Random points

- my arms feel quite sore after going to fitness first Miranda. Its quite a nice place, with the usual characters in a gym: beefcakes showing off their muscles, sporty spice chicks who can lift as much as me, and weak asians (me!).

- teaching my lil bro how to drive right now, and its quite a challenging/stressful experience - why? cause you don't have any control of the car except for screaming "watchout!" and "there's no point checking the lanes AFTER you've changed lanes".

- went back to my old stomping grounds at Blakehurst and played bball and got crushed by the Croatians. I feel a bit rusty and not that confident at the moment, need to get back into my groove - or maybe its just Chuck's crushing defence?

- caught a bit of tennis fever on the weekend (bad luck to Hewitt - he'll be back) and decided to hit up the courts at Panania RSL with Dawen and lil bro. However it seems i've lost that Federer bounce in my step, my Agassi backhand, my Marat Safin forehand, and my Michael Chang hustle. Although i can still serve the ball in.........

- with all this time on my hands, it felt it necessary to watch three seasons of the prison drama OZ (24 episodes). One word - awesome. I and my lil bro was totally addicted as soon as we watched the first episode.


DJ HO's Question of the day: Is it wrong to download, copy, or buy pirated dvd's/cd's? I know legally its wrong but do you have a problem with it?

I really dont, seeing I have downloaded/bought my fair share of pirated goods. My attitude is like why buy the real thing when you can get a copy for free/fraction of the price. For me its like readily available, easily obtainable, i'm not really hurting anyone in the process. But on the flipside, if everyone downloads/buys pirated stuff the distribution/production companies/artists don't make enough profits or get the money they rightly deserve which may discourage them to produce further stuff or they can't plough the money back into other artistic works.

However, i guess pirated stuff has created an industry of its own - more CD/dvd burners are being bought off the shelves, blank cd/DVD's sell like hotcakes, ipods are fawned over by every kid with a mp3 collection, and playstation "repairers" have more PS2's to fix so you can play pirated games. So there are some positives that are derived from this illegal activity. ANd perhaps by downloading a few tracks from the latest CD, it MIGHT (but prolly won't) make me buy the actual album. In reality I reckon for most people (including myself) they don't think twice when buying the latest movie on a copied DVD in hong kong or downloading tracks from the new Snoop album.

I mean if we aren't supporting our favourite artists who is? the average joe/jane on the street that doens't have a optus cable connection set to Kazaa or understand how to use bit torrent. But I love being able to get my lil bro to download the latest NBA game or directing him to get this movie or whatever. Essentially, are people like me killing the movie/music/gaming industry? I think we are having an impact but not that disastrous. I have not bought a music CD in like yonks. I might have downloaded the latest movies on DVD however, i still go to the movies every now and then, becoz you go for the social experience. By instead of spending money on CD's, i can use the money which i have saved to see a concert. So perhaps i am redirecting money into other avenues for the music industry.

But ultimately its wrong though and we all know it. But does anyone really have any gripes with it except for the people that make money from the sales of legit stuff. The record companies are still standing. HMV is still there. EB world hasn't disappeared. Artists are still producing hot/crappy music.

Tell me what you think.

oh to be fit..........

i would like to be healthy and fit. firstly because its a personal thing but i guess its also because its an image projected by society - images of pumped up bodies, washboard stomachs, slim and trim figures. For me i guess i would like to live healthy. i am more conscious of what i am eating these days, and i am constantly fighting the addiciton of junk food on a regular basis. Whenever i go to lunch, in the back of my head i say to myself, " i should eat something healthy", but i usually end up getting something like fish and chips and a coke.

In addition, i would like to join a gym. a lot my friends have gym memberships, in fact i don't many people that AREN'T members of a gym. I guess my reasons for joining are twofold: i would like to live a healthier lifestyle and my other motivation would be to develop a better figure. I don't mean i need arnold swarznegger/scott steiner muscles but rather some upperbody strength and (ashby) leg drive. this would help me play basketball, when battling in the post or defending someone. i guess the positive side effect would be to fill out my very thin arms when i wear my latest YAO MING (!) basketball singlet.

Oh to be fit and healthy.......but at what cost? I'd have to change my eating habits (from KFC to subway?), exercise regularly (from constant arm stretching for the remote to lifting weights).

Furthermore gym memberships don't come cheap. From what i know/read at fitness first (FF) a normal membership at a particular gym is $80, a passport (access all) one is $90. Over 12 months, that could equate to $1000. There are student memberships at $34.95, but alas i'm no longer a student. the rate varies as well from reading this vogue forum (don't ask why i was reading vogue). The UTS gym is $80 for 3 months, but that gym has poor ventilation and stinks everytime i go in there. there are other suburban gyms out there too with a friend of mine paying $670 for yearly membership (equivaltent to $55) and revesby RSL i heard has a decent gym too. but it seems like fitness first would be the ideal one to join - it sounds cool, has a slick image, they give you a free backpack which you can rock saying "I'm a member!", and importantly if my friends are a part of it, i'd be more fun/motivated to go with them. plus the company i work for has a corporate deal with them, so i can get a decent rate. from speaking to a friend of mine who has the benefit of a corporate deal, it becomes $72.95 for a passport membership.

if the price is right, should i join a gym? the thing is for anyone to benefit from being a member of a gym, you have to go on a regular basis, otherwise its not worth it. i don't think there is any point in me signing up if i go gangbusters in my first month and then eventually slide into going once a fortnight. ideally, i'd like to go at least two times a week, equivalent to 8 times a month. but with work commitments, a girlfriend, going out with friends, learning mandarin, taking on a masters degree in tax soon, being a lazy person to begin with, it won't be easy to force myself to go to the gym.

