Christmas in July!

Today is the celebration of Christmas in July in Ursula Hall. Yeahssssss!!!! Another occasion to have some better food and to take some pictures and make merry! Hope it'll be tons of fun!



Me, Daryl and Jared decorated my door with Christmas decorations

The end product!

Hope to win the best door decoration contest!

There and back again, A human's tale, by Doni

Today's Sunday the 15th of July, the last day of the winter holidays. Today is also Yunjin's birthday, my ex-neighbour. Happy Birthday Yunjin! Hope you have fun wherever you are.

Been back from Central Australia on the 6th, and it was an awesome journey. Anyone should do it. If not for the spectacular view of Ayers Rock (Uluru), then for the vast Australian outback. I certainly know how big Australia is now. However, take note that this is during winter, so weather in that region is pretty pretty cold, especially at night, and rather hot during the day, as it is for a desert. I seriously wonder how the aboriginese live there in the past.

Well other than surviving the dryness and harsh cold/hot weather, and of course some pesky flies, there was also the steepness of Uluru which will send some faint-hearted turning right back. It was a really steep climb to the top, and we were amazed during the climb to see some parents bringing their young kids with them on the climb. At some point, the slopes could be like 70 degrees steep. And getting up is just the beginning, you have to get down via the same route too. Think about it. Another challenge on the trip which was generally dry, was the sudden strong rains and winds at Peterborough, one of the few pit-stops we made on the way back. Throughout the whole night, rain was splattering our tents, howling winds were attempting to rip the tents from the pegs, and the cold weather was adding to the misery of the situation. We, well mostly Zhong, the poor guy had to hold on to the only pole which was supporting the whole tent so that the wind did not topple our only shelter throughout the night. Kudos to him!

Well so much for misery, there were definitely great moments throughout the trip, hilarious moments which included a guy named Joseph, and new friendships forged. There were photo opportunities galore, that resulted in more than 4 gigs of photos in my laptop which I had to drastically reduce. Anyway, here are some of the better photos of the trip...

What a good dinner

Dinner was lousy at college today, so me, Jay Shen and Barney decided to eat out at Izumi. That proved to be a very good choice as we had a fantastic dinner. We ordered one kimchi chi gae (kimchi soup), one yu gae chang (spicy beef soup) and one dumpling soup with rice. It was a really good meal, and I think the last good meal I had was maybe on Hannah's birthday lunch at Jimmy's in Dickson, which was some time ago. So really enjoyed the meal, and reminded me of the time when we went for food spree in Sydney. Had an ice-cream from Kim's Grocery after that to round up this hearty meal. Though it was really freezing cold outside, and it seemed like an absurd idea to have ice-cream, but that was one ice-cream that wouldn't melt and it tasted really cold.

Received an email from Diana yesterday and learnt that she was going to University of Sydney in July to study Masters in peace and conflict or something like that. That's good. Might take the opportunity to visit her in Sydney before next semester begins. Haven't seen her in a while. Can bring her to eat good food in Sydney.

Been watching some random stuff lately. Most random of all must be "Drawn Together", the reality tv for cartoon characters. They put a number of cartoon characters in one house a la Big Brother style, toss in some dumb, stereotype, sex, suicidal, racial, lame jokes and make it into a comedy cartoon. "Watching it will decrease your intelligence level" warned Jay Shen.

Also watched Victoria Secret's Fashion Show, or "The Greatest Show on Earth" as claimed by Seo Yeon. Well, the highlight of the show (for 2006) must be the dance by Justin Timberlake performed to "Lovestoned" and "My Love". Awesome man! Also watch it for Adriana Lima, Alessandra Ambrosio and Gisele Bundchen. Totally HOT

One more exam to go! yeah

Exams coming

It's 3 more days to exams, so no time for blogging. Nothing of much interest anyway. Here's a couple of photos from the Hot air balloon fiesta some time ago. Cheers.








Me and the Mike Wazowski (from Monsters Inc.) balloon

Steven's Stories

This is a post which I wanted to put up at the end of my semester and before the exams, but didn't get to finish it. Now here it is.





Well, exams are coming up pretty soon, so haven't had the time to blog. Today marks the end of teaching period and the entering of the crucial examination phase of the semester. What better way to sum up the whole semester than with stories told by my lecturer for Risk Theory STAT 3035, Dr Steven E. Stern.

To see how he looks like, checkout: http://ecocomm.anu.edu.au/people/info.asp?Surname=Stern&Firstname=Steven




The "Clearly" Story

This is a story about Norbert Wiener, the famous mathematician. During one of his lectures in MIT, he was writing down equations on the board and then he said "CLEARLY, xxxx = yyyy...". He then paused and stared at what he had just written for a while, and the subsequently exited the lecture hall. All the students were stunned and dumbfounded. "Why did the professor leave the room?" "Is he coming back?" So they waited, for a while, for some time, for a long time, but the professor did not reappear. The students were confused at this time, whether to leave or to stay. At this moment, Norbert Wiener came back into the lecture hall, and continued "Yes. Clearly, xxxx = yyyy."

