Skin the Rabbit

Christmas and Coolum

2012-01-03T21:42:00.001+10:00

Had a great Christmas break with the family. We knew that it was going to be a special holiday as it would be the first season with the two new beautiful babies. Alison and I had only seen Thomas in pictures on Facebook and the occasional Skype session, so it was really great to finally be able to give him a cuddle (especially when he's so soft and squishy compared to Nelly!). The two babies hit it off immediately I think, although Eleanor did spend some time trying to inspect his eyeballs with her fingernails while Thomas tolerated her abuse with great patience.

It's interesting to see what a difference three months makes at this age and how each baby can have their own personality. This is the longest time I've seen Eleanor in the company of another baby and you really get an idea of what makes each kid special. I think Dora put it best when she called Nelly "spirited" as she was a bucket of energy and noise through the whole week compared to the Buddha like calm and happiness we saw in Thomas. I also got to see how easy it was for Nelly to cry and complain for the smallest things so that little girl is going to have to swallow some cement and harden up soon.

All tough talk but it's hard to stay cross at her when she looks so cute. The first few nights in Toowoomba were a little restless, though we'd like to think that she was just excited about trying to catch Santa putting presents around the fireplace. She woke us up pretty early on Christmas day and was in a chipper mood to get to church. No idea where she gets all her silly faces from.

Opening Christmas presents after church for the past few years had become a minor affair as all Alison's younger cousins have grown up. If this year is any indication I'd say there will be a sharp increase in the quantity and size of pretty, wrapped packages to tear open on Christmas morning. Nelly's favourite is her new cookie jar shape sorter that Grandma and Granddad bought for her. We noticed that she has the cutest technique for choosing a shape to take out which I happily captured on video for posterity.

As an aside, we never thought we would be a Fisher Price family but our collection of beeping and singing plastic toys appears to be growing at an alarming rate. Anything to keep the little ones entertained I suppose.

On the boxing day holiday we packed the cars up and drove up to Coolum to spend a week at a house that James and Dora rented for the family. It was a great location, only ten minutes walk with a stroller to the beach and shops. The house itself was also perfectly equipped with all the creature comforts one could ask for; multiple kitchens, numerous fridges for drinks, a small pool, TVs in the rooms and best yet... complimentary wireless internet access. It didn't take me long to set up the PS3 for a little bit of gaming goodness. Ah bliss.

I've never been a big fan of the beach, but I had to make an exception to take little Nelly down to play in the water. The waves were pretty choppy so we didn't head out too far and the water seemed pretty cold to me, though no one else seemed to mind. The biggest challenge was probably timing our trips to avoid the harsh morning sun and align with the sleep schedule for the babies. Sleepy kids tend to wake up when dangled in the waves it seems and she even appeared enjoyed it after a while.

The other issue, which should be obvious if we had thought about it, was that Nelly kept trying to eat the sand on the beach. That made building sand castles a little tricky so I guess we'll have to postpone that activity for another beach holiday. At least she was fine and had fun in the surf with Granddad John and cousin Thomas.

We all got some lovely photos of the babies which can be seen on this album here.

Coming back to work was challenging after spending so much time with our little girl. I can't believe how much she's grown up even in the last month. Her latest trick is being able to sit up in her cot and wail miserably until someone comes into the room to play. She has also become pretty adept at extending from a sitting position to reach out to fetch her toys, but still appears to have no interest or aptitude for crawling significant distances. Probably a blessing really as she'll be a handful to look after given how energetic she is normally even without mobility.

At least there won't be a long wait till the next holiday as we're back to Malaysia in the next three weeks for Chinese New Year to see the other grandparents. In the mean time we'll just have to lose as much of this Christmas weight as we can before gorging ourselves on food again at the end of the month.

Christmas Tree and the Beach

2011-12-11T19:02:00.001+10:00

We dragged the Christmas tree out of its box last weekend to assemble and decorate. Setting up the tree is usually a painfully meticulous process as Alison and I "discuss" the finer points of bauble balance and distribution. This year however we had an adorable arbitrator to settle disagreements, and she even helped with placing the star on top.

Nelly's first Christmas is rapidly approaching and all our shopping has more or less been done. Absolutely can't wait till we're up in Toowoomba with the rest of the family for what will be a very memorable holiday season, what with two new babies in the family now that Eleanor and our new nephew Thomas are here. We'll also be spending the week following Christmas up in Coolum with James, Dora, Thomas, John and Sheena which will be great.

For this weekend we drove down to South Port on a little field trip. In truth it was mainly due to my desire to try out this ramen place (Ichiban Boshi) that I'd heard about. The ramen actually turned out to be good although not great (compared to Hakataya ramen in Sunnybank in my opinion), but the trip was good fun anyway.

After lunch we headed down to the water for a stroll, where Nelly cackled at the seagulls and pelicans flying around. I imagine that obese pelicans primarily nourished from the cast off potato chips of visiting tourists look kinda silly to an eight month old, perhaps even to 29 year old mums who keep referring to them as "smellicans" and giggling. We weren't dressed for the occasion but I have a feeling that once we get Nelly on the sand and water she's going to love it.

Before heading back to Brisbane we stopped by Baskin Robins for a quick treat. Not sure if we were being irresponsible parents, but we decided to give Nelly a bit of Rocky Road from mummy's cone to see what she would think. She didn't go into anaphylactic shock and seemed to take to the chocolate quite naturally. I think she's going to have a sweet tooth.

Sit Down for a Meal

2011-11-06T18:13:00.003+10:00

Eleanor's latest trick has brought our interaction with her to a whole new level. Just over the last two weeks she's pretty much mastered the art of unassisted sitting (only occasionally smacking her head on the floor when one of us isn't looking), which brings with it a surprising number of new things to do. Obviously this new posture now allows a slew of toys that were not appropriate before and have suddenly become necessary.

It also means that feeding time is a lot easier now that Nelly's core is strong enough to keep her upright. We had her outside in her nappy, eating watermelon and mushed up banana for breakfast, which she mainly fed herself. Still a little messy but I have no doubt that her table manners will improve with age.

Another big bonus for me is that she seems to enjoy sitting on her mat while I play the guitar in front of her. She seemed so interested in my six string that I thought Alison's ukulele would make a nice toy for her. She managed to pluck a few notes before attempting to eat the instrument so it might be a few more months at least before the music lessons officially start.

Haven't uploaded a montage in a while and I did go video crazy so here's a few clips from this weekend. She's just adorable!

Half a Year Later

2011-10-16T18:59:00.000+10:00

Yes, we're those parents. Any milestone no matter how small should be celebrated, if only to provide an excuse for tea and cake in the park. No, Nelly did not partake in her half-birthday cake. We thought we'd give the poor girl a few more months (hopefully years) before subjecting her to the same high fat, high volume diet that her parents seem so fond of.

First stop in the morning was to get a quartet of icing encrusted morsels from the Cupcake Parlour. Then we drove down the road to Orleigh Park to find a lovely spot under a tree for some morning tea. Nelly was so well behaved and happily gave us lots of smiles for the camera.

As an aside, I've recently upgraded all our iOS devices to the latest version of iOS5 which, amongst many great new features, includes iCloud. Can I just say that having Photo Stream is an absolute life changer now that I don't need to synchronise four devices manually after taking few (ok, perhaps more than a few) photos. You can see my personal picks on the album here.

Eating the cupcakes fresh this time made a world of difference. These were super moist and had great flavour. I ordered the Turkish Delight along with the Marbelous (which is the one with a Guylian chocolate on the top). Alison had the Fairy Floss and Very Cherry (with the Cherry Ripe). Eleanor seemed interested in sampling the sweets but we convinced her that a bottle of milk and blended beans, carrots and sweet potato would be just as good. Kids are so gullible.

It's amazing how much she's changed over the last six months (as I said, we're those parents). Just over the last few weeks since Canberra have allowed Eleanor to improve her upper body strength when pushing herself up on her tummy. She's also interacting a lot more with us vocally, which is unbelievably rewarding. I had actually thought that she was going to be a laconic lass with very little sign of joviality, but I've been pleased to see her develop a musical laugh and happy squeal that melts my heart every time I hear it.

Happy six months Eleanor Chua. Your mummy and daddy love you very much.

Airplanes, Flowers and Canberrra Weddings

2011-10-03T20:56:00.000+10:00

The last time we were down in Canberra was to renew my passport and see the wonders of our capitol city with hosts Meg and Rich. They did such a wonderful job of looking after us for our last visit that we couldn't pass up the chance to come down again. Especially to attend their wedding.

The flight down from Brisbane would be Eleanor's first experience with the joys of air travel. It's not a long flight, about an hour and a half in the air, so we were going to take this as a test run for what it will be like traveling back to Malaysia in January next year. If this experience was any indication, then we are very lucky parents as Eleanor was very well behaved. In fact, she slept most of the way and kept calm through take off and landing.

John and Sheena were at the airport to greet and drive us to the serviced apartments in Kingston. Being Floriade it was a good chance to see the flowers on display, though it was a shock to the system walking around in the cold after the Brisbane climate. Nelly and everyone rugged up and we had a lovely time walking through the different arrangements.

Speaking of dressing for the cold, Eleanor's Aunty Dora found this charming bear hat in Singapore a long while ago. We were hoping to use it but it turned out to be too big for Nelly and would likely be too warm in Brisbane by the time she grew into it. Good thing we actually got to use it in Canberra as we think she looks adorable in it.

I'd forgotten about this until we arrived, but we missed our chance to try a Canberran culinary institution during our last visit. It seems like queueing up for Brodburgers in the freezing cold at night is the local experience that all visitors should try. This is about as far from fine dining as you can get; three guys serving huge burgers of repute out of a stationary crimson trailer that is lit up like a gypsy's caravan at night. Catching up with Nat this trip to show us round town, I knew I didn't want to miss out again. So we stopped by for succulent beef burgers, slathered with Brie and tomato relish, even after a pretty big dinner and dessert before hand. It was 10:30 at night in pretty chilly conditions but that didn't stop people from gathering in front of the iconic red caravan.

There are some pretty nice restaurants in Canberra but as it stands, the people's vote on Urbanspoon is for Brodburger at the number one spot for popular places to eat. I would have to agree with that assessment. Incidentally the Asian Noodle House in Dickson on the second spot was pretty darn awesome too (which was where we had dinner before the obligatory supper excursion). One of the best laksa I've had in Australia.

The main attraction of course was Meg and Rich's wedding. The ceremony was to be held on the grass in the sculpture gardens by the National Gallery, but inclement weather meant that it was touch and go if the service would be moved under cover. In the end things were set up on the slate tiles overlooking the gardens and the Knot, where so many proverbial ties have been made. Megan and Rich looked great and happy, if perhaps a little cold with the weather.

The reception was held a short walk away at the Lobby. Great food, heart warming speeches, lovely company. It was a great chance to meet more of Alison's friends from school and hear about old times. The grandparents had driven all the way from Toowoomba to meet us in Canberra and look after Nelly so we could enjoy the wedding without having to worry about a baby. Seems rather silly that we spent most of the night talking about our little girl and cooing over photos that we had taken of her that day. Parenthood is a funny thing.

The rest of our time in Canberra was spent revisiting the tourist spots; the war memorial, the national portrait gallery and parliament house. We also received a fascinating tour of the Royal Military Academy, courtesy of Nat. I doubt that Eleanor will remember much of the trip but I think it's nice that she's already been on top of the centre of our nation's government.

Anniversaries and Solids

2011-08-27T17:44:00.002+10:00

We haven't been up to Toowoomba together in a while to see the family, so Mary and Peter's 60th wedding anniversary was a great chance to catch up with everyone. All the Snow cousins have just grown up so much since the last time we saw them at Christmas. I'm starting to develop a bit of a height complex from having to look up at all the kids, who haven't even finished growing.

I haven't used my camera to take photos of anyone aside from close ups of Eleanor for such a long time, it was refreshing to have the opportunity to take candids and group photos on the day. I love taking photos of Alison's grandparents not just because they tolerate me clicking away constantly, but also because they are really great to photograph. Mary and Peter are such beautiful people and I don't feel like I have to work especially hard to get an interesting photo out of them.

With so many other shutterbugs there it was also a great chance to get a family photo of the three of us. Uncle David was happy to oblige. Shame that Eleanor felt a little too tired to accommodate by this point.

Even though I tried to focus on the Snows on the day, I still found my view finding gravitating towards our beautiful daughter. She was looking pretty cute on the day so I just couldn't resist taking the occasional shot.

It was a really fun day for everyone. The rest of the photos in the album can be seen here.

Nelly's been busy with more than just modeling patiently for her dad. Mobility isn't quite there but she's advanced to rolling onto her back occasionally, a milestone that was very exciting for her parents.

Then there's the topic of nutrition. Books and doctors seem to differ in opinion on when parents should be introducing solid food to their babies, varying from three to six months of age for the first spoonful. Of course solid is a relative term as the consistency of the rice cereal doesn't appear to be that different from the milk that Eleanor devours daily. Common advice suggests that once your baby is old enough to have proper head control and begins to show interest in the food that you are eating then it's a good time to start them on the mushy stuff. Consistent and reliable head control has been a recent development in the last month, but I'd comfortably say that our little one has been fixated on our meals since her first few weeks in the world. Certainly one clear indication that she's my daughter.

Now that Eleanor is a little over four months old, her doctor has given us the green light to start broadening her diet. Today we successfully shoveled two meals of cereal into the little one and got most of it to stay down. The first few mouthfuls were strange but by the end of the first bowl she got the hang of things.

We'll have to see how she goes over the next few days before adding more interesting food groups to the mix, but early signs suggest that she's going to be a tolerant if messy eater. By the time she's six months we expect to have her trying everything that she'd eat as an adult (aside from honey as that apparently can cause botulism in the first year), including the usual scary items like peanuts, seafood, wheat and other potential allergy inducing food stuffs. Looking forward to adding dad's favourite sea urchin roe to her porridge.

Kitchen Refresh

2011-08-14T16:41:00.002+10:00

One of the problems with buying a house from owners that were DIY enthusiasts is that every now and again you have to deal with a project that wasn't built to last. Our kitchen was one such project, though we didn't know it when we first moved in of course. Over the last couple of years the cupboards next to the stove have slowly listed clockwise, to the point that our microwave door would actually close itself due to the angle. There's also the cupboard doors that no longer lined up straight and drawers that refused to close properly. We put up with this for quite a while, until mum suggested that the cupboards were in danger of collapsing soon if we didn't do something about it. Reason enough to pull our finger out and call an expert.

The kitchen company that we got in to quote pretty much agreed with mum's assessment (why wouldn't he?) so we booked in a date to fix this up. Our initial fear that the entire cabinet would have to be replaced was quickly put to rest. Apparently all it needed was to be propped up properly and adjusted which would just take about half a day. Even so this meant that we would have to clear out everything in the pantry and drawers. Amazing how much stuff you can hide away and forget about.

We even had to dump things in the second bed room.

The kitchen had always been one renovation project that we were going to leave to the next owner to deal with (along with the bathroom), but since we were already doing some work on it we couldn't pass up the chance to give the appliances a little refresh. Especially when they were already going to be calling in a sparky to remove the oven, why not put a new one back in afterwards? In fact a new stove top wouldn't go amiss either.

It's surprising what a big difference this makes to the room. Even the new metallic kick boards seem to make the space seem larger. Very happy with the results I must say. Hrmm, now how about that bathroom?

Fingers are Fascinating

2011-07-24T15:21:00.003+10:00

Eleanor is growing up so quickly. The pile of clothes that she can't fit into any more is getting bigger which means lots of sorting into stuff to keep for the "next one" or to pass on to other expecting parents. On the plus side, this also means that the choice of clothes available for daily wear is changing over time. We've now entered a size window with a few garments we love, including this gorgeous rainbow hoodie that was given to us by Nelly's aunty Dora. We dress her in this every chance we get.

Speaking of aunty Dora, we got some pretty exciting news this week from the family in Singapore. On Tuesday afternoon on the 19th of July 2011, we were blessed with a nephew (and Eleanor a cousin) when James and Dora welcomed Thomas Liley into the world. Mum and bub are healthy and are now home and being looked after. One set of grandparents already flew over with another pair to join them by the end of next week, but thanks to the wonders of technology we have all been enjoying photos and video calls with the new family. Young Thomas is a beautiful baby and we're sure that he and Eleanor will soon become the best of friends.

Nelly has also hit a few development milestones in the past few weeks. One of which is a growing fixation on her digits. It's become commonplace for her hands to be covered in slobber as she tries to decide if the left or right one has superior flavour. It makes her happy and it makes for some cute photos so we permit it for now.

It can however be a little annoying when you're trying to take some nicer photos of her that don't all involve shovelling fists into her face. Even when they are out of her mouth the hands aren't very far away. My other theory of this seemingly defensive posture is that she's attempting to prevent us from applying moisturiser to her face. The doctors gave us a few things to deal with her eczema so we are now following a strict regiment of QV cream through the day and judicial use of cortisone in affected areas. This was a prescription that Eleanor was less than pleased with and she reminds us of that at each opportunity. Can't argue with results however, her skin is starting to look a lot healthier.

We spent some time this afternoon going through another photo shoot, which you can check out here. Bit of an alternative chick look this time to celebrate our girl hitting 14 weeks. It's actually hard for me to believe that she'll get bigger than this. Wish we could keep her like this forever.

Photos at 2 Months

2011-06-18T17:55:00.002+10:00

Been busy working with photos over the last month. Guess it's pretty obvious that the main subject would be little Eleanor for most of these, though in truth I'm surprised and a little embarrassed that I haven't taken more photos. She's 9 weeks old today and growing up so quickly. Thankfully she's developed a routine and is starting to sleep through the night and isn't as bothered by the small things like changing clothes and diapers.

Capturing the little bub on camera was a challenge until a week ago when she started to develop something resembling posture to allow assisted posing. It's difficult to think too much about composition when you're trying to photograph a baby with the rigidity of a blob of jelly (incidentally one of her nick names).

First photo project we had to put together was for our thank you cards that we sent out. I smashed something together in iPhoto and got them printed out on card which worked out rather well. The selected photos are titled "Zsa Zsa darling", "Downward Facing Dog" and "The Fonz" in clockwise order from the left.

Another photo project that I've been working on in iPhoto for a few months now (in secret) was to put together our wedding album. Alison has been on my case for years since the wedding for not allowing the photographer to put an album together for us (as I thought I could do a better job naturally). It took a while but I got my act together and compiled what I think is a pretty nice book for us to keep and sent it off to Apple to print. Aside from the great quality of the book, it was also nice to see Alison's confusion and concern when she saw the Apple logo on the box.

The book includes photos all the way from the start of the proposal in Sydney to the end of the honeymoon. Compiling this took over three months of subterfuge and secrecy so it was nice to finally give this to Alison.

As for Nelly, we were heading out to meet some friends for lunch today and decided to dress the little one up. She looked so cute in her outfit that we just couldn't resist grabbing the camera for an impromptu photo shoot. Alison worked hard to distract the baby while I took as many shots as I could. We even tried to be creative with some props. Here's Nelly having a great time with her friends (who were very compliant I must say)

Not all the photos turned out as well as I'd hoped, sometimes because of the angles and some unflattering cradle cap that I had to crop out. Played with cropping up close with this shot and desaturated for what I think is a haunting yet surprisingly arresting effect. If I weren't so lazy I'd try and photoshop my reflection from her eyes.

My favourite photo amongst what I believed to be the keepers was this one. She didn't really smile but I love that she's staring right at the camera and looks so adorable. Daddy bias may affect my objectivity of course.

You can view the rest of the photos from the shoot on Facebook here

Three Decades and a Full Moon

2011-05-15T18:23:00.004+10:00

Not totally shocking, four weeks of parental leave have just flown by in a blink of an eye. I now face going back into the office on Monday, but at least I get to finish things off with a lovely birthday celebration with the family.

We originally had thought to turn my 30th into a big event with loads of friends and a big party at home. Reality of life with a one month old and the realization that I don't really have many friends to begin with meant that we ended up dialing things down a bit, opting for a quiet day by ourselves. After a breakfast treat of pancakes with bacon cooked by my darling wife, we decided to drive out with mum and Uncle Wing to Cleveland for fish and chips by the water. The food there wasn't spectacular and the weather was a little windier than we had hoped but we had a great time anyway.

In lieu if a birthday cake, Alison picked up a selection of cupcakes from the cupcake parlour. Very tasty and colourful but I think we may have bought too many for the four of us. Eleanor passed on the sweets having drunk more than her share of milk beforehand.

For dinner we called Cam Ranh and booked a big table, to accommodate the baby capsule and an indulgent number of dishes, and gorged ourselves on seafood. There was the staple specialty tofu, grilled chicken, pork spare ribs, pipis in XO sauce and not one, but two plates of crab; one in chili sauce and another in ginger and shallot gravy. I think we all thought we would be packing quite a bit to take home but we somehow managed to consume all that food without too much effort, much to the surprise of the chef. The last time we had this much crab was with Tim and Christine and it was absolutely sublime, as were all the other dishes that night. Great eats.

I got some great swag for presents this year too. Nellie gave me a very thoughtful robe to keep me warm when I have to change her diaper at two in the morning. It's a stylish grey with monkeys on it so I'm all set when my invitation to the playboy mansion comes through. My darling wife bought me the perfect gift for a balding male teetering on the edge of a midlife crisis, 6 laps on a rally track learning to drift in a WRX. Hopefully I won't embarrass myself by crashing the car.

Got a bunch of other great presents too, but of course the best gift is having the family here together. It has been really nice to have Nellie's Ahkong and Amma here to spend time with her. It's hard for them to find the time to come over here so having them both with our little girl is really great.

In addition to spending time with the baby, showing Wing the features of Brisbane was another key part of his trip. He's been here before for business trips but would usually be whisked to the Gold Coast or stuck in stuffy hotels, so it's not surprising that his impression of our city has not been overly positive. Knowing what he likes we focussed on the food markets at Rocklea and shops at Sunnybank to prove that you can get great produce for the dishes he enjoys. He seems to be very impressed by the quality and range of Asian food available and is even appreciating the meals beyond Chinese cuisine which is a pleasant surprise. In saying that I think his highlight was when we bought two salmon fish heads and fish bones from the Rocklea markets to cook fish curry and grilled the salmon heads on the BBQ. Oh so yummy.

On Sunday we had another little gathering which included John, Sheena and Barbara. We cooked a heap of steaks, prawns, sausages, chicken thighs and (something a little different) a bag of marinated chicken necks that Wing spotted at the butchers. Food and company were once again fantastic and I got to blow out my candles on a birthday cake this time. Even after stuffing my face silly I still managed to wolf down almost half a tray of creme caramel that my beautiful mother in law had made for me. I'm actually feeling a little ill from overeating now.

The other important occasion that we celebrated was Eleanor's full moon, as she is now one month old. Mum brought over the powdered dye to make red eggs for everyone to eat and we had given Eleanor a nice bath and dress her in new clothes before the arrival of her visitors, except she proceeded to soil that half an hour later. Even looking back at the first few pictures we took of her at the hospital it almost seems like a different girl. Back before she was born, I naively thought it would take a week for us to get a handle on things and establish a routine. Hasn't quite happened yet and I'm no longer holding my breath, but if the last four weeks is anything to go by I'm looking forward to discovering all the things I don't know about our little girl in the months to come.

Family Gatherings and Parenting

2011-05-06T18:04:00.004+10:00

The past two weeks of have just flown by as we continue to take our first tentative steps on the path of parenthood. I think I made the point in the previous post that we wouldn't know what to do with ourselves without the help of friends and family, but it's worth noting again that we have truly been blessed by a wealth of assistance and advice from all our loved ones.

Last week was really special as the family in Toowoomba all came down to spend Anzac day with us at home. This was the first chance for Mary and Peter to meet their great granddaughter and I think Eleanor made a good first impression. It was a good excuse to break out the old camera and take lots of photos to mark the occasion.

Alison and I were forced to sit back and relax while the rest of the family dealt with food and assorted preparations. We may have protested a little at first but it was fantastic to put up our feet for a bit and talk while others cooed at the baby. Once the feast was ready to eat I got another opportunity to point out the benefits of purchasing the larger outdoor table to Alison. So much food but it was the company that made it a great meal.

The following weekend we took advantage of family hospitality once again by spending a few nights in Toowoomba with John and Sheena. I'm sure they enjoyed having Eleanor there to fuss over and show off to their friends and it was nice to have Aunts and Uncles pop in to visit. With the grandparents available to take care of the baby, Alison and I actually managed to get quite a few nights (and afternoons) of sleep so I think the dark bags under our eyes are starting to disappear.

