Untitled

Don't know what exactly to say really, just been a while and think I should post something on here.

Study's become quite stressful, and obviously my assignment is going too slow, hope I'll get over it eventually, but obviously after the assignment there is more experiments and the final thesis ahead.

I realized I'm probably consuming too much sugar in my breakfasts. I used to have muesli+natural yoghurt+juice which had worked quite well for me cos the natural yoghurt does not contain sugar. I switched to Moo recently which is undeniably yum but obviously a lot sweeter, and adding juice on top of that makes my breakfast a pretty sugary one. I'm thinking of something without the sugar to replace my juice if possible, or i'll have to buy natural yoghurt anyway just for breakfast and the Moo would be only for snack...

Another thing is, I think I should avoid showing up in some places at the wrong time which might send out the wrong messages. And 'assume nothing, expect everything' should become my motto from this day on.

Wish me luck.

My 4th June, Bits and Pieces

Today is the 21st anniversary of the massacre in Beijing (opposing to genuine thoughts, accumulating evidences support that massive proportion of the massacre took place all around Tiananmen square not actually within the square, hence it shouldn't be called massacre in Tiananmen square) 1989.

I was not even four in June 1989, attending kindergarten in Guangzhou thousands of kilometres away from Beijing. The only thing I remember regarding to this massive political movement was its very beginning, which was the first funeral I've ever seen - the funeral of former president of China Hu Yaobang broadcasted on TV one morning (22nd April 1989 to be precise) when all of us kids and nurses were made to watch in the classroom. My memory after that funeral is faded and I don't have an idea of what people were talking about what happened after it in my city those days.

Back in those days there was a VCR player in my grandpa's house and there was one Karaoke tape of the pop songs then which I soon learnt to sing all the songs in from my aunt. The first song was called 'bloodstained glory'. I did notice that this song was quite different from every other songs in that tape which were all love songs, it was talking about the country but different again from the 'mainstream' communist march themes that we often hear on national events.

No information goes my way about that political movement for a very long time, until close to my graduation of elementary school that I heard the term '4th of June' being mysteriously spread amongst our classmates but nobody could tell for sure what that means. I went home and asked dad, 'a group of college students demonstrating in Tiananmen Square trying to overturn the communist government and establish capitalism in China' was the only and overly cautious answer I got.

During those days when a computer is rare and nobody knows what internet is in China, I can do nothing to find out for myself (I was not allowed in public libraries because I am under 16, weird rules in China I know).

I finally got internet access at home when I was in high school, not long before I discovered torrents and eMule. While most of the political websites were blocked by the prototype GFW without me even knowing there was no way to block the P2P searches (even now I think). There was one day that I subconsciously searched the term '4th June' and there it was a whole new world for me. I watched a lot of footages about that movement and I finally have an idea about what it is about. I got angry that the government fired towards its own citizens, the validity of this communist government was also highly questioned, my consciousness told me that opening fire on its citizen is wrong and cowardice. A democratic leader in such situation would've stepped down because there is no point staying in that position given the fact that he had already lost his support from his people, which is the legal ground of his position.

Deng Xiaoping had stated during the massacre 'kill 200 thousand to get 20 years of peace of mind', I don't think the death toll in the 1989 massacre was that high but that government survived 21 years after the movement. Look at China now, a house is worth 100 years of salary of a normal worker, foods rising dramatically in price, not any form of medical insurance for people in the countrysides, ridiculous difference of income between the rich and poor... Any second thoughts of the government would be jailed or even locked in the lunatic asylum, violent and unruly use of force to break down private properties for the benefits of the people in the government and real estate giants, even forcing people to burn themselves. All of these needs to be covered from the general population and the cost of such concealment is at the rise as they happen increasingly frequently. It's a matter of time that the communist government collapse, but time is a serious matter. Chinese people don't want to be helped, they are unacknowledged of and uninterested in questioning their government, that is exactly what the government want them to do so that the communist government can survive. Unless there is no more room for even food and shelter for a large proportion of people who would finally stand up.

