Sunday, July 29, 2007

National Tree Day

Today was Natioanl Tree Day. I've only 'officially' participated once some years ago. It wasn't that big a deal, just a few trees lying around with a couple of (what I assume to be) volunteers waiting for participants to come & plant them. I haven't driven pass that particular stretch of road much lately so I have no idea if that/those tree(s) are still there or not. Anyways, I digress. For this year, I just planted out some of what I already have at home into the ground. Since we lopped down the 2 dead/dying eucalyptus some months ago, there are gaps in our backyard that just makes it look kinda weird. So this yr I planted out one of the yuccas that got damaged during the lopping out front & in its old spot (the yucca basically snapped into 2 detached pieces that have since been potted up in plastic pots & rooted. I don't think there anything of the yucca is left in its originaly site) I planted out some of my chestnut saplings. Chestnuts are supposed to grow to quite big (10m I think) & I need them to be at that spot & block out the setting sun (if they survive long enought o be that big. They're only, like, a foot high or so).

Meanwhile, have refitted my tv-quarium & will go & buy some hardier specimens tomorrow. So far I have 3 yabbies in mind. Will find some cheapo goldfish to fill in the gaps later.

Monday, July 23, 2007

One foul day

Lightnings don’t strike twice, but tragedies most certainly can. Almost 2 years ago, my beloved tv-quarium suffered its first tragedy when there was a mass fungus outbreak that literally killed all my goldfish overnight. You probably could’ve guess what I’m about to say – yes, another fungus outbreak has claimed my ENTIRE tv-quarium, barring the plants. I don’t know if that was from the new fish that I introduced a week or so ago or if it was something more inherent, but pretty much all of my fish just died with a white puss surrounding them over the course of 1 day. Here’s how it went down. I bought 4 more fish Thursday last to add a bit more colour (1 silver shark to keep the remaining silver shark company, & 3 giant danios to inject some blue into the tank). Everyone looked very happy, & then on Sunday (ie 3 days later) the 1st of the giant danios died. It didn’t look sick or anything. It just died as if it had starved to death except it didn’t look thin or anything. I went back to the store to ask what the f & they asked me to bring in a water sample. So I did. They tested pH (which I also did at home, 6.5, 7-ish) and a couple of other stuff which I didn’t have the equipment for & concluded that my water was too acidic (it was a 4 or something according to their test) with a high level of ammonia. So I asked how did that come about when I tested pH on Monday & it was 6, 7-ish? The guy explained maybe I’ve been overfeeding & the leftover (plus the poopies) is producing too much ammonia. As such, I should feed over every other day & put some ammo lock in. So I did. That was Friday. Not long after I put in all the stuff & stopped feeding for a day did stuff start to go wrong. Another danio died, & then the normally resilient serpaes started looking puss-y. Tested pH again & still acidic despite putting in pH-remedy. Another danio died Sunday morning with the swordtails & platies started looking off. Over the course of the day I had to remove 12 (yes, a full dozen) dead fish including the very, very resilient bristlenose catfish that had been in that tank from the very beginning. The clown loaches were looking normal, swimming happily foraging for food scraps 1 minute & the next they were just lying dead, sideways. By the end of last night there were only the 2 silver sharks (with the older/larger 1 looking rather puss-y) & 1 serape (which was beginning to look better again) left. All of which died overnight & were just laying motionless by the time I got up this morning. It took me hours just to take out all the water of the 100L tank, & after a brief trip down to get a parcel from the post office, more hours spend washing the decorations, rehousing the water plants, washing out the gravel & deciding what to do with the tank. The last time this happened I left the cleared-out tank along for a month or so. I don’t know what to do just yet this time round, but am thinking of putting in yabbies instead. Not right away of course. Will need to have the whole tank washed out a few times to make sure whatever was in there is thoroughly, well, washed out. That would take more days. Great. Visitors coming in 2 weeks. Wonder if I’d have it re-populated by then.

Meanwhile, the new/7th/final HP was released over the weekend & I’m slowly working my way through it. Me, a notorious sufferer of the slow reader syndrome (I think HP6 took me on & off 3 months to finish) I’ve only covered 11 chapters in 2 & ½ days. Considering most of today was spent doing the tv-quarium that is actually not too bad an effort seeing I was in the middle of Ch8 when I went to bed last night/this morning. Don’t really know if I should just finish it off quickly & start on my PhD chapters again or to drag it out & interweave reading with re-writing chapters. Shall see. But of course, needless to say most of my MSN contacts have conveniently disappeared since Saturday, a few of which I know were/are buried under HP7. never a fast reader, I cheated by looking up the plot on wikipedia on Saturday. I did guess a few things right, but many things are most certainly surprising. Despite knowing the plot, the gory details of all fights scenes are still very entertaining & exciting. Some sentence structures are a bit tedious though, eg explaining what stupefy is when everyone reading the book would most likely know it by heart that the hell that spell does! Argh, it’s chamber of secrets all over again! Although the general, overall quality of Deathly Hallows is much better.