It's funny how I've switched most of my internet time from researching gadgets and games to looking at prams and baby accessories. We had bought a bunch of stuff from a workmate of Alison's which included a pram and baby carrier. We found that neither of these were actually usable in our experience because they were too big; the pram because it wouldn't fit in the car and the carrier because Eleanor is just too small to fit in it. It was a little grating to have to buy replacements when we already had something available, but a quick trip to the store convinced us that the Baby Jogger City Mini was a must have. That easy one move folding action has been a life saver when packing up the car to head to the shops. Very impressed with the design of this stroller and I can see us packing it up for a trip back to Malaysia in the future.

The other huge success we've had today was with a new baby carrier. Little Nellie is very clingy and loves being held, and despite our best efforts to transition smoothly from cradle arms to the cot she often wakes up in a few minutes screaming for attention. After quite a bit of internet searching we found the Sleepy Wrap, which turned out to be one of the cheapest and yet versatile products on the market. The postman delivered it this afternoon and we can say that initial results are very positive. Nellie pretty much slept in it all afternoon and woke up in a great mood for a feed. The best bit is we went out on a walk with her and Alison had full use of her hands for hours without any worries.

The wrap theoretically handles up to 18KG of baby, and Nellie's weigh in at the Doctor's today marked her at 3.31KG so we have a ways to go yet. With the fabric spread over shoulders and waist it does seem to spread the weight very evenly so hopefully our backs won't give out before then.

Eleanor's Amma is going to be flying in tonight so we'll be heading to the airport soon to pick her up. She's no doubt very excited to see her granddaughter and her new iPad 2 which I spent the past two days setting up. No matter how much I love my technology I think it's pretty clear which one she's more eager to get her hands on.

Only have another week off work but I think we're finally getting the hang of this. Heck, we even managed to watch a whole movie yesterday afternoon (The King's Speech, which was excellent) and she slept right through it. In the next week we'll be celebrating a super Mother's Day, picking up Uncle Wing from the airport and there might even be a day set aside for me to grow a year older. By the end of it I might even be ready to return to the office, though I imagine that I'll miss my girls terribly.

Eleanor Madge Ying Yuen Chua

2011-04-24T18:35:00.005+10:00

It's a little later than I expected, but I've started to compose this post typing slowly with one hand. You see, the other arm is currently occupied holding my one week old daughter. The week has been filled with more challenges and victories than I would have thought possible in such a short period; though one thing is certain, we're very happy to have our little girl with us in the world.

Alison sent me a message early in the morning on Friday the 15th to say that she was feeling a little peculiar. This was a reasonably frequent observation so we remained cautiously hopeful that this would progress to the next step. By the afternoon I received another SMS to say that things had fizzled, and so we set ourselves up for another weekend of waiting impatiently. By 12:30AM on Saturday Alison continued to experience occasional cramps and pains, though nothing resembling what we were told in classes or had read in the literature. Calling the hospital at the time got us stern dismissal that the symptoms resembled actual labour, and Alison was effectively told to go back to sleep and set in for a few days of feeling rotten.

Waking up with less than an hour of sleep on Saturday morning, Alison was still feeling cramps and now had waves of nausea to deal with. Sleep deprived and worried, we tried to pass the time by watching TV and keeping her mind off the discomfort. At least until 11:00 that morning where we called the hospital again to check in. Once again the nurse at the other end felt that the description didn't really fit the traditional signs of labour, but they were concerned that the baby wasn't moving as much as they would have expected so we were asked to come in to the assessment unit.

Packing the trunk and driving in was a pretty subdued affair as we were both convinced that the midwives would just tell us to turn around and come back home. All that we were hoping for was a little something to help Alison deal with the nausea, even planning a trip to the grocery store to pick up some ice blocks on the way home. Imagine our surprise when we heard an audible pop during the assessment, followed by the midwife telling us, "Oh honey, you're definitely in labour". Seven centimeters dilated in fact, so it was a good thing we came in as we were mere hours away from meeting our daughter.

First thing we asked for after the obstetrician arrived at the scene was to get Alison the epidural. All the different coping techniques, positions and equipment we learned about in antenatal class went out the window as it soon became pretty obvious that something was distressing the baby and getting her out fast became a priority. With each contraction the baby's heartbeat would drop from 150 down to 110, even lower as the labour progressed, and as low as 60 BPM at one point. After a handful of pushes with vacuum assistance it became pretty clear why; the umbilical cord was wrapped around the baby's neck. It caused my own heart to stop momentarily, but our obstetrician calmly clamped the cord and cut it before pulling the baby out.

The midwives rushed the baby over to the pediatrician, who was standing by to clean the baby and her airways of the meconium in the water. Seconds later we heard the first of many healthy cries from our baby girl. I nervously shuffled over to perform a ceremonial cut of the remaining cord and meet my beautiful daughter. I'm comfortable enough to admit that there were a few tears in the room at the time.

Once the doctor was happy, they brought the baby back to Alison for us to be together. After appreciating the wonder that had just joined our family we whispered her full name softly into her ear; Eleanor Madge Ying Yuen Chua. She was born at 2:42PM on the 16th of April 2011 and entered the world in a Lilliputian frame, weighing merely 2.96KG, with a height of 49cm and a head circumference of 34cm.

We have found it challenging coming up with an English name that matched well with Chua but using my mum's name (Ilona) as inspiration we were both very happy with Eleanor. The origin seems to be a little vague but I think the ambiguity lends a certain depth to it. With the Greek interpretation (a variant of Helen), Eleanor means "Compassion" which I would think she fits; while the German word "ali" means foreign. Madge was Alison's paternal grandmother, a very strong and funky woman who I sadly never got to meet. We are both thrilled to give our girl names from such wonderful women in our lives.

It's important to us for Eleanor to have a Chinese name that was more than an afterthought. Alison and I asked mum to help us with this and she has come back with a name that perfectly matches the sentiment we were aiming for; Ying Yuen (英雲). As with most Chinese to English translations, the precise meaning is up to interpretation and context. Ying can mean "beautiful” or "brave", while Yuen (also romanized as Yun) means "cloud". I also like that the character for Ying is used to mean English (英国), quite appropriate we think for a child of mixed heritage to be brought up in a "Western" country.

The grandparents are obviously excited about the first grandchild on both sides of the family. John and Sheena even raced down when they heard that Alison and I were in hospital, arriving in the birth suite just half an hour after Eleanor was born. It would have been nice to have mum there too but we're trying to involve her as much as possible through a stream of photos and short video clips for her to see. At least she will be here on the 6th of May and Uncle Wing to follow shortly.

We had received a bunch of visitors at the hospital as well and little Nell (nickname is still in flux) has been showered with a heap of lovely gifts. It's fantastic to share her with friends and family and has been a highlight in the last week of sleepless nights. That and putting her in silly poses and hats to take photos for our entertainment of course. I call this the downward facing dog.

The three of us were originally supposed to be discharged from the hospital on Wednesday, but opted to stay another day to ensure that we felt fully prepared to take a little person home to look after. The staff at the Mater Mothers Private, particularly on our floor 11, were absolute angels. We needed a lot of help in the first few nights trying to figure things out, which wasn't helped by Eleanor being jaundiced for the first two days either. There was a lot of information to take in and process and as new parents we had to make quite a few decisions that necessitated long debates between Alison and myself, just because that's the sort of people we are. Not the best practice when tired and frustrated at 2 in the morning. Through all the options we tried, the midwives and consultants at the Mater were nothing but supportive and we could not have made it through the first few days with our sanity intact if it weren't for them. Especially stuck in a small room for five days, even if the food was pretty good.

On the subject of food, it was nice for Alison to finally satisfy the sushi craving she's been fighting for the past nine months. There was a sushi train not far from the hospital so I picked up a few pieces of nigiri to wolf down as a midnight snack. They do say that eating food you love is a great way to produce oxytocin and helps with breastfeeding so I just like to be able to do my bit.

Of course we have been getting loads of help from our own parents, aunts and uncles. Sheena was down for the first night that we got home on Thursday to help with cooking and cleaning and it will be nice to spend more time with the family over the Easter break. Strapping little Eleanor into a baby capsule was interesting but she seemed to enjoy it once she was in the car.

I always figured this whole parenting caper was going to be a challenge, but can see how so many fathers have been telling me that one can only understand what it's like when they actually have their first child. In addition to all the support we have received it's also good to know that we will be going on this journey together with other family as James and Dora will be proud parents of a baby boy in July. What a year this will be for the family.

No doubt we're only on the tip of the iceberg at the moment and there will be many frustrating moments to come. At the end of the day we look at her face after spending three hours trying to settle her screaming and think it's all worth it. Love you lots munchkin, just be patient with your mum and dad while they're learning.

Oh, and it only took about seven hours to complete this post intermittently. Alison is now nursing the baby to give me a chance to finish this off. Something tells me that big blog posts won't be a big feature over the next few weeks, even if I want to.

Bump Shot

2011-04-03T10:10:00.002+10:00

It's been brought to my attention that I haven't put up a photo that prominently features Alison and the baby bump. In my defense I had tweeted/instagrammed a photo a while ago but I guess that doesn't carry the same weight as an official blog post. With the time for the bun to remain in the oven rapidly reducing, here we are:

The dress sort of hides it but we're at days minus 9 to due date. Down to the single digits!

Rabbit Reevaluated

2011-04-03T07:36:00.005+10:00

I haven't done a whole lot with the blog layout since the redesign over a year ago. At least nothing that I've felt worth writing about. One thing that I did nut out a about a month back was the Archives section at the bottom of the page. For a long while you couldn't see any posts further back than a year but now you should be able to navigate all the way to the start, post numero uno that was scribbled back in 2005. Who'd have thought that I would stick to it for this long eh?

I'm starting to think a little bit about kicking off another redesign at some point, especially now that mobile/touch devices have become more prevalent. The current design was really made to serve a traditional mouse driven experience with hovers playing a big role (in the links under the title bar for example). As it stands the site experience on an iPhone or other mobile devices smaller than a table leaves a lot to be desired.

Update: Seems like Google have saved the day once more. I've since activated the Beta feature for mobile templates and it makes browsing on the iPhone heaps better

In the interim it seems that the great team at Blogger have done quite a bit of work for me already. They have just recently introduced Dynamic Views which utilise the feeds off the blog to create a pretty snazzy HTML5/CSS3 view of the posts on the site. The only supported view on mobile phones is Mosaic which is a fluid layout that can support different device resolutions. Pretty smart idea and it works well on the phone. You can check out what the Rabbit in Mosaic here.

You'll probably notice that there are quite a few other views that Blogger are supporting. I love the Flipcard, which I would assume is the default when using a desktop browser. What's particularly funky about this is the ability to dynamically regroup posts by dates or labels. Pretty fun stuff and I'd encourage you to have a play here. In fact, I like it so much that I'm probably going to put a permanent link to the view on the page somewhere for easy access. Just haven't quite figured out where yet...

Not all the dynamic views seem to work all that well with the site for some reason so I guess it's either a bug that they are still working out or I'm doing something dodgy on my side. Likely to be the latter, given how smart the guys at Google are.

Digging through the other videos from Google they have a heap planned for Blogger in the near future. Fast forward to about 1:40 to check out the new features that will likely be coming soon. About time I say as the Blogger admin interface needs an update even more than the Rabbit does.

Nursery

2011-03-31T20:17:00.003+10:00

Alison and I have been poking and prodding away at the back room for a while now, trying our best to get it ready for the little bundle of joy that's coming our way soon. Pretty amazing when the back room was the junk room for the longest time. This is what it looked like when we first moved into the house over two years ago.

Yes, for long time readers I have posted this photo before when we initially tidied up the room but I would argue that even then it lacked a real sense of purpose. Never imagined that we would get it looking like this one day.

Most of the bits and pieces came from Ikea, the place that keeps giving. We never intended to spend a lot of money getting the nursery ready and I think we got away without spending too much. Patching the ceiling with some spakfilla to cover a hole is the extent of our handiwork so we don't expect to be painting the room strawberry pink or anything like that. All we're looking for now are a few cute stickers for the walls and maybe a large canvas to hang somewhere. No doubt something saccharine and whimsical.

As you can see in the corner, Alison's nursing chair that we ordered finally came on the weekend. It was so big that they had to get it in through the window, which was a bit of a worry but at least it's done now. Not looking forward to moving that out when we leave. Either way I think it complements the room nicely, we love the fabric and it's oh so comfy.

Quick baby update as time is rolling in pretty quickly. We are now at day minus 12 and things could happen any day now. In fact, one of the other couples in our antenatal class (who happen to have the same due date) just had their little daughter on Saturday. It was a wake up call for us so the bags are packed, the camera charged and the emergency routes to the hospital are all mapped out. We are trying to remain calm and patient but in truth we really just want to meet our baby girl. So aside from making very encouraging suggestions at Alison's belly, we continue to wait.

Conference at Jupiters

2011-03-31T19:37:00.003+10:00

Another conference for the company and this time we drove down to the Gold Coast for the night. It was nice for once to have an agenda that was short and sweet to get the company blurbs and mandatory breakout sessions out of the way so that we could get to the fun bits at the buzz night. Not that the official conference proceedings were bad by any means. There were definite highlights including a demonstration of Krav Maga, walking on broken glass and we all got to hold an Olympic gold medal. Pretty nifty.

George had the guts to walk on glass. Look at him though, it's not like you would expect a few shards to crack that tough manly exterior.

For the buzz night we had a theme of Transformation to dress up to. There were quite a few superheroes and mythical creatures. We took a slightly different tact and opted for external change, in this case a group of plastic surgeons. Scrubs turned out to be hard to find so to be specific we're highly qualified consultants on the ward.

I even got to keep in character and performed an impromptu augmentation on one of the other developers. Pretty good for a first operation I think. I don't think the implants lasted all that long on account of excessive fondling.

Food was pretty good at dinner and breakfast. Can't vouch for the alcohol provided as I was on baby watch for the night just in case Alison called. Based on what I could see everyone else certainly had a good time with the booze. Buzz nights take on a completely different flavour when you're sober that's for sure. If it wasn't already obvious the baby call never came that night.

Miniature Trees

2011-02-27T15:10:00.006+10:00

Alison and I have been enjoying our antenatal classes over the last few weeks. Lots of information to take in but I think I'm finally starting to get a picture of what I'm supposed to do in this whole process. Alsie has been immensely patient with me and I think it's a good sign that she hasn't begun to panic at the thought of having a bumbling oaf like me to help her through everything. Very thankful at this point for the miracles of the human body and competent midwives.

Our last class will be this coming Monday, which is when we will finally get a tour of the hospital and I would assume the birth suites. Another two weeks and Alison will officially stop work and begin her stint as a stay at home mum. We are absolutely flabbergasted at how the months have flown by.

Alison's bonsai class from her birthday was the other calendar event we had to look forward to this month. We drove all the way out to Morayfield on Saturday morning, which took a heck of a lot longer than we expected, to join a class of six other aspiring students to learn about keeping little trees. The theory section in the morning was pretty interesting though I obviously wasn't paying attention based on my incompetence when we got our hands on the trees later on. Everyone in the class chose from a selection of Junipers to work with and our first task was to wire up the branches.

I can see how it would be pretty relaxing as a hobby if you could take your time but I think we all felt a little pressured to keep up with the class. My wire work was far from acceptable judging by the disapproving looks I got from the teacher. Those silly little branches were fiddly and the leaves were spiky so I when I say that the exercise was slow and painful I mean that quite literally.

After wiring up the trees we cut off the roots and repotted the tree in a container of our choosing. Trust me to pick the biggest tree so the instructor had to go get me the next size up. A little bit of styling, some trimming of the lower leaves (to create the illusion of age and nature), application of some moss and pebbles and we have what could be considered a bonsai. It'll need some work but I'm quite happy with the results. All of us were encouraged to attempt an Informal Upright style which is the most common traditional technique. If I'm feeling adventurous in years to come I'd love to try and repot this with the visible roots (nebari) over a rock. I've always thought those were the nicest looking.

Alison's tree was a different shape obviously, and it had a root which stuck up out of the soil which the instructor thought would work well as a Jin. Apparently this is when you peel the bark off the tree to create a dead wood effect and is another technique employed to imply age of the tree. It's a little hard to make out but you can see the yellowish root sticking out near the base of the trunk. Not sure if we will do it but the instructor encouraged us to apply some preserver to turn that a nice silvery colour.

The important thing is we both had fun and came back with two new plants to decorate the outside area. Haven't purchased any proper equipment as yet so we'll make do with kitchen scissors and chopsticks to maintain the things. Hopefully we'll keep them alive.

Washing Machine and Kinect

2011-01-23T18:13:00.002+10:00

Alison got a bit of a fright last week when she heard a loud pop accompanied by a blue spark from the washing machine when she started a load. While the power light seemed to indicate that the machine was still somewhat functional, we couldn't get the old thing to actually start filling or spinning. Assuming that this came about due to a combination of age and the unnaturally humid weather, we decided it was best to just get a replacement. The front loader was progressively taking longer to finish cycles and would have been too small to accommodate our growing family anyway.

Expecting a rush of people looking to replace their white goods from the recent flood damage, Alison and I braved the traffic out to Indooroopilly in search of a decent deal on a washing machine. The Good Guys provided just that deal with a 7.5KG Whirlpool top loader for what seemed like a ridiculous price, supposedly over three hundred dollars under RRP and potentially even a little under cost to move stock. The salesman at Harvey Norman that we asked to price match thought so too, but did it anyway in the spirit of competition, so one week later we now have a much bigger beast to handle our laundry.

Being a top loader this of course will use a lot more water than our previous model, but at least we can open the lid whenever we miss a sock now. Amazingly this also finishes a cycle in about 15 minutes which is at least twice as fast as we're used to. Fantastic stuff.

Inspired to continue cleaning out more old bit lying around, I gathered an impressive pile of Gamecube, 360 and PS2/3 games that I had hidden away in back cupboards. Obviously these weren't going to be getting any use from me, heck I don't even know if I still have a Gamecube lying around or if I'd sold it off, so it was time to cart them all to Game Traders for an appraisal. The tally came up to $175 of in store credit, which was conveniently close to another purchase that I'd been considering for a while.

I followed the articles on Project Natal pretty closely before they launched the Kinect and thought it was full of promise. As the release date grew closer however I got a little skeptical about the available titles and decided that I would pass until something compelling came along. Santa must have picked up quite a few units over Christmas as most people at work got a Kinect with a few games and were surprisingly very happy with it. I have no doubt this is nothing more than the second round of the "Wii effect" but with just $15 to make up the difference I too have joined the millions of people forced to rearrange their living room to play this thing.

Working with the sensor is pretty fun and technically I'm reminded of the novelty of the Playstation EyeToy with the polish of the Wii remote. Unlike the EyeToy, the Kinect does a much better job of detecting your movements and the user experience is far more integrated into the Xbox menu system. There is still a noticeable lag when moving the cursor but with practice you soon learn how to move around the screen relative to your body. The facial recognition is particularly impressive and it's refreshing for Alison and I to be able to jump in and out of games without worrying about signing in or swapping controllers. As the marketing catch phrase goes, "You are the controller".

Only expecting an afternoon of entertainment from this we refrained from buying more games aside from Kinect Adventures, which comes free with the sensor. The mini games are pretty fun but I don't think it's going to have a lot of replayability. Great for parties and showing off technology to others but there's not a lot of substance there. One thing it does well to draw you in is automatically saving photos while you're busy making a fool of yourself. An ingenious addition as seeing your friends in stupid poses is a cheap but effective means of endearment.

The disc also came with a few demo titles, including one that has been getting a lot of positive attention in the reviews called Dance Central. It's a rhythm dance game made by Harmonix which already had something going for it in my books, but the execution is a clear indicator that serious, quality games can be made for the Kinect. Unlike any prior dance game, this one actually has you dancing real moves and assesses you on your accuracy. No more stomping feet a la DDR or semaphore mimicry from Para Para Paradise. The Kinect sensor is sensitive enough to identify the most subtle limb movements and with over 600 separate dance moves from shoulder popping to leg grabbing in the game. This is dance simulation with real credibility. Granted, you are limited to a space of around 1.5 metres to pop'n'lock but it's enough. I enjoy getting out on the dance floor whenever I get the chance (not that I consider myself any good mind you) and from what I can see this is a real winner. Will likely even learn a few usable moves for the next party we go to.

The Big Wet

2011-01-16T17:26:00.004+10:00

Queensland has made international news this week, though the cause has unfortunately been far from desirable. Our beloved state has been struck with a catastrophic flood on a magnitude that we have not seen since the disaster of 1974, with an affected area larger than the size of Germany and France combined, hitting cities with families and friends all the way through. We have been incredibly fortunate and were spared the heart ache of losing our homes as countless people have, or having anyone we know for that matter overly affected by the flood waters. Alison's grandparents in Toowoomba had a few feet of water in the bottom floor of their house but beyond that we have fared remarkably well and are extremely grateful for that.

Through the week we received a huge number of phone calls, emails and messages from friends and family around the world concerned for our safety. We're touched by the good wishes that you've all sent our way and would like to restate that Alison, the baby and I are perfectly well, as is the house. Minor inconvenience was all we suffered through this week so everyone can stop worrying about us now.

Monday already had Alison and I in shock as we watched the footage of the flash floods that struck Toowoomba and would continue to rush through the Lockyer valley on the way to Brisbane. The already saturated ground could no longer hold any more water and 200mm of rain that fell in an hour started a deluge that ripped through the main streets of Alison's home town. This video on YouTube gives an idea of how quickly conditions changed providing little chance for anyone to do anything to prepare.

Brisbane thankfully had a little more warning and we were advised that the river would start to swell on Tuesday morning. Alison and I were at work and debated the merits of getting home before roads would get cut off by the rising water. By 1pm we decided to chance the rain and wet roads, joining a mass exodus from the CBD of people that were trying to get home to prepare by moving valuables to higher ground or sandbagging their properties in hope of keeping the water at bay. Even though we probably would have been able to wind through back streets to get home later in the day, I'm still glad that we left early while the main roads were still open. They didn't remain that way for long come Wednesday morning.

Wednesday was largely disaster prep for us to last until the waters would subside. Even though we live in one of the high risk suburbs, at no point did we fear for our house as our street is on a pretty high hill. If waters were lapping at our doorstep then most of Brisbane would be completely submerged. Instead we focussed on getting essentials before general panic set in, stocking up on bread, canned goods, fuel and other bits and pieces early in the morning. By 9AM the power was cut in Oxley to minimise any risk to flooded houses which meant that any work I expected to accomplish from home went out the window. We had a brief reprieve at noon which allowed us to heat up our lunch to eat before the power failed yet again an hour later. Now we were worried about the food in our fridge, fully expecting the power to remain off until the waters were due to subside in three days time. By this point all gas canisters, bottled water and packed ice was sold out at the few remaining stores that were still open, so it would have been pretty tight for us to last without resorting to an unhealthy portion of canned goods and packet biscuits. After transferring the majority of our perishables to a friend's place that did have electricity and charging up our emergency flash lights we retired to bed wishing luck to the poor people down the road that have been slaving away to save their possessions for the past 48 hours. Imagine our relief when the power came back on at 11PM.

Water from the flash flood and tides were expected to peak at 4AM on Thursday. Since I could barely sleep I turned on the TV to get an update on the news. Through a mammoth effort by the hydrologists controlling our flood gates at Wivenhoe dam and a blessed day with less rain than forecast on Wednesday, the peak was lower than the 5.45M above the river originally expected and only came up to 4.45M at its highest. Damage to the city was severe and we even lost a portion of the floating walk way in New Farm which could have caused even more chaos were it not for a little tug boat that saved the day.

Walking down the street the next morning it didn't seem like the impact was any less severe, certainly not for houses that have been well under the water for over two days. Household items, food and waste now polluted the body of water that stretched up our main roads from the train station. Already we could detect a scent of the stench that would grow to permeate the area once the waters retreated, leaving behind mud, rubbish and sewage through homes and neighbourhood streets.

Trekking further afield we drove out to see how some of our highways had fared and the result was shocking. The off ramp from Jindalee to the Centenary Highway had become a vast river, adorned with road signs and street lights. We were now truly cut off from getting out by road and the trains were no longer running into the city except to transport emergency personnel. Once again the general advice was to stay home which we did.

Buildings in the CBD were also losing power so my machine at work was turned off, again eliminating any productivity for the day. Thankfully our projects can be delayed a few days, for other people in the company they had to continue to work and service Flight Centre stores across Australia and internationally that were not affected by the flood and would still need to continue operations, perhaps more than ever to accommodate the logistical nightmare of getting emergency workers interstate as necessary. We actually had new centres set up in our disaster recovery sites and staff flown to Sydney to keep working. Pretty intense and inspiring.

