Eugene's view on things

09 Perth city to Surf Annual Fun Run

2010-04-28T20:23:00.004+08:00

Well, its time I update my blog again after more than a month of stagnation.

Looking through some of the photos I had taken, it seems like I forgot to blog about the time when I participated in the Annual Perth City to Surf fun run.

The run starts from close to the heart of Perth city to the City Beach, and there were various options such as 16km, 8km run and 4 km run.

Since I had not train for this, I took it easy and went for the easiest option.

The 4km run starts in one of the suburbs closer to the finish line. The traffic going to the start line was pretty bad, but there were ample parking for those who are prepared to pay for it.

After I sorted my parking, I followed the masses to the start line. Its been a while since I last seen so many people at one place at the same time.

There were so many people that it took me 15 mins just to cross the start line after the start of the race.

Looking at the photo above, its obvious that the 4km run/walks were catered more for families. Maybe this year I'll try the 8 Kms.

It was a bit frustrating trying to clock a good time when there's so many people around blocking the way.

Fair to say when I reached the finish line, my time was pretty embarrassing. Some of my mates that did the 8km run were only a few minutes behind me.

Despite the poor finish, everyone was a winner that day. Everyone that participated and appeared at the finish line were given medals and merchandise.

Sometimes I wish I work for a big company as most of them have corporate tents with BBQ and and live entertainment.

There was a stage for the prize giving, and apparently some Aussie celebrity was there. Since I am still pretty new here, I have no idea who they were.

There you have it, if you are in Perth when the City to Surf fun run is on, its definitely worth doing if you are fit. The 16 and 8km runs were along the Swan river and the view throughout the run is simply amazing.

Perth Hail Storm 22 March 2010

2010-03-29T00:34:00.000+08:00

Just when I thought Perth is an uninteresting place, last week the heavens opened up and dumped its load ending what seems to be a 6 months drought.

Usually when its forecast-ed to rain here, it's pretty much a non-event with only a light drizzle at night that hardly gets noticed. But last Monday, it was different. Halfway through my afternoon meeting, the electricity went out and it started raining cats and dogs.

The rain came down with such fury that my street was flooded within 10 minutes.

Trees were falling in Kings park around cars,

This was followed by hail, and unlike any hail I'd experienced, these suckers were big, some of them close to 60mm in diameter.

Do not let the photos fool you. The sky was clear only for a brief moment after the first arsenal from the heavens. The heavier storms were just rolling in as I was driving home.

Extremely heavy rain soon followed and there were water everywhere. I could see people trapped in the rising water.. like this poor cyclist in Leederville.

Visibility on the freeway was very bad and there were traffic jam everywhere,

There were a few occasion when the hail came down with the heavy rain, and being stuck in traffic means that there's no where to run. The sound of the car being pelted with big tennis ball-sized hail was indeed a new experience for me. There were cars around me with their screens being smashed in..

Fair to say, I tried a different route through the city, to avoid having the same fate as the car above.

Wellington street was flooded, and so was Adelaide Tce, the main street that passes through the city.

It was a long and anxious drive home, anxious because I am curious what damage my car sustained from the hail. However, thank god I made it home safely. Lots of cars were stalled on the way home, but I was lucky.

I was stuck outside my house because there were no electricity for my garage door to work, so i took a photo of a rainbow.

The electricity didn't come back until a day later, and the heavy weather left Perth in a mess.

The media reported that this 4 hour storm caused more than 108 million worth of damage.

This is not hard to believe because a lot of cars and building were damaged, and the electricity was out for up to a week in some places.

Photos of hail damage from car yards were circulating around

I feel for the owner of this Porsche, all the panels had dimples from the hail.

I used to think they were exaggerating when they say Australia is a land of extreme, now I actually think its true.

Oh yeah, my car had a few dimples too.. but its a cheap car :)

Thoughts..and Fremantle Wharf..

2010-03-13T22:53:00.001+08:00

Its hot and muggy, been doing heaps over the past few months, but unfortunately my Sony Ericsson T650 died so i didn't take any photos. Perth still feels really new to me and i am still coming to terms with the fact that I'd left NZ and all my cars. I still feel quite foreign here and deep down, I still call NZ home.

Reality is, its time to move on, so i am trying really hard to make Perth my new home. I think I am still too new here to really appreciate Perth. I miss my Kiwi friends and the down to earth ways we get about doing our own things.

Times like this I would go for a drive and try to walk off my homesickness...

I drove for a while and ended up at Fremantle Wharf where the museum is. It was past 5pm, so the museum was close. Behind the museum, I noticed a big, matte black, gear knob shaped structure and decided to check it out.

It turns out that its the nose of a submarine that is usually part of the museum tour.

The submarine was pretty impressive. I am sure it is mentioned in some tourist brochure somewhere, but I prefer to stumble upon things this way, i think it keeps life interesting.

Further down the wharf, there was an old school sail boat called Leuwin.. something like that.

It was just docked there when i was there but from the looks of things, I think it takes visitors out on a cruise quite often.

I'd decided to take the long way home and drove through Kings park, Perth indeed is beautiful,.. maybe one day I can call Perth home

Out and about Perth-Mountain biking at Goat Farm

2010-01-26T01:10:00.002+08:00

Hello world.. my procrastination has reached epic proportion and i thought I should at least blog again to let you know that I am alive and well. Thanks Fred for giving me the nudge that I obviously need to get off my lazy ass and start blogging again.

I'd been bored and not been cycling much since I bought my AE71 corolla. However, while surfing youtube, I came across this clip;

Although it is a BMX clip, it instantly got me motivated again. I chucked my bike in my old corolla and headed towards the hills (Goat farm.) Apparently Goat Farm is a popular mountain biking venue.

Truth be told, I am a very lousy Mountainbiker. I only got into it because some of my NZ friends were into it but shortly after I bought a decent bike, most of them left NZ. I only went to Woodhill in NZ less than 10 times, so my skills were close to non-existant. (one of my friend actually went to Portugal to build a mountain bike track, how cool is that?)

There were downhill tracks at this mountain biking venue, but being a pansy, I chose the cross country route that rode around the park. Initially the trail was pretty easy

But it got progressively rougher, with big rocks everywhere

riding uphill over these rocks proved to be too much for me, i was powering over the rocks until one of the bigger rocks got the better of me and I flew over the handle bars

Unfortunately I did not see that there were barb wires in the bush. Luckily for me only my leg got cut.

I think once I get medicare here, I'll look into getting my tetanus shot up to date.

Eventually, I reached the top, you can see Perth city in a distance from there..

