Matfoo’s Weblog

A major thing happened last week, while I was preparing to watch F1. The water heater in the kitchen leaks and flooded the kitchen. For more details, you can read my wife’s blog on this.

The good news is the plumber fixed everything. The bad news is one of the piping head was exhausted and need a new head. The plumber didn’t have that with him yesterday [29 Apr 08] so he decided to fix it today [30 Apr 08]. The extra bad news is, he can only come in by 2-3pm. Flora will be working at that time and I have a meeting at 2pm. After some negotiation with my meeting attendees and the plumber, I decided to let the plumber come at 3pm.

So after the meeting ended at 2.30pm, I began my tour de Melbourne. I cycled 4km to Flora’s work place to pick up house key (It’s a long story why we don’t duplicate the key. I won’t elaborate here). Cycled another 1.4km back home to wait for the plumber. After fixing everything, I cycled another 1.4km to return the key back to Flora and cycled 4km back to university. In addition of 2.6km I did this morning to university and another 2.6km coming home later. So in total, I have done 14km today.

Now writing this post, I’ve just reach university and eating my lunch. What a tiring day. I guess I’ll lost another 1-2kg after today.

My supervisor arranged a field trip for us to irrigation channel in the area of Shepparton to let us have an insight of the research works that the group is working on. Shepparton is located at the northern part of Victoria and the journey took us about 2 hours to reach there. Here are some pictures of the places we visited during the trip.

A floodgate. This floodgate is to release the water when it reaches the safety water level to prevent flooding.

The lake behind the floodgate

The water from the floodgate will be released to this river.

The undershot gates the floodgate used.

One of the irrigation channels transporting the water from the lake (pictures above) . This is the medium size irrigation channels.

This is the olden type of gate structure of the much smaller scale of the irrigation channel where the opening of the gates for water release are done manually. Soon this type of gates will be changed to automated one as accuracy is higher which leads to better water management to reduce water wastage.

This wheel (operated manually) is used by the farmers to direct the water from the irrigation channels to their farm and for their usage. Again, this will be replaced by automated gate system.

This is the automated gate which has been installed in some of the irrigation channels. With the automated gate, the release of water are done automatically and remotely.

The overshot gates used will open or close depending on the water demand from the farmers. All done automatically and remotely.

In part 2 of the field trip, I will show you the towns that we passed through.

MART 130 had been named one of the best place to have breakfast in Melbourne for 2008 by The Age newspaper.

MART is actually TRAM spell backward.

Flora’s cousin’s friend actually arrived at the place first and called us that the place was closed. I was surprised as I’ve just called them before hand to ask what time their breakfast end for the day. We were like confused as if we are entering the Twilight Zone (I’m guessing you are playing the music of Twilight Zone in your head now). Who did I actually talk to on the phone 1 hour earlier? When we reached the area, we also couldn’t find the place and things started to get really like Twilight Zone (music). Where’s this MART? Finally we found it. It’s actually ONE of the tram stop. No wonder we and/or Flora’s cousin’s friend couldn’t find where this MART was.

MART is the tram stop itself. How cool is that. Behind MART is Albert Park.

We were supposed to be there for breakfast but we arrived at around 1130am. There so many people that we have to wait to be seated. Around 30 minutes later, there’s table for 7 available hence, breakfast became lunch……of which I thought. 1200pm we were seated. We were given menu at 1130am while waiting so we’ve decided what to order then. Once the waiter came and took our order at 1215pm, we waited eagerly for the food. MART was famous for its Corn Fritters. In fact it was their Corn Fritters that won them the award which I mentioned before hand. So, Flora ordered the Corn Fritters and I ordered the MART Egg Style 3.

Soon lunch became late lunch. Our food only came at 130pm. More than an hour wait. When the food came, the presentation was fantastic and the portion was quite good. In my heart, I was thinking the food better be good. I was so hungry. Imagine a supposedly breakfast became late lunch. When we helped ourselves, it was worth every second of the wait. The food was fantastic and superb. The corn fritters was nice and the claim is authentic. I can’t elaborate more as I just tried a little bit from Flora’s plate. Let her tell you how did it taste in her blog when she posted it.