By Friday limited services were running again without charge so Alison and I managed to get a train into work. Aside from the water cooler talk about the obvious subject on our minds and occasional exchange of photos, the day went by with a surreal air of normality. The train ride to and from the city highlighted how many areas were still inundated and the extent of the damage where water had receded. The shops suffered blackouts were stark and even those that retained power were bare of essentials that were snapped up in the initial rush.

This whole experience has been a stressful affair and in the end we were the lucky ones compared to a lot of people. Friday afternoon marked the start of the long clean up ahead, with mountains of ruined furniture and items piled on the sidewalk in front of dirt encrusted houses. By now the pong was discernibly present even from our house close a kilometer from the water line. While we did not participate in the clean up effort, over 7000 volunteers showed up to lend a helping hand to affected homes. The recovery and repairs for houses, roads and businesses will likely take months but the effect of this event will scar Brisbane and Queensland for many years.

Birthdays, Food and a Chair

2011-01-09T16:22:00.002+10:00

Something tells me that 2011 is going to be a pretty interesting year in the Chua household. We were sitting around the table on New Year's Day enumerating all the great things that we have to look forward to and took great pleasure in discovering that our activity calendar has something of note for each month all the way through, with a keenly awaited arrival coming in April. By which I mean the rumoured successor to the iPad of course... with a nod to the birth of our first child. Seems fitting then that we start a year that heralds new birthdays to remember with an old birthday that has been celebrated for the past 29 years.

Alsie suggested that I didn't have to buy her a present as we had pre-booked tickets to see Wicked next week. Being a smart and loving husband I refused to succumb to this gambit and searched for something suitable for my darling wife. Jewellery and books were out of the question this year so I opted for an activity instead, one that would suitably calm my daughter's present domicile and perhaps even enhance our own. Satisfied that I found the ideal gift, I purchased two beginner's classes for us to learn the soothing meditative art of Bonsai.

The beginner's course will take us through a day of preparing our own tree to take home and keep for many years of attendance and appreciation. Unfortunately they don't run them in the month of January due to the weather, which is too hot to allow for the root pruning required when working on a new plant. Thus the two of us are booked in for a Saturday in February so we wait with eager anticipation.

A birthday would not be proper without some immediate celebration however, so it was fortunate that we had plans to have dinner at Aria that night with friends. Admittedly the function was organised as a send off for Nat, who will be starting officer training in Duntroon shortly, but I was happy to claim the occasion for Alison's benefit. The degustation menu certainly seemed promising enough when we sat down and the view of the Brisbane river by night was inspiring.

While the staff and venue were extraordinary I must confess that the quality of the food, while admittedly very good, wasn't as impressive as we thought it would be given the reputation of the place. My favourites were the Iberico ham (which I've been looking to try for some time) and the seared tuna to start. I would have rated the scallops with that divine nero sauce above everything else if the scallops weren't a fraction overcooked. Lacking anything else to soak up that beautiful squid ink reduction I resorted to swiping the plate clean with my finger, not my finest moment but thoroughly satisfying.

The consomme which was supposed to be the signature dish was underwhelming, with far too many salty notes and very little balance. Alison didn't even finish her plate which was completely out of character for either of us. Beef fillet was the other dish that was served with an accompaniment of lavish promises of gastronomic delight from the waiter also failed to deliver to my palate. Medium rare and tasty meat but sadly a far cry from any claims of melting like butter. Alison, who was offered an alternative to rare beef on account of her condition, trumped the table in my book with a very nicely cooked piece of cod. Even with a few disappointments we had a wonderful night with great company and conversation.

John and Sheena stayed down in Brisbane with us over the weekend to see some friends and watch the tennis, so we all went out for breakfast on Saturday to continue Alison's birthday festivities. I uncovered online what I hoped would be a charming cafe in Teneriffe called the London Club. As with most restaurants and apartments in the area, the place was built into a renovated wool store with high windows, period design and a healthy serving of charm. By coincidence, John also realised that the building that housed the London Club was also the same building that his father Jim worked in as a wool valuer years ago. Touching bit of history that we reflected on while waiting to be served. Luckily they also happen to serve a fantastic spread for breakfast and I devoured my corn pancake and haloumi stack in record time.

Before returning home, the four of us stopped by a fabric shop to browse their catalogue in search of a pattern for Alison's nursing chair. While we had identified a comfortable chair in the furniture shop, our choice of fabric there was somewhat limited so we scoured the racks at Warwick hoping to find a textile that communicated that elusive blend of playfulness for the kids and bold funk should we require a future focus piece in the living room. It's hard to visualise until it's upholstered, but I think we found something that just might do. The chair has been ordered and should be delivered in the next few months.

With just four months left on the clock we are now starting to prepare the nursery in earnest. A short trip to Ikea today had us returning with more drawers for impending baby goods so we expect that assembling this and rearranging the back room will be a job for an upcoming weekend. Photos will of course follow once the nursery has been adorned with an appropriate level of "sugar and spice and everything nice" sentiment.

Christmas and Mum's Visit

2010-12-28T08:59:00.002+10:00

I felt that five weeks flew by pretty quickly as we dropped mum off at the airport last night. I haven't been spending much time on the computer for blogging and the like while she was out here so I figured it's about time now to catch up on things.

Most of our time with mum was spent, as is expected in this family, discussing and consuming copious amounts of food. There were lots of favourites from home that Alison and I both missed and thought to replicate with mum's guidance over here in Brisbane, one of the simpler ones being Tau Suan which we had the last time we were back in Malaysia. Now that we discovered a source of pandan leaf in the packed freezers of a grocery store in Sunnybank along with deep fried bread from the same provisioner, we should be able to make our own batch as we need.

Even minor improvements to the house were with the view of expanding our culinary options. Alsie and I have often discussed the merits of having an outdoor stove for all the stir fries and oil splatters that accompany mum's efforts in the kitchen. While the results are often great for the taste buds it does little for our figure and wooden floor boards. Simply buying an outdoor cooker would have been insufficient without accommodating for the fatty projectiles of enthusiastic wok-manship, which was why finding a cheap splash back solution was a necessity. A quick trip to Ikea solved this for us as we picked up a half dozen DIY kitchen panels that we could affix with liquid nails to protect the wooden enclosure and introduce a fiery highlight of its own. While there we also picked up a handy side table which now completes the outdoor kitchen.

Mum made full use of the area to prepare a bevy of delicious dinners, much to the contentment of our bellies and polished wood floors. Char Keuy Teow showed up on the menu a couple of times now that we were finally cooking with gas.

The eating certainly wasn't confined to Brisbane, as we were also treated to the annual Christmas feast in Toowoomba. It's always a treat to spend the season with mum around but this year was a little smaller with some uncles and aunts with other commitments. The volume of food however had not diminished to account for fewer mouths so there were considerable left overs. John's ham was juicy, succulent and expertly cut as always. Mum contributed an asian prawn salad with a beautiful spicy bite. Sheena's terrine was under appreciated by the party but I devoured as much as my belt would permit. It was a wonderful way to top off a little over a month of indulgent eating that must now cease as I've put on at least 1.5KG according to our scrutinising scales. Well... we'll stop once the last of the Christmas chocolates have been dealt with of course.

Time certainly does seem to fly when you're having fun. Mum will be out again in May for a short visit and I'm sure it'll be a blink before it's next Christmas, which she hopes to once again celebrate with us in the Southern Hemisphere. This visit was certainly good fun, but something tells me that the next few will be even more special. For mothers and grandmothers alike.

Jolly Old England

2010-12-12T17:42:00.005+10:00

Just spent the majority of the last week in the air bouncing between Australia and the UK for a little bit of work. It seems glamorous but I could probably do without the jet setting lifestyle, far more comfortable staying at home with the family and my own bed. Not that I didn't take advantage of this trip back to blighty of course to catch up on some food that I've missed.

When I was a spoiled undergraduate student in Canterbury I used to cycle to the local Tesco supermarket to pick up bags full of these candy yoghurts that had far too much sugar to be healthy for me. The attraction was a super sweet crumble or crunchy mix in and a tub of similarly sweet flavored yoghurt, my favorite combination being toffee yoghurt with caramel encrusted cheerio-like cereal. I couldn't find it this time but got a few tubs of other varieties to get my fix.

Flight Centre are looking to build a few websites in the UK so I was flown over (cattle class as per company policy) to have a chat with some of the businesses over there. Unfortunately the business in question weren't based in some classy district in downtown London, rather the sleepy town of Ipswich some two hours drive out of the city and civilisation. Weather was less than pleasant, though survivable thanks to warm clothing loaned by concerned parents and cautious packing by the family. We barely had time to wander about in the cold aside from scampering between pubs and places for dinner, not that there was much to see in the area. The one landmark in town was a manor house converted into a museum that we covered during a lunch break one afternoon.

After three days in Ipswich we got to spend an afternoon in London before flying back home. Sightseeing was postponed for far more important duties, in this case making a bee line for Selfridges to continue mum's tradition for chowing down beef sandwiches in the food hall there. I got a large portion with a mixture of tongue and pastrami which was awesome.

For dessert I scoffed a cookie from Ben's Cookies, a new fixation that was recommended by Ross at work. Soft and chewy goodness, in this case milk chocolate and orange. Probably not the sort of thing one would eat at an oyster and champagne bar but I get my sweets where I can.

Sufficiently stuffed we slowly made our way back to the Flight Centre offices with a stop by South Bank to check out the London Eye and spy Big Ben across the river. It was a pretty sunset but the temperature soon dropped so we didn't stay out for long.

It was a short trip and I think I would have spent as much time in the air as on the ground but it was kind of nice to be back in the country for a while. Still couldn't wait to get out of the cold and come back to warm and sunny Brisbane. I made a decision a long time ago not to work in the UK and I'm still pretty happy with my choice, don't think I could handle the weather, but it's a nice place to visit from time to time.

The Most Beautiful Girl in the World

2010-11-20T10:44:00.005+10:00

Such an exciting week. We picked mum up from the airport on Wednesday and rushed her home to show off all the changes to the house since she'd last been out. She's thoroughly impressed and intends to show her appreciation by fattening us up with great food for the next five weeks. I can already hear the people at work grumbling with jealousy at the packed lunches to come.

The big news this week however has to be our visit to the hospital on Friday for the "big scan". We've been asked a few times if we intended on finding out the sex of the baby and thankfully Alison and I both see eye to eye on this issue. We figure there are more than enough surprises in parenting that saving this one for the birthday seems unnecessary. Just incase the title of the post weren't enough of a clue, the next addition to the Chua clan will be a girl.

The report was once again totally positive, in fact she seems to be growing a lot faster than expected with quite a few measurements ahead of the curve. That's my girl, excelling already.

Biparietal Diameter	44.6 mm
Occipitofrontal Diamater	59.6 mm
Head Circumference	169 mm
Transcerebellar Diameter	20.1 mm
Abdominal Circumeference	142.8 mm
Femur Length	33.3 mm

We were given a DVD to take home that included a recording of the entire scan. Of course I couldn't resist the urge to edit this and put a few highlights on YouTube. Do you need to get a fetus to sign a consent form?

Future baby purchases should be a lot easier now that we have confirmation of gender, as will selecting a name obviously. The final moniker will have to wait till we meet face to face without sonographic assistance; till then we have decided to keep the potential candidates a secret too until the final selection has been made. People seem a little too candid with their appraisal of names if they think it hasn't been finalised and it's enough of a challenge as it is for Alison and me to reach consensus. Regardless, I imagine that I'll continue to refer to "Daddy's little girl" for as long as she'll let me.

Accumulating Stuff

2010-11-14T17:58:00.004+10:00

It's funny how life seems to work against your best intentions. I would be the first to admit that my love for all things shiny and new does little to help our bank account or mortgage, but I've honestly been trying over the last few months to keep the gadgetry purchases to a minimum. Sure, it hasn't been that hard given that most of my luxury time has been spent on playing just one game but I reckon I deserve points for effort.

Of course this would be the month that threw us some mandatory roof repairs, a financial screw up where I transferred a significant amount of dosh to the wrong account, a car that refused to start, obstetrician bills, a large dentist bill for a crown to replace my fractured molar and to top it off... our Topfield Set Top Box decided to break. Granted not the most financially damaging event by comparison but I'll put up with practically anything except for a threat to my personal entertainment.

My view on extended warranties has centered around the philosophy that defective products would likely break in the first year, which means that it's a fairly rare case where I pick up the extra two years offered at the check out. Kinda ironic then that the two big purchases that I opted to buy into the extended warranty have both broken down, one of which thankfully was the latest Topfield blow up. There was a moment of panic when I couldn't find the receipt from the Good Guys but I eventually pulled it out of a completely unrelated folder in our filing cabinet (perhaps it's time to get a new system). The warranty company took their sweet time processing the request which meant that we had to cope with the horror of unpausable live TV or recording ability for a good three weeks (gasp). This weekend however they finally came through and we were asked to pop down to the local store to pick up a replacement, not a Topfield but what I hope to be a far more reliable Beyonwiz DP-Lite

The system will take some getting used to but so far it seems to be doing the job. I certainly like the improvements to the EPG and a bump to the amount of storage from 320GB to 500GB is welcome. Hopefully history won't repeat itself but I once again grabbed an extended two year warranty so we'll see if this turns into a self fulfilling prophecy.

Our other purchases this weekend have all been for the bub, and it's kind of scary how much we've gathered in a short afternoon. A colleague of Alsie's has been desperate to offload the majority of her baby gear now that her two sons have no need for rattles and wraps, so we took a drive out to their house to have a peek at what was available. In the end we pretty much picked up the whole lot for a very reasonable price, which means that our place is now filled to the brim with a subset of work tools for parenthood. These include:

Cot
Four wheeled super transforming stroller
Nappy bag
Diaper dispenser
Baby bottle sanitiser
Assorted colourful toys to keep Daddy and Baby entertained

I'm sure there's a good reason for it but surely there must be an easier way to design a stroller. We unfolded it when we got back home and it took the next ten minutes of straining, pushing and twisting to get the darn thing to collapse again. It was a nostalgic moment for me as I thought of my childhood Transformers (tm) toys that required a degree in Mechanical Engineering to work out.

Most of the goodies have been tucked away in the study now, but one acquisition that's made me take stock of this experience was setting up the cot in the back room. We now have a nursery, along with stuff toys that I've had for years to be passed on. It's the first of what I'm sure will be many new bits of furniture and decorations the baby's room and I can already feel the house changing into a family home.

Mum's flying in on Wednesday and this will be the first time she's seen the house since the renovations and changes. Boy is it going to seem different.

Keeping busy

2010-10-31T15:18:00.002+10:00

Babies, house keeping and Starcraft. That's pretty much all I've been up to outside of work for the past few weeks. Which is actually a nice change as things have been frightfully busy at work with lots of conferences and activity going on at the office and no sign of the schedule slowing down as we approach the Christmas period. In fact I'm likely going to have to make a trip to the UK in December for a week to gather some requirements for our applications, which would be an exciting opportunity if it didn't coincide with mum's visit and a concert that Alsie and I were planning on going to. Such is life I guess.

This latest Flight Centre conference had us on the ferry to Moreton Island for a nice sunny break and the usual corporate review. Shame that all but the last day had us stuck indoors as the clouds dumped on us, perfect weather for the pub but not all that conducive to dolphin feeding or sailing. Saturday night was a fancy dress buzz night where we had to come as a Tarantino or Spielberg character, so the team rocked up in attire inspired by the Lost Boys from Steve's triumphant work, Hook. Oh how many times I watched that movie as a kid.

Sunday was a little nicer outdoors so we got a chance to do some quad biking. Didn't end up being as awesome as I thought it would be which was a shame. I'd pick go-karting over that any day but it was nice being able to do something in the sun.

Call us overenthusiastic but we somehow found ourselves buying baby Chua's first bit of clothing the other week at Myer. What started out as a trek across this store to find an extra item to purchase to qualify for a discount ended up with the two of us cooing at baby socks and prints of anthropomorphic animals on jump suits. One of which we purchased as it had a cow on it, adding this to the small collection that started with some lovely presents from Krit for the bun in the oven.

The fixation with Starcraft has not begun to wane as yet, with most nights dedicated to frantic mouse clicking in the attempt to best some random 13 year old kid in Singapore that obviously knows what he's doing compared to me. Oh if only one didn't have to work to support a family. Never one to take responsibility for my failures I decided to blame my gross uncoordinated flailing mouse cursor on my wireless mouse, and splurged on getting a "proper" corded gaming peripheral. It glows in the dark and has 10 different options for customization that I don't understand so I'm sure my performance is about to rise to a whole new level of incompetence.

On the odd occasion Alison has successfully dragged me off the computer to do something constructive around the house, or you know... spend some time with the mother of my child. This weekend we busted out the sand paper and started preparing the outdoor table for a future paint session. Even with a smooth finish it's looking a lot better than it did before so we can't wait to see how it turns up after a fresh coat of paint.

Aside from that it's just been normal house work and infrequent yard mowing while we wait for mum's upcoming visit in November. The place is looking pretty established now though neglect has resulted in a few weeds popping up here and there. Personally I blame the warming weather and freakish level of rain we have experienced in the last month. Better get those gardening gloves on again.

Fatherhood

2010-10-03T11:17:00.002+10:00

Being the sappy and clucky guy that I am, I've been thinking about this blog post for many years. Next to the announcement of nuptials over three years ago, this would be the next logical milestone to chronicle on this little weblog of events. Though I'm sure I could drag the buildup for a few more labored sentences, I think I'll save everyone time by coming right out and saying this; Alison and I are going to be parents in April next year.

It's been hard to keep this all under wraps for the past 12 weeks while we waited for the socially appropriate time to spread the word. Friday was the first of many tests that this child will have to endure in it's life and I'm pleased to say that it's already excelling all standard benchmarks. Admittedly my assessment could be considered marginally biased.

That's a beautifully formed left hand I think. Absolutely perfect for playing the guitar and video games as you would expect. One thing that doesn't come across in the pictures is how much the baby moves during the ultrasound. We were absolutely transfixed on the screen, watching in awe as the baby (a mere 5.5cm from crown to rump at this point) floated around and danced on the screen. I'd buy one of those machines to take home if I could.

There were also 3D pictures taken but they didn't come out as well. I'm going to be taking a lot of photos over the next few years so this kid better not be camera shy. Fascinating that it sleeps the same way I do with my arm over and face against the wall. Well... I found it fascinating anyway.

The new grandparents and family are suitably excited about all of this, with mum booking trips out in November and April to be with us. We may even get Uncle Wing to drag himself away from work for once with the promise of being able to hold a new bubbie. The estimated due date at the moment is the 12th of April 2011, which would be an Aries. Another Tauren in the family wouldn't have gone amiss but I'm sure we'll manage.

It's still too early to tell the sex of the baby though Alison and I both plan on finding out. Names on the other hand will have to be a surprise for April. Rest assured that there will be posts to follow our upcoming adventure.

Starcraft and Stuff for Home

2010-09-12T18:27:00.003+10:00

Been spending pretty much every opportunity to play Starcraft 2 lately much to Alison's disgust. I finished the Terran campaign a while ago and absolutely can't wait until the second game (Heart of the Swarm) comes out to go through the Zerg chapter of the story. Of course the one I really want is the third expansion (Legacy of the Void) which will cover Protoss but that's bound to be a while away.

With the campaign complete I turned my attentions towards the multiplayer game. Back in SC1 days I had quite a bit of fun playing multiplayer at LAN parties but never really got into playing online on Battle.net, due to the age of the game and the justifiable fear of getting my ass whooped. After watching a bunch of shoutcasted videos online and losing lots of matches myself I can clearly see how this is Korea's number one competitive sport to play and spectate. I've certainly become an addict. You can keep tabs of my progress through the multiplayer ladder here.

I've been playing Terran mainly but plan on switching to Protoss at some point. The new match making system is really great and most of my games have been with opponents of a similar skill level which has been great fun. Blizzard really got things right with the design with heaps of achievements to collect, automatically saved replays of games to learn from and a really fun ladder system. Then of course there are all the improvements they made to the game mechanics compared to the first one with automining, larger unit groups, smart casting... oh I could so go on. I love this game, the last time I was this into something was that other game from Blizzard.

There are heaps of channels on YouTube to get started with SC2 that I've been following religiously. Husky and HD both do great coverage of professional and high level matches while Day9 breaks down games into what we can learn from the play. Superb stuff.

Alison did manage to drag me away from the computer this weekend for a few social events with family and friends (where I exercised extreme restraint to not talk about Starcraft). While out Alsie managed to pick up a coffee table for our outdoor setting which should make a pretty nifty weekend project and we grabbed a painting for the hallway while at the Portside market.

It should just take a bit of sanding and a new coat of glossy paint to restore this antique. Alsie found it for a steal while out with Elizabeth and it's the perfect size and style that we've been looking for.

Our walls are pretty bare and we are always on the lookout for art to hang, except that being cheapskates we rarely agree with the price tag. Thankfully this one wasn't too pricey and fills out the entrance way nicely. Welcoming and colourful for when I come through the door after work... to play Starcraft...

The Mighty South Aussies

2010-08-13T20:50:00.002+10:00

Holidays! Even the short ones are sweet and refreshing, certainly when you get to spend time with good friends. With the Ekka show holiday falling on a Wednesday this year we couldn't help but take a couple of days off work for an extended weekend in Adelaide to see Kath and Andrew. This won't likely come as a surprise but we spent lots of time talking, photographing and eating food on our trip.

The flight down was uneventful aside from the alarmingly obese people on the plane with us. On landing we were given a whirlwind tour of the house (predictably charming and immaculate) before rushing out to the Central Market. Alison and I were pleased to see a Smelly Cheese shop, presumably related to the one we saw in the Hunter Valley, as well as a mouth watering selection of small goods, bread and fresh produce. Situated in what appeared to be the heart of China Town we were treated to a wide assortment of munchies on offer, but somehow managed to pull ourselves away with a bag of cheese, the softest turkish bread I've ever seen and some sausage buns. Great stuff.

Frankie has certainly grown up since we last saw him. The weather was rather cold so he sported a smart red sweater throughout our stay. Definitely appreciated the extra warmth when he came for a bedroom visit in the middle of a chilly night. Still had to fight him off at dinner but I don't blame the poor guy for trying to steal a bite of the yummy food we were served.

Andrew didn't have as much time to spare with work being ruthless for him, but what time he did have was largely spent cooking up a storm in the kitchen. Breakfast on our first morning was an absolute treat with buttermilk pancakes, sweet bacon and grilled bananas. Yum!

Adelaide, and South Australia in general I believe, seem to have their own unique brand of style and food. I was a little bummed that we never got to see an ad for Foodland (The Mighty South Aussies... yeah!) with what promised to be the corniest jingle I've never heard, but I did get a good chance to sample another South Australian institution... the FruChoc. It's a peculiar taste which I would describe as a compressed Jaffa Cake with its powdery faux fruit texture and chocolate coating. Strangely more-ish so I had to buy four bags to bring back to Queensland for further sampling.

On the Sunday the four of us headed out to Hahndorf in search of steins of beer and platefuls of sausages and sauerkraut. Unfortunately we didn't get either as we left lunch a little too late but we did get a chance to walk around the shops, picking up a fancy bag and orange Birkenstocks in the process. On the way there we stopped by Mount Lofty for a very quick look around the surrounding countryside. It was far too cold to dally at altitude.

What we missed with a hearty meal at Hahndorf we made up for with a chance to visit Chianti's, our host's favourite Italian spot. I had a scrumptious ox tripe dish with grilled polenta, of course accompanied by a glass of Chianti.

The next day was a pretty exciting one for Alison as we got to visit the Haigh's factory. Alsie has always had a soft spot for the chocolate covered orange slices and I think I've found my weak point with a dark chocolate shiraz truffle. Suffice to say there was a little bit of chocolate purchased that day.

To cap off that day we stopped by a little Cafe near the house for some tea and sweets. Great macarons, I particularly liked the green one which had a beautiful tart lime flavour.

Kath was kind enough to loan us her car on Tuesday so Alison and I ventured out ourselves into wine country in McClaren Vale. The landscape was certainly quite different outside Adelaide itself with a lot more native trees and rolling hills, a change from the ordered roads and deciduous trees in the city. The yellow flowers, which I'm sure are common weeds, gave the landscape a warm hue to offset barren grape vines. Why don't we ever visit wineries in spring or summer?

