Posts Tagged ‘Jiaren Lau’

On the 22nd of August, 2009 – my family made a holiday trip to Australia. They arrived in Queensland for a couple of days before travelling to Sydney in New South Wales, Melbourne in Victoria, and back to Brisbane in Queensland respectively.

Before I get ahead of myself let me introduce you to the family.

TheLauFamilyOk, Genius…so Linzhi wasn’t there with the rest of us…shes busy finishing her dissertation…but for the sake of the introduction lets just assume she was there.

Far Left is my dad, the big man, the boss, Mr. Lau Nai Kwong…2nd is the lil guy, the cutest boy genius aka the “uleee”/ooh-man, its Mr. Jiaxen Lau. The “subtle” copy/paste job is my “can’t live with her/can’t live without her” sister, Linzhi. She came to visit me earlier this month and I’ll get around to blogging that soon…in the meantime last but not least is the perfectionist, the financial accountant of the family, the Queen Bee – Mrs. Khoo Khau Tze.

Now that we’ve got that out of the way lets get on with it shall we…

We headed off to Stradbroke Island to let them experience first hand the scenery that Australia has to offer…

On the way there we took the Calypso Catamaran ferry to take us to the island itself. My lil bro really enjoyed the wind blowing on his face…

TheLauFamily-6527We took the North Gorge bushwalk along the coast of the island where my parents especially enjoyed the fresh air…

TheLauFamily-6540See how touristy my dad looks? Cap. check. trainers. check. shorts. check.  sunglasses. check. camera around neck. check. T-shirt with more than one colour. check. Yup! Tourists alright! The funniest part is I told him that Toowoomba is pretty cold even though Australia was beginning to warm up so he didn’t bother bringing any shorts! The one in the picture was the only pair which he bought a couple of hours earlier at a shopping mall on the way to the ferry port.

A good 10 minutes walk and we arrived at a “Footpath Closed” sign. We backtracked and took the other entrance to the bushwalk (its a circuit) and 20 minutes later we arrived at the best lookout on the island. Here you can see sting rays swimming below as well as dolphins, turtles, and if you’re lucky – whales! They particularly enjoyed the sound of the waves hitting the rocks below.

TheLauFamily-6557

TheLauFamily-6567There were also some friends sitting at the edge of a cliff that I thought would make a nice B&W.

TheLauFamily-6561As I had already been there before, I didn’t take that many photos. Pop made me hold his cam so I was using that instead. Good coz I can make the post a little shorter :)

We stayed til sunset before taking the ferry back to the mainland. I love sunset!

TheLauFamily-6584

TheLauFamily-6587We sure had a good time! The following days we went to Warner Bros Movie World and the Wet ‘n’ Wild Water theme park! My old timers went to Movie World but not the waterpark…

TheLauFamily-6706This was an interesting roller coaster…it accelerates like a drag race car from the start even going uphill! Very different from your usual coasters. My fave was the Lethal Weapon one though but I was too busy enjoying myself to take pics! For obvious reasons I didn’t bring my camera to the waterpark so we’ll end it here.

This next pic is especially for my sister, Linzhi. Pop wanted to show her how long he’d grown his beard before he’d have to shave it off for my graduation…(oh yeah, the reason they came was for my graduation which took place after they got back from their “around-the-east-coast-of-australia” trip. In their absence Steph’s mum and cousin came and we brought them to the Australia Zoo at the Sunshine Coast! Check it out when I blog about it next!

TheLauFamily-6712

Hey all,

I’ve *finally* got my website up and running properly the way I want it! I didn’t want to pay for a blog theme so I spent literally hours coding a free version of a paid blog template and customized it to suit my needs. Today that task is finished. I still need to make a front page but at least I have this to keep updating Doesn’t it look so much better and more professional than the previous one? Its got a simple single column so no space is wasted and I can upload huge pics! …sorry streamyx customers back in M’sia, its gonna be a slow ride to the bottom!

I’ve got a lot of blogging to catch up to and I’m not sure how the large pics will look yet. I’ve had a request from my sister to upload pictures of Shybrow for her housemate, Judy, to see…

I figure, “Why not?, what a great way to debut the new theme!” Its something fresh, fun, and is not chronologically attached so I can blog about stuff that happened sooner without screwing up the posts!







So, with no further ado’s…




I now present to you:




SHYBROW!!!

My 22 week old Guinea Pig, Shybrow!

Testing Caption Style

My 22 week old Guinea Pig, Shybrow!

Ok, first impressions:

- Caption style is crap. Why is it aligned at the left and not center?! *definitely not using that again*

-*ZZZzzzZZZ* *SnooOOooOORre* my pictures used to take 2 seconds to upload max…not it takes about 15-25 seconds?! “Houston, we have a problem” *bbzzztt*.

Now to try some portrait orientation…(sorry Linzhi, you have to be my guinea pig in this new-theme-blogging-style-to-see-how-it-responds-and-looks-like experiment. No pun intended.) Yes, I know that if no one else is reading, at least my sister, Linzhi will be because she wants to show pics of Shybrow to her housemate!

