Painting with Light (1)

I realised that I haven't been posting anything in the last few weeks, and this blog is more dead than ever. I was supposed to do some travel-logs from my recent trips; I have even written up half a post but it has since been collecting dust in the draft folder. I have also had some ranting about people's general attitude towards racism but I have also pushed that aside for more farming in Farmville.

Every once in a while, I sit down thinking that I should post some photography stuff. A few months back a camera shop approached me to put a link to their shop because they thought this is a photography blog. Well, since they paid me, even if this isn't a photography blog, it kind of is one now. Who knows if I don't post anything on photography for a few months they might just ask for a refund.

So here goes. Something about photography.


Photography comes from two root words, "photo" which means "light" and "graphy" which means "writing or drawing". So photography literally means "painting with light". My journey in photography has been about how I slowly come to gain insight about the importance of light.


When I first got my compact camera back in 2003 (shown here is Chin Fei's Minolta Dimage Z3), I knew pretty much nothing about light, except maybe for "it's bad if it's too bright or too dark". I played around with my tiny Powershot A70 trying to make sure that everything was bright enough.


If it was dark, I added flash. (Gosh I was actually better looking than Yee Pin before I put on all the fat)


Or, I exposed for a bit longer.


I thought I was pretty good, and once in a while I did get pretty good shots with sheer luck.


I played little tricks,


like changing the colour of the picture by shooting through sunglasses.


But that's pretty much all I knew about light and photography in general, and my knowledge about light pretty much halted without further improvement for the next three to four years.

[to be continued...]

Kill The "Do You Want to Restart Now" Nag

I am sure this is not new to geeks like See Hua, but I discovered this convenient trick to get rid of one of the many annoyances in Windows. If you have spent some time with Windows (any of the recent versions including XP, Vista or 7), you would most likely have come across this lovely dialog:

You click on "Restart Later" hoping that it would go away; but no, it keeps coming back to you like a nagging aunt. Some days your machine gets more impatient, and it shows you this version instead:

Sometimes it's even worse, where the option "Restart Later" is grayed-out and you can do nothing except to watch your computer restart in horror.

Now, imagine that this happens in the middle of watching your favourite movie, or presenting your powerpoint slides. Should we let Windows take us hostage for its "restart now" compulsion? Of course not. There's an easy way you can kill off this nagging dialog when it appears.

Here's what you do. The following instruction is for Windows XP only, for Windows Vista or Windows 7 please refer to this page.

1. Go to Start --> Run
(for those who like keyboard shortcut, you can also use the combination "Win + R")

2. Type net stop "automatic updates" then Enter.

3. You will see the Command Line window for a brief second and voila, the nagging dialog would be gone. You don't have to worry about the update not being installed because the Windows will still install it automatically the next time you restart your computer.

That's it, a public message by CY.

Of Using Thesaurus Could be Dangerous

Note: This is again a collage of my posts in ReCom, so it might appear incoherent. This post is dedicated to my fellow juniors who are facing the struggle I once faced and is still trying to overcome.

Writing in English is a common struggle faced by most students from Chinese education background. Being unacquainted with the language, many of us have difficulty finding the right expression for our thoughts, and some people end up doing literal translation from Chinese language, often resulting in embarrassment.

In improving our language, one of the tactics often employed is to read thesaurus and do what I would call "find-and-replace". What happens is, instead of using simple words like "beautiful", "ugly" in our writing; we look up the fancier version of the adjectives in thesaurus and replace them with "idyllic" and "grotesque" instead.

While this tactic could work if we do it with care and complement it with improvements in other aspects of the language, I would like to remind people to resist the temptation of doing simple "bombastic-vocab substitution" without considering the context. I have seen many people who learn vocabs through thesaurus and end up writing sentences like,

• Yeah I am trying to ameliorate my english
• He is a bona fide guy
• I reckon vehemently that you are of the right opinion;

when they actually mean

• Yeah I am trying to improve my english
• He is a genuine guy
• I strongly agree with you

After some find-and-replace process, we end up with either sentences that sound awkward or are totally wrong. And worse of all, we don't even realise it, as some of us think that thesaurus means "the book of synonyms".