It didn't seem as picturesque as the Hunter but still pretty nonetheless. In fact, the wineries and food spots weren't as convenient as our trip the Hunter which was a little disappointing but we still managed to find a few bottles to buy even so. Just three really as we weren't sure how much room we'd have in the bags for the flight home. Wish I could have taken this one with me.

Our morning of wine tasting didn't take as long as we thought it would so we decided to push further south to Victor Harbour. The weather was far too cold and windy for us to brave the crossing to Granite Island to see the penguins but the scenery was nice. Don't let the sun fool you, that wind was absolutely brutal.

The return trip bypassed a cheesery that didn't have much that we wanted to buy (no soft cheeses... boo!) but the metal cow with a wobbly head at the front was awesome. If only we had room to take it home with us, I'd love to have one in the garden.

Time flew by pretty quickly and we were back at the airport before we knew it. Would have been nice to have a longer break but I guess we'd best save our leave for Christmas when mum and Uncle Wing are coming out to visit. At least we have something else to count down to. Had a great time and we're both feeling pleasantly relaxed, if a little bit heavier, from the trip.

Final Touches and More Macs

2010-08-01T17:47:00.002+10:00

Yowzas, it's been a long time since I've posted anything. I'd like to blame it all on how busy and difficult things have been at work, which certainly hasn't been a picnic over the last few weeks. In truth, it's really because we haven't done all that much of interest, and no one wants to hear someone whinge on end about how hard they think they have it at the office. This weekend we managed to get into something a lot more constructive, which I can comfortably share with the greater Internet.

The last section of the house in our renovation plan that has been demanding attention was the little corner under the verandah, next to the storage shed and where the rubbish bins live. As the lowest point on the property, the ground there has always had drainage issues and been damp from run off from the porch. Not particularly nice when you have to take the bins out to be collected after a night of rain. It's not an area of the house where we spend a lot of time so we've managed to ignore it up till now. Thankfully John refused to let us rest on our laurels and forced the team to regroup and roll up our collective sleeves to get stuck into fixing this problem.

Our main challenge with this mini project has always been finding a retaining wall block that looked reasonable and was easy for us to install. Numerous trips to the nearby landscaping place always ended with disappointment or uncomfortable compromises, at least until we found this little block. Simple to stack, looks the part and it didn't cost all that much either. With John's practiced method of smoothing bedding sand he and Alison had the start of a retaining wall up in no time.

Next came the paving of the area to allow us (well... me really) to take the mower and tools in and out of the storage area). We have become really familiar with these 400mm blocks by now and if I'd be quite happy if I never have to lay another one of these ever again.

All this took pretty much all of Saturday and we were stuffed by the end of it. I know I've definitely lost all my landscaping stamina in the extended break we took from manual labour. Things were looking a whole lot better at least, though we still had the steps and some tidying up to do.

How lucky are we that John and Sheena sacrificed their Sunday morning to help us finish things off. With the steps in, more mulch and a small trailer load of gravel we now have a properly tidied corner of the house that we'd be happy to show to visitors. There's even a new garden bed for us to plant where Alison has visions of a passion fruit vine, given that the one we had out the back has been ravaged by possums and never really got enough sun to begin with. Rather pleased with the results though some of the steps may need a bit of concrete later on to hold them in tightly. Hopefully our efforts will survive the first down pour we get.

The other project I had this weekend was to get my new computer setup finished. I've noticed that since I got the iPad I've been using my MacBook less and less, aside from firing up XCode every now and again to have a play. In fact, I've been using my old Toshiba a lot more, which had been relegated to Torrent duty, especially to do development work and play the odd PC game. I still needed my MacBook plugged in to sync the various iDevices around the house though, but it became pretty obvious that I was using both machines inefficiently.

Always one to try and simplify (and keen for an excuse to get a machine capable of running the recently released Starcraft 2), I decided to sell the two laptops to consolidate down to a single desktop. Portability shouldn't be as important anymore with the iPad and I know that I'll want something that's always on to serve media and download torrents. The newly revamped Mac Mini appeared to be the best choice. Now that it supports HDMI out of the box I've even been able to connect it up to the old Hitachi TV as a second monitor.

Not a bad rig really, though I've become so used to having more RAM with OSX (the machine comes with a default of 2GB installed) so I immediately placed an order for 8GB of RAM which should be arriving next week. Also picked up a 1TB Firewire 800 hard drive for a fantastic price to serve as the main media store, with my old 1TB as a secondary and the 500GB as a Time Machine drive. The internal 320GB drive is pretty slow so I'm eventually going to swap that out for a 64 or 128GB SSD to keep things running nice and smooth. All up that should serve as a pretty nice server to store content, cut some code (IntelliJ and XCode should run pretty nicely with 8GB of RAM I would hope) and play the odd game.

Of course this is even better now that we get Steam on OSX. Starcraft 2 is freaking fabulous so far and I can see myself sinking an unhealthy amount of time into it. Hopefully the machine should be grunty enough to run Diablo 3 when that comes out too. Oh, another great thing I love about this little baby is how quiet it is. I haven't heard the fan kick in once when playing games or watching YouTube. Power consumption is supposed to be brilliant too which is a great feature for a device that will be on all the time.

There was supposed to be another big purchase this week with the release of the iPhone 4 in Australia. Unfortunately I didn't attend the midnight launch this time and am now paying for that lack of commitment with a three week wait for the phone to come back into stock. I did however manage to get one month off my phone bill by signing up to the raincheck option at Optus so I guess it's not all that bad. At least I'll have my Mac Mini to keep me busy in the mean time.

That's about it from here. Alison and I will be off to Adelaide for a little holiday to see Kath and Andrew next week which we're super excited about. Can't wait to try all the food, see Frankie (the dog) and just have a chance to relax. Feel like we certainly need it.

Three Years of Wine and Cheese

2010-06-06T21:58:00.004+10:00

Well, considerably more than three years in reality but it has been three wonderful years since Alsie and I tied the knot. Celebrating a little early this year granted, but we managed to get a killer booking at Spicers Peak Lodge so we had to jump at the opportunity. It took us about two hours, a minor squabble regarding my dirt road driving and a Mexican stand off with a herd of cattle but we finally arrived just past midday at the most awesome lodge house I've ever seen. The view of the surrounding wilderness would have been magnificent if not for the heavy fog that enveloped the peak when we got there, but a roaring fire and an offer to trade our car keys for a cold beer didn't leave time for disappointment.

Chilled glass in hand, we both descended onto one of many plush couches surrounding the stone hearth in the lounge room and began flipping through a picture book that chronicled the construction of the lodge. The task was a mammoth one at we could well appreciate from the long, windy dirt track we had to navigate after the Cunningham highway. It made the opulent decor, fine trimmings, an extensive game loft with a pool table and the sonorous tones of Simon and Garfunkle streaming through ubiquitous Bose speakers even more impressive.

Lunch was very nice and the matching wines helped us choke down the confit of duck and pan fried squid we were served. Immaculately presented with wonderful produce, though Alison and I both felt that the chef had a penchant for over seasoning his dishes which was a minor blemish on the experience. Even so, I would have happily wolfed down another serving of that beautifully bitter chocolate fondant with caramelized pineapple.

After lunch we headed out into the cold to explore he surrounding countryside. Driving on the road up to the lodge we spied two chairs invitingly perched on the edge of the lawn, overlooking the surrounding field and hills so we headed in that direction first.

A short stroll and we found a table at the northern lookout that would have been gorgeous to have a picnic if not for the inclement weather. After savouring the view for a moment, we headed back to check out the tennis court and helipad before reviewing our room for the night. Our eye was immediately drawn to the fireplace but I think the room was pretty nice in general.

The rest of the afternoon was wasted away playing a few games of pool and taking advantage of the complimentary WIFI with our iPads. As a side note, Carcassonne for the iPhone is a most impressive port of the game and works really well on an iPad for two people. Two more glasses of wine later and we were being served canapes to ease us into dinner; a seven course degustation with matching wines.

To start with we were served an unbelievably rich globe artichoke demitasse, coupled with a Reiseling that I actually enjoyed. The rest of the dishes that followed were good, though not especially memorable until we got to the steak; a 9+ wagyu sirloin with leek tarte tatin and babaganoush. A trifle over seasoned once again but the flavours worked wonderfully in concert. By the dessert course the wine had certainly compromised my ability to enjoy the food so I could only stomach a spoonful of panna cotta and a bite of the pistachio praline before retreating to bed.

We woke up a few times throughout the night to scavenge for food and tend the fire but still ended up having a relaxing sleep by breakfast the next day. Good thing too as the breakfast menu was quite exciting. Alison ended up ordering a smoked haddock omelet with minted peas and creme fraiche, fabulously rich and smooth. I on the other hand, feeling a little worse for wear from the night before, opted what was basically a sophisticated big breakfast; free range scrambled eggs, roasted tomatoes, wilted spinach, mushrooms with hollandaise sauce, bacon and amazingly earthy black pudding. The tomatoes could have probably been roasted a little longer but everything else hit the spot.

We were having such a good time that we'd love to have stayed another night, but all good things must come to an end. Handing in the room keys earned us a pot of honey from the on site bee hive as a parting gift, then it was time for us to head down back to civilization.

A quick stop by Aratula for some antiquing on the way back home and that was pretty much the end of our little trip away. Thankfully our return to Brisbane still left us with lots to look forward to. Naomi and Nat were going to host a raclette party at their swish city apartment. The meal was described as a reverse fondue, though as I'd never had the pleasure of trying fondue that wasn't much help. In saying that, any meal which involves a bowel clenching quantity of cheese is alright in my book.

We rocked up with a semi chilled bottle of chardonnay and were treated to a smorgasbord of cured meats, vegetables, bread and assorted cheeses to melt and drizzle. The idea was to place a blend of soft cheese on your personal raclette pan and stick this under the grill for the cheese reduce to a bubbling pool of melted goodness, a simple concept with fabulous results. Our hosts had peeled and boiled a pot of Dutch Cream potatoes (just recently my discovered spud of choice) that were beautiful sliced up and combined with sour cream, chives, paprika and smothered with a velvet blanket of raclette cheese, gruyere and gorgonzola. I would have paid more attention to my arteries hardening if my taste buds weren't screaming maniacally with pleasure.

So all up a good night with friends and food. The only mild sour note was that we were too full to enjoy the dessert that Nat and Naomi had whipped up.

Sunday was a day of necessary jobs, as the house had somehow degenerated into a state of gross untidiness. At least we got things back on course before lunch and had time to pop out to Bunnings to pick up a few things for an afternoon in the garden. The little animals we picked up when antiquing in Aratula found a home by the fence.

Our vegetable patch has been decimated several times by possums much to our dismay, so we're fighting back by improving our agricultural defenses. The netting seems quite fragile but we hope it will prove to be enough of a bother to deter mischievous marsupials from causing trouble. With luck we might actually bring a tomato to full term for us to eat.

A long weekend with one more to enjoy next week. Had lots of fun with my baby and it's nice to celebrate this special milestone, which is leather this year I believe. Happy anniversary darling.

iPad, nay iPads

2010-05-30T16:18:00.004+10:00

It's almost hard to believe that the iPad has finally reached our shores. Friday was a pretty exciting day in the office for those of us that either had a device ordered or planned to try their luck at the store. I eagerly checked the mail room for deliveries several times that morning before giving up to head out for a run. In fact while jogging through the luscious pathways of the botanical gardens I happened to glance at my phone nonchalantly, before sprinting the rest of the way back to the office at Queen Street. My delivery you see, had come.

Having had a few days to play with it my conclusions are unsurprisingly positive. The device is uncompromisingly attractive to the eye and unfortunately, fingerprints. I had the good fortune to play with one beforehand so the heft of the machine, due no doubt to the two oversized batteries, wasn't all that shocking. You do eventually learn how to hold it and distribute the weight of the screen with efficiency. Battery life by all accounts is absolutely amazing. I've hardly put the thing down and have used it for well over five hour stints at a time between brief charges and the battery indicator hasn't fallen below 56%.

The first thing that you notice after turning it on is how vibrant the screen is. It's marvelous to play games, read books and enjoy photos with other people as the viewing angle remarkably wide. I have no problem leaving it flat on the table to read something free handed, something I would not be able to do with the screen of the iPhone.

Applications of course are the real draw of the iPad. I've been doing a fair bit of research into the standout apps and loaded them up beforehand.

Evernote - I couldn't live without this at work. I'm even composing this post in it
iBooks - there's not much choice in the iBook store at the moment but it's ok with ePub support
Comiczeal - a great app for reading comics in cbz/cbr format is made infinitely better by removing the need to scroll to see the whole page
Numbers - I'm a bit of an Excel geek so I need my spreadsheets. Was a little disappointed that they didn't have pivot tables but the function list isn't too bad overall
Wired magazine - more of a gimmick and a tech demo but it's interesting to see where the publications may go in the future
Instapaper - brilliant for taking long articles out to read. Especially as I don't have the 3G version of the iPad

Typing on the full sized onscreen keyboard in landscape has been an interesting experience. It's certainly large enough that you expect to be able to use your normal touch typing skills, but the lack of physical keys means that you have to be a lot more cautious about accidental touches, not an easy thing when one is used to resting fingers on the home row of the keyboard. The layout is also certainly different from a traditional keyboard so that is taking some getting used to as well. I'd almost liken it to using a mechanical typewriter, where the timing the release of a key before typing the next letter is crucial to maintaining a consistent tempo and speed. The auto correction in iPhone OS is pretty useful once you start trusting it again.

I've been showing the new toy to everyone that exhibited the mildest note of interest so Alison has had to listen to me parrot on non-stop all weekend. She's had little opportunity to actually use it but had grudgingly admitted that she was impressed and could see herself getting one in the future. Since I knew we were going to be in Chermside to check out the Apple store, I decided to strike while the iron was hot. This would be the only way I could guarantee that my iPad remained solely for my use.

I also picked up a wireless bluetooth keyboard just incase I need to type longer reports, though in truth I really want to give the virtual one a good go first. Now that we've been a little indulgent and splurged for an iPad each I doubt we'll be using the laptop for much aside from downloading files and work. Still early though so it should be interesting to see how our habits change over time. All in all definitely no regrets.

Although, it would be nice to be able to watch Masterchef on the iPad which can't be done as it doesn't support Flash video. In saying that, the channel Ten website has been crap lately with streaming video so it makes little difference in the end. Story for another time perhaps.

Week Twelve and it's over!

2010-05-25T18:47:00.006+10:00

The weekend came and with it my Everest for the 12 week challenge. A gruelling 20K walk from Currumbin to Main Beach which would serve as the last charge before the final weigh in on Monday. It didn't seem like a long distance numerically, but boy does it look like a long way on the map.

Imagine how crazy it would be then to walk the full distance of 30K from Coolangatta! That's what John signed up for along with Steve and Linda for company. Alison, Sheena and myself missed out on the elite blue bibs and reconciled ourselves to ordinary orange. There was also an option for the 10K distance, appropriately accompanied by yellow labels as this was obviously the choice for chickens and wussies - I jest of course.

We could barely make out our destination in the distance from the 20K starting line. There was a brief wave of despair as the enormity of the task sank in before we resigned ourselves to close the gap between us and a promised sausage sizzle, one step at a time.

The walk turned out to be a lot more pleasant and manageable than any of us would have thought. I think at some point around Burleigh, just past the 10K mark perhaps, my left calf started to feel pretty sore and tight from the strain. To stretch the muscle out I took to jogging in brief spurts which was unintuitively remedial. So much so that I bade my darling wife and mother-in-law goodbye and ran the last 5K to the finish, earning me the splendid honour of being the first to complete amongst the 20K participants. Being a glutton for punishment and wracked with the guilt of abandoning my walking partners, I handed my bib in and ran back to rejoin Alsie and Sheena for the last bit of their walk. As a result I think I would have travelled over 26K all up and I'm certainly paying for it dearly with sore legs. At least we got across the line in good spirits if somewhat battered by the ordeal. A total time of 3 hours and 50 minutes.

What's amazing is that John kept up a remarkable pace, passing us early on to complete his 30K in about 3 hours and 15 minutes. A stunning achievement really.

So surely this must have had some effect on my final results for the challenge. My initial goal was to lose 10KG in the twelve weeks and I still had quite a bit to make up the last time I stepped on the scales a fortnight ago. I'm terribly pleased to announce that the numbers I received on Monday didn't disappoint.

In the strictest sense I didn't achieve my target weight lost, but I'd say that 200 grams isn't worth fretting over. My other measurements that evening turned out to be pretty favourable too. Particularly chuffed about an 11cm reduction around my belly which I'm definitely seeing with my clothes.

So it's all over, I just need to put my final measurements into the system and hope for the best with the competition. Of course I already feel like a winner and fully intend to continue with the exercise. My discipline with eating may change a little though as I rediscover my love for all things chewable. I just so happened to have some left over lasagne from Sheena, that I rudely refused the night before the weigh in, and gladly demolished for lunch after stepping off the scales. Ah carbohydrates, how I've missed thee.

Oh... about those before and after photos, I'd say the improvement is startling and something to be proud of, but I'd feel like a right twit if I posted them online. Probably best given the longevity of internet documents.

Urgh, what a week

2010-05-21T21:24:00.002+10:00

Well that was quite an interesting week. Things started with a bang on Saturday when I went to the shooting range with some of the guys from work. I'd never fired a gun before so this was certainly going to be a new experience. Everyone else seemed to know what they were doing and I was beginning to feel a little uncoordinated.

I found it pretty hard to actually get any feedback for where my shots were landing (perhaps because they didn't actually hit the target?) so I wasn't sure how to improve. The novelty of shooting a gun beyond the 22 calibre - which had the kick of a pea shooter - was pretty sweet at first but sharp recoil can only keep one amused for so long. In hindsight I probably should have worn longer socks too...

There were a couple of shotguns around so we got a chance to do some clay pigeon shooting too. I fired off two shots and managed to score a lucky hit on my second round. I'm quite happy to retire with a 50% success rate. Not a bad day to spend with mates but I think I'll stick to the driving range personally.

The week pretty much went downhill from there. I was supposed to have a new team member start on Monday which involved a bucket load of work to prepare for. Imagine my disappointment when I got an email at 8:00 saying that she had decided to take another job elsewhere - yes folks she did it by email. Needless to say this has put my whole plan for resourcing into a tailspin which we're still reeling from, not to mention slamming our recruitment efforts back to square one and wasting two weeks of lost interviewing time. Not that I'm bitter or anything.

Felt so rotten about this on Monday evening that I decided to forgo the weekly weigh in. Worse yet, we went out for pizza at Dominos which was probably not the best idea in the last week of the 12 week challenge. At least they were the healthy options on the menu.

Things are looking up though. Alison and I will be doing a walk with the family for the heart foundation this weekend, which should give me a final boost before the weigh in on Monday. My iPad should also be getting delivered in about a week and I've already started downloading apps in preparation. Just after that we'll be heading to Spicers Peak Lodge for a night of indulgence to celebrate three years of happy matrimony. Always helps when there are nice things to look forward to.

I Got Worms

2010-05-12T21:14:00.000+10:00

I originally thought that my birthday this year would be fairly low key, especially considering that I'm supposed to be in the middle of the twelve week challenge and watching what I eat. In the end I sorta threw caution to the wind and that's ok. Because it's my birthday dammit! (29 if you must know)

As is traditional in our household, the special treatment started early I'm the morning with a shower of presents from Alison and family. Got some pretty darn cool gear including funky sleep mask (need my beauty rest as I age), a great set of steak knives, some gardening soap and a wine cooler. No real theme to the collection but all will be put to good use.

Had to turn up to work unfortunately as i've hit rock bottom in the annual leave bucket. We did manage to get out of the office for lunch to try out this place that does a four course degustation for $20 which is insane value. They are a hospitality training school so I guess the students need to practice their craft and they might as well sell the results to discerning customers. Overall there was a lack of polish but that's forgivable at such a great price.

On returning home I got another surprise birthday gift waiting for me. A little bit of well crafted misdirection had me guessing exactly what Alsie had bought but a quick trip out to the garden revealed that I'm now the proud owner of a trendy worm cafe. Our previous composting efforts weren't overly successful so I look forward to putting these little invetebretes to good use.

Dinner had us going out to Southbank to try out a new Taiwanese restaurant that we'd heard about. We've been hankering for Siu Long Bao since our trip back to Malaysia so we were pretty excited when we got there.

Alas the juicy morsels didn't live up to our expectations. Just too thick and dry with the skin and the meat was pretty coarse and gristly. Tasty meal nonetheless and we'll probably still go back if we're in the area.

Alison took me down the road to Gunshop Cafe for dessert. I ordered a poached pear with maple panna cotta and chocolate sauce, which my darling wife further adorned with a candle when the plate came out. Who ever said you needed cake?

Week Ten, Two To Go

2010-05-10T21:03:00.002+10:00

I've been doing lots of running. Lots and lots of running, certainly by my standards. I've finally gotten fit enough to do the city loop comfortably (around a 6.25KM round trip) during my lunch break. Took me about 40 minutes today so that's an average 6:40 pace (about 9km/h). I'd like to be able to get that down to a 6:00 pace eventually.

Starting to really enjoy jogging around again, though this does mean that I've had less time in the gym to do weights. I think I've actually lost some muscle tone as a result, but at least I'm closer to my target weight.

Two more kilos to lose to get to my goal and two weeks to do it in. Should still be possible if I focus and keep up the cardio. It's also all in prep for the 20K that we'll be walking on the 23rd.

As an aside, I woke up early this morning and placed my order for a 64gig WIFI iPad, along with a camera connection kit and an iPad dock. Apple should hopefully ship it out to the office in time for the launch day on the 28th of May. I just hope that they don't have a problem with shipping as I'd be rather disappointed without an iPad for the weekend. Now I'm also looking around for new bags, this Tom Bihn one looks pretty good.

Landscaping and Week 9

2010-05-03T17:23:00.002+10:00

Ah, another long weekend. I could really get used to this whole four day work week arrangement. We used our extended break for labour day to lurch back into the some work in the garden, once more with John and Sheena's help of course. There's not too much left to do aside from the eastern side of the house, not somewhere we usually spend much time but it's such an eyesore that we can't wait to tidy things up.

The dirt around the Hill's Hoist would need some attention too, as well as the run off from the gravel pit overflow.

A little bit of bedding sand and some 400mm tiles would give us stepping stones a path around the side of the house.

Then it's just a matter of piling on more hoop pine to cover up all those unsightly weeds and unused concrete drains. I love mulch, it hides everything.

Lots more mulch, a few more tiles to extend the existing platform, some more cement and a heck of a lot of river rocks later. Now the back of the house is pretty much complete. Though now that I look at it I think a few plants in the corner wouldn't go amiss, perhaps an agave or two.

Now the last section is under the balcony where the rubbish bins live. That'll need a bit more thinking with drainage, retaining walls and lots of paving to consider so we're happy to leave that for another day.

It's been a while since I've carted around the wheelbarrow so we were feeling pretty sore the next day. Seems like all that hard work (abstaining from drinking coke zero all day too) didn't make much difference on the scales. Guess I've hit another plateau and will have to take the exercise regime up a notch.

Only three weeks left and I'm beginning to tire of this whole process. Happy with the weight loss and enjoying the exercise, but the weekly weigh-ins are getting a little old. Look forward to finishing up so that I can down shift to something more sustainable.

Week Eight, Cardio

2010-04-26T21:05:00.003+10:00

Woohoo! Finally a week of decent results. Today was the ANZAC day public holiday so I got to have a sleep in (till 6:30) and whipped out the scales and measured before breakfast. As a result the numbers may be a little artificial but I'm chuffed regardless.

A few odd ones there, particularly the increase in hips. Overall I think the rest of my numbers have been favourable. It's been almost a full week of running on the treadmill, jogging around Brisbane or a super walk while in Toowoomba so I was hoping to burn a few kilos off. Also need to buff up my stamina for a 20K walk that Alison and I will be doing with the family at the end of May. Should be good fun.

Responsibility

2010-04-24T15:03:00.002+10:00

Well it's been a busy week, and not just because it's our first one back after a long holiday. While I've been away it seems there were a few things cooking at work with lots of new projects and shifts happening. To cut a boring story short ChrisP, my Team Leader, has moved to take ownership of another team in the company, which obviously leaves a spot open in our team. The IT executive committee have thus decided to give me another shot at the reins, making me responsible for a charming and well qualified group of three developers (soon to be four if all goes well). It's been a while since I last had to bear the real weight of leadership but hopefully it's just like riding a bike.

I guess this means I need to start acting respectable again...

