Wrap-up

This year is coming to an end and soon the new year will soon begin. it's time to wrap things up. This year has been great even though the first semester I was in a depression mode and the last 2 months I've been having too many problems. However, I've been living my life to the fullest and learned so many things. This year I've been good and all I want for the new year is a nice fine and CARING lady and a good job. I also take this opportunity to show my gratitude to some people whom I find significant in this year. First of all, to my Cambodian mate Itt. He's a never-say-no friend. Thanks for being so helpful. And then thanks to bong sang for showing me how to be strong and positive. He's very confident and open-minded. When it comes to computer stuff, most of the questions can be answered by Kenno. Not just that, lately he could give me solutions to some life problems too and it worked. And then Kaly, you're so nice to me after all the mean things I've done to you. I can say that you're my best female friend ever. Being the slowest person in the world doesn't degrade your personality Girish. Thanks for the adivces you have given me. Well, to this girl Ada. Even though we've known each other for a month something but she's really been so helpful and caring to me. Thanks for helping me to solve some of the problems I had lately. Joseph, have I told you that you're the most fun person to hang out with? It's been really fun to hang out with you bro. Jolie Jolie I never thought you were such a clubbing person hehe and yeah thank you for sharing the fun with us and sorry for the inconveniences I've made. This one to Danung, thanks for making me feel special. That's really been nice of you. And to Man Moi for sharing your own experience. The last but not least, I'd like to thank my best friend Vireak. Thanks for keeping in touch and keeping our friendship. I wish you were here so that we could hang out again.

Alrighty, I wish everyone a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New!!!


This is my favorite Christmas song, "Last Christmas", for this year.
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Cute White Stuffz

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Hottest of The Year

It's the first time I'm blogging about celebrities. For these 2 ladies I couldn't help admiring them for the fact that they really take my breath away every time I see them tv ;) Maybe they're not the hottest for everyone but they already have my vote.

Hotty with a mean voice. [pic source]

She looks best in "Malena". [pic source]

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Christmas Dinner Party

Finally decided to join a Christmas dinner party with my colleagues from Bisco at Nick's house. We were supposed to get to the place earlier but Joe's idea was to take a shortcut but ended up taking more time as usual lolz. We started with some drink from juice to wine and followed by a big meal and finished by pavlova and more drink. Yesss finally I got to try pavlova after almost 4 years in New Zealand.

[Click to enlarge] Some of Bisco team - Danung (position?), Chris (researcher), Jolie (Graphic Design), and me

Nick's baby Loyal

Pavlova with ice-cream and strawberries

Random plant :)

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Layers

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Another Rotorua Trip

Waken up by a phone call from Itt, my Cambodian mate, he asked me to join the trip to Rotorau as we planned in a week before but I didn't feel like want to go at first because I was drunk the day before and other things as well but finally I was convinced . We six people were headed to Rotorua at about 10am. It was just a one day trip so it was quite late and I didn't think I would be fun. We arrived there and the first place we went to was a Lake, I don't know what it's called. Since it's short trip we couldn't do anything much. So we decided just to have paddle boat race. It was killing our legs but it was so fun hehe. And then we went to a park and there was a museum but we didn't go in anyway just walked around in the park. After that, we got to Polynesian spa but man there was a lot people there, tourists actually. The spa was crowded by people. Everyone of us was so hungry after that so we dropped by a Korean restaurant but the first idea was fast food. The food was really nice. It's maybe first best Korean restaurant I've ever been to or maybe I was just too hungry. And the last place was natural thermal area where they have boiling mud and it's smoking in the ground. After all it was such a fun trip. Actually there are so many things to do and places to say. So I want to go again but I gotta save some money first :)

Paddle boat (this one is for kids)

Pony ride

Museum

Forgot to read the stone so I don't know who is it

Just another rose garden

Natural thermal area

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Bad Luck is The Beginning of Good Luck

I was stressed out by my passport thingy for a few hours in the morning but then I got cheered up by my colleague Ada. Thanks to her for cheering me up and for the some inspirational advices :) and also for making sure that I didn't go back to think about that passport thingy again for the whole day. At lunch time, we all the colleagues excepts the boss went out for lunch in Vietnamese restaurant. And at dinner we went out together again this time we went to Chinese restaurant and the food was really nice I couldn't help gobbling the food hehe. The funniest thing was 2 of the guys looked so nervous because one is Indian guy he never wanted to tried anything new apart from curry and the other is Taiwanese, Joseph, he couldn't take spicy food and we ordered spicy ones and that was Ada's plan to make fun of Joe. That's kinda mean but I know he didn't mind. They were like they were gonna go for exam or something lolz. Oh just after the dinner, we got to see the Santa Parade in the area. We didn't know about that but we just came in the right time. After that, we went off to a pub for some drinks for a few hours more and the last thing was playing pool in the city. It's such a fun day but yeah there was a few things I that I realize now that I shouldn't have done. Sometimes you don't know what are you doing until you come back to yourself and think back to what you have done but well it's over now so I'll try not to do the same mistakes again. G'nite everyone.
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DLD667

