its back

Have finally found my ipod nano.

It was in my fugly blue bag.

Does that not sound like glory?

A few weeks ago, my computer crashed and I lost all my music.

Until now, i havent manage to mooch off somebody for their music collection. Its starting to feel a bit depressing listening to the same songs which I have on CD.

And I am starting to miss my old collection. Every now and then I will listen to a couple of them on youtube and reminisce about the times when i first heard those songs. Most of them were in first year uni, because that was when friends gave me those songs.

Can't wait to get Damien Rice's 9 crimes back on MP3.

oops

I think the day I stopped blogging was the day when my life started to take a more intangible spinning way of getting from point A to B and then to point C and then back to square 1.

Here's a question for you peeps (if you ever do come back to this website)

would you rather have the following lifestyle:


a) earn 50k - 70 k per annum with a comfortable job and nothing too stressful. I'm not saying 50k per annum as a grad. I mean as a person who is in middle aged and has kids and all. Wont be driving a BMW or anything. Most likely it'll be an old HOlden or Toyota.

You will not holiday in Europe if you have a family. You will holiday in Bali for only 4 days.



b) earn > 100k, but u work very hard and you have no social life and you work till your stomach lining is gone because of irregular meals due to your pesistent hard yet futile work.

You may go to Paris, but only if you have no kids. You may holiday in Bali for 8 days plus and have enough money to go to the Greek Islands.



c) Earn between 70 k to 100k per annum with a comfortable job but at a senior position, which you acquired afterworking in job b) for many years before deciding that you'd rather spend your free time with the kids instead of buying that new mortgaged house.

You may have enough money to go to Bali for 8 days but no Greek Islands.




So what is the best choice?

Friday yeah yeah yeah

It has been a really good Friday!

Firstly, I had lunch with the IH bunch. Was good fun catching up and eating jap food. Friends + Jap food is a great combination.

Then there was the end of financial year drinks. Its been a long and hard financial year. The boss said that this would be one to forget, but 2010 is definitely looking brighter in comparison.

The drinks started at 4.30, and we had pizzas too! Not to mention the chips, vegetable dips and pies. The beer being served was Pure Blonde (ok with me) and Cascade light. I distinctly remember eating 4 slices of pizza, 1 pie and having 2 beers.

The party crowd then moved out to a nearby bar, ICON where I had a $2 pot of Carlton, and an interesting conversation with one of my colleagues about country life in Victoria (he's from the Country)

Later on, I bar hopped to Ondergrounds and bumped into some colleagues from a different division. Had some fun catching up and having a tequila shot. The salt shaker there was a bit busted. THere was salt inside it but it wouldnt come out easily! I suppose it was stuck or something.

By this time, i figured I had enough drinks in me and decided it was time for Karaoke with another bunch of colleagues. We ended up at this place next to Oriental Spoon along La Trobe street. The music wasn't as good as other places such as Party World, but I still had a lot of fun. My friends can really sing. One of my colleagues' gf is American and she sings like an American Idol. Was pretty amazing.


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On another note, I managed to play another song on the piano (amateurishly).

"Where the city meets the Sea" - by "THe Getaway Plan"

Started playing it after hearing about Kai and August going to their concert just to hear that one song while enduring mental torture by metal bands.

nice song...kind of addictive....even actually purchased a copy of it from Itunes!

Cynicsm is bad

While at work today a friend emailed me a fwd that went along the following lines:

A rich man wanted to teach his son about how fortunate they were by comparing their family to a poor country family. So the rich man and his son went to live with a poor family in the country side for a week. After a week, the rich man asked his son about what he learned, and his son replied:


While we only have one dog, they have 4 dogs.

While we have a pool, they have a creek that never ends.

While we have imported lighting from Germany, they have the stars in the sky.

While we buy our food, they grow their own.

While we have a big wall to protect our house, they have friends who protect them

While we have servants, they serve others.

While we have a nice lawn, they have fields that never end.

etc etc.





