*sweatdrop

Taking a break from stressing out.

Okay, back to it. There's too much to be done!

Dad's birthday

Happy birthday dad! Getting older, but at least you're still very fit!

*BTW: see how magie's foot is just about to go into dad's green dessert? Just after this picture, she kicks it off the table hahaha. Luckily the glass didn't break and pudding just fell out intact!

We went to Wheeler's hill hotel bistro to eat. It was a very good dinner! I had the special steak and lobster for $29. Not a big fan of lobster, but it was nice. Steak was cooked quite well as well. Finally got my Heiniken (haven't had one since Amsterdam) and got another blue something for free with a newspaper coupon. We also got free calamari through coupons. Bless my mum for keeping coupons haha.

teoh,

Magical musicals

Okay guys, I know I just did a post and the second post may be too much for you to handle, but I implore to my loyal readers, just bear with this unexpected but hopefully pleasant surprise. I was going to include this in my soon-to-be-but-forever-delayed London post, but I simply have to post something about it here.

I saw three musicals while I was in London, which were, in the order that I saw them in: Lion King, Wicked and Phantom of the Opera. Before I get into the actual musicals themselves, I will talk a little about musicals in London.

For those who don't know, London is littered with theatres. It's one of London's biggest revenues and there's a huge industry behind. Not like here, where

TicketTek (boooo) and TicketMaster (boooo) control most of the plays in Melbourne, there are literally dozens of outlets where you can buy tickets for shows. Most of them offer discounted tickets, in which they try and sell last minute tickets or restricted views. Seeing a show almost seems like seeing a movie over there, but no where near as cheap (or should I say 'cheap').

Official tickets range from 60 pounds to as much as 200 pounds. Discounted tickets can get as low as 20 pounds. Pounds = AUS, roughly 1.5x. Now, my opinion on show tickets is this: I hate discounted tickets. You don't know what you're really going to get, because the people sell them really well (or just blatantly lie in your face).

For Wicked, I bought one of these discounted tickets, in which the lady said they were midway, dress circle. For those who don't know, theatres usually go in the order: stalls, dress circle, grand circle, balcony - from ground up. So I thought, middle row, dress circle not bad for 30 pounds. Turns out the theatre for Wicked only has stalls and the dress circle. So I was pretty much up the back, which while it wasn't completely a show breaker, it was still annoying. Now why would you pay so little, and give up enjoyment for a show you obviously want to see (otherwise what are you doing there?). So I like to buy with having mind enjoying show the best way possible. Lion King, me and tracy paid 65 pounds for 2nd row dress circle, and it was awesome.

Anyway, enough about tickets. The shows themselves:

Lion King

Easily the best thing I've ever seen. The costumes themselves are beautiful, the masks that they use to portray the characters that they're playing are magnificent. The music, which we all know and love, is as great as ever and the extra pieces they added in a pretty good too (with a few exceptions in my opinion). The translation from movie to stage is excellent, it really is a different experience but the whole story line is still there. The whole thing is so good, by the end of the first scene, the epic Circle of Life, I was satisfied. 65 pounds well paid for one scene. In short, it was BRILLIANT. HIGHLY RECOMMEND. Can't recommend enough. Stampede music and scene was my favourite, so epic.

Wicked

Had slightly distant seats as mentioned above, but I still thoroughly enjoyed this show. I had only very little idea of what it was about, and was really surprised at how much I loved the story. It relates to the behind the scene and is the prequel of the Wizard of Oz. The characters are cute and lovable, the songs are really nice and I've been singing along with them in my car for the past 2 weeks. People like Amanda will really love this show. Also highly recommend (and for the love of theatre, get good seats).

No picture =[

Phantom of the Opera

This one was slightly different in style, and an interesting deviation from the two above. Followed the storyline of the movie (from what I can remember anyway) pretty well and I did enjoy it. However, not sure if opera singing is my thing, cause I don't think I appreciated it as much. The songs in this one was very much more solo style, showing off some good talent. They had some nice special effects too, like fire balls (oooOOoo) and gunshots (everyone jumped, really unexpected). Recommend if you liked the movie and the songs. Theatre was kinda small though, my legs were pretty cramped.

So that's it. If you see a crazy asian boy driving, bopping his head and yelling out gibberish and bashing his wheel in some kinda of stampede pattern, that will be me. Makes the drive to Hopper's Crossing easier though =]

teoh,

Not convinced

So I've finished two full time days at Civil EX and thought I'd just give my impressions of the place and what I do there.

Civil EX is a construction contractor company, that is fast expanding, getting more and more staff and projects. Basically I'm known there as an intern/student, just helping out my supervisor Matt in Estimating. Estimating is where clients send their initial tenders/plans to us and we estimate the amount of money and work that Civil EX would need to do to take upon the job. We then send back the numbers to the client, and if we're one of the lowest estimates, they will sign on with us (or maybe there's reputation also involved, I'm not entirely sure).

