So Cluelessly Cute
Sorry, I know its been a while, but yeah lots of things have been happening, and lately I realised that I have also been getting more fitful sleeps, cos perhaps I spend most of the day at school and exercising. I was supposed to go running t
oday along Swan, but luckily I checked the bus timetable, and today is actually a public holiday and the buses stop about 2-3 hours earlier than normal, so yeah lucky thing I checked. Funny thing is though, that school still runs normally even though its a public holiday, so yeah I don't really know what they define as "public"over here, cos being a student isn't being a member of public somewhat. Anyways just wanna share some pictures of things that I see, first off gonna share some pictures of this casino/IR called
Burswood that I headed to two weekends ago to watch the Manchester Derby,which of cos didn't disappoint. Never saw so many City fans though.
I felt like I was back in Asia again. So many Asian people everywhere trying their luck at the machines.
This is the typical
jackpot machine I guess, probably the fastest way to gain or lose money without moving much in a single night.
This was the huge screen at the sports bar, which we were at. It was standing room only, and somehow the other huge screen contrived to show cricket. Seriously, juxtaposing it beside a 7 goal trailer, I think its fair to see why football is the world's favourite sport.
The next two pics are pics of those cute miniature like horses that they have at circus, they look like normal horse but with stunted legs, and a mini everything else. Very cute. Took it on the way back after I finished working one of the days at Langley park and they had set up the circus tent beside our soccer fields.
I couldn't go nearer, because an electric-fence was put up. Wonder if its to keep us out or to keep them in, I think its prob the former, I mean look at them? So cluelessly cute, eating the grass without a care in the world.
Well, anyways that's all for now, basically the major assignment for this week is done, which is the group presentation we just finished earlier on in the day. What is left is to prepare towards week 11, one essay, one exam, one presentation. The key is to prepare as much as I can in this week so that when week 11 comes I am ready.
Missing all,
Az
The Nightmare before Hari Raya
Its hari raya over here, but yeah its pretty much the same over here. Same old Sunday, and same old routine, which I like realli, cos at least got soccer later in the afternoon. Also, we have a team outing later tonight to go watch Man U vs Shitty, so yeah looking fwd to that, its my first team outing and our first in a while.
Other than that, bout 48 hours before this, my external hard drive crashed. Like completely went missing, and could no longer be detected. Everything that I had on it, which includes my work from day 1 at UWA was gone. But its my fault for not backing up and stuff. Stupid me. But yeah i spent most of Friday night, and the whole of Saturday in school redoing my work, and realli if it wasnt for Nat helping me out I wouldnt have finished my stuff. So thanx Nat, for pulling thru for me, it was awesome, then again I never doubted you would.
Alex helped out a lot too, so yeah it was good to have people rally around you when you need help. But yeah what a nightmare I really was on my bed, and praying on Friday cos I didnt know what else to do, and of cos I wasnt in the right mind to startredoing my work, thinking that I could somehow retrieve the data.
But once I got over that, it was just non stop work and Nat roped in to help me till about 2am on Friday, cos I realli wanna go for tonights team outing and stuff.
But yeah I think those who realli realli know me know my view on Hari raya and stuff, I much prefer the fasting part, and I dont like going round and visiting people, especially people who I haven't seen for over a year. I guess today will be the day u take the opp. to see ppl but I just dont feel nice about popping your head over, pretending like you care, when the rest of he year you dont even say anything, its not right. I'm fine with going to the houses of people that I am familiar with and go to at least maybe once a month or something, so usually first day of Hari Raya is fine. But yeah pls for me no 2nd day or third day, not realli comfortable with it.
I guess the one thing I miss most is the food! Haha, but its alright, garlic bread is cooking in the oven now so its not too bad I must say. I hope I can enough rest today and clock up sometime to practice for the major presentation I have due tomorrow.
Hope everybody else is doing ok.
Missing all,
Az
Losers on and off the pitch
Well back again for another update, the second half of the season is here, and we have four well now 3 more matches. We managed to win again today but it was a crap match cos of the opponents. I realised one thing, that I'd rather play against a crap team than play with a good team which talks crap.
