November 2008 part 1

(I'm writing this 6th December... the photos had been sitting here in this draft for 1 week now. Just too lazy and too many things going on I suppose. The problem with reporting backwards is I normally lose a lot of the info. [sigh] I'll blast through all the events then to keep everything up to par then)

17th Nov 2008 Pancake Parlour
Vera was leaving for Singapore on this day so we (Evelyn, Vera and myself) decided to have a farewell lunch before she left... plus we had to go to her house to install the Maya software since she would still be helping Reif even back in Singapore.
We had our lunch at Vera's recommendation of Pancake Parlour. No surprise that the speciality would be... PANCAKES~!
The girls were deciding on what to get... I don't really mind anything so I left the girls to choose.
While the girls were choosing, I let my eyes wandered a bit around the shop... But it didn't take very long until the pancakes arrived. [lol] That's what I call good customer service.
Here's some shots to tempt you to go find some pancake shop now~! (Don't mind the pink words at the bottom, was experimenting with photo & type to mimic magazine-ish layout) This pancake was strawberry, ice-cream and pancakes.
This one here is a short stack (a stack of 3 pancakes) served with a side of hot chocolate sause and topped with vanilla ice-cream...
More pancake shots~!
I decided to dress the pancake up and tried to make it presentable? Hahaha~!All gone~! Yummy~! Took this shot just to tease you all... Muahaha~!

18th Nov 2008 St Kilda Beach

Man Yee, Jaslyn and Yoong Yoong had invited me to eat dinner by the beach... Sounds romantic I know... But the dinner was take-away McD meal and the weather was gloomy.
Nonetheless, I had fun taking far-away shot as opposed to my zoomed-in shots I had been taking for the past few months. You have no idea just how many times I clicked the macro setting.... Hahaha~! Though not as many times as the "no flash" setting.

Anyway, enough of my camera gibberish, I liked the quiet family time this family was spending together by the beach. They're dressed pretty heavily because it was chilly...

I was interesting that out in the pier / jetty, there was someone there...
And that someone was also watching at that someone at the pier from the beach... and I was watching at both of them. [lol]
The beach was pretty quiet. Not much of a spectacular sunset to look out for with the gloomy weather and all.
Still, the girls and I ate our dinner of burgers and fries while enjoying the ocean waves. We had to keep an eye out for those who eyed our dinner... the seagulls...
As we were pretty protective of our food, some of the seagulls lost interest in the food....
While the others waited for us to be careless.. Hahah~! It started to drizzle just as we finished our dinner so we made our way back to Man Yee & Jaslyn's place.
They bought errr... would you call these alcohols? [shrugs] Anyway, we got one bottle each... Man Yee with the bottles
Jaslyn clearly enjoying hers.
and Yoong Yoong's one (which she demanded the girls to find the one with the highest alcohol %)
And my drink~!
Just a random shot of the bottlecaps... If you're wondering why there's only 3 caps, Man Yee's one was a screw-on type so I didn't insert it with these...

We played a bit with the bottlecaps and then we played with the playing cards ("dai di" and bluff). I left their apartments for the train station...

I made it in good time... before the time the second last train was to come...BUT it never came... neither did the last train back. I was thinking ahh, stupid train. great... now what... I didn't trust myself to take the tram back in daylight, what more night time.. so I stopped a taxi and took it home.

I'll just note here that it would be my first time stopping a taxi and sitting in one, alone. I admit that I grew scared of sitting in a taxi alone after reading all those horror stories about kidnapping and murder... so I was glad I got home safely that night.

19th Nov 2008 Potluck Party

Bor had invited me to a Potluck party that I had no idea just how many people were attending... I made fried (editted: from friend. thanks for pointing the mistake out zie) mee hoon (enough for 4 people) anyway.
When I got to the Unilodge level 3 common area on the West building, I was pretty shocked to see the amount of food that were already gracing the table. There were potato wedges, assam laksa, sushi...

