Matfoo’s Weblog

A tough and upsetting week for me. Lab session is to start this week (31 Mac 08 – 6 Apr 08). That means adequate preparation for me is essential so that I can supervise the students during the lab hour. Nonetheless, things didn’t go as smoothly as I thought. I’m particularly disappointed with a couple of things.

Firstly, my partner lab demonstrator. He was a student in the university before and had done this lab as a student before. So, he wasn’t that keen to go through the whole lab preparation thing. And the rules of the lab is that you CAN’T work ALONE in the lab means that if he’s not there, I can’t be there in the lab. We did go through 60-70% of the lab but due to time constraint (we only have 3 hours per session to prepare), I felt that we should go through the remaining 30-40% but my fellow lab partner wasn’t that keen saying he has his other commitment. There I was, have to visualise all the possible circuit connections and experiment outcomes based on the manual.

Secondly, the lab coordinator and the lab staff are helpful….but at times I thought they took everything for granted. Can’t blame them for they had done the lab over and over and over again. But a “rookie” like me, they fail to understand the need a rookie need to get used to the lab thing.

These 2 things sort of wasted the whole week of lab preparation. Well, nothing can be done now. Lab is starting today (31 Mac 08). God is my strength and my knowledge. I will go to my lab session with God. And I will not fear.

Finally, I was called up for audition in church band. Overall, it wasn’t that bad. I do felt rusty for not playing bass for quite some time. In addition, all the songs I played for audition are new to me. I wasn’t given any briefing of things should go but I can still cope. In the end, the pastor of the worship and music ministry “presented his evaluation” about my audition. I won’t go into details of those but I felt pretty challenging when he preferred me to get my own bass guitar so that when I am scheduled to play, I can practice at home. The thing is the bass guitar with an amplifier is not cheap. And a living in a super tight budget of me, that would probably be the last thing to buy on my mind. Nonetheless, I’ll pray for the bass guitar to come for if this is to glorify His name, He will provide.

Both these scenarios taught me one thing, i.e. I have to be a very very very fast learner.

The real taste of autumn is here. Rains and cloudy weather condition loomed over Melbourne for the past whole week. And I managed to taste the effect of cycling in the rain with temperature of 12 C without raincoat! Just with a sports jacket bought from Malaysia . You may wonder why I didn’t wait for the rain to stop before I cycled back home? It was because there’s cell group on that night and I don’t want to be late. It was a “new” experience but I will not try it again. It was so freezing especially my palm and my face. The body was still alright. And to avoid being to long under the rain, I cycled twice as fast as I normally cycle. After reaching home, I barely able to talk catching for breath and the cold air didn’t help much. It was like I was having pneumonia or something. Thank God after a hot shower, things got back to normal. What make the whole thing worse was, when I reached home, the rain stopped

God blessed me through cell group with a very good winter jacket. While talking about winter coming, I mentioned that I wanted to scout for winter jacket as I had yet to get one. The cell leader somehow had extra pair that he doesn’t wear anymore and he offered to give it to me. Praise the Lord. The jacket was water proof, goose down and I felt really really warm after wearing it. The only thing is after wearing it, I looked like Michelin Man

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Who cares! As long as it keep me warm, I don’t care whether I look like Michelin Man or not.

Nothing much in the sports arena this week. In EPL, Liverpool won the derby match, 1-0 over Everton. With Man City lost their match to Birmingham, a ticket to Champions League qualifying is almost a certainty.

NOTE: This post may sound too dramatised. So please don’t give or create a face after reading this post.

I was on our way back from church when suddenly a red color “thing” caught my attention. I stopped to double confirm what I saw. That was such a rare sight that I felt that it was a must to take some pictures of “it”. “Its” cousins are more comfortable, more economical and more qualitative. And yet I found “it” here. It’s not unusual to have “it” here but it’s very very rare. I personally would not go for “it” after so many bad experience with “its” elder brothers.

What did I see?

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A Proton Savvy!!!!

A “RED” one some more. This owner is either very “patriotic” OR he/she is a proton lover OR he/she found this car adorable. Just to make sure that this is really Savvy (despite seeing the proton logo), I went to the back of the car to ensure myself….yup that’s a savvy.

This is such a rare sight. VERY VERY RARE SIGHT.