Can u imagine? They took the lead in the first half, and they went in one up. But somehow we eked out 2 goals, took our chances and were on the upside. Then things started to go awry. First, a guy threatened to punch Ali, then another one kept mouthing us, and told us "you guys are a joke!". He must have said that at least 15 times in the match. all of them were mouthing off in one way or another, but I tried to ask the team to keep a lid on it, although Ali was obviously losing it. Who wouldn't if a guy threatened to punch you?
Anyways, I was just realli sad, and resigned, cos its always these players who are blessed with some skill, that lack the class, thats why I realli admire those players who I played with in JC, they were excellent players, yet the class they show is amazing. On the field they just play the game. I still remember in Sec 4, and the AC guys were having a go at Puva, and all he did was just smile, I remember Syarif doing that to, and then he fucked some guy up with an incredible tackle that left the guy completely winded. So the point is, at the end of the day just let your actions do the talking.
I realli hate ppl who mouth off, and I hate ppl who walk around with the God-given right that they should win things without actually winning them (ahem, some club in the EPL seems to have that attitude). So yeah, the team today called us a joke, but realli they merely got undone by some good football, as well as their own attitudes. Aggression and anger realli have a very bit part role to play. As John Wooden says, emotion is your enemy.
But yeah, I'll leave it at that. I think the score does matter, but I think its worse if you lose on the scoreboard and you have no class to boot. Dats something .
6 wins, 1 loss, 3 more matches and then the semis.
Missing all,
Az
Trip to Subiaco Oval (Tri-Nations with Ben)
And so, this is a pictorial update on the highlight of Ben's visit over here, which was a trip to watch the tri-nations at Subiaco Oval.
This was Ben waiting for our chips and stuff before heading to Subiaco Oval, which was where the match was held.
The crowd outside Subi Oval, the good thing about the stadium is that it has 26 entrances, which meant that even though it looks clogged up here, its mainly due to people standing around and waiting outside, but the walk in was smooth, the only long line was cos many of the ang mohs were buying their favourite beverage of cos, BEER.
The sports teams in Australia often have some brand name attached to them, so the rugby players are known as the Qantas Wallabies, and this was the giant balloons they brought up to acknowledge the sponsor, of course.
The stadium was comfortable and seating was good enough such that our view was unobstructed. Furthermore our end saw a majority of the tries. Above is a picture of he crowd to the right of us. Pretty decent crowd I guess considering that Australia had nothing left to play for.
The Wallabies made plenty of mistakes which resulted in tries, and as always they had to reset with a kickoff from the centre. Australia is in yellow.
This was in the second half, and the SA players walking out from the dressing room. They are huge, although they look tiny from this picture. But yeah my amateur camera held up pretty well considering I took this from the other end of the pitch.
Australia caught up somewhat in the second half, and scored a try, and the kicker was preparing to kick in the conversion (extra 2 pts) after scoring the try. The SA players have to stand behind the goalpost while the kick is being made.
Now, one thing about the bloody National Stadium is that the stupid screen is really useless. It even stops running after 45 minutes, and you won't know how much of extra time was left and such. This is an example of a working screen.
Managed to get a great shot, again from my end, of the Aussie players huddling up after the loss, nice to see some camaraderie even in professional teams. You don't see many huddles after the match nowadays.
Me and Ben taking a photo closer to the pitch after the match. The stadium emptied out pretty quickly due to the numerous exits everywhere. Also, everyone who bought a ticket was granted a free ride on the train or bus home, so yeah it encouraged ppl to take public transport and avoid massive congestion often seen in Singapore, that is when ppl actually bother to see Singapore play at all.
That's all from Subiaco Oval, and probably my one and only chance at watching Tri-nations, something I have been watching since I was first introduced to the sport at 13. But it was a great experience, thanx Ben!
Missing all,
Az
UPDATES!
Hey all,
sry to have taken so long and not spoken much but things have been just a rush over the last two weeks and I wanted to make sure I squeezed every possible minute to make sure I'm on top of things. So I'm just gonna break things down into various aspects of life as we go along, in no particular order.