Stupid Ideas

Online shopping?
If you see a space asking for coupon code, google it before you check out.

Rent or buy? (When you have the choice of course)
Before you buy, estimate the life span of this item and the time period of you willing to use it, divide the price of this item by whichever time is less. If it turns out more expensive than renting, rent.

Credit card, savings or cash?
Cash is preferred for grocery and everyday shopping if you feel like you are spending too much, as you don't see the money gone if you are using a card, you hand that card out, signed your name/keyed the pin and the card came back with one more receipt! When buying something big though, you might want to use the credit card to avoid seeing your money go.

Assignment due days...
Divide the word count by the number of days left til the due day, and aim at writing that much per day. If it's tomorrow, ask for extension...

Planning ahead?
In my case this never worked. If a plan is made to be broken why even waste time on it?

Making your bed?
Waste of time! It's gonna get messy anyway when you get back on it tonight.

Laptop

My laptop is failing.

It'd been through a lot with me, and I liked it a lot and at the moment I was running Ubuntu on it and it is jut kept in the lab as I've already got a desktop for my gaming and multimedia needs. After three years of my intensive use it's actually about time that this Dell XPS M1210 retire. The graphics had failed before but I was under warranty so I was able to change the motherboard. Now I can't seem to do anything to it and in fact I don't actually know where the exact problem is. It might be the graphics or the cables that connects the screen and the motherboard. The display is either running at normal colour depth but very shaky or it downgrade to the ugly 256 colours. Switching off special effects worked for 10 minutes and the problem returns. More problems are following up in this old machine and the network proxy suddenly stopped working and I lost access outside of the uni website. I need to replace it.

I knew I don't need much of computing power and I know I am after a cheap stuff. All I require it to do are processing spreadsheets, writing reports, showing presentations and surfing the internet. A netbook is the first choice although I also considered an iPad. The iPad would've been too late given that it wasn't even accepting pre-orders in Australia when I had to make a decision.

There are worries about netbooks, most notably being too low of a resolution for those small screens will cause hardship browsing the internet, and in my case, also affects the powerpoint slides as I've noticed before unless I set it prior.

i've seen those 1024x600 screens, awful. There are only two HD screen (1366x768) model available for 10" netbooks, one from HP which I can't even see the full specification in their crappy internet store so I went for the Dell Mini 10z (Yes Dell again). I don't expect much from it but the review looks quite good, and 10hr battery life is just an extra that I would gladly accept although I'll almost always plug it in in the lab anyway :P The choice between mobile broadband compatibility and TV tuner actually took me a while to decide. I chose TV tuner but still a bit nervous not knowing if I should. It didn't matter that much actually cos I am using mobile broadband on a USB 3G modem and my desktop uses a TV as monitor. The justification that I gave myself for choosing TV tuner is that if I am away from home, I can always take my USB 3G modem but the TV is not so easy to carry... I don't actually watch TV btw... The colour is another thing that is too hard to choose, definitely not purple or pink, red is not bad, I got too many black stuff, I don't like blue, green is nice and so is white... I got white at last, and I'm actually thinking of getting a skin for it anyways :)

Now all I have to do is wait, and track online occasionally to see how are they working with it before it reaches me.

Hmm

I think I'm just too bored at this time that I started writing this thing... I moved my house again today. Hopefully no more drama this time...

After all these had happened, I couldn't help but thinking of how life was like in Melbourne and I know I miss it. Adelaide was way different than I thought, and not in a good way. I was quite prepared to get used to a quiet place before I came but not a shit hole. It is ridiculous more bad stuff happened to me within this three months I was in Adelaide than the whole three years I was in Melbourne.

Thinking about the good side of it, I started to make a new bunch of lovely friends here, my study was going slow but smoothly so far and hopefully a better career prospect afterwards, I was lucky that I met these people who are able to help just when I needed it most, without whom I would've been all pathetic living on the streets now. I am glad after all, and things are looking up.

