all i want to do is to more like me and less like you
khanh is town for a week or so! i havent seen her in like forever (well since she went to the UK). so a bunch of us met up after work to go to K. for some reason there was a ludicrous amount of feedback coming from the mics.. *shrugs* i dont know technology. we ended up singing half the time without mics at all.. which is bad for me cos i need the mic echo to make me sound even a little bit un-awful.

afterwards we went to BBQ King.. by the time everyone had turned up, it was too late for me to eat.. so i couldnt get any juicy juicy peking duck.. *sigh*. bunny and i split some congee.. which was tasty.. but not peking-duck tasty =p i didnt really last much longer than that, i had to run off to frisbee...

.. so.. we won! our team played pretty mad.. i played pretty well too, probly not my best game.. but good for different reasons. i still had the taking-off-to-the-end-zone moves that i normally have, but i was actually throwing ok this game. i threw 3 hammers, 2 were caught in the endzone and one.. well sjtu went to the floor =p but thats 3 more hammers than ive thrown in any other game =) they were playing zone defence against us.. and frankly i have no idea what im doing in a zone.. i usually jsut wait around claiming that im "spreading out the defence" =p

i wake in the morning and i step outside, and i take a deep breath and i get real high..
this weekend was a total bust.. instead of doing many things.. i did none. the most exciting thing i did all weekend was watch the replay of spurs beating the suns on ESPN.

um.. there was some crazy thunderstorms this weekend.. very loud.. i was scared and couldnt sleep. i had to run over to maria's room and get her to sing me a song about her favourite things.

if i could paint, id paint a picture of you
here is my latest attempt to break out of an artistic rut::

um.. what do u think? i think i still have a tendancy to make the feet too small.. for some reason i can only draw from the "slightly to one side and slightly above the target" angle.. hrm. i need lessons or something.

theres gotta be more to life than chasing down every temporary high
i get paid tonite at midnite (my biggest pay slip ever!) and i finished the day with $2.75. i was gonna go to rock climbing today, but i couldnt afford to train out to parramatta to get a lift and borrow some money =p it ok though cos im still heaps sore from skating yesterday anyways.

instead i went home and watch the NBL all-star game. the game was actually pretty cool, the score was 156-140 with the australians beating the imports. there were totally like about 50 alley-oops and about forty 3-pointers in the game. brad newley, this rookie was ripping it up. theyre talking him up to go to the nba, which is cool for australian basketball.

saldy he dunk contest was a total yawn.. even moreso than the nba one. there were only 2 guys in it.. and the guy won it with two-handed 360..... and thats it. no bounce, no windmill, no double-clutch.. nothing. it wasnt even a realy 360 cos he came in at an angle, so it was only about 270. he got 29/30 for it .. gah! worst of all was Steve Carfino MCing it.. *shakes head*

he was a skater boy, she said see ya later boy
i spent all day at work today doing hovering tooltips in css and dhtml.. yawn.. heaps tedious having to think of tooltips for pretty much everything on every page of this application i wrote. but apparently the end users are some of the stupidest ever, so ive gotta be thorough =p

after work me and hunt went skating in dulwich hill.. it was pretty cool. theres a skate park and a snake run and a basketball court and a tennis court and a bbq. ive totally forgotten how to skate now.. it took me like half an hour to even start turning and forget about ollies, i couldnt even sorta kick the board up. there was some kid there who was trying to teach us a few things.. quite friendly although he was a bit of a non-credible-guy, but i figure most kids are =p

i heaps keen to keep skating, if i wanna get better.. i spent about half the session trying to remember how to skate, its a bit frustrating not being able to do things i thought i could do already =p on the upside i was free of any major injuries, jsut a juicy bruise on my shin...

..wondered how im gonna make it thru..
at after work drinks + pool today i was choking like nick anderson in the nba finals. i couldnt play at all.. like not sub-par.. not sorta-bad.. but horribly terrible. i may as well have been using my left hand.. maybe one of my eyes is out of focus or something.... gahh..

