Note: Although this procedure is fairly safe – Please only try this if you have a reliable backup of the database (and logs) and recovery from your backups has been tested.

1. This is an optional step but I like to run a program called SequoiaView just to have a graphical view of what is taking up all the hard disk space on the servers.

With this program you can colour coordinate extensions to filter out your databases and log files as illustrated below:

In the above illustration you can see my databases are fairly large and that’s ok because it’s all my SharePoint data, but my log file is fairly large too. It’s around 1.7GB.

2. Let’s try and shrink this log file to save some space. Open up  SQL server Management Studio (If you don’t know what this is you probably shouldn’t be doing this). Navigate to the database which log files you want to shrink. The name of the log is usually the name of the database.

3. Right click on the database and select Properties

4. Then select the options menu on the left hand side of the new window that appears like so:

Above I have highlighted the options selection as well as recovery model. For a full explanation read here but for a brief explanation, this basically tells SQL server to either keep a full track of every transaction made on this database so you can recover specific transactions or a simple recovery which relies on backups taken of the database for recovery.
5. You can choose to modify this value to simple which will get rid of your large log issue or you can temporarily change it to Simple, shrink your log file and then put it back into full recovery mode (which is what I like to do and is the gist of this blog). So change your recovery model to Simple (Please backup the database first) and hit OK.
6. Next right click on the database of topic and select Tasks -> Shrink->Files
7. The window that appears will look like the following but please choose the options as shown in the figure below:

Select Log for file type.

You will notice in the above figure that we can reclaim 98% of space from that log file if we use simple recovery for this database. Keeping it in full recovery mode would still free up space but not nearly as much.

8. Hit OK and then go back and follow steps 3 and 4 to revert your recovery mode back to full.

You should now have more space to work with on your SharePoint SQL server box.

You can also automate this process so that you don’t have to continue to check in and do this manually by creating a maintenance plan in SQL server Management Studio but I’ll let you figure that one out yourself.

Step 1. Navigate to the document library that is missing the tool menu.

Step 2. Click on Site Actions -> Edit Page

Once you have done that you should then see a difference in the main content section – You will notice a big button that says ‘Add a web part’ and then a couple of headings which may differ (but be similar) on your site like so:

According to a few articles the tools menu gets hidden when there are web parts added to a document library page and if your 2007 had any they may even be hidden from your view until you hit ‘Edit Page’. Now this would only apply if you are happy to get rid of the webpart/s but if you are hoping to have the best of both worlds, then I can’t help you at this point in time. Luckily for me they were completely unwanted web parts. I can, however, offer you a workaround which is at the bottom of this post.

Step 3. Delete the unwanted webpart/s by navigating to the far right of the webpart and clicking the arrow seen below:

Click on delete. It will prompt you whether you want to permanently delete the web part. Click on Yes if you are willing to let go of this web part and all the information it holds (not really considering a lot of webparts just reference a list or library located somewhere else). I suggest before you do this to have a look at the properties of your web part and make sure you aren’t permanently losing all the information it presents.

Step 4. Click on Stop Editing!

You should now have your library tools.

Workaround if you want to keep your webpart:

Step 1. Navigate to the document library missing the library tools

Step 2. Tick any item already uploaded in the document library like so (folders or documents, it doesn’t matter):

Once the item is ticked you will then see the library tools menu!

• Exchange mail push notifications not working at times and sluggish speeds of the app
• Sluggish performance in general
• Terrible battery life

Upgrade the firmware to 2.2 Froyo. This is available via Samsung Kies now for all Australian providers of the Samsung Galaxy S. Install it on your PC and upgrade!!! To check what firmware you have currently go to Settings -> About Phone and you should see firmware version.

Now for the full story:

So I’ve had the Samsung Galaxy S for about 6 months now and as much as I wanted to write an early raving review about it, I knew it wouldn’t be doing the device any justice because of how immensely shithouse (for lack of a better description) I found it compared to everyone else who bought it did. I was coming from using an iPhone 3G for a year which I had no problems with until OS 4 came out. I think this made a difference in my perception of the Samsung.

