Merdeka Weekend

Hey guys~! Hope you enjoyed a "fun-filled" merdeka weekend.
As for me, I'm mentally waving the flag and just spending the 24 hours away... [lol] I'm so totally suppose to do work but my brain is flat-lining and I just bring myself to work. Not good...

29th Sept 2008
Woke up a bit earlier than usual to meet up with Sarah online to pass me some things. In the early evening, Evelyn and I went swimming... It was very cold and windy but nice and warm in the water. XD
After my good swim, I went to the city with Yoong Yoong and met up with Jaslyn and Man Yee to eat dinner~! (Yummy~! Dumpling~!)
The restaurant was Golden House. The girls had ate here before when Aaron and the gang brought them there to eat. The best landmark would be the Crown Casino. (that's Jaslyn in the photo)
We came to the restaurant about 6pm something with plenty of place to sit. Come 7pm, the place was filled with people... It was a good thing that we came early.
The best thing to eat on a cold and windy winter's night is a good dinner of steamboat~! (one side is clear soup, the other szechuan soup)
We took a lot of food since it was buffet style. Plate of meat~! [drool]
Dinner cost me Aus20... so I certainly ate my fill. XD Which a good thing (filling dinner) and a bad thing (fatter me) [lol]

31st August 2008
Other than the fact that today was Merdeka day, nothing much happened. I went to my usual boxhill grocery shopping and ate Shanghai lunch.

I guess the only difference would be Evelyn joined us (Man Yee, Jaslyn, Yoong Yoong and myself) to our weekly boxhill trip. Hmmm... I bought pandan leaves and some agar-agar ingredients [lol]. After I came back, I put the things away and started to vacuum clean my room and did my laundry. Clean clean clean.

I made chicken rice (this time with pandan leaves) [yum] for dinner and sat down to watch my weekly show, Rove. After my show, I just sat in front of the computer and posted blog posts, chat... And now, it's 2am... hehe, I'd say it's time for bed but I didn't do any work but I'm sleepy... Will have to work later then. Cheers~!

Sitting at the end of W3

Gosh, I'm now at the end of week 3... Time seems to be moving pretty quickly. ~__~



29th August 2008, Friday

12am Work my way backwards. Heheh... I'm currently trying to put together a word document which I had editted the information for the fifth time now (and certainly not the last... trust me). Oh well, that's work for you. Progress and more progress.



Before this, I was playing magic TCG (trading card game) with Saran. Interestingly enough, he was staying beside my apartment (he's staying in a studio apartment = 1 person apartment) for 2 years? Hmmm... he has quite a number of anime (original ones) and is ranked top 14th in magic in Thailand (aka a very good player). Played about 4 rounds (I won the first and last round)



9pm. He also showed me a multiplayer online game called Team Fortress 2. Similar to counter strike he says. He let me play 2 times. Hahah~! Fun to kill stuff.



7pm. Hmmmm... before that, Evelyn, Saran and myself had dinner together. We ate at a japanese restaurant called Samurai. I loved the Chicken Katsu Curry they served. It was delicious~!



4pm. I accompanied Evelyn as she did her presentation for her individual project. Bill and James were sitting and listening to her presentation. Lucky for her, there was one other person that had to present as well.



12.30pm Had group research project class. Shaun showed us the character submissions and announced who he selected to be in the lead character design team. Naomi was one of the four who got chosen. I wasn't worried since I was nowhere near good in drawing. [shrugs] Other than that, James introduced the method of formal meeting to the groups.



28th August 2008, Thursday

Going for business lecture is pretty much a bore but I still try to bring myself to college to attend the lecture (at the very least, so that I won't be late for the flash class). In the flash class, we learnt about singleton variables (it's an actionscript 3 term). Hmm... I made random green curry noodles with crabstick, sotong fishballs & vege.

27th August 2008, Wednesday

A little late for comm practice. Shane don't like late-comers. XD Good thing that I met Reif at the Prahran station and walked into class with him. Hahaha~! At least got company. This week the rest of the group were doing week 1 discussion, which my group has already done. Nothing much today.

26th August 2008, Tuesday

Steve's class. We didn't do very much progress since some of the key points were clashing with other groups. Need to work on the key points some more. [sigh] Reif did an awesome environment transition. After class, I went to the city to book my ticket.

