Random musings with shots of Brisbane

Okay, I'm going to go easy on the Indians/Sarawak/Malaysia rhetoric, and just going to talk about life in Brisbane.

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The many faces of Brisbane City

Foggy and misty.

Wet and rainy

A clear day and relatively warm (15C on the day I took it)

Brisbane city from the Coronation Drive bikeway

Looking towards Brisbane city from the north


Don't you just love Brisbane?

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Someone tell me how on earth did this happen? 34.3 MB in 1,193,023 hours. Thats 49,709.29 days. Or 136+ years. Even my old 28.8K modem could download 34.3 MB faster than that!

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Back when I was in Auckland, I blogged about this interesting pie shop:

"Buy one or we're both starve". Oh yeah.


Then I saw this in a food court in Brisbane city:

Who's copying who?
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Seen in a DVD shop in Brisbane:


It's all those loli jokes I tell you. Its all those loli jokes.


Max Loh's inspiration for Kurogane?
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People with sharp eyes will see some subtle changes in the right pannel of this blog. I've updated a few things, and added a live (but very transparent) RSS feed from my photosite.


Photoblog feed on the right pannel. So you know when there are updates in my (not-so-frequently) updated other site.


Brought my Fav posts and guides up to date. The old one was getting a bit aged.
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That's it folks!

Why Communism doesn't work

I know this is way too late. The world found that out 25 years ago. However it is a indicator of why anything "commune" doesn't work unless you know the people well. Honestly, living with 8 other complete strangers doesn't help.

In my previous postings, I said much about Indians. Last year I went on at great length about my experiences living with a Mainland Chinese. But now that I think about it, at least the MC left me alone to sleep in peace, for all his maddening stunts. The Indians drive you insane day and night.

Music and sound
For some strange reason, Indians think the optimum time (I do calculus) to play their wailing and moaning Bollywood music is 1 am. I'm not joking. Then you have the Muslims with their equally ear-drum shattering music. Honestly, sometimes it takes all my self-restraint to crank up Nami Tamaki's "Reason" to full on my Altec Lansing speakers to drown them out. The only thing stopping me is my fathers advise: "Two wrongs do not make a right".

People who say "Just tell them to Shut the Fuck up turn down the volume" have never lived with Indians. Honestly, some dogs can process requests better than them. I bang on the door and tell them to tone it down. Yes, the volume does go down, but their voice accompanying it goes up. At this stage, the original song is the lesser of the other evil called "The voice of somebody who can't sing".

Why do you think I never do karaoke?

It just reinforces my perception that Asian's can't be educated. I'll give you more proof. here in Brisbane, some of the bus stops in the city (heading out) have been moved recently, due to the construction of the Inner Busway. So they put up signs, notices both in the papers and the place, saying "This bus stop will be closed. The new one is this way". On the day of the switch, the old bus stop was empty. Down the road, the people were waiting for the bus in the new bus stop. Just like that.
Back home, they've made Gambier St into a one way road. Well known. The change was well announced in the papers. But you still get the no-so occasional Ah Beng going down the wrong way down Gambier St. Why? WHY?! Why are Asian's so hard to educate? (keep in mind I'm also one.........)


What is your's is mine. What is mine is mine
The internet was knocked out for a 3 weeks not too long ago, after we hit the limit. Close friends will know how I almost died. The problem with Australia and New Zealand is all their broadband is capped. You only can download a certain limit of data per month. Unlimited plans don't really exist. But Telstra is worst. BOTH your upload and download data is counted to our 30GB/month cap. And when you hit the limit, your connection is cut off for the rest of the month unless you pay $20/GB for the data over your limit. Yes, I hate telstra.

Now 30GB/month might seem a lot. It is, if you are one person using it and paying $200/month. But over 10 people? Each person should get 3GB/month, or we all average about 1GB/day.

I will be honest. I have been keeping that 120MB/day (3GB / 30 days) limit well. I know, because I have a meter which tracks my usage. But the owner came in yesterday, at 9am, and we looked at the meeter, and we had used 1.2GB already! From 12am to 9am, some selfish sod had used up more than one days of our quota!

Now the problem is, no one wants to own up. When you ask if they've been downloading anything, they all claim it wasn't them. Short of employing torture that violates the Geneva convention, I don't think we'd get a answer either. So morale get's low. People start thinking "There is no point me keeping to my limit, when someone will just drain the quota. Might as well go full blast and download all the Nagaserete Airantou ep's I've missed." Instead of working together, people sub-consciously just slack back, trying to get as much as they can out of the communal pool. Downloading as much as we can. Then we get our internet cut off. Which then the Indians crack from the lack of internet. Which they then play their heartbroken Bollywood songs. Which keep me awake..........


Washing at the kitchen (oh oh, yeah yeah)
Now, doing a roster to deal with the (literary) dirty task of washing up sounds nice. But you're making the assumption that people will follow it. Oh yes, when I first moved in, there was a roster. I was on a Friday shift.

