We've moved up in the world and upgraded from the Fortress... to the Villa.

Yes that's right, we are now residing in what we have nicknamed the Villa, which is an apartment block 50 metres down the road from the fortress. We pay $30 more each week but in return we get a nice modern apartment, definitely feeling the warmth, and it comes with a dishwasher, fridge, dryer, carpark, and free access to a heated indoor lap pool and a gym. So awesome. We spent all of yesterday shifting our belongings in the cold, wet, windy Wellington weather, but with much help from Jono's family friend who had a Hilux, we were able to spare ourselves total freezing by piling all the big stuff into the boot and carting it over.

All's well that ends well.

And certainly it ended well with a night at Strawberry Fare! I met up with my home group at 8pm, I was totally starving after not eating since lunchtime, and I greedily ordered a garlic bread for myself while the waitress took our dessert order. Turns out she didn't give our order to the kitchen until about 30 minutes later, and she was so apologetic about it and felt really bad, so she gave us a round of FREE HOT CHOCOLATE, YAY!! And on TOP of that, we had an entertainment card worth 25% discount, so a garlic bread, hot chocolate and a lemon chocolate cheesecake came out to $11.75 for that night.

On Friday night we celebrated Sidhe's 12th birthday with an open bar tab at Red Square. And I got totally hammered, I had something pretty bad and got a headache around 10pm, incapacitating me for the rest of the night. So damn embarrassing. When the bar tab ran out, we relocated to the Terrace for yet more drinking. That's two weeks in a row! >_>

This week coming up is our last week before Alpha, so it's going to be pretty full on. At the end of it, I can enjoy a nice three day weekend in Auckland over Queen's Birthday.

Announcing... a revolutionary title for the Playstation3: Sidhe Interactive proudly brings you the next generation in Breakout - Shatter!



A polished, well-presented and addictive game that I've contributed to in a very small capacity. I still get my name on the credits! So you have to download it, it's definitely something you'll want to play.

Winter has pretty much arrived in Wellington, with some epic hail and thunderstorms to start off the season. On Wednesday morning around 6am, the four of us in the flat were woken by a heavy hailstorm, followed by some brilliant thunderclaps that were lagging behind the lightning by only about half a second, so the storm was pretty much overhead. We opened the door to find the following sights:

And when I left the house at 8am to go to work, this is what was left:

Upon arriving home after a long day on Wednesday, I was mortified to find my computer refused to boot. Later diagnosis by my awesome workmates revealed that the BIOS had screwed up somehow and a simple reset by taking out the internal battery fixed it all and now it's working fine again, just in time for the latest Psypoke project...

Psypoke Idol 2

Flash and code done by me! Go and vote for your favourite Pokemon!

In other news, I spent Saturday afternoon lazing in the sun at a friend's place in Wadestown instead of going to Karori Sanctuary, had dinner at Siem Reap again, overtime is scheduled for the coming week and it's also Mother's Day today. So I'm waiting for our cordless phone to charge so I can make a call.

Time sure flies by when you're doing overtime two or three days a week. There's a lot of work to do at work, and on Monday we'll be officially four weeks to Alpha. Following that, another four weeks to Beta and another four to Gold Master, so there isn't a lot of time at all before the game ships. No I can't tell you what it is yet. But on the brightside, things are settling down, we've got a very clear indication of exactly what needs to be done, it's just that in our time frame, things are going to be quite hard pressed.

Anyway, that doesn't meant I've been at home all the time, I've been out socialising. Tuesday nights have become our drinks night, so we pick a pub and hang out for a couple of hours there. Two Fridays ago, in celebration of Dave and Andy's birthdays we went to the Southern Cross for dinner (although Jono and I went to HK BBQ to supplement our meals) and the next day, to Castle Point for a one night camping trip.

Castle Point's a small community about 2.5 hours northeast of Wellington. It's on the east coast just out from Masterton, and boasts some magnificent scenery, some interesting rock structures and a working lighthouse! The best parts about the camping trip were firstly, the drive up where we just sang along to epic Disney songs, and secondly, the weather was fantastic (as opposed to the cold and the rain south of the Rimutakas). Lots of fun, and of course there are photos on the way.

I was walking home last night when I randomly saw this poster plastered on one of those cylindrical columns on the street:



Luke Thompson's a pretty good musician (refer to my Parachute 2009 post) and the gig was only $10 so I was tempted to go. Unfortunately I couldn't find anyone else to go and we had plans to go to Strawberry Fare anyway (which automatically overrides all other plans) so I decided to can it - I saw him only four months ago anyway.

We had dinner at Satay Kingdom, and finished around 8.30pm, and we were walking up Cuba Street when who should I see but Luke Thompson himself, walking with a group of other people (probably his band, manager, entourage, etc). So I guess I got to see Luke Thompson afterall... although I was really meaning to hear his music.

Quite the drama for me this Easter trip, although I didn't lose my glasses like the last time I went away for Easter.

Firstly, I was working overtime on Wednesday night and we got curry from Dawaat, which lead to a rather bad case of indigestion. I was still up at 3am on Thursday morning, lying in the foetal position in bed when I remember my parents had given me this miracle Chinese medicine for general stomach aches. It worked so well I even went to work on Thursday and made it to Auckland safe and sound.

Secondly, on Monday night, I got a text message saying the flight had been delayed by an hour; Juliann and Surya were already at the airport so had to wait out the hour. They decided to check in and asked for my booking reference so we could all sit together, but to no success - they kept getting some errors and couldn't do it. So I decided I'd get to the airport early-ish to get a good seat, so I got to the kiosk and swiped my card; it said it couldn't find my e-ticket so I went to the counter. The lady there took my ID and put in all the details, then looked at me quizzically and said I didn't have a ticket. With fears growing, she took me to the ticketing counter and the lady there put in all my details, looked at me, looked back at the screen, looked back at me and said... "You've booked Wellington to Auckland."

Oh man, I have never been so mortified in my life.

But the end result is that they changed me to Auckland to Wellington, free of charge, and they still fed me apple pie and chocolate ice cream. So huge props to Qantas for doing that for me T_T

Anyway, the weekend was great, I got to catch up with everyone and ate some great food (Photos of the food to come soon). It was hard to do stuff because places were closed on the two public holidays, but I still managed to play some pool, some handball, some Trivial Pursuit and of course some piano. It was really relaxing and a much needed break from all the overtime I had been doing.

Achron.

Biggest brain-exploding game since Braid.

I've been incredibly busy with lots and lots of things.

Firstly, my Pokemon website Psypoke got a huge overhaul with a completely new template and a new backend that hopefully futureproofs the site for Generation 5, if that exists. The Great Refactor was an idea I had in November that actually carried through, so the code is nice and tidy, and the template has been sitting there for six years or so, so it was nice to have a fresh new look for Pokemon Platinum's release.

Secondly, I've been doing a bit of overtime at work - two weeks ago, I did four days of overtime with both good and bad meals to compensate. Microwaved food is seriously disgusting. The meal I had was named "Delicious Chicken Breast" and it should have been called "It's A Trap". There's been a huge amount of indecisiveness over the way that the menus and the UI are designed, and the UI coders suffer as a result. We're getting so much work piled on us, we'll be doing three days of overtime next week and three more the week after.

Thirdly, last weekend, I went with some friends to the 'Naki where we stayed at someone's grandparents place, only to get up at 7am the next day and scale the steep heights of Mt Taranaki. And omg, it was one hell of a climb. I was so incredibly unfit, I was struggling each step of the way. What made it really bad was a section of the mountain was just scree (loose rocks) so you'd take a step and slide down. I kept complaining about negative progress and whatnot, but four and a half hours later I was standing on top of the mountain, over 2.5km above sea level. The view was shrouded by clouds but in the gaps there was the splendour of the New Zealand landscape, seeing as far east as Central Plateau itself. My annual exercise for the year can now be checked off and I can mark this as an achievement to be proud of.