25th August 2008, Monday

My group didn't have much to do during business class since we had already decided on our topic already. Dion got us to complete section 1. I used the laptop to key in the answer and then got Jake to write his version. After that, Jaslyn and I got to writing the collaborated answers into the workbook. [lol]

Heh. That's this week so far... except for Saturday and Sunday. [lol] Cheers~!

Sunday: Boxhill, Mooncake and End of Olympics

End of week 2 and my brain has (at the moment) seized to function... Guess I'll kick in early for the night.

"I woke up at 11am today. I was going out to boxhill with Man Yee and Jaslyn... Frankly didn't know if the two would somehow forget about me and go on their merry way by themselves. I have an uncomfortable thought that it's I that wants to friend people and never the other way round. It's really a crippling way to think I know but it happens.

Come 12pm, I was a little worried. I had showered and laid my clothes to rest on the bed while I wait for any message. I was thinking to myself that come 1pm, I'll head off to boxhill by myself.. So you can imagine my relief when Jaslyn calls and says that they're on their way.

I jumped up and was ready in a flash. I went down to the station and met with the two girls in the train. And should luck have it, Su Khwin was there in the same train heading to the temple. Small world~!

We got off at boxhill and headed out to have lunch. I had something pork with pickled vege noodles soup. I asked the girls about footie (football). The poor dears. Don't get me wrong. They enjoyed the game and all. It's just that probably in the whole freaking stadium, all the rest were locals and were staring at the girls.

In the restaurant, there was a very curious and beautiful / cute (I thought she was both) toddler. She constantly looked to Man Yee and myself. She really was very very cute.

Anyway after lunch, we did out grocery shopping. Went to the reject shop to pick up a dishwashing liquid for a dollar. Went to the chinese pharmacy to buy pei pah koh (cough medicine)... Yea... I'm getting a cough. It's not that bad just yet but better to cure it while it's still a little problem.

I bought a lot of stuff like chicken meat, ladies fingers, tomatoes etc... Teehehe~! Food food. [grin] Man Yee bought for us some mooncakes...
I chose to try sesame flavour~!!!
It was interesting. Thanks Man Yee~! [kiss kiss] Happily devoured it with a good cup of tea.

Got me thinking when the mooncake festival is this year... Awww... I'll be missing playing with the candles, watch accidental burning of lanterns (happens sometimes when the candle reaches the end and the fire reaches the lantern...) eating mooncakes out in the garden, feeding the mosquitoes (not that we want to...)

On the train ride back, the girls and I were chatting about our childhood experience with medicines. XD yea... it's a weird topic to talk about but whatever topic keeps the conversations going is fine by me. [lol]

I got off at my Glenferrie station while the girls rode on to Richmond. They stayed in St Kilda. Chucking my 3 bags on groceries, I went over to Yoong Yoong's place to pass her her share of moooncake. I didn't stay very long to chat with her since she was busy with her work (which I had ignored during the weekends [spells doom]).

I passed the white radish that Evelyn asked me to buy for her and then accompanied Evelyn to Safeway to buy her groceries. Later, Van came by to drop some free food she got for her workplace (the green curry and pies are AWESOME~!) and some free pastries from Cindy (Thanks Cindy~!)

She stayed a while to use my laptop to access a cd-rom (for assignment work) and then we chatted a bit about the progress of her problems. She left shortly after to visit Jane who was sick. I watched my Sunday programme, Rove. It's a talk-show with backbone that tickles my funny bone. It's really very good. Maybe youtube would have bits and pieces of it. http://www.rovedaily.com.au/home.htm

After that, I retreated to my room... only to be put back in the living room after Dad pointed out that the closing ceremony was on. I was thinking "Oh, it's over already~!? Eh..hehe..."

With the ceremony closing at 12am (with more air pollution = fireworks), I came back to my lovely labbie and chatted via microphone with my parents..."

Now it's 1.14am and I'm going off to bed... without doing work. [sigh] Nothing due tomorrow luckily... Cheers~!

City Tour

16th August 2008
The end of the first week of studies and I've got plenty to do already. Even with work to be done, I took Hanna, Andy & Isabelle out.
I took them to Queen Victoria Market. What I found fascinating would be that there was someone selling live chickens hens that's ready to lay eggs and baby chicks and even rabbits..

There was this stall selling wooden crafts that I know he imported from Vietnam. It's really pretty and stuff.

