Chatswood Spring Festival

Also known as the Willoughby Spring Festival, this is one of the more popular community festivals. We got to Chatswood a bit late already, but there's still lots to see. The city centre is divided into zones, each with its own theme. One zone is called Green Street with environmental demonstrations, bush gardens, rainwater stands, and info kiosks. The main street is where most of the stalls are - crafts, arts, Chinese trinkets, gourmet food, etc. The Civic Centre houses the Willoughby Art Prize and the Spring Flower Show - mostly orchids. Right in front of the Civic Centre is the Kidzone. There are kiddie shows, circus acts, and hands-on juggling tutorials. Used to know a number of juggling tricks, but I seem to have forgotten most of them.

Swatch Labirinto

How often does one get to come across a Swatch AutoQuarz? Go in any Swatch Shop and you'll find the Originals, the Skins, the Chronos, the flik-flaks, the Beats, the Ironys, etc. but an AutoQuarz? I reckon it's as rare as a Swatch Solar. So when I saw the Labirinto (STK404) on sale, I just have to buy it.

Had a pretty nasty experience with Swatch's plastic battery compartment breaking off, that's why I'm using an Irony. I'm sure it's not gonna happen to the AutoQuarz because there is no battery! As the name implies, it's an automatic but it uses a normal quartz movement. Like an automatic, it uses a rotating weighted half-disc to generate energy (when you move your hands). But instead of storing this energy in a mainspring, it is used to power a micro-generator, which charges a capacitor, which in turn powers the integrated circuit, which makes the quartz crystal oscillate, which controls the timing of the stepper motor, which drives the gear train, which ultimately moves the hour, minute, and second hands.

The Labirinto's back cover is transparent, so you can actually see the rotating weight and a portion of the circuit board and the gears. I also noticed a silver disc which looks very much like a button battery. Hope it lasts as long as the watch.

Michelle Leslie is a Muslim

Funny what a 15-year jail sentence can do to one's religious beliefs. Michelle Leslie is an 18-year old Australian model who was caught on her way to a Bali dance party with two Ecstasy tablets inside her Gucci handband. At first she denied they was hers. She then changed her story that it was her friend's and she asked her to keep it in her bag. Interrogated by the police, she confessed that the tablets were actually hers, and that she was addicted to them, and that she planned to take one of them during the party.

A week later, Michelle Leslie says she's a Muslim and now wears a hijab. She is covered from head to toe, even with a headdress to cover her head and shoulders. I really don't get it - she models lingerie as part of her job and was wearing little but body paint in an event last year.

I think it's about time Schapelle Corby reveals that she's also a Muslim.

An Absurd Movie ... Unleashed

Given a choice of Wedding Crashers, Monster-in-Law, Kicking and Screaming, Lords of Dogtown, and Unleashed (a.k.a. Danny the Dog), I chose the least of all the evils. It's still a bad choice. Very bad choice.

Who would've thought that with Luc Besson as director, Yuen Wo-Ping as martial arts choreographer, Jet Li and Morgan Freeman as main characters, and Massive Attack providing the soundtrack, we'll still end up with a bad movie like this?! Compared to The One, Romeo Must Die, and Kiss of the Dragon, there's way less fight scenes in Unleashed. I'm all for quality-not-quantity, but we're all better off watching Jet Li's old kungfu movies. That was before he had crazy ambitions of conquering Hollywood. I've watched lots of his Shaolin movies and Once Upon a Time in China series, and his moves are just awesome.

The fight scenes in this movie are too unrealistic. People don't line up to attack you. They don't wait for their turn to get their butts kicked. And there's only so much beating a person can take before they go down. Even the drama aspect of the movie is badly developed. Morgan Freeman is good as always, but I guess it's not enough to inspire his fellow actors. Not sure what happened to Jet Li here, but his acting is downright pathetic. His character is supposed to be psychologically abused and illiterate, but that's no excuse to carry a single facial expression throughout the film. He was poker-faced in Hero, but his emotions still show through. As for Victoria, who is supposed to be 18 years old, living with a blind man and playing the piano all day long must've influenced her mental and emotional development in a bad way. No 18-year old girl is as carefree/happy/innocent as her.

Total waste of time. I should've just watched Sin City again.

Cross City Tunnel Walk

The Cross City Tunnel from Rushcutter's Bay to Darling Harbour is finally opened, bypassing 18 sets of traffic lights. It is also NSW's first fully-electronic toll road - no toll booths, no cash, no stopping.

