Fun Times 2

Thursday 26^th November 2009

We head to a Japanese restaurant for brunch and then do…more shopping! lol, we can’t get enough,

Tonight is the pre wedding dinner at their house. The main dinner that everyone will attend is tomorrow. The one tonight is smaller.

Dinner is a buffet with noodles, rice, curry and pork and chicken as well as fruit for dessert. Set up in the carport and there are tables and chairs set up in the front yard.

Friday 27^th November 2009

Wedding day!!

In the morning there is a lovely outdoor ceremony followed by a tea ceremony in the afternoon at the house and at night, the wedding dinner at a restaurant, with 45 tables!!

Morning

The wedding arc.

Their cupcake cake. How cute is it!

The bride and groom =D

Afternoon:

After the tea ceremony was lunch which was another buffet and also a huge roast pig. It was sooo yummy, wondering if I can acquire something similar in Australia.

Roast pig

Night:

4 season’s Seafood platter: on this is abalone, deep fried soft shell crab, deep fried tofu and two more seafoods which I can’t remember.

Shark fin soup

Garoupa fish

Other dishes we had that night were: smoked chicken, prawns, mushrooms and vegetables, glutinous rice, rice dumplings and chinese pancake.

Doing toasts on stage.

Note: Images added to "Fun Times"

Fun Times

Lazy, lazy me. Haven’t updated in ages. Quick rundown of the timeline. We went for 12 days from Nov 24 to Dec 6. Here goes my recount for the first few days...

Monday 23^rd November 2009

Packed and ready to go, we fly from Sydney – Melbourne and wait it out there for over 5 hours before check in even opens, a little shopping was to be had but not much as our luggage was still with us. Being so early meant that we were, near the front of the line so we had time to eat before we boarded

I will say though, the service was SLOW, 10 minutes to do ONE check in, although we were near the front, it still felt like we were waiting a long time cause they were so inefficient. I won’t complain about Qantas lines again.

This is my sister's cat...he's sleeping on my clothes that I just packed.

Cute and annoying at the same time lol

Tuesday 24^th November 2009

Our flight is at 1:30am give or take. Boarded and ready to fly for the next 8 hours! Not much sleep was to be had unfortunately courtesy of a crying baby sitting close by L

7am ish: we arrive in KL, baggage is taken and customs is a breeze. We are greeted by my Aunty, cousin and dad (dad arrived a few days ago) we dump our luggage and then go out for breakfast.

After breakfast we sleep for a few hours then go shopping :) many shoes were bought. Shoes come in my size here! unlike in aus where size 6 women’s rarely fits.

Dinner with the family at home. Last time there were so many people at the dinner table was when a few of them visited us here in Aus :)

Wednesday 25^th November 2009

Everyone is a late sleeper, so breakfast always ends up being brunch XD, we go shopping again!

For dinner tonight, we go out for crab, delicious, I can’t remember the last time I had crab. Yummm, we also had prawn curry served in a coconut, beans and tofu (both deepfried) and mantao.

salted egg crab

Cheese Crab

Later that night we went out with the cousins for a few drinks. Afterwards we go out for some late night roti, I love that some of these shops are open 24/7 .

Tonight, 3 new guests arrive arrive to stay with my cousins. AL's friend from Singapore and Mrs Chiyoko and her daughter, ML's host mother and sister from Japan.

Another blog and photos soon :D

Back

Touched back down in Australia yesterday morning...after a long and uncomfortable flight. Much love and hugs to all my family overseas for giving us a wonderful 2 weeks. Can't wait until I see you all again. ^^

Have been sleeping mostly since we got back. Might start unpacking as well later today.

Photos up soon.

Study

I have been holed up in my room a lot these past 3 weeks. Finally finished today YAY!

Now all that’s left is packing. 2 kinds in fact;

1. For Malaysia in less than a week!! And
2. emptying out my room for subletting over the summer.

I know, boring blog right? Here, have a photo of some pretty jacarandas that I walk past everyday on the way to uni.

I relate jacarandas to study now since B said that when they start to bloom, “if you haven’t started studying yet you’re doomed” haha.

Well, here’s to a another year of uni finished and to a good, safe summer/christmas holidays.

Exams

The semester is finally over and that means that it is here…exam time!