Week Seven, the Comeback

2010-04-19T20:36:00.002+10:00

First day back at work today. Made it through with a surprising amount of energy and wasn't that hungry, which is unusual after an extended holiday. Rocked on down to the gym at 1 in the afternoon and didn't expect to be able to do much. Only mustered up about 20 minutes on the treadmill and a pitiful stint with the skip rope. Imagine my surprise then when I hopped on the scales and measured up for the week.

This is the lightest I've been since starting the challenge! Still a little thick around the middle but I think four weeks of solid running will help shed the inches. My theory is that the scales in Malaysia were a biased towards the heavier side. Also might be retaining less water with the cooler weather perhaps?

Can't argue with good results either way. Now I need to tempt my taste buds with the Masterchef premier.

Back in Brisbane

2010-04-15T17:31:00.004+10:00

It's a good thing that we came over to Malaysia with very little in our bags, because there's no way we would have fit our shopping for the return flight otherwise. All three of our bags were packed to capacity and if the airport scales are to be believed then we've accumulated another 7.5kg of clutter. As previous posts have indicated I'm also unfortunately carrying a bit more weight on my person for the trip back to Brisbane.

The flight back was pretty comfortable and I'm impressed with the service on Qantas. We asked and got upgraded to an exit row which was vacant so our legs got some much appreciated stretching room.

Got a little ripped off by the cab ride from the airport, but it was good to just get home without fussing with public transport and a walk up the hill. The house is still standing and the garden remains in good shape, with grass that's suspiciously short (no doubt thanks to John) and a rapidly spreading mass of courgettes that aren't content with remaining in the vegie patch. The grevillea and himalayan ash have grown tremendously as well, and we look forward to the shade they'll provide up front. We were especially pleased to see the progress our neighbours have made with the retaining wall and fences, looks like we'll be able to re-landscape that section of the house soon.

Read some rotten news about the iPad when we got off the plane. Seems like I'll be waiting another month before I can get my grubby mitts on one, due to lack of supply. Damn the iPad for being so darn popular.

Nice to be back home. At least we won't have to go back to work till Monday.

Week Six and the Floodgates of Food

2010-04-13T19:38:00.004+10:00

The camel's back has been broken. I'm not even trying to pretend to follow a diet for the remaining days we have in Malaysia, as is clearly evident by the influx of food.

On Sunday we drove back to Subang to catch the last pasar malam (night market) of our trip, and everyone knows that a trip to the night market will no doubt involve food... lots of food. We took our time walking amongst the veg and fish stalls, stopping only to pick up two more bags of kueh, eat a bowl of Fa Sang Wu (a creamy peanut soup), two sticks of Lok Lok (sticks of meat and seafood cooked in a hotpot at the back of a truck) and a piece of Apam Balik (a thin, crispy, cream corn and peanut pancake, folded over like a calzone). I loved Apam Balik as a kid so I think I showed great restraint by stopping at just one piece.

The next day we were at Megamall again for more shopping and spotted these cute dessert buns on the menu at lunch. Alsie just had to order them. They're filled with red bean paste and were actually quite tasty. I would have thought that pork buns would be more appropriate...

Not satisfied with the mountains of kueh we've already consumed, mum picked up a tin on kek lapis (spekkoek) which is a dutch-indonesian baked layered cake. Another morsel that I'd stuff my face with as a kid, as you can imagine I was/am a very fat kid. This was a very good batch, so smooth and buttery and I definitely experienced that "just one more slice" feeling. My love handles were quivering with pleasure.

One last nostalgic dish, waffles with ice-cream from A&W. Not exactly fine cuisine but it's a staple for our trips to Malaysia. It's also proof of my fall from grace. Alison and I went to a A&W at the start of our trip and I comfortably abstained from waffles back then. Now here I am with a double scoop of ice-cream. Oh, how the mighty have fallen.

So what's the damage after all this self destructive behaviour?

Not brilliant, I've basically knocked my progress back by three weeks. I picked up a new pair of running shoes and a Nike+ sensor on this trip so I can see lots of cardio in my near future to help burn off all this fat before the end of the challenge. Still, it was worth it I think.

This will likely be the last post from Malaysia as we're flying back tomorrow. It's been a great two and a half weeks and we wish we could stay longer, but it's probably a good thing for the pocket and waistline that we're forced to return to work. Lots to look forward to still with an upcoming Australian iPad launch and a Christmas visit from Mum and Uncle Wing. That'll certainly help me deal with the rising swells of homesickness that I'm already beginning to feel.

Sights To See

2010-04-11T17:52:00.004+10:00

After a week and a half of indulging in a life of gastronomic and retail consumerism, we stepped into the travel portion of our holiday. It's been a busy three days but we've managed to see so much that we've hardly had time to feel tired.

Taman Negara

Mum booked a trip to Malaysia's national park (which is what Taman Negara means in Bahasa), reportedly the world's oldest tropical rainforest. Alison and I drove mum and Uncle Wing up to the resort which took about four hours on the road, with a short stop for lunch at Jerentut. Roads weren't too bad, though I had to dig deep into my Malaysian roots to find the courage to overtake slow moving cars and trucks on the narrow tracks that snaked through oil palm plantations. We reached Kuala Tahan late on Thursday afternoon and were told that the first of our activities would start shortly after dinner.

This turned out to be a short night trek through the rainforest, with our guide pointing out interesting flora and fauna. We didn't get to see any snakes or large animals aside from some sambar deer that were attracted to a popular salt lick. Apparently if we'd waited another hour or so then we'd have seen some sun bears. We may not have seen much I thought the walk was pleasant, albeit rather hot and humid even at night. The main highlight I thought was when Saberi, our guide, teased out a malayan scorpion from it's hole with a short stick. Nifty.

The next day we donned our "jungle clothes", ready for a full day of wilderness adventure. I'm glad we got these as disposable apparel because I'm sure we committed more than a few fashion crimes here. I guess they might make good garden wear if Alison lets me take the shirts home to Brisbane.

To start things off, Saberi took us on a moderate 2km walk through another part of the rainforest and focussed his explanations on the local trees and plants. Should have been paying more attention as I've clear forgotten what this tree is. I do remember that the Orang Asli (natives) use it to communicate by hitting it with a hard stick or rock. The soft wood, large base and tall trunk allow the tree to reverberate and produce a loud beat that can be heard from a distance. We just thought it was a cool tree to pose under, darn city dwellers.

At the end of the walk we climbed a short stairwell to enter the world's longest canopy walk. At least it would have been if half the walkway weren't closed for renovation, apparently deemed unsafe on account of termite activity. The first half seemed fine when we were up there, about 30 metres off the forest floor. We managed to see a black giant squirrel on one of the canopy platforms and got a great view of the surrounding tree tops.

On descending from the canopy, we met mum by the river (she didn't join us for the trek) and were whisked up the rapids to a native village. The tribe we visited were of the Bateq people, where we got to learn a little of their culture and were shown how to start a fire, make poisonous darts and use a blow pipe. Ah how silly we must have looked. Most of us anyway, Alison proved to be a natural at the blow pipe and was the only one in the group that scored a hit on the target.

After lunch we headed up the Tahan river to see the cascades at Latah Berkoh. While the cascades weren't all that impressive (far too many people and the water was pretty stained from trees and debris during the dry season) we were absolutely smitten by boat ride up the river. We've seen lots of tourism ads about Malaysia that showcase river cruises through the rainforest and this was just like it. The arching trees, calls of wildlife and uncovered rock formations on the river made every bend a tantalising treat. We couldn't keep ourselves from running our hands through the rushing water or reaching for low hanging branches.

On the way back we were caught in a heavy downpour, which would normally be a nuisance to most Malaysians. In the middle of a rainforest however, and trapped in an open river boat, we found the experience oddly magical. We even stopped by a local fish sanctuary to feed some kelah that are being conserved in the Tahan river. By the time we got back to Kuala Tahan we were absolutely soaked to the bone, which must have seemed odd as the town hadn't seen a drop of rain that afternoon. Drenched but utterly satisfied with our excursion. Uncle Wing even picked up a walking stick as a souvenir from the forest floor.

Genting Highlands

On Saturday we left Pahang to drive back to civilisation, stopping on the way the antithesis of a natural peaceful sanctuary; the congested commercial peaks of Genting Highlands.

Alison has heard me rabbit on about taking her to Genting for years now so it was a good to finally cross this one off the list. Not that I'm a huge fan of the place, but because it's such a famous landmark. Rather than nurse a building sense of nausea in the winding car ride to the top, Alison and I opted to take the cable car from Gotong Jaya. The queues were pretty crazy, but after about 40 minutes of waiting we finally got into a cab on the way to the summit. It was a pretty misty day so it was a treat to see the towers of Resort World appear among the clouds. At least until we got closer and the grot became readily apparent.

It's been close to ten years since I've been to Genting, and aside from the new First World hotel it seems like it's hardly changed. The price of food and a penchant for gaudiness certainly has remained consistent with what I remembered. We had a walk around to take in the sights but didn't feel the need to pay for any of the attractions.

The weather was a nice change from the heat, but we couldn't understand why more of the cafes weren't outside to take advantage of the cool air. We would have been quite happy to pay an extortionate amount to enjoy a beverage with a cool breeze and view but all the restaurants and cafes overlooked carparks or indoor rollercoasters. I guess that's what the local market wants.

Batu Caves

Last stop on our return trip was to another KL landmark that we've somehow missed on previous holidays in Malaysia; Batu Caves.

I've only been to the caves once and that was on a school trip back when I was five or six years old, so aside from the energy sapping 272 steps to the entrance, I remembered very little of the place. Given how young I was I don't think I would have been able to appreciate the majesty of the lime stone formations and the sheer size of the idols. The front statue of Murugan is 42.7 metres tall and is the highest in the world.

Once inside the cave we were shocked by the height of the ceiling, stretching 100 metres with pin holes of daylight streaming through openings at the top. With so little natural light we had to rely on lamps affixed to the cave walls, which bathed the streaked formations with a beautiful amber hue. Just gorgeous.

Monkeys were pretty common throughout the caves, unabashedly accepting (or stealing) food from tourists before rushing to higher ground to enjoy their spoils. We weren't accosted thankfully but I spotted a few handbags being ransacked by simian hands. They seemed quite comfortable with humans and I managed to get close to this one to take a few photos before descending to the carpark.

Altogether a great mini-holiday within our holiday. It does mean that we're coming to the end of our stay in Malaysia though, so what once seemed so far away is just around the corner. Best to make the most of what's left.

More Food and Shopping

2010-04-07T20:31:00.003+10:00

Shopping in Malaysia is great fun when you convert everything back to Aussie dollars. It just seems so cheap! So far we've bagged about four pairs of shoes, over ten shirts, three bags and a bunch of other bits and pieces. To round off our wardrobe, particularly for the upcoming trek through Taman Negara, we needed to find some basic t-shirts and shorts for hiking. Jaya Jusco had a crazy sale on so we fought our way through the mob to find a good deal, coming away with far too many clothes of questionable style and quality but with irresistible savings.

I've been wearing the same pair of glasses for the past nine years, so this trip seemed like the ideal opportunity for a style change. My old Silhouettes have been really light and comfortable, but I picked a heavier hinged frame this time. Still getting used to the darker frame but I think they suit my face... although I'm worried that I might look a little too HK now...

The food continues to roll in. Meeting up with Teoh for dinner brought us to another seafood restaurant with a view, perched on a hill in OUG. The owner of the establishment is a family friend so we were greeted warmly and well looked after, with the tea pot refilled constantly. We left the responsibility of ordering our meal to Tezza and were very impressed with the results. Assam fried fish, kang kung belacan (yet again, I know), pork ribs marinated in red fermented tofu and another dish of tofu with roast pork. Great food, and to top it off the whole meal only cost 46 Ringgit (about 15 Aussie dollars). What more could you want?

At home, mum's been treating us to some classic Teochew dishes. I used to have Tau Suan for breakfast whenever the family returned to Johor for Chinese New Year each year, but haven't had a chance to eat this in years. This is a sweet split green bean soup with cut up pieces of fried bread. Keen to share another childhood meal with Alison, I asked if mum could whip up a batch of this and she happily obliged.

Mmmm... reminds me of my childhood.

As another treat we've also had a few nights of Mah Jong with mum and Uncle Wing. Good fun, we really do need to find some people in Brisbane to play with.

Heading off to Taman Negara for four days tomorrow. Hope we don't encounter too many leeches while we're walking through the jungle. Probably grasping at straws here, but with luck there'll also be a WiFi connection so I can keep tabs on what's happening with the iPhone OS 4.0 event tomorrow. If not I'll just have to catch up when we get back on Sunday, fingers crossed for some funky features.

Week Five and Growing

2010-04-05T20:46:00.002+10:00

*sigh*

Not that surprising, but the numbers have not been kind to me this week.

Here are my excuses for the shoddy results:

It was a hot day of shopping and I was feeling quite bloated
I weighed myself in the afternoon after a heavy-ish lunch, when I normally check my weight in the morning
Alison was not available (occupied with the massage bed) so I had to run the tape measure myself
Er... I've been doing lots of pushups... therefore building muscle... which weighs more than fat
Ahem... I've been eating far too much food...

Just bought a heap of new clothes which I hope will still fit by the time we get back to Brisbane.

See Food, Eat Food

2010-04-05T19:34:00.002+10:00

Lots of food has been consumed over the last week, and much of it was marine in origin. On Thursday we were left in the hands of a Japanese chef at a restaurant owned by one of Mum's tenants. The initial courses didn't bode well for our evening meal but I feel the kitchen lifted their game by the third course in. We figured they were trying to impress when they brought out this huge boat of sashimi, with a plate of toro (tuna belly) as the centre piece. The other large cuts of milk fish, scallops, salmon, yellow tail and prawns didn't go unappreciated either.

The following courses continued to rise in quality; a mammoth plate of slow cooked tuna jaw with meat that slid off like a lamb shank, cold soba noodles coloured with sakura flowers and finally a gentle but surprisingly complex scoop of sakura flavoured ice-cream. Great stuff.

On Sunday we drove for over an hour to the port of Klang, where we hoped to find some good food at an authentic fishing village. Unfortunately the restaurant we were hoping to eat at, which came very highly recommended by a friend of Uncle Wing's, was closed for lunch. Bummer.

Not to be discouraged, we asked the locals for an alternative and were directed to another nearby restaurant which was serving. It was a frighteningly dishevelled shack, with laundry draped on any available surface and a toilet (I use the term very loosely there) disturbingly close to the kitchen. That's not necessarily a bad thing though, some of the best food can be found in the grottiest of hovels, so we ordered a few dishes and hoped for the best. We were to be sorely disappointed.

Leaving with a bad taste in our mouths, quite literally, our palate keenly awaited salvation at a little place Yvonne knew of in Hulu Langat. Heaven knows how she found out about it as it seemed to be hidden in a valley off the main road, but I guess word travels quickly based on the horde of cars parked for dinner. The place, a small Thai fishing village, may have been unimaginatively named the Veg Fish Farm, but the aroma from the grill and the frequent happy clatter of plates certainly helped whet the appetite of eager patrons. We amused ourselves by looking out for the occasional fish that jumped out of the surrounding lake.

One thing that can be said about Malaysians, they'll drive anywhere and wait, if not always patiently, for an unbelievably long time if good eats are to be had at the end of it. Our timing was impeccable as this is what the carpark looked like ten minutes after we arrived.

Thankfully after a reasonable drive (compared to the earlier slog to Klang) and what would have been a 15 minute wait, we were treated to incredibly good eats. Pipis, steamed and salt baked talapia, calamari covered in salted egg yolk, spinach leaves coated in a salt and pepper batter and the most fragrant seafood tom yam soup I've ever had. We also had chilled coconut milk with a treasure trove of jellies, red rubies and fruit to round off the meal, flanked by that ubiquitous Thai dessert; fresh mango with sticky rice. I was absolutely stuffed by the end but managed to cram in a few mouthfuls of glutinous rice, saturated in velvety coconut cream. My diet has officially gone to hell.

Going to pay for this on the scales.

Food Adventures

2010-04-01T20:08:00.007+10:00

Haven't done much over the past few days aside from eating with friends and family. A pretty typical Malaysian holiday I would say. Normally Alison and I would have char kuey teow for breakfast on most mornings but we haven't felt the usual craving this trip. Probably for the best as all that fat and oil isn't especially good for you. We had it yesterday and our tummies were pretty tender for the rest of the day.

Instead we've opted for comparatively healthier options like claypot noodles. A filling and sustaining breakfast, and tasty to boot.

Caught up with Rudi the other night and had the good fortune to meet his lovely girlfriend, Twink. It's always nice to see childhood friends match up with likeminded people, in this case a devoted foodie. We were treated to dinner at the Bombay Palace, where we had a fabulous time discussing the assortment of curries and breads available. Superb palak paneer.

Today we hopped on a train to Midvalley Megamall to do some proper shopping and sample more local cuisine. We had a little more success this time (an earlier trip to Sunway Pyramid was pretty ineffective on the retail front), and Alison and I both came away with a pair of shoes each, along with some shirts.

Another reason for our trip to the Gardens was to check out a recommendation to try the Xiao Long Bao at Din Tai Fung. To be brutally honest, I'd have to say that while we thought this was really good, they still paled in contrast to the heavenly parcels we had in Singapore. I did however jump on the opportunity to have Alison try her culinary challenge of the holiday... the oh so misunderstood Century Egg

It took me a while to work up the courage to eat this when I was younger, and I've got the asian advantage, so there was a feeling of great pride when Alison overcame her aversion to the idea of a "preserved egg" and slammed it down the hatch. It's not as bad as everyone seems to think, though this plate of century eggs did seem a little milder that what I'm used to. I wonder if they toned things down to help make it more palatable.

As a reward of sorts, we found a nonya shop serving kueh and bought a bunch to chow down on a nearby bench. Probably a little overpriced when compared to what you'd pay for this at a roadside stall but the quality was pretty good. I love talam (the green and white pieces) and this definitely satisfied our dessert stomach.

Well done babes. Tonight we're heading out for Japanese food, omakase style, so hopefully the chef won't try to be too adventurous.

Week Four, Before the Food Hits

2010-03-29T20:31:00.003+10:00

I have a feeling that this is going to be the start of a rapid physical regression. It's been three days of good food and I don't think my body has had time to respond just yet, but I'm sure the waistline is planning to advance pretty soon.

Weight is holding steady, but this is with a different set of scales so there might have been some undetected change there. The rest of the measurements are pretty favourable I'd say. Particularly chuffed about the decrease in the midsection. All those sit-ups must finally be paying off.

Gave my planned exercise routine a miss this morning, but I'm blaming that on a lack of available gym wear. Will try to make up for it tomorrow before complacency settles in.

Sightseeing in Singapore

2010-03-28T13:40:00.005+10:00

Hit the ground running on our first day in Singapore and met Jason and HuaQi for a packed day of food and culture. Still running on Brisbane time so languid, equatorial morning pace took some getting used to, as we quickly discovered that most shops and stalls were still closed at 9:30 in the morning. Lazy bums. Still managed to find a cute little shop to have some bean curd and fried bread for breakfast which was super yum.

Our first cultural experience was to check out the national museum to learn a little more about the lion city. I think the huge chamber with an enveloping audio-visual onslaught of Singaporean life (accompanied by an orchestral soundtrack) was a little freaky, but the other exhibits were fascinating. I especially liked the room of paper bags from years gone by. Alison and I already have a paper bag from a restaurant framed at home so maybe we should extend the collection.

Next on the list was a bus ride to Qun Zhong Eating House, reported to have the best dumplings in Singapore. I'm inclined to agree, the Xiao Long Bao was probably the best I've ever had. The skin was so soft that it took a bit of practice to just pick them up without spilling the warm soup inside. Top it off with some vinegar and sliced ginger and it's just an explosion of flavour in your mouth. Could eat these forever.

Combining a food and cultural experience (the best kind), we were whisked down the road to the Tea Chapter, a tea house that can claim to have served Queen Elizabeth the Second. In fact, they charged a premium to sit at her very table (how could you refuse?). To keep with the theme we ordered the same tea she was served, a blend labelled Imperial Golden Cassia.

We were fascinated by the process of serving, smelling and drinking tea. After brewing the tea is poured into the white jug looking thing called a "fairness cup", to ensure that everyone has a properly mixed cup of tea. Then this is poured into the long thin cup which is the "scenting cup". This is smelled to appreciate the first of three scents, the "hot scent", before pouring the tea into the drinking cup. The now empty scenting cup is then rolled between the hands until warm, and smelled again to experience the "warm scent", which in this case seemed sweeter. The tea can now be drunk, in exactly three sips; the first to cleanse the mouth, the second to clear the throat and the third to enjoy the flavour. After drinking the tea, the scenting cup can be smelled once more for the "cool scent".

It took a while to go through the process but it was thoroughly enjoyable. Very nice tea too, full of flavour and depth. We all got a chance to serve tea at the table and I documented Alison's go. After saying bye to Jason and HuaQi we decided to check out a fish foot spa to treat our tired feet.

I've got terribly ticklish feet so I never expected to last through the 30 minutes of fish nibbling away dead skin. It took a while and some mental conditioning but I managed to stay the course. It felt a little like a jet stream from of a jacuzzi with the smaller fish. The larger ones were rather disturbing but I think I'd gotten used to it by then. Not sure if the treatment was especially effective but we both agreed that our feet felt a little softer afterwards.

Our short stay in Singapore is now over and we flew in to KL last night at 10. We actually feel like we've already had a holiday, which is exciting as it's just beginning. I believe WonTon noodles are on the menu for lunch and there's a long list of restaurants that Mum and Uncle Wing have lined up for us to try. Expect more photos of food to come.

Touch Down

2010-03-27T10:02:00.005+10:00

The holiday begins! We trundled down the hill to the train station, bags full of electronics and light clothing in tow, to catch the train to the airport at about ten in the morning. I must confess that I took some pleasure in counting the number of people in our carriage that appeared to be heading to work... sucks to be them.

On getting to the airport Alison prepped her latest aviatory conditioning measures, critical on this flight as she's been fighting a bout of the sniffles. This involved a cocktail of pseudoephedrine, nasal spray decongestant, a large packet of tissues and two rubberised plugs charmingly labelled Earplanes. We were told they would help equalise the cabin pressure and reduce headaches during descent.

Our plane wasn't especially big and we were right at the back on account of a large batch of returning school children, but the flight itself was fairly pleasant. I loaded up my old iPod with a heap of podcasts to keep me entertained as I'm not usually fond of inflight entertainment. As an aside, I've recently been introduced to a podcast for short fiction called the Drabblecast which is great to listen to. Fantastic production values and very well read I think.

Earplanes actually turned out to be a success and Alsie wasn't quite up to her usual level of post-flight grouchiness. We touched down in Changi Airport at about 7:30, and after a reasonable cab ride we arrived at James and Dora's Singaporean abode. A lovely place, though we're a little intimidated by their taste in gargantuan furniture.

We weren't feeling especially hungry after the flight, but somehow managed to pop out to the stores to get a late evening snack anyway. I couldn't resist the call of some authentic takoyaki, though I did give a cursory nod to my diet by only ordering three balls rather than my usual six.

To work of some of that guilt I tried to do a little body weight exercise this morning in the study. Might even drag myself down to the pool later on for a swim perhaps. Holiday food is coming and it'll be a task to remain vigilant.

Week Three and Feeling Wonderful

2010-03-22T18:17:00.003+10:00

Woohoo! Finally a bit more movement on the scales. I guess all that food from yesterday hasn't had a chance to pile on just yet. When I started the program I wrote down a goal to lose at least 10 kilos in twelve weeks. So far I've managed 3.7 in three weeks. Not too shabby!

Chest keeps getting smaller which suggests that my man-boobs are being reduced. My belly button has also finally moved under the centenary mark which is fab. Just so you know, I've been trying to keep things consistent by distending my belly as much as possible at each weekly measure.

Aside from the numbers I'm also feeling a lot brighter and energetic. Consuming less food as well and trying to pay attention to what I'm eating (and how much) rather than mindlessly wolfing it down. Who would have thought that eating healthily would be good for you.

Of course this is likely to turn a little sour come Friday when we take off for Singapore and Malaysia. I'll be packing my skip rope along with a print out of workouts without weights so I'll be fighting the flab off as hard as I can. Bring on the hawker food!

