Motivation!

I've found my motivation and drive to complete my course! I hadn't realised that I had even lost it until rediscovering it on Wednesday during my tutorial with a relief tutor. This semester hasn't been the greatest academics wise (well, I've only had 2 semesteres up date so I guess I can't really do much of a comparison can I). And I was on the brink of giving up and not giving a damn about studying so hard. However Dr Libby, the tutor who took over on Wednesday reminded me once again what I was doing in this course.

I love how most of the speech path tutors here interject their seminars and lectures with little anecdotes about their clinical experience and how they've spent years and years dealing with children/adults/funny peeper. It's a very subtle yet pretty much stark reminder of what life as a speech path is really going to be like. The proffessionalism that's required of you, the mannerisms and responsibility entrusted unto you. It's not just about mugging and getting information, it's a hell lot of people skills and human interaction. THAT's why I chose this course, because I'll get to interact and 'man-handle' clients. haha, ok wrong term la..

Yay... It's nice to have drive. hopefully this zeal and passion will last over the past 6.5 weeks, and then it's home! Wah lao my mudder dun care me already, she's sooo busy with work that she never calls me anymore unless I call her to call me back, then it's a quick 5 minute conversation at most where she tells me a client is here before I can even finish my verbal diarrhoea. They sold the old house already never even tell me la, wah laoooo.. Later I go back got new cat in the house also dunno ah

Had such a hilarious weekend with paul around last week, haha, I drove so much that I think I covered the equivalent distance of going across Singapore 6 times in just over 4 days. The airport itself is abuot 50km away, Gold Coast is 65km away, and the car kept overheating. It was damn stressful though when smoke started coming out of the car, but freaking hilarious now that I think about it. haha...

Dust and more

My nose is peeling like an orange and I'm coughing up phlegm like how a persian coughs up furballs, and I'm wheezing like a chain smoker after climbing just 4 flights of stairs. All thanks to the stupid stupid dust storms over the weekend. But it's all much better now, I'm glad I didn't get a chest infection like how a number of people here did, gosh they sound like hell. It's as if I storm's perpetually brewing in their chest or something and they can cough up enough phlegm to drown the whole college.


Basically the dust storm hit once on Friday, and again on Saturday. Looks like a sepia-fied picture right? Wrong.. it's ALL DUST. I didn't realise how well the camera captured the dust until I compared it to a picture I took this morning on a clear day. It's amazing!Colour difference so cool right? Thank God I wasn't hanging my laundry out that time! See I hang my clothes! My mudder will be so proud of me. muahhaha.Once again, the dusty dusty brissy. poooi. damn gross. You can literally taste the dust. It moved from the desert up north, down to Brisbane, NSW, Sydey and back up again to us the day after.

On another random note, it's amazing how the sunsets make the muddy river look so awesome. Ain't it gorgeous?
It was awesome seeing and feeling the rugby crowd during one of the games I was there working at. I think my sentence damn jialat. Anyways, ya, it was a game between the Broncos, one of the favourite teams. All I can say is that Australians truly live up to their beer drinking traditional image!

Shinedown!

Have you ever had the luck to come across the song which you always wanted to find out the title and artist of but never got the chance to? (badly constructed sentence) I just had the wonderful fortune of discovering Shinedown, and found that a couple of their songs were songs which I were always trying to find and download but was never able to. It's like striking 4D man... Hahah




There was a little worm crawling over my anatomy practical worksheet that day, it was a really tiny fella, pretty cute. He's now unfortunately deceased because I 'accidentally' squished him after exploiting him in this short video. He was freaking puny la, like a moving comma.

Ok I'm off to see my kid at the kindy!! :D

One hellova week

It's been a craaazy week, and will continue to be for the next couple of days at least. It's amazing how much life changes when you're placed in an environment so different from what you're used to. Life as a foriegn student (yes I'm gonna talk about THAT again) is just so different from that of a local irregardless of where you are.

