I guess I’ve been lacking in updates regarding what I’ve been up to here in Brisbane lately, with the whole Europe thing taking over the past few entries. Anyways here’s me filling in the blanks…

Rockclimbing at Redcliffs

Plenty of people see Australia as a very boring place to be in compared to Malaysia. In some ways i guess thats true with the shops here closing by 5-6pm.

Mountain Biking at Toohey’s Forest Reserve

Of course you still have your bars, pubs and clubs and 24 hour McDonalds but forget mamaks (at least here in Brisbane anyways). Shopping centres here are smaller compared to what we have back in Malaysia… without ice skating rinks, an indoor theme park, or a canal running through it.

Singstar competition at American’s farewell party
In contrast, the lifestyle here in Australia is alot more outdoorsy… which is lovely!!! Who wants to spend time walking around in a shopping complex anyways!?!

Trying out Brisbane’s new Kirspy Kreme outlet

I almost get to go on a rockclimbing/camping/mountian biking/ trip every weekend!! Awesome shit.

Rockclimbing at Brooyar State Forest

Australia is a real lovely place. I love cycling around to wherever on my bike in the cool sunny weather, and have I told you about the blueness of the skies?? Ahhh….

Kayaking up the Noosa River

It is however winter now here and it can be very very chilly with the winds and all especially in the early mornings and late nights. Camping at this time of the year can be really cold, especially when you’re using some cheap sleeping bag like me. I’ve been camping twice so far in winter and both times so far I wake up (several times due to the cold) with frozen numb pieces of flesh for feet.

My new Epiphone DR-200 Acoustic Electric

The temperature gets to about 9 degrees celcius at night and maintains at low 20’s during the day. It’s quite awesome in the day time but I would need to put on a couple of layers of clothing when heading out when its dark outside.

Pub Crawl with the QUT cliffhangers

I’m also in the process of moving into a new place. Yes… AGAIN…

Now that Brian’s lease to his old place is over, we’ve found a very nice and new apartment unit to move to. Not very far from my current place, still in Woolloongabba. With a double “L’s”, double “B’s”, and quadruple “O’s”….

Bouldering at Toohey’s forest reserve

I “may” post more detailed entries on some of my trips above Sooner or Later…

On another note, theres just so many movies to watch nowadays now eh?? So far I’ve only watched Kung Fu Panda and Zohan, and both are pretty frickin hilarious… heh… now theres Get Smart, Wanted, Hancock, Hulk, The Happening…. anymore??

Pffft… I have the time.. will watch em all.. one day..

Ya know how western names are composed differently compared to our chinese names?

When looking at western names, the first name is always placed in front of the family name. e.g. Shawn Richardson

However, when considering chinese names, its the opposite. e.g. Liam Leng Chai

So theres always this problem for us people with chinese names when registering to study at an institute in a western country. Our names get mutilated and morphed into weird shit. If you’re lucky, Liam Leng Chai becomes Leng Chai Liam.

Sometimes only the Leng is taken as the first name, the Chai taken as the middle name, and the Liam as the family name. In this case, the middle name is ignored and you become Leng Liam.

You see how the whole thing is destroyed??

So officially my name here is Poon Liam. Which is a little weird.
However… in certain cases this may work out for you.

(We had an exhibition to promote our final project where we mounted our works on the walls and had our names placed below it. I took this picture of someone else’s work)

Consider this, your name is Lee Chun Kit… and this happens…

WTF!?!? DAMN COOL RIGHT!?!? This guy/girl must be very popular here in uni…
P.S. I’ll be off on another camping/rock-climbing trip over the weekend. So no updates then. Get my phone if u need to get to me…

The trip was not over yet… nooo…

We left for the Riga International Airport in the wee hours of the morning… still feeling very sleepy headed as we checked our luggage in and waited at the departure hall. We had a 5am flight back to the Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam…

It was a short almost 2 hour flight so we arrived there at about 6 something, almost 7.

We had about a day’s worth of time to spend here in Amsterdam as our flight back home to Malaysia would be departing at 9.

So without wasting too much time, we immediately departed for Amsterdam Central, the hub of Amsterdam city via train from the airport.

And took off… to explore Amsterdam… and more importantly… food.

Amsterdam is a pretty beautiful place. I’m not too sure if this just a conventional case of grass being greener on the other side of the fence. But… take a look for yourself!! This is just some random street I just took a snapshot of…

So anyways, we decided to go in a random bakery just off the main street for breakfast run by a nice Iranian dude. We had warm waffles, croissants and hot chocolate. Here’s a picture of me looking like the thoughtful and sensitive guy writing postcards and letters to people.

So after a thanking the shop owner for a wonderful breakfast, we decided that we were going to explore Amsterdam via the most popular mode of transport here in the city, bicycles.

Oh yea, and if you remember from previous posts I mentioned that Kim Chew and Yi Sung we’re already touring the place before we headed for Riga.

So with map in hand and this idiot as our guide, we headed off…

Riding through the beautiful streets and canals of the city of Amsterdam. Every so often stopping somewhere to take pictures…

And as most of you should already know, Amsterdam is known for is liberal “coffee shop” policy. So we couldn’t miss the opportunity to pay these coffee shops a visit where we tried space cakes and “you know what”.

After that, we basically cycled around the city and took even more pictures. Visiting whatever free places we could go to in our attempt to save as much money as possible.

We didn’t really keep track of the time but at some point we got hungry and headed to McDonalds for lunch. Haih… 7euros… RM35… haih…

We continued on taking pictures and checking out the city. I have to admit I didn’t even bother to learn the name of the monuments and the meaning behind them. We just camwhored…

One very interesting thing about Amsterdam though are their public toilets… Check it out…

Yes it’s just a gigantic piece of plastic with a hole. No buttons. It does not go underground. Very Cool…

So after relieving ourselves. We headed off to Vondelpark, Amsterdam’s largest park. Oh My God it was big. I have never ever seen a park that large in my life… and there were literary thousands of people walking dogs, jogging, cycling, lazing on the grass, having a picnic, making out and whatever else you can think of.