Impress me Adelaide, if you please.

Dramas

And yes, I did realized this might happen since the day you came back. You just don't look right. It still happened a bit enexpectedly.

You make too many promises that you don't keep, you told me this is sort of his family tradition, I don't think so after meeting your family (without whom I wouldn't know where I'd end up). He's just too good at lying. I was to stay because of the place, thinking that you might get a bit better after all those, you have left me with no choice and seemingly acted faster than I did.

I would consider myself reasonable to you by all means, I tend to think Cancers are all like that, I could be quite soft but not when things go bad enough for me to having to turn my back on you, once you made me make that decision it's irreversible. I don't have tolerance on those stuff I think you have noticed. I would not let myself be fooled again.

It is a difficult choice but I made it. The bad has outweighed the good. It will cost me a bit but yes this is my hard earned lesson. Waking up in the morning not knowing where I am is not a good feeling, but at least I don't have to worry about anything else.

You are just hopeless. Men just wouldn't change. I think I learnt that better over all these days.

Sam, Misha and me

Suddenly the house was all empty and I'm all alone.

Sam is my recent housemate and Misha is his old cat.

As Sam will not be in this house for quite a while I had been feeding Misha and playing with her. She is all black and 14 years old, very decent and friendly I would say, and it is the first time ever I sort of own a mammal as a pet. (I've had ducklings that were dead overnight, fishes that reproduces way too much and birds that found their own way out of the cage before) I started to grow quite close to Misha since Sam had been away, lying on the same bed with her and letting her claw dig into my hand, looking her deep in the eyes, scratching her neck and caressing her fur and feel the warmth of her.

Until last night.

I fed Misha 5PM sharp as usual and she did not finish the food as usual. I let her out to play around 7PM and started playing a bit with my computer cos it had been such a shit day for me, I had screwed up everything that I possibly could. I will know Misha wants to come in if she scratches the door.

It was just before 11PM that the neighbour knocked at the door and said she thinks Misha was hit by a car and probably dead. I rushed out with her and found Misha on the edge of the road, somebody might have moved her but she is still warm. It was very dark there. I couldn't think. The girl next door fetched me a shoe box and a pair of disposable gloves while I just stood outside and looked at the lights through the window, then we went back to Misha and I picked her up, squashed her a bit into the shoe box. I was sure it's Misha only then, with her purple collar and the bell that always informing that she's around.

Back to the house I had a closer look of her, she had ants all over her expecially around the head. I called up Sam's mother and she was about to go to sleep, but she popped in immediately. I don't know how to tell Sam about this I hope his mother will do that for me. I thought I felt some sort of shriver when I touched Misha again but it turns out it was just myself. Sam's mother sprayed some fly spray to get rid of the ants and took Misha with a few towels, leaving the shoe box.

When I looked into the shoe box today there was Misha's blood, sort of gel like inside the box. And there's a few dead ants.

I left the box there.

I can't remember exactly where on the road she was, some blood stains indicated for me.

I tipped Misha's bowl where her leftover food started to stick onto.

I brushed the cat food stain on the kitchen floor.

I left the door open.

It all turned silent.

Adelaide Complains

Not a very exciting place I would say, not much night life going on around, and you will have to shop early or the shops are closed. You could count on the buses being late, they are never on time anyway. Train service looks nice as they are fast and punctural, but there are not many of them around. But this Belair line is such a joke that goes like a huge loop way outside of the city around the hills. What's the point?

The Day of Drama

I finally had a chance to update my blog (Well it's not the first chance but I've been slack...) and I always wanted to talk a bit about Adelaide, but no I'll leave that for the next one so this one's about my last day in Melbourne, 1st Feb 2010. The big drama day.

As my flight is leaving like 5:35pm for Adelaide I booked my taxi on 4pm (bit stress in the first place I might not do that again), and I handed over my keys to my housemate cos I am no longer renting the place. And they are all at work.