Test Caption Style again

Test Caption Style again

-hmm…wayyyyy too big…you can even tell she was out of focus…

-caption didn’t come out the first time.

-had a http error when uploading the image (not a new problem)

-picture too big…have to scroll down to see whole picture.  Need restrictions…

Now, I’m gonna try limit the heaight to the max width…lets see how we go:

test captionObservations:

-hmm…captions didn’t come out again…never EVER using captions from now on…

-it was aligned left…now corrected.

-is the watermark too big??? …let me know in the comments!

Conclusion:

-landscape pix can max out the screen.

-portraits need to be restricted.

-never use captions.

-20 secs to upload image

-always http error.

—————————————————————————————————————————————————

Ok, I’m happy with my little experiment. I do believe the http error is caused by the large image size…lets see if I can pull it down a little without being too obvious.

Back to the article: Shybrow come from two words:

-Shy

-eyebrow.

Shybrow aka ShyShy aka Shaaaaaaaaiiiiiiiiiiiii is the only guinea pig that I have ever seen to have eyebrows. Not those weirdo whiskers things but full on eyebrows. We enjoy puching them way up front so they cover his her eyes completely. Its super adorable! Shes very well trained but shes a Grade A+ couch potato. Shes so so so so so lazy and no mater how many times we try to train her she never responds when we ask her to come…

It was originally Shybrowse but people kept calling her shybrow so the name stuck. I actually think its a better name! She knows we’re calling her but shes just too lazy to bother…except when she knows you’ve brought food for her.

Steph was lucky enough to catch her yawning yesterday:

cutestguineapig-9180As you can see she only has four teeth and a really cute tongue. That in front of her is an apple.

cutestguineapig-9323Meet Guwheenee Guinee Quinie Gweenie. I think thats how you spell it. Thats how you pronounce it anyways. Shes Shybrow’s only friend. Sometimes Gweenie bites her though and makes poor Shybrow scared.

Oh did you notice Shy’s eyebrows? You can clearly see em here:

cutestguineapig-9189So CUUUUUUUTTTEE RIGHT!??!?!?!?! I like to see her mouth too…will have to take more pics of her later.

In the meantime that about wraps it up for my debut post. Expect a flood of posts in the next few weeks! Last but not least, heres a special something for Judy Lee, Linzhi’s housemate.

Perhaps a brief intro for those who are unaware:

Not too long ago in a land far away (Scot-land that is) Linzhi and Judy were out early one cold morning. (Wait, is this the same time as when you got dragged out carrying your blanket with you? if not I may be telling a bogus story). This story is based on a true story of an event. blablabla yada yada yada …nothing interesting happens…blablabla again…yada yada and more yada… until Judy, spots some ducks!

In her infinite wisdom she figures the only logical way to call them over would be to bend over slightly, arch your back and knees and bring your hand in closer to your face with your palm facing up. Now, close your middle, ring, and pinky finger as well as thumb to form sort of a fist with the exception of the index finger which should still be extended. Using a waving action with your index finger motion the ducks to come closer by repeating the following words exactly.

“Heeeerrrrreeee duckie duckie duckie….Heeeerrrrreeee duckie duckie duckie….” Repeat as necessary. Its *almost* failproof. It works on every other animal as well as we’ll soon find out…

Before you view the video, I’d just like to say that I wanted to be funny so I pretended to use some weird accent. I now realise the error of my ways and looking back I look like a complete moron making a fool of myself. Sorry about that.

Tell me what you think of the new blog theme? How are the pictures? OK or no way??? Please leave a comment!

OK so a little update before I start never hurt anybody. I am now officially unemployed as I have finally graduated with my Master’s in Business Administration. I have no idea what I’m going to find a job as although I’m pretty sure I’ll be looking for something that falls in my bachelor degree qualification which is I.T. I’ve also lodged my application for an Australian Permenant Residency and have a few more bits and pieces which I need to get sorted before all I need to do is wait until they process it.

If someone wants to give me a helping hand in deciding what to do next that would be great…otherwise I’ll just see where God brings me and in the meantime I shall do some hardcore blogging!

…………………………………………………..so we’re posting about the Hillsong Conference today. We’re back in Sydney. We’re exhausted. We’re psyched!

The Hillsong Conference is held in the Acer Arena which is one of the stadiums in the Olympic Park located in Sydney Australia. Yes, thats the one where the Sydney Olympics were held at…duh! I only took one snap of the Olympic Park which is below. I took some pics of the Acer Arena from the outside with the intention of stitching them together in PS to create a nice pano but I’m too lazy so screw that plan.

HillsongConference2009byJiarenLau-5312

Yup, way to start off writing a blog post after 2 months of nothingness and the first picture you post is a happy snap?! …apart from the heavily cropped pic right on top which I try to inject into every post I write…The first thing that happens as we arrived were the massive screens showing the latest #Hillsong tweets…it was there to keep everyone occupied because it was BO-RING for the first half hour we were there. We wanted to get there early the first night so we had epic seats! Guess which one was the one posted by Aaron Lim?

