Horsley Park Half-Lunch and Civic Centre Half-Salute!

It's a day of halves today. I was supposed to have lunch at a friend's house at Horsley Park around noon. Had a badminton session at Homebush from 11am till 12 noon, so by the time I left the house it's already 12. The TomTom application on my E65 tells me Horsley Park is only half an hour away. It probably didn't factor in normal road traffic because I got there 45 minutes late. From Horsley Park, it's another half-hour to Chatswood where I'm supposed to attend a farewell concert by the Willoughby Symphony Orchestra and Choir starting at 2pm. Again, the TomTom didn't factor in the fact that I left the concert ticket at home, so I had to abort a nice vegetarian lunch, drive all the way home, then drive (quite fast) to Chatswood.

The concert, entitled Civic Centre Salute, promises to be a grand one. After 35 years of being home to the Willoughby Symphony, Willoughby Civic Centre is transforming into the Chatswood Civic Place, and this is going to be the orchestra's last concert in this venue.

By the time I got to the Civic Centre, people were just coming out for the intermission. That's half of the concert gone already. Apparently, I have missed Rossini's La Gazza Ladra Overture, Beethoven's Symphony No. 5, and a few others. The rest of the concert is worth all the hassle though. The second set opened with Handel's Hallelujah Chorus. Then we had the Willoughby March. The host gave us this bit of trivia about the piece: it was composed in 1969 by Albert Keats, the first Musical Director of the Willoughby Municipal Symphony Orchestra, and first performed on-site by the orchestra on Feb. 28, 1972. Next we had Mozart's Requiem and Tchaikovsky's third movement from Symphony No. 6. The highlight for me was when the choir sang the O Fortuna chorus from Carl Orff's Carmina Burana. Chief conductor Nicholas Milton borrowed a violin and started playing the opening bars of Hungarian Rhapsody No. 5 (very slowly), then the whole orchestra joined in - playing fast then slow depending on the conductor's whim. We also had Verdi's Anvil Chorus from Il Trovatore, and a few others. For the finale, the orchestra played Strauss Sr.'s Radetzky March, and everyone started clapping along. Reminded me so much of the Vienna New Year concerts that I used to watch on TV. I was sitting along the second row, so the music's really loud and you can see clearly how the music is being created. Very nice.

Movie 2007.07.26 - The Simpsons Movie

Went to see The Simpsons Movie on the first day (actually night) it hit the theaters. Good thing my movie buddy and I chose the last full show, or else we might not have gotten seats. I noticed that most of the audience are groups of high school kids or gangs of boisterous boys with bad haircuts. Does that say anything about me? Regardless, it's the funniest movie I've seen in years. This movie version is eighteen years in the making, and definitely worth the wait. It's non-stop LOL jokes and gags from start to finish. Too bad my friend didn't share my enthusiasm, and had to remind me to pipe down my outbursts from time to time.

What I liked about the movie is that it's short and sweet (and funny). Homer single-handedly turns Springfield into one big toxic dump. To prevent the surroundings from being contaminated, the EPA (Environment Protection Agency) seals off the town in a giant glass dome. The Simpsons family escapes into Alaska and settles down. Upon discovering a government plot to create a new "Grand Canyon" by nuking Springfield, the Simpsons decides to comes back and save the town. In the course of the movie, Homer learned to ride the motorcycle daredevil-style, Marge began to have doubts about her love for Homer, Bart skateboarded around town naked, Lisa became infatuated with Colin, and Maggie spoke her first word, which gives hope to all die-hard Simpsons fans out there. (Have to admit I learned about that last bit from a website. I knew I should've waited till the credits finished rolling.)

New Radioblog, Old Songs

Found out recently that radio.blog has a new version out (v3.1.8). I've stuck with v2.5 for quite some time because one, it works, and two, I'm not too sure if the new version works in the non-PHP mode. Only one way to find out. There's a few UI enhancements like new layout and support for playlists. Still the same old songs though. Ripway is only giving me 30MB of online storage space and 150MB of bandwidth per day, so I can't really put up more songs.

