davechan.com - a slice of dave

Routine + willpower + Anthony Robbins

I'm one of those people that get stuck in a routine, usually for bad. For example, as I love my sleep, I have a habit of repeatedly snoozing my alarm until the very last moment and then making a mad dash out of the door. I measure how bad I've been in regards to sleeping in by seeing how much milk I have in the fridge. When I sleep in and don't have time for my usual morning routine, the first thing I cut is breakfast. I've even poured cereal and milk into a glass and drank it in an attempt to save time, but sometimes I don't even have time for that.

I'm happy to make it into work before 9:15am, and I live 15 minutes walk away from work.

Anyhow, I guess part of the problem is that I have very little willpower. I get myself all hyped up saying that tomorrow I will go to bed earlier and wake up earlier. Every time without fail I will find some reason to stay up late that night, and again wake up late the next morning.

On Monday night, I went into work after the fireworks, and didn't get home until about 1:30am. Anyhow, after fixing myself something to eat, I sat down on the couch to relax for a bit and flicked the TV on. The infomercials had started, and tonight it was Anthony Robbins spruiking his latest package of "How to Change Your Life" systems. At this time of night, I'm very vulnerable to suggestions, and I started thinking that yeah, this doesn't sound too bad at all. Luckily I decided to go to bed before I called and sacrificed $49.95 for 6 months for Robbins' system. I wonder though, because he's been around for a long time, does his stuff actually work? I know that being around for a long time does not necessarily mean that something works (eg Benny Hinn This Is Your Day) but it must count.

Maybe I need to invest some money in motivational tapes so I can wake up earlier. Either that or someone give me a wake up call at about 7:30am EST each weekday...

Late blogging - weekend summary

In case anyone has been paying attention, my sincerest apologies for not keeping up to date with my blogging.

Saturday was BDO.

Sunday I went into Chinatown to watch the lion dance and also soak up the atmosphere. I actually woke up late, and so I rushed into Chinatown, hoping that I could catch the tail end of the CNY parade. I was rather annoyed to find that there was no parade after my rushing around. Sadly, it wasn't until Tuesday that I realised that parade isn't on until this week.

Sunday night I went out to dinner with some friends. It was the first time I'd been out and had a look around a Sydney suburb. We met in a suburb called Eastwood, which is about 15 minutes from the city. Unlike Perth suburbs, Eastwood has a mini-"town centre" where there is a small pedestrian mall plus a few streets of restaurants and small shops, although nowhere near as many as Chatswood. Apparently there's lots of Asians in Eastwood, as there were quite a lot of Chinese, Malaysian, and Korean restaurants, as well as a couple of oriental grocery stores. After dinner we headed out to the city for some drinks. Surprisingly Sunday night was pretty quiet and the bars that we went to were pretty empty. It was good to go out anyway.

Monday of the public holiday I spent most of the day washing clothes and bumming around the house. Later that night I met up with Alicia and some of her friends for the Australia Day fireworks. Unlike the Perth SkyShow, Sydney's fireworks were all let off in one continuous stream with only a few short breaks of about 15 seconds between songs. The fireworks themselves were aesthetically pleasing as I saw shells that I hadn't seen before, however the atmosphere wasn't as good as Perth's.

How appropriate is it that the Sydney fireworks were intense and spectacular, but very rushed? It reflects the city itself, when compared to Perth.

Big Day Out Part 2

After having a bit of a nap in the stands, Alicia was getting restless (she was stalking the "V" drink stand with my digital camera), we decided to start queuing up to get to the front of the stage for The Strokes. Because the aforementioned fenced off area in front of the stages was common to both stages, we thought that if we got to the front for The Strokes, then we could simply shift over and also be at the front for Metallica, which was the act following.

The Strokes are a rock band out of New York, and I'd listened to their songs previously at work off a friend's music share. They're pretty good, and I understand that they have had quite a bit of airplay on Triple J. I was quite looking forward to this performance as the songs had started to grow on me. Besides Metallica, The Strokes were one of the bigger acts for BDO.

The band turned up on time and started cranking out some tunes. There was something wrong though. We couldn't hear the lead singer! Everyone was going nuts regardless, and I don't think they really cared (heck they probably knew all the lyrics already), but after a few songs, there was a chant going, "Turn it up! Turn it up!".

The lead singer (I have no idea what his name is) heard the chant, but replied, "Tuuuuurrrn it uuuup? Ah-kay, here's a song called ." Idiot. Anyhow, they did belt out the songs which I wanted to hear, so I was pretty happy, but no one corrected the problem with the vocals.

By now it was close to Metallica time, and to our left we heard cheering and screaming whenever a roadie came on stage to set up a piece of equipment or something. The roadies got a lot of attention from the crowd. This intermittent cheering was accentuated by rising calls for "Metal-li-ca! Metal-li-ca!" from the crowd waiting in front of the other stage.

This cheering got to such a volume that The Strokes guy was getting rather agitated at the microphone and mumbled stuff into the mic (which we couldn't hear) and during a song, actually climbed down off the stage and walked down to the Metallica fans and started making finger gestures at them. The fans responded in kind, and I thought it was going to turn ugly, but to his credit, he ended the song, and waved his appreciation to the Metallica crowd followed by "God Bless". The fans applauded in kind. Good way to defuse the situation.

Anyhow, during this time, we'd decided to start edging towards the Metallica stage and so shifted over to our left, eventually getting to the front of a huge poster which separated the two stages. The poster hid a huge stack of speakers, and for the first time the Strokes vocalist had an audible voice! I guess the sound engineers must have done something such that the sound mix was good if you weren't directly in front of the stage. Damn fools!

The Strokes finished their set, and very quickly the fenced off area filled with lots of people. I noticed that the demographic was rather skewed towards the big, slightly overweight, unshaven male. A fair few of them had taken their shirts off, presumably because it was still kind of warm rather than to show off their bodies.

The time was 8:45pm, and we were now squished in with the rest of the crowd. As if on queue, it started raining, gently at first, which provided some cool relief, but soon it got more than annoying, and Metallica were nowhere to be seen. They were late! And we were now stuck in a big crowd of blokes, bodies slick with sweat and rain, and, as we now discovered, also emanating some serious BO stenches.

Eventually, Metallica turned up on stage, and they blasted into their first song. Two things to note here. The first is that while we were waiting, I kept hearing comments like, "Where the fuck are they the wankers?". After they took the stage, the comments changed to, "Man they fucking rock!". How quickly they turn.

The second thing to note is that someone next to me warned me to be careful of my glasses as they might get crushed during the moshing. What moshing? Oh...oooooooh...shit. When the first guitar note of the Metallica set screamed in the night, the crowd, as if on queue, started pushing in all sorts of directions, dragging everyone along with them. I swear I must have been displaced from my original spot by about a metre each time. I had to put my arms in front of me, elbows out just to protect myself from the surging crowd. It was mad.

For the first concert that day, I actually kept turning towards the clock on the electronic display board to check the time. I couldn't wait for the concert to finish. I didn't know any of the songs (I'm not really a Metallica fan) and it all sounded the same to me. Throughout the set, I couldn't help but think the lead singer, (Jack, Jake, James?) with his perfectly-placed hair and Richard Branson-like smile was just a bit too old for this sort of gig. He looked more like a dad than a metal rocker, and I kept picturing him with his wife and two kids in tow, wandering around his grassy estate somewhere in rural US.

I didn't enjoy that experience very much, although I guess they put on a pretty good performance. Mind you, with such an amped crowd, I don't think they really could put a foot wrong.

With about 20 minutes to go, we pulled away from the crowd and headed towards the Boiler Room again for Basement Jaxx. I'd heard from a colleague a couple days earlier that the last act in the Boiler Room was always popular as it was getting towards the end of the night (it was about 10:10pm) and people would rush there to catch the last act. Although it was huge, it couldn't possibly hold 30,000 people (number of tickets sold as of Thursday for Saturday's BDO) and so they were known to close the doors after capacity had been reached.

Basement Jaxx played exactly the same set as on Wednesday night. Even the encores were the same. However, I didn't mind because I was dancing away like crazy and having a fantastic time. Unlike Wednesday where the crowd was basically just jumping up and down like at a rock concert (say, Metallica), this crowd was much more of a raving crowd, and most everyone was dancing. Despite the fact that I'd heard and seen it only a few days earlier, I actually enjoyed this performance even more than the first time at the Enmore. The atmosphere was just so much better.

At around midnight we rushed out of the Boiler Room and joined the crowd for a train back to the city. After dropping Alicia off home, I continued onto Harry's for a late night snack. Harry de Wheels is a little hot dog and pie stand on the Wooloomooloo Wharf, and by god do their wares taste good after a night out. I had a curry tiger, which consisted of a curry beef pie with a generous serving of mushy peas and mashed potato on top, draped with rich gravy. Lovely!

Flybuys opens doors

Last night walking up George Street with some friends, one of our friends had to withdraw money from a Commonwealth Bank ATM. It was one of those access controlled ATMs, where you have to swipe your ATM card to gain access to the lobby where the ATM is.

While waiting, I thought just for a joke I'd try swiping my Flybuys card through the access control swipe.

It worked.

We packed ourselves laughing at the wonderfully secure system CBA had. We wondered how much it cost to set up the swipe access and the automatic doors. All able to be opened by a Flybuys card.

We walked on, and we came upon a National branch which had a similar system. Of course, I couldn't resist trying the Flybuys card again.

Again it worked.

Hmm, I don't remember seeing "Access to bank ATMs" being a Flybuys reward :)

Big Day Out Part 1

Yesterday I went to the Big Day Out.

This was my first BDO, and I thought it was great. The day started out at about 1ish, watching the final heats of the freestyling competition. Freestyling looks like breakdancing to hip-hop music. Two teams of three people each take turns to pull out moves such contorted handstands, spins, and other moves which you would recognise from the breakdancing era. It was quite impressive actually, especially one guy who did a long headspin without a helmet. That's gotta hurt.

From there we moved into the Boiler Room to watch Salmonella Dub, a New Zealand group which plays dance music with a Latin influence. In Sydney, the Boiler Room was a huge circular pavilion which was well-ventilated and roomy. In the centre a huge rig composed the control centre and a hub of the lighting system.

Salmonella Dub rocked, not least of all that the Boiler Room was pretty sparsely populated at the time and it wonderfully cool inside, even though we were dancing. We stayed for about 20 minutes, although we would have loved to stay longer except that we wanted to get to the front for Black Eyed Peas, so off to the main stadium we went.

The stadium had been set up with dual stages, so that one band can be playing on the left stage and the right stage be setting up ready for the next band, and vice versa. In all, a very efficient system. The area in front of the stages was fenced off, and entry was only allowed through two gates on either side of the stages. Entry was strictly controlled, and there was a limit on numbers to avoid crushing (yeah right, more on that later...).

