Amsterdam Photos are up

Yeap the photos are up.

Let me recall on the trip a bit. Before I set foot on Amsterdam, I had on my list several things I know about it - Tulips, Van Gogh, Red light district and diamond. I set out to see the later 3 and I did.

I reached Amsterdam late at night. It took me some effort to get to the Shelter City hostel as it's all dark and I didn't have a proper map of the area. But luckily a nice officer at the train station helped me up. Dutch people are nice. :)

Then I checked in the place, pretty crowded 8 beds dormitory. All other beds are already taken. I got a bed on top. The locker is outside the room. So I chucked my stuffs in the locker and went out for a night venture.
It's funny that the hostel is a Christian hostel with big "Jesus loves you" sign on the wall to greet the guests. But I found it rather strange that it is actually located within the red light district. And some of the girls' business locations are just besides an old church. Sin and savior have never been so close together. I have this irony in mind and one of the volunteer (a nice German girl with fantastic voice, and she played the guitar singing one song she wrote. I'm like melted) there shared a great vision with me that the church should really be at the dirtiest or sinnest place on earth, those people are the one most in need of salvation. I was awe struck, well said!

Anyhow, I did go deep into the redlight district as an observer of life in the very different part of the world. Lots of girls dressed in bikinis pose in their own windows to get business. Some are really good looking, but there are also some which made me pace faster. The good thing there I guess is the "No pimp allowed" law there, so all the girls will get what they get paid for without another layer of exploitation.
Another surprise I get is that I actually felt quite safe walking around there alone. It's very different from my imagination of mafia, sex trade, gang fight, guns and marijuana. I did see people rolling marijuana and smoking it in pub.

I took a boat trip on the day. It's a great way to experience the many canal and see the leaning buildings. They say "Nothing is straight in Amsterdam", the road at funny angles with each other, the buildings are leaning left and right, and even the people, hehe, it's the gay capital!

I went to Van Gogh Museum and learnt that he's another very sad and depressed artist. Artistic wise, there are nice paintings to see. That's all I can say. Haha! Oh, a surprise is that there are some Japanese geisha painting (typical Japanese style) that Van Gogh drew to learn different style of drawings.

I went to a diamond polishing factory to admire many diamonds and unexpectedly caught a Chinese tour group. So I got some free guided tour with an exclusive diamond sale behind locked security door. The factory has some Chinese employees to take care of the rich Chinese buyers. It's good to be Chinese. Haha! A random Caucasian tried to sneaked in like me and got told off without much difficulty.

After the diamond tour, I had all the things I wanted to see checked off my list!

Another interesting thing was the dinner. I went to a pub to have dinner - some sort of chilli mussel with salad, for 10 Euro. I ordered it and got myself a Heineken to sip. When it finally arrive, it's a huge pile! Pretty tasty, I can't help but to count them, it total at 70+. Great dinner!

I think that's about it for my Amsterdam 2 nights 1 day tour. Now go hit the photos.

Dinner with my aunt and cousin

My Aunt (I call her San Gu, 3rd Aunt) from Melbourne just went to Malaysia and came to Perth to visit my cousin Siong for a week or so for the first time. She loves Perth.
She was scheduled to fly back to Melbourne on Tuesday, so we had a dinner on Sunday, 1 day after I got back.

Home cooking is best!


Pork ribs with chestnuts and mushroom, yummy.


Siong Ko's pudding dessert with caramel and pineapple. He must have a better photo and perhaps recipe on his website.


A photo together to mark the occasion.


I had so much food, and it's so great to see SanGu again, the last time was 2002 in Melbourne. And Siongko is going to Italy to meet up with his partner. They have a great page on Italy travel tips here.

Sneak peek of my trip photos

I arrived back to Perth last Saturday. Spent the last couple of days adjusting jet lag, unpacking, doing laundry, going through 2500 photos, stack of receipts, etc..

Here's a sneak peek of a collage of some of them.


