Go West Coast Eagles !!!

Our father, who lives on the West Coast

Football be thy Game

Thy Eagles come

Thy game be won

At the MCG as it is at Subi

Give us this day your freakish goal

And forgive us our poor passes

As we forgive those

Who give free kicks against us

And lead us not into the pocket

But deliver us down the corridor

For Finals are the Kingdom

the G awaits our Glory

for ever and ever

Amen

What more can I say ? Go the West Coast Eagles ~~~~~~~~~~ !!!

Its going to be a Grand Finals re-match. Sydney vs West Coast (Perth - My hometown). And I still remember what happened last year. Well... I remember the aftermath of what happened after the Grand Final match last year. (see. 10 Stitches).

Lets see if we can avoid a trip to the hospital this year.

Small Talk

Question. What constitutes as cheating ?

Is it only considered to be cheating when you have physically cheated on your other half ?

Or the moment you fall for another person when still engaged in another relationship ?

Or isit acceptable to just periodically 'Mind Cheat' ?

Don't get me wrong, I don't believe there is anything wrong with looking at and admiring attractive people. If I couldn't, then there would be no purpose for me to go and watch movies anymore.

But where do you draw the line ?

Could you accept that your other half will flirt with other people he occasionally meets at pubs and clubs. Or vice versa ?

I don't know where I stand on this issue. Mostly because I don't want to appear to have double standards. But I can safely say, I have never physically cheated on any of my ex-boyfriends (and including the current one). But that is physically. And mostly because I would just end the relationship before starting another one.

But what my heart feels is another entirely different issue.

For example, I know that whenever I speak to Him, I would forget all else and can just happily chat the night away. But I have learnt through experience, that your perfect soul mate may not be the person you hold most dear in your heart. And I am old enough now to know I should not just 'move on' based on feelings alone.

As to double standards, I'm yet to find out how I would feel if my other half had a similar 'friend' in his life. At the moment, I feel that I give him as much freedom as I possibly can simply because I want to expect the same amount of freedom back. In the end, I guess it is all about Trust. And the 'line' (which waits to be crossed) differs with the amount of Trust that exists in a relationship.

And the perfect soul mate ?

For me, at this moment, it's finding that special someone to bend our heads together over a Sudoku puzzle... to share my paper with on a Sunday morning... who'll steal my blankets on a cold night... console me when I've drunk too much alcohol, picks me up and hold my hair back when I spew... lies to me when I ask 'does my butt look big in this?' and takes my side on everything ... except maybe when it comes to football.

flt closed

Flt Closed. Thats all I saw for both of my flights to Melbourne and back on the weekend.

On my way down there, I arrived at the airport about 20 minutes before the flight took off and had to rush through check-in and security, and was extremely lucky that the Gate I had to find was just around the corner from the security check point.

On the way back I wasn't so lucky.

The Melbourne Sky Bus (shuttle bus) took about 30 mins to get to the airport. So yet again, I was late. But this time it was worse, I arrived at the airport just 15 mins before scheduled take-off time.

And the Gate this time, was one of the furtherest Gates away in the airport. So I ran all the way there in my heels.

I made it through though. Just. Although I think I promised away my first born child whilst running to the gate. I swear I will never leave it this late to get to the Airport again. Ever.

Oh.. and I think I need to get a new pair of heels. These were definately not made to withstand a 5 minute run. Will post up more photos once I have the chance to download them from my mobile.

Sneaking In

For the past month or so I've been getting into a pattern of arriving at work around 9.40 - 9.45am. Its not because I wake up late. I still wake up at 7.30am, but for some reason I just can't seem to get my butt out of the apartment until 9am.

As I usually stay back late until about 6.30 - 7pm, my manager is pretty ok with this arrangement.

Except for days like today, when there is a GM quarterly address.

I didn't realise the GM meeting was on until I reached the office (at 9.35am - was slightly earlier today), and noticed the meeting request flashing from my MS Outlook.

Our GM has a habit to make fun of people, by this I mean saying 'Hi' to them when they walk in late and encourage everyone else to say 'Hi' to them as well and clap while the poor person tries to find a seat. This is in front of a group of about 60 people.

Or so I witnessed after our last quarterly meeting.

The meeting booking was for 3 hours. I couldn't see how I was going to get out of this. So I decided to quietly sneak in and enter from the backdoor of the meeting room.

Unfortunately he caught me.

Only this time he said this.

"Good morning... *blank stare* ... Oh I actually don't know your name, so I can't make fun of you.."

The whole room had about 3 seconds of silence, after which was followed by a roar of laughter, some of where were from my own colleagues.