Apple salad
Linda's fried dumplings...
Other food...
Everyone had travelled from different places so most of the food came in plastic boxes and stuff...
While others had managed to present their food a bit better.
This one was a wicked dish... It was avacado, seaweed and wasabi paste... the green you can see are avacado not wasabi (thank goodness). The wasabi wasn't very strong but most had avoided this dish...
A rather thick bubur chacha.
Muffins and other pastries, sitting and waiting to be eaten~!!!!!!
Man Yee and Jaslyn bought two pizza since they weren't keen on the making food bit.. or at least they couldn't decide what to make...
Oh, whoever brought the "fah yuk" (deep fried pork meat, the brownish red dish in the photo) has my praises.
My mee hoon sitting in a blue container. looks small (width-wise) but the container is pretty tall...
The assam laksa... waiting for me to devour it...
It was most unfortunate that I didn't think to open the container and place the gorgeous and delicious chocolate muffin on TOP of the container instead of letting it sit IN the container. [slaps forehead]. The fun bit of eating the chocolate muffin was that we were also suppose to dip it in custard cream before eating it... Delightful sin. Hahah~!
[sigh] But before we could dig in, we have to sit and wait for the others... That's Jaslyn.
Linda already started snitching. Hahah~! I also got start munching already. I couldn't help it~! The food were calling to me~!!! No, I shall distract myself by taking more random photos...
Here's Aaron and Pauline.
Linda and Man Yee.
The mastermind of the potluck party, Bor.
Finally with all the people here already (note that the outside is now dark), we can MAKAN~!
The girls in their VIP corner.. hahaha~!
[L to R: Tennison, his gf, Aaron and Pauline] Some sat near the food...
While others moved about, socializing.
It's all about eating and having fun after all...
Priscilla and her peace sign~!
I was trying to take photo of Lia (the girl in checkered shirt) and didn't realise I had Yoong Yoong at the side there.. hahahha~!
Nita and Lia
Tennison, his gf and Joanne Siow
Pauline giving Yoong Yoong a sip of alcohol. Strong one... Pure enough.. I was a little shocked that they drank it straight.

24th Nov 2008 Evelyn Birthday Celebration
We met up at the city and went to take a photo sticker... That's Man Yee, Yoong Yoong and Jaslyn in the side...
Ahh~! I didn't mean to cut Jaslyn out... XD This would be my 2nd time taking photo stickers. Well, the first time I took a photo sticker was during my trip down to Singapore when we stayed with Uncle Carlos... My sisters and Samantha (Uncle Carlos' daughter) had to posed only our faces, in a small frame.
In comparison to that, this one was crazier... and not to mention that we could take full body shots... choose the background, pose (we pose 6 times and can only print out 4 versions), then we go to another machine to add all those art (flowers, cakes, timestamp and even draw in effects and words). The photo's a little small seeing that we have to print one that can be split amongst the five of us... XD
More photos? Oh well, Evelyn and Yoong Yoong
Evelyn and Jaslyn
Evelyn and Man Yee.
We made our way to New Quay (pronounced new key) at Docklands for a seafood dinner buffet to celebrate Evelyn's birthday. That's Evelyn and Yoong Yoong.
Man Yee. I like how the mood of this photo turned out. I don't ask them to pose. Normally I click my camera like a trigger happy idiot. The girls normally just ignore me.
Ahh. She saw me taking her photo. XD I think she's really pretty. She'd make a good model. The interior of the New Quay
Round 1: Appertizers. Assorted cold meats with sushi and prawn salad.
With a side of chicken soup with sweet corn.
Round 2: The seafood stuff.. PRAWNS~! Mussels, sashimi
A pause in the food. That's the birthday girl reading her birthday card.
Round 3: More seafood. Prawns and fresh oyster with lemon. The lemon is very important in eating oyster. Well, for me anyway.
Round 4: The hot stuff (not spicy larrr). A bit of everything.. Chicken, duck, satay, char siu, mixed veggie
Round 5: The rest of everything that couldn't fit in round 4's plate... hahaha~!
Round 6: The dessert stuff. They have this chocolate fountain thing... So I dipped the marshmallow and dried apricots... That's the chocolate mousse topped with roasted almonds. egg custard sprinkled with cinnamon powder and pastry stuffed with cream and sliced strawberry and kiwi laid on top of the cream.
Round 7: The last of the desserts.
Sponge cake with lemon flavoured cream topped with roasted almonds
Sponge cake with blueberry and cream
Sponge cake with finely chopped hazelnuts and topped with cream and finely dusted with green tea powder.
I paid about $40 for my dinner tonight ($10 extra each to pay for Evelyn's dinner)
We all ate til we couldn't move...
so we sat for a little while..
After the big dinner, we decided to walk for a bit.
And watch the sunset.
There was a fancy restaurant too... I wonder how much it cost to eat there...
The cityscape in the sunset looked nice...
Of course, imagining that you own one of these boats is a slightly nicer imagery... [laughs]
There were some interesting sculptures at docklands...
Perfect for taking random photographs...
But the sunset really does look lovely...
The christmas decorations are already up and it's not even december yet...
It's a modern christmas tree...
We made our way back towards the city after the sun had set...
Had wanted to get some cocktails but the bar was out of cocktails already so we settled for beer instead.
The atmosphere at the night bar was low and peaceful... nice for a gang of friends to get together.
With that the day has ended...

