of such essence

* selflessness in the workplace? *

2011-11-15T20:31:00.000+08:00

the dilemma:
(a) when your boss asks you whether it's okay if he allocates part of your contracted work days to another staff member.
(b) you want to work those hours because it's good for you, your experience and your bank.
(c) but then you find out that he's asking because it turns out that someone else's contract is up and they are soon to be jobless.

what do you say?
what's the answer?
is there a right answer?
could i just say no?
is it selfish to say no?
am i meant to do unto others as i would want to have done to me?

i suppose most of all i wonder - is there a right answer to this at all?

spring and flowers

2011-11-03T21:27:00.001+08:00

hello september, hello spring!

well the past few months certainly were eventful!

* a whole bunch of sydney friends came to perth with us to visit
* celebrated rach's birthday
* spent some times with my girls who i miss terribly
* took funny photos with family
* i quit one of my jobs
* celebrated my birthday and got surprised a bazillion times
* we took a drive down to wollongong and then got caught in the fog
* ended up receiving more bunches of flowers in 3 days than i have my entire life
* roadtripped and saw cows, waterfalls and caves (amazing!)
* then i got sick and finally took a couple of days off work

bundles of fun ay! :)

and then we say... bye september. oh. and october too.

* seoul officially ticked off the list! *

2011-08-23T20:14:00.001+08:00

officially breaking the silence with updates of photos from my recent holiday to seoul, south korea!

myeongdong: also known as shopping central for all of the big brands.
deoksugung: the first palace we hit up. it's actually smack in the middle of seoul cbd. so amazing how the old and new are melded together.

mum and i: first meal in seoul!
dumplings: AU$3.50 for a basket of 8 dumplings! amazing.

all meals AU$5: everywhere we ate, even if we pigged out, the meal for 3 of us only cost $25 or less!
crazy vending machines:listerine anyone? or how bout a toothbrush and toothpaste?

national war museum: by far the most interesting museum i've been to in a while!
lotteria: korea's version of maccas

dongdaemun train station: as it turns out, homelessness is universal. :(
laderach: ask rach about people watching here. ;)

DMZ:we took a tour to see the dmz and the underground infiltration tunnels. the history to be told is mind blowing. also, now we can say that we were 150m away form the north korean border while being 400m underground!
photo after the trek back up from the tunnel (400m at a 45 degree incline): let's just say that i wanted to give up about 10% in. but then there were all these old people doing it. let's just say ewww. coz it was soooo hot and stuffy down there.

seoul city tour bus: they had these electronic guides on the back of each seat on the bus, giving commentary as we went past each stop. have i ever mentioned that i love hop-on-hop-off bus tours? :)
men in uniform: these guys were accompanying what looked like an important american dignitary. but then they were nice enough to pose for a photo. side note: the american army uniform is so much better than its australian counterpart.
no photo line: at the dora observatory. on a clear day, you can see across the north korean border.

rach and i: one of many photos of us from the trip. :)
map of the seoul city tour bus: we did so much that day, my feet were pretty much dead by the end of the day.
nanta: a really funny non-verbal cooking show performance.

all in all, it was 5 days of exploration, adventure and bonding.

the only thing which i didn't get to document with photographic evidence is the SHOPPING. oh my goodness the shopping. floors and floors and floors of nice and amazingly cheap clothes, accessories, bags, scarves, shoes... the list goes on.

=) would i go back again? yeah. totally!

* a new to do list :) *

2011-06-22T16:39:00.002+08:00

come the end of semester means "helloooooooo" to list making season again! yay! :)

so here's the grand plan. funnily enough, i've only got 2 weeks left to get it all done!

* print more photos for my wall-collage thing
* sew some cushions (yay! fabric shopping!!)
* learn songs for andrew & gek's wedding
* buy a dress for said wedding
* go to taronga zoo (weather permitting)
* make bossam
* take a trip out of sydney somewhere
* play a bit of sc2
* bake something that doesn't come in a box
* finish watching blue bloods

and last but not least:
* spend time with special people who i really do need to spend time with. :)

there's also heaps of work-related stuff that will need to be done. there's so many changes at the ombo at the moment, heaps of people movement. and at the other office it's end of financial year, so howdy to all the stress that comes packaged with that. and then there's lawsoc, which i've totally been ignoring due to a total lack of time over the last few weeks! so i really do need to catch up!

my fingers are tightly crossed to getting all this done before i leave... in 15 days!

despite the work to do list... my sentiments are still along the lines of: yippeeeeeeee!! :)

* time for another a-z =) *

2011-06-15T23:58:00.001+08:00

* admin law is made way more difficult than it needs to be
* buses hurt my ears when they drive past a street corner
* carrots stay good in the fridge for way too long
* driving is actually therapeutic
* exams used to be fun, what happened to that
* fridays are unfortunately ruined, forever
* golf balls hurt when you get hit by them
* hello kitty definitely should have stayed in the 90s
* icecream is better in winter
* junk should be ditched not hoarded
* kind people are hard to come by these days
* love goes both ways
* mirrors don't always tell the truth
* noise always travels further than you think
* octopus tastes good when cooked by korean people
* pride reminds me of a balloon
* quarreling gets loud when it comes from a house next door
* reaping benefits always requires patience
* strepsils got cheap and only have 16 in a box now
* trust is good
* uniformity hinders creativity
* vegemite is a godsend
* xeroxing should be an official noun
* zagat should totally come to australia

* a little patch of not much *

2011-06-15T23:27:00.001+08:00

two posts ago it was one month til the end of semester 1. now, it's four days. i've just come off from 6 hours of intense study, so admittedly, my thoughts are a little bit jumbled in all things not administrative law.

five minutes ago, i felt an overwhelming need to ramble/vent. so with a lack of people to ramble to at 1:22AM on a wednesday/thursday night/morning, here we are. =)

i went to uni today for a revision class and ended up bumping into heaps of JDers that i started out with last year. the consensus of reactions were along the lines of "phwoah! where've YOU been?" as it seems, i have disappeared.

it certainly does feel like that happens to me a lot. i'm so accustomed to this kind of reaction from people that i think i have a habit of 'disappearing' from all kinds of things. right now, i'm thinking this could possibly be a shadow or consequence (either works) of my inability to commit to pretty much anything in general.

at different points in times, i've looked back and realized that i remember being a part of something, but now, as it stands, i'm somehow not anymore. or at least, even if i am still physically present in said thing/group/activity, i still feel like i'm not. i guess this on the whole could be construed as completely normal, but the point that i distinguish in my mind is the fact that i can never remember the exact point in time that i stopped feeling like i was a part of it.

most of the time, like all my other phases, it's entirely self-inflicted. i'm pretty sure i'm the one who backs off or has a change of mind or just gets busy with other things. but this as a constant can't be a good thing... can it?

it's something that i've been thinking a lot about lately, but just haven't been sure of where to place it. i always wonder how it affects the people around me.

colour me confused. just a little anyway.

i think i'll conclude by saying that i think i may need another aquarium day. =D

* ouch *

2011-05-17T21:57:00.000+08:00

two weeks ago, i was at maroubra beach, having an awesome time playing gridiron catch. now i think about it, it seems that i've spent a lot of time this year this way. and you know what? it's always good: peaceful, challenging at times, and usually accompanied by great company and conversation. what's not to like, right? but then, on this day, i reached out to catch a pass, made contact with the ball, but missed.

so this leads me to reveal... did you know: i didn't know that a 'fracture' meant a bone was broken until like, 2 years ago?

but now, in addition to knowing what it means, i now officially have the pleasure of know what it feels like.

check out my awesome bruises:

i suppose the funniest part to the story is that i didn't realize that my finger was broken after it happened. so as we had friends over for dinner and a guitar hero session, we spent the next 2-3 hours jamming. the next morning though... my finger wasn't looking so pretty.

but i must say, i wore those bruises proudly. ;)

* my one month catch up! *

2011-05-16T14:54:00.003+08:00

the last month has been an absolute blurrrrr! so much has happened since my last post. things are in a great place right now. one month left til the end of semester 1 and only six weeks away from another asia holiday!

but in the crazy events of the past month, the only way i could think to describe it all was by posting these photos:

the royal easter show 2011: half a day at work, awesome weather, heaps of rides and great company.

SMAC CAMP: five days of learning, bonding, and making new friends. =) point walstoncroft was amazingly beautiful.

sunny weekend day trips to brooklyn and wollongong.

almost forgetting mother's day

celebrating shell's bday: sugary goodness from adriano zumbos, over-ordering at korean, plus 2 full hours of k.

=)

things are good.

* my down day *

2011-04-12T21:39:00.000+08:00

last week, i woke up one morning and decided that i was going to have a down day.

this down day turned out to be an incredibly awesome idea. productively, it ended up including a trip to sydney aquarium - a place i've been wanting to go since i moved here last year!

best part? four letters: L-E-G-O. i'm such a kid. haha.

check it out:

did you know mr. shark weighs 680kgs? that's AMAZING! there's also a 7m model of jaws which is apparently the largest shark display in the world. also, AMAZING.

i decided afterwards that i really should have bought an annual pass. there's two reasons
(1) you get issued a plastic card called a 'merlin adventure pass'. and it looks AWESOME! :)
(2) this second reason is probably a tad bit more valid. it's because of the bench which is positioned right in front of this:

at that point, i felt almost pensive. :)

all in all - it was a really great down day.

* to sing like that *

2011-04-10T14:12:00.000+08:00

makes you smile hey.

* the procrastinating taste test *

2011-04-08T23:05:00.000+08:00

did you ever wonder who were better? eagle boys? or dominos?

well i've ALWAYS wondered this question!

so, one night this week, i decided it was time to put it to the test.

observations:
dominos: pizzas are slightly smaller, but have better deep pan bases/dough. their pizzas are also topped off with way more cheese and somehow turn out to be much saltier (though i realize now that that's probably the bacon talking).

eagle boys: much more generous with the toppings (especially veggies), but bases aren't as nice (granted, we tried their mid-base, not deep pan). also, they give you toppings right to the edge, without charging a surcharge. the downside though is that they took heaps longer.

results:
i'm sad to say, but i think dominos still wins in my books. they were faster and tastier. the size doesn't really bother me coz i'd never be able to finish a whole pizza on my own anyway. so, maybe in reality they're actually sizist and work to favour little people. :)

* day of rest *

2011-03-22T18:26:00.000+08:00

one day of no uni. no work. no errands.

friday night lights made it all that much better.

* discontinued use will result in death *

2011-03-20T20:07:00.000+08:00

* penny for my thoughts *

2011-03-20T20:00:00.001+08:00

* a bad day is merely a perception
* ballons make awesome gifts, especially when filled with helium
* clarantyne works miracles
* dealing with busyness is a blessing
* every thought that is thought need not be spoken
* frozen grapes are the best kind of accident
* God is in control of all things
* havaianas deliver on their non-slip promises
* i think i'm an accident-causer
* jumping in rain puddles might someday be fun
* kelly pool rocks
* living through this year's committment theme is hard
* monopoly deal is so 2 years ago
* not being the best judge of character is tricky
* old friendships take effort to keep
* playing keys for church while tired isn't a bright idea
* qi is actually a word
* rest is for the weak
* silliness is something everyone should be entitled to
* trusting people is probably my biggest vulnerability
* understanding others can be a challenge
* veal is young beef
* weather that's not sunny kinda sucks
* x-ray surgery's are a rare find in sydney
* yellow in my mind equates happiness
* z words are unbelievably hard to make on word with friends

* challenges *

2011-03-15T19:57:00.000+08:00

today was the first day that i didn't like my new job.

maybe it's because there were two people out sick and there were four of us doing a six-person team's job, it just felt super hectic. but for whatever reason in this change of season, people today were coming from such angry places!

i left the office today feeling emotionally abused. the feeling i got was that i had spent my 7 hours at work trying so hard to prove to myself that i'm made for this and that i CAN actually do this. that's what happens when you get people who call and say things like "well you're just a clerk aren't you?" or when they make threats like "well you're office is obviously powerless to do anything about it so i'm gonna have to go buy a firearm and take matters into my own hands". when faced with statements like that, today, i just found myself speechless.

i'm trying to remember that it's not my job to convince them of anything. i need to remember to detach, not to take things so personally and to keep things professional. don't let blood boil.

one bad day in a month isn't too bad a thing i suppose. more than anything, i know i just need to keep at it. at this point i'm really just praying that i don't end up feeling too emotionally worn by this because otherwise, i'm not entirely certain of how i'm going to manage everything else that's going on.

but hey, for now at least, i'm resolved to not being so damn dramatic! =p

* what to do *

2011-03-05T13:15:00.000+08:00

question for today:
how do you get around not knowing a person's name when you've known them for more than a year?

this is actually a very sincere question.

see, there's a guy in one of my classes this semester who i remember meeting at the beginning of last year. we had that one class together and even sat next to each other a couple of times. that class also involved court visits, so i randomly bumped into him at north sydney local courts, after which we went and grabbed coffee together.

the worst thing of all this, is that i, for the life of me, cannot remember his name! i don't even think we actually ever formally introduced ourselves.

it's weird because our conversations are great and i know all these random things about him and his schedule, but i still don't know his name!

here's what i've come up with so far:
(1) i could pay really close attention in the next class when the roll is called to see what name he responds to (fyi, i tried doing this last class, but it got too suss to keep watching him - coz people tend to put their hands up rather than responding verbally for some strange reason.);
(2) bring a friend along who doesn't know him and conveniently forget to introduce them, so that they'll do it themselves and therein, he'll have to give his name;
(3) ask someone else if they know (but no, because that's just weird and awkward and evidence of a mass fail on my part); or
(4) just ask him straight up.

sigh.

* the real meaning *

2011-02-28T21:23:00.000+08:00

just because i have a tendency to be dramatic, i googled 'stress' and came across an article from the victorian government's better health channel which says this:
"stress that is not managed or treated can lead to significant medical illnesses and anxiety disorders that can often result in depression."

i look at my timetable and plan for the next four months and the one thing i feel is stress.

the irony hits when i realize that for the longest time last year, this was exactly the feeling i missed and even longed for. i remember complaining about having way too much idle time, about not feeling or being productive, about not doing all that i could be doing with my time and energy.

thus it makes me wonder: why is balance such a hard thing to achieve? and why is the real meaning of my decision-making so hard to ascertain?

i think i'm known for being a stickler to extremes when it comes to work and uni, and sometimes even friends. to this extent, i wonder if i actually know where the line lives. you know, the line which tells a rational person that enough is enough, that 'no' is the right response, or even the line which points out the wise decision when it is just so crystal clear.

here's to praying that i'll be able to respect that line and that stress won't get the better of me this semester.

* just a little bit *

2011-02-23T22:48:00.000+08:00

holidays are over. i can feel it. there's four days left before classes start up again. as you would guess, i'm back in sydney, back from the trip home. and wowza. what a jam-packed last few weeks!

the two weeks in perth were fantastic. got to catch up with a lot of friends. but at the same time it was sad because there were heaps of people i didn't get a chance to see. the good thing is that a lot of those people happen to be coming over to my end of australia over the next few months, so i guess the complaints end here!

it was great to get to go down south with the girls. after an afternoon of grueling discussion and relative indecision which was largely guided by impulsiveness, we ended up hitting mandurah, bunbury, busselton, dunsborough (albeit, just a drive through), margaret river, augusta and cape leeuwin.

beautiful!

it was so great to spend a good three straight days with the girls. one thing i realized is that for real friendships, time apart does nothing. people can change, but that doesn't mean they necessarily grow apart. i don't know what i'd do without these girls.

the other thing which was totally awesome was the time i got to spend with family! we ended up hitting the shooting range, golf driving range (o.m. to the g. at the automatic system that wembley golf course has now!), hawkers' and novembar. all of which have officially made my list as 'happy places'.

going back through my photos though, it's kinda funny how we totally didn't take any whacked out funny shots! boo! normally after a hang out, my camera is usually filled with at least 100 stupid shots. this time round? no such luck!

family and friends aside, one of the greatest things about this trip was that it was filled with some pretty important and awesome 'firsts'. check it out:

(1) first time i actually walked along matilda bay
(2) first time i fired a glock and hated it
(3) first time i hit a golf ball off an automatic tee
(4) first time i went with my whole family to watch a movie at the cinemas
(5) first time i ate a burger that was fully packed with red hot brazilian chilies
(6) first time i hired a car in my own name
(7) first time i drove an 8-seater car
(8) first time i travelled further south than busselton
(9) first time i swam at a beach in over a decade
(10) first time i ever saw water so crystal blue (@hamelin bay)

all in all, it was an incredibly fulfilling trip home. the only shame is that the time went by so fast. if i'm completely honest, i already miss it. =p

just a little bit.

* sweet home *

2011-02-03T00:39:00.001+08:00

first day back in perth. and already, so much has happened!

last night was heaps fun! after landing, we ended up going out for supper with cheng, shell and lil. finally, after a whole year, the six of us back together again = good good times. it was pretty funny because we walked around northbridge for a good 20 minutes and circled the chinatown restaurant block repeatedly, until the point that a few of us absolutely refused to walk past the left-hand lane restaurants for a THIRD time, rejecting those ever so desperate hostesses. and then, even though we wanted to play pool, point 88 disappointed us on the food end, so as a lack of a better last resort, we ended up crossing the horseshoe bridge and going over to maccas in the city. and at that point, everything seemed to revert back to exactly how they were one year ago.

as i realize it, it's nights like this that make me really miss living here.

after a late night, waking up today turned out to be GREAT. there was no need to set an alarm, no dread of waking up, just sheer ease and relaxation. funny enough, i still ended up getting out of bed at 9:30AM! the morning was spent chilling with dad, chatting, catching up... the afternoon held tea fusion and pool, and tonight goes down in history, because after our mass reunion steamboat chinese new year dinner, it turned out to be the first time that the entire family has gone, as a family, to the cinemas to watch a movie together. ever. we ended up watching 'unstoppable' (hellooooooo chris pine!!) in a hope that it would be the kind of movie that dad wouldn't sleep through. and win for us, because it was a pretty damn good movie, and as it turned out, dad had lots and lots of things to recount about it after it finished!

i'm loving being back here. although i must admit, perth seems a bit quieter than normal. but hey, it's only the first day!

at this point, i'm so glad that i've got another 11 days left. =D

* patriotism *

2011-01-30T21:54:00.000+08:00

australia day 2011:

AM
- the rocks: parksong + market-style kransky hotdogs.
- a jumbo frozen coke from 7-eleven.
- seven games of pool, coming away with a 5-2 win. huzzah.
- (note: we played the next day and i lost 3-6).
- SUN.