I went out to tip the last bit of my rubbish out at 3:45, made sure that the door was not locked when I leave, but it's locked when I came back. So I have a flight to catch, and all of my stuff was locked in the house. I asked the neighbour for help and they are calmer than I am and decided to drive me and pick up a spare key in the real estate agent after calling them.

At 4pm we are about to set out to the office and I saw the taxi just outside of my place. I went to talk to the driver explaining the situation and asked if he could wait up for a bit and he agreed. The traffic is starting to get busy on our way to the agent and Carmen gets quite angry at the drivers ahead. There was two locks on the door and they only gave us one, I was hoping that it was the right key because one of the locks is not locked.

Not quite 4:20pm we are back and I could see the taxi still waiting. I rushed up and tried the keys and it was not the right one! Carmen's boyfriend started try to bust the lock and it didn't seem all that easy although he told me that he was a locksmith for some time. I tried to call my housemate but somehow he exchanged his SIM card with his cousin and I didn't mark down his new number right.

4:35pm I start to think that it's over that I would not make it to Adelaide today that my housemate comes back home from work and opened the door for me. And he drove me to the airport, we arrived at 4:55pm

Collecting my boarding pass and waiting to drop my bag and it says the plane is already boarding, so I was on the fast track. Then I was not able to check in my backpack because my suitcase is too heavy, I was fiven a choice either pay $50 to check it in or take it onboard. I'm not paying obviously but I was a bit worried that there might be something that I couldn't take onboard with in that backpack because I was planning to check it in.

And there was. I spent some 5 minutes at the security gate because they found a knife inside the bag but could not find it. It was my first Swiss Army Knife and I had to throw it away because there is no time for me to get back to the check in and put it in the suitcase. When I am finally inside the gate, I heard my name called and it was the final call for boarding.

And this is it, my eventful adeventure towards Adelaide.

Last Day in Melbourne

Sunny outside, shutters shut, and I am sitting in front of a quite empty now room staring at the sheets of sunshine escaping through the slits of the shutter, swaying as it breezes.

The jeans that hadn't been worn for ages, trashed. Socks that are bit worn, trashed. dustbin itself, to be determined but I'm not taking it. Rents, cleared. All packed up. Keys, handed over. I only just realized how rusted my keyring had become.

Almost three years now, about time to leave, about time for a change. Am I ready for that though? What is so wrong with my current life in Melbourne? I never felt this way towards Melbourne before. Nasty weathers, annoying flies, what is so good about it?

(2 hrs Later)

Had some dumplings for brunch, nice. The sun's still bright, but went past my window. called for the cab to pick me up at 4pm, should be alright. Not wanna turn off the computer yet but still have to dump the trash first. Opened the lid and saw the shoes I dumped yesterday was still there, I hate this pair too much that I would swear never to buy a Converse again, ever.

Time to go.

Google Pulling Out of China?

I made a statement on Facebook yesterday that if Google pulled out of China I am not going back either, I meant it.

Well, Google is the first search engine I had ever known, and I could not imagine a life without Google now. Although I had only been out of China in the recent years Google had been part of my life way longer before that. Opening my browser when I wake up in the morning my homepage is iGoogle, then the first thing I would check is Gmail, following by Facebook, website of my uni etc., and I am obviously using Blogger, Google Earth/Maps, Youtube, Docs, Picasa, Wave... The list goes on. I wouldn't deny that I am a fan of Google that I might use more services from Google than many others, thing is it is almost certain that all people who have access to the Internet are using some services provided by Google.

What had enraged Google to have threatened to leave China was that it had found on its servers attacks from China attempting to access Chinese human rights activists' Gmail account. I'm not going to repeat the story so just see here.

