Will make games for food

I'll be attending the GCAP conference this Friday and Saturday which should hopefully be a lot of fun. It'll be good to listen to all the key note speakers and *fingers crossed* get some hands on time with any display Wiis they have before the official aussie launch next week.

I also got some personal cards made up on the off chance that I get to do some 'networking'. I've been told it's always good to have something to hand to people you meet at these things. Could be useful for getting numbers from the booth babes... err... maybe not.



Quite happy with how they turned out even if they were cheap prints at Office Works which I needed to cut out myself. Let's hope Atari don't come after me for using the likeness of a Space Invaders alien.

Safe in Brisbane

Yeah yeah I know, promises of consistent updates during our holiday trip may have been grossly exaggerated. Changes to the house and internet connection in Subang meant that blog updates were not possible in spite of my best intentions.

On the bright side we're back in our home now. Two weeks flew by even faster than we'd thought possible and now we find ourselves a little travel weary, rather soft around the edges from good food and extremely happy with the time we managed to spend with friends and family. Parting with family has never been an easy thing for me but at least we have a big party to look forward to in June next year.

As for our holiday diary, I did actually start writing things down in a word document for quick posting upon our imminent return but after the second day this too fell by the wayside. My plan therefore, is to cheat and write retrospectively of our brief getaway if only to share a sliver of our holiday snapshots with an unwilling audience. Stay tuned for updates... backdates... whatever... with tales of tourism, familial introductions and much much food.

You can never go home

Mum had briefly discussed her plans to renovate the house on her last visit to Australia but the full extent of the changes were hard to imagine until we’d seen them. Since mum’s spending most of her time in Kajang with Uncle Wing (or traveling to Australia to see her favourite son) there wasn’t much point in merely extending the house to create more space to clean and look after. Instead she’s managed to divide the house into three self contained units, two downstairs and one large area upstairs for her to use when she decides to stay. This was the house I grew up in so some of these changes were pretty freaky.

BEFORE

AFTER

First big shock came from entering what used to be the front door to the house. The entry way has been walled off obviously to give this first unit the original kitchen and the downstairs bathroom to use. The spot which my piano has occupied for close to 15 years has been transformed into a TV wall and study area. Of course this was just a setup for the next WTF moment.

BEFORE

AFTER

Sleeping in the dining room was definitely an odd sensation for the first couple of nights. I've eaten my share of meals in bed growing up but waking up to see the my reflection in the kitchen mirrors was just gnarly.

BEFORE

AFTER

Even the garden couldn't escape mum's eager renovating mood. Our little flower stand come sitting area has been changed to a pot plant fish pond.



It may be hard to make out from the small picture but there are little guppies from Uncle Wing's pond floating around in there.

BEFORE

AFTER

The first sliding door on the side of the house now leads to the original staircase which still provides access up to the second floor. What was my bedroom upstairs is essentially now a simple study room for mum store room for all the junk I haven't been able to cart over to Australia yet. My poor neglected piano also now adorns this miniature entrance way.

BEFORE

AFTER

Behind the second side door was the biggest change of all. This used to be a maid/guest/karaoke room which wasn't being used much in recent memory. Mum's now sealed it off and pushed the house boundary back to create a second unit that she intends to let out.



Of course mum's infatuation for the open bathroom continues here too.

BEFORE

AFTER

Here you can see how the back of the house has been done away with to accomodate the new kitchen and seating area. The first picture is obviously a little old. The geese (Donald and Daisy) are long gone now and that's Wong and Rudi over for one of my birthdays.



Mum's quite proud of this addition to the garden. The longan tree was about to meet the axe before someone pointed out that the tree was about to bear fruit. Not the best longans I've had but I guess it's better than nothing.