Going down was easy, I let gravity do its thing until I came across this

Well, unfortunately for me, I took one of the corner too sheepishly (yeap, I applied the brakes when I saw the drop,) i should have harden up and power through the corner. Again, i went over the handle bars and scrapped myself on the top edge of the drop.

Luckily my bike didn't fall over the edge.

It was then that I started to ride a bit more conservatively seeing that the bike track was very close to the edge

Over the course of the day, I had a few other nasty falls, and more cuts and scrapes

Overall, the mountain bike trail was not as great as Woodhill in Auckland,NZ, but its fun none-the-less . I would do it again, but i guess Its better going with someone else who is better than myself to show me the ropes.

Anyone in Perth keen to head out there? send me a msg. :)

Out and About Western Australia- Lane Poole camping prt 2

2009-09-01T08:47:00.001+08:00

As we continued our trip, the road got dustier and dustier,

The road surface was actually red dirt, and are very notorious for becoming dusty really fast and sticking on cars, we had to keep our distance to ensure that we can still brake effectively. I'd seen quite a number of Kangaroos appearing out of nowhere, and unlike possums or rabbits, hitting a Kangaroo can do serious damage.

When we arrived at Lane Poole, we were greeted by park marshals asking for a park entry fee of $6.50 per person at the gates. Upon handling over the money, we were given a park map and also a rubbish bag.

We decided to camp at Charlies flat because it had provisions for having a camp fire. There are other camp grounds like Chudith that does not allow open fires but has a sheltered BBQ area.

Anyway, we got there around noon and it was pouring down, so we hasten our effort to set up tents,

I'd bought along my giant inflatable flip flop to use as an air mattress.. again, having an old car was great, I need not worry about scratches :)

Since the ground was wet, we decided to check out Chuditch sheltered BBQ area and prepared our lunches.

After lunch, we went for a walk around Chuditch, the view was ok..

As the night drew closer, we prepared for dinner back at our Charlies flat camp ground

We started a fire in the fire pit, everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves.

The fire pit was well setup with a pivotable tray for cooking.

Cooking around a camp fire was indeed challenging as we could not see what we were cooking,

The night was really cold and with the sky being cloudy, it was really dark. At 9.30pm, we thought it was midnight. After playing a few camping games and telling stories, we went to bed. This was the view inside my tent.. pretty cool huh?

The night was really cold and I was really glad i had my air mattress to keep the cold from coming up from the ground. I was also lucky in that I had a double layer tent with an inner netting. In the morning, the interior of the tent wall was covered with condensate and it kept the water from dripping on me.

The next day, we explored the area, and found that the Nanga Mill campsite was heaps better than the one we were at.. arghh.. such is life...

We also did the King Jarrah walk, It was not as interesting as I hoped it would be. Its pretty much walking though some short tree forest for hours and hours with no interesting lookout or geographical feature. I guess coming from New Zealand, hiking here just do not seem that nice.

Anyway, as we finished the loop, we reached Nanga Falls,

The waterfall was not what I'd expected, its more like a drain. I was expecting a waterfall that I could at least go for a dip. To put it into prespective,..

Yeap, its pretty small.

Anyway, Camping in Lane Poole was great but that's about it.

Out and About Western Australia- Driving to Dwellingup (Lane Poole camping prt 1)

2009-08-11T09:14:00.000+08:00

After all those effort getting the car into shape, It's only fitting to take it out for a drive, so I rounded up some of my new friends in Perth and headed to Lane Poole ( a camp site not far from Perth,) close to Dwellingup.

Seeing that this was an overnight camping trip, we started early and filled the car with supplies and camping gears

The trusty corolla has an average size boot, but we still managed to utilize every inch of it.

The drive was rather sceanic, but it's nothing compared to New Zealand.

The drive to Dwellingup took about an hour and 30 mins, it was a great felling driving the old car.. reminds me of my childhood times when my mum had one of these,

When we arrived at Dwellingup, we had a toilet stop. Both of my other friends' cars were Toyota Camrys. My car sure looked old in the photo below.

We'd decided to visit the info centre since the toilet was just next to it. It had this scary sculpture with a guy and an axe in front of it, made from welded scrap metal.

: Dwellingup information centre

Apparently Dwellingup used to be a prisoner's camp, and they had a very big fire and there were quite a few casualties. As such, inside the info centre, they had this old Mack fire engine.

The photo does not actually convey the size of te thing. The wheels of the fire engine was actually as high as my my hip.

Anyway, seeing that we are on our way to a camping trip, we started to make up stories about ghosts, and how the scary scuplture will come to life and hack us to bits at night.. but we soon realize how immature that was and we moved on.

The road to the camp site was actually unpaved,

Times like this I was glad that I had an old car and not something new and precious..

To be continued....

Fixing the Mighty AE71 Corolla-Changing the Timing belt and tuning

2009-07-20T22:21:00.002+08:00

I don't know how the other bloggers find the motivation to blog as often as they do, especially when they have a proper job. I think its to do with dicipline, which is something I must work on. I am usually really easily distracted and checking something on the net usually result in hours and hours wasted browsing the net.

Anyway, in continuation with my previous 2 posts, and possibly the last one I will do about fixing my car, this post as per the title is about changing the timing belt. When I got the car, the mileage on the car was about 230,000 kms. Usually the timing belt should be changed every 80 to 100 thousand kms, and seeing the condition of the car, I doubt that the timing belt was changed when it clicked over the 200 thousand kms mark.

I bought a timing belt kit from a local auto shop Repco, surprisingly they still keep stock of these kit even though the car is 25 years old.

The item on the left is a crank pulley puller. Normally the crank pulley is seized on the crank shaft that a minor tap is not sufficient to loosen it, hence a puller is required.

Before removing the crank pulley, all the belts connected to it were removed, including the clutch operated thermo fan normally attached to the water pump.

When I tried to fit the crank pulley puller on the crank pulley, I realized that the radiator was too close to it, so I removed the radiator to clear some space

This is how you use a crank pulley puller :)

A quick turn on the middle threaded shaft will pull the pulley away from the crank shaft.

Anyway, the timing belt on the car was indeed a bit worn. It was a genuine Toyota item and small cracks were starting to appear on the face of the belt

Good thing I was bored and decided to change the timing belt, otherwise if the belt breaks while the engine is running, the engine would have been a writeoff.

After taking off the crank pulley, I removed the lower timing belt cover, cleaned it and marked the numbers with a white marker so that when I tune the car, I can see where the timing is at.

Normally, before taking the timing belt out, the proper way to change the timing belt is to turn the engine until all the marks on the cam wheel and the crank pulley points to TDC (top dead centre,) but I was lazy. Since I had my white marker with me, I marked the old belt and the position on the cam wheels, and then transfered the markings on the old belt to the new belt by counting the teeth, and fitted the new belt on. This way the fitment of the new belt should be as per the old belt.