We lined up for about 15 minutes before we gained entry to the front for Black Eyed Peas, and I'm very glad that we did. BEP were fantastic, and hip hopped through an energetic 50 minute set. Unlike Basement Jaxx a few nights earlier, BEP played through all of their hit songs, all of which pleased the crowd no end, and I ended up really getting into it. Granted BEP have only released two albums so far, but I found myself recognising all the songs except for two. Until a few days ago, I didn't know that the music for the iPod ads was the BEP song Hey Mama.

It took a little while to get out of the fenced area and back out into the general population, so we arrived about 15 minutes into the set for 1200 Techniques, another hip hop act. By this time though (4pm) it had started raining, and lighting bolts flashed across the sky, providing an awesome backdrop to the stages, but also getting us rather wet. 1200 Techniques were playing on a stage which had been erected on what was a grassed area, but with the rain and thousands of people dancing, this area had been converted to one big mud pit. There were quite a lot of hot looking girls, and honestly I wouldn't have minded a few of them rolling around in the mud. But I digress...

1200 Techniques were pretty good, but playing songs which I hadn't heard and were all starting to sound the same. However, the rain made up our minds to find shelter back in the stands of the stadium. We grabbed a couple of drinks and a couple plates of nachos and headed back to the main stadium in time to catch the second half of Something for Kate, a band I've heard many great things about, but never really heard much of their music. To be honest, I still didn't really recognise any of the songs except for their final song, and the rest all sounded like standard rock fare. I wasn't really paying much attention to the lyrics as I was busily tucking into my nachos and from such a distance the vocals were rather garbled anyhow. The nachos were pretty good though, as was the homemade lemonade.

We left the stadium after SfK finished and headed back to the Boiler Room for the last half of Pee Wee Ferris' set, which was pretty standard dance fare I thought, before we headed back to watch the finals of the Freestyling competition. Like the heats, the finals were pretty impressive, although it was quite clear that the competition was rather one-sided, with one of the teams pulling out some awesome, awesome moves (they were one of the teams we had watched in the heats) which they stepped up a notch, combining the talents of the three performers into some very cool maneuvers. I was very impressed.

We were at a bit of a hole in our schedule, and so we decided to go back to the main stadium to have a bit of a rest (I was starting to flag and Alicia's feet were hurting) to the soulful strains of the Hoodoo Gurus.

Time? About 7:00pm.

To be continued...

Basement Jaxx

I went to see Basement Jaxx at the Enmore Theatre in Newtown in Sydney with my friend Alicia.

Basement Jaxx are a group out of the US that play catchy dance music. I can't think of a suitable box to fit them in, as there are so many little boxes these days and so vaguely defined. Anyhow, the concert was quite fun, although there were some very interesting (and annoying!) aspects.

First off, I think the Jaxx absolutely rock, and they didn't disappoint, starting off with the very bouncy Good Luck. They then cruised through a selection of their hits and some lesser known tracks, with the crowd bouncing along the whole way. And when I say bouncing, I quite literally mean, bouncing.

The Enmore Theatre had been split into two sections, with one section seating and the other section, where we were, standing room only. Originally I thought, oh yeah, cool. Standing room would be where everyone would be dancing.

Well, sort of.

It was actually so damn crowded that it ended up being more like just bouncing around, as there simply wasn't much room to move, let alone dance. Also, I do mean literally bouncing, as the part of the floor where we were had a bouncy floor, similar to those in jungle gym when you were a kid. This meant that for the more raucous songs, when everyone else around you was jumping, you had to jump around too, whether you wanted to or not, as the floor would be bouncing you around regardless! I tell you I felt a bit seasick at times on that floor!

The setup was great, with a very wide video screen set up behind the group continually showing images and graphics to the beat of the music. The lighting was amazing, seemingly with every single light including the house lights made use of. The performances themselves were pretty polished too. The Jaxx is mainly electronic music, but the singers who sang live gave it a much better feel than a couple of guys behind some decks and computers.

I really quite enjoyed the night, and the only disappointment was that they didn't play my favourite track, Do Your Thing. The energy the band created was amazing, and it was a mind-blowing show all in all.

Shame there wasn't enough room to dance. However, at Big Day Out...

Analyze That!

Analyze That is the sequel to the very funny Analyze This. Unfortunately it's not as funny as its predecessor.

Analyze That continues the story from the first movie, and Robert De Niro's character, Paul Vitti the head of a mobster gang, is in jail. There's a couple of assassination attempts on him, and he pretends to go crazy in order to be freed from jail so he can find out who has ordered the hits. This ruse succeeds, and the FBI put Paul Vitti in the custody of his psychiatrist, Ben Sobel (Billy Crystal).

The scenes where De Niro is trying out new jobs as part of his therapy are rather painful, although there are a couple of cheap laughs. The scenes where he is on location for the shooting of a TV show based on the mafia are particularly badly done, with the characters really straining for laughs. There is a cameo by Anthony LaPaglia, which is quite entertaining.

Both De Niro and Crystal play their characters well, especially De Niro who undergoes so many changes in personality it's crazy (pun fully intended) each of which he handles suprisingly well. While the movie wasn't as funny as the first one, it was still mildly entertaining, although I certainly wouldn't rush out to go see it.

Dave's verdict? 2.5 stars out of 5.

