Landed

I had finally settle down in Melbourne, but there are things that do not go quite well. I'll make it short this time.

Current Disadvantages:

• unstable Internet connection
• unable to upload photos from my mobile phone
• room heater does not have heating effect outside 1 meter radius
  

Current Advantages:

• unlimited facebook connection using my mobile phone
• access to YouTube, unlike Swinburne Sarawak
• fast Internet speed despite its connection instability

I'm currently living in my own room rather than using the whole apartment. Everything I own, I keep them in my room, including toiletries.

I came to realize how little things I actually need to survive daily; just shampoo, body shampoo, toothbrush, toothpaste, toilet papers, a mug, a bed, a towel stand and a telephone. It's like being a Harry Potter, even my room number is 4.

My Own

It's finally here.

A picture speaks a thousand words, but no words can portrait how I feel. Happy + Excited = Hapited?

It's much better than I had expected it to be. It's much lighter, much eye-candy, and much unique.

There are few new features that excites me very much; the DVD player, the new keys on the keyboard, and the face recognition program.

Unlike the usual laptops that I have seen, this one has a unique DVD player. It's like the CD player of MYVI cars. All I have to do is to slot the disc into the opening. The eject button is found in the keyboard, among the keys.

Since it's new, the ejection rate is rather fast, and it ejects discs like a disc launcher fashion you can actually feel the impact of the ejected disc "ramming" into your hand.

As for the face recognition program, that's for security purposes. It works by detecting the laptop user's face. If the owner is not present, it will lock up the laptop.

The security is divided into four levels: None - Log in - Periodic - Continuous. Basically, if I set it periodic security, the camera will attempt to search for my face once every set duration. Continuous on the other hand, requires me to be in front of the camera all the time.

Cool huh?

This laptop comes with free gifts: a 4 GB pendrive, a headphone, an spoilt optical mouse, a USB-powered cooling fan and a laptop bag. And yes, they are all FREE.

On top of that, I added 2 GB RAM into my purchase. Due to the original RAM being two 1 GB, my RAM upgrade only resulted in 3 GB.

This new gadget is going to be my bread and butter in Melbourne. My Blackenese.

I couldn't resist not to take pictures of my new buddy.

Eric Learns To Cook

Just like Michael Learns To Rock, I learn to cook from my grandma.

This another breath-taking event that I'm going to appreciate a lot. Everybody has to go through it. It is fun to have a 60+ years old expert to teach me actually, so much fun that I kept forgetting to take photos.

Considering I'm a total newbie in the kitchen, I started off with vegetables. At first it feels hard to actually slice through the leaves without damaging the leaves. But it gets easy after a few "bouquet".

I enjoying slicing the stems and the leaves of what-ever-the-vegetable-is-named that I realized there wasn't enough for me. I'm slowly turning into a serial vegetable killer. It's all about enthusiasm and precision.

Chopping lady's finger is the most fun part of cutting. One wrong slice and there goes the finger.

Grandma: You have to slice it in a way that each slice has exactly 1cm thickness.

I guess that's a piece of cake for an expert lah.

Next, I forgot to take photos of the tofu + grounded meat for the soup and not to mention the black pepper chicken. But all of them I cook one ok? Maybe except the part where I need my grandma to add in the spices.

My grandma does not really let me handle the fish. All I did was to look at it while the oil fries it to crisp, and wash the wok after that.

Next comes the vegetables. It wasn't easy. I would say handling the badminton racket and smashing here and there is a lot easier than handling the spatula. Nevertheless, I still managed to cook something at least.

A job done well is a job well done. There's a lot of heat, sweat and fun.

I will remember to take more photos during the next lesson.