Call me a conspiracy theorist but Apple’s device building quality = 10. Apple’s marketing ploys and tactics = 10. As soon as the new iPhone 3Gs/4 came out, the quality of user experience was lost on the iPhone 3G….A bit too much of a push from Apple for me to upgrade in my opinion. I wanted to sue Steve Jobs for ruining my product but then I realised you can never really own an Apple product. They more or less own you. The only way to get out of Apples product prison was to buy something that did what my iPhone did, with none of the handcuffs. So I switched to the Samsung Galaxy S.

Firstly I was running on Android 1.2. They have cute little names for Android builds like gingerbread, froyo etc. Don’t let the names fool you. Anything under 2.0 is absolute shit. They should rename them to Android 1.1 – Embryo, Android 1.2 – Autism, Android 1.8 – Parkinsons. Anyway I guess I should talk about the phone:

First Impressions (keep in mind this was running 1.2)

At first I thought, wow this is a bit longer than I thought it would be. It has a 4.0” display which is considerably larger than the iPhones so obviously the phone is a little bit longer as well. It manages to be convenient though as it is lighter than the iPhone and the display is gorrrgeeousss (imagine a gay man saying this). It was rich in colour and I was really happy with how great video and photos came out. After all it was boasting a 5mp camera and 720p shooting just like the iPhone 4.

During the first day of use I didn’t notice the lag you get at literally random times but what I did notice was the battery diminishes incredibly quickly. I didn’t think about it too much as I was playing with it a lot but later on I still had the issue. Also for those of you who sleep near your phone like I do, there is a sound the phone makes to notify you that the battery is fully charged….yeah… you can’t turn that off (I don’t think) and it goes off at about 3am daily. I’m used to it now so not a huge deal breaker personally.

Terrible things about the phone running 1.2

• Firstly I responded late to a few important emails due to auto-push notifications not actually meaning push in Android 1.gaytard.2. The exchange compatibility was appalling! I would have to keep manually resetting the connection to the mail server to get mail. Push would work for a little while and then stop. This worked pretty much flawlessly on the iPhone from the start.
• Battery life was pretty bad. I would unplug it from the charger at about 8am and it would be dead by 8pm after receiving maybe 3 SMS and 1 phone call on average.
• The number one for me is the lag. At times the phone would be quick and very responsive,  but in the middle of doing something like checking an email, the phone would just stop responding. You’d click on the button to return to home screen and nothing would happen, about 1 minute later the phone would make a couple of vibrating bumps and then you would have to force close the app. Sometimes it would be so bad I’d have to turn the phone off completely to bring it to working order again. Out of 10, I’d give myself a 2 for patience. The worst scenario I had was when I was in a cab trying to check an email for an address. The phone stopped responding while checking the mail and we missed the turn where I had to go. Then!!! I had to make a call to let me into a data centre as it was an emergency and I accidentally hit the maps button. That sent the phone into complete retard mode and I had to turn it off and on again. A highly stressful situation made 10x worse thanks to this phone.
• There were no officially provided updates for the phone on Virgin until very recently. This is crazy. I’ve had the phone for so many months and it was running like a drunk $2 hooker in heels would when she skimps out on her pimp. So many people have been complaining and Google had released 2.2 about 5 months ago if not longer so why did we have to wait so long since release date? Shame on you! Shame on all of you!

Tips that got the phone to be usable:

I got so sick of the Samsung that I switched back to the iPhone for about a month. When I got back from holiday I decided to plug the phone into the computer and finally there was an update ready to be installed. The update ran smoothly and I noticed the phone ran smoothly after the update too! It’s not completely 100% lag-free but lag-free enough for me to categorise it as a little better than usable. Here are further things I did to get the phone working a bit better after the update:

• For battery life I installed an app from the android market called Juice Defender. This app controls things things like data transfer, 3G, screen brightness and allows you to schedule when you need data on and things like that. I have found it to increase battery life substantially. I can now use the phone for a full day easily. Sometimes even overnight and throughout the next morning with average use. The less I use the phone the more drastic Juice defender helps to keep the phone going.
• I noticed that push notifications were working a lot better but the email app that comes native to Android ran slower than it did before. I then noticed that there is an email app in the Samsung set of apps as well and decided to try it out. This app is great! It updates the inbox straight away and it’s quick to retrieve emails to read. The only issue is that you can’t select multiple emails and mark them as read or delete them. This is not a major issue for me though as I want to read every single email that comes into my inbox for the day. The app is called Samsung email. Be sure to get rid of your exchange account from the native app first though.
• A cool way of sharing apps with friends is to set up a dropbox account and share it with your friends. This way you can get the dropbox app for android and access this shared folder between each other. At the moment I am doing this with a friend of mine who fills up this folder with all the cool apps he finds. I then go through the list and download any new ones he has put in there. It saves me from having to hunt down these apps myself
• There are apps which are known as lag fixes and these are apparently effective against the lag issues on the Samsung Galaxy S. I say apparently because I don’t use it as you have to root the phone to do so

