Left Behind

The things that people leave behind at the pharmacy counter... whether on purpose or accidentally.

This is quite common. There are some who loathe carrying small change. 

This one is more of absent-mindedness but happens a lot as well. Paying for medicines and forgetting to take it.

Discarding receipts. Also very common. This is why we only issue receipts if specifically requested. 

Hmm, now this one is a first. I didn't exactly see the customer leaving these behind. What's even weirder is that they were left by two separate customers on two different nights. The garlic came first and then followed by the onion few nights later. I'm wondering if the customer saw something that I should be aware of. Vampires? 

Phillip Island Penguin Parade

There are a lot of animals that are unique to Australia - kangaroos, wombats, koalas are among a few of them. A lesser known one is the Gippsland earthworm found in the state of Victoria. These giants can grow up to a length of 3m. Of all the animals we saw down under, the one that I will remember the most are the fairy penguins.

(Image from Wikipedia)

These penguins are not as famous as their more well known cousins the Emperor Penguins. They weren't even  among the 3 different species of penguins featured in the animated movie 'Happy Feet'. They are naturally very small in comparison to other types of penguins with the average adult measuring under 50cm therefore earning them their name (Fairy Penguins, Little Penguins, Little Blue Penguins).

You can see these penguins in a zoo (we saw some of them in Sydney and the Gold Coast) but I do advise you to see them in their natural habitat, Phillip Island. It makes the experience that much more special. There are many day tours that operate from Melbourne that will take you to Phillip Island.

The penguins normally go out fishing as a group at dawn and return to their burrows just right after sunset. This is a safety precaution. Though they are master swimmers and divers in the water, they are not very good at walking. They feet looks disproportionate and not capable of sustaining their own weight on land. If you see them up close, it almost looks like its struggling to walk - almost always stopping and panting after a few steps. Imagine sticking two 20 sen at the bottom of the iPhone and try making it walk. Very wobbly and unstable. It is this handicap that makes them easy targets when they go out and come back from fishing. 

They're not always on time you know

It is also this handicap that makes viewing this awesome penguin parade possible for us. There are stands and walkways built all around the beach where the penguins come home. At the appropriate time, we will be ushered out to fill the seats and await the penguins' return. Once the first group of penguins come ashore, the main spotlights will be switched off within an hour. So normally what  everyone will be advised to do is adjourn to the walkways where we can get a more intimate view of the penguins. Touching is definitely a no no and so is photography. There are many park rangers scouring the vicinity so its better to keep the cameras in your bags. 

An amazing fact is that penguins are generally monogamous. When they find a mate, its really 'till death do us part'. Literally! Penguins will only find another mate once their current ones are deceased. Also, have you ever wondered why penguins have black/blue backs but white bellies? Its another safety design. When penguins are in the water, airborne predators will have a hard time differentiating the penguins from the air thanks to their black/blue coats. The same goes for seaborne predators who look up and see the white bellies that are similar to the rays of light shining in from the sky.  

After many of the tour buses have left, our tour guide asked us to follow him to a corner of the car park where we found a couple of penguins in a dark corner. There weren't any rangers around so I quickly snapped a shot in bulb mode. Can't risk using the flash because that will be like throwing flashbangs in front of them. 

If you're ever in Melbourne, I do urge you to consider going for this. Looking at our itinerary in Melbourne, I thought the highlight of the whole trip will be the 12 Apostles and the Great Ocean Road. I wasn't expecting much from the Phillip Island day trip but I was proven wrong. This was a lot more memorable to me than looking at huge rocks and winding roads!

We couldn't pet them but we did bring one home

Old Is Good

Barely a month after getting my car back from the workshop, another problem appeared. The car boot was always wet during a rainy day and the wooden board that was there had turned into sludge-like material. So it wasn't any good just replacing the board, it had to be certified water tight so this does not happen again. 

There weren't many workshops around that are willing to test for leaks and repair them but I did find one eventually. That was the first time I've been there so I looked around at how their other customers repairs were going along. Interestingly I was the only one at the shop for repairs, all the others were there to upgrade. A burly chinese man was installing new lights and door handles to his Ninja King (Land Cruiser), a JPJ officer was lowering his car and changing the rims and another fella was haggling over a new sport suspension kit but decided in the end to just change the bodykit on his Dmax. 

This got me thinking too... my car is currently about 13 years old and there will definitely be an increased cost of maintenance due to its age, so why not just get a new car? As I was entertaining this thought, I noticed something.

I had the whole car repainted while it was at the workshop and so fast there's a major scratch! Most of the time my car's exposed to a lot of things when I'm at work. Its an open air and a high traffic car park at a hypermarket and who knows someone might have knocked a shopping trolley into it accidentally or parked too close and swung his door open carelessly.

These things are unavoidable in such an environment. I don't know who did it, but I do know that I'm not going to get a new car now. The heartbreak will be a lot more intense! I'll probably drive this one till its wheels fall off or situations or am in a situation that makes it necessary for me to get a bigger/new car.