Maybe i could combine all these activities. perhaps when i visit the gym, i could go on the treadmill and socialise with dawen, tim, ashby, hoi, who are also on the treadmills next to me (as everyone has a gym membership), whilst watching the latest tax updates on the TV infront of me, with one headphone blaring a how to speak mandarin CD into one ear and a holding a mobile phone in the other talking to a client.

ultimately, I reckon if i wanted to eat healthy and go to the gym regularly i could. You make the effort. You make the time. The question becomes - can i be bothered? Oh to be fit and healthy.......

DJ HO asks:
1. Are you trying to live a fit and healthy lifestyle?
2. are you a member of a gym? if so, which one/how much do you pay and importantly is it worth it??!!

the little things in life can really drive you insane

today's is australia day, a public holiday where your meant to be able to relax.......i had all these plans.......but there were ruined by a friggin leaking tap......i attempted to fix it but it only made the problems worse....and it dawned on me how useless i was with a spanner....i thought that it i could take it apart i could see what was wrong with it....but after realising that i didn't have the proper equipment ( a big arse spanner/wrench) and no idea about the internal workings of a tap......i gave up......only to be shown by my resourceful brother all these diagrams of how to fix a tap from guess where?? GOOGLE! .....i don;t think its that hard to fix a leaking tap, you just have to change the washer.....but it frustrates everyone cause we had to turn off the main tap.....

all i know is i'm having a terrible australia day atm

HK: City that never sleeps

I've been in HK for about a week and ahalf and todaty i'm flying home at midnight. What are my impressions of HK?

1. The food and generally everything that i've been buying has been very cheap. I've been having $18HK dollar breakfasts which equates to like $3 AUS. Most of my meals hvae been between $18 - 40 HK ($3-$6). I love being able to walk anywhere during the day (especialy at night) and gettting a snack. seafood stores here are so fresh, you can see the massive fishtanks with live fish swimming around. although they can be a bit cruel, as i've seen a fish scaled alive (!) in macau with its head split open, and then chopped in half. I've also witnessed a fish cut down the middle and with full internal organs displayed, lying on a table, and it was still breathing.!

2. Public Transportation is awesome. Its cheap and reliable. They have this thing called the Octopus card and its like some debit card/smart card which you just put against this box and it debits money out of your card. I've used it for ferrys (about $2HK = $0.3 AUS) to cross the river from HK island to Tsimshatusi), trams ($2HK), trains, buses, and even to buy pearl tea drinks. If only we could have this in Sydney!!!!

3. Honkies work hard. just seeing a lot of old grannies pushing really heavy carts full of boxes, people finishing work late, etc... i think a lot of old people that don't have family must fall through the cracks in Hk society.

4. Weird/or very hip fashion? I've been to a couple of honkie stores, and i just cannot purchase anything in there cause its just too funky/honky for me. Sometimes i see people on the street (especially in mongkok) and they have zebra pants with punk rock hair styles.

5. shopping paradise. its seems that they are certain congregations of certain products. I went to this little shopping centre in tsimshatsui and its was just full of mobile phone shops. Both levels with like 30 stores all sold phones. In Sham Shui Po there's like the golden computer centre, which only sells computers and perhiperials. IN mongkok there's like whole streets that only sell sport shoes! And to top if off there's also streets in Prince Edward that sell birds (very festy), goldfish street which sells every type of fish imaginable, and several streets that sell only flowers.

clothing just seems so cheap over here. you can get jeans here for as low as $60HK ($10AUS). So i bought three pairs in the markets but unfortunately they turned out to be too small (anyone want a pair of 33 inch jeans?).i tried out heaps of jeans in the stores but they were all too tight - they didn;t have much that were loose fitting - either honkie people like tight jeans or they have thinner body builds to western people or i just like baggy clothes!

6. Not many people seem to sleep early! I've been to mongkok, causeway bay and sham shiu po, and macau at around 11pm. and the streets are just absoultely jam packed.

7. i don;t know what the deal is, but there seems to be an incredible amount of broadway, city call stores in the main street of mongkok. on this one massive street there are the SAME stores every one hundred metres. HK is like some kind of giant electronic store. different suburbs specialise in certain goods.

8. there's a lot of foreigners in Central (Jung Waan). In fact, in Lan Kwai Fong, there deosn't seem to be any chinese people. Its like a nighttime area with heaps of bars, and it attracts the expat crowd. And i serioulsy didn't feel comfortable walking arouind there despite being chinese! the only asians there seem to be funky asian americans!

9. a basketball nation? every where i go, there seems to be basketball courts which are packed out. Team Aussie Chinese expats (Me, Chris Lau, Ip, Ken Chan) got our arses whupped last saturday at Wanchai partly cause we were rusty, but we should have won. Honkies have a different style of playing basketball. Big guys have no idea how to post up or use their height. Not many people take it to the rack hard. HK may not be a basketball powerhouse but you hvae to give them props for playing ball at Wan Chai at 11pm on a weeknite.

10. I miss home and all my family, dawen and all my friends . I never realised it until this week when i have been itching to go home. I really feel for Ip and C-Lau cause they are gonna be gone from Australia for the next couple of years. since i was in Hk, i've pretty much been by myself with no-one to talk to except Ip at night.

11. I gotta get a PS2! GOTTA get NFL street!

12. Macau is pretty much an extension of HK. more on that another day!

See you guys soon! i arrive in aust on Friday like 11am!