To celebrate the event, a charity walk called "Walk for the Salvos" was organized before the cars are allowed through. It was not as interesting as I thought it would be. A colleague actually asked me, "What's there to see?" And she's right. It's just one long two-lane tunnel. A good number of people showed up for the walk though.

Lost in The Island

If you've watched The Matrix, Gattaca, Minority Report, and any one of Michael Bay's films, you can safely skip The Island because there's nothing new here.

The movie is about the cloning of humans as source of replacement parts for their "sponsors." DNA samples are taken from wealthy sponsors, and a matching clone is bred inside pods not unlike those found in The Matrix. Once they've grown enough, they are laid out on beds and given their first education. Instead of jacking in and having training modules uploaded into their brains, they're simply brainwashed with memories of the childhood they never had and shown promotional videos of The Island. This is how every resident in the facility believes that the whole planet has been poisoned by pollution, and that The Island is the only pathogen-free zone left.

The whole place looks industrial and utilitarian in design. The sets are probably taken from Gattaca. Everyone dresses in white tracksuits and wears white Puma trainers. (I want one!) White for the clones, black for the supervisors. Every aspect of their lives is watched and monitored, just like in Gattaca. Everyone is supposed to be content eating their oatmeal and tofu meals, waiting for the day when his/her name is drawn from the lottery and shipped off to The Island. But Lincoln Six Echo (Ewan McGregor) wanted more. He started having dreams; he started asking questions; he saw a flying bug that should not be there at all. And he started getting chummy with Jordan Two Delta (Scarlett Johansson). Because of these, he was brought in for a consultation with Dr. Merrick. The same engineers who designed the retina-scanning spiders in Minority Report must've created these mini-bugs that crawl into your eye sockets, scan your brains, and comes out of you like kidney stones.

To make a long story short, Lincoln Six Echo eventually founds out the awful truth about "going to The Island." When Jordan became the next winner, he busts out of the underground compound with Jordan in tow. A whole string of inconsistensies ensue:

• After years of brainwashing about the outside world being a dangerous place, Lincoln and Jordan have no qualms about wandering about in the desert.
• With no real-life experience whatsoever, there were able to survive the real world pretty well.
• Lincoln has never imagined or seen any motor vehicle before, but he was able to drive a supercar and a flying motorbike.
• Clones are immortal. The whole police force can't bring them in. An elite team of ex-GIGN and Navy Seals can't bring them down. They fall off a skyscraper trapped inside a glass-and-steel corporate logo, and they simply walk off unharmed.

Did I mention the product placements?

• Lincoln wondering where his other Puma shoe went
• Lincoln and Jordan duking it out on Xbox virtual reality
• Aquafina for the clones, Budweiser and Michelob Light for everyone else
  
• Nokia 8800 for mobiles calls, Cisco IP phones for video calls
• Speedo for the swimmers
  
• Calvin Klein for Jordan Two Delta
  
• Cadillac Cien for the boys
• Ben & Jerry's for the kids
• Hummers, Chevys, and Chryslers for Michael Bay to smash up
  
• MSN Search if you're lost

Talking about lost, I rushed back home just in time to catch the last 30 minutes of the last episode of Lost's first season. Somehow, Charlie and the gang were able to retrieve turnip-head - not sure what happened to the French woman. The guys on the makeshift raft saw some bleeping on the radar and uses the flare gun. They attract a pirate ship, and Walt gets kidnapped. Jack, Kate, and John blows up the mysterious hatch. We see a long narrow tunnel leading down all the way to Season Two (coming next year).

Tsinoy.com EB #2

After something like 8 months, I attended my second Tsinoy.com EB at Paramatta's Charcoal Mine. It's good to see the same old people like blue_chips and his girlfriend, bobmacks, akimacks, and bowen. The Korean BBQ buffet is great, too.

City2Surf 2005

This is actually my second time to join the Sun-Herald City2Surf, but this year the company fielded a team. We were supposed to meet up at St. Mary's Cathedral at 8:30am for a group picture. By 8:45am, I was still queuing up at Hyde Park to pick up my bib. I saw this girl wearing a black Nokia Terminal9 shirt, so I figured she's a teammate. We waited at the church steps, but didn't see anybody else.

The run is supposed to start at 9:30am, but it started later than that. The Sun-Herald Start people went first, then the HSBC Start, then about 15 minutes after time zero, the Back of the Pack started running. I wouldn't really call it "running" with so many people crowding the streets. I spent the first few kilometers weaving in and out of the traffic, keeping to the footpaths as much as possible. The going from Rushcutters Bay to Double Bay to Rose Bay is relatively easy because there's lots of shops and spectators around. There are live bands and drinking stations here and there to refresh the runners. The Durex guys, the Super Friends, and the guys in full body paint are back this year, but I didn't see the running brides and the green dinosaurs.