Chinese New Year

A belated happy Chinese New Year to everyone!

Yesterday was Chinese New Year, however celebrations go on for a week after, which is cool.

In Perth there's generally not a lot of public events and celebrations and such, but in Sydney it is a pretty big thing, with quite a lot of officially organised activities.

Wishing everyone a happy and prosperous Year of the Monkey!

Blog spam

There's a new form of spam dissemination doing the rounds these days and its called blog spam. Spammers will exploit the comments feature of popular blogging systems (such as the system this blog runs on, MoveableType) and use it to post links to spam sites. I'm sure a few of you out there have seen it.

The tool I have been using to prevent and kill spam is called MT-Blacklist for MoveableType. Until the folks down at MoveableType add in a spam blocking feature into their software, I'd recommend everyone with an MT installation (that means you Allen) go and install this software to protect their blog.

This has been another pre-recorded public service announcement. Thank you.

Infernal Affairs

Rolling on with the movie theme, last night my friend Justin asked if I wanted to go see a movie. With such an open-ended invitation and my long-harboured longing to go watch this Hong Kong cop flick, I overcame my tiredness and headed off to the Valhalla in Glebe.

Infernal Affairs is a story of two men, one a high-ranking mole working for the triads in the police service, and the other an undercover cop. They've both been in the midst of their enemy for almost 10 years, and both are finding it increasingly difficult to live with their other secret half. Tony Leung Chiu Wai and Andy Lau Tak Wa play the two lead roles, the undercover cop and the mole respectively.

For those that are thinking, "Oh cool, lots of shooting and people dying and Chow Yun Fat in Hard-Boiled cinematic action" can stop right there. While there is a fair share of guns and people dying (it is a Hong Kong cop movie after all), it is more along the lines of a restrained The Killer.

Restrained in action only, Infernal Affairs delivers in suspense and tension in spades. The most exciting sequences are when the police and triads are engaged in their cat-and-mouse battles, with both insiders feeding information to their respective bosses via discreet means. An electric atmosphere is created by directors Andrew Lau Wai Keung (director of the Young and Dangerous series)
and Alan Mak Siu Fai as the police and triads dance and attempt to outwit each other, while the two protagonists have been given assignments to rat out the mole in their respective organisations (who is of course, themselves). They are also trying to find out the identity of the other.

While the theme of duality and the greyness between the polar ends of good and bad have been done to death by John Woo (in his inimitable fashion), Lau and Mak take this theme and run with it, creating a thoughtful and insightful movie out of it. As one reviewer said, "It's not bang-bang-bang, it's more think-think-think", this movie forces you to think and re-evaluate, especially at the very end, what is fair and what is unfair in life.

Christopher Doyle (Aussie cinematographer of In the Mood for Love fame) is again in control of the camera, and while he doesn't have as much to work with here, he makes the best of it, with his trademark, deliciously lighted shots provoking the right atmosphere at the right time.

A fantastic movie, it was made in 2002, and has already spawned a sequel and a prequel. The Hollywood remake rights have also been sold to Brad Pitt's production company, and so it should be interesting to see how the remake fares.

I loved it, and even if you don't like foreign films, bear with it, as I'm sure you will love it too.

Dave's verdict? 4 1/2 stars out of 5.

More movies - The Sound of Music and Finding Nemo

Sunday night was spent at home watching DVDs on the iBook. Although it is a small screen, the picture is pin-sharp and movement is as smooth as an LCD screen will allow.

First off the bat was the second half of The Sound of Music. This is possibly my favourite movie of all time. I love all the songs, and I love all the characters. The littlest girl is soooo cute! She's got a permanently angry face.

The DVD version of The Sound of Music has plenty of extras, but I haven't yet had time to go through them. The picture has been cleaned up vastly, although they seem to have created a flowing effect, making the characters "shine" on screen. This can be annoying after a little while, and caused me to turn the contrast down on my screen.

I also bought Finding Nemo on DVD. This comes on two DVDs and like all Pixar films, is chock-full of extras like a behind the scenes featurette and a studio tour. There are also some games on the DVD, and for once they are actually somewhat engaging. Well, it kept me amused anyway.

I love all the Pixar movies, and Finding Nemo was no exception. The attention to detail is stunning and makes for a very immersive experience. Somehow though, I wasn't quite satisfied after the end of the movie. I think for me the story didn't quite hit the spot. I couldn't feel for the character of Dory (voiced by Ellen DeGeneres), and I think her role as the bumbling sidekick was too comic and with not enough depth. DeGeneres does a fantastic job voicing though with the script she was given.

It's been a bit of a movie-fest recently, and I'm glad to be able to watch the movies that I have been wanting to see finally.

Still haven't gotten around to watching any of the Lord of the Rings movies though...

Another Bus Stop Story

It seems so many of the interesting things that happen, happen at a bus stop late at night. Last night I was waiting for the next bus at the bus stop at about 1:45am when two guys in yellow tracksuits ran past, like they were being chased or something.

All of us at the bus stop turned to each other with inquisitive looks and a guy who had just arrived said matter-of-factly, "Oh, they just stole a mobile phone".

Sure enough, a few seconds later about 5 cops come running and the guy who seemed to know what was happened pointed excitedly in the direction the guys had gone screaming, "They went that way, that way!!!". The cops ran down the alley, their heavily-loaded belts jangling as they ran.