Conclusion:

The Samsung Galaxy S has great potential. Its hardware specifications are out there with the best handset devices out to date, but the letdown of this product is its reliance on the relatively young and generic OS Android. I compare the Samsung with the iPhone but this isn’t a fair comparison because Apple only need to product test a small set of devices for their OS. The Samsung is using a pre-built OS and modifying it to fit the functionality of the phone. Naturally, getting the balance of OS and hardware correct will take some time and I think once they get it right, the phone will exceed the iPhone. I bet you Apple fan boys will say… Yeah but the Apple iPhone 4 just works and by the time Samsung get it right there’ll be a new iPhone. Well that’s fine because there will also be a new Samsung and ever-advancing updates to Android…. Plus Steve Jobs is going to die soon and once that happens Apple might start making umbrellas and kitchen appliances so go to hell you arseholes. Also I have an iMac and was gifted an iPad. I hate myself as much as I hate you Apple fan boys.

First thing I looked at was the hardware resources thrown at the system. I ran a bunch of reports and monitored the hardware to see if there were any bottlenecks on both the terminal services server and the NAV SQL server which hosts the database the JET report plugin queries. I couldn’t seem to find anything here. The server was running at half capacity, yet I knew that there had to be a performance issue.

I then tried logging onto the TS server with a new remote desktop connection. This is where I got lucky and stumbled upon the solution. I connected without adding local printer mapping in the remote desktop client and tried the same report I was testing. I found that the report went from taking 5 minutes and 9 seconds to taking just a little over 20 seconds. Further tests with larger reports provided better outcomes with reports which took 4 hours now only taking 20 minutes.

After investigating I found that the issue lies within Excel and its default behaviour to check with the printer for page dimensions during each cell repopulation while generating a JET report. The huge delays will arise if your default printer at the time of generating a JET report is at a remote location to the TS server (remote back and forth communication takes some time between excel and the remote printer). The simple workaround is to disable the group policy which enables the default printer as the default client printer and make it something like a PDF creator on the TS server (a local printer to the TS server) which means fast reporting with the functionality to still print when required. So you can still map your local printers but now it won’t be the default printer and you will have to select your printer from the print prompt printer list. It’s a small price to pay for much faster JET reporting.

I hope this helps!

OK… before ordering your pizza please check retailmenot.com for the best coupons on offer. You definitely need a coupon because the regular price is at least double what you can essentially get the price down to. Retailmenot is updated regularly so if you find that the coupons aren’t working ensure that you bookmark the site for later use on your next pizza purchase. I usually get pizzas for $4.95 on most days thanks to this site.

NEXT…Go to the Dominos website, pick your store and get to the pizza selection screen.

Yes they have a lot to choose from! You may notice that they categorise their pizzas with classic, traditional, big taste and ‘make your own’. Let’s rule out making your own pizza for the simple fact that you can only choose 4 toppings to put on it. This is crap and you will soon find out why…

The categories are basically your price levels in pizza. Classic and traditional are usually the same prices but the ‘big taste’ pizzas are an extra $2.95. This is a big deal because what you’re basically getting is a few more toppings and a unique ingredient such as prawns for that value….. or are you?

Here’s what I’ve found. If you order a traditional pizza and take off 2 toppings and replace it with a different two toppings, you do not pay any extra. Within these toppings you can even select prawns as a topping and you will only pay the same as a traditional pizza. Awesome right! Well it’s extra awesome if you choose the right pizza!

The pizzas under ‘traditional’ have a varying number of toppings averaging about 6 or 7. The 70’s lot pizza has a whopping 11 toppings already selected on the pizza! This I have found is best value for money.

I select the 70’s lot, I then proceed to take off the toppings I least desire and add different combinations to try some awesome new pizzas for cheap. You can take away mushrooms and olives if you want, then replace them with prawns and Italian sausage.

So here is my great pizza for $4.95!

Why not try it next time!

Our trip started off with a 7 hour-ish flight to Kuala Lumpur from Brisbane International. The flight was great and we were looked after well by the flight attendants. Just remember that alcoholic beverages are free on international flights so ensure you build a great rapport with those that can hook you up with a few beer cans at once. By the end of the flight I was nicknamed ‘happy hour’ by the crew.

We were quite happy to hear we had arrived at Kuala Lumpur. The airport is great because there are signs everywhere. If you get lost in Kuala Lumpur airport then you’re probably one of those people who can’t follow recipes, ikea instructions, treasure maps etc. and should probably not travel alone.

The first thing I noticed about Australia (which Malaysia was lacking) is the warm welcomes and friendly conversations you get with airport staff. In Malaysia, the help desk lady looked as if she was mad at us for asking her a question…. I was a bit dumbfounded by the whole thing. The guy who let us into the country death stared us the whole time he was checking our passports and then waved us through the gates without saying a word. He thought he was a police officer or head of a Malaysian scooter gang or something. He also didn’t do his job right as he didn’t give us back our departure cards to keep. WHATADOUCHE.

Once out of the airport things were a bit better. We made our way to the city which is about 45 minutes away from the airport. Along the way, the drive is fairly scenic with various buildings which are worthy of snapshots:
This seems to be a stadium of some sort. Not sure what it is but it is very patriotic with the flags. I think it looks nice.

I find KOK MOTOR very reliable.

Then there was the Colosseum! It’s strange that they don’t put these on the KL brochures.

But let’s not forget the Petronas twin towers. The tallest twins in the world and what used to be the tallest building in the world before Taipei 101.

Finally we got to our hotel where I found out that Malaysia has no etiquette for queues, door opening or elevators. I have never been so agitated by people in my life. At one point we were waiting at the hotel counter and about to be served when a guy tried to stand in front of us and get served first. I had to physically grab the back of his collar and pull him backwards. He must have thought “how rude of me to do that” to which all I can say is “When in Rome, be an arsehole like everyone else (or something like that)”.

A trip to the China town markets totally made up for the rudeness. This place has stalls upon stalls of knock-off merchandise. Each stall varies but for the most part the quality of the gear is quite amazing. The knock-off Rolex watches are scratch proof and work on perpetual motion (no need for batteries). Needless to say we bought a few of these. They sell at roughly 100MYR which is around $30AU:

Issmeister just wanted to be involved. He has a poo legitimate Casio on.

I also bought lots of clothing. The Issmeister got into this bargaining battle with one stall and he ended up getting 2 Lacoste polos for 30MYR which is about $5AU a shirt. Usually the acceptable price is 2 for 40MYR. I bought lots of polos and many beer t-shirts. I also bought handbags for gift giving. Make sure you don’t get ripped off with a low quality bag. You can get high quality bags for about 110MYR but a lot of stalls try and sell the crap ones for about the same price. Go to a larger stall. They usually have both good and bad quality. Just ask for the good quality stuff which comes with a larger price tag.

I got really sick during our stay in Malaysia and spent quite a few days in the hotel room. I only recovered a few hours before the flight to the Maldives. I caught some kind of China town market flu which gave me instant fever. I was quite lucky as they would have caught me under the thermal cameras and sent me into quarantine if I was still sick at the airport; totally ruining my holiday. I was still able to do a little bit more shopping though….

This is the pavilion shopping centre. It is quite massive. The other massive shopping centre in Malaysia is the Mid Valley Megamall. Both are great places to shop but if you walk down the street on the right of the Pavilion there is a huge line of designer stores. It’s a yuppie street but quite impressive.

Speaking of impressive:

Yes! You are looking at a McDonald’s delivery scooter. Have you ever wanted a quarter pounder at midnight but couldn’t be bothered making your way over to Maccas? Of course you have! Australia really needs to get their act together and get some McDelivery Scooters!