I guess it's also time to look for a better webhosting service. When I first set up my radio.blog, the best I can find is Ripway. This time, I found ZendURL, which gives you 100MB of space, gigs of bandwidth, PHP/Perl/CGI/SSI/MySQL support, FTP, POP, etc. All for free. My only complaint so far is that it's a bit buggy and tend to be offline from time to time. I've already integrated the new radio.blog to Blogger, though it might not show up if ZendURL is down. If you prefer the old player, go here:

http://aching.50webs.com

Roasted Duck, Smokeless Star City

So nice to have a free hotel lunch now and then. My colleague received a $30 lunch voucher from Star City, so the three of us went to make good use of it.

First thing I noticed when I first stepped into the casino is the clean, clear air. My colleague tells me that a total smoking ban went into effect in NSW starting July. That would explain why there's a lack of cigarette smoke and punters on the tables. The Trophies Food Court is packed though. Love that roast duck rice and the $6.50 meals (including soft drinks).

So Many Toys, So Little Time

First was the Microsoft Xbox. A few hacks and modifications later, it became a full-fledged multimedia center. During my recent trip to Manila, I came back with a Magic Sing karaoke system. You gotta give it to those Koreans. Literally thousands of songs (actually MIDIs) built right into the microphone. When my sisters came back from Manila, they brought with them an MP4 player with karaoke functions. Works quite well with the MP4 DVDs I brought before. Chalk one up for good compression codecs - thousands of minus-one videos on one DVD. Our latest acquisition? A Dance Dance Revolution (DDR) PC game complete with a Topway dance pad. Sure brings back memories of weekends at the arcade (watching, not dancing).

Asian Cup 2007: Australia vs. Japan in Little Portugal

Went to Little Portugal along Marrickville Road for dinner to celebrate my sister's birthday this week. We got there 5 minutes into extra time of the Australia-Japan match in the Asian Cup 2007. The actual game played out yesterday night in Hanoi, but since I haven't read the news, it's still an exciting game to watch.

After 30 minutes of extra-time play, the score is still tied at 1-1. Japan could've closed off the match with some promising attempts, but Mark Schwarzer managed to block the balls. The game went into penalty shootout. Japanese goalkeeper Yoshikatsu Kawaguchi turned out to be the better man, denying Harry Kewell's and Lucas Neill's penalty kicks. Despite Schwarzer's valiant attempts, Japan won the game on penalties 4-3 to move on to the semi-finals. Such a sorry ending, but the food was great though.

From the street, Little Portugal looks like a take-away shop. Don't mind that, just walk straight in and you'll find the (small) dining area. We ordered a whole Portuguese chicken and large chips, which were served almost immediately (after the complimentary bread and butter). My first time to try Portuguese chicken - quite a distinctive taste. And the chips is at par with McDonald's. (That's a compliment.) Our other dishes took a while to come out, so they must be freshly prepared. We had diced pork with potato chunks and pipis and another dish called Bifina (beef steak, bacon and egg, served with wafer thin potato chips, pickles and rice). The servings were so generous we didn't get to finish everything. So no dessert or coffee for us.

Bankstown Bites and Badminton

Bankstown Council is again hosting Bankstown Bites for the third year. This year's highlight are cooking demonstrations and book signings from celebrity chef Iain 'Huey' Hewitson. There are also eight food tours to choose from running at 10:30am, 12:30pm, and 2:30pm.

I got to the Bankstown City Plaza around 10am. Since I'm relatively early, I get a free shopping bag filled with brochures and other goodies. The food tours have interesting names such as Wok It Up, European Eats, Tantalizing Tea, Sweet Treats, Little Lebanon, Know Your Noodle, etc.

I'm a sucker for desserts, so I signed up my friend and me for the Sweet Treats tour. First stop is a Lebanese sweets shop a few block from the town center. The place is basically one long gallery of all kinds of sweets. They also make their own ice cream. The shop owner is pretty generous - everyone gets 2-3 scoops of ice cream and 2-3 kinds of sweets of your choice. We moved on to the cake shop on the next block. There's free hot chocolate for everyone, pastries, and a mini-takeaway package for everyone. Back at the town centre, we visited two more Chinese bakeries where they just plied us with cakes and cookies and pastries. My friend already gave up after the cake shop.