Victorian Visitors

2010-03-21T18:25:00.004+10:00

Tim and Christine were up this weekend from Melbourne for some psychiatry conference so we had a chance to catch up and show them around our little town of Brisbane. Armed with inside information of their recent efforts to find a reasonably priced unit to call home, a challenge in today's real estate climate in Victoria, we were focussed on convincing them to relocate up to Sunny Queensland with the promise cheaper listings and awesome company (that would be us). To kick things off we met up at the Belgian Beer Cafe for two kilo pots of mussels and beer battered chips. The mussels were supreme, but as I'm trying to be good I avoided the deep fried potato goodness, which was no easy task I assure you. Being self confessed seafood lovers, I think the guests were sufficiently impressed.

We picked the two of them up on Sunday to take them back to our place for morning tea and the obligatory tour of the house. All my self control must have been used up from the day before, as I couldn't resist a wagon wheel with my cuppa. That was the thin end of the wedge for what would become a pretty piggy day.

Bolstered by the reception of our previous culinary recommendation, we kept the theme consistent and booked a table at Cam Ranh for lunch. We've always been impressed by the seafood there, particularly the chilli crabs, so we ordered up a veritable feast of kangkung belachan, Cam Ranh tofu (a scallop and prawn infused slab of melt-in-your-mouth silken goodness), pipis in XO sauce and of course, two kilos of gorgeous chilli mud crab.

It took a while to finish all that, and my mild crustacean allergy resulted in slightly flared lips by the end of it, but I've got to say that we were very satisfied with the food. Got to love living near Darra.

After a long lunch we didn't have much time before taking Tim and Christine to the airport, so we opted for a quick visit to Cleveland to see the bay and hunt for a palette cleansing cup of gelati. Then we delivered them to the airport via the a scenic drive over the Gateway bridge and said our goodbyes. If we did our job right they'll be Brisbanites by the end of the year.

Driving back we decided to check out the new Clem7 tunnel which is still toll free for the next week. The lanes were pretty congested with other curious commuters but that meant we had more time to admire the current longest underground tunnel in Australia.

Not the best weekend for my diet. Hopefully it won't affect the weigh in and measure tomorrow too badly. Especially with only have four more gym days before our flight back to Malaysia. Yay for holidays!

Week Two

2010-03-15T20:06:00.002+10:00

Second real week of tracking my progress and it's another case of ups and downs. The weight loss seems to be plodding along slowly but I'm hoping that's purely due to the "muscle" I'm gaining. The rest of the measurements seem to be trending in the right direction at least, and I think I see a difference in the mirror. Clothes are starting to feel a little looser and more comfortable which is always a good sign.

Hit the gym three times last week and I'm going to try to at least match that again this week. What I really need to be doing of course is more cardio to burn off the fat, so I'll have to schedule in at least two decent runs this week as well.

Might be a little hard to manage as I've also gone and bought Final Fantasy XIII for the PS3 which is bound to be a distraction from the fitness routine. Must stay strong though... only two weeks before flying back to Malaysia.

Week One Weigh In

2010-03-08T18:20:00.002+10:00

First results are in and I think it's a mixed bag, which I'm a bit bummed by. I would have hoped to get better results after being "good" but I guess this should just spur me on to do better next week.

The weight lost is nice but I seem to have put on girth in some pretty odd spots. My neck? How is my middle abdomen increasing so much when my belly button went down? Not that I have a directed work out regime as yet, but I think I already have to start adding more cardio to my schedule. Went for one run on Sunday which obviously didn't cut mustard.

This week I'll be trying to hit the gym a few times at work. Already went today so at least that should get the ball rolling. Here's hoping for better results next week.

Detox, Delays and Darn Big TVs

2010-03-06T08:14:00.003+10:00

Well there goes one working week of trying to be healthy and it's been pretty good so far. Feeling like I have more energy in the mornings and generally more upbeat, which is saying a lot because work wise the past five days have been absolute $H!T. As a condolence, I was cheered up that my peers nominated me for an award at the Buzz Night on Thursday so there's a silver lining in my rumbling storm cloud of work issues.

I've managed to avoid eating anything fried and abstained from the booze for five days, but the next two will be a real challenge. Alison and I have decided to go on a 48 hour detox, which involves drinking the contents of these two boxes as our only means of sustenance (yikes!). I have actually been on a liquid diet before but at least I allowed myself to have glasses of milk to keep the hunger pangs away. These Goji berries had better pack some staying power.

This morning I woke up to receive some rather disappointing news when I checked my daily feeds. It seems that Apple have finally made an announcement regarding the availability of the iPad, which unfortunately spells out that they won't be released outside the States before late April. Not great news given my plans to pick one up on our trip back to Malaysia. The plus side is that when they do get released in Australia they'll be coming out with the 3G version at the same time, so I can at least resist the urge to pick up the first WIFI one I find before checking out what the carriers plan on doing (not that I have high hopes for Australian telcos). I guess this also means that I'll be able to read a few reviews before dropping cash on the counter so I'll know if it's a huge bomb.

Perhaps to console myself after reading the bad news, we somehow got into a TV buying mood. John's recent upgrade meant that Alison's parents had a bigger TV than we did, an intolerable travesty I'm sure you'd agree. We hadn't planned on getting one this soon, but on an unrelated trip to JB Hifi to pick up "This is it" on Bluray (we enjoyed the movie and love extra features), the call of the Sales tag was too much to resist.

In saying that I think we exercised some restraint here and only matched the parents in panel size (46" if you must know). We ended up getting the Samsung L46B650 for a decent price, and even convinced the sales guy to chuck in the Bluray disc and a wireless dongle for free. For a moment we were considering spending the same amount for a larger albeit inferior panel (a Hisense) but deferred to the wisdom of crowds after reading some opinions on forums.

Really happy with our choice from what I've seen so far. The contrast ratio is amazing compared to our old Hitachi and I'm still getting over how smooth the video is at 100Hz. We were watching an episode of Bones on the Apple TV and I thought the picture was bordering on freaky, which is pretty good considering the source media is just a compressed TV Rip. Must have some pretty good upscaling. The extra HDMI ports also mean that I can finally move the Wii off composite input.

As for the old TV, that's going to be heading to the new office/store room. I have plans on using it as a gaming TV (so that I don't bother Alison when I get in a PS3/Xbox mood) and perhaps even as a monitor for the MacBook. I'll need to pick up a Mini-DVI to HDMI converter as the Hitachi doesn't support VGA input but the cables seem pretty cheap these days.

A Twelve Week Challenge

2010-03-01T19:00:00.002+10:00

It's no secret that I'm particularly fond of my food. As a result I've fought a helpless battle to control my weight most of my life, which results in a lot of yo-yo dieting. The latest upswing in fitness has now come out of a need to counteract the upcoming binge-fest that will take place on our trip back to Malaysia, which happily coincides with an opportunity at work to do something about my expanding belly.

Flight Centre, well Healthwise specifically, are holding their annual 12 Week Challenge which has officially started today. It's a bit of a poor man's Biggest Loser, where we submit our measurements and photos before and after the period for a panel to judge who made the most progress. There's also supposed to be a written component but we all know that's a wank really. It's all going to be down to hard numbers... and hard abs... grrr.

There are a heap of travel related prizes to be won, but I'm sure the real goal is to get people to take better care of themselves. Of course, if I were the cynical sort then I'd say the main goal would be to drum up more gullible people to sign on for personal training sessions... oh wait, I am the cynical sort.

Because working as a team is so much more fun, I'll be entering with a group of four including ChrisP (my boss), so there's some motivation to get results. Just because I'm a masochist at heart, I'm also upping the ante by publishing my weekly progress here for public scrutiny. Hopefully the threat of embarrassing ridicule will be enough to keep me away from the naughty food. So without further ado, here's Week 1.

I have a feeling that Weeks 5 through to 7 will be particularly challenging as we'll be back in the land of cheap and tasty food by then. Expect to see a little bump there.

Alison helped me take my "before" photo and we both agree that it turned out to be sufficiently disgusting. I think I'll assess my actual progress by the end of the program before putting the shots up for comparison. It's also particularly... fleshy... so I'll have to think long and hard before subjecting the Internet to that.

Day 1 and so far I've survived without eating anything I shouldn't have. Came home in the rain and managed to muster up the energy to do half an hour of Zumba in front of the TV with Alison. Now I feel fat and I have no rhythm...

Bits and Jobs

2010-02-21T17:12:00.002+10:00

The buying and cleaning continues! Yet another weekend filled with the vicious cycle of clearing space to be filled by more junk from the shops, though at least this time I think each purchase has been, for the most part, purposeful.

Yay, our outdoor couch and chairs are finally here! The delivery truck arrived around lunch time on Saturday so I had the dubious honour of assembling more furniture (one day we'll be rich enough to buy goods that don't require a toolbox) while Alison went out for lunch with Elizabeth. The chairs were a little finicky to put together, as they are suspended and oscillate on a flexible bar, but I managed to finish everything in about an hour. Can't believe how awesome it is to have a couch outside to lounge on. Now we just need to find a little coffee table to place beverages and we're all set.

With a four wheel drive at our disposal (we're car-sitting for John and Sheena) picking up the filing cabinet should have been easy as pie. It would have been if we didn't have to make two trips to Office Works to take back the first cabinet which had a dent in the top. To be fair, the staff were apologetic for the inconvenience and happily replaced our dud with a working model, which allowed us to hide the heap of paperwork that's been clogging up the guest room for the last few weeks. Our little store room has turned out rather well I think.

This means that the guest room is now pretty much cleaned up and ready for visitors at the drop of a hat. No more cleaning up this room and bothering guests when I need to use the computer, nosiree. We even have two drawers empty just for long staying visitors, how hospitable!

The old junk room has been cleared out as well, though we haven't done too much with it as yet. For now it's just a space for the guitars, carpet offcuts, a computer desk (for the other laptop) and the wardrobe of course. Not really all that interesting but I'm sure we'll find a use for this room eventually.

It's certainly an improvement over what it used to look like for the better part of the last year.

All these new goods were accompanied by a mountain of cardboard packaging, so we took a trip out to the "transfer station" on Sunday (once again only possible due to John's car). I would have liked to fit the stump we uprooted a few weeks ago in the back, but the car was jam packed with packaging material. Friendly neighbours to the rescue as they let us dump the stump in their skip bin. Farewell nemesis, you were a worthy opponent.

While out we picked up a few more friends for the garden. We haven't actually come up with names for them as yet (suggestions anyone?) but we already think of them as family. The rabbit tries to oversee the vegetable patch, and is currently conducting a thorough investigation of a list of tomato eating suspects. Our gnome may seem a little laid back but who can blame him when you have a tropical paradise of gingers to relax under.

On the subject of vegetables, may we draw your attention to the awesomeness that is our eggplant. Some of those babies will be going into a stir fry in a few weeks I'd wager. No sign of courgettes as yet, but the herbs have been super.

We bought a rusted old wash basin on our trip to the Tin Dog last year with the intention of planting herbs or perhaps flowers in it. Now that our herb and vegie garden is largely complete we've been forced to come up with a new use for this, and settled on an assorted cacti/succulent arrangement.

I'm not sure how well some of those will do with the wet weather we're having but with luck they'll grow and spread out nicely. We've put together a few different colours so with luck it should end up being a pretty addition to the garden.

New Year and New Stuff

2010-02-16T19:52:00.002+10:00

Happy Chinese New Year! Normally we'd have people over for steamboat but we didn't quite feel like doing that this year. Not that we completely gave up on tradition, Saturday was a fully packed day of pre-New Year cleaning (love a good bit of superstition to kick us into doing housework) and we braved the crowds in China Town for a set dinner on Sunday to see the festivities. The mall was redone just in time for New Year and it's looking good, if still a little gaudy. Tossed together a few clips and pics from our night out into a movie.

When we were doing the renovations we knew that an increase in storage space would coincide with a need to fill that space. Of course we promised ourselves that we'd exercise some restraint with our purchases, which lasted all of about a month it seems.

The old dining table has proven to be too big for to use now that we have a sliding door leading to the patio. This new breakfast table for four seems to fit quite nicely though, perhaps even providing enough room for the odd dinner when it's too cold to sit outside.

Our backrooms are now cleaned out and rearranged, with the computer desk coming out of the "guest room" to make way for some book shelves and a new set of drawers. I'd post some photos, but our attempt at cleaning up did not extend to putting away the mountain of filing that heaped on the spare bed. Good thing we have a filing cabinet coming in this weekend.

We also got a new carpet and a hat rack (need somewhere to put those gardening hats and daily bags). Quite a bit of use out of the power drill as you can imagine.

Even the vegetable garden has had a few improvements. We now have a chilli plant, a lemon tree and some rapidly growing rows of eggplant, zuchinni and tomatoes. Well, perhaps not the tomatoes as something seems to be eating the new leaves every night, but the eggplant and zuchinni are doing great.

Oh yes, and there's a tiny papaya tree growing in the back there. Apparently they're fast growers so we should have some fruit by next season. Sweet!

Couch for the patio is still to come. Can't wait as it's been scorching over here and we'd love to just lounge outside with the breeze. It might also spur on yet another trip to the stores in search of a coffee table though... hrmm...

Carpet and iWant

2010-01-30T09:20:00.004+10:00

I'm sitting on the couch typing this on my MacBook, sniffling from a combination of dust from the new carpet in the next room and tendrils of cigarette smoke from the tradie outside. It's a relief not to have to put shoes on to walk through that part of the house, and I'm glad we don't have to see that god awful garage floor anymore.

Now that the house is functionally complete (still have more to do around the west side where the bins are), we can start rearranging our accumulation of stuff so that we aren't living with two store rooms at the back. Heck knows what we're actually going to do with those rooms once we clear the junk out of there, but I'm leaning towards a music room or library. Let's hope I can resist the urge to buy more furniture and stuff to fill it.

Speaking of stuff to buy, everyone has no doubt heard about the expected release of the Apple iPad. Engadget has a pretty good guide of what we know about the iPad from various sources and can be read here. I'm certainly not alone in saying that I've been waiting for Apple to release a tablet-style device for some time now, so I woke up especially to catch the news of the keynote coming in on the 27th of January. I'll let you watch Jobs work his magic for yourselves, but suffice to say I was feeling pretty convinced that the shiny object in his hands would be my next must-have-item. In saying that, I was sleep deprived and fully in the clutches of the Reality Distortion Field, so in a desperate attempt at objectivity I had to set my systemic fanboyism aside and questioned my initial zeal and lust for this device. With a few nights sleep and some time to mull over how I see this appliance fitting into my life, I think I've arrived at a rationalised and adult decision.

I WANT IT. I WANT IT NOW!!!

The internet and mass media as a majority have actually landed firmly on the other side of the fence of opinion. Google for articles on the device or pick up a paper and you'll likely read about the disappointing lack of any number of features including multitasking, cameras and the lack of Flash support. Perhaps the most common comment that's being used to dismiss the latest offering from Cupertino has been a terse "It's just a big iPod Touch". My personal reaction is that actually isn't a bad thing at all.

Others on the net have written with greater flair on the subject of why the iPad is actually the start of something big and special in the world of computing. You can read my personal favourites here, here and here (that last one penned by the awesome Stephen Fry). Purely for narcissistic indulgence (after all, that's half the point of having a Blog isn't it?), I'm going to list a few of my own thoughts as well.

It's just a big iPod Touch

Yes, and I think that's actually a good thing. Microsoft have been trying to create a Tablet like device for close to ten years and have failed at each turn due to the fact that cramming a desktop UI model into a miniature form factor plain does not work. It didn't work for Windows Mobile (which incidentally was one of the main reasons why I bought an iPhone in the first place), and it hasn't worked for Tablet PCs. Creating a working tablet device would require a paradigm shift away from windowing systems and desktop mimicry, so it's actually not surprising that Apple decided to just extend an existing and incredibly successful model that they have with iPhone OS.

Aha, but if that's the case then is there any point in getting one of these iPads, especially considering I already have an iPhone? Well the key I think to my justification (call it rationalisation if you will) is that there is an operative word to the iPad death cry on the lips of myopic pundits.

"It's a big iPod Touch"

The increased screen size suggests a lot more than larger movies and a glorified digital photo frame. It offers greater levels of interaction that is now afforded by superior screen real estate. While iPhone apps will initially be the only third party software available, it won't take long for iPad specific apps to arrive and present a more intuitive (dare I say intimate) level of mobile productivity. Lots of people assume that the overlap in functionality will heavily rest between the iPhone and the iPad, while I actually see (or at least hope) to have the cannibalisation occur at the other end of the bridge, with more and more applications that I work with on my MacBook being transferred to the iPad.

The promise of this can already be seen in Apple's own offering of a redesigned iWork for the new device. I'd imagine that most of the following things I use my laptop for will fall by the wayside:

Browsing full size websites - sans Flash but here's a hope that HTML5 comes along sooner rather than later

Word processing - Typing on a larger screen should be easier than the iPhone, and there's always the keyboard dock. Great for blogging on the go

Image Editing - Photoshop for processing RAWs on this would be super! Once again, transferring photos over to the iPad with the camera connector will be really useful while on holidays

PDF/Comic/Graphic Intensive reading - I do love GoodReader for the iPhone but it's still hard to read a text with lots of graphics unless I'm on a computer. I'd guess that reading PDF text books will be fantastic on an iPad

Finance Tracking - I'd love to see something like MoneyWell on an iPad. Finance apps for the iPhone never did anything for me with the smaller screen

Note Taking - I take short notes in Evernote on the iPhone but if I'm at a meeting then I still currently need my laptop. The iPad would be so much better for this

That's not even touching on all the potential when it comes to games on a larger format screen. I'd love to get my hands on an RTS designed for the iPad. Granted that the lack of keyboard shortcuts may be a problem initially, but I wouldn't be surprised to see new UI grammar being invented for the multitouch screen that will allow us to compete at the same level as keyboard/mouse jockeys.

So this is bye bye laptop/desktop?

Heck no! This has been marketed as a device between a laptop and a smartphone and I don't think that's just greed on Apple's part. There are still a number of activities that make more sense on a fully fledged computer, but the thing is most of these aren't really day to day activities, more akin to what one would use a server for.

Downloading Torrents - Can't live without my movies, TV shows and games. I'm unlikely to chain a mobile device to the wall all day to get the latest episode of How I Met Your Mother

Encoding - Once again, ripping a CD/DVD or burning media doesn't really make sense to me on a tablet

Serving media - Of course the same machine in our house that downloads media would need to stream it to the Apple TV and other portable media players, iPad included!

iPhone/iPad Management - Apple haven't said too much about how the iPad and iPhone would interact with each other. It would be great if I could sync between the two devices without the need for a desktop hub, but I don't know if that's going to happen

Programming - Unless they release XCode for the iPad, I can't see how I can give up my MacBook

The last point is an interesting one I think, though I doubt anything will come out of it. It would be pretty cool to be able to close the loop and create simple applications on the device itself without having to use OSX.

So your iPhone becomes a dumb mobile

Far from it. I still think that there will be lots of apps that make more sense on the iPhone as a smaller and always connected mobile device, especially when I only plan on getting the WIFI only version of the iPad. Social networking, RSS feeds, media, GPS navigation and casual gaming just to name a few, not to mention having a ubiquitous camera for taking pictures and movies. I also think that the iPhone will be a better device for listening to music, as I've always been paranoid about missing phone calls when I have my earphones in.

It depends on what App Developers do, but I think the iPhone would also make a fantastic satellite device for the iPad. They both run the same operating system (basically) so I could see applications with functionality stretched across both devices. Perhaps a note taking application on the iPhone synced to a text book app on the iPad. A Scrabble boardgame with the iPhone used to display your tiles. A graphics application with the iPhone acting as a palette. You get the idea.

So no disappointments then?

Hrmm... not quite. My cheery optimism for the gospel of Apple can only take me so far. Granted that some of the things on my wish list are a symptom of waiting for the iUnicorn (that mythical Jobsian device that does everything from solving world hunger to toasting waffles), but a guy can still dream.

Touch-inspired iLife - iWork is great and I'm really happy that they released that, and of course Photos is getting closer to iPhoto with each release, but I was kind of looking forward to seeing Garageband and iMovie at least on the iPad. I'm sure that the App Store will cough up an alternative before long but it would have been nice to see Apple's take on this

No iBooks store in Australia - Granted I'd still probably be using Stanza to read my free ePub books anyway, but it would have been nice to see the iBooks store as a worldwide release. It took quite a while for iTunes movies and TV shows to come here, so hopefully the wait won't be as long

Revolutionary Text Input - A large size keyboard seems a little unimaginative, and I'm not entirely convinced that this will be easy to use one handed. Placing the tablet in landscape mode on the lap makes sense, but I think it will still be important to type while standing or on the move. Will have to try it out first hand

The Name - Enough has been said about this, have a look here. I mean iPad... really? I guess if Nintendo can make millions selling a console that sounds like a bodily function then anything goes.

Another sticking point I have is with the demonstrated user interface. Holdonaminute, no I haven't done an about face. I do think that blowing up the iPhone OS to a larger screen makes sense as a whole, but there are a few tweaks that could have been made on the Home screen to take advantage of the extra space (aside from god ugly backgrounds, what's the deal with that?). Increasing the number of Apps that fit on a page by another column would have been nice. That lock screen is also looking pretty stark. If I had to guess though, I'd say that Apple have simply stuck with what's familiar to get people familiar with iPod Touches and iPhones to adopt the system, and will unveil an evolutionary UI change in the next version of the iPhone OS. Of course there's that iUnicorn again...

So you're getting one then...

Yeah, hopefully in March when they release it and when we're back in Malaysia. I've got high hopes for the thing and my gadget lust is going into overdrive. Especially when I consider how even the first iPhone model released has changed with each new version of the operating system.

I sit here on the couch typing this on my MacBook, smelling some much needed rain falling on our drought stricken grass, and I wish I were holding an iPad. Horrible name and all.

Australia Day Break

2010-01-26T20:47:00.002+10:00

With Australia Day falling on a Tuesday this year, Alsie and I took Monday off to stretch the weekend a little longer. We filled the Saturday and Sunday preparing and hosting our first decently sized party at the newly spruced up house, inviting a bunch of Flight Centre mates with partners and children over. I was a little worried as we've never had that many people over (over fifteen) but I think we came through it fairly unscathed. No breakages or food poisonings at any rate, though we continue to discover how unprepared our house is for little children. I also overestimated how much food we'd need so people were taking back quite a bit of food that they brought over, which was somewhat embarrassing. Hopefully all things that will come with practise. All in all a great night with good food, super company and a cacophony of discordant singing.

After reading about a sale at Domayne on oz-bargain (absolutely in love with that site by the way), we tromped down to the Valley on Monday to see if anything would catch our fancy. I'd normally say that the stuff in there is a little too rich for our blood but who could resist a sale? After a little deliberation we've placed an order for a chic two seater with a pair of matching chat chairs that rock, figuratively and literally. It's now on order and we should hopefully be getting them in a couple of weeks.

While in the valley I finally got a chance to take Alison to Poppy Cake to try some of their famous cupcakes. The shop itself was pretty kitsch and with the sweltering weather we've had recently I treated myself to an ice-cream soda. Great cup cakes, though they're so rich that you can only really have one.

On Australia Day we decided to take things slow, staying home to occupy ourselves in the kitchen and the garden. A recent attempt at making our own pizza dough has inspired Alsie to try her hand at making bread rolls. They were absolutely beautiful as a side at lunch, complimenting the blackened cajun salmon, enoki mushrooms and green beans we plated up. For dinner we unpacked and barbecued some vacuum sealed steaks we picked up at the butcher down the road, served with some grilled corn and baked potatoes with sour cream. No damper this year but I think we managed to have ourselves some decent tukka.

Between gorging ourselves and lazing on the couch watching episodes of House, we kept ourselves busy getting back into the odd jobs that needed our attention around the home. The utility room is going to be carpeted this Saturday, so Alison dove in to painting the concrete steps. We just chose a plain white and it's going to need a few more coats, but I think it's looking cleaner already.

The vegie patch has remained neglected by us, but we took a small step towards having a working garden by setting up some trestles for a passionfruit vine on the back fence. Alison has always wanted one of these and I'm certainly looking forward to some passionfruit cakes... or ice-cream... mmm. I got a chance to use my drill once again to drill the pilot holes (look at me, I sound all handy and stuff), though this required a pretty long extension cord to get power to the back of the house. The final result doesn't look too shabby though. Let's hope the plant gets enough sun to grow and bear fruit.

I was also busy in the front garden getting more root barriers into the ground, hoping to stave off the expanding turf from growing where it shouldn't. It's a lot easier to put these things in before laying the turf rather than doing it retrospectively, so this took forever. Even then we ran out of root barrier so the jobs still not over. *sigh*

Back to work again tomorrow but it's not so bad being a short week. I'm also keenly looking forward to the 27th/28th with the Apple keynote. It seems as though the Apple Tablet is all but ready to be unveiled, with the keynote starting at 4am on the 28th, Brisbane time. I'm so excited about this that I think I'll wake up to watch the keynote live on the Twit TV feed. Could be a huge let down, but I think this could be the start to a whole new chapter in personal computing... I'm such an Apple-whore...