Another thing that impressed me about McDonald’s in KL is the prices of their meals (note that the airport McDonald’s is more expensive). I bought a large spicy McChicken burger meal (which was 6/10 on the spice metre and rocked) for 9.60MYR which is about $3AU. They also sell Ribena and Milo on tap.

Our time in Malaysia was kind of at an end. We had another day in Malaysia after our time in Maldives and Sri Lanka on the way back home but we had pretty much done all the shopping we needed to already.

Oh… and this is pretty funny:

This is a street sign they have near BB shopping centre. It’s a packed street full of people trying to aggressively get you to enter their store or massage parlour. The sign warns of purse snatchers. We should get a bogan warning sign at the Logan Hyperdome.

Anyway…we packed our bags and headed to the Maldives for a very short overnight trip. The plan was to stay there for a few days but my mum wanted a bit more time with her family over in Sri Lanka, so we had to sacrifice beautiful weather and nice beaches for bad weather and smelly alleys.

We ended up having no records of our stay in the Maldives. We arrived in the beautiful Malé where I was as drunk as a fruit bat that found a barrel of fermenting fruit hooch and drank it all. We were drinking whenever we felt bored so the wait at the airport and the fact that this old school 1970s plane they put us on had no personal TVs made me drink my boredom away. The flight was roughly 4 hours and I could tell this plane was from the 70s because the fuselage smelt like old people and it had flamboyant wallpaper. I figured someone else would take photos but alas the rest of the group started feeling sick and started vomiting. All I remember is reading a ‘Welcome to Malé’ sign and that’s about it. Mum says it was beautiful and she doesn’t even like water so it really must have been a lovely place.

We then got on the plane and headed over to Sri Lanka.

There were marines holding Uzis and army guys holding AK-47s around every corner. We were just about to walk out of the airport when a customs officer came running at us telling us to stop and get rid of our remote control helicopter which we bought in Malaysia. We were like whaaaattt? Hell nahhh bitch! But apparently these things can be used as spy gear so we were forced to dump it at the airport. I didn’t really want to get shot over a toy helicopter so we let it go (besides we could buy another on the way back home).

We thought… wow this defence minister is a bit paranoid… and then we experienced the billions of check points we had to go through to get into Colombo. It’s ridiculous! Every 5 minutes you would be asked to pull over and show your ID (in our case our passports). 4 or 5 army officers would hold AK-47s at the front and sides of the vehicles. If they found something suspicious they would just go nuts and shoot the crap out of the vehicle killing anything inside. They would sometimes search the van for any Tamils that we may be smuggling and waste about 5 minutes of our lives at each stop. In order to travel about 12km it would take around 1 hour. A bit stressful to say the least but don’t let this deter you. Sri Lanka is still worth the visit.

One of the many things I love about Sri Lanka is the food. If you like rice, curry and all the spices you will love it too. In fact you can find very similar food in both Malaysia and Sri Lanka. The general rule is – The more traditional the food, the cheaper it is and the tastier it is. Here is a packet of Lamprais in Sri Lanka. It is served on banana leaves and contains chicken curry, rice, and other sambols which go together well:

A meal like this would cost about 150Rps which is about $1.50AU (depending on where you get it). A food court in a shopping centre would probably sell the same thing for about $2.50AU.

If you take a drive away from Colombo, you will notice the congestion and pollution fades away into the distance and you will realise just how beautiful and untouched the island is. My favourite place of serenity was the Kandalama Hotel. It is a hotel ingeniously built in a rock face. The hotel walls make use of the rock that surrounds it. One of the nicest hotels I have ever seen. Here is the view from its eating area:

At night the hotel room window provides remarkable views of wildlife which frolic around both close by and in the distance. Elephants never cease to be majestic.

We took a trip to the Pinnawala Elephant orphanage. A lot of these elephants were victims of the lengthy war in the country. Some were missing feet, others lost their parents and were brought up by mahouts but all the elephants at the orphanage looked alive and healthy.

