So I have plenty of time off, and it is too stupid to take it. After a whole day in the Royal Show I got to admit that was a long day. Lucky I had prepared for this and arranged a day off after the long weekend.

With my sister and friends, we were in the showground from 11 am to 10pm after the fireworks. We parked our car at next to the Claremont shopping complex and walked all the way to the show ground. It was a nice walk, though, all the way we saw lines of cars looking for parkings. Paid special occasion parking some more. I was glad that I saved $10 for the parking (traded with 10 minutes walk.)

During the day (while the sun light is still bright) and with the schedules in hand, I essentially walked across the showground for at least 4 times visiting different exhibitions and shows. I can only use "people mountain people sea" to describe. It was so packed. I didn't go to the rides and play area in day time, because I had other plans for that section (in night time).






(More day time pictures here )


And after 6:30pm, I slowly walked towards the clouds on the Rides corner. Based on the past 2 years experiences, this is the best time and place to take night shots. That was why I had waited under it turned dark before I headed here. The plan was to spend the next hour to walk through the clouds and shoot as many shots as possible in one go before 8pm. (Got to be somewhere before 8pm) Unfortunately the plan didn't work out. In after 45 minutes later I got myself into an emergency situation. Nature calls. :(





(More night time pictures here )


Without other options, I started to head to the closest known washroom location, the VIP staging area. I then hung around there and looked for the best spot for the fireworks. Soon after that, and sister and friends joined me. And soon after that again, the fireworks started. I made a mistake of open a long exposures (by meant of that, I meant 12 seconds). All of my first few shots was over exposed, even with the black cloth method. So I lower the adjusted the shutther to 4 seconds.







(More fireworks pictures here )

Just this afternoon my team leader popped by and told me and the colleage next to me to consider taking some time off. Previuosly we were able to charge the extra hours we worked to overtime and got paid for it. A few weeks ago, it can't be done anymore.

Orders from the management saying that paid overtime has to be preapproved 7 days before work. We all know system break down won't let you know 7 days before hand. Hence we had to work for free or not working at all.

A simple calculation from my timesheets indicated that I have accumulated about 2 and a half weeks worth of TOIL over that past 8 weeks. So I suggested to my colleage and see if we can make arrangement of working only 4 days in a week, until we have finished taken our time off.

The problem we can predict is, even in a 4 days week, we will end up working 5 days worth of hours anyway. Which translated to longer working hours per day. That also means more stress.

I guess we will just stick with working until we got sick and away from work for a few days like the past. :(

I came across this online magazine calls iMotor a few weeks ago. Nothing too fancy about it, its just another ezine. Since then I have subscripted to it and have been reading it every fortnightly when a new issue came out. The company that makes this happen is CerosMedia, there are other ezine available here.

Although the concept is nothing new, it sure did change some people's reading habit. A decade ago if you want to get the latest news about cars, electronics, and computer you have to go and buy some magazine. I still remember I have to get a local newspaper to get hold of a copy of Hong Kong based magazine call CompuAge for me.

Since Internet was getting popular, it is just too convenient that everyone will search for the info, googling for it. People like me will subscribes to RSS feeds, and save the hassles to visit multiple sites repeatedly to find out if there is anything new.

This day, where Netbook is the trend and more and more smart phones, MIDs, UMPC are out in the market, It even shows that people relies on the Internet so much. 5 years old will look for an answer from the Internet, no need to mention that IT professionals like me, who uses Google more then ever. Internet becomes the first stop for all of the information seeking. There are people looking for lost person in Facebook, tracking down the boyfriend via MySpace, and even have a website setup by a woman trying to find out who smashed her outside a casino.

Soon or later, company like Google and Microsoft will learn from your Internet habit and push the information to you. And when I said learn, I mean "spy". Think of it, Google Search saved your search histories, iGoogle records the news and RSS subscriptions, Google Streetview and Map records the places you are interested ( and don't tell me you never visited your home address in map or streetview) and now the latest Google Chrome web browser. One day, you might receive an email from Google advising you that the local market has fresh apple and the reason why it send you the advisory is because they thought you like apple and you haven't had apple for at least 6 months.

Technology, it can be very scary.