Just some explanations.

Ameliorate is "improve", but it's usually used in the context of "ameliorate the condition". I am not sure whether it's correct to say "ameliorate english", but the fact is that it's seldom used in this context, so when you simply use it this way it sounds awkward. It would be much better if you just say "improve my english" or "brush up my English".

Bona fide means genuine, but it only refers to the genuine in the sense that it's not counterfeit. E.g. a bona fide Malaysian, a bona fide van Gogh painting, a bona fide offer etc. However, it doesn't have the meaning of "genuine" in "a genuine guy". By a genuine guy we don't mean this is not a pirated-version of a guy, but we are referring to his sincere, truthful personality. And "bona fide" is not often used in this context.

Reckon means think, vehemently means with passion / emotion / zeal. That last sentence was simply improper and awkward. "Of the right opinion" is technically correct but it's not what you would say in daily conversation. It's a cumbersome phrase.

I hope that it's obvious from the examples above that if we simply learn our vocabs off thesaurus, thinking that we can substitute improve with ameliorate or genuine with bona fide indiscriminately, we will probably end up doing more harm than good to our writing.

At the end of the day, using good vocab per se is not a bad thing. Obviously all seasonal writers have a good repertoire of vocabulary, and the vocabulary fluorishes their writing. However, when the other aspects of our language is not as good as the vocab we are using, the whole thing will just feel absolutely awkward. For someone who is not too well-versed in the language, he or she might be "impressed" by our mastery of vocabs without picking up the other glaring errors; but for a native speaker, seeing improperly used vocab interspersed with glaring grammatical errors and non-flowing sentences is a major eyesore.

Or to put it the other way: vocabulary is to a language as icing is to a cake. If you put the icing on a great tasting cake, it's gonna make it even better; but if you simply put icing on a burnt cake or on a bowl of noodle, it's just yucky.

The Secrets of Success

I believe that through our journey of growing up, all of us must have come across self-help motivation books and speeches where the authors and presenters claim to give you the key to success. They enabled us, they made us dream. With time, however, we gradually forget most of the contents from those books and speeches. In fact, we come to the ironic conclusion that the only successful people seem to be the very people who make money from publishing books and giving speeches about being successful. Like Lillian Too and her Feng Shui tips. However, this video is a bit different. It managed to encapsulate the good old "secret of success" succinctly (it's only 3 minutes long) in an engaging way. I found it highly enjoyable and inspirational. I hope you feel the same too.

Thanks to my brother for the recommendation.

How to Stop The Buzz in An Earbud

So your earbud / earphone produces annoying buzz when it plays low frequency sounds? This is what to do:

... gently place the earbud to your mouth and suck, taking care not to get the earbud wet.

Worked like a charm. Saved me a trip to the Apple store.

How to Fix Slow Scrolling in Firefox

Many Firefox users including myself have been complaining about slow, choppy scrolling when they visit certain websites. For example, with the recent redesign, ReCom has been scrolling pretty choppily for me. Another example is this forum and this university website.

Apparently, the slow scrolling is due to the presence of a fixed background image in the web page. In the case of ReCom, there is a fixed background blue gradient. For the second forum, it is the giant globe, and for the university website, it's the pretty orange intersecting lines.

Interestingly this problem doesn't affect all versions of Firefox and all machines in which Firefox is used. But if you happen to be one of the unfortunate users, fret not - a fix is just a click away! This is a bookmarklet you can drag to your bookmark folder or save as a bookmark (found here):

Zap Background!

Whenever you visit a problematic website, just click on this Zap Background bookmarklet and the problem will be solved instantaneously! How does that work? Basically it just tells Firefox to stop displaying the problematic background, so it could scroll smoothly again.

