Koorong Item of the Day

Guitar Heroes for Christian Songs.....

One day I'm going to play this for church in the band :)

Christmas Day

Its Christmas Day 2008! Been a really good day for me... This is what happened...

1. Went to church.. and then decided to crash maccas with friends

2. Spent the day with my awesome girlfriend :) Made this 3D puzzle of the world... the last piece was so annoying to put in!

3. Had dinner with family~ I got home to realise that my dad put a PLATE under my bread roll AND gave me a box of tissues too! (inside joke for Will and friends)

The Unfair World

Is it just me or is there something wrong with these two vastly diifferent views seperated by just one road?

Church in KK

Was so blessed today to be able to attend the local Basel Church's new service in Foh Sang (about 1 minute drive from my uncle's place.

It's the newest service which the basel church holds at a new church building which holds 100+ people. The service is in mandarin, but most people can speak hakka and english. Its such an awesome experience to be part of God's people in a place so far away from home, but to be able to be united by the blood of Christ~ And to worship and sing praises, even in a different language, with different songs and different people, really is a pleasant experience.

Found some nice acronyms during the Nick Vujicic interview... here's one that I liked:

Faith: Full Assurance In The Heart

Papar

Went to the place I grew up yesterday.... its nice to visit places of childhood memories, even though I can't remember much if anything.

Papar is a district which is on the outskirts of Kota Kinabalu in Malaysia. Its sort of close to the beachside, but apparently the place hasn't really changed much for years.

This place has the best hand made fried noodles I've ever had! Bet I grew up eating this stuff...went there for breakfast yesterday morning and had TWO plates of fried noodles... each plate was totally clean after I had finished with it :) The meat was so fresh and tasty~

Visited our old house too.... sucks because its all fenced up now and the school next door is claiming the land :( so probably last time I see the house.

Roti Canai!

Roti Canai + Egg with curry dip

Roti Tisu ..... 50+cm of roti.... SO BIG!

A typical afternoon meal in KK

- Soup for Aunt
- Satay, one of the three servings we had.... maybe 50 all up between me and Uncle
- One bowl of Satay sauce each, plus extra bowls after we finished out bowls
- Rice cakes to dip
- Fresh Bread to dip
- Dumplings X 15 (not in picture)

Best lambstick maker in the world....

2 yuan per lambstick..... BARGAIN!

Should import him to Brisbane...

The face of chinese TV

This extra ad is on every 5 minutes!

And apparently all the chinese guys want to marry this girl.....

The Great Wall

Whale and Tan's Beijing tour has been a great great experience. We spent about $10AU each yesterday to visit all those landmarks, and today was the peak of our tour - The Great Wall of China!

Our tour (it was a mandarn guide) cost us $40 AU in total for the day including lunch and all entry fees into tourist spots.

We visited:

1. Ming Tombs

2. The Great Wall of China - Badaling Section

Both were great experiences. Here's some pics of the Great Wall:

Here's how we got up half of the mountain to get to the great wall:

Very sophisticated huh...

Beijing Day 1

Arrived this morning at Beijing!

Here's what we visited today:

-Temple of Heaven

-Olympic Site

-Tianamen Square

-Forbidden City

-Best Duck Restaurant in the WORLD!

-Supermarket to buy 23RMB WATER ($4.60AU)

Shanghai Day 4 Highlights

Multitalentedness:

I gazed in amazement today at this person's skills...

He has the ability to:
- Ride a motorbike at 50km per hr
- Talk on the phone with one hand
And....
- Smoke with his mouth and his other hand

..wow..

Run for the lifts:

Been really accustomed to the lift run over the past few days...

Ping has a REALLY REALLY small bladder.

Once I walked into the lift and saw a puddle of yellow liquid next to Ping...

The other time... I spited him by pressing all the level buttons (level 2 til 10) before our level : )

And also seeing him dance around in pain trying to keep it in....

Shanghai Day 3 Highlights

Best things about Shanghai:

- The food (price and quality)
- Shopping (prices and discounts)
- Ping's house = best accommodation

Crap things:

- Smoking everywhere
- People spitting
- Pollution

Interesting happenings:

- Ping walks to the wrong side of the escalator (and almost on it) TWICE
- Some girl who is on TV every 5 minutes that apparently every shanghai guy wants to marry
- Ping looking at girl's clothes at the shops
- Yet another breakfast for $1 AU (steam buns, dumplings and soy milk)

Tomorrow night:

- Off to Beijing to see the Birdcrap and the Ice Cube

The best breakfast in the world....

Steam Buns and You Tiao (oil sticks) in Shanghai!

Cost: $1

Satisfaction: 100%

Fullness: 100%

Sorry, no pictures.... whale's internet is as slow as his brain :)

Snapshots

View of Hong Kong from TST at night

Will fighting against Bruce Lee at the Avenue of the Stars. Check out the awesome background!

Wonder why tom is stoned....

Hmmmmm what happened there?


Its my new magic trick!