I've put photos of the first 3 days up on picasaweb already. See below for links, or simply scroll down.
Flying with Emirates and landed in Dubai
London Day 1
London Day 2

Venice is fantastic, Florence is stunning

Went to Venice on Friday. So happen that I bumped into Wojceich from Adelaide U at breakfast and he decided in 1 minute that he'll come with me to Venice. So we did and had a jolly great time with some 200+ photos. Venice is very beautiful. The water is greeny and looks clean. It is fantastic to go with someone.

Saturday, I met Alessandro at Fidenza and he drove me to a castle on a mountain at Bardi. It's not a touristy place so everything is in Italian and there castle is not super impressive like those with lavish paintings. The torture chamber is grouse. But I really enjoyed the alternative tour, seeing the country side from high up, and of course catching up with Alessandro.

We parted at about 3pm and I took a train down to Florence. It's already dark when I checked in and get myself settled, but I decided to went out for a walk. And the Duomo (cathedral) is simply jaw dropping. It literally stopped me and drew me to see it closer. I took some nice long exposure shot using only the floor as support without tripod, most shots turned out quite good. And there was a Charlie Chaplain buskler at one of the plazam very funny and entertaining.

Florence is currently my top ranked Italian city so far. Somehow, I just love it much more than other places.
Also the youth hostle I stay in (which is where I'm using the free internet) is great too. It is decorated vby many copies of paintings and sculptures by some local arts students. Very nice.

Yes! Presentation is done

My first international presentation. Spent the whole day flashing up the presentation so that it makes more sense.

OK, they need to close the room now.

In short, it's done, and I enjoyed it.

Amsterdam and no internet

There's no internet in the hostel I stayed in Amsterdam and I'm dead tired to write anything on the first night after a whole day of cycling in London, and a whole day of walking in Amsterdam the second night.

Now I'm in Modena, Italy. Conference is going on well. I'm very lack of sleep for many days due to flight schedule, and a long dinner last night that finished at around 1am. It was good though, a new Bologna friend took me and another new friend from Uni Malaya to a local italian restaurant and tried some authentic Modena food.

My presentation is at the last session tomorrow, shall prepare for it.

London Day 2

8/9 Sat

I woke up after 6 hours of sleep at 7:30am, got myself ready and the luggages packed. Woke Sylvia up to let her know I'm heading off at 8:30am and let her know what happened the night before. Then she sent me to the tube at Turnham Green to catch the underground to Liverpool Street where I'll meet YikGio. The trip was smooth and I got there 15 mins earlier so I called Tanliang up for a chat.

YikGio showed up at 9:30am and I followed him home. His place is just <10m mins walk from the Liverpool Station, fantastic location. I dropped my luggages there and we set out for a whole day of bicycle tour of Central London.

It is awesomely awesome to see London on bicycle with a good friend who knows the places quite well. Wow, where do I start, we went to so many places. I think we started off at the Tower Bridge and ended at the National Museum. In between there were the Big Beng, Packingham palace, Westminster Abbey, Thames River, London Eye, Bolough Market, lunch at Chinatown with his landlord Paul, St Peter's Cathedral, etc..

The funny thing is that I didn't learn all these places in English, so the names really do not mean anything to me at all. It's until I translate it into their Chinese names, then I go "Wow! I'm at XXX!! It's unreal." Like the da ying bo wu guan, tai wu shi he, etc..

Cycling around London is fantastic although it could be a bit scary at times too. But it's a really efficient way to see the place. There's no way I could have covered so many landmarks in London in such a short time if not by cycling. And YikGio is a fantastic tour guide, he took many photos of me in front of the landmarks, which is something I don't get very much as a lonely traveller a lot of the time. Thank you very much my friend.

I'm now on my way to the Stansted airport to catch my flight to Amsterdam.
Photos should follow when I get time to load them up.

