Czech it Out!

Friday night was Czech it Out! at the Prague Czech Beer Restaurant. There were 20+ people, mugs of beer and lots of meat. This was not a be-nice-to-your-bowel night but once in a while is ok... or at least I hope so.

Giles drinking beer and waiting for his plate of meats

Ordering and discussing facebook

Robbie + Megan

Colin's arm + Astrid eating mains

Rachel's yummo pork knuckle, which I should have ordered

Giles' plate of meats

My smoked ribs were awesome!

Do Not Eat!

On Monday morning at work, I opened the fridge to find one of our bCODE readers in there. I work with hardware engineers and they are all very odd, yet entertaining.

Under The Bridge

Does anyone know who the group of olds guys are who play chess at the old table and benches that look abandoned, under the Sydney Harbour Bridge in the Rocks?

They have the key to the lockup area that you go past as you approach to descend the stairs on the south side of the bridge. They play chess. They are only there once in a while and only in the evening.


Is this a well known Sydney group of eccentric old dudes?

The Big C

Thanks to Peter Miller, I have hit 100 facebook friends. Yay!

Google this!@#$&*^

I am at 95% of my gmail quota. Google suggests I BUY some more space.

Yeah right! I am very happy to dump my gmail account and go to the other webmail providers who give unlimitied space.

Malaysia Fest

Today, I continued my quest to find the perfect chicken satay like the ones I use to get at the Palmerston Markets when I lived Darwin. In search of the grail, I made my way down to Darling Harbour to Malaysia Fest.

Malaysia Fest is organised by Malaysian students in Sydney. The main stage was being run by two very enthusiastic students (a guy and girl) who presented a Malay wedding ceremony, a formal thank you march and a competition that involved members of the audience attempting to tie a traditional Malay male costume (like a sarong). It was fun and entertaining and luckily I avoided being plucked from the crowd when I pleaded that I was still eating my "chicken sticks"TM.

Malay "chicken sticks" - quest rating 1/10

Formal thank you ceremony after the Malay wedding

Not too crowded so there was lots of space to sit and relax in the lovely Sydney sun

Don't let me fool you with my references to non-food stuffs. I was there for the food and I tried most of the stalls except the crazy looking drink stall that sold drinks containing coffee, guarana and a lot of other stimulants all in one brightly coloured can. I chose to avoid the sugar coma today. These were food stalls offering Malaysian cuisine like satay, Chinese yum cha, laksa, noodles, fish ball sticks ($3 per stick), crab balls (4 for $6) and a big bunch of other stuff that I am not able to identify. It was all great quality and very cheap. Reminded me of the $5 dinners at the markets in Darwin but minus the sandflies.

An interesting sticky rice with soy sauce and gigantic pork bun

I love pork buns!

The Ayam show bag for $6. Reminded me of what we ate in PNG

To the Peasants of the Emperor

Cool music vid for the song "To the Peasants of the Emperor" by AM Syndicate:

Daffodil Day

Friday the 24th of August 2007 was Daffodil Day. Daffodilling your day with flowers, pens, soft toy soccer balls and anything else that can have the yellow flowers printed on them, raises money for The Cancer Council of Australia.

For as long as this day has been raising money, I have bought at least one bunch of flowers each time. This goes back to when I was at school, through university and all my working life. One year I missed the flowers and ended up with a blue and yellow flower pen (the daffopen) instead. This year, as I do each year, I donated my workday water bottle to the cause as a vase.

Well worth the $5

My Starbucks Name

When I go to Starbucks, they insist on taking my name so that they can pretend to know me when they call out that my coffee is ready.

This used to result in a ridiculous outcome every time. I'd give my name, they'd write down their version of it and the next fool would call out some other interpretation of it. It was chinese whispers when I was happy to be called "a tall latte with skim". That's much better than Dana, Rachel, Alana, Damian, Daryl and my favourite... Dot (not sure if it just said "." or actually had "Dot" written on it).

My solution to this is to create a new and easy to write and read name. It's never the same: sometimes I'm Jess or Sam or Felicity, once Tinkerbell (no double take, she wrote it down and he called it out), another time I was Bunny but often I just stick with one that works without fail... Dot.

How I work according to Subversion

According to Subversion and my boss who likes data and graphs, this is how I work during a week and at certain times of the day. This is based on data from our newly created (< 2 month old) repository.

