Kog's Blog: January 2005

Happy Birthday Taffy and Kent

Went to Taffy and Kent's combined 21st last night. It was a 4hr harbour cruise so a nice change from bars and clubs. The food was nice, I went hard on the ham/salami and was sooo thirsty afterwards. Highlight of the night came when Taffy opened one of his presents to find a pocket-sized version of the Kama Sutra. Should of seen the expression on his face. Hahahaha...

Back from KYC

From the moment Richard picked me up from Central station on Friday afternoon to Jimmy dropping me off a few hours ago, I won't forget KYC 2005 in a hurry. It was awesome!!!

All of the talks were really interesting, helpful and more importantly, challenging to all of us. I liked Tim Bowden's talks better than Paul Winsor's but probably because Tim adds humour in his talks and I couldn't get a hold of Paul's Kiwi accent but hey, it was God's word that we all heard. I also ordered the talks in MP3 format so if anyone is interested, I can lend them to you once they arrive.

The fellowship was also great. All the guys stayed at a place near Echo Point so we got a really good view of the valley from the living room. We watched the Oz Open, talked about what we got out of the talks and played 500. A Sydney High Vs Sydney Grammar game of 500 was played on Friday night with the Grammar boys victorious by 2 games to 1. Ah, the GPS rivalry never dies =P Speaking of Sydney High, I actually saw two guys from my grade at KYC, one whom I haven't seen since graduation so that was pretty cool.

If there was one downside to the whole weekend, it had to be the weather. When we got there on Friday night, it was chilly. Fair enough, given we were at the mountains. But from that point onwards, It just went downhill. Saturday morning was sunny and quite warm but by the time we finished lunch around mid afternoon, storm clouds gathered and just bucketed down - rain and hail. It cleared up a bit by night and a mist formed but it started raining again after the night session. But this morning was just plain crazy. It was raining quite heavily and very windy as well. It felt more like winter than what one would expect in the middle of January. I think I learnt my lesson - A jumper is highly recommended if you intend to stay in Katoomba, even if it's January >_<

Bring on KYC 2006! ;)

Do you drink beer??

If there is one strange question they ask in every interview, mark that down as one of them. Then again, what do you expect from engineers?

Today I went for an interview for industrial training (see previous post for more info). The meeting was in the afternoon at 2 so I was quite nervous throughout the morning and during lunch time. Also, I wore a grey-ish business shirt I bought yesterday and being a hot hot day today (it's stormin and rainin as I type), I was worried I would end up looking like this guy:

The interview itself was quite casual. For the half an hour that I was in the boardroom, they asked questions like:

*Where you live
*Which school did you go to?
*Do you have a driver licence?
*Employment history
*Uni studies
*Career aspirations (um...err...)
etc

Then they gave me a run down of the structure of the company and the kind of work interns do. The bit I like most is the possibility of going interstate and assist in projects. Then came the question:

"Do you drink beer?"

It seems the other interns don't drink so I think they were surprised (or relieved?) that I said 'yes'. Hahahahaha...

And that's about it. They now want me to send my academic results. Great, they get to see how I stuffed up both HSC and uni. Blah.

Hobble Hobble...

Oh dear, my left foot is hurting. Must have done something at basketball last Wednesday. It's all swollen so instead of walking I now hobble. Put me down as extremely doubtful for Oztag tomorrow evening. But if I can pass the 'fitness' test tomorrow morning i.e walking from my room to the bathroom without getting those throbbing pains I'm experiencing right now then I'll play.

One month on...

Max-1980MB on 15/1/2005
Min-24MB on 26/12/2004
Total - 10329MB

There it is, our first month's ADSL usage with Internode graphed up nicely. 16GB available and we used just over 10(I went full hard yesterday on downloads and got 2GB out of it). I guess it would have been higher if my dad would stop using dial-up. His reason for still using Bigpond? To keep his email address he has been using for the past 4 years!! Not only does it not free-up the phone line (something I always used to do in the pre-ADSL days), it also interferes with the phone line and ADSL gets disconnected. Oh yeah, and we still have to pay Telstra. Grr....

Visiting Pastor Lui gave a sermon this morning on 'A Person whom God delights' and I found it very challenging. You can love the Lord but not delight Him and I think that's an area I can definitely work on. After the service a couple of interesting things happened. Richard made an announcement about KYC during the service and a few people came up afterwards interested in going. This means the number of people going have increased to just over 15 and we need to find a larger accommodation to fit the extra guys. I'm gonna ring Raine & Horne tomorrow and hopefully the larger houses are still available.

I also talked to this guy named Jack who is studying Tele Eng @ UTS. He's doing his industrial training this summer and the place he is working at is looking for someone during next session. The catch is that it is full time which means delaying studies for one session. I'm seriously considering passing my resume to him and give it a go since I wanna take a break from studying anyway(not that I study that much). But delaying my studies for a session means I'm gonna still be in uni when everyone graduate next year and also finding a thesis partner will be much harder.

A place to stay

We have found accommodation for KYC. Yay!!! I'm so thankful that we have a roof to put over our heads next weekend. For a while it looked like we have to sleep in a car or something. Now I can't wait to get out to the mountains to chill out and hear God's word =)

The new car is coming along nicely but still taking time to get used to the transition from our old car. Power steering is definitely a big one. How little effort does it take to turn a corner now! A far cry from the Corolla hatchback. It's gonna feel weird to be able to drive a power steering and a non-power steering vehicle. What else...ah yes, there's a CD player in our new car. Now before you start laughing, our old car does not even have a cassette player so radio is the only option. Now I can listen to music without getting interrupted with ads. Lastly, central locking. The other day, I forgot that I didn't have to hold the handle while closing the front door or having to push the little 'knob' down to lock it. It's all done with the push of a button.

Bleh

The leaky shower is now fixed. Sort of. It still leaks but not as badly as before...like 1 drip every 5 seconds? Haha yes, the dam levels will continue to go down because of people like me :P It's been a long afternoon. I had to contantly make trips between my room and the toilet (to Google 'how to fix leaky taps'), between the house and the front lawn (to turn the main tap on/off) and between the house and the local hardware store (to buy valves and washers). All up about 4 hours. Yet somewhere on the net it says a job like this should only take about 10 mins. Hmm....To top it off, I managed to cut my thumb. Wonderful.

Went to Nick's 21st on Saturday night at his place. As usual, his mum cooked nice food for us all. It was funny to see Nick getting drunk. The stuff that came out of his mouth...Nah, I won't embarrass him here. I made my first public performance with the guitar singing Pearl Jam's 'Last Kiss'. Got a few laughs but I was too tipsy to care...So yeh, happy birthday and welcome to manhood Nicholas...

What else? Yes, we are getting a new car - Nissan Pulsar ST sedan. Picking it up tomorrow. Yay...no more fighting with my parents over car usage.

Back to school for me tomorrow. 6 weeks of Cisco CCNA networking course @ UNSW - 9am-5pm every Tuesday. This will be followed by Oztag at 6:45pm. My goal is to score at least 1 try in the second half of the season. Dunno whether it will happen though. So waking up early is a must. Dunno whether that will happen either. Hahahaha....

Happy New Year

Happy New Year everyone. Hope you all had a good time welcoming the new year last night but also remembered those affected by the tsunami diaster. With so many dead and many more missing, it really does make you think how fragile life is. So yeah, do keep those affected in your thoughts and prayers.

Here are some photos from last night. My NYE consisted of a BBQ at Mitch's house and a gathering at Richard's place before heading off to The Rocks for the midnight fireworks. More pics can be found at Yahoo! Photos - NYE 04