If you don't want to click on the bookmarklet every single time, there are more methods you could employ that solve the problem once and for all but involve some tweaking:

1. If the problematic website is one that you visits regularly, you could tell Adblock (if you have it installed) to block the problematic background image altogether. To find out the URL of the background image, just right click on the background and "view background image". Then go to your Adblock setting to add the background image to the blocked item list.

2. A more drastic action is to disable static background image altogether in all websites. Visit this page for more instruction.

Enjoy the smoothness! :)

*****

Small talk: I have not disappeared. Exams were over two weeks ago and I have even gotten my results back. I attended five graduations in the past week and it was both gratifying (the photography opportunities) and physically demanding (you would know why if you have seen me at work :P) Camouflaged by the vibrance and joy was a little tinge of sadness, knowing that this is the end of social partnership I enjoyed tremendously with many good friends here. I am having holidays in Melbourne at the moment, and you will see me sporadically update this blog as I find the inspiration and mood.

Ubiquity

If you thought Chrome was the coolest thing you have seen in a while, think again. Enter Ubiquity, Firefox's latest experimental feature:

Ubiquity for Firefox from Aza Raskin on Vimeo.
An instantaneous blow-away for me.

My Mi Goreng Recipe

I have a little recipe for Mi Goreng, and no, I am not talking about fried noodle in Malay Language. I am talking about the internationally acclaimed instant noodle by IndoMie® Pt Indofood Sukses Makmur Tbk, Jakarta 14430, Indonesia.

Yup this IndoMie Mi Goreng.

Well you might think, just about every single Tom or Dick in this world knows how to cook IndoMie. Just boil some water, put the noodle in, wait a few minutes until it's cooked, drain the noodles, mix in the MSG-rich sachets, and an instant delicacy awaits.

BUT.

While I followed the instruction throughout the years to the last fine print, I have always felt that the noodle is a bit too stretchy to my liking. Some "elastic tendon" kind of feel. And the MSGs never felt thick enough, not salty and sweet enough. I know this sounds so unhealthy, but really, who can resist Indomie once they try their first serve in their lives? :P

So last year, when I had Indomie one day, what happened was I sort of put together a better tasting version of Indomie. It is springy but not stretchy, and the flavouring simply tasted superb to me. Thick, sweet and salty. Or put shortly, there was simply nothing more you could ask for in a pack of instant noodle. I have been cooking IndoMie this way since.

And today, I am going to share my favourite recipe:

1. Cook noodles (obviously)
   
2. Without any delay, proceed to prepare all the flavouring sachets (except the fried onion) in the bowl. The plastic sachets must be cut using scissors instead of tearing by hand. This is essential for the timing and to prevent dirtying your clothes.
   
3. Proceed immediately to drain the noodle thoroughly with a kitchen sieve. Do the first two seconds of sieving under running cold water.
   
4. Mix the noodle thoroughly with the flavouring in the bowl.
   
5. Sprinkle the fried onion on top.
   
6. Devour the fantastic Mi Goreng!

It seems that the time spent by the noodle in the boiling water is essential to the success of getting springy, half-tender noodle. Your mileage may vary, and so is your tastebud. So find what's best for you, and enjoy!

Disclaimer: I have not been eating IndoMie as much as I used to. I don't think I have even eaten one box yet this year; while in the first year I used to have enough to be used as lecture note containers. Please consume IndoMie moderately and responsibly! :D

p/s: In fact in the talk page of the Indomie Wikipedia article, there are even some creative cooking methods involving some other additional flavours and ingredients. :P Indomie fans rejoice!

An Encounter - Unibicycles, Melbourne University

This is gonna be a long story. It's about a bicycle, its recurrently punctured front tire, and someone in the Melbourne University's unibicycles. First let me relate some background about this bike. Or if you are not too keen on it, just jump straight to the conversation further down this post.

My girlfriend has a bike, and I have been using it for the past year. Being a poor international student, the bike of course wasn't one from the top range, but it's not the cheapest either. She got it for about 300 dollars, two to three years ago.