(End of part 1) Cheers~!

My not-so-holiday Holidays

Allow me to work backwards and put together this post. So the most recent is from the end of the post to the top here

10th Nov 2008, Monday

It was the last day of business and I'm really very pleased with the performance of my group. Here's a group photo [L to R: Louise Chui, Jake Ng, Jaslyn Koh and me]
Here's one with our lecturer, Dion. Thanks for everything Dion~!
After the presentation, we went to have lunch in the city... [drools] Here's Jaslyn with her duck.
Here's my lunch of the day, cheese baked rice with chicken meat, bacon bits and mushroom in cream sauce... [drools some more]
Oh and here's yoong yoong's roasted pork meat (Siew Yuk) rice. I took some of the Siew Yuk since I had a craving for it. Yay~!

11th Nov 2008, Tuesday
Nothing new to report...
Just my usual sunset watching photos...

It's really amazing how a few minutes pass and the whole scene changes...
It's lovely to have a warm cup of tea and breathe the cold evening air as we see Apollo's departure for the day... [happy sigh]

15th Nov 2008, Saturday

Was suppose to be a gorup dinner but I already knew that the only ones to arrive would be me, Evelyn, Vera and Saran.

We met up in the city and took this photo of the city decoration lights. [L to R: Me, Vera & Evelyn]
We had the decision between Thai food and Korean BBQ but since we didn't want to come out smelling like meat (yea... eating Korean BBQ does do that to you since the smell sticks to your clothes), we decided Thai food.
That's my coffee drink. Yummy~!

The green curry chicken [drools]
Vera's guava drink? I think it's guava or it's something else.... but it's a fruit drink definately, just served in this container.
[Laughs out loud] That's Saran, pulling a scary look~! He had to hold that pose for a while since my camera is a bit slow... hahaha~!
While waiting for the rest of our food, more photos [L to R: Evelyn, Vera & Saran]
DESSERTS~! Yummy~! It's very much like the Malay Kueh (Kuih) you can find back home.

Because it's a good few days now... I can't remember what it's called... hahah~!
But I do know that I like this one A LOT. I think it was just called coconut dessert... XD strong coconut milk (santan) taste.

This one was a banana glutinous rice (pulut) dessert sprinkled with sesame seed on the top. I love sweets~! I really enjoyed our dinner together. Thanks~!

16th Nov 2008, Sunday
I had to wake up early because yoong yoong was coming to find her pendrive... when she came, she asked if her pendrive was on the table to which I replied no. She checked her bag and it was there all the time.. [smacks forehead] She goes on her merry way to print the stuff while I waited for us to head to boxhill.

Met up with Pauline at Glenferrie station where we sat in the cold... Just what kind of summer is this turning out to be. Can be pretty hard to adjust to the sudden change in weather... Ate lunch with the girls (jaslyn, man yee, yoong yoong, pauline and myself) and the tv was showing TVB's tv awards I think.

Bought some small stuff and headed back to Unilodge. Helped Yoong Yoong move her stuff from her old room to her new room. Managed to find what she needed to hand up on monday... Walked the girls (jaslyn and man yee) to the station, followed yoong yoong and pauline to pauline's place. Helped pauline to correct her resume and cover letter in 3 hours. Got to eat pauline's home-cooking. ^_^ I even got free food~! Whheee~!

I came home and called evelyn and we worked on her systems for a bit...