We had some spare money in our flat account, so we hit the town and went to a classy restaurant on Cuba St called the Matterhorn, where I had an awesome steak and shared some Bordeaux wine with my flatmates. Steak is my hero, it makes me calm.

A few weeks ago, we also had the annual Newtown Fair, where I bought some delicious ginger fudge, that I still haven't touched because I feel bad for eating so much bad food :(

And finally, I am officially a New Zealand citizen. Take that Winston Peters!

Our World is a Giant Hologram?

Before you say "lol matrix", a hologram is a two-dimensional image that, when viewed, appears three dimensional.

Let us extend this notion of a hologram to being something from a particular dimension that manifests itself in another dimension. Certain physics forces may in fact do that...read the article for some fascinating stuff.

Also I have to do overtime for 4/5 days next week. -_-

Auditorium

Wow.

(Thanks Stephen!)

We have two IDEs at work: the awesome Visual Studio .NET, and the extremely incompetent "why the hell would anyone use this, oh, wait, we are because it compiles our PlayStation and Wii code" CodeWarrior. CW is a world of pain of its own, and here's a handy little tip for you.

Templates in C++ have the angle brackets as delimiters. That is, std::vector<int> or std::pair<int, int>. In Java and C#, they are refered to as generics, but for the sake of this post, they are essentially the same concept. (Check out the differences here).

Anyway, say I require a map of ints to a vector of ints. I would declare it as so:

std::map<int, std::vector<int>> mapping;

Looks okay? Wrong. Look again:

std::map<int, std::vector<int>> mapping;

That's the bitwise shift right operator. Of course, the fix is easy:

std::map< int, std::vector<int> > mapping;

Thanks Codewarrior.

Alright, so I finally finished that piece of crap game called Final Fantasy III for the DS, and let me tell you, the final dungeon would be infuriating if you had died and had to start ALL over again and beat ALL those bosses. It's utterly ridiculous. And it had the lamest ending ever. It wasn't even a proper FMV. It was just them running around dropping all their friends off around the world. Sigh.

Anyway, there's been two things that have really been pissing me off lately.

First is the Australian forest fires, and the fact that they've been started by arsonists. I mean, for crying out loud, do they KNOW what the hell they've done? Do they comprehend the number of deaths they've caused and the number of lives they've ruined? Do they feel any remorse for what they've done? I don't understand what goes through the minds of these retards when they decide to have a bit of "fun" at the expense of a thousand lives. It's tragic, it really is.

Second is the story about a thirteen year old brat who has become a father. I quote from the newspaper article:

Asked what he would do to support the child financially, Alfie asks in a small, high-pitched voice, "What's financially?"

Does this guy even understand the responsibility of bringing up a child? Will these freaking brats stop breeding like horny rabbits and creating evil spawn that are there to steal our oxygen? Why the hell would you even have SEX with someone who has BARELY gone through puberty? Not only is this morally wrong, it's also incredibly disgusting.

NOTW also says that there may be as many as eight possible fathers, including 14-year-old Tyler Barker, who claims to be terrified at the possibility.

If you're so freaking terrified, why don't you STOP HAVING SEX WITH THESE SLUTS SO THAT YOU DON'T GET THEM PREGNANT? And furthermore, EIGHT possible fathers? What the hell is wrong with this sex-starved girl?

And the fact they're getting so much bloody media attention isn't helping. The guy is completely oblivious to the responsibilities he faces in bringing up this kid, but yet there's suddenly this incentive of tens of thousands of dollars from these moronic tabloids offering him money for an 'exclusive' documentary. Isn't that some kind of INCENTIVE for him to breed more? What is wrong with this world?

UGH.

Mel organised lunch at Great India today, so Jono, Rosie and myself bundled into the car that Andrew had so kindly left for us and headed to Courtenay Place. As we were walking, we stumbled across something rather peculiar on the ground.

It was a small piece of purplish paper.

It was just sitting there invitingly.

I picked it up quickly. It was a $50 note. That pretty much paid for lunch for the 6 of us at Great India. And a delicious lunch it was too \o/

And then again, at Central this evening, we had a "light meal" to welcome our new pastor.

In other words, I had two very good meals, and didn't pay a cent for them.

That constitutes an awesome day in my books!

Okay yeah, I've been pretty much working on the BIG SECRET EXCLUSIVE SITE every night of the week, so of course that means blogging gets pushed out.

Anyway, Friday Fail is a term used by our senior programmer, Steve, on Fridays when we meet for our daily meeting at the couch area at work, and browse FailBlog. Steve left us on Tuesday, and now there is a failure of Friday Fail, and as a result, team morale was lower than usual and heaps of things ended up breaking.

Last week, in recognition of Steve leaving, we booby trapped our game for his last Show and Tell. He demonstrated our progress on the game and spoke about the various changes we made. As he wrapped up, we got him to go back to the main menus and *bam*, we sprung a picture of him in his "underpants costume" from Halloween (this was from his old work place), accompanied by Marvin Gaye's "Let's Get It On". Needless to say, his mouth gaped open for a good half minute and he scurried off stage. We'll miss you, Steve.

Show and Tell usually happens on a Friday, but as you're all aware, last week was Waitangi Weekend, so immedately after Show and Tell I had to rush to the airport and catch a flight back to Auckland. As tradition stands, I made a beeline to Momo Tea in Mt. Albert, and hung out with my youth group, having some hearty food and some delicious drinks.

Friday morning I had music practice, and following that, Bob's unsurprise barbeque at Ray's place. This pretty much lasted the whole day, with some awesome food and lots of Rock Band. No Stephen, this was the PS3 version so we didn't play Still Alive. We played some outdoor badminton too, until we started getting attacked by the mosquitos. Towards the end of the night, we hung out for more drinks at EasyWay and played last card, until we were pretty much sick of last card and headed our seperate ways.

On Saturday I pretty much lazed around, but in the afternoon I met up with Mat and Will and took a stroll around Albert Park, just observing the lanterns and inhaling the wonderful aromas of the roadside food. It was a gloriously hot day, and I am often reminded about the surprisingly large temperature difference between Auckland and Wellington.

I spent Saturday night with family for our reunion dinner, which I would say was the main purpose of the trip. I dunno, I kinda feel very sentimental about these things, I was a bit disappointed about missing Chinese New Year last year. Family's important to me, and reunion dinner is just one of those symbolic meals that you share with family, a bit like how Christmas is so important to some people.

Sunday was pretty much church and lunch at (where else) Ha Long, before I caught up with my sister, who insisted on showing me various painted windows, her coffee table, her new laptop and her photo board. And before long, it was time to head back to the airport and start the journey back to Wellington. Sigh.

Wishing you Gong Xi Fa Cai in the year of the Ox!

I just got back from Parachute 09, after a mammoth seven hour car ride from Mystery Creek, Hamilton. It was an absolutely fantastic weekend, full of sunshine, friends, fellowship and worship. I saw the likes of Late 80's Mercedes, Luke Thompson, Dave Dobbyn, Nathan King, David Crowder, Kutless and Casting Crowns. Saturday night was full of excitement and adrenaline, and Sunday night was full of praise, worship and fun.

Definitely one of the better Parachute events I've been to - looking forward to the big 20th Birthday Bash next year!

PS: Photos to come.

Edit: Been having some weird server config issues that locked me out of the admin panel. Anyway, photos are up.

I recently got Pokemon Ranger: Shadows of Almia and Kirby Super Star Ultra on my DS; and with the ever-addictive nature of Picross, it means more DS and less blogging. Anyway, here goes.

There's been a few events happening in Wellington. You will have heard in the news of the Gaza protests happening in Civic Square. I was passing by and heard the chants (they're quite catchy, I must say). One was "Israel, you can't hide, we charge you with genocide!". And this happened for at least two days, we could hear it quite well from our office.

