Filling in the Gaps

Without further ado, I present this long post... [lol]

Week 5 of 13
Friday 12th September
Friday’s class was rather full-on. We listened to a talk, pitched our logos, showed our animatics (which Reif and Kelvin did an awesome job preparing).
After class, Hanna and I made our way to the Chocolate room for some (you guessed it) chocolate. (That's the photo of the name of the shop. It's really comfy) (That's Hanna with our desserts~!)
(This one is Hanna's. She ordered a chocolate drink.. Can't remember the name of it. [lol])
I had a Chicago Chocolate dessert. Yummy~!
(Yes~! Don't you just want a spoonful of this delight?)
(Well, you can't because I finished it. [evil grin] [wipes off chocolate from lips])
(It was a good time when you can sit, chat and eat chocolate)
After dessert, I walked with Hanna and showed her some of the restaurants which I thought were good. The walk’s purpose for me was really to walk off the chocolate… [lol]

Saturday 13th September
Wasn’t anything much planned for the mooncake festival… Van had asked me for a little help.

Her Vietnamese student group had arranged to have a little sale of sorts. (I was the one who blew up these balloons and tied them on a string)I was told to just help look after the store {I just thought that would happen when she goes to the toilet} and that I get to sing. (Chicken soup on the left, danish rolls and muffins)
I’m not a fantastic singer but I do want to get as much practice as I can. (The decorations) So you can imagine my utter disappointment and anger when she leaves to make and bring more food and didn’t prepare us small change, tissue and gloves / tongs… (I sat outside for a bit, totally bored out of my skull)
Yea… us... I was madder, wondering why she needed me at all if she got another friend to help. ([sigh] at least I got to see the moon)
(Van returned with the stuff she should have left us first and more food)
The singing thing didn’t happen. I walked away from this event, feeling that I had wasted my time. [sigh] she wanted to pass some food to me which she said she will later but she didn’t inform me that she wasn’t coming and I waited the whole night for her. Is it that hard to sms me? [grumbles] I will not be angry with her for long, no worries but I’m only human so let me fume a little for now…

Sunday 14th September
I was awaken by the ringing of my handphone (my skeleton practically jumped out of my skin) at 8am in the morning~!!! Who, in their right minds would call someone else at that hour (unless you know that the person is an early riser and I’m NOT an early riser) my ideal time to rise is when the sun is high in the sky.

If you’re wondering why I didn’t just silent my phone, I must say it’s because I didn’t want any repeat on the Evelyn episode (I’m not longer upset about that) Regardless, I glared at my phone and saw that it was Van. She called to ask if she could come over for breakfast.. I was still fuming about the disappointment the day before but I still kept my cool. I don’t eat breakfast, people… I have my breakfast drink…

Unfortunately for dear Van, I had planned to go swimming in the afternoon and later in the evening go for buffet Korean BBQ dinner, which I specifically told her. I was not pleased when she called me that few times that day (This is the restaurant name at Boxhill)

(The interestingly shaped pig grill pan / stove. It's a wild boar, in case you can't see)
(The first few meat to grace the pan / stove)
(That's Evelyn, she was the one who brought us to this restaurant)
([stir stir][flip flip] Ah, the lovely sound of cooking...)
(Yay~! Cooked meat~! Yummy)
(I guess the best part of this meal is that it's buffet style~! [grin] Oh, the only utensil you need; plate, fork, cup and tongs. The spoon became redundant since we didn't take rice. As if we would with all these meat to eat~!)
(Jaslyn posing with the meat [lol])
(Yoong Yoong, with her pink-not-orange sweater. She keeps saying it's orange when it's obviously pink..[snicker])
(Man Yee, happy with the food. Peace~!)
(Evelyn, with a funny pose for the good meat eat)
(I think it's interesting that we can see Man Yee's eye right in the middle of the calamari)
(The food~!!)
I DID enjoy the Korean BBQ very very very much. Thanks Evelyn for the great recommendation.

Week 6 of 13
Monday 15th September
It’s already the mid of the month.. scary. Anyway, nothing much for business class other than setting the next meeting on next Tuesday. Ermmm… Oh~! After class, I went to the city to meet Sabrina~!!!!!! Happy happy~!

