My Life in Sydney – Part I

I was in Sydney for a project from May-August but have not talked much about it since I came back. So, I just feel like writing something about it now.

I was staying in a place called Coogee, a suburb about 20 minutes drive from the city. It is a nice place with restaurants, mini market, hotels and pubs around. The best part is there is a nice beach just 300 meters from the apartment I stayed.

Too bad it was winter, so there weren’t many people sunbathing.



















pathway for jogging and dog walking
















Dogs are not allowed on the beach


This is the 1 bedroom service apartment I stayed, not bad huh?

















The living room
















Kitchen
















Dining room

The cost of living at Coogee is quite high, normal meal costs about AUD10-20 (MYR 27.50-55.00). Even a breakfast meal and a cup of coffee cost about AUD20 too. However, it is not bad to sit in front of the restaurant, enjoy the sunlight, see people walking by while having your breakfast in a Sunday morning.

I went to work by bus everyday. Taking bus in Sydney is not too bad compared with my experience in KL. Because the weather is not humid, you don’t feel sticky after taking bus. The buses are clean, well maintained and the most impressive part is, they are punctual!!! I haven’t taken bus for a long time in KL, I wonder how is it like traveling RapidKL nowadays? Is it rapid?

Team Dinner

I went out with my colleagues for our team dinner on Saturday evening.

We have team dinner every 3 months. As we provide IT support round the clock, some of us don't get to meet our own team members very often. So, the team dinner is for us to have a chance to sit down and have dinner together, and also for the management to appreciate our hard work. Although my team is not big (7 including the manager) sometimes it is not easy to find a time where everyone is free. This time was a last minute decision and only 5 out of 7 attended. It is a bit pity that all 5 are 'ma latt lou', the only girl in our team who always claims that she spices up our lives at work is still in South Africa (Well, she is almost a South African now).

We went to Chilli's at Mid Valley. Only after half way through the dinner, my colleague reminded me of taking some photos and put it at my blog. Too bad that the food was already in terrible shape and not good for photo shooting by that time. So I only managed to take a photo of the dessert with a phone camera. May be this is a mistake that new bloggers always make, not sensitive enough to things that can be put into their blog.













The bad thing about having dinner with colleagues is that you always can't stop talking about work, although we did talk about something else. F1 lah, we were hoping Sato will knock Alonso out in the last race, movies, England's lost to Croatia, the forthcoming treasure hunt, and were supporting Wigan against Manchester United. Too bad, ManU won 3-1.

After dinner we went for a comedy movie - 'Talladega Nights'. It was quite funny, not too bad to end the Saturday night with some laughters.

My Nephew

Children nowadays are much cleverer than our generation.

My 2 year-old plus nephew already can differentiate between a road car and a racing car. He even told his dad that 'the blue car is Alonso'.
















Here is his video while reading 弟子规





For more of his video please visit My Life At KL.

Liver Cleansing

I work in a Shared Service, Outsourcing (SSO) company which serves its end markets around the globe. My company operates 24 x 7 x 365 and I am required to work night shift from time to time.

Some said that our body organs rest at different time of the day and for liver, its resting time is between 1am-3am. So my mom said my liver must be full of toxic because of my shift hours and need to be cleansed. She gave me a liver cleansing formula she obtained from an organic detoxification camp she attended quite sometime ago and asked me to follow the diet.

Personally I believe that our body has its own biological clock. So I doubt that the time our body organ rests is fixed at certain hours, unless someone can convince me that the resting time is closely related to the sun or the moon. I guess the resting time mentioned in most articles are general guidelines for most people who live a normal lifestyle. For people who work on shift, our body should be able to adjust accordingly. However, if you keep changing your sleeping hours from nighttime to daytime too often then I am sure it will affect your health. Can someone please comment on this?

Although I don't agree with the fixed resting time theory, I still went on for the detoxification. An unhealthy liver will cause skin irritation, weak eyesight, a bowel problem, an irregular menstrual cycle, a recurring headache, weight gain, loss of energy, sudden aging, restricted blood vessels, bloated intestines, digestive problems, breathing difficulties, memory and concentration loss, pain in the joints, or any major illness such as heart disease, cancer, MS, diabetes or Alzheimer's etc. How nice it would be if liver cleansing can improve health problems mentioned above. Furthermore, there is no harm trying it.


So, you must be interested to know the formula huh?






















Here it goes:
1 tablespoon of Organice Blackstrap Molasses
1 teaspoon of Cold Pressed Organic Olive Oil
1 lemon - squeeze the juice
a little bit of cayenne pepper

Mix the ingredients and drink it every morning right after you wake up. Do this for 10 days consecutively. It tastes sour at first but a bit sweet towards the end, but certainly not like sweet and sour chicken.

You can try this as frequent as you want and it will be good if you can at least cleanse your liver once every 6 months.

Sorry that I can't tell you if the formula really cleansed my liver but my recent blood test report says that my liver is in good condition.

Btw, I am not going to be responsible for your health for trying out the formula, please try at your own risk... :p

A Scanner Darkly

I haven't seen the movie 'A Scanner Darkly' yet, but am very impressed with the animation. The entire movie was filmed digitally using the Panasonic AG-DVX100 and then animated with Rotoshop, using an animation technique called interpolated rotoscope.





















A lot of people have tried to create the same effect using a combination of different filters in Adobe Photoshop, including poster edges, noise, posterize but none have come close to it. I tried one myself, but failed too.

The best tutorial I have seen so far is given by Melissa Clifton. Using the vector technique, she has sucessfully created the 'A Scanner Darkly' effect. However, this doesn't come easy. It requires hours of work, it's certainly not something you can produce within an hour using the filters in Photoshop.


See the work of Melissa.















And compare with mine. : (

A day of mix feelings

Today is a day of mix feelings. I am leaving a buddy who has been with me for more than 8 years. He has accompanied me everywhere I go all this while. 8 years is not a short period, it’s quite sad to say goodbye to him. Don’t get me wrong, I am referring to my car.
















Although it doesn’t have the aerodynamic look (it’s called Aeroback leh) and a bit underpower when carries more than 3 persons, this car has been quite reliable and fuel economical. It never gives me any major problem throughout these 8 years. I feel sad to only trade it in at RM8,000. Proton car price has been dropping so much…sigh…

Knowing that this is the last time I am driving this car, I treasure every moment on my way to the car dealer. Replacing it is a new Honda City VTEC. I hope this new car will also be fuel economical, even more reliable, besides being more powerful and aerodynamic.
















See. Nice or not?

Favourite Movies

You may notice that my favourite movies are a bit strange.

Some may have heard of ‘Crash’ and ‘Snatch’ before as one is Oscar Best Motion Picture of 2006, the other one stars Brad Pitt and was shown on AXN a couple of times. As for the other two, most people seem to have no idea what kind of movies they are. Whenever I recommend these movies to my friends, they always respond with ‘Huh? What movie is that?’

Among all, my favourite goes to ‘Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels’ directed by Madonna’s husband, Guy Ritchie. IMDB rates it 8.0/10.0 and I think this is the best heist/criminal comedy I have even seen. The language may be a little difficult to understand as they speak a lot of cockney rhyming slang, but it doesn’t bother me too much because the plots are simply too good. My friends who have watched it always come back to me and say ‘Hey, it’s really funny’. For those who have not seen it, try to get a copy.

It’s really a classic, trust me.

Mid Autumn Festival 但願人長久 千里共嬋娟

Today is Mid Autumn Festival, it's also my birthday.















But I am not excited. Since I came back from Australia 2 months ago, there are a few things that don't feel quite right and kind of bothering me. One of them was my forthcoming birthday. Don't know why this is the first time in my life that I feel OLD...sigh...

Tonight I am going to celebrate my birthday with Chang-Er...

明月幾時有
把酒問青天
不知天上宮闕
今夕是何年
我欲乘風歸去
又恐瓊樓玉宇
高處不勝寒
起舞弄清影
何似在人間
轉朱閣 低綺戶 照無眠
不應有恨何事长向別時圓
人有悲歡離合
月有陰晴圓缺
此事古難全
但願人長久
千里共嬋娟

Someone Stole My ID

I'm KayWin, welcome to my blog...

Normally I don't share a lot with people I'm not close to, but recently feel a bit bored, so decided to try out blogging.

I think the most challenging part of blogging is to have ideas to write, and have the time to upload some photos to make it interesting. I'm not someone who brings camera everywhere I go, let's see how long I can do this...

Initially wanted to register my blog site as http://kaywin.blogger.com. Too bad it was already taken by a 16 year-old girl from US. As I always think my name is unique, I feel like my identity being stolen... : (