The Recommended Corn Fritters. It’s corn fritters with ham and sauce and cream.

My MART Egg Style 3 was not too bad as well. It’s poached eggs, with sausages with toasted sourdough and cream and sauce.

MART Egg Style 3

FYI, MART served their MART Egg in 4 styles. If this is not your taste, you can choose the remaining other three. My combination of the poached egg, sauce and the sausages was superb. You can taste the texture of the sausages well and everything was fantastic. The long wait we had was worth the wait.

MART is located at 207A Canterbury Road, Middle Park, Victoria. But I recommend you taking tram to get there. Like I say, it’s the tram stop. Take tram 96 from the city and stop at tram stop 130. Price wise, I wouldn’t say it’s cheap but it’s not too bad. Both the dish we order are priced at AUD 16 (RM 48). But, it’s worth pampering yourself at least once to try the food there.

Things are getting busier and busier and busier. I’m officially ending my weekly bulletin.

BUT……………

Probably you may know/notice what I mean.

A very busy week and it will only get busier. C is always not my good friend and to convert it to MATLAB require lots of attention. Thanks to VT Goh, P Lo and WS Yap for their help that clarifies me a whole lot about C and that eases my conversion to MATLAB.

Over the weekend, my supervisor invited the whole research group over his place for seafood BBQ and some interesting dessert. The BBQ was good. There’s prawn, calamari and rainbow trout, breads and dips, salad and so on.

My supervisor with his secret recipe for his rainbow trout

The research group with their family.

The trout’s ready

The whole meal ended with dessert from around the whole. We have Chinese dessert, Malaysian dessert, Algerian dessert and Norwegian dessert.

Dessert from Malaysia (cookies and cream – to the right of the water melon), China (red bean paste samosa), Algeria (Ghrebie – beside the samosa) and Norway (Appel Karke).

We started our BBQ from 2pm and ended almost 7pm.

The evening view from the balcony of my supervisor’s house.

After a good meal, it’s time to get back to work.

I finished another James Patterson’s book. I was actually wondering what could the title means? See How They Run.

My first thought was actually some character in the book running away from some bounty hunter that kinda thing. But I was quite wrong. The story centered about the Jews’ retribution to the ex-Nazis soldiers as the Jews suffered through the Holocaust during the WWII. The revenge took place on the first day of the 1980 Olympic in Moscow, USSR.

The Dachau Two is the Jewish group comprised of several experts and professionals the plan the retribution. But their plan was something much bigger than their original intention.

I thought the story was interesting. It started with lots of commotion here and there and unexplained incident. That made me wanted to continue reading to find out the whys. The ending was pretty good. I thought the ending was brilliant and fair.

If you are into the Jews and Nazis thing, you may want to consider reading this book. Otherwise, you may give it a pass.

This is an interesting car plate number that not many would give a miss. It was late evening around 10pm and the only camera I have is my handphone. Since my handphone has no flash. This is the best I can capture. I don’t know what to say or react seeing this but…………….:D

Pretty routine work week except for the weekend. The cell group organised a outing to Albert Park! There’s a sport centre (Melbourne Sports and Aquatic Centre. For more details you can check the link here. ) there where you can swim, play basketball, badminton, ping pong, driving range and etc.

The cell group booked 2 badminton courts for one hour. I personally thought the price for renting the court is pricey but it’s almost full house. I didn’t play badminton for fear of aggravating my knee injury and so I was the umpire of the day.

And soon after, they went for driving range, which is not my cup of tea. So, I just watch them “drive” for a while then I went to what caught my attention the most. For me, the highlight of the whole outing is not in those sports stuff. It’s the Albert Park itself! Does Albert Park sounds familiar? Yup, it’s the F1 circuit for Australia GP. At first I was thinking of walk the whole circuit route BUT….just from the Turn 2 (where the sports centre is located) to the pit garage, it’s a very long walk. It took me almost 20 minutes of brisk walk to reach the pit garage. Of course you won’t see any F1 cars there but, to be close to the pit garage of an F1 circuit is something “big” for me.