Updates:
Photos in my picasaweb

Windsor Castle, Oxford and dinner with Winson

As the title said, that's what I did today. Took quite some photos today. Need to sleep now. Watch this space for photos and details.

London Day 1

7/9 Friday

My first morning in London. The jetlag did not bother me much and I'm well adjusted from a late-nighter to a early-morninger by the jetlag. I woke up at 8:30am, Sylvia went out for an appointment already so I had some organic honey muesli myself.

Sylvia came back at around 9am+ and she made me some very nice omelette with smoked salmon, avocado and spring onion, on toast. It's fantastic. Then we decided to go to Windsor Castle together and after that I'd go to Oxford myself and come back to meet Winson at Fulham Broadway.

1 hour in Oxford, rush like mad. Saw a girl who looks like RongZuEr on train. Met Winson and his A level friend Jeff (a Medical researcher from from Malaysia living in Ireland).

Night back late, stucked at Earl's Court for half an hour got home at about 12:30am.

Updates:
Photos in my Picasaweb

Arrived London

I touched down London at 8:15pm local time. Took about 1.5 hours to clear the custom, so many people.
My cousin Sylvia came picked me up and we reached her home at 10-ish. Relaxed a bit and bath, now it's mid night at London, which is 7am Perth time. I was still rather hyper active when I reached London, I think I'm ready to collapse anytime now.

Good night world.

Flying with Emirates and landed in Dubai

Emirates airline is fantastic. Movies, TV programs on demand, huge selections, altogether aboutmore than 500 channels to choose from! The screen is bigger than MAS and SIA and its a touchscreen! In addition, there are two live camera I can watch, one looking infront of the cockpit and another looking down to give a bird-eye view.

The air stewardess are very pretty and friendly too. Haha.
I got a window seat, but it really didn't matter because all three seats are empty, so I got 3 seats to lie down and had a good sleep. :)

The food are great. Breakfast was some cheesy crepe with salmon and baked tomato. I forgot to take a photo of the menu. :(
And the lunch was fried Hokkien noodle with seafood, and some salad with two small pieces of cooked salmon.

I watched a romantic pseudo musical "Because I said so" and half of Aaron Kwok's award winning "Father and Son" (After this we exile(?) was the proper name).
In the 11 hours flight, I slept (probably 5-6 hours), watch 1.5 movies, had two meals and went to toilet 4 times.

Oh by the way, there's WiFi on the aircraft also, and it's free to preview the inbox. To use it for 4 hours costs 10 USD. I didn't try.

Before landing at Dubai, I looked out the window, the sight is amazing! It's all sand, just a huge desert. And there are clusters of houses here and there connected by roads that looks like highways from the plane. And there are power line as well stretching vast distance. When it get close to the airport, suddenly there are patches of greens and knife-cut built-ups. The sight is just amazing! It's amazing that in the middle of a desert, a city is build and is flourishing.

Walking out of the aircraft was another shock. 35 degree celcius with high humidity. But tht only lasted for 20 seconds before I walked into a shuttle bus that took me into the airport.

The Dubai International Airport looks like any western airport with dutyfree liquor, cigar, perfume, huge posters, etc. The only difference is the people, many dressed like Arabic - white over cloth for man or black overcloth with veil covering everything except for the eyes for lady. Strangely, it looks to me that it is just as acceptable as any other clothing. The cultural/religeous stereotype somehow become relaxed when people are in a foreign land. This is probably my first bit of eye-opening experience on this big trip.

It's 2:30pm in Dubai now, 4 hours behind. I have another half an hour until boarding.

Updates 25/09/2007:
Photos are up at my picasaweb

Big trip Italy

I'm at the airport now, 5am in the morning. The flight is at 6am. 11 hours to Dubai, then transit for 2.5 hours, and the another 7.5 hours to London Heathrow. This will set a new reocord for me as the longest flight.

