June 2006 Archives

Based on feedback from friends who had seen this film I wasn't expecting too much out of it. Almost all the reviews I have heard have been bad too, with an average of 1 out of 4 star ratings.

However, since I just love Japanese cars, I thought I would give it a go, to just enjoy the cars and whatever action they had in store.

Richard and I watched the 8:20 session, and what a night it was. After buying the tickets, while we were going up the escalator to the cinemas, my keys in my pocket jabbed me when I turned or something - and somehow the tickets slipped out of my pocket. Fantastic! We didn't even realise they were missing till we were ready to head in.

Luckily - backtracking we picked up one of the tickets, and even luckier, the ticket counter reissued the other for us! So - on to the movie!

The selection of cars in the movie was not bad, here's a quick rundown on some of them that caught my eye.

Here's the most eye-catching car in the movie, a Mazda RX-7 that doesn't look like one at all - thanks to the crazy Veilside Fortune bodykit.

Tokyo Teppanyaki is located on Chapel Street just a few doors away from the Jam Factory.

This was our celebratory lunch for the SALAMI (Salary and Advertiser Make Over) project which we rolled out the end of last month at my workplace SEEK. Yup, my project managers love these sort of short forms for our project names. Gotta love them.

Anyways, back on topic to this lunch. The place was much bigger than it looked from the outside. I've passed this place a lot of times, but I never knew it was so large inside. There was definitely room for a lot of people in there. I can't imagine how it would be like if this place was full.

The chefs preparing our food were friendly, and their chatter did add to the fun and atmosphere of our meal.

Last night, Ben and Adeline (well - Adeline was the chef) made some yummy Hainanese Chicken Rice - and I was lucky to be invited!

When we entered their apartment, we were greeted with the nice smell of the fragrant rice. Cookie came along too as he would have been left all alone at home, and stole the show from the chicken rice quite a few times.

Malaysia is a hardcore football nation. During the world cup, almost everyone young and old and from all walks of life and races will be tuning in.

Mamak places are jam packed with people staring at those large LCD TVs supporting their favourite teams, or... the teams they bet on. Yup, don't kid yourselves, during the World Cup, betting is probably on a mad level among everyone. Heck, I know even back when I was in primary school, we bet on our favourite world cup teams with our 20 cent erasers!!

So when can we expect Malaysia to be in the World Cup? Our Pak Lah has mentioned he would want to see this happen.

Some people say this will not happen in our lifetime.

When can we see the Jalur Gemilang powered players competing on the world stage? How come, as a football nation, we suck so bad on the international level? I'm sure there are hidden talent that can be found in a lot of Malaysians.

Aiya, if Malaysia can make it, I even have a jersey design ready for them!

Red colour for luck as the Chinese will say. And since if they do make it, almost every person will be betting around them, more luck the better.

What's keeping Malaysian footballers from being taken seriously on the world stage? Maybe we should be having some football academies, and more promotion behind our local football league. Some people have a strong notion that our league is full of match mixing. I don't even think many people are even interested in the league.

Come to think about it, the sport is definitely popular. Lots of children, both boys and girls pick up the simple sport from as young as 5 years old. In school, it is the most popular sport. So why does it die off after school?

After seeing how big a difference it makes to a non-footballing nation like Australia, it'll be really sweet to see Malaysia do it. In the land where football is a rugby like sport, and the real football is called soccer, this is quite an achievement.

Will Malaysia do it in my lifetime?

We had an Indian theme potluck at Su Yi and Andrew's place yesterday night.

Basically, the objective was to have everything as authentic Indian as possible. Well, we had to cut some corners a bit, but all in all, I'd say it was as authentic as we could get.

This was a place Andrew recommended - so we headed over there to try it out. This place is located on High Street in Doncaster.

King's Jade Restaurant is a small restaurant, and there were quite a number of patrons when we went there. Luckily there was a table just nice for us - as we hadn't booked in advance.

Anyways, Andrew had been there before and he recommended the roast duck and beef brisket in hotpot dishes.

So we ordered the Peking Duck to start, followed by mains of half a roast duck, beef brisket in hotpot, vegetables with deep fried tofu and eggplant with minced prawn.

Here's a picture of the main dishes. Unfortunately I forgot to take pictures of the Peking duck as we were totally hungry and had started digging in...

The human skull has been transformed into art pieces and graphics for god knows how long. Arguably the most popular - when people think of pirates they think of their flag with the skull and crossbones.

