4 and 5 September 8am – 5pm UNSW Law 203
If you can map,code/program,research,speak Pakistani, know Pakistan’s geography or just want to help, then come along to CrisisCamp Sydney a partnership between the World Bank, SIFEUNSW, CIE, & Mozilla Foundation! It is ONE weekend to help people stranded by Pakistan’s floods by creating GPS usable maps for relief agencies in Pakistan to find survivors faster.
Register: http://pkfloods-sydney.eventbrite.com/

Help the Pakistan flood victims using your existing skills

The Pakistan Floods are without question one of the largest humanitarian catastrophes of modern time, with over 15 million people now homeless.
If you are interested in making a small difference in helping the humanitarian effort of attending to the short and long-term needs of the displaced peoples in Pakistan, register here (http://pkfloods-sydney.eventbrite.com/) The CrisisCamp will be on the weekend of 4th and 5th of September. We will be going through a number of tasks that will help the aid agencies on the ground. These include:
Adding reports of emergency incidents from the ground to http://pakreport.org/ushahidi/ using http://pakreport.crowdflower.com
Working with expatriate Pakistanis who can help you translate local terms and names of places for entry into the reports
Reading reports from relief agencies, identifying information about hospitals, shelters and schools and adding the data about their locations, capacity and other relief-related information to Sahana and OpenStreetMap
Tracing satellite imagery to add the location of roads and infrastructure
If you are an expat Pakistani who speaks Pushto, Seraiki, Sindhi or Panjabi come along and help find the names of remote villages.
Documenting lessons learned from the CrisisCamp to help others
Writing tools and software help automate the above tasks

Why organise this CrisisCamp?
In late July 2010 after an unusually wet monsoon across South Asia, substantial areas of Pakistan were flooded, affecting nearly a third of the country. UNOCHA has described the Pakistan Floods as a disaster surpassing the Boxing day Tsunami, Pakistan Earthquake and Haiti Earthquake combined in terms of the number of people affected and the social and economic destruction caused. Pakistan was already suffering socially and economically from the effects of the conflict in the region. Without help, this disaster could have untold long-term consequences for the future of the most vulnerable in Pakistan.

Who is organizing this camp?
To assist in the relief efforts, an enterprising team of volunteers and organisational supporters such as Students in Free Enterprise (SIFE) and Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (CIE) at the University of New South Wales, and Drumbeat, an open web initiative of the Mozilla Foundation and the World Bank are coming together on the weekend of September 4-5, 2010 in CrisisCamp in Sydney, Australia.

What: CrisisCamp Pakistan Floods in Sydney
When: 4th and 5th of September 8am-5pm
If you can’t make it both days Sat or Sun should be fine – just mention that in your registration
Where: LAW 203 , University of New South Wales (UNSW), Kensington, Sydney
http://www.venuesandevents.unsw.edu.au/venues/law/lawindex.html

It’s rather funny that I blog once a month now if at all (and even not at all in May . . . and hey! It was my birthday! …weirdd)

Have I gotten over blogging?
Perhaps.

It doesn’t mean I’ve forgotten the art of webdesign in that entire venture into the land of the commerce and the arts (which isn’t the visual art-form), but it has meant very little change in this site over the years.

My ever so neglected WordPress with your very old old theme.

…. That and I don’t drink coffee.

I don’t know why I designed this the way I did. Perhaps it was a way to try and pull off lime green.

I think I’ve managed somewhat.

I could definitely design something, but having moved into designing more printed materials than websites, it is a bit of a resolution shock.

Websites need to have fast loading speeds, they need to be almost spartan compared to the vibrance of poster backgrounds where optimisation isn’t a concern.
I rather wish it wasn’t but then that would be inconsiderate.

Since I’ve switched from Telstra to TPG (I think almost a year has gone by), the concept of being capped doesn’t really exist anymore. But even if not for me, it does for others and so coffee is what you’re still going to see.

For 8 days and 7 nights, I was in Melbourne!

For the first 4 days it was comp times.
For the latter it was spending time with prettypretty and my lovely friends who were also on holidays there. =D

Wow. So many people appear to be going to Melb this year. So strange.

With the SIFErs there was a bit of a tiff, which may have made a riff.
I may have gotten angries. But I don’t really mean any of it. Maybe its just undedication which bothers me. And yet I’m so cynical. Which probably doesn’t help.
Yet I think of everyone as friends. Which is kind of strange. I think everyone is awesomes fun. It’s just something to disagree on. Blah.

Oh well. Maybe I can plan plan and away till comes a day where I can fix things.
Ponder ponder plot plot.

Disaster control! Unless I’m the disaster..
Part 2 – Aieee Road Trippyness!

But firstly, hotel dorama:
Well I went to 3 different hotels during 8 days aiee. @_@ All were pretty with pretty pretty rooms and some with pretty views (Stamford Plaza are nice people even if they have no views whereas Sofitel’s views are magnifique as their frenchyness even though I swear they’d make me pay for every minute if they could and their bathrooms were tiny tiny!! Rydges was nice and balanced with prettiness and views…even from the 7th floor but I hate the bed cos’ I was on a rollout bed and my back hurt after that U_U ).

The front of Rydges:

The view from my room in the Sofitel – wheee~:

I spy sofitel on collins’ atrium bar from above!
which is where we finally reached it..), saw pretty so pretty ocean scenes with rolling hills and all those stuffs with lovelylovely on the great ocean road which is the edge of Victoria and Australia which was so much more entertaining even though there’s the lingering thought of where? Where? Are we there?

The scenic route.
We almost ran out of fuel @_@ and petrol stations at general stores in middle of nowhere towns close for winter T__T I should have taken a picture of thaat.
Omg panic once realising the nearest petrol stop is 18km away!!

Um the surf coast towns are pretty and beachy and it looks almost paradisaical sort of. Heaps of mini beaches if I liked sand which I don’t! Do I hate myself? Maybe. Hm.
Mmm nice pie. Yum yum.
So picturesque I had to take heaps of pictures whilst in the car.

Driving back was creepy and lovelypretty was tsk tsk speeeedddingg….in a rented Hyundai of all things =.=’ claps I wonder how hard he had to press on the pedal to reach 145km/h?
Even saw a a fire! eek.

Hmm.
Yes that was the roadtrippyness.

…………

Melbournian food.

My trip of lots of eating was cut short by making use of the kitchen at the serviced apartment to cook Ol El Pasto soft tacos and bacon and eggs for lunch.

Blah.
Ate pasta like 3 different times though. Cellar Bar @ Grossi Florentino is indeed nice nice. Maybe better if it had bigger portions.

Or if I got to eat at other places except heaps of restaurants are CLOSED on sunday! Whyyyy? Actually, that’s like a question of why restaurants are also closed between 4-5pm.

—
Shopping is so overrated. It’s still cheaper online buying either in other bits of Melb or from the UK (shame on me, I bought more stuff from ASOS >.< But there’s a discount code!! You can find it on FB but its treatful =D). Same overpriced chain store junk all around in Melbourne. Zzz. I bought one thing and it wasn’t really on sale or really worth it but it was pretty. A stripey big bowed dress/shirt with ruffley skirt(y) bits!

The shoe store ladies are really ugly. I swear they have makeup caked on their faces so badly that they look like some of those home and away girls except thaats understandable. Badly dolled up makeup cakes are so not cool sugarcakes.