PM
- darling harbour: boat parade.
- australians of the year ceremony, funniest speech by the senior winner.
- the australian navy band. hot stuff.
- fireworks timed to the sydney youth symphony orchestra.

it was a pretty fulfilling, albeit touristy day.

* happy days *

2011-01-30T21:23:00.000+08:00

i never cease to be amazed when so many things change in such a short amount of time. just in one day, my entire plan for this year has changed drastically. the best thing? it's EXACTLY the change i was looking for.

the past couple of weeks of my summer holiday, as you probably can tell, have been spent not doing very much at all. a couple of days in the office here, and a lot of days spent at home on the couch catching up on my beloved tv series there, plus a whole bunch of very welcome outings with friends, that's pretty much been the story of the last three weeks of my summer.

retrospectively, the rest has been good. but more than anything, it has made me appreciate the art and blessing of being busy. i think i came to this same conclusion quite a few summers back, when i first realized that i am just not the kind of person who deals with excess time very well. as it turns out, idle time + me = a very unhappy person.

the idea that the next six months are going to be pressure-packed and full-on is seriously appealing. i'm excited. i'm pumped. but moreover, i'm happy.

and you know what? being happy is really truly, an unbelievably great thing! =D

* a good day *

2011-01-22T00:35:00.001+08:00

i got to spend three hours in a bookstore today. no rush, no urgency. just pure leisurely perusal.

as usual, i came out with a shopping list:

thank goodness for bookdepository and free international shipping!

* holiday advice *

2011-01-16T20:06:00.001+08:00

after mentioning my growing case of restlessness which has arisen as a result of the absence of both full-time work and traveling this summer, i was told today:

"you need to learn the art of bludging. once you accept it, you'll be fine".

so i looked it up. according to good ol' urban dictionary:

bludging:
aimlessly lying about with no direct purpose in life.

big hrm. i don't think i'm wired right for this.

* something a little silly *

2011-01-15T22:37:00.001+08:00

spotted on the virgin atlantic website - because i only just found out earlier tonight that they fly direct to HK from sydney!

wow. how great is this offer. spend over $5000 for the flight, but it's all worth it coz virgin will give you a whopping $100 to spend once you get there.

talk about proportionate incentives...

oh. and great spelling of 'august'.

good job virgin marketing.

* new to my playlist *

2011-01-13T11:12:00.000+08:00

hello boyce avenue.

the weightlessness and the lack of rest
away from you, i'm in over my head
even when it's dark before the dawn
i will feel your grace and carry on
and with every breath of me, you'll be the only light i see

random fact: the eldest brother, daniel, went to harvard law school, but loved music and his brothers so much that after graduating, he gave up a career in law, moved back to florida, and committed to making music.

* words sent on upwards *

2011-01-12T22:51:00.001+08:00

the rhymes you learn as kids are often the ones that mean the most:

i know not by what methods rare,
but this i know, God answers prayers.
i know that He has given His Word,
which tells me prayer is always heard,
and will be answered, soon or late,
and so i pray and calmly wait.
i know not if the blessing sought
will come in just the way i thought;
but leave my prayers with Him alone,
whose will is wiser than my own,
assured that He will grant my quest,
or send some answer far more blest.

-eliza m hickok. 1933-

note to self: pray first. plan later.

* how some things happen *

2011-01-12T20:10:00.000+08:00

somehow it feels that this week has been the bearer of bad news.

- flooding in queensland.
- bushfires in wa.
- deaths in the family of close loved ones.

my fingers are tightly crossed that next week brings happier tales.

* impulse travelling *

2011-01-11T14:50:00.001+08:00

being a perth girl, while i was growing up, going to melbourne was considered to be a "big" trip. it was pretty much equivalent to making an overseas trip to singapore/KL, seeing that the flight took the same amount of time and it was in the ballpark of the same cost for flights.

but helloooo budget airlines.

granted, tiger is not and never will be my first choice, but check this out:

so now the question right now really is... should i be impulsive or not? =p

* repeat *

2011-01-10T11:52:00.003+08:00

i'm hooked.

and also amused because the last time i was this into a chinese song, i think i was still in high school.

* progress *

2011-01-05T23:53:00.000+08:00

back in november, i optimistically posted my agenda for the summer.

here's my progress.
(1) create an art piece for the wall(s) in my room.
~~(2) fix my laptop keyboard.~~
~~(3) take at least three road trips far out of sydney.~~
(4) play sport of some kind. preferably tennis. i could also settle for shooting hoops.
(5) write a song/finish my piano composition.
(6) read a bunch of new books. let's say, at least five.
~~(7) get back to the old me and spend more time in the kitchen.~~
(8) finish the sc2 campaign.
~~(9) look into buying a sewing machine so i can start sewing again.~~
(10) walk across the ~~harbour bridge~~ and anzac bridge.
(11) go to taronga zoo.
(12) do 20 new restaurants. first on the list, dim sum at iron chef in cabramatta.
~~(13) do summer school (sad face).~~: CANCELLED
(14) start learning a language.
(15) read the NT from start to finish.
(16) make several trans-continental phone calls to a few special people.
(17) memorize psalm 119.
~~(18) fish.~~ multiple times.
(19) learn how to use photoshop properly.
~~(20) jump on a plane and go someplace random. (note: syd-auckland is only $139!!)~~

good thing there's still 6 weeks of break left. *big smile*

* 2011 *

2011-01-03T14:32:00.001+08:00

the new year is probably the time to start writing about new promises, new thoughts, new decisions and all other pledges that accompany the idea of a new years resolution package.

for me, this new year is going to be about one word: commitment.
- commitment to family.
- commitment to work.
- commitment to friends.
- commitment to study.
- commitment to discipline.

it's probably a tough ask, but as i was sitting on a beach at dawn on new years day, the beauty of this view at 5:27am helped me to realise that my fears about this year are probably unwarranted.

after processing all those thoughts, it was quite uncanny when i came across this yesterday, in an old journal of mine - my new years resolution for 2004:

"i'm going to be committed this year. i won't stray. i'm going to live what i believe. i'm going to stand firm. i'm going to trust."

seven years later, i'm realizing that it's funny how some things are so cyclical.

* three snaps of the week *

2010-12-24T22:18:00.003+08:00

SNAP #1
oh maccas.

just a few days ago, we were at mascot maccas, tiding away the time for raph to catch his flight back to perth. the ordering system at this maccas is all done by self serve machines. upon ordering, a 'change recipe' button came up after selecting my meal, so i decided to be a bit adventurous.

if you ever wondered what a quarter pounder with extra extra pickles and lettuce looked like, wonder no further:

awesome huh? let me just say... it was SO tasty! however. while we were thoroughly impressed with the food at this maccas, we were seriously shocked by the sign we saw on the way out:

SNAP #2
jumping on the justin north food fan bandwagon, while raph was in town, the three of us went and tried his new joint, charlie & co, in the pitt st westfield level 5 food court. three realisations from this:

(1) this place is far too classy (and secluded) to even be considered a food court joint
(2) this place somehow makes it okay for adults to eat burgers without the stereotypical assignations of being unhealthy or junky.
(3) this place officially serves fries that are quite literally to die for (in the sense that they taste SO good that you risk wanting to eat too much of it that you could potentially suffer some sort of consequence).

charlie & co's parmesan and truffle fries:

my mouth is watering already.

SNAP #3
an absolutely priceless fail.

spotted in eastwood: (a.k.a. asiatown). i wonder.... why am i not surprised.

little seasonal thoughts

2010-12-24T22:01:00.000+08:00

i was thinking today... christmas this year doesn't really feel like christmas. maybe it's the lack of involvement and busyness in church activities. or maybe it's the fact that we're 3000kms away from family and friends.

i'm inclined to think that this isn't such a horrible thing.

as rach and i were talking today, i found myself saying that for now, i couldn't imagine living anywhere else. and in terms of things that have been kept at a constant, it's funny how even though we pretty much live in the city, we seem to have maintained our trait of driving heaps far to get and do things. for example, the church we go to is 32kms out of the city. and as a follow up example, today, when we needed to do our grocery shopping, we chose to drive out to eastwood, which is still a good 20km away. what can i say. i love my burbs.

oh! we finally came to a decision to buy a christmas tree. but. we set ourselves up for disappointment because we got to the store only to find that they were sold out of all trees that would've fit in our place. the only ones the had left were 1.82m giants. =( that's just not cool.

on a slight tangent, another thing i realize is that i really miss carolling at christmastime. i think that's another BIG thing that's been missing this year. i'm so used to the routine of carolling at old age nursing homes or having a sing-off at church. my hopes are though, that the epic christmas mix list in the car will take care of that particular inkling.

in any case, i think this christmas marks a new type of christmas. and really. who ever said change was a bad thing? =p

* catch ups *

2010-12-09T23:01:00.000+08:00

another great thing about holidays and summer is the golden opportunities to catch up with people.

perth: seeing the chubs.
these girls are the bestest friends anyone could wish for. i heart them.
i am however, bummed, because i didn't get a good shot with lass there too. =( she's too hardworking and decided to go back to work!

but really. friends don't get greater than this.

on the way to singapore, i spent the whole of my one day layover with them. we did our usual lunching thing at matsuri (yayy) and then hit karrinyup (2nd yayy). then when i swung back through perth on the way home to sydney, they were so sweet - they got up at an INSANE hour in the morning to come over to my place to have breakfast, right before having to rush to work and to the airport.

on my perth-day, there we were, sitting in the middle of karrinyup shopping centre, with not much to do, but to kill time while waiting for my jeans to be altered. every time i go back to perth, it seems that the trend for our hangouts always ends up at cafes or restaurants which give you paper and crayons to mess around with while waiting for your food/drinks. this day was no exception. after playing hangman (our next trend), the girls started drawing randomly - and they ended up drawing pictures for me... to keep! the afternoon didn't end until i nicely folded each of their photos and put them in my wallet. sweetness.

nadia's [2nd] creation... lots of laughs associated with this one, only because the first one didn't quite "make the cut" to be folded into my wallet. =p but i won't be mean and put the picture of that one up. she did however, earn a new nickname because of it. =D

jas and trish's.

we love crayons.

singapore.
it was great to get a chance to catch up with carolyn, even though it was only for one short hour! after not having seen each other for years and years, it was a great fun-packed hour. and it's decided! exchange reunion is officially not happening in africa. thank goodness!! but we now have decided on a new place: ALASKA!

i am superbly excited. =D

* i love my family *

2010-12-07T03:26:00.000+08:00

a great part of this trip to singapore has been the family time. of course, the occasion itself called for it, but even after the funeral, we've managed to meet up with cousins/other family pretty much every day.

here's what we've done in the last three days:
- watched harry potter 7
- bowled at marina square @ 1am
- had breakfast at dempsey road CA*california plus breakfast dessert at ben & jerry's
- bowled again: 5 games at orchid country club: finished at 3am
- late night supper @ thomson prata until 4:30am
- family potluck dinner with the aunties/uncles
- impulsively bought finger food from the taka food forum and went to sit on random benches for dinner on the 4th floor at takashimaya (how high school of us!)
- played 3 hours of pool at lucky plaza (note: there's a NEW kPool place that took over mambo billards! this brought back sooo many *childhood* memories, back to when we used to play at mambo every day of our holiday in singapore!!)
- supper @ bencoolen st prata until 2:30am

do you see the trends? but how awesome is it that even though they have to work, they're still keen to wanna max our hang out time while we're still here! i love these guys.

i think this is the first non-official-event photo we've taken together. like. ever. BUT. it's such a shame that quite a few of us are missing. =(

family potluck night! my mouth is already watering for more roasted cackle pork!!
the best and crazy thing about coming back to singapore is that everything is SO much cheaper! i mean, bowling is like SGD$3-$4 per game? and. pool was SGD$5.80 per hour!! that's insane! back in sydney, one game on a normal day is AUD$14.90! and POOL. it's AUD$16 an hour!! nutters!

for the first time, i think there's an ever so slight chance that i might miss singapore. gosh. who would've thunk it?

* remembering *

2010-12-06T10:24:00.002+08:00

in saddening news, my grandma passed away last week in singapore.
even though it wasn't unexpected and didn't come as a big shock or surprise, i suppose it's still a sad thing to have happen.

as soon as we heard, we got right onto booking flights in order to make sure that we got here in time for the final night of the wake/vigil service and then for the funeral.

at the vigil service on thursday night, one of my grand-uncles got up and gave an amazing eulogy. it was packed full of anecdotes and stories and recounts of what my grandma had done for her younger siblings. he mentioned three key things:
(1) respect, (2) commitment, and (3) forgiveness. he had so many stories to tell about how my grandma would make so many sacrifices in order to make sure that her
younger siblings were all okay and taken care of.

with the number of people who showed up over the three nights of the wake (apparently the second night had 300 people!), it was so clear that she meant so much to so many people. she was really the matriarch of the family. she was the glue. she taught us all how important it was to be close with family. i think she's the only reason why all our extended family are so close.

after having gone to a number of funerals in australia over the past couple of years, coming back over to singapore for a funeral made me realize just how different things can be in a different culture. the things i realized:

[one] the wake goes over multiple nights (usually three), not just one. furthermore, it's usually held at the bottom floor of a HDB flat, out in the open. this is remarkably different to a one night/day service type thing where it's held at a chapel or a church or a funeral parlour.

[two] the family gets put on a rotating roster. usually, the young ones take the overnight watch and sleep during the day, while the "older" generation gets day duty. i think this would be because during the day, it's more likely to be their generation's friends who come to pay their respects.

[three] rather than wearing all black as they do in australia, tradition says that the mourning family needs to wear white tops and black pants/bottoms. it's a pretty strict dress code too. usually, someone will go to giordano/bossini/hang ten and mass buy white polo shirts for everyone. i suppose it's a good way of distinguishing who's family and who's not.

[four] at the cemetery, usually, when it comes time to pay our last respects, people are meant to grab a handful of sand/soil and sprinkle that on top of the casket and/or throw in a flower. i kid you not when i tell you that there was a tractor, mounding the clay soil into the burial plot right in front of us. this was nuts!! to me, it was so wrong on so many levels. it just means that the last thing i remember of the casket is it being dumped by a mean looking and disturbingly loud tractor! what's worse, can you believe that they started the tractor right in the middle of the final prayer? i sigh and shake my head.

[five] food. there's always food. people bring food. the family buys food for meals during the day. and the family also caters food each night for after the vigil service. drinks-wise, there's always a huge refrigerator that's stocked with carton drinks (bring on the ice lemon tea, chrysanthemum and lychee drinks!) oh. and there's water too - which come in funky sealed plastic containers which you need skinny-bubble-tea-looking straws to pop the top in order to drink it.

tangentially referring to the the topic of food though: i landed in singapore at 6am on thursday. by 1pm, i had knocked off three staples on my 'must-eat-when-in-singapore' list: chicken curry puff (old chang kee style - i pretty much OMGed coz someone bought an entire box full of them!!), roti prata - despite the confusion and weird looks, my cousin managed to score me a cheese onion prata. finally, cha kuey teow was somehow provided too. even better, by 3pm the next day, hainanese chicken rice was also taken care of. now that's called efficiency and an awesome family!!

but more on topic. indeed, the turn of events were sad. but it wasn't entirely devastating. i did tear when my uncles/aunties were crying, but i really did (and still do) feel at peace. i see grandma's passing as a good thing. no more suffering!

i guess i'm just really grateful and thankful. on so many levels.

waiting for news

2010-11-30T07:20:00.000+08:00

patience is a virtue. or so they say.

but have you ever had that feeling when you're waiting for something which you know is inevitable... but it's just so uncertain that you're not sure what to do?

well. that's happening right now. and i'm at a loss. i don't know if i should be making tonnes of contingency plans or if i should just be hoping for the best!

but if hoping for the best means setting myself up to get sad. then sigh. i don't know if i want to do sad.

oh well.

just a closer walk

2010-11-26T19:10:00.000+08:00

i was walking to work this morning, and i heard someone humming the very last line. that was all it took to get this ringing in my head. all day long.

just a closer walk
just a closer walk with Thee,
grant it, Jesus, is my plea,
daily walking close to Thee,
let it be, dear Lord, let it be.

i am weak, but Thou art strong;
Jesus, keep me from all wrong;
i’ll be satisfied as long
as I walk, let me walk close to Thee.

through this world of toil and snares,
if I falter, Lord, who cares?
who with me my burden shares?
none but Thee, dear Lord, none but Thee.

i think i love the country version more so than the "normal" one.
there's just something about it that makes me feel totally... good. =)

if you ever loved somebody, put your hands up

2010-11-25T20:16:00.000+08:00

SO much better than nelly's original!! kurt schneider and sam tsui: you guys need to start your own label already.

i'm not sure how that makes me feel

2010-11-23T22:53:00.000+08:00

so i know of a couple of girls from my high school who had kids (and later got married) when we were around 18/19. at the time, i think i shrugged it off thinking that they were the anomalies. the odd ones. the one in a millions.

but there's something strangely different when you find out that a friend, someone you actually knew, hung out with and shared life moments with, who is born in the same calendar year (albeit being all but a few months younger), just got engaged to be married. to a good guy. a great guy.

it's really strange when i think that this friend was part of the same group of girls with whom talks over brunches just a year ago, would be centred around boys and finding the right kind of guy that God planned for us to be with.

she's found it. and don't get me wrong - i'm superbly happy for them both!

yet, reflecting on the news, i gotta admit. it's a little scary... isn't it? it means that the 88 babies have officially graduated into the "marriable-age-range". and that in itself, really really freaks me out!

a message to time: please slow down. i can't keep up! =p

N.K.O.T.B.S.B

2010-11-23T17:33:00.002+08:00

* back to lists *

2010-11-15T20:45:00.003+08:00

so those of you who knew me in high school and throughout the most part of my undergrad would remember that i was really big into lists. i had lists for everything: pro-con lists. to do lists. travel lists. prayer lists. restaurant lists. study schedule lists. book lists. the list goes on. [haah].

now, with all my 'free'-not-occupied-by-study time, i'm now officially back to list making.

i'll share with you my optimistic agenda for the next four months:
(1) create an art piece for the wall(s) in my room.
(2) fix my laptop keyboard.
(3) take at least three road trips far out of sydney.
(4) play sport of some kind. preferably tennis. i could also settle for shooting hoops.
(5) write a song/finish my piano composition.
(6) read a bunch of new books. let's say, at least five.
(7) get back to the old me and spend more time in the kitchen.
(8) finish the sc2 campaign.
(9) look into buying a sewing machine so i can start sewing again.
(10) walk across the harbour bridge and anzac bridge.
(11) go to taronga zoo.
(12) do 20 new restaurants. first on the list, dim sum at iron chef in cabramatta.
(13) do summer school (sad face).
(14) start learning a language.
(15) read the NT from start to finish.
(16) make several trans-continental phone calls to a few special people.
(17) memorize psalm 119.
(18) fish. multiple times.
(19) learn how to use photoshop properly.
(20) jump on a plane and go someplace random. (note: syd-auckland is only $139!!)

that looks like a potentially fulfilling four months hey. =p

i'm excited.