If your face now is starting to ,

I apologise . After all, it’s something rare to find here.

Very much looking forward to this week for two main reasons. Firstly, supposedly going to try out the lab experiment for the first time for the subject that I’m lab demonstrating for and secondly, there’s a very long weekend ahead (Easter Holiday) as the University will be on holiday from Friday (Good Friday) till Tuesday (Easter Tuesday break). I really need a break to get myself composed. The report writing (in fact still correcting), advanced postgraduate course and research really starting to wear me down.

Unfortunately, the try out for the lab experiment did not happen. There’s a miscommunication between the lab coordinator and the lab staff about the schedule that all the tryout lab had to be postponed to the following week. Sigh…. was really looking forward to tryout those lab and learn about the system myself.

Good Friday till Sunday was a relaxing moment for me and Flora. After the Good Friday service, the cell group organised a picnic to Mount Dandenong. With the weather forecast saying Mount Dandenong have the maximum temperature of 17C, it will be a very nice day for picnic up in the mountain. Each of us were assigned a food to bring for the picnic and the place was fantastic. Very beautiful and serene. You can see all those picture in Flora’s blog here. The weather was nice and food was nice, the fellowship was nice.

On Easter Sunday, after the church service, the cell group decided to have lunch at Malaya Inn at Doncaster. Apparently, this Malaya Inn serves one of the most authentic Malaysian-Singaporean dish. After trying out a few in Melbourne, I have yet to find that so called Malaysian-Singaporean restaurant that’s nice. But this one is different. It’s really nice. I ordered Fried Carrot Cake (Char Kueh) and it tasted like the one in my hometown, at Kenyalang market! And Flora ordered the Char Kueh Teow and it’s really nice. It tasted like the one in my hometown, at Hui Sing hawker stall, stall number 17 (Shi Xiao, literally Four Small)! I was really enjoying the lunch although the price is relatively on the high side. The Char Kueh same portion as the RM 3 Char Kueh in Kuching cost AUD 10!!!!! The Char Kueh Teow also cost AUD 10!!!. Well, at least I’m satisfied with the taste. I wonder whether the cook’s from Kuching or not .

After the lunch, Flora’s cousin, invited for a high tea BBQ. Flora’s cousin just bought a house in Viewbank (14km from the city and is near the Train Station, Rosanna or more northeast than Heidelberg). The reason I put the detailed description of the Viewbank suburb is that most of the people do not know where’s Viewbank. The house is nice and cozy. Very quiet and peaceful. I didn’t take any photos of the house because they just moved in and things are still not in place. So, I will only take when they do a official house warming. The BBQ was nice and spent the remaining of the evening relaxing and enjoying the nature.

Sportswise, F1 is in Sepang. At the same time GP2 Asia is also in Sepang as the support race to F1. Kimi Raikkonen finally won his race with his Ferrari a class of their own. McLaren were not that fast as compared to Melbourne. But their effort of damage limitation is paid off with a podium by Heikki and a 5th place by Lewis after a mess up in the first pit stop. BMW’s Robert Kubica took second. Another strong performance by the BMW which we all thought BMW will be not competitive judging by the winter testing time.

Fairuz Fauzy finished 2nd in the Race 1 and 6th in the Race 2 in the GP2 Asia Series. Not too bad for him as he consistently scoring points in all the races so far. He now lies third in the championship with only 4 more races to go.

In EPL, sadly, Liverpool lost pretty bad to MU. Wasn’t expecting that. 0-3 to MU was a big defeat. I didn’t watch the match as there’s no live telecast here. I do hope it’s because of playing with 10 men that led to the big defeat. Anyway, I hope Liverpool will do well in the Champions League. That’s all I can ask for.

It’s easter and to join the “mood”, we bought ourselves a box of Easter Chocolate Egg. It’s Cadbury Crunchies’ Easter Chocolate Egg.

The size of that “egg” is the the same size as a real medium-size chicken egg.

For those who had eaten Cadbury Crunchie before,

The inside of this chocolate bar is made up of sweet honeycomb that looks like this,

Ooooo…..yummy! Thinking that the inside of the “egg” will also be like that, so we ate it. To our dismay, the content of the “egg” is……..

Hahaha…. hollow. Apparently the “honeycomb” is at the side of the “egg”. What an “egg”!