I was delighted to meet Sabrina after half a year. We were walking arm in arm as I led her to Max Brenner for waffles. [grin] Love their waffles. Had arranged to meet Su Jin there. ^_^ The three of us sat and chatted for a bit.

After waffles, Su Jin left for her dinner plans and I took Sabs for some Vietnamese food. (The tea is yummy, isn't it Sabs?)
Pho noodles. Unfortunately the one in the city was pretty bad…
too much ajinomoto and Sabs said her chicken version tasted like hor fun… which it does to an extend.. [lol] I hope I was good company to take your mind off the not-so-good food, Sabs…

Tuesday 16th September
Was extremely tempted to skip class. I was right when we didn’t do much in class today. All I did was post up the list of image references we need and editing the script. I was glad that vera invited me to have lunch with them.

We made our way to lucky coq to have their good and yet cheap pizza. Was suppose to skip class today and hang out with Sabs, Su Jin and Chek Lee. But I had a feeling that that plan won’t happen and went to class and had pizza lunch instead. So it’s good.
Who was there? Vera, Kelvin, Loius, Dedy, Jojo, Huee and Khairul. (The left- Kelvin, the one in green, Loius)
(Nearest to the camera - Vera, Dedy & Khairul. Huee is actually in the middle of Dedy and Khairul but Dedy blocked her from the camera. [lol])
(Khairul & Jojo. Unfortunetaly, no photos of Huee since I took the photos candidly.)
(Spring is certainly in the air with all these flowers in bloom)
(Lovely colours really... and I pass them everytime I go to school)
(Even this little wonder, it grows past the fence along the route to the Prahran train station)
(Pretty don't you think?)
(On the other side of the fence grow this creeper flower plant that has purple blossoms)
(Prahran station)
(Coming back to a cloudy sunset is nice too)

Wednesday 17th September

Was early for comm prac class. (Took some photos of the white blossom tree on a clear blue day)

Today Jiew was in charge of presenting. I brought my folio layout to be viewed. Lots of work to do [sigh]

Needless to say, I was plenty pleased that I got Sabrina to distract myself after class. i went to pick her up from the city after my class at 3pm.. we were decided between a daily ticket ($6.50) and 2-hour ticket ($3.50). the trick with the latter is that if we validate the ticket (which we did at 3.15pm), it'll expire at 6pm (it counts from the next closest hour {which in this case is 4pm} and then add 2 hours).

you can imagine sabs and i were standing at the ticket machine, calculating if i can get her back to the city before 6pm... then from the city, we headed to my college again.

Today was a train day for me. [snicker] brought her around the campus. tough luck and steve wasn't walking about... so she couldn't catch a glimpse of him... [lol] i made it sound as if he was an endangered species. Xp

i let her use the internet at school rather than the original plan of using my internet because my college connection is wicked fast~! [nod nod nod] my friend told me that swinburne college has the fastest internet connection in melbourne. XD youtube streaming is pretty good. oopss... off topic. [grin]

after the campus tour of sorts, we headed back to my room at about 5pm. my modest little abode. there we transfered the photos from her cameras to her pendrive (while looking at some of the photos she took). after that, i took her back to the city at 5.30pm and we reached the city at about 5.45pm. [grin]

since i was in the city, i messaged 2 friends to see if they were free for dinner. sabs curfew was at 7pm and not 6pm, so we sat in the middle of the city square (of sorts), enjoyed the lovely evening air and chatted. by the time it was 7pm, my friend had replied and was indeed free for dinner. sabs had to have dinner with her family (they bought food to cook to save money)

The friend who replied was Perng and I was plenty pleased that he and nick were meeting up to eat dinner in the city. I really didn’t want to return home early today. We ate at a Japanese noodles shop. I ordered gyoza ramen. The boys were exchanging movies and talking about tv series and games. Thankful for sabs’, perng’s and nick’s company since I certainly needed it.

Thursday 18th Sept
Missed classes today. Overslept… Yikes…

Had dinner with Van. No longer angry. Enjoyed dinner.

