Redondo and Choki Choki

Sem break is over, and without realizing it, I'm gonna be taking my last semester in University and gonna be stepping out into society before I even manage to say "I'm not ready~!"

But as time flies.... you soon find yourself sitting on a jet plane once again, en route to my last chapter of uni life.

This time around however, I'd gotten my international passport done ^_^ and was all set and ready for a trip to eat the overly advertised "Excapade Sushi" in Brunei~

So... one fine day

one fine... HOT day....

13 of us got into 3 cars and drove our way to Brunei. And me... with Ringgit Malaysia 186.80, had 0.00 Brunei Dollars and was planning on not spending a cent in Brunei =.="... cheap ain't I?

Upon arriving, our first destination was the all the uni student's beloved Sushi restaurant: "Excapade Sushi"

Somehow I really wonder how those arabic words are read.... and how the words "Sushi" made it into their glossary... but anyway.... to cut the longs story short. We went in, we sat, and we ordered. And when the food came.... ^_^

This is what they called.... .... .... what was it again...? Fire Cheese Salmon??? It's made with a slab of rice below, topped with a generous slice of Half-cooked salmon, followed by another slice of melted cheese on the top of it, to go with it was mayonnaise and some other sauces on top =) The taste?.... Absolutely Delicious *slurp*

One thing to know when going to a Sushi Restaurant. You NEVER leave without trying their Sashimi! And at Excapade sushi, they provide like... the most Beautiful and THICKEST slices of Sashimi I've seen in my history of japanese food.

Getting good sashimi is one thing, getting a LOT of it is another. But you know, the best thing about this place is, you get a good, generous amount, for a very very cheap price @_@

And if you're a freak at raw meat foods. You could always treat yourself to their King size portion of sashimi =.="

Which.... proudly consists of 48 pieces of mixed sushi and sashimi. Where only 8 pieces are NOT made up of raw meat =)

Sadly though, I couldn't be bothered taking any nice photographs of the food that day because my stomach was urging me to put down the camera. And they kept ordering dish after dish after dish of a variety of different sushi's, which was one thing I liked about this restaurant too.... it was full of new flavours.... hehe

And by the end of the day....

But of course... this not even half of what we ate =) and the total price of my table.... $86.70 Brunei Dollars. Divided by 6 people paying (but 7 eating... yea... that extra one was Me XP) $14.50 per person ^_^

For RM30++ we got to try a variety of weird and wonderful new Sushis.... and had a stomach full of raw fish when we stepped out the door of Excapade. Totally worth it =)


And the one more thing every Curtin student does when they go to Brunei... ...

Redondo ^_^

(I bought the Choki Choki's just to reminiscent the childhood days when we bought those sticks for 20 cents and sucked on them in class, hehe)

On a random note. I saw this quote a friend's blog and truly agree with it. So I just decided to share it here.

"Feeling gratitude and not expressing it is like wrapping a present and not giving it.” -William Arthur Ward

And I believe the same applies to every other emotion in life.

_

Monday, 19th July 2010

I didn't put the day and date because something memorable happened, I didn't use it because I wanted it to look cool, but just because, I didn't know what other title to put.

It's been a while since I last updated. It seems my passion for blogging is dying once again.... or maybe it's because I've dedicated too much time to this virtual video animated game called "MapleStory" again =.="


Anyway, it's been holidays for me, and without knowing it, it's nearly coming to an end!! With 2 more weeks to spare, I'm trying my best to enjoy my last days of being able to eat home cooked food and just sit around while my mom does all the housework, heheh *evil smile* coz I have to do everything myself when I go back to miri.

But then again, being in KK, without enough Ringgit Malaysia's so spend, and nothing much to do, is actually pretty dull. So dull that I even spent time to scrutinize the potted plants that's been sitting outside on my balcony for 1 1/2 years..... And guess what? I found this~!

A green creepy crawler eating up all the young shoots off the tip of the plant!!

Upon informing my mom about it, she made the decision to throw it as far as it could fly. But then, me.... having nothing better to do, came up with the idea to let it live and see what becomes of it ^_^

Kinda scary eh... when you look at it closely.... reminds me of Pokemon Caterpie...

So having a fried computer, for those of you who knew, yes, my lappy got fried due to malfunction of the cooling fan... or something.... and I had 1 week with virtually NOTHING to do.... anyway, so having a fried computer and nothing much to do, I inspected the plant and the crawler on it every few hours.... and the very next day, I found it'd moved and gone to the bottom to get some shade.

A night later... while I was sound asleep... it turned into...

PUPA~

Too bad I wasn't around to see it spin it out. I never thought that he'd be doing it during Midnight~!!


Then slowly.... 2 days passed... nothing happened... 5 days, not much change. A week of uneventful happenings for the pupa went pass, while I had already gone for a couple of rounds of Call of Duty, had BBQ fish with friends, and even got my computer repaired.

Then somewhere around day 9, the colour of the pupa changed a bit.