Eating out in Melbourne can cost a bomb. Hence, it’s important that me and Flora not only cook every of our meal at home but also plan what to eat and budget for what to buy so that we don’t overspend. Basically we try not to exceed $50 budget on meal per week (for 7 days, lunch and dinner for both of us). Occasionally we do have to eat out for example after church, then we try to eat the most reasonable meal. Here I am bring you through how is our weekly meal would be.

It all started with planning of what to eat for the week. (Pardon the poor picture quality)

The L means Lunch, while D means Dinner. Then, comes the budgeting. The price written down there are based on estimate and experience. As you can probably see the total budget for the week is about $45-$50.

So, for our Sunday dinner and Monday lunch, we had Rice, Green Vegetables and Bulgogi Sauce Chicken

Monday dinner and Tuesday lunch, we had Rice, Green Vegetables and Assam Fish

Tuesday dinner and Wednesday lunch, we had Sushi

For Wednesday dinner and Thursday lunch, we had Egg Sandwich and Chips with the bread we made ourself.

For Thursday dinner and Friday lunch, we had Rice, Green Vegetables and Butter Chili Chicken.

For Friday dinner and Saturday lunch, we had, Rice and Kimchi Mixed Soup.

And finally for the weekend, we went to Queen Victoria Market and bought this “famous” Bratwurst. Boy it’s pretty expensive. $5.30 for the bratwurst. (Just bread and the bratwurst)

This conclude our weekly menu. Cheers

Apparently the writing woes is still continuing. Yup…I’m still in the midst of correcting and writing and correcting and writing. Anyway, I do hope through this experience, I can really sharpen my technical writing skills and every day is a learning process for me.

Lab induction was on. Induction is when the lab coordinator brief all the returning and new students about safety measure in the lab. The university take this safety measure very very seriously. They even have fiction video drama on a court case where parents suing the university for the death of their child in the lab. The lab I’m supposed to supervise has 6 clear plain sight emergency stop button to be pressed in case anything bad really go wrong. The lab coordinator is very strict about footwear in the lab and one should not work in the lab alone. He/she must be accompanied by at least 1 person. The lab will shut down at the strike of the clock with no mercy. The lab coordinator will come and lock up regardless the student finish the lab or not. We as demonstrator are asked to leave exactly on the dot and don’t need to bother about the students left behind. How cool is that!

One thing strike me (which I must get used to) is the attire of most of the staff in the university. Jeans and shirt is very normal. T-shirt and shorts is also normal. The lecturer, lab coordinator etc all teach in their casual attire. The one they feel most comfortable with. I will wear like that when the lab starts. T-shirts and shorts…….hehehe.

Sports wise, 2008 Formula 1 is here. And Melbourne is the host of the first round. Amazing race I would say. only 6 finishers but 8 point-scorers. Why? Well, according to the rule of race classification, if the driver finished at least 90% of the race distance, he would still be classified as a finisher. Australian GP has 58 laps, that means if any driver retired with 6 more laps to go will still be classified as a finisher. Apparently the case of this amazing Australian GP, the Toro Rosso rookie, Sebastien Bourdais retired 3 laps before the race finished and Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen retired 5 laps before finished were classified 7th and 8th respectively giving them points (as top 8 classified finisher would be given points). McLaren’s Lewis Hamilton won the race followed by BMW’s Nick Heidfeld and Williams’ Nico Rosberg completing the podium. Next week is Malaysian GP. Can’t wait for the action to continue. In addition, GP2 Asia will continue as Fairuz will try to do well in front of the home crowd.

A1 GP is also on in Mexico. Alex Yoong is back to race for Team Malaysia. He finished 9th after starting 14th in the Race 1 giving Malaysia another 2 points. But the Race 2 was quite disappointing. Started 10th but finished 15th is not where we want to be. Alex won the race in Mexico last year and not only he didn’t defend the win but a big setback. Sad….