The elephants bath in water which is located directly below a hotel restaurant. Here we had a few beers and watched the elephants. It’s a spectacular view that will be rare to clone in a single life time:

The drinks are incredibly cheap. A tally of Carlsberg beer costs $2.50AU at restaurant prices. I started to like Sri Lanka a whole lot more…

Despite things being cheap, I found myself spending a lot of money in Sri Lanka. The country is taking a few good strides in the right direction but its current state is quite eye opening. Whenever I saw a cleaner or a driver I was curious to ask their wage. Their stories would have me throwing money at them.
In Sri Lanka people get paid monthly. A driver, if he works 30 days straight will get $150AU for his efforts. As a driver you are expected to sleep in the van if there is no accommodation for you with the party you are driving. You are required to sit and wait until the party you are driving has finished doing what they are doing. You are pretty much on call 24/7.

A house cleaner gets $4 for a full day’s work. If he takes a break within his monthly pay schedule, he will earn only $3 a day. To give you an idea of how cheap labour is: I couldn’t find an automatically opening door with a sensor. There is no value in investing in such equipment when all you need is a person paid with chips and tips to open doors. The most saddening part of the Sri Lankan economy is that even though wages are so low, grocery shopping at the supermarket is only slightly cheaper than the Australian Coles. How does a person earning $4 a day afford $40 worth of groceries in a week? Especially when they get paid monthly?

There are wondrous things to see and do in Sri Lanka. I highly recommend leaving Colombo and staying at Kandalama Hotel and Sigirya Village Hotel. These hotels are definitely worthy of a honeymoon stay and the service at hotels is hard to beat in other parts of the world.

1. Play with a gun

I was so sad that I couldn’t get to play with a gun. This was the major thing I wanted to do but no matter how much money I flashed I couldn’t get a gun to my hand. Apparently they would lose their job if they let me play with their piece but I think I just didn’t have the right connections because my cousins have been able to play with guns in the past. It may have been easier during the war I guess? This is as close as I got:

2. Chase a monkey

3. Play cricket with street kids

4. Ride an elephant

I bought this elephant for $40

5. Give a poor person lots of money

I was initially going to give one person a lot of money but ended up giving away a lot of money to various people that told me sob stories. They need the money more than me anyway. I took a photo just for the purpose of completing my ‘to do’ list of the money I gave to our driver.

15,000Rps is around $150. I thought it was a nice figure considering the fact that he gets paid that amount for a month of work. He was highly appreciative.

6. Slap a cow on the arse

I had a failed attempt at slapping cows on the arse but promise you I was able to slap a buffalo on the arse. It took off in the opposite direction and it was quite hilarious. The cows are so skinny over there compared to the Aussie cows here. P.S My hair is oily because I had just gotten some weird body massage where they tried to break me in half after rubbing oil everywhere and told me to keep it on for a few hours. WEIRD!

7. Wear a stupid cap everywhere

8. Find a giant guava

I was hoping I’d find a larger one. Last time I was in Malaysia I found a guava that was the size of a rock melon. It was ridiculous. This one doesn’t compare but is still larger than the usual. I guess it just wasn’t the right time for the giant, mutated, rock melon guava.

9. Get drunk with a non-english speaker

This is Dinesh, our driver. He doesn’t speak a word of English. Well I taught him how to say sperm but that’s about it. We got along like a house on fire. He would listen to what I had to say and just smile. I got him really drunk on pina coladas. It was the first time he’s ever had a cocktail and loved it.

10. Ride a scooter in a hotel hall

We bought electric scooters in Malaysia for about $100 and decided to charge them up in the hotel room then take it for a spin at night. That was kind of fun. I kept banging into hotel room doors.

11. Buy a single cigarette

This is my single cigarette! I bought it for 19Rps which is about 19 cents. You basically just walk into a food store and go… 1 cigarette please. They pull it out of a packet and give it to you…. huh!

I thought, wow cigarettes are so cheap. I should start smoking…Why don’t I smoke?

And then I started acting pompous with my single cigarette and realised… that’s why I don’t smoke.

12. Bribe a cop

I was worried about this challenge. I didn’t know how I could get this done without looking like a total idiot and having a valid reason to bribe a cop but the challenge dropped in my lap (so to speak).

Our driver was charged with overtaking dangerously – a fine of 500Rps which is $5AU (haha). Later, on inspection of the driver’s license, the police officer found that he was driving a heavy vehicle without a heavy vehicle license. The driver had to stop driving and make his way to the police station to pay the fine. I walked in with him as I was paying for the fine. The cop that actually booked him took the money. I gave him an extra 500Rps and asked if our same driver could drive us to the van depot so we could get another driver (even though we kept the same driver because he was cool). The cop said yeah… so I said … can I also take a photo? And he was fine with it…after all I paid for it hehe!