I'll spend 2 days in London, staying with my cousin Sylvia and will meet up with my Hobart housemate Winson and highschool mate Kenny (Yu4 Jie2).
After 2 days in London, I'll be off to Amsterdam for 2 nights 1 day. Then flight to Milan and make my way down to Modena where my conference will be.

The conference is 5 days, first day I'll only attend the afternoon session which is tutorial. I didn't plan to attend that as it cost 150 Euro and I didn't know who was presenting. But later the price dropped to 50Euro and Mubarak Shah is presenting. He's a leading researcher in my field and I read and use some of his papers. I'm very excited to be able to attend his tutorial.

Then it's 3 days conference. I'll be presenting my paper on Wednesday last session. (haven't brush up my last bit of presentation yet). Then I'll go to Venice for a day, Florance, Pisa (leaning tower) for 2 days. Naples (Pompeii) for a day and Rome for 3 days.

More updates will come with photos. Hope internet will be good.

Stay tuned.

Golden Rules for Career Success

I got this from my brother.

Golden Rules for Career Success - Richard Moran

Working as a business consultant all over the world, I have discovered some basic career-related rules that everyone should know—but many don’t.

• Business is made up of ambiguous victories and nebulous defeats. Claim them all as victories.
• Keep track of what you do; someone is sure to ask.
• Be comfortable around senior managers, or learn to fake it.
• Never bring your boss a problem without some solution. You are getting paid to think, not to whine.
• Long hours don’t mean anything; results count, not effort.
• Write down ideas; they get lost, like good pens.
• Always arrive at work 30 minutes before your boss.
• Help other people network for jobs. You never know when your turn will come.
• Don’t take days off sick—unless you are.
• Assume no one can/will keep a secret.
• Know when you do your best—morning, night, under pressure, relaxed; schedule and prioritize your work accordingly.
• Treat everyone who works in the organization with respect and dignity, whether it be the cleaner or the managing director. Don’t ever be patronizing.
• Never appear stressed in front of a client, a customer or your boss. Take a deep breath and ask yourself: In the course of human events, how important is this?
• If you get the entrepreneurial urge, visit someone who has his own business. It may cure you.
• Acknowledging someone else’s contribution will repay you doubly.
• Career planning is an oxymoron. The most exciting opportunities tend to be unplanned.
• Always choose to do what you’ll remember ten years from now.
• The size of your office is not as important as the size of your pay cheque.
• Understand what finished work looks like and deliver your work only when it is finished.
• The person who spends all of his or her time is not hard-working; he or she is boring.
• Know how to write business letters—including thank-you notes as well as proposals.
• Never confuse a memo with reality. Most memos from the top are political fantasy.
• Eliminate guilt. Don’t fiddle expenses, taxes or benefits, and don’t cheat colleagues.
• Reorganizations mean that someone will lose his or her job. Get on the committee that will make the recommendations.
• Job security does not exist.
• Always have an answer to the question, “What would I do if I lost my job tomorrow?”
• Go to the company Christmas party.
• Don’t get drunk at the company Christmas party.
• Avoid working at weekends. Work longer during the week if you have to.
• The most successful people in business are interesting.
• Sometimes you’ll be on a winning streak and everything will click; take maximum advantage. When the opposite is true, hold steady and wait it out.
• Never in your life say, “It’s not my job.”
• Be loyal to your career, your interests and yourself.
• Understand the skills and abilities that set you apart.
• Use them whenever you have an opportunity.
• People remember the end of the project. As they say in boxing, “Always finish stronger than you start.”

Stack of photos from phone

I've downloaded a stack of photos from my phone.


On June 18, I received this RaboPlus hardware pass code generator for their internet banking. Read Rabobank 6.6% online saving account for details.
Oh, recently Australia has increased the interest rate again. The Howard government does not particularly welcome that as election is coming soon. But I'm happy as most banks followed by increasing their rate too. At this time, Raboplus is standing at 6.7% while BankWest at 7% (12-month introduction rate)!!