After fitting the new tensioner and idler pulley, I reassemble the covers, pulleys, the belts and the radiator.The car is back to its usual self again. I can now drive on the freeway with the engine singing away, and not worry about the engine letting go.

I also bought a timing gun, dwell meter and a vaccum gauge for setting the timing and also adjusting the carburettor to ensure that the car runs optimally.

I realize most readers are probably bored with my car fixing blog, so I guess I'll skip that bit.

The car runs great now, but still guzzle a bit of fuel (13L/100kms,) not sure if thats normal, maybe cars around that era are not that efficient.

Fixing the Mighty AE71 Corolla-changing brake hoses

2009-07-09T09:07:00.000+08:00

After discovering that the brake hoses were perishing while changing the inner tie rod, I started to have this horrific thought that the brake hose might pop every time I apply the brakes. I guess i could always rip the handbrake and let the car spin to a halt should that actually happen.

Anyway, just to be on the safe side, I bought some brake hoses, brake fluids and a bleeder kit to change the hoses.

While changing the hoses, I realized there was only one brake hose in the rear, so I returned the extra hose that I bought.

The rear brake hose did not perish like the front brake hoses, but it was very stiff, so I changed it anyway.

Removing all the brake hoses didn't take long. All the hoses seemed to have hardened in some way or the other. The front brake hoses were particularly bad as the braided portion were starting to show

The front brake hoses were in 2 sections, but the one I bought only came in a single length. The coupling in the middle of the front brake hoses fitted into a bracket on the strut.

Since the hoses I bought didn't have any attachment points, I decided to use grommets in the bracket to prevent the hoses from being ripped to shreds by the bracket.

After fitting all the hoses, I topped up the brake fluid reservoir and bled the brakes from the furthest to the brake closest to the brake master cylinder.

I hosed off any excess brake fluid under the car and took the car for a spin.

The brake peddle felt really firm when depressed now, and its good to have that peace of mind again.

Fixing the mighty AE71 Corolla-steering tie rods

2009-07-06T21:12:00.000+08:00

My AE71 corolla seems to have a mind of its own when driven fast (100km/h) on the freeway, not to mention the 3 speed automatic seems to be geared a bit short making the engine sing along at that speed. The corolla would sway left and right and a turn of the steering wheel of up to 25 degrees would yield no response, making driving the car a bit challenging if not scary.

Thinking this was not normal, I crawled under the car and have a look, and low and behold, the right steering boot looked like this,

The left steering boot was no better.

Perth's soil is mainly sand and God only knows how long ago the boots let go.

For those of you who are not familiar with the mechanics of a car, the steering boot protects the tie rod from dusts and other contaminants. If contaminants manage to get its way into the tie rod, it would wear out the ball part of it. Simply put, the wear will cause sloppyness in the joint and this in turn causes play in the steering. Easy.

Jacking up the car and wiggling the front tires revealed that there was significant play in the steering joints.

Time to take things apart to fix it. First, I removed the wheels. (i made sure the car was securely on jack stands and the tires were under the sill, those who know me will know I had a bad experience with a car falling on me breaking my right arm about 2 years ago.)

Next I removed the outer tie rod bolt connecting the steering to the steering knuckle,

Then I used a tie rod remover to remove the tie rod from the steering knuckle (its amazing how tight taper fit can get. )

Once the tie rod taper "pop-ed," i marked the inner threaded sleeve of the outer tie rod and removed the clamping nut that keeps the thread from undoing.

Removing the outer tie rod and the torn steering boot revealed the worn inner tie rod. Yeap, that's the steering rack that its attached to.

To remove the tie rod, I had to straighten the locking washer,

Once the washer was straightened, I undid the inner tie rod from the steering rack using an adjustable spanner.

See what I mean, the grease in the tie rod was missing and there was significant play in the ball joint

I purchased a pair of new tie rods from WA suspension. The Repco and Supercheap autos that I went to didn't have the tie rod listed in their catalog for some reason.

Before fitting the new tie rods, I applied some thread locker to the threads to ensure they do not come apart.

The new tie rod was tight.

To protect the new inner tie rod, I also fitted some new steering boots.

I then bolted everything back. There was no more play in the steering now.

unfortunately, or fortunately depends on how you see it.. I discovered another problem,

The brake hoses were severely worn. Its hard to believe cars like this is still allowed on the road without periodic check. In NZ, WOF check would have detected all these issues. No wonder there were heaps of broken down cars on the side of the road here.

Anyway, I'll change it next time as I have to buy the hoses first.

Back to the Tie rod change. Since I changed the length of the steering tie rod, this would affect the Toe setting of the car. I placed some useless flyers under the front wheels as slip plates and use an old school tape measure method to set the to back to 0 degrees.

The car drives straight and steering was tight. The difference was night and day, and the car is so much safer to drive now.

Out and about Perth- Sculpture by the sea

2009-06-11T22:48:00.000+08:00

Back in March, My friend Liz came over from Adelaide for a visit (Check her blog out, apparently she started her blog after reading mine, and her's looks so much more advanced than mine now.)

Since I got my cheap run around car, I thought it would be a nice gesture to show her around Perth, and coincidently, Sculpture by the Sea was in town that weekend.

If memory serves me right, it was a particularly hot day, and the beach was really crowded.

I felt a bit embarrassed that my old clapper didn't have a working air conditioner, but luckily Liz was a cool sport and didn't complain at all.

Sculpture by the beach featured lots of very big artwork littered all over the beach, some of them were really hard to distinguish from junk, such as these burnt out containers

Others were quite obvious, such as this big trike made from tin, yeap that's me in the photo.

My personal favorite was this big watch, the strap was actually rusted steel but it looked the part, yeap, that's me again cam wh0ring

One other notable art piece was this big pencil. Despite having a "do not touch sign," the kids continued to touch it.. I always wondered how they anchor the pencil on soft sand, as it was pointy. It would be interesting if it fell.

Anyway, Perth was recently rated as the 5th most livable city in the world. I guess with free art shows like this (not including the $15 brochure explaining the artwork,) and free movies by the river, its not hard to believe.

Bought an AE71 Corolla..

2009-05-23T21:26:00.004+08:00

My time as of late had been spent fixing up a car that I bought for $600AUD.

Yeap, its a 1984 toyota Corolla AE71, with 1.6L 4A-C (Carburetted) Engine. The shape of the car is the same as the corolla DX or KE70, but with a different engine.

