No Nose Smiley :)

On Thursday 22nd December 2012 at lunch time, I wandered down to the Bank of China near Wynyard station (Sydney) and filled in my application form. The form was to apply for the bank account. The bank also took a copy of my passport and my HKID as well as a letter in the same name which had my home address. If you can read Chinese, here's a photo of a sign which was a the branch with some details: The bank branch was very quiet even at lunch time. There was one lady who was at the enquiry desk who helped me out. I took a seat and explained what I wanted to do and she just asked me if I had all my ID and documents with me. I had to write my Chinese name a couple of times which was a bit embarrassing as my handwriting looks like a 5 year old's! You know how some kids may write S or L or some other letter "backwards"... that's the type of handwriting I have! I had to silently giggle when the lady asked if I could "read Mandarin"! (Not Chinese but ...

I’ve recently learnt about Tabata and how this can help me optimise the time I spend on exercising. Reducing it down to less than 5 minutes a day! So of course I had to give it a go. I started this on 19th December 2011 so it’s still early days. Let’s see if this can replace the longer runs I would normally do with Sprocket. I decided to do this with my trusty exercise bike (seriously this has been probably the item which has been the best value in terms of exercise equipment – I bought it around 1995 for over $200 from Rebel Sport and I’m still using it regularly!). So I exercise in quick intervals of 20 seconds going as fast as I can and then 10 seconds of slower cycling. To make it easier I downloaded an Android App (Interval Timer AD) to help me identify the end of the 20 or 10-second ‘stints’. I wonder why the 20 seconds seems so long and the 10 seconds so short . I do this for 8 cycles and after I can feel it. I can feel the ‘Afterburn’ and my heart rate is accelera...

The HK government is doing HKD6000 handouts to all Permanent Hong Kong ID holders. After hearing about this for months now my mother tells me to hurry up and sort it out. Unfortunately I need to get a LOCAL (as in Hong Kong) bank account open in my name (ie not a joint account). Anyway I wandered down to the HSBC branch and they can’t help me unless I want to wait 6-8 weeks for an account to open. I then went to Citibank and they can open a foreign currency account but not a ‘local’ account… so I tried Bank of China . I just called them as I didn’t want to walk down there (after having just come back from that way). And they can do it all for me! I just need to bring my HK ID, Passport and evidence of current address. All of this needs to be done by 30th December 2011! So get your skates on down to your local Bank of China branch (there aren’t too many of them) and pay your AUD100 to get your HKD6000! More info about the scheme here: http://www.scheme6000.gov.hk/eng/in...

After the first run of exercises, I tried to get around with just wearing either my really weak contact lenses I had from before (they were daily ones which were around –4.50) but it wasn’t working too good.  But it was a whole site better than trying to walk around with the –4.00 or –2.75 glasses which John had provided me.  I lasted a whole of one work day and a weekend before I reverted to wearing my normal contact lenses.  These normal contact lenses had already been backed off by me so hopefully didn’t impede my progress too much. To give you some idea of the progress, whilst wearing the –2.75 lenses I had to bring my laptop very close to be able to do any work.  Right now I’m typing away at my laptop in a normal position and I’m doing fine!! So today was a cloudy with periods of sunshine type day.  I was able to do some drills including the first time with the Star Chart.  So I first did my distance drills and saw a bit of improvement.  And t...

I’ve subscribed to Sustainable World Radio as a podcast feed and came across an episode about building and building in cob.  So of course now I want to build one in Howes Valley.  I want to start small (more likely to be achievable!!) and will learn from building a “pizza” oven (earthern oven) first.  I’ve been using Spool to download a number of YouTube and Vimeo videos to see how others have been building them. At this stage the pizza oven has to come first.  The base is the interesting component and I’m wondering if I should use the legs of a table I don’t like… and just build more stone around it and mortar it in with a cob/cement mix mortar.  And I want to expand on it by building some benches or sitting area for the BBQ/Pizza oven.  So I’m picturing a layout something like this: The middle will be workable height (using my table legs possibly?  or some sort of block work to build a BBQ and Pizza oven area) and then on either side facing bot...

I received the lenses a little while ago but couldn’t do any of the exercises until I received the glasses.  John (John William Yee) sent me two pairs of glasses as one was weaker (-4.00) and one stronger (-2.75).  I would have called it the other way around but that is how he refers to them so to be consistent, so shall I.  I need the glasses as my contact lenses and other glasses would be obsolete as my eyesight improved (what an exciting prospect even if dislike the wastage of it.  Does anyone need any toric lenses in around the –4.75 mark?  ) I’ve been excited once I received the lenses and glasses but really needed to wait for some daylight to do the first test as the exercises required me to look into the distance. A bit hard if there is not enough light to see very far! So this morning I woke at my normal time and convinced Sprocket he didn’t need to go for a walk and remembered to not put in my normal contact lenses. I prepared by pulling up the in...

Over the past few years I’ve been trying to improve my eyesight without laser surgery.  I keep thinking back to a conversation I had with someone when Hurricane Katrina went through the US and their comment about possibly not being able to see what was happening in an event of a catastrophe.  That’d be me.  I wouldn’t be able to find my contacts, and even if I did, how long would it be OK to wear them for before they didn’t work?  I’d be blind.  I don’t mind a bit of a blur but I’d have to be able to see anything dangerous. So I started investigating options.  Whilst friends of mine and my brother all got laser surgery and highly recommended it, I just am not convinced that is the way to go.  I searched the internet for some options.  I even went to a training course in Mosman run by Vision Training to learn some techniques.  They were good but I didn’t have the dedication to practice and train my eyes as much as I should.  Also the m...