The point from Rose Bay is where things start to get serious. The upward slope is steep, and most people are content to do brisk walking. It's not called Heartbreak Hill for nothing. By the time I got to kilometer 11, my legs can't take the pounding anymore. It's not sprain or cramps, but my knees hurt with every step I take. I figured if I keep on running, it'll make pain go numb, and I would be fine until I finish the race. Bad idea. The pain got worse so I had to limp all the way to the finish line. It's a pity because it's all downhill from there (literally). I could've shaved minutes off my time if my legs didn't give up.

Last year I did 130 minutes and 58 seconds. This year was 110:11 for 14 kilometers. Not bad. Because of a late start, my real time was actually 93 minutes and 3 seconds. Not bad at all.

Reading/Computer Glasses

Went to my health provider's eyecare center to pick out a pair of reading glasses.

The guy who attended to me was quite helpful. My idea was to look for some pairs within my price range, then select the most ideal one. The guy is of another opinion: he said comfort is first priority; we'll worry about the price later. So went through racks and racks of frames: Boss, Nike, Oakley, Emporio Armani, Calvin Klein, Polo Ralph Lauren, Timberland, Van Heusen, etc. I must've tried on more than 40 pairs of glasses. He highly recommends the Nike frames - around A$350 each. He gave a few of them to his former flame. Too bad things didn't work out. After all the wining and dining and presents he showered her with, she went back to Singapore after finishing her studies.

I feel for you, mate. Just glad you're not selling cars. It would hurt even more then.

Carnival of the Animals at Chatswood

Attended my first classical concert since coming to Australia.

The Willoughby Symphony Orchestra staged a multimedia performance art concert at the Willoughby Civic Centre Concert Hall featuring Mozart’s Serenata Notturna, Copland’s Appalachian Spring Suite, Stravinsky’s Soldier’s Tale, and Saint Saëns’ Carnival of the Animals. The last two pieces are the main draw because they had a computerized slideshow presentation running in synch with the music.

For Carnival of the Animals, they had two young guest pianists. They started off with the Introduction and Royal March of the Lion, and they are really good! They were a bit off-key with The Pianists, as they were supposed to be. When they got to The Swan, their fingers were just flowing across the keys. Everything is just right, with the minor exception of The Fossils. I think the lady played the xylophone a bit too loud, and didn't blend with the symphony well. Anyway, not bad for 35 bucks.

The Last Amazing Race

Still can't believe Rob and Amber didn't win The Amazing Race #7. I mean, these guys are totally ruthless and scheming since the start of the race, and they deserve to win. (Huh?!) Uchenna and Joyce, who ultimately won the race, started the last leg with $0 to their credit. Heck, they had to hitch a ride to the airport and beg for taxi money there just to get to their first destination.

When Rob and Amber got on that plane to Miami at the very last minute, that should've been the end of Amazing Race 7. But no, they had to re-open the boarding gates and the airplane door just to let Uchenna and Joyce in. Reality TV? Yeah, right. As luck (or the scriptwriters) would have it, Rob and Amber got lost in Little Havana looking for "The King of the Havanas." Conveniently enough, Uchenna and Joyce's driver speaks Spanish, so when he asked for directions to "El Rey de los Habanos," he had no problems finding the place.

That said, a guy who sincerely thanks people who refuse to give him money and insists on paying the correct taxi fare before running into the final pit stop deserves U$1,000,000.

Honeymoon with High School Teacher

It's a long story. Anyway, we met up with a honeymooning couple (my sister's classmates) and our long-lost high school teacher (and her husband) for a get-together tour of the city.

We picked up the couple at Circular Quay after their lunch cruise, and we set off for Bondi Beach. We got a bit lost after that, but we managed to pass by Coogee, then to La Perouse for some picture-taking. We wanted to take the Prince of Wales scenic drive, but the entrance gates are closed after 5pm. Then we went to Olympic Park and cruised around Newington. Our teacher suggested buffet dinner at the Liverpool Mounties. By the time we reached there, my stomach was growling already. Worse, there's a long long wait for the restaurant to take in the next bunch of diners. After dinner, we dropped by Huxton Park to visit their place, then off to Rydges Capitol Square to drop off the couple. End of tour.

