Combined Shipping, Not!

For the past 4 days, I've bought a total of three brand new Swatches from eBay. Given that I already have an Irony, a Jelly in Jelly, and an AutoQuarz, I really shouldn't be buying more. Then again, this is what eBay does to new users. I mean, compared to the SRP, these things are CHEAP.

First up, I bought a Swatch Extra Thin (a.k.a Swatch Awearness) GK326 for only US $10.50 on Sunday morning. At Squiggly, it's listed for EUR 36.13.

That same night, I bought an automatic Swatch Roundabout SAN108 for US $35. On Squiggly, it's EUR 54.62. Actually, I didn't win the auction for the Roundabout. From an initial price of US $0.99, the bids went all the way up to $29. I put in an extra dollar, but looks like somebody has already put in a max bid. I kept upping the ante until I'm the winner at $31, with only a few minutes to go. Just to be on the safe side, I put in my own max bid of $35. After the deadline has passed, I found out that I lost the auction to a guy who put in $35.99 in the last 5 seconds. I was dumbstruck - now I know what the expression "having the rug pulled underneath you" felt. Anyway, the good news is that I was sent a second chance offer, which I immediately grabbed.

Today, I picked up an automatic Swatch Nume-Rotation SAM107 for US $26. Squiggly is asking for EUR 54.62.

The reason I bought so many in so short a time from only one seller is because I misunderstood one of his terms. The condition said, "maximum of 3 items for combined shipping." With a shipping charge of US $22 each, I figured that's a savings of $44. Apparently not so - you get 3 items shipped together, but the individual shipping charge still stays. Fortunately, I got a discount of $7 on the 2nd and 3rd item. I guess this means no more new watches for the next few years.

2 microSD Cards in 1 Day

Again, I blame these purchases on eBay. Do I need two 2GB microSD cards? Not really, but they're so CHEAP. Not really, but it's a great feeling to win in an auction.

On the other hand, do I need two microSD cards? Yes, one for the X20 and one for the S2 IS. Are they cheap? Yes, for now. It's even free shipping and handling from apusacution.

Hunting and Gathering with TomTom

Based on Anna Gavalda's 2004 novel, Hunting and Gathering (a.k.a. Ensemble, c'est tout) is a romantic comedy set in Paris. Audrey Tautou plays Camille Fauque, an anorexic office cleaner (a.k.a surface engineer), who dabbles in sketches during her free time, much to her Mom's dismay. She lives alone in a shoe-box of an apartment. One day, she meets her stuttering neighbor Philibert Marquet de la Tubelière (played by Laurent Stocker). He sells postcards for a living and aspires to be a theatre actor. Sharing the opulent apartment left behind by his grandmother is Franck (Guillaume Canet), a womanizing chef, who grows weary of taking care of his elderly granny Paulette (Francoise Bertin). Over the course of a year, the movie tracks how the main protagonists come together and draw inspiration and support from each other.

GF was asking me what's the meaning of the movie title. I don't know the answer, but I told her that's a very good question. :-) At Westfield Hurstville, we had snacks at McDonald's and Japan Crepes. Back at home, I upgraded our old 1st Edition TomTom One to the latest software. The latest version of TomTom Home can't recognize our device, so I had to download and install an older version. Once TT Home is able to see our TT One, it proceeded to download the latest V7 firmware and install it. By using a patched ttsystem file, the TT One is now able to make use of the latest Australian maps. Easy as that.

Grilled Crunchy Salmon

I actually picked up this recipe from GF's Mom. My sisters' have done grilled salmon before, but for some reason, they're never as crunchy as the ones from Ramen-kan. So here's the trick. The secret is to pan-fry the salmon slabs, then grill it in the oven. If you get the timing right, it'll come out crunchy as pictured.

Foxtel and WYD 2008

A couple of new things happening today. My brother is not used to the lack of quality programming on Australian TV, so he subscribed to cable TV. The Foxtel cable guy came in this morning to install the service. TV viewing at home will never be the same again.