We also had a dinner voucher to the Red Tomato in Kelburn, which had featured on that restaurant revamp show on TV. Yeah, the pizza wasn't too bad, my only complaint was that the Mexican was smothered in coriander, which didn't really suit the overall taste at all. Coriander is a garnish and it shouldn't be the dominant taste on pizza.

We hung out on Oriental Bay one evening, having fish and chips on the beach. It was a really calm day; two of the group even went for a swim in the water. By 8.30pm, the water was warmer than the air, so it must've been incredibly difficult to come out.

Last weekend, it was Wellington Anniversary = Long Weekend, so we planned a trip to scale the heights of Mt Taranaki, somewhat reminiscent of the good ol' 4th Form Camp, when we hiked up Mt Ruapehu. Unfortunately, the weather did not permit, so we decided to make our way to Cape Palliser, the southernmost point on the North Island. Not only was it gloriously sunny, the wind was fantastic and hiliariously fun. We climbed 250 steps to the lighthouse and enjoyed the full blast of the winds on the cape. Three of the group even went swimming in the frigid waters, and we shared a picnic lunch on the rocks by the sea. Cape Palliser is also known for the seal colony, and you can check out the gallery for pictures.

This weekend, it's Parachute 09 up in Mystery Creek, and also Chinese New Year on Monday. It's going to be awesome.

So yeah, went back to work today. It was SO boring, I fell asleep in our three hour sprint planning session. What a great start to the New Year!

I've had an awesome holiday up in Auckland, just catching up with everyone. I went to Momo's, the driving range, Rotovegas, Goat Island and the airport five times. I played DotA, table tennis, table tennis extreme, pool, handball, lots of piano, Rock Band, Singstar, Buzz and Photo Hunt. I went on the famous Rotorua luge, the Agrodome's Big Swoop, I saw the Lady Knox Geyser erupt as well as several geothermal park attractions, I hung out with friends and family and I ate and ate and ate and ate. See my gallery for all the pictures. I have some YouTube videos to upload later as well.

Satisfied Jeremy is satisfied.

Well, this'll probably be my last blog post this year. It's going to be pretty busy from now on, and I probably won't have a computer while I'm up in Auckland.

Thanks to all of you who visit and post comments and drawings. You can read more of my rantings at my 2008 Summary.

And with that, have a Merry Christmas and a happy New Year, and I'll see you in 2009.

I installed Google Friend Connect for my site, which took 10 minutes, and spent another few hours or so thinking up some creative ways of displaying it on the site. It problem is that its minimum width is 200 pixels, but my right navigation bar on my blog is 160 pixels. So I tried to float it and have some animations for it to pop out onmouseover, and blahblah, those didn't go so well, so I settled for the immediate effect and that works quite well. What's surprising is that I didn't have to tweak it for IE at all.

Anyway, in the past week, I've been to Momo's three times, been busy at work doing menu and UI coding, played a pretty good amount of DotA and generally slacked off with that secret website that I am working on.

There's two more weeks until I leave for Auckland. It's going to be an awesome Christmas time \o/

As shameful as it is, I spent a while trying to help Mike with his C++ programs, attempting to read a particular format of characters from stdin.

The problem is that if this program is fed character data, it loops continuously:



Why? num_reads is 0 and upon reaching scanf for the second time, the buffer is still attempting to read something, but it can't and returns 0.. and so on and so forth.

So what's the solution? Simple. Use sscanf!

Okay I haven't died yet, it's just been pretty boring on the news front for the blog.

Let's see, I've spent the last two weeks practically home alone: two flatmates in the South Island, one in Australia for a week, means one Jeremy at home cooking delicious food for himself, and playing absurd amounts of DotA. Not that either of these things are bad. I brought DotA to work on my iPod in the hope I could attract some interest and get my workmates to play as well.

I had a flatwarming for three of my workmates last night too. They live about 20 minutes up the road from me, so maybe I'll see them on the bus or walking home or something. But it was a pretty cool party, got to hang out with people and socialise and stuff. Woo~. Got caught by the rain as I went home, but luckily the bus was on time and I managed to minimise the wetness.

I've been doing a lot of web development lately. I fixed some spam bot problem with my Shoutbox a few minutes ago, and I thought I'd blog about something that's been infuriating me for the past few weeks.

The majority of the world have this program installed on their machines and actively use this malicious application. I do not know the exact numbers, but whatever the statistics are, it is far too much for people to being using such filth every day.

I am, of course, talking about Internet Explorer.

Who the hell at Microsoft decided to make a substandard browser with so many security flaws and a blatant disregard for web coding standards just to piss developers off? Morons. Absolute bloody morons.

In this site I've been working on (You know the one, Stephen :O), I have this search box that appears onmouseover, and it disappears when you click outside the box, but should remain visible when clicking inside the box. The easiest way to implement this was to cancel the bubbling effect that events have, that is, clicking inside a table will trigger its onclick, its parents onclick and continue up the chain until there are no more onclick handlers.

So, if the table onclick is specified and the event.returnValue parameter is set to false, I can use this value to prevent subsequent calls to the onclick handler. Thus, when it gets to the body onclick, inside the handler, I just return prematurely if event.returnValue is false.

Yup, that's all great. Works wonderfully on Firefox. This behaviour also works on Internet Explorer too...oh, wait. Hold on a second. By specifying that the event's returnValue is now false in Internet Explorer, all onclick handlers no longer work. That means onclicks for anchor tags and submit buttons. What kind of stupid system is that?

I resorted to using the following code:



Clicking on the innermost <div> with "Click" calls myFunction. myFunction sets eventHandled["onclick"] to be true, and prevents bubbling up by halting execution of the onclick in the <table> and <body> tags. Finally at the <body> tag, the states are reset to ensure that the next onclick can be processed. Phew!

Stupid Internet Explorer.

(PS: I should look at getting some syntax highlighting...)

As history unfolded three days ago as America watched its first African-American President be elected, so too the winds of change have swept over New Zealand as John Key, leader of the National Party, becomes our Prime Minister-elect. Gracious in defeat was Helen Clark, who highlighted the good nine years of Labour government, and announced her resignation as leader.

But I must say.

The changes don't stop there. We are watching the face of New Zealand politics change like never before, as New Zealand First fail to meet the 5% party vote threshold, and both Winston Peters and Ron Mark fail to win their electorate seats, sealing the fate of the party as it no longer has any seats in Parliament.

I can say only one thing.

Buy your copy now, and I'll autograph it for free!

As the poem goes, the city of Wellington celebrated Guy Fawkes Day with a fantastic display of pyrotechnics streaming from the harbour.



But for some, these fireworks meant more than watching a myriad of chemicals combust in the sky. These fireworked heralded a change. A change that attracted the interest of the entire globe as we followed the US Presidential Race during the later hours of the afternoon, until its pinnacle as Senator Barack Obama claims the 44th Presidency of the United States of America, defeating rival John McCain, 338 electoral college votes to 156. It is certainly a phenomenal landmark in the history books as America gets set to crown its first African-American President.

But of course, my project team and I were busy discussing important matters at our team meeting.



¬.¬

I had a fantastic Labour Weekend. So good catching up with all my friends. As a result of the excessive fun, I have caught a cold and am suffering at work. Today was terrible, I couldn't concentrate and I kept sneezing and after drinking that disgusting Lemsip crap I felt like throwing up.

Anyway.

I finished up at work on Friday and met Laura and Raymond at Cha for dinner. It was still relatively early, so Raymond and I went back to his apartment and Laura went back to hers at around 7.40pm. Then Raymond wanted to have a shower and by the time he finished...it was 8.05pm.
Picked up Laura at 8.10pm
Got to the flat at 8.15pm
Picked up Jono at 8.25pm
Arrived at the airport at 8.30pm
Boarded the plane at 8.40pm
Took off for Auckland at 8.50pm

Yeah, rushed, much. In the chaos I left my keys at the flat, but that wasn't too big an issue. I got picked up by Casey at the other end and met Bob, Ted, Amber and Han at Momo's, where I proceeded to knock my glass over and cut my hand in the process. After bleeding profusely, they decided to give me a free drink (YAY).