Another few seconds passed and a couple of guys dressed in casual clothes and still clutching a couple of bags of McDonald's run towards the bus stop and run down the alley that the thieves and cops had gone down. I guess they were the victims of the mobile phone theft.

All of this occurs to the background symphony of wailing police sirens. I mentioned to another fellow bus stop person, "Welcome to Sydney".

Lazy Saturday

Today was a lazy Saturday. After crawling out of bed at a very slack 12:30pm, I decided that I really needed to get out of the apartment, and so I headed into town.

Wandering around Sydney by myself, I decided to go and check out the LEGO show at David Jones. As a kid, I loved LEGO and every present chance I got (birthday, Christmas) I would ask for more LEGO. I actually amassed a huge collection, enough for myself and at least 2 or 3 other cousins to play with at onece, which I later disassembled personally piece by piece, and gave away to friends and relatives in large portions. As a teenager (I think I was about 15 or 16 before I finally released the last of my LEGO collection) I drew great satisfaction from passing my toys down to kids that I knew would have as much fun as I did from them.

Anyhow, the LEGO show wasn't as big as I imagined, although there were some cool creations on display, in particular a few scenes from Sydney (the Opera House) and also from China (Forbidden City, and what I think was a scene from Shanghai). Most interesting of all (for me at least) was a small display showing the history of LEGO, from the 1930's to what it is today. In 2001 LEGO was the leading tire manufacturer in the world. Another small tidbit of useless information.

After the LEGO show I drifted around a bit and ended up at the Art Gallery. Voluminous in comparison to its companion gallery in Perth, I wandered around for a few hours, admiring the Asian collection, which encompassed some interesting Chinese and Japanese pieces. Almost as preparation for the movie tonight, I read a little about the symbolic significance of cherry blossoms in Japanese culture, and also checked out some samurai swords. The Chinese collection gave me a few ideas regarding decorating though.

At Havelock Street, I have a wall which runs unbroken from one end of the apartment to the other. I had been thinking of buying a large piece of cartoon artwork to fill this space (there is a particular Tom Everhart piece which I had had my eye on a couple of years ago, but is now sold out) but after seeing the Chinese collection, I am now thinking along the lines of a long Chinese painting of the mountains. Anyway, something to mull over when I get back to Perth.

There was also a collection of a New Zealand artist's work, Colin McCahon, but I really didn't get any of it. It's late 19th century art work which is just too deep for me I guess.

The much-vaunted Caravaggio exhibition actually closed at 4:30pm, something they don't tell visitors, so I wasn't able to go and see that. Besides which, I wasn't sure I wanted to fork out the $15 to see it.

The day ended with me sitting in the Starbucks coffee shop in Circular Quay, sipping on an ice cold coffee Frappucino and reading the weekend newspaper. Ah yes, the perfect closure of a lazy day and a delicious entree to the delights of the evening, which called for a screening of...

The Last Samurai

Tonight I went to see "The Last Samurai". This is one of those movies that I'd been hanging out to see for awhile. It didn't disappoint.

"The Last Samurai" is set in Japan in the late 18th century and tells the story of an American army captain who is hired by the Japanese emperor to train their soldiers to defeat the upsurgent samurai. Tom Cruise plays this captain, and he does a very good job in this role, which I thought required a lot of finesse. He does overact in the first 20 minutes or so of the movie, which is set in America and shows the captain to be an alcoholic post-war powderkeg ready to rumble, but I can forgive him that for his sublime performance in the rest of the movie.

The story moves onto the main Japan setting, where Cruise begins training the conscripted Japanese army in the art of fighting with rifles. Soon they are thrown into a real battle, underprepared, as the samurai have just attacked the railroad. The emperor's main advisor plays a central role in the movie as the main driver to Westernise Japan, and sees the samurai as his main enemy in achieving this aim.

The meat of the story begins when Cruise is captured by the samurai in that first battle. The leader of the samurai, Katsumoto, sees Cruise as the enemy, but a friendship between warriors is forged when Cruise begins to learn, admire, and eventually embrace the samurai way.

Ken Watanabe gives a fantastically emotive and polished performance as Katsumoto and Billy Connolly has a surprise minor role.

The story and the dialogue of the movie were both very likeable and did not stretch the believability of the characters. However, the one thing that did irk me about the movie was the cinematography and the choice of shots. In a movie about the tranquility and flowing zen-like energy of the samurai, there were an awful lot of random shots of the beautiful Japanese countryside chopped together. I would have thought that some slow panning would have suited the movie a whole lot better. But then, perhaps there is some deep and meaningful reason as to why this choice was made.

Dave's verdict? 3.5 out of 5. Go see this movie, and try to hold yourself together through the gore of the battle scenes.

Female in 4WDs

There are a few things that always send a chill up my spine.

One of these is females in big 4WDs.

Yesterday I was walking to work, and I crossed a street where there were two cars waiting to enter the main road. The second car was a "Female in 4WD". I approached the cars, wanting to walk between the two to get to the other side of the road.

Do you know what the "Female in 4WD" did??? She had seen me coming and had actually rolled her vehicle forward when I was less than half a metre away from her bumper! She did this because she wanted to discourage me from walking in front of her car so as to be able to move forward as soon as possible after the car in front had merged into traffic!!!

After being taken aback somewhat, I looked up at the driver incredulously and she returned a look of, "What the hell are you doing?".

I couldn't believe her audacity, and just for good measure, I crossed the street in front of her car anyway.