(hrm.. and im supposed to be attempting to be more upbeat =p)

anyways.. frisbee went a lot better than pool. i think i played pretty well.. i made a few interceptions and defence overall was pretty goodness =) i scored twice i think.. and also made a few long catches (although i did drop a couple too). we ended up winning 13-11 (or there abouts), we lead the whole way cept when they managed to tie it at 11-11. pretty tense =p most importantly i felt like id run hard and at least put in a good effort for the team, i was happy with how i played.. and i came away with zero (count them) injuries!! w00t me! although for some reason i woke up this morning with a bruised rib.. ouchies. =p

i dont give a damn about my reputation
blah blah blah << insert random angst >>

:: friday
during the day i got about a hundred emails in my inbox of ppl trying to decide what to do in the nite. about half of them were tenny and minh calling each other names =p and in the end no one had any idea what was going on *shakes head*.

after work i went out to drinks with some work ppls. my boss was trying to talk us into joining his group for downhill mountain biking. apparently is the most dangerous thing ever, so its totally something i need to try =)

we ended up going to parra for some bowling (which i predictably went horrible at) and then went to karaoke. i finally got to go to the k place in parra, and i have to say it was pretty good. the song selection isnt massive, but the songs are pretty new and theres a good selection of non-pop and non-rnb songs in there, enough to keep my amused anyway. some radiohead for hunt too =)

:: saturday
uh.. this whole day was pretty hazy .. it was jsut so hot it didnt make any sense. so being the conservative cautious person i am, i had to go outside and play basketball =p it was way too hot for basketball.. but its still fun =) at the end we were playing horse and i won (of course) beating out david by matching him with 3 threes in a row (including one from the dreaded right cnr).. and then finished it off with an over the backboard shot .. mwhahaha.

also that day we went around parra shops looking for skateboard trucks. i ended up buying a yet another beanie. yay me.. uh.. even though its totally too hot to even think about wearing a beanie =p

:: sunday
yeh ok, i slept in heaps.. and didnt really even feel like getting out of bed, so i missed yum cha in the city.. and only jsut got out in time to go see the Lord of The Rings exhibit at the Powerhouse Museum. i think ill always be sorta disappointed by these sort of exhibits, i mean they cost more to get into than actually seeing the movie, and all u get are like props from the movie. it was pretty cool to see how they made stuff and all that jazz, but i hear its like on the extended edition DVDs anyway =p

the other thing i wanted to see was this movie thing called Eavesdrop.. but it was totally closed or something. *shrugs* the door was clocked and no one was around.. it was weird.. it seemed really interesting. *sigh*

.. on that note, i was recently told i shoudl try and make my blog more upbeat. which i sorta tried to do after i changed the template from that rather downtrodden looking red shoe template. i think ive hit a downhill spiral again, i dun wanna give off an upbeat vibe in my blog if im not upbeat, thatd jsut be like deceptive .. or something. but then again, maybe i just need to change my template again and itll all be cool. im not really sure what to change it too.. ive totally had severe creative block of late, i cant draw or design anything. im thinking i should like go overseas or something to get some inspiration =)

icchan online
*scratches head* .. these humans confoose me sometimes. the other day this friend of mine added me to their msn messenger list. i hadnt really talked to this person for a while, but it was a pleasant suprise cos ive wanted to catch up for a while. cept they wouldnt talk to me.. id send a msg and theyd jsut go "ok" or "hi" ... why add someone to ur list if ur not even gonna talk to them? it doesnt make any sense =p

weirdness..

