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XXth birthday? :)

Yesterday was Jin's birthday! Don't even ask me how old I am, because I have lost count since I past the 30 mark! (but I am glad she is catching up hehehe!) Initially we were planning to go to Char Char Bull in Freo for dinner but then because of the gloomy weather, we decided to go somewhere closer to home. Four of us headed to Sienna in Leederville but to our dismay, the restaurant was full. After a rather lengthy discussion out in the cold, we decided to settle for Kailis Bro Seafood Restaurant at 101 Oxford St. Leederville. Price wise, the restaurant is not cheap by any standard, we were $175 poorer after that and we didn't even bother about desert or coffee.

Food quality was excellent I must admit. The cobbler that I ordered was very fresh without any "oily" feeling even though it was deep fried in batter. Jin reckened her battered Spanish mackerel was a little bit too dry but loved their chilli mussels. Dao ordered some herbs-clad snapper while Lisa had a bowl of pasta with blue crab meat. Lisa was happy with her pasta but Dao, being a rather talented cook herself, wasn't too convinced with hers :P The friendly service provided by the waiters and waitreses is something to be commended as well. A big downside is the noise level in the restaurant. It was higher than expected for a restaurant of this standard, making decent conversation a rather unpleasant experience. Apart from that, this restaurant is hard to fault and since I have been giving quite a few movie reviews so far in my blog, I will treat this as a review as well and award the restaurant 4 stars out of 5! Not bad at all!

A weekend at Guilderton

A weekend camping at Guilderton and everything seems so refreshed! Yes, I survived the camp in the small town of Guilderton about 95km north of Perth. Guys, if any of you ever feel like taking a short break from reality, your soul will thank you for having a short stay at the Guilderton Caravan Park. The holiday park is situated right on the mouth of the Moore River overlooking Indian Ocean. From the look of it, the park itself is the town center and there is only one cafe/restaurant/general store. Everything is so "natural" and tranquil...well...except for the weather of course :)

I brought my trusty Canon with me but because of the lousy weather, I didn't have much luck with it. Lets hope Lisa and Dao have better luck with their Nikons so I can grab some photos off them...and of course, with me in the photos hopefully :P

As you can see in the picture, the Moore River mouth was largely block by a stretch of long sandy bar with the water level in the river seems a lot higher than the sea level. Basically, you can walk from one side of the river to the other on that stretch of sand and the view of the river from there is amazing. I could only wish the weather was nice enough for me to see the full sunset from the beach!

We have 2 tents set up and me and Jin stayed in the smaller one. Yes, food and food and food and of course, beer and beer and beer and I mean lots of them! Well, that's basically what we did most of the time and strange enough, the heavy downpour and strong wind brought by the storm added to the "cosiness" in the tent! There you have it, that was my first experience at camping and it was fantastic :)

Fishing is one of the favourite activities in Moore River and indeed there are lots of river bream in the river. Unfortunately, most of the bream we cought on Saturday afternoon were undersize so we ended up releasing all of them back to the river. Before we could try our luck on a different fishing spot, the rain just sent us straight back to our tent again :(

No doubt we will be back to Guilderton again in the very near future, probably bringing our tent again to camp there. Hopefully then we will have better luck at fishing!

Shrek The Third

Yea...that's right! It's another movie review time and this time is the long awaited sequel to two of my all time favourite animated movies - Shrek 1 & 2: Shrek The Third. Well, don't get too excited because to me, it's just like the other two "third sequels" that appear this year so far(Spiderman 3 and Pirate of the Caribbean - At World's End), Shrek The Third is a rather disappointment and lame film unfortunately.