It is not just about human rights, it is not just about Google China's proportion in the market did not meet the expectation of the company (It is still substantially profiting), it is more about the conscience of the company, realizing that it is no longer possible to and feasible to cooperate with the Communist government and help them with their censorship while in the end compromising its own users' privacy and rights of speech. Ever since the launch of Google.cn, the company had been through animadvers and pressures from the government, increasing by the year. And many of them are actually traps planted by government and government-run media aiming at detrimenting the public image of Google, Google did nothing and just continue what it was supposed to do. This time however, the Chinese goernment had broken the bottomline of the company.

Towards Chinese people the government is obviously lying again saying human rights was an excuse Google use for leaving China with bad business in a cover, or stating giving up China is giving up half of the world. Well, from what I have seen on the blogs and forums, complains are dominant, mourning that they have to use alternative ways to go around the GFW and continue using Google service, as Google.com will definitely be blocked once Google.cn pulls out of China, alongside with all of the Google services (although many of them are already blocked, such as Youtube and Picasa), and that Baidu will take over the place where Google used to be in. (Well I myself only get on Baidu for free music downloads back in the time, and now I buy CD's or if I really can't find the CD, iTunes. Baidu is a disgustingly greedy company anyway forcing companies to auction on the placement in search results or they would be taken out of the search literally by placement tens of pages back no matter how relevant the content actually is)

Is it China's or Google's loss if Google do pull out from China? The Chinese government would not mind Google pulling out, they might actually be happy 'one less naughty boy' in the country. For the people however, the loss of Google is more than one less search engine, instead it would mean a significant tightening of the internet environment within China, rumours are are already everywhere saying that the Chinese government is planning to switch from a 'blacklist' policy on the Internet, which blocks the blacklisted websites etc., to a 'whitelist' policy which blocks anything that is not registered with the government. I honestly can't imagine internet looking like that, with no voice from outside of the government at all, not even personal websites. It is matter of time that China will cut its internet communication from other countries and be isolated from the rest of the world fearing any criticism of its illegal regime in the first place.

This statement was found on the internet: It is not that Google had given up on China, China had given up the world.

Interesting Shift

I realized this only after I watched 'the Lovely Bones', there is something different from most of the other movies these days: there is no 'politically correct' African background part in this film, instead, they put an Asian girl in as Susie's guide to paradise.

And I do realize there are more movies like this thinking back, 'Eating Out: All You Can Eat', those two illegal immigrants from Vietnam(?) working in Tiffany's nailing salon and Tandy obviously, no African background casts again. I'm sure there's more but I'll stop here.

It is quite obvious that most of such parts given to minors in the movies and TV shows are not necessarily ethnically specific (well illegal immigrants maybe) and sometimes even inappropriate (The one popped right into my head was Gwen in the BBC TV series Merlin because there would have been very rare case of African people 'in the land of myth and the days of magic' let alone being a royal servant and probably Queen later). They only serve as 'politically correct' disclaimer.

My point here is, is there a shifting in terms of 'politically correctness' from African population towards Asian population? If so, does this mean a realization of racism had turned from towards Africans to towards Asians? Or, does it mean Asian immigrants in the Western world are playing a bigger role by the date in the community comparing to Africans?

I am not going to answer these questions because I don't think I know the answer. What I do know is, African people are affecting the culture of Western countries in a deeper way than Asian people do. For example there's Eminem and there's Whitney Houston. But there's no white J-Pop star or Manga artists and there's no mainstream Asian artists in Western countries either, at least none as big as Whitney Houston.

Well, maybe it takes time?

Google Wave

Quite by chance that I got an invitation from a friend on facebook and laid my hands on this thing. I didn't quite understand the concept that I only heard about some friends mentioning it to be quite nice and stuff, I didn't expect much either. But well anyway I went ahead with it and watched like a third of that hour-and-a-half long video. (the length is putting me into sleep but the idea actually quite exciting, that you could do things that are very different and you could actually see a lot of potentials out of Google Wave)

Well I got excited obviously and then I found a big problem here, one that didn't come with gmail when I got the test account: I don't actually have friends to wave with except the guy that invited me and two magically added contact within my I think gmail contact list that had never showed up. It hadn't been a problem in gmail because it's only an email account that you could start sending any email to any people with email addresses, but with google wave, you don't actually have heaps of people to start with because it is a social network and it is invite only... Well like a day and a half after activating you do get a new wave saying that you are now able to invite people, well, 8 people. That's better than nothing but far from satisfying I would have to say, yes I do reckon I will get more invites later but Google Wave is still considered a social tool, and quite dependant on a social network.

In a word I am satisfied with the idea and stuff that come with Google Wave, but not the way that they open for testing like this. I do understand that resources are limited but 'by-invitation' should not be the mode one social network builds up. Facebook did not limit their access by 'invite only', they purchase new resources when it is used up, and btw what is facebook when it gets to the benchmark of 50,000 users? As a giant like Google, Wave should get more resources and open for public testing IMBO.

Well I bet this thing will be banned in China, with its powerfulness that fears its miserable government with potentials way more powerful than current social networks and wikipedia and youtube conbined, literally.

Wrapping up the Year 2009

It wasn't supposed to be a good year according to the Chinese Fung Shui for me, and it wasn't.

I counted myself lucky that at least my study goes smoothly, although I did not achieve very good results I managed to get myself graduated in time by the end of the year and got my honours offer from University of Adelaide.

Jobs are pretty hard to find I would say, none of my applications were even responded. But as I decided to continue my study and escape for another year, all I could hope for is that the next year would be better. I'm still on a part time job but changed spot, worse than the last job obviously but I won't stay in Melbourne for long anyway so I don't have to cope with it for long.

I've met the first horrible landlady in my life and stayed in her house for a month and a half. I've never met anyone so greedy, and slutty enough to screw the tradie working in the house in front of us, to get a special discount maybe?

I am starting to feel that I am getting old. I never had this thought before. In my plan for life ten years back I decided that I would never grow old, that is, I will kill myself when I'm... Back then I set a target of 30 so that I would not grow older than that. Seems this date had to be changed because I am already feeling myself old? That is, if I still wish to do so, which I'm no longer sure.

No luck in love as I said many times before. broke up with one and nothing comes my way after that. Melbourne is not the city for the one that I was meant to be with, it's quite obvious now after all these years. And I'm leaving Melbourne.

Will the world really come to an end at 12.21.12? I wasn't worried. There is nothing I could do if it is true and nothing would change if it isn't. Just live as we always live until the day comes then see what happens. Getting prepared for the end of the world is like an ant training his muscles the second before he was crushed between your fingers.

Copenhagen

Media coverage on the climate change conference in Copenhagen is everywhere these days that you can't actually turn a blind eye on. Seems that I should not just keep quiet on this one.

Although many would say that there is not yet scientific proof that human activity is causing global warming, I do personally believe so the same way that there is no scientific proof of existence of God but many still believe in it. Anyway this is not the point of this post.

The developing world is playing a bad role in this conference as far as I heard, taking climate change hostage to ask for economical compensation/benefits from the developed world. China, again, is one of the most shameless countries amongst.

The amount of greenhouse gas emission in China is only second to the United States at the moment and growing fast. It is foreseeable that the country will soon be releasing more greenhouse gas than any other country in the world. However, China is trying to evade its responsibility of reducing greenhouse gas emission because the US is saying that the funds it is giving would not go to China because they consider China a developed country. (Well it would do so anyway, that's just an handy excuse)

Should China actually be seen as a developing country? The Chinese government insists so naming a low per-capita GDP. Well, while the metropolitan people are enjoying every convenience of the developed world, there are people in the countryside living in extreme poverty. While the poor Chinese might be responsible of releasing ignorable amounts of greenhouse gas the metropolitan people are responsible of emitting the same or even larger amounts of greenhouse gas than people in the developed world. While one could split the poor countryside of China from metropolitan China and demands that funds only go to the countryside, the government would almost certainly never do so (just track back where did the donations for Sichuan earthquake go last year), all they want is free patented technologies and funds from the developed world and use them to boost its already deformed GDP, then use the data to continue deceiving its people of its growth despite the fact that people are ripped off by the government, and keeping its governence.