I managed to find a super part-time casual job! It's basically back to F&B, doing casual events as and when they come (which seems to be pretty frequent with football/rugby/ping pong/whatever ball season that's in right now) After spending more than half a year from hardcore F&B work, I must say that yesterday was the LONGEST 2 hours I've ever spent. I swear my little toe is officially dead. It was exciting, getting to work in a foreign country, because it didn't really feel like a foreign country at all. Firstly, serving ang mohs are the easiest by far. I must say that Aussies are an awesome chilled group of people, unlike us fussy, perpetually complain-y Signaporean customers. Aussies are pretty casual most of the time, and even back in singapore, I really enjoyed serving them amongst all the different foreigners. (french were a pain in the ass most times)

Secondly, all the other waitstaff were foreigners, much like singapore. Only difference was that these people were from Brazil, Africa and and not the sterotypical asian countries we assume. It was pretty interesting listening to their conversation. Finding work for them can be pretty tough, and most of them are cleaners in places such as hostels and such. (We're so used to seeing old ah-mas and ah-peks cleaning our schools and toilets, seeing people who aren't way past their retirement age was something different). Don't you think we have sucky human rights/welfare policies/principles? Many cultures frown upon making someone be at your beck and call 24/7 (maids) and being only paid $250 a month, even more would look on us with disapproval for making an old person do physically demanding tasks for only slightly more than that amount. One thing I must agree with our principal back at St Hilda's, don't think of our school cleaners as cleaners, look at them and think that they are someone's grandma or grandpa.

How did my complain-y whin-y post get turned into one about Welfare? aiyoo..

One thing awesome here is the emphasis they place on worker's welfare and rights. We all need to have a COMPULSARY half hour break, we all have insurance covering any injury, we get paid a whoooping $18/hr.

But one thing I still cannot tahan here is the shitty obscure public transport system. As much as they paid, I ended up taking a cab home for $15 cos the bloody buses/trains/ferries/cable car/helicopters/jets stopped functioning around midnight. Wah lao eh can die la, it's annoying when you're actually pretty near, but just have no way to get there.

(I want to buy a scooter!)

Tadah!!

I've discovered the wonders of Mozilla Firefox! IT makes my day because... I can now upload pictures once again! I'm just gonna spam pictures right now man. My back feels like a brick wall jsut smashed into it, which is essentially what I did yesterday when I fell splat on my back while accidentally doing a handstand. (I'd intended to do a half one, but the inertia of my heavy legs pulled my right up. oh crap.)


So.. pictures from random spaces and places. Sorry I didn't get to meet up a tonne of people during the July break, (sorry Jerome! I promise I'm gonna try out your guitar at the end of the year!) :D

Movieworld trip we made 2 days before my final exam last semester, I uploaded the wrong photo, it was suppoesd to be the one where we were 'sleeping' The person photographing this is the hugest irony in the world, he used to be from commandos and parachuted practically every week, yet he was scared out of his wits to go on the Batwing, (which is kinda like a reverse bungee only way less scarier)This shot is from the day the Malaysians put half of IH in the toilet bowl shitting and puking nasi lemak. This french guy was manning the French stall (naturally) and he was really sporting to allow me to draw a moustache on for him with the calligraphy paint, hahaha!

Strawberry season's in! Guess how much this whole bag costs? (It's about 1kg, I swear) Freakin' $5 la. Amazing eh? Too bad I don't like 'store-bellies'

We went for the EKKA, which essentially is a HUGE exhibition of practically everything, and I mean EVERYTHING (from farm animals to made-in-china-goods) held every year for a week. Wah lao the aussies even have a whole public holiday just for it la, so spoilt. Haha.. Anyways, check out the huge ass bananas man, you can see the weight at the side, its 37kg.

And you think that's big? Check this pumpkin out, it's 155kg~ Ooo Punpkin Patch babies!!

Furballs!!!! Hehheh...I know they kinda look like aliens, but they're just chicks huddling under the table lamp cos they wer freezing. Dammn cute la!!squishable... STOP THINKING ABOUT NUGGETS YOU HORRIBLE PEOPLE!

Baby coow!!! (hamburgerrrrr)

And lambchops!! Uhh wait I mean wittle wamb!! Now everyone go Awwwwwww.....

Ee why the font liddat one. This fella was damn cute la, he was like a 2 year old randomly coming up to people and unafraid of strangers. and his fur was SOOO soft!! (like a baby's bottom, heh heh)

Wah haven't blog so long.. Damn shiok la. (See, I'll never lose my Singaporean accent, not in a million years)

Random update!!

MY internet is still screwed up, and I seriously don't feel like updating because I can't put up pictures and all cos it looks like a HTML document. And my sentence structuring today sucks, pooi

Let's see what interesting things have happened...

I watched the NDP via satellite! (Ironic seeing how I don't even watch it on normal occasions)

My hostel had a huge cultural day called Soiree and the nasi lemak from the Malaysian stall sent half the residents to the toilets at 5am the next day with diarrhoea. It was pretty amazing cos you could hear all the flushes going at once! The aussies got it worse though, they puked their guts out the whole day too!

It hailed about 4 nights ago~ Ice cubes falling!

