Photos from my phone

Here are some photos I took using my phone.


Chia, my good friend from Tasmania has arrived Perth 2 weeks ago. He's here to stay. There shall be lots of good time ahead.


Kings park bush fire. The dynamic range of my SE-W810 phone camera is just not enough to see the ash ground.



My little wing friends along the path I cycle to work.


Quick sand bun (流沙包) - made with salty egg yoke. Yummy... See it's flowing. (there isn't much information on this bun online, other good photos here and here. It's a HK/Guangzhou specialty. According to my Guangzhou housemate it is a new treat in GZ these couple of years.
By the way, you can find it in the new Dragon (龙门) Restaurant on Francis Street. Pricey though.



Lego structures built by kids in the Art Gallery of Perth. Reminds me of my childhood playing a small tin box of Lego with my brother. Great fun. Always wished I have such big pile of lego to build huge stuffs. I'll probably put aside a Lego corner for my kids with this basic building block, not those Starwar type you see in toy shop, I find them too specific which limits the creativity.

First 3 days of work

I started my working life this Monday with DownUnder GeoSolutions. It has been good. Steep learning curve. Been on training since the first day and may continue for 2 weeks. Funny thing is that there are currently 11 staffs and interns from the KL office having training in the office here. So it's pretty Malaysian at the moment. :D

People are nice and very casual. shorts and slippers/barefoot are common.

Gotta sleep, 8am start is not fun. :(

My Thesis Submission

I finally submitted my phd thesis.


Getting the four copies of 220 pages thesis to graduate research school for submission.


My super good supervisor Peter.



My another super nice supervisor Amitava.


Shih Ching, my cubicle mate for the whole phd journey. :D


Minh


Lanny and Jing Bo


John


Chris


Luigi


Rob


Bob

Some more photos in my gallery.

Feedback from giving talks

I have followed Jayjay (our CSSE ex-school manager, now school manager at Physics) to present at many talks he organised. At the beginning it was outreach program to high school where I showed high school students computer graphics stuffs like image morphing, video-based rendering, perspective rectification, etc.. Recently we had been going around to show the virtual 3D UWA with the new Google crown.

We did one at the UniClub auditorium to 170 high school students. And here are what they write down in the feedback form about us.

Feedback from students:
* Life is about reflecting light into dark places by using the resources you have as best as possible;
* I will remember the speakers and how they were all unique;
* My favourite was Jay Jay because I am interested in that career path;
* Tzu Yen was my favourite because he was funny and informative;
* Jay Jay and his gang because what they spoke about was cool;
* Tzu Yen, his virtual universe project was very interesting;
* The 3-D computer group was so interesting! Explored new boundaries;
* I found the computing group interesting;
* Did not enjoy the virtual tour as I found it not stimulating enough;
* The favourite was the Asian guy who showed us the designing thing on the sketch pad; ("Asian guy" I guess refer to me, and the "sketch pad" must be SketchUp)
* My favourite was Jay Jay and Gary;
* The computer man with the T-shirt was my favourite; (I'm the computer man with this :) T-shirt)
* Speakers were all awesome but Tzu Yen was awesome more; (Oh Yeah! Awesome more! I like that. Hear that Barney?)
* Some of the speeches went for a while longer than expected and got boring at some point – although they were all worth it in the end;
* I think we should have had more breaks and some speeches were too long;
* The best thing about the visit today was the speakers; they really do give us something to think about, to aspire to.

Pu22!es

I have been busy putting together my thesis chapters lately. The progress has been satisfying and the thesis starts to take its shape. Working consistently with the pace, I shall be able to submit in July. Yay!
Apart from the dry process of writing thesis, I had been doing some puzzles. Canon research lab CiSRA is having a puzzle competition. Danno told me about it as he work there and want me to never graduate. Haha!
Me, ShihChing and Minh are teaming up as Fubar Fighters to crack the puzzles. We solved the first group which was open for a long time, then this week the real battle started at the rate of 4 puzzle a day for 4 days! My brain is rather overwork. Some of the puzzles are just clueless to me!

Anyone can take part in the competition, just have to register for it and play. But Australian students are eligible to win prizes. Looks like my hope to win the camera is slowly vanishing.

A friend send me this website on puzzles which tech interviewers like to use. See techinterview.org

Bruce Lee and Harry Potter

This is an artist impression of me after the artist saw these photos. Apparently, he thinks I look like a combination of Bruce Lee and Harry Potter (the glasses).

Muarotak has more of his comics and drawings on his site (in chinese).