Throughout the years, the bike has had a good deal of problems. There have been three occasions where one of the spokes in the front wheel was snapped. Each repair cost about 20 dollars. We have been repairing the bike in the shop we bought the bike from, but it's very far away from my house so we no longer go there.

In May this year, the front tire punctured for no reason. One day, as I was about to ride to the hospital, I noticed the front tire was totally flat. My girlfriend sent the bike to the uni bike shop to repair it, and they changed the inner tube which cost something like 20 dollars. She said the shop keepers were fierce and hostile, but she didn't elaborate much on it.

A few days after that, the tire punctured again. The SAME, REPAIRED tire.

During that time we were totally preoccupied with meeting our research deadline, so we didn't send the bike for repair again. The busy period had since passed, but I kind of forgot about the bike (didn't use it during the holidays), and only today I thought of sending it for repair, as she's gonna use it once we start our semester.

So I dragged this bike to the shop. In all possibility, it could have been the bike shop's fault that their replaced inner tube punctured in just a few days. However, I thought it's quite hard to argue as I am now sending it in after two months. Hence I just let it pass and didn't even mention that.

This is what ensued in the bicycle shop. Not verbatim but the gist is there. And the last sentence IS accurate.

Me: This tire went flat since one month ago and how can I fix it?
Shop Guy: One month ago? *with what I think is a contempt look* *check the tire*
Me: Oh have been back in Malaysia.. *to do away with stupid judgmental attitude*
Me: What do you think is the problem?
Shop Guy: Just a puncture.
Me: How would you fix it, and how much would that cost?
Shop Guy: I am gonna change the inner tube, 25 bucks.
Me: When can I get it back?
Shop Guy: You will have to wait until after lunch tomorrow

*With that he carried the bike to his storage area, and came back in. But he didn't give me any receipt or anything*

Me: Should I get a receipt or something?
Shop Guy: It's a piece of shit, what am I gonna do with it?

WTF? Okay the bike is not terribly well maintained, and it's only 300; but it's not very rusty or cracked or squeaky either. Calling it a piece of shit is just plain rude, and even if it's true, saying it simply shows just how much an arse he is.

So I am gonna boycott this shop from now on. Your mileage may vary, you may have a bike worthy of more courtesy, or this guy probably just had a bad day. Regardless, have a second thought when you choose your bike shop the next time, especially if you have "a piece of shit". And this shop just lost some business.

Where Is My Tram?

If you are a Melburnian, try out this website called www.tramroute.com. Just click on the tram line you are interested in, and choose "show estimated position of tram" - you then get to "spy" on your trams, and the dots representing trams actually move on the map! If you click on a particular tram stops, you also get to view the time table for that stop on your right. Very handy indeed.

It's not specifically mentioned, but I believe that the estimated tram position is based on the time table instead of the real-time tram tracking system as employed by Yarra Tram's Tramtracker. But oh well, it's so much fancier than the Tramtracker, and this website doesn't cost a single cent to use. :)

[via Melbourne Metblog]

The Fool's Magic

Have you ever gotten these FWD:FWD:FWD:FWD:FWD: in your hotmail, facebook or friendster?

Find the error: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20

Did you know that 80% people could not find the error above? Repost this with the title "Find the error, its impossible", and when you click "Submit Post", the answer will be really obvious.

Forward this message to 50 friends in your contact list and you will have a new design in your profile!

Magic. When u hit the forward button, u'll see the person who views ur profile the most...try it...

I am sure many of us have followed those instructions, secretly wishing that the promise would come true. And many among us would also have counted 1 to 20 one hundred times, trying to find the nuanced abnormality that might have been missed in the previous attempts.

If you haven't realised, many of these things are simply "viral mails". Their very reason of existence is to propagate throughout the cyberspace via people's naivety, wasting people's time in the process. They are what we call mindless "memes", nothing more, nothing less.

We tell ourselves, "Hehe, I am going to find out the answer then challenge my friend and show off how smart I am". And ten minutes later, we give up and click "submit post", turning ourselves into the vector of the meme in the process.

The key to those memes' success is that nobody actually bothers asking or verifying with others when the promised magic doesn't happen. Everyone is afraid of being laughed at. They thought they are the only person around who has made stupid mistakes.

Essentially, this whole phenomenon is quite similar to the famed emperor's new clothes. They are the same old psychological manipulation with a modern twist.

Download Firefox 3 Now!

Firefox 3, the latest version of my favourite browser has just been released! Go get it now!

Download it here.

If you are still using Internet Explorer, you should try out Firefox just for one or two days (and try out the add-ons while you are at it) to understand why I have ditched Internet Explorer since five years ago. For starters, check out some tips and tricks I wrote when Firefox 2 was released.

If you are using Opera or Safari... Well we shouldn't quarrel. :D

Update: Tada!

RSS Feeds Now Available in Malaysian News Websites!

For a long time, I have been rather disappointed by the lack of RSS feed in local news. I know The Star does have RSS feeds, but its RSS is hidden in a separate page and is not auto-detected by Firefox or Internet Explorer. Most other news websites, notably all Chinese news websites, did not have RSS, making it hard for me to follow them daily. It's very disappointing as RSS has been widely used in all major international news websites for at least four years now.

To my surprise, when I visited SinChew's home page today, my browser detected the RSS feeds on the web page! Just go to any of the sub-categories (international, local, sports etc), and look out for the RSS logo.

I did some exploration, and found that Utusan also provides RSS feed, but Nanyang still doesn't feature it.

Note: If you have no idea what RSS is, visit this page for a brief explanation, and try out Google Reader for a feel of it. Needless to say, my blog has a RSS feed too, and if you read this blog regularly, you probably should try it out! :) This is how I read all my friends' blogs regularly.

PicLens

If you haven't started using PicLens, you probably should:



It brings so much fun and novelty to viewing images online. Works on flickr (my photo album is there), google image search, facebook, picasa, friendster etc. Now it also lets you view youtube videos, although for some reasons it is not yet working on my computer.

Available for Firefox, Safari, and, eeer... yea, Internet Explorer.

Windows Live Writer

I have always disliked Microsoft on principle. Apart from its Office suite and the relatively stable Windows XP, I think that most things that come from Microsoft are pretty much inferior to its alternatives. In particular, Microsoft Internet Explorer (especially the 6.0 version) tops the list of my most undesirable software.

But today I am going to highly recommend this Microsoft product: Windows Live Writer.

It's basically a blog application. It works on most blog providers, including Windows Live Spaces, Blogger, Wordpress and MovableType. It also works on blogs hosted on your own servers.

There are so many cool features in this application, it will be a hurdle for me to list it out while expressing my excitement at the same time.

In fact, heed me just once: If you have a blog, download the software here, install it, then type your blog address and password. You will be surprised by the first thing you see after that. More surprises will come when you start exploring its features.

Well done Microsoft Live Writer team. This software deserves lots of coverage. Oh ya, it's FREE.

(Needless to say, this post is typed in Windows Live Writer.)

Of Photos and Photoshop

Have you ever looked at a good picture, and upon knowing that it's been photoshopped, said that "Chehh like that hor"?

I had. In particular, I have more than once been disappointed that in real life, travel destinations look blander and less interesting compared to pictures in travel websites. I have always blamed photoshop for that. However, as I learn more about photography, I am starting to see the other side of the coin.

I learnt that every single photo, no matter how original and pure, must have been photoshopped by the time it appears in front of you.

When we took film photographs in the past, we thought that our pictures all turned out bright and colourful. But that doesn't mean that the colour and exposure of our pics must have been right in the first place - the people in photo shops have been "photoshopping" colours, brightness and levels for decades before Adobe Photoshop came along. That's precisely where the software's name came from. All your pictures in the good ol' albums, regardless of its quality and age, had been photoshopped.