And it's beginning to get hot hot hot here, pretty cold at night, but now the days are just starting to be like summer again. Yuckk

I finally got a chance to play guitar duets with someone!! Which was awesome since she was doing most of teh hard work, hehheh...

OK I is go and stardie now. Never thought I would not want to update my blog. Schtoopid internet. It worked fine in Singapore, I suppose after a while we all get tired and bored of sharing our lives with the world.

Home

Finally writing once again once all the madness has settled. I'm back in cold, nose-freezing Brisbane in my bigger-than-a-HDB-room hostel room using my cocky internet. Neh biang the youtube and blogger pages are screwed up once again now that I've returned, I reckon it's to do with a setting of the broadband internet here.

I cannot put picture!

=( Neh mind

I had an interesting flight back, and learnt several things.
1) the best seat on the plane is with the pregnant ladies/mothers because you enjoy great leg room.

2) It's even better when they have kids because they tend to be extra nice to anyone who sits next to them because they feel apologetic whenever their child cries/moves/screams/farts.

3) If a baby's crying because the ear pressure's hurting him, try making him swallow by dropping water into his mouth or, I kid you not, hold the baby upside down. (They say one)

4) SQ don't allow you to carry guitars onboard apparently.

I found the entire setting of my flight to be rather interseting and ironic in some sense. There I was, sitting between 2 Australian mothers who were returning back to Brisbane for a break from their expatriate lifestyles in Singapore. And I, a foreigner returning to their home which I call home while they leave their husbands and homes and go home. Farnie right? har har. I know not farnie la. It was nice talking to them and hearing their views about our country, especially from an expat's point of view. Most times we just label them as such, the ang mohs who live in Orchard. (Actually, they really do) and who shop in Tanglin and eat at Dempsey (which these 2 ladies also happened to do quite frequently) I wonder how many expatriates actually visit our Heartland areas? Besides Clementi, I've never seen an ang moh set foot on any other housing board area.

Life as an expat, how interesting. Free yet stifling.

I didn't eat Old Chang Kee chicken wings! wah lao!

And I'm sorry I only got to meet a few people, this holiday was truly... packed. Cannot believe the amount of days I spent out roaming the city, catching movies, catching up, catching buses and trains, it always seems to be a chase back in Singapore eh?

Home!

I'm finally back! And it feels like someone forgot to turn off the heater, oven, toaster, hot water and stove all at the same time. for once I can sit on the toilet bowl without cringing at the cold, and I can shower and come out without shivering first. WAH

But somehow I suddenly feel like going back to brisbane too

I'm sorry for the lack of updates, my youtube and blogger have been pretty wonky lately and I'm gonna try and ask Liner to fix it. Hopefully my laptop doesn't die on me, I've finally built a relationship with it.

ARGH why so blarrdy hot!!!

I wans to goes homes =(

Meals

You don't realise how much a 'family lunch' or having 'a meal with your parents' means until you aren't able to have one.

Mid study-break break

I can't wait for December!! This is officially (hopefully) my sister's aisle song, although I doubt she'll have to cover the amount of distance to last a 4 minute song. Unless she decides to have a couple of slow lorises preceding her and a 2 year old flower girl who decides to inspect every flower petal before throwing it to the ground.

If not her walk down the aisle should take less than a minute.

Oh my gosh I just can't wait for it all to be pieced together when the big day comes! And don't you think the song is just so perfect for weddings? Listen to what Lea Salonga says about the song, just splendid =)

It's such a teary song though, damn sweet la! :D:D

Oh boy! SO Exciting!!! :D

Perhaps I should abandon my course and become a full fledged Wedding planner. HAHA

It's Winter!

One more day of school before it's all over! Well, that is except for the exams. It's officially winter and my tedency to hibernate has kicked in, not very good when there's work to be done. I can't believe that I'm actually using the term 'winter', a word we poor perpetually hot and sweaty Singaporeans rarely hear. Winter!! Acually the sun's still shining in my face, just that it isn't a very good idea to walk around with a sweater on.

We have fireplaces!!! I set a fire that day, but a very puny one though. Here's a picture of something called Damper being cooked. Basically it's a sort of scone which you can simply cook by chucking it into the fire. They add beer to the dough sometimes, which is what we did on Tuesday. It tastes AWESOME when it's warm (but a little funny due to the beer)

We should do this back home!
And look! I started a trend! I stuck this up on my door to hide the gay/bisexual/transgender sticker. It recently caught on with my floormates and now we all have stupid pictures up!

