I’m not expecting it to blow up like Gangnam Style is but this new video of Psy’s new song Gentleman is what the South Korean star is all about. Lavish costumes with outlandish colours and lots of weird dancing. A lot of hate seems to be directed towards the fact that he was mean to the girls in the video and being a jerk.
Last I heard, being mean to girls on a music video in context to the song the singer is singing isn’t illegal. Stop being femi-Nazis.
I’m on the fence on whether I like this one or not. Might take a couple more watching to decide but so far, I’m not loving the MC Hammer pants.
Last weekend was the last weekend I had with Jess before she jetted over to Las Vegas this Thursday so I thought we’ll do something she suggested. She asked if it’s okay if we visited the Heide Museum of Modern Art and I thought it was a brilliant idea. Jeremy had told me about Cafe Vue before which was just next to the museum and we could grab a bite there after visiting the museum and see what’s on.
The museum was having the works of French American artist and sculptor Louise Buorgeois’ work on display. It featured alot of her sculptures made from fabric she found lying around in her linen cupboard. It was really interesting looking at her abstract artwork and think the emotions she was trying to convey with her work.
Who am I kidding, I have no freaking idea what I am looking at. Even though her works were very interesting to view, most if not all of them were fairly creepy. On the other hand, I am very impressed with the likeness of the body parts she made.
This one resembles two headless corpses having a bit of a hug in a glass coffin. One of them have this weird prosthetic leg. Both intriguing and erotic at the same time. The likeness of the torso, calves, buttocks and genitalia (you could see them if you view the piece from the side of the coffin where the feet were) on these bodies were uncanny. Again the word creepy comes to mind.
Her fabric heads are the ones that freaked me out the most. And the museum had ALOT of them on display. This particular one just showed a few different sized fabric heads strung upside down.
After the trip at the museum, we wanted to fill our bellies at Cafe Vue but they had a wedding function on so we got kicked out! We popped over to this new vegetarian place in Fitzroy I found out from Jess’ workmate called MunsterHaus. I guess it’s some word play on Monster House but I have no clue how that is related to vegetarian cuisine.
It’s one of those hipster vego places around the fringe of the city and only offers you three bowl sizes, small, medium and large and we could order any dish on display as long as it fits in the bowl. It’s actually a pretty good concept because you get to try a whole lot of different dishes but I doubt people like my parents would fancy it because there’s a lot of “healthy” choices and not typical Asian food like the folks favour.
Price is a little steep though. I grabbed the large bowl, Jess had the medium one and coupled with two drinks, it came to about $50. Would definitely go back again to see what other dishes they have on other days.
It’s another day and another company decides to do an announcement. And this time, it’s about a half baked product they can’t even show.
No price, no shipping date and the company happily and proudly announced that it’s available for preorder.
Sony announced the company’s next generation game console the Playstation 4 in New York today and all they demoed to journalists was the DualShock 4 controller. The controller has pretty impressive new features with a headphone socket, two point multi touch trackpad, a tracking light for movement invoked controls and an integrated speaker. If the Xbox 360 controller had a kid with the Wiimote, their love child would be somewhat similar to Sony’s Dualshock 4.
Sony bought Gaikai not too long ago and the company seems to have integrated Gaikai’s technology into the PS4 with ability for game downloads, streaming games ala OnLive from Sony’s servers, more social video sharing of gameplay and remote viewing for friends.
Seems like alot of bandwidth intensive features.
I wonder how is it going to impact people who don’t have access to high speed internet and don’t intend to go online with their PS4s? It’s going to be another dumb box in my TV console that plays games albeit with improved graphics?
So many questions, so little answers, zero fucks given so far. I’m still pretty confused as to things like whether physical media would be used in the PS4 or if PS3 games will be playable on the new console but I guess we’ll find out in 10 months time.
Valentine’s day used to be a stressful time for me.
What should I buy as a gift? Where should I bring the girl for a fancy dinner? How much should I spend on flowers?
All these questions were thrown out of the window when Jess told me she’s not into celebrating Valentine’s day lavishly and that we should have a quiet one if I really wanted to do something.