For a price cheaper than my bicycle, I thought it was a great buy. Sure the car blows a bit of smoke during startup, but it didn't smoke much when i am driving around and it still pulls hard for a 1.6L

The interior is surprisingly clean for a 25 year old car.

Unfortunately its an automatic. That means no happy skids for me (the corolla is a Rear wheel Drive). This could be a blessing though, as I had a history of over modifying cars and spending a fortune on them.

As for the body of the car, well, if you are not familiar with the corolla DX, AE71 or KE70 (chassis code,) its probably one of the squarest cars around and it almost seemed like the designer used a ruler to draw the car up.

There was a bit of rust on the body, but nothing structural, the rust were mainly at the bottom of the passenger door, below the fuel flap and on the rear arches.

The front seemed to have a light ding, which is why the bumper isn't that straight. Same goes for the rear.

Anyway, I do see potential with this car.. there are possibility that i could change the front to an early model japanese quad headlight variant and drop a 4age (injected) with manual gearbox into the car in the future. And possibly drop the car and put some deep dish rims on it, similar to an Australian example here.

That is the ultimate old school look that i will be going for if i do keep this car.

Why would i do that? well, because it has a potential to drift

Toffe Apple with a hint of JDM from MeZ Productions on Vimeo.

Eating Out-Big Bowl Noodle House, Northbridge Perth

2009-04-30T00:21:00.002+08:00

Perth has quite a lot of Asian food places for a small city. Quite a number of them are located in Northbridge, just across the railway tracks from the city.

One weekend, after walking around Northbridge around noon time, we decided to give Big Bowl Noodle House (408 William Street Northbridge,) a try.

The shop front was nothing spectacular, in fact, it looks really boring and tacky.

As per the shop name, the shop's specialty was noodle soup, but what makes this noodle house different from the rest was that they make their own noodle. Upon entering the shop, 3 noodle making machines can be seen sitting on the right hand side of the kitchen. There were signs not to take photos of the machines, so I didn't take any close up photos of them.

The menu was a simple laminated paper.

We had to wait outside and make up our mind what we wanted as this shop was really packed on the weekends. I always have this belief that a good restaurant is one which there are lots of people in it, and this one surely fitted that criteria. lets hope the food is as good as its hyped up to be.

I can't remember the exact name of the dish I ordered, as this was a few months back, I think its "wat tan hor fun."

My friend had a simpler fired noodle,

Yeap, the food tasted as good as it looked. I rate the food slightly higher than average. Not too bad for the price too. However, the portion served was a bit smaller than what I used to get in similar noodle houses in New Zealand.

Eating in this noodle house sort of reminded me of some of the common noodle houses in Malaysia. Overall, i recommend it.

Out and about- LotteryWest floating films

2009-04-21T00:23:00.000+08:00

Wow, I'd been quite a slacker as of late. I just had a quick look at my blog and I realized that I had not been updating my blog for a month now. Anyway, life is still the same here, still looking for that elusive professional work, joined a church group, brought a cheap car ( will blog about this later as i spent a lot of time on it.)

Anyway, back to what I was going to blog about.

I heard that there was a free movie by the swan river called the LotteryWest floating films- part of the Perth Festival 09 events (Perth international arts festival) back in March s0 I went to checked it out. According to their website, there were 3 free screenings, and I attended the one at the Riverside Gardens, Bayswater.

I arrived at the venue about an hour early to secure a spot directly in front of the floating screen.

Surprisingly, there were not much people there then despite it being a free event.

As the time grew closer to the screening time, more and more people came..

Being part of the arts festival, there were musicians there playing the bongo drums and some arty farty people on stilts walking amongst the crowd.

As the sun sets, the breeze started to pick up and it was really pleasant, for once there were no flies around. The movie started on time and being a family event, they showed a japanese cartoon called " kiki delivery service." Despite being out doors, the sound was really well set up and the visuals were really clear.

Overall, it was a very well organized event and a great evening out.

After being in Perth for 6 months, I think Perth is a great place to be. I initially thought its going to be a boring place, but there are heaps of free things like what I just blogged about, it just takes a bit of time to look them up. I also went to another event a few weeks ago called, "music under the moonlight" which again was a free event. Again the crowd was not overly huge, the event well run and there were no rowdy people in sight.

New Toy- Dahon Folding bike

2009-03-20T02:16:00.000+09:00

When my other half came early February, I didn't have a car and i figured I'll get her a bike so we can cycle together.

She initially tried riding my bike but she said the top tube was a bit too high and since she never had the privilege of riding a bike growing up in Hong Kong, learning on my bike was a bit daunting for her.

So off I go researching on the net as to what's the best bike for her to learn on, something that is low and small. I read on a famous Singaporean blogger's blog, MrBrown, that he had some folding bikes and they fit the bill. They looked funky too.

I checked the prices on these bikes at a local bike shop, unfortunately, for some reason, bike shops in Perth seem to put quite a large margin on their bikes, maybe they thought that because of Perth being the most isolated city in the world, they can do that.

So I'd decided to buy it online. I tracked down a website that's in Sydney that sell these bikes called Cellbikes.

They had the Dahon range of folding bikes too, and naturally because this was going to be a beginners bike, I bought the cheapest Dahon bike there, the Dahon 2009 Eco 3, for $449AUD. Cell bikes also had a promotion going on when I bought the bike, ie if i purchase more than $500AUD worth of stuff, shipping is free. Since it worked out cheaper for me to buy a helmet, locks, and lights at the same time rather than paying for postage, I added those to my cart.

1.5 weeks later, this arrived at my flat.

It was well packaged and quite small too compared to the packaging my Ghost bike came in.

Upon unboxing the bike, i noticed that all my side orders were neatly packaged and jammed into the Dahon box.

The helmet and the lights looked awesome, and come prepackaged with batteries!!

Anyway, the main course was yet to come. The Dahon box has a reminder that the bike needs adjustments prior to riding for safety reason.

I was curious as to how a bicycle can come in such a small package, and upon opening the box, it was almost unreal how they can fold the bike so compactly.

Pulling the bike out of the box...

The bike was partially assembled, all that was required was inserting the seat post into the bike frame, fitting the pedals and twisting of the gear change cable to ensure a smooth shifting of all 6 speed gears. 5 mins later...Ta DAA

The bike was a bit twitchy to ride compared to my bike because of the small 20" rims. My other half likes it heaps and she was riding it low rider stylez...

Anyway, another thing i read on the net was that these Dahon bikes can fit into a $1 IKEA bag...unfortunately, I think that only applies to the 16" wheels version.