For information and more interesting stories about him, checkout:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norbert_Wiener

The "Light is brighter" Story

One day, this policeman was patrolling this shanty part of town. He was walking along this dark alley, and along the two sides of the road were gutters filled with thrash, a whole lot of thrash. As he continued walking, he saw ahead was a man under a bright street lamp. This man was dressed in tuxedo, wearing a tall hat, and surprisingly, rummaging through the rubbish in the gutter. This policeman was rather intrigued by the scene and decided to ask the man what he was doing. "Hi sir, may I ask what you are up to?" "Oh I'm searching for my watch which I've lost," replied the man. So as a kind policeman, he decided to help the man search for his watch. After searching for half an hour through the piles of stinking rubbish filling the gutters, they still have not found the watch. So the policeman decided to ask the man "Are you sure you lost your watch here?" Which the man replied "No, I lost it over there [points to another pile of rubbish in a dark area], but the light is brighter here."



This story was used by Steven to describe our use of approximations to find an answer to various variables throughout the course.





The Pot Story



As a clarification, the pot here refers to pot as in pots and pans, not pot as in the other meaning, you know... Yeah, so before I start with the story, I must let you know that this story is not funny. It is as it is, just a story.
So there's this big financial company which is embarking on this project and needs to employ a talent in this field for the job. They sent out ads for the job, and received thousands of applicants for the job. So the selection panel decided to set up a test for them to complete, which helped them to eliminate the number to about a hundred. Which they then proceed to conduct a few rounds of interview which managed to land the final two applicants for the job. One is an actuary and one is a mathematician. So the selection panel was at a lost of how to choose between the two of them. Then this statistician who was among them, who hasn't spoke throughout the whole time, came up with an idea. The others who never quite took note of the statistician the whole time, decided to listen to him, since they had no other plans. So the actuary was called in the next day, and the mathematician the day after.
The next day, the blurry-eyed actuary came in early in the morning, and met the tester. "So what do you want me to do for the test?" The tester asked him to proceed to the adjacent room. In the room was a pot of water in the centre of the room, a window on one side of the room, and a boiler in one corner of the room, which was connected to a power socket on the wall. The tester said "The test is to show that you can boil some water." The actuary was rather confused by the request, but then since he has came so far, he might as well proceed with it. He took the pot of water from the centre of the room and placed it on the boiler, flick on the switch, wait for a couple of minutes, and showed the tester the boiling water. The tester put a tick on the sheet of paper. The next day, the mathematician came in, and proceeded to do exactly the same test. He too showed the tester he could boil the water in the pot with the boiler. So back to the selection panel who couldn't understand the test. The statistician came up with another idea for a test. So the actuary was called in the morning of the next day, and the mathematician in the afternoon.
The actuary came in the next day and asked the tester for his test. He was told to proceed to the next room. The room was the same as the other day, except the pot this time was on the window sill. So the tester told him to show that he could boil some water, again. He proceeded to fetch the pot of water from the window sill to the boiler and then heat up the water to boil. So the tester gave a tick on the sheet of paper. Then later on, the mathematician arrived. He went into the next room, and it was as the actuary has seen, the pot of water on the window sill. The tester told him to boil some water as the test. So gleefully, he took the pot of water from the window sill, and put it in the centre of the room.
The End.

FYI: The mathematician got the job.

That's all folks for this time. I'll be away in Central Australia for the next 12 days. So hope it'll be fun. will come back with loads of pictures. Adios

A Rainy Day

A view from my window, of this dark and wet day

Today is a rainy day. It hasn't rained a lot in Canberra for some time now, but today it did. This is good for the water shortage that has affected this area of the world.

Another piece of good news (or bad news): My Investments lecturer fell sick and lecture was cancelled this morning. Had an additional hour of sleep to make up for rising early this morning. Yeah, I hope she doesn't give us a make-up lecture. Bet she must have overslept due to the rainy weather, and provided that excuse. Sneaky, but a good one at least.

Haven't had a lot happening, just some small random stuff. It's "random act of kindness" week, so the rules of the games are: we are assigned one person to be kind to, and what you do is up to you. Well at least what I did was to give my RAOK some chocolates and biscuit and sweet. Well I received plenty of stuff myself from my RAOK, will show you guys the picture sometime, after I gather all the stuff I received.

Read news about the Inter's win against Roma in the 2nd leg of Coppa Italia, but it wasn't sufficient for them to turn round the 1st leg deficit. Pretty upset about that, but well, we have held the trophy for 2 years consecutive now, time to give others a chance. Hopefully Man Utd will win the FA Cup this weekend, against Chelsea.

Well, rain has stopped now but still seems pretty wet outside. Media player is playing "I don't know you anymore" by Savage Garden. A slow nice song to go with the general mood of the day. Would be better if I was sitting by the fireplace with a mug of tea/coffee to go with it, but it ain't happening. Gotta be contented.

We are the Champions!!!

Manchester United are the newly crowned CHAMPIONS of England!!!

The 9th Premier League title by Alex Ferguson, and first title since the Londoners stole our title after 2003. A whole season of consistency has paid off with sweet success. Congratulations to the whole team! Ole Ole Ole Ole.....

An Interview of Sir Alex Ferguson after winning the title can be found at http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x1wsp1_sir-alex-interview-title-wining

[And thank you Wenger and team for a job well done]