It looked.... darker and.... drier... 0_0 and I thought it was a long way more to until... on the 10th Midnight... I was about to do a quick checkup on it's progress and saw.... ....

It was OUT~

And it was BIG~! Here's a 'Plant to Butterfly' ratio photo for your viewing. Basically, the wings were about as big as the palm of my hand.

And gosh... this is actually the first time I had a close look at a REAL BUTTERFLY.

Just look at those eyes.... and the tongue to go with... or proboscis... or whatever that's called =.=

Another pic... ^_^

10 Days. The amount of time it took to turn from a scary looking greenish trailer-like bug, into a huge (well, I think it's huge), colourful and amusing piece of artwork.

Somehow, I'm happy with the decision of not throwing it out the window. ^_^

Pre-Exam Butterflies

It seems that each update of mine is taking longer and later than the previous post. Well, I can't help it I guess. Maybe I just suck at organising my time, or I'm just too busy with exams lately, and also a bit of Maple, and maybe a little bit of too much worrying.

Whenever each semester of mine here comes close to an end, my emotions run wild and I get weird mood swings from time to time, but no, it's not that time of the month, and I'm a guy.

It's just that someway, somehow, all my emotions usually pile up due so many things.... among them the nostalgia going back home sweet home, but at the same time I feel I'm gonna miss this boring yet peaceful place in miri... then sometimes I just wanna get over with all the exams, then again I don't wanna end everything and graduate just yet. Top it all up with exam stress, the fear of failure, along with my solitude behavior especially during these periods just make me wish that I could DISAPPEAR~!


Tomorrow is my final paper. Embedded Systems Engineering 301. And the bloody problem with it? Is it's an OPEN BOOK exam.

I once adored open book exams. I always admired the fact that some people could bring their whole textbook into examinations and were jealous of them being able to do so. I wish that one day I could try that as well. But that was last time.

The thing about Open Book Exams are, you have NO IDEA WHAT to STUDY! I've had 4 open book subjects up till today. And all I can recall is that everytime the night before the exam, I get all anxious and stressed up, not because I'm not prepared or whatever other reason. But because I just bloody CAN'T prepare~! Never have I ever had such a stressful exam before. This is seriously my first.

But even through so much stress and chaos going on in my mind, the exam will still come sooner or later, and time will pass without us having to wait for it. So I guess, enough ranting for today. I've gotta work hard for whatever unforeseeable future lies in front of me.

Ressurection

Time and again I've planned to update my blog actually, and re-post things that I missed out, stuff that I delayed. But the more I lag behind, the more left out my blog became, because the longer I waited, the more I didn't know what to update about. So, I decided that I'll pick up from where I left off and just update like I usually would, ignoring the fact that I missed out a whole 2 months of updating ^_^


So here I am again, back into blogging.... I hope. As this serves as my own personal record for my life line here on earth, and at the same time for some of you who enjoy reading it to keep yourselves entertained, I will try to continue updating as I used to.


Anyway~.... So I actually wanted to give a more solid update, but because I'm so busy with assignments, works, and games lately, I decided to make it just a simple 'what-am-I-up-to' post.

So.... I have been busy... how busy you say? Well, let's just say busy enough to prevent myself from being bored all day like I used to be. And the root for this -- MapleSEA

Okay.... so I USED to play maple. Yes, a LOT, I could say... to the fact that I was actually the number 2 highest level in class when I was in secondary school. And then I quit because of various reasons which I am lazy to state because I do not think it would interest you.

This.... is me... ^^

.... Last time...

But here I am again back to this childish-2D-side-scrolling-platform and time consuming game. (Curiously, it seems to be the only game that I can get hooked on to for hours.... *besides COD and L4D with friends that is, of course...*)

What's more?? MapleSEA just launched a new job class recently.... recent actually being... 2 days ago =) And it's a Magician class re-named as DragonMaster. The main difference about this job is... you have a cute little dragon hovering beside your character at all times... ^_^

And so... I can say I was one of the enthusiastic players which joined the crowd and created a new character along with everyone else just to have a look at what it was like. It was one of those times when Maple was all of the sudden full of players rushing to do quests and everybody looking like clones, hehe

See the cute little dragons hovering around some characters? ^_^

Game Masters (GM), are like the in-game "Gods". Even they come by once in a while to see how everyone is doing. Honestly speaking, it was the FIRST time I saw a real GM in-game after so many years of playing maple, LOL.

Okay, enough talk on maple. You might be furious at the fact that I said that I'm 'busy' with gaming~ But well, I DO have other things to do also....

I've been busy lately with assignments, assignments, tests, and tests too.


Again and again people have asked me "What course are you taking?", and I reply "BTech." But I always get puzzled faces from that answer. So I tried a different approach. I answer "Computer Systems and Networking," instead.

But you know what?? 90% of the human population's mind cannot process the words 'Computer Systems and Networking' and always equate them into "Information Technology", which, in short, sounds like... "IT". zzz....