View of the pit garage. See how far I need to walk to get there from the sports centre.

Yup, I’m finally reached the pit garage. The back of the garage.

Yup, this is used for F1.

Entering the pit lane.

Standing in front of the allocated garage for McLaren.

Because Albert Park is a public park. They have to paint the grid every year for the Grand Prix and erase it once the whole event it over to avoid confusion.

The mark of the tyre as the F1 car leave the pit.

The grandstand opposite the pit garage.

View of Melbourne City from Albert Park on an autumn day.

After the outing, the cell group went to a Thai restaurant for dinner. The food was good and the price was not too bad for Melbourne standard. Then, we wrap up the night with a crêpe in one of the famous French crêpe cafe. The crêpe was nice but slight pricey considering the ingredient that is used to make one. Just flour, sugar and butter with a scoop of ice cream and it cost almost AUD 8.

The AUD 8 crêpe. Good thing it DIDN”T taste like crap.

Sunday, we had lunch at an Italian restaurant called Sofia and oh boy, Italian are very generous with their food. A small pasta serving can serve two persons for their servings are really really large. That’s why I guess the tag line for Italiannese in Malaysia says, “Our food are meant to be shared”. If you are interested to know where’s this place, it’s located at Burke Road, Camberwell. Just sort of opposite Camberwell train station.

The large portion of pasta. Originally, 3 persons ordered this but eventually 6 persons are actually needed to finish this plate of pasta.

Sports wise, Liverpool beat Arsenal in one of the best Champion Leagues’ match for season 2007/08. A 4-2 match provide all the needed footballing suspense and entertainment. I was particularly devastated when Arsenal scored the equaliser at 84th minutes which will see Arsenal through to the semi final by away goal rule. Kudos to Walcott for such a superb solo from his own penalty box to Liverpool’s before passing it to Adebayor to score the equaliser. At first, I thought it was all over for Liverpool. What can be achieved in 5 minutes? To my joy, just 1 minute after that, Babel was brought down and Liverpool was awarded a penalty. Gerrard made no mistake and scored to bring the score 3-2 with 4 more minutes to go. Babel sealed the deal when he scored in the last minutes of the injury time to give Liverpool a solid 4-2 win over Arsenal. Perfect result. Let’s hope the Reds can tame the Blues in the semi finals.

Sadly, Man Utd is closer to clinch the EPL title. Some team must challenged them next season.

Motorsport wise, Fairuz Fauzy finished the first season of GP2 Asia series with a point and settled 4th in the driver’s championship. A pretty good achievement. A1 Team Malaysia scored their best ever points finishing in the season with a 4th place and 6th place in Race 1 and Race 2 respectively.

In my previous posts, I was blogging about MMU New President, MMU New FOE dean and MMU New FIT Dean. With the departure of two main key persons in MMU (i.e. Prof G. Jasmon and Prof. HT. Chuah), the MMU world must be wondering where would these two key persons be. There are rumors here and there and finally, one of the key person’s whereabout is officially revealed.

Prof. HT Chuah is going to UTAR as the President/CEO.

Hopefully there will be a healthy competition between MMU and UTAR for the sake of Malaysian education to place these two universities as the main education hub in South East Asia and hopefully in the world.

I am sure this has been forwarded around here and there.

For those who didn’t get the farced link, I won’t provide the link for it could have been corrected but instead I will “show” you the excerption.

This is from the local online newspaper in Malaysia. The title of the article sound normal but can you spot anything wrong with it?

Focus on the caption and the picture. Is this a mistake, hacked, deliberate or a prophecy?

Well…as anticipated that if I post the link here, you won’t see the difference anymore. 10 minutes after this post, rectification has been made, and this is the what supposed to be.

I wonder what would happened to the “poor fellow”