just want to wish everyone a happy and healthy chinese new year!  God bless you all and hope everything goes well in the new year.

yesterday, an unusual day.  it hailed!  yes, in february, the worst month of the worst season for bushfires... it hailed.  absolutely incredible.  the weather the last few days has been like winter!  it's so cold it feels like winter... whatever happened to 35-degrees-plus heat waves?!  i wonder if this year will also be this extraordinary......

i saw something else unusual yesterday.  inside a shopping complex, i saw a fairly young guy collecting money for charity.  not unusual.  but what was unusual, was that this guy was asian!  very rarely do you see asians in australia doing volunteer or charity work... immediately i wanted to know if that guy was an australian citizen or not (not that i was actually interested in him, i was just interested in the fact he was doing charity work =P).  i'm not saying that asians don't donate money to charitable causes or make contributions to the community, i'm sure a lot of them donate money to worthy causes.  but it's just rare for them to be the ones invovled in the organisation or in giving up even more precious things, such as their *time* for these causes.  i say more precious because a lot of asian-australians are money-rich, but time-poor professionals, for example medical doctors.  to a doctor, a couple of dollars is nothing.  but a few hours is a lot.  isn't it interesting how different situations alter our perspective on issues?

all that said, i can't really criticise these people, since my contributions to charity are also normally of the monetary sort.  but i hope to see asians more involved in community work like this in the future, especially those of us who are permanent residents or citizens -- if we live in australia and enjoy the social conditions here, we should also contribute to our society.  living here is a privilege few can enjoy.

Beneath our radiant southern cross,
We'll toil with hearts and hands,
To make this Commonwealth of ours,
Renowned through all the lands.
For those who've come across the seas,
We've boundless plains to share.
So with courage let us all combine,
To Advance Australia Fair.
In joyful strains then let us sing,
Advance Australia Fair.

well... it's all over... lleyton hewitt lost to marat safin... there goes the aussie hope of the first australian to win the aussie open since mark edmonson... so disappointing... and altho alicia molik won the doubles with russian svetlana kusnetzova, it just doesn't sound quite as good as a singles championship title :S .

and what is really disappointing, is that lleyton received a code violation for intimidating a linesperson... after he won the point with a brilliant down-the-line winner.  i mean, i applaud hewitt's focused mindset and amazing concentration, but that incident was really unsportsmanlike.  so un-australian... whatever happened to "fair play"???  it's "just not cricket"...

anyway, all this talk of sport is making me sound very australian.  but i'm not a "banana"... really :P  i will post on my chinese blog tomorrow, as proof :P

that's interesting... i discovered that the blog location i originally tried to create does, in fact, belong to me!  despite blogdrive telling me it belonged to someone else already...  so i've decided to use this blog for english, and my other blog, http://tigerbyte.blogdrive.com, for chinese/ korean/ french/ whatever other language i can be bothered writing in!  but with two blogs, you can be sure my average rate of updating will be even slower :P

never mind... i need to revise the html coding i learnt in year 8 for my blogs, i think!  i'm amazed i even remember the <h1>, <h2> etc tags!  and i really need to add more content, my page looks so bland at the moment... if anyone wants to donate me some nice images or music, or give me any suggestions, it would be much appreciated!

my first entry, my first blog. haven't decided yet what form or shape it will take, or how often i will update it.  why did i start it in the first place?  hehe... firstly, i'm waiting for someone to come online, but they're not online yet.  i hope they will... but maybe i will have to sleep before they do.  so i'm killing time now... although as someone once pointed out, we don't kill time, time kills us.  i dunno what direction my life will take right now.  so many possibilites, yet a lot of them unlikely.  can i find my dream?  can i make that dream my reality?  only time will tell.  the second reason i'm starting this blog?  for my relationships with my very closest friends.  i love you guys, and this is just another way for us to share ourselves with each other.  finally, a blog is... interesting.  well, it can be... i'll do my best to make this one interesting and not too full of overly-philosophical ramblings. :P