Or another common reaction I would get is "Oh~ So you're studying computers~?". "Ah yes, yes... something like that." I just can't be bothered to clarify sometimes, because it just doesn't make things better =) "Hey, actually my computer at home is kinda broken, could you help me take a look at it?"; "Nonono... sorry, the 'computer' I study and your 'computer' isn't the same." =.=" Lame? Well, saves me the trouble ^_^


Actually, the name implies exactly what I'm studying, Computer Systems.... and... Networking.

To give you a brief idea, this is what it's like:

They call it Wireless Networks

Wireless Data Networks 303. We learn about wireless communication, internet, mobile phones, bluetooth, anything wireless. Wireless Pet control commands do not apply. I do not know why there are so many wires in the picture though......

My name is 68HC12

Embedded Systems Engineering 301. In this unit, we learn simple Embedded Systems programming on how to program an embedded system. Embedded Systems are hard programmed hardware such as your microwave control unit, washing machine controlling unit, car engine ECUs, aircons, and used in many other systems.

Haha, that's like two units from this semester. But yea... it gives you a rough idea of what I learn.

So much for Maple, Assignments, Exams, and more~.... I think I gotta get back to doing them.

Will update another time. For now, ciao~

*Hibernation Period*

Ah yes... So very sorry that I haven't updated for more than a month... I DO realise that I have a blog, and it's not really that I've forgotten about it this time. Somehow, time just couldn't find its way here into this blog, and I channeling it elsewhere =( And to add-on, I wasn't really in the mood for blogging lately, to top it all up, I just lost touch for a while.


Well, I'm glad to announce that I'll try to put a proper update up soon. Maybe even post multiple posts that I actually planned to put up a couple of weeks back but didn't complete.


I just thought I'd post this as a reminder for myself today, haha, and as a 'promise' to this blog of mine that I'll be back soon.

Facebook - The World's Largest Social Net*cough*stalk*cough*ing Site

Facebook, www.facebook.com, Launched 4th February 2004, and to date, is not even 10 years old. Yet it is now known as the world's largest social networking site already, having above 400 million user accounts and more than a billion monthly visits, and it's still increasing. Today, it is number 2 in the Global Page ranking... only succeeded by... I dunno what... but most probably google.com

Facebook is one of those things that exploded nationwide like a bomb. After people started using it, they just found it so useful, fun, and addictive, leading it to being the top Networking site today.

I, however, really wonder how they still manage to keep it free, having to maintain... ... tera... no, zetta.... maybe tera-zettabytes of information, random chatter, applications, wall posts, relationships, likes, comments, stupid comments, arguing comments, dislike comments, SS-self pics, loads of photos, and today, even HD videos. I'm guessing their information storage warehouse must really look like.... .... a warehouse... of computers...

Being a facebook user myself I too find it useful in knowing about what's happening to people around me like who fell in the toilet bowl; who lost their baggage; who's a playboy; who dumped who... and if you wanna know more... you could just drop a friendly comment in the comment box below.


Facebook however... also serves as The World's Largest Social Stalking Site.

Okay, I admit. I stalk.

Some people are just too interesting that you stalk them. While some others make you wanna know so much more about them that you keep going back to their profile to find out more about them.

Sometimes, in fact I can stalk someone so obsessively.... that their link appears in my firebox browser drop down list~!!!

Who doesn't nowadays? See the 2nd Facebook link? With the blurred out name? 

The link was actually even higher up, 2nd from the Facebook home page link. And then I realised that was BAD... way bad...

So I found alternative methods to stalk without leaving an obvious 'stalk-print' behind. And I worked hard trying not to click it and it slowly settled to the lower bottom ^^ JUST in case one day my 'victim' somehow used my laptop for something, I just wouldn't want him/her to see his/her facebook profile link in my drop down list when all they wanted to do was look for www.hotmail.com, would I?

Sometimes I can spend hours at once, just looking through someone's pictures or related stuff. You could click links after links after links of someone's friend or photo or wall, and find yourself in a totally foreign area... and then realise: "Shyt! It's 12am!"

But then, facebook isn't all bad. I personally use Facebook as an online archive for my photos.

 

And at other times... facebook can be such an interesting place.

So I was browsing facebook one day.... and I came across THIS!

GOSH.... I seriously didn't want to ruin a child's life by helping in the deed of giving him the name "Megatron" but then again it would seem amusingly interesting if it really happened =)

In the end, I became a fan ~.~

I wondered what else Facebook had in store. So I typed into the searchbox my favourite First Person Shooter game: COD... and it came up with this:

 

I wonder what these people are thinking... Hahaha

And then came the Parents issue... where the more "In" parents would create an account on facebook and keep themselves up to date. Man... Parents sure are scary, and so are teachers....

Like, when you get engaged without telling your mom...

or.....

when a mom decides that dating her kid isn't such a bad idea 0.0

or if you're really really bored.... you could just play with someone's 'status'es

and screw up someone else's

They sure screwed his status up good lol.

I guess that's all for Facebook - The World's Largest Social Stalking Site

p/s: Introducing Lamebook, an archive of all the funniest and lamest facebook stuff compiled =)