Tulip Farm Trip

Yes yes yes, me a guy, went to the tulip farm festival.
The festival was located somewhere in dandenong. What was in store was live jazz, 3 tokens to wine tasting, overpriced food and loads and loads of tulips


So.. i had 7 tokens(3 from smalls and 1 from kit mey). I had the chardonnay, cabernet savignon, merlot, semillon, pinot noir.Cant remember the rest of them. Oh and i had blue cheese, brie cheese and the swiss cheese. Yummy..





As you can see i was abit reluctant when i arrived at 1030ish in the morning. the journey took bout an hour on bus. When we arrived, smalls had motion sickness and she tried to puke. poor kecik.



What woke me up as a guy was a display of steam engines. Here is a pic. All the engineers flocked to the side to check the machines out.




Once done, we headed to the tulips. I didnt know tulips could catch my attention for a long time. I spent most of my time photographing macro shots of it. here are some. There were rows and rows of tulips of its particular color. Some were crossbred to give another shade of color. amazing. genetic engineering..




Not sure what flower, but check the bee out hovering over the petals



Blackish tulips



Here is a shot where a stray flower grew among the common




Posing among the tulips, me, jia yun and alya




The males in our group. Trying to look entertained








We then as usual got into a photo taking frenzy



Here is one trying to mimic the windmill while a bunch of indian tourist staring at us waiting to get the windmill for themselves. Hui wen always comes up with crazy ideas.


A perfect picture for a cd cover.



Another with the 6 of us



Me, Jc and Aik, keeping ourselves entertained



Posing next to a wine truck




Now for the best part... we planned to make a bollywood scene at the tulip farm since there were tonnes of tulips..this is what we did.armed with spontaneity, 2 cameras, and tulips. and lotsa editting and laughing.

The story is, both of the ppl in the video is looking for their soulmate. A friend points out that he is on the bus. Somehow the scenery brought them to common ground. And happy ending.(oh, tots was in the video too, forgot to put it in the cast.sorry! :( )



So, the tulips wasnt so bad, when you had other agendas and great friends around you.

the moment

as requested by aik.

this shot taken by kit mey has really got him on his toes. its really disturbing. how can someone you think as your closest friend "reveal" his other side to you during a drinking session. Take a look, tots is really happy having aiks hand. aik said he has been thinking about what the hell is going on.

well you all know alcohol dont lie, so what does this mean? anyone?tots...?

Roberts Hall Ball followed by MUMSU's after party @ PI

As you can see, Jc and I were enthusiastic to pose on the chartered ventura public bus. "License to carry 71, 42 adults seated"?

Bus ride took about 10 minutes to reach our destination, the Merrimu Reception Centre. It was just opposite the Maccas near Chadstone. The entrance of the place look like one of a small town's chapel.





Hopping around and taking photos before it began. Ladies and gentlemen, the foursome from roberts.



The girls from japan in our table, Yoko and Emi from tokyo and eriko from yokohama. Very friendly people, always wanting a good conversation to practice their english :)




The President and Vice with presenting the Ball awards, 2006 king is Dale Robert and queen Laura. I think this is the best venue of all the balls and functions i went to in australia. Very grand, from the picture, the backlight currently in blue, changes every few moments to a different glow. very cool.




Jian Cai and me feeling bored when the DJ started playing stupid songs. I brought the Haku out. hehehehhehe. From this moment on, Jc is as carefree as a toddler


Sweet sweet Joleen.



Some of the Roberts residents posing on the stairs before we left, cant remember hugging keith..


By now, the 4 of were high on free flow alcohol(sweet wine) because we decided not to spend a single cent in the club. but, that didnt happen.

Arriving at PI, the trinity complete, met up with Smalls after her MUMSU ball.




Oh and yee vonne too



And i found aik too..



Meet hong sze, just met her through aik, shes funny and super hyper and sober eventhough she doesnt look like it in the picture.scary eyes.




another picture of the cam models..at every opportunity they have..see see, smalls has a hat..later she has something different. She loves accessorizing



Me, tots and aik. they were chilling in the city with vonne before they met us in the club.


smalls and hui wen stealing the lime light and a tie.



PI ( ex-amber), the management was ok, just abit stingy now since they didnt give a free bowl of doritos compared to amber. but there is nothing wrong with the music except they played a song 3 times.

All of us had a wicked time, and left the club after 3am, and headed down to Chillipadi to yam char. I had roti ruben which i did taste unlike last time(donated 20 bucks for them to clean my puke and didnt finish my food). Suprisingly i met Shereen from SAM, first time seeing her in melboune oh and darren too for the 2nd time, at chillipadi too.

The day out ended at 530 am when we reach the halls in an eight seater cab which caused the 7 of us 70 bucks i think.

A wicked wicked night....

Cheers

This is a really really really funny and emotional clip. I think it was worth figuring out how to post this clip on the blog to share it with everyone.

I watched it a few times.. and im amazed how good they could act.

To every little good things in life, Cheers! :lol:

Home sweeeeet home.

When JC wakes up early in the morning..the first living thing that greets him would be..

a shade of light brown on its exoskeleton,feelers, hairy legs and has a shape of a rugby ball, some of them are capable of flight too.

if you had not guessed it..its a COCKROACH(es). i managed to look it up and its species is call Blatella.


This is how it looks like

I have been sharing a fridge with JC since i moved to australia. As time passes by, more and more cockroaches seeked refuge in our fridge. They chose to stay between the rubber insulation on the fridge door. This must be the best place since the inside is cold and the frame is hot. So its an IDEAL place. Thus staying between the rubber insulations, its rather convinient to just crawl to our food and grab a bite and head back home. or head back for supper like we go mamaking.

Everytime i open his fridge in the morning to grab some cereal, ill see "friends" of ours everywhere. from the lower compartment where you store your veggies, to the egg storing cases.

The infestation is soo bad, when you flick or knock the rubber insulations, you will see a few of out friends coming out from a small hole. Yes, many sizes of cockroaches. from sizes to a grain of rice to sizes of a sweet. one big happy family

Recently the infestation got worse. You can see at least a cockroach crawling around the fridge, on the floor and yes.. on JC's study table. which is by the way.. less than a meter away from where he sleeps.

What have we done? tupperwared any foodstuff. kill any cockroach on sight. Jc got a can of insecticide to declare chemical warfare on them. And according to him, they are kinda immune. they still get to run away. they dont die on the spot. I think we need more powerful stuff like sheltox or baygon.

The most annoying thing now. is that... i just spotted one near the toilet sink on the bathroom cabinet, where we put out tooth brushes, facial wash, and contact lenses. The toilet sink is less than 3 meters from JC's room.

Smalls, JC and Hua Sim, things are getting serious. Smalls' room, by the way is 3 meters from JC's room. so..smalls..your room is next in the line for infestation.

......
Jc and I have decided to move the fridge out of his room and temporarily store all our food stuff in smalls room for the time being. When moving the foodstuff out, we found 2 live cockroaches in the egg container, 1 near the vegetable storage area and a few small ones all around. We then sprayed insecticide into the hole between the insulation and the frame. We also filled the whole fridge with insecticide and set it to the coldest setting hoping to freeze it to death.

here is a shot of the cockroach eggs we found on the carpet under the fridge after we moved it out

Corporate dinner

Few days ago i attended the Mechatronics club corporate dinner. We were reluctant to go because it cost 20AUSD, buy rayner already did the bookings so we were forced to go. What happened at the corporate dinner was, engineers from prospective mechatronics employers sat down and had dinner with us. The main agenda for us was to squeeze what ever information we needed to ask about internship, employment, company background and valueble first hand experiences from people from our field. It was really an experience as put by aik, "money cant buy". Each table had corporate representative sitting with students for the night. My table had Wayne from Invetech and cant remember her name from Careers and Employment Monash.


This took place at novotel at glen waverly. This is where it was held, at the waverly conference room. 7 tables, small venue but big results.




This is how it looked like from our table. The people on stage were the ones who made all of this possible. Thanks y'all. Oh by the way, second from the left.. thats a she..

questions

are you there yet?
are you ok?

how is everything?
how are the people over there?
how do you like it?

are you comfortable?
are you alone?
are you lonely?

when are you coming on?
when are you going to sleep?
when are you having your meals?

why arent you here?
why arent you online?
why are things so complicated?

what are you doing?
what are you thinking about now?
what is the time there?

my first chlorine competition

After the field trip, i was supposed to represent roberts hall for a swim meet. At 7.30pm, all of us gathered at the roberts common room to head to the monash sports and recreation center. Thanks JC for accompanying me there, kept my nerves calm. I swam 2 events, the 25m x 4 relay and the 50m mens.

Okay.. the 50meters mens.
It was my turn to go, i was supposed to step on the dive board thingy.. (by the way i havent dived in the pool from a board) I stepped on thinking..should i step on the edge..or the middle..noooo..the edge is slippery (saw someone fell before this). Suddenly the referree blew his whistle.. I jumped..it was fantastic..like how a cat jumped into the water.. I jumped belly and head first.. a terrible start..at the corner of the eyes i saw everyone ahead of me. struggling to resurface myself.. i sped off..i was catching up...swimming somewhere in the middle...then..wall..eerrr..turn??(i was supposed to somersault, ive done it many times). whoops.. dead end.. touched the wall..stopped.. turn around.. AND i lost more time.. hahah...


later the 25m x 4, Jc said i swam intermediate in comparisson to the others (since there wasnt any diving nor turning around). hah. i smiled. the others in roberts didnt do too bad, christa got 3rd while reggie won the 25 meter breaststroke(he is a national swimmer). I spotted a Kit Wai look alike. same figure, face and built. like some say, a crab on a stick. he swam so fast, his hands looked like knives chopping meat with both hands. he sped off like a thorpedo.

my hamstrings and calves felt like rocks after the 2 events. my vision blurring..
it was a good competitive experience to learn from, laughing at my mistakes.

stepped into the world of robotics

i visited the ABB robotics factory today. It was a field trip organized by the mechatronics club. Supposedly a field trip when it was only a 5 min walk from the halls. I arrived with boon kiat, david, rayner, and jian kuang. The others were too lazy to be bothered. The reception look rather familar.

Have a look




and now

look at this..



this is taken from the monash website, if you know monash, its exactly the same color scheme and layout. I guess the advertising company sold the same templates to both of them. Bummers.

So we had a presentation on how robots were used in everyday life. Automobile assembly...cutting... welding...and the most interesting.. the processing line of chocolates. One of the presenters showed us a full clip of the whole line of the Cadbury easter egg facility. NICE..

I was sitting at the right corner of the "theaterette"(thats what was written at the door). The presentations were not dull nor entertaining. But Rayner and Jian Kuang started to dose off..Once of the presenters, Paul i think, caught them. He scolded them saying "im sorry im keeping you awake, im sure you had a whole day of classes". We were stunned. After his presentation, he sat next to me to make sure they were awake for the rest of the session.

After all that, we walked around their factory aka storage facility. Boring.... we didnt get to see any machines in action. They were all caged up in fences and we couldnt go in because we didnt wear safety boots. It felt like a new aged zoo where animals were replaced with robots. which by the way..didnt move..how interesting. and the person bringing us around was throwing technical specifications at us and regulations and operating standards. Like how some of these robots are actually water proof and is capable of a wash down. It seems they are also washed using dry ice so that it does not short circuit the electronics. sorry for the nerdy moment there. have a look through the cage.





BTW they made us wear lab goggles in the factory when there is absolutely no moving or dangerous objects nearby. i guess it was to protect ourselves from his accidental projectile of saliva when he was making a point. utter nonsence.

The time all of us were waiting for.. refreshment. i think i liked this part the most. i had miniature shepard pies, fried chicken, beef pies, a variety of sandwiches, some weird cheesy pastries, 2 bottle of softdrinks and tapaued a bottle of beer. contented.

When i was about to leave, i thanked Paul for the great presentation and he said.. "i hope i wasnt keeping you awake". I was...i wasnt sleeping..thats Jian Kuang. wtf? but i didnt say anything. i just stood stunned and continued shaking his hand. i guess all asians look alike huh?

at the end of the day..we all had souvenirs, david had lab goggles, and the others had a bottle of beer each. were just being FAs. all natural

a wooden box with metal strings..oh what fun.

When i heard chris's had a guitar, i was overjoyed. i got his room extension from smalls, called him, barged into his room when he was studying and borrowed his guitar. I was so anxious to get my hands on a guitar since easter break. I spent all my free time trying to recall all the songs i used to play and learnt a few. My finger tips are sooo sore. thats how long i havent been playing; till my callouses became soft.






Thanks chris for lending me your guitar for 3 whole days.

merdeka Merdeka MERDEKA!

Those were the words we shouted out when the clock ticked midnight. There were at least 30 of us Malaysian who decided to be patriotic, harking to my call to gather to cheer and sing our national anthem. The word spread like a wild fire. Tots called people from Richo, aik called his friends from normanby and i called all in roberts. Despite the short notice and the allowance of 30 minutes from not knowing whats going on, to be utterly enthusiastic.

We gathered outside Richo's common room. The crowd was too big, hence the guards watching our every move. We were like forming an illegal gathering waiting to proceed to a riot. Thinking quickly and decided not to dissapoint everyone that came down in their night clothes, aik and i decided to go to hill in the middle of Roberts hall. (the hill is in the center where all the room windows of roberts and richo faced). When we were on the hill, we had 2 more minutes. I was hesitating when to start since estimating when the 10 second countdown from my handphone clock. I made a rough guess, and inhaled... and i led by shouting....

10,9,8........1. merdeka Merdeka MERDEKA!!!

Everyone shouted as one. one citizenship. one voice, in a foreign land

(btw, australia doesnt have an independance day, i found out quite recently, they are still under the british through some technicality in order to maintain a western image in an asian continent)

The shouts of merdeka were then followed by our national anthem, which we all sang proudly on top of a mountain, waking the whole of roberts hall and richo. We saw people from the window drawing their curtains to check what the F**K was going on with such a racket. They peered through, then they jerked it closed with anger. The guards were hot on our voices, they gradually climbed the hill to stop the noise, just as they were close enough to say anything, we finished the national anthem and we fled. Yes we fled. Like a bunch of DVD sellers in a pasar malam when the police came.

Malaysian who heard us from their rooms, came down to see whether there was a formal gathering. The others thought we were a nuisance. Some thought our gathering at richo earlier was a fight. But all of us who sang on top of our lungs were proud (not the running away part) that we were celebrating our first Independance Day outside our country.

I didnt know i could be so patriotic to do such things after the country has thrown me to jail based on nothing(read corrupted malaysia link) and suspended my license because i followed the "efficient" system.

BUT i was glad, that the need to celebrate this day was satisfied. to be patriotic