Google SydneyTrip & UWA won the competition

This is 2 weeks old. As mentioned in the Happy^Googleplex post, We went over to Sydney on an all expenses paid trip by Google. We flew in on 17/2 Sunday, spent a day at Google office on Darling Harbour on 18th and most of the team went back on 19th. Me and Minh stayed for one more day with Danno.

Highlights:

• We were greeted by a chauffeur with our names on a cardboard at the airport. It was my first time having my name on a cardboard at airport. But I was disappointed that there wasn't a big Google sign on it. Even more disappointed that it wasn't a Google van that took us to our hotel.
• We were put in Amore hotel. Very nice and classy. My room was on 17th floor. Nice view.
  
• Danno met us up for dinner at Pancake on the rock. Good pancake, I like it and like it a lot.

• Monday 9am we met at Google office on Darling Harbour, in the IBM building. We met our 'competitors' too. Haha! Both other teams were from Melbourne U, both were two people team. Compare to us 8 people big full team from UWA to out number everyone, muahaha!
  
• SketchUp user interface designer Matt flew in from US to give us a tech talk.
• Will and Lysandra accompanied us in the Google office tour - but we weren't allowed to take photos beyond the reception. Bummer. But it is nice inside, open space. Food around people.
• Our team and two other Melbourne Uni teams gave a talk on our journey of modelling, it was very informal and fun.
  
• Food is great inside Google! We made our own pizza and roll from the salad bar. There was crab meat on that day.
  
• XBox and Playstation with huge screen mounted on the wall for Googlers' gaming craze during lunch time.
• We went on a tour of Sydney in the afternoon with the Googlers.
  
• Winners were anounced at the hotel atrium before dinner. And our UWA team took the crown. Yes! Each of us were awarded with a goodie bag.
• Google treated us a nice dinner on Darling Harbour looking over the Opera House. Fancy! And there were many quiz challenges from Will, fun!
  

• Most of the team went back on Tuesday. But me and Minh stayed for one more day and Danno took a day off to take us to Blue Mountain. So touched, thanks mate. And Super Horatio helped clear the heavy fog for us there. It was fun. A lot more fun that last time when I went alone.
  
• And at that night I stayed with my UTas best friend Jermin and Yeemei's place. They took me to a Shanghainese restaurant and I was stuffed with fantastic food. So yummy. And that night we chatted till 3am and had to go to airport at 7am.
  
• Me and Minh flew back on Wednesday morning together wearing the proud Google T-shirt.
  

Photos are here:
Evgeni's version


Mine:

2008_02_17-19 Sydney Google trip

And once we come back, Jayjay has been at work to channel out the news that we did win the competition.

UWA News (27 February 2008)


Loconuts (28 February 2008)


Subiaco Post (1 March 2008)


Western Suburb (4 March 2008)


Joondalup Times (5 March 2008)

The modellers Theme Song

It's a crazy hour now but I just can't wait till tomorrow to blog about this!
Danno made a theme song for the modellers! I can't believe it!!!

It's so cool! And hilarious at the same time! And I now have a song with my name in it. You have made history Danno!

Read the post and enjoy the song on Danno's The Modellers post.

Oh ya, apparently Danno is having a Theme Songs on Request service. Danno I want one!!

Also, The Modellers has become my ringtone.

UWA 3D campus team in Media

There were a couple of photo shots by our own team members and professional photographers from the papers. And with Jayjay's media contact effort, we get quite some media exposure.

At the top of scale shall be The Australian. We appeared on the Higher Education section with each of our faces bigger than a 50cents coins.

The Australian | 16/01/2008 | Page: 21 | Higher Education
Region: National Circulation: 133000
Type: National
Size: 482.57 sq.cms

Click the picture to see the actual size, or here for the online version.


It's also on Wanneroo Times (Brad) and Western Suburbs Weekly (Myself):

Wanneroo Times | 15/01/2008 | Page: 14 | Regional Changes - Central
Region: Perth Circulation: 77098
Type: Suburban
Size: 241.78 sq.cms

Western Suburbs Weekly
15/01/2008
Page: 5
General News
Region: Perth Circulation: 48960
Type: Suburban
Size: 189.49 sq.cms

And of course, the official media release is on the competition page on Google.


Previous post on this topic

Update:
On ScienceNetwork WA (24 January 2008)


Featured on frontpage of UWA new Website.

Media release on UWA (December 21, 2007)


UWA's Prospects E-Magazine

IE Aust Student Magazine

UWA Engineering Graduate Association Newsletter - The engineering Essential

Super Horatio Song V2

Danno has done it again with Super Horatio song! This time with his high voice and violin. It's even better than the first version!!