Back in the Motherland

So begins our two week journey of food, family and friends. After dropping our keys off with the kind neighbours (someone has to look after the fish while we’re away), we scooted off in the cab to Brisbane International. We managed to get there way ahead of time for the flight in order to claim duty off Alison’s new camera. I got a little disappointed when I spotted the ixus 65 in the duty free shop for $450 seeing as that’s what we paid for at Harvey Norman. That soon went away when we got our 10% duty back though.



Slightly boring side note, moving to Annerley has effectively shaved off $20 from our normal cab fair. Sure beats trying to wrangle three heavy suitcases onto the Air Train. Hooray for us!

The flight itself to KL was fairly uneventful though all the pills that Alsie ended up popping to help with travel sickness didn’t appear to be too effective. The main thing I did notice in the air was how rude and unprofessional the flight attendants were (we were flying Malaysian Airlines). You’d think that if your job basically involved ensuring that your passengers were happy and provided for then you’d be a little more accommodating to requests. Honestly, this bunch just seemed shocked that a paying customer had the temerity to ask them for something. Very disappointing MAS, we’re definitely flying Singapore Airlines on our next trip.

Arriving in KLIA we filled out our entry forms and proceeded to the checkout counter. It was kinda sad for me as this could potentially be the last time I get to walk through the Malaysian Passport autogate if I intend to apply for Australian Citizenship.



All the other passengers on our flight had rushed off by the time we got out to baggage reclaim. Our two suitcases were waiting for us so we snapped them up and were waved through customs to meet mum and Uncle Wing. We quickly got the hugs and greetings over with in order to move on to the important stuff… food! Uncle Wing took us to a little hole in the wall that he’d heard about which was on the way back from the airport.


Here we are at seven in the morning having our first Malaysian meal of the trip. This is Bak Kut Teh, a claypot stew of pork and tofu in a Chinese herbal tea which is served with rice. The little bowl on the side is filled with intestines in the same tea. Certainly beats the pants off cornflakes and milk any day of the week if you ask me.



After brekkie we stopped by Uncle Wing’s house for a bit of a rest before driving back to Subang. Sitting by the indoor fish pond we got a chance to see how large the carp have grown in the two years since our last trip.

Wiiii!

Electronics Boutique at Garden City have not one but TWO Nintendo Wii consoles for customers to try out. There was a huge crowd waiting to get their grubby hands on the wiimote and nunchuck for some Zelda and Excite Truck action so I didn't get a chance to have a go unfortunately.

Visual impressions are good though, the console is slimmer than I thought it would be and the controllers look small and fit perfectly into your hands. Didn't want to watch too much of the Zelda demo to avoid any potential spoilers so I tried to focus on the players using the controllers which seemed responsive and intuitive.

Good thing we'll be on holiday for the next two weeks so the wait till December 7th doesn't seem quite so bad. I've already got my Wii pre-ordered along with an extra Wiimote (which comes bundled with "Wii Play") and a copy of Zelda Twilight Princess. Can't wait for it.

Travel Plans

Als and I can barely believe it but we'll be flying back to Malaysia and Hong Kong tomorrow! There's nothing quite like having a house full of open suit cases filled with rolled up clothes and (certainly in my case at least) about half a dozen adapters for various electronic gadgetry. Passports ready, air tickets double checked, torrents all queued up and fish food feeders prepared. We're definitely set to dive right into a delicious holiday which will no doubt pass by in a blink.

It's really exciting as this will be the first chance for Alison's parents to see Malaysia and my extended family (eeeek!). Then next weekend we'll all be flying out to Hong Kong to celebrate James and Dora's engagement and meet all of Dora's family. Lots of names to remember and lots of food to eat.

I'll be lugging my laptop along back home so hopefully I'll be able to find an internet connection to post pictures and rants of all the cheap wonderful food we'll be consuming. It's a little weird thinking about a trip to Asia that isn't going to involve the purchase of the latest PDA/Console/MP3 player. Cheap dodgy DVDs on the other hand will be bursting out of our bags on the flight home.

Just one more sleep before we fly.