On a personal note, GF applied for volunteer work with WYD, and was accepted on a one-day-a-week basis. Starting today, she clocks in at the WYD office along Liverpool and calls back interested volunteers to get their details. Since I was in the city anyway, we had dinner at Zozo Korean Restaurant.

The Steinway Spectacular

Tickets for The Steinway Spectacular are a bit pricey, but how often do you get to see eight Steinway concert grands together on one stage, played by eight of Australia's leading pianists? A hundred dollars gets me and GF front-row seats to the concert. (Second-row seats, actually.) The sound and experience you get is really up close and personal. From where we are, we can see the pianists play, their dancing fingers, their facial expressions, their glistening foreheads, etc.

Musical director, conductor, and host is Guy Noble. His spiels are quite funny and interesting. First playdate for The Steinway Spectacular is actually at Melbourne's Hamer Hall on April 11. Mr. Noble calls it a rehearsal for the Sydney leg. Another trivia: for today's concert, we have a new Steinway specially chosen by the Vladimir Ashkenazy at Steinway's Hamburg factory to replace one of Opera House's three concert grands.

The concert opened with Gerard Willems and Clemens Leske playing Mozart's Sonata for two pianos in D major, KV 448. After that, we have Tamara Smolyar and another guy playing Babadjanian Armenian Rhapsody for two pianos. Next up is the Alla marcia & Tarantelle movements from Rachmaninov's Suite No. 2 for two pianos, Opus 17 performed by Sydney Conservatorium of Music students Gregory Kinda, the youngest scholar to enter the Conservatorium, and Alexey Yemtsov, recently discovered and championed by Ashkenazy. Then, a four-piano arrangement of Gounod's Grand Fantasia on Themes from Faust before the interval.

After the interval, we have Strauss' Die Fledermaus Overture, Grainger Fantasy, Ravel's Bolero (with the inclusion of flute and drum), a Gershwin medley, and the final movement of the Organ Symphony by Camille Saint-Saens. For the finale, the eight Steinways and the Grand Organ played The Jolly Jumbuck Fugue from the Waltzing Matilda ballet written by Sir Charles Mackerras. As an encore, the pianists played Peter Allen's I Still Call Australia Home. The piece was so moving, I almost broke into tears.

Bavarian Bier Cafe

Had dinner at the Bavarian Bier Cafe with some fellow Fil-Chi's. I had my reservations at first, given that the place is usually quite noisy whenever I pass by. Turns out it's not boo bad during weekends. We had the pretzel, the pork belly and the sausages. You also need to try their flavoured beer.

For dessert, we went to Lidnt Chocolat Cafe at Cockle Bay Wharf, but there's just too many people. so it's off to Starbucks for coffee, chocolate, and conversation.

1st Australian Red Bull Flugtag

What's a flugtag, you ask? I don't know myself, but Wikipedia tells me it is flightday in German. Cooked up by Red Bull owner Dietrich Mateschitz and first held in 1991 in Vienna, the competition would have groups of people trying to fly homemade human-powered contraptions as far as they can. Very similar to the Birdman Rally competitions held in Manly Wharf, though I can't say which one is the original. Most oftentimes, these things don't actually fly at all. Competitors and audience alike are only there for the fun of it.

GF and I got to Mrs. Macquaries Point a couple of hours after the start of the event. The embankment area is truly packed with people. We stayed for a while and watched groups of people launch themselves into the water in their flying machines. It was funny the first few times, but then it starts to get monotonous pretty quickly. The weather was quite good, so we walked our way back to Circular Quay through the Royal Botanic Gardens. Coffee and hot chocolate at the Customs House cafe.

First Ever eBay Purchase

I'm in the market for an mp3 player. Not just an mp3 player though because most of my music collection is encoded in OGG. So that narrows down my choices to iRiver or Samsung. I started to lean towards Samsung because the newer ones are becoming more and more stylish. Aside from that, some of the Samsung players now come with Bluetooth. Paired with a pair of Bluetooth stereo, you can get your music wirelessly. What's more, the Samsung can support two BT devices. More fun for everyone. Still, I believe the iRiver has better sound quality.

