Winter's Fairytale: 2008

My goodness... Still so many photos to go.. XD and I took some more too.. endless endless.. hahaha.

26th November 2008 Interview & City
Oh gosh, the interview for my honours program. Let me think.. It was at 9.30am (yea, so early) and although I did bring my printed portfolio, I was lucky to bring my laptop as I was asked by my interviewers to show the motion graphic.

They did ask me if I could do script / computer codes... Nothing much in that department unfortunately. But I must admit that I thought my interview went pretty well. It wasn't the formal type and there weren't awkward moments. I filled it with small talk.

So yea, after the interview, I went to do some work in the lab but I left to meet up with the girls (Man Yee, Jaslyn and Yoong Yoong) since they offered to go clothes shopping for me. More like getting me comfortable with trying on clothes and giving me their opinions of what sort of clothes I should wear.... I'm grateful.

Anyway, the christmas festivities are already in the city air. There was even a postbox for santa~!

There were christmas trees of many styles... this one was made up of stars...

We went to the arcade after the clothes trying session. Yoong Yoong and Man Yee tried their luck with the Dance Dance Revolution (DDR)...

They didn't make it pass the first stage because they chose to play normal instead of easy.

Other than DDR, we had also played a few different games. One I wanted to note was this one. The horse racing game. It was amusing for me to watch the girls play while trying not destroy the game.

Didn't help that the machine was more or less on its last leg already... Jaslyn's screen kept flickering as she played...

The arcade that I was talking about was in the Crown Entertainment Plaze which also houses the Crown casino. The christmas decorations here are up too...

This one was a rather intricately designed merry-go-round with animals... Can't ride on it... just a decorative piece.

From the detailed to the simplified version of a reindeer....

More golden scupltures of animals having a ball...

The tree was rather fantasy-like to fit in with all the animals theme around it...

Other than decorations, there were little acts too... Now you see the santa...

And now you don't. The santa stone was actually played by a person... I didn't even realise when he walked away, my attention was at the tuba playing santa with his band of the star-guy and the christmas tree...

Walked back from Crown... guy with bagpipes, playing on the bridge. As far as I know, he's there every evening... XD

The city evening's scene...

30th November 2008 Puffing Billy
The girls invited me to sit the puffing billy. It's a steam engine train. [grin]
From the city, we sat to the end of the Belgrave line, stopping at Belgrave. It took about 1 hour I think...

The place is pretty countryside-ish until you see you can buy the ticket outdoors... in the forest..

Paying about $16 for a return ticket to Menzies Creek (the first stop from Belgrave). Wilson, Man Yee, Jaslyn and Yoong Yoong.

As the train starting puffing away, I took some random shots... like this crow on the street lamp...

...The puffing Billy...

... even the cute little boy who was running along the train.

The train ride was a relaxing one I suppose....

We even get to wave to the people outside....

...and if they're nice, they'll wave back too.

Not much of a grand scenery to look at.. At least it's serene.

Since the train isn't travelling at a deadly pace, we can actually sit on the window. Yoong Yoong and Jaslyn.

Wilson and Man Yee. They're siblings by the way...

It wasn't too hot, it wasn't too cold... not for me anyway.

Our train stopped at Menzies Creek... there's nothing much to do here... XD just a giftshop. There is a museum but it's closed. So we just took group photos

Group with train...

Group with train tracks...

Group trying to jump from train tracks...

Group successfully jumping off the train tracks..

Never really knew that taking this sort of photo would be a bit difficult. For one, I had to count 1,2,3... the girls would jump and I would silently count 4 to snap the photo. Most interesting...

The stop was about 45 minutes so we were just randomly photographing stuff...

Poses... You might not be able to see it... but Jaslyn was actually pretty far from the food..

The train station....

Group with the menzies creek signboard...

The steam engine train...

The steam engine train drivers and the girls...

The history of Puffing Billy...

The Route that we took..

More information of the train... Apparently the train tracks run pretty far into the countryside.. But for me, the 2 hours plus trip was pretty much enough to give me a feel of the experience.

2nd December 2008 James & Zara
I was dragged to school by Evelyn to do work. Though technically there were still quite a lot to do but my part was already done... I came to do other people's part (of sorts). I'm the lazy one I admit... But since it's a group work, there were some main people who did a lot of work.

I got a treat coming in to class to do work that day though. Bill had brought his daughter, Zara to college. And here is a shot of James (technically our big "boss") playing with Zara.. [grin] Bill's at the computer. So cutez~!

3rd December 2008 Early B'day
The girls had decided that they wanted to eat steamboat...

It wasn't anything grand..

But I was suspicious of Evelyn's and Yoong Yoong's behaviour that day. For one, Yoong Yoong wouldn't specifically want to go to Evelyn's room for no reason. XD

So when they returned with a cake, I was half surprised.