We headed to Crust Pizza, picked up a vego pizza, headed down to Yarra Bend park and had a nice little picnic there for a couple of hours. It was nice just catching up with Jess, talking and whoring ourselves with our iPhones taking heaps of photos (I curated heaps, these are the only ones I think look presentable on a public blog). We were basically just enjoying each other’s company.
I had a good time and didn’t feel pressured to pay $300 on a fancy dinner for it.
We were sat under this tree and spent copious amount of time on our iPhones before finding out it was a kind of fig tree. We learn something new everyday.
I forced everyone in the family to say some Chinese New Year greetings on the camera and made this little greeting video that I could send out to family and friends. Trust me it’s way better than those shitty videos you get spammed with on Whatsapp from friends.
It’s not a very professionally done video but it does remind me of those Chinese New Year Eve variety shows in Singapore where they show celebrities doing their Chinese New Year greetings before cutting to the commercials.
I could barely hold my excitement back when I found out last week that we get a public holiday on Monday because Australia Day falls on a Saturday this year. Score!
Saturday morning was a whole lot of prayers. We started off at Dad and Mum’s place, giving our thanks to what has been a good and bountiful year in 2012 and then followed it up by asking the Buddhas for a safe and prosperous new year ahead.
We had to do a few hundred kowtows and I was a tad unsure how Jess would react to it but she did pretty well surprisingly. She didn’t even break a sweat and looked like she’s done this before. Hmmmm.
Here’s Mum leading the prayers for the females. Jess getting her first taste of “Xie En” and “Kou Qiu”. We only do about two thousand kowtows over here in Melbourne. I remembered we used to do up to eight thousand in Singapore so this wasn’t really even close to what I had to go through before.
Another shot from the back. Dad had actually just painted the room during the Christmas holidays so the wooden panelling with the painting of the Goddess of Mercy and beige walls were all new.
Coincidentally, Twitter released its video sharing app Vine and I thought what better chance to try it out with my first Vine on the prayers going on at my parent’s home?
After we finished up at Dad and Mum’s, we rushed over to Shiping and Cheryl’s prayer hall and repeated the prayers one more time. Clayton was sporting a new haircut so guess what I did?
After prayers were finally wrapped up, we all drove down to the city to indulge ourselves to a “traditional” Aussie Day lunch at the newly opened Gong De Lin Vegetarian Restaurant on Swanston Street.
Amber suggested this new place which only opened its doors a couple of days ago and even though it was nice know that there are more options for vegos in the city now, the food was really disappointing with every dish having carrots and capsicums in it as a secondary ingredient…a pattern that I noticed after the third or fourth dish was served.
And it wasn’t cheap too. There were 10 of us at lunch and the meal came up to $300. Pretty pricey for a shared lunch and it’s fair to say I probably wouldn’t go back.
I’ve got my Australia Day Big Blue clash between Melbourne Victory and Sydney FC in the afternoon so we all went our separate ways after lunch and as I was heading down to AAMI Park for my game, Roy sent everyone this photo.
That’s right, it’s Redfoo from the now defunct LMFAO. The Australian Open was on and his girlfriend Victoria Azarenka was playing in the women’s single finals that night so they were probably on their way there before Roy bumped into him.
Anyways, I made my way down to AAMI Park for my game and it was AWESOME. It was the first time Alessandro del Piero was playing against Victory in Melbourne for Sydney FC and I was really excited to watch him play.
But what was even better was Melbourne Victory’s Marco Rojas’ continuing his red hot form by scoring two goals against the Sky Blues. Archie Thompson score the other goal for a convincing 3-1 win. Couldn’t have been a better ending to an awesome Saturday.
Sunday started off with a bang like how Saturday ended. I really wanted to go to brunch so Jess and I headed off to Seddon Deadly Sins in the western suburbs. I’ve always seen my friend Maddy describing how she loves that place on Facebook and she’s always there every other weekend so I figured it MUST be good.
They used old children story books as their menus! I have to admit that’s pretty cool. A little hipster-ish but definitely unique and cool.
My “Gluttony” vego big breakfast which I thought was awesome except for the the fact that they probably should have given me two pieces of toast instead of one. Take note Seddon Deadly Sins!
Jess’ salsa and chorizos with toast.
After our bellies were filled with delicious brunch, Jess and I reckoned it would be a good idea to head to Williamstown beach for a stroll since it was just nearby. It was a warm day with blue skies, the perfect kind of day to be out and about at the beach!