in other news: atm i have no ppl online on my msn messenger list.. not one. i guess everyone else actually has a life =p

if only we could go back to then...
uh.. i totally wrote this ages ago, but forgot to post it. i was like reading the "year in review" thing on a few other blogs and i was like "hrm.. didnt i write one of those? i wonder where it went.." .. see what happens is that when i write long blog posts i tend to write them in notepad first, cos web browsers tend to die alot and so i dont wanna risk losing such a long post =p it was jsut sitting in notepad at work.. buried under multiple web browers, and java code and web server consoles =p

uh.. last year was like totally weird. it was certainly different to other years .. im not really sure how to describe it. it was neither better nor worse.. just different. i think the biggest lesson i learnt this year was that things arent all that bad.. i shouldnt try so hard to chagne things all the time. i often say that i wanna change this and that.. but change is so much effort and rarely worth the trouble =p

:: work work zug zug
work is totally the same as it was when i started 4 years ago =p i still dont really do anything.. the only real difference is that i get paid more to do nothing now. The appears to have been a mass exodus from the CBD, with hardly anyone around for lunch nowadays. lots ppl have moved out to like north sydney and outlying business centres... i (very) briefly considered quitting.. but changes are imminent at the rba anyway so the coming year should be different again =p

:: sport sport
well this was pretty interesting... i quit dragonboating cos i totally couldnt handle the hectic training schedule. i continued frisbee, we won div4 and so we moved up to div3 its going pretty well i think. i played comp basketball for the first time since 1997, it was pretty coolness.. ive sorta forgotten how to play basketball though.. =p

i went snowboarding in japan =) started skateboarding again.. i started doing rock climbing... i played a bit of tennis here and there.. and i even played on an indoor and outdoor soccer team for a bit... phew.. thats a lot of things for one year =p

:: socialising
this year was pretty much a write off in terms of socialising.. i totally just couldnt be bothered most of the year. i spent most of the year being accused of being a piker... and that was fair enough =p but my bday dinner was heaps good this year.. lotsa ppl i like turned up =) i once knew this guy at school named Nico he never really came to social things.. because apparently things which are rare become more valuable, so by only turning up to say 1 in 10 events, made his visits that much more valuable.. hehe .. or so goes the theory anyway. and i guess i might be like that, i enjoy outings more if i dont go to them all the time. i dont really like the idea of going to things out just of politeness or just cos i dont have anything else to do. also my life was consumed by pokemon for a while =p .. but i have to say im rather very bored with computer games in general.. nothing has really kept my attention much of late.

:: females
the two most common questions im asked when i catch up with ppl are "are there any vacancies at the RBA?" and "have you got a gf yet?" .. so i figured i should put a section for this.(also after my sister got married, i was bombarded with "when are you gonna get married and move out?" from every relative within a blast radius of Sydney) so ..um.. nothing really to report.. there was this girl who i liked heaps earlier in the year.. but girls are nothing but trouble.. and this one was no different. she jsut turned out to not be who i thought she was. though this year i sorta realised that theyre not really trying to be mean, theyre jsut careless and not all that thoughtful. which i guess is excuseable.. im willing to give them the benefit of the doubt, i figure they dont know what theyre saying more than theyre trying to jerk me around. .. i was thinking that if i was trying id sorta be after a gf for all the wrong reasons anyway. i mean i dont wanna forceably attach myself to some poor girl just cos its the thing to do nowadays =p im pretty sure i was heaps of a jerk to my last gf anyways.. i wouldnt wanna do that to anyone else... at least till i sort myself out. but i am quite lightbulbed nowadays though ....