Friday 19th Sept

(Read the firey dinner post)

This post was a little tough to do... I wrote the words first, then post the photos and then fixed them together and added photo captions

Firey Dinner

Before you go and discriminate me as a danger in the kitchen after reading this, I should point out that I've been cooking well in the past 6 months and had helped my mum in the kitchen since young and this is just one of those hiccups that happens.

Frankly, I'm laughing this off but I'm putting this in the beginning since if I put this in the end... you won't believe me. Anyway, I'm typing this now since it just happened about 2 hours ago (was watching tv) and I'll post the gap of dates later.

"Today was rather normal. I was rather late for class really... I bumped into Saran at Glenferrrie station and Jake in the train heading to school. By the time, I got to school, I was late for my meeting but I went to the location anyway. Reif, Sarah and Michael were at Lucky Coq. We didn't talk much I guess...

Class was pretty normal and after class, I held a small meeting. Was about 10 minutes really. Wanted to discuss with everyone and made sure it was clear everyone knew what they were doing. Had to send the meeting minutes... Bumped into Derek at Prahran station.

Anyway, came back at 4.30pm, was watching tv and constructing the meeting minutes. I told Evelyn to buy dumplings since she was going to Boxhill. Something told me NOT to cook dinner tonight... Anyway I insisted to ignore that feeling and made pasta.

Here's where everything went wrong... I had one pot boiling water (to put in the pasta) and another pot with oil. Seriously, I walked away from the stove to get to my room to send the minutes off (copy and paste and send it off)... seconds, just seconds.

I came back to the stove and saw that the pot of oil was smoking... badly... The first thing I thought was to move the pot away from the heated stove. seconds... the oil caught fire and [sigh] I was suddenly holding a pot of fire. I must say now that I'm glad that Hanna was there.

First thing to do was to put out the fire... Hanna reminded me not to use water as I was wetting the cloth. I knew that but then I struck me if I couldn't use a wet cloth either. So I grabbed the nearest semi-dry table clothes and muffled the fire. I thank god that I learnt science. All this happened within a minute really.. Smokey room....

I might add that after the fire was put out, I became aware that the fire alarms in the room was ringing. I knew from the orientation, NEVER OPEN THE MAIN DOOR for if the smoke alarms went off there, the fire brigade would come and I would be fined a hefty sum. Hanna was opening the unilodge handbook as I made my way to use her phone... needed to do something about the still ringing fire alarm (I had opened the glass doors so that the smoke will make their way out.

Promptly I called the extension for the reception to ask them to turn off the alarm. When the guy on the phone asked for the room number, I really couldn't remember the room number. Guess the shock kicked in late.. [lol] Hanna told me the room number.

After that, we were in the living room, I kept apologizing for scaring Hanna and she laughed a little about the incident. We sat down and laughed about the incident really. The guy from the reception came at our door and luckily the smoke had thinned out really. Came to asked if everyone was alright and reminded us to not open the main door so as to not trip the smoke alarm outside.

Anyway, here's a photo of the poor black pot... (You'd think after all that, I won't think of taking this photo) Too bad my mind was preoccupied on dousing the fire and turning off the smoke alarm to photograph the fire... I'm not THAT crazy..

Anyway, after the good laugh, I set to cooking dinner... again. You'd think I would give up and buy McDonalds or something. [lol] Anyway, this time the cooking went on with no GREAT incident. [lol] By the time, the guy from the reception came back again (I knew he'll be back to ask who set the fire alarm off), I was already halfway through cooking the pasta

The finished pasta
I was pretty glad that Hanna was with me (she really has a good head of those shoulders and a great stone in the sea of chaos). I'm totally grateful~!

Would say that it pays to be prepared (knowledge and mental state) in this kind of situations. Again, I'll point out that I'm NEVER this clumsy but it sure made a great start to the holidays~! [lol] by the way, I'm totally fine.

On a random note; I really don't know why I was bumping into the guys in the station. I'd like to think it was a warning of sorts... [puzzled]

Anyway, cheers~!