After the laughter died down, I said "Well, this might be the only situation, when it might be good that my GM doesn't know my name", and sat down in an empty seat. Which was subsquently greeted by some more laughter.

There were two more unlucky souls after me who tried to sneak in as well, but unfortunately (or fortunately) for them he remembered their names.

For the whole afternoon now, I've had two department head managers, one operation manager, my own manager, and my manager's manager come down to see me.

All of us small potatos are on the lower levels, while the managers are on the higher levels of the building.

It was kind of weird. Most of these people, I don't usually see unless something had broken and we needed to go upstairs to be part of the line to face the firing squad.

Some of them actually walked by to say Hi to me, and specifically mentioning my name. And asked how things were. The operations manager actually congratulated on what I good job I had been doing supporting their people during the last outage period. (Happened about a month ago).

While my own manager, told me not to worry about it, and joked that maybe I should stop supporting those people the next time something goes wrong, and then they will definitely remember my name. My manager's manager came down about 20 mins ago asking me to walk upstairs with him, just so that he could personally introduce me to the GM.

I told him I didn't think it was necessary.

Is it really important for the highest manager (in Sydney anyway) at my company to remember my name ? or everyone's name in that matter ?!

I'm happy so long he signs my yearly payrise and bonus allocations.

Atleast now I know what to say at my Exit interview.

When they ask why I decided to leave my current company, my answer will simply be : The GM didn't remember my name.

Decision Making

I gradually come to realise that asking my boyfriend to make a decision is like trying to squeeze blood out of a brick -- It. Just. Isn't. Going. To. Happen !!

Its actually a simple decision, whether or not to take a holiday next week to give his friends a visit in Macau, and while on the way there, I can visit my friends in Singapore. (Since we are going to have to transit in Singapore anyway).

But no. Its not going to be a easy decision. Because until this very day, he still hasn't managed to ask his boss if he can take leave. While I'm sitting here everyday watching the price of airtickets go higher and higher.

Somehow I feel like he is a log. And I have to kick the log for the log to move. Kick an inch. And it will move an inch. No kick = No move

Since we are on the topic of decision making, I have a major decision to make myself.

Either go to a job which will offer great career development (or so they promise) but on about the same pay. Or go to another job which will still offer some career development pay 15k more but be based in the outer suburbs of Sydney. (See 'At Home' for reasons why I don't want to work out of the CBD).

How ?!

I'm still not sure yet. But unlike someone else I know, I will not be leaving this to the last minute and not do anything about it. Friday. I will choose one on Friday.

Ice cream throwing incident

After talking about it for the past two weeks, we finally decided to go and have the 'Ma la' hot pot (Chinese Extremely Hot Flavoured Soup) on the weekend.

The hot pot was scary. The chilli side had dried chilli and peppercorns covering the whole surface of the pot. All drenched in this thick layer of chilli oil.

I had already bagsed the toilet first.. just incase he was going to hog it for the next 2 hours after we reach home.

The hot pot was split into two sides (for two different soup bases), hot side for Pete, and obviously the non-hot side for me.

After totally stuffing ourselves with hot pot food continuously for two hours, we decided to go home and lie down. We told each other we were complete pigs, as we had ordered enough food for atleast 3-4 people and slowly dragged our butts back to the car.

That was when we saw this young Asian guy leaning against our car eating an icecream bar.

If Pete had gotten his wish and brought a motorbike, I guess the motorbike would have like a 'wife' status. While a car althought not his first choice in motor vehicles, would still rank rather highly up there. I realised this when I crashed his car last weekend, and the first thing he said (after all the swearing), was to ask how his car was. And only on a second return call did he ask how I was.

Anyway, the point is, I could feel the fustration build up when he saw this other guy leaning against his car eating icecream. I could hear him mutter "You have got to be kidding me"... To which he took his keys out. Strolled right up to him. Asked.. "Do you mind?"... Unlocked the alarm. And went to open the door.

The guy didn't really respond that well.

I think he started yelling something in Korean. (No offense to any Koreans out there). Which I think can only mean something on the lines to... Do you want to fight? As his female friend tried to pull him back.

I told Pete to not be stupid and get back into the car. To which we both did, and the guy ended up hurling his icecream bar at our car when we started to drive away.

I scolded Pete for provoking the whole incident. To which he gave me this weird puzzled look.

Am I right to say he provoked the whole thing ? If he didn't walk straight up to the guy, I doubt he would have the same reaction as he did.

With possibly no resulting ice-cream throwing incident.

In any case, we were too full to engage in a fight anyway.

