MS Sydney to the Gong Ride

Tomorrow, I will participate in my first ever MS Sydney to the Gong ride. The ride goes from St. Peters to Wollongong, via Brighton Le Sands, the Royal National Park, and the Sea Cliff Bridge, totaling 90 km. Personally, I hope to finish in 5-6 hours. The event is held to help raise money and awareness for MS - Multiple Sclerosis - an autoimmune disease affecting the central nervous system.

Preparation for any endurance event is of utmost importance, and this is no different. Equipment must be checked and rechecked, supplies readied. For this event, the most important equipment will be the bike. It has been serviced a couple of days ago, and all gears and brakes are checked. The tyre pressures are also checked, as are the pedals and the shoes. Aside from the bike, there are the clothing, helmut, gloves, shoes, camelpak for hydration and some light energy snacks for along the way.

But perhaps the most important thing is human preparation, both mentally and physically. I have no idea how I will go as I have never ridden this far before. Unfortunately, I haven't had much time to train up for this event, unlike for the Oxfam Trailwalker, but hopefully I will finish tomorrow.

Health Checks

Today we had a health expo at work. The work is carried out by this company called HealthWorks. I had several things checked out, including vision and skin cancer screenings. Luckily, nothing of concern came up. I did learn that it is possible to get melanoma on the sole of the foot and in the eye. 

Other tests I went through included body composition and heart health. I had an interesting discussion with one of the health professionals about what is classified as fast food. Turns out I considered everything that's not a sit down meal at a restaurant to be fast food, but they only considered the more traditional meaning of chain stores. My blood pressure was uncharacteristically high today, perhaps due to the recent tragedy in the news.

I thought it was a bit unsophisticated for the body composition check that they just used a Bio-Electric Impedance scale for everything. But, I did get some good results, so I can't really complain. I mean, to have a Basal Metabolic Age of 18 years is great. They also gave a figure for % body fat, bone mass, and body water percentage.

Weekly Petrol Update

Unleaded: 135.9c / L
Exchange Rate: 0.6362 USD
Crude: 65.00 USD (102.17 AUD) / Barrel

Indoor soccer

So I played my last game of Indoor Soccer at Tempe. It wasn't a particularly good game by my team, but we managed a respectable score of 4-7. The season has been a long one, and I joined the team a few weeks after the start.

The team was originally pulled together by one of my friends - Eric. The level of competition is very high, and way beyond what the team was capable of. So, that plus the fact that for some reason, for this competition, you did not pay upfront, meant that everyone on the team pulled out after week 3.

So, captain Eric, with all that he can muster, started calling through all his friends. His girlfriend eventually contacted me and that's how I joined the team. All the other team in the competition have uniforms. We just rocked up in whatever colour we wanted to wear. We're the rainbow team. In the number of games I've played, we have gone through at least 15 different players over the season, and this is for a game where there are only 5 on court at any one time.

All the games I played were in good spirit, and despite losing almost all games, I had a lot of fun. I have learnt a lot through this competition, and I have no doubt my skills have improved. I am now looking forward to another season to play somewhere, but I am finding hard to find competitions that are still open and accessible, maybe I'm just not looking in the right places, but it sure is a lot harder than finding outdoor games. Hopefully I will find a competition at a good level and gather a team to participate before the start of the next out door season.

Catch of the Day or something

There are plenty of online stores out there, so how would one go about attracting business? Recently I discovered a website that has an interesting concept. The website is called Catch of the Day. This is an Australian website with a difference - they sell one major discount item per day. This way, they keep their inventory costs low, while providing an incentive for visitors to return. They don't always have new stock though, and sometime they recycle old stock that didn't sell as well. The more popular items - like LCD monitors and portable hard drives - sell like hot cakes, and are usually gone by mid-afternoon. They update their listing each day at noon, so it pays to check each lunch time.

I recently bought a set of Philips stereo bluetooth headphone and a pair of Doro cordless phones from them. Payment was done via PayPal, so it is fairly secure. The items were delivered about a week after placing the order. The thing is, some of their prices are just amazing. I ended up paying less than half of the cheapest alternative for the cordless phones. I don't even know how they can source their stuff so cheaply.

Tomorrow, they will have a birthday sale, and some of the items posted on the site are real bargains. For example, they're selling the popular Nintendo Wii for just $199, and 4GB Ipod Nano for $99. That's huge! So, if you're in the hunt for some bargains, I really recommend this site! Happy Fishing...