Oh yeah, I bunny hopped the bike and because its really light weight, I get quite a bit of pop out of it.. obviously my other half did not see the fun side to it and was a bit upset that i was abusing her bike. Anyway, hopefully she will learn how to ride soon so we can terrorize the neighborhood. :)

Out and about- Perth Markets

2009-03-11T09:11:00.000+09:00

As some of you might notice, its been a while since I last updated my blog. No, its not because I've given up on Blogging or I am too lazy this time. A lot has happened in the last 3 weeks. My other half finally got her visa and she is here in Perth now. Since then, we had decided to move as my single room no longer cuts it. For some odd reason, we had also started going to church again, and I bought a cheap used car. I'll blog about that later. Anyway, I'm back and blogging again :)

Roughly about 2 months ago, I wrote about attending a Blog advertising network gathering organized by Nuffnang. I met quite a few interesting people and one of them was Tiang, who was apparently doing some volunteer work for a startup market called "The Markets." He gave me his card and asked me if i would like to help out at the Markets during its startup stages.

Seeing an opportunity to contribute back to the community and possibly meeting more people who might have leads as to where I can find work, I was keen to help out. Tiang was also the person who told me about the Thong challenge which coincidently was on at the same weekend the market was starting up. Unfortunately for the markets, I thought the Thong challenge was more interesting and didn't help out on the first week of the market startup.

On the following week however, I visited the markets to check things out and to see if they still need my help. The market was held between the museum and the art gallery every weekend on Saturday and Sunday.

The market was smaller than I thought, but its a good start. I see no sign of volunteers or Tiang, so I figured I missed my chance to volunteer.

There was a live jazz type trio there playing some background music as the punters stroll around checking the stalls. Apparently all the stall should be selling things that are locally made or grown, so there were none of the usual tacky generic chinese junk there.

One of the stall had a lavender theme going on. I think they were lavender growers from down south that I read so much about in tourist guide books.

Anyway, since i missed out on contributing, i figured i should buy something. Seeing that I am always sunburnt from cycling around, I bought an Aloe Vera plant for $3.50.

It took me less than an hour to browse through the Markets, but its well worth a look. Would have been better if they had some special local food there though.

For some readers out there who are keen to showcase their local craft, please have a look at their website www.theperthmarkets.com.au

Eating out- Perth Hawker Bazaar 2009- Burswood lakeside event

2009-02-16T12:18:00.000+09:00

Spending Chinese New Year all alone in a foreign land, not knowing anyone or be with love ones is always hard for me.

However, not to be dragged down by this, I'd decided to make the most of it and hunted down an event that might put me into the festive spirit. After work, In the 37C dry heat, i cycled to Burswood lakeside about 20 mins from my place to check out the Hawkers Bazaar that I heard over the TV a few moons ago. Actually, Bazaar was on the 31st of Jan, so it goes to show how slack I'd been.

Upon arrival at Burswood Lakeside, I was greeted with a red arch, actually, there were red everywhere... a colour closely associated with Chinese New Year.

Right inside the archway was a statue of what I assume was the Smiling Buddha, and there were lots of patrons burning joss sticks to this statue, and again, I assume they pray for prosperity and good Luck for the coming year.. as they do during Chinese new year.

Walking around the Bazaar was indeed a great experience indeed. For a moment there, i thought i was back in Malaysia again as there were more Asian than cocasion there. The excitement and festivities started to rub off on me and i didn't feel that bad anymore.

There were 2 sections to the Bazaar, one was the food section (pictured above) and one was the non-food section (pictured below,) mainly selling hand held fans, chinese massage (not the ones with happy endings,) Scarfs, and etc.

Anyway, enough about that, the main reason why i was there was for the food. For some reason, despite the Bazaar being held as a Chinese New Year Event, there were food from all around asia, like indian curries, thailand tom yams, indonesian food and etc. There were also a whole range of vegetarian food that were made to look like meat.. which i thought was a bit ironic. I also overheard one of the seller said, vegetarian cakes, taste like chicken... interesting concept don't you think?

As I explored the Bazaar, I came across a stall with the longest line, selling Malaysian Satay, I figured it must be really good as the fact that its next to the toilet didn't deter the patrons.

I joined the line as I am a firm believer that a stall with lots of patrons must mean that they are good.

It took about 45 mins before I got to the front of the line, by that time i was salivating and extremely hungry. The curry puffs and the mee goreng looks really good from where I was queuing, so i got some of those too.

For those of you who do not know what curry puffs are, Its a sack of curry meat and potato (dry-ish) in a pastry shell. Since I grew up in Malaysia, I had quite a few of these when i was growing up, but its been more than 15 years since i last had one. It did hit the spot and the taste brought back memories...yum

As my turn drew closer, the delicious smell of satay cooking on a BBQ was almost a torture.. so close and yet so far..

The queue was so long that it was dark when i got my food. I was starving too so I also got a punnet of Mee goreng (fried noodle in malay)

The food was really Yum.. but i guess anything would taste good as i was starving.

After finishing the satay and noodle, i decided to get some shave ice as desert.

They called it "ice Kacang (iced beans)" and "Cendol (dont know where this word comes from.)" These are a mixure of lychee, red beans, black jelly (gincau,) corn, red syrup, shaved ice and condensed milk ( sometimes coconut milk.) Again, it was yum.

As the night progressed, the stalls were lit up, and it was a beautiful and festive sight indeed.

Part of the Bazaar/celebration was a firework show. I relocated to the lakeside to watch the fireworks. There was a light footbridge that was suppose to only hold 20 people at a time, but i guess people do not care about things like that when they are more interested in getting a good spot to watch the fireworks.

Bang on 9 pm, the sky lit up and exploded..well, that's what it seemed like.

Anyway, it was indeed a great event to go to. Highly recommended if you are in Perth. Its amazing how something like this can reignite the feeling of Chinese New Year Festivities.

Happy Belated Chinese New Year for readers. :)

Australia Day- Thong challenge at Sorrento Beach, Perth

2009-02-03T08:03:00.000+09:00

I think i am slipping in my motivation lately, I guess it can be seen in my Blogging frequency.

Last Monday was Australia Day, and I heard from a person I met at the blogger's meet that there was going to be a Havaiana Thong Challenge.

When I first heard this, i thought it was a G-string challenge, as i have never heard the expression "Thong" used for anything else. However, to my disappointment, Australian call their jandals/flip-flops/slippers thongs. In fact, I was told that the Thong was as much an Australian icon as the kangaroo or the colour green and yellow.. or gold, as the Australian calls it.

Anyway, Tom and Ashleigh, my collegues came along to join in the challenge. The event was called a challenge because it was a world record attempt for the longest line of inflatable airbeds, and the airbeds being inflatable jandals. We got there early because Tom and Ash missed out on the online registration and they didn't want to miss out on getting an inflatable jandal each. When we got there about 10am, there were already a line at the registration tent.