Although when I think about it now, if I was in a bad mood that day, when he threw the ice-cream, I probably would have went out of the car and wacked him.

If only there was a baseball bat in the car.

Mental note : Must put baseball bat in car.....

At Home

I took one of my many RDOs (Rostered Day Off) today. Not because I was feeling slack, but because I had an interview to attend to. Everything is good about the new job I applied for (it is great for my career development), the only downside (a major downside for me), is that it isn't in the CBD.

Therefore, no more 'after work' drinks on Fridays in the city.

No more pub crawling with my colleagues.

Faced with this drastic change in lifestyle, I'm not even sure if I will be willing to take on that job at all.

And I'm talking about a substantial increase in salary. I guess when it comes to lifestyle, money isn't always going to make up for everything.

But anyway, I came straight home hoping to log online to WoW. Only to realise that half the realms were offline... !!

NoooOOOooo.... :(

Something tells me I should have gone back to work.

Its Karma.. ! :(

my Drawing (Take 2)

My second attempt....

I originally wanted to do one of my 'Golf ball' looking goldfishes, but I couldn't find a decent picture on Google images. I searched for 'Goldfish Art' instead and drew the above picture while getting ideas from the many little thumbnail images that popped up from my google search.

This is proving to be more addictive than warcraft !!

my Drawing

My manager is off on a training course for the whole week.... :)

So after fixing one of the tape libraries in the data center... I was pretty much left sitting at my desk, twiddling my thumbs, waiting for support calls to come in.

That was until I remember this... Which was inspired by this.

All of these works of art are made using this cool program from ArtRage.

Here is my little drawing.. (my first attempt.. so don't expect too much)...

Not sure why it looks so dark and gloomy. I had originally started with bright blue skys with full sunshine on a beach. Then somehow the colours got darker, and my painting had turned to night with a starry sky and with a cliff hanging off the side.

I'm off to do another one now... :)

Ready... Fight !

I got into a bad fight with him yesterday. I actually can't recall what started it anymore. But I can still remember how it ended.

It ended with me taking his car out alone.

However, I only managed to get about 10 minutes away before I was involved in a car sandwich acccident.

Lucky for me, I was at the front of the sandwich.

The ones behind me weren't so lucky, they had their bumper and front of their cars all smashed in.

It was a four car pileup.

I was lucky that there were no cars in front of me, and there were no oncoming cars either. As the force of the crash and pushed my car onto the other side of the oncoming lane.

I called Pete to tell him I had crashed his car, to which I could hear a reply of vulgarities and obscenities from the other end of the phone. I hung up. (Somehow I felt slightly pleased). He called back, asked if I was alright, where I was and told me to wait for him.

So... moral of the story girls ??

If you ever get into a bad fight with your boyfriend, just take his car out for a spin and crash it. He will come back running to you, apologise and promise never to do it again.

Oh... and I think I am ok. Slight neck pain.. To which I think I will be requesting free massages for the rest of today.

Child's Play

My manager's daughter is turning 6 this weekend, and we were all invited to her little princess's birthday party. The idea of spending 1/2 of my weekend looking at a bunch of 6 year old kids running around really wasn't what I had in mind, so I declined the party invite. Apparently, most of my other colleagues (the ones who don't have children), decided to do the same. After a quick chat during lunchtime, we decided that although we weren't going to make it to the party, we should atleast get her something for her birthday.

And being the only female on my team, I was the designated birthday present shopper.

We decided to chip in $20 each towards the birthday girl's present. I thought a quick trip down to Myers during my lunch time should be sufficient to get what I needed. I mean, how hard is it to shop for a 6 year old girl ??

I was so wrong. There was way too many choices. Not enough information shown on toys which depicts the age group its suitable for. Too many weird toys. And why do all those dolly figurines all look Anorexic with abnormally big eyes and boobs ?!?

Even though I was armed the with knowledge that my manager's 6 year old liked anything to do with Barbie and Disney Princess, I never really thought shopping for a 6 year old would be so hard. And I really didn't want to just buy her some Anorexic looking figurine.

Not content with just getting her a stuffed toy... (It was hard to find a $120 stuffed teddy bear). I decided to get her a couple of different presents which she would be able to use.

I had almost brought her this educational game. Then stopped to think back what I had wanted when I was 6 years old. Couldn't really remember that far back. But as a kid, when it came to opening up Christmas presents, if it was soft, flat and flexible, then there would be a great chance that the wrapped up contents would be clothes. And I would leave them last to open, wasn't really interested in clothes. And I would prefer to open all my toys first.