So I logged on to eBay and did a search on iRiver x20. A couple of hits came up. One has a starting price of $50 on Marchi 31, currently $60, and the auction ends in 9 hours. I've never tried bidding on eBay before, so I immediately signed up and put in a bid of $61. There was an instant counter-bid of $62. Apparently, eBay has this feature called proxy bidding. Put in your max price, and eBay will slowly counter any winning bid up to the maximum bid price you define. So I put in $63. Another automatic bid of $64. I put in $65, and lucky for me that's how it remained till the close of the auction.

What I didn't notice is that the seller has another x20 for sale, ending at about the same time. With all my attention on the first x20, the second one slipped through my radar - there's only 1 bidder for it with a few minutes to go. Notwithstanding the fact that I've already won an x20, I put in a bid for $51. Proxy bidding upped it to $52. I was about to bid more when the auction ended. Checking the bidding log, my rival increased his max bid to $55.55. Too bad for him, some stranger swooped in and won the auction at $56.55.

Ah, didn't know this eBay thing could get so competitive and addictive. The way I like it.

April Fools Birthdays

It's a good feeling when people remember your birthday. The whole 6th floor cafe area was reserved for the big event. Lunch buffet consisted of salads, sausages, steaks, chops, breads and rolls and potatoes. For drinks, we've got mineral water, softdrinks, fruit juices, beer, and wine. For dessert, everybody got a portion of the big chocolate cake, and before we left, everyone got a bottle of wind (your choice of 2005 red or 2007 white.) Happy birthday, NSN.

After work, I met up with GF. As to be expected, she has some presents for me (sweaters from my favourite store), even though I specifically asked her not to get me anything. For her punishment, I didn't invite her to my birthday dinner at Botoli. Fortunately, somebody else did. We ordered honey prawns, mushrooms and vegetables, lemongrass chicken, and a few others I forgot already. Anyway, one of the kids on the other table is celebrating his birthday, so the restaurant gave him an ice cream scoop with a candle on top. I'm always up for a freebie, so we asked the waitress if we can have the same thing. To my surprise, she declined. I had to admit I was a bit miffed, but not for long. After we had our orange dessert, the waitress brought out an ice cream cake from Pure Gelato, complete with sparkling candles, courtesy of GF. Ah, one of the more memorable birthdays I've had.

Steamed Silver Perch

Have prepared:

• 1 fresh snapper, dressed
• 1 teaspoon shredded ginger root
• 1 green onion shredded fine (white section)

Place fish on a thin platter, and over it, spread evenly:

• Shredded ginger root
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 whole green onion

Place platter on a trivet in a steamer, making sure water is boiling. Cover and steam for 15 minutes. Test with fork. Fish should be removed before it has a chance to become overdone.

When fish is steaming, heat:

• 1/4 cup vegetable oil

When fish is done, drain and place on platter. Discard whole green onion, then pour over the fish:

• Hot vegetable oil
• 1/4 cup soy sauce

Garnish silver perch with the shredded green onion and serve steaming hot with fried or steamed rice.

Bundeena Kayaking

Temasek Club's activity for the month is kayaking at Bundeena. My sister wants to try her hand at kayaking; GF is happy enough to go anywhere; me, I just want to take pictures. It's a pleasant one-hour morning drive to Bundeena. Once you enter the Royal National Park, just follow the long winding road through Maianbar, then to Bundeena. After a nice breakfast of crispy pancakes at The Fringe, we checked out the Horderns Beach. Once the group is complete, we drove to the nearby Port Hacking. While everybody else went kayaking, GF and I walked along the banks of the Simpsons Bay. After 2 and a half hours, the guys paddled back. Passed by Centro Roselands on our way back and had late lunchearly dinner at the food court.

The Great Assembly of Lotus Flowers

It was really by chance that we got to know of this Buddhist event being organized by a group called Voices of Wisdom. Learned about the event by way of a bookmark that my Mom picked up. We're not really sure what it's about, but since it's free and my parents has never been inside the Opera House we decided to go.

