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After almost a week of attending the Terminus - Harry Potter Conference in Chicago, Illinois between 7-11 August 2008, these girls are still unable to hang their robes and wands. They just have to get their photos taken at the hand prints outside the GRAUMAN’S Chinese Theatre, Los Angeles.

Photo taken 13 August 2008 by Jing Advincula (half of the dynamic duo of Elpie and Jing) their gracious hosts while in L.A.

Early this year - Jeanne registered us to the City-To-Surf, a 14km marathon from Hyde Park in Sydney to Bondi Beach. We are not runners and not that athletic, so I though she’s crazy to get us into it. I’m a self-confessed couch potato, with a burst of guilt physical activity thrown in every now and then.

Three days before the event, I was watching the weather, hoping for rain so that Jeanne would chicken out and I could sleep in this Sunday - but ‘alas, it’s a chilly morning but fair nevertheless. Friends were also calling in the night before to organize meeting places and time - they are keen and also their first time. Great - 5 first timers whose preparation for a marathon is a walk to lunch.

Our strategy is easy - we will walk the 14km. We soon find out that it’s not a bad idea at all. A huge portion of the 70,000 participants had no intention to run. Others are even more inventive - like dancing all the way with a boom box on the back pack for music. Others are dressed in gowns and men on tux and did it in style. One family came as the Flinstones, others as fairies, Flash Gordon, Wonder Woman etc - it’s very festive. I wondered why I avoided it all these years.

This year’s City-To-Surf is the first micro-chipped event ever held in Sydney. We wore a microchip tucked into our sneakers and this is meant to record our time for the event. On Tuesday - 12 August, the results will be published in the Sun Herald newspaper - the official sponsor of the event. This means, we could not lie on how well/bad we did in the exercise

For more photos of the event - click here.

It’s been a while since I wrote in this blog. Like the Australian winter - I have gone into hibernating, indulging on my other favourite past time - movies. If it’s not for the planned trip of Celine to go to America, our awesome foursome has nothing to get excited about all winter. Yes, Celine and Linda are currently attending a Harry Potter convention in Chicago - a goal they set last year.

Celine saved every dollar she earned to pay for her trip. She set a financial goal and achieved it. I’m very proud of her as she is enjoying every bit of her young life with good friends to share the time and excitement.

They arrived in Illinois early. They stayed in Tito Emil’s and also at Tita Vangie’s home initially before joining the rest of the delegates in a downtown Chicago hotel. I’m sure Celine will bring home gigabytes of photos but for now - here’s a shot shared by Tita Vangie as the girls visit an American icon - the Wal Mart store.

9 May 2008: I’m a bit reluctant to publish public performances of Celine because invariably it would be home recording quality. But it is not often that we get to record it. In most cases, recording of any kind will be prohibited because of copyright laws.

Early last week, a friend called us to request for Celine to sing in a charity fund raising dinner for a person in the advance stage of cervical cancer. Celine was in a middle of a number of University assessments, so I was surprised that she agreed to do this gig. With less than a week to prepare and a song not in her current repertoire, she barely had time to prepare for this.

I’m sharing this home video for a limited time before I mark it as private. Hopefully, enough time for friends and family get a glimpse of Celine’s public performance. The video was taken by her sister Jessica - it is a bit shaky and the poor lighting didn’t help either. You could also hear her (Jessica) making some comment as she and Ryan makes fun of the Italian part of the song.

4 May 2008: The Madrid Family are visiting Sydney from the Philippines. They flew in from Melbourne in the early morning and stayed at the beautiful Meriton Apartments right at the centre of downtown Sydney. Jeanne and I took the early train to meet up with them. The plan was to take them to Taronga Zoo if the weather is clear - or take the Red Bus around Sydney on a wet weather. The day turned out to be a perfect autumn day - bright and not so cold.

Taronga Zoo is a good place to visit for first time travellers to this city. Natz and Shirley have been to Sydney but has not yet seen the zoo. The day can begin with a ferry ride from Circular Quay which boast the water view of the Sydney Opera House and the Harbour Bridge. It is also a short ride between ports, before you know it - you’re at the zoo. There are 3 ways to get in to the park after reaching the port - a cable car (access to this was not operating today), a short walk to Gate 2, or a bus ride to Gate 1. We took the bus ride.

The zoo is spread over a slope, and Gate 1 is at the top. Once inside the park, we took a cable car ride and since there were not that many patrons using it, we went around twice. It gave us a bird’s eye view of the place and we were even surprised to see a large Orang-utan perching on top of his tower.

We visited animal displays of marsupials, birds, reptiles, cats, apes, etc at a leisurely pace. We even had the chance to touch and pet an elephant. The Madrid’s also had the obligatory photo with a real Koala.

I was specially fascinated by the antiques of some of the animals. My favourite is split between a tiger who paced his area so close to the public isolated only by a thick glass - and a chimpanzee who decided to give an acrobatic show while encouraging the public to clap. These are not trained show animals, for this chimp - it is definitely a learned behaviour from constant exposure to human. A third choice would be the Orang-utan who was relaxing on a hammock using a sack as a blanket. It looked like an old lady having a nap. When we were there watching, she decided to get moving, came down for a closer look and sat contented as people watch on.

