DVDs

Quite tired from all the running around I've done today, church, lunch in Richmond, drop off Peter Lin @ Box Hill, home, Anna's to drop off/pick up stuff, soccer in Box Hill, Julz's to drop off lecture notes (almost had to make a trip to the "M" half of the M&K Show's residence also in Balwyn but can give her the stuff tonight), home. Then tonight going to Vic's, then Anna's to then proceed to Bex's 23rd kebabamathingy. Swotvac also officially starts tomorrow and I have yet to start studying! Argh! Hmm anyway, funny thing, I thought I'd make a list of DVDs I wanna watch - despite the looming exams and all. What a bum.

So, you know when you're with friends and all in a bummy mood? And so y'all go to the video store to check out what to rent? And then when you get there, not one person can agree on what movie to watch? Well, to make it a little easier, if any of youse out there wanna watch the following movies then gimme a buzz.

Pieces of April: I don't know why, looks like an arthouse movie because Katie Holmes has red hair.
Alexander: Like Troy, I missed it only to hear about the epic battle scenes from other ppl.
Baseketball: As recommended by the girls in my cell, "If you liked Anchorman (which I did) then this one is for you."
Battle Royale: I've heard good things about this one. I don't even know anything about it! From what I gather it has some connection to Japan? And violent?
Be Cool: All-star cast and characters from Get Shorty. Looks decent.
Chronicles of Riddick: Although the first one was a little, how you say, crap, this one looked pretty good from the trailers - special effects galore!
A Clockwork Orange: Heard a lot of good things about Stanley Kubrick but never seen one of his films. This looks more my type than "Eyes Wide Shut".
Cruel Intentions 2 and 3: Haha I know what you're all thinking. To be honest, I thought the first one was okay. Then again, sequels to these kinds of movies can really suck. And probably will, but I'm curious as to how bad they will suck. The movie that is, you filthy swines!
Finding Neverland: I'm a big fan of Johnny Depp and although this one looks a little soppy, appears to have potential.
Girl Next Door: Strongly recommended from the fellas but maybe they were a bit biased. Afterall, the story is based on a girl (played by the sexy Elisha Cuthbert) who lives next door who's a pornstar or something. Hehe hmm...
The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy: Loved the book when I was young!
The Life Aquatic: Looks like a really good comedy with a star cast!
The Longest Yard: What can I say? I'm a fan of the Adam Sandler movies!
Mr & Mrs Smith: Brad Pitt. Angelina Jolie. Nuff said.
TMNT 3: Having grown up in the early 90s, it's almost criminal to not have seen all turtles movies! I've seen one and two but have never gotten around to watching the third one. Have to get this one outtathaway for closure.
Wild Things 2: See explanation for Cruel Intentions 2 & 3.

Recantation

Decided to retract my last post.

Tonight I got fully ripped. Last night I was totally out of sorts and way in over my head. Listening to others share tonight at committee meeting gave me a much needed kick in the ass. I can't believe how petty and spoilt I can be sometimes.

The irony was no more evident when my dad got into my car and started the engine. Despite all the problems and the grief my car gave me on Monday night, despite the fact that the RACV guy told me the car wouldn't work, despite him also cutting the wires to the car and only being able to run after hotwiring, despite me praying that God would work a miracle that night, the engine never purred more confidently than tonight. That was the miracle God held back from me to test my character and faith. How badly I failed.

Once again, a lesson I so often forget, God has His own timing. Daniel shared a passage tonight from the gospel of Luke which I thought was highly relevant - Luke 9:57 - "I will follow you wherever you go." and Luke 9:58 "...the Son of Man has no place to lay his head." I guess this typefies what it means to follow Jesus, that often there will be hardship and little rest. In conclusion, I have to remember that even though it's the harder life now, eternally it will be the better existence.

MSN Space

yea cbf doing photos here, just spent AGES uploading photos to my MSN space. Most of you should already be on my MSN anyway so just click on that star next to my nickname. Otherwise, ADD ME! bongoey@hotmail.com

promised I would upload photos of hotham and the neighbour's decimated house, you can go there to check it out.

over and out.

More Goings On

Yeah, so I've become lazier in terms of my blog but hey that's not a bad thing is it? Less blogging = Have a life, right? Haha...hmmm.

Quick 411 on the last few days, played badminton for the first time ever on Saturday for Ellen's Taiwanese Student's Society thingy. Lemme say that my gluteus maximus is soooo damn sore! As well as my lower back muscles! Highlight of the day must be the sausage fest we had afterwards - about 100 snags but only about 5 people eating! Haha it was amazing. They had fried bacon & eggs, pasta salad, mustard sauce as well! Great stuff!

Sunday had to wake up at 8:30am because I was playing guitar for P&W! Was freaking out the night before coz there were two songs with really hard chords to play, but heaven sent me Ken Ibuki and he gave me the chords for use with the capo. So instead of 4 and 6-fretting it doing Bflats, Dflats and Eflats, I was only required to do Gs and Cs. Haha sweet. Also played soccer for the first time in AGES which was okay. We drew 4-4 and I almost busted a lung I was so unfit! I felt bad too coz I kneed a guy in the shin, I felt my knee go straight into it quite hard and he just keeled over. Needless to say, I was going for the ball so he was okay with it.

Did some admin today, including sending a letter off to TAB to reactivate my account since I incorrectly entered my pin three times! (Read Chops and Quoc, I'm getting my act together don't worry!) Also made the call to the optometrist to get contacts! That'll be interesting seeing as I've never had contacts before. After this post I'm heading to the PO to book an interview for my passport.

On other matters, been reading The Da Vinci Code which I must admit is a really enthralling read! Politics aside, it's a great fiction novel peppered with facts which I guess is why a lot of people believe the story is true! Haha...but yea, I've read about 200 pages in the last few days whizzing through it like crazy.

Hmm meant to be at Uni right now but decided to "take a day off" since Dave is coming over soon to finish off our massive Marketing assignment. Big props to Lanny for going to the 3-hr 9am class to mark my name off - I know how hard it is for you to go to Uni let alone rock up at 9am! Haha you derro, paint your face black already!

On the domestic front, for those of you that haven't been to my place recently the neighbours tore down their house. So now, walking to my front door, you can see the backyard patio of the neighbour two doors down. Also, in their infinite wisdom, the neighbours have decided that since they took down our fence, they can move the line over so that we lose about 30m x 30cm land. That would devalue our house by a substantial amount so legal proceedings are in the works. I've been commissioned by my dad to take photos and maybe I'll post them up later in the week.

Anyway, I've got errands to run and places to be. Till next time people, carpe diem!

The "Best of" Blog

Alas! Much time has passed and it has dawned upon me that today marks the first birthday of this blog! Happy birthday dear blooogggg...happy birthday to yoouuuu!

To celebrate this momentous occasion, I have decided to compile a "Best of" collection of my favourite posts. This is a good way for newcomers (and recent-comers (get your mind out of the gutter!)) to get to know me, in a nutshell, without having to sift through the abundant crap that currently co-exists in the blog.

This is Just a Tribute (21/12/04)
Brainchild as a result of hours of monotonous data entry-ing. Bordering on psychotic when this blog was posted. Still, I managed to see the funny side of things - as you do.

Ode to S**t (30/12/04)
A rant about that toilet paper. Been bugging me for ages and seeing it again spurred this tirade of abuse.

Howdy Stranger! (8/1/05)
One of the more reflective pieces I've written (as opposed to plain silly) which discusses growing up as a twenty-something.

mon anniversaire neuf Fevrier (9/2/05)
Don't be fooled by the exotic nature of the title, but it's not as s**t as my other posts. Wrote this on my 22nd birthday in a somewhat sombre mood. Afterall, I aged a whole year overnight!

Plagiarism (23/3/05)
Not one word was written by myself (save the Bibliography). As the title suggests, I stole bits and pieces from other blogs of my friends and rearranged them in any way I pleased. Gotta love the mates!

Recipe for a Blog (5/4/05)
I remember thinking "I've come up short and have blogger's block again!" Little did I know that writing about writing a blog could actually turn into one! Voila!

Dear Drew (3/5/05)
Dedicated to Drew on his birthday, I listed an assortment of porn movie titles which played on popular movie/tv-show titles. Ann kindly reminded me that I left out "Buffy the Vampire Layer" and there were a few interesting additions from "40 Year-Old Virgin" which I saw last night! Haha like "Space Nuts"

The Kids Are Alright (8/7/05)
Written after a wonderful week teaching kids, this post expressed the happiness I found in the innocence of children. A bit of a D&M post.