Today while crossing the road, I saw a black Lexus 4WD heading towards me. There was a "Female in 4WD" in it. You can be sure I gave it a wide berth before stepping onto the road.

Where is my iBook?

I am sad.

Last Thursday I had to take my iBook back for repairs. The optical drive was causing problems, in particular, when importing music CDs, and causing random crashes.

With luck I will have it back tomorrow.

I will be happy again!

Finances and diet

Now that I'm paying this off here and that off there, I'm having to start seriously looking at my finances. While before I would spend money quite frivilously, I now need to watch what I spend.

Sorta like watching what I eat. Something else I haven't really been doing lately.

I've been pretty bad food-wise. I guess it might be partly because I've been eating out a bit more this month than the last two months. Or it could also be because I've been so slack since I've got back to Sydney.

My apartment isn't the neat, tidy place it was before. My ironing keeps piling up because I can't be bothered doing it. Books, newspapers, mail, and other junk is piled up on my dining table. At least I've been keeping the kitchen clean, but even then I've taken to leaving the dishes in the sink overnight, something I would never do previously.

Maybe it's the humid weather. Yeah, that's what I'm going to blame it on.

Blog spam protection - done!

My blog has now been updated with spam protection. Please let me know if you experience any problems.

I would strongly advise people to follow my advice regarding email addresses as in the post below.

Cheers,
Your blogger

Blog spam

In case no one has noticed (yeah right) my blog is currently being spammed by Mr Viagra (see comments on the right).

Do not be alarmed. Tonight I will install a patch for the blog which should hopefully prevent these types of spam attacks.

Since the spammers have found my blog, it's safe to assume that they probably have trawlled it for email addresses as well. To be safe from spam, when posting comments, either put your email address in this type of format: "dave@davechan.nocannedmeat.com", or don't use an email address at all.

Thanks for your patience.

Of Angels and Light

Tonight I went with my friend Fiona to go see Of Angels and Light, a free show at Sydney Olympic Park, and the opening show of the Sydney Festival.

The Sydney Festival is Sydney's version of the Perth Festival of Arts. It's a series of events, encompassing all types of performances ranging from theatre to def jams, from multi-media art to bathing city buildings in coloured lights and patterns. It also includes the Outdoor Cinema, which, like Sunset Cinema, shows recent release cinemas outdoors on a huge marquee screen.

Tonight's performance of Of Angels and Light was a public show, grandiose in scale, with tens of thousands of people in the audience. The theme was angels and freedom, or lack thereof, of movement. On suspension wires high above the crowd, male and female angels bathed in lights, glided gracefully through the air.

They were joined by angels bouncing around the inside of transparent spheres in spheres, rolling through the crowd, again seemingly with no limit to their freedom of movement. In reality they were trapped in their own small sphere, and their movements limited to the action of the outside sphere. It looked like lots of fun though! Here's a really bad photo of it. (All the photos are bad - unfortunately my little Kodak performs very very poorly in low light conditions)

More angels appeared, attached to huge balloons with wonderful images depicted. Again, these angels appeared graceful, flying and leaping through the air.

Like there is no good without evil, there can be no angels without devils, and did they put on a hell of a show. Heck, I liked the devils more than the angels! But then, I'm bad...

The performance of the devils was based around the concept of fire, and controlling it. The three devils arrived in chariots drawn by papermache horses, with reins ablaze in fire. They then started to play with fire, juggling fireballs, throwing around flaming sparks, and generally causing a very fiery performance on their little chariot stage.

Suddenly the wires above the devils burst into flames, and started raining down sparks, creating an awesome curtain of fire.

One of the highlights was an angel in purple walking down the side of the Novotel hotel building. This was truly amazing as she was very graceful, to the point that she was almost chiding us, "well, I'm on the vertical plane, all of you people down there are the weird ones".

In a resplendant finale, that same Novotel building was lit up in a slightly garish array of colours.

All in all a very enjoyable night, although I did get lost on the Sydney trains and left poor Fiona there alone for an hour. At least she won $150 on the pokies while waiting for me. We added another $10 to her winnings after the performance.

iPods!

A couple of posts ago, I mentioned that Apple would be releasing some new products.

Well, they have. And what a feast. See http://www.macworld.com/archive/expojan2004/ for more nitty gritty.

I'm just going to tell you what's most interesting I think for you and me, the average consumer.

In April, we will see the iPod mini, a dimunitive MP3 player capable of holding 4GB of songs. They come in 5 shiny colours, silver, gold, blue, pink, and green. They look very sweet. They look very cute. And they cost too much. At US$249, they don't seem to be a very good deal, no matter how cute they are.

Speaking of iPods, Apple Australia made what is possibly the most important announcement (or not, I only found out about it buried deep in a newspaper article) of all - iPod prices in Australia have now been reduced. Yes girls and boys, you can now get your very own coolest MP3 player in the world starting from $399.

I got so excited I was almost going to buy one the moment I confirmed the prices.

Until I saw my bank balance that is.

I think I'll hold off for a few months.

Seriously though, this is great news, as the iPod was just a little too overpriced in Australia, despite the fantastic job that the Apple marketing department did over the Christmas period. I predict that more of these little babies will fly off the shelves at this new, lower price. I mean, we're talking about AUD$100 cheaper!!!

The other salient announcement at MacWorld was the release of iLife 04. iLife is Apple's suite of home applications, encompassing iPhoto, for organising digital photos, iTunes, for organising music, iDVD, for creating DVDs, iMove, for editting movies, and now, GarageBand, an application that allows you to create your own music. And iLife comes free with all new Macs.