:: um.. miscellaneous odd and ends
i finally started playing some bass.. only to find out that judy is coming to take it all away. i think destiny is trying to tell me that bass isnt the path for me. i might learn piano or something... *shrugs*

this year was actually ok for injuries. whilst they were frequent.. there werent any serious ones. they were all jsut cramps, sprains or grazes. skating resulted in heaps of extra bruises and scrapes.. but its invigorating almost =p most injuries i get tend to hurt for about 5 mins.. but look horrible for the next 3 months =p

i sorta tried break dancing a bit too.. i can do a 6-step and a 3-step. theyre heaps easy. i cant do much else though. id try more but i gotta put like effort in =p

.. i still havent got my license.. *sigh*

so.. uh.. resolutions go here somewhere..
- get my license, hopefully car, but at least motorbike (this is a perennial resolution =p)
- actually get good at something before quitting (probly skating, breaking and drums)
- go to snowboarding in europe (this one is in the bag.. i think)
- actually save some money (uh.. we'll see)
- convert someone into wearing Chuck Taylors =)

and lastly, a rather australian-looking Top Ten Songs of 2004
10. My Band - D-12
9. Look What You've Done - Jet
8. Stand Up - Scribe
7. Out of The Blue - Delta Goodrem
6. Young Man, Old Man - The Dissociatives
5. Feeling This - Blink 182
4. Sunsets - Powderfinger
3. Check It Out - The Beastie Boys
2. Scar - Missy Higgins
1. American Idiot - Greenday

music is crap, aliens told me so
this week has been pretty crazy in web tech.. nick (the resident guru) is leaving.. nathan has left for another section and mike (an ex-industrial student) has returned from uni. but through all that ive manged to not do any work at all =p

yesterday i had to return the bass to judy.. *sigh* .. im music-less again. ill probly start learning the drums. since my brother is too busy learning the guitar and the piano to play his drum kit.

after work we headed out to dinner and to karaoke =) it was a good group of ppl .. heaps old school. nowadays its almost unseen to hang out with a group who are mostly compscis in my year. also with Thao overseas, ive seen Minh more times in the last month than in the previous year =p

on the train home, i bumped into Kush.. i see him about never.. we talked about primary school, and how weird it was to bump into ppl from primary school who we hadnt seen for nigh on 12 years now.

it doesnt even matter how hard you try
work was yawnness to the max...

i had frisbee tonite, we didnt have enough ppl *frown* .. but they played down with only 6. Naremburn Oval is notorious for having hte lights go out early.. and tonite it benefitted us. with us up 12-11 and 5 mins the go, the lights turned off, bringing an early finish to the game.. and we won =) mwhahaha.. hehe

i totally cant go one day without injuring myself. tonite i made a divin catch and cramped up my left calf (the bad one). how do u prevent cramps? i mean other than stretching? i seem to get them a lot more than other ppl.

in other news: im thinking of quitting my job. the guy who sits next to me jsut quit to go work at a computer game developer.. ahh the compsci student's dream =p he had to take a huge pay cut and has to move to melbourne... maybe a fresh start like that is what i need? hrm...

even though i tried, it all fell apart
twas the twins' bday thing at brotne on sunday.. i wasnt heaps sure if i could be bothered going cos its hecka hard to get out there (considering i dont drive) .. but i hadnt seen those kids in like forever.. so i thought i should go, also i find them heaps easy to buy presents for. but ppls bdays are usually bad places to catch up though.. cos they know everyone there, and are usually too busy to come and catch up. at my bday i do make an effort to at least sit down at chat to everyone a bit (and not jsut as they arrive, and when they leave).. im not sure i do a very good job though =p

the party was ok.. its wasnt really beach weather, but warm enough that i went for a bit of a swim.. i basically jsut spent the day sunburning myself =p it was one of those parties where i knew almsot everyone.. but i only sorta knew them, so i was like "um.. should i say hello, or should i jsut sit here quietly?". im not that keen on socialising out of politeness (or boredom).. its reaks of fakeness. i receive enough of that, so id rather not dish it out as well.