New vocabulary seems to be what the Chinese government is playing at the moment, 'reducing 45% of emission per unit GDP', clever, but hypocritic nonetheless. As we all see, China's GDP is growing at a significant speed and momentum (although its people are actually getting poorer). With the growth of GDP switching from second to third industry the emission per unit GDP would naturally reduce, but that does not mean the total emission of the country will decrease, quite the opposite, it would still be increasing. Let's do the maths, say the total GDP is 10 per year and per GDP unit emission is 1 in the year 2005, the total emission would be 10. There are 15 years between 2005 and 2020, with the GDP growth rate of 8% per annum, the GDP will become 31.72 in the year 2020, with 0.55 per GDP emission target achieved the total emission of China would become 17.45. See that? A 74.5% increase in the amount of emission! while the Chinese government blames that the target set by the US of a 17% reduction on greenhouse emission as not 'serious' enough, what about themselves trying to deceive the world and emit more greenhouse gases themselves? It is just a dirty trick because it's so obvious to most people that 45>17.

Tackling global warming is a global project that requires cooperation among all countries because the developed world and the developing world exist on the same earth. If the developed world works hard to reduce emission while the developing world is doing nothing or even increasing the amount of emission, it would just be an expensive political show with no winners eventually, because the global warming is not stopped and the huge amount of money the developed world spent on themselves and helping the developing world is giving nothing in return. The developing world might be benefitted by the funds at first but when consequences of global warming kick in they would be as fragile as everyone else.

Eventful Day Huh?

Well.

Got a call from my boss in the afternoon, telling me that I don't need to work on Friday, which means, I completely lost the job I've been working for two and a half years... Well I am leaving Melbourne anyway and I have told my boss that, but I still need that money to pay back my credit card obviously... :S Anyway I couldn't say nothing hanging up the phone, all desparate and started working harder on my job hunting.

It was within a few minutes that I got an email from the honours coordinator in University of Adelaide telling me that I have secured my place for the Honours program for Viticulture and Oenology. I thanked him promptly of course and does not know how to react now, should I be happy or sad? It was all too sudden.

Then, just before dinner, I got another call from a restaurant that I left my resume last week, I was to be on training tomorrow there as a waiter. Well, a job is absolutely something that I am desparate for, and there it is. I thought my hope was gone and there it is. Well, hope this works out. This really relieved me a bit although I don't think this job would pay any good.

That's two good news against one bad then. I would consider it a good day.

Now

Exams, finished. Honours application, submitted. Job hunting, bit lazy but working on it. Results,my greatest fear is not how I did but rather whether they would be out at all. Visas, haven't started applying as I don't even know which to apply yet, depends on whether I'm getting a job or go for further study. Family, coming to visit me in Australia in exactly two weeks. My room, needs tidying. Graduation ceremony, depends on my results and whether they come out at all. Weight, I am scared to weigh myself now. Computer, upgraded to Windows 7. Love, no luck as always.

Well so here I am. Sitting here in front of my computer for the first time in quite a while - I've been cut back from my job as they needed to save costings and replaced me with the boss herself so they don't pay wage on weekends. The resumes I've sent out the other day got no reply as expected. But my situation is delicate anyway - I could work most of the time til one week before Christmas, then available again after Christmas. I don't think I could get a job before Christmas at all because there's only like two three weeks til then.

I think I might go out with friends tonight, well it's been too long since the last time I did so as I always work on weekends. Yes as I was cut back from my job I'm now pretty tight on money but I'll still go for it, just for one night.

BidPax?

While you would think wow $13 for an iPod Touch 32G or $15 for an Xbox is cheap, think again.