That is, new Macs bought after 7th January. Not ones bought say, on the 15th December 2003.

Damn. I just missed it. I hate that! I'm going to have to shell out money for it. Oh well, shit happens.

Anyway, I just wanted to share the good news, and hope that it might inspire some of you to head down to your AppleStore just to go and have a look and play around with an iPod. They are even more impressive in real life.

Chinese Gambling Movies

Chinese love their gambling, and as such there are lots of gambling movies. I'm watching one on SBS now. It's called "The Conman" from Hong Kong. Just like gambling, these movies are also rather exciting to watch too. Mostly they're pretty brainless, but the directors do know how to build up the suspense.

Drama, comedy, romance, you name it, as long as it has some component of gambling in it, people will watch.

I've been watching foreign movies on SBS for quite awhile now, and tonight's movie is special.

It's the first foreign movie I've seen where they bleep out the expletives.

Windows v Mac

It's strange. I'm back on my Windows laptop as the almighty iBook is in for some repairs.

I keep moving my mouse to the top left corner to close windows, where the Mac buttons are, instead of the top right corner, where the Windows buttons are.

I'm converting...

Hold that elevator!

Over the last couple of weeks, but the last few weeks especially, I've been staying late at work. Now it's not so much that I'm a workslut, but it's more that I'm trying to keep up with my team-leader, who works pretty hard and pretty long hours.

I'm in a new company (4 months and counting) and on a new project (2 months and counting) and am I still trying to make an impression? I guess so. I just want to make a good impression on people. And if staying late to get things done quicker will do it, then so be it.

A side effect though, is that I'm increasingly become more and more tired. Working late means I have less and less time to myself, to do the little things. For example, I've taken to leaving dishes in the sink overnight, whereas before Christmas, I would be religious in cleaning them, and even drying and putting away before the night finished.

How is work? Well, work isn't bad. What I'm doing now isn't technically challenging for me, per se, although there are the odd occassions where I get stumped with a particular problem. We're also not using any technology which is new for me to play around with (at least, not in the bits that I'm doing). So it's relatively comfortable coding, working with infrastructure that I'm used to working with.

Our office is in North Sydney, which is like a mini-CBD, which the name suggests, is just north of Sydney, on the other side of the Harbour Bridge. North Sydney is full of offices and places to eat and little shops, and everything is shut down after about 5:30pm. I'm kind of glad I don't live in North Sydney because I think it's kind of spooky there after hours (I went into work at night on Sunday, and it was so lonely that I started calling people on the mobile to calm my nerves).

Despite the fact that I spend a bit of time on the web browser and email during the work day, I think I'm a relatively productive worker. I guess I'm just insecure about my contributions to the mothership.

Tiredness rant

I don't know what's wrong. All of a sudden about 15 minutes ago, I had a sudden onslaught of tiredness. My head hurts, my eyes are droopy, and my body says to me sleep. It's a very similar feeling to when you are already in bed and are about to drift off to sleep.

I wonder if I'm already dreaming? Am I blogging in my sleep?

Tick tick tick...today, at about 4am Sydney time, Mr Steve Jobs of Apple Computers will be hosting his annual keynote at MacWorld San Francisco. Typically, these keynotes are used to launch new products. Jobs' keynotes have brought us such wonders as the iBook, iPod, new iMac, and a host of other gadgetty goodness.

So be sure to go to www.apple.com tomorrow to see what new toys Mr Jobs has brought us for 2004. I've no doubt they'll be exciting!

I'm watching an old James Bond movie, "A View to Die For". It seems to be from the 1960's or 1970's, and looks very dated, especially with the use of technology. I like James Bond movies as they follow a formula and are really quite entertaining and mind-numbing. Switch-you-brain-off-goodness.

World Idol

Well, World Idol has come and gone, and the Norweigian guy won.

"You have the voice of an angel and the face of a Hobbit. If there were a Middle Eart Idol, you'd be it" -- Ian Dickson, on Kurt Nilsen, the Norweigian guy.

I didn't watch the World Idol episode, but the first time I read that quote in the newspaper, I almost pissed myself laughing. Apparently all the judges were very mean, and mean to almost all of the contestants, rightly or wrongly.

We seem to either love or hate the judges. They (sometimes) say what we really want to say deep down, but are afraid to. If a remark from two of the judges about one of the contestant's weight can make front page news, then it really is a sign that the TV show has successfully permeated our society.

I have to admit, when Australian Idol first started, I dismissed it as another exploitative reality TV show, like Popstars. Then I actually watched an episode, and not only did I find it mildly entertaining, I found myself offering my opinion on the singers themselves. And then arguing or agreeing with what the judges thought.

Reality TV taps into multiple facets of what we love to do. To judge and to identify with the contestants. We really want to love some of them, and we really want to hate some of them. The more we find out about the contestants, the more our pre-identified views are reinforced.

Television no longer has to create a fantasy which suspends our belief. With reality TV, we as an audience actually demand to know more about what's behind the smoke and mirrors, and to discover what we think is real about people.

Is it a sign that we've stopped living our own lives, and instead take perverse pleasure in watching the lives of others?

Quiet Weekeneder

Whew...this week has just been so crazy. Let's start with the beginning of the week...

