Waterproofing electronics

For those out there who wants to bring electronics out to sea, I have to say that unless the unit is waterproof in itself, there are few storage containers that you can trust for submersion.

Aquapacs
Reputed to be the best stuff around, but I personally drowned 2 phones and a set of walkie talkies encased inside them before.

Boxit
About the only thing I trust for submersion of phones, but you got to sacrifice usability when using your phone and live with its bulkiness. No flip phones or smart phones or phones with jog dials allowed, and call volume is much reduced.

Sealline
I saw this one with a roll-top, definitely a no-no. Roll top style bags cannot be submerged! (But they did say it only afford watertight protection.

Pelican Micro Cases
I bought it thinking it was waterproof, but every time I used it water will find its way in without fail; you only need to slosh it around an inch of water at the bottom of your kayak and it'll be wet inside. I went to the product website and scanned the entire site - nowhere on the site does it use the word 'waterproof'. Caveat Emptor!

D&G
I bought this green medium sized bag recently for $10 only at Beach Road, and stored my Solio charger in it. It has a 'ziploc' closure which then rolls down and is velcro-ed fast in that position. Inside, there are two thin plastic flaps which seals up together when pressed against each other, and can presumably keep any water from touching the stored items, quite a cool concept. Don't think I tried submerging it for long, should try someday.

And on waterproof electronics...
Pentax WP-series camera
Proved itself to be really good in operating underwater, never had problems with it. Picture quality leaves much to be desired though, even to my untrained eye, but maybe the newer models nowadays have better lens/processor.

Garmin GPS
My Garmin 76cx is supposed to be waterproof, being designed for boating use, but I had never dared to use it without protection - it's too expensive a toy! I am quite comfortable in using an Aquapac over it though.

And maybe I'll try waterproof mp3 players soon...

Dreaming on...

A friend Alex in PESS now just informed me of his successful application for an exchange semester in Canada! Congrats to him for going through the many rounds of trouble the application gave him, it has all been worth it certainly!

Thanks to him, I was suddenly inspired again to learn about the outdoors and more from visiting great places like these. I had once dreamt of going Canada to explore its vast nature parks and learn playboating on the Ottawa river from Liquid Skills. If only I can still find time to go NOLS someday, or to take my L3 coaching course or perhaps even a sea surfing course. The possibilities are endless (elsewhere).

Now I just need loads of cash and the heart to plonk it all down for them...think that'll be very difficult now that I'm all grown up and have already *ahem* shifted my priorities to other things in life...

(PS - just booked a holiday tour package for 10D Europe today, but would have loved to go for a cruise in Alaska to visit Denali and more...)

Batam Trip

We have always been interested in doing short getaways whenever we can, so for the V-day weekend, we tried Batam for the first time. Before going, I was wondering how Batam made itself a leisure island, without much natural attractions or...any attractions that I can think of actually! After the trip, I was even more confused...

Holiday Inn saved our trip - it's pretty nice, and we got a suite room with 2 bedrooms, so actually it can house four person very comfortably - damn!

The resort is nice, the pool is rather pretty, and we had fun playing table tennis too (that has become a standard activity for our recent holiday trips hm).

Nothing much else was good though. We went to Nagoya town center, which had a megamall selling things we weren't interested in. It was very noisy there with this terribly loud performance inside the mall, and we had to endure it throughout dinner at Pizza Hut; there really isn't anything nicer to eat. Before that, we had to endure a torturous 2 hour massage which was rather painful at times, and not very soothing or relaxing overall, offered little privacy, and irritated us with instrumental tracks of chinese pop played loudly. I couldn't wait to go back to the hotel.

And so we hereby resolved that...

• We will stop masseurs from inflicting torture on us in the future when things get painful
• We will not go travel overseas for the weekend - taking the ferry twice in two days is rather bleah.

I want better trips!
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Reno update 12th Feb

Things are going really fast, and I'm getting excited too. The rate of progress is really quite amazing to a noob like me, and I wonder if that's normal, or if my contractor is really good.

With the old cabinet beneath the stairs and the sliding balcony windows gone, the house looks big and spacious. Light, glorious light!

The view of the living room again, this time from the balcony. Wiring work has started already, hence the wires all around.