Here are some photos of the day.

Ferry Ride to the Zoo	View from the Cable Car	View From the Zoo
Touching the Elephant	Obligatory Kangaroo Shot	Walking In The Park
	The Classmates

The complete set of photos in in our Gallery.

We just spent over 1 1/2 hours waiting for our dinner to be served in a posh restaurant in Sydney. The table next to ours simply walked-out as they could not wait anymore. When our order did arrive - one dish was so salty - we sent it back. The manager apologised and explained that they were short of one chef. Fortunately for them, we were desperately trying to keep our spirits up, not wanting our family time to turn sour. We were celebrating the last few days that Jessica is 18.

Which lead me to the question : Have you ever considered how much time is spent waiting? A great deal of our day are spent waiting - I’ll start a list:

1. For the lights to turn Green
2. For your turn at the bowser
3. For people to turn up in a meeting
4. For your computer to boot
5. For a web page to load
6. To be served in a restaurant
7. At a supermarket checkout
8. At a bank teller
9. At an automatic teller
10. For the bus/taxi/plane/train/ferry or jeep/tricycle/3-wheeler
11. For your turn in the toilet/shower
12. For someone to stop talking so that you can put in a word or two
13. For water to boil or coffee to drip

This was e-mailed to me today. It is one of those forwarded e-mails but the information actually make common sense. Since it was marked as a FREE ADVICE, I’m reproducing it here in the hope that if I ever lose a wallet, I can get to my blog for these numbers and check list. The red marks are my comments.

A corporate attorney sent the following out to the employees in his company:

1. Next time you order cheques, have only your initials (instead of your first name) and last name put on them. If someone takes your chequebook, they will not know if you sign your cheques with just your initials or your first name, but your bank will know how you sign your cheques. Ok. The last time I used a cheque was in 2000. So cheques are becoming more and more irrelevant. I thought about deleting all advice pertaining to cheques but I decided against it.
2. Do not sign the back of your credit cards. Instead, put “PHOTO ID REQUIRED”. I’m inclined to follow this but my photo id and my card are always together anyway.
3. When you are writing cheques to pay on your credit card accounts, DO NOT put the complete account number on the “For” line. Instead, just put the last four numbers. The credit card company knows the rest of the number, and anyone who might be handling your cheque as it passes through all the cheque processing channels won’t have access to it. Could you really safely assume that the credit card company would look for your number? Or are you taking unnecessary risk of your transaction not being processed because it has incomplete information?
4. Put your work phone number on your cheques instead of your home phone. If you have a PO Box, use that instead of your home address. If you do not have a PO Box, use your work address. Never have your Centrelink Number printed on your cheques. You can add it if it is necessary, but if you have it printed, anyone can get it.
5. Place the contents of your wallet on a photocopy machine. Do both sides of each license, credit card, etc. You will know what you had in your wallet and all of the account numbers and phone numbers to call and cancel. Keep the photocopy in a safe place. I also carry a photocopy of my passport when traveling either here or abroad. We’ve all heard horror stories about fraud that’s committed on us in stealing a name, address, Social Security number, credit cards. I might just do not now - been meaning to that for ages. It is in the same basket as the advice that says - take a photo of all your furnitures, appliances at home and list their serial numbers - never got a round tuit

Unfortunately, I, an attorney, have first-hand knowledge because my wallet was stolen last month. Within a week, the thieves ordered an expensive monthly mobile phone package, applied for a VISA credit card, had a credit line approved to buy a Dell computer, received a PIN number from DMV (RTA in NSW) to change my driving record information on-line, and more.

But here’s some critical information to limit the damage in case this happens to you or someone you know:

1. We have been told we should cancel our credit cards immediately, but the key is having the toll free numbers and your card numbers handy so you know whom to call. Keep those where you can find them.
2. File a police report immediately in the jurisdiction where your credit cards, etc., were stolen. This proves to credit providers you were diligent, and this is a first step toward an investigation (if there ever is one).
3. But here’s what is perhaps most important of all: (I never even thought to do this.)

Call the three national credit reporting organizations immediately to place a fraud alert on your name and Social Security number. I had never heard of doing that until advised by a bank that called to tell me an application for credit was made over the Internet in my name. The alert means any company that checks your credit knows your information was stolen, and they have to contact you by phone to authorize new credit. By the time I was advised to do this, almost two weeks after the theft, all the damage had been done. There are records of all the credit checks initiated by the thieves’ purchases, none of which I knew about before placing the alert. Since then, no additional damage has been done, and the thieves threw my wallet away. This weekend someone handed it in. It seems to have stopped them dead in their tracks.