Love 101 (16/7/05)
Not orthodox by any means - in fact can be downright weird. It's a long post explaining love (including a diagram!) so be warned, read if you're in an open frame of mind...or just bored.

Ten Things I Dislike About You (15/8/05)
I am real person with real feelings. So real that I too, like any other human being, get pissed off at small but disgusting habits. Unfortunately, I have to live with "Stalker #1" and needed to vent.

Happy Snaps

Well today I woke up early to go to church and was still feeling a little down. Had a good cry last night so it's all out now. Anyway, today Ailz gave me the photos CD of the weekend at the snow (read about it here) and now I'm at Uni having a browse. It's made me feel a whole heap better looking through them and so I'll show some of the more interesting ones here. I'll be uploading all the pics from the CD somewhere so watch this space. Enjoy!

Mikey and Katie sitting by the window of our apartment. Great view!

Peter Poon after hitting his head on the corner of a shelf.

L-R: Mikey, Matty and Vic posing for the cams. I'm in the back coming down I think.

Aileen losing yet another hand which led to her eventual "dare". You can see Vic fully loving it and giggling like the school girl that he is.

Vic and PP fighting for the last spoon.

Headshot of the "players." Here we're trying to determine whether Matty should be penalised for grabbing TWO spoons! Matt: "What? Me??"

Carol, Andrew and PP chilling out.

PP found a new way to ski. Looks a bit painful though.

The M&K Show!

"She'll be comin' round the mountain when she comes." Ta da!

L-R: Aileen's finger, Vic, Me, Katie and Mandy

PP getting snowballed by Carol.

And this last one, I didn't expect on the CD but was from Family Camp back in May. It's Cat's mum playing "Fluffy Bunny" which involves saying "fluffy bunny" with as many marshmallows in your mouth as possible. This was taken just after Mrs. Chow exploded marshmallow bits all over James' hand holding the mic on the left there.

Kevin

I knew something was different last night when I got home around 2am hearing Kevin barking. He didn't stop so I went outside to see what was up, I was thinking about bringing him inside. Instead I took KJ's kennel (which he never uses) and put one of Kevin's pillows in there since it didn't seem like he wanted to go into his own kennel. He stopped barking and so I went back inside to sleep.

This morning my mum looked outside and saw that Kevin had indeed passed away. I couldn't think or move, I just kinda moped around not quite comprehending anything. My mum kept on yelling at me for being lazy so much so that eventually I cracked and basically told her to F off - using that exact word too. I wasn't standing around being lazy but I guess I was just traumatised. I always hear of people in shock when a tragedy happens but I always think it's a mind over matter type thing - how ignorant I was.

Anyway, with the help of Korean Lee and Thai Andrew, the three of us dug a hole in my backyard. We buried him with my mum saying a short prayer. After reading Personality Plus which Mandy so kindly lent to me, I can understand that my mum's just the type of person who deals with pain by lashing out at people. I, on the other hand, close up. It took a lot of my mum yelling at me for me to crack, a lot more than it would've used to so I guess that's a very minor consolation. But I'm still annoyed I still cracked.

Kevin was like 16 years old, in dog years that equates to 112. About two years ago when I got KJ I realised how old Kevin really was. It amazed me he lived so long. I am happy though that he got to live out his life and didn't pass away from a tragedy.

I remember when my last dog, Lucky, died the first person I rang was my best friend, Seamus. He answered and through the tears all I said was "Lucky died" and hung up. I didn't want to talk about it, just to notify a close friend what had happened. Today when Kevin passed away, the first person I rang was Anna and I told her what happened.

Thirteen years on and it doesn't get any easier.

R.I.P Kevin 1989-2005

Shirking

Hmm so I'm sitting here at 10:10am on a Wednesday morning once again doing payroll for work. I really should be doing work instead of blogging but, you know...

Just had a browse at other ppls' blogs and seems like yesterday was "posting day". Reading Julz's blog has me really thinking about my imminent USA trip. There is still so much to do! Book accommodation, plan itinerary, get a passport, sell my car...

I don't know what you're laughing at right now, the fact that I'm going overseas in less than 2 mths and still haven't got a valid passport, or the fact that I'm selling my car...yes, to fund my trip!

It's amazed me at the responses of everyone whom I've told about the idea of selling my car to fund my US adventure. It's usually met with rolling on the floor laughing or "ROFL" for you MSNers out there. Is it really that far fetched? I guess it's put more into perspective when I tell them that my parents have been wanting to buy me a new car for a while so chances are when I get back I'll just get a new one right? Not to mention the fact that I'm gone for 2mths and so it'd be a waste paying car rego and insurance during that time. Yeah? Yeah!

Hmm anyway, for those of you that don't know, my car isn't like a long term one, it's just the average kinda jeep. So selling it won't really bring me to tears or anything of the like. It's not like I own a BMW or even a Holden Commodore (everyone gets a free ride in Sanji's new car!!!) and selling that off has large financial implications.

Hmm anyway, I should really get back to MYOB because it's starting to whisper subtle threats. Or maybe that's just my conscience.

Big Week!

Wow what a week! For me only blogging once in a week means something probably went wrong...or it went right! I'm pleased to announce however that it was the latter.

I'll spare you guys the details mainly because I have to get ready for Uni really soon (yes, first day back from the hols how painful). Anyway continuing on from last week's post, Tuesday I had an all day group meeting at Lena's. I'd say the assignment isn't too taxing but I guess we all have a tendency to bum coz we're slackers! Haha, on the bright side we managed to watch The Aviator which was a decent movie. Leo has a penchant for those rebel/pioneering roles doesn't he?

I also worked quite a lot last week, Wednesday, Thurs and Friday. At night I was going out also, with dinner at the Conservatory at Crown on Wednesday night - all you can eat seafood! Haha that was quite interesting. Even more interesting however was all you can eat Korean BBQ on Thursday night! Haha I won't even go there, but basically for Thursday and Friday I only had one meal. Friday night was also a good one, my cell group prepared for next week's singing and sharing night - should be good! After YG went to Blackburn Maccas to witness a "Nugget Off" which was a comp to see who'd eat 40 chicken nuggets! Haha congrats on those dudes who did it! I think there are photos on Drew's blog. I also had a great time mucking around with Vic, Mandy and Katie. Haha I'm really growing to love the "M&K show" they are a full bag-and-a-half of laughs when they're together!

Saturday I spent the day rehearsing for S&S night then had the Surin dinner in the evening. That was also pretty good even though the food was a bit spicy! All I can say is spicy in, spicy out! And it was definitely spicy out yesterday afternoon!

Speaking of which, yesterday I had my confirmation. I was really really nervous beforehand even though I'm not normally that freaked out before a public speaking event. It's normal for ppl to get the jitters, but usually I can deal with it. Yesterday however, when I had to share my testimony I was really packing daks! It was quite unfounded though, as after the service and even beforehand I had lots of words of encouragement. Thanks you guys! After service we went to Georges for a combined Brian bday/Ross farewell. Had waaayy too much to eat then went to have a go at Touch Rugby. Not a good combo. It was good to get some exercise and a sweat going since it was such a glorious day yesterday weather wise. You know spring is very much in full swing when tomorrow's forecast is 26! Huge!

After Touch, got home, showered and went to Ross' church. I think it's called Yarra Plenty Christian Church. They're pentecostal and were really enthusiastic and just out there which I thought was a really good change. Totally enjoyed it. Afterwards went to some chick's house to have pizza which was really cool too, met a lot of people! It was also a change from my norm, since Vic and I were practically the only asians there! Haha so definitely a good change of scenery for me, I loved it.

Anyway I'm gonna end it here since I'm still in my PJs. To Ross, even though I'm seeing you later today, you probably won't read this until just before you leave on Tuesday so I'll do my little farewell now. Have a great year in Japan! Make sure you blog heaps about your shenanigans and the goings on in the land of the rising sun. You absolutely have to take that photo of three stereotypical Harajuku girls on each arm while wearing that "Yellow Fever" t-shirt! Haha you know you love it! Hope you have a really good time and don't forget us back here! I've said all the mushy stuff on the CD with Don't Be A Menance To South Central While Drinking Your Juice In The Hood. Make sure you don't read that until you get to Japan!

Anyway, in a Powerball-esque deep voice; another day, another million reasons to love life! That's hot.