But then the Indians started slacking off. Remember my KCCNNB moment? The Indians started shifting the burden to other people, under the excuse of A)work (one of the guys here has 3 jobs.Bastard) B)exams C)Assignments. So they would come up to whoever has unfortunate enough to be in the kitchen, tell them it was (apparently) their turn this week, to wash the 5 day old cups with petri-dish milk. Eventually we got the hang of what they were doing, so we just didnt bother. And this is I'm scared to go to the kitchen. I will never walk into there barefoot. The floor is dirty and sticky. The smell of 5 day old milk, 3 day old curry, 7 day old dhal is overpowering. Try telling them to clean up? They will claim it wasn't theirs. Now I know where the we-send-you-in-circles public service staff came from.

AND DONT ASK ME TO WASH UP. If I do, 4 days later the sink will be back with 3 day old plates, utensils and cups. I AM NOT A SERVANT! I did consider asking them to pay me to clean up, but obviously they'd rather eat dinner with flies and 6 day old fermenting rice in the kitchen than to pay me $10 a day.

I came from the multi-cultural country. I'm well aware of many cultures. I am not racist, unlike Hisham. But if you act like this, how else can I conclude about you?

NDD PRESS STATEMENT

宁华世界动漫社会的人民反对哈卢意深教 (NDD)
Official anti-Haruhiism movement

Ninghua, 25 June - The independent and sovereign government of Ninghua today wishes to express their concern of the confirmed screening of the cult plague-in-disguise Suzumiya Har..., anyway, let's just call it Haruhiism, by Malaysian television NTV7.

In a posting on the offical website of the station and widely circulated, it showed the proposal and final screening of the plague Haruhiism by Media Prima backed and owned Nat Seven Snd Bhd. It would be subbed in the Malay language with the original Japanese language audio track and broadcast at 12.15am, under the "Midnight Anime" banner. Screening is scheduled to take place as often as three times a week.

The NDD movement expresses it's genuine concern and anger over the screening of Haruhiism. Haruhiism is designated by the Ninghua State Department as a plague entity, and that everyone has a moral and legal obligation to destroy it. While we at NDD acknowledge it would be screened at anti-social times to prevent the masses being infected by it, we at NDD view that the fact that Haruhiism was allowed to be shown on national TV is nothing short of outrageous!

We at NDD acting of behalf of the world urge NTV7 and Media Prima to reconsider their controversial and potentially damaging decision to screen Haruhiism in Malaysia. While we recognise the (keris waving) soverignty of the Malayan (har har) government, the actions of the Malaysian government to intervene and stop this are called for.

We at NDD stand by our policy of opposing all Haruhiism overtures.

Author:maybe i should do creative arts..........

Rain and more Rain

I know this is almost blasphemy saying this, considering that we are in Level 5 water restirctions, but......

STOP RAINING DAMMIT!

Poor Brisbane is in a drought. And it's not just Queensland. The whole of Australia. NSW. VIC. WA. SA. I think only NT is the only one left without water restrictions, through rivers of gorg flow freely there..

Anyway, some pic's of the rare rain in this place:


From a bus.


At the Greenslopes busway station


At the Mater Hill Busway station

While this will no doubt be a nice welcome for the farmers...



I'm not that well off. All my clothes are wet. And I have no place to dry it. So if you see me in weird clothes for the next few days, you know why.

Coming soon....

(Click for high res, 845KB picture)


Someone has to help out with the bandwidth costs through.......

And that's one semester

It's only the first semester!

Why you should not share the same server with a government website

Ever since The Borneo Post came into the 21st century, with the launch of their online edition, it has been a boon for overseas Sarawakians like me, to get news from home. The Star and NST have zilch news on Sarawak.

Then it's shadow counterpart, Eastern Times, came into existance after they shut down the Sarawak Tribune. But anyway, that's another story for another day.

The problem with The Borneo Post online through, is that I can never access it before 11am. The server seems to live a 9 to 5 working day. And what time is it in M'sia when it's 11am here? You guessed it!


Which is a shame, as I always have problem accessing it. The page simply will not load for hours, then this comes up. However, I noticed that this error message looked familar.....



Well guess what, it's the same error message when I try to access the Sarawak State government website!
Different websites.Same IP address. >.<

And I don't think it's Jaring's fault either. Yes, the 202.184 IP range belongs to Jaring. I can access Lowyat and NST (both hosted on Jaring), no problem.

Come on man, dedicated hosting isn't that expensive! You get cheaper and more reliable deals outside Malaysia! Even a 1st year Swinburne Sarawak student can get a nice hosting for his clubs website!

There is something wrong with the Malaysian internet infrastructure all-right.....

Edit 1.09pm AEST: I can now access The state government's website and Eastern Times, through Borneo Post online is still down. What, does the internet only start work at 11am in Malaysia?