The police over there actually get a commission for handing out a certain amount of fines. They are happy to take bribes.

13. Challenge a local at pool

It was close. We ran out of time. He was really good! I won the first game, he won the second, I won the 3^rd but we really needed to play to the best of 5.

14. Drink out of a jug

The jug is made out of pure glass (not plastic). It’s heavy and could do a lot of damage across someone’s face.

15. Eat something I’ve never had before

In Malaysia I ate some deer chilli dish. Apparently deer meat is eaten often in New Zealand but I have never had it before so I was keen on trying some. It tasted great! I don’t know if it was just the way it was prepared or the meat itself but I smashed the plate of deer meat. Recommend++

16. Drive a trishaw/tuktuk

These are actually quite hard to drive. They have scooter like gears. You have to turn the handle down to drop gears and turn it back towards you to hit a lower gear.  The clutch is sensitive and I found myself holding it down and just revving the juice out of the lawn-mower-like engine.

This ‘to do’ list brought some great memories on a trip that came with natural adventure and challenges. Why not try make a ‘to do’ list on your next trip abroad? I’m sure you’ll find it just as fun as I did!

best game in the world

So I haven’t written a blog in a long time. I was too busy playing the best game in the world. I bet you’re all wondering what game I speak of? Probably not since I wrote it in the title of the blog but… yes you guessed correctly! It’s FIFA for Playstation 3. Now there is FIFA 08 and FIFA 09 with FIFA 10 coming out soon too (how exciting).

Both FIFA 08 and 09 have the same game play for the most part. This means that both games play with the same button configuration; hence interchanging between the two is painless: A facile interchange which I perform regularly as I travel to different suburbs in acceptance of a challenge.

A bit about the game:

• You can play 1-7 players on a single PS3 which means you can make a party of it (my friends and I regularly do have FIFA parties). WARNING: A mixture of FIFA and alcohol starts physical fights.
• You can play online in leagues and against people etc. (but this is not as good as playing in a room full of people because you can’t mock them after a goal).
• It’s the best game in the world.

Now I’m no expert at the game by far but every time I play FIFA I hear the same questions being asked:
- How do you score from a free kick?
- What’s the best way to take a corner?
- How come I keep missing when I go for the goals?
- Why do I keep losing?

Usually I ignore these questions during a game because I can’t be bothered teaching the aforementioned methods but now I write these down and will reveal it to all those who complain about me keeping secrets about the game (when they can just learn it themselves by reading the manual you douche bags).

1. How do you score from a free kick?

This takes a little practice and a lot more strategy. The practice part: You need to learn to judge the right power for distance. You can practice this for hours by pressing left on the D-PAD while in the free mode before you open up the menu. This will provide a free kick situation wherever you stand with the ball. When in doubt tap the circle until 2 bars are reached in power and place top spin.

Strategy: I just spoke of top spin. You can also curve the ball by pushing the direction you wish on the left analogue stick while pressing circle for a shot. You need to combine that with a shot at the goal as far away from the keeper as you can (try and aim into the crowd and curve it into the corner of the goal).

2. What’s the best way to take a corner?

For a corner you have to judge where your players are standing. If you kick it at an angle too close to the goals the goalkeeper will just come out and grab it. He has fairy hands and never drops the ball so kicking further out into the box is the best way to go. Again judging the power for distance is important. The longer you hold square the further your ball will go into the box. You can also use the same curve and top spin techniques in a corner situation (same technique as a free kick).

3. How come I keep missing when I go for goals?

When a player is under pressure, he is sometimes going to take a kind of terrible shot at the goals. In order to negate a terrible shot you can press R1 and then take the shot. This makes the player go for a more finesse shot. Again power is also a factor. Don’t smash the crap out of the circle button or the ball will go into the crowd.

4. Why do I keep losing?

The answer I usually give is … “Because you suck Camels dick”. Upon further investigation I believe other factors to you losing are that you disregard team formations and don’t read ahead of play. What do I mean? Well a team has a set formation be it 5-3-2 etc. This means 5 defenders 3 mids and 2 strikers.