I'd pre-registered online so I just had to sign in and collect my giant inflatable jandal

The scene was amazing as there were quite a few people walking around with these giant inflatable jandals.

Like any big events, there were a few tents giving away freebies, such as this tent, giving away free Nestea, a concoction of tea and lemon, and tea with peaches and mangoes.

Close by, the local radio station, Nova was there providing some commentation and humor for the day, unfortunately, I find them more annoying than entertaining as the DJ was really obnoxious and was being a smart @ss all day.

Once registration was all done, we joined the cool crowd in carrying these giant jandals. All of them are the right hand side.

For $30aud, we each got a giant inflatable jandal, a small key chain, a small sample package of sunscreen and a postcard. Just as a comparison, I'd placed a small jandal on the side of the big inflatable jandal for size comparison.

We found a good spot at the beach and Tom got quite a few free odd tasting Nestea. I had half of this before going for one of the challenges and got a bit ill.

The first challenge was to run with the inflatable jandal and paddle on the inflatable jandal through the surf via a predetermined route. I was not last and i was not the first, so it was ok.

As the day drew closer to the actual record breaking attempt, there were more and more people a the beach, it was a good sight.

At about noon, everyone lined up at the beach and we awaited instruction as to what to do in order to break to world record. It took them awhile to organize the people, but it was ok because everyone was excited

We all got into the water and held onto a rope connected through a series of buoys. I am not sure exactly how many people there were, but i am sure there's enough to scare away any sharks. We were in the water hanging onto the rope for about 30 mins before they took 3 photos for the record attempt. The temperature that day was about 38C and despite the sunscreen that i'd slapped on, my back got a bit burnt and am currently peeling as i type this blog.

Apparently we broke the record that day, but was later beaten by the crowd at Bondi Beach a few hours later.

All in all, it was a great day.

Nuffnang Perth Blogger Meetup

2009-01-25T23:22:00.001+09:00

A few posts ago, i wrote about Nuffnang coming to Australia and what they could potentially bring to the Australian Blogging community.

Well, Nuffnang did make an effort and organized a Perth Blogger Meetup.

Unfortunately for me, the start time was slightly before my knock off time from the supermarket job that I labour for a temporary living, so i had to reorganize my work schedule a bit.

Justifying to the managers and peers were a bit awkward.. once i told them i was going to a Bloggers meet, they'd given me a new nick name- GEEK. Anyway, I don't really care, Nuffnang has setup a bar tab and also some finger food for the event, and I am not going to miss free food for a low level job.

So after work last Wednesday, I made my way to the Brass Monkey Bar where the event was held.

If you recognize this building from my previous post , you are right, its the same building that was at the background of the gay parade.

Anyway, i found the entrance and went into the bar to look for the nuffnang event.

I manage to find the Nuffnang crew with their florecent blue banner, and signed their register

in the photo above, the guy standing next to the banner was Martyn Thomas, the Director of Nuffnang Australia, and he had come all the way from Melbourne for this event.

Shortly after another Nuffnang Australia director, David Lee gave a quick rundown of what they are trying to achieve here in Australia, nothing not covered in their website.

Ming, the co Founder of Nuffnang was there too, apparently he came all the way from Singapore and was doing a tour around Australia

The Perth Nuffnang meet was not that massive. Looking around, the only blogger that i know was Karen Cheng

If fellow readers do not know who she is, well, she wrote about women's fashion and parenting. I know.. not the usual topic that i read but she updates her blog very often and sometimes talks about Perth, that's why i read her blog.

There were other bloggers too, but probably less than 25

The finger food was ok, just the normal pub food, I didn't manage to take a photo of it before it was almost polished off..

The meeting was actually awsome. Karen's Husband Andrew was there and we had a really good yarn about Perth and what's to do here. There were also other bloggers that were there and after hearing my sad story of coming to Perth looking for the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, they suggested networking more, as apparently the secret of getting a job here is not what you know, but who you know. I'll be joining one of them in a few weeks doing volunteering work, hopefully i will meet some people in the engineering industry. Fingers crossed.

Anyway, seeing that this is the first time i meet a famous blogger, i thought it would be a good place to cam whore.

From some of the other Asian blogs i follow, a lot of them throw up some gang signs when they take photos, so i thought i'll be an egg and do the same.. i am not usually like this.. promise.

Eating out- Dim Sim Cafe Northbridge, Perth

2009-01-19T21:39:00.000+09:00

Yeap, the heat finally got to me and I am no longer actively cycling around as much as I used to, so no interesting things to write about. A few post back i wrote about Kings park, well, quite a huge portion of it went up in smoke 3 days ago due to arson. I will endeavor to take some photos when the weather is not too hot.

Speaking of weather, it sure is strange here.. during the day, the temperature can get up to 42C, but the temperature rapidly drop to about 23C at night.. and last night, there were lightning and hail storms.. and this morning, the temperature shot up into the red again.. Crazy..

Anyway, a few weeks ago, My friend and I decided to have brunch at a Yum cha place in Northbridge called Dim Sim Cafe.

Apparently this place is a newly open restaurant here in Perth. I was trying to find it on the internet so i can post the address up, but i could not find any reference to Dim Sim restaurant in Perth. Anyway the ambience was really nice and the staff were really polite.

Its been a while since i last went Yum Cha because of the lack of people to go with. Yum Cha is best enjoyed with heaps of people so that a myraid of dishes can be sampled. However, because it was just myself and a friend, we didn't get too much.

We actually got a bit more than this, however, the food was great. Its similar to the ones I had in Hong Kong, so its not too bad, so if you are ever in Perth, check it out.

Checking out Cottesloe Beach

2009-01-14T22:34:00.000+09:00

I'd been a bit slack in updating my Blog, I guess the festivities got the best of me and I got a bit lazy.

Anyway, the weather here has been getting really good ( if its not good enough already) almost everyday. Extremely sunny days, above 30C made it a perfect time to check out the beach.

I'd been hearing from the local radio station that Cottesloe Beach has been refered to as the sexiest beach in Perth, and decided to check it out myself.

Cottesloe Beach, on first impression was indeed a great beach. It has fine soft sand and was really clean. As can be seen in the photo above, there's a massive landmark building that makes this beach distingushable from the other beaches. The picture was taken from a wave breaker rock barrier, and because of this barrier, there was a calm area for the punters to swim around without having to worry about the big surfs.

After visiting the night scene here, i was wondering where the pretty people hang out here, and i think i found it.

I final realize what people ment when they mentioned that the night life in Perth isn't that great. In my opinion, Perth made up for it with its beaches with lots of hot beach bods.