Just wanna say this is the nite :) I just got home from drinking with my Cambodian dudes, Itt, bong Sang, and others. I know i should hit the bed now but nah it's worth bloggin' first aye. After along time we drank together and a week of being vegetarian, I ate meat like a wild dog. I planned to go vegetarian for 2 weeks actually but everything didn't seem encouraging because I had to eat subway everyday, vege delight, and there was no other choice :( After drinking like 3 liters of Jim Beam we were headed to the city for supper while some wanted to go to UpTown hehe but managed to go to Mandarin Seafood restaurant. The driver, Itt, drove like we were in a race or something, made a few handbrakes and I was like coool but they said I was scared maybe because I was focusing on something and it made me look like I was paranoid about the driving but no hehe. We drove back to the place we drank and I got my car driving back home. On the way, I wished I had 2 pieces of sticky tape that could hold my upper eyelids open but yeah finally i'm back home safe and blogging. We had a few arguments while we were drinking but it was good to talk things out and say sorry for the inconvenience we made. The best things was giving each other hugs after arguing and the sorrow and pain were washed away after all. Ok, I still have work tomorrow. It's time now so yeah good nite everyone, sweet dream!!!
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Update

Where to start? Umm... well the most visible thing is the hostel is so darn quiet and dead. I hardly see other people except my 4 flatmates and most of the time is Girishee. I just made another attempt to stop smoking again and try to cut down on drinking as well. I know it's not a good time of the year to take that actions but if we wanna do something the right time to do it is now, right now. Hopefully it works for the smoking but not for the drinking because lately I've been going out with my colleagues quite a lot and it's all about drinking.

It's like this all day long

Almost-empty carpark

Girshee greets me with Haka

For the closing of the post, I'd like to put this song on "Besame Mucho", means "kiss me a lot" by Andrea Bocelli. It's been my favorite song since the beginning of the second semester of this year.

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New Place

The picture below is my new bedroom. It doesn't look different from my previous though, just the position of the bed. I went through one night already and it was a sleepless night. I don't know whether it was because of a new place or the sound of snoring from both sides of the walls. One of my next is a girl and another one is a guy, of course the guy is much louder hehe. I used my ear-plugs but it couldn't help much heheh. I decided to chat to some friends (still had my ear-plugs on) and went back to bed around 3am and finally fell asleep after about half an hour.

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Moved

I've just moved out to a new apartment but not to somewhere far away. It's just a few blocks away from the old one. It took me the whole morning to move out and also clean the apartment since there were 5 people were staying but there were only 2 people did the cleaning I guess that explains a lot but the worst part is not about the cleaning and moving, it is because I got emotional just before moving out :( It would have been better if I moved to Cambodia but this case is like I moved from my second home to a new home. The reason because I have been staying there for 3 years now. And there's a lot of memory in it. Even now as I'm typing I started to feel uncomfortable again.
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Just A Thought

Let imagine this person loves you so much and you are two in a relationship. He sacrifices everything for you, his time and his energy. He loves no one but you, he thinks about you every minute and he prays for you. He spends his all his years waiting for no one or nothing but you and he is always be there when you need him or when you are down. But you know how it feels like for him if you cheat on him? I know you might not know that feeling because you are not a victim.

If you can't visualize it in your head, try the other way around. Close your eyes and imagine if you love this person so much. He means the world to you. You forget and forgive how bad he has done to you, you sincerely appreciate everything he does for you and you are about to risk everything for him and one day you find him cheating behind your back. How would you feel about it? Hurtful?

If you are about to play or have played this game with someone who loves you, please think about it again because in the end when your colorful shell cracks and falls down that's when everyone turns away, he/she is the only one who will embrace you with love and compassion till forever.
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From My Window

In response to Waz's post, I've just posted 3 photos (below) taken from my window.




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Why Windows Sucks?

I personally don't like Windows for some reasons. After using for a while it's getting slow and at one point it gets very frustrating. If you talk about graphic, it sucks and the worst thing is it crashes from time to time. Whenever you need to jump on the net, make sure you have anti-virus, anti-spyware, and firewall software. However, it's not guaranteed that your computer is 100% safe from threats. The other day I was wondering what happen if I google "why windows sucks". I tried it and it came up with alot of items with that phrase or at least "windows sucks". Here are 2 of them which I found quite informative.
1. Why windows vista will suck
2. Why windows sucks
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A New Display Rig

I finally decided to buy a flat monitor for myself as a reward for working hard enough. It's 19" ViewSonic VA1912wb with 5 ms response time, one VGA port and one DVI port. The quality is pretty good. At the same time I also bought an apple keyboard too. I'm happy with my workspace now.

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Disable Annoying Firefox Tooltips

[Update: I've moved to a space now (http://phalkunz.com/). Please post your comment on my new blog. This post on my new blog is at http://phalkunz.com/2006/10/30/disable-annoying-firefox-tooltips/]

Drag-and-Drop is the beauty of the GUI but sometimes other thing gets in the way that makes it useless. The most annoying drag-and-drop I have ever come across is when I try to drag the address of a website (by dragging the icon) from the firefox address box and place it on the bookmark toolbar folder but before I drop it in the folder a tooltip with a message "drag and drop this icon to create a link to this page". It sounds good, right? The folder I wanna place a bookmark is under that tooltip. After I drop the link and I check the folder the link it's not even there because that tooltip block it from going in. I was like grrrrrrr. I think this happens to mac version only. But lucky enough, firefox provides a way to turn it off. Go type "about:config" in the address box and hit the enter. It shows a list of configurable feature, find "browser.chrome.toolbar_tips" item and double-click to turn it value to false. That's set.

[Update: I've moved to a space now (http://phalkunz.com/). Please post your comment on my new blog. This post on my new blog is at http://phalkunz.com/2006/10/30/disable-annoying-firefox-tooltips/]
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HelloWorld in Cocoa

This is my first Hello World application written in Cocoa framework. It was kinda complicated to get started with Cocoa framework because it has to follow MVC design pattern, which separate the presentation, controller, and the logic apart. It took me half an hour to write while other languages/frameworks take take me at most less than a minute but I guess it is good for developing large applications.

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Spring Leaves

Even though it's spring now, the weather was so gloomy for the last few days. It was raining and I missed the sunshine a lot. Auckland weather sucks aye... However today is such a beautiful day... This afternoon while I was waiting for a shuttle to get home, I was standing in the shade of some trees and when I looked up, the sky was blue and the tree leaves were shined through by the sunlight. "What a beautiful day!" I said.
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Walking Tall

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Back to Life

I've been away for so long enough till I don't really where to start (bloggin') again hehe. The thing is I've been so busy lately. Anyways, just before this I was playing around with SketchUp for the second time and I ended up drawing a face figure that I had sketched a long time ago. By the way, it's such a nice tool to try and comparing to 3D modeling tools SketchUp's approach is very different. Most of time, I used lines (or rectangles) to cut the faces of objects and then push/pull tool and believe it's very intuitive. You don't need knowledge in 3D modeling to start with it.
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Let's tag

I've been tagged by Hans to join the 7tubes game. I don't really know what it is though but here's the theme, list 7 songs that we have been listening to recently and tag other people. I clicked my iTunes' "Recently Played" smart list and here are the six songs from the list and one not from the list.

1. Breathing by Lifehouse
This song's in Lifehouse's first album but it keeps me coming back again and again.

2. Every Woman In The World - Air Supply
I got to know this song by a movie called slither.

3. Besame mucho - Andrea Bocelli
I stole this Guitarra Cafe cd from my dad. I played all the songs and liked most of 'em. but since I watched this movie (i can't remember the name), it made me like it more and more. The song is a featured song of the movie.

4. Poison - GTO OST
4 or 5 years back I watched this jap series with my friends back in Cambodia and something just reminded me about it. I jumped to YouTube.com and played it again.

5. Back to you - Bryan Adams
10 years ago, I played this songs again and again everyday and lately I started to bring it back.

6. Feel good inc. - Gorillaz
It was my last year favorite and it still rocks.

7. It don't matter - Donavon Frankenreiter
I know nothing about his guy and the song but I really like it.

I've done my part so here are the people I'll tag.
1. Kenno
2. Kalyan
3. Somonkol
4. Chanbopha
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Label Chart

Recently, my main interest seems to shift from photography to blog modification. I've been hanging out with my roommate Waz and all we talked about is blog mod. I've modified my About feature (button) so when we click it, it displays About information in the same page without redirecting to a different page but since it's not an obvious thing because I used the expand/collapse code with a few modification to enable the fading fx I didn't have a post about it. With this post, I'm blogging about a new mod which I called "label chart". It displays barchart for labels according to numbers of posts that have been tagged with. This idea is not my original idea though. I was amazed by this idea where they increase the font sizes of tags (called Label in blogger) depends on their popularities. First I saw this on Flickr I thought I was cool and thought I would make my own someday but then yesterday Waz introduced me to this post, it shows how to create that feature, which the author calls it Label Cloud. Just after that, I learned his code and without copied his code right away, I knew how to use <b:loop> tag in blogger markup language. Instead of making the same thing, I was looking for a different to represent the popularities of labels and then I thought of barchart and because it has been used for years for presentation of summary of numerical data thus most people are familiar with it. Finally, I made it with a few added lines of code. Even though I don't use the same presentation as used in Label Cloud, I still admire the idea.

Below is the code. The added lines are highlighted with yellow color. Click it to enlarge.

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Abandoned

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Fern

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Western Spring

Western Spring, Auckland, NZ
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Expand/Collapse Code

As I've been asked by a few friends of mine about Expand/Collapse, I just wrote a small tutorial of it even though you can find the code in page source of my old blog template it's not easy to follow because the code was lengthy and the function I wrote is not well structured I would say.

<html>
<head>
<script language="javascript">

// TODO: expand/collapse (show/hide) an element, specified by id,
// triggered by an element, specified by triggerID. triggerTxt is a text in trigger element.
function toggle(id, triggerId, triggerTxt){
e = document.getElementById(id);
trigger = document.getElementById(triggerId);

if (e.style.display == 'block' || e.style.display != 'none'){
e.style.display = 'none'
// instead of [+] you can also replace with an image as well
trigger.innerHTML = "[+] " + triggerTxt;
}
else
{
e.style.display = 'block'
// instead of [-] you can also replace with an image as well
trigger.innerHTML = "[-] " + triggerTxt;
}
}

</script>

</head>
<body>

<h3 id="trigger1" onclick="toggle('list1','trigger1','click here')">click here</h3>

<ul>

<!-- element (in div) to be expanded/collapsed -->
<div id="list1">
<li>Item 1</li>
<li>Item 2</li>
<li>Item 3</li>
</div>

<ul>

<!-- call this function now to collapse list1 element when the page is loaded -->
<script>toggle('list1','trigger1','click here')</script>

</body>

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Get Drunk & Get Educated

Different manufacturers use different ways to promote their products in terms of advertising, packaging, giveaway, etc. Tui has an interesting way to keep its consumers entertained while drinking by printing a quiz on bottom of each bottle cap. I never found it cool because it is about New Zealand history esp sport history. I mean it's boring because I never liked history papers. But until Saturday last week, when we were drinking, I picked up each and every cap coz someone wanted to answer the quiz. Yeah, mostly it's about sport history of New Zealand as usual but along the way I found these 2 questions quite interesting so then I would like to share. The first question is "How long does it take a sperm to swim 20cm?" and the second one is "What does a polyorchid man have at least three of?" Try to answer if you want. There are also answers provided. To see the answers, press Ctrl-a (for windows) or Command-a (for Mac). Enjoy!

1. One hour
2. Testicles


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It's back!

Yay! Finally, I managed to get my modification back and I decided to preserve blogger navigation bar.
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Gone!!!

I've just upgraded my blog to blogger beta so all the modifications I've made are all gone :( Anyways, I'll try to change it back again.
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Be Socialized

I think Hans is right. The most socialable feature of Blogger is "next blog" button that takes you to a random blog in the Blogger blogosphere and it makes users feel they are totally connected with others, they're not alone. I modified my blog template just to personalised it and I deliberately block the "next blog" button. I didn't realized how important that feature was untill I read Hans's post "could blogger beat wordpress?", introduced by a link in Waz post. Being aware of the importance of the "next blog" button is, I put up that feature back on.
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By The Window

Sitting by the window of my bedroom is a pteris fern and it is a present from Bex (even though I demanded her to buy it for me, I still called it a present).


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Yellow Flowers

Pic from the trip.
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Expand / Collapse

 I am supposed to be reading an article on GIS for my research but I was spending my time writing a javascript function to expand and collapse blogroll in the sidebar in my blog instead. Have a look at the blogrolls! Click one of the blogroll titles (e.g. [+] Friendz Weblogs) to expand the list and click again to collapse it.
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Configure Woosh Modem under Linux

I've been tried 2 linux distros (Fedora and Kubuntu) in the last 2 days (well, just for the sake of trying them out) on my pc machine (i386) The first thing and most import thing of all is to get my internet connection up and running. I am using Woosh nz isp connected using wireless modem. I thought it would be hard to set it up because it's not widely used and the technical support is only available for Windows and Mac systems only. I was googling and there I found what I really needed. [1] To configure the modem in Fedora is so easy. Just go to Network Configuration, create new connection and choose xDSL Connection and then just type in your username and password, that's set. [2] For Kubuntu, you have to fire up Terminal. Type in pppoeconf, which at first looks quite uncomfy for me, and then you have to answer (type in) a few questions, key in the username and password. That's all set! Oh, to active the connection in Kubuntu, pon dsl-provider and to disconnection poff.
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Walk Alone

Pic from the trip.
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Bad Programming

As Vodafone has extended its free txt promotion, weekend here (New Zealand) is a good time to txt your friends without worrying about losing your phone credit. It's when people start to sharing jokes or even some nonsense stuff via txting. And at the same time, it is a good time to annoy your friends. The most annoying txt is when it's sent letter by letter and what they do is type it in letter by letter manually but with the existence of Python for mobile phone Serie 60 (and I'm sure they Python for other mobile devices as well) we can do it easily. Below is a few lines of code to automate that manual process.

import appuifw
import messaging

data = appuifw.query(u"Message: ", "text")
nbr = appuifw.query(u"Phone Number: ", "text")
txt =  unicode(data);

if appuifw.query(u"You sure wanna send?","query") == True:
  for i in txt:
     messaging.sms_send(nbr, i)
  appuifw.note(u"Messages sent", "info")

From this code and with a very lil knowledge of programming you can modify it to make it send word by word or a reversed message. Enjoy :) !
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Through The Window

This photo is not mine, this is bex's. I just like the color and composition of this photo so I decided to post and share it here. It's also from the trip.
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Today's Roadtrip

We had another roadtrip today accompanied by Itt, Sang, and Bex. We headed South Auckland to Mangatangi dam and Waihihi bay. There's nothing special about this trip actually. We made it because I were bored and didn't know what to do. During a drinking session last night, Itt suggested that we should go to these places. It started off with a sunny sky but ended with a gloomy weather. Oh it wasn't too bad though because everyone seemed to be happy after all and I enjoy taking photos in any lighting condition so yeah and another thing is today is my first day after 1 year that I haven't eaten Hamburger heheh. Each of us took quite a lot of photos, I won't post all the photos in this post but here are 3 from me ;)

One side of the dam

Anoter side of the dam

Waihihi bay

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Stands Out

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Preparing For The Fall

Today is a beautiful day, isn't it?
The sky is blue
The sun is shinning
But who knows what tomorrow will be like?
To be optimistic, the sun will shine again
To be pessimistic, it will be raining tomorrow
Or to be somewhere in between, you would say it will be cloudy tomorrow
It might be a bit cumbersome but it is worth preparing yourself with a raincoat or umbrella so you won't get wet if it rains.

Would you prepare to fall when it comes to relationship?
You never know how it goes in the future
We all know this saying "Time can change everything"
Eventhough it's not always true, it is most of the time true.
When you prepare yourself for the fall, it doesn't mean you don't trust your partner
You can trust the present self but you cannot trust the future self.
Prepare to fall so you won't get hurt badly.
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Marae

Wikipedia: "Marae is a sacred place which served both religious and social purposes in ancient Polynesian societies ..." [Read me]
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Cambodian In Wellington Museum

I found this Cambodian women's profile in a Museum in Wellington, New Zealand. Here it says:

Necklace and bracelet
about 1970

When Niborom left Cambodia, her mother gave her these as a parting gift. The two never saw each other again. Niborom's mother was murdered by the Khmer Rouge.

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Morning Light

One of my friend, Ith, and I didn't sleep for the whole night while other friends were sleeping in the cars. We had driven to many different places in Wellington to find a place to stay but all places were not available. We also went up to mount Victoria and then come back down to Oriential bay in the morning like 7am for the refreshment. We had to wait until 11am to get in a hotel which was booked by another friend of mine's fiancée. The funny thing was she booked the hotel from Oz instead. The morning light at Oriental bay revitalised and kept us going for another 5 more hours.
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With Her Reflection

This flower is in an apartment downstair. It was dying a few days ago but now it's back to life.
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Electricity Pole

This photo was taken on the way to Wellington on 18/apr/06. At that time, the road was jammed by a long queue of cars heading to Wellington, some for the winter uni games and some for the Rollingstone concert. I escaped from the busyness on road by just turning to the side and looked through the car window and enjoyed the calmness of the nature surroudning. And there was eletricity pole was outlined by the late evening sky filled with sky-blue and dark-orange colors. Maybe it was a good time to take a silhoutte photo and here's the photo.
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