Things that make me smile...=)

I'm sure I've had this as a title before, it's just that I'm a strong believer of sharing your happiness and joys instead of imposing any emo-ness and bit*hcomplaints to the world who can't be bothered listening to you whine.

I'm sure we all have that song that makes us smile uncontrollably, that feel good  or shiok song that calsm you and make the corners of your lips raise and your mood lighten and you go all 'ahhhh...'

The song above currently has that effect on me, yeah, it does sound pretty much like bubblegum pop, but hey, it makes my endorphines run! =)

And you know what else makes me happy and high?? Smelling nice things like my Dove soap! I spent a good 10 minutes hopping around with the bottle like Gollum and his ring. (I think my housemate and her friend thought I was siao, I think the fumes got to me la)

Hehe... The simple pleasures of life; why don't you start with your 5 senses and just see what makes your day? That can make a crappy day all better =)

( I know I sound like some uber positive-happy-high-brainless-bunny now, I think the redbull is kicking in.. hurhurhur...) seeing that I've read the limited research on Red Bull and the impact it has on mental performance, I'm sure it's having an effect on me right now. If only I could be as verbose as I am now on this blog as in my lit review. haha..

Skilled Laborour

Several weeks ago on one of those lazy nights where I frist got my internet connected, I stumbled across Xiaxue's videos on clicknetwork.com, and came across a hilarious video of her baby sitting. Well, it wasn't hilarious per se, more of a mix between shock and amusement. 

You may watch the video at the following link: (I am unable to embed a video from clicknetwork

http://www.clicknetwork.tv/watch.aspx?c=1&p=8&v=462

As many of you know, I'm not exactly the person with the best fashion sense, neither am I the kind who knows how to 'dress up' even if the occasion calls for it. I'm pretty much a T-shirt-and-jeans kinda girl, and have progressed steadily from super-oversized-ugly-t-shirt-and-berms to fitted-t-shirts-and-jeans-with-occasional-dresses. As plastic or superficial as it may seem, I sometimes do envy girls who are able to use 87 different substances to accentuate their features. 

Random example of pretty girly dolled up girl

It's like an art, I suppose that's why they're called make-up artists yes?

People like Kaykay and Xiaxue even make livings out of their looks (especially xiaxue with her video tutorials on how to gigantify your eyes), which is pretty awesome if you think about it, show people how to do something you like (and are good at), and get paid for it! And it's not exactly laborious either.

So when I saw videos of them babysitting (Kaykay and Paul Twohill had another experience here), I gaped for a while. I have never seen people SO awkward around kids before! Watch for yourself and see, