Matfoo’s Weblog

I started to resume my badminton routine. It’s time to exercise more than just merely cycling. Since, I don’t have a racquet and I need to get one, I searched around and found one with a reasonable price. The racquet cost AUD 35. It’s not a superb quality racquet, but for non-professional player like me, it suffice.

There was I in the Melbourne University Sports Centre using my racquet for the first time. After my second game, due to sweat on my face, my glasses slipped off my face and fell. Then I heard something I don’t feel like hearing. Yup….. I broke my lens. The left lens. I didn’t take a picture of it cause I don’t have a mood to do that at that time. Instead, I’m gonna sketch it here.

The good news is that, I do have a spare glasses, which is like 5-6 years old. Thank God the last I tried it on, My eyes’ still can feel comfortable with it. I heard of the super expensive price of the glasses in Australia and I wasn’t even prepared to think about it.

Now come the bad news. The price of the glasses in Australia is indeed very expensive. For the sake of convenience, there’s one optical shop 5 minutes away from my house. The price for ONE lens to suit the unbroken lens is…….AUD 250!!!!!! There may be cheaper lens elsewhere. But for the sake of convenience and desperation……What can I do. I’ve been blaming myself for not using the spare glasses to play the badminton game. Now……. sigh……

Moral of the story. Get 2 pairs of glasses from Malaysia before coming here. It’s far cheaper back home. SIGH…. So, how much is my badminton racquet? AUD 285.

Christmas is coming. As usual during this time, churches will have lots of activities planned out to tell the world the birth of Christ and spread the God’s around.

This is the first time both Flora and I will be celebrating Christmas with Richmond AOG church. One particular interesting thing practiced in Richmond AOG church which is new to me is the Christmas Hamper. Richmond AOG has the tradition to give these hampers to the Richmond community. That means, 1-2 weeks before Christmas, the church will gathered all the hampers and distribute it door-to-door around the designated neighbourhood near Richmond suburb.

Back from the churches that I came from (both in Kuching and Subang Jaya), the church normally take cares of the hamper. Certain groups of people will be taking charge of the hamper. In Richmond AOG church however, they let everyone participate in the packing of the Christmas hamper. The church provides the empty hamper boxes to all of us to fill it up and returned to the church by certain dates. In other words, it is like you personally packed that hamper to be given away. So, it’s more on the personal level.

The best thing is that you can even invite your friends and colleague to participate along. So, it can be like the whole office/college/groups packed the hamper to given away to the Richmond community.

Our cell group leader decided to do it on the cell group level. We took 25 empty hamper boxes and it’s shopping time. We (around 15 of us) did the whole thing on Saturday and finished everything in less than an hour. Here are some of the pictures of the hamper we had packed. Yes… the box looks like KFC box. That’s what our Senior Pastor said when he first saw it.

Non-tangible items preferred

Christmas At Richmond

All the 25 boxes of hamper

Had my exam in the Royal Exhibition Hall beside the Melbourne Museum. This is something new to me as going to a place which is not in the university for a university examination. The exam hall is about 10-15 minutes walk from the university.

The ‘cool’ feeling in me turned to confusion. The crowds were huge. Students ranging from undergraduate to postgraduate all in the same hall having examinations. I applaud the excellent crowd control by the invigilators but I was quite disappointed with the PA system used for the announcement outside the hall. If I’m not mistaken, there were only 4 speakers (quite old one) used to project the voice of an invigilator against 1000s of student. Sigh….I can’t hear a thing Ok, enough of describing the outside. Let the pictures do the talking.

Crowd of students waiting outside the hall.

Check out the speakers on the right of the picture. Imagine that’s the speakers used to talk to the thousands around. How can we hear what’s been said?

Moving inside the hall, I thought the whole 3 hours of examination is filled with activities. One can’t really control the urge to answer nature’s call so every 15-20 minutes, you’ll hear footsteps of students (including myself at the second hour of the exam) going to the loo. Again, the PA system for announcement, sigh….. The hall is so big and one would expect a terrible echo. Yup, I can’t hear a word the chief invigilator saying thanks to the echo. Anyway, it’s an experience to share with you all.

Seatings everywhere

NOTE: All the pictures were taken BEFORE the exam begin. The mobile was later SURRENDERED to the invigilator before the exam begin.

This may be an old old news but since I just got to know it, I’ll post it here.