* asian-style old spice *

2010-11-15T20:27:00.000+08:00

five random things that make me...

2010-11-07T23:18:00.000+08:00

(1) WONDER... 'really.....?' =.= coz that TOTALLY defeats the purpose of cleaning the screen in the first place!

(2) AMAZED... that people would still pay $5.99 for a pack of these when a DVD which stores like 40 times the amount of data is a quarter of the price. or less.

(3) SHAKE MY HEAD... and then laugh while saying, "don't be so cheap!! just go buy a laser printer already!".

(4) READ... and then read again coz i couldn't tell what it meant the first time.

(5) REMEMBER... that i'm living in sydney. and that I actually really like it here.

helloooooo backstreet boys.

2010-11-05T09:55:00.000+08:00

hahahahhaha.

yesterday was a special day: ALL FIVE of the BSBs got back together to perform on oprah's "teen idol" episode.

oh the 90s. notice how oprah knows all the lyrics too?

sometimes it's funny when...

2010-11-04T13:30:00.002+08:00

a. the weeks go by really fast, yet there's still one thing which just sticks on your mind
b. you know you need something, but you're not sure what to do about it
c. your favorite pair of shoes are the ones that actually hurt
d. people think that you're one thing, but you can't help but feel like another
e. you think you're sure of something, but then uncertainty encapsulates everything else
f. you read the blog of a 30 yr old who still abbreviates/nickifies their partner's name
g. the one thing which seems to matter the most, just doesn't seem to matter at all
h. you know you're loved, but sometimes you've never felt more empty
i. the thought of ageing is more frightful than dying
j. you see something you want, but know you shouldn't, but you do anyway
k. you're misunderstood, and there's nothing you can do about it
l. you almost forget what letter comes after 'k'
m. everyone predicts your decision is bad, but you don't listen
n. you can feel what people think through the look in their eyes
o. the one person you want to talk to is the one person you can't
p. you overcome the awkwardness of a new friendship, and all of a sudden things are cherry
q. you have enough money that you don't know what to do with it
r. you just want someone to stop and listen, but no one seems up for the job
s. a book that's written for 5 year olds still makes you laugh
t. you see someone who you haven't seen for years, and they're still exactly the same
u. you procrastinate to the point that guilt sets in
v. you wait for 1.5 hours for a 30 minute class
w. waking up the next morning makes all the difference
x. you almost crash your car, and you don't mind
y. you realize just how lucky you are coz of what you have
z. it's 9 o'clock at night, and you're yawning

note: i actually posted this 2 years ago on the 4th of september 2008.

after reading it through again today, i'm actually amazed at how there's so much truth in some things, and then yet absolutely none in others.

i marvel at change.

* sister love *

2010-11-02T18:53:00.000+08:00

rach came up with a pretty awesome technologically-savvy solution to our house: she's managed to hook up our tv and surround stereo to a dedicated laptop "server" which powers an external hard drive that stores all of our entertainment. and now, coz of the wireless network, we can now access the hard drive and all of its goodness from our laptops (even when we're upstairs in bed), through the laptop downstairs. wonder why i can't sleep early? ;)

as rach so rightly pointed out, this also means that now, when we want to play music, we can actually stream music that's on our own laptops and have it play through the central speakers/sub! ain't that so much better than listening to it through our crappy laptop speakers? technology i tell you!

when demonstrating, the first thing she did was ask me for my music requests. aww.

of all things, this was the first song that came to mind.

and you know what? it's kinda funny how true it is... =p

impulsivity

2010-11-01T22:55:00.000+08:00

sale fares.

rediscovery

2010-10-31T23:26:00.001+08:00

thanks to the facebook news feed, i have just rediscovered the hilarity that is wong fu productions.

more: the turn off and the allergy.

gold!

i first saw yellow fever back in 2006. at the time, i didn't realize that these guys did so much more! i suppose this serves as another example of how and why social media is going to take over the world. =p

did you know: wong fu also did David Choi's MV for 'That Girl'!

not bad for 3 college boys (a mechanical engineer, animator and economist) from UCSD.

milk it

2010-10-26T23:48:00.001+08:00

i was walking down the street the other night and happened to notice this.

poor kid.

i had no idea that they'd actually fine you twice. on the same day.

that's just wrong.

i had a stalker day

2010-10-25T17:11:00.003+08:00

the forecast for saturday was beautiful. or so BOM said.
but as usual, they got it wrong.

- enter sadface here -

after having a very lazy morning (by which i mean waking up at 1pm), i decided to further feed my desire to procrastinate studying by going out for a shopping walk with rach.

first stop: get our FAME tickets!! it was funny because we actually pre-bought our tickets online, but had to bring a print out to the box office so we could pick the actual show and seats. we left the house, and it wasn't until we were halfway down campbell st that we realized that we forgot to bring the print out with us! being technologically optimistic, albeit feeling very very lazy, i convinced rach to not walk home saying, "nah - don't worry!! just use your iphone!! they've gotta accept that!" but no.

we got to the box office a few minutes later and the chick was kind enough to tell us that we had to bring actual hard-copies of the vouchers. so after a good two minutes of discussion to see if the walk back was worth it, off we went, walking back up the 'hill' to grab the papers.

half way back, a terribly asian internet cafe caught my eye. at that moment, i decided it'd be worth paying however much it cost to print it out, so long as i didn't have to walk all the way back home again! so we did this. and you know what? that internet cafe rocks! they give you five free minutes and their net is super super fast! the added bonus was that if you managed to finish what you needed to do in the first five minutes, you could print anything for 15c per sheet. so. it paid off. 60c later and miles and miles saved of walking (=p), we were back at the box office choosing our seats.

mission accomplished.

the afternoon got more interesting as it went by.

after doing our shopping (i picked up a new pair of havaianas! yay!), we walked outside and it was absolutely pouring down with rain. again, me being lazy and having been incredibly impractical about my outfit for the day (i chose to wear a dress... of all things), i managed to convince rach that taking the 555 was a much smarter choice than walking all the way home in the rain.

30 minutes (i still shake my fist at sydney buses), one phone call and two eavesdropped conversations later, we got on the crowded bus to get home. but this is when the annoying moment hit. okay, so i'm not always huge on etiquette. but the one thing i have learned that i am very serious about: bus etiquette and elderly people. this is one rule that people just should NOT break!

given the rain, there were heaps of people waiting and it was a big rush to get on. shortly after us, an ah-mah got on, carrying a number of heavy looking enviro bags overflowing with groceries and produce. she had to have been at least 70 or 75. so you know how on every bus, there are two front seats and then six of those priority seats going along the side of the bus? well, on the left priority seats, there was one young girl (17-18ish) carrying st. john ambulance stuff, with a middle-aged couple seated next to her. on the right priority seat, there were 3 middle aged men. granted there were a few people standing in the way, but this granny was forced to stand, managing her bags, wedged between people, with no able-bodied person offering to give her a seat! but the real cheese-off were these two who had squished themselves onto the front seat.

obviously, this photo was taken after the granny had gotten off the bus. but when she was still on (and STANDING... WITH her heavy bags), she was right next to these two - and they fully ignored her! i could swear that when the granny accidentally bumped into the dude, he just turned, gave her a look, then with a shake of his head, went back to flirting with his girl.

man that was annoying.

i was going on and on about it on the bus to rach, with us coming to the conclusion that these two were most likely not from here. a few minutes later we get to central and these two get off. rach and i get off shortly after and start walking home. as we do, we passed a couple of shops along elizabeth street. and guess who we see! the smoochy couple, stopping at a laundromat (who offer a bag storage facility for $3 per luggage bag/day), to collect their bags!

i have one word plus a shake of my head.

tourists. =.=

more from the sing-off

2010-10-22T22:37:00.003+08:00

okay. after an hour of you-tubing, i now feel the need to post like 10 more clips here.

but, i'll settle for this one.

their rhythmic layering in ABC is... just. wow.

i feel that i should also mention that they're from san juan, puerto rico. the accent of the 'i'll be there' soloist makes it complete. =p

the sing-off.

2010-10-22T18:11:00.002+08:00

hosted by nick lachey. (shawn stockman's a judge on it!!)

the ENTIRE thing is a capella.

see here: NOTA (2009 winners) singing Down.

they're crazy and amazing.

problem free philosophy

2010-10-22T00:05:00.001+08:00

today = last day of classes.

it's amazing. it was said multiple times today alone, but seriously? where has this year gone! i could swear that only a week ago, i was packing up crazy amounts of boxes in my room back home, trying to make copious notes and lists of things that i was leaving behind. now we're nine months down the track, and i'm still left with lots of lists and lots of boxes.

in terms of today's activities, in addition to getting freaked out by last classes and past exam papers, both of which served as solid reminders of how much work i HAVE NOT done during semester, the downside of today was that it also bore some not so good news.

at the same time, while not so good news is just that: not so good, the positive part is that it's always accompanied by warranted procrastination!

after refusing to go home, i ended up train-ing it over to rach's office in north sydney, where she put me to work pummelling everything i was feeling into getting these goodie bags sorted for a technology expo that's happening next week. in total there were around 800 bags? intense!! as we left, there were stacked bags everywhere, all over the office!

note: the hello panda fuel.

the second great thing about not so good news is: shouting. and by this i mean. rach was sweet: she bought me dinner. =p

for now, bad news or not. the reality is that exams start in seven days. which means. necessary end of procrastination and. even more necessary end of getting caught up in thoughts that i should leave alone for now.

so you know what? i've decided to reconcile two themes:
(1) phil 4:6 - be anxious for nothing; and
(2) hakuna matata. =D

trends

2010-10-16T21:40:00.001+08:00

i am surely guilty of repetitious behaviour.

every exam period, without fail, i end up watching a season of gilmore girls. until this is done, studying can't start.

12 days until the first exam.

guess i should be glad i'm on disc 6. =)

little gifts.

2010-10-16T00:22:00.002+08:00

leaving off from last time, i said that all i've got left are questions.

since then, i've come to the conclusion that questions are most definitely a good thing. i need to question progress, achievements, goals, attitudes, faith. why? because therein lies the potential to grow.

due to my 'mood' this week, my music playlist turned out being a heck of a lot more somber than usual. but for some reason, this song was at the top of the list. eventually, i just deleted everything else and hit 'repeat'.

after listening to it about 15 times, i looked up the lyrics and realized that this says something that's actually really, very true. here goes:

I've heard it said
That people come into our lives for a reason
Bringing something we must learn
And we are led
To those who help us most to grow
If we let them...

it's true. it might all have been in one day's work, but i'm glad to know now that my 'worst curse' has officially been absolved: i actually DO know what i'm thankful for.

aren't you glad? 'coz now i can be all smiles. again. =)

and lastly, just a side note: although i often think it's wrong for boys to be able to sing so high, sam and nick. they do it so well, don't they?

my mind is a jungle

2010-10-08T19:25:00.006+08:00

last night, prior to clean up, i had 1.4GB left on my 200GB mac hard drive.

my pet peeve: having no space on my hard drive.

but. i realise that my mind is a jungle.

here's an example of how my thought process have been recently. just to demonstrate this psychosis.

START
(1) obviously, if i have no free space left on my hard drive, i must be accumulating lots of junk.
(2) i then realise that i'm evidently technologically incompetent because i can never figure out how to properly diagnose the proper way to delete things on a mac coz when i delete stuff, it hardly changes the hard drive stats.
(3) the thought of junk then makes me think of my room and all the unnecessarily unpacked boxes i have.
(4) then, gosh. how much stuff have i left in perth!! i should really bring more stuff over.
(5) but where to put everything!
(6) the lack of PHYSICAL storage space in my room now. need to buy a new cupboard.
(7) oh my goodness i'm never buying IKEA furniture again coz it's so dodgy.
(8) i'm annoyed that i get annoyed every morning when i yet again, realise that one cupboard door doesn't close and that my drawers can't take all my clothes because otherwise they'll break.
(9) i still think i don't have enough clothes over here.
(10) i should really go shopping. especially for work clothes.
(11) wow i saw a really nice bag in mimco the other day. it was on sale from $480 to $200. my heart broke when i left it in the store.
(12) i haven't actually bought my annual bag this year. surprise surprise.
(13) the ted baker range was weirdly bad this season.
(14) i started carrying my pink canvas ted baker to uni because my other uni bag broke.
(15) man it's sad that i forgot to stop by a zinc in singapore to restock [on bags].
(16) i forgot to buy a bag. but i did buy shoes. =D.
END

okay i know 16 is a weird number to end on. but quite literally, that's where my thought process ended. i went from... not enough space on my hard drive, ending up at buying shoes in singapore. leaps and bounds.

it's probably because i'm tired and my mind keeps jumping around radically. but. bob [the "neighbourhood" cat who loves to sit on our front porch for days on end, even though we still don't know whether he has an owner yet, but assume he does because he's pretty and clean and looks very well fed] randomly came in to the house the other day [as he does] and let me take photos of him as photographic evidence that he exists. he expressed exactly what i think i should be feeling.

for those of you who haven't met bob yet. now you have.

too much fun

2010-09-11T11:35:00.005+08:00

i can't believe break is over.

the past two weeks flew by. i did no uni work (yay!). and now i feel like an absolute time waster (boo!).

yesterday was EPIC fun. a bunch of us got together to celebrate (belatedly), two friends' birthdays. combine awesome food (wooooot to karaage!!) and great company with a blank wall, projector and guitar hero... that sounds to me like an awesome way to spend an afternoon. or.... a whole day.

BUT! yesterday also marked the first time going to the fish markets! i officially love that place now! and given how close it is to home, i am foreseeing a heck of an increase in the amount of seafood that's going to be cooked in our kitchen. i am all smiles for the sashimi too. though, the live crabs and marrons still freak me out terribly.

yum yum yum.

and the CAKE. wow. sumani did an awesome job.

how amazing are those strawberry flowers!! the only one thing to deplore, is that someone had to ruin the moment by breaking into song, singing 'strawberry kisses'.

one word: scarrage.

but now. i think. enough play. time to start getting head down bum up into all this uni work!! =p or at least, to merit by trying.

travels

2010-09-05T22:23:00.003+08:00

one thing to add to the list of why i love living in sydney is being able to drive elsewhere. i realize that this is quite contradictory in the sense that people usually move to sydney to experience city-life itself. but for me, with a love for scenic drives and day-trips to outer country towns and all, being able to get out of the city to a small town within two hours is a big big bonus.

i suppose you could do this from perth too, but having grown up there takes the fun out of it!

anyhow! rach and i now have a thing about using our saturdays as road-trip days. it's been great! i keep telling myself that i need to put together a list of surrounding areas/towns that i want to travel to before the year's end.

wollongong: 3rd july

this roadtrip was entirely spontaneous. woke up in the morning and decided to jump in the car and drive. half way there, we saw a sign saying 'grand pacific drive' and thought... "why not?"

well, as it turns out, one reason for us to hesitate should've been the lack of petrol in our car. YET. we were quite ignorant and didn't realize just how low we were until we were so far in the national park that it didn't make sense to turn around. and with our mobiles out of reception for a lot of the time, we had our fingers crossed SO hard that we would pass a petrol station. after passing 2 ancient and closed stations, we finally got to one, just in time. =p let's just say that that experience taught us two things: (1) running out of petrol can potentially be a really exciting way to liven up a road-trip; but more importantly and perhaps more wisely, (2) you should always check petrol levels in your car PRIOR to entering a deserted national park.

despite gunning for a petrol station and missing half of the scenic stops along the way, we still managed to pull over a few times to take in the scenery. i gotta admit, i'm in love with bald hill and sea cliff bridge.

beautiful. just beautiful.

canberra: 13th august

from the extremely weird toll booth to the tent embassy in front of old parliament house, canberra really was all that i thought it was going to be. i'm glad we got a chance to do a tour of the parliament museum - but my only wish would've been to have gotten the chance to do it when i was a lot younger. after learning that most nsw kids get to tour there during primary school at some point, i feel like wa kids really missed out! =p

the trip to canberra also gave us the chance to catch up with our cousin, sherman! this was pretty awesome, seeing that we haven't actually seen each other in around 5 years? go figure. everyone's moving to australia now!

the big yay from the trip, was that we got to see the high court! the sadness factor kicked in when we realized that they were both closed and under construction. those two things don't make for a very picturesque opportunity.

home food

2010-09-05T21:46:00.003+08:00

mum's worried that we don't eat right over here. so i started taking photos to testify otherwise.

with the kitchen renovations over and done with, of course we couldn't let the new oven go to waste! as a result (and of serious cravings too), there's been lots of baking.

raspberry vanilla swirl cupcakes

walnut and choc-chip brownies

white choc cake with butter cream icing
in the interest of giving credit where credit is due, this one was all rach. =p

banana bread
p.s. thanks jess.k for the awesome recipe!!

curry puffs

celebrations

2010-09-05T15:45:00.004+08:00

so in "breaking news", it was rach's birthday a few days ago. the one thing it brought... was good food! and you know me - that's always a welcome experience!

all in all, i thought we celebrated her birthday in true tan-family style. =p on the night before her birthday, ben and i waited (for AGES!!) for her to go to sleep, before decorating the house with balloons and arranging a surprize skype session with the extended family back home! i really should boast about how awesome they are - they all waited for ages and actually managed to do the "surprize"-yelling-thing awesomely!! =p

food-wise, here's a couple of snaps:

katsura japanese restaurant, 11/129-133 military road, neutral bay

so the food looked pretty, but i think that people come here for the cooked food. unluckily, the bulk of what we ordered was from their sushi/cold dishes menu. it was slightly awkward because the restaurant wasn't busy, the other patrons were pretty quiet, and worse, there was no background music. all i could think all night was how awkward it must be if a couple came here for a first date.

BUT. the food was quite tasty. at this point, we didn't know that the next two nights of jap food was going to kick this place's ass. =p

zushi japanese restaurant, 239 victoria st, darlinghurst

after getting over the fact that it took us 45 minutes to find parking near to the restaurant, i was wholly surprised by this place. i mean, who wouldn't like a place that does gyoza sushi!

i feel terrible though, because i have no blog-worthy photos to post here. (i'm going to blame poor lighting) =( however, i'll make more of an effort the next time i go back (that's right. there will definitely be a next time!). =) OH. and they do free delivery for orders over $50 in the sydney metro area. thank GOD we live in surry hills!

takeru japanese restaurant, 2339 sussex st, sydney

this place wins. i mean, finding the equilibrium between food quality/tastiness/healthiness and price is pretty difficult right? but this place rocked. it was UBER cheap and also gave the option to do half-sized dishes (for an average of $6.90) if you felt like trying more than one thing.

rach and i totally over-ordered, purely because the menu pictures looked really small. but. we were totally satisfied.

so jap three nights in a row. i think i can say with confidence that each night, the food got better while the price got cheaper. =p that's a pretty good trend!!

the morning of rach's birthday, being big on birthdays, i decided to get up *early* (haah. at 8am) to make her some breakfast and to surprize her with her present. i rushed like crazy while she was getting ready, trying to be quiet, and found out that good food doesn't actually have to take ages to cook! i was super happy that she liked it (and that it looked pretty!) the only sad part was that i didn't have enough time to make the hollandaise. =(

but here's my handiwork:

not bad ay?

all up... it was a pretty sweet weekend for a b'day celebration. =)

fly by

2010-08-23T15:10:00.003+08:00

months have passed and now i'm feeling a tad bit pensive.

since my last post, quite a few things have gone down.

(1) my first set of law school exams have come and gone: after the stress and relative indignation, results came back and it seems that my stress wasn't so warranted after all.
(2) heaps of people from home came to visit: the chubs, jerry, randall, veron and then mum. it was good fun and we ate WAY too much. i have heaps of awesome food photos (*cough*) which will someday make it up here.
(3) i ended up going to MYC over the winter break- which was great! i got to meet heaps and heaps of other unsw students and got the chance to learn a lot as well.
(4) we "road-tripped" to wollongong and canberra. i'll just say now that i'm glad i moved to sydney and not some small ass town that's in the middle of nowhere. for me, big-city-living can never be overrated.
(5) lastly, after 10 hours in a line, one free beanie, scarf and lots of free food later... i finally got the iPhone 4!!!

okay. now because it is week 5 and it's coming to "that time of semester", i've been questioning lately why postgraduate students do what they do. when you boil it down to its very essence, it's difficult to escape the fact that postgrad law is self-inflicted pain and torture. it's a strange "feeling" to be so bitter and conflicted over something that was voluntary in the first place.

the grand hope now, is that at the end of all the whining and grumbling, three years down the track it's all going to make sense and hopefully, it'll all be worth it. but still, the future seems elusive and the present just seems so.... well for a lack of an alternative adjective... annoying. =.=

i'm going to sign off on the following cliche: there really is nowhere but up from here.

=p

weekend adrift

2010-05-31T11:58:00.004+08:00

i finally set aside some hours for 'social' time over this weekend. i'd say i was pretty *well rewarded*.

saturday was the cLaw bake off. cinnamon scrolls, half a pecan-pie (because the crust felt more like being on the floor than staying in the pie pan), butter cookies, apple and cinnamon wholemeal muffins and truly authentic biscotti. yum yum.

the afternoon started off on an *eventful* note, with me walking up three flights of concrete stairs carrying two bags of mixing bowls, cookie cutters, butter and flour - to the wrong apartment, then walking back down, only to realise that wearing thongs on a rainy day was a really really bad idea. just after the stepping off the top step, the water got the better of me and i slipped, tripped and fell, and went flying down the stairs, only to land squarely on my ass and elbow about 6 stairs down. the only thing that enforced the hilarity of the moment was the fact that there was a young boy (probably 7-8 yrs old), who was helping his mom carry in the groceries, who said, with his mouth gaping open, "are you okayyyyy????" he then proceeded to tell me a story about how he did the exact same thing last week when he was coming home from school and how he had "slid down the stairs like a water slide". he also stopped to emphasise that he had his backpack on, and that was the only thing that shielded his butt from the excruciating pain that apparently, i was experiencing. and yes, there was a reference to my butt. =.= so after a good minute of half-lying on the stairs, i gathered my things and my pride and got up to go and find the right stairwell leading to jess' apartment.

and as things would have it, i now have a massive bruise on my back to attest to my clumsiness.

lesson 1: don't wear thongs on a rainy day.

i feel an onus to point out now that here i sit, on a rainy day, in the postgrad lab at uni, with thongs on. *sigh*. at least you can be sure that i'm gonna be avoiding concrete stairwells for the rest of today!!

the *eventfulness* of the afternoon continued. as i alluded to before, annabelle was taking the pie crust out of the oven, and in just a split second when i was walking by, i saw the pan falling... so naturally i put out my hand to try and catch it. between the two of us, we were completely helpless and now, as a result of my insensitivity to heat, i've got a boil on my arm to prove my failure of catching the stupid pan.

lesson 2: heed friends' advice when they warn that just because you can't feel that something's hot, doesn't mean that you're not gonna get burnt.

then came sunday.

went out to a 21st party for a guy in my bible study group. i gotta say. the entire afternoon reminded me of home: from the masses of food to the distinct different groups of friends, the video-speech in lieu of the person not being able to make it for the party to the "speech" his mom gave... just everything.

and it ended up making me feel pretty "introvertedly" reflective. maybe that's just a synonym for lonely. that much is unclear.

i just kept thinking about friendship and the timeline across how friendship occurs, develops and grows. as i asked trish last night, how long do you think it takes for acquaintances to become friends? and how long does it take friends to become good friends? and then good friends, best?

it was probably a softer (and significantly less painful) note to end my weekend on, but at the end of the day, sunday made me think a lot and now, i still get amazed at how the ideas of "friends" and "family" are universal.

anyhow, a bruise, a burn and a couple of new friends later... my weekend was pretty complete.

bumbling along

2010-05-15T10:21:00.003+08:00

in one word, living in a new city could be summed up as many things. some would say "exciting", "exhilarating" or even just downright "awesome". i, however, choose to stick with "interesting".

there's something about it when you wake up one morning and you realize... 'hey. this is my home now'. this happened to me just the other day. it was one thing to be here when the delivery guy dropped off 19 massive boxes of stuff that got shipped over from perth. but it's quite another to realize that when everything is unpacked and in its new home... that you're settled. but the thing i've realized is that there's a strong dichotomy between being physically settled and emotionally settled.

i'm not sure how this gets measured or how it's even quantified. but at the end of the day, can people have more than one place that they call "home"? i think it would really suck to move to a place and to never ever feel at home. to me, that would feel like a waste of time, because at the end of the day, you want to feel comfortable in a new place so that you can get the most out of it. maybe it's the friends that you make and the people you meet which make you comfortable and thus, make you feel at home. or maybe is the familiarity of the activities or the realization of a 'better' or more enjoyable lifestyle.

either way, it all comes back to the fact that change takes time. perhaps before i would've been too impatient or too short-sighted to see it. but now i feel like i'm really into this.

moving here was a good thing. a very good thing, indeed.

food buff.

2010-05-05T21:30:00.003+08:00

sydney's definitely delivering on the whole "good food" vibe. granted, i still haven't had a kick-ass bowl of laksa (last night's home-cooked dinner aside =p) which is even worthy of being compared to hawker's cuisine back home in Perth, but there's just so much OTHER good food around!

one thing i didn't mention in my last post was that there seems to be a little tradition starting. so far, before we do the send-off at the airport, we always seem to take a walk to world square with the intention of eating at makoto (the sushi train restaurant). we then put our name on the waiting list, wait 15 minutes while talking about how long we've been waiting, and then afterwards decide that it's not worth waiting for, so we head over to sushi roll for comparable-ish sushi at 3/4 of the price!!

okay sorry. i digress.

rach and i went venturing the other night and deciding so scope out our plethora of nearby restaurants. instead of walking up the "hill" (it's not really a hill, we're just kinda lazy) towards crown st, we decided to walk to liverpool/pitt st area to check out what else is there. we ended up stumbling on this freakishly taka-resembling but korean restaurant which was super super busy and packed and noisy (hence the taka reference), but with reeeealllyy good value-for-money food! just my luck that i didn't bring my camera out that night. but fret not, i'm pretty sure we'll be headed back there again so i'll make sure i some snaps!

for now, here's a little display of the restaurants we've been hitting up:

east ocean, 1/421-429 sussex st, haymarket

found this place on a recommendation from a friend. with this friend being a mainlander, i can totally see why she would like it. the entrance to this place is along the main dixon street walkway, but it's one of the only restaurants that don't have annoying people standing out the front yelling, forcing passer-bys to to look at their menu. such enticement. service aside, i really liked the food here. but then again, having people being rude to you in a language you don't speak kinda makes things worse.

but granted, their food was good.

marigold chinese restaurant, 683 george st, haymarket

DIM SUM. again. while it wasn't my first "reaction" when we did east ocean and marigold back to back, i've finally decided that (after going back again) this place wins. there's two levels to the restaurant, make sure you go to the top level. it's always packed and noisy, but the crowd just makes it feel super authentic. the waiters and trolley-pushers are ever so slightly obnoxious at the same time as being both pushy AND helpful, that it makes the whole dim sum experience believably authentic.

best dish? hands down their pai kuat (spare ribs). best. sauce. ever. and better yet, they don't do the whole dragon palace trick-you-chunks-of-meat-that-are-actually-chunks-of-yam thing.

please don't let the lack of photos here make it seem like this place wasn't worth it. coz it's exactly the opposite. the food was so good... i forgot to take photos. whoops!

dae jang kum korean restaurant, 35 goulburn st, haymarket

this is my took be gi in sydney. word for word. dish for dish. the only thing that dae jang kum does better is that they have SO much more space. bye bye to waiting 45 minutes for a hope to get a seat when you're a party of more than 2! i loved everything about this place. including the korean water bottles, the korean MVs playing on the big flatscreens and the big portions of everything! there's no value for money like it.

dishes you see below are the bulgogi, chicken bulgogi, oyster dolsot bimbimbab and the seafood pancake. yummmmmmm.

anyone who comes to sydney to visit us is going to get to try this place. word.

toraya japanese restaurant, level 2 @ the mandarin centre, chatswood

honest and modest japanese food. it felt authentic. wasn't mindblowingly awesome, but when you're paying $9 for a pretty sizeable bowl of gyudon, you can't really complain right? plus... udon comes free with every "meal" you order. bonus!

pizza e birra, 1/500 crown street, surry hills

gourmet pizza. yum yum. i can't believe how insane this place is. so many people lined up outside. supposedly, they don't take bookings over the phone. but i called up anyway to ask them what their wait time was like for a group of 5, and the guy was nice enough to put my name on the list, take down my number and tell me to head on over in about half an hour. sadly, i missed their call coz my phone was in my bag, so when we got there they had given our table away. but it only took about 10 minutes for the next table to be cleared and thank goodness this table was in the corner, next to the light! MUCH better than sitting in the middle of the restaurant amidst the flurry of LOUD conversation going on and the bazillions of tables around.

foodwise, little caesars still kicks their ass. but balancing my impression in terms of atmosphere AND food, this place was pretty sweet.

we went with one seafood, one chunky meat and their signature 'pizza e birra' pizza. the last one hands-down was the best. puff crust to perfection.

zellini's cafe, 34 belmore road, randwick

after a night of bowling (3 games for $15 @ amf - hehe), raph, rach and i decided that we deserved some desert. seeing that we were in randwick, we decided to stop off at zellini's after seeing their cake range through the front class. we weren't disappointed. we ended up getting a lemon cheesecake (which to me was extra extra extra cheesy), a chocolate-ish cake that had a funky name which now totally escapes me, and raph had a vanilla shake.

maybe i'm too much of a "small city" gal, but i think that charging $2 bucks per person just coz it's a public holiday is a bit excessive. i mean, charge us a percentage surcharge if you want... but there's just something off putting when i see a sign that says $2 bucks extra per person... it's unprofessional almost.

flo, 1/242 elizabeth st, surry hills

this was officially the first cafe i went to in sydney. it so happened to be the morning that rach and lil got to sydney! we were all a little tired due to lack of sleep, but for some reason, this place wasn't quite as satisfying as what we were expecting. it was a sunday morning, granted service might be a little slower, but they took aages to get the food out. some people who stopped in to get a coffee on the go had to wait like 10 minutes for their coffee. but, their food did look quite pretty. that counts for something right?

and that just about sums it up!

gosh we're gonna get fat living here. hahahahhaha. =p

doesn't get much better than...

2010-04-29T23:42:00.003+08:00

visits from family.

there really isn't anything better! the past few weeks have been so hectic with uni getting into full swing and with starting a new job and all. but finally, life in sydney is settling down.

well well! lots of things to report. and lots of photos to show too!

food @ home

surprise surprise. rach and i have actually been doing a lot of cooking over here! and because the first meal turned out pretty tasty - not to mention pretty!! we decided to start a photo-journal. =)

mum, dad and lil's week in sydney

it was so great to have them all come over here to check out our new place and to see more of sydney! but after a week full of re-sightseeing and eating... i think i'm ready to never have to trek down to the opera house for at least a good month or two. i miss mum and dad. i really do. don't get me wrong here, it's an awesome thing to be over here, living out this new phase of life. but it doesn't mean that i don't miss how things were. having them here just reminded me of all of that.

all in all, it really was a great week. here's some snaps:

skyping with the family

how would we live without the internet?!

our family certainly couldn't!! the week after mum, dad and lil got back to perth, it was mum's birthday! while we had a "mini" celebration here (we made eggs benedict - yes, WITH the homemade hollandaise sauce, sausages and apple pie!) in sydney, the family still had a good ol' family dinner back home in perth. to keep things fun, they skyped us towards the end of the evening and it was hilarious!! anecdotally, the second photo below shows just how interested everyone was when i launched into a story about the murder case i'd been following in the king st supreme court over here. looks like everyone's just incredibly engaged right?? hahaha.

raph's long-weekend in sydney

long and behold, just a few weeks after mum and dad were here, raph decided to fly over for the anzac long weekend! figures that it was perfect timing, seeing that it was the "last" weekend before my JD classes decided to get all psycho with the assessment due dates! regrettably, i still spent most of the weekend writing my criminal law court report, but there was just enough time to spare to spend some awesome quality time with my big bro! gosh, i miss him heaps too.

funnily enough, we didn't take many photos at all! totally unlike us! i guess we just got carried away with the actual "doing" part of things and forgot to stop to snap photos of the "doing" of things. =p but here's a *few* shots anyway.

all in all, a very good couple of weeks.

stay tuned for some restaurant reviews over the next couple of days! =D

time for an update

2010-03-27T17:59:00.003+08:00

heaps of stuff going on the last couple of weeks. well, at least it feels that way.

starting with two weeks ago. we found a place! we were very lucky with the whole thing... and it all happened so fast! rach came over so we could find all our furniture... turned into such a hectic week!

so while rach was here, just happened to be that the backstreet boys were finishing up their australian tour, so for old times' sake, we went to watch! and you know what? it was TOTALLY worth it. hahah. they did all of their old songs... and in my opinion, their older stuff is still way better than their newer stuff. haha. we were a bit far back, but it was still totally worth it!

i may have mentioned before, the week before rach got here, i was totally craving for japanese. but the thing about being on your own is that you can't really go to restaurants! well, i mean, you can... but really, who wants to go and sit by a sushi train on their own!! so, once rach got here, jap was totally on the list... and oh yeah, it was worth it.

makoto, 119-121 liverpool st, sydney

my thoughts: you definitely don't go to makoto to eat tuna gunkan or california roll! but honestly, the beef tataki sushi? genius! best part of it? this place is a 10 minute walk from home. thank goodness sushi ain't fattening!

and check this out - the chef is smokin' something (i'm not sure what)... but i gotta get me one of those torch guns!!!

just for keepsakes, here's one of us, happy chappies after some awesome sushi!!

musashi, 447 pitt st, haymarket

just last week, elina and i decided that we were craving jap (again), so we went to check out makoto's sister restaurant, musashi. i believe i blogged about this place last year, when ben, shell, rach and i were in sydney last may. and once again, musashi did not disappoint!

what we ordered: rainbow roll, sashimi, beef teppanyaki.
fish so fresh and the dipping sauce for the beef teppanyaki was out of this world!

more KESC updates: the kingsford eat street challenge continues...

KESC 6: dinner at oportos, followed by dessert at abcafe

let me say it now, someone totally needs to bring oporto's to perth. i ordered a bondi burger with chilli - for fast food? it was pretty damn good! pity though, coz the meal cost $10, so on my scale, they get put next to nandos. as for dessert, lychee icecream sound good to anyone? coz for $7, i thought it was pretty sweet! some of the other girls ordered the chocolate brownie and the hot chocolate. i always love it when there's choco art on top of the foam. so pretty!

KESC 7: dinner at gourmet pizza kitchen, 333 anzac parade, kingsford

you gotta read jess's entry on the jelsie blog for full effect. long story short, eight of us went to GPK, only to be greeted by a corner full of 5 year old boys. honestly, there had to be at least 20 of them. shouting, throwing play-doh, fighting, battling, pushing, shoving... let's just say, the food took half an hour to come, while we took 15 minutes to eat and get outta there. too bad, coz the pizzas were actually really good!! my new favorite is the geneva with added jalapenos. nothing quite like a chilli hit!

this brings me to my final thought. DID YOU KNOW. kfc here doesn't have hot and spicy!!! shock horror. absolute shock horror.

catching up on food

2010-03-01T12:14:00.004+08:00

people say the food in sydney is something else. someone even gave me a book which proves that sydney takes its food seriously. so when you're in a new city, living on a budget it only makes sense to make friends with people who know good, cheap places to eat!

luckily for me, the friends i've made so far are quite the foodie-bunch. and what's even better, is that down the road from uni lies a plethora of cheap-eats restaurants!

here are some examples:

my first sydney laksa at some restaurant in kingsford.
price: $7.50
my thoughts: pretty good for the price, but it definitely didn't soothe my craving for hotness! and i should also note that i forgot to ask for yellow egg noodles, so my thoughts are probably skewed by my distaste of the vermicelli rice noodles.

beef lasagne for dinner at giovanna's italian restaurant, along anzac parade in kingsford
price: $14.50
my thoughts: the plate looked really bare, especially without any kind of garnishing on top. i gave this restaurant a 3.5 of 5.

stir fried kuey teow with beef and vegetables at kingsford chinese restaurant
apparently this restaurant has been around for over 15 years and is famous for offering big portions for little cost - i can now attest that it's true!
price: $6.80
my thoughts: this totally beats the pants off chilliz at karawara. hands down! but still, it just ain't as good as dad's beef hor fun!!

chicken laksa from wokmaster, maroubra
price: $7.00
my thoughts: better than the one along anzac parade, but there was still something missing... so definitely not as good as hawker's in northbridge!

these next two don't technically classify as "nearby uni", but i still consider them to be pretty cheap-eats!

the "strawberry patch" at pancakes on the rocks
price: $12.95
my thoughts: a classic that's really hard to stuff up. i wouldn't say it's anything spectacular, but it's definitely satisfying.

the "monte cristo" at pancakes on the rocks
price: $14.95
my thoughts: again, nothing oh-my-goodness about it, but it was satisfactorily tasty

so this entry here marks the beginnings of my sydney food catalogue. there's only one *problem*: can you believe that i still haven't had proper jap yet? how shocking!! ;) i do, however, guarantee that this *problem* will be rectified by the end of the week. =p

new habitats

2010-02-28T20:58:00.008+08:00

three words have prominently arisen from my weekend activities: property inspections suck.

as you would have it, i spend yesterday morning wandering the streets of randwick in search of suitable accommodation for Rach and myself in this big, new city. funnily enough - before yesterday morning, i was actually looking forward to it! now? i am educated for the better.

what's so good about walking around for hours and hours, waiting in the hot blazing sun for a tardy real estate agent to show up and open house for 15 minutes or less. not only that, but then you end up going inside and realising that your first intuitions were correct. yesterday, i viewed seven different apartments. five of which i had significant doubts, judging by the photos online. in addition to the really hot afternoon weather yesterday, to make matters worse, each second property on my list was on the same street. i thought - oh how cool - it means that most of the properties are in the same area. in reality it just meant that i walked from one property to the next, then back past that first property to see the second, then back past the second to go see the third, and so on and so forth. by the end of it, i had tan lines on my feet and shoulders and now, i feel that i can confidently say that i know the apartment buildings along avoca st, randwick straight off the back of my hand.

funnily enough, with each passing inspection, i found myself getting more and more confused. when i was trying to describe the properties to rach, details of each of the apartments started getting melded together. i mean, which one had the black skirting? or the renovated kitchen? or the toilet that made me feel really depressed? honestly, apart from the two below, without photos to jog my memory, i honestly can't remember what i thought about the rest! the one good thing that came out of yesterday however, is that we found one good property at a "reasonable" sydney price, and so with our fingers crossed, we're going to pray that our application is successful.

so check out the two properties below... =)

apartment 1

apartment 2

in all honesty, my prayers are going towards not only a successful application so that we won't be homeless over here... but i would be lying if i said that i didn't have hopes to never have to live through another day of seven property inspections again!!

new chapter, new city

2010-02-22T20:37:00.006+08:00

phew!

one month later and it's helloooo to sydney! so no, i didn't back out last minute... and yes, i still am quite terrified.

i suppose that this move has been all the more terrifying because of the abounding support that i've received from all of my loved ones back home. given any expression of doubt, uncertainty or dubiousness, i was met with unequivocal confidence and assurance that no, i would be fine. now... if only i could be as sure as them!

leaving was hard. it was great having a final farewell party though - and i'm really grateful that so many people showed up - especially those who i hadn't seen for yonks and yonks!

the chubs @ my farewell... with jas there in spirit..!

the last "sisters" shot we took. *sadface*

purposefully, i procrastinated throughout the entire last week of packing though... but to my own credit, i did finally finish and i must say that i think i did a pretty good job of being thorough! i ended up side-cataloguing everything, just to be sure that in the case that i need some obscure object that was sitting covered in dust on the fourth shelf down of my bookcase, i'm pretty sure i could tell you which archive box it's in and whereabouts in the box it is (i.e. how far down!).

i marvel at my pedanticity (i know this is not a word, but really... it should be, because everyone knows what it means!!). and i really didn't know i was so anal about particular things until i started packing. but the real skill that i displayed throughout that entire last week was my ability to get side-tracked by things of age. seriously, i spent 5 minutes packing a few books and cataloguing them, and then i'd come across a photo album from primary school and spend the next half an hour laughing at how stupid people's hair cuts were. in most cases i then proceeded to find whoever else was at home to show them my findings.

one word: sigh.

the hardest part about leaving was being at the airport. although it was great having my besties & family send me off, it was tragic looking back. i will admit, my record of countless months without tears was broken by a few stray tears as i was walking along the tarmac. (to the chubs: at least i now know i'm not completely emotionless!!)

one last chubs group hug.

it's not exactly hard being here alone. i mean, i always have been a person who likes being on my own for periods of time (but yes, i do also have a need to be around people!). but i think i feel more affected now because i left home when things were really good. back in 2007 when i left for canada (okay, i know this isn't exactly an ideal comparison given the temporary nature of study exchange), the world of opportunity for travel and experiences completed enveloped me. you might even say i felt beckoned. but now? things are completely different! there were so many different opportunities, so many different roads to take, many of which didn't require moving interstate. i could've done honours, i could've gotten a job, i could've even done grad law back home at UWA.

so amongst the big questions puddling around inside my mind, i wonder, did i make the right decision or not? my faith tells me that after much perseverance in prayer, the fact that my move interstate was relatively easy and straightforward, i'm most likely on the right path. but still, right now i can feel i tiny little flicker of apprehension.

as my mum so rightly said, i need to give it a couple of months. and that, i am gung-ho willing to do. =)

so a few tales since i've gotten here.
[1] the walk across the UNSW campus is killer. those basser steps make you want to die. and really, good luck if you're not wearing comfortable shoes. i myself, was lucky enough to have forgone wearing flappy charles & keith flats in favour of my good ol' billabong thongs. i'm pretty sure that if i had worn the C&K's, it'd be welcome to blister-town by now!

the captions (if you can read them), say it all... it really is a dreaded walk

[2] the sydney bus system is crazy/ultra-confusing/AND awesome all at the same time
it took me this entire first week to really figure out how the whole bus thing works and to remember which buses take me where. after a good five years since needed to rely on public transport system, i can heartily say that (a) i reeeealllly miss my car and (2) carrying groceries home on a bus just plain sucks.

just a glimpse of the quandary known as the sydney eastern region bus service

[3] pidgeons. what a lovely way to wake up every morning. without fail, these two little birdies have come to chirp me awake... EVERY morning. how pleasant. =.=

but hey, they know me so well they even stayed around for me to take a photo of them.

okay, and here's a glimpse of what my room looks/looked like after my boxes of stuff arrived. =)

for those of you who were readers back in 2007 during my exchange in toronto, the duvet sheets probably look really familiar. =p

markedly, i think i'll stop here. i'm sure that there'll be heaps to blog about over the next few days as classes start. but i make no promises.

if you're reading this, thanks - coz you're probably even more faithful to this blog than i am at this point!!

*hi-5*

- pheebs.

official move date

2010-01-12T01:05:00.002+08:00

so now it's done & done! tickets are booked, accommodation is *almost* sorted, and dates are locked-in.

official move date to sydney: 15th february

wow! it's all becoming real. really really real. it just occurred to me - i've only got 9 days of full-time work left! and worse... only 35 days left in perth! so that means there's only 35 days to make sure i catch up with everyone i need to see before i go. so many loose ends! gotta send quite a few thank-you gifts (and us chubs still need to fit in secret santa!!). oh, and of course there's going to be a lot of "catch-up" coffees and lunches and dinners... and of course, my kick-ass farewell party (which c'mon was a given) to plan!

*tear*

how sad is leaving.

i can already feel it: one big chapter of life is about to close. and to be honest, i really don't know how i feel about the next one opening.

the time has come

2010-01-10T22:49:00.003+08:00

after planning for the future for so long, it's weird how all the emotion has been sucked out of me. i really expected a climax when i got the good news that i got accepted to UNSW. but now... weirdly i'm left feeling confused.

as most of you would know, i spent the latter half of last year deliberating about what to do this year in 2010: whether to work, spend another year at curtin doing honours, do honours at another uni, or go and do postgrad law at a uni over east. in due course i applied for a few (some might say 'too many') different uni's over east namely and lucky me - i was accepted to quite a few of them. after the sydney trip last year, i really did think that i had my heart set on sydney - i was so sure that i wanted to go to UNSW. i mean, as everyone tells me, there are just so many benefits of sydney over melbourne!

after hearing back from monash, i first thought it was scary that they started in january - simply because it meant that i'd have to leave some time this week. i mean, how am i meant to pack up my life in just one week? i swear it's not possible - there's just wayyyy to many people that i haven't seen or caught up with yet and too many things that haven't been organised! so immediately, there's one pro to UNSW - they don't start until late february.

i really should say - i know that i've made my decision. i know i'm going to UNSW. but somehow, deep down, i feel confused... or maybe even conflicted. i'm not sure whether it's the arising emotions and realisation that i'm really, actually going to be leaving perth, leaving family, friends and everything familiar, or if it's because i'm just ready to go right now, and that i don't want to wait another month to leave. getting into and choosing UNSW means another 3 weeks of work and another 3 weeks of just planning, and not 'doing'.

i keep asking, why do i feel this way??? i mean, i know i'm usually the planning type. i love to plan things down to the letter. take holidays for example - i always end up with pages and pages of research and notes about places to go, things to do - even details down to bus times and how much things cost. but now... it seems that the timing of everything is just completely throwing me off!

don't get me wrong - i love perth. i love living here and i love being within my comfort zone (duh!). but there's half of my heart which is tugging and saying that i'm ready to up and leave right now, right this moment. the other half is glued here. the other half knows that it's gonna be hard to leave and to say bye to things as they are right now.

in two words: i'm torn.

welcome to 2010.

2010-01-07T00:37:00.002+08:00

there's no better way to celebrate the coming of a new year: family, friends, fireworks and a foreign city. luckily for me, i managed to get all four lined up in a 10-day holiday. =p

it's funny how year 2009 held so many things, but at the end of the day - i can't quite remember the important things! what i do know though, is that i've been incredibly slack in keeping things up to date and in order, both here and in my journal! in any case, i can retrospectively say that my final semester at uni wasn't all that easy - there was plenty of stress, but plenty of fun at the same time. i did get the chance to learn a lot about myself - and that's always a good thing!

so my last post up here was in august - that's four whole months ago!! and believe me a whole load of stuff happened in that time - much too much to even begin to catch you all up! i will however try make a list:

- i finally cut back hours at work to 20 hrs a week
- i dyed my hair and it was wayyyy too dark
- i had 2 really really bad hair cuts - one of which was the day before my birthday party. =.=
- i turned 21 and had an awesome time celebrating with a booked out ice-skating rink, ice-hockey, speeches and videos (aww) and lots and lots of presents. =D
- got through my final semester of undergrad uni without too much fuss - except i will say that capstone sucks.
- celebrated rach's birthday - but it was so memorable that i can't remember what we did..
- celebrated raph's birthday with a really kick-ass steamboat dinner
- won $50 bucks at the cas
- went to sydney (which i think i mentioned in a previous post already... but can't remember)
- went down south with my besties for an absolutely awesome couple of days (which was much too short!!)
- finally decided what i wanted to do with myself for the next few years (i'll leave the details to later)
- decided to sell my car
- started buying dresses, and discovered that i actually like them
- went on a holiday to singapore, hong kong and macau

and that just about brings us up to now!

so details about this year can only be announced after friday the 8th of january. i have my fingers tightly crossed that i receive a positive response from the university of my choice, because if i don't, then it's sayonara perth in just 6 days!! isn't that scary?

i'm so not ready to leave my family and friends. and as much as i love being independent... premature departure is just totally wrong!

well, i hope this new look for my blog makes things easier to read and easier to follow! i've missed you all! *hugs*

all but intentions.

2009-08-23T18:02:00.001+08:00

hehe.

okay, so i've been laggard lately. i'll admit it! but so much has gone on lately. all that includes a trip to sydney, a setback from melbourne, and a lot of food. good food. but i'll get to that later. =)

on the side of a quick update, i'll start by acknowledging that i'm used to juggling multiple responsibilities through the uni semester, but with so much changing in just the past two weeks, i'm left with two feelings. 1) regret and 2) distaste.

before i start, i'll put a disclaimer because i realize how slammed it is that after two months of not blogging, i come up with all this negativity. but sorry. this is my forum of candor.

1. regret: i realize that i've passed up so many opportunities. the girls will attest to me saying this... but i know that bailing on events is probably one of my top ten traits. LOL. honestly, now that i think about it retrospectively, is it all worth it? passing up dinners with friends, community groups, volunteering opportunities, serving in church... i feel like i missed out on a lot. i can see what my life could have been like... and then i see what it is like now. and i'm not entirely sure i like what i know.

so now this leads me to...

2. distaste: a seed has been planted and so i'm starting to doubt the "studies come first" motto. now that's pretty funny seeing that it's my last semester of my undergrad degree... and yet more studies await next year. but the distaste part comes in when i say that i think my priorities are a little funny. they're not wrong. they're not bad. they're just a little funny. i wonder at what point in time i became the girl who would stay home from a party or gathering to study. i don't like it!

all of this comes down to choice. and decisions. i'm working on it. hahah.

the other thing i feel i need/want to mention is my severe aversion to rigidity. and as it turns out, rigidity has been following me everywhere lately. i don't want to be a quitter, but sometimes i'm just so tempted!

anyhow, so moving away from the bad and onto the good.

sydney rocked.

deep down, i had hoped that i wouldn't like it just so that my choice would've been made easier. but i loved it. so now i'm in that "whatever" phase of decisions and i'm just going to take it as it comes. i don't need to decide on anything until january next year so i've made a pact with myself to try and enjoy the "freedom" from making and binding decisions.

there's a few photos from sydney. all of them can be viewed by clicking here. =)

as usual, we ate heaps. but we walked heaps too so i guess that kinda evens things out! but i should say thanks to those who told us where the good places were to go - it all came in really handy and made our trip all that more efficient. ;)

we managed to do all the touristy things we needed to do (except for a ferry trip to manly - which i actually really wanted to do). and i suppose that the only bad thing from the trip was that i totally didn't realize that my camera was set at 0.3MP for the entire trip.. so the photos that i do have are only large enough to print a 6x4! ordinarily, this would suffice, but there were a couple of prints that would reallllyyy have looked awesome framed up as an A4. so enter sad face here. =(

anyhow, i'm feeling that this has been enough thorough reflection on my part.

time to stop writing about life and go live it!

*hugs*

- pheebs.

so it's been a while

2009-07-08T15:03:00.002+08:00

as in true phoebe-style, time has gotten the better of me.

but! there's been lots and lots going on. and i am finally here, with time, to actually sit down and write about them!

the first thing i should post about is my spontaneous trip to singapore. four days is probably the shortest overseas trip i've ever taken, but weirdly enough it was actually the most productive! the main purpose of the trip was to go and see my grandma - which i'm really really glad i did. so now even though she can't hear, see or know who we are anymore, i'm really glad that i went. then of course, there was all the family things, which i love.

so the shopping. well, i found another ted baker bag - that's always a good sign! and the lady there actually remembered me from last december which struck me as kinda weird? or funny at least. and she also recognized the tote ted baker that i was carrying, she remembered that i bought it in melbourne on sale. it was that part which made me just a tad bit freaked out. but hey, i figure i'm safe because i didn't tell her my name... either way, it was all just a little too weird for me.

i also found 10 pairs of shoes over the 3 days there, which beat out my previous record which stood at 8. =p it was pretty awesome though because i would walk into a store and *ding*, immediately i was just drawn to a pair which i just HAD to buy. so considering that i only shopped for two days, i pat myself on the back and say "good job". =) i would take pictures and post them up here, but i probably would be mocked for buying six pairs of shoes which look pretty much the same. in my view though, you can never have too many pairs of the same shoes. particularly, if they're cheap asian shoes that work their purpose well at least for six months. funny though because i think i've bought at least 4 pairs of the same shoe... i'm just lucky that the chinese manufacturers have kept supplying singaporean shoe stores with the same shoes for the past two years... what would i do without my C&K flats?!?

so while i don't love singapore, there are a few things there which pacify me. here are three things:

first: apple juice with aloe vera bits.
my only question is.. why can't they manage to bring this into australia???

second: roti prata at midnight
it's just such fatty goodness... hahahah. =p

third: chicken rice
okay so this didn't come in the oil-proof brown paper wrapping, but still singapore's hainanese chicken rice just can't be beat.

now it's time for some other photo highlights:

for the first time ever, i went to a singapore museum. and believe me, this wasn't by choice. mum was looking for some trippy syringe-pens at singapore general hospital (SGH) and we somehow managed to get shanghai-ed into touring their museum. =.= i have no words.

lucky for me, my dates in singapore happened to cross paths with jas and luke and their holiday so we met up and went for some awesome japanese along with my cousin ben and his girlfriend, faith. food was awesome - i'm really glad i got to go back to shokudo. but funnily enough, the only photo i have with both jas and luke turned out to be fully blurry. hahaha. so this one will have to suffice!

we also went to check out mustafa, because i don't think they believed me when i told them about the 24-hr indian palazza of all neccesities/consumables that you could imagine. and true enough, in a world full of toothpaste, i managed to find one with a green appled flavor! and grape, and orange and strawberry. and they came in cute little tubes. oh how i wish i was a kid again. too bad i wasn't game enough to try it - for me, toothpaste is synonymous with mint. anything else is just plain weird. lol.

the other rocking aisle was that with all the tv dvd boxsets. you can't imagine how upset i was to realize that 1) the prices weren't any better than that in australia, and 2) everything i wanted to watch, i own already. *sad face*.

i guess scary seafood places aren't restricted to china. singapore has them too! and as my uncle put it, just because they're live - doesn't mean they're fresh!

and i realized again that i'm really not a seafood person. some people really get a "high" or a "kick" from seafood. i guess i just don't.

what would singapore be without those hawker stores that are state-wide famous for their awesome good food? this place is famous for their teo-chew porridge.. honestly, in my opinion? i couldn't tell the difference between this and rice and water. but hey, maybe i'm just not asian enough! =p *shock horror*

and of course, a singapore trip just isn't complete without a pure chocolate ice blended from coffee bean. =)

okay well that's about it for now.

you'll all be glad to hear that the LSATs are well and truly over. so! i'm happy living in ignorance at least for the next week and half until results come out. =)

til next time!

- pheebs.

almost over

2009-06-04T00:42:00.000+08:00

whew.

exam period. always such a purge of stress. i must say i believe i've been coping with it all quite well this semester. i've been watching lots of tv, eating lots of instant noodles, and i've read (or should i say, re-read) 4 books over the past week and a half. all of this on top of finishing 3 final exam papers and final assignments. that's quite a feat right?

so, maybe overloading at uni is actually made for me. but then the white hairs growing on my head tell me otherwise - maybe stress is overrated.

in any case, i'm just glad that there's only one week left of this "hell on earth" that they call semester one of year four of uni. it's gone by so fast though.

as a result of the intense studying and assignment-ing, social activities have been seriously limited. the zero number of new photos on my camera tells me that i haven't been investing enough time in my social life. =p more to the point, i haven't even had time to catch up with lunch buddies at uni. so poor. i can't wait for the dim-sum season to start again. i love dim sum in winter. it's so cheery. =p

oh and in the works are plans to visit sydney! now all that's left is to figure out the timing of the trip. it truly sucks when there's a window of four weeks for 3 people to schedule their annual leave because it just means that there's bound to be overlaps (which means extra work for all those stuck in the office). not only that, but it makes it harder to get approval. for the first time ever, i'm not the first one to book leave (usually i know these holidays in advance and do quite well to get in early), but this time, i've gotta work round the others. i don't mind at all because i'd love to work more during the semester break - just to try making the bank a bit fatter. in any case, y'all know how much i love the planning phase of things. this holiday is no exception. =)

til next time.

- pheebs.

decisions :(

2009-05-18T22:38:00.002+08:00

if you're passing through here, please - help me decide by taking a vote.

which is more worthy?

$59.95 mooks gaudalupe

OR

$109.95 goorin bros zendra

as i speak

2009-05-13T17:22:00.002+08:00

people ask me... "how ARE you???"

my answer: B-U-S-Y!!

i'm not kidding!

but now, i feel like i owe a post, and after all, my new camera did arrive the week before last - which i totally neglected to tell you all! but yes, i decided to go with the ixus 100. it's tiny and cute. and takes good enough photos. so score!

i thought i'd post some photos to give a quick recap of what's been happening over the past few weeks... OTHER than uni of couse! =)

last month was mom's birthday. nothing quite as sweet as getting showered with presents throughout the day right? we got up extra extra early (and by we i mean rach and me) at 6am to make her breakfast. we then had flowers and chocolates sent to her office. followed by a homemade signed photo [below] and then.... a laptop! pretty good effort hey. =p

a few days later in april, it was jas's birthday! and because we're all such good friends, we spent the whole of friday "slaving" away, making cupcakes and a cupcake tower.

third birthday for this post goes to janice! happy 21st! but too bad that the clearest photo i have of all us girls has some random guy in it too!

last week we had family come visit from singapore. was pretty awesome. makes me remember how much i love having family around. so anyhow, weirdly enough we didn't actually take any group shots - well, none on my camera anyway! but i did get some pretty funny snaps of my 13 month old niece. she's hilarious! as soon as she gets into a car, she crashes. every single time! it's so awesome. but as it turns out, i'm such a bad auntie... teaching her to drink coke. it's totally in the genes coz she loved it. =p oh and she knows how to suck through a straw - that's pretty awesome for 13 months!

so with the last shot... of course, with the new camera, i just HAD to practice the self takes. and yup... i think i've got them down. =p

but all in all, it's been a busy past few weeks! and sadly, things don't look like they'll be slowing down anytime soon!!!

til next time...

peace!

xoxo. pheebs.

goodwill comes in...

2009-05-02T18:29:00.001+08:00

note: i exercised goodwill today.

how... you may ask?

simply put, i gave in to my soft spot for fellow "starving" students making their way in the world.

hahaha. okay. so that's probably being slightly melodramatic, but the events of today seemingly highlights one inherent weakness that i can't seem to escape.

my trip to china over the 2008 christmas break reminded me that i really have absolutely zero skills at bargaining. again today, i can say with all confidence that i just don't know how to negotiate! see, i've been trying to sell my piano over the past couple of weeks and after putting an ad up on gumtree, i had quite a few calls. a serious buyer came to see the piano today and after inspecting the piano, we talked price. oh boy was it a bad idea for me to be there alone. lol. people say that you've gotta know the lowest point that you're willing to go to right? check, i did. but as soon as they said that the guy (who was like 17? 18?) was paying for it himself and was a student and only had $X saved up to pay for it and that they just moved into a new house and really couldn't afford much more, i said... okay, no worries. i'll do it for $X+100, even though it was less than what i wanted for it.

*haiz.sigh*

so i know i did a good thing. the guy was clearly a musician (he plays guitar and is learning composition, hence the piano), and i'm pretty sure that it'd go to good use. and hey, at least i sold the thing right? but the principle of the matter is still there: i gave in WAY too early.

ah well, it's a lesson for next time right?

;)

til next time,

x pheebs.

p.s. that was just a test.

2009-04-26T05:02:00.001+08:00

okay. so let me just say.... WOW!

it actually worked!

that's soooooooo awesome. so right now it's like 4:34am. and here i am testing out this wicked new "blogging-system" which probably will change my world.
okay, so it probably won't change my world... but man. this is so crazily efficient. i check my email like 20 times a day, so this might just work out dandily! and you probably will be hearing more from me. =D

anyhow, so i figure that it's about time for a quick update as to what i've been up to for the past couple of months...

x. overloading at uni was a really good idea round about 8 weeks ago (or however long it's been since uni started)... but now it's just seeming pretty stressful. most times when i go to uni, i still feel more like a staff member than a student. and i'm not liking that too much. i have the luxury of having my desk look over the main pedestrian crossway on campus and every time i look outside, i see hundreds of students rushing about, carrying laptops, assmably rushing to hand in their assignments... and then there are those who are just chilling out, just walking with friends. when i see all this, i think about how much work has changed my student life. two years ago i was like that and now, i'm at uni four days a week and three of them are spent holed up in an office at a desk in front of a slow computer. isn't that sad?

x. worse, i feel like my social life is inexistent now. but then... i'm pretty sure i felt like this the same time last year. i distinctively remember a conversation that went along the lines of "something's just got to give in my life right now". and then in the end, after months of deliberation, i decided it was serving in church. that, i regret. so now i'm actively serving (not as much as i want to be)... but at least i'm putting it as a priority. my only worry now is how next semester is going to go. i think i have that bad habit of living in the future. some people? living in the past is their thing. that used to be my lifesong, but not anymore! now i'm all about thinking what the next six months are going to be like, or what next year will hold for me.

x. this brings me to say... i've made quite a few decisions about next year actually. i've been forced to really. i know that i can't stay (and don't want to stay) at Curtin. as soon as i'm out of uni (which is most likely to be at the end of next semester), i'm definitely finding a new (and proper) job. not that Curtin hasn't been good to me. it's definitely been good. but i've been applying for jobs and for grad school. depending on how the latter goes, maybe i'll be able to call the eastern states "home"... at least for the next couple of years anyway.

see? there's that future talk again. all this talk has gotten me so serious. but... maybe it's just because it's almost five in the morning. why am i not tired you may ask? maybe it's because i spent all of thursday night "burning the midnight oil" finishing off an assignment that was due on friday. just for the record, that's the first time i've ever done that for a uni assignment. it felt weird. and i definitely don't have a good feeling about how the result is gonna go. but then i guess that's something which makes uni, uni right? so anyhow, i totally slept to catch up for it last night. slept 14 hours. which is something i haven't done in about a year. but it did feel sooooo good. in any case, i ended up waking up at five pm this afternoon, so that's the reason for my five am psychosis. not something i'll work into my weekly routine i don't think.

next thought.

i don't usually like to think of myself as a shopaholic. i like shopping online, but that can probably be attributed for my love of receiving mail. don't you love getting surprizes in the mail? i do!! i gotta say, i was really popular this past week. got more than 10 letters... which okay i admit sounds pretty lame, but some of them held some good news! and who doesn't love good news? so yes. anyhow back to my original thought. my shopping list of desired items has been growing and growing and growing. and now that list contains the likes of:

x. a canon ixus 100 or 110 - i'm still not 100% decided
x. a ghd straigtener - preferably one with the fat plates (as opposed to the usual skinny ones)...
x. a 32GB iPod touch - my 8GB is pathetic and useless.
x. a new clock - random i know, but mine has stopped working and i've constantly been thinking about buying one that actually suits my room decor.
x. a new car (yes, one with 4 doors this time)
x. a new babolat tennis racquet - i already bought the sneakers, so of course there needs to be a matching racquet!
x. hair rebonding - technically this isn't a purchase... but then again, for $120, it technically is.
x. oh and yes while i'm at it, i'll add hair cut too.

well. at this time in the morning, that's all i really can think about. but i'm sure my list actually is a lot longer.

so anyhow. all i meant to say at the beginning of my little "rant", was that this year has been really interesting so far. hrm. or not. it's more like. things this year have been totally routine, but then there's little stuff coming out of nowhere which is making things interesting.

oh and p.s. just for a random thought, i really love the big taboo. i could play that game forever!

so here's me, keeping things happy.
xoxo. pheebs.

so much has changed.

2009-04-26T04:33:00.001+08:00

wow. so you can email to your own blog huh?

who came up with that idea? totally awesome.

everytime i hang out with friends or even when i'm walking alone and just thinking of random things, i always have the thought... woah. i should definitely post about ____________. and then by the time i get home, the thought is totally gone and i never remember what it is i wanted to post about!

so wow. if this whole email thing works... maybe i'll even start posting stuff from my iTouch!

technology never seems to amaze me. watching movies about all those totally futuristic things? totally bugs me out. but now i think about it, so long as i don't have some eviil robot taking over my life... technology's pretty cool.

peace out y'all.

xoxo. pheebs.

at the tip of my fingers

2009-04-01T23:12:00.002+08:00

so i've always known that i'm not exactly the most technically savvy person out there. but it only really just occured to me that not only am i totally under-utilizing my mac, but i just don't know enough about what the internet and technology has to offer!

so check this out. there's a user who has posted up a list of 25 of his top mac applications that he could not live without. of this list of 25, i currently have three installed on my own mac. these are: skype, handbrake and firefox. okay, so two of which are not mac-specific. that makes this even more pathetic to think about.

now going beyond this, the other 22 - i never even heard of! and to make things worse (or embarrassing), questions like "what's a BitTorrent client?" and "how does RSS feeds work?" crossed my mind.

i asked my brother to explain to me how RSS feeds work. his explanation was clear and simple. but somehow, i just can't get it. but. i have dared to be brave and have now downloaded NetNewsWire to dabble in. i will let you know how it goes!

in any case, i'm sure this is going to be interesting. but somehow, i'm still worried. downloading things from the net, whilst illegal, is moreover worrying for me! i just can't do it. i never know what looks like a good file or what files are going to have viruses. i don't know how people do it! it took me ages to get the concept of a torrent and how that whole thing works. somehow, i'd rather PAY for my stuff and do it the "right" way, rather than have to worry about downloading a worm or a trojan or another crazy computer bug.

hah. "computer bug". i guess really am a noob.

=.=

oh. and don't even get me started on the intellectual property argument. i've been thinking WAYYY too much about it the past few days. actually, you know what? i think i'll keep that topic on the table for a another dawning day. =))

crap is crap

2009-03-16T10:42:00.004+09:00

usually, i'm the kind that never has nothing to say. i really do always have an opinion. about everything.

but the for the past two weeks (which seems like forever), i've been left surprizingly opinionless.
i'm not entirely sure what's to blame but these days i sit in my classes and i just think. wow. how come everyone knows so much?

how is it that the world's wealth of knowledge seems like it's been transferred to everyone else, except for me?

i feel foreign.

there was a point in time when i first got back from canada/US after a good six months of being abroad. and in class everyone was talking about the recent election and how australia was just about ready to be flushed down the toilet (of course this topic was discussed a lot more eloquently and passionately featuring extremist cases of political "jargon" and other such wisecracks). but for the life of me, even though i had followed the federal election briefly on youtube and news.com.au, i sat there not able to even recall who the new australian prime minister was, let alone being able to discuss new rudd policy directions, budgets, platforms and all of that stuff. shame on me! right?

so now, there are times when i think that i'm totally out of my league. is it my fault that i use common sense as my primary platform of political interpretation? ultimately, i just think that theories should exist to help us make sense of reality. but if a theory doesn't do anything except confuse reality even more, then it really must be a crap theory even if it was theorized by some dead guy who was the founder of whatever institution that was world-renown for watever reason.

honestly. crap is crap. why can't we just leave it at that?

i marvel at God

2009-02-26T21:17:00.003+09:00

so today was probably one of my most scary days ever.

it started off with getting out of bed on the wrong side. as crazy as it sounds, my head just didn't feel right. i didn't feel good when i got dressed, i didn't feel good when i got in my car and i definitely didn't feel right when i got on the freeway then realized that i had forgotten my wallet.

things got worse because i was late for work and for a seminar (which was completely boring by the way). and then i was totally unproductive at work. things started to look up over lunch with liz, but then working after lunch was just totally painful.

so at about 4 o'clock, i decided that enough was enough and that it was time to go home. i packed my stuff and was out of the office by 4:30.

bad move.

i was so tired, my eyes kept closing. but then i got on the freeway and was relatively awake. i was only driving for about 5 minutes, past canning bridge on kwinana freeway. i was driving about 15 meters behind a ford falcon wagon pulling a trailer. then it all happened so fast. i saw the ratchet rattling... and before i knew it there was a block of metal the size of a large clay brick flying at me. i tried to take a quick look in my mirrors, but i couldn't swerve because there were cars in both lanes either side of me. so i saw it flying, screamed with my mouth wide open, then it hit. i even think i swallowed glass.

so all i can say now is that God is good. because if that metal brick thing hit any harder, i'm not entirely sure i'd be here right now! see have a look at this: it looks way worse in real life.

so apart from being thankful that i'm still alive, i'm also thankful for friendship. sadly, ronnie and christa and baby jayden went back to new york after three years of stirring ministry here in perth. we're all so sad to see them go but i know that God has big things planned for them.

so here's a happy-sad moment sending them off at the airport:

and finally, there's other types of friendship which i find totally liberating. and i'm definitely thankful for it. the type of friendship where i'm be free to be myself, say what i want to say and be totally carefree.

there's many things that i'm thankful for. and today really just reminded me that you know what? i don't want to die yet. there's so many things that i still would like to have the chance to do.

but honestly, i marvel at God, the things that He creates and the ways that He shows us His love.

just because

2009-02-07T16:33:00.002+09:00

rule: routine needs to be nipped in the bud.

that's what i keep thinking everytime i get home from work, tired. i just want to sleep. or plonk my butt on the couch. but then, i'll always find something to do. then by the time i have dinner and finish doing whatever i was doing, when i get into bed, it's always 12am, which is pretty late considering my days start at 6:45am. but then, at 12am, i always feel the urge to read. so, i give into the temptation and i whip out a novel to read. then once i start reading, i usually can't stop (especially if it's a robin jones gunn novel). so i read the book from cover to cover. by the time i put the 400+ page book down, it's 3am.

then i sleep.

for 3 hours.

at 6:45am, i'm rudely awakened by the sweet sounds of secondhand serenade, fall for you. which happens to be - my song. at that point in time i snooze my alarm. and do so roughly five to six times every morning. by the time i peel myself out of bed, it's 7:30am. at which point i realize that i'm late. not late by work standards, but late by my standards.

i realize that with a 7.5 hour work day, if i start at 7:30, i'll be done by 3:30. but if i start at 9:00, then i'm there til 5:00. and that's just depressing. not to mention a pain in the butt because of the peak hour traffic both there AND back. so ideally? work should start at 7:30.

but like i said, routine needs to be nipped in the bud.

so let's say thanks because i think a "new" routine is dawning for me this year.

yay to that!

extremities

2009-01-20T22:42:00.006+09:00

a colleague today told me about her 14-year-old brother who brought his 14-year-old girlfriend home for dinner. her mom simply freaked. she just didn't know how to deal with "losing" her baby boy. and while this brother of hers was the kind of boy to not lift a finger around the house (and get away with it), at dinner he got up, cleared his girl's plate and asked her "how did you like it honey?" with a smile.

it's things like this which make me really laugh and wonder.

i laugh because i realize that it's so typical for young ones in love to lash out extremities. some of which may be regretted later on. now this boy carlos is probably one week away from saying "i love you" to this poor girl, and it seems to me that the words "i love you" can be so unbelievably carelessly used these days.

i wonder for this reason: if young people are going to throw around "love" like an everyday word of passion, then what does it mean for people to say it when they really mean it? do we need to come up with a stronger word for love then?

when i was growing up, just saying that you "liked" someone was such a huge deal, complete with the whispers and the giggles. let alone saying that you "like liked" someone. so now, when kids say that they "love" someone, does it carry the same meaning as it used to?

personally, i feel that this is how it should be: once you truly love something or someone, it never goes away. i am a strong believer in eternal love. maybe that's because i'm Christian and i cherish the eternal love that God has for me. but this probably doesn't apply for everyone in this world (although i do hope that one day it does). but perhaps this explains my intolerance for people who say that they "love someone always", but then years down the track it turns out it's not true.

nevertheless, i try to think 10 years or 20 years in the future and i can imagine the linguistically emotional stuntedness of teenagers. if no one says that they "crush" someone or that they "like" someone, and if "love" loses it's meaning... then what's left?

xoxo. pheebs.

oh how things change

2009-01-12T22:20:00.002+09:00

generally speaking, when people welcome in a new year, it begins with resolutions, promises and others of the like. but one thing which i only noticed this year, is that the new year also brings dramatic change. i feel as if people around me are living towards new aspirations and are somewhat conscious of the fact that they really want something different from the year 2009.

work is definitely like this.

i kinda expected that it was going to be a bit weird coming back to my job after leaving for a couple of weeks. obviously, someone had to do my job when i was away, but i didn't quite expect to feel so... trodden over. it's not so much that i feel replaceable because to be honest, i'm actually quite relieved that i am so replaceable right now! but when i look ahead at the year 2009, i'm scared. scared is all i feel. overloading at uni and dealing with work and other commitments, while fulfilling my promise to myself that i WILL have a social life this year - it's all quite worrying. last year i kept getting frustrated because i was never able to go where i wanted to, despite the fact that transportation and finances were no object. time seems to run away from me. but i know for a fact that i don't want to be one of those 80 year olds sitting in a rocking chair while looking back on life realizing that i spent my 20s working hard at things that didn't really matter.

friends matter.
faith matters.
even uni matters.

when it comes to compromise. i suck. i really really do suck. i'll be the first to admit that decision making has never been my forte. put me in a petrol kiosk with 25 different kinds of beverages? chances are, i'll walk out with five, just because i couldn't decide. and that's after 20 minutes of serious deliberation.

but the problem is that life isn't like the petrol kiosk refrigerators. it's actually a lot harder. and so this is where i'm lacking. the only problem now is that i know where my head is at, but the action part of the equation lags quite far behind.

well, now it's time for a p.s.
honesty is a virtue that is often ignored. but i personally think that the virtue most forgotten these days is patience.

patience in answers.
patience in prayers.
patience in wisdom.
patience in friendship.
patience in knowing what's right even though everything else tells you it's wrong.

xoxo. pheebs.

welcome to 2009

2009-01-01T11:24:00.005+09:00

so it's the the first day of the new year! gosh 2008 went fast. like really. i feel like i barely accomplished anything! hopefully though looking to the new year, 2009 will hold better things!

okay so as promised, i still have a lot more photos to share from my travels. the rest of these start from tuesday last week, when we took a ferry over from hong kong to zhongsan. my uncle and aunty have been living there for the past four years, and let me tell you, after spending a week in hong kong, relatively unplanned about where to go and what to see, it was such a fantastic feeling to have a tour guide and a driver!!! since my uncle is the general manager for a plant over there, he was so cool to have his driver take us around zhongsan and then take two day trips to shenzhen and guangzhou. it's always really good when you meet family abroad though!

anyhow, here's the snaps and a rundown of our china trip so far:

this is the CKS ferry that we hopped on, it was about a one and a half hours ride from HK to zhongsan. seeing that we were all pretty knackered, we slept through most of it anyway! so no, i don't actually remember it being very bumpy, but it sure was foggy outside! but then again, maybe it could've been thick smog or pollution, in china, you never really know!

so maybe the van curtin is slightly in the way, but still it was a funny sight! so that makes two motorcyclists that i've seen carrying some heavy duty equipment! one guy tied a washing machine to the back of his bike! i really was waiting to see a guy carrying 15 people stacked up. would've made for quite a photo huh?

in guangzhou, we went for lunch at a thai restaurant called Banana Leaf. so we get seated, i look around, quite bewildered at the two massive trees which seem to spread all over the ceiling. so naturally, i look up to check out the superficiality of the tree leaves. but then, i don't see bananas hanging from the tree, but i see a multitude of massive durians! i'm not sure if that was intentional, or if they just couldn't find fake bananas to hang off the tree (but then it is china and they can make anything right?) or if they just got lazy and thought their patrons wouldn't notice! strange...

like i mentioned before, china makes for much more funny english and signage than hong kong.

it also seems that china makes for good food when you know where to go. my uncle brought us to his regular teppanyaki place. the chef simply put was very very skilled. i'm not sure i agree with her recommendations of which sauce to use on what meat, but the way she de-shelled those prawns had me amazed. needless to say, it's pretty cool watching people cook for you when their hands move so fast.

another night for dinner our uncle took us to "Seaport City Restaurant". now this place was just crazily amazing! i've never been to a restaurant like it before. firstly, we had our own room. and second, we had our own private bathroom. let's just say that it was very very very posh.

the other thing that i've realized this trip is that i think i'm an animals-right-ist at heart. prior to this trip, i usually could care less about what animal i'm eating because i think the food chain exists for a reason (i do however draw the line at dogs and cats). but over the past two weeks, every time we've eaten chicken (which by the way happens to my favorite edible animal), my heart churns because they always always ALWAYS put the head on the plate for display with the rest of the body! i really do think it's totally gross and just completely unnecessary. =(

chicken aside, seaport was so posh that if you wanted a seafood dish and wished to choose exactly which fish/crab/lobster/sea cucumber/snake/eel/prawn you wanted, you took the lift down to the ground floor and picked them straight out of the tank/tub. now the fish and the prawns i could deal with, but my goodness! i have never ever seen so many snakes ready to be eaten! there were cages and cages, and buckets full of them. it was totally rank! however, i must say that the prawns that my uncle chose were pretty huge, and not to mention, tasty! =p

okay moving on, shenzhen made for some good shopping experiences - especially for raph! it was hilarious, we went to a upmarket shopping center that day and for the most part we were just browsing as stuff was suprizingly expensive! we then wandered into Jack Jones, which seems to be a pretty good brand over here (it's somehow related to the brand, Only). now the salesgirls in this store were particularly leechy, and i had purposely made a bee line straight out of the store a few minutes earlier because one of the girls was seriously seriously stalking me. but anyhow, raph was trying on a few jackets here and there, and one salesgirls just totally got attached. but i've gotta say. she was just so good. and even though she spoke really little english, and we even less mandarin, we still managed to work our way around getting sizes and what not. single-handedly, she managed to up raph's purchase from just one jacket, to the jacket, shirt and vest! i know it doesn't sound like much, but when you consider that each item was pretty pricey, it was pretty skilled of her!

but what made the moment even "golder" was the fact that she ushered raph to the fitting room to try on all the merchandise. while waiting for him to dress up, rach and i ended up chatting to her. among other things, she asked us where we were from, whether we were working, how we related (p.s. she was totally suprized when we told her we were siblings - it must be the one child policy thing!), and then - whether or not raph had a girlfriend! she was totally excited and just really really cute. she helped raph to fold up his sleeves and she pretty much just told him straight out that the t-shirt he was wearing just wasn't good enough, and that he needed to walk out of the shop wearing the shirt from there! so of course, the moment warranted a snap!

cute huh?

the next day also saw another day trip to the city of guangzhou. we ended up leaving the house quite late today, so we didn't get much of a chance to do too much shopping once we were there. but our aunty took us to a pretty sweet market-y type bazaar in which we found some awesome bargains! i bought a bunch of jewelry and scarves =)

later on that night, we went on a night-cruise to see the lights of the city. while the bridges were pretty cool, it really just didn't compare to the other tours that i've been on - especially when you compare it to the east/hudson river in new york and pugent sound in seattle!

so that leg of our china trip ended on tuesday morning when mom, dad, rach and i took a ferry back to the HK airport in order to make our flight to shanghai. raph ended up taking a ferry back to HK to shop and party it up with friends there.

upon arriving in our hotel at shanghai, rach and i realized that there was seriously something suss about our hotel room. it seems to us, that this hotel, despite being awesomely located to everything touristy, is intentionally tailored for perverted travelers.

so not only does our room come equipped with a full packet of condoms, but it also has a hormonal supplement for dudes that need "assistance"! the funniest part of it is the descriptions on the back of the box. however, in fear for the young ones and innocent minds, i think it best not to post them up here! one other thing which adds to the perversion, is the fact that our shower has a half body mirror sitting right next to the shower head. =.= quoting from rach, it's probably of some assistance when hotel guests find themselves getting up to the heebie-geebies!

what i will post up here however for another laugh, is one page of the hotel's service directory. now there's only one instruction. click on the two photos below, and read it aloud to yourself:

and for an itemized description of the "list of artcles":

awesome english huh? honestly, as soon as i read it, i called my mum in her room, told her to flip to the page, and just started crying with laughter. i laughed so hard, my back started to hurt!

well that pretty much sums up my travels so far! =D

well i should be off, tomorrow has in store a day trip to hangzhou that happens to start at 6:30am! woohoo right? =.=

haha.

love,

pheebs.

once upon a time in china

2008-12-31T13:56:00.004+09:00

wow! there's so much to catch you up on. the past week has been hectic hectic hectic! i've traveled to five cities over the past 7 days - it's incredible! and i've started to realize that china isn't so bad after all. while i would never want to live here because there are just wayyyyy too many people, there are some things to be had whilst here! by saying that, what i really mean is that shopping has been awesome!

q. but you know what the hardest part of the travelling is?
a. the language barrier
so you know, coming to china has really made me wish that i spoke chinese. and it is kinda sad that it's taken me this long to figure that out. just last night when we checked into our shanghai hotel, the fridge was turned off because it's winter here, so the hotel tries to conserve energy (oh how ironically greenie of them!). there was a notice on the front of the fridge saying to call the front desk if you wanted to have it turned on. so, of course i called the front desk and it was shocking. the lady did not know what a "fridge" or "refridgerator" or "freezer" meant, and i had absolutely no idea how to say it in mandarin! she thought i meant air-con, which okay i applaud her for that deduction, but still! i had to ask my mum to call the front desk for me, and then they told her that all we had to do was turn the dial at the back of the fridge (duh!). so now i just think, instead of having the notice say for people to call the front desk, why didn't they just say to turn the dial in the first place!?! it all just seems so crazy. =.= and don't even get me started on the haggling!

okay, well so much has happened over the past week, we've been to so many amazing places, eaten at some pretty awesome restaurants and just witnessed a whole new way of life. i was told the other day that china girls get married really young, usually at around 21/22, and then they have a kid the next year. and coz they're still so young and they need to work,they leave their baby with their parents in the villages and then leave to the city because the pay is better there. i just can't imagine growing up in such a lifestyle. really.

so that's another thing that this trip has taught me: APPRECIATION.

here's the five things that i need to appreciate more:
(1) God
(2) family
(3) friends
(4) work
(5) love

who knows, maybe God has planned for 2009 to be a better year than this one. in any case, i'm definitely looking forward to it!

so as usual, i'll close off this post with a bazillion photos. and yup this time it WILL be a bazillion coz travelling for 7 days has let me take over 900 photos!!!

so here goes:

Day Five, Six, Seven, Eight and Nine: Hong Kong

signage in mong kok, hong kong is absolutely crazy!! it's not quite as funny as the chinese, because surprise surprise, hong kong people actually can spell in english quite well!

but before i speak too soon! that doesn't mean dodginess doesn't make it up there!

nice photo of rach and i on our little trek up to catch the peak tram. we were both having such good hair days! hehe.

now once we were up on the peak - we were so amazed by the view. there's a little viewing gallery which you have to pay a little extra for, called the "sky terrace". it was amazing though because they built a glass "wall" around the side to block the wind. but once you stuck your head over the glass, the wind hit you like a tonne of bricks! such good engineers/designers hey. i always love people who help my hair look good in photos! =p but this snap just goes to show that no matter where you go, the rude/inconsiderate tourists always seem to be around.

same day as the peak, we jumped on the train and went to disneyland!!! now all i can say after our mere 5 hours there, is that i really really wished that i was 10 years old again. i can just imagine, it would've been ten times as magical and 50 times more amazing! even then, it was still cool. and i can finally say that i've been on space mountain! and gosh, i really hope the LA one is better coz by my standards of roller coasters, the HK one just did not compare!!!

on our last night in HK, we were so hungry that we decided to stop for eats at a restaurant in langham place. now this building i'm pretty sure is home to the world's longest escalators. the building houses two of them which each transcend past 5 storeys. that's pretty mighty hey! this restaurant, which shall remain nameless simply because i can't remember the name, by far wins the Most Confusing Asian Menus everrrrrrr!!! in total, between the five of us dining there, we were given 17 menus, 18 if you count the drinks one that was left standing on the table. and surprise again, the food really wasn't all that good.

now we also took a day trip to macau on Christmas Day. this was funnnnn! hahah. it was only a short trip because we went sometime in the afternoon, but i still feel like i saw enough. =p

i can also say that we ate well, because this was by far the best congee i have ever tasted in my life. and for those of you who know me well, congee is one of my favorite foods, so needless to say, i was pretty stoked when i tasted it. =p

and of course, the portuguese egg tarts just HAD to be tasted. now there were six in this box, but five seconds after mom brought them to us, two of them were appreciatively devoured! so travel hint no 1: if you ever travel to macau, you MUST eat these egg tarts! and travel hint no 2: yes, they are meant to look a little burnt - they're good that way!

so a visit to macau wouldn't be complete without a trip to the venetian resort. only three letters can describe it: O.M.G. it's HUGE! massive! ginormous! this photo is of their gondola ride canal which they built on the inside of the east wing of the resort. you see the sky? yes. it's fake. but wow. you sure do feel like you're outside when you're inside! amazing huh!

the SLR took awesome photos of our family from outside the resort - but i haven't yet got my hands on them! but once i do! this is there first place they're going! so stay tuned, they'll be up here soon.

the family on the turbojet ferry ride back from macau. yes, we're all happy chappies!

whooooops!

okie. forgot to look at the time. i've got to go!

hope you've enjoyed reading what i've been up to so far! =D and i just want to put it out there, feel free to comment okie?

will write soon,

love, pheebs.

hellooooo singapore

2008-12-20T03:04:00.003+09:00

hi guys!

the last couple of days have been unbelievable hectic. i finished up at work on wednesday - i was meant to leave the office at 12pm, but ended up sticking around til 1:30pm. and lol. i had 21 things on my to do list before flying off at 1:15am that same night. the day was hectic running to and from shopping centres and then it was even more hectic trying to get all my stuff together! but luckily, everything got done and i was at the airport by 11:15pm ready to check in. then when raph and i got to the airport and lined up, we found out that my flight had been delayed. from 1:15am until 4:15am!! so the contemplation started in deciding whether or not to drive home first, and then drive back again later on in the early morning. raph had to work the next day, and so did dad, so it made more sense for me to stay at the airport. so i did.

o.m.g.

it was the longest night of my life. i ended up watching two discs of one tree hill. thank goodness i brought my laptop with me! AND kept my charger in my hand-carry bag. hahah. =p that's forward thinking for ya! after that and the plane ride, i ended up landing in s'pore at about 9:15ish-am. normally getting through singapore immigration is really quick. but it so happened that a plane from india had landed just before my jetstar flight (at terminal 1), and so it happened that the immigration lines were absolutely JAMPACKED with indian people! worse though, is because it takes ages for indian people to get through customs, with their visas and other paperwork. instead of 10 minutes, it was more like 30-40mins! needless to say, the "other foreigners" like me, were getting quite ticked off. now i think back to it, it was actually quite funny.

rach came to pick me up from the airport, and so after reaching my aunty's place, we headed out to orchard. and wow. i've not had such a good shopping day in a very very long time! let's just say that ted baker makes it all so much better. heheh. but i ended up buying two pairs of shoes and a really really nice ted baker bag! =)

i didn't end up sleeping last night until about 1am again, so technically i had been awake for more than 48 hours, with 2 hours of cat-napping on the plane. hardcore hey! i really don't think i'm cut out for it - i was getting preeeeetty moody by the end of the day.

but now i think, it's kinda funny when you travel overseas, but then you don't really feel like you're overseas because you know where things are and you can recognize enough buildings and streets to get around on your own. that's what singapore has become to me! it's the weirdest feeling though because i look around me and there's a bazillion asian people, yet they all have this really funny way of talking. even funnier because i was standing on orchard road watching a street concert/musical and omg. i could NOT understanding what those people were saying!! yet, i'm pretty sure that they were speaking some kind of random english, or "singlish" as they say here.

anyhow, as usual, i got to take quite a few good snaps throughout the day! yay. =)

DAY ONE

me at changi airport

nothing says singapore like good 'ol chicken porridge from food republic in wisma atria

just in case you can't tell, that 60% of sign belongs to ted baker. and that big white bag i'm holding comes from there too. =D *grins* let's just say that 50% off a really nice bag makes me sky-high-happy.

oh for every high there's a low. this drink was the worst thing i've ever ordered. EVER. it was called a "minty lychee tea". yet it was ice blended and looked like puke. worse $6.80 i've spent on a beverage. lol. =p

hehe rach. =p but of course, when i found bubble tea, i just had to get the usual. but what was jaw dropping was the fact that it only cost me $1.80!!!

DAY TWO

lunch at shokubo: rach and ben

lunch at shokubo: jeremy and me

hehe. jap apple juice is so good. i think the packaging makes it taste better.

somehow, in cold storage in takashimaya, we managed to find the grossest drink. but rach's face really does say it all.

we then met up with raph so we could go to the airport to pick dad up. hehe. and truly, a day is not complete without a funny face picture.

but it was a good hairday for us both - nice picture hey!

so that marks both day one and two of my asia holiday!

stay tuned for more updates!

love,
pheebs.

whoopsies!

2008-12-07T21:44:00.001+09:00

heheheheh.

okay. so i've been working on a new template for this blog on-off for something like the past 2 months. and then earlier this evening. i was just sooooo smart. somehow i managed to wipe my old template... without saving it.

LOL.

so yes. just in case you're wondering, why the new look? that's why. and hahaha. i don't even have enough time to go and properly re-work it. so kudos to the dude for creating this template - it was easy enough to piece together. but to all my *loyal* readers, please bear with me until i get all the aesthetics sorted out!

anyhow. life lately has been busy. it's been dinners out pretty much everyday since the exam period finished! and i'm headed off on holiday in about 11 days - yay! so much exciting stuff.

i'll have lots of photos and that to bring you next time.

but until then, sayonara! =D

a re-freshened outlook

2008-11-19T18:07:00.004+09:00

following last week, emotions were left on a high. while i've always been emotionally adept, it came to a point that i had to make some serious changes. see, for the years that gramps lived with us in perth, he had used my room. i was quite a pain about it. i know i complained to so many people about my "space" issues and most of you would know heaps about my apartment/house hunting for the most of this year. so having my room back at first felt quite weird. now as blunt as this is going to sound, i'm glad that gramps didn't die in my room.

it's bad enough that for the whole of last week, every time i walked into my room or just stood at the doorway and looked at my bed, i would see him lying there like he had done for so long. i would see him and even hear him breathe really loudly and make those really weird dream grumbles. but then. on saturday last week, that's when the image association started. every time i saw my bed, by association i'd see gramps in bed at the nursing home. then again by association, i'd see him how we first saw him when we went to view him that morning after he passed.

so call me weak, call me sensitive.

either way, each time i walked into my room, i'd feel sad.

so over the weekend, i finally decided. no more. i needed to make a change. for the longest time, i've always wanted to paint one wall in my room white. i always thought that it would open up the room a lot more, make it not so hot in summer (because of the dark colour) but just not too cold in winter (there's still the three walls of dark colour left).

so that's exactly what i did! now i'm really only responsible for providing the paint. thanks to shell who dutifully came over on friday/saturday to help me paint - because she's totally the arty one. haha.

now i would take a picture of the finished product, but i'm going to wait 'til all the other elements of my room change are completed. :)

but the night before, on friday night, we had ourselves quite an adventure. with me being fickle about deciding what to eat, it took a drive through northbridge, leederville and innaloo to decide that we'd rather cook ourselves. so! precedent prevailed and we made the best takoyaki ever:

and yes, we were all smiles about it, because even our first batch turned out peachy!

but following this phase of "re-freshening", mum and i went to the city on saturday after church. there's nothing quite like $150 worth of dvd boxsets, cake and coffee, and quality time with mum.

me with cheesecake and iced chocolate

mum and her massive melting moment

now i gotta say, the cake and coffee was pretty average, so just a recommendation for those of you who ever have the need to stop for coffee in northbridge, you might want to consider not going to vultures cafe. you could tell that the lemon white choc cheese cake was store bought and the extent of the "white choc" was just a dot of cream-like topping. also, the melting moment didn't really melt - it sorta... disintegrated... in a really strange way. and the iced choc would have been smashing, provided that it wasn't 75% icecube (which was not blended).

but all in all, and semi-dodgy afternoon tea aside, the weekend was pretty fulfilling.

and you'll be glad to know that i can now sleep in peace. :)

a tribute to gramps

2008-11-16T03:24:00.003+09:00

so sad news guys.

last saturday morning at 5:50am, my gramps was called Home to be with the Lord.

okay, so sad news for me, for us. but good news for him. he's been in perth, living with us for about 2 years now. and i'm really really really glad that he came here. it gave me a chance to hang out with him, play mahjong with him, cook for him, eat with him, and just get to know him.

he's the only grandparent who i can say i actually knew. i knew what kind of food he liked, what he didn't. i knew what kind of tv he liked watching and where on his back he liked to be massaged. i knew how he liked his coffee and that he had a really really sweet tooth.

but what was even better, was that as soon as they heard, all the family from mum's side flew down from singapore. we've never particularly been close to all of mum's family, so it was a little bit nerve racking at first just to see how things would go! but, the Lord is good. it turns out that His master plan all this time was to bring the family back together. gramps would've been pleased. happy. contented. and at peace. it was one of his "last wishes" to see the whole family reunited. so to have it happen (and for EVERYONE to fly down at the last minute), it was really a blessing.

it's also times like this which make you realize the brevity of life. but it's not just about making some sweeping statement like "living life to the full", but it's more about living life well. and i think gramps did that. i mean, i've heard lots of stories about him growing up, and really, he didn't get saved until he was in his 70s. but nevertheless, there are so many things which we can all be thankful for and there are also countless things which i've learned from him - through his example.

last weekend (through to wednesday) were probably the most hectic and sleep-deprived days that i've lived through yet. from little to no sleep on most of those days, God still provided. He kept me safe when I was driving (tired... yes), but He also opened my eyes to see that love and faith are two things which i need to work on keeping close to my heart.

but all in all, gramps' funeral wasn't sad. at first i was sad that people weren't getting sad. but then, i realized after a bit that you know what? really, what is there to be sad about? gramps lived a full life here on earth, but he's gone on to a place which is awesomely better than here! i mean, c'mon the streets ARE lined with gold and everyone lives in a humongous mansion! it's a pretty sweet deal. so you know what? it's not and was not a time of grieving. but rather, it was a celebration. =)

SUNDAY

the first lot of family landed on early sunday morning, so sunday night dinner called for a good ol' aussie bbq... :)

MONDAY

the two sisters saying goodbye

chucking all-nighters to get the video presentation up to scratch!
but yes, i realize that the clock says 12 noon, but hey!
i hadn't slept yet!

playing keys: getting ready for the vigil service

quick lunch before rushing off to finalize everything

the beautiful wreaths

consoling mum

the vigil service in action, people paying their last respects

we were tired... so of course, there's funny faces on the couch

TUESDAY

a family portrait before the herse left for the crematorium

after the reception, such a catalogue shot

< L to R: benedict (aka da ge)|raph|mum|aunty siew tin|me|rach|dad >

nice one of the three of us

one last meal: the family at the atrium restaurant, burswood

five trips in two and a half days...
thankfully, petrol prices went down to 120!

and finally, we have a nice family shot for mum's side!
see what i mean? family unity all the way! =D

so a celebration indeed.

but nevertheless, it doesn't meant that we won't miss him.

coz i will.

dearly.

*kudos to both jerry and uncle albert for the courtesy of some photos*

suprize

2008-11-03T18:40:00.006+09:00

wow. the past few weeks have flown by! study, work, study, work. and then yes... it is birthday season. last week was raph's, today is dad's.

things were quite funny with raph's actually. wednesday came and went. no traditional family dinner. no traditional gift giving. no nothing. just a hug and a smile. hahah. and oh boy, was he sad. (though he doesn't quite admit that). little did he know, that all along, we were planning to throw him a surprize party! hardeharhar.

we kept the secret well... except for a one VERY close slip-up by rach... hahah. we had to explain a few tricky things too. i.e. why lil and shell came to sleepover, why lil and i made 2 litres of mango pudding, why we were making cellophane windows (which we used for our buzz game) and why we were cleaning the house randomly!

thanks to raph's blessed case of slight "thickness", we managed to pull it off. hehe.

but here's some pictures and a vids!

the *surprize* golden-moment

rach's brainchild.

the awesome choc/vanilla/strawberry cake that mum made for raph

the pie-fight round of our "buzz-like" game, flick.the.switch

everyone looking on at raph opening his pressies

the other side of the "crowd"

rach|me|lil|shell|cheng|raph
the six of us really BUZZing after the rest of the company left

what makes me tick

2008-10-12T19:23:00.002+08:00

you know, it sucks when you have a person who constantly ignores what you say. you want them to listen. most times, you want their opinion. but then, when you're standing in the kitchen, and you're both there, you start talking. mainly about your day and the things that you got up to or the interesting things which happened throughout the week, and the things which you're not quite sure what to do about. but then this person just looks at you and looks right through you. they know you're there, but they don't quite seem to notice. they focus on cutting the vegetables or washing the cups. or something weird like that.

but then, what happens when this keeps happening repeatedly? not just once or twice, but every day over a few years? what then? am i meant to be numb? am i meant to just not care? should i just write-off that emotion and just say to myself, "you know what? even if they don't care or respond, it really doesn't matter!" but then, that would be lying. because it DOES matter. what they think does matter. but when they stand there and all they can think about is themselves, then that's a bad thing right? is the onus on me to vocalize these feelings? do i need to say it to their face? or would a letter say it better? after all, that's written proof right?

how can i make it not hurt so much? i want them to be emotionally sensitive to what i'm going through. so no, maybe i'm not going through a crisis. but yes! i want to hear what they have to say about themselves, but i want them to care about me as well. i want them to be interested in how my day went, what happened at work or at uni. i want them to listen to me! not just hear me, but actually listen!

really, is that too much to ask?

whoops

2008-10-09T16:37:00.003+08:00

so i'm going to be 100% honest here.

so far we've gone through about 12 weeks of uni. and it's terrible i know, but for my 3rd yr politics unit (which is pretty much "the big unit" which most students complete in their final semester - i.e. it's a 50 credit unit which has a research paper worth 50% of the unit grade), participation in tutorials is weighted as 20%. this can be considered to be exceptionally high, considering that most other units only have 10% participation. now in order to actually participate, one would have to actually ATTEND the class right?

as i've discovered, i've "somehow" managed to miss roughly 5 of these tutorials. independently, 5 isn't such a bad number. but... in my case, that's 5 of 9 tutorials i've missed. quite embarrassing really. but what made things even more embarrassing is the fact that when i walked into class today, and passed my tutor in the hallway, he looked at me and said "hi, pheebs"... and then, he gave me this look. and immediately i thought "oh no, he totally noticed that i haven't been here for the last like 4 classes". so a few minutes later, to cement my speculation about his unfortunate knowledge (of my wagging), just after class started, he walked over to me and handed me my marked research proposal - which i then found out from a friend, the same research proposal that everyone had gotten back 3 weeks ago in class.

*slaps forehead*

i guess the lessons in all of this, are:

(1) don't wag;
(2) don't wag classes in which your tutor knows you (by name);
(3) if you're going to wag, wag smart - i.e. sporadically;
(4) don't wag classes when they hand stuff back - that's way too obvious; and
(5) it'd probably be better to not wag at all

as they say, a lesson may be learned too late, but it's better than never having learned the lesson at all! and you know what? i've got 2 semesters after this to prove it!

:)

birthdays... =p

2008-09-30T21:26:00.011+08:00

yup! it's that time of the year again! and happy 20th to me. =)

not so much of a big deal this time round. but, it was definitely a happy time!

here's some happy snaps... and warning, there's quite a few!

whoops. upside down..! but here's what my fam got me! new stereo for the car. =D

family shot at dinner. too bad dad is blocked in both shots =.=

yes, the girls slept over...

and a nice shot of course...

and we made strawberry cupcakes!

food from the family b'day dinner:

and the cake... =)

and liz was so sweet - she got me a slice of the marble gold cheesecake and put my name on it! check it out:

two nights later it was my parent's 32nd wedding anniversary. now. i'm not sure why we kids were there, but, i sure am glad we were coz the food was A-M-A-Z-I-N-G! =D

so my kudos and compliments go out to the chef at hanami japanese restaurant in mt lawley.

here's some snaps:

and some other snaps from the night:

mum and dad - don't they look happy?

funny shot of me and rach. well, at least funny on my half. =p

and then a funny shot of me and raph...

so yes, let's just say that last week was a really good food week! haha. and it was a really good week for a birthday. =D

the same sun melts the snow and hardens the clay...

2008-09-21T23:28:00.002+08:00

work.
work.
and work.

uni work.
work work.
home work.

yuppp. that's pretty much my week huh.

oh and side note: the only thing that i've done the weekend (other than my stooopid OB200 essay) is this:

"new series" a.k.a. GREEK. let's just say... it's soooooo addictive. our butts have been plastered to the couch for at least 9 hours.

pity it's monday tomorrow though. coz yup. guess what it's back to?

WORK!

if i ever have to ask...

2008-09-07T00:15:00.003+08:00

wow. so long day today. it started at about 5:45am when i woke up to get ready for election day. why you may ask? no... i didn't need 3 hours to prepare for my civic participation in exercising my right to vote, but i did need to get up and get ready to get down to greenwood primary school to work as a polling official. and oh. my. goodness. let's just say that it was probably one of the most un-invigorating days of my life! i got there at 7am, was issued with a stack of ballot papers and an electoral roll, the doors opened at 8am, and once we passed 9:30, it suddenly became dead quiet. and poor us, things never really picked up.

so after 10 hours of voting, our polling place only had 1,537 votes cast. and that's distributed across five polling officials. can you imagine? and worse, i was sitting at table number 4... so everytime we had a lone voter come in, they would stop at the first or second desk, and the rest of us were left there without any action! hahah. but in total i issued about 350 ballot papers. not much when you consider that i was sitting there for like 10 hours.

but even though it was deathly boring, the pay's good and the experience all up was pretty good too. at least i can now say that i have first-hand experience in witnessing exactly how these elections are administered. the people i got to work with today were really nice too. although, our assistant polling place manager was a bit funny, she rained a lot and had a little bit of a problem respecting personal space, but... even given that it was all still very pleasant.

but ask me if i'd do it again? i don't think i can say i would. i'd rather spend my saturdays in front of the telly, or heck, even studying! hahaha. at least then i wouldn't be so knackered. =p

anyhow, on another note. i'm really bothered how i keep getting distracted by the same thing. have you ever had a thought which just keeps invading your mind, minute after minute? it's a totally bizarre experience for me though... i'm really used to just having lone thoughts which drift in and out of my consciousness. but lately, i've just had the same thing repeatedly flash. it's beginning to get annoying. and i'm wondering maybe if this is God's way of telling me to act on it! but then again, the consequences are pretty uhm... severe? well at least they're real. and you know, once you go forward, there's no going back!

well. i'll be off for tonight. but i just want to say. i never ever ever ever want to have to ask someone these three questions ever again:

"have you cast an early vote for this election, or voted elsewhere today?"
"what's your full name?"
"and what's your address?"

gah.

-enough said.

sometimes it's funny when...

2008-09-04T20:25:00.005+08:00

of such essence

* selflessness in the workplace? *

*spring and flowers *

* seoul officially ticked off the list! *

* a new to do list :) *

* time for another a-z =) *

* a little patch of not much *

* ouch *

* my one month catch up! *

* my down day *

* to sing like that *

* the procrastinating taste test *

* day of rest *

* discontinued use will result in death *

* penny for my thoughts *

* challenges *

* what to do *

* the real meaning *

* just a little bit *

* sweet home *

* patriotism *

* happy days *

* a good day *

* holiday advice *

* something a little silly *

* new to my playlist *

* words sent on upwards *

* how some things happen *

* impulse travelling *

* repeat *

* progress *

* 2011 *

* three snaps of the week *

*little seasonal thoughts*

* catch ups *

* i love my family *

* remembering *

*waiting for news*

*just a closer walk*

*if you ever loved somebody, put your hands up*

*i'm not sure how that makes me feel*

N.K.O.T.B.S.B

* back to lists *

* asian-style old spice *

*five random things that make me...*

*helloooooo backstreet boys.*

*sometimes it's funny when...*

* sister love *

*impulsivity*

*rediscovery*

*milk it*

*i had a stalker day*

*more from the sing-off*

*the sing-off.*

*problem free philosophy*

*trends*

*little gifts.*

*my mind is a jungle*

*too much fun*

*travels*

*home food*

*celebrations*

*fly by*

*weekend adrift*

*bumbling along*

*food buff.*

*doesn't get much better than...*

*time for an update*

*catching up on food*

*new habitats*

*new chapter, new city*

official move date

the time has come

welcome to 2010.

all but intentions.

so it's been a while

almost over

decisions :(

as i speak

goodwill comes in...

spring and flowers

little seasonal thoughts

waiting for news

just a closer walk

if you ever loved somebody, put your hands up

i'm not sure how that makes me feel

five random things that make me...

helloooooo backstreet boys.

sometimes it's funny when...

impulsivity

rediscovery

milk it

i had a stalker day

more from the sing-off

the sing-off.

problem free philosophy

trends

little gifts.

my mind is a jungle

too much fun

travels

home food

celebrations

fly by

weekend adrift

bumbling along

food buff.

doesn't get much better than...

time for an update

catching up on food

new habitats

new chapter, new city

at the tip of my fingers

crap is crap

i marvel at God

just because

extremities

oh how things change

welcome to 2009

once upon a time in china

hellooooo singapore

whoopsies!

a re-freshened outlook

a tribute to gramps

suprize

what makes me tick

whoops

the same sun melts the snow and hardens the clay...

if i ever have to ask...

sometimes it's funny when...