Each bid allows you to raise the price by 1c, while the bid itself costs $0.6-$1 depends on how many bids are you buying in bulk (buying 500 bids for $300 gives $0.6 per bid). Let's just say everyone is buying the largest bulk and hence every bid costs $0.6, a $13 iPod Touch would cost all bidders 1300 bids, i.e. $780, look, the final price $13 is nothing comparing to the bidding cost. How much does that iPod Touch cost? $399 delivered on the official Apple store. Same calculation, you could see bidders paid $900 bidding cost for the Xbox.

So how much did the winning bidder actually paid? Only one bidder in this bid is not possible because nobody is competing you might get the goods for 1c that's $0.61 for the whole thing. So start from two bidders, the case is still easy, $780/2 = $390 for each bidder, meaning that the winning bidder paid $403($390+$13) for the $399 iPod (surprise surprise) while the losing bidder paid $390 and get nothing! In the case of more bidders the bidding cost for each person cannot be calculated for exact but if one bidder is intending to outbid anybody whenever a new bid is placed, he pays half of the bidding cost, which in the iPod case is $390.

I would love to be a seller on BidPax but I think the company is the only seller here cos they obviously make a lot of money out of those who didn't do the math prior :P

Vegetarian Hypocrisy

I have noticed that increasing population of this world is going vegetarian. Reasons?

Animal cruely. As if there wasn't cruelty practiced on plants! Potatoes, tomatoes and many others are skinned and cut into pieces. Leeks in eternal torture whenever the leaves grow to a certain level is cut and they have to grow it again. Basil and parsley planted in pots in the kitchen are nipped off their best leaves whenever needed. Cabbages and cucumbers are left immersed in salty, sour and stinky solutions until totally rotten before eaten. The only difference is that you (consumers) are often the ones who practise such cruelty towards their vegetarian food. That plants do not express their feelings like a dying cattle or lamb with their eyes in those stunning pictures does not mean they do not have feelings.

Health. Nutritionally speaking, a vegetarian diet hardly supports the well being of human. A simple example is omega-3 fatty acids, which are not made within the body and are responsible for modulating inflammation and other allergic reactions are mostly sourced from fish, vegetarian wise they are only found in tiny amounts in nuts. Omega-6 fatty acids, on the other hand, although also essential, are responsible for enhancement of such allergic reactions. Omega-6 fatty acids are the ones that are available abundantly in plants. A shifting to a vegetarian lifestyle is a huge interruption to the balance of intake of omega-3:omega-6, suggested ratio 1:3-4, is currently 1:30-50 in the developed world. This could also be one of the causes of people getting increasingly allergic to increasing number of materials in these countries.

Obesity. Well at first I found it interesting that vegetarian people in Australia are still way overweight, but when I found out their only non-alcoholic drink is sodas I don't wonder anymore.

I am not suggesting a better way here, I don't see one. This is a cruel world, if you are not able to be cruel to any other species, you die. Going vegetarian does not mean you are any less cruel, you are just hypocrite plus you are risking your own well-being.

Future

I'm graduating. Sounds cool? What about the things after that? Find a job, if I'm not lucky enough, continue my study for an honours project, and if I'm not lucky enough even for that, keep finding a job until the next year honours open application... In whichever case, I'll have to get a new visa to stay in Australia.

I don't actually know where to from here. I don't see a future ahead of me yet, I am not even sure if I would be graduating this sem (well 70% sure I could but anything could happen). A job is even more blur. I haven't started applying for many of them yet, well there are vintage jobs available in Mildura which I have applied but even if I get an offer it's only a vintage. The chance of staying after the vintage is quite slim. On to honours, I don't know if my results are good enough among the applicants, they weren't very good to me at all... I hope I could talk the professors into having me, but then if I got a job somehow I'll have to defer that offer, which doesn't seem quite good... Anyway, I'll try to apply for both and see what happens. Wish things turns out OK...

And for now, I should only concentrate on my upcoming exams in these few weeks left as a student, probably ever.