was to my pleasant surprise that I received an email from a fellow employee (from the US office) saying 'hi' simply because he shared the same surname as me.

I was expecting to be the only person in the entire corporate directory with my surname. But it turns out that I am one of three.

an easy weekend, but achieved little

Well I set out to have an easy weekend, and I got it. I'm in two frames of mind about it, though, cos I also wanted to cover off a few things at home. Things like getting my desk tidied up, writing up (the rest of) my holiday to KL and Beijing, sorting out the photos of said trip, and getting my tax return finalised. I failed to achieve all of those things.

I didn't even go to the gym to get some exercise. It's been a week since I've been to the gym, and I don't have any excuse really. It hasn't been a difficult week, but I haven't been resting well and I've been drained of rest the entire week. I suppose it's good that I took an easy weekend to really recuperate.

At least I managed to finish the mowing I started last weekend. This time I got the backyard done. Hopefully the grass won't grow back too quickly. A chore is a chore; and mowing is definitely one chore I do not enjoy doing often.

I also managed to go riding; so the weekend wasn't a total loss. The weather was initially a bit overcast and the wind was very gusty. I could feel the bike being blown from side-to-side. Unfortunately the ride this weekend was rather 'meh'. I just couldn't get in the groove. It wasn't a patch my previous ride (last weekend).

The ride home was 'interesting' - to say the least. The weather turned for the worse and since it was gusty, it made for some side-to-side shenanigans courtesy of the wet road and wind. I'd be lying if I said that I wasn't concerned for my safety. It was a pretty hairy ride home. This is only the second time I've ridden in the wet. The first time was on damp road that got drier the closer I got home. This time around, it was the complete opposite. The bike definitely felt different in the wet. Braking distance increased noticeably, and I was trying to apply throttle, brakes and gear-changes as smooth as possible to avoid the squirms or aquaplaning. There were a few squirms but nothing major. I was more worried about aquaplaning into the back of a car, though. Certainly I knew if I made a hash of it, it could have been a nasty end to my weekend.

a quiet weekend that wasn't

All indications for the weekend that just past were: quiet and relaxing. It was anything but (quiet). I had to do the usual chores like washing my work clothes (and ironing them), and I had birthday drinks to attend on Sunday night. I also had a car to wash. There should have been plenty of time to do the 'other stuff' I needed to get done. Stuff like reviewing my Super options (thanks to my new job), sort out my tax, clean up my room (my desk is swamped, yet again) and make a real go at sorting out my holiday photos so I can finish my write-up on the holiday itself.

I only managed to half-finish one of my 'unexpected' chores. I was asked unexpectedly to mow the lawn, but I only managed the front half of the house. The backyard will have to wait till another sunny weekend.

At least I got to fit in some riding. I think it's safe to say that 95% of my mojo is back. Certainly for the faster bits of riding. I think I should invest in some knee-sliders. The other 5% of my mojo are those elusive slow-riding skills that I still suck at. But since I ride as a hobby, and I don't actually commute, it's not a big issue. It's something that I should work-on, never-the-less.

Hopefully next weekend will turn out to be a quiet one. I hate having too many things on my plate and letting them slip for too long.

multi-spoke wheels are hard to clean

I got back ~40 minutes ago from washing the car. It hadn't been washed in about 4 months and it was completely filthy. Washing the car itself wasn't too bad. I went to a self-service car wash and took my time. It was 12:15AM in the morning, and although I'm not suppose to use a bucket, there's no-one around and no-one's going to care. I needed to use a bucket anyways, cos a spray with the high-pressure hose isn't gonna remove any amount of dirt off the car. It needed a real good scrubbing.

The worse part about cleaning the car were the wheels. Oh man, they were covered in dirt and brake-dust. The wheels themselves are 10-spoke (a 5 spoke by 2 design) and they took some effort to clean. I think it took me the same amount of time to clean the 4 wheels as it did the entire car. I was there for a around 2 hours and I'll wager 45 minutes of that was dedicated to just the wheels.

Anyways, the car is nice and clean now. The wheels are all shiny and it is a stark contrast to the black brake-dust-covered-look it had before the clean.

first week at new job

So it's the end of my first week with BearingPoint. I can't say I've eased in yet, since I've been on DataStage training since my 2nd day with the company.

The training itself was good. The product isn't that hard to use because there's an air of familiarity to it. I can see it being a very powerful tool for complex data transformation. It is, after all, a tool for Extract, Transform and Load (ETL). Getting the most out of what it can do will be the real challenge. I hope they will put me onto a project that will let me utilise these new skills soon. I dislike being trained on something and then letting it go to waste without being given the opportunity to apply it to real-world scenarios. Anyways, I got a nice little certificate for completing the training.

Training finished up early today, so a number of us went down Flinders Lane to have a nice meal. We were provided meal cards for our lunch during the week, but a number of state-siders wanted something a little more special. We went to the Bluestone restaurant and bar on Flinders Lane between Queen and Elizabeth. The food was really nice. We had 3 different wood-fired pizzas (vegetarian, chilli, and salmon), salad of rocket and goats cheese, and chilli fries with aioli.

The day ended back in the office with some monthly drinks at Harry's bar on the ground floor of our building. It's a nice place with an adjacent restaurant. Drinks were fairly cheap at $3.50 for a glass of Carlton Draught or Stella. It was a good opportunity to mingle with some of the BearingPoint staff. It seems like the company has a lot of recruitment drives, since the majority of the people I met seem to be new staff who have only been working for the company for a few months.

trains aren't just being slack

The trains have been running achingly slow this whole week. And with only Friday left to go, I don't see it improving before the week is out. A ~40 minute train ride has now become ~1 hour. At least my cynicism of the trains has proved unjustified:

"Routine maintenance on Monday night found hundreds of flaws on five sections of the track. So severe is the deterioration that Connex has imposed a speed restriction of 30km/h along the damaged areas where trains usually travel at speeds up to 95km/h."

first day at new job

I had a crap start to my first day of work with BearingPoint. I did not sleep well at all. I think I only managed 2 hours of sleep.

After putting in the effort to get up early so I'd get to the office on time, good ol' public transport conspired to let me down - almost. Firstly, the bus I intended to catch was at least 10 minutes late to my stop. Not only was it late, but it was packed full as well. When the bus finally got to the train station, I had missed my train. Not that it mattered. They canceled the train I wanted to catch. Ah, but I had left some contingency in my plans. The following train is an express train that should get to the CBD by around 8:50AM. That should leave about 10 minutes to get to the office (it's not that far to walk, and I've been there before). To my dismay, they changed the express train to stopping-all-stations. Gaaaahhh. There is not a single nice thing I can say about our public transport system - especially the trains. They are run by a company known for sewage or waste management. Or something to that effect. Go figure. I elect to be a cynical smart-arse and say "start with shit; end up with shit".

Luckily I managed to get to the office without being stupidly late. 9:03AM according to the clock in the lift. That's not too bad, and give-or-take 5 minutes versus my clock, I'd say I got there just on time given all my set backs. Bah!

Anyways, as far as first days go, it was pretty hectic. I have training tomorrow (geez talk about hitting the ground running) for DataStage, so a lot of my induction activities had to be squeezed into one day. Particularly those activities that need to be completed during this week. My training starts tomorrow and ends on Friday. I'm glad, however, since it's training I want to be undertaking. So on first glance, they are looking out for my interests. Also, the people there seem to be really friendly. There's a light-hearted-ness to the banter, so my initial impressions are good. There seems to be a sense of community for the greater interest of everyone (and not just for the sake of the company's interests, either).

There seems to be a gig being lined-up for me that could utilise some of my existings skills. So I needed to complete my BearingPoint CV as soon as possible i.e. today! Luckily my existing CV is a good one that I could refer to and use as a 'template'. This exercise still took most of my day to complete. I still have a stack of forms to fill out before the end of the week. Hopefully I find some time in between training to fill them out.

reciprocity - a definition for friends

It's nice to give back to someone who's been really supportive of me when I was feeling down. With time, people 'get over' things. I wouldn't say this in absolute terms. Some things you just don't get over completely; but you learn to move on. It sure helps a lot when you have friends to lean on to get you there. I needed it, and I am where I am now because of it. I only hope I can help to achieve the same end for those who I've previously sought help from. Today, I was able to (at least in-part) return an act-of-friendship to someone who is now going through a difficult period.