We loitered around and watched Huey do a cooking demonstration. Had a quick lunch of fried rice and Filipino BBQ, then off to badminton.

Movie 2007.07.15 - Priceless (a.k.a. Hors de prix)

The story is about knowing what you want and getting it at all cost. However, once you get it, you might realize that it's not what you want after all. Audrey Tautou plays sophisticated gold digger Irène, who's in search for the richest guy around who can set her up for life. Gad Elmaleh plays Jean, a hapless hotel waiter and bartender, who fell in love with Irène, and later becomes a boy toy to keep up with her luxurious lifestyle.

Have to admire Jean's commitment and dedication to Irène. He used up all his life savings, bonds, shares, and pension money in a day and a night, just to humour her, spend time with her, buy her things - knowing all well that it will lead to nothing. In the end, he spent his last euro just to take one final look of her face for 10 seconds. And just when he found himself a cushy benefactor, he had to give it all away again, just to help out Irene ensare her old sugar daddy. When Irene is getting ready for the kill, she realizes that she doesn't want the Chanels and the Guccis. All she wants is to ride the scooter with Jean and spend a nice afternoon at the bay.

I'm surprised Jean put up with her for so long. He knows she's a professional gold digger and simply toying with him. Anyway, that's true love for you. Instead of berating her and nagging her to see the error of her ways, he puts with her until she blunders again and again, and realizes that she got her priorities all wrong, and eventually comes back to him.

Favourite scene? The first time Jean and Irène meet at the hotel bar. He puts on "Can't Take My Eyes off of You" while expertly mixing up a cocktail drink for her. And she just sits there with her cigarette admiring his skill.

Want a Charge with That?

Seems like selected outlets of Burger King in Manila are offering customers free charging of their mobile phones with every order. This being in the Philippines, I'm pretty sure people will be standing beside the charging station munching on their burgers and fries while waiting for the phones to charge up. If you're not careful and blink your eyes, you'll lose your phone.

(Just looking at the picture, it's obvious that Nokia is the market leader. Go, Nokia!)

Update: A colleague wrote in to say that mobile charging stations can also be found in selected McDonald's and Wendy's outlets and Ayala Cinemas.

Movie 2007.07.06 - Transformers

Have to say this movie could've been done better. It's classic Michael Bay, and that guy sure knows how to build excitement. Still, the Transformers end up a bit one-dimensional. They should've just done an all-out Autobots vs. Decepticons showdown, instead of involving humans with their silly jokes and petty emotions. The transformation sequences and the action scenes are very nicely-rendered though. Sure with my Nokia could also transform like the one in the movie.

Rail Jam at Harbour Bridge, Inferno at Broadway

The one day when I have to meet up with a friend in Burwood and have a nice dinner. Right around 4:30pm, I got an internal email saying that there are problems with the North Shore line on the Harbour Bridge, and people are advised to seek alternative means of transport if going to the city. I figured I'll leave the office (relatively) early at 5pm and just take the many buses going to the city. Wrong. I went down to the North Sydney station to check things out and found a huge throng of people still confused as to why no trains are coming. Outside the station, there's people everywhere waiting for buses and flagging taxis. There's not even a proper queue anymore. A CityRail officer came by with a megaphone and announced that there are buses waiting along Walker Street. I rushed off to find this long long queue going around the corner and stretching all the way down the road. It's a cold winter night and the wind is blowing hard. Not a good time to wait for buses. Took me an hour to reach the head of the line;15 minutes to get to the Circular Quay by bus.

Good thing my friend is nice enough to offer to drive to the city and meet me at the Sydney Entertainment Centre. Still, that's a long walk from Circular Quay to Chinatown, I tell you. To get away from the cold, we ducked into Broadway Shopping Centre and had pizza and calamari at Inferno Cafe, then hot chocolate at Gloria Jean's to cap a long day.