My Blue Heaven

Wow.. methinks updates are required!

Ok empty blog main page = Not Good. Lol. Thankyou for everyone’s comments on my previous post. I’ve been going through some ups and downs lately (duh) and things aren’t as bad now.. or I’m just dealing better with them. Whichever one. In any case, I’m ok. 🙂

I know I’ve been pretty slack with my blog. Been too busy involved in other little projects.. as well as that annoying thing called “Real Life”. Work is mega-hectic as per usual (yeh yeh what’s new eh). But I’ve managed to keep up going to the gym every week (yay!) AND I’ve joined up membership at a dance studio in London (Danceworks) which means I pay a monthly fee and it drags my lazy ass to class each week (though I only need to go twice in a month to make it back plus extra savings). My jazz improvisation class is still going too – we have another performance week this week.. I’m gonna be performing “Blue Bossa” on Monday. Yay. I’ll see if I can do another video.. depends how crap it is coz I’ve been a bit slack with attendance the last few weeks and have hardly practiced at all too. :/ So.. there is my life in a nutshell thus far. I’ve attached one of my most recent videos below.. it’s a video blog of me going to dance class last saturday. Hope you enjoy – took me 7 hours of editing to put it together. But well worth it since it got featured.. woohoo! 🙂

Blog thing

Your Depression Level: 84%

You seem to be severely depressed. You should seek immediate attention from your physician. Depression can be cured – you just need to take the first step.

Are You Depressed?

Happy 2007

Wow. Can’t believe it’s 2007 already. How time flies.

Normally I try to write some sort of profound new years blog entry, but I seem to be lacking inspiration this year. Oh well. You can watch my NYE vlog instead. 🙂

Btw, I don’t expect to travel to ALL those locations I listed this year.. they were merely a list of possible destinations that I am interested in seeing. My resolutions are more like.. medium term goals over this year. Just some things I want to achieve this year, things that are important to me, to help keep me focused and disciplined when I get lazy/distracted/tired. (And the list isn’t all-inclusive.) And yes the editing is a bit choppy… Kwai did alot of it and we were in a hurry coz it was NYE and we needed to get out to watch the fireworks.

Myself and Kwai went to see the fireworks on NYE here in London, over the Thames. It was pretty cool, for London. Nothing compared to Sydney of course, but a good show nonetheless. And the atmosphere was pretty cool… for once people in London seemed warm and friendly and actually spoke to each other (or maybe it was just the alcohol).. but there was definitely a celebratory festive air on the banks of the Thames that night. Then we went home.. and it only took about an hour and half.. (which was quite good for NYE).. and stayed up till 5:30am celebrating the new year with our friends from around the world on stickam (ok it wasn’t as sad as it sounds.. it was fun) and watched the live video of Times Square celebrations in New York.

Coming up soon is our trip to Florence, Italy. We’re gonna spend 5 days in Florence for my birthday in mid jan. Can’t wait! It’ll be nice to just soak in the beauty, the art and the food of Florence over a relaxing 5 days.. no rushing from one city to another this time. 🙂

Fotos

Some photos I took in December from my work. Pretty views of english countryside at dusk, during those few days we had such bad fog in London that they cancelled heaps of flights.

Long time no blog

Wow its been a while eh.

Just a quick update coz I have all of 5 minutes before I have to leave work to catch my train..

• Work’s been mega-busy, challenging, demanding.. but fun. 🙂 Boss is great, work colleagues are great.
• Life has been mega-busy.. with jazz class taking up entire monday night, and just lots of stuff going on.
• I’m going away on a “mini-break” this weekend! We have an impromptu car for the weekend so spontaneously decided to drive to Belgium (Brussels) and Germany (Aachen) for one night. Leaving real early sat morning, catching very cheap eurotunnel across, and staying 1 night at a friend’s place in Aachen. Yay for having friends in other countries. 🙂 (Incidentally, this friend is a fellow youtubian from youtubia. This will be an inaugural youtube meetup. Preceding the official london meetup next year! W00t.)

Ok time’s up! TGI Friday!!! 😀

The end of a chapter

And so it is. The end of a chapter in my life (well, career anyway). Yes today is my last day here at e.s.p.a.r.e.s. Funny, I’ve been here for almost a year now. How time flies. I’m happy to be moving on, as this job at a digital agency is something that I’ve pursued for quite some time now. But being typical, I do feel slightly nostalgic about leaving. There will be things I’ll miss… things like walking by the Thames river in the mornings.. chilling in the park by the river at lunch.. some of the yummy local eats that I’ve discovered over my time here.. my regular morning mocha whilst on the bus from Clapham Junction. Hmmm. *sigh* I am excited about this new role though. I have a few uncertainties and doubts. But hey.. what is life without those. Hopefully this will be a door way to new opportunities and new found skills.