Sculpture by the Sea

Until the 2nd of November, the coast line from Bondi to Tamarama will be littered with colours and shapes, forming the one of the largest outdoor sculpture displays in the world. Best of all, it's free. I went to Sculpture by the Sea today, even though the weather could have been more kind. A few of my favourite this year included the anatomically correct farm animals, and the huge needle pulling thread on the hill. There were a few more abstract ones that also caught my attention, and the butterfly-globe was also very striking. Here are some of photos from the day trip, definitely worth a visit!

Night Noodle Markets and World Bar

October is Good Food Month and last Friday was the last night the Noodle Markets were held. at Hyde Park, and I went to check it out. The atmosphere was amazing, the north side of the park packed with people chatting, drinking, eating. Musing blaring in the background and an array of coloured lighting transformed the trees and walkways.

The food on offer was pretty good too. The best part? The fact that I went at 8.30pm. The stalls all close at 9.30pm, and it's the time to flog off whatever they had left. This means shorter queues, and cheaper food. I also got to try out the Citi VIP area. The area is just a small barricaded area in the middle of everything, and it had a private bar, and some candle lit tables draped with red table cloth. It gave a very intimate feel to the area. The noodle markets were very well carried out, and I'll be back next year for sure.

After the noodle markets, I headed to World Bar with some friends. For a bar right in the heart of the Cross, we were told that we would only get in if we were casual and not business attire. One of my friends had to go buy a t-shirt from a near by shop after he turned up in a dressy shirt. The bar was pretty packed and a live band was playing. The trademark for the bar though had to be their teapots. Several cocktails - Long Island Iced Tea,  Tropicana, etc, are served in teapots you would find at a Yum Cha restaurant. One pot is about 7 shots, which is pretty awesome!

ViewSonic VA1928wm

There was a sale of sorts at Harvey Norman today. I've been eyeing an upgrade for computer monitors for my parents' PC for a while now, and thought I might try my luck there. The budget is not high, around $200. But, anything will be better than what they were on before - an LG 17" flat CRT.

This is what I ended up with the ViewSonic VA1928wm. I got this baby for $197. There are several shops around that sell 20" screens in the low $200 mark, and they all have superior resolution - 1650 x 1080. The VA1928wm only have a resolution of 1440 x 900. But resolution wasn't the biggest concern, since the higher res. 20 inchers have a finer pitch, therefore smaller lettering on screen. That would in fact make it harder and not easier for my parent to use.

So for my dough, what do I get? An easy-to-install, non-tilt-height-adjustable hard-to-tilt, super bright screen, with in-built speakers connected to my PC via standard VGA and audio cable. The design looks a little dated, but sleek non-the-less, with a silver bezel on the bottom. The power button in the middle of five buttons glows a bright blue when turned on. 

The amount of physical desk real estate saved is amazing. The screen is also more bright than my 20" iMac and I'm thoroughly impressed. The specs boast a 10,000:1 contrast ratio, and I have no reason to complain. I haven't tested out the response time for the screen, but that will be less critical for my parents' usage. Overall, very happy with my purchase.

Petrol Prices

As the financial crisis hit, oil prices have come down a long way since the highs experienced earlier in the year. The Aussie Dollar has also come down sharply against the Greenback. With these factors, should the price at the pump have fallen? Yesterday, as a silly protest, a petrol station in Blacktown started subsidising petrol, and sold Unleaded at 94.9c a litre for a while. According to 2Day FM, they were subsidising more than 30c off their wholesale price, which means, the petrol stations really don't make that much profit - all the profits goes to the petrol companies. 

I will attempt to post some figures every Wednesday morning from now on and compare the price at the pump, crude oil, and exchange rates. This will hopefully give us a good idea of what is actually happening and how much we're being ripped off.

Unleaded: 140.9c / L

Exchange Rate: 0.6882 USD

Crude: 72.18 USD (104.88 AUD) / Barrel

The price of Unleaded petrol the Shell in North Ryde on Lane Cove Road.
The exchange rate according to Google.
The price for Crude is  from Nymex Crude Future according to Bloomberg.

Are you with ANZ?

Last night I was given a task, that should have been a lot simpler than it turned out to be. I needed to transfer some money into an ANZ account by midnight. If I transferred from another bank, it would take a couple of days to clear. This meant that the money had to come from another ANZ account, one that I don't have. Without thinking, I started messaging my MSN list to see who have an ANZ account. ANZ being one of the big four banks in Australia, I figured this would be easy.

After about 15 minutes and talking to countless people, I finally found one person with an ANZ account. But this person didn't even have any money in that account! The search went on for another 30 minutes, and eventually I managed to find a source, and here I say my thanks. What amazed me though, was that even a future employee of ANZ did not have an account with them. So much for being one of the big four.

Vote for which bank you use on the right!