exam free

it feel so good to not have any exams, at least for the time being. today shuyu and i went to springvale because i needed to buy veggies and fruits because yesterday when we went to chaddy, coles was selling them for some ridiculously exhorbitant price that i was not willing to pay for. so we went to springvale and had a terrible time looking for parking before we finally got the perfect spot – right at the entrace to the shopping mall, minimising the need for us to walk in the cold wind. (i hate melbourne weather) we had an awesome lunch at this dim sum restaurant. it was so good and we were both so happy after that. we then went to buy our groceries and by then our parking had expired so we went to find a different parking lot in a 1/2P zone because we needed to run to safeway to get some stuff.

i bought some more food. i think my fridge has enough food to feed a small army. just before we were about to pay, we stood in front of the baby food section. incidentally we were talking about what kind of children we wanted.. meaning either boys or girls and we both decided that we wanted daughters because little boys are monsters. :)

speaking of little monsters, 1 or 2 weeks ago, during pcl, we were having another discussion on why girls are better than boys and one of the arguments was that girls spend a whole month making these beautiful eggs while guys just mass produce sperm of which only about 20% of them are viable and the rest are just crap. the response to that by one of the guys was that it was a team effort in the journey to fertilisation. haha hilarious.

so back to the point about standing in front of the baby food section at safeway, we ended up looking at all the different flavours available and there were so many nice ones like mango custard, apple and mango, pear and they even had beef and mashed potatos. wth. i think when i was a baby i had gruel. kids nowadays are so fortunate. (of course, i say that as if i’m a 90 year old balding toothless woman) and then shuyu and i both said that we wanted to try one so i actually bought a bottle and we’re going to open it at dinner tonight. :) hopefully it tastes good. hee hee hee.

and tonight, since i’m more free, i’m going to try to cook something nice. i’m thinking about risotto. i bought the arborio rice yesterday at coles and i have the chicken stock, mushrooms, onions, chicken and heaps of capsicums. ooh this is going to be such an awesome dinner :D i’m quite excited about it! :) :)

back to reading! :D

chef six – shuyu iris xf

yesterday’s lunch was highly eventful. firstly it started off with me wanting to cook one of my pre-packed frozen aluminium foil meal which had my meat, brocolli, carrots, mushrooms in a rather tasteless fluid that has dared to call itself gravy. when i took the foil packet out of the freezer, due to the excellent quality of the foil, i punched this gigantic hole in the bottom. but i couldn’t be bothered to do anything about it so i just tossed it in the toaster oven that i bought. (best investment ever) 20 mins later when i went downstairs to check on it, i smelled this burnt aroma and when i opened the toaster oven, there was this black, angry-looking mass staring at me. at first i thought it was my meat but then i realised that it was just the tasteless “gravy” so no love lost :) a while later, when shuyu decided to toast her sandwich, she placed the sandwich on a paper plate and stuffed it into the toaster oven. 5 minutes later, she smelled somethign burning and when we went to check her sandwich, the whole thing was on fire. the bread was burnt to a crisp and the paper plate looked like it came out of a barbeque pit. amazingly. the turkey and cheese inside the sandwich was in pristine condition and perfectly melted, so she just transferred it over to another 2 slices of bread.

a few hours while i was making futile attempts to study, i decided to go andmake myself a nice big cup of milo. while i was organising my notes back in my room with milo on my desk and papers every where, i somehow accidentally knocked the cup over, which was more than half full of milo (or less than half empty, whichever way you want to look at it) and got milo all over my desk. after about 2 seconds of frantic flapping of arms and yelling i ran to my closet and grabbed this whole stack of face towels and tried to mop up all the milo, which had gotten over my notes, my pens and pencil case (why isn’t it a pen case, since a majority of the stuff in there are pens anyway) what a pain. after that i can’t really remember what happened because my memory is clouded by irritation.

and last night shu, xf, lynn, eugene, perryn and i went for dinner at chilli padi at chapel street. there was some singapore organisation thing holding a national day celebration. we were expecting an entree buffet, as was stated in the menu and when the first dish came out, much to our horror, we saw 6 sticks of satay and about 5 spring rolls that was to be shared among 10 people. seriously wth. and we were all so hopping mad because we were wondering where the other entrees were. and when the rendang came out, the comments the guys made included, “what the hell i can finish that whole bowl myself” and we waited for quite a long time for the rice, which made us even more irritated. and we decided that the only thing that was a buffet here was the rice because it seemed to be free flow. after that we got this sambal prawn thing and 10 of us shared 3 plates, so that wasn’t too bad. we were actually slightly more satisified, but we still felt that we would probably need to eat more when we reached home. then after the prawns, there was fish and pig trotters and after that we felt full and we decided that it wasn’t too bad :) the waitress then cleared out plates and before we knew it, there was more food: black pepper soft shell crab and some lontong-like dish. omg there was a ridiculous amount of food. if we had known better i don’t think we would have eaten so much during the first couple of dishes. then for dessert, there was nyonya kueh and a durian cream cake. it was quite crazy but i think that that dinner was definitely worth the $15. if we had just eaten there ourselves, for the food that we received, we probably would have easily paid about $25 each.

so overall it was a good dinner. :) and i’m really looking forward to our house cook out tonight. 1 appetiser (onion soup by me) 2 mains (teriyaki salmon by shu and a casserole by xf) and i think (HOPE) an apple crumble dessert from lynn. :) :) :)

ahh a weekend of decadence. now i’m going to get ready for church and after mass, whack all the cakes that they provide :D HEE HEE HEE.

brilliant

it was a really lovely day today and the walk to church was particularly pleasant. the sun was out, the wind was cool. the homily struck me a lot. today’s gospel reading was about the 5 loaves and the 2 fishes. this is a highly abridged version, but when the 5 loaves and 2 fishes were offered, it was all that was available, but yet everything was given to Jesus to do what He could with it.and by giving everything to Jesus, it was turned into a miracle to feed the 5000. also, Jesus knew how much the crowd needed but when the crowd was fed, there were still 12 baskets left. what the priest said was that God will always give more than what is necessary. :) and i felt very good after listening to it because i was thinking about all the times that God has worked in my life. after mass, rachel, chun yi and i rushed to the community house next to church and there were so many cakes and biscuits and we were pigging out on brownies, cakes from coles. there was even you tiao!

after that we went to coles and office works and i thought that i might as well do my groceries. on my shopping list, i had the following items: rice, pasta, milk, peanut butter, fruits, vegetables, body moisturiser. i bought all of them and realised that i now had about 6kg of groceries to carry back home which was at least a 2km walk away from clayton town. but before that, we stopped by mmc for our weekly brunch and i think that after eating pies for the last 2 weeks, i should probably stop, but then they are so good!

so after trudging home, with sore fingers, sore thighs, arms and just about every part of the body, i finally reached home and fell asleep on the floor in my room after unpacking all my groceries. at dinner time i decided to make porridge, so i threw everything into the rice pot and came back upstairs. after about an hour, i went downstairs to check on my porridge to find that nothing had happened and that it looked just the way it did when i left. i then asked xf what the hell happened because it had been in there for 1 hour already. she then discovered that i forgot to depress that stupid button the start the cooking process. at this time, i became damn irritated and transferred everything to a pot and turned up the gas stove to maximum flame and boiled the rice for all its worth and managed to cook my porridge in about 10 minutes. i felt slightly better after that until i realised that i forgot to prepare tomorrow’s lunch, upon which my irritation mounted again.

i think i’ll probably eat a tuna sandwich tomorrow and attempt to finish the 10 cans i bought last semester at coles when they were on offer. -mutters-

despite the stupid things that happened, today was a wonderful sunny day :) and thank God for the beautiful weather.

ghastly weather

the weather yesterday was disgusting. it was a deceptively lovely morning. i ony wore 1 layer and walked out of the house. naturally i brought my jacket, because knowing the weather in melbourne, you can’t know the weather in melbourne -.-

true enough, during pcl during our debate of whether a child with congenital adrenal hyperplasia should be brought up as a guy or a girl, with one of the comments being creating a whole new gender class, the sky outside turned this ominous grey and and trees were all swaying around. when i stepped outside of cmhse, the wind was blowing and i could feel it through my thick jacket, with only one stupid piece of cloth underneath it. i then hurried to the library in the drizzle and the rain, feeling rather pissed off at the weather. when i got to the library, i was still freezing, so i wore my scarf and jacket and sat in the seat looking like some weird puff with books. thank God the sun came out. once again, despite the clouds, the presence of the sun made it seem as though the weather had taken a turn for the better.

but when i stepped out of the library to go to the gym, i got owned by the wind again and i ran all the way to the gym for body pump where i got owned by the hand weights. i was only doing 1kg in each hand and i was dying within the first 15 minutes, so the rest of the hour was quite a bit of torture.

with aching arms and a stinky shirt, i walked to lynn’s place to get shu’s car because she got a parking fine and drove it home, only the realise that i didnt’ have my keys and xf was out with wd and shu was happily skiing away at fall’s creek so i went back to lynn’s place again and crashed at his house and watched friends, so you think you can dance usa and then xf called me and i went home. thank God for lynn though, who fed me this really good burmese fish soup dish and an apple. i felt so bad because i was stinking up his room :(  on my walk home, i got owned yet again by the wind and was in a rather bad mood when i got home.

can’t exactly remember what happened when i got home, other than the fact that i was talking to shu and that i had a shower, brushed my teeth and then went to bed. and when i woke up this morning i couldn’t feel my arms. so here i am sitting at my desk but i can’t really feel my arms >.<

ok workwork. exam is in less than 3 weeks time! :( :( -panics-

event of the year

During the 3rd lecture of the day that was just after lunch, we were all gathered in R1 for another lecture on health promotion and knowledge management.

About halfway through the lecture just when everyone was falling asleep, we heard the door at the back of the LT open, some scuffling and then a small commotion and then there was a loud WOOHOOO, followed by a guy running down the LT stairs in his birthday suit, although according to wei de he had his shoes on, and cheering at the top of his lungs. He then went to the front of the LT and did a small dance before running out the front door of the LT, still yelling out some kind of battle cry. And this was all in the name of green peace. :)

All this time, the LT was absolutely silent. Even the lecturer didn’t really know what to say. The only thing that could be heard in the LT during the whole episode was the cheering of the naked guy. After he left, and after the stunned silence, every one burst out laughing. Chai turned to me and told me that he was now fully awake and the both of us couldn’t stop laughing for a good 15 minutes after that. :) it was so HILARIOUS.

I must also add that the temperature outside today was 12 degrees celsius, and that is without factoring in the wind chill, so I would imagine that the guy was in quite a bit of discomfort.

After lecture, on the menzies lawn, there was some relay going on in conjunction with green week. THere were about 4 groups of people in a row and each team member had to run to a white plate and place one hand on the plate and run around it a couple of times, run to a table, drink a huge cup of beer and then run back to the white plate, do a few more rounds in the same fashion and run back to their team mates. At the end of it, there was quite a lot of vomit on the floor and the guy on the winning team flashed the audience. I wonder whether vomit has any fertilising properties. :)

That said, it was highly entertaining and today was LEGENDARY :D

I went for WYD over the weekend in sydney and it was a really incredible experience :) will write more about it later. have to go and do some hard core mugging! :) take care and God bless!

back in melbourne

i’m back in melbourne! the flight was a rather harrowing experience because it was very turbulent. it wasn’t as bad as the flight i took back here one year ago. gosh that was a horrible experience. shu and i sat next to each other again and this time we were somewhere at the back of the plane where it was just the 2 of us. it was very painful to leave again. i think that i should be used to it by now, but i keep on feeling homesick. even though i just got back 2 days ago, i’m already counting down the days to my return to singapore. thanks heaps to my dears who came to see me off at the airport. :) love you all so much.

zepeng shu ernest christi and i took less than an hour to clear customs. this was very different from back in february when we took 3 hours to get out of the airport, and we all so damn bloody pissed off and tired. when shu and i got back, we weren’t even sure whether xf was home but she was and the both of us spent the whole day in her room. it was FREEZING when we touched down. before we landed, the captain announced that it would be 4 degrees in melbourne and shu and i looked at each other in panic. she was wearing 3/4 pants and sandals and i was just wearing my thongs and we were both convinced that our toes would fall off. the air was rather refreshing initially, until the wind started to blow. then it just became cold.

so anyway, when we got home, it was damn bloody cold i the house and we immediately went to hunt xf down in her room and we started catching up on 2.5 weeks worth of gossip/news etc. It was quite a nice feeling with all of us sitting in her room and feeling slightly warmer because her heater was on. it was really damn bloody cold. i could feel my whole body tensing up again like it used to before i left. horrible feeling. the programme for the whole of saturday was our arrival, followed by a long nap, then lunch at bobs which was awesome, coming home again, another few hours of sleep occasionally interrupted by us getting up and continuing our gossiping which was then followed by dinner.. well, dessert actually because we were still ful from lunch so shu xf and i went to the pancake parlour at the glen and ordered a stack of blueberry pancakes and a stack of pancakes covered with caramalised walnuts and bananas :D omg it was HEAVENLY. then we came home and i was on the phone for a very long time before i went to bed.

then on sunday i went to st peters with rachel and it was really cool because a contingent from puerto rico was in town for the day and they were on their way to sydney. it was so damn cool and the wyd song is SO NICE! rachel and i decided that we wouldn’t mind going to st peters every sunday from now on because it actually isn’t that far from home and it would be good exercise towalk the ~2.5km. anyway, about wyd, i can’t wait to go to sydney on friday! i’m really SUPER excited about it because there’s so much hype about it now. the Pope has already arrived in aussie and OOH it’s going to be massive :D a lot of people have been talking about it and ARGH i can’t wait to go. :) then i’ll meet daryl, daniel, rach, val, gabriel, van, greg and a lot of other people from sg going! EEK. this is really so exciting :) after mass we went to mmc for breakfast. the cakes there are gorgeous. they’re HUGE. they’re about 15cm high. rachel had a mango cheesecake while i had a chunky beef pie which was super beefy and damn nice. it was pretty late so i considered it as brunch and i promised myself i wouldn’t eat anything until dinner. well, it failed. but before that, rachel and i walked to retravision along princes highway and i bought myself a toaster oven and carried it all the way home. now my arms ache, but i think it’s a good investment, because right now, i can move away from my frozen dumplings and soup every night and from my tuna sandwiches for lunch. the thought of it makes me feel queasy.

at 3+, joyee, xf, wd and i went to the glen for coffee and cake. the bailey’s cheesecake was excellent and i had my usualy skinny latte (second one of the day.. couldn’t sleep properly last night). after that i went grocery shopping and i am so proud of myself: i spent less than 50 on my groceries! i bought a whole bunch of fresh food and when i got home, i marinated the meat and separated it into aluminium foil bags and threw some veggies and mushrooms in. so when i want to eat, i just have to toss it into the toaster oven for about half an hour! how awesome is that?! :D

and as for the first day of school, well i didn’t want to get up this morning. it was cold and the bathroom felt like a freezer. i hate monday mornings. but at least it’s really nice and warm outside. the sun is out and.. i’m actually holing myself up at home and typing this entry. it was nice seeing people again and my pcl group seems pretty cool this sem. and my tutor seems good.. well, anyone is better than da bao, whom i saw this morning! spoiled my whole day. i was sitting in facing the door in South 1 and then i saw him walk past. then xf asked me whether it was da bao and it was! and incidentally, today’s pcl was about cushing’s syndrome and the woman in the case had truncal obesity. i’m not saying that da bao has cushing’s. i’m just saying he has truncal obesity and an ego that is larger than his waist size. i’m pretty sure it’s at least 50 inches. that’s about 127 cm. but seriously, i don’t think an adult elephant can fit its trunk around his waist.

hmph.

i miss the rg band girls.. the night before i flew we went for dinner at sushi tei. or at least, i sat there and watched them eat haha :) and had 2 pieces of sushi and it was hilarious and so wonderful. i really love how we are all still so awesome together even though we are all in different parts of the world. and how our conversations seem to have absolutely no link. it was a very warm feeling in the room and i felt so good being there with all of them :) hug hug. then after that i had to rush home because we were celebrating bona’s and daryl’s birthday at val and rach’s place and i was not only late but i got caught in the bloody rain. and i had to go and pick the cake up so i was soaking wet by the time i met them. gah.

wow this post has reached 1210 words. it is potentially as long as a gp essay.

ok long entry. i think i’ll stop here. i’ll myself to mom’s pineapple tarts! woohoo. i love mom! and i miss eunice and dad and che, ben, yai.. sigh. love love. i’ll see them soon! eunice will be back in december! woohooo :D the most kick ass part is that because dad’s miles are going to expire, he managed to redeem a 2 way ticket for her, which is awesome :D

4 days to sydney! :D and 1 hour to resuming my hard core gymming, which was totally wasted last semester because i pigged out like crazy during and after the exam period and in singapore :(

ehh

hello i haven’t been back here in a while. i’m currently using eunice’s computer because she’s sick and she’s trying to call her office, where the people report to work at 12pm when it’s supposed to start at 9. so she’s sitting at home, feeling sick and feverish and they are not answering the phone. she’s actually next to me right now, bemoaning the fact that nobody is answering the phone. :)

mom makes very thin tea. it tastes like hot water with colour.

blue ferrari?

Yesterday mom and I went to town and parked outside the fairmont, the hotel previously known as the westin stamford, (kind of like _____, the artist formerly known as prince. =.=) was a blue ferrari. In all honesty, it did not look like a ferrari at all. It looked like any ordinary car. And I was telling mom that it was strange that the ferrari was blue, since they are usually red, yellow or black. mom concluded that it probably belonged to some old dude who was trying to be young but not too young, and flashy, but not too flashy. so he ended up with an old man-ish blue ferrari.

mom and i had an excellent lunch of hokkien mee and beef hor fun. :) good stuff.

i’m feeling stinky, disgusting, oily. but as a side note, prince caspian is gorgeous.

history mystery

i got the email as well, but the way eunice shredded the email to bits was fantastic and i thought i’d copy and paste it here. i laughed so hard, i cried.

‘Have a history teacher explain this—– if they can.

Abraham Lincoln was elected to Congress in 1846. John F. Kennedy was elected to Congress in 1946. Abraham Lincoln was elected President in 1860. John F. Kennedy was elected President in 1960.

Both were particularly concerned with civil rights.
Both wives lost their children while living in the White House.
Both Presidents were shot on a Friday.
Both Presidents were shot in the head

Now it gets really weird.

Lincoln ’s secretary was named Kennedy.
Kennedy’s Secretary was named Lincoln .
 Both were assassinated by Southerners. Both were succeeded by Southerners named Johnson.
Andrew Johnson, who succeeded Lincoln , was born in 1808.
Lyndon Johnson, who succeeded Kennedy, was born in 1908.

John Wilkes Booth, who assassinated Lincoln , was born in 1839.
Lee Harvey Oswald, who assassinated Kennedy, was born in 1939.
Both assassins were known by their three names.
Both names are composed of fifteen letters.

Now hang on to your seat.

Lincoln was shot at the theatre named ‘Ford.’ Kennedy was shot in a car called ‘ Lincoln ‘ made by ‘Ford.’ Lincoln was shot in a theatre and his assassin ran and hid in a warehouse.
Kennedy was shot from a warehouse and his assassin ran and hid in a theatre.
Booth and Oswald were assassinated before their trials.

And here’s the kicker…
A week before Lincoln was shot, he was in Monroe , Maryland A week before Kennedy was shot, he was with Marilyn Monroe.

Creepy huh? Send this to as many people as you can, cause: Hey, this is one history lesson most people probably will not mind reading!’

now this is obviously just coincidence or mind-blowing ignorance.

Firstly John F Kennedy was elected the 35th president of the United States in 1961 and Abraham Lincoln was elected the 16th president in 1861. get the facts right.

snipers and assassins usually go for the head because that’s the fastest way to kill some one, obviously. so there’s nothing significant about them both being shot in the head. lots of people in history have been shot in the head.

Both presidents were really famous and I would think well loved to an extent that borders deification. Thus the assassins who killed them would be infamous and would be known by their full names as are many famous or infamous people. let’s have examples: franklin delano roosevelt, napoleon bonaparte, Gaius julius caesar, and many more.

as for both being succeeded by Johnsons, Johnson is the second most common last name in the United States so I don’t see what’s so special about both presidents being succeeded by people with the last name Johnson, especially since both johnsons were vice presidents.

and so what if both people were assassinated by southerners? firstly the south has so many people there’s an equal chance of an assassin coming from there as other parts of the states. in fact there is a much greater chance compared to a place like new england. furthermore, the civil rights pursued by Lincoln and Kennedy in favour of african americans in the US pissed the southerners off. They liked having their slaves, and even after slavery was abolished the local courts and systems of governance in the south were still very much prejudiced in favour of white people even when they committed crimes against black people. so it’s not surprising that the assassins were southerners in either case because they were the ones that were the most pissed off by Lincoln trying to abolish slavery or kennedy trying to improve life for black people in the US.

The probability of both presidents being killed on a Friday isn’t that large. roughly 2%. before you jump out of your seat shouting about how there must be some kind of mystery here because it sounds like a tiny probability, let’s just say that probability is not the only factor here. Friday might be a more convenient day for an assassin to go after a president if he’s more likely to make public appearances on those days. It’s the end of the working week for most people as well, which might be the reason why public appearances might be scheduled on those days.

as for the car being called ‘lincoln,’ there are so many things named after famous people like washington apples. for god’s sake, if some one was killed while eating a washington apple, it doesn’t imply they were some how freakily related to george washington in the least.

ok I’m getting tired of tackling this thing. the only creepy thing in here is the level of ignorance and the eagerness to find some thing unexplainable even though it clearly is. who ever wrote this was an idiot.

 

home

I am home! The past couple of days have been pretty crazy. On tuesday morning, I woke up at 430am so that I could catch the dandenong shuttle to the airport at 545am. Any later and I probably would have missed my flight due to morning traffic. So I took shu’s car and drove to eugene’s place and picked him up and we went back to my place and waited for the shuttle at the bus stop right outside my place.

When we got to the airport, the check in line wasn’t even open yet =.= so we were waiting in line for a while and we checked all our stuff in. This is the first time I’m coming home with such light luggage. my bag weighed less than 20kg. Last year I think I was hitting 30+kg each time I flew. I was really lucky this time around. Dad had some miles that were going to expire, so he used it to bump me up to business and so eugene and i went to the lounge to eat brekky. there wasn’t much there though and at first the lady at the counter didn’t want to let the both of us in, but she said that since there weren’t many people inside, we could go in and when it got crowded we had to leave. and we were wondering how crowded it could be at 8am. so we ate and watched the news, read the paper, fell asleep and then we went to the gate.

it was really nice cuz i could stick my feet all the way out in front of me and i still had room in front :) and the food came in courses and was pretty yummy! :) and i was exploiting the in flight entertainment. watched the other boleyn girl, 27 dresses and serendipity and an episode of how i met your mother. woohoo good stuff. :D

so here i am back home in blazing hot singapore and enjoying every minute of being back home. :D i’ve had my prata, gone for a buffet.. now there’re 10 million other places to go and eat and i have to go eat at chomp chomp with rachel and chun yi :) -grin- awesome stuff. hee hee.