First we have 1 week of for exam prep where there are no classes then 2 weeks of exams

I have 3 exams…spaced relatively well apart.

Time. To. Study.

Snail Mail

These are my birthday presents from B and C. They were thought to be lost in the mail for a few weeks; they were sent at the end of August but I didn’t receive them until last Monday (12/10)…that’s about 6 weeks! when it should take about 3 or so working days. What happened Australia Post? Hmmm, well they’re finally here so yay to that :)

From C: A very cute forever friends bear holding an “O”, very fitting seeing as my name starts with “O” :P

From B: And a gorgeous pink pashima scarf. It’s so soft!

Love you both ^^

Midsemster Break Recap

Over the mid semester break, I went to Brisbane ^^ it was excellent, I got to catch up with friends from school who I haven’t seen for a few months J I was just revelling in the fact that I don’t have a lab today or anymore for the rest of semester! Yay, so here is a brief recap of what I got up to.

Saturday 26/09/09

I arrived on sat night and went to a friend of a friend’s house for a birthday party…there was a lack of cake so perhaps I’ll rename that to ‘gathering’ or ‘get together’ I always associate birthday parties with cake hehe.

Sunday 27/09/09

C, B and I, of us, chilled at my friend’s house during the day and that night, had dinner with Y and her parents at a little restaurant in Sunnybank.

this is the drink I had, Lychee Ice. It had real lychees at the bottom of it!!

Pork and noodle soup. It was such a huuuge serving as you can see in comparison to the spoon there. lol. I didn't finish it.

Monday 28/09/09

Actually went into the university of Queensland, UQ to do some study!! Gyahhh, defeats the purpose of holidays when there are still assignments to do ne?? Oh well, it was productive nonetheless and B and I got lots done J Curry Udon for lunch was a good reward for us being studious haha

We then went to the city; borders and david jone’s in particular to see what C and B could use their respective vouchers on hehe

UQ lakes

this is called "The Wheel" from memory. It's a ferris wheel in the city

Tuesday 29/09/09

Iceskating!

I am ridiculously unco-ordinated. So needless to say, I struggled. I think throughout those 3-4 hours, about 7 people ended up having to help in one way or another, mainly, holding me up and stopping me from falling. By the end of it, I was getting somewhere on my own! But not exactly ‘skating’, more ‘walking’ on the ice instead. At least I wasn’t grabbing onto the walls anymore like I was at the start. It was heaps fun and I am looking forward to doing it again one day :)

After that, we watched a Pokemon movie, the first one I think? The one about Mewtwo…woops ><

Ice skating snack: Giant cookies B and I stumbled upon at the bakery when we were walking to C’s place.

Dinner that night was Nasi Goreng which B and I shared. C had Haiwanese chicken rice. Yum!

Wednseday 30/09/09

We were supposed to breakfast at 9am in the city with 7 of us, B,C, D, Y, J, K and myself but Y and J couldn’t come. C, B, D and I didn’t get out there until 10… sorry K!

Breakfast burger

This is called a breakfast burger and you eat it just like that, a burger; with your hands! It even came with no cutlery so you had no choice but to eat with your hands. It consists of, avocado, cheese, egg and bacon

B and C had a random…'photoshoot' let’s call it at uni at noon. It was to promote UQ clubs and societies I think…something like that. After another short stint at uni, (am wondering how I end up going to uni on holidays, it isn’t even my uni lol) we went back out to the city and met up with others, including, Y and J, for the Wednesday markets, karaoke, pool and dinner.

Markets

Markets again

Y also took me to a nice little chocolate shop and the chocolates there are sooo good. A tad on the expensive side but you pay for quality. Also no prices on anything…which I always find a bit annoying.

Thursday 01/10/09

Went to breakfast again…this time at pancake manor! Gotta love ice cream and chocolate for breakfast ^^

these were called Jaffa Pancakes from memory;
pancakes, orange slices, chocolate sauce, ice cream and icing sugar

Then got in couple of hours shopping at indooropilly shopping centre.

The rest of the afternoon was most relaxing; chilled with B at her college for the day. My first college experience! I missed out on a college dinner as we went out for dinner…but I am informed that I’m not missing out on much. Lol. Dinner was Chinese; chicken chow mein, curry puffs, salt and pepper squid and some other stuff.