afterwards we totally coudlnt figure out what we were gonna do. so we just stood around bewildered and undecided for a while.. then decided to go out to Parra.. and decide from there. we ended up playing Athens2004 on PS2 (cos david forgot his karaoke remote). i found out that im quite good at weightlifting.. but absolutely horrible at high jump ... quite ironically the opposite of real life =p

we ate out at some random jap restaurant in parra.. it was pretty meh... not horrible.. but not fantastic either. but jap food is always better than pretty much every other kind of food =p

we ended the night with some more PS2.. and finished after 11pm.. to which i exclaimed "holy crap, im not gonna sleep at all tonite" ... well i thought it at least =p it takes me forever to get home from Parra.. cos its like 2 trains. Minh offered to drive me home.. i was a bit reluctant to take it at first, cos he also needs to go to work.. but then he said he doesnt leave his house for work till 9:30am!! wtf? and i leave i at 7:30am. also he was gonna drive me home and then come back and play more PS2 with david anyways =p

fo shizzle my nizzle
on friday i managed to get thru a lot of lil errands and tasks i had to get done.. stuff to do with my trip and stuff about HECS and other lil work related things.. its good to be productive for once =p hehe

after work i went to see Phantom of the Opera: the plastic fantastic version... I was sorta wondering how a movie like this could come through without me hearing much about it (since im quite alert to news about musicals) .. and after watching it, i found out why i hadnt heard much. to be honest, it was terrible. they totally masacred it.. they had good voices but didnt sing that well.. the leads mostly had very hayden-like acting.. and they tried to compensate that with some other characters who horrbly overacted. and the fake accents were cringe-worthy... there were a few scenes where the actors were singing, but they were like holding a note, and at the same time doing stuff which would prevent them from successly holding a note like that or like theyd barely open their mouth and belt some some awesome notes, making u think "she is totally not singing that". the music was awesome as u can imagine, but frankly this is a good example of how not to make a musical into a movie.

... ahem.. anyways.. today i went surfing for the first time.. it was pretty fun. its totally tiring on the arms, i found it tricky to paddle on this massive foam "beginners" board that i got =p but once i managed to catch a wave, it was pretty easy, i was standing up by the end =) if i couldve caught some better waves then i wouldve been doin really well i think. well enough that ill try it again sometime.

.. in other news: its the twins' birthday today (as well as Elvis, David Bowie and Stephen Hawking) .. as far as i know neither of them read this, but Happy Birthday girls. i havent seen those kids in like forever, they grow up so fast *sniff*

racism is a weapon of mass destruction
im totally over my trip already.. and i dont even leave for another 6 weeks =p ive totally had it up to here *points to throat* with booking and organising this trip already. ive jsut had unrivalled difficulties trying to fix up my booking with this tour company.. so totally crap.. i ended up having to buy a calling card to make a phone call to London to get any sort of response out of them. the minimum i could buy was $10.. which is ok.. but its charged at 1c per minute.. so cheap =) i made a call to them for about 9 minutes.. so i have about $9.91 worth of credit to make international calls to the UK .. i have no idea what ill do with it =p it is all sorted out though =) *phew* .. jsut gotta send one fax tommolo.. hopefully its all over now....

... i forgot to mention this earlier.. but im not broke .. somehow i managed to overpay my HECS by $1837.63 .. not really sure how that happened. so theyre apparently gonna give me some money back =) time for a shopping spree .. w00t!

miscommunication is a weapon of mass destruction
my life has been riddled with angst courtesy of this place in the UK who im attempting to book a ski trip with. i got a letter in the post from them.. sent on the 30th dec.. and it said i had to pay my balance and post the form back to the within 7 days else id lose my deposit. i received this letter yesterday (5th jan) ... which gives me about 2 hours to post the form back to London... hrm.. complete with a cheque for 265 pounds.

they obviously dont often have overseas customers.. cos they totalyl handle their accoutns horribly.. they also dont answer emails.. and dont accept credit card.. basically i have to stay up till like midnite tonite and make an international phone call to them.. to hopefully get a coupla days extension maybe... as you may know i dont really swear.. but SHIRT SHIRT FLASK!!!

......................................................
hrm... but other than that.. the rest of my week has been heaps cool =) been hanging out with some nice ppl ..