When a defender gets the ball, don’t just run him up the field without passing the ball. Try and keep him at the back of the field where he belongs so if you do lose the ball you have him in defense still. When your opponent has the ball, don’t only chase the guy with the ball but try and block the players which have the potential of receiving the ball. If there is a player next to them, your opponent will feel reluctant to pass to them.

The most important thing is passing. If you don’t pass and try to act cool with your ‘Maradona’ runs you will more than likely get your arse handed to you.

Like I said I’m not an expert and there are more tips and tricks out there. If you have any let us know in the comments section.

I recently returned from this year’s curry camp. It was held at Lake Perseverance in Crows Nest or something like that (I think near Toowoomba). It’s out in the middle of nowhere and totally a Blair Witch scene. Most of the camp is spent making fun of our parents. I have to be grateful here as my parents brought me up very much blind to most Sri Lankan stereotypes.  Apparently there are stereotypical Sri Lankan parents that are overprotective, embarrassing at the best of times and totally racist. My parents are just embarrassing.

To get to know my heritage, I participated in many ‘Sri Lankan’ traditions. I also include some of my traditions when going on these camps.  I would like to show you some of the photos so you get a good understanding of Sri Lankan culture:

First of all, it’s all about pouring yourself a drink of scotch that is way too strong and will put you on your arse in about 20 minutes flat. Within these 20 minutes you have to make the most out of your time by participating in as many activities as you can….

Activity one, I took my chances and had a go at Sri Lankan drunken boxing:

Both parties need to have a drink in their hand. Punches are thrown but the winner is the one with the most aggression in their eyes and the most bruises.

I then had a go at some Sri Lankan dancing:

Sri Lankan music is called Baila. It’s basically the same set of songs remixed by millions of artists and most of the songs sound incredibly terrible. The more retarded you look while dancing, the better baila dancer you are. The aim here is to dance with a drink but not spill it.
As you can see. I’m a terrible baila dancer:

This year we brought an unlimited supply of glow sticks. This was great. I had hours of fun with the vibrant colours. I came up with the idea to tie glow sticks to possums but possums are ridiculously fast and can hear me coming from a mile away.

The only real problem with that many glow sticks is that they become like sand at the beach. They start to creep into all your crevises and you don’t know how it got there:

My night was getting good, but then I had my first warning that my time was running out. I took my first fall:

Oh no. I think I’m a bit intoxicated!

But then I saw a couples photo being taken, and by tradition, I had to get into the photo and ruin it for them by looking like a rapist/pedo:

I have to say, years of practice and now I am quite good at being a ninja behind photos. They really don’t see me coming. They ask me what my secret is. I tell them it’s a mix between magic and departicalisation. I have ruined many moments. Most of which are deleted from the digital camera straight away. Above is one that got through.

A few more rounds of drunken boxing and I was feeling quite alive again. The girl in the photo below was wearing pants that can only be described as Bruce Lee’s pants in ‘Enter the Dragon’. These pants were so cool but made me want to throw kicks at her as recently I have had several encounters which made me believe I am about as fast as Bruce Lee.

I was trying extremely hard not to clothes line her off the railing she was sitting on.

A Sri Lankan camp is not a Sri Lankan camp without the touching of the golden chest. This is where all the guys grope the guy with the best chest. This is either judged by a chest feeling like a female’s breasts or a manly chest that is good to squeeze. Either way I don’t condone this as it was my chest that was being groped:

I do look quite proud over my win though.

A little bit more partying took place. I became a general annoyance to everyone:

….and more annoying once we found the megaphone:

Just as I peaked and was singing great renditions of Whitney Houston and Celine Deon songs, my time came crashing down….

I fell and I couldn’t get up. Now I know how that Japanese homeless bum felt when he was abusing me at the Hiroshima train station. He was too drunk to walk over and abuse me so he asked me to walk over to him. Good times.

I hope reading this has educated you on the culture of Sri Lanka. There is not much to being Sri Lankan and if you find that you are an outsider, here are three tips to fitting in:

• Drink excessively and shout everything you’re saying
• Use lots of hand gestures and dance like you have no control over your own legs.
• Complain about everything around you

Hope you can join me for the next Sri Lankan camp.