On July 6, I received a very heart warming gift from a Malaysian auntie, ChoonHo's mom. She was here on holiday for 2 months, I was the first new friend she met here in Perth and we had 4-5 good chats altogether. And before she left for Malaysia, she knitted me this scarf as a gift. Each knot is a blessing, she said. I'm so touched. I'm so blessed.


On July 7 (obviously), I got this cool parking docket.


On July 19, I witnessed a police chase. Some car thief was chased down by 8 police cars. It was raining and didn't want to get wet. So I only got a photo of the channel 9 news car illegally parked on verged.


That night, I had dinner with my housemates at HKBBQ. The tofu dish is fantastic!

So is the BBQ

and the squid.



On July 26, I took a panorama of my desk using the stitching program that come with my k800i.

Big Bowl Noodle House on William Street

I've downloaded a stack of photos from my phone.

On 18/6, I went to Big bowl noodle house the first time. It's fantastic! Big bowl. It's extra noodle is FREE! Very satisfying.
My favourite is the beef noodle soup.

The beef stomach noodle soup is great too.

Minced pork noodle is good too, just a pity that there is no vege.


The seafood one is pricey and ordinary. The cheese baked noodle are pretty good too, good to share, a bit too heavy for one person consumption.

Oh ya, the best bit is the chilli! Very very good sambal chilli. The price ranges from $8.90 to $14.90. Recommended!
And the friendly identical twin waitresses added a bit of fun too.

And when I googled to find more information about the shop, I found this blog that has many photos of the place, and a closer look reveals that it's actually a friend of mine, Kok Wei's blog. Hi! Kok Wei.
It has the address and shop front photos there if you'd like to try it.

Luck Factor by Richard Wiseman

As part of the National Science Week activities, there was a public lecture by Prof Richard Wiseman titled "The Luck Factor". Richard is a professor of Psychology he was a magician before that part of his career started. It was a very entertaining lecture with magic tricks and public psychology experiments. I was fooled too! Fun!

Jason found one of the experiment online. It's an experiment to count the number of basketball passes among 3 white-shirt players. It's hard to get it because there are also 3 black-shirt players to confuse people.


There are some more cool experiments by Richard Wiseman on youtube and his quirkology website. I was fooled by the colour changing card tricks!

Transforming the Mind, Yunus-style

Transforming the Mind, Yunus-style by Marina Mahathir.

There I listened to Dr Jonathan Mann articulate a very new concept to me, that a person's health is directly related to the human rights he or she is able to enjoy.

What underlies Prof Yunus' motivation is something extraordinary in these cynical times: he has total faith in the human spirit.In believing that every human being is at heart an entrepreneur and has skills that are under-utilised, Prof Yunus revolutionized the way we look at the poor. No longer are they to be looked down as incapable, unreliable, too ill-educated to better themselves. They are human beings who happened to be born in difficult circumstances which are no fault of theirs. As Prof Yunus likes to remind people, "Poverty is not the fault of the poor".

UWA EXPO

It's Open Day again. This is my 5th time volunteering at the open day, and it's the last time also.

I helped set up most of the vision demo in the morning and talked to visitors about all these projects that I seems to know from listening to the creators explaining about them in previous years.

Most of the demos are from last year or year before. A couple of interesting thing to note：
1. A really cool face recognition system using a simple webcam that we downloaded from here. Visitors just love it. If you have a webcam, you can test it out too.
2. On last Friday 5pm+ I decided to print out a huge poster of Chinese Ascii arts to cover a big white wall in our demo lab. So I go to the code that I haven't touched for more than a year and got it to do what I wanted in 20 mins. Felt pretty good about myself. The end result is a 8x8 A4 sheets of Winthrop tower made up of Chinese characters. A couple of visitors were very impressed by that. One of them said "It's the coolest thing I've ever seen in my life!". I was happy with that.


