Hail storm

 
 
 
 

It's very cold. but very cool! :)
Taken with my phone at the front of my office.

Malaysian taste in MasterChef Australia

I'm excited and proud to see Poh (Poh Ling Yeow), a chinese Malaysian who moved to Australia at the age of 9 getting the runner up in the first MasterChef Australia realisty tv show. The thing I admire about her is her passion to show the Australian community the food she grew up with, the century egg, roti prata, hainanese chicken rice, petai, sambal, curry.... She took great risk in choosing to cook those Malaysian dishes that are very unfamiliar to the food critics tastebuds. But she took those risk to give the show a real piece of her cultural heritage. I salute her for that be-true-to-yourself spirit.

Poh's bio
Malaysian dish Challenge

Google Earth in browser!

Need to install one plugin, then you can tour Google Earth with 3D buildings in the web browser.
UWA School of Physics

Minority Report gadget come to live

It is so so cool!!

sixth sense - a wearable gestural interface that augments the physical world around us with digital information and lets us use natural hand gestures to interact with that information.

May 13 on a positive note

Yesterday is May 13, a date that has been stabbed into Malaysia history 40 years ago and demonised by politicians over and over.

However, I found this refreshing school of thoughts by zubedy to have a positive note on May 13.

I’d like to recolor May 13th. I would like to breathe new spirit into the date, to dilute and eventually erase the negative aspects and memories and replace them with positive meanings and values. I want our future generation to see this date with kind and loving recollections. We can always change things, if we so willed it.

The article is well written and touches my heart. I think every Malaysian should read it, maybe the book too.
A book to unite Malaysians

His company zubedy.com looks very interesting too.

Graduation on April 1

How would you feel if your graduation is on April 1?
Many of my friend got this honour. Actually in early 2008, my plan was to attend this ceremony myself. But things got delayed and eventually I missed out on this one and will attend the one in September.
Anyhow, because of that, my parents got another chance to travel to Perth since they already got the tickets long before anything is really confirmed. So we had a great time in the whole March when they were here in Perth and they will come in September again for the ceremony.

I attended the ceremony for my housemate DeRong - Bachelor of Engineering (Mechanical).




Caught up with many friends.


Jingyu from China - Mining Engineer


Danno and Tone whom we spent our phd years together - Doctor of Philosophy in Computer Science.


Jayvis from Spore- Mechanical Engineer


Chris from Mauritius, Stuart and Kaysen from Msia - all engineers


James from Msia - a student I tutored in his first year Computing for Engineers & Scientists. OMG!


Peter, my PhD supervisor who came for Danno's ceremony. I got hassled for my correction. :P Yes, I would get it done real soon.


Du, Danno's another supervisor who is also in the visvis group I belong.


And the big group of friends who came for Derong's ceremony:
Zheng, KokSoon (my friends who's visiting Perth), Yeeting, Derong and Minli.


I also test out my 12x zoom with ISO800 for some long range photos in Winthrop Hall.


PhD recipients get to sit up on the stage (showcasing the variety in hairstyles).


Honorary Doctorate recipient - Michael Fitzpatrick. (caught Peter in the background)


Daniel who did CS honours in our lab. He now got his EE/CS double degree.


Evgeni my fellow modeller.


Fred I met through ShihChing and Jason's church.


Derong looking smart


Stuart


Tone contemplating the moment


Danno's name and shortest ever thesis title read out by Robyn, who was my supervisor for a year and used to be in visvis group before she became the Dean of graduate research school.


Danno shaking hand with Chancellor.

I'm pretty happy with the zoomed results given that indoor stage that's very far away generally is very hard to photograph.

The ceremony was great. The food afterwards are delicious too. And I found a new word I don't know how to pronounce -- ENGINEERNG.

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.

Earth from above

I went to watch the earth from above exhibition in Perth last Saturday. It's a photography exhibition of aerial photos of some interesting places on earth -- to provoke thinking about over-consumption and sustainable living. Awesome photos with awesome message! The only down side is that it's outdoor under the beautiful summer sun! There are some shaded area where I enjoyed most of the photos and caption readings.

Go and see it if you haven't, it's at the cultural precinct (just north of the Wellington train station). It's open till 7pm daily till 12th this month. Last 8 days.

There's also a Google earth version.

Since 1950, economic growth has been considerable, and world production of goods and services has multiplied by a factor of 8. During this same period, while the world's population has doubled, the volume of fish caught has multiplied by 5 and the volume of meat produced by 6. Energy demand has multiplied by 5. Oil consumption has multiplied by 7, and carbon dioxide emissions, the main cause of the greenhouse effect and global warming, by 5. Since 1900, fresh water consumption has multiplied by 6, chiefly to provide for agriculture.

And yet, 20% of the world's population does not have drinkable water, 40% have no sanitary installations, 25% is without electricity, and 820 million people are underfed with half of humanity living on less than A$3 a day.

In other words, a fifth of the world's population lives in industrialized countries, consuming and producing in excess and generating massive pollution. The remaining four-fifths live in developing countries and, for the most part, in poverty.

From: earthfromabove.com.au

Working life

I've been working for 3 weeks - 3 days (Xmas, Boxing Day and New Year Day). This is the first time I really work, like a full time 9-5 job (actually mine is 8-5), and it's not that bad, especially weekends! Haha! But time is really limited, don't even have time to clear my inbox, read my Google Reader's stuffs, play facebook, upload photos, etc..

Anyway, some of my friend has asked or will ask me "how's your new job?". So I shall give a 3 weeks working life review. :D

The job is pretty cool, at least my title is - Seismic Processing Geophysicist. Yes, I know. What the ?! right? dugeo is a geophysics company. We process seismic data for company so they can see clearer what's down there in the earth several km down. The strength of dugeo is something called Quantitative Interpretation, which in the terms I can understand mean transforming seismic wiggles into oil/gas probability.

I had 2 weeks of training with some interns and staffs from their KL office. It was great as I get an orientation into the field (which is completely new to me) and my classmates are all from Malaysia. Ha! It's so strange to work in an Australian company in Subiaco with so many Malaysian colleagues. Before They left after their short term training back to Malaysia, I brought them to had some little tour in Perth. :)

WingSee on the left and Victoria in the middle. Wingsee is based in KL and Victoria is based in Perth.


From left: WS, Eddie, Elaine, Jassica and myself. Eddie and Jassica are interns both are geology students from Uni Sabah Malaysia. Elaine is based in KL.

People are really great in dugeo. And there are lots to learn. Boss is cool. I get to cycle to work/drive/take bus. It takes about 20mins to cycle through Kings Park from my place to work. And there's shower for us to use. Staffs there wear Tshirt, shorts and slipper or no slipper to work. :D And there's a flat hierachy, anyone can go to anyone to ask questions.
I shall upload a photo album called dugeo in my facebook right after this to introduce some people in the company.

After the training finished, I'm assigned to work with a project building velocity models. With the correct velocity model the seismic images can be properly cleaned up to show what's really the structure down there in the earth several kilometers down. However, the real job I'm currently doing is pretty much donkey work clicking mouse to line up dots to be straight lines. :P I did 100+ locations today, there are about 2000+ locations. Xb And each one of them need to be revisited several times and again since the velocity model building is an iteration process. I think I might get carpal tunnel syndrome and bad eyes if I don't take enough breaks.
Hope I get this done soon and get something more interesting...