Thanks to Shu’s suggestion, we all went to Billy Kwong for a dinner to try out the famous ‘modern Chinese’ dishes. Billy Kwong is a restaurant opened by Kylie Kwong — famous Australian Born Chinese chef. It’s a small restaurant in Surry Hills boasting organic and ‘bio-dynamic’ ingredients (we still don’t know what ‘bio-dynamic’ means). The menu was not very large as it fit on an A5 sheet of paper. In the end, we decided to go for something that was pretty Aussie (Sang Choi Bow), something that was standard Chinese (Crispy Skin Chicken) and something totally new (Caramelised Pumpkin). Here’s what us Asians thought… Continue Reading »
I’m sure there have been substantial amounts of time and money invested into the design of toilet cubicles. I mean, these things are ubiquitous and have been around for a good deal of time. There’s gotta be some sort of usability studies on this topic. Surely anybody in the building construction industry would have no problems coming up with a functional toilet cubicle that allows you to get your job done, without fuss, and away you go.
Well, apparently not.
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Feels good to be writing again now that I have finished Uni. The topic I want to bring up today is engagements and marriage. I’m sure that most of you have noticed that there are so many people getting engaged lately! It almost seems like there is a new engagement a month, and at least one wedding to attend per month.
It’s exciting to attend these weddings, to see the joy in the couple’s faces, to hear them as they make promises to each other to love the other person as long as they shall live. But a question that has crossed my mind as I attend these weddings is, how do these couples know when it is the right time to take the next step? How do people (well, the boyfriends anyway) know when to pop the question? Continue Reading »
From the number of weddings, engagements, and people starting to go out in the past few months, it looks like cupid has been working overtime (which is sorta typical in this day and age… how sad).
Congratulations to Grace and Chris, as well as May-Sze and Ethan on your marriages. May God continue to grow you and bless you in your marriage.
And to preempt anybody asking me the question, I have one word for you all:
Patience.
[Now that Joyce's thesis is finished, and Grace and Chris' wedding is over, time for me to finish off said half-baked posts...]
She had everything to live for — a “beautiful and bubbly” girl that was described as “intelligent, successful, talented and popular”. However, her friends and family were stunned when Charmaine Dragun took her own life at The Gap.
Nobody saw it coming.
Despite her cheerful appearances, impressive social circles and other external factors, deep down she was really troubled. She effectively lived a life behind a mask of faux happiness, keeping up a positive image of herself, while deep down her hurts were slowly driving her over the edge.
A bit over a year ago, I had the unfortunate experience of being informed that Andrew, a co-worker who I was working closely with at the time, committed suicide. None of us saw it coming neither — he was similarly positive, good-natured and had a carefree attitude towards life. It would appear that not even some of his recent setbacks had affected him much.
Oh, how wrong we were.
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Tags: depression, suicide
Life has been busy for me lately — lots of stuff to do, things to plan for, people to meet up with, etc. It’s times like this that I go into my thinking phase where I muse about any random thing that pops up in my noodle.
As a result, I’ve got a whole bunch of half-baked blog posts that I’m still in the middle of writing. I’ll finish them off when I have a bit more time…
Anyway, for all you serious photographers out there, a bunch of new toys have recently been introduced for you to drool over:
- Canon have upgraded their 30D and 1D-series cameras to the 40D, 1D Mark III and 1Ds Mark III respectively.
- Nikon have announced their D300 and D3 bodies to compete with Canon’s current dominance in the dSLR market.
- Olympus have decided to join in on the party with their recent announcement of the E-3.
This is all good news for anybody who is planning on entering the dSLR camp.
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It’s one of those things that you hear about, and dismiss as an unfortunate event. The probability of it affecting you is rather slim, and so there’s no need to be so worried about it. The only problem is that regardless of how unlikely something is to happen, there’s still a possibility that it can occur.
I had the somewhat unfortunate experience last night of a grab-and-run while I was waiting at a red light.
Fortunately for me, there was nothing on the passenger seat, and so the would-be thief took off empty-handed. I was also lucky enough that the assailant wasn’t armed or violent.
It all happened extremely quickly — the whole event lasted at most a second. Everything that followed was simply a reaction as there was just no time to think and respond. It’s only after I’ve replayed the entire event over and over again in my mind that I can now make some sort of sense as to what happened…
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Last night, my family went to have a buffet with the extended family to celebrate 中秋節 (mid-autumn festival). Now, depending on ones particular mindset, the goal of a buffet is to either:
- Obtain maximum enjoyment for a fixed price, or
- Try to get as maximum value out of your initial outlay — usually via cramming as much food into the stomach as possible.
Now, the above sounds similar to the Knapsack problem, but this discussion is beyond the scope of this post. All that should be noted is that it is very rare (nigh impossible) to simultaneously satisfy both of the above two points.
What this post is concerned about, is the latter of the points — as I believe many people out there (particularly Asians) adopt the “eat your money’s worth” mentality at a buffet. Even when they’re quite satiated, they’ll keep shoveling food down just so they feel they’re getting their money’s worth.
Of course, most non-professional eaters hit rapidly diminishing returns once they reach a certain level of fullness. Beyond this point, each morsel swallowed no longer brings enjoyment — you’re simply eating for the sake of value (i.e. trying not getting ripped off as much).
Those of you who have been on gastronomic adventures with me, often hear me talking about different stages of fullness. This is simply my own metric for describing the level of fullness in a somewhat consistent manner. That way, if I tell someone that I’m “stage 3″ full, they’ll know how I’m (and more importantly, my stomach is) feeling.
The only problem is, I’ve never formally defined these different stages. And so, without further ado, I present to you — Keith’s Stages of Fullness.
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About two years ago, Optus made an announcement to let the world know that they’re relocating 6500 employees to “a new, state-of-the-art, campus-style headquarters in North Ryde”. This relocation was scheduled to take place from July 2007.
Over the past two years, I’ve seen their new headquarters evolve from just a huge patch of dirt into the campus that exists today. I haven’t been inside the campus to have a look, but it’s meant to be pretty impressive — ponds, water features, gardens, restaurants, etc. It has even been described as a small city in itself.
And so, as of about two months ago, the new inhabitants of this North Ryde’s mini-metropolis started rocking up. Having an extra 6500 neighbours turn up in the space of 2-3 months changes things somewhat… and not all of it is good. The following is what I’ve noticed to have significantly changed over the last three months or so.
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As I’m sure many of you know, Joyce and I are really into musicals (or more accurately, Joyce is really really into musicals, and I like musicals a bit less than opera… which happens to be a lot). However, the number of musicals that we’ve actually seen together (as opposed to listening to the recordings in my collection) is pitifully small.
bluebeary: clinical psychologist; likes good food and music.