Week 5 of 13

Thought I'd start this post and then edit until the weekends and then post it... Think that's much better on my brain.. [lol]

8th Sept 2008, Monday
I went early to school to find my poor forgotten pendrive. It wasn't where I left it but I knew it was in a pretty visible location (makes you wonder how I missed it in the first place [lol]). It was to my great pleasure that some nice fellow found my pendrive and passed it to the registrar. Interestingly enough, the receptionist was asking my name and when I started to explain the description of my pendrive to her (white, kingston, green parts, blue string) I was nicely reunited with my pendrive. hehehe.

Class was usual with Dion overlooking our progress. I had a bad feeling about our business setup in australia (it's a mock business plan) and asked Dion what if we weren't allowed to do it in Australia... He said at this stage, that he would still allow us to proceed but should have done this research a while ago... I was right to ask him that question since I got a reply from the Australian Customs (Was just asking if we could import in a fish species) and that it wasn't in the allowed list. Oh well... at least Dion said we could still proceed. ^_^

9th Sept 2008, Tuesday
I had been sleeping rather late the couple of days and was working on the group research document for a solid 4 hours... not that my group members would know. [shrugs] at least I know. So in the morning, I was pretty bushed and had to literally drag myself from my bed. It's a battle half won once I get into the bathroom. [lol]

It was a good thing that I went to class today. We were doing further discussions about the storyboard. Style change again... XD Steve steve. Tsk tskk.. [lol] But then again, as designer (especially digital designer) I'm mentally aware that changes are frequent and we have to roll with the punches.

10th Sept 2008, Wednesday
I came late again for Shane's class. XD Wasn't too late but still late... More or less the moment I got into the classroom, my group had to present the weekly discussion. Jiew was worried that I won't come for the class and was wondering if he or Matt had to present in my place. [lol]

Nothing much for comm prac (communicating practice). Just showed Shane some work and then I was off to eat some thai lunch with Jiew. Ate massaman curry with rice. It's a sweet curry (lots of coconut milk, carrots, peanuts and chicken). After lunch, I made my way to the library to do some research... while waiting for Evelyn to finish class. Made use of the fast internet speed in school by downloading motion graphic videos (thank you ando for sharing your love for motion graphic with us)

11th Sept 2008, Thursday
For once I was early for my business lecture class~! [lol] Scott was talking about company branding (what is it? why do it? examples of good brands). He began on time and ended earlier.

Something interesting happened for flash class today. It started when I read this email we got from Bill (our lecturer). He said to arrive early and that he'll have a short announcement and then he'll take us to a secret location for lunch. Intriguing isn't it? [lol]

Sure enough, he brought the whole class (about 30 of us) to Lucky Coq and each of us got a free pizza. Tehehe~! Yea~! Free pizza as big as pizza hut's medium size pizza. He brought us there to do work... As to why we got the free pizza, I'll say it's an incentive of sorts and that the money wasn't really from his pocket.

On the way home, I was mentally preparing my dinner for the night (yea... I do that.. sometimes). When I got home, I thought of getting work done and out of the way, which was rare since I'm really lazy... About 90% done, Kah messages me and ask if I was free for dinner tonight. (Ahhh... now I know why I'm "told" to do my work -instincts-) Promptly I accepted the invite, completed my work as best I could, uploaded the work (it's a group project) and dashed away to the city (ok... I took the train..)

We had our dinner in the city. Curious as to why he was in the city (he lives 45 minutes away from the city), I learnt that his friend was the one who dragged him and he's dragging me. [lol] I suppose the funny thing would be his friend didn't know I was coming so there wasn't enough space in the car (which Kah didn't know about)... so Kah and I had dinner in the city.

We hopped into a vietnamese restaurant that sells asian food. I ordered curry laksa.. which was funny since I had fish curry yesterday and korean curry the day before that. I like curry~! Tehehe =) After dinnner, we walked to EB Games that sells platfrom games (Playstation, Xbox, Nintendo DS, etc) and computer games. Since we had nothing much to do after, we headed home.

NOTE: I realise that the post are a little backlogged but I thought I'd better post this for now. Working on filling in the gaps. Cheers~!

Week 4 of 13

Working backwards is easier on the brain... I think.. [lol] Let's see...

7th Sept 2008, Sunday
I just came back from my swimming. [grin] I smell like chlorine... [lol] It'll go away eventually. My stamina is getting better. Don't need to stop at the halfway points now.