HillsongConference2009byJiarenLau-4771

Yes there were actually hot chicks in front of us…and no I didn’t hit on them, puh-leez…they actually asked us to post that! We also got a bunch of leaflets/brochures on our seats which I knew I would never see again after that night so I happily took a picture of them:

HillsongConference2009byJiarenLau-4775

When they finally started we were greeted with the famous Hillsong Conference Opening Ceremony…sort of like a not-so-grand Olympic opening ceremony…check the vids out on youtube if you really wanna see the whole thing…I only got a couple of shots:

Gotta love the laser light show they put on! Since the Conference was so long ago now there’s really no point in doing all three days. I’m just going to focus on the main service in the stadium. I made sure I sat at places of the stadium everyday so I got a shot of all the stuff I wanted (which is harder than it sounds!). Compressed into four pictures you can really see the atmosphere that was going on in this place:

I can’t remember exactly but on one of the nights there was a guest worship team from the US. I think it was from Jentzen Franklin’s church or something like that but I’m not sure. Please correct me if I’m wrong. Whats cool is the way they had the lyrics displayed…it was like playing flash instead of the normal camera panning the audience/singers/musicians with the yellow words on the bottom of the screen. It was more like this:

Okay.

If all you wanted to see was my fave Hillsong pics they’re all above or on my Flickr page. I’m not going to post anymore. I’m sure there are plenty of shots of the pastors/speakers/singers close up everywhere else on the web. What no one else has was what we did during the times of the day we weren’t actually attending the conrefence but goofing off somewhere else!

One of the afternoons we spent close to a whole hour trying to get four people to balance together on a metal stump which was about 25cm in diameter. We failed miserably laughing til our we cried while onlookers gave us that look-at-those-whimpy-asian-loosers look as they walked by…We finally made it which was confirmed by counting to “3″ very moderately after which we fell off again. Luckily for us, Steph was around to witness this glorious occasion and froze the moment of triumph in this picture below that oozes awesomeness.

HillsongConference2009byJiarenLau-5303

As you can see there were many other stumps which were higher and we couldnt do this on those. You can see in the background on the right an “At/At” sign which I think were all the athletes that took place in the Sydney Olympics back in 2000. It went all the way from Aa to Zwateva.

…then there was this weird one:

HillsongConference2009byJiarenLau-5311

Yes, it was a pig on the stump! I took a pic from the other side but I was against the Sun so it was all dark…On one of the nights after taking the train back to Parramatta station we were so hungry and had dinner at the Nandos restaurant there. The owner was really nice and gave us some freebies! We actually had a photo competition of who could make the ugliest face without using your hands. The owner of the restaurant was the judge and the loser (which was chosen by the judge and later agreed by all) had to run up and down the train station shouting “I love Britney Spears!” at the top of their lungs! Guess who won (or should I say lost)?

HillsongConference2009byJiarenLau-4913

Neo

HillsongConference2009byJiarenLau-4915

Will

HillsongConference2009byJiarenLau-4919

Sabrina

HillsongConference2009byJiarenLau-4920

Wilson

HillsongConference2009byJiarenLau-4924

Steph

HillsongConference2009byJiarenLau-4925

Sudakar

HillsongConference2009byJiarenLau-4926

Pei Ling

HillsongConference2009byJiarenLau-4927

Patrick

HillsongConference2009byJiarenLau-4931

Edna

Yes, I did a face too but this is my blog so you don’t get to see it. I didn’t win or lose so my inclusion doesn’t really matter :) The winner was granted one immunity to forfeit a dare on the “Truth or Dare” game we were going to play when we got back but never got around to doing so…but go ahead and guess who won or lost. Let me know in the comments and I’ll let you know if you’re right or wrong when theres enough comments, hehe…speaking of winning, one of my pictures in my previous post, the Scott Kelby’s Worldwide Photo Walk competition won my local Photowalk…can you guess which one?

On the afternoon of the third day of the conference we really goofed off big time. Everyone else had electives…I was too lazy to go to mine so Steph, Patrick, and I went back to the poles and took some portraits!

Less talk More pictures!

Right, got it!

I’ll shuddap and let the pictures speak for themselves so enjoy the rest of the shots. This is me signing off!

HillsongConference2009byJiarenLau-5320

HillsongConference2009byJiarenLau-5322

HillsongConference2009byJiarenLau-5341

HillsongConference2009byJiarenLau-5378

HillsongConference2009byJiarenLau-5388

HillsongConference2009byJiarenLau-5400

HillsongConference2009byJiarenLau-5401

HillsongConference2009byJiarenLau-5415HillsongConference2009byJiarenLau-5417

HillsongConference2009byJiarenLau-5418

HillsongConference2009byJiarenLau-5470

You know in retrospect, this would be a great place to take some wedding shots!