C 4.1 My roomC 4.2 Michael's

C 4.3 Kayla's

C 4.4 Mel's

(It says: Death by Cake)

Haha.... I love our floor.

Wave Motion

2 weeks to exams! After a year, it's finally back to the good ole' days of counting down to exams! Haha, though it would be a pretty dumb thing to do at a tertiary level considering you have finals every 6 months. Still, it also means that the time to go back home draws nearer and nearer, and I'm praying damn hard that the stupid pig flu here doesn't get any worse. I'm not looking forward to being quarantined in any way.

It's been a pretty nice day.=)

We were going through something called Garden Path sentences in Linguistics the other day, and boy are they confusing. Take a look at these sentences:

The rat the cat the dog teased chased ate the cheese.
The elephant squeezed into a telephone booth collapsed.
He helped the old lady across the road.
Before the police stopped the driver panicked.
The pen the author the editor liked used was new.
The horse raced past the barn fell.

Which of the following would you consider grammatically correct?

...

Decided?

Guess what, they're ALL grammatically correct sentences. It's just that comprehending them requires more than our brain can provide sometimes. If you give them a read through again you'll be able to understand. Fun eh?

I feel like Noah

It's raining and raining and raining and raining... and raining.

Been raining for practically 48 hours, which is SWELL because I have no school for the rest of the week, (implying that I can actually cuddle up in my bed whilst people at uni get all cold and squishy... muhahaha)

=) Yay Rain rocks!

Toy Shopping

Forgot this photo the last time I posted. MASSIVE MAGIC MUSHROOM!!!! [Ok not magic, but perhaps genetically modified]

It REaLLY is larger than Siyi's head. She'll be eating it the entire week man!

Anyways, I went toy shopping on Friday for the symbolic play test I'm supposed to carry out on my kid next week. Toys are so expensive!! We spent a collective amount of $35 on toys, plus an additional $9 on books and stickers. At least I'm sharing the cost with a classmate from Speech, or I'd be $20 poorer and stuck with a whole bunch of toys. I must admit it was quite fun though, toy shopping is probably one of the more interesting shopping trips ever.
The collection of toys we spent about 2.5 hrs hunting down. The tea set was SUCh a pain finding, not to mention expensive. We needed a fork, knife, spoon cup and saucer. For some retarded reason, most tea sets just have two or three components of the set we need. Thank goodness we found this at Krazy Klark's (this kind of cheapo shop).It was seriously such a pain. Never felt so exhausted in my life. Shopping for a list of required toys is seriously not an easy task.

Anyways, I can finally say...

I'm home sick!!!

I hate getting those sudden bouts of homesickness when I'm doing my work, like...

Missing the blueberry buns from the bread shop downstairs

The funky smell of Plaza Singapura (it does have a really weird smell, really!)

Being able to sit at a hot, crowded kopi tiam eating lousy western food

Eating the AWESOME grilled chicken from the Marina Square food court and chilling with Feifei (we shall do that when I get back fei!).

Oo! Walking along the Esplanade

tapping my hideous EZ Link card on the musty 106

GROCERY SHOPPING with my family!! (I miss NTUC)

Where the word 'satay' means meat on sticks and not a fusion curry/peanut/sweet flavouring they put in the sauce and blend with mysterious things

Having unlimited use of the internet and not having to scrimp on Youtub-ing

Being able to call my friends when I want and wherever I want and not just see them on the screen

Just nuah-ing on my sofa watching recorded episodes of Hannah Montana (Omg I'm gonna spend a day watching all the episodes)

Rushing to grab a coffee and muffin at the East Coast Starbucks before church service at 9!

Having food portions that are of human proportions and not that of a giant's

Omg... MILO DINOSAUR/T-REX/GODZILLA/KING KONG!!

Jay walking! hehheh

having my laundry being done by my mum for meeee

The national library and the amazing breeze that goes through the building because of the air pocket created around the building. AND the smell of the library!

walking around in horrible ugly t-shirts and FBTs when I go down to buy stuff

The list goes on and on, I'm sorry if it bores you or makes you feel more homesick (for us who are far from home), but typing all this out actually helps me deal with it much better. It allows you to reminisce in a very sweet manner, the way you would look back and remember fond memories of your childhood or of someone. =)

I watched the Butterfly Effect again, I shall talk about that another time though, it'll probably be quite boring.

On of those sunset days at IH

Heenee

I'm free from exams/assignments until June! Which is... my favourite word...

AWESOME.