17th Nov 2008, Monday
Technically it's only 1.20am so there isn't much of today to report about other than I'm helping Evelyn with work and that later I'll be dragged out of bed in the morning and probably drop by class for a short while before crashing onto bed later...

Last Day of Classes...

How long was it since my last post... [refers to previous post] Halloween things... Hmm.. About a week then.. Let's update~!

5th Nov 2008
I caught this interesting view of the sunset...

I wonder if you can see what I see. I thought the colours and cloud formation looked like a burning phoenix flying in the background... too much? Well, that's what I see in my mind's eye. [grin]

6th Nov 2008
This evening's sunset was really a totally different setting than the previous sunset. Looked like a black and white photo. My sunsets doesn't require much photoshop since nature had more or less set up the colour palette. [happy sigh]

7th Nov 2008
It was the last day of class and I took the opportunity to photograph my groupmates.. [L to R: Aaron Richards (our group's coder), Vera Hermawan (our pro 3d modeller), ermmm that's Steve in the bg (our 3d lecturer XD), Saran Nipatakusol (3d groupmate), Reif Campling (our genius animator), Evelyn Leung (our group's game character designer), me (group secretary & does some 3d stuff) and Michael Sacks (our group leader & does some flash stuff)]

Just took a photo shot of what the class looks like. Yea, we have macs on the left and pcs on the right. [grin] you know... some people love macs, some people love pc so we have both... [lol] at least that's how I'll justify things.

This was a shocker. Hahah~! Shaun was in a suit and he looked like James Bond walking in. ^_^ [happy laugh] I'm laughing because it was a treat and yet it was amusing. Note that this would be my first time seeing him in a suit.

A bit of a closeup on some of my groupmates. That's Saran Nipatakusol, he's Thai. Coincidentally, he stays in the apartment next to me at Unilodge. Wicked magic card player and gamer. Went over to his place to play cards and watch whose line is it anyway a few time to de-stress.

This is Aaron Richards, he's really our group's only coder who handled all the actionscript 3. He is our master coder for the flash game group.

And that is Dedy (pronounced Daddy, really and he's Indonesian) and he's not part of our group... [lol] I took his photo because he's funny. On his left is Khairul, a fellow Malaysian.

Anyway, we were given a 15 minutes break so I accompanied Evelyn to the Japanese shop and we spotted Peter there. We sat and talked for a while before heading back to class...

That's Ng Kah Hei, better known to us as Kelvin. He refused to be photographed so this was about the best shot I could get of him. [grin] He's our group's animator and he's Singaporean... I think. XD yea.. I'm pretty certain he is.

Hahahahaha~! This reminds me of the sms I got from Evelyn before I got to class that day. She had typed to me something along these lines "OMG, Shaun and Steve are wearing suits~! XD Moe~!" [lol] This was about the best shot I could get of all four of my lecturers (L to R: Shaun Britton, Steven Murdoch, Bill Trikojus, & James Marshall)

That's Michael Sacks, our crazy leader and I serve as a secretary under his command [snicker]. From what I've seen, he's crazy with flash games (especially pro in those games that involves shooting zombies). He's in charge of handling the game graphics.

This would be our full group photo. [front: Saran, Michael; 2nd: Reif, Aaron, me, Evelyn; Back: Kelvin, Vera & Sarah-Maree Gillespie]

And this would be be the same only adding Steve, Shaun and James. [grin] Well, though classes are over but the project is still on-going. Deadlines: 21st Nov and 4th Dec. Back to work then, Cheers~!

Halloween Part 2

So yea, I managed to grab the photos of that night from my friend during class today. I shall warn you all now that some of the photos might be blur since we were trying our hardest to capture the photos without the use of flash.

And yea, they're all silly photos and I once again warn you that I'm in some of the photos. Sorry for appearing in the photos and if your eyes scream horror after seeing my photo... [bows low] Let the photo spamming begin...

(L to R: Jaslyn and Man Yee)

(L to R: Yoong Yoong, Me and Jaslyn)

(Jaslyn and Me) "You're still looking?"

(Man Yee and Jaslyn)

(L to R: Yoong Yoong, Man Yee and Jaslyn)

(L to R: Jaslyn, Man Yee, Me and Yoong Yoong)

(Man Yee and Me)

It was no easy task trying doing this shot but it was certainly funny to try.

