The race is at 3pm today and cover a distance of 3.2 KM.  There will be 23 horses in this race and 23 skinny little jockeys, lol.  No disrespect to them though, they are amazing sports persons with strict food diet, exercise and lots of guts too…

To make this Melbourne Cup a bit more interesting, I have decided to put $10 on 2 horses.  Went over to TAB website and checked out the names of horses.  I finally decided on 2 horses, barrier 8 – Drunken Sailor and Fox Hunt in barrier 18.

8 & 18…  Sure win.  That’s what the superstitious Chinese will think.

With a beer in hand and some junk food in the other hand, let the race begin!

Good luck to everyone and most importantly ME!

Cheers.

We will be driving up to Fraser Island soon for a family holiday.  I am planning what food and snacks to get for the kids and me.  It will be a 2 day drive and we will be spending a week on the island.  What to do!?  What to do!? I really do not know where to start.  Headache… 

Chips, chocolate bars, lollies and soft drinks…  Kids favourite.  How much should I buy and how long will these snacks last?

Maybe I should get some carrots for the kids to chew on when they are peckish?

Maybe there shouldn’t be any junk food at all for this trip?

Not mention about the sleeping and cooking stuff, meat and vegetables, clothes, toys, medicine, fishing gears and lots of other things that I am still not aware of…  What other things do I need to pack or buy?  I am going crazy here.

Its not easy being a dad.  However when I see my sons enjoying themselves and the smiles on their faces, its all worth it!

OK.  Back to planning…

Cheers.

Working from home is a great idea!

I VPN to my work PC and voila, I was back at work virtually…  You know what I mean, not physically there and still able to work.

Working from home saves me about 2 hours without having to drive to and from work.  I also get to wear my home clothes and feel so comfortable and easy, right at home.  Of course, you have to gain the trust of your boss la…  Who knows what you can get up to when you are home alone? 

So, next time if you can, try asking your boss if you can work from home.  Happy employee = happy work = productive = everyone happy in the end.  No reasonable boss will turn you down.

Cheers.

As for me, with my small and fragile built body, I will stick to easier sport.  Maybe I will take up lawn bowling. 

So why do I want to write about CAPTCHA?

This is a blog and everyday I get automated postings aka Spams to my posts.  They are useless posts with links to adult, medicine or other sites that needed exposure.  Yesterday I received quite many and enough is enough I guess.   Even these posts have been marked as spams, I still have to to empty the spam bin manually.  This is quite annoying sometimes!
So here I am, I have installed a program that will ask a simple question before the user can post his/her comment.  Hopefully, this doesn’t deter my readers from commenting.
Let’s see if this CAPTCHA program will work as intended.

Come on real human readers, I need some real comments, please… 

Planking actually involves someone lying flat on their bellies on any objects, anywhere they can think of.  Obviously, individuals will think of unique places to do this to impress friends or anyone on the Internet.

Sadly there has been a death of a young man in Brisbane.  Apparently the young man fell to his death from an apartment after a failed attempt in planking.  Police suggested that alcohol might be involved in this particular case.

I am so sorry to hear loss of lives by reckless young men attempting silly acts.  Please be responsible and think twice before doing anything that can put yourself or anyone in danger.  We can have fun but please be safe…

I work in the IT industry supporting databases at a large organisation.
Recently there were some difficult issues with one of our critical databases and we needed assistance from the vendor, a very large global database company.
I went through the proper procedure, i.e. filled in an electronic form with all the required information and logged a support call with them.

Day 1-2.  Extracted reports and uploaded them as requested by engineer #1.  Engineer #1 explained that issue was caused by a dodgy program.  I requested for more info.
Day 3-6.  No update.
Day 7.  Engineer 2 came on board and advised engineer 1 is on leave.   WTH!  No handover or nothing from engineer #1.
Day 8-9.  Uploaded more reports as requested by engineer #2.
Day 10.  After some investigation, I was advised issue was caused by heavy activities on a few disks.  As usual, I need to know more and asked for more info.
Day 11-14.  No updates for a few days, I had to call in and escalated the request as my manager is breaking my chops.  A service manager called me and asked me the same questions again.  She then told me someone will look into this issue.
Day 15.  New engineer #3 is now assigned to my case.  No mention of the investigation done by engineer #2.  Engineer #2 has disappeared.
Day 16-21.  More reports uploaded.  Communication with engineer #3 was not good as well.  I kept repeating myself and kept asking the same questions.  He tried calling me a few times but the call quality was bad and I can hardly understand him as his accent is really strong.

It is now almost 4 weeks since I first logged this issue with them.  No progress and no resolution.  What a pain!

I think its time to repatriate this support call back to Australia.

The federal government has extended the completion date to 2020 for the National Broadband Network (NBN).  Apparently there was some agreement between some MPS that the bush and the city folks have to pay the same price for the new NBN.

When I go to the bush for camping, I don’t expect a toilet that has flushing and clean water facilities.  I don’t expect to have mobile phone coverage everywhere I go, there are lots of things I can give up because I want to have cleaner air, quieter environment and basically just to enjoy the wilderness…  The same can be said to the people that chose to live in the sticks.  They have cheaper houses and bigger piece of land.  Some don’t even see bitumen road for many kilometres…  On the other hand, city folks complain and whinge when they see one tiny pothole on the bitumen road.  City folks are only a few minutes drive to local shopping centres while the folks in the bush might have to drive for hours just to get to a convenient shop.

There are ups and downs living in the city or in the bush.  However we can never expect to have the same quality of service for everyone…  Come on, let’s stop debating and start building…  By the time they finish rolling out the NBN, the technology would be out-of-date and will need to be upgraded again… lol

My humble opinion:  Australia is going to be a backward country…

Australia is a multi-cultural country and there are so many races living here.  No doubt there is going to be some tension or misunderstanding between us.  Generally we are a bunch of kind and tolerable nation.  Of course as with every other things, there will always be an odd ball here and there. Perception, history and bad experience might caused one to think differently about another race or culture.  Let’s not generalise! A bad apple in the box doesn’t mean the whole box of apples are bad…

Personally I have seen on very very few occasions, unkind words spoken to me because I am not the same kind or race.  No big issue, words cannot hurt me and how I wish those ignorant ‘few’ can open up their narrow mind and see us for who we are…  Again, I must stress, very very few…  I don’t wish to start an uprising here… 

Let’s be fair to everyone, don’t discriminate and let’s live together in harmony…

Channel 7 has coverage of men and women tennis all day and night for this week and next week.  How lucky are we?
I have been watching quite a fair bit as there is not much else I fancy on tele (television).
Federer, Nadal and our own Stosur have been nothing short of amazing to watch.
Even our young Tomic gave Nadal a bit of running after losing 3 straight sets.

Most of the ladies/women matches, you can be sure to hear constant moaning and grunting.  Its blardy loud as well
Man, is it annoying or what?  After a few games, it is really unbearable.  Like they say in hokkien “buay tahan“.
I have to turn down the volume on the tele or my neighbour will start to wonder what we are doing in the house.
No disrespect to these young ladies, they are good looking, athletic and very talented.
However do they have to moan like they are having so much fun?
Not sure what the rule in tennis is for moaning?

For the above reason, I  don’t think I can sit by the courtside to watch and listen to the whole moaning match.  It will drive me mad.

Now I cannot wait to see Federer and Nadal in the final.  Yay!