I know I'm not a good hand artist (whatever they're called) - but occasionally I do like to draw a bit. I thought I'd just share this piece that I drew on the tablet quite a while back this year.

What was I thinking? I dunno - I was sort of thinking of skulls quite a bit. I started out with the following.

After that - it got me thinking, "Hey, maybe I'll use this as my MSN avatar!". Cool, now to play with it a bit in Photoshop.

This is what I came up with. The pencil lines are still pretty clear on this one, and need to be cleaned up.

A simple colour invert cleaned up the rough pencil lines - and produced the effect I was looking for.

I call the piece - the Dread Skull. Call me lame, but I like it.

Heck, I even made an MSN emoticon after!

If you want to add this to your emoticon library, just save this picture somewhere on to your computer and go to Tools>My Emoticons.

Here it is. Apparently the new chasis is based on the Liberty platform. You can see some heavy Liberty influences in this picture that's creeping up everywhere.

Looks like the controversial front grille is here to stay, but I have to admit, the new look that started this year with the 06 model does grow on you the longer you look at it.

I like how this new design makes the car look tougher - but it does look significantly heavier than the current GD chasis.

I have to say, over the last few days that the World Cup has been running, this was the match that I was highly looking forward to - Australia vs Japan.

I have interests in both these teams - with Japan, I'm behind Japan as they're one heck of an Asian team, they're fast they're agile, and did I mention they're one of Asia's finest football teams?

With Australia, well... I'm living in Australia, and with the amount of energy going on with the Aussies and this team coming into the World Cup since 1974, it's a bit hard not to support them a little bit. Ok maybe more than a little bit...

Anyways, we all know by now that Australia won. At the final whistle, the Australian supporters at Federation Square just went ballistic - we could hear it clearly and we're about 1 km away.

And when I came in to work this morning, it's all people could talk about. Heck during our staff meeting, they even began with the "Aussie Aussie Aussie - Oi Oi Oi" chant... unfortunately I'm just not that Aussie enough to join in yet.

Schwarzer here must be thinking "Oi referee, like that also can - u bak chiu koh stamp ah? (eyes stick stamp)" after the controversial 26th minute goal that saw Australia trailing 0-1 up till the 84th minute.

I still haven't gotten over how the Aussies scored 3 goals in the final minutes...

Here's to the colourful Japanese fans. Hope they'll do better against Croatia and Brazil.

World cup fever is upon us. May the force be with you betting kakis.

We always forget how dangerous the world of Formula One really is. Over the years it has been running - many have died participating and even working on the circuit during the races.

This long video on YouTube is a strong video on how unpredictable and close people involved in this high speed racing world are with death every day.

No matter how safe you can make the car - anything can happen.

Makes you think about the cars you are driving everyday.

Wahai kawan-kawan di pejabat polis.

Kalau lari saman, sama-sama kita ambil banyak orang pergi tangkap.

Star paper today.

Wartawan yang mari - boleh juga kita "pose pose" sikit - hansem bukan?

Meanwhile, snatch thieves are still going about their daily business, and the latest victim that I know - happens to be my sister.

When Ayumi released the album LOVEppears in 1999, it was a big hoo haa because of her picture on it.

This album was her second album.

I'm not here to talk about Ayumi's music however - this is her from this controversial album cover as a desktop.

1600x1200

1280x1024

I have to say though - I don't think this is Work-Safe. Use at your own risk. Heh.

To download, either click on the thumbnails above to launch a seperate window OR alternatively right click on this link - for the 1600x1200 size and this link - for the 1280x1024 size and select "Save As".

If you know me well enough - you'll know that I'm a HUGE Subaru fan.

Fans of Subaru will have heard of Prodrive - the performance arm based in UK that does the work on the Subaru World Rally Team's cars. And in case you haven't heard, Prodrive has been developing a concept sports car with all the goodies from a Subaru Impreza WRX STI... with lots of added features... LOTS.

Follow the "Continue reading" link below to watch the feature from YouTube. Turn up the speakers and grab some popcorn.

It was a Friday night (2nd June), the plan was dinner, and a bit of a belated birthday celebration for Adeline who spent her birthday on the 31st May shopping away in Chadstone's crazy special night time sale.

The lovely couple for the night.

Ngam or not? Secocok kan?

Last time we went to Williamstown was about 3 years ago if I remember correctly. Back then, it was just a short drive-past whilst we were on a bus headed to some trip somewhere.

Anyways, Andrew was kind enough to drive us there for lunch on Sunday (25th May) - and together with Cookie too. We had our lunch at this Fish & Chip joint. Here's a pic of the place.