Now, here are some numbers which you might need to contact if your wallet etc has been stolen:

1. Visa Card Australia 1800 621 199
2. Visa Card International 1800 450 346
3. Lost Travellers’ Cheques 1800 127 477
4. MasterCard Australia (02) 9466 3700
5. MasterCard International 1800 120 113
6. Bankcard Australia (02) 9281 6633
7. Medicare 132 011
8. Centrelink Fraud 137 230
9. Seniors Card 1300 364 758
10. Passport 131 232

Important Numbers (Australia Wide)

• ANZ FREECALL 1800 033 844
• BankWest 13 17 18
• Citibank 13 24 84
• Coles MasterCard - 1300 306 397
• Commonwealth 132 221
• Credit Union Australia - 1800 224 004
• CUSCAL- MyCard 1300 135 538
• GE Capital 1300 369 904
• Lease Plan 1300 668 572
• Members Equity 1300 654 998
• MyCard Card Services - 1300 135 538
• National 132 265
• St George 1800 028 208
• Sydney Virgin 2000 (Postcode) - 1800 080 000
• Westpac 1800 230 144
• Woolworths Ezy Banking 137 288

Since I started subscribing to a web hosting service, I have moved my website 3 times. Perhaps I should commercialize the method of moving sites already. From a basic GeoCities Plus account, to GeoCities Pro, then MD Web Hosting, then Servage.Net and now Hosting Monster.

GeoCities Plus - at US$4.95/mo I thought was good enough. I was hosting a static HTML website on a free site courtesy of our ADSL Provider. The space quickly run out when more photos for the Family Tree were added. The thought of having no ads was the appeal over a free site that comes with a Yahoo Email account. I have a problem when you don’t have any control over what get advertised as you might be endorsing a product you are absolutely against.

GeoCities Pro - at US$8.95/mo - I am now able to call my website www.seawind-network.com instead of a geocities with a ~ and my Yahoo ID (Yooo hooo - SCORE, now I can ego surf in Google and find me in my own site ). It was great, until I realised I was paying too much for too little . They don’t even offer MySQL or PHP support for this. It was also a rude experience when they simply closed my Plus instead of copying it to my Pro. I had to rebuild everything all over.

MD Web Hosting - Introductory Price of A$59.40 for the first year, Australian based - which means I get a very responsive site. This site is my first taste of the cPanel and learned how to move domains from one-host to another. I also learned that it is better to register your domain in U.S. (US$10/year) vs. here in Australia (A$35/year). This is also my first time to use the rommelpascual.com domain, it was given to me as a gift 2 years prior to this - the registration was just about to lapse when I became interested in using it. MD Web Hosting offers a meager 5GB space and 10GB bandwidth per month. I hosted my PMWiki in this site and basically got addicted in anything PHP.

At this point - I was already learning how to use the Ubuntu Feisty Fawn (LINUX for Human). Playing with a test website locally before I release it to the world. Then we subscribed to TPG’s ADSL2 which also gave me a static IP. This allowed me to host a 80GB Gallery2 site from a room in our house. However, Jeanne and I has always been backing up our photos in Webshots and pay a yearly fee for the space we used. This was my ‘excuse’ to go and shop for a hosting company which will give a bit more space.

Servage.NET- At A$8.35/mo giving as much as 500GB space and 5TB bandwidth. I thought I was dreaming when I saw this flash on my screen. This is also a rare time when I responded to an annoying pop-up. They also allow porn - so now I can also host and make online all those smut I’ve been collecting for years Just kidding.

I’m still a customer of Servage, but I’m not happy with the speed of my website. Specially the Gallery2. It has become unusably slow. I’ve optimised the database, uninstalled all unneeded plugins, applied caching etc. Eventually, I created a test Gallery2 site with less than 100 photos - the response was no better than the site with over 10,000 photos. The lesson is - look for a hosting company which offers space, bandwidth and reasonable CPU time slice. There’s no point having a 5TB bandwidth if you can’t get any processing time.

Servage is based in Germany. It was a concern as it takes 20 hops to get there. As I read more reviews about them - I’ve confirmed my suspicion that it is their site that is really-really-really slow. Perhaps it’s all those porn site that they are hosting. Not that I have anything against it - but I’m standing in their traffic, it’s time to move out of the way. This week - I decided, was time to consider another site.

Host Monster - at US$6.95/mo you get 1.5TB space and 15TB transfers - it simply has become ridiculously cheap - compare this to the GeoCities Pro. The allure to me is that it has SSH access. It gives me unprecedented control over my website - almost as good as hosting it myself - except that I can’t install any software. I can use emacs to edit my files (Yoo hooo - no more point and click editing).

FFMPEG - is still not supported which means that the video section of our Gallery will remain to be icons.

I was right though - this Host Monster is super-super fast. There are times when you can’t make a discernible distinction between the site inside our home network to the site hosted all the way to Utah. Incidentally, it takes 18 hops to get to the server in Utah - not much less than Servage in Germany, so the number of hops perhaps does not have quite a bearing on speed as I have thought.

They also have very good and knowledgeable support staff - I login to a support chat at 5am Saturday and they are there - alive and kicking . I hope it remains this way - they have policy not to allow porn to be hosted in their network, so I guess the odds are good.

I’m now officially a Net Junkie - not that I never was!