The event was held at the Utzon Room from 11am till 4pm. We got there around noon, and there's already a long queue snaking around the box office. Nothing like a free gift to bring out the crowds. After half an hour, one of the organizers came out of the room and announced the unfortunately, they ran out of free gifts. In time, we reached the room.

In the center of the room, there's a small table with three Buddhist statues. Underneath the table is portable CD/cassette player repeating a Buddhist chant. There are markings on the floor forming a big circle around the table. People are supposed to enter the circle at one point, go around the statues three times while chanting, and come out at another part of the circle. At the exit, you'll be given a gift voucher, which you can exchange for a free gift.

At least that's how it's supposed to work. What saddens me is that I've seen people walk around the circle just once - without even chanting, come out of the circle, and immediately ask for their free gift. Some even bring along their kids, and insist that they, too, be given the gift vouchers. Worse, I believe some parties even did the routine twice to get more free gifts. You can argue that, hey, the organizers are giving away the gifts - you'd be foolish not to take it. Still, there's something to be said about taking only what you need.

Port Stephens Tour

It was a good day for a tour; it was a bad day for a tour. It was the long Easter weekend. Too bad it had been raining the past few days.

GF and I met up at Central station around 6:45am, then walked to the Sydney Entertainment Centre where the NCT bus was supposed to leave at 7am. From the city centre, we went to Chatswood to pick up more people.

Programme for the day is as follows:

• Australian Reptile Park (Gosford) - $22.00
• Divers Luck Winery (Port Stephens) - $3.00
• Dolphin Watch Cruise (Nelson Bay) - $19.50
• Seafood Lunchbox - $12.50
• Four-Wheel Drive (Anna Bay) - 19.00
• Sandboarding (Anna Bay) - free

The morning was pretty uneventful, except for the fact that our tour guide kept forgetting that GF and I had already paid our expenses in full. Turns out when we gave him our payment, he marked the wrong person's entry. And now the other person is claiming that he had also paid. I'm pretty sure we had already paid, so I'm not budging. After a while, the tour guide came back to our seats, and wanted to confirm that I'm not lying to him. Geez, as if I'd lie in front of GF.

After about an hour or so of driving, we arrived at the Australian Reptile Park. GF and I didn't join the tour anymore as we're not really into reptiles. Killed time at the lobby and the souvenir shop. It drizzled a bit; hopefully it stops by the time we get to Anna Bay. Next stop is the Divers Luck Winery, supposedly the first and only winery in Port Stephens. One of the staff gave us a short overview of how they make their botique wines. Three dollars gives us a sampling of two white wines, two red wines, and port. Felt a bit tipsy after all that drinking. That's actually not good because next up is our noontime dolphin-watching cruise at Nelson Bay. The weather's not cooperating, too, as the winds are pretty strong, resulting in some choppy waves, adding to my seasickness. I went below deck to pick up our seafood lunchboxes. Again, the tour guide asks me if I have really paid for the expenses. Unbelievable. I had to look around to see if there's a hidden camera somewhere. The seafood lunchbox is no good. At $12.50, I really expected better. After sailing here and there for an hour, our skipper gave up sighting dolphins and brought the ship back to port.

Now, for the highlight of the day. After more driving, we got to Anna Bay. I'm quite surprised with the change of landscape. On one side is the Birubi Beach. On the other side is desert as far as the eyes can see. Undulating sand dunes with clumps of vegetation here and there. There are even camels that you can hire to take you around. In our case, we used a 4WD coach to bring us to the sand hills for sandboarding. The hills are about 30 meters high, and the slopes are pretty steep. If that's too much, you can try the gentler slopes at the side. There are boards littered about. You pick one up, sit on it, and off you go. My first run down the slopes is quite fast and exhilarating. The good thing is that you can slow down your speed by using your hands as brakes. It gets a bit tiring after a few tries because you have to climb all the way to the top. GF was content to just watch and take pictures from the sidelines.

Three hours and some Bee Gees and Teresa Teng concerts later, we're back at the Sydney Entertainment Centre. Late dinner at Ramen Kan to finish the day.

Blog Revamp

It's been a long time coming, but I finally switched from the classic Blogger template to widget-style editing. Most of the template came out intact, but I lost some of my customized HTML code - some handcrafted sidebar elements, links to reddit, digg, del.icio.us, etc.

What I liked about the widgets-based template is that it makes formatting the page very easy. Integrating new apps is as easy as opening a widget window and pasting in some Javascript code. I managed to port over Radioblog, Google Search, Snap's mini previews, Statcounter, and Google Analytics. Instead of the Flickr Badge, which only displays the latest pictures, I uploaded 800+ of my photos, and used Google's Picasa slideshow.

Shrimp Balls

Chop finely:

• 1/2 pound fresh cleaned prawns
• 1/4 cup bamboo shoots
• 1/4 cup canned button mushrooms
• 1 whole green onion
• Add:
• pepper
• salt
• few drops sesame seed oil

Place in mixing bowl and add:

• white of one egg

Mix together until fluffy. Leave the bamboo shoots and mushrooms till last. Form into small balls the size of marbles. Add cornstarch if mixture too wet.

Dip balls in batter of:

• 1 beaten egg
• 1/2 cup flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 3 teaspoon oil
• Sufficient water to make smooth batter of pancake consistency

Fry until golden brown.

Chicken in Parchment

Combine in a large mixing bowl:

• 1/2 teaspoon vegetable oil
• 1/2 tablespoon soy sauce
• 1 teaspoon Chinese parsley, minced
• 1 teasepoon spring onions, minced
• 1/2 teasepoon hoisin sauce
• 1 pinch salt
• 1 cup uncooked chicken fillets cut into 1-inch square thin slices

Mix thoroughly and marinate for an hour.
Wrap each piece of chicken in 3-inch square pieces of parchment paper securely with all lose corners tucked in.
Fry parchment chicken in deep, hot vegetable oil for 5 minutes.
Drain on absorbent paper toweling and serve immediately.

Poetry and Passion at Naremburn Park

Quite a busy day today - after the movies, it's off to the park we go. Took the train to St. Leonards station, then from there, took the Willoughby Council shuttle bus to Naremburn Park for the free open-air Poetry and Passion classical concert by the Willoughby Symphony Orchestra.

I do have a ticket to the special reserved area sitting. Since GF doesn't have one, we just sat on one of the benches at the fringe of the park. Given our distance to the stage and strong winds, we didn't get to hear much of the orchestra's performance. It started to get a bit cold in the night, so we had to get some hot tea. Back at Burwood, a quick dinner at Canton Noodle House rounded up the day nicely.

Paolo Santos Live & Intimate Australian Tour at Basement Blacktown

Not really a big Paolo Santos fan. I kinda liked his breakout song Moonlight in Paris back in the early 90s because that's when I first heard the song. Then he started doing mostly covers of old songs - changing a few notes here and there. Never really liked his falsetto voice.

Anyway, he's here in Sydney to do a couple of shows. Am surprised he's still around, given that most of his contemporaries have come and gone. GF's brother-in-law sounds like a big fan, so we all went to Basement Blacktown to see him (Paolo) perform. Had I known earlier that Paolo Santos also has a show at Burwood RSL, I would've recommended that instead. Tickets costs $35 bucks - not too expensive considering he did two sets for the night, with each set consisting of 10 songs or more. Then again, the concert venue is not that nice. It's at the basement level of the building, way too many tables, only lighting is the plasma screens here and there, and insufficient ventilation. The food's not too bad though. Or is it because I haven't had Filipino food for a long time now?

Paolo was in his regulation T-shirt and jeans. He's got good rapport with the audience. (Not that difficult since most of the audience are fans anyway.) He sang the trademark Paolo Santos songs - mostly slow smooth ballads, easy to sing: Sailing, Overjoyed, Huwag na Lang Kaya, No Woman No Cry, Magasin, Roxanne, etc. It was getting late, so we left a little after the second set.