getting back mojo

I went riding today for the first time in 3 weeks. Needed to get out onto the open road again. It was good to get back into the saddle and let the motor stretch its legs a bit. I went up Mt. Dandenong again - it's my usual haunt - but there were a fair few cars. Didn't do anything too crazy though, but I managed to get some good lean on the bike. Man I felt rusty though; time away and being overseas kinda does that. Thankfully it's Spring now and hopefully there will be more weekends with sunny weather.

trip to Kuala Lumpur and Beijing - the lead-up

I managed to get two weeks off between jobs so I decided to make good on my free time. I mean, ever since I finished Uni, I never had a decent holiday or break. Certainly not anything more than a couple of weeks. So about a week into my severance period (typical 4 week thing) I strolled into a Flight Centre in the Melbourne CBD and started asking about flights and accommodation. I worked out that I wanted to go back to Kuala Lumpur for a few days. I specifically wanted to be around Sunway resort. I've been there before on a previous company trip (for training!) and I have a number of cousins staying in the area. I was hoping to catch-up with them and to basically relax and eat the local food.

A little while before I decided to resign, I had a chat with a good friend who's now residing in Beijing. He was back in Australia for a few weeks for a small holiday and he's since gone back to Beijing for work. So I organised to visit him during the China leg of my trip. It would be a good way to visit Beijing since I don't know many people from there, and my Mandarin really sucks, so getting around could be a real problem.

So the itinerary came out to be 4 days in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and 6 days in Beijing, China. I had my flights and accommodation booked on the same day I went to the Flight Centre to inquire about my holiday plans (they work fast! I was very impressed). I also needed to get a Chinese holiday visa and I had Flight Centre arrange that for me as well. There's now a nice-looking visa stuck in my passport.

I also picked up a nice new shiny digital point-and-shoot camera - the Canon IXUS 950 IS. It is a sweet little 8MP camera with an optical image stabiliser. The image stabiliser does wonders for night shots and taking video. It's not a miracle-worker; some effort still needs to be taken into holding the camera as still as possible. I also picked up a Sandisk Ultra II SD card and set the camera to M2 or 2048x1536 resolution. It's an 8MP camera but at that setting I could only take 380 odd shots; versus 1150 odd shots at M2 resolution. It's not like I'm printing my photos in A3 anyways.

I had everything organised one week before my final day on Friday August 17th. I would, in fact, depart on the 17th at night - or rather, early Saturday morning on the 18th. I had Flight Center work out the flights to be at night to save as much time as possible. All that was left to be done was to serve out the remainder of my severance period, and to pack my luggage.

change of job

After serving (2 weeks short of) 3 years at Novell, I finally decided it was a good time to move-out into other areas in my industry. My last day with them was on August 17th 2007. I really enjoyed working for the company. I think the best thing about it was the people I worked with. There are some really good, friendly and helpful people currently working there. It was probably the hardest thing to leave behind. But alas, I can't build a career off friendship.

My time there served to highlight a divergence in where I wanted my career to head. Unfortunately, the opportunities offered by Novell were not as forthcoming as I would have liked. Even if they were, I did not feel comfortable due to what I perceived as a lack of a support network in the areas I wanted to develop my skills.

Thankfully, I was able to seek assistance and guidance from a good friend of mine. He gave me the encouragement I needed and also helped pave the way into his company. So, I am now an employee of BearingPoint. I am genuinely excited by this change in roles. I sincerely hope that I can grow and develop the skills I so dearly want with this new company. As far as I can tell, they have the capability to give me what I want; and they have the support network to back-it-up. So, I'm looking forward to building a career of 'mutual benefit' with them.

it begins

Well I've finally done it. I've been putting this off for far too long. At first I wanted to create an entire blog by myself (you know, as in code the thing) but I just couldn't find the time or motivation to get it off the ground. Consequently, I've let far to many moments I should've recorded slip, and basically I got tired of not having a place to write things down. So here we are... as the title says... "it begins".