Friday 02/10/09

The day of departure.

College breakfast… of toast lol. I didn’t have any of the hot food. Went into the city early so B could buy herself an iPOD and then onto the train and off to the airport it was and back to Sydney.

Clockwise from top: B, Y, me and C ^^

Mooncake

Saturday was the mid autumn festival.

So a belated “Happy Mid Autumn Festival” Everyone.

Hope you all had lots of mooncake!

I love mooncake, It used to be a real treat because it wasn’t widely available when I was growing up but here in Sydney they are readily available :) For those out there who don’t know, they are like a ‘brick’ of lotus paste, which can be square or circular and covered with a layer of flaky, savoury pastry. This pasty will be decorated with words and patterns. And as mentioned above, they can also come with duck eggs inside; you can get between 1 – 4 eggs per mookcake. Lotus is the default flavour, but there are many other flavours available such as green tea, pandan, red bean. My favourite is just the plain lotus ones with no egg though. Most people I know bar one love the salty, crumbly salted duck egg yolks that some mooncakes have. I personally don’t. Every year I try them in anticipation that my tastebuds ‘come around’ to the flavour; they will appreciate the flavour and I will finally understand how good they are and what I’ve been missing out on… but it never happens, it’s still too dry, too flaky and too salty, just like previous year. Oh well, one day perhaps I will appreciate them, but for now plain lotus all the way lol

A small box of Wing Wah mooncake

A Note on the Weather

Tuesday 22/09/09
Thunderstorms at night

Wednesday 23/09/09
Dust storm

Thursday 24/09/09
Windy and Sunny

Quotes 2

Quotes I like #2

New template…again

I looked at this blog on a different computer the other day and noticed that the background and banner were misaligned – boo :( it happened again when I opened it in a different browser – boo again :(

Couldn’t. Be. Bothered. Reading. Through. Lines. And lines. of code….

So behold the chocolate template! From http://freetemplates.blogspot.com/

Yay! looks good
Yay! I love chocolate – so it is very fitting for me
Yay! no issues of any kind with the template.

Looking forward to...

Travelling!! :D in just over two weeks, I shall be heading up to Brisbane for the mid semester break. Not sure how much of a break it will be though cos I’ve may or may not have assessments due in the holidays, like during easter at the start of the year. We’ll see how that goes.

Also, at the end of November, am going to Malaysia for my cousin’s wedding :) yay! it’s been 7 years since I’ve been over there. Am eagerly awaiting the food!! Especially Roti!!!

Birthday!!!

Aside from the stressful week that was, last weekend was awesome, it was my birthday! It was a nice and simple celebration.

Dinner at Letoile
My sis and my birthdays are within a week of each other…with a few years difference of course :P Two weeks ago, before either of our birthdays, the four of us (my sisters, sister’s boyfriend and myself) had dinner out at Letoile in Paddington to mark the occasion. It was delicious :D

Here is a list of what we ordered;

• First course/Entrees: twice baked cheese soufflé, snails and duck terrine and salad whose name I can’t remember,


• Main: Mulloway with baby veg and red wine sauce and, confit duck with beans beef (can’t remember the cut) with roquefort sauce


• Desserts: apple tart tatin. crème brulee, strawberry bavarois, and a poached pear dish with chocolate sauce.

Before dessert we also got a shotglass filled with watermelon flavoured granita. It was very refreshing

I really didn’t need dessert as I was already so full, but it’s dessert! So I had to make room for it. Everyone got 3 courses :)

We also saw there…Manu!! It was very exciting; He kindly agreed to a photo with us at the end of our meal :D

We also had dinner at my sister’s on my actual birthday and last Sunday, we went out for a Thai dinner with my uncle as well. So, very food orientated, but that’s the way I like it :D

What is a birthday these days without cake? This year, I was spoilt rotten and got not one, not two, but THREE cakes!!



Hello Kitty cake!
This one from my sisters: I love Hello Kitty so it was awesome to get a Hello Kitty cake for my birthday!!! It was the lightest cake out of the three. Layered sponge cake with cream. There is also a layer of white chocolate underneath the strawberries.

This one was from my uncle. It was so rich! 8 layers of chocolate, caramel, biscuit goodness!! Just looking at it we all knew it was going to be a dense, rich cake! Very small slices were cut.