The open kitchen, with the cupboards still to come. There will be an island worktop in the middle of it all, and the sink will be on it, hence the three pipes sticking out on the ground.

At this corner where the toilet used to be, there is now a washing area with a half-height wall, and a raised platform for the washing machine. Can't imagine this narrow space used to be the width of the toilet.

A look down the rail-less stairs from the top.

The plastering work was really good, and after taking out and replacing the windows, they are going to lay the parquet floor on the second floor already.

Today, we just choose the laminate colours of the cupboards, got some ideas on paint colours coordination, and selected some sanitary wares for the toilets. Contractor hurrying us on various things now and we have to do our market research diligently these days, busy!

Work in Progress

The contractor started hacking work on Monday, and was supposed to finish it on Wednesday; we went to take a look on Wednesday evening and they were already tiling the toilets! Went to take a peek again on Saturday, and they are plastering the walls right now.

The house looks rather strange with the rail-less staircase; we could see all across to the balcony through it. Everything is everywhere, and tiles are all there in their packaging ready to be used.

This is the kitchen, with the corner wall hacked so that it is more 'open'. Eventually there will be a glass wall around the corner, and a swinging glass door too, all to let the light in. The kitchen does looks much better without the toilet.

The master bedroom toilet has been tiled already, and it looks pretty good, according to what we want.

Can't resist the view from the bedroom everytime I'm there...

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This has been the most expensive weekend for us - we just returned from Harvey Norman today and blew $1860 there for the fridge, washing machine, microwave, a handheld vacuum, hifi, rice cooker etc. I have to say that the sale is genuine and good lah. Another $1800 was spent on the bed yesterday. And the airconditioning's gonna cost us $3.3k soon. Coupled with the previous $1.5k spent on the sofa and console and $2k for the stuff from Barang Barang, that's over 10k leow!

Oh, I forgot the lights...oops.

Waiting to get wet...

Everytime I return home I see the foldable boat bags propped up there against the wall, just waiting to be used and assembled. It always remind me of how great the last trip was, and how long I'll probably have to wait before I can use it again.

Maybe when my new place's up I can assemble the frame and hang it up or something, that'll make a nice display piece! It'll be a fantastic dust-trap though, and maybe we'll eventually start hanging up clothes on the frame even...

Man I miss paddling. It's terrible to do it like once every half year!

Should you depend on the external for happiness?

I had 2 great PE lessons today!

I took the pain to split them my class into their groups and brief them about all the routines that they will be doing for all lessons last week, so as to make sure this week's lessons will go smoothly. In the morning, I took time to sort them out again, make sure they go for their warmup lap orderly, and start all activities briefings only after everyone is settled. They had fun trying out different things and I didn't had to waste their time organising them and slowing down the flow and momentum of the lesson. All that made my day.

And I wonder if it's a good thing to be excited by the success of my lessons, because it also means I'll be negatively affected if I don't have a successful lesson (and I have pretty high standards for myself). The alternative is to be the cool/cold teacher who is detached and unaffected by his performance at work, which probably translate to a lack of enthusiasm in teaching. Sometimes I wish to be the latter, but I'm plainly too excitable and emotionally involved really, which makes it really draining when things don't go the way I want.

I love to be the involved teacher, but it drains so much from me. That's why I think good teachers that lasts like that for long are really really rare.

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Postscript - 5th Feb

Things didn't go as smoothly today, it took a long time for me to get them organised, even though I improved on my 'script' and clarified my instructions. Things still work but just not efficiently. So that's how it is, ups and downs, and one just have to take it all I guess. Just wondering sometimes when I'll take it until...

Keep a dog, lower your stress

It's always nice to come back and be welcomed by a dog, even though you don't really like to be licked all over on the legs. At least you know there's something who actually looks forward to you going home as much as yourself.

Here's Hockey in a fetal position during a rainstorm. He's such a furball isn't he?

And here's my cousin with her St.Bernard...it's really huge and quite ready to scare the wits our of anyone whom it doesn't know well, but apparently it's a darling for the family (so they say).

I'll actually think I'll like to keep a dog too, but it'll have to be smaller than Hockey of course. Something mid-sized will be nice, one that's intelligence and wouldn't bark at anything that moves. In the day, maybe it can play with Hockey till we come back to fetch it after work haha.