I won't be voted off the island this week since I do 46.5% of commits in my team of 3 .NET devs. Of course I also win on lines of code changed and quality :o)

My new Perez Hilton t-shirt

In honour of Li Lo, Britney and Paris.

Happy Birthday to Me

Giles took me to have a lovely lunch at Wooloomooloo (I love typing that). We sat and ate and drank for hours. It was an overcast day but with the outdoor heaters, it was perfect. This was my first birthday in 8 years where the temp was above 15 degrees C. Yay!

Wooloomooloo wharf from out table

A sticky and some water, just before dessert came

Now I am 31 years old... so old

The boats for the rich people

The best view of the city

A Prime Year is 31

An impromptu gathering was organised by Mei on Friday evening to celebrate my 31st birthday. It is not usual for me to celebrate birthdays that are prime numbers so it was a small yet rowdy crowd who turned up for drinks at Sydney's awesomest cocktail bar, the Hilton's Zeta Bar.

Mei attacking Giles

Talking with the newly engaged Liz + Jules

My usual drinking buddies, the gorgeous and funtabulous Mei and Irene

A wall decoration at the Zeta Bar

Chiara who sang karaoke at my 30th, joined me again for this birthday

Giggling

The bar food is really good and the service is great!

Everyone but me (taking pic)

We were tired at this point :)

The girlies

Thanks guys. Thanks Mei. It was a fun night!

PS David K was here but left before the drunken camera came out.

Failing an interview on the way up

A company I worked at once was hiring for a technical position (not dev work) and it put out the call to the pimps (from Wikipedia: "Typically, a pimp will solicit clients for, protect, and in other ways manage a [fill in profession] in exchange for a commission on her earnings") to get a handful of fully screened applicants.

During the week of the interviews, geeky looking people that I didn't recognise (stranger danger) were being shown through our offices and in one case one hopped on to the lift with me. Story starts with me turning up at the lift to our building pre-coffee-comatose one morning. As I waited for the elevator to land on the ground at it's usual slothful pace, two other people turned up and waited for the same thing.

When the doors opened, I boarded and hit the button for my floor. The second guy paused, holding up the queue of 1 behind him and then stepped on to the lift. I admit it wasn't the friendliest or most fragrant lift but he was even slow for me without my caffeine hit. Then half way in the door so the other guy could just fit passed, he spun and looked at the buttons... eons passed... and he finally pushed a button. He pushed the button for my floor that had already been pushed. He saw me push hit. He saw it was the only red button. He pushed it anyway.

As he stepped off the lift in front of me as we got to our floor, I just knew that this guy was not someone I could ever enjoy working with, technically anyway.

Not so fabulous, is our Scrabulous

My fave facebook app is not doing so well. It's been down for two days. I've had to go cold turkey. Giles quoted someone on the 'blag who said that when you write a popular facebook application, you are happy because it is popular and then you are sad because your server melts.

Being A Kid Again

If you have always been a geek, you'll remember this and love it!

Walkies

Stealing an idea from David, I visually documented my late afternoon walk home from work in Milson's Point. It's a beautiful walk, despite the traffic. Unfortunately, my camera doesn't do great night shots but you get the idea.

The corner near my work and a view of the bridge

Funky drain pipes on a wall of an apartment block in Milson's Point

The bridge and the road entrance way to Luna Park

Along side the cars about to go on to the bridge

The Sydney Opera House

Sydney city at dusk

Day 12 - Caffè Latte Patches

Someone needs to invent the caffè latte patch for the recovering caffeholic.

This morning involved a lot of rushing around. When I finally settled down, I felt the need for a coffee but not for the taste of coffee or the hit it gives but for that warm mug of X to hold in my hands as I read the paper (online of course) or watch bad pop music.

The similar need a smoker has to hold a cancer stick between their fingers was replaced by a cuppa hot chocolate. It was nice. Not as heavy though. Not as warm. Not the same.

Headaches 0; Tantrums 0; Deaths 0.

Walkies

Stealing an idea from David, I visually documented my late afternoon walk home from work in Milson's Point. It's a beautiful walk, despite the traffic. Unfortunately, my camera doesn't do great night shots but you get the idea.

The corner near my work and a view of the bridge

Funky drain pipes on a wall of an apartment block in Milson's Point

The bridge and the road entrance way to Luna Park

Along side the cars about to go on to the bridge

The Sydney Opera House

Sydney city at dusk