SchoolSchool has been hectic but manageable, had a very important presentation that just ended yesterday. Actually I am not so much scared of the presentation and stuff cos I'm pretty used to standing up and talking in front of
ppl. But at
postgrad level, one is expected to not only give a
presentation but in fact conduct a workshop for the whole class. Luckily though, my group mates were really helpful and very focused people. They are both exchange students though so I am not seeing much or anymore of them after this
sem, the first is
Sverre (
pronounced sir-
vair(as in fair)-rah) and
gemma (pronounce the G like a J).
Sverre is from Norway and he does kickboxing, and
Gemma is just this incredibly fun person from NZ. Both were really
helpful and it was fantastic that three
ppl from different continents could work well together, although at first I really couldn't understand
Gemma very well, cos of her thick Kiwi accent. But anyways, the presentation went well and I was glad the class participated as well. I always have this reservation with
ang mohs, especially when they are in their own country, cos they tend to stick to themselves, I guess its the same for us Singaporeans. So talking to the crowd and all, I wasn't always sure if they would speak and be open with us. In short, the
presentation went well and our lecturer was pretty happy with our effort.
WorkAs some of you may no,I still give tuition over here, which takes up a bit of my time each week. But I got a new gig, helping out in the administrating and
officiating of the
Bank of Queensland Corporate Sports Challenge. Basically its a competition held during lunch time for the office
ppl to come and compete, and they have many
different sports, so this time of the year we are doing soccer, and in about a month we are going to start with netball. The guy in charge is pretty nice, David Meyer, and yeah he helps us a lot. Officiating the matches
havent been all that smooth cos
ppl do contest decisions but its not the hardest thing in the world. But its cool having the exposure of being involved in a major set up such as this, the soccer tournament itself has over 60 teams, so its cool, and getting the hands on experience in terms of organising stuff and all, its been good really. So yeah.30
AUD an hour (about 36
bux an hour)
doesnt hurt as well!
I will be getting yet another job which pays about 75
AUD a pop and basically in involves the distributing of catalogs in my neighbourhood.
Haha, I just decided a few days ago that I do have time to squeeze in a bit more work, and yeah the person called me and told me they had no distributor in my area. So basically what happens is that twice a week, they will drop the catalogs and stuff at my house. I take them, fold them, and have about 48 hours to drop them in my neighbourhood, which I think is
a reasonable time frame, cos there is no particular time that I must
drop them at, rather just a time frame. So yeah
dats an extra 150
bux a week, and its not too shady I guess. Basically all this money from work is just going to my bank account, cos I am not gonna loosen my wallet, other than maybe a bit for
Fremantle seafood.
Ben's VisitI am gonna write a
seperate post for this, cos I have pictures and such, and we did quite a bit in the 3d2n he was here. But yeah other than that it was good to see a familiar face around. But more on this later.
WQ will be heading here on
tuesday, so yeah there will be plenty to write about, too much for this post at least.
SoccerWe've played 6 matches, and we lost our 4
th game 4-1. It was just a complete collapse to a team which was not really very strong, and yeah I was rally very disappointed. We switched certain things about the way we played, toggled our personnel around and we won our last two games 2-0 and 4-3 (just yesterday).Basically I now play as a GK, cos I can play as a sweeper as well, and it makes it sort of a 5 man attack, instead of just depending on the 4 outfielders, and so far it has worked well. Pity I played a howler yesterday, and it was great the rest of them managed to bail the team out. Its a break this coming week before we play 4 more games and then hopefully progress to the semi final and eventually final.
Hmmm, I think
dats about all for now, this coming week its gonna be a break week, but I am determined to use the time to get on top of my work and make sure that when school opens I'll be pretty much ready to go, cos yeah the next six weeks when school opens is gonna be very hectic. Alright will get the Ben post up soon, till later.
Missing all,
Az
I felt like I was back in Asia again. So many Asian people everywhere trying their luck at the machines.
This is the typical jackpot machine I guess, probably the fastest way to gain or lose money without moving much in a single night.
This was the huge screen at the sports bar, which we were at. It was standing room only, and somehow the other huge screen contrived to show cricket. Seriously, juxtaposing it beside a 7 goal trailer, I think its fair to see why football is the world's favourite sport.