Last Sunday night, the 28th, I left Perth on the midnight horror flight. It actually wasn't too bad, because I was so buggered that I slept relatively well. I also had an empty seat next to me, so I wasn't crowded in either.

I got into Sydney airport at about 6:30am, caught a taxi back home, and promptly fell on the bed asleep. Until about 9am that is, when I woke up for work. Needless to say, I was rather spaced out that day at work. In fact, I started drinking coffee again because I was falling asleep at the desk.

Tuesday I met up with a couple of friends for dinner (hi Kate and Serge!) which was fantastic except that the service was rather slow, dragging the night on a bit longer than I was expecting. I have to admit the wait was worth it for the food that eventually came out though. It was a Japanese restaurant and I had the eel on rice for mains, one of my favourites, which was very well done.

Wednesday was New Year's Eve, and it was a long night, although not quite as long as I thought it would be. I was just too knackered.

Thursday was recovery. Thank God. I stayed home and did some washing (hadn't done any since before I left for Perth) and just moped around the apartment.

Friday was work again, and the start of the weekend. I knew it had to be a quiet weekend. There was no way I could handle going hard this weekend after the shattering Christmas and New Year. So a quiet weekend I had.

Friday night was dinner with Joe and Santi, which was again at the really cool and yet so dodgy Chinese Noodle place in Chinatown. Tonight dinner was $23 for 3 of us, which included Chinese tea. The food was again fantastic (oh my gosh the eggplant, the eggplant!!!! Fried eggplant in hot sauce...oooooohhhh!!! Soooooo good!!!!!) and the value unbeatable. I love it.

After dinner I wanted to go and have ice-cream at this place called "Passionflower". They sell weird ice-cream flavours. I had two scoops of ice-cream...one of lychee flavour, and one of wasabi flavour. Hold on, what the? Dave, did you just say, wasabi flavour?

Yes, I did just say wasabi flavour. And it was good too. Not hot like wasabi, but sweet. It had the wasabi taste, but without the nostril-clearing effect that wasabi normally has. The lychee flavoured ice-cream was, of course, sweet and good.

Saturday I woke up at 3:30pm. Yep, 3:30pm. I just couldn't be arsed getting up out of bed. The only thing that did it was the fact that the bedroom was getting really hot. Considering how much my company is paying for this apartment, one would think it would have decent cooling. Sadly, no.

Saturday night I caught up with Pak, and we went out to Bungalow 8, a bar out by Darling Harbour for a couple of quiet drinks. Very cool place, but I was again too tired and not in the mood to party. They had multiple plasma screen around showing "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom". The music was electronic jazz; I picked out a track from Verve//Remixed. I'll have to come back when I'm in more of a party mood.

Today, Sunday, I went out to a friend's house to sort out their home network and their computers. Again, just quiet. For dinner, I went back to the Sussex Food Court that I went to on New Year's Eve. So good, and pretty cheap too!

There's Dave's wrap up for the week. I've got a few more thoughts to blog, but it's getting late - it's 11:25pm, and I need to be getting my sleep!

Happy New Year!

Happy new year everyone!

Last night I went out to the city with Mark and a bunch of his friends from high school. It was a good night, with Sydney really coming alive. Like the Rugby World Cup final, the atmosphere was fantastic. I guess lots of alcohol helps.

In Sydney, there's two lots of fireworks, one at 9pm for the families with young kids, and the main one at midnight. After dinner in Chinatown (at this fantastic food hall which is going to be a new favourite of mine) we met up with his friends at the Town Hall steps and started drinking.

As in Perth, street drinking is illegal in Sydney. That didn't stop Mark and myself asking a cop to take the following photo for us. Mind you, pretty much everyone had a bottle or can of alcoholic beverage in their hand.

We walked up to Darling Harbour to watch the 9pm fireworks. There were so many people there, that it was difficult to get through, but eventually we made our way to Pyrmont Bridge, and from there, the view of the fireworks was pretty good.

Because of the huge crowds, the fireworks were let off from different places so it gave people a chance to get a good view of their closest firing location. For us it was a barge in the middle of Darling Harbour. The really cool thing about fireworks going off in multiple places was that it gave a sense of being surrounded by fireworks.

Night photos are difficult to take, and fireworks photos especially so, as shown by the following blurry shots:

Sydney has lots of interesting characters, and big events like the New Year's Eve fireworks really brings them out of the woodwork. For example, this random guy has an interesting dress sense.

Sydney is so classy. Even McDonald's has bouncers. (Actually, all the fast food joints had bouncers last night to control all the drunken people around).

In Martin's Place, there's a fantastic Christmas tree up. Actually, Sydney seems to have a fondness for huge public Christmas trees. There's one in Darling Harbour too.

The main fireworks at midnight were really good, althought unfortunately because we left it to the very last moment to get a spot, we didn't get a very good spot, and although we could see the fireworks going off from behind the Sydney Opera House really well, we missed a lot of the ones going off from the Sydney Harbour Bridge. Not to worry though, it was still a great atmosphere, and people were quite literally going "ooooh, ahhhh". Some people though, missed the event.

After the fireworks, the crowd rushed towards the train station as one. Again, the size of the crowd was unbelievable. I'm still getting used to the scale of things at which Sydney operates at. Things really are much bigger.

After the fireworks, we wandered around trying to find everyone, and had planned on going bar hopping, but we were pretty damn tired, and ended up having our first meal of the new year at a local McDonald's. A less than ideal end to the night, but when you're hungry and tired...