I turned up at church on Saturday morning, much to the surprise of the music team (apparently Jin hadn't told them I was on). So yeah, I got to play piano, and that was great jamming with the boys again. So much fun, far more fun than at Central Baptist. Afterwards, we distributed some flyers for the Light Party before I headed over to St Heliers to meet the Grammar Gang for lunch at La Vista. Great food there, so good to catch up with everyone. I was free for the rest of the afternoon and it was still early, so we went down the road to play Mini Golf. There were so many fails there, it was awesome. Props to Amnon for beating Richard!

It was still early in the day so we went back to Mat's flat and just hung around for a while, watching Family Guy and playing some Smash Bros Brawl. I really can't stand the Wii control scheme (and that's not because I've been working with it for the past week). The Wiimote has so few controller buttons that they could not possibly encapsulate all the techniques into a user-friendly scheme. Once I started with the Gamecube controller, it felt so much better. MetaKnight and Dedede are awesome! :3

Left the flat and went to Cinta's place for dinner with her, Alice, Jo and Reuben. We had apricot chicken, some cheese and cauliflower, boiled vegetables and roast potato, and Oreo cheesecake for dessert. Awesome stuff. We spent the rest of the night solving those stupid take-apart-shape-and-put-them-together-again puzzles.

Sunday morning was church, had heaps of fun on the piano but it wasn't my best day (I screwed up the offering piece) but I think people just appreciated me being back on the piano, which was really nice. We had testimonies from our group heading to Cambodia for a short term mission, as well as a delicious curry lunch for fundraising. I hung around for a few hours for BASIC and then the guys went to play pool. All I can say is... black ball fail.

I went out with Dad and Uncle Tony and family to this teppanyaki place in Ponsonby called Fuji. Entertainment was fantastic, food was delicious, but unfortunately not as filling as I would have liked. Really had to work for our food as well! I caught a piece of egg in my mouth, and two bowls of rice flung in my general direction.

Met up with the youth group guys at Momo's (haha, again). I didn't cut my hand this time, which was great. I had a taro milkshake with mango pudding, but didn't feel like eating much more. We were keen on going out after that, but nothing happened and we just went to bed.

But Matt, Sam and I ventured out the next day in the blazing sun to Mission Bay, where we enjoyed some unhealthy breakfasts in the form of ice cream, waffles and pancakes. We hung around Bastion Point before heading into town. We took at stop at Yifans where Matt played the new Street Fighter - I really like the art style, with the black paint strokes. I had to rush off soon after to meet Casey, Bob, Laura and Raymond for yum char at China. Good food, again, but unfortunately I was still a bit stuffed from breakfast. However, I did manage to cram a durian puff and a mango puff, so all is well.

Spent the rest of the afternoon fixing dad's computer, then met up with my sister for a chit chat. Her cat is adorable <3 and very vocal too. Being the awesome sister that she is, she managed to get me this:



It was a quick dinner at Uncle Tony's before heading to the airport. What a weekend. Catch all the action in the gallery.

IT HAPPENED IT HAPPENED IT HAPPENED IT HAPPENED IT HAPPENED IT HAPPENED IT HAPPENED IT HAPPENED IT HAPPENED IT HAPPENED IT HAPPENED IT HAPPENED IT HAPPENED IT HAPPENED IT HAPPENED IT HAPPENED IT HAPPENED IT HAPPENED IT HAPPENED IT HAPPENED IT HAPPENED IT HAPPENED IT HAPPENED IT HAPPENED IT HAPPENED IT HAPPENED

I was walking home from work today when I came upon this construction site. A concrete wall was half demolished, and some people had graffitied on it.



I find this amusing.

As I said earlier, I was on music again at Central Baptist yesterday. I arrived at 9am, as usual, and practiced the songs. All good, all well, seems the dynamics and the timing were all in shape.

We were stuck for an offering song, so I decided to play a song I'd never played at Central before.

It was quite possibly the most inappropriate song to play during an offertory.

It was certainly a song that smashed the boundaries of Central's realm of hymns and contemplative music.

Just as the offering was announced, I broke out the hugest grin ever. This is the most mischief you can have during a church service. When all was quiet, I took a quick breath... and started off with a piano slide into the jazzy Em7 and Amaj7 chords of My Redeemer Lives.

It was awesome. I had so much fun.

Anyway, after the service, we had lunch at Nando's, dessert at Kaffee Eis, and then I met Ray who had just arrived in Wellington for a three week work spell. We met Peter at Butlers on Willis for a quick drink, and made some dinner plans.

Raymond hadn't eaten anything all day, so he got a curry from Reading Cinemas, and I wasn't feeling that hungry so I got a banana-kiwifruit-orange-apple thing from the juice bar. But of course I felt hungry afterwards, so we skipped straight to dessert.



So good.

I'd been speaking to my parents on Tuesday night (as I always do) and one of the topics I brought up was the music at Central Baptist. I mentioned that the music was very conservative and not as lively or modern as Kelston, and that's something I lament. Songs like Be Unto Your Name, Majesty (Here I Am), Amazing Love, Complete, All the Earth, Who Am I... they're awesome songs and incredibly rich in both their message and their musical structure.

I felt a bit empty after playing on Sunday, because I wasn't enjoying myself as much as I did at Kelston. I was off beat and not enthusiastic. I miss being able to jam with Reuben, Matt, Cinta, Mary Ann, Sam, Ben (when he used to play), Steven and Andrew. Now that I think about it, I think it's because I felt restricted in what I can do because the lead singing isn't as strong as it could be, and as a result, I have to lead with precision in the melody.

Well, today was different.

I got a call on Tuesday night from one of the ladies at Central, asking if I could be the pianist for this Sunday as well. I said sure, why not. Practice was today at 6pm.

And what a practice it was. It was a joy being able to play some familiar songs like Jesus God's Righteousness Revealed, I Will Give Thanks to Thee, Great is Thy Faithfulness and Give Thanks with a Grateful Heart. It was awesome being able to play how I wanted to play...to wander with the notes and play different beats. The two lead singers have fantastic, powerful voices and they harmonise so well. It was really uplifting.

Church music for the win.

Time to clear out some photos from my phone. As I said on Monday, we celebrated the announcement of Rugby League 2: World Cup Edition, my first game at Sidhe Interactive. The company took us out for some nibbles and drinks. Meet the team!





Those Wellingtonians seemed pretty happy that they beat Auckland for that Ranfurly Shield, so they held a parade for the players.



I was owned by the bus strikes on Wednesday and arrived at work 30mins late, so that night, I planned to stay at the Hub and walked to work the next morning. Good weather for it as well! On Friday night, I met with Jono and Dave at this Malaysian restaurant where we had the awesomest grilled prawns. A bit pricey, and not very big portions, but delicious.



Today, music at church - daylight savings meant I had to get up at what was really 7am. Then I met Laura for yum char at Majestic. I need to stay awake and not nap to keep this sleep schedule intact.

We got the announcement that the game we've been working on for the PS2 finally got the green light from our publishers.

So that means that at the end of October or the beginning of November, you can go out into New Zealand stores and buy a copy of my first game.

That's right, you can play the game, flick to the credits and point and shout when my name appears on screen.

While personally, it's not my kind of genre, I wholeheartedly endorse and promote this game to give you a fantastic gaming experience.

And without further delay, Sidhe Interactive presents...

An extremely challenging set of puzzle games where you're in a room and you have to escape. It reminds me of Phoenix Wright - go around collecting things and use them to solve puzzles.

I've beaten:
- Sphere
- Vision
- RGB (BOTH Secret Doors)
- Switch

Yay that's all of them! \o/

Some things I forgot to mention last week: I saw Hamish Carter, Olympian, Gold Medallist and Auckland Grammar old boy, at the BNZ Food Court. He was buying sushi. I wanted to say hi to him but I was too shy and he was talking to someone else and it would have been cool to get a picture with him in retrospect but there were so many people around I would have looked really stupid and touristy and Azn.