Another disappointing week for the Malaysian badminton particularly for the so called Malaysia’s best double pair of KK Koo and BH Tan. Again, they fail to defend their Swiss title with a lost at round of 16 to compatriot Mohd Zakry and Mohd Fairuzizuan. In fact Malaysia could have two doubles in the final. With two pairs in the semi final Malaysia fail to put any of them in the final when veteran double, WW Lee and TF Chong lost to the Korean pair who eventually won the Swiss Open and Zakry and Fairuzizuan lost of the the top Indonesian pair before giving a strong fight till the rubber set. Kudos to these two double pairs. Lee Chong Wei entered the final to play Lin Dan. A clash of the first 2 seed of the world. Sadly, Chong Wei lost the battle. And that ends Malaysia’s charge for gold in Swiss Open.

Liverpool won the UEFA Champions League match against Inter at Italy. A second half goal by Torres is enough as away goal means Inter Milan needs to score 4 goals in 30 minutes to win the match. Liverpool defended well and they are going to the quarter final.

You can get pretty emotional after reading this book.

This book portray how a mob-mafia can be so powerful that no authority can handle him. Not even the judge and the jury. While reading this book, I was flooded with emotion of deep anger on the mob character. He kills for fun. He rapes for fun. He is the “baddest” guy you can imagine as portrayed by the author of this book. How do you deal with this mob even the judicial system fail to do so?

The plot is pretty much standard. Not so much of a big twist. I get the ending that I want. That at least give me the satisfaction of how the author deal with the mob. Read it if you really have nothing else interesting to read. A so-so for me.

It’s autumn since 1 March 2008. After almost 2 weeks, not only the signs of autumn is not there, the signs of summer is recurring. Checking the weather forecast (see below), this whole week will be hot. Very hot in fact.

This is really weird.

This is a very interesting week particularly for all Malaysian. For the first time in the history of Malaysia BN suffered such a major upset in the 2008 General Election. BN managed to form a government with only a simple majority win and losing not only the usual state of Kelantan but also almost the whole west coast of Kinta and Klang valley of Selangor, Perak, Pulau Pinang and Kedah. Personally, I’m quite satisfied with this result. I thought this is a good wake up call for BN. A new Malaysia has been born and I hope that this will be start of many good things to come.

Enough about politics. This week mark my first week cycling to university. My first day was pretty tiring and boy the leg muscle really burn. It took me only 15 minutes to reach the university and I was pretty surprised by that.

Last week, I did mention that I got the lab demonstrator job but not knowing what subject that I’m handling. Well, praise the Lord! I got the subject that I’m comfortable with. That’s the good news. The not so good news is that this subject has the largest number of students enrolled. So that means more hours. I do hope that I can really manage my time well between my research, my studies and my work.

My postgraduate course had begun. The lecturers and the lecture are pretty interesting. This course had made me realised that I have been treating mathematics for granted. Really for granted.

This is a long weekend in Melbourne for Monday (10 Mac 08) is a public holiday in conjunction with Labors Day. Seems like Australian major city have their own Labors Day and not following the international labor day on 1 May. Unfortunately, the University of Melbourne does not observe Labors Day as a public holiday. So, it’s still work for me.

We went to Dockland on Sunday as there’s a dragon boat race. Flora will blog about these in details with picture so you can refer to her blog when she has posted it. Going to Dockland brought us to visit parts of Melbourne we have yet to visit after 3 months here. We finally got to see the Southern Cross train station, Telstra Dome (where soccer are played) and the anticipated Dragon Boat Race at Docklands. It was pretty hot with temperature hitting 32-33 degree Celsius. But it was nice to see new things in Melbourne. The race was just so-so but we at least got to see it.

Sports wise, Malaysia suffered pretty bad setback in the All England super series. Lee Chong Wei and the Tan Fook-Wan Wah paired manage to reach the semi finals but denied the final by their respective opponents. The worse news and the one that disgust me the most is the defeat of Keng Kiat-Boon Heong to unseeded Japanese pair in the 1st round!

I do not enjoy writing. I think some can relate with me in this matter. Whether it is a research proposal, a progress report, a conference paper, a journal paper and/or research thesis, I always find it hard to write properly. I’m always admire those who can write that seems so effortless. I know experience has molded them such way.

I’m in the midst of preparing some sort of like detailed research proposal. Boy, it’s pretty tough to write in order to meet my supervisor’s requirement. The figures below illustrate just what I meant.

This was returned to me after my first draft. After rewriting, this is the outcome.

Still looks pretty much the same huh

Anyway, I’m in the midst of correcting for the third time. Hopefully things will improve.

Man…when can I start to write effortlessly?