I think Shrek is a little bit long in the tooth and this installment should have been a DVD-only release rather than the big screen. The movie tried very hard to be funny and unlike the previous installments, you would be hard pressed to find about fresh idea in this one, except the Snow White :)

The story is quite lame as well and the plot is sketchy at best. With the death of the frog king, Shrek was made heir to the throne which he actively refused. He then embarked onto a journey to find the next in line heir with donkey and booted kitty. In the meanwhile, Prince Charming was massing an army of fairy tale villians for an offensive take over of the Far Far Away. The whole movie is laden with stale and rather calculated jokes. Overall, it's a 2.5 stars movie and I think I have been very forgiving :)

Self-Annihilation: Pharmacy vs Woolworth and Coles? NO LONGER!

Came home from work earlier today and not feeling very well thanks for all the coughs and sneezes customers brought in from work. But that's ok, after all, they are the ones who pay my bills and mortgage and put food on my table at the end of the day. I reluctantly picked up an AJP, a monthly pharmacy magazine which I apparently subscribed to but never get around to read them. I got a pile of them stashed in a giant basket in my kitchen still in their plastic wrappers.

It was the April 07 issue and as I flicked through the first few pages, the headline on page 4 cought my eyes: "The enemy within: aggressive pharmacy competition reaches new depths". Pharmacy industry was faced with a grievious challenge couple years back when retail giants, Woolworth and Coles Myers were trying to get a slice of this multimillion-dollars pie. Every pharmacists (well, almost everyone) were united in their voice to fend off these Walmart-inspired, profit-driven greedy giants. At the meanwhile, a "cancer" is growing within the industry which has slipped under the radar of most of us: big discount pharmacies aka "warehouse pharmacies"!

"NEVER BEATEN ON PRICES!! If you find a cheaper price elsewhere, we will match it and give you 10% off the difference" Heard that before, seen it before, now the cancer is spreading even faster in Perth and is coming to a place near you! FEAR THEM!! Yes, if you are a owner-pharmacist, you should be very worried and so do all of us hard working pharmacists, who are trying to make a living out of serving our community with our knowledge.

Here I quote from the article: "A new player within the Liverpool market, Chemist Warehouse, has gone on the front foot in its competitive campaign to attact customers away from its more established rivals..offering discounts well below cost. These reportedly include Panamax 100tab pack selling 69c and 89c, free gifts with prescriptions and volume discounts on a host of analgesics." As unbelievable as it sounds, the Chemist Warehouse was also reportedly sending their girls to dish out their discount catalogues within and outside of rival pharmacies! Other examples include dispensing three and four packs at once and telling customers that they would only receive their OTC discounts if they had their prescriptions dispensed with them.

How bad can it be? Have you seen people from Big W distributing their catalogues in Kmart? How unprofessional and unethical can those warehouse pharmacy owners be? Can you trust your health with those unscrupulous greedy minority "pharmacists" who want nothing but their aim to close other stores? What is the price you put on your health? I feel sorry for those new pharmacy graduates who are trying to make a living out of this endangered profession...believe me, I feel sorry for myself too!

p/s sorry about the language tone I used in this blog, that's just because I AM ANGRY!!

A day in Perth Hills

Today was another one of those "doing-nothing again" day :) We decided to head for a drive to Perth Hills to visit the Springdale Art exhibitions in Kalamunda. It was rather relaxing with lunch at the Stirk Park in Kalamunda until I got shitted (pardon my language) by bird later during the day. Will come back to that later but Stirk Park in Kalamunda is one of the most picturesque park I have ever visited around Perth. I have added couple of photos in my flickr with Jin as my "model" :) If you happen to find yourself sitting at home doing nothing during one of the weekends, please take a short drive to the Hills, you won't regret it!