Click here for the full story:
Super Horatio has returned!

Download Super Horatio’s New Song while you read the story.

Recap 2007

I'm never really a big fan of New Year. It just happened to be the start of a randomly chosen counting system. Hmmm.. I think it's not random, but what is the significant of the first day of the Gregorian calendar? It's not the end of winter, not the day of longest sunlight, not the day the sun is closest to the equator... Can someone who knows tell me?

Anyhow, it's a good day to reflect. So I'd do so.

A good thing about writing diary or now blog is that it helps to retain memory. So I can look back and say "Hey! I did that and it's cool, let's do it more!" or the opposite. Here are the list of things I recalled, in no order.

• I started watching 20mins Sitcom because it is not too long and is funny. Started with "How I met your mother" and then "The Class" and currently watching "The War at Home".
  
• I had the longest moustache and goatee since I last clean shaved on November 17, see my photo taken on 23/12/07.
  
• I started jogging and cycling. And I enjoy it.
  
• I went to Europe the first time in my life and presented my first international paper. This is blogged about a lot in September 2007 and here: Amsterdam | Modena | Venice & Florence | Pompeii .
  
• I went to Shanghai for the final translation job with the company and had a blast shopping. It was a pity I didn't write much about it.
• I had a holiday back home for 2 weeks. Sweet!
  
• I modelled UWA in 3D took a lots of pictures of it. It started as a photo popup, and later become a full modelling.
• Our UWA team got into the top 3 of Google 3D campus competition (Aus/NZ).
  
• I started using Google Reader with 39 RSS subscriptions and reading friends' blog is easier than ever. I also have a shared reading list here and on the sidebar.
  
• I met up with my cousin in Perth.
  
• I become a pseudo-vegetarian - vegetarian on normal days and while I'm cooking, whatever on special occasions and when others cook. Constipation is history.
  
• I finally had a plan to finish my phd and was working hard towards it. Started seriously writing the thesis.
  
• I got a song dedicated to me, or more accurately to my heroic twin.
  
• I got a book with my name and stories in it when the author left us.
  
• I switched bank for high interest online saving, from BankWest to RaboPlus.
  
• I met my minister and helped up with the 50th Merdeka Celebration of Malaysia in Perth Convention Center.
  
• I made several huge posters using my Chinese text art program - Winthrop Hall, Shih Ching & Rina's engagement and Joe's wife birthday. Maybe I can make it commercially viable.
  
• I ate out a lot this year, the most frequent in my life to the point that me and my housemate ran out of places to eat. Taka, Hawker Cuisine, Big Bowl Noodle House, Analakshmi, Stuzzico Pizza, Subway, Dragon China (聚龙阁), Bateman Fish Head Mee Hoon and Utopia are some which I like.
  
• I organised youth events for AMWA and made some new good friends.
• I took 5179 shots of photos and videos!
• I blogged 103 entries to this blog.
• I donated blood the first time in my life.
• I did not join Facebook.
• I joint Adsense in July and had 2,992 page impressions, 9 clicks, 0.30% page CTR $1.08 page eCPM and $3.23 profit.
  

This list may grow when I remember things.

And now it's new year. 2008. Happy New Year! And hope it'll be a good one for you and me.

Happy^Googleplex

Yahoo!! Opps, no, I mean Happy^Googleplex (read: happy to the googolplex)!

Yes, we won. We're one of the top 3 finalists in the Google 3D campus competition (Aus/NZ). Hard work was rewarded. :D

Here's what they said in the email:

After much debate and deliberation by our SketchUp competition judges... you have been named one of the "Build Your Campus in 3D" Google SketchUp finalists! Congratulations!!! The judges were truly impressed and we all want to thank you for your hard work and dedication to delivering such a high-quality product.

As one of three finalist teams, you are invited to the all expenses paid on-site trip in February. You will visit our Google Sydney office, listen to a technical talk, and enjoy free time and planned activities, so plan to have a great time! The date is yet to be finalized, but we are shooting for either Friday, February 8th or Friday, February 22nd (depending on when our SketchUp resources are available for a technical talk). I will reach out again to confirm participation and follow-up with travel details.

Now I have a slight problem, I have planned to go back to Malaysia for Chinese New Year which is on 7 Feb, and stayed till end of Feb to help Peter with his Matlab Course in Spore and KL (although that was canceled). I hope eventually the date will be on 22 Feb then I will come back earlier from Malaysia.

Anyhow, it's bloody exciting. Google, here I come.