Anyways I feel bad for not giving a proper update in ages, I feel as if my life has been jiggled, swiggled, blended and swirled. Habits and routines have changed and it's frustrating how I can't get some things to go back to what it was a month ago. For instance the simple act of NOT falling asleep everyday after breakfast, (which is practically as good as waking up late) It's just something that bothers me, I strongly take pride in waking up at 630 everyday/

Talked to my mum today and she said,

'Eh, so how's the Heenee in Austraila?'

I was like, What?? What heenee?

'Heenee la, H1N1 virus!'

Hahha, apparently for the first few days of all the newspaper articles she thought that the virus was the HINI virus, damn hilarious!!! Trust my mum to be so full of nonsense! haha, she rocks.

Funfact of the day! Do you know English originates from a German dialect? That's why the two languages are actually so similar! (Go Mings for German!)

And do you know we have 8 bones just at our wrist? There were more funny things I've found out during our morning breakfast conversations with people studying various subjects, just that I can't remember them all.

Let's fight HEENEE together!!!!

=)

Stupid Things I've done over the past 60 hours

1) Fell off my chair (very gracefully) while getting up from it (Thank God for carpets).

2) Inserted my ATM card into a slot beneath the actual ATM slot, and embarrassingly got it stuck inside.

3)Missed my tut cos I cannot find it.

4) The best is yet to be. I hope I don't do anything dumber than all this.

Mings if the swine flu thingi gets outta hand I'll be back in Singapore for a longer period from 30/6-21/7. OR if it gets TOO outta hand then I'll be stuck here in Brisbane and I'll cry everyday!

Love ya!

Up and down like a horses in a carousel, that's how my mood changes.

I've effectively had a million fluctuations just in one day. sucks. bleacgh.

Lunch was awesome though! The rice today was actually FLUFFY and correctly cooked! *Gasp!*

2 more months, and it feels like forever at this point of time.

The Break is OVER

This week has been by far the most interesting, amazing, exhausting and hilarious week I've had ever. Nat and Liheng were down in Brisbane for 1.5 weeks, and it was really great having a part of home come down to visit. It was funny how our group of maybe 3-4 people slowly expanded with each night, such that by the end of the week we were sitting at tables with 10 people. I was telling Nat that when you're overseas, the amount of links and networks you draw up are pretty incredible, such that pretty soon you know everyone. Anyways, playing tourguide for a week is no joke, and I'm really glad we all enjoyed ourselves.

Ok picure time, because my brain is still slightly fuzzy from the after effects of all the events.

That's us at this awesome cafe called 3 Monkeys! I shan't elaborate more about finding the cafe, it was so embarrassing. After this photo we had 4 more people join us, and ended up with a kind of pseudo-wedding-dinner table setting. That was pretty interesting because we started as a table of 2 groups of strangers and were friends by the end of the night.

Brisbane city by night taken from the City Cat (which, ironically, is a boat)

And duh, Brisbane city in the day. Don't you love those Simpson clouds?? Awesome right? But the weather throughout the week was retarded. When we decided to go to Movieworld on Monday it rained like Siyi's unstoppable leaking tap. Resulting in Nat and my shoes turning into mini canoes of water and very smelly, wet, wrinkled feet. After that day, it no longer rained. Siao one.

Movie World shot in front of Superman! I think I probably posted something similar last year in Sep considering what an awesome ride this is. Nothing can beat Superman Escape. Honestly promise confirm plus chop. And that's the bunch of us with an adrenaline-high pose after the ride. We wanted to go on one more time but, as I said before, the stupid rain just flooded in like nobody's business.

I'm impressed with my own photography skills man. Haha. Nah, how bad can a shot of a giant ferris wheel be? It's their version of our Flyer, just 3 times faster and slightly smaller. Looks awesome in the skyline though.

And Cons passed me paintings that are just SOOOOO gorgeous!!! I just fell 10 times happier everytime I look on them on my wall. Don't you think they look really zen and classy now that I stuck them on this way? Heh.. I suck at decorating rooms, can't stick stuff on walls properly for nuts, so I was really surprised they turned out looking great on my very very bare walls. Everyone loves the paintings Cons!! Thank you!

Guess what??? More colours!!! NAt and I went slightly deranged at the sight of coloured scrapbook paper and embellishments, we split the 'goods' cos I'll be preparing for my sister's scrapbook for the end of this year! Yay can't wait! :D:D

And I apologise but that's about as may words I can come up with. (Head still buzzing)

It's my mid semester break!!!

Suddenly time is on my hands (ignoring the shitload of work I have to do before term starts again)

I watched 10 Things I Hate About You for the gazillionth time!

:D