Then we drove along the Mundaring Road across the hill and stopped by the Mundaring Weir Hotel for a cuppa. It's a nice discovery actually and we promise ourselves that we will go back again, may be for a meal or two next time. The little cafe was packed full of people and I could see the poor girl behind the counter manning the espresso machines could barely keep up with the orders :)

Oh yea...did I mentioned the defecating bird? I think I must have upsetted some birds in my previous life, this was probably the second time birds having fecal incontinent on top of me! Why me?? Well...thinking about it...I got attacked by magpie before, so this was not so bad I guess. It all happened near where I took the above shot :)

Hale School mid year concert

Last Friday, we went to my nephew's Hale Junior School mid year concert "Celebrating Music from Hollywood Movies". I think the concert was organised yearly by the students from year 3 to year 7 and my nephew was in the junior string quartet. It was a fun-filled night and I am really proud of you, Lynden, and your school is indeed amazing! They played music pieces from various movies ranging from classic like "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang" right through to "Jurassic Park" and "Pirates of the Caribbean - At World's End".

The standard of the play was nothing short of breathtaking and it was indeed hard to believe that those kids are still in primary school! Looking at them really makes me feel ashame of myself. When I was at their age, I was probably catching fish in dirty drains (longkang fish), digging holes in dirt and fighting with other kids over lollies!

A crazy day

I am so so full...yea...still full at 2am in the morning, I was so full earlier on that I couldn't even sit properly...so full that I feel like throwing out :P

This morning, we had BBQ with Mal and Jenny and their friends in King's Park. I was pretty hungry this morning considering that I only had a piece of bread for brekki. Yea...so hungry that I ended up eating more than my stomach could handle I think. Furthermore, we forgot to bring water, instead I washed down my food with only red wine! So driving home at the time was probably out of the question, so we decided to hang around the park and had an afternoon nap there :)

Then we went to brother's house for dinner straight from King's Park with my stomach still pretty much full. The noodle that he cooked was so nice that I couldn't resist but to gobble down the whole lot in a giant bowl! So, back to square one...loosing control over eating?...happening to me all the time!

What we had today :)

Getting fat...fat...fat...ate outside whole day today :) We woke up around 9am on this beautiful second day into winter and decided to have brekki at the Blue Duck in Cottesloe. We went there following one of my cousins' recommendation because of the great breakfasts they serve. Well, to tell you the truth, I think the food they serve is "so so". I ordered the Blue Duck full brekki while Jin is happy with just becon and poached eggs. Their menu can be found here. Although the brekki left much to be desired, the atmosphere of eating on the restaurant balcony next to Cottesloe beach made up for it.


In the afternoon, we went to one of the wineries in Swan Valley, the Fish Tail. It is a very small winery and therefore, you can only purchase their wines directly through their cellar. They don't sell their products through any of those liquor stores in Perth. I think we went there about 2 years ago and got some "Pink Salmon" and it was fantastic so we decided to go back to get more :) "Pink Salmon" is not your typical red wine because the red merlot grapes skin was only allowed to be in contact for 12 hours only to give that brilliant pink colour. The grapes were fermented in stainless steel container and hence, unwooded and the taste is crisp and sweet without the "dryness" of typical reds. Check them out next time you head to the Swan Valley and you will not be disappointment!

Sunset around Perth

The weather in Perth during the past few days were excellent and everyday after I finished work around 5:30pm, I was treated with wonderful sunset with pieces of amazing golden clouds spreaded thinly over the horizon. I wish I have my Canon with me all the time, but I don't think running around with my 3.5kg Crumpler bag full of stuff is that practical anyway :) I whipped out my trusty Nokia mobile with 2MP camera and took couple of shots. As you can see in the photo, this puny "dodgy" camera from Nokia is not a bad emergency alternative after all. As Ken Rockwell wisely put it, "Your camera has nothing to do with making great photos". Ken has been providing me, and I believe millions of people around the world like me who know little about photography, with invaluable knowledge and great inspiration. Thanks to his website, I have learnt much.

It was lucky for me that I finished work early last Friday and had a chance to take my camera down to South Perth to take a few shots. I have posted more photos at my usual place at Flickr. Although a little bit a cloud in the sky would be nice to give the sky a little bit of texture but that orange golden colour the lit up the sky at the horizon was an amazing sight indeed.