We saw some trees leaning weirdly away from the coast and couldn’t resist some photos with them.
Next stop was the Williamstown Marina and we sat out in the sun for a bit doing some reading. I was quite surprised that there were quite a few shops in these parts (FIVE ice cream stores…so yeah.) and it was full of families with kids but not too busy like St Kilda.
Oh and did I mentioned that there were FIVE ice-cream stores? Jess was craving for some sundae and I was being a greedy pig so we stopped by The Ice Cream Shoppe for some cold refreshments. Yum!
You would have think that that was a fairly full on day by then but nooooo…..we went back to Jess’ place where she spent about 2 hours getting some work done before we decided to head down to the local car wash to give our cars a long waited wash and clean.
We then headed down to the local fish and chip shop, grabbed some dinner and headed down to Darebin Park for dinner before deciding to direct our own shadow short with Vine. Don’t ask me what we were doing because I had no idea too. Haha!
We then watched Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter later that night. I suggested the movie after Jess was telling me how good Zombieland was (She caught it on Friday) and I thought she might be still in for a supernatural themed movie.
Monday came along and Jess made me go running with her in the morning and then we attended a Blenheim BBQ gathering with some of Jess’ mates.
Unfortunately I didn’t have any photos but I had a really good time hanging out and getting to know some of Jess’ friends from New Zealand so it was good.
By the end of the long weekend, I was dead beat but I couldn’t be happier how it had went. Fun times, good food, good football. What more can I ask for!?
Jess and I headed off to Brickvention 2013 at the Royal Exhibition Centre on Saturday. It was a two day event that brings together LEGO fans of all ages from all over Australia to view original and unusual creations built by Australian modelers and collectors so I thought it could be a fun day out.
Cosplay Australia was out in full force collecting donations for Autism Victoria. I’m guessing these are characters from the Star Wars series? I have no idea but they do look freaky with their glowing eyes.
After we finished up with Brickvention, Jess and I went on a little adventure to purchase her new Macbook Pro. We were suppose to get it from the Elizabeth Street store in the city but it turned out they didn’t have any stock even though the website indicated that they did.
Wasted trip into the city. Sigh.
We had to make a detour and drove to the JB Hi-Fi on Rosamond Road in Maribyrnong and I have to say, Ush, employee that attended to us, was the friendliest JB Hi-Fi employee that Jess and I had ever met. He wasn’t one of those bearded, dark rim glasses wearing, sleeve tattoo sporting hipster dude or emo chick.
Just a down to earth guy who made sure that we where happy with our purchase and answered any questions we had with enthusiasm unlike anyone we have encountered before at JB Hi-Fi. He even showed a photo of his 14 month old daughter to us and encourage Jess and I to quickly have kids because it was the best thing ever.
The family advice thing was a tad weird but it just made Jess and I laughed more than anything really.
I have to say Ush really made my trip to the Rosamond Road JB Hi-Fi a really pleasant one and I would probably go back to the same store if I need anything else next time.
We then headed off to Craigieburn and invited ourselves to Cheryl’s home for a nasi lemak dinner. They just bought new outdoor dining tables and chairs and the weather was good so we were fortunate enough to have dinner outdoors.
Cheryl is a great cook and everyone was just wanting to get stuck in as soon as possible. Seemed like Clayton couldn’t hold back anymore. Haha!
Jess took this shot of Clayton and it was my favourite one for the day. Definitely shows why she’s the pro and I’m the amateur. Cheryl hated Clayton’s new hair cut but I thought he still looked cute doesn’t he!?
Obligatory group shot for Instagram and it seemed like Ashley was too shy to reveal her face! I have to thank Cheryl and Shiping again for having us over for dinner and the coffee from your new coffee machine is AWESOME. I’m going to be around a whole lot more. HAHA!
I asked Jeremy when I was writing this post if he knew who Guy Kawasaki was and Jeremy mentioned something about motorcycles before changing the topic to why the Ministry of Education in Singapore deemed that the recorder was the only instrument required in music lessons. That shows how much fuck he gives about Kawasaki.
Alright back on track.