More chocolate cake! Chocolate cake layered with ganache. This one from my housemate, how good is ganache?

I also got a new bag . It’s real leather and comes with a rose decoration;My personal favourite part about this bag aside from the multitude of pockets held within is that there is a little strap inside with a clip that connects to your keys, I shall never have to scrounge around for my keys again!!

Hectic week

The week is finally over, 1 essay and 2 mid semester exams later! I finally have some ‘relax’ time, well sort of, no stressing over upcoming assessments anymore but there are still notes to type and lab reports to do. Tonight I will make up for some lost sleep, I shall go to bed early and wake up late, something I have been doing in reverse since the start of the week. lol

In other, more exciting news, it was my birthday on the weekend!!! :D:D recount coming soon :)

Cute cats!

No time to type up a ramble or rant of any description though I would very much like to. 3 assessments are due next week gyahh!! So I have links to share instead.

Some videos of cats being adorable!

Stalker cat:

Wake up kitty

Phone case and map

I've noticed that my camera has been on its own little hiatus since holidays have been over. My own laziness really seeing as I always leave it at home these days. that being said, I do love taking photos when the opportunity arises and am in full support of taking multiple photos of the same thing so I can look at them later and decide which one is the best, my friends don’t appreciate this as much as I do, especially when I’m taking photos of them :P

On this slow, sunny weekend, I have decided to put my little camera to work by taking photos of my phone/phone case :) My phone case is red and shiny :P I got it from the markets and it comes in a lot of colours such as blue, purple and black.



Here’s a news article I came across yesterday when I was surfing; an incorrectly labelled map from fox news from the start of the week (Aug 11). It has been dubbed “Fox News Fail” and speaks for itself.



Image sourced from Did Fox News flunk geography?

And here I thought that Egypt was in Africa…wait, it is haha

Quotes

Quotes I like #1

Don't walk in front of me, I may not follow.

Don't walk behind me, I may not lead.

Just walk beside me and be my friend

- Albert Camus

Random Facts

Elephants are the only animal that can't jump.

New Template, uni and xkcd

So I have decided to change my template, this one is also from Blogger Templates and is entitled “Splash” BUT it was a bit dodgy. I had to some tweaking to it as once the header and background images were loaded, they weren’t in line with each other or the text. As you can see, everything is aligned and all is good except for the little sliver of the background image that pops up over the top of the header. I also changed the size of said images and the font colour – to black, as the light grey was a bit hard to read, and the overall background colour is light grey instead of default hot pink that came with the template. Now I do love the colour pink but it was way too much! Lol It’s been years since I’ve done coding so it took me a while but I got there in the end so yay!

Rain Template

Splash Template

It’s week 2 of uni now, where all my labs and workshops and tutorials start. For one of my pracs, there is group work and we got a group of 5 together for it only to find out that the groups were PREALLOCATED! Made me very anxious and as luck would have it, we weren’t all in the same group :( In the end, the 5 of us spread over 4 groups, so 2 stayed together. I was not one of those 2 but the group I was allocated into is good so it’s not so bad.

Another xkcd comic. This one is entitled A Delicious Cycle.

A Delicious Cycle
http://www.xkcd.com/140/

Semester 2 has started :(

Holidays are over
Uni started up again yesterday, it’s been pretty chill so far seeing as it’s only the first 2 days. I was happy with all my results from last semester so hoping that this semester will be just as good if not better.

Just a quick recap of some of the things I’ve done over the hols:

Movies I’ve watched

• Ice Age 3


• The Proposal


• Bruno


• Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince aka HP6

A movie that I wanted to watch but didn’t was Transformers II, hopefully I’ll see that soon.

Food.
I went out for meals a lot this holidays, very yummy :D but not too kind on my pocket haha. I had pasta, Japanese inc. sushi, Japanese barbecue; and a good old fashioned BBQ – sausages and lots tomato sauce.

Karaoke!!
We sang lots of old school songs such as backstreet boys, Aqua and Spice Girls and even the Bohemian Rhapsody – I never realised how long that song is.

And shopping, :)
I bought myself a new phone! I got the new iPhone that came out in Aus recently. It replaces my old nokia which I’ve had for about 4 years now. It was a reliable old nokia but it was time for a change. I also bought some new clothes.