Speaking of Azn, I got interviewed by some Azn magazine so if you see my mug somewhere, you'll know why. She asked me if the Government should be spending more money on the defense force.

Anyway, it has been a pretty bad start to the week. Yesterday I spent the whole day battling with freaking Metrowerksfail over some stupid access paths problem. Apparently, if you have two files of the same name but in different directories, and each of the directories are in your access paths, they are treated as duplicates. What a load of fail.

Following that, I played pretty badly at badminton. I was just smashing the shuttlecock in anger most of the time :p

Today I was just fixing some stupid sound problem and it boiled down to nothing to do with sound, but rather the directories in which the resources were located. Blah.

It's been a very busy week in terms of the two websites which I am responsible for.

Firstly, the Ignite Youths website was released to public eyes at the beginning of the week - a result of some awesome collaboration between myself and Reuben.

Secondly, Pokemon Platinum was leaked three days early, much to my surprise, so I moved into emergency mode and started hacking for information as soon as I could. That involved ringing the flat during work hours and getting Andrew to email me some of my programs. ¬.¬

In any case, Psypoke's got some great information for the time we've spent on it. I've been browsing some other websites and they're very far ahead in the game, but I know WPM from PokeBeach spent 28 hours continuously playing the game. I wouldn't be surprised if SPP had some slave doing the same for him.

I've apparently survived my first Wellington winter, and to remind me of the days to come, we were on Oriental Parade with Nats and Ben, who were visiting from Auckland.



Of course, Oriental Parade immediately implies The Parade Cafe.



Which rounded out an awesome weekend of food.



I've been recovering from a cold lately. I had to give a presentation to my team at work on Friday, and that was extremely difficult. On the brightside, I got another Show and Tell prize - a Rubik's Cube keyring! Not that I care much for those things anyway. I need to remember to buy borrow obtain, using unspecified methods, Spore the game - some guys at work were playing it since its release on Thursday.

I finish this post with some muffins.

Yes I have strung those random words together purposefully.

I've been pretty busy this whole week - been out late every day except Wednesday when I was on cooking for the flat. Monday was badminton as usual, and that was great because one of my workmates joined me and Sunni for that. The weather was cold and miserable, but I had the car so that was sweet.

Our favourite oboist, Alex, was down from Auckland with the New Zealand Youth Orchestra, so we enjoyed a night of classical harmonies and a touch of opera. Quite cultured, indubitably.



Epic fail on Thursday as our team gathered to submit our game to Sony. The requirements are eight authoring-quality DVDs, which means disks are $25 and burning takes up to two hours on a 1x speed burner. We were five disks through when we realised they didn't boot, and that we had some extra files on there that we shouldn't have. So that was a good $125 down the drain, thanks to my epic fail, and so I stayed late at work to help finish the disks. On the brightside, they were eventually completed and we couriered our precious cargo to Sony. Phew.

Also, I finally finished Braid - the best puzzle game I have ever played. It is an incredibly well thought-out game, with extremely clever puzzles and mechanics that will explode your mind. Braid is available on Xbox Live Arcade, and I highly recommend it for dedicated gamers who live for the satisfaction of solving intense problems.

Oh, by finished, I mean I got the 60 puzzle pieces as well as the Closure Achievement. I didn't get the stars or do a speed run ¬.¬

We watched the failed kayaking races on Friday and Saturday night, much to the surprise of John, Jono and myself as we listened to Dave's enthusiasm for the Kiwis in Beijing. Good effort though, but not quite the result we were hoping for. After that, we decided we would drown our sorrows with some feijoa vodka...so we went to New World and bought some mixing drinks. White Grapetise and feijoa vodka = epic win.

Andrew had cooked a whole pot of rice on Friday night that he didn't use at all, so on Saturday, I decided I would use it in the most Asian fashion possible - fried rice. I will let the pictures do the talking.



Weng-Hao and I also had a 90 minute DotA game where I was Zeus and he was Clockwerk, and we were against Mortred and Spectre. We didn't get sassed, but we just had serious issues trying to break the towers while defending our own. In the end, we broke all three lanes for Mega Creeps and for the win \o/

Went swimming on Sunday again - this time to Freyberg Pools on Oriental Parade. Good exercise, yay, whatever. But more to the point, we went to the Parade Cafe afterwards for a good hot chocolate and some wedges \o/!!! Good food, yay.

Poor Andrew had been stuck in his sleeping bag all afternoon, so when I got home, he was still watching the movies he had rented. I went into my room to do some work on my websites when I heard a crash from the bathroom. I thought it was just the clothes horse that had fallen and made a noise, since I thought Andrew was still lying on the couch...but around 30 seconds later came the call "...Jeremy...". I was rushed out to the bathroom where Andrew stumbled out, saying he'd just passed out, when he started blacking out just as I grabbed him and stopped him from faceflooring. Turns out he was dehydrated and dizzy from sitting in his sleeping bag for so long. Geez.

John came home pretty soon after and started diagnosing all sorts of problems. I offered my advice - clearly it was cancer or AIDS.

Also, FF3 sucks.

I was up until 2.30am last night, watching Valarie Vili shotput her way to New Zealand's second gold medal at the Beijing Olympics with a mammoth 20.56m throw. I also watched as the Evers-Swindell twins beat out their competitors by 1/100th of a second to grab New Zealand's first gold of the games. The tension waiting for the final result after the photo finish - just epic.

We also watched Mahe Drysdale, Nathan Twaddle and George Bridgewater achieve their bronzes, as well as Hayden Roulston's silver medal race. Awesome effort from all four guys.

Congratulations to all our medal winners on day eight at the 2008 Beijing Olympics - you've done the country proud.

And if that wasn't enough, I woke up to the news of the All Blacks owning South Africa 19 - 0 in the rugby - huge congratulations to them as well.

Pretty eventful Sunday as well - piano at church this morning, yum char with Laura and her friends at Grand Century and swimming at the Aquatics Center in Hataitai. Wooooo, physical exercise. Yay me.

I was up until 4.30am last night watching the Opening Ceremony. Gah. The performances and the choreography and the fireworks were fantastic though, really awesome and vibrant. My favourite parts were the fireworks making footprints, the introduction to the scroll, the blocks that moved up and down and the tai chi display, and the lighting of the Olympic Torch was definitely spectacular too. Pyrotechnics were top-notch throughout the ceremony.

We had a farewell dinner for Bjorn on Tuesday night at Two Souls, where the food was fantastic. On Wednesday, Mel and I ate at Rasa on Cuba St before going to Central Baptist where we played on the piano for a good two hours or so. Friday night I met up with Laura and her friends at Lonestar (I had the ribs - they were awesome) before heading home to watch the Opening Ceremony streaming live from the TVNZ website.



Today - I am being very Asian and I'm boiling some barley water \o/ Thanks to my parents for providing the oversized pot. I had been thinking of boiling barley water for ages, and it wasn't until I got the opportunity to grab some barley from the Asian grocery store near Pak'n'Save that everything started falling into place. I couldn't find any rock sugar, so I tried the Asian supermarket on the corner of Dixon and Cuba, and I managed to get a packet of rock sugar crystals. Hopefully this won't be an epic disaster.

Speaking of epic, apparently it's now a verb at work. You just got epicked.

Yeah right.

When I woke up yesterday (approximately 11am), it was awesomely sunny and..dare I say it for Wellington standards...warm O_o It was almost like it wasn't winter.

Anyway, Bjorn had organised some indoor soccer and netball for us as part of his going away. Oh my goodness, that seriously hurt. I was so unfit. Goalie was a popular position. So many of us were suffering today. But it was fun, and no one passed out, and all was good.

We were at Eelyn's last night for an awesome dinner (Yes I have pictures, don't worry). We were entertained by conversations of med-speak and chickens, a good round of Pictionary/Charades, and towards the early hours of the morning, some electrical displays from the storm outside. The rain was incredibly heavy, and the lightning was rather frequent, so we didn't leave until 2am or so.

