i won't be here at 12.00nzst to wish all a happy new year so i'll do it here 10 hours in advance: Happy New Year to you.

Won't be in front of my computer till then so if you wanna grab me txt or call :)

maybe we can hang out after the countdown. in town or something.

sorry. no parties at my place for this occasion. another two months? we'll see about it.

have a good one tonight for your separate celebration wherever you are :)

currently listening to Snow Patrol - Chasing Cars

Happy Birthday to my dearest mother back home.

Another year's passed by so quickly when we were all celebrating christmas together at st lukes (my previous flat)....

so much has changed since then. Just when you thought everything's according to your plan yet in the end things did not turn out as expected...

But that's life. Aint it?

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all who reads this blog.

I'm sorry that I wouldn't be able to txt all at the same time.

REason: I could finish up my free txt at one go if I were to txt all of you out there. Twice: Christmas and New Year wishes.

One thing I could do if you were to txt me personally: I'll publish them all here:

1. I know who really cares to txt me;
2. Publicity purposes: you get to hyperlink ur blog or whatever here;
3. Spread the cheer!

Whoever gets my txt (in fact if you ever appear in my cell phone contacts you'll know about this blog by the entering my url) and bothers to come to this page congrats u're 1 step away from having ur txt appearing on this page. To get it published just send me a PERSONALISED txt and it will definitely appear on this page.

*it will appear within the next few days as I keep all my txts in my phone. and i'll type them out here. :)

hmm.... isn't this a good idea?

p.s. I'm sorry for not replying any of the txt's for the past few days as I've been very busy. Now it's the time to spread the chrismas cheer! fyi: it's 12 days of chrismas. no excuse for not replying at all.

Keep it coming!

K3V.

my holiday started on the last day of work: 22/12.

went to margies at 2am on 23/12 till 4.30am. hopped on to Jacq's car along with May and Richie for our road trip to Rotorua.

Stopped at Hamilton Garden and Waitomo Cave along the way. Had brunch at The Dam Cafe.

Reached Rotorua late in the afternoon. Checked ourselves in at the Hot Rocks Backpackers (Ain't that hot anywayz) Got a little lazy near the evening and it was drizzly. May, the ever energetic tourist from Malaysia initiated the visit to Te Puia. Being lazy 'locals' Richie and I braved the rain to accompany her to visit the place with the absence of Jacq who decided to ditch us. Reason for going out? Maybe because 'if I lay here, if i just lay here...' it might just waste the time. (the line above was taken from Snow Patrol's Chasing Cars). Since i've been to Rotorua it's not a new thing to me having come to this place at least twice. To make this particular trip interesting Richard's come up with some 'useless piece of information' to quiz the absentee Jacq. "Jacq do you know where Maoris come from? Do you know why Maoris come to New Zealand?" These were later questioned when we went back to our backpackers.

Moving on to visiting the mud pools. The visit wasn't all no fun because there were some really interesting topics to talk about. For instance May's unique opinion that wearing sandals in the rain is better than wearing cover up shoes (seriously do you think so?!); and Richie's trying hard to remember all the useless facts just to bore the shit outta Jacq. or maybe at least make her feel bad. One highlight of the visit: Richie (wearing sandals as well) slipped and fell on to the floor followed bydifferent reactions from May and me. Details? Ask any of us at the road trip.

the visit was quickly followed by chinese takeaway and while we were all taking turns for shower we had a little chat about each other's fav song. or Techno rather. My fav would have to be DJ Jean The Launch and Amok 666. humming continuously, especially me and Rich, these went on and on for the whole damn evening.

Since it was claimed that Lava Bar was apparently the most hip place in Rotorua and it's conveniently situated next to the backpackers we decided to have some drinks in our bunker before heading there. A bottle of Chivas was shared among 4 of us and before 10.30pm with countless 'see you at the bottom' shouts we were basically up for the bar. Too bad the bar wasn't up for us. Yet! It's too early!! Somehow we didn't really get to see how happening the bar could be as we were already gone by 11.30pm. .....

...
a really good sleep by the way.

Day 2:
The following morning started after 8.30am. We had leftovers from the Chinese takeaways we bought the night before. Checked out of the back packers at 10am. Lazed around in a cool cafe called Zippy. It's an awesome cafe. You should try the Soy Mocha it's the best i've ever tasted. Much better than Starbucks(Starbucks' never made any good coffees in the first place).

We were going to try the Zorb but then for that bloody 30 bucks we might as well spend it on something more exciting. My advice: Never go for Zorb. It's bloody stupid!

Thus there we were, Gondola Ride up to the hill for Luge Rides! Five luge rides! So we basically spent the rest of the day doing luge rides and making fool of ourselves.

All in all it's a pretty laid back trip. Relaxing.

Was half hesitating whether this trip will be fun since I didn't know May, Jacq long enough. And Richie! I only knew him on the day itself!

A random last minute trip but it's worth every penny. The mixture of different personalities made it a fun and surprisingly exciting opener to the holidays!

Some lines from the trip:

"If I lay here....."