There was a lot of people in the market on a saturday. Since I normally come on a weekday, I was pretty surprised with the amount of people in the market... After the Marketplace, we met up with one of Andy's friend, Rabby (pronounced rab-bye) This I found interesting since a rabbi is a Spiritual leader of a Jewish congregation; qualified to expound and apply Jewish law (taken from my dictionary)

A little more about today's mates. This is Johanna Zimmerer (Hanna), my German housemate.

This would be Andil Elita D'Souza (Andy) & Hanna. Andy's from India and she's here for 2 years to complete her Masters.
And this is Isabelle and she's from Mexico. She's here to do Film Studies in the same campus, Prahran.
And yea... the four of us..

Anyway, Rabby brought us to eat some Thai food since the girls haven't eaten Thai food before.
That's Rabby and Andy. They are cousins... Technically Rabby is Andy's cousin's cousin. They met at their cousin's wedding...
This was what the others ordered. Spicy stirfry minced meat (they chose pork & chicken) served with spring onions, red capsicum and tomatoes with rice.
I order spicy noodles soup (meehoon) with pork meat, chicken liver, fishballs sprinkled with shredded carrots and spring onions.
It tasted a bit like tom yum where they added the lemon but it wasn't too red... It was delicious.

Hahaha~! After our hot and spicy Thai food, we got each a small cone of Gelato (ice-cream) for Aus4.5. I ordered mint and toblerone flavour. [grin]
We were heading back to the city through RMIT... Can you believe that this photo was taken inside of RMIT? Yea... they have an arcade in RMIT. and also pool tables... I was like... [jaw drop]
We made a quick visit of the State Library. It's open to the public and has free exhibitions in there.
I didn't think that they would be quite a number of people here... XD [grin] Art exhibition. I like looking at paintings.

In my opinion, this one was the best of all the portrait painting..
I liked this scuplture since it represents the impact the French brought to Australia (If I'm not mistaken). Conceptual sculpture.
And this is my favourite of all the landscape paintings. I don't really know why it captured my attention as it did but I think it's lovely.
After taking photographs of the painting (all without flash of course), I noticed that there were signs of no photography or was it flash photography... I saw it from afar. yikes..
After that we went to Melbourne Central and walked into the Body Shop. I bought this exfoliateur visage (visage means face) aka a facial sponge. This would be my very first merchandise I ever bought from the body shop. I don't really buy facial goods / makeup stuff.... yet. All in all, it was a so-so day. [sigh] Can't ignore work forever... Cheers~!

Steamboat / Hotpot

12th August 2008
Yea.. Homemade steamboat. The only problem was we didn't have a steamboat pot. Yoong Yoong read somewhere / was told by someone that we can use a rice cooker as a pot.
I admit that I was skeptical... Well if that didn't work, there's always the cooking pots.
We bought plenty of steamboat food... and I mean plenty. Fishballs, meatballs, crabsticks, bak choi, eggs, meat, straw mushrooms. All the things came up to Aus70...
I made the soup. Let me think.. what did I put into the soup... I used a whole chicken, diced carrots, sliced tomatoes, white radish, 1 chicken stock and sweet corn.
Using a rice cooker as a steamboat pot works. Good food~! Woohoo~!
My steamboat comrades... Evelyn, Yoong Yoong and Man Yee...
Oh and Jaslyn. [lol]
Aaron and Pauline came a bit later to join us. They even brought sushi. The funny thing about the sushi would be they bought the wrong bottle... Instead of rice vinegar, they bought seasoning oil (the kind that they use for the japanese fried egg). So the sushi tasted bland but fragrant. [lol]
There were so much leftovers that we had another round of it on the 14th August but we added some instant tom yum paste into the soup. We finished most of it but I finished the last of the leftovers for tonight's dinner (which consisted of a bowl of noodles with some crabsticks). Cheers~!

(Let it Snow)3

9th August 2008
I had stayed up until 3am to watch the Olympic Games Opening Ceremony. I will mention here that I watched it in bits and pieces since I was doing my laundry (put the clothes in the washing machine, transfer from the washing machine to the dryer, then collecting the clothes from the dryer) but I did watch enough to know what was going on.