Which meant pain getting up for church in the morning. Yup. I met everyone else at Reading after the service and we had lunch at this cafe on the corner of Cuba and Ghuznee (I forgot its name again -_-) where Andy and I shared a pizza (No pictures of this one). My mission in town however, was to get some shoes, so I was accompanied by Mel and Ian and we went to the Number 1 Shoe Warehouse on Lambton Quay where I got three pairs of shoes for $74!! What a bargain.

So I've been working on this incredibly panicky yet addictive game called Amnesia Attack that started on Psypoke first, then I ported it to the Ignite site, and finally my own site got its own a few days ago. As of this update, I have five Amnesia Attacks - can you name them all?

So. Good.

So yeah, last Sunday, when I posted that Facebook message, we were having some friends around for a Sunday roast, which was delicious by the way.

This past week has been busy; we had an internal conference at work where we listened to some of the seniors talk about various topics - it felt like being back at Uni, except I couldn't fall asleep. It was, however, very informative, and entertaining at some places as well.

Nats was down for the weekend for a med conference too, so we caught up with her. Matt Andrews was down as well (in b4 joke about stealing bags) so he joined us; Tom Bye was around and I yelled out "Tooommm, Hiiiiii" before we had to drove off, so I don't know if he recognised me or whatever.

I was on music again this morning; I didn't know half the songs, but I still managed, which was great. I also arranged to get access to the piano during the week which is FANTASTIC, I've been eagerly waiting to try out Still Alive on the piano (Thanks Stephen :3) but also it gives me an opportunity to practice during the week so I don't freak out on Sunday morning. Met with Mel and Raewyn after church for lunch at Nando's, where Mel and I shared a whole chicken.

We met up again in the evening with the intention of enjoying some jazz at Lido, but it was pretty full so we walked to D4, but that was dead, so we headed to this place on Majoribanks which was closed. With hunger pains rapidly rising, we resolved to go to Strawberry Fare, where I had a salad and some chocolate brownies. I think I scared Mel, Paul and Raewyn with my I-am-eating-but-it-looks-like-I-am-having-an-orgasm face. I think my CompSci friends know which one I'm talking about.

In case anyone is wondering:

No I did not create a Facebook account. Go away.

EDIT: lol urfacebook

I wanted to make sure I got to work on time on Friday, so I spent Thursday night at the Hub because of the trucks protest. They took so long coming down State Highway 1 that they only got to town around 8.30am, so there wasn't any traffic at all. But once they got in...there was epic honking and blasting of horns. They certainly made their presence known in Central Wellington. I heard there was mayhem in Auckland as they blocked up the Southern Motorway and Queen St too.



We'd also learned that Team Puppyguts, led by some guys at work, had won the 48 Hour Film Festival. Congratulations to them! In celebration, the company got a treat.



I spent most of the day finishing up the Ignite Website..and sneaking in a few games of DotA. Sigh I'm so rusty. But the website itself is making good progress, and Ignite Youths 2.0 will definitely release on time :p

I just got back from watching the game at JJ Murphy's. What an epic game!



We had a good meal as well. They were unfortunately out of steaks, so I ordered some delicious lamb shanks. Still a little bit hungry, Sunni, Andrew and I decided to share a chocolate mud cake (We were looking at Raewyn enjoying hers and wanted one too). My first comment upon its arrival:

"...This tastes meaty...."

Yeah. Some one had confused chocolate sauce with barbeque sauce. Awesome.

Last Tuesday, the company had the Speed Racer premier at Reading Cinemas. While most of us concluded that it wasn't as bad as everyone said it was, it was certainly...epileptic and corny in some places. Overall, it was entertaining and had some action-packed shots, but I wouldn't say it was fantastic-fantastic. Oh, there was an after party too, and that was pretty good. I got to play the game for the first time (I highly recommended it) and got to hang with some workmates, so that was pretty cool.

Amy was down in Wellington again, selling dumplings at Pak n Save, again, so we met up for dinner on Wednesday. I took her to Great India where we had some awesome curry and some not-so-awesome Indian dessert dumplings. We went over to Strawberry Fare to make a booking, where I saw Sunni and Raewyn. I told Raewyn that Amy was on the Jet program as well and the two couldn't stop talking. Go figure.

Anyway, we met up again on Thursday night with Peter and Laura, and we had dinner at this place called Piccolo on Vivian Street. It was small and empty, but the food was pretty good and the owner was really friendly and talkative. I advised everyone to eat less because we went to Strawberry Fare afterwards YAY. Between the three of us (Laura had to leave), we shared a Jaffa Tower and a Lemon Chocolate Cheesecake.

Friday night it was time to head to Auckland. Due to bad weather, the flight had been delayed by 30 minutes, so it wasn't until 8pm that we were actually boarding. However, some retard had decided that he'd check in his bags, but not show up on the aircraft. So we waited an extra 30 minutes for him to show up, and Qantas finally decided that they wouldn't wait and started to unload his bags. So yup, just as they finish unloading, aforementioned retard shows up and boards the plane (with heavy glares from the other passengers) and we finally fly off at 8.50pm or something like that.

It was around 10.30pm when we finally got to May's house. After the initial greets, I started scoffing some food that John had saved for me while the speeches started. It was a really good party, quite cosy and really friendly. It was midnight or so (time really flew by) before everyone started leaving, so I texted Andrew and the others to see what they were up to. No one wanted to drive out to Te Atatu to go for milk tea, so we canned the idea and made plans to meet up on Saturday afternoon.

On Saturday morning, my sister and I went to this place called Fuze on the peninsula for brunch, and I ordered some bacon and eggs with an extra lamb chop. It was good to catch up with her, especially over such good food.

I met up with Andrew, Richard, Mat, Nat and Jono at Benediction, just off Newton Road. I was still full from brunch, so I didn't eat anything, but I had a milkshake and watched the others enjoy their meals. Jono had to head off, so we split up: Nat, Mat and I went to Dress Smart, looking for a jacket for Mat, while Andrew and Richard dropped Jono home. We reconvened at the flat, which smelled like rubber thanks to Richard's ingenuity, and just hung around. Pretty soon after, Mat went with his family to see Kung Fu Panda, so the remaining four of us went to... MOMO'S! So good. So much better than Wellington milk tea.

Pretty soon after, we were at the Blockhouse Bay Tennis to celebrate Matt and Andrew's 21sts. It was...strangely familiar. But there were lots of people, lots of good food (again) and lots to do. There was music, there was dancing (no Singstar though), there was some alcohol (I went totally pink...but so did Matt), there was a really good atmosphere about the place. Great time.

Sunday was church, lunch at Wendy's with the youth, a quick catch up at Amy's place with her, Ted and Bobby (the food looked awesome :/) then dinner with my parents. We had beef stroganoff and roast chicken, plus my sister had made some apricot choc-chip muffins and my dad had brewed some feijoa wine. It was awesome.

One of the best weekends ever. Sigh.

Well, not photos strictly from the weekend, but whatever.









So yeah, I had my first music practice at Central Baptist. It's quite different from KCC - we start at 9am on Sunday morning and finish just before 10am O_o which really puts on the pressure. I knew some of the songs and picked up others, and I was accompanied by a saxophone, an organ and a flute, so there was plenty to mask my mistakes. But it's a really nice piano, as you can see, and it's really great to be playing for church again.

Yum Char was pretty average. Yeah, what can I say? It was a bit more expensive, not very good variety (too much fried food), and the mango pudding tasted very artificial. We'll be sticking with Majestic...although Peter wants to go to Grand Century some time.

Epic Cute.

If there was any Monday to choose to demonstrate how bad Mondays can start out, I would choose today.

In retrospect, the day itself wasn't bad; rather, just the bus ride to work.

Some guy thought he would be funny and make a joke about how the bus was full and how he'd have to sit on the roof.