Jocks Vs Nerds

I found this hidden in the depths of my computer the other day. I don’t know the source.

Jocks vs Nerds

Michael Jordan having "retired," with $40 million in endorsements, makes $178,100 a day, working or not.

If he sleeps 7 hours a night, he makes $52,000 every night while visions of sugarplums dance in his head.

If he goes to see a movie, it'll cost him $7.00, but he'll make $18,550 while he's there.

If he decides to have a 5-minute egg, he'll make $618 while boiling it.

He makes $7,415/hr more than minimum wage.

He'll make $3,710 while watching each episode of Friends.

If he wanted to save up for a new Acura NSX ($90,000) it would take him a whole 12 hours.

If someone were to hand him his salary and endorsement money, they would have to do it at the rate of $2.00 every second.

He'll probably pay around $200 for a nice round of golf, but will be reimbursed $33,390 for that round.

Assuming he puts the federal maximum of 15% of his income into a tax deferred account (401k), his contributions will hit the federal cap of $9500 at 8:30 a.m. on January 1st.

If you were given a penny for every 10 dollars he made, you'd be living comfortably at $65,000 a year.

He'll make about $19.60 while watching the 100 meter dash in the Olympics, and about $15,600 during the Boston Marathon.

While the common person is spending about $20 for a meal in his trendy Chicago restaurant, he'll pull in about $5600.

This year, he'll make more than twice as much as all U.S. past presidents for all of their terms combined. Amazing isn't it?

However...
If Jordan saves 100% of his income for the next 450 years, he'll still have less than Bill Gates has today.

$$$ Game over. Nerd wins.

Cooking Shows

I lo lo looove cooking shows :P

Here’s a list of some that I watch.

“Iron Chef” is my favourite and has been for some time now :) even though all the episodes are at least 10 years old. I have watched a couple of episodes of “Iron Chef America” as well.

Then there is “Food Safari” and “The Food Lover’s Guide to Australia.” and “The Cook and The Chef”. the first 2 are hosted by the same lady, Maeve O'Meara, she travels and teaches you about the cuisine in whatever country/city/place she is in and goes to people’s houses and cooks with them. “The cook and the Chef” is, as the name suggests, is about a cook, Maggie Beer and a chef, Simon Bryant. They share a kitchen and cook simultaneously. In each episode there is a theme and they cook 2 dishes each. “Masterchef Australia” , is almost over :( but not yet :) it’s the last week this week. I don’t care who wins as long as it’s not Chris, he’s too cocky and annoying in my opinion.

http://www.foodnetwork.com/iron-chef-america/index.html
http://www.sbs.com.au/foodsafari
http://www.sbs.com.au/food/show/food-lovers-guide
http://www.abc.net.au/tv/cookandchef/
http://www.masterchef.com.au

Scholarship

On Monday, I received a letter to inform me that... I got a scholarship! Yay! It was one I applied for in the middle of the semester.

Angular Momentum

The website http://www.xkcd.com/ is one I was introduced to by my friend a few years ago. It is made up of many comics written by a guy called Randall Munroe. The comics poke fun of anything and everything from maths and science to love and romance. There are also some that are just plain 'aww' when you read them. He's fantastic! Very witty and clever. The following comic is a very cute one, one of the 'aww' ones if you will. Enjoy!

Angular Momentum

http://www.xkcd.com/162/

First Post! and Holidays!

Yay my first post!

I have just found and downloaded a whole bunch of blog templates, which I will probably swap and change around heaps. Decided on 'rain' as you can see :) Am also trying to create my own one, taking a while though, I vaguely remember doing web design and coding from high school so re-teaching myself at the moment. Hopefully I’ll have my own template up soon :D unless I decide that I couldn’t be bothered with it anymore.

First semester of uni finished up at the end of June so it’s been holidays for about a week now. I had 3 exams, 2 on the same day! of all the 14 days of exams, 2 of mine were on the same day! How fortunate am I? lol. Have flown up to Cairns for the holidays and it’s so warm here! It’s great, you can’t even tell it’s winter. Uni starts up again at the end of the month so no doubt winter will be in full swing and I will be freezing when I fly back down south again.

Getting very eager for uni results to come out, but they won’t be out until mid July…so I might as well put them in the back of my mind and enjoy doing nothing =P