Wednesday, July 18, 2007

HP5 | wii-explosion

No, my wii has not exploded. As some of you may know, it's end of financial yr sales here in Oz so me being me naturally I stocked up on many things. Well, by most things I mean wii games & some plants. After playing just sport & play for 4 months, my wii games collection grew exponentially in the last month or so, first with World Poker Series, Cooking Mama, Pirates' At World's End, Rapala fishing, Wario Smooth Move, & yesterday Harry Potter 7. How can you beat half price? (Well, I guess 'less than half price' would beat it) My brother Ben also bought Rayman & Tiger Woods 2007. He's thinking about Mario Party 8 but I'd wait for Mario/Sonic Olympics. Ooh, so much fun!!

Meanwhile I went & watched Harry Potter 5 yesterday. We booked the tickets late last week thinking that it's the 1st day back at school after the winter break there wouldn't be any kids around yet there were still quite a few school-aged kids around. Them tardis! That aside, the movie wasn't as good as expected. The flight scenes were cool & all, but the book was simply too long & by cutting out so much it just looked a bit disjointed. Still, can't wait until the final book comes out (not that I have time to read it soon). My bet is on Voldermort (duh!) & HP to die, with HP killing V & either Neville or Ginny to kill HP. More likely Neville. What do you think?


Wednesday, July 11, 2007

Do I look like a chum to you?

I happens to me ALL THE TIME. No matter where I am, I always get asked direction. It's ok if I know the place (say, here in Sydney) but not if literally I get asked EVERYWHERE. Why am I bringing this up now? 'Cos I got asked again, not once but twice, today. First time was when I was walking from where I parked to work. It wasn't so much getting asked directions but an old lady asked me to bring her wheely bin back from the side of the road. Not that I minded terribly, but senile old her didn't remember which bin was hers (there were 4 there) so I had to bring all of them back in before she realised that the 1st 1 was actually hers. Never mind that. The 2nd time was just now, on my way back from lunch this new migrant asked me while pointing to a (small) church if that was the railway station. Granted, she looked like a recent migrant who spoke in a very heavy (south american) accent so she probably hadn't much idea of what Parramatta station is supposed to look like (it was another 2 minutes walk away), but a church? Anywho, that brings me back into think all the times that I have been asked directions, & in odd places. Like 'recently' when I was in Taipei, I was in 西門町 & was asked by (in Mandarin) a man for directions. I hadn't even been in the city for 2 days by that stage!! SanFran, HK (who'd think I know how to give directions there wouldn't you...), NY... Been asked, been asked, been asked, and needless to say, wouldn't have a clue where to tell them to go (If I was any ruder I'd have somewhere to tell them to go to, but I'm not :P). Story of my life, always a shepherd (who doesn't know his own way, ha ha!). That brings me to the question then, do I look like a chum to you? For those who don't know/remember what I look like, a recent photo may help answer that question.

Here are the before and after shots of my library updating efforts. The soft, brown, cotton tapes are to help the boxes slip out of the compactus easier (by stopping my fingers getting wedged in almost every time) while soft on the hands. Always looking out for softness, yes... There are 'only' 200 or so dusty boxes to do... x_x

Friday, July 06, 2007

Should I start treating my Facebook more seriously?

Clearly I'm very bored at work, 2 posts in 2 days. So, naturally I was surfing the net for new publications/news/etc & I came across this article. Never knew Facebook is that popular here in the land of Aus, even though my cousins have been adding me to their lists in the past 2-3 wks. I don't even remember when/why I signed up for Facebook. Seriously, I actually forgot that I have already signed up until my hotmail keeps receiving msgs from Facebook asking for confirmations from ppl that I don't have a clue about who they are. And they're from western Canada for crying out loud! Really, who'd want to befriend west Canadian? (J/K!! A friend of mine is actually back teaching in NW Canadia, although she's not on Facebook I don't think) Anyways. So naturally I've not used Facebook to any great effect (or any effect for that matter) except receiving confirmation requests and snide comments about my mandarins (no dirty snickerings pls. I'm referring to those you pick from trees). So I'm considering making better use of it & start with uploading whatever photos I have on this computer. (ooh, free exercise plan from the Marketplace! So watching Knocked Up). Crap, only have 8 photos! Must upload more when back at home...

Thursday, July 05, 2007

Still alive | Second-hand smoke

My recent lack of postings doesn't mean that I've dropped off the radar (or earth's surface). There simply hasn't been anything particularly interesting to blog about. Apart from the end of financial year sales (which led to my purchasing of several Wii games), there was much house cleaning - vacuuming, stove scrubbing... Sent in my summary of abject theory nearly 2 wks now & still no comments from Kev. Must chase up AGAIN. So meanwhile, we've been having some Iron Chef-style Cooking Mama cook-offs at home, or pretending to be a Carribbean pirate (don't be fooled by the 5 rating. It promises superb swordfights - which it delivers - except I'm not dexterious enough to carry out the commands. Or remember them for that matter...). Ben just got Rayman earlier this week, so we spent last night whacking rabbids & dancing to the tunes.

At work: updating the WESTIR library. One-third of the way thru. Will have enough material to do maybe another 1/4. Will have to wait until my order arrives, probably next week. No one else in today (sick person, sick wife, dead cat, & Gold Coast their respective 'reasonings') so I'm left to my own devices. Pics to come on what I'm doing :P (BTW, does anyone know if animals can get cancer from second-hand smoke??)

Waiting for HP5 (the movie) & HP7 (the book) to come out.