So. Here goes eh.

Current listening :: “Come To Me” – Diddy Ft Nicole Scherzinger (Recently discovered this track from one of Luamky’s dance class vids on youtube. Loooooove it.. totally makes me wanna get up and just shake it!! :))

Italy Trip 2006 : Part 2

And the saga continues with Part 2 – arrival in Milano! Enjoy. 🙂

Updates

So I haven’t really blogged any real updates in a while. Life has been busily chugging along. The biggest news of the moment (that I think I only hinted at before) is that I’ve resigned my current job (about 2 weeks ago) because I had a job offer with a very cool creative digital agency. Yep, I finally got that greatly pursued job at a digital agency, after many interviews (and many knock-backs) for many months, at many different digital agencies. For those who have no clue what on earth a digital agency is, and what the fuss is about. Here’s a quoted explanation from the Brand Republic website, which is kinda a news and information hub in the digital agency industry:

“Before defining what a new-media [or creative digital / interactive media] agency is, you really need to distinguish between agency and consultancy. At its most basic, you could say that an agency does things for you — such as build you a website according to your specifications — while a consultancy advises you on the right way to go about something, ie whether you should have a website in the first place. A good analogy comes from the analogue world, where the advertising agency occupies the space between the clientÂ’s business and the clientÂ’s consumers. Selling superior knowledge of the consumer, the client and the immediate competitive environment in which they exist, an ad agency aims to deliver appropriate messaging through appropriate channels. The new-media marketplace has bred a new business model. It is a model that is essentially a fusion between consultancy services, marketing services and production output. ….[New-media agencies] undertake to facilitate and mediate the entire business process, from the conception of an idea or product, to the launch of a digital property (which may be a website) and its appropriate support services. ….There are a myriad of specialisms that the new-media consultancies must embrace and each requires its own set of skills, from business consulting and database management, through to building online brands and website construction.”

So hopefully that is an accurate description of the industry I’m entering into. It is a highly sort after industry for web designers & developers because the type of work is very client project based and highly creative (since we are usually dealing with brands and advertising in the online world). And the environment at these type of companies is always fun, casual, highly energetic and close-knit (totally different from the banking industry, which is usually quite boring for a designer/developer, tho you do get paid more in banking). But there are usually heaps of cool perks like more holidays (eg 24 days), private health insurance, annual bonuses – some agencies I’ve seen do things like company breakfasts or lunches.. free donuts.. massages.. onsite gym.. onsite xbox 360 or pool table or similar fun activity.. onsite subsidised bar.. day off for your birthday.. etc. But they are also usually fairly demanding jobs because they deal with clients.

Anyway, I’m looking forward to this new role – hopefully it’ll be good and I’ll fit in well with the company (it’s a really really small company of only about 13 people.. so far)! It’s kinda a senior web developer role in asp.Net (as well as some front end stuff) – so it’s not a front-end-only role which I’d been going for in all my other interviews. I’m a bit nervous about it because asp.Net is not my strongest skill and I’m not that experienced in it. The interview was kinda funny actually, I only had one interview with them, which kinda went like:

Me: “Honestly, I’m not sure if my asp.Net skills are good enough for this role”

CEO: “Well I think they are”

Me: “Oh.. er ok then”

They are planning on expanding with more permanent staff, and less contractors – so hopefully they’ll bring in more (better) asp.Net developers than me, so I can perhaps concentrate on more front-end stuff.. we’ll see how things go. (Strangely they don’t have a dedicated front-end developers team like all the other agencies seem to – the designer also does the html/css which is rare I’ve found). Anyway I will also be able to have client interaction, which is a big bonus for me because I want to gain experience in that side of things. Perhaps even move to that side, away from technical. We’ll see if I’m good at it first! The only down point is that they’re not located in London.. they are down in Edenbridge, just outside the M25 – which is like, in Kent!!! From Croydon, its not too bad, only abt 1/2 hour train (with only 2 trains an hour). But to get to central london takes full hour train journey.. ouch. Oh well, I think it’s worth it with higher salary, more perks/holidays and less working hours!! (9 – 5:30pm.. woohoo!)