I guess somethings never change... :)

3 separate shopping trips later, and after deciding against the educational game - it really didn't look like fun. I decided to get her a set of Disney Princess pattern PJs, a Barbie sleeping bag and this kids game from Cranium.. Hullabaloo.

I hope she likes them.

Clueless

Its been raining cats and dogs the whole night. So much so that it totally flooded the road that I have to walk through to get to my train station. Perfect excuse to not go to work. But it didn't happen, as Pete offered to drive me instead.

However, even he wasn't prepared to drive his car through knee-deep water (we saw this guy trying to ride his bicycle through - but he stacked it), so instead of dropping me off at my usual train station, he drove me to the next station along my train line.

And this is where I remembered this shop. We have probably driven past here everytime we go and eat shanghainese food. This shop was probably first pointed out to us by Mon, and everytime we drive pass it, we said we will blog about it. But both of us never realy did, (Sorry Mon, but I couldn't resist testing out my new camera phone). Yes, thats right, I finally got my new phone ~~ ! The Sony Ericsson K800i. The camera is so cool.. 3.2 mp ~~! And I can even blog straight from my phone to blogger. :)

Anyway, enough about my new phone, I'll talk more about that later.

Here is a photo of the shop in question:

I guess only the people who can read chinese will find this funny. The shop itself is supposed to be a hairdresser (no idea who would actually go there to cut their hair), but they used the wrong chinese words on their sign. The words used, actually means somewhere around the lines of 'ILLEGAL SHOP'. The pronounciation still sounds the same as 'hairdresser shop' - atleast in Cantonese it is. I'm not sure about Mandarin.

The first character means something like 'Not' or 'Non' when used in a sentence. The second character means 'Legal' or 'Law'. The third character means something like shop. So putting it all together, you get something around the lines of "Not-Legal-Shop'. Or Illegal Shop. (Pls correct me if I am wrong, I've never really learnt chinese and all I know now is from playing online chinese games).

This is the chinese character for hair - 髮

It took me about 10 minutes to figure out how to type that, so if anyone else knows how to type out the chinese equivalent for hairdresser, pls post it in the comments section... thanks.

And no, I don't live in an Asian country. This would probably never occur in an Asian country. With a name like that, the shop will probably get raided by police everyday. Only in Australia would you see something like this. Although I can't be too sure, if the owner of this shop knows which country he is in.

Take a look at this...

Before anyone actually says that this is the Australian flag. Let me just say it isn't. The Australian flag has only 6 stars. This looks more like a cross between the Australian flag and the American flag.

So either the owner of this shop is completely clueless, or maybe they are just trying to convey a political message.... That Australia will one day become the 52nd state of America ???

I hope not.

Found It.... Not

An advertisement on a townhouse for sale caught my eye while I was going through my usual home alerts from Domain this morning.

• Modern Kitchen ........ Check

• New toilet ............ Check

• Timber floors...... Check

• Enclosed Kitchen Area ...... Check

• Two large bedrooms ........ Check

• Split level with allocated parking ....... Check

• Private Courtyard & Garden ......... CHECK !

• Priced under $340K ............ DOUBLE CHECK !!!

It was almost too good to be true. It was perrrrfect !

I quickly sent an enquiry to the advertising agent, requesting a floor plan, strata fees and inspection times.

Then I saw the suburb name. I've never heard of it.

Oh no... it dawned on me that I could be looking at a townhouse in woop woop...... A quick look on whereis.com and I managed to locate the suburb.

It wasn't too bad. There was a passing train line. Only that its EIGHT #%$!# stops away from my current train station !!!!!!

Yep... Thus indefinitely adding another 40 mins to my current train trip to work every morning.

Damn.

And I thought I had found my dream property. Damn. I knew it was too good to be true.

The reality is that I know I will probably never find anything that fits my selection criteria in the price range and in the suburbs I want to live in. Its probably the main reason why I am still renting. Sigh. And my landlord wants to increase our rent to an extra $20 a week.

I need another pay rise.

Sad Day

Just been shocked from hearing that Australian Icon - The crocodile hunter - Steve Irwin has just died from a freak accident after a stingray barb apparently went through his chest.

Its hard to believe that he is no longer with us.

Is a tragic loss for the family, Australia & Wildlife Conservation.

My heartfelt sympathies to his family

Steve was a true hero of the animal world and he died doing what he loved. May you rest in peace. You will be forever remembered by everyone.

Pinch and a Punch

Pinch and a punch for the 1st of the month everyone ~~~ !

And boy do I feel like I've been punched... :(

I went to the gym last night... and now... my legs... tummy... all pain pain.. :(