::monday, tenny's bday.. jsut a quiet lil dinner, but heaps fun =) we went to Tony Romas .. who are apparently famous for ribs.. well they are according about 1 millions signs in their store =p it was rather tasty though =) thanks go out to Amy for shouting everyone... it sure wasnt cheap. we finsihed up with a trip to Passionflower.. where david ate 5 scoops of ice-cream.. by himself =p
.... afterwards i ran to catch the last train

::tuesday went to Yakiniku (oiishi~) with some anime ppl .. but it was all the nice anime ppl.. and none of the suck anime ppl =p the food was mad.. they had these vents above each table which were supposed to suck away all the smoke from your BBQ.. but i dont think ours was working.. as our smoke was trying to go into the vent next to ours =p Annie was suffering pretty bad.. the smoke was going straight into her face.. it made everyone teary-eyed.. literally =p .. and of course we had to go to Karaoke after =) it was pretty bad (sound-wise) though.. i was singing horribly (moreso than normally).. and i think the other guys jsut werent trying .. it was still fun, it jsut mustve sounded terrible =p
.... afterwards i ran to catch the second last train

:: wednesday
i had to stop and buy a bday present for my brother.. so i was running a bit late to get to parramatta.. to go to rock climbing. there was a a bunch of us there more than i thought thered be.. so it was pretty fun.. and its always fun to catch up with lingy ^^; *waves* .. im considering purchasing equipment cos its totally expensive to hire. the guy at the shop was trying to convince me to buy these size 7 shoes.. by saying they should be tight, and theyll stretch a bit, but i couldnt even get my foot into it =p i was climbing better than last time, i think mostly cos i had hire shoes instead of dunlop volleys. but i got past the 3 that i couldnt do last time and a 4 which id never done before.

since it was ling's local area she took us to the most happening place in Norwest: maccas =p it was pretty much the only thing open.. so we went there and ate. for soem reasone everyone appeared to have ordered double meals or something .. there was about 10 ppls worth of food between 6 ppl =p it was fun to sit around and jsut chill out.. it sorta felt like uni again =)

.. i got a ride home.. w00t!

mo money mo problems
oh.. also i have zero dollars in my bank... yeh thats right $0.00 ... how the hell did that happen? well pretty simply it was HECS.. i tried to take advantage of that 15% discount which i had to pay before dec 31st.. so i jsut put all my money into HECS.. (~$6700) .. so i have no money... hrm.. it is pay week this week though .. so ive only got to hold out till thursday... *checks pockets for shrapnel*

theres so much that ive wanted..
as im typing this theres ridiculous amounts of noise going on in my house.. my brother and his "band" are "practicing".. which is another word for making a racket =p also on of his other frens is playing Soul Caliber and another is playing soccer.. in the house.. its like sort of a bday get together (its his 21st).. so loudness though =p

also ive been playing this game called Virtual Orchestra Studio.. its basically DDR/drummania.. but with a keyboard. actually its just a MIDI game where u use keys of a keyboard instead of the keys of a keyboard. like lines come down the screen, and when they get to the bottom, you hit that note.. there are only six notes though (do re mi fa so la ti) .. its sorta fun.. but not as great as DDR =p

.. uh.. so NYE..
this year was a bit more boring than last year, but heaps less troubles.. i dont vaguely remember things i regret doing like last year =p it was just a bunch of ppl down at the good ole pyrmont point park.. nothing heaps exciting. me and nige had some good frisbee practice, which i sorely needed. i slept at Grace's place.. its pretty nice.. i wouldnt mind buying a similar place =) anyways.. i pretty much jsut crashed as soon as we got there, its like in Chippendale.. and we walked there from the park, my feet were deadness. the next morning we got up and spent the day playing counter strike with nige and some of her roomates.. pretty lame.. but still pretty fun =) hehe

so.. uh.. resolutions..
*shrugs* .. none as drastic as last year.. get my license is one.. get a life is another..