A Life Lost

"Your business is about to f**king swim down the Hudson," Ramsey said to Cerniglia, while offering advice on how to turn his business around.


One must really wonder how much influence the words Gordon Ramsay bluntly said to restaurant owner Joseph Cerniglia in 2007 had on the latter's decision to take his life in that particular manner. If you've watched his shows then you will realize most of the time his lips will be moving but there will be no audio. That's because its mostly profanities.

When he was interviewed by Jeremy Clarkson on an episode of Top Gear, Jeremy brought up the topic of Gordon having received an OBE and jokingly asked if it was for services to swearing. Gordon doesn't just have colorful language but gets angry a lot and is very rude. Well no doubt this helps the show's ratings. The main reason why many people watch American Idol is because of Simon Cowell though no contestant has taken their lives yet. And thats 2 for Gordon! Well I think its because Simon looks like a buffoon anyway and no one takes him seriously.

In our line of work we meet all sorts of characters daily and this is a very timely reminder to never take anything personally no matter how much pressure we are under. The results can really be fatal.

I'm Back!

I've spent the past couple of weeks travelling around Australia and its been a blast. There were many things to prepare and attend to but it was all worth it. My wife and I visited Melbourne, Sydney, Gold Coast and Brisbane in a space of a couple of weeks and left with many fond memories and pictures. 

A kangaroo gets close

There will be more posts on the trip after the photos have been sorted out. I do plan to make them into an album as well but that will be much later. Here are some thoughts on the trip...

- Zebra crossings (the ones without traffic lights) mean nothing in Malaysia but over there, they are very important. Pedestrians always have the right of way on zebra crossings ... a concept that I found very hard to get used to. I almost ran over 2 people and had to remind myself to slow down and look out for people each time after that. 

- Koalas sleep 20 hours a day! And don't call them koala bears. They're not bears.

- 50% of the people we meet in Brisbane are Asians. 

- It must suck to be a tourist from China. Souvenirs are all made in China and I wonder how its like to fly over seven thousand kilometers to a foreign land and buy products at prices that will cost a trivial sum if they had bought it at home. I didn't see any Malaysian products there though I did pity the fella who was driving a Proton Persona (Wira). 

This kangaroo got too close...heheh

- Planning a trip all on your own as opposed to going for an all-inclusive tour package (like our Korean trip last year) is a lot more fun but tiring. No one is there to greet you at the airport, take your luggage and ferry you around. You have to read maps, learn train routes, decide between different modes of transport, etc.  It was a great experience but will think twice before doing something like this again. 

- Nothing beats the feeling of coming home. Really.

Mobile Blogging

I'm giving this mobile blogging a go and updating my blog from my iPhone. Now this isn't the first time I've posted from the phone but this is the first time doing so while uploading a picture.

I'll be going to Australia later this week so it's just as well that I discovered this option of emailing the picture from the iPhone camera roll to a predetermined blogger mail account.

I'm also glad that my friend Mr Procrastinate is no where to be seen. I've started packing slightly earlier than usual. It was a tough choice deciding what cameras to bring but I decided to go with my gut instinct and bring 4. With few days left to decide that may change. But no matter what I bring, I know it'll be a great trip and am looking forward to it.

Lessons from the Walk

I was involved in a car accident a few weeks back and it forced me to find an alternative method of transport. The workshop promised that they will have everything up and running in 3 weeks time. They took 4 weeks. But it doesn't matter. I could not have been any happier than I was yesterday when I drove to work in my own car again. It didn't bother me that the radio station I listen to chose to do a Justin Bieber marathon and my ears were bleeding by the time I arrived. No sir, not bothered at all.

There are a few experiences that I'll probably never forget from my 4 weeks of walking to work.

- There are things you think about when you walk that you probably wouldn't even bother when you are driving. You notice the terrain more ... well maybe because YOU HAVE TO! You learn which stretch of road has the most dog shit. You notice where the trees are and the shade they provide. There's one awful stretch of road that has no shade at all and takes me a brisk 9 minutes to cover.

- The weather. I've not been affected by meteorology since my time in Glasgow but how the weather fares here will determine how fast I get to work. On hot days I can reach in 23 minutes tops but on nice cloudy days, probably 30minutes.

- Roadkill. Birds. Dogs. Cats. Rats. Urggh.

- There are some really kind people out there. I've been offered a ride to work twice.

- Conversing on my terms. The first time I was offered a ride, it was a non-stop high-speed MLM sales pitch till my destination. That made me resolve to control the conversation should I come across the same situation again. Second time round was another fella, a neighbor of mine. Nevertheless I avoided asking obvious questions like, 'so what do you do for a living?' or 'what interests you?' and stuck with safe topics like weather and politics.

- And finally, if I had to do those four weeks all over again, I'd rather buy a bicycle.