Josh Groban and Michael Buble

Been listening to the sophomore studio albums of Josh Groban and Michael Buble the past few days. David Foster ought to be real proud of his boys. Their self-titled debut albums were great, and their follow-up albums don't disappoint.

They are basically targeting the same crossover market - classical for Josh Groban, jazz/swing for Michael Buble. Josh Groban puts more passion into his singing, while Michael Buble is the consummate crooner. In Closer, Josh Groban sings a good collection of English, French, Italian, and Spanish songs - from the standard Caruso to theme songs such as Mi Mancherai (Il Postino) and Broken Vow (Meteor Garden II) to MJ's She's Out of My Life. In It's Time, Michael Buble sticks to his standard formula of revivals and remakes. Not to missed are You Don't Know Me (from My Best Friend's Wedding) and Quando, Quando, Quando (duet with Nelly Furtado).

Albert Goes to Wollongong (Part II)

With hours to kill before the dinner costume party, I spent the whole afternoon walking around Stuart Park, the North Beach, and ended up at the Flagstaff Hill with its twin lighthouses. Lots of photo ops, I tell you. Tonight also happens to be when the moon is closest to Earth.

I'm not really a big fan of costume parties, but the company has one every year. This year's theme is Las Vegas. Last year was Hollywood. I swear some people showed up with the same costume as last year. Worse, I didn't even get a proper dinner. We were served a dish of fish fillets with a very creamy sauce. And that was it. I waited and waited for the main course, but none came. People got up from their seats and started to wander about. At that point, I just gave up and went back to my room to catch Lost. Too bad it's a refresher episode, where they show all the highlights from previous episodes. The magic show during the "dinner" was very good though.

Found out the next day that steak was served (very much later) as the main course.

Albert Goes to Wollongong (Part I)

Went down to Wollongong for a two-day company event. We had some team-building activities in the afternoon, then a costume party at night.

Participants were grouped into teams of 15 and asked to go to certain landmarks in Wollongong to complete certain tasks (a la Amazing Race). After each task, teams will receive a piece of a puzzle, which they have to complete after the five tasks. We had at our disposal a volunteer driver and a mini-bus, and we get to decide which venues we want to go first. First stop is the nearby Stuart Park for some canoeing. Each team was given 5 canoes, three persons to a canoe. Once everyone has paddled to the other shore, the whole team has to paddle back. In the heat of the moment, some of the canoes tipped over and people has to be plucked out of the icy waters for a change of clothes. Meanwhile, we proceeded on to the next event. At the Flagstaff Lighthouse, we were asked to form a human pyramid. This was not too hard considering that there's only 10 of us left. After the coordinator has taken an official photo, we were off again. We were supposed to wait for the other team members, but as everybody knows, winning is more important than teamwork. At the Win Stadium, each of us was required to do a free kick with a rugby ball. It's not as easy as it looks on TV, as the ball kept flying straight, instead of up across the goalposts. At the Mt. Keira (Kum-Ba-Yah) Girl Guide Camp, we were asked to pitch a big canvas tent. (The earlier team tried to slow us down by hiding the tent and the pegs.) We were also asked to cook spaghetti and consume it. Last stop is the Berkeley Sports Stadium for a free throw. Hailing from Philippines where basketball is the national sport, I'm embarrassed to say that I'm the second last person in our team to get the ball in. Back at the meeting place, we put together all of the puzzle pieces, and it turned out to be a table and chair set from IKEA.

I was genuinely surprised to find out that we were the last to come back, considering we cheated a little. It's true that our volunteer driver is a chubby mum with thick eyeglasses who drive slow, but we finished all the events chop-chop. Apparently, the other teams didn't play fair either. During show-and-tell, some teams admitted to hiding the tents and other equipment. Another team closed the gates to some of the venues, and even posted signs giving wrong directions. Yet another team called up other people and gave misleading instructions. One team was delayed from proceeding because their driver went off to buy some liquor. Now you know what kind of company I'm working for.

Ban Them Books!

Heard over the radio today that certain Islamic bookshops in Sydney are selling extremist literature endorsing suicide bombings and attacking Western civilization as "the culture of oppression, the culture of injustice, the culture of racism". Because of this, certain parties are calling on law-enforcement agencies to take action against these bookstores - raiding them, if need be.

Let me put it this way. A typical bookstore would have at least thousands of titles. Is it the bookstore's responsibility to screen every item and make sure the contents are agreeable to everyone's sensibilities? Think Kama Sutra. Think the Holy Bible. Think Stupid White Men. Think Lady Chatterly's Lover. Think the Communist Manifesto.