Ok enough about work! Ooh I went shopping on the weekend. I pretty much spent my entire winter clothes budget on a beeeeautiful cream autumn/winter coat from Mango and 3 autumn/winter skirts from Topshop. Pics to come. 🙂

My official statement on MySpace

In response to the exploded phenomenon of myspace – with every pop artist, band, model, actress, actor, man, woman, child and their dog now having a myspace page:

“Myspace sucks. From a web developers viewpoint (and myspace member since early 2004) myspace is a poorly designed site (who on earth came up with their page designs??) with little functional benefit and runs at a snails pace. It’s full of noobs who “pimp” their profile pages with extremely poorly designed hacked code that will crash ones browser at any given time (way too much power in the wrong hands). ItÂ’s a pure waste of web space and an eye sore to look at most of the time. If you want a blog, use blogger or other similar sites. If you want a web site, make your own (it’s really not that hard). If you want a photo gallery, use Flickr. If you want a video host, use Youtube. The community thing doesnÂ’t work either – everyone has about a 1000 friends, most of whom are scanity clad members of the opposite sex. So in summary.. the functionality sucks, the design sucks (both profile and admin pages), and the community sucks. Did I leave anything out?”

TheWineKone sums it up nicely in this amusing video blog. 😀

Current listening :: “Milestones” – Miles Davis

Balance

My word of the week. Balance. I’ve been musing over this concept recently and how much of a juggling act life is. Balancing work, sleep, household chores, friends, partners, health, fitness, hobbies, other activities, and even just time-out alone to reflect. All these are good things and a necessary part of life, but when one activity grows out of proportion to the exclusion of other activities.. I think it can become a not-so-good thing. I guess this might seem pretty obvious. But maybe not to all. Say work – it is a necessary thing to earn income to survive. And some may even really enjoy their work. Though for most it is probably a mix of good and bad. But when it takes over your life.. working say 10 – 12 hours a day.. what’s the point? You may earn more money, but you have no time to enjoy that money, and other aspects of your life slowly disintergrate due to lack of attention – be it health, fitness, relationships, family. Same could probably be said of other things.. hobbies, commitments other than work, even partners. Spend all your time with a partner and no time with anyone else, and you end up with no friends. (Or the other way around.) Or spend all your hours surfing the net, to the detriment of your sleep and life, and you end up tired, late for work and neglect to do necessary things in real life, like household chores or paying bills! And so on.

I guess this is something that is important to me. I’ve always kinda rebelled against the idea of my life being so monopolised by one activity that I have no time for anything else. There is so much in life to enjoy and experience, to learn and grow. I guess I *expect* it of myself to be able to make time for and balance the things that are important to me. (I suppose you’d first have to figure out what actually is important to you.) Some things that I wish to balance in my life include: work, eat, sleep, music (learning/playing piano), music (listening/watching gigs), dancing, fitness & health, partner, friends, time-out/reflection, learning & growing (mentally, emotionally and spiritually), household stuff (cleaning, finances etc) and more recently travel (see/experience new things).

Hrmm. It’s gotten so cold in London so quickly.

Can’t think of a clever title

So I’m STILL sick and still trying to recover. I marvel at just how much snot my nose can produce. I mean.. is there an endless supply or what? Hehe sorry if thats too much info. 😛

Anyway I have some good news, but I won’t go into that just yet. All will be revealed by the end of next week. If you’re that curious then feel free to email me, but really, its not a big deal – just a little something I’m fairly happy about. 🙂

Still haven’t had a chance to trawl through the pics from Italy. But I found some miscellaneous pics taken around London over the past month or so. Enjoy.

So summer has drawn to a close here in London. And with the onset of autumn begins a “new year” in many areas. For one, bible study group will be starting up again in 2 weeks time. I’m quite looking forward to hanging out with our “rebel” group regularly again. Our group is actually moving away from St Helens – we’re joining the church plant at Clerkenwell. So looks like I’ll be going to a new church soon. I’ve already volunteered my piano playing skills for the service. So yay.. I’m gonna be able to play piano again soon.. after so long without. :))) Nicely coinciding with this is the start of the courses at Goldsmiths University of London – the PACE (Professional and Community Education) program, which is much like the Sydney Conservatorium of Music access program. I’m gonna audition for the Modern Jazz Workshop. *crosses fingers* Hopefully my skills are enough for the course and I haven’t forgotten absolutely everything I learnt at the Con. It’ll be good to just get playing again. Even if I don’t have a piano at home… some playing is at least better than none. And perhaps I can practice on the church piano…

Current listening :: “Pose” – Justin Timberlake

Swimmingly cold

I went swimming again last night coz I haven’t been in over a week and my tense shoulders really needed the release. The weather hasn’t been very warm over the past few weeks (15 – 20ish degs with a fair bit of rain too) and it was probably around 17/18 degs when I went swimming last night – so I was prepared for it to be a bit chilly, but it wouldn’t be too bad. So I thought.