Time for me to tone up and join the crowd... or maybe not, as recently a big shark ate someone about 5 mins drive from this beach .

Still a good scenery no?

New Year Party at The Ruby Room club

2009-01-04T18:59:00.000+09:00

As the year 2008 comes to an end, my younger workmates wanted to go out to party into the new year. I decided to tag along as I have nothing to do at home anyway.

We started out at a quiet pub called Belmont Hotel and progressed to the Ruby room.

According to my workmates, Ruby room was the "in" place to be. Little did i know, it turns out that the Ruby Room was located in the same Burswood Entertainment Complex as the Casino where I went for a croupier interview a few months back.

Being New Year Eve, i guess The Ruby Room took the chance to rip their patrons off by charging $40 cover charge.. for that amount, i would have expected at least some special sort of programme for the night, but it turns out that there was just a DJ playing lame music from the 80's. No dancers like metro city, or live bands.. rip off indeed.

Despite the high cover charge, there were a lot of people there. In fact, we got there about 11.30pm and it took us more than 25 mins to get drinks as the queue was extremely long. Here's how the place look like while i was in the queue.

When i finally got my drink, i quickly made my way to the dance floor for the countdown. There was a screen showing the seconds remaining and the crowd was chanting the countdown, and as soon as we hit 2009, it was mad. People snogging all around me.. cheering, balloons dropping from the ceiling with confetti. It almost seem like was the only person not hugging or snogging.. :(

Anyway, the crowd got over it pretty quickly and continued to boogie on the dance floor.

Saying the dance floor was packed is an understatement

It might seem like fun, but let me tell you, partying that night was probably the worst night out i had because of the type of crowd that was out.

I am not sure if its always like this in Perth or its just that night. The patrons were a bit rough around the edges and aggresive. I think with the resource industry having a hard time and its the year's end, miners from all parts of regional WA spend their new year in Perth, and some of these people were acting like bogans and were starting fights.

I feel sorry for the ladies that were out trying to enjoy the countdown.. come to think of it, the quality of the ladies there were very poor too.. rough around the edges, a total turn off.

Anyway, I guess that's to be expected as Perth is the hub of all the action for the resource industry.

I think I'll give night life in Perth a miss from now on.

2008 reflection and goals for 2009

2009-01-03T01:12:00.002+09:00

Happy New Year everyone, we finally made it to 2009.

2008 was indeed a year of change from me. I didn't realize how much I had gone through until I sat down and had a good think about it.

Beginning of 2008, I was in Hong Kong for a formal matter and had a brief look around,

I also went to Macau and checked out the sights.

On the same trip, I stopped by Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia)

and also Singapore,

It was a great trip indeed as I met up with friends whom I have not seen for more than 10 years.

Back in Auckland, NZ, I participated in a fun run Half marathon, round the bays,

I'd never seen so many people run in the same general direction before

My passion for the past 7 years in New Zealand had been my cars, and in 2008 I carried out an engine transplant on my Drift AE86 toyota Trueno from an old and tired 16v 4age

to a newer 20v 4age, all by myself (yeap, I even surprised myself that it worked)

I even took my drift AE86 on drifting track days, grip days, motokhanas, and the occasional mid night and early morning backroad mountain runs. Ahh.. fun times indeed.

In fact, I had two of these cars, although they look similar, my red AE85 was a different beast, as it had a 3L twin turbo 2jz-gte Supra engine, supra gearbox, hilux diff and etc

In 2008, the timing belt idler pulley developed a sweaking noise, and hence I pulled it apart and changed the timing belt, water pump, idler pulley and crank pulley

Its amazing what we can actually achieve when we put our heart and minds to it, again, I did this in my garage by myself. After I put everything together again, the noise was gone, and i went Drag racing with it (legally of course, at Meremere Championship Dragway.)

Sad to say, the car only manages a 12.7s quarter mile running on 9psi boost. Power was no issue, its more the traction that was the problem.

I also took the car to Taupo Raceway, the same track that the A1GP cars drives on for testing

The car was oversteering, and although it was fun, it was slow.. The back wheel would spin up due to lack of grip. I could go sideway on a straight line and keep it there as long as I wanted.. but the novelty wears out after a while. I will miss driving my cars. I sold both of my pride and joy in 2o08

In an attempt to fill the void left by not having my cars, I took up kitesurfing

I had lessons, and am still not good at it.

And then, a big change came, I decided to resign from the company which I had dedicated 7 years of my life,

And took this plane to Perth

While in Perth, I started this blog, and i guess you can work out what I'd been doing since by reading this blog.. nothing substantial compared to what I enjoyed in NZ.

I'd lost a lot of weight, felt very alone, however found time to think things through with clarity.

One of my other passion is investing, and in 2008, I'd lost a lot of money. I'd since fine tuned my trading system, and in December, I'd started participating in the Market again after a few months break from trading.

Started with 3000AUD (1800+1200)

Made 3041AUD (144+710+525+210+852+600) in 6 straight win trades.

Slightly more than 100% return in one month (each trade do not risk more than 25% of the 3000.)

2008 indeed has been a stellar year of change for me, no doubt 2009 will bring its challenges.

These are the things I want to achieve in 2009 (although some of them are out of my control)

1. Find a Mechanical Engineering related job

2. Buy a car

3. Rent a place and set it up for comfortable living

4. Save deposit for a house

5. At least double my share/CFD trading portfolio

6. Go on an oversea trip outside Australia or New Zealand

7. Keep in touch with current friends and families

8. Make more friends

9. Pick up kite surfing and at least be able to do unhook kite loops by year end

10. Maintain weight of about 70kgs (2kg tolerance interval)

There you have it.. kinda personal but hey, its my blog and i guess it reveals a bit more about myself

Audioengine A5 active speakers

2008-12-30T00:22:00.003+09:00

Despite all the cool posts of me visiting various places around Perth, there are times when I prefer to stay in my room and relax, such as today, when the temperature soared to 38C. 5 months, that's how long I'd been living in Perth with just the content off my Macpac Utopia backpack and a laptop, and honestly, i am sick of listening to the inferior inbuilt speakers from my Lenovo T61P.

So, I'd decided that this silly season, I'll get a set of speakers to liven up my room. I'm not the sort that go for distorted sound as I personally find excessive deep bass without decent mid range and natural highs fatiguing. The reason why I said that is because that's what the plastic injection moulded Altec Lansing, klipsch and Bose companion speakers that I'd auditioned sounded like.

From previous experience, Its best to splash out a bit more to get some decent gear rather than go for mediocre stuff, especially for items like speakers that I have to live with for a while. After searching the net and reading various forums, I'd finally decided to get some Audioengine A5s. To be honest, its a big gamble as I have not auditioned or heard of them before, but I am yet to read a bad review about them. At RRP$699AUD, they were not cheap.