An Assortment of Events

2010-01-17T17:33:00.008+10:00

Yikes! I had intended to post through our Christmas break but I guess we were just too busy actually doing stuff. New Year's resolution (hah!) is to post more frequently rather than clumping everything together. I'll strive for brevity here for the sake of your eyes and my fingers.

Another Toowoomba Christmas

No surprise that we spent another year in Toowoomba with the family. Food was superb as expected and it was nice to have a little break before the big renovation push over the Christmas/New Year hols. It's been tradition as of late to break into a recital of the 12 days of Christmas after dinner, though I don't know how much longer we can convince the ageing cousins to join in.

A New TV for John

We helped John buy a new TV not too long ago. It didn't take long after setting it up to realise that we could have gone for something a little bigger (which as far as TVs go is always better), so we braved the boxing day sales at JB Hifi to get an upgrade.

Striking while the iron was hot, I not only picked up a 42" LCD, but also got two Topfield PVRs (another one for the 'old' TV up back now) and a blu-ray player. I'm pretty chuffed with the whole arrangement now, though at some point it would be lovely to have an amp added to the living room. I reckon that might be a bridge too far unfortunately.

Gardening and Jobs in Brisbane

Our yard had turned into a jungle by the time we returned from Toowoomba so it was time to get the mower out. This would be the first time since starting the renovation and laying down turf so I was pretty excited. Even Alsie helped out with the little strip of grass out the back.

The little garden bed next to our patio was planted with alternating variegated and red backed gingers. Rather tropical I think and it gives the area a lovely resort feel to it (which came in useful later as you'll see)

We got a handyman to help install some Elfa shelving, which was a step closer to getting some use out of the new utility room. I toyed around with the idea of installing the top track myself but I'm glad I didn't given how much trouble the poor guy had. The modular design of this system is great as we'll be able to buy more as we need it.

I had an excuse to get the drill out to put together some vegetable beds. Not sure what we'll plant just yet, though we've been very happy with the tomatoes we grew in a pot. I'm thinking of some eggplants and courgettes as well, with some herbs and perhaps a passion fruit vine in some of the smaller barrels.

By the weekend we were joined by John and Sheena to attack the back yard. It's amazing what some root barriers, wood chip and a little raked soil will do. The turfing would have to come a week after.

Resort del Chua

Uninspired at the thought of returning to work, we decided to do something a little special on the last day of our break. Of course we were also exhausted from a full week in the garden and didn't want to travel too far, so we checked into a charming little resort in the area. We felt pretty relaxed after a lovely day of nibbles, freshly blended smoothies, outdoor movies, boardgames and BBQ prawns. Two storms rolled on through in the late afternoon but I was adamant that we stay outside under cover rather than retreat indoors. Had a great time and felt very much at home so we'll definitely come back.

Alsie had a birthday

My baby girl got a little older on the 7th of January. The lucky thing was showered with presents in the morning from friends and family.

I've had one of the presents burning a hole in my desk drawer at the office for about two months now. It's a gorgeous pendant from Christine's new store, so I got to support a friend and get Alsie some bling at the same time. Win! Alsie also got some matching earrings and a lovely complimentary bookmark.

It was hard keeping the site a secret from Alison but I managed to hold my tongue in the end. I think Christine's done exceptionally well and would recommend checking out her wares. This is a lame photo taken on my phone and hardly does the piece justice so head over to her site for better idea.

A fence came down

Renovating neighbours Joel and Katie haven't had too much luck lately. They've tried their best to help fix the last shared disaster with the paint on our car port but it just refuses to budge.

Bad luck struck once more when they were excavating in their backyard. While driving the digger past our fence, the earth gave way and knocked over our fence which in turn popped off the sleepers of our retaining wall. The dodgy fence was hardly reinforced so it's not surprising really.

They had fixed the fence as best they could by the time we came home, though there's still a little more to do.

We could have gotten all flustered about it but I guess these things happen and they're keen to help us fix the problem. It's just a bummer as we thought we were done with that side of the house. At least we managed to save our liriopes, and have temporarily planted them in one of the vegie patches until we can backfill our retaining wall again.

More Turf

The turf was delivered the week after we prepped the back yard, so John and Sheena had to come down once more to lend us a hand. Thankfully there was only half the area this time compared to the front yard so it didn't end up taking all that much time.

Not content with an easy task, we decided to tackle something else while help was handy. The target turned out to be my old nemesis, the stump around the under side of the house, so the Arborator had to ride once more. It took a lot of digging, pulling and levering but we got that sucker out in the end.

Toilet Tiled

The new toilet has also been tiled by a friend of John's, and we're pleased with the results. This was another job I'm glad I didn't have to do after seeing how fiddly it was to get the tiles cut and level.

What next in 2010?

Phew! Seems like we've been a little busy, but there's still quite a bit to come. We're getting quotes in to have the new utility room carpeted soon which will be the last functional change to the house. There's also some roofing work that needs to be done to spruce up the existing house to bring it in line with the new roofs. At some point we'll also have to figure out what we're doing on the eastern side of the house where the bins are.

Lots to look forward to as the year goes on. A trip back to Malaysia to see mum and family will be most welcome in late March, where I'm also hoping to take advantage of arbitrage and pick up the hotly speculated Apple Tablet. One hopes that I'll have more details about my impending purchase on the 28th of this month should Apple make an announcement.

Towards the end of the year I'm hoping that mum will return the favour and come out for a visit at Christmas. That's certainly going to be incentive for us to have the house complete for her visit. With luck the garden will be nice and established by then.

2009 was great, but roll on 2010!

A Flurry of Activity

2009-12-21T10:50:00.003+10:00

Not sure how I missed writing a post last week, but now I have a heap of banal events to regurgitate. So let's get cooking!

To kick off, a little background news. Andrew's been working on getting into fast world of boob jobs and facial reconstructions for a while now, no doubt with the intention to earn a metric f$@k load of moolah to pay for that Maserati he's been eyeing. Not that we'd expect anything less from our boy genius, but he's been offered a plastics rotation in the magical far off land of Adelaide, and while we couldn't be happier for him it does mean that our steadfast Brisbane comrades will be packing up their dog to leave us for the time being. Such bittersweetness.

Anyways, the reason for the exposition is to provide some context around our latest visit to their lovely home with camera gear in tow. I was "commissioned", if an amateur shutterbug could be bold enough to use the term, to take some snaps of their abode for the impending rental listing. All faults represented belong to the photographer rather than the subject of course.

It was a rather cloudy day so I really wish I had a proper flash gun and slaves to light the rooms and outside properly. I've always worked with natural light up till now but I'm starting to think I should be investing in gear that will allow me to control my lighting environment better. There's only so much that my meagre photoshop skills can fix in post processing after all. I found balancing exposure of the warm indoor lights with the cool light of an overcast day to be especially challenging.

As for our own house, things have progressed quite nicely in the last fortnight. In fact, as of today we are officially out of the realm of work that needs to be done by tradies (w00t no more dirty shoe prints on our floors!). The sink we've been waiting for has finally turned up so the plumber came back to finish off the downpipes, toilet and sinks. An added bonus was that he stirred up the pipes when installing the hot water regulator, which has dislodged a large collection of rust and almost doubled our water pressure. Still getting used to the idea of being able to use more than one tap at a time.

The painters also got started last week and have done a great job of matching the colours. All the joins, nail holes and splinters from the builders have been fixed so the final result looks stunning. Amazing what a fresh coat of paint does to a place.

Unfortunately we'll still have to get up on the ladder to do the touchups for the patio and car port rafters ourselves. Something that I'm saving for the Christmas break. The rest of the work is up to us anyway so roll 'em sleeves up and prepare to get dirty.

To cover a large expanse of bare concrete in front of the deck, Alison and I ordered this rather nifty outdoor rug from America. It's made of 95% recycled plastic, presumably from soft drink bottles according to the manufacturer, and can be hosed off with gay abandon. I normally wouldn't be one to choose such a garish pattern, but Alison was rather smitten with the design so I relented. Bollywood it may be but it's still preferable to the dull harsh grey of slab. The rest of the patio will be selectively concealed by supple furniture to drape ourselves over on warm summer days.

Rusty has also become an outdoors dog, adding his charming hues to the mix. I'm not entirely convinced if that's going to be his permanent post but it'll do for now until the vegie patch comes along. It's nice to be greeted by a friendly face as you walk around the side of the house.

John and Sheena came down on the weekend for another working bee, this time with the aim to lay some pavers around the side. We ended up building a path from the back of the patio to the clothes line as I was rather keen to have a line in place to mark we will need to turf. I toyed with the idea of paving the whole area under the clothes line, but I think John and Alison's idea of using mulch will prove to be far more maintainable.

Through this whole DIY building process, I'm either going to bulk up muscles I've long since forgotten or break my back in two. Depends on my bone density and whether my suffering spinal column decides to give out first I guess. Boy were those bloody pavers heavy, and we even got the smaller ones which should have been easier to install. It looks like a small path, but we still had to lug over a tonne (that's not hyperbole by the way) of bedding sand and 44 of these 400x400 pavers around the back of the house.

Placing the pavers was slow going initially, but the time we took seemed to diminish in proportion to our increasing aptitude, or perhaps we became less stringent with each merciless wave of lethargy. By the end of it we were slamming the bastards down just to finish before it started to rain. One hopes that traffic will settle some of the more wobbly pieces at the end.

The garden has received a bit more attention from us as well, and we're proud to announce that the front yard is finally complete! Next to the carport we've planted a line of Murrayas and scattered about nine bags of heavy chip bark to tidy things and dissuade weeds from joining the party. Hopefully this will grow into a reasonable hedge in a few years.

The last small garden bed next to the path was a little tricky to plant due to the severe slope. Given that it was so close to the concrete I didn't want to put in anything with invasive roots, but it had to get enough height eventually to peek over the crest. In the end we've opted for a trio of Gardenias at the back of the bank, with a skirt of blue Agapanthus to compliment the cream flowers. It'll take a lot more water than some of the other plants but at least it's right next to the tap.

So work continues. Christmas is just around the corner and then we'll get cracking into some of the beds and jobs around the back of the house. I'm especially looking forward to putting in our line of ornamental gingers so that our patio area can get some greenery. It's been ironic that all our hard work thus far has been for the area of the house that we hardly use. Still, it's certainly nice to be able to drive in to this.

Apologies for the vertigo inducing panorama. No, we don't have a magic front gate that wraps around itself.

Cleaned and Turfed

2009-12-06T18:46:00.003+10:00

Started talking to painters about quotes to get the externals and newly plastered walls painted. I know we should probably embrace the whole home-owner renovation experience and get our hands dirty, but in truth I'm just lazy and would likely guff it up. We got two quotes back and one seemed ridiculously cheap so we decided to go with that one. The painter as it turns out is the owner's son and seems to have undercosted the whole job. Let's hope that his painting is better than his cost estimation.

With most of the messy work out of the way and cheap paint coming along, Alison and I forked out for some boys to give the house a good clean and scrub. Yes another job that I should be manning up to do but hey, I value my time. Watching the water turn grey as they brushed the weather boards gave me a strange sense of satisfaction. There was a moment of panic when I realised that the jet spray of soapy water was flooding the house through the many cracks in the doors and windows, but nothing that a scramble for towels and frantic mopping couldn't fix.

Saturday was another big slug fest in the garden. The mission this week was to get the front yard turfed and presentable. To begin with, John showed us how to rake up the left over rocks and get the ground levels right in preparation for the soil to be delivered. Tiring work, but before long we had a trailer load of left over construction rubble to be taken to the dump later.

Then the good soil was delivered and had to be wheelbarrowed and raked across the area to be turfed. We left a couple of strips bare for garden beds to come.

Just when we'd pretty much finished getting the ground ready, this huge truck pulled up with piles upon piles of good Sir Walter turf. Our two pallets were dropped off and we immediately got to laying the strips.

We've always liked Sir Walter as it seems to stay green in the worst conditions. Particularly important in during the current drought. I'm also rather fond of the texture on your feet as the blades are wide and bouncy. Should be nice and soft to lie down on one hopes, as long as those nasty green ants don't decide to spoil the party.

This stuff turned out to be a lot heavier than we'd expected so our arms got a real workout. Especially when you're paranoid about getting good coverage and keeping the lines straight. We even had a pleasant surprise when our neighbour Manni donned his gardening gloves and came over to help us move some left over dirt to the back. Much appreciated as we were exhausted by that point. It took a while but we got there in the end.

John's estimation for what we'd need was scarily accurate, but even so we ended up with three strips left over. Not keen on wasting expensive turf we thought we'd have a teaser strip for the backyard so that we could imagine what things will look like eventually. Looks rather smart next to our new outdoor dining table I think.

We're going to have to water the lawn pretty frequently over the next month. Initial soakings are taking forever to do but it's important to get the roots to grow deep and establish themselves. Good thing there's a relaxation on water restrictions at the moment for home owners installing new turf.

On Sunday we popped out to the markets to pick up a tray of mondo grass to plant on the border between the turf and driveway. We packed them in fairly densely so hopefully it won't take too long for the clumps to join up.

We still need to get the garden bed next to the car port planted up to give the cars some shade from the morning sun (thinking a hedge of moraeas at the moment) as well as another bed next to the side path down to the lock up area, but overall the front yard is pretty much finished. Backyard is the next big job...

Lights and Islands

2009-12-02T20:00:00.002+10:00

Everything except for the plumbing is done now. Apparently that blasted sink is still making its way on the delivery route from Melbourne to Sydney, so with luck we'll have it by the end of this week. At least we have working lights now in the front and back. Alison and I have had a couple of BBQ dinners in the new area and aside from the bugs we love it. I'm sure we'll get used to sharing the outdoors with the wildlife.

You wouldn't think that a sensor light would be difficult to setup, but the one we bought must have been the finnickiest of the bunch. Half the time it was picking up a bus driving past on the street but refused to register the two of us waving our arms in front of it. I think I got it right in the end, though it only comes on once you turn the headlights off when driving in.

Coming up to Friday was pretty busy as Flight Centre flew all the technology guys out to Hamilton Island for a weekend conference. Working on a weekend isn't usually all that flash, though with a view like this from the room I found it pretty hard to complain too much.

Friday was a free day so we made the most of it on the beach with a bit of volleyball, swimming and frisbee. Staying true to Flight Centre culture, a fair few people jumped into the pool bar and proceeded to get really sloshed. Not really in the mood to get hammered this early in the trip, some of us decided to brave the 2.5K trek up to Passage Peak to enjoy the view. The last 900 metres or so were absolutely brutal (at least I thought so) and my camera bag was feeling very heavy by the end of it. Much cursing and sweating later we reached the end of the line and stopped to rest and take in the view.

Saturday was the day of the actual conference. The overall theme was "Challenge" and was par for the course with cheesy corporate planning days. One thing that Flight Centre do well with conferences though is organising guest speakers to give talks. This time we got to listen to Jesse Martin retell his solo unassisted voyage around the world. Pretty fascinating tale really, though if I were being cynical I would point out that he's looking for more channels to push the DVD about his trip.

The conference venue was remarkable, overlooking the mouth of the harbour and the air strip so we got to see boats and planes come and go all day. There may have been quite a lot of traffic, but this is still the prettiest intersection I've ever seen.

Saturday night turned out to be fairly boozy once more, though I retired early to get up the next morning at try my hand at sea kayaking. Not to say that I didn't down a few beers along the way. Wouldn't want to go against the grain after all.

Back at work again now and still feeling tired from the weekend. Got to get my energy levels back up though as we're going to be turfing the front yard this Saturday. No rest for the wicked!

Almost there...

2009-11-22T18:08:00.003+10:00

Argh! It's frustrating when the finish line is in sight but it seems to take forever to cross it. Due to a series of communication snafus, we didn't get any electrical or plumbing work done this week. The sparkies for some reason were under the impression that the job was done, even though the fans, lights and external power points haven't been touched yet. As for the water works, the wrong sink was ordered and would have been far too big for our toilet. At least the electricals should be done tomorrow, but we'll be without down pipes, the sink and the new toilet for a while yet.

There's not much left to do with the actual building. All the doors have been installed now in the store, which is a relief as we can finally lock up the house.

The old front door was sticking a fair bit so we got that replaced too. Since this was pretty much the last bit of work to be done indoors (aside from one more set of light switches), I immediately ripped off all the drop sheets and rolled out the carpet again. It's nice to have the place feel like home again. At least until we have to start painting everything.

To kick the weekend off we started with the final trip to the dump. It was a big load but we got there without incident thanks to John's clever use of rope and a cargo net.

With the rubbish out of the way, we dove into the designated project of the week. In this case the corner garden bed. We knew we'd like to have some shade from here eventually so the big feature will be the red grevillea at the back. It's a little small and whispy now but this should hopefully grow to provide cover. To fill out the rest of the area we planted an assortment of agapanthus, grasses and a giant yucca we had growing in a pot. The old lilly pillies behind may not survive but we're still willing to leave them in and give them a go. Then it was all covered up in our favourite mulch, hoop pine. We think the results are rather fetching.

Next we headed along the retaining wall. To get started, John filled a layer of river rocks to help keep the dirt from seeping through. Then we shovelled in filler from the holes that were dug in the corner garden bed, before topping up with some nicer soil from the landscape suppliers down the road. To break up the wooden fence we planted a line of stripey white liriope. Hopefully they'll spread to meet each other.

Tomorrow should see the last bits of the building finished, as we just have the patio out the back to seal, a few touch ups and the front gate to be rehung. Oh, and the lights of course but we've had our hopes up before. Then it'll just be the plumbing. Come on, let's finish this sucker already!

Some Assembly Required

2009-11-16T18:09:00.002+10:00

Not too much work done last week on Thursday and Friday. I was hoping for the lights to be installed by the sparkies in time for the weekend, but I guess they must have hit a snag or two as we could only see a few power points installed and wires tidied up. At least most of the messy work is finished and the utility room is starting to look nicer now that the plastering is done and the skirting boards have been installed. Won't be long before the real doors are put in and that old fly screen can be tossed out.

In between waiting for the plaster to dry, the builders also managed to find time to put up the gate on our storage room so that's now complete and ready to be used. It's currently full of their tools so I guess I'll just have to wait a little longer before chucking my gear in there.

Seeing as we're on the tail end of this whole project, I rolled my sleeves up to get the landing sanded and stained while the builder's decking oil was still available. It's expensive stuff to buy for yourself otherwise! Sanding by hand isn't especially fun but it didn't take as long as I thought it would. It's amazing what a difference it makes too.

A second coat the next day and we have a pretty nice looking spot to sit and have a cuppa in the morning. At least until we get some real furniture for outside.

Since moving into the house we've been struggling with the lack of in built wardrobes in the bedrooms. Up till now we've had to scurry in varying states of undress between rooms to get changed, as we've never had space in the main bedroom to store clothes. Sick of this situation I put my foot down and cajoled Alison into trekking out to Ikea to get some bed side drawers.

We've been looking around for a while and this set of two fit the room perfectly. As a bonus the tall skinny one has a mirror on a hinge for morning tie routines. One of the few bits of Swedish furniture we've bought that didn't need an alan key, just stupidly difficult screws to drill into wood. I have a corker of a blister now to show for my efforts.

In hindsight, I think we should have gotten the three drawer for beside the bed as we can't see the clock anymore. Might pick one up and move the four drawer into another room.

If all goes well the work should be done by the end of this week. Fingers crossed we'll be able to start cleaning up our house properly this weekend!

Deck and Gardening

2009-11-08T16:35:00.003+10:00

We've hit a bit of a speed bump with the renovations. Our builder has an urgent job that needs to get done with his guys which means that we lost two days this week and likely three from the next, putting a halt to what was supposed to be the last big push to finish. Shame, but at the same time we've embraced this opportunity to have a break from building mess and banished the sea of drop sheets that we've had to put up with for the past three weeks.

Even so, three solid days of building have produced results from the last update. We now have a new deck/landing from the dining room and laundry to feed onto the out door area, and the BBQ section is half finished with just the sink and the storage gate to go in.

The storage area behind has taken shape as well which has already proven to be a nice screen for the toilet and bathroom. I'd imagine that this will eventually house a table tennis table along with handy tools and perhaps sporting stuff.

The last new hole in the house has been cut out, opening up the entrance way to the old garage. Three concrete steps were poured though the sliding door has not been fitted on as yet. It's a hole for bugs to flutter through though we haven't seen too many in the house thankfully.

They even managed to finish sheeting the new room up which certainly brightens the look. Plastering will be the next job I suppose before lights get installed. Apologies for the angle but I had to lean over partially cured concrete to take the photos.

Not content to have work on the house stall on account of others, we decided to take matters into our own hands (once again with the help of John and Sheena) and get stuck into the garden. The mission on Saturday was to clear a bunch of rubbish from the renovation by taking a couple of loads to the dump, as well as sorting out the eastern bank of our front yard.

Alison and John made short work of an assortment of wood cut offs, doors and concrete blocks and carted off close to a metric tonne (!) worth of rubbish to the Willawong tip. In the mean time Sheena and I strapped on the gardening gloves and removed the sad line of lilly pillies to make room for some Xylosma saplings. We've been told that these should handle the clay better and grow to give us a bit of shade and privacy.

To retain the bank and keep weeds from growing, John and I popped out to the local landscaping suppliers to get a few trailer loads of Hoop Pine bark to spread over our newly sculpted and planted area. I absolutely love this stuff as it's got a funky fresh scent and gives you a neat forest floor look.

It was a hard day of work in the sun but I think the results were worth it. Alison and I also finished up by planting a few more Agapanthus further up the bank. We'll have to get more Hoop Pine and plants to fill up the area but by the time we're finished I think it's going to be a nice looking area that I don't need to mow (Yay!).

To celebrate we thought we'd invite Kath and Andrew over to have a look at the place and break in the BBQ. I needed a hand to figure out what to do with the whole meat on hot plate cooking stuff (and John kindly offered to show me the ropes), but I was very happy with the result. The Beefeater puts out a lot more heat than the old one we had in Annerley and I finally got a chance to use the tongs I got for Christmas. All up a very fun and productive weekend.

Roofs, windows and painting

2009-11-01T17:45:00.003+10:00

Yet another busy week of exciting changes. There were a few showers which threatened to slow down work but the builders managed to get the roofs up on the car port and patio by Thursday even with the rain. The size seems a little excessive though I'm sure we'll find a way to fill the space.

We came home pretty late on Friday but were still keen to see the changes even in the dark. Our old garage has been framed up properly, the sliding door from the dining room installed and the toilet sealed off. I think the area feels a lot more like a room now that the walls are squared up (I always hated that cavity there). That sliding door lets so much light into our living room now and really opens it up, love it.

The yucky old garage door has been taken off and replaced by boards and a new window, which lets heaps of light in to what was a dark and dingy room. I'd expect that the wall on the right will be taken down next week to be replaced by a sliding door into the entry way. Oh, and the walls and ceiling sheeted of course.

The new toilet is taking shape nicely too. It's going to be cramped but there should still be enough space for a suite and micro basin. The back wall and window are in and the door that used to lead out from the entry way has been sealed off. The outline to the right will lead to the new "utility room".

Alsie and I had some homework this weekend as well. The hardwood battens to be used on our little storage area behind the barbeque would need to be coated with decking oil and we "volunteered" for the task. Lucky for us we have beautiful parents as Sheena came down to help tidy while John offered to show us how to prep the material properly. Unfortunately this turned out to be a lot more labour intensive than our original plan so after over six hours of sanding, brushing, painting and rolling we're feeling absolutely buggered. At least the wood looks good.

Powering through the pain we managed to also get two other jobs done, fixing up the internal blinds that some tradies had broken as well as finally assembling the barbeque. Cooking plates and the cabinet doors are now on so all that's left is to get a gas bottle and cure the gear before chucking a couple of snags on the grill.

As we were losing our old garage, the car's been on the street for the past three weeks while this work has all been going on. I'd fully expected some youths to key a door or hail to plummet down while the poor Civic was exposed to the elements. Thankfully she's survived the stint unscathed aside from a little dust and now gets to enjoy her new home. She might look a little lonely once the building materials get cleared out but at least we'll have a spare spot for her automobile friends to come and visit.

It seems like we're coming up to the end of our little project here. I'd say there's only about a week and a bit of work to be done by the builders, after that it's all in our hands to finish up. Woohoo!