I then retorted to my friend who sent me the email that "the stars in the sky will not pay for the oncology bill in the event of a serious medical incident".


My friend then replied: "Why are you so cynical? thats unattractive in a guy"....



Anyway, the point of the fwd is that its all about a point of view and to look on the better side of things. And i agree. Its just that this fwd doesn't make logical sense to me.

Firstly, the poor family in the fwd isnt poor enough. Talk about slumdog millionaire poor. Or starving to death in Africa poor. NOw thats poverty. Country people are not poor. They may live a hard life, but they are not in poverty.




Then again, try talking to an Australian farmer who is facing the prolonged drought.

Or a developing market farmer who's livelihood is threatened by US and EURO subsidies.

Or Zimbabwean farmer who's been forced off his land by Mugabe's thugs.

Or the Bahai people who the Iranian goverment have persecuted for years.

Or the natives in East Malaysia who have had their land taken away from them in the name of 'development".

Or the Karen people in Burma who have been fighting against the Burmese Junta for decades.

Or the Iraqi Christians who are persecuted by Fundamentalists in the post-invasion years.

Or the CHechans who have been enduring years of conflict in the caucasus.

Or the Cypriots whose land has been taken away by the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in the 1970s

Or the Darfur people who have been hunted down by the Janjaweed Militia?

Or the Hutu/Tutsi's who were hunted down by respective militias in Rwanda/DRP Congo?

Or the farmers in PEru who were collateral damage in the fight against Shining Path terrorists?

Or the indigenous farmers in Brazil who are losing their ancestral land to logging?

Or the North Koreans who are starving while their government builds nuclear weapons?

Or the Afghans who are caught up in yet another conflict?

Or the Pakistanis who are facing one of their biggest domestic crisis' in modern times?





the list goes on and on. I have more to say, but i don't think anybody will read down this far.

So the logical way of thinking about this is that the rich man isn't poor. He is damn rich. and his son is lucky cos at least the rich man is spending a week in the country with him, trying to educate him on the important things in life, which is to appreciate what you have by knowing how little other people have compared to you. Then you will really truly realise how blessed you are.


P.S.

Recently i was posted to a hospital as part of my job.

I learnt that money talks because money helps buy life saving medical equipment, drugs and expertise. If you want the best for your loved ones in times of medical difficulties...money makes a difference. So don't tell me money doesn't mean jack shit because I know what money can buy and it can mean life/death for some people.

Sometimes all the money in the world cannot save a person/child's life...but what you want to buy is the best care possible which is the best anybody can do.

More than meets the eye

I really enjoyed watching Transformers 2. It brought back happy memories of going to Kathy's Toys at the now demolished Jaya Supermarket to buy those action figures.

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Nowadays, I realise I am becoming more aussie.

The bombers beat the crap out of the blues yesterday and it made me smile (widely).

Instead of having roti/mamak for breakfast on saturday mornings, i now have Cheese & steak meat pies from the nearby bakery. (sidenote - why cant mamak stalls sell roti & pies together?)

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Am meeting plenty of Brits while on work. Spoke to this client and apparently her cousin is a Liverpool academy player. That means there are only 3 degrees of separation between me and Steven Gerard!

ME > Client > Client's cousin > Steven Gerard!

Food , glorious food.

The other day while having dinner at a vietnamese restaurant with some friends, I brought up the subject of food in Melbourne.

Its true that the Malaysian food here is rather limited in choice, variety and depth of quality. While there's really good Malaysian food available, it will never be able to compete against the best that is available back home.

However, Melbourne's food scene redeems itself with a wider variety of food. I've come to appreciate the Italian cuisine available here as well as other cuisine such as Korean, Greek, Vietnamese and Indonesian food.

I cannot believe that I never ate "ayam Bakar" or "ayam penyet" in Malaysia until I came here. Indo food is really nice and I wonder why it hasn't taken off in popularity in Malaysia. Perhaps somebody should open a franchise of indo food in Malaysia.



Anyway, the vietnamese fare that night was really good and I had a smile on my face after the meal.