DJ Jean - The Launch

Amok - 666

and some useless piece of information:

"Do you know how big is the Lake of Rotorua?" (79.5km. to be exact!)

Will add more if I can remember.....

Thanks to Yvonne and Janice for the movies tonight. To be honest the movie was not really my taste but the company was great. thanks a million!

Another day for me. Same old same old. But it wasn't the same for NZ Herald: New face!

Came across this article: for you event organizers out there it might be useful though it's pretty expensive:

Check out www.invite2go.co.nz

It's email based but for txt based i suggest using vodafone's txt2000! bloody too much. Ask Jengis. He's struggling to finish it.

it's 6 more days before the xmas break and I've got heaps of stuff to catch up at work in addition to the workload I promised to finish up for my current team.... Maybe i'll spend the weekend to do it.

Just maybe. Maybe Xmas is around the corner that I think a break is more deserved than work. ... 6 more days.

if u're bored check out this site:

http://www.oddcast.com/sitepal/

pretty fun to play with demo. actually i'm bored so i was trying to play with different things to amuse myself.

less than two weeks before xmas. woo hoo!!!

have u got anything planned? i just wanna chill... don't wanna be involved in any planning.... haha. stress free holiday.....

later.

no 12/12. but a farewell dinner for Yan who's leaving for HK in two days. see u soon. on my birthday. haha!



Enjoy ur trip back! :)

it's been more than 72 hrs since i last blogged.

what's happened generally around me?

wii was launched. wii.nintendo.com

christmas in the park just passed. (i didn't go)

ipod nano's still in my wish list.

hay fever is popular now (don't get one!)

i got myself a 2gb pendrive (i need one badly for work and pleasure)

and a 1gb mmc card for my camera phone (cos i need to take photos of random things)

nothing cool about IE7.0

i'm a little unwell. thus the short post.

will blog in full length
soon. maybe friday.

and no. there's no 12/12. no door sales. nada

Eleven-Eleven photos. They are all up at my flickr album.
Thanks to Arron, D-T, Mia for sharing.
Please feel free to browse through the album.
Do not hesitate to contact me of any issues regarding the photos as I'm happy to resolve them as much as you are.

In order to have these photos viewed freely without any interruptions anytime of the coming months to come I have upgraded the albums.
If you feel like contributing your donation is very much appreciated. A dollar won't make much difference to u anyway. :)

Click on 'Paypal' on your right to donate for this cause.

Once again, thanks for all the support, be it man power or monetary form.

We will rock on! Keep tracking for future events. Bookmark this site (http://www.kevinteh.net).

Your rep
Kevin

been tryin' to find my pendrive for days now. can't remember where i last saw it. fuck it. i'm getting a new one.

might cost me 90 bucks for a kingston. not too expensive. speaking of expensive/cheap how do you actually define it??

i'd say it's a very subjective term. say $200, do you think $200 is expensive? it depends. depends on what you're paying the $200 for. Got my car towed a while ago and had to release the car. Cost me around $200. Expensive. Buying a second hand 3G phone on trademe at $200. Cheap.

What about getting a pendrive for $90? Cheap? Expensive? I have searched every corner in my flat as well as my desk at office. I still couldn't find it. Took me probably 2 hours in total and heaps of grief. This is painful and frustrating. The pendrive is my life, my soul. I used it almost on a daily basis for mp3, work, work and work. Now it's gone.

This is the end of my affair with my ex pendrive. Time to move on to a new one.

Cheap? Expensive? It's breakeven for me. For now.

Ipod Nano.... Any thoughts? :)

Coromandel Road Trip. That's my last weekend's highlight.

Just found out I haven't actually mentioned it. An update on my weekly outing is inevitable for those of you who actually bother to read my blog on a regular basis.

Here it goes:

Friday:
Started off slowly. Was supposed to have a few drinks with colleagues at The Drake but got a phone call from Jacq cos her car's got towed away. So basically after work had a shower then I went straight to New Market to pick her up. Got her car released at the nearby tow yard. freakin fifty bucks! at least it's much better than my 200 bucks a few months back.

so she got it released then we went downtown to meet up with MayH at Toto's for her ex-company's Xmas function. Bloody big company I should say (oh i randomly met Antonia there, she was like, 'Kev you're like everywhere!' .... am i??). Free wines, beers and juice. got ourselves well 'fed' with the free stuff while waiting for Miho. By the time she arrived it was probably 9.30pm. so we headed off to some jap restaurant near quay st (don't ask me what it's called cos i have no recollection of the name) and met up with Ken and Palni. A few sake shots followed and we walked to some pub called 'Steamship' blah blah blah (again, don't ask methe name) to meet up with Doreen. She was obviously gone by then since she can't even remember that we were there that evening.

Around 11pm we came home. Met up with Yan and got ourselves a tequila shot before we headed to Studio for 'Oxygen'. Probably I was tired that evening so I didnt' really enjoy it that much . (met up with JasonN and FBian/SuAnn) Came home at about 4am.