The random want of steamboat dinner and Yoong Yoong going to see Evelyn quickly made sense. I got new earrings from the girls... Though not snowflakes, it's still pretty enough.

Don't mind the balloons in the background... It was a present that Brett left behind...

But having balloons in the background does make the photo a bit more festive doesn't it?

After dinner however, I went to help clean up Evelyn's room for about 2 hours until 4am in the morning.

4th December 2008 Evolve
I had gone to the city with the girls. In the city square there was a big cloth poster for the days of christmas count down.

We went to do some shopping... I didn't buy any clothes but I did buy a pair of earrings. [grin]

After the window shopping for me, we made our way to ACCA. Oh this isn't ACCA.. just a curious plant that grew along the roadside which I thought looked lovely.

Here, ACCA building... (well, the words anyway.. I was pretty lazy to cross the road to get the whole photo of the building)

We waitied for it to be 6pm... there were quite a few people waiting to go in too...

There wasn't a lot of sculptures but rather each major was represented with one projector and it play loop the students works...

Here's a shot of my group's character, Pete the plumber. I did the water rating thingy using Illustrator, animated it in aftereffects and Reif used it as texture in the 3d animation. [grin]

Another character the gardener. If you want to see the website, go to http://www.missionco2.com/ though i'll have to warn you that it's a pretty heavy site to load...

My photos got projected on the wall too... [silly grin] That's the otter photo.

The "loving the sun" photo...I was happy to see my work up on the wall. Different from the One Academy one where only 2 photos were enlarged and it wasn't stuck with the Multimedia session.

I thought this photo looked like a TVB drama kind of shot... hahahha~!

There were a lot of people at the exhibition (taken by Jiew)

My classmates... (Taken by Jiew)

I know a bit here... Front, L to R: Zoe, Steven, Ben, the other two I'm not sure... Back, L to R: Jaina, Danny, Richard. Some I found out via facebook. (Taken by Jiew)

It's the camera that warp the photo not me.. hahhaa~! (Taken by Jiew)

I didn't see Shaun at the exhibition so this shot came as a little surprise to me. (Taken by Jiew)

Jojo, Steve and Yui. Jojo and Yui are nice girls. Jojo can be pretty random I've learnt while staying back in the lab one night. [grin] (Taken by Jiew)

Apparently some of them went to go drinking after the exhibition. I stole these photos from facebook [super grin] (Taken by Zoe)

There were a lot of random photos like this one but I thought I'll just show this one. [lol] I'm free I'm free~!

5th December 2008 Scienceworks
The girls invited me to go to the Scienceworks museum. It's not too bad seeing that I just had to pay $4 for student price. [grin]

The first thing we played with... Jaslyn's take

Yoong Yoong's take..

What we were playing... we were playing with levers and lifting each other. Hahaha

Seeing all the little toys, I was reminded of the times I had Science classes in primary school.
I like this one.. this one shows us how a safety deposit box works...
The girls tried to "break into" the safe but I was the successful one. Muahahah...
If the science was taught to me like this, I'd be able to understand it better.
Once again, highlighting the importance of play...
Speaking of play, this one was a funny one. It's a mechanical arm... nothing funny about that. In fact it's pretty awesome.
The funny part would be how Yoong Yoong controlled it, She was pulling the middle finger and saying things like "f*** you, Jaslyn", "f*** you, joanne" in a 'guy' voice. Then (with the middle finger still up) rotating the body... she goes "f*** everyone~!" It was hilarious~!
Here's one. Playing with pulleys. Pull yourself up... though the girls did tell me that their shoulders and upper arms hurt the next day. I didn't play this so I was fine...
It was really fun coming here to play.
There even was this set-up system of slides, cranes and other stuff... It was fun watching the "eggs" travel across a series of tubes and stuff.
To keep things interesting, the cranes need to be hand-craned so you might say the whole contraption is pretty much energy free...
Then we explored the museum section.. how the door bell goes ding dong... by hitting two different bells.
The insides of a grandfather clock.
everyone would be familiar with this type of writing after the angels and demons movies.. it's a type of writing that seen up-right and upside down, you can see the same word in the same writing...
A bit of fairytales to see too... a scene from Aladdin
A scene from the three little pigs...
There's even story narration telling about this part of the story.
I think it's pretty detailed.. [grin]
There's Hansel and Gretel too..
And the Wizard of Oz. Oops I nearly typed Ox instead of Oz.
I got to press lots of button, pulled random levers, etc~!
There even was a climbing rock to climb on..
Hahah~! It's there for children to climb on and it doesn't go up too high..
Toys toys toys. It was really fun to go to the Scienceworks Museum. It reminded me of the London Science Museum and that one was super way much better than this one. ^_^ One whole day at the London one wasn't enough to cover everything. I'm glad I went for that one instead of following my mum and elder sis to shop at Oxford and Bond Street (how I remembered that, monopoly~!)