If that wasn't enough, this clown started singing.

Yes, singing.

Badly.

Singing badly about how he had to go to court and try get a not guilty verdict and something about being hit on the head with a beer bottle, and how the bus wasn't going the right way to the courthouse.

I thought my ears would bleed.

Blahblahblah blah blahblah, blahblahblah. Blahblahblah blah blah. Blahblah, blahblahblah. Blahblahblah blah blah blah. Blahblah, blahblahblah. Blahblahblah blah blah blah blahblah blahblah blahblahblahblah blah blah blah blahblah blahblah STRAWBERRY FARE blahblahblahblah blahblah blahblah blah blah. Blahblahblah blah blahblah, blahblahblah. Blahblahblah blah blah. Blahblah blahblah blahblahblahblah blah blah blah blahblah blahblah blahblahblahblah blahblah blahblah blah blah.

I guess I've just been so busy with everything. Last week was the last week of the sprint at work, so we were trying to finish things up. Mat, Nats, Stacey and Richard came down over the weekend for a visit (see the Gallery pics), and I've got an influx of work from Psypoke...and also another secret website ¬.¬

Let's see... last weekend was really good. It was great to see Mat again, and he got to meet all the Wellington people I hang out with, as well as see some sights (including my work place). We had lots of good food (YAY PARADE CAFE AND STRAWBERRY FARE). We did a 15 minute run through Te Papa, we visited Mt Victoria in incredible winds, we watched the All Blacks beat Ireland, we played Pictionary (never again.), Mafia (never again.) and Puerto Rico, and Mat even went to church with us.

It's bug-fixing week this week, so it should be relatively quiet, but I've got a lot to do outside of work. *yawn*

Alice, Cinta and Jo came down to Wellington for a visit on Saturday very morning. I picked them up from the airport at 8am - thus began the love affair with Wellington.

Saturday was sight-seeing day. We went to Mt Victoria, Oriental Bay, Lambton Quay, Civic Centre, Te Papa and Botanical Gardens. We saw the Beehive, that stupid Platform 9 3/4 sign at the Railway Station, the giant floating silver ball, my workplace, a large umbrella.... we ate lots of delicious things too. We had brunch at the Parade Cafe (I had been there with Andy, Nat and Jono before) where we totally indulged on far too much bacon, corn fritters, eggs and divine chocolate cake and carrot cake.

Sunday I took them to Central Baptist where they were treated with scones ("I approve!" said Alice). They can report back to KCC and tell everyone how I'm doing :p We went for yum char after that, at Majestic Cuisine, where we insisted on tofu fa, mango pudding, and durian pastries. I also took them shopping down Cuba Street and Lambton Quay, and that was rather excruiating. We had a simple dinner - two wood oven pizzas from Maverick's, just down the road. This was in anticipation of epic dessert at Strawberry Fare, where we ordered far too much and I had to force myself to consume the entire lemon cheesecake that I had ordered (It was delicious). They also met everyone from the Estate and the Hub - we hung out for a bit at the Hub.

But the worst of the shopping had yet to come, as we went to Dress Smart in Tawa. Geez. Haha nah it was alright. There were some cool non-clothing shops there that had interesting things (like a sim card backup device for $2 or something like that, or giant candles shaped like Chess pieces). We had a quick bite at KFC before heading back to Valley Girl on Willis, where we saw Auntie Su, Yining and Liann. Then it was a quick walk up Lambton Quay and Cuba Street again, before heading home to pack. We ended the weekend of awesome food by going to Great India on Courtenay, where, again, we ate far too much.

It's been a really good weekend! And we have more visitors this weekend too \o/

Yeah I suppose I've been a bit slack when it comes to blogging. I spent the past week working on the most awesome Pokemon Snap section on the INTERNETS!!! EXCLUSIVE TO PSYPOKE!!!!!!!

Anyway, the whole flat went to watch Indiana Jones last Saturday. It was very action-packed, by the post-movie analysis proved there was very little plot, bits of cheese, and many holes and inconsistencies. But as I said, the whole point of the movie is to be so enthralling that you forget about all these things, and it did, so it was okay in that respect. I wouldn't pay to see it again though.

On Sunday, we went to Karori Baptist for a visit. The service was...um...different, and very friendly. Too friendly. Jono and I were glad to escape. We met with Andrew, John and Bjorn at this cafe in Kelburn, where we waited over an hour for some epic delicious food. Of course I took pictures - check the gallery.

Hmm, I haven't blogged in ages. Oh well, here goes:

Firstly, I've made some changes to the gallery, so you can post some comments about the photos I've uploaded. There's a summary of the comments posted so far on the right-hand side, so you can see the most recent ones.

Secondly, I've uploaded photos I took last week, covering events like Heong's Graduation, Jane's Birthday, and the Wellington Food Show. The Food Show was absolutely delicious - a must for next year! There are also three Graduation Photoshop pictures for you to see :3

I've had a pretty damn awesome week. I got to spend time with family and friends, eat lots of delicious food (that I took pictures of, don't worry) and I graduated in two degrees that were the result of four years' hard work and divine intervention.

Fantastic.

I spent all of Wednesday with Debs. We went to see Iron Man, which was rather disappointing in my opinion. The story and the villain was predictable, the fight scene was short...and the physics were completely wrong. Also,
1. Build robot arm and leg.
2. ???
3. SUCCESSFUL ROBOT!
I got to spend some time on the Internet (which explains the rushed post below this one) before we went for dinner at St. Tropez. We shared escargot; I had a nicely done steak for mains and a tart au citron for dessert - she had braised duck and creme brulée.

I wanted to meet up with Casey and Jesse on Thursday, but neither of them were in. Instead I spent half the day fixing the Internets for my dad, since he'd decided to ditch Woosh for ihug. I spent the rest of the day catching up with friends and lecturers at Uni, before going with the family to Mikano in Mechanics Bay for dinner. Tom wasn't working there that day. Whether this is fortunate or unfortunate is for you to decide. But the dinner was nice and dessert was superb - I had another steak and a nut trifle. Trifles for the win, seriously.

Friday graduation brought about some weather uncertainty. Andrew picked me up before picking Deanna up. We were a bit strapped for time, so he decided to drop me at Uni so I could rush in for the Maths breakfast. And what a delicious breakfast it was as well - there were fruit kebabs and toasted croissants and danish pastries and garghharg*drool*. There was also some champagne but I decided to take the sober route for the day.

I rushed to the CompSci breakfast two floors above and to my delight I managed to swipe the last custard tart as I entered. It was good seeing lots of people I knew and catching up with more of my lecturers - telling them I'd gotten my dream job, and thanks for putting me through all of that, and so on. Many thanks to Ann for including Python in the CS111 cirriculum, it has become quite useful at work :p

Rain threatened to cancel the procession at 9.30am but a window of opportunity arose and we quickly marched down to the Town Hall, a bit wet, but still jovial. Upon arrival, who should we find but HSIN-YAO?!, who had previously not existed for the past three years or so. We have pictures as proof, in case you don't believe us.

Trudging back up to Uni, I took some photos with some of my lecturers and old Clock Tower workmates, before heading to the Science brunch for some delicious chocolate cake, and finally to Albert Park for some more photos with the youth. It was all too short lived as we rushed down to the Town Hall again for the ceremony. Mad props to Andrew for high-fiving the chancellor!

Dinner was with my CompSci friends at Santa Lucia in Mission Bay. It was a really good atmosphere, with live music and dancing. I was in such a good mood that I asked Debs for a dance. Only to be refused. But apparently Amy was keen, so I tried to teach her some Ceroc moves without looking too uncoordinated, and it seemed quite good O_o So hooray for that. We migrated to Amy's house for 4 hours of mafia (again, I was promptly killed in the second game I played. I blame you, Casey!!).