Guy Kawasaki is somewhat of a weird one. He used to work for Apple and old school Apple fanboys will remember him as the chief tech evangelist for Apple in the 80s.
He’s since gone on to create a few startups and made a name for himself after he left Apple and in recent times, have been vocal about his preference for Android over iOS.
The writer of the article I’ve linked to interviewed Guy and one of the questions she asked was what his current mobile device was.
This were his exact words:
Samsung Galaxy SIII. That’s right, I don’t use an iPhone. Real men use Android.
Firstly, did anyone even expect the guy (no pun intended) to use an iPhone. Yes he might have been the chief evangelist for the company 30 years ago but it’s been 20 years since he worked for Apple so why does everyone still associate whatever this douchebag do or say with Apple?
I certainly don’t.
Secondly, I am pretty sure most people who are fond of Apple products who are familiar with the company’s personnel like Steve Jobs and Tim Cook wouldn’t know who the fuck Guy Kawasaki is. He left Apple in 1987 so none of the success Apple is enjoying right now has got anything to do with this man so Lifehacker and every tech blog out there should stop placing Guy on a fucking pedestal like he’s some Apple guru
Thirdly, if Guy had any respect for the company he once worked for, even though he doesn’t necessarily think much of iOS, was it really necessary to trash talk and say that only real men use Android.
What the fuck does that even mean?
So you can customize your lock screen and you can use widgets. Wooooooh big fucking deal.
I’ve always maintain my stance that both Android and iOS are extremely polished mobile platforms and that even though Android is not for me, I truly believe that there’s nothing wrong with choosing Android over iOS. If you love tinkering and customizing your device to suit your needs, Android’s the platform for you.
No need to bash others just because they like something different from you do.
You would think that someone in the tech industry would speak with more sense and justify their choices for technology in a more logical manner but I guess when it comes to fanboyism, it truly shows a douchebag’s true colours.
Happy new year everyone who reads my humble little blog! (By everyone, I’m just referring to you Jeremy)
Time passes when you’re not keeping an eye on it and before you know it, 2012 has already departed and 2013 has plonked its big fat ass upon us already.
Just take a moment to think about this. It’s 2013.
13 long years after the turn of the millennium.
It’s 1 year (alright more like 1.5 years) away from the 2014 World Cup in Brazil.
Someone born in 2002 beat me in FIFA 13 online yesterday. Yes, a 10 year old beat me in video games but let’s not digress from the mind blowing fact here. I can’t even fathom how anyone born in the naughties could be 12-13 years old (assuming they were born in 2000) now.
2012 has been a pretty decent year for me. It was a vast improvement from 2011 where I suffered two heart breaks but it’s true that time heals all wounds. All I’m grateful for are my ageing parents are well and healthy and that I have my family with me when I needed them most.
2012 was also the year I asked Jess to be my girlfriend. It’s early days in our relationship but I have a good feeling about this one. A good sign was when she forwarded me a well worded email she wrote to a client and she didn’t even need me to help her write it or proof read it beforehand!
Independent girlfriend is independent. Me likey.
I know everyone makes resolutions whenever a new year comes around and as much as I hate to be a cliche, I have set up two resolutions that I hope that I will stick to.
I’ve been quite broke and in debt ever since I finished building my house in 2010. This meant I wasn’t in the position to be saving up financially for a good part of 2 years now. The sad thing about that was that my failure to save didn’t translate to removing the debt and costs I incurred when setting up my new home.
2013 will be different.
No more frivolous Apple products purchases and all surplus income will go towards lowering or eliminating my credit card debt. It’s not easy when I have to manage the mortgage of my house myself but if I don’t start paying off my debts now, it’s going to be harder down the road.
Another thorn in the flesh that I have been trying to tackle has been my weight.
I’ve ballooned over 8 years I’ve lived in Melbourne. There were a couple of times down the years I’ve tried tackling my weight and had varying degrees of success but I lacked the continuity to keep the good work up and piled the weight back on.
2013 will be different.
I’m going to eat healthier, exercise more and be more responsible about my health. I’m not young like I was before and putting on weight could pose seriously health risks so I’m putting down the gauntlet to shed some kilos.
So there you go. Two simple resolutions but it’s going to take huge amounts of effort and discipline.
Wish me good luck and if I haven’t said it, happy new year!