Seeing that Yoong Yoong wasn't helping with the carrying, she decided to move in front instead. XD

Self portrait #1: Yoong Yoong, the cross-eyed witch

Self portrait #2: Me, the silly witch

Self portrait #3: Man Yee, the burning (puteri lilin) witch

Self portrait #4: Jaslyn, the terror witch

We decided to throw in an extra "passport shot" for Man Yee. Self portrait #5: Man Yee, the grumpy witch.

That's me, waiting for the next shot...

(L to R: Me, Man Yee & Yoong Yoong)

(L to R: Yoong Yoong, Man Yee & Jaslyn)

(L to R: Yoong Yoong, Man Yee & Jaslyn)

We are the gangster witches... I'm not very good in the gangster pose... but I tried?

Man Yee and Me. Given the topic of trying to be cute, our first try was this... [lol] apparently our poses, both of us keluar topic~! Hahahah~! It's sweet and mushy.

Another take at being cute... now we're torn between looking scary or excited... hahahha~! [shrugs]

The arrow indicates where you should put food into...

The girls

Thinking for new poses are hard....

Play with the ET moment~! I'll point out that this shot was taken after many many NGs. Yoong Yoong kept laughing and that made Man Yee laugh... Jaslyn and I were laughing too.

Just to prove a point to Yoong Yoong, that's me and Jaslyn doing the pose in just 2 takes. (1st take was off because of Jaslyn's hair)

And making sure it's not Man Yee's case, that's her and myself in also 2 takes (the 1st take was off because we forgot to see off the camera flash)

Camera flashes can be pretty bright... hahaha~!

The whole time we were taking our crazy poses in Federation square, in a quieter section...

I really like this shot since it pretty much captured the happy, silly, fun feelings we were sharing together.

All in all, we had a pretty interesting night. Til next time I suppose, cheers~!

My First Fun on Halloween

It was Halloween and the girls had planned to have some fun since we really needed to just sit and have fun amidst the finals and deadlines.

To keep us going throughout the night, we met up at 8pm and began with filling our tummies with some Japanese food...

Here's my miso soup... nice and warm for the chilly night.

And here's my asahi. [big grin] I want beer and I want good beer. Hahaha~! No worries. I only had one bottle and that isn't enough to get me tipsy...

Yoong Yoong's dinner dish was the first to arrive... Creamy Mushroom Chicken I think.

With a side of Ice Blended Green Tea with Vanilla Ice-cream. Phew. That was a long name for a drink.

Next came, Jaslyn's Teriyaki Chicken... Or was it Teppanyaki Chicken. I think it was the latter since it was served with bean sprouts (taugeh) underneath the chicken.

Loiuse's bento set. Errr... I can't remember what the name of the bento set was...

At least I rememembered my own one. Tonkatsu set. Yum~!

Really enjoyed my dinner. Look at how clean my bento box. No.. I didn't lick it clean.. There are too many strangers around. [lol] My dinner came up to errr.... bento was 11.80 and the asahi was 6, equals to 17.80

After dinner, the girls and I went to federation square to play... We took out our little witch hat (which was stuck to the black hairband) that were in our bags. ^_^ Cute convenient things.

We were having fun doing odd poses and stuff. But with my camera pretty incapable of taking night photos, I only have a few on it... That's Jaslyn.

That's one with the girls. Louise, Yoong Yoong and Jaslyn.

The two purple witches. ^_^

Yes, so I called you a witch.. No need to get angry about it... [lol]

Unfortunately, all my photos in my camera were of ones that we were pretty normal... I'll show you the crazy ones much later once I get my hands on them..

One green witch, two purple ones and I'm the orange one. There were only three colours to choose from apparently... But yea, I think this photo pretty much summarizes our night, Halloween witches having fun in the city. ^_^

After all the crazy poses we did (you might see them...if I'm not lazy to post them), we sat down to dessert of the night. I ordered a very very very bleh drink (pine nut black tea, I had ordered peanut not pine nut [sigh]) but luckily had an order of green tea cake to take away the drink's taste... [shudder]

Witch hat + cake... It's now a witches' dessert. [lol] Hope you guys had a good halloween. Cheers~!