6th Sept 2008, Saturday
I went out with the girls (Man Yee, Jaslyn & Yoong Yoong)

We waited at Flinders at 11am... Would say that I normally don't go out on my saturdays and rather that I spend it chatting with friends and other random things. Hehe~!
Anyway, we met up to eat lunch and jalan-jalan as Yoong-Yoong would say... We saw a demonstration along ermmm... Collins St? I can't remember... XD
This would be my 2nd demonstration I've seen while I'm here. This one is about abortion..
The first one I saw was about some chinese prison torture thingy? ~__~ I fear that I don't really remember the details. It's all friendly and stuff. So no worries.
We went to this chinese shop and their menu was totally complicated... At least it required extra brain power to figure out just what and how the menu set worked... I ordered curry chicken with rice and Hong Kong coffee. I liked the coffee... the curry... I could have cooked better myself...
After lunch, we were deciding just where to go... Either we watched a movie or go to boxhill. We opted movie. We bought tickets for the 5pm Mamma Mia movie but we had time to spare. We were walking through to QV (Queen Victoria) and there was a spring fashion show.
It's spring now in Melbourne and it's getting nice and colourful everywhere. I guess after the fashion show, we were inspired to do some fashion window shopping as well. As much as I like to imagine which clothes would suit who, I don't like to shop for myself. [shrugs]
After visiting many different shops, we took a break and sat down at Max Brenner for some chocolate.
I ordered a chocolat dark chocolate orange drink. It came in a hug mug. Hehe~!
The others ordered a sucko each. It comes like this [points to the photo above]
Man Yee had milk chocolate version.
Jaslyn had dark chocolate one since she doesn't fancy milk too much...
And Yoong Yoong got milk chocolate as well...
The others can play and stir to pass the time... but mine is just a drink. So I had to pace myself so that we more or less finish at the same time. XD That proved a little hard to do since my drink was lovely...
After our little drink, we made our way up to the cinema to watch Mamma Mia. I love the movie. I knew how to sing most of the songs. [grin]

5th Sept 2008, Friday
I missed going to my group's meeting at 12pm. Sorry sorry sorry. But I don't think I missed much... I made my way to the meeting place, just to escort them back to class. [grin]

Class hasn't started just yet. Saw Shaun sitting in the corner with some character sketches, munching on a carrot and there was a celery piece in hand too (if i'm not mistaken). He thanked me for the jelly I gave. The funny thing would be he asked if it was kuih lapis to which I amusingly shaked my head. He then asked if it was poisoned to which I assured him I had other guinea pigs (myself) for that.

Class went on as usual... I went home and Saran invited me to see what the new game "Spore" was like. I was intrigued since it was by the creators of Sims and I like Sims.

It was much later than day that I realised I had left my pendrive at school... >__< (I do hope it's still there... nothing important in it and I do do constant backup of the files in the pendrive but still...)

4th Sept 2008, Thursday

I woke up with the bland feeling of just not going to school... but I knew if I succumbed to that feeling, what's to stop me from doing it again and again. I managed to get to my morning Business lecture class on time (of sorts) [grin] After that, I went to flash class... there wasn't any actionscript class today but discussion of games.. Our homework was to play games and suggest good ones.. I stayed back and sorted my stuff but instead of doing "work" work, I played the few games that they recommended. [sigh]

3rd Sept 2008, Wednesday

I was early for Shane's class. [grin] What would be funny to note would be normally our morning class is packed... but this day there were only the 8 of us. Small class means faster we can go home. Teehehe~! Anyway I had brought some of the jelly I made on tuesday, two boxes to be precise. I passed one box to Jaslyn to share with Man Yee. That left one more box which I decided to pass to the lecturers to share. Was my luck that I met Steve on the stairs. [grin] The poor dear didn't like jelly but I asked him to share with the others anyway. [lol]

2nd Sept 2008, Tuesday

The pandan leaves I bought from boxhill was getting dry. I had made chicken rice with pandan leaves on sunday and had kept the rest of the pandan leaves for jelly. Rather easily, I made some jellies with it in about 40 minutes. I used 4 ice-trays and one container in all. The only work that I had to do was cutting the canned lychee into smaller pieces while watching over the boilling jelly mixture. I didn't have a recipe but I did help my mum make jellies before. I had enough time to make the jellies and then head to school. XD Nothing unusual in class..