The awesome foursome in Venice! (Yes, we went to Venice!)

Lost in Hong Kong

Today I went on a totally unplanned and unorganised trip to Hong Kong Island to find some iconic buildings around the city. I never really imagined this small journey to be such an awesome experience....

Had lunch in Mongkok..... then declided to MTR down to Admiral Station, because the closest landmark I could find on my (chinese) HK map was the Bank of China Tower (Has diagonal features going up the building). I managed to find my way out of the station to behold the building a block away from the MTR exit. The buildings in HK are so much more interesting than the stuff in Brisbane. The nightlights are spectacular. I realised (after seeing the IFC close up) that maybe buildings in HK are designed to be gazed specifically at night. The Bank of China Tower doesn't look as spectacular as it does at night, and the IFC looks quite plain and even ugly up close.

After the Bank of China Tower I wandered around a couple more buildings and through a few gardens to stumble across Richard Rogers' Hong Kong Shanghai Bank (HSBC) building. Built in the mid nineties.... and famous for its iconic 'clothes hanger' structural system expressed on the facade, employing columns in tension (instead of in compression) and hung from these 'clothes hanger' elements. Also, the famous undercroft at the ground floor, which we've seen many photoes of, did not dissapoint. The central atrium, even though I could not get up to actually see it, was an amazing sight.

Lastly was the IFC towers. The complex is made up of two towers, one being the tallest tower in the HK skies, and the other a miniature version of the bigger one. This tower has been made famous in Batman: The Dark Knight, where Batman its capturing Lao. The crown of the towers is a claw-like feature which sticks up into the sky. Personally, I like the smaller tower up close. It looks a lot nicer and you can actually see the claw feature from close up, unlike its bigger neighbour.

Anyway, rambled on long enough.... Will talk more about other stuff later :)

What's wrong with Hong Kong?

I've been in Hong Kong for about 5 days, and its been a really good experience. The MTR is by far the best thing the place has to offer. The city is built on a really smart infrastructure that Australia has never seen before. Even though a lot of the buildings are old and crap, and the streets smell and the air is polluted and smoggy, its just amazing to see a city built on an intelligent foundation, and little snippets of the cool techniques which work in this place (like bamboo scaffolding on 40 storey buildings, and the walkway covers on top of curing concrete).

The food in Hong Kong is really and also cheap... we splurged the other day on yum cha and then japanese.... Yum Cha ended up about $10 per person, while the Japanese was about $25...... and we were all full both days.

I didn't come to HK to learn about history, but it was an eye opening experience both at the History Museum and also in Macau visiting the fortress and the various cathedrals.

Lastly, the buildings in HK and Macau are awesome! Been snapping away on my new camera for the last few days :D

Next Post: In China!

Overseas Trip!

Most of you know that I'm going overseas on Monday for a whole month! If you have any tips or you'll be in those cities when I'm there, please reply to this and I'll either go look into your tips, or try to arrange to meet up with you guys!

Here's my Itinerary:

Monday 17th Nov: Brisbane - Hong Kong
Sunday 23rd Nov: Hong Kong - Shanghai
Tuesday 2nd December: Shanghai - Singapore
Thursday 4th December: Singapore - Kota Kinabalu
Friday 12th December: Kota Kinabalu - Kuala Lumpur
Monday 15th December: Kuala Lumpur - Brisbane


Hope you all have a good holiday and have a great lead up to Christmas :) I'll be back for all the parties!!!

Perseverence and Trials

Went to the night service, and had a timely reminder and encouragement on my walk with Christ. Thought I would share this wonderful message with you all.

"Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything."

Keep persevering. Keep honing your faith in Christ through the many trials and tribulations the world throws at you. Keep holding on to the precious hope of salvation given freely through Jesus Christ.

Architect's Folio

People think architecture students have it easy. They think its as simple as an arts degree. Some think that we laze around because we don't have any exams or anything. But I reckon architecture students have the most contact hours and do the most late nights out of any other courses. All this hard work usually revolves around this document called a 'folio', or a design portfolio which encompasses the semester's work of design and technical projects.

Our folios usually consist of sheets between A3 and A1 size, and they are posters or drawings which describe our final designs for projects within the semester. The smallest folio I've handed in is probably 26 A3 pages, and the largest one is our most recent one (pictured), which went up to 84 A3 pages. The average A1 folio was approximately 12 A1 pages (equivalent to 48 A3 pages).

Folios are 100% summative, which means our overall grade for the semester is unknown until the results are released, and most of us don't know if we passed of failed until then. However, we get these presentations called critiques, which is when we pin up our drawings and tell a guest architect about our design, and get critical feedback (usually negative) so we can work on our designs more.

Our last folio was the craziest... I spent like a day just to put drawings on a template 84 times, and then another day to print. Luckily I have an A3 printer at home which saves like $5 x 84 of prints (like 420 bucks). The final folio was like..... 2cm thick :S

I'm so happy uni is over until 2010 for me :) no more folios!