Saturday:
Woke up at 9am. Showered and dragged myself to buy some McD breakfast on GNR. It took half an hour to order the whole bulk of breakfast to cater for around 5 ppl. Bloody restaurant. Somehow they made a mistake and never really knew how to deal with it. The manager kept apologising and promised to get a replacement meal for me which I was in the end given the wrong set of meals. MF***! 5 hot chocolates became 5 white coffee! and one less hash brown. my god. .... at least the breakfast kept me awake!

but I wasn't the one driving to Coromandel. Jeng was at the wheel for the first part of it while I was sleeping at the back. haha. all because of a late night on Friday. But it was one of the best sleeps ever. The participants of the trip were: Jeng, Carol, Me and May in one car and Warren, Nick, Kenny and Yan in another one. Stopped at Thames for another McD lunch before we continued our journey to the Hot Water Beach. It was a winding road. I liked it cos straight roads are more dangerous. That's what I reckon. Don't you think so?

Reached there around 3.30pm and spent about 2 hrs at the beach just relaxing. I was in fact really relaxing: had a gooooood sleep as I didn't remember anything throughout my nap. They were actually having fun posing in front of cameras and making candid and action-packed shots. Photos will be up soon.

Left the place and off we went to Thames again for, again, McD. McD's the saviour as we didn't bring any food at all. No planning is good planning as we didn't get ourselves stressed out.

Reached Auckland around 9pm and stopped by in Howick for Chinese food. Sent May home in Henderson before I rejoined the people at Orange for pool. Pretty long and tiring night and the night ended for me at 2am.

Sunday:
Woke up by 8am for Airport to see off Blasius from Christchurch who was leaving for Malaysia. Brief catch up is better than no catching up at all. Went to church at 11am. Viewed a Parnell house at 12.15pm and joined the group for karaoke at K-Box. Not that much fun as a matter of fact. Probably I arrived late and most people left way before 3pm leaving me and Kenny terrorising the room!

The weekend ended with a DVD 'Click' with some photo swapping sessions in the background.....

Busy but accomplished weekend.

ACG. In the making. Phuck Yeah.

'click' the movie.
have u watched it?
as usual it was a sunday dvd night with the ppl. "Click" was the movie of the night. Pretty meaningful comedy:

Don't you wish your life's controllable by the remote? You could fast forward to the part you want and skip the unwanted part along the way.
Everyday we are occupied with so many things in our life we tend to neglect the most important element: family.

What's there left in this world if we actually keep working and working without treasuring what we already have? Yes, work is important. Important deadlines and career advancement and climbing up the corporate ladder. But if we just work our ass off without knowing what we really want in the end it would be meaningless. And sad.

I might sound contradictory here but hang on a second: I'm not discouraging hard work. I'm not encouraging just plain family and no work at all. There seems to be a balance in everything that we're involved in.

Work/Life Balance. Heard of this term? It's a simple term but how many of us can really achieve it? Have a think about it: 7 days in a week. How many of these are work days? 5? Do you work on Saturdays? Some people do. I do sometimes. Work/Life Balance doesn't mean having 3.5 days of work and 3.5 days of leisure. Could it be 5 days of work and 2 days of leisure? Could be. Some people need just 4 days of work and 3 days of leisure (in rare cases). What I tend to do is work really really hard on work days and relax as much as I can on weekends. Does it help? It does. In some way. Even though some times we think that the weekend's too short. Every Sunday night is a low night for working class: Monday's a slow start as always. But what I tend to do is have a target and go for it: Make Fridays your target! It might sound sad but hey at least it's a target and you'll work hard to achieve it. Well I do have long term targets ie climbing up the corp ladder for instance. It's really long term. Patience is the key maybe.

Just had a phone call with parents. They've been checking out this site very frequently and yeah it's always good to have interaction and express our own opinion about the life we're leading, be it good or bad.

Life is not all about making tons of money. It's mostly about happiness and having a sense of achievement for everything that we do.

Just take me for example: Friday's a short term target, you work hard and you get rewarded with two days (weekends) off; having a successful career is rather long term but you're slowly climbing.

Grow your wings and flap it before you fly. Don't just jump off the cliff. Not sounding philosophical here but a thousand miles does start from every little step.

We're still young here. Work hard. Grab the opportunity. Don't be afraid to fall along the way. Once you're all settled it's never too late to start your own family. When you've got 'the family' make it your number one priority. The rest takes care of itself naturally.

You'll live a happy man in the end.

So guys, work hard, party (relax) too. :P

Lunch Time Blog.

Looks like i'm slacking off nowadays. blogging wise that is. apart from that it's been a busy week for me. Currently still partly in traffic team organizing traffic surveys, training up new grad, as well as picking up bits and pieces of stuff from the guy Lucas at Project Management Team. Haven't been able to breathe easily because of the unusually high work load and stress. Maybe I should take a break. Maybe I should just do nothing and sleep at home.

But hey I've asked for it. and now i get it. Maybe it's time to wake up super early like I used to and be stuck at work from 8 to 6.

It's a different culture working for different bosses. I gotta change my attitude to suit him. ...

Oh well lunch time's up. Ciaoz.