More photos are on my photo gallery

Online Virtual UWA

A quick note on the virtual UWA project I've been involved. It's launched last Friday and well received. All the ungodly hours spent on the 3D modelling was glorified.

Read the story here.

This Winthrop Hall model is one of my work.


The virtual UWA is online at http://www.csse.uwa.edu.au/virtual and you can choose an avatar and see many panorama views of UWA. Need to download the BS Contact to see it, the instruction is on the site.
At this moment, the 3D models are not up yet. Eventually they will.

Meeting with my minister

Last Friday I was invited by Somun the student coordinator of AMBC to attend a meeting with the minister of International Trade and Industry of my country - the YB Rafidah Aziz. She and her team of representatives are on a trade mission to Australia and Perth is their last stop.



She speaks well, with a sense of humour and a no-nonsense kind of attitude. Her directness is quite funny at one time when she was directing the delegates' attention to one of the information CD and here's what happened - she took out the CD, looked at it and said "What is this CD about? I can't even read the title, the title is too small! Who prepared this?" and she looked at her subordinates, "These people just played with graphics, what's the point of putting the twin tower, fireworks so big and you can't even read the words!"


The lunch was great! Well, it's at the Hyatt Regency Hotel.


And it's a courtesy of the Malaysian government. I felt a bit uneasy about that so I made it a point to make some contribution out of my attendance.

Over lunch I got a chance to talk to the director of a software company in Malaysia that just signed a partnership contract with an Aussie company. They might be able to get me a job when I get back. I also got in contact with the treasurer of MASCA WA, Everlyn, a nice young curtin student, I also caught up with Kay Sen, ISS liaison officer at UWA.
(ya, it's more natural to look at the LCD instead of the lens)

After the lunch, that's the student meeting with minister and 4 members of parliament who came along with the trip. The minister seems down to earth during the dialog, she made it very safe for us to ask questions and express our concerns, by asking us to address her as Auntie Rafidah and treat her like an elderly relative. That worked quite well and many Q&A was exchanged. One student got a smack on the hand by addressing her straight as Rafidah. One asked her about the state of Proton and why the import tax for cars is still so high and she shared some interesting stories about the past managements which I won't reproduced here.
Another student touched on the education system that focuses more on paper than practical and she answered as it's a culture that is ingrained and needs to be changed.

I got my guts up and ask her opinion on the concern that I have which I think is shared by many young non-Malay professionals who are currently overseas, ie I'm going back (or some are thinking about going back) to serve the country but am deterred and frightened by the many racist remarks of ministers and unfair racist incidents towards the non-Malays. Her answer was along the line of - "for god's sake, please do not ever look at any issue as Chinese or Malay or Indian! We are all Malaysian! There are some idiots who said something inconsiderate and that does not represent the mass of the parliament and the government's view." I hope it's the true words and not just lips service.

Then another student raised the issue that they don't have a venue to organise event for Malaysian students, the Consul General briefed that there's a plan of Malaysia House under AMWA to accommodate this need. With much hesitation, then being pressed by the minister, the student expressed that AMWA members are mainly Chinese... And "Auntie Rafidah" straight away told off the student right on the face that "Do not ever think of going down that path!". And she reiterated that Malaysian is Malaysian, not Malay or Indian or Chinese! If there's to be a Malaysia Hall, it will be for all Malaysians.

Seems like we still have a long way to go for the nation building, but I'm glad that the minister took the strong view of "all Malaysians" and taught the student a lesson! The director of the Malaysian Student Department from Sydney also reiterated that its department is there to help all Malaysian students, not just the government sponsored ones.
Also, a new officer to look after Malaysian students here in Perth was requested as Perth has about 4000 Malaysian students, the second largest in Australia, and the minister was supportive about it, and it may just happen next year.

At the end, we took some happy snaps. Overall, it was a great meeting.


More photos are on AMWA photo gallery, which I maintain.
http://www.amwa.org.au/gallery/