So I arrived, and I noticed there were only about 10 people in the pool. Then I went in… and I realised why there were only 10 people there. It. Was. Frikkin. FREEZING!!! I burst into some speedy freestyle completing a lap in record time in the effort to warm my body up. When I finished the lap, it was still freezing and my muscles had gone numb from the cold. It was so cold, I found it a little difficult to breathe. But I endured. And I warmed up slightly by about the 4th lap. The water still felt cold though. And it was cold throughout the 11 laps (1km) I stubbornly managed to complete. Proud I am.

After my swim, I took an extremely nice hot shower (thank God they have hot showers!) I literally felt my body slowly thaw out, with that tingly feeling, like in winter when your hands have been out in the cold too long and you warm them under a hot tap.

So I guess my swimming days are almost over. 🙁 They close to the public from Oct onwards, and from Sept are open to only members in the evenings (after 5pm). Damn that gives me 9 days left of swimming after work. *sigh* This makes me wish I was back in Oz. I’m gonna miss swimming.

Voglio parlare Italiano con lei

(Translation: I want to speak Italian with you). Yep, I’m learning Italian! Slowly! Tis not an easy task going from absolutely zero knowledge of italian to a functional & useful conversational level in just a few weeks! I’ve been using the acclaimed Michel Thomas course, listening to it on my ipod at every spare moment. I must look strange muttering to myself on trains, buses etc. He’s supposed to have a very unique method of teaching languages based on understanding rather than memorisation, which enables you to learn a new language very quickly, with no homework necessary! I just hope all the reviews are true, coz this trip is coming up soon and I’m only at the end of cd 1 (there are 6 cds)! But its been fun so far.. I’m enjoying the experience of learning a new language, especially with the goal of actually using it in Italy.

Mi dispiace ma non posso parlare italiano molto buono adesso.

Dizzy

Had the day off sick on Monday. I woke up in the morning after a pretty restful weekend (only went out on saturday to watch 2 movies – Cars and Miami Vice) and a decent nights sleep. But then I sat up in bed, and I just suddenly felt dizzy, room spinning, vertigo sorta dizzy. Had to lie back down again. I tried getting up and having a shower, thinking I’d feel better afterwards, but I still felt dizzy. When I walked, I had this definite lean to the right.. kept walking into the wall! :/ Going to work was looking unlikely, so I booked an appointment to see the doctor. Turns out she reckons I have some sort of inner ear virus. I can’t remember the name.. either Labyrinthitis or Vestibular Neuronitis? Anyway, she said it was a virus and so no meds would help. She just prescribed some Procholorperazine to help with the dizzyness and nausea, if I needed it.

So I’m back at work today, was feeling ok this morning, but I’m starting to feel slightly dizzy again. I do wonder why this occurs. I’ve had it on occasion over the last 3 – 5 years I think. Whenever I get very tired to the point of exhaustion, I’ll get this onset of vertigo.. though I’ve never thrown up from it. I wonder what the cause really is. The doctors diagnosis seemed a bit.. not very well researched. She only took my blood pressure and asked a few questions. No other tests or much interest in background history etc. Anyways. I guess thats what you get with the NHS – a free health system giving quantity over quality. England’s healthcare kinda sucks.

Snip snip

In other news, got myself a £10 hair cut (trim is probably more accurate) on the weekend! Cheap cheap! It was at the Rush hair academy, where they train junior or even senior hair stylists, and they need models to practice on. Rush is now what Toni & Guy was a few years ago. Anyway, the hair cut was free, and the £10 was just for the blowdry. Bargain! And an awesome blowdry she did – she wanted to show off the soft layers so she gave my hair a bit more volume and movement with piecey, flicky ends. I loved it so much I did a mini photo shoot when I got home, with kwai’s SLR. Hehe. Check it.

Heheh. I hardly ever get a blowdry these days coz it’s too expensive. In fact its been 5 months since my last hair cut! I know, there’s hardly any difference – I only trimmed my fringe a bit and maybe an inch or two off the dry ends. I’m trying to grow the layers out a bit coz they were cut too short last time.

And finally.. here are some pics of me and kwai’s cooking endeavours recently. Been really getting into cooking at my place coz am trying to save money blah blah. Anyway, I reckon it’s fun to cook, and the food is usually nicer, not to mention half the price. 🙂

Current listening :: “First Love” – Utada Hikaru