Matt's gotten me doing some document preparation, a LOT of printing and sorting into folders etc. I really hate printers now, I've had one jam on me a few times. The interesting things I got to do was actual estimating on some plans using a computer program and getting to know how the place works.

The people there are nice, but older than me obviously. I'm not too sure how much relationships I can establish being there only one or two days a week. It's too early to tell what future I have at Civil EX, but part time work is looking pretty good! The drive isn't as bad as I thought it would be either.

Captain America Movie

"I've just finished kicking Captain America's butt, here's the shield as proof"
Iron man still beats the crap out of any marvel movie I've seen.

Maybe I'm just too harsh, but this is another mediocre movie for me. In fact, it doesn't feel like a lot of effort was put into it (not to dismiss the work they probably actually DID put into it, but that's just the impression I get), an almost 'oh let's make captain america because we need him for the avengers movie' feel.

That's to say, it wasn't entirely not enjoyable. The beginning of the movie was enjoyable, a scene where bravery was demonstrated certainly made a good impression of character depth. I appreciated all the links to other movies, such as Stark appearances and the tie onwards to avengers. There was a sense of lacking during the 'putting together Captain America' for me, nothing like what Iron Man had when he was building his suit. No real exploration of his new found powers or anything like that. Besides becoming really buff, they didn't really show off his speed, his strength or shield in such a way that was a definite link to Captain America. Movies exaggerate men strength all the time! Show me that this is different!

Slight spoilers ahead

And then once Captain America is establish, it's all just explosions and gun shots (all which miss Captain America through terrible marksmanship) with no narrative. Character depth is all gone. All I know about the 'personal' squad that Captain America choose is they all like to drink and one's the token asian guy. No names or anything. The storyline is so terribly simple and predictable. There's a point in the movie where I wanted to stand up and scream ITS A TRAP in my best ackbar voice. A girl kisses the hero just as he prepares to jump on a plane to save the world; I'm thinking, what if the plane left while you did that? GG world for romance. But that would've been more entertaining than the completely anti climactic 'boss' fight.

AND BY THE WAY. How does Captain America know how to fight? He wasn't trained in combat, guns, flying ships, driving bikes or any of that. How does throw the shield so well and catch it so well?

Not too sure why people said it was on par with Iron Man - for me, definitely not. I know Xuan, Edward and Marco enjoyed it, but me and amanda remain unconvinced. But it was definitely better than Thor *snigger*.

teoh,

How things change

I was watching the news today with my mum, and the weather report came on. Water storage levels are at an amazing 60%. Well, maybe it's not suppose to be amazing, but I'm sure for most of my friends it must sound amazing.

I'm referring to the times when we would open the herald sun in our free periods at school, to watch ling, sidney and matt tear through the brain teasers, but would first notice the little blue rectangle at the front (or was it the inside of the front page?) that would tell us our dire our water situation was today. 21.5%. 16%. Down down the levels went (just like prices are down at coles :D (we all hate that ad, mostly because there are giant hands pointing down all over at our workplace) anyway I digress).

And now, here we are, four odd years later and levels are back up. I have a feeling I'm more water conscience because of that water drought that I grew up. But the point is, how things change over time. Look at the graph above!

Anyway, I know I promised Europe posts, and I do have London almost done in a word doc. I want to photoshop some photos together though, cause blogger is really bad at showing photos.

In other news!

For those who don't know, I have gotten part time work at a civil construction firm! Hurray! The firm is called Civil EX, and unfortunately based in Hopper's Crossing. So yes, I will be making the long one hour and a bit trek across the west gate bridge to go there. Could be worse (like not having a job and staying at the call center forever worse!!!).

They pay pretty decently, 22 an hour, and the experience is worth way more than that. They have also mentioned full time work after uni, so it's something to fall back on! I've committed to every Thursday, and maybe Friday's when uni workload allows. I've also arranged to cut back on CSC hours to a mere 12 hours a week =] I start on Thursday, so I'll let you know how I go.

How I got the job? Well, it was (as is everything in my very early career life) by referral of course. My uni friend David Blamey mentioned me to one of the owner's of the company (there are three, and some history behind which I might share later) when he asked if he knew anyone who wanted to do part time work while studying. The funny thing is, we are not best pals or anything. I first met him in second year and helped him out with some computer stuff, so I'm good friends with him and his group. We help each other out with uni projects too. But I did not expect him to go out of his way to think of me when this opportunity came up. Just goes to show that if you treat your friends right, they will return it!

My dad mentioned that I have a pretty balanced life style now, and I have to agree. Hopefully badminton will continue to be regular on Sunday's and I'm sure I'll be able to cram more than one social event now and then. Things are looking pretty good.

teoh,