Driveway and weekend jobs

2009-10-25T19:56:00.001+10:00

The last of our concrete was poured on Wednesday so we now have a new spanking driveway to the street. It's an expansive sea of hard lines though I'm sure the car port roof and strategic landscaping will soften things up nicely.

Aside from that there haven't been too many changes. Beams were painted and put up in preparation for the roofs next week and our window holes in the old garage have been filled with weatherboard from the side of the house where our sliding door will be installed. Our hardwood battens were supposed to be here for us to oil and seal but that can wait till next weekend.

Oh, I did have a little man-moment on the weekend. The insulation guys had knocked off a heap of lead nail heads to lift the roof and most of the pieces rolled into out gutters. Apparently lead and gutters don't get along too well, something about a galvanic response that results in rust, which meant that I'd have to brave the roof for the first time to clean them out.

I'd love to say that it was a cinch once I got up there but if anything my anxiety only grew the longer I was away from Terra Firma. I scaled the ladder pretty early to avoid the sun but I hadn't factored in the dew on our iron sheets adding to slip factor. I ended up scooting around on my butt all over the roof to avoid slipping and breaking my neck, a far from efficient means of locomotion but it was all my nerves could take.

We also bought a barbeque today and decided to assemble it to give our builder something to work off when cutting the bench and cavity. Shame we underestimated the amount of work involved and only started putting it together at 5:30. Two hours later we downed tools after struggling for a good hour in the dark with three torchlights and the tiniest screws known to man. The doors aren't on yet but at least the cabinet is up and wheels are on.

Reckon it'll just be another three odd weeks before the renovations are complete. Had a chance to show John and Sheena our progress and everyone's excited about what the final product will look like. I know I can't wait.

Comes out in the wash

2009-10-20T20:01:00.002+10:00

Today was going to be another milestone to look forward to. We left the house in the morning with our builder starting to pour concrete for our next big slab for the carport. Everything was going fine and dandy.

Over the last six months we've had water seeping through from a tap on the neighbours fence near the garage. As they've been renovating for over a year, our driveway and yard has been treated to everything from plaster run off to green paint. Fair enough, we can take a little mess as understanding neighbours. I warned them that we'd be pouring the carport this week, and even so we came back home to see this.

To give him credit, he drove over immediately to see what could be done and offered to work something out with our builder. I'm sure it'll come out in the end but it's still annoying as all heck.

Slabs and a lot of dirt

2009-10-17T09:11:00.002+10:00

Week 1 of building is finished and I'm amazed at how quickly work has progressed. There are silly small things in life that you just assume are permanent, and when they change it takes you a while to adjust mentally. The bits of earth and concrete in our backyard for instance, I still can't get over how the house we've known for the past year has changed in such a short time. It's wonderful to see the difference although strangely draining emotionally.

Concrete was poured for our patio slab on Thursday after the mesh, reinforcements and posts were put in. Alison and I found ourselves transfixed that morning, watching them pour and smooth the grey sludge about with rakes and levellers. Fascinating work really and we could have happily stayed to observe all day if we didn't have to go to work to pay for this renovation.

By the time we came back from the office our slab was complete, if a bit green and soft. We were careful not to step or fall onto it of course, though there was a temptation to shove our hands in and write our names. The area is looking nice and big which should make room for all the outdoor furniture we want to get (table tennis table included). That pipe on the right next to the down pipe is where the outdoor sink will be installed along with the bench and a narrow lock up area behind it to keep the bathroom and loo away from the cooking area.

The main focus on Friday was to get the side path, car port and driveway dug up. The excavator was back and lowered the levels around the side of the house so that our earth is below our garage ant capping. You could almost climb onto the roof without a ladder back when we bought the house and now I can't even see the roof unless I jump. Trenches were dug and pipes laid down to take water from the garage down pipe and the new down pipes from the car port out to the gravel pit in the back yard.

The front of the house has also seen some changes this week. Our footings and levels are done for the car port, the driveway has been sculpted out and some of our plants removed. We had initially planned on saving the azalea in the front yard as Alison has been nursing it back to health. In the end we figured it would be best to start from scratch with a long garden bed in front to give the house some shade and shelter from the street.

The car port roof will be pretty close to our boundary line so one of the conditions of our building approval was to have a surveyor out to peg markers and inspect the finished car port. It's yet more money that we didn't expect to have to spend but I guess it's still cheaper than getting into a fight with the neighbours later on. Next week should see some more concrete and the retaining wall put in along the fence line. The builder has also cut an outline of the door between the garage and our entry hall so I suppose that's going to be done soon. Progress is good but all this dust is a pain to clean up... boo...

Fluffy! Muddy!

2009-10-13T19:47:00.005+10:00

Here's a bit of an image dump to show how we've progressed with the renovations. I took an annual leave day on Monday to be home to give some direction (read that as get in the way and ask annoying questions) to the insulation people and the electricians. Our insulation guys arrived pretty early in the morning to get started before the roof got too hot. Can't say I envy the job they had to do, it would have been scorching on a tin roof and it didn't sound like easy work.

While they were up on the roof banging our sheets away I was indoors pointing out where we wanted our fans, lights and new GPOs installed. The ceiling fan in the bedroom is an absolute treat and we're excited about getting some extra power points for use. Especially in the bathroom as we bought a new electric toothbrush on the weekend. :)

Most of the roof had to be lifted to stuff our glasswool batts in, though they just strung them up in the garage. They'll stay that way until our builder gets around to sheeting the room.

Our other big delivery was a huge skip for the concrete and earth to be ripped up on Tuesday. We made good use of it ourselves of course in the mean time, getting rid of some spare boxes and a huge mound of tree cuttings.

Tuesday morning was a very early start for the builders. So early in fact that I actually had to wave at one out the window when I woke up at 5:20am. Won't see me at work that early nosiree, but great for us. We just need to remember that the windows into the bathroom and toilet aren't nearly as opaque as we think.

I was biting my nails at work all day as the weather radar showed huge storms across Brisbane in the afternoon. I was fully expecting a mud pit in the yard and a flooded lounge room from misplaced roof sheets. It did turn out to be pretty muddy when we got home but not as bad as it could have been. Grateful that we bought a spare change of shoes to get through that slop though.

The backyard has had all the levels dropped and holes dug for reinforcing and posts. You can actually see on the left how far they've dug down to drop our ground level below the ant capping and for the slab to come. They also obviously got a start on the new utility room, starting to cut out the door frame. If all goes well then this whole area will be concrete by the weekend.

The other bonus we have from removing the earth is we got our ground levelled off in the back. A bunch of trees that we didn't want also fell victim to the digger and it's bizzare looking over so much space. There'll be heaps of room for the clothes line and garden beds to come.

Very exciting and not bad for Day 1. Expect more photos to follow.

Fan of Games

2009-10-04T16:16:00.003+10:00

Phew, we've had a quite a productive weekend. Firstly I'm pleased to say that we've officially signed the contract with our builder so there's no turning back now. One would argue I suppose that turning our backyard upside down would have been the point of no return but there's something final about putting your mark to paper. Unfortunately the job won't actually start until the week after (officially on the 13th of October) so we have to put up with unworked ground for a little while more.

The fans and lights that we ordered also came in this weekend, so we dumped all that in the garage we just cleared last week. Great timing as we have a sparky coming through on the 12th to install some of the lights, fans and GPOs inside the house. This will all be happening on the same day that we're having insulation batts installed in the roof to help deal with the upcoming summer heat. Rather nice as the insulation is largely subsidised by the Australian government, score!

Not content with the amount of money we're already throwing into the house, I somehow thought it would be appropriate to pick up something I've been eyeing for a while... a Playstation 3. One of the new discounted Slim versions that is. To be fair, I've been saving up my pocket money for this for months now (or some other lust worthy gadget) so this shouldn't affect our renovation coffers.

We got a reasonable deal on it and picked up Little Big Planet as well as Metal Gear Solid 4 to play. We had a taste of LBP at Kath and Andrew's one night so we knew it would be wicked fun. It's been a while since I've played an MGS game so I'm a little pathetic for now but hope to improve with practice. At least I have a full collection now of consoles and can look forward to great stuff like God of War 3 and Final Fantasy XIII.

Speaking of Final Fantasy, I stumbled across this little video the other day and was extremely impressed. It's basically a mashup with the Dead or Alive and Final Fantasy girls having a big melee. Great choreography for a fan made video and certainly epic in scale. I'm a bit of a sucker for these things.

This is actually the second in a series (the first can be seen here) but it's the longest with the largest cast. Oh and of course Tifa kicks butt once more so I'm obviously pleased, although I was a little torn between cheering for her and Hitomi. The others in the series are certainly worth watching as well and I'm eager to see more.

Just one more game related video. I've somehow managed to miss the announcement of a little game called Torchlight. It's by the same people who did Hellgate London, which I thought was a disappointment. This on the other hand looks quite promising and I shouldn't have too long to wait before finding out for myself as it'll be released on the 27th of this month. Something to tie me over till Diablo 3 comes out.

Alright, now back to playing games. :)

Clearing the Garage

2009-09-26T15:19:00.002+10:00

There are a heap of small jobs to do in preparation before the builder starts work, so this weekend we got into tackling the mess in our garage. A collection of suitcases, gardening tools and boxes of forgotten trinkets lined the back of the room, largely untouched since they were dumped there all those months ago. They would have likely remained there too if we weren't forced to make way for the upcoming conversion of this room into a new store/utility area.

Sorting out the junk didn't take too long though I did have to suppress my hoarding reflex. Some items that made the cull have been lying around "just-in-case" for close to ten years, including my rollerblades from college, a chin up bar that Alison has been trying to throw out since we met and my good old playstation 2. Perhaps this is a fine excuse to get a playstation 3...

What we decided to keep stuffed into boxes and stored in the lockup area under the house. We no longer have easy access to the bicycles or the lawn mower though I'm sure that won't be a problem given the current state of the garden.

Speaking of our back yard, the holes and pipes have all been backfilled now. It still looks rather bleak and the ground is alarmingly soft in some areas but at least we don't have to worry about falling into a pit of poo. Only bummer is that they didn't setup our washing line again as they said they would, though I suppose it might be best delayed until the ground is levelled off. Not like we can hang clothes out in our dust bowl anyway.

With much a plumb

2009-09-23T22:09:00.001+10:00

It's been a very exciting week. After what feels like an eternity of planning and careful negotiations, we finally break ground with our renovations with some necessary plumbing work.

The previous owners made some pretty dodgy additions to the pipes around the house, resulting in a bunch of outlets that just spilt out onto concrete or bare dirt. That's if the water didn't just overflow from clogged gutters. It's a great feeling to know that these problems will be fixed along with the addition of pipes for the new toilet and outdoor sink.

Monday morning started with a big digger just squeezing by our garage to dig up our backyard, absolutely destroying one of the lilly pillies on the way past. The workers had to do a little archeological exploration to find the sewage line as this was no where near the mark on the council plans. They ended up going through a few layers of building history, eventually digging up the old septic tank, grease trap and terracotta pipe work.

By the end of the first day we had a wrecked backyard and a good start on the pipes laid down. It was all good until we realised that the old pipes from the toilet were broken and left open for all the world to see.

After briefly considering checking into a motel, we decided to test our luck and impose on Kath and Andrew for emergency lodgings (and amenities of course). Our hosts were very hospitable and we got our share of licks during the visit, mostly from their adorable dog Frankie.

Everything was fixed up the day after thankfully and I'm developing an appreciation for what plumbers do. The work is certainly messy but I have a feeling that this is just the tip of the iceberg with our renovation.

The inspector came by this morning and gave the work a green light so we're good to go for the next stage. At least we would be if we had our engineering plans which are taking a little longer to get through than we expected. The builder thinks we should have our plans back by next week and then it's just another three days or so to get building approval before work can begin in earnest. In the mean time, we just have the return of the digger tomorrow to look forward to as those big holes need to be covered up before the weekend. Especially this one...

Things are going quick, we'll be pretty busy moving things out of the garage and picking paint colours over the next week. Better buckle up for the ride.

Searching for Snow White

2009-09-13T17:52:00.003+10:00

I was so into the idea of geocaching back when we first started that I even added a tag on the blog for all the treasure hunting posts that would no doubt follow. It's now almost two years later and we haven't cracked out the GPS in search of caches since that initial foray.

Holding my breath to see if this is going to keep, but we went on another walk today to find caches. Well, I did anyway... Alison just came along for the stroll and to humour me. It all started when I downloaded the official geocaching application for the iPhone. Pretty snazzy app actually. Amazing that I can get away with one device while I had to lug out our Garmin GPS, a camera and a notepad when we first tried geocaching.

As part of my cunning plan to keep us going with this fascinating hobby, I picked two caches to hunt for that are actually part of a set of seven (or eight depending on how you look at it). The people that maintain these caches have themed it after the Seven Dwarfs (yes, I'm normally one to use the "Dwarves" plural form but I'm being faithful given the context) with each cache providing a clue to find the final cache, Snow White.

The first cache we found was Sneezy, hidden in the rock wall beside a shaded path around a duck pond in the Edenbrooke estate nearby. With all my appreciation for convergence of technology, my phone was useless when it came to writing in the supplied log book as we forgot to bring a pen along. Doh.

At least we got the clue though and the ducks were cute. Jumping on the opportunity to do another nearby cache, we headed north in search of Grumpy. This one took a little longer and a touch more courage as I was sticking my hand into fallen tree stumps, hoping to find a plastic container rather than a redback. The iPhone GPS isn't all that accurate either which certainly didn't help but I managed to get there in the end.

Two down, five more to go. Here's hoping I can stick to it this time.

Ocakbasi, I've found you

2009-09-11T17:51:00.002+10:00

There are lots of things I miss about the UK, though people usually give me a peculiar look when I mention that it's often the food that I pine for the most. Given that I did a fair bit of growing up there I'd say a big part of my junk food palate was defined by my adolescent binges, initially at boarding school in Exeter, then at university as a starving undergrad. While I've had some success in locating comfort snacks of the prepackaged variety, I haven't had as much luck with take away food. One kebab shop in particular.

It was a combination of factors that resulted in the rise of Ocakbasi, a non-descript kebab place in Canterbury, to become the defining establishment of my uncouth culinary experience. For one, they delivered at all hours which no doubt appealed to the English drinking public and lazy students. They were also one of the few halal restaurants, so my predominantly Malaysian muslim friends could gorge themselves guilt-free. The key point however was a magical mixture of the British willingness to serve chips with anything, topped with a curious assortment of available sauces. Thus was born the Ocakbasi chicken doner meat and chips, with burger sauce, garlic sauce and mayonnaise.

Oh yeah, it looks disgusting and you'd wake up feeling like a grease truck the morning after, but we kept going back for more.

Initially when I came to Australia I didn't find as much love for the spud in Aussie culture. Few of the kebab shops here served chips, and even if they did none were willing to honour my reasonable request to slop some kebab meat on a bed of chips. I even went as far as to buy a kebab from one store, chips from another and smack them together. It just wasn't the same though... no where near. It seemed like such a simple thing but my hankering for kebab and chips went unsatisfied for six long years.

Then it all changed. Alison and I popped by Mt Ommaney to pick up Beatles Rockband on Friday, which was when I did a double take on a menu item at Ali Baba's in the food court. They called it an "Aussie Pack" but I knew it for what it truly was... my chance to relive the Ocak. The stars must have been in alignment. They didn't have burger sauce but they did have a "grill sauce". They didn't have a garlic sauce, but even better they had a garlic mayonnaise.

The servings aren't quite as indulgent as Ocakbasi but by golly the taste was there. Now I just hope this isn't some special offer only available for a limited time. Make room in Fat City 'cos here comes Shazza!

Rabbit Redesigned

2009-09-08T19:19:00.005+10:00

Voila! Welcome to the newly designed Skin the Rabbit, the fruit of over three weeks of labour. If you're reading this on Facebook or an RSS feed then I'd ask that you visit the main site here. Otherwise this post isn't going to make much sense.

Part of my new role at work involves clueing up a lot more on Web technology than I have in the past. With all the my research and studying I slowly developed a drive to put some effort into the design of this blog. The old girl hasn't had a face lift in the five years I've been posting here, so I guess it was about time to give this old format a make over.

The first thing I wanted to address was the layout of the blog itself. Sites with the two column format (posts and widgets) or three columns (posts, widgets and ads) still seem very much in vogue, but I've found myself growing tired of the look. While I think the model works well for printed media where the eye can flick around columns quickly, I'd started to think that it didn't quite fit what I want on a weblog. My argument is that having extra periphery content on the side while the reader is trying to read a post vertically becomes a distraction. Potentially a welcome one if I these were revenue generating ads, but in my case I simply had an assortment of widgets with no real purpose. At best this restricted the horizontal real estate, at worst it forced the reader to scroll back up to review sidebar content.

What I've gone for here, as you can see, is more of a sandwich approach. Images and tweets along with a menu bar are at the top but quickly give way to full width posts. The old archives and tags are in their own section at the bottom, with shortcuts in the title menu to jump down and shortcuts at the end of each post to bounce back up to the title. My hope is that this new format will give me the flexibility to play around with new post layouts and include larger images or embedded movies in future posts.

I wasn't just content with shuffling things around to widen the post area though. It's a convention in web development to design sites with a minimum resolution in mind, padding out the rest of the site with filler (note the stylish dark grey bars on the left and right). The previous layout for Skin the Rabbit was just as guilty of this, though a little less noticeable with the white on white. The old "minimum resolution" was set at 800 pixels, which was all well and good for 2005, but in the year 2009 I think I can safely bump this up to accommodate 1024x768 as a minimum resolution with a modest 990 pixels. I'm sure this will just keep going up as the years go by.

When I sat down with pen and paper to design the new look I had a pretty solid concept in my head.

My problem was that I've never really been a decent artist. No false modesty there, I just can't seem to draw or paint free hand on account of some cross-wired signals between the image I have in my head and my shaking hand. Maybe it was the stark and clean iPod commercial look I knew I wanted, but I thought I'd give vector based drawing a try with Inkscape and I'm rather chuffed with the results. I think it's something about being able to tweak a bezier curve for minutes until I'm satisfied that it bears some resemblance to what I'm going for. I have no illusions about quitting my day job to draw portraits on the street, but at least I can say that all the art on this site is original (aside from logos), something I'd never thought I could do.

Just as strong as my vision of the style was how interactive the site would be. I've always been a sucker for Flash based websites with funky slideouts and transitions. Unfortunately I've never really taken to ActionScript or Flash in general, not to mention there's the whole issue of Flash containers and plugins which annoy me. Thankfully I didn't have to go down that path thanks to advances in Javascript (particularly in modern web browsers) and particularly jQuery.

Oh I could gush on and on about the wonders of jQuery. Most of the things that made me decide not to go down the Web Development route originally in my career have been neatly put aside thanks to this miraculous plugin. It makes programming behaviour and manipulating the DOM an absolute joy. Even more so when you combine it with jQuery plugins! The photo slideshow you see at the top is made with Cycle. The funky scroll effect you get when you click the Archive/Tag or the Top link at the end of this post comes courtesy of ScrollTo. Then there's ThickBox, just click on one of the images in this post (or any other post for that matter) to have a look at that.

Right next to jQuery on my list of wonderful web technology is CSS. I never really got how powerful this was before but I can definitely say I'm a fan now. I was still a little naughty here and made use of some inline styles towards the end as my stamina flagged, though I'm sure I'll come back later to clean it up.

Other parts of the design that I'm quite happy with are the expanded photo section (click the carrot) and the archive section, both done with just jQuery and Javascript. The archives were tricky as I wanted to be able to navigate through all old posts while keeping a sense of quantity of content, all in a fixed amount of space. Hopefully the bar denoting post ratio gets this across. The expanded photos came out pretty sweet I think. Kinda wish I could link directly to the photos hosted on Flickr, but that change is going to require a little more research into the Flickr API.

Of course to make an omelette you often find that you have to break a few eggs. Getting the new layout to work across multiple browsers was definitely a challenge. One big casualty in this big redesign has been support for Internet Explorer (at least those prior to the current version 8). Much has been said on the net about the horrors of Internet Explorer 6 but I think this article here sums it up pretty nicely. To quote:

Since there were no universally accepted web standards in the early days, Microsoft created a browser that attempted to force the web to behave like any other Microsoft product. Nearly 15 years later, in spite of the development of widely accepted web standards, Microsoft has still not entirely abandoned this approach. Even today, Internet Explorer is to web standards what Ebonics is to standard English.

You can try the latest web browser acid test here. Chances are if you're using a non-Microsoft browser then you're going to get a decent score. To avoid all the extra work involved in getting a site working well with IE6 and IE7, I've just decided to drop support entirely. There are many free standards compliant browsers out there, which you'll see if you try and visit this site with an Internet Explorer version older than 8.

I'm sure I'll be tweaking things a little over the next few weeks. There are a few bugs still that I know about but figure they're minor enough to ignore for now. Do drop me a line if you notice the site breaking though as I've only tested this with the latest versions of most browsers (the usual four; Firefox, Safari, Chrome and Opera).

Hope you all like the design. I normally don't solicit comments but do let me know what you think if you have the time. I never thought when I first started a blog that I'd have the discipline to keep going this long. Here's to another five years of banal accounts of my life. *clink*

Edit: Grrr... looks like I failed to sacrifice some sacred cow for a smooth release or something. Lots of things seem to be broken including ThickBox on Blogspot images, Archives prior to July 2008 and who knows what else. Will have to fix these up through the week. Curses.

Father's Day Purchases

2009-09-06T17:33:00.005+10:00

There was a bit of excitement in the Liley household this Father's Day. Granted, most of the clapping giggles came from Alison and myself (though I detected a hint of enthusiasm from the parents) but I think to whooping was justified. I'm proud to say... that we've dragged John and Sheena kicking and screaming into the Audio/Visual 21st Century.

Gone is the behemoth of a TV that blemished their living room and enter a modestly sized Sharp 32" Aquos. Not only can we watch TV in Toowoomba without cringing at the cropped widescreen programming, but as the "family tech support guy" I no longer have to wrestle with a boulder when I need to plug in new equipment. Even though my joy is mired by a parthian shot from the old CRT, as I've pulled my left arm helping John carry it to the garage, it was so worth it. The event would have been even sweeter if we'd picked up a DVR to complete the package but I guess there's always next time.

While Alison and I hadn't explicitly planned on coercing John into buying AV equipment, we did predict potential for growth in electronics and remote controls in the lounge eventually. With the knowledge of John's distaste for clutter we picked up a Logitech Harmony 515 universal remote for him for Father's Day. I've been using one of these for a while now and it's amazing how easy it is to program compared to universal remotes of old.

Unfortunately I did run into a few issues getting input switching to work on the Aquos (how ironic). Unlike most TVs I've worked with, the Sharp doesn't have specific IR commands for each input source, rather relying on OSD menu navigation to change between them. Given that state isn't available to the remote, this meant that changing from TV to DVD was only possible with dirty hacks (ie, switching channels to force TV input followed by moving down input sources a known and static number of notches before hitting enter). Not quite the straight forward experience I had when working with our Hitachi, but I got there in the end.

Now armed with universal remote and decent TV I'm sure that John and Sheena will be able to enjoy their TV watching with gusto. At least once we get rid of the four (yes count 'em, FOUR) VCR players they have with the aforementioned DVR. The struggle continues.

As an aside, we've had some success with our little fruit and vegies we planted. The strawberry plant had a few flowers which were chomped repeatedly by some garden pest, though we now have a growing and thus far uneaten strawberry! The assumption is that our fruit stealing nemesis has either given up or merely biding time while the berry ripens under our care. Our real success story however is the lettuce.

Look at the bunches (what's the collective noun for lettuce anyway?)! They're practically overflowing out of the barrel so I think it'll be another week before we start clipping off the young leaves for a little salad. Thoroughly satisfying for amateur green thumbs.

Our other achievement was finding the right succulent for our rusty watering can turned planting pot. We've been hunting high and low for something I'd seen in a magazine once. Finally found them at a nearby nursery and learned they're called Burro's Tail (sedum morganianum). We punctured the bottom of the can and filled it with potting mix and the crassulaceae (isn't Wikipedia wonderful?).

As we packed the mix pretty high in the can I employed what I thought was a delightfully ingenious method of watering while avoiding overflow. I put the spout of the can under the tap and let 'er rip with the can tilted on an angle. The role reversal amused me to no end. Seemed to do the trick though I've reverted to more traditional methods since.

I've been working on a something special for this little blog for the past few weeks, though it's taking a lot longer than I thought it would. Hoping to reveal the results sometime in the next week or so. Watch this space!