Prof. Ghauth is now the Vice Chancellor of University Malaya (UM). I am happy for him. Being my former university President and also my former boss, I can say I that I am proud of his achievement.

I like his quote in TheStar interview recently,

“I can’t wait to start work to get UM back into the top class again, – Prof. Ghauth Jasmon”

That quote sums up everything I’ve been holding on to. I know politics or whatever connection may be involved but I don’t care. I know I’m being naive or you can call me one, but I don’t care.

The most important thing is to create a good and healthy competition in Malaysian education with one aim, i.e., to place Malaysia a competitive competitor in the world of academic and research. This journey is still far but with this new leadership, I hope we are getting there…soon.

Congratulation, Prof. Ghauth.

After the end of Formula 1 2008, if you don’t want to get yourself into the Racing Withdrawal syndrome, try A1 GP. This is the 4th season and this is the first time that the A1 GP teams will be Ferrari engine built based on F12004 that Michael Schumcher won dominantly in 2004.

What’s more interesting for this season (apart for Team Malaysia won the opening round of the race in Zandvort, Netherlands and now leading the championship table…), you can watch all the action LIVE on the A1GP official webpage itself. By going to A1GP.com and click on LIVE VIDEO STREAM, you will reach this page

Choose whatever video resolution that want, and voila, A1 GP race on your computer. I thought this is so cool. With TV coverage for A1 GP rather limited, this is what I long for. I watched the Chengdu Race here and so can you for the remaining of the season.

A1 Malaysian GP is coming in 2 weeks time and with team A1 Malaysia is leading the championship, be sure to fill the Sepang circuit (for those who can) or go to this website (for those who can’t go to Sepang) to give your support to the team. The team has improved quite a lot and Fairuz Fauzy definitely improved his driving a whole lot.

If you can’t get yourself too close to F1 because of the price, give yourself an A1 GP treat. This is when you can get yourself as close possible to the pit garage and on track activities. For those who are in Malaysia, go to PitStop.com under A1 GP forum thread, for more info. You will be getting the experience of the lifetime. At least I did….when I watched the A1 GP Malaysia qualifying live from the Team Malaysia pit garage!!!! How cool is that.

Here’s the snippet of what Flora and I experienced…..

Pit garage for A1 Team Malaysia

The pitstop.com fans. It’s not “for the exclusive type” , just have to know the correct people. Check it out in pitstop.com

We were given free T-shirt and see how close you can get to the car

Flora with Fairuz Fauzy, the current A1 Team Malaysia driver

Me, watching the qualifying LIVE from the pit garage

It’s Melbourne Cup day. This is the day the whole city is on holiday for a HORSE RACING competition. Unfortunately, the university has no holiday, which is fine with me as I have tonnes of dateline looming.

Julien, the exchange student from France (which we had a farewell) had graduated and got himself a job as an engineer in Australia. FYI, this is not a celebration for his job (he has been working for almost a month) but instead because it’s a public holiday, we had a chance to meet up over dinner. Nothing to do with celebration

So, since we never tasted Moroccan food before, we decided to head towards that direction. La Paella was chosen by Nadia (reason unknown – probably nearby? nice picture on the internet?). For me, La Paella was perfect for the reason it’s only 7 minutes walk from my house.

A to B only about 7 mins.

We ordered a banquet as it has lots of variety that we can taste most of the Spanish Moroccan Cuisine.

Entree – Breads with Dips

Mix Platter of Chicken Kebab, Pan fried Cheese, Spanish Omelet and Grilled Mushroom

Beef Raif – Deep fried bread with minced beef and yoghurt

Lamb Shank Tagine (this is very Moroccan)

Main – Seafood Paella (this is Spanish though)

The food was not bad. The lamb tagine was very tender. Paella….ok. I thought the rice is a bit soggy compared to the one I tried before. I would give the food an average rating.

It was nice catching up with Julien. Our next meet up probably will be over Lebanese cuisine.

From left: Julien, Me, Flora, Nadia & Yuping

God is good all the time. In times of uncertainties, He is always faithful. This morning (4 Nov 2008), my devotion led me to this wonderful verse in the Bible.

‘Call to Me, and I will answer you, and show you great and mighty things, which you do not know.’ – Jeremiah 33:3

Who said your understanding is bounded. Who said we have limited answer. He said it so clearly that, call to Him and He will answer you AND show you BIG things that you DO NOT know.

Glory be to God.