Think Fight Club. "Another thing I could do, Tyler tells me, is I could drive to my boss' house some night and hook a hose up to an outdoor spigot. Hook the hose to a hand pump, and I could inject the house plumbing with a charge of industrial dye. Red or blue or green, and wait to see how my boss looks the next day. Or, I could just sit in the bushes and pump the hand pump until the plumbing was superpressurized to 110psi. This way, when someone goes to flush a toilet, the toilet tank will explode. At 150psi, if someone turns on the shower, the water pressure will blow off the shower head, strip the threads, blam, the shower head turns into a mortar shell." "To make a silencer, you just drill holes in the barrel of the gun, a lot of holes. This lets the gas escape and slows the bullet to below the speed of sound." "You take a 98-percent concentration of fuming nitric acid and add the acid to three times that amount of sulfuric acid. Do this in an ice bath. Then add glycerin drop-by-drop with an eye dropper. You have nitroglycerine. Mix the nitro with sawdust, and you have a nice plastic explosive." "The three ways to make napalm: One, you can mix equal parts of gasoline and frozen orange juice concentrate. Two, you can mix equal parts of gasoline and diet cola. Three, you can dissolve crumbled cat litter in gasoline until the mixture is thick." Talk about DIY urban terrorism. Should Fight Club be taken off Dymocks' and Angus & Robertson's shelves?

Let's take an ISP for example. It provides Internet connectivity. It provides hosting services. Is it responsible for pedophiles who use its chat servers to lure young victims? Is it accountable for copyrighted songs and movies passing through its network? It it liable for "offensive" materials hosted on its web servers?

Winter Concert Series - Queen on the Bay

Caught the last of the Winter Concert Series at the Darling Harbour Aquashell. I missed Leonard Bernstein & George Gershwin on July 2 and Opera on the Bay on July 9. It's a good thing I was in the city for Queen on the Bay.

The tribute concert is based on the 1986 Queen world tour Queen - It's a Kinda Magic. "Freddie Mercury" opened the show with One Vision. He tried to pump up the crowd, but I figured everybody was too cold to care. The audience started to warm up after a few more numbers. By the time Freddie changed to his red pants and white shirt, people were clapping and singing along to Radio Ga-Ga, We Are the Champions, and the finale We Are the Champions (complete with fireworks). The encore was Bohemian Rhapsody if I remember correctly.

Albert Goes to Melbourne - Part II

This time I was there for two weeks, excluding weekends. The good thing about Melbourne is that most of the tourist spots are located in the city centre. The bad thing was that I'm there for work, so my only free time is after office hours. Coming back late from Sunshine and after having dinner, it would already be 9pm when I hit the city streets.

Ever the optimist, I think the cold, windy nights and the ungodly hours work to my advantage when I'm taking pictures of the city as there's very few people about. I try to ignore the cold wind that is making my neck/shoulder muscles tighten. I try not to think about the ice-cold metal post as I brace my camera on it for a steady nightshot. I try to act cool as the security guard questioned me as to why I'm taking pictures of the ANZ Gothic Bank.

For every night during my Melbourne trip, from Parliament House in the east to Spencer Street Station in the west, from University of Melbourne in the north to Flinders Street Station in the south, and all the crisscrossing streets in between - this is my vacation.

Current Events of Week 27/28

July 2 - Live 8, billed as the greatest rock concert in the world, features 260 acts at 10 venues (London, England; Paris, France; Berlin, Germany; Rome, Italy; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Barrie, Ontario; Johannesburg, South Africa; Tokyo, Japan; Moscow, Russia and at the Eden project in Cornwall, England) on four continents in a bid to end world poverty.
July 2 - Venus Williams beats No. 1 Lindsay Davenport 4-6 7-6 (7-4) 9-7 to regain the Wimbledon title (2000, 2001, and 2005).
July 3 - Roger Federer beats Andy Roddick 6-2 7-6 (7-2) 6-4 to complete a hat-trick of Wimbledon titles.
July 6 - Start of the G8 Summit 2005 at Gleneagles, Scotland.
July 6 - The International Olympic Committee declared from Singapore that London would host the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games.
July 7 - A series of bomb attacks on London's transport network has killed more than 50 people and injured about 700 others.
July 8 - Cory Aquino calls on President Gloria Macapagal to make the ultimate sacrifice and resign. GMA says, "I will not."
July 16 - Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (Book 6) goes on sale.