I had booked to go on a trip to Mount Buller (Aus 172) with Yoong Yoong, Jaslyn, Man Yee & Man Yee's brother Wilson. We had to meet in the city at 5.45am outside the Evergreen Agency (the agency we made the booking with). So that meant I only got 1 hour's sleep that day...
The bus ride took about 4 hours (6am - 10am). It was like driving up to Genting Highlands / Cameron Highlands. When I saw the landscape outside turn from green to white, I was giddy happy. [lol]
It's really awesome to see the trees outside covered with real natural snow.
This year the winter is cooler than usual and it was very good snow season. This is good since we were going to ski.
You can see the pretty blanket of snow.
Curious would be that the drivers have to put on this chain like thing on just one 0f the tires. It's to help the car tire grab the road if it's snow / ice on the roads.
Even our bus had to stop to put on the chain onto one of the tires.
In the meantime, we were staring out of the window, looking at the pretty pretty snow.
I did sleep a little on the way up. I sat next to this lady that kept coughing.. ~___~ good thing I didn't catch whatever she was having.
There was a slight mist. I like the variety of mood I can take here.. This one shows how tranquil and quiet the photo is..
and this was is rather busy and somehow captures movement. The wind blown tree is frozen in place. Guess it'll have to wait until September / October when spring comes about thaw out.
Oh look... someone left their car out in the snow and it has a thick layer of snow on it...
Gosh, aren't I taking a lot of photos and we're not even up and out in the snow yet? [lol] Trigger happy photographer~!
I guess it's because I never seen real snow. I was really excited about the snow.
It's something about it... the white, the cold, the many shows showing the lovely association with snow...
I guess the biggest association of snow would be White Christmas.
At one point, I was thinking the ground looked like it was covered with sugar / salt instead of snow. [snicker] Along that lines, I remembered of the lovely christmas cake that Zie Wei brought to the Genting trip. [hugs Zie Wei] I know you want to be here so I'm taking plenty of photos for you to see.
Anyway, getting out of the bus was like stepping into the freezer. Hmmm.. I guess it only seemed like that because the bus turned on the heater. [grin]
KYAAAAAAAAAA~! Snow. Errrmmm.... holding the snow in your hands is like holding a bowl of ice kacang ice shavings in your hands but here, it doesn't melt and remains powdery-ish. [lol]
The girls paid extra to get these special winter suits (aus35)... I didn't need it since it really wasn't that cold. Plus I was wearing quite thick anyway. One thing I wished I got would be the snow goggles.
The snow season was in Mount Buller starts July and ends at September.
If you're wondering why I'm standing funny... it's the ski boots.. let me tell you. If you have weak knees like I do (my doctor told me that), walking in the ski boots alone for a while would kill you. I didn't know that the ski boots would force you to stand / ski / walk with your knees bent all the time.
Needless to say that everyone else enjoyed and ski so much more than I did. Which is good. [grin]
There were really quite a bit of people that came up, either to do some sightseeing, skiing, snow boarding or toboggan.
We had a 2 hour basic ski lessons. At the very least I know I can ski but I totally can't do the snowplough (stop technique).
Gosh, at the very end of the lesson, my knees were practically screaming (excuse my language) "BLOODY HELL~! PAIN! F*CK, GET OFF AND SIT!" It took all my strength (not to break down into tears) just to remain standing...
Given that we started the class at about 11.30am and ended about 1.30pm, the rest still had 2 hours to ski. I enjoyed sitting on the snow and experiencing real snow fall.
These were a few shots I took while sitting on the snow.
[grin] These are my gloves that I put on my ski stick? hmmm... I don't really know what the equipment is called. XD [wiki] ski poles
Everyone was having fun and here I am, stuck on the snow because just standing alone was torture. But it was really good weather since I got to experience fresh real snow fall, clear skies, sunny and cloudy all in the few hours I was there.
One thing about photographing snow though... It's really very bright (yea... so are the people if you realized) All the photos I had to go to photoshop and reduce the highlights / brightness
Coming down was so very much harder than going up. Walking down the staircase carrying ski poles and the skis, knee-bending boots, screaming knees and tired legs. A few times I just wanted to throw myself down the stairs and the hill and roll my way down...
By the time I got my feet out of the boots, my feet and toes were terribly cold and numb. Even walking on my normal shoes, I still found it hard to walk properly...
Now I know. The next time I have the option, I vote to do toboggan or sight seeing. I have done enough skiing to last me a lifetime. At least I tried and now know I can ski but I can't stop.. I'll be a terror to others, myself and the trees if I ski. [lol]
We got to the bus at 4pm. I managed to grab my sleep since I only had 1 hour's sleep that day (slept 3 hours going up and the 4 hours coming down).

By the time we got to the city, it was time for dinner. We ate at a thai restaurant named yourthai since we were given discount vouchers for doing the ski booking at that agency. I had Mongolian Chicken Rice. Hahah~! Cheers~!