1st Sept 2008, Monday

My god~! It's already September. [sings the September song] Had to do a 5 minute pitch for business class. ~__~ I knew I could do better but I hope Dion didn't catch my gitters as I tried to control them. [shrugs] I hope I did better than I think I did. He'll let us know how we did in our pitch next week...

That's about it for this week... [grin] Cheers~!

Fun Wednesday

Teehehe.. I'll just grab this from my reply to Kimmy.

"random; today was a fun day. ^_^ i was up and out earlier since Shane wanted us to be punctual or get out. anyway, I was travelling on the train from glenferrie to richmond. I chose to stand and from where I stood, I could see a very sweet family (dad, son and precious daughter). The sweet little girl was so cute~! so when I caught her looking at me while her dad and brother weren't looking, I pulled faces. [lol] not scary ones but amusing ones (well at least it was amusing to the lil girl). You should have seen the lil girl's eyes light up at finding at interesting speciment to look at (aka me). The little girl looked intently at me and giggled once in a while.

but whenever her dad turned to look at the direction her precious daughter was looking, I would turn away and minded my own business (looking out the window or the floor). I played with her a few times and I guessed after the third time her father looked my way, I had to stop the little game we were playing. I realise I like kids but I don't know how to handle babies. XD oh well.

random 2; I had made jelly yesterday. I bought pandan leaves on sunday to make chicken rice and the rest to make jelly. But on tuesday morning, I realised that the pandan leaves were drying up (it's the weather and the heater in my room) {yea.. i had put the pandan leaves in my room. I love the smell of it} So anyway, I made the jelly just before I went to school (about 40 minutes to prepare) The only thing I needed to do was boil the pandan leaves, sugar and water and cut the lychees into small pieces to put into the ice trays (i used 3) and container (for one big jelly). that's a lot...

I shared 2 trays with hanna, isabelle, yoong yoong and evelyn. I gave one tray to Saran as he called me for help... he didn't eat dinner and was hurt. So I brought him one tray of jelly and gave him my leftover of green curry and chicken rice. [shrugs] a friend in need is a friend indeed. anyway, I gave half a container to jaslyn and man yee. The other half of the container I passed to Steve to share with the rest. poor steve told me that he didn't like jelly (which was ok by me, since eugene also didn't like jelly. so I knew that some guys don't like sweet stuff) I have no idea how the rest would like or not... or if my jelly would end up in the dustbin. [shrugs] sharing is caring and I don't mind. "

Anyway, class today was really funny. Normally the morning session is packed to the point that I had to sit on the floor last week. So Shane had sent an email telling those who could go to the afternoon session, they should. So today's class had left Shane with only 8 students. I think it was also because he was using another classroom... [shrugs]

After class, I went to have Thai lunch with Jiew. I enjoyed lunch and Jiew had let me play with his new iphone. I found that I was difficult to type with my fat fingers... XD but I enjoyed the little game (that maze game where you tilt the phone to move the metal ball). [grin] Thanks Jiew for letting me handle your iphone.

I walked Jiew back to college and met Annie. I missed seeing Annie. She's a nice girl. [grin] Was talking to her when I saw Shane walking past with his sunglasses to which I commented that he looked cool with the shades on (which is true). he then said "I may look cool but i'm not cool" and I promptly reply "ah, you're so humble about it" and he left. Annie thought he was a friend of mine and when I told her that he was my lecturer, she was shocked the way I interact with him.

I mean, yea.. he's a lecturer.. and I do respect him but I don't think the way I interact with him was disrespectful or anything.. teachers, lecturers and tutors are all humans anyway.. [shrugs]

Came home and crashed on my bed... was very tired. After my nap, I ate my dinner and watched mr TV (australian idol and so you think you can dance). Fun day but no work done.. I'm spelt doom upon myself. hahah.. Hope you enjoyed reading. Cheers~!