I manage to track down the Australian distributor for these speakers, but they are all the way on the east coast of Australia, and they didn't have the Black one in stock, which i prefer more than the white one, as i thought the white one looks a bit too pretentious.

After 4 weeks, the distributor ordered some from the States for me and they didn't even charge me for shipping, how great was that? :)

This was how it looked like when I got it off the TNT courier delivery guy,

It was rather heavy, but hey, that indicates a certain level of quality right? after all, it has thick wooden cabinet and inbuilt amp. Anyway, i ripped open the box, and it revealed a more colourful packaging box, which i thought did the product a disservice as it made it look like a toy.

Almost all of the reviews I read mentioned how well the speakers were packaged, and they were not wrong, not only did they use shock absorbing plastic foamy padding (no cheap polystyrene here)

The speakers where wrapped in soft draw string bag,

and the speakers were protected again with another layer of thin plastic foam,

As an ex product development engineer, I salute how much attention to detail the makers of these speakers put into packaging their product. I wonder how they justify the cost of it, no doubt it made parting with $699AUD seem worth it, and this was before i auditoned the speakers.

I patiently setup the speakers on my barren work desk and this was how they looked like

I'll write about the tv antenna and the little white box next to the computer next time.

In the instruction sheet, it mentioned that the speakers need to be run in for it to sound good. Initially when I played some Radiohead through the speakers, to my disappointment, the right speaker (passive) was not delivering any highs, and the sound imaging seems skewed to the left because of this. A bit worried, I decided to crank it up with a bit of Gorillaz, and all of a sudden, the silk dome tweeter on the right cleared its throat and man, it sounded good. There were no boomy-ness, and what i thought was noisy is now precise, quiet and pleasant. No matter how loud i cranked it, it still sounded awesome without being fatiguing.

Its hard to convey the difference via a blog, but I'll try.. its like switching from watching a low quality youtube video to a High Definition 120fps video like this (click on HD , let it load first and watch it at full screen for the best effect)

skate - shot on red #1347 - 120 fps from www.theglobules.com on Vimeo.

I can literary hear the stickiness of the lipsticks, the spit on the microphone, the breath taken by the singer, the thickness of the guitar pick, and the size of the hall the tracks was recorded in. As for sound staging, listening to hotel California, I can distinguish each of the members position, the type of guitar they are playing, and where the precussion were.

The Audioengine A5 are truely amazing speakers, worth every penny I spent on it.

Night out at Perth Metro City

2008-12-26T23:32:00.005+09:00

One of the things that I used to do while I was in Auckland was to hit town with my work collegues to check out the Scene. It was a great way to end the working week.

This week I'd decided to check out the night life here in Perth. I heard that Metro City was the biggest clubbing venue around and decided to check it out. Being one of the more popular clubs around with live DJs and etc, it attracted a cover charge, and on the particular night that I went, it was $10.

Like any popular clubs, there was a long queue outside the club, however, unlike the clubs that i had previously been to, all patrons were required to walk through a metal detector arch, similar to those found at the airport. As if that's not enough, despite not triggering the metal detectors, everyone was subjected to a pat down by the security guards prior to entering the club. At that point, I was not sure if i should feel safe or otherwise.

I found out later that this particular club had some bad history of gang fights and had previously been closed up to 5 months due to shooting and stabbings.

The club was surprisingly well setup, with a stage, big dance floor and 3 different serving bars for drinks.

My flatmates were there with me, one of them was an Irishman and from the sound of things he knows his drinks very well. He tried some tequilla shots with some of his friends, but he was not impressed. According to him, the tequilla was watered down, and its not worth sucking on the lemon after the shot. I do not drink, so i cannot comment.

Anyway, the scene was really great. The girl boy ratio was good, almost 60/40 at the start and flipped to about 40/60 towards the early hours in the morning.

The clubbers there were a friendly bunch, a lot more than what I had previously experience on my day out in Auckland, nz. Its easy to strike up conversation with random strangers and they are not as mingas as the crowds in Auckland.

When I was there, they had a DJ rocking the house, and also a couple of dancers.. similar to those seen in the background of a boy band MTV.

It was by far the best club I'd been to so far.. mind you, I'd only been to a few in Auckland Viaduct and Parnell in Auckland.

I would highly recommend partying at Metro City just for the ambience and experience (the watered down drinks is another matter.. it does not affect me as much as i don't drink.)

Anyway, at the end of the night, going home was a very different experience too. Apparently there was a shortage of Cab drivers in Perth due to the more lucrative mining jobs around, so, we had to queue up for about an hour just to get a cab home..

Merry Christmas everyone!

Victoria Park Christmas Street Mall

2008-12-21T14:55:00.006+09:00

On my way back from the city a few weeks ago, I stumbled across a road closure on my usual route home.

Unbeknown to me, the Victoria Park Christmas Street Mall was being held that day.

I decided to check it out, as I got nothing else planned for the rest of that day anyway. There were lots of attractions there, despite the name suggesting that it might resemble a mall or a market, there were surprisingly not much street side stalls, and if there were any, they were tastefully done.

There were carnival like games that resembles clowns waiting for BJs..

Bouncy castles..

Street performers, like this recycle junk band..

this gymnast, involving the public in his stunts, while making subtle suggestive jokes...

and the one that interested me the most, mountain bike trials show by WA bike trials, if you are curious what bike trials is, just click on the undelined link.. it has a short video there showing what its all about. In short, its skillfully balancing a mountain bike and jumping from objects.. worth a click on the link ..

The photo above shows one of the performer jumping up the boxes to about 2m above the ground and dropping off.

Apparently these crowd offer lessons on how to carry out these stunts, i was tempted at first to try it out, but on second thought, the skills are pretty pointless and would loose itsnovelness after 15 mins.

Moving on, there were a small fenced off places with farm animals in it for kids to play with

There were goats, sheep, piglets, hen, roosters, turkey, bunnies, hamster, duck, goose , swan and etc.. unfortunately, they were really messy as they shat everywhere and the person running the show had to constantly sweep up the crap.

Overall, this street mall was awsome. It would be great for people with small families. In fact, at the other side of the street, there was a stage with a brass band doing their thing.

Perth is indeed a really nice place to stay (if i can find a proper job that is.) I am continously being pleasantly surprized by the events that I stumble upon here. Too bad being there alone was no fun at all.

There were indeed lots of people there by the time i was about to make a move on

i am sure there are a lot more things like this all across Perth, as this street mall was just for a small suburb of Victoria park.