We found a nice shady patch of grass to sit in. Everyone else was sitting under the sun.. Weirdos. We took out this amazing puzzle game, Quorridor, which Yi Sung and Kim Chew bought in Riga to play.

Basically you try to get your man to the opposite side, using planks as walls to facilitate your journey to the other side or stop your opponents. It’s like the funnest game ever… in the world. I miss Quorridor.

Anyways, after a couple of rounds of Quorridor, It was about time we headed back to Amsterdam Central to catch the train to the airport.

We returned our bicycles and found a place to have dinner at a restaurant on the way to Amsterdam Central. By the time we got on the train, we were super exhausted… It was a long… long… day… and considering the lack of sleep we had the previous night, it was time for some well-needed rest.

Thankfully though, It was a boring 12 hour flight home. We slept all the way.

The only thing I regretted was sleeping through the flight and missing all the free meals that came with it!!! I heard there was Ice-Cream.

And that concludes our trip to Europe.

And so the real competition begins, the initial part consisted of a real time online business simulation between the teams. The 20 teams were split into 2 groups of 10. With members of each group battling it out to be the top four in their groups. The 8 teams (top 4 from group 1 and group 2) would then continue on to compete in case studies and presentations to win the final prize of 3000, 2000 and 1000 euros.

We lost.
But then… we went to play poker!! And I won 2nd place!! WAHAHAHA I AM KING!!!!

I won 50USD and also a football… that I gave to Ethan. But the main point is.. I beat 1600 people from all over the world to win 2nd place in the International Peaktime Poker Tournament. BOW BEFORE YOUR POKER MASTER!!! MUAHAHAHAHA!!!!

Okay so it was a close and tough fight but we didn’t do good enough in the end and just barely missed a spot in the final 8. But at least now were not spending our time worrying and thinking about the competition anymore.

That night we went around on pub tours with our compadres and students from the school.

Shisha (as we call it in Malaysia) or waterpipe (as they call it here) is much more off a bigger thing here. Seeing how it originates from the middle east, thats probably not a big surprise.

This is Kim Chew’s Shisha Face.

After that we went to a couple of other bars, pubs and clubs around Riga… however the best one in m opinion was this little rowdy cramped up bar they called the French Bar with cheap booze and packed with students who probably cant afford to go anywhere else.

Despite lacking the class and poshness of some of the other places, the place had its own unique ambience. That of noisy drunk students and loud foreign music.

There, I was chased away from a table by a very drunk and gigantic russian, and minutes after that got invited by the same guy to dance on a chair. AWESOME!!

And I also had the most delicious shots I’ve ever had in my entire life. Apple Pies!!

Basically its a blend of tequila, apple juice and cinnamon. Which tastes amazing… and topped off by sucking off an orange slice.

So easy to do, I have yet to give a homemade version a go… anyone wanna try and tell me if it works out for you?

The next day, we were given the opportunity to take part in a workshop in designing a student management system for the University of Kuwait, led by Mr Peter Woolsey… While the final 8 teams had to go through more stressful case studies

It was actually a very interesting and fun experience to see how things really work in the real world.

Group Picture with part of the workshop!!!

That night, we went for dinner with team Singapore, Hong Kong, and Canada.

We had pasta, and cheap european beer. At least it seemed cheap due to the freakishly humongous currency. One thing about latvia, everything in the stores are in cents so they seem really cheap. That is until you multiply it by 7 to compare with the Malaysian Ringgit. Oh My God. 0.90 Lats = RM6.30, WTF RIGHT?!

After dinner we went back to our hotel room to rest for abit. The night was still young and it was far from over… later on, at 10pm was the “Stars Party” organized by Peaktime and MTV…

Heres a picture of me looking very much like a star…. and Kim Chew looking like a little kid in a candy store.

The event was just so darn cool… they even had this award giving ceremony that was just like one of those MTV movie awards thingys.

Oh, and Sung and Xian Jin had a slap bet on who would proceed to the final stage of the competition. Xian Jin lost…. so.. Sung got to slap Xian Jin. Really Hard. Twice.

Haha. We partied all the way into the morning before finally returning to our hotel. One of the perks of losing early in the competition as the 4 teams that made it to the last stage had to go to bed early to prepare for the final round tomorrow.

Here, Spot me, Yi Sung, Kim Chew and Xian Jin.

So here we are, on the final day of the competition. The final four teams competed early in the morning, while we were probably still sound asleep in bed wearing of the aftereffects of last night. By noon, everyone was gathered back at the auditorium

Speeches were given and certificates were presented… WOOT FINGLE!! PARTICIPATION CERTIFICATE!!!

3rd place was taken by Latvia, 2nd place by Team Poland and 1st by the Netherlands.

And so the competition came to an end. It was a little sad having to return to our REAL lives. We were just getting used to having free buffet breakfasts every morning. Dressing up in suits and walking to attend workshops and fun competition stuff everyday. Now we had to go back to uni assignments and exams and stuff… *sigh*
And we made so many awesome friends too in these couple of days!! It was so much fun getting to know everyone and having fun at the same time.

Our flight was to depart at 5am the next morning. Had to wake up at 2.30am but as expected, we didn’t. Hehehe…. We made it to the airport in time anyways. So with wonderful memories and experiences we bid Riga goodbye. I wonder if I’ll ever be back here again someday… *shrugs*

If you haven’t, I don’t see what you’re waiting for….

download it here.