Update 19/12:

• 3 Finalists: UWA, University of Melbourne (2 teams)
• The winner will be announced during the on-site event in February
• Finalists will visit our Sydney office and enjoy a technical talk, office tour, food in Google's world-famous cafeterias, and planned activities in Sydney
  
• 33 teams officially registered for the competition,

Happy Birthday to me

It was my birthday on Wednesday. I'm 28.

This year birthday came a bit unexpected. I was busy with things and suddenly I realised my birthday was approaching in less than a week's time. I went to get myself a portable hard drive on Saturday as I've been thinking about it for awhile. My internal hard drive is giving me a bit of problem and I didn't have enough storage space to empty it and give it a good formating. I suspect the file index table is the problem as I can copy a file to the drive and read it, but once I move the file within the drive, it will not be accessible anymore... Anyhow.

My lovely housemates Yeeting and David got me a chocolate mud cake at slightly before midnight. It was a surprise. Yeeting and I were watching our new found pastime How I met your Mother in my room while David was studying for exam. And half way through the show David suddenly came in, turned off my light (and I thought "thanks, that'll make the cinematic experience better") with the cake. :D
It was very nice. And I haven't had mud cake for a long time.



It took us 4 shots to get the cake into the photo, haha!

Stayed up late that night and Liangliang called me at 2am+ as she got the daylight saving the other way round. Haha!

I didn't go to lab as testified by Shih Ching on the day. Had a bit of Birthday blue thinking about my life, uncertainty and work after PhD.
In the evening I went for a cycle along Matilda Bay. Fantastically refreshing.

Then I decided to have Stuzzico pizza at East Perth. So David and I drove there at 6:30pm and found it's closed by 6pm. Bugger! Then I remember there's another branch on Hay Street closer to the city, so we went there and found out that they are close too.
Disappointed, we walked about that restaurant area and found the Love and Care Cafe which often caters for Malaysian event. So I decided to give it a try. We had Mee Goreng (fantastic, spicy, the sauce is great. 5/5), Mee Soto (Ok, rice cube a bit tasteless, 3/5) and a Nasi Goreng L&C (fantastic, fluffy rice, 5/5) and air bundung with cincao.
The serving of food is quite small, so two of us easily finished the three mains. It was very satisfying.

Then at about 8pm, Rina, Shih Ching, Jason, Lilian and later Alex came with a homemade cake by Rina. Rina called me and let me know she'd come but I didn't think about what to expect. So it was a crowd and a cake I didn't expect. Thank you so much.


Green tea icecream cake with my name in chocolate. :D~


I thought this shot is really cool - two different shirts about PhD and me caring about nothing but the cake.


The cake is really delicious with full flavour of green tea. If you want to taste it, check this website for Rina's new venture - cookies2sushi.
To my nerdy brain, the name sounds like a program that takes cookies and chucks out sushi. Ooo... look at the inside of the cake.


Thanks everyone who send me blessings through sms, msn, phone, email, physical gifts, transferred hug, and telepathy thoughts.


p/s: I went to Stuzzico again today to nail the pizza I missed. The rocket/salmon pizza is absolutely awesome! Highly recommended. Best pizza outside of Italy I had. I'll try the prosciutto pizza and panini next time.

Kazoo Yen & physical Nonsense

Danno is finishing his phd up and going to leave soon. He gave me this gift that has my name in it. A kazoo and a 1 Yen coin. Ingenious!


And I'm so touched and delighted to receive a paper copy of the Only Talking Nonsense. It's really cool to read his blog about things that happened around his life which I share some scenes, but it's a totally different and amazing feeling to get a book of that which has my photos, my stories and a lot of my fond memories recorded.



Thanks Danno. You rock!
With the glory of Lordiness you bestowed on me, I forgive you for making up all the posters about me. Haha!
Well, I was never offended to start with, not even this one below and this tzu-yen.blogspot.com website. It's such great fun! You bloody pranker!


Thank you for your friendship Danno, I'm truely honoured.
I wish you all the best.
(And hope we get to execute some more pranks together shall the victims' fate destined. Muahahaha!! )

Italy here I come

The long anticipated email finally came today at 3:30pm WST. It was supposed to be announced on 1 May, and I thought my paper is rejected because I didn't get the "notification of acceptance" on the date.

Congratulations - your paper #1569032579 ('Projective Transformations for Image Transition Animations') for International Conference on Image Analysis and Processing 2007 has been accepted for ICIAP 2007 Oral Session.

Yes! My second paper (yes,only) is accepted. I'm so happy!
ICIAP is a 2nd tier conference according to CORE ranking of ICT conferences. And it'll be in Italy which is somewhere I have never really thought of setting my foot on before. Oh well, I never really think of going particularly anywhere anyway. Haha!