I spent Saturday with Mat, Tom and Richard, playing Ticket to Ride in the afternoon, then heading for dinner with the CSC + Mat and Richard at Jimmy Wong's on Lorne Street in the city. It's some kind of fusion east-west place, and I had some wagyu beef which was really disappointing. My parents can cook better stir-fry than that. Unsatisfied, we went to the dessert place next to the Civic Centre for some ice cream and pearl milk tea (I had a double scoop of mango and cheesecake ice cream!).

Sunday was a chance to say goodbye to the youth group. It was a Mothers' Day service, then a quick lunch at New Lynn Shopping Mall, before spending some time with Debs and then my family. We rushed to the airport at 7pm, to find out my flight had been cancelled...engineering problems, or something. I was really lucky to get a flight at 9pm on Air New Zealand, for no extra cost. What's more, my luggage was overweight so I had to stuff some clothes into hand luggage. So while the flight was a bit chaotic to start with, I managed to get back to cold, cold Wellington without further troubles.

I wish I could relive this week again. :3

Commerce graduation was fantastic. The forecast was set for 100% chance of rain, but all we saw were magnificent blue skies and mostly sun, although some very brief overcast moments provided some relief from the heat.

Anyway, the day didn't quite start off as planned - I woke up at 8am instead of the planned 6.45am and ended up missing the Commerce breakfast (which wasn't that great anyway, I heard). I still arrived in time for the procession and it was a nice walk to the town hall. Since I was in the first ceremony, we went straight in and sat down.

The ceremony didn't take too long, and we were soon out taking pictures with parents and friends before heading to China for yum char. And it was a pretty good yum char, but not as good as Majestic Cuisine in Wellington. Following that, it was up to Albert Park and Business School for more pictures, and then a quiet night at home.

Phew.

I shall be more prepared and energetic for Friday's graduation.

I am taking a break from packing... I'm trying to pack light so I can take some nice-to-haves back to Wellington like Pictionary, possibly Cranium (although Suni has Cranium already), a badminton racquet and possibly a shelf (A small one, of course).

Congrats to John and Wei for graduating in a Bachelor of Engineering today - I'm glad the weather held out during the day! Hopefully it'll fine up next week.

See you guys in Auckland soon! *sneaks off to play DotA*

It was Andrew's birthday yesterday, so we made an expedition to Matiu/Somes Island in the middle of Wellington Harbour for a walkabout and a picnic. Really awesome weather, the skies were blue and the sun was out in full April force. We got to see some wildlife as well, including some skinks, a fantail and a robin. And sheep, sheep are cute :3 Pictures in the gallery.

Dave had his birthday earlier in the week as well; Jono and I had homegroup so we joined the gang afterwards - just in time for delicious cake, I might add.

Only another week to go before I'm back in Auckland \o/

Last weekend was the Armageddon Pulp Expo at Wellington's TSB Bank Arena. While I'm not a big fan of comics, sci-fi, anime and wrestling, Armageddon still has a decent gaming presence and I was there to catch Super Smash Bros Brawl and, of course, the best racing game ever, Speed Racer.

Bumped into Peter today. He just arrived to start work on Tuesday. He's probably reading this. I met John for Burgerfuel and the three of us went to HK BBQ for milk tea.

The three flats met up at Calzone (again) for some coffee and dessert. While it was not the best in the world, it was certainly delicious and droolworthy.



We were also joined by Tom, who had flown down from Auckland for something to do with the tramping club this weekend.

Calzone were closing up, so we migrated across the road to HK BBQ. And there's only one thing we go to HK BBQ for.



Yum :3 Still not as good as Momo's, and we got booted out at midnight. Sigh. And they say the Wellington night life is better than Auckland's.

I slept at work today :O Legitimately, you could say. Basically, we're shifting the place around so that people in project teams are closer to each other, and it's easier to communicate or whatever. Anyway, shifting means unplugging computer; unplugging computer means I can't do work; if I have no work to do... I sleep :O



After work, I met up with the others at Char Bar for the pub quiz. We didn't do too badly this time round: our name was In Soviet Russia, Quiz Answers You!. And we weren't DFL either, so that was great.

We decided to end the night by having rock melon milk tea with pearls at HK BBQ.

We resolved on Friday night that we would go for yum char, since some of us hadn't been in a long time; or in the case of Jono, never been at all.

We chose to go to Majestic Cuisine, since it's such good value for money and the quality is pretty much up there. We had so much food.. prawn dumplings, scallop dumplings, vegetable dumplings, siew mai, rice noodle, char siu bao, glutinous rice, deep fried squid, pork ribs, pork pastries, mango pudding, tofu fa, custard buns, coconut cubes...simply awesome. However, there were not enough egg tarts and no more durian pastries :(



We had so much fun that Jane and Andrew could not contain themselves.



The rest of the day was spent napping and playing... DotA! Yay! :D

IT REOPENED HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

So yeah, I went into town with John to grab a few things, such as Burgerfuel, a clothes rack, and a sympathy card. I wanted to get a haircut too, but I didn't find anywhere suitable.

Anyway, that night, we had a potluck dinner with the other two flats. Man, it dragged on for a whle *_* But the food was really good: I contributed some prawn-cuttlefish ball-onion and capsicum kebabs, we also had roast pork, roast chicken, roast vegetables, salad, garlic bread, chips and dips...and ice cream and fruit salad to finish.
In other news, I got to play on the keyboard \o/ and we also watched Dirty Dancing /o\

IT REOPENED HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

So yeah, I was a bit late home last night because I went out with Jono, Sunita, Jane and Paul. We went to Calzone, this cafe on the corner of Courtenay Street and Cambridge Terrace and just hung out. I had a honey-roasted chicken fettucine. Then we migrated to HK BBQ across the road for some taro milk tea:



By the time I got home, it was midnight and I called my parents (timezones, you know) and spoke to them for an hour or so. I swear, everytime I call them, there is ALWAYS a mention of "this absolutely delicious thing we had the other day. It was so good. If only you were here." -.-

Instead of Ceroc, me, Jono and John (The three J's) went to a pub quiz on Wednesday. Our team name completely and perfectly described the events that night.



Anyway, today I completed a program in Python, which is rather new to me. My exposure to Python consists of CompSci111 lab exercises that require you to figure out the area and circumference of a circle or to create a random number guessing game. But Python is a neat language, I've yet to fully discover its benefits and quirks. I still don't really like that indentation thing though.

I might have an epic update for tomorrow. We'll see...

Someone on my project team left the company on Friday, so we had a thing for him to celebrate his time at Sidhe. As usual, we had our obligatory company trivia quiz, and since he was from Norway, the inevitable question was "Who created the fjords in Norway?". No, my team didn't get it right. Yes, I'm sorry.

Anyway, here's a photo of some of the events that transpired that night. It was a balloon popping game.



On Saturday, I binged on a $6 bag of sour gummi lollies, including sour apple rings, sour watermelon rings, sour peach rings and sour coke bottles. And two mega snakes. Insert diabetes here.

On Saturday night we went to the other flat for a cultured wine and cheese night. To some people's dismay, there was more cheese than wine, but Bjorn didn't seem to mind. It was a really good night, despite the cacophony that was John and Matt talking in French.

Today I went with Jono to Central Baptist for a proper service, and yeah it was really good. I think I'll stay. I even managed to slip in that I was interested in the piano ¬_¬ And we're looking to join a home group as well. I guess we'll see how that goes.

I TTLY LUVZ FACEBOOK I CAN POKE YOU LOLZ DO U WANT TO POKE PERSON BACK U CAN WRITE ON MY WALL AND DRAW DOODLEZ TOO YAY FACEBOOK *~*!**~^_^ ^_^*~*!**~

EDIT: Click here for a recollection of the day

Okay well, firstly I got my new glasses today for 50% off the normal price because OPSM are awesome.

Secondly, I was walking out of my building when I saw the bus drive by, so I hurried to the bus stop and managed to catch it in time. As I stepped on the bus...I saw three very familiar faces walk down the footpath.

Richie McCaw, Dan Carter and Ali Williams.

WWWWWWWWWWWAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH