Category Archives: Soccer

Soccer Addict

★ Posted on at 09:16 pm ★

MAK_0348

This was taken outside a restaurant in Taiwan. The place was in the middle of some fields and served up some great dishes, where the vegetable were all taken from the plants they grew next to the restaurant. That’s Taiwan for you, with many family businesses, it gives a unique flavour to their food, products.

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Got through my hectic weekend. Supposedly a bucks night for Jun Kit, but with me organising it, it was a simple but fun night. Had a few hours of poker before going off to La Luna for dinner, where we had the 6 course degustation. At under $70 for the meal, it’s one of the better value for money places to dine at. Went back to a friend’s place after dinner for another few hours of board games. Watched Arsenal get crushed by Manchester City while we were at it. Was disappointed that Arsenal got swept aside so easily, but they did have a few chances of their own but luck wasn’t on their side that night.

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I was up until 430am on the Sunday morning watching soccer. You’d think one would be tired after the food and games from the night before. Heh, it was a great match between Tottenham and Manchester United (depending on which team you support anyway). I haven’t seen such slick passing from United in a while and even at 10 men down, they still managed to score another goal, with a great pass from Fletcher, and Rooney out muscling two defenders before slipping the ball between the keeper’s legs.

The Champion’s League starts tomorrow morning, with a match between Manchester United and Besiktas at 445am. Keen to watch it, but I’d rather not kill my sleeping cycles anymore before my cousin’s wedding this Sunday. Heh, the excitement of soccer is starting already.

Mid Week

★ Posted on at 11:08 pm ★

at the G

Was at the MCG to watch the last qualifying match for the 2010 World Cup between Australia and Japan. Australia won the match 2-1, but it was a dead rubber kind of match, with both teams already qualifying for the tournament in South Africa next year.

Heh, had enough foresight to bring my fish eye lens along to the match and captured a really wide view of the stadium. The MCG can fit over 90,000 people, and today nearly 70,000 people attended. Not too bad.

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Just a quick post about random stuff. Had dinner with friends the other day and was reminded it’s been 10 years since I was in Trinity College, doing my foundation year and preparing for Melbourne University. Heh, a decade goes by real quick. I’ve graduated since then, sold fish for a year, saw the highs of the finance industry, even stayed in New York city, saw the lows of the finance industry, seeing Bear Sterns and Lehman brothers collapse to dust. Now working in the health sector, doing something quite different.

Speaking of my job, drove slightly out of Melbourne to visit an aged care centre which is run by my hospital. I took the opportunity to travel down to see the facility that I was providing support for. The place looks like it was converted from some single story houses into an aged care centre. Seeing old people is a stark contrast to our normal daily lives. They just sit still, sometimes asleep, sometimes just daydreaming, and not moving much as old age has crept up and one is not so active anymore at that age.

The conditions are much better than what I’ve seen in Malaysia (I recall going to an old folk’s home back in high school and it looked poorer in condition). Still, it’s sad to see these people spend the rest of their lives here. Many of them were in their rooms sleeping on hospital beds (you don’t even get a nice bed frame, although I suppose it helps with caring for the person). Nurses who work here genuinely want to make a difference in this area I suppose, as it’s emotionally, if not physically draining to help older people become a little more mobile, or those who suffer from dementia, Alzheimer’s, it’s a difficult experience.

I’m just feeling fortunate to be young, and being able to experience life as I can now.

Oh the Usual

★ Posted on at 08:02 pm ★

flowers at the rocks

Decided to post something bright. Took a reasonable amount of pictures while I was in Sydney and it’s only recently I’ve finished editing the pictures. The Rocks is near Circular Quay, which is where you can take a ferry to the various places in Sydney like Manly Beach, Balmain or Bondi Beach. You can also see the Tower Bridge and the Sydney Opera House nearby.

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It’s been a busy couple of weeks. Heh, I just don’t seem to get enough time to do everything I want to do. Off to Ballarat for a conference on Thursday and Friday. Need to get up early to drive west to Ballarat. Heh, the conference organisers decided to skimp on the cost of accommodation, hence the need for attendees to either pay for the previous night’s accommodation, or go early the day itself. It starts at 9am, so I’d need to be up around 6-ish to get ready to go.

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Finally got round to installing Windows 7 on my spare PC (I have too many spare PC’s at the moment, heh). So far the experience is been pretty good. It does boot up faster than previous versions of Windows, although this is negated by the fact that it takes a lifetime for the PC to go through the BIOS boot process.

Didn’t time the install as I left it and went out. Like that you can trial the installation and just paste in the CD key, as opposed to requiring it during the Windows XP install. I also didn’t have to install a single driver, and got the full resolution of my 24″ monitor, which is a first for Windows (for me anyway, not sure if Vista started this trend). Plugged in my printer and it detected it straight away, installing the necessary drivers on the fly. I did have to install software for my Pantone Huey screen calibrator, but since it’s not a generic piece of equipment, I didn’t expect it to automatically work. UAC has been toned down somewhat, I don’t find it as annoying as before and I’ve installed quite a number of applications already.

I like the new Libraries function, where you have files differentiated by documents, music or pictures. You can just link a folder to the library and you get quick access to your media files, which I find very handy. There’s also all the eye candy, like auto changing wallpapers that blend in and out. Nice to have but not overly important.

Heh, operating systems have matured plenty since Windows 3.11 when I first started dabbling with PCs. These days, as long as I can get things done quickly, it doesn’t really matter what operating system I’m using (incidentally, typing this in Ubuntu, which I haven’t evolved beyond simple tasks like email, web surfing and instant messaging).

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Oh, and Manchester United has won the Premiership a third year in the row. Sure their players cost around 20 to 30 million pounds each, even the bench looks that expensive, but if players don’t gel, they can’t beat opponents. Heh, just looking forward to the Champion’s League final next week. As much as these two sides are potent in attack, it’d be pure suicide to just push forward. One can still hope the match will end 5-4, but I’m just happy to watch a few more matches of soccer before the draught until August before it all starts again.

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Yeap, just the usual things keeping me occupied. Happy to be busy anyway.