The conference will be on 10-14 Sept 2007, held in the Palazzo Ducale (dated 1634 DC, Baroque Ducal Palace) in Modena "the capital of engines" as it is the home of many famous sports car manufacturers (eg. Ferrari). A tourist page of Modena is here.

Searching and reading about the touristy places makes me excited.

The next level of Super Horatio

Here's a MSN conversation Danno and I had before the Super Horatio Theme Song come to live!

"Danno the Eternal Smartass" says:
you're gonna kill me...
(i)TzuYen - does research, eats vegies says:
uh?
(i)TzuYen - does research, eats vegies says:
why?
"Danno the Eternal Smartass" says:
you'll see in the next hour or so!
(i)TzuYen - does research, eats vegies says:
The super horatio blog?
"Danno the Eternal Smartass" says:
let's just say super horatio has gone to a new level
"Danno the Eternal Smartass" says:
yeah i'm gonna post something as soon as i finish it.
(i)TzuYen - does research, eats vegies says:
Haha! Well, I shall see.
"Danno the Eternal Smartass" says:
damn. I look for jobs to avoid work. I do super horatio stuff to avoid applying for jobs!
..........
"Danno the Eternal Smartass" says:
this SH thing had better turn out good!
..........
"Danno the Eternal Smartass" says:
super horatio is coming.
(i)TzuYen - does research, eats vegies says:
done?
"Danno the Eternal Smartass" says:
just compressing it
(i)TzuYen - does research, eats vegies says:
What? A video?
"Danno the Eternal Smartass" says:
:P
(i)TzuYen - does research, eats vegies says:
Oh oh....
"Danno the Eternal Smartass" says:
hehehe
"Danno the Eternal Smartass" says:
uploading now
"Danno the Eternal Smartass" says:
there you go, link in my name
"Danno the Eternal Smartass" says:
or http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJzhfvIHQpg

Here's the ingenious work our resident joker/musician Danno did:

Click here for Lyrics.

My cousin, Siong

I met up with my cousin Siong today morning. Man! I didn't know how he could recognise me?! I was there making a phone call before going to search for him ( I have no idea how anyway, thought maybe just call him when I can't find him), then this man just come straight to me calling my name unmistakably. I haven't seen him for maybe 20 years? I simply have no recollection of seeing him before. Maybe he my parents showed him some of my photos when he visited them couple of years ago.

Anyway, we sat down and had a great chat and getting to know each other. He's really cool. Yes, you are. (Yes, siong ko, I expect you'd read this sooner or later. :P )
It's great to have a cousin close by.

He's a chef in-training. And here's his foody blog. Don't click the link without a full stomach! Man! The food looks good!

Siong Ko, when do I get to taste some? :P~~

Those has me on MSN will be familiar with my "(i) TzuYen - does research, eats vegies." My cousin calls the world to "live mad, eat chilli". HaHa! Is it just coincident or is it a family expression?

Working @ Google - Software Engineer, Computer Vision and Graphics

Software Engineer, Computer Vision and Graphics - Mountain View

I think working at Google is really cool! And I do love organising information.
I'm delighted to know that they want some Computer Vision and Graphics experts. Maybe I'll work there one day.

Damned C/C++! I don't have extensive experience with that!! :(

How's it going?

Man! I was so like this guy!! It is not funny. I was so scared that people find out what is really going on, they might not think highly of me anymore... Yes, I have a huge pride to feed! :b
I'm glad I learnt to say things aren't so good when they really aren't. That makes the answer to "How's it going?" so much more meaningful. And it is liberating too. Pretending things are going well all the time is such an effort, not that I am consciously pretending it, but somehow, I do that to survive something, to look good I guess. Being able to put that aside and just express how things actually are and how I actually am, is like a tensed muscle releases. It's a great feeling.

But sometimes I find people say "How's it going?" instead of ask. Well, sometimes I find myself do that too, :( like I have no intention to listen to the answer anyway...
Hope I can catch myself on such behaviour!

Or is it because a lot of time "How's it going?" is treated the same as "Hi!"? Is it treated as just a form of greeting and not actually an invitation for a conversation?

So, to you, How's it going?

Photos from my phone

I loaded some photos from my phone again.


Vegetarian PadThai at Subiaco Station Street Market. Very nice. Where else can you get $6 Padthai in Perth? I will come back again.


Cherry is in season, well almost over... I bought some top grade cherry last week. It is good. I think it's the same type that I brought back from Tasmania to Malaysia some 5 years ago. Heart shape, dark red. Yummy.

I tried and succeeded in tying a cherry stem knot in my mouth.