How about digital pictures, one might ask. In most digital cameras, the pixels of a picture are recorded with digital sensors, processed by a processor and converted into a jpg file. The quality of the picture coming from the process is largely dependent on the quality of the lens as well as the processor. When I visited St. Kilda beach with my friends last time, when I compared the same picture (e.g. group picture) taken with different cameras, I noticed that my Canon A70 produced much more vibrant colour out of the camera. Colour, contrast, saturation, sharpness etc, they have everything to do with the lens and the processing of the camera.

So my point is, every picture (apart from professional unprocessed RAW files, but that's another story) has already been through some level of processing, sharpening, colour-changing, white balance tuning etc. Some photo-purists take pride with not photoshopping pictures to the extent that they have this holier-than-thou attitude towards the whole practice of photoshopping. I feel that it's a bit ignorant for them to do that. Yes it's a good thing that your pictures are already beautiful straight out of the camera, but that doesn't mean that you are naturally better than people who do more post-processing. Probably unbeknownst to them is the fact that their cameras have already done a fair amount of "photoshopping" in the 'original" version. Unless you are talking about composition (which can't be changed with photoshop except simple cropping), or you are comparing two photographers using the same camera system, it's hard to make any meaningful comparison based on the usage of photoshop alone.

Also, with regards to the "cheating" travel photos - I came to term with it with the realisation that they were never meant to paint the actual picture for us anyway. Photos are now more a form of art than an item of realism.

To finish off, I will show you one of my recent efforts in improving a photo with photoshop. The techniques and results are nothing to rave about, but it's just a concept I am trying to get across.

This is my mum and dad. We were happily shooting some random portrait pictures in Ampang recreational park, Alor Star. We saw this stone structure which is perfect to sit on, and I snapped away with 3 shot-per-second continuous bursts to capture their expressions. This is the original picture that I got (actually already modified a bit of exposure, but not much different from the real original). The colour is not too great, but my dad's glance at my mum is priceless. It's not staged at all, it's one of the pictures chosen from the 20+ shots taken in 10 seconds.

In my attempt to make this picture stand out more, I changed this picture to sepia at a click of a button. Not too special but looks more nostalgic now.

I tried black and white instead. Black and white pictures are good at capturing contrast and is occasionally used to remove unnecessary distraction from colours in the picture. I preserved the original composition, but cropped a little bit and performed channel mixing. Channel mixing is a slightly more complicated way of turning colour pictures into black-and-white, and it's able to manipulate contrast to our desired effect. With the right setting, channel mixer produces better looking picture than the ones you get with one-click change-to-black-and-white function. Learn more here, or google "channel mixer".

This is my third, and final attempt at the picture. I cut out the legs and the background trees, leaving the limelight to the two of them. For those who are technically inclined, I also did some extra colour-burning, sharpening and level adjustment. This picture will not win me any award, but I like this picture so much that I am setting it as my wallpaper and planning to get a large printout for them. The full size gives you an even greater impact. Also, do compare this with the original pic above - it's definitely an improvement.

Ahh the joy of photoshop.

The Best Place to Exchange Currency

I was trying to get get some Singapore Dollars in the city. Currently, 1 Australian Dollar (AUD) can buy 1.27 Singapore Dollar (SGD) according to Google. So in the ideal world, I can get SGD 100 with AUD 78.75.

First I went to this money changer selling SGD at AUD 1.2112. As the exchange shop was about to close, I promptly proceeded to buy SGD 100 with AUD 86.55, inclusive of an AUD 4 commission.

Then I walked past another money changer with an advertised rate of AUD 1.23. But when I asked at the counter, I was told that in total it would cost me AUD 92. Apparently they charge quite a bit of commission. I was amused when the cashier tried to encourage me to buy it after quoting the price.

The third shop that I went to sells SGD at AUD 1.225, but they don't charge any commission, so I could actually get SGD 100 with AUD 81.65.

Poof. My five dollars vanished into the thin air. :(

Image credit: homesgofast.com

A Visit to Ikea

Don't wear a yellow shirt to Ikea if you don't want this to happen:

Excuse me, do you know where I can get this thing from?

=.="

Tasmania Trip (3a) - Of ICA, IGA and Expired Goods

I was complaining the other day about how some supermarkets sell things which are already past its best-before date. I kind of suspected that best-before are different from use-by, and that Yong Chin's theory (best before, not too bad after) might actually be right.

After some random searching and browsing, there was a shocking revelation:

While it's illegal to sell products after its USE-BY date has expired; it's legal to sell things after its BEST-BEFORE date, provided that it doesn't pose health risk to the consumer.

Apparently USE BY dates tend to apply to products where the character of the product will deteriorate over time, or perishable produtcs that present a food safety issue if eaten after a certain period of time. Examples are fresh foods such as meats, dairy products, liquids, some frozen foods etc. Those are the things that you usually find in those "quick sale" section.

Meanwhile, BEST BEFORE dates are applied to more stable products that do not need to be eaten within a certain period of time. Examples are dry food products such as cereals, grains, canned foods, oils and tea. The BEST BEFORE date simply indicates that the product may have lost some of its quality after this date passes; but as long as it's stored properly, it should still be safe to consume.

Lastly, there are some food that don't have any date marking at all, e.g. canned foods such as baked beans, because they are safe and keep their quality for over two years.

So, apparently the IGA that we went to weren't doing anything illegal at all. But still, one year and three months is a bit too long, don't you think?

Sources:
To Eat or Not to Eat
Wikipedia - Shelf Life
New South Wales Food Label Facts Brochure (PDF)

Tasmania Trip (3) - Of ICA, IGA and Expired Goods

This morning, I was reading the Wikipedia frontpage when I came across the ICA meat repackaging controversy. Apparently a few hypermarkets in Sweden allegedly repackaged out-of-date meat and put it back on the shelves, jeopardizing the public's health. It forced the ICA (the supermarket chain) to apologize and withdraw some of their festival programs.

This incident reminds me of some encounters I had with IGA (Independent Grocers of Australia), one of the popular supermarket chains in Australia.

There are IGA stores all around Australia in just about every state, and there used to be one just downstairs when I lived in the College Square apartment in my first two years. While that particular IGA was pretty convenient, the price was rather reasonable, and the owners were friendly; there was something that I found disagreeable - sometimes they sell expired goods.

There are sometimes chips, chocolates or sweets that have expired for weeks or months in the store. While some of them are labelled as "reduced to clear" (which is an euphemism for "expired goods to be lelong-ed"); some of them are mixed in together with other goods. If one is not careful enough, he is at risk of consuming expired stuff. But then we kind of lived with it, and picked up the good habit of checking "Best Before" dates for every single thing.

Just a few days ago, when we were in Launceston, Tasmania, we lived in an apartment with an IGA just next door to it. The IGA was a full-size hypermarket and they sell quite a huge variety of goods. When we first arrived in the apartment, we visited the IGA at night to stock up our food for the next day. We were browsing about the hypermarket when, to our shock, we came across some expired drinks in the refrigerator. The first bottle of fruit juice, produced by a famous local brewery, had a sticker that says "Best Before March 2007". The second bottle of fruit juice, with a different flavour, had an amazing best-before date of September 2006.

We were rather irked by the expired drinks, so we brought the two bottles to the cashier and told him about it. He smilingly apologised and put the two bottles beside him. With that, we paid for our own food, and left the IGA for our apartment.

Two days later, we stayed in the same apartment again, and as a routine we headed back to the same IGA for more shopping. We thought, oh, for the sake of it, let's just see if there are still any expired drinks or snacks around in the supermarket. And, after one minute...

We found the same two bottles of fruit juice, displayed nicely on the rack.

How disappointing. Not all supermarkets are irresponsible, but the ones that are, shame on them.


p/s: Yong Chin had a theory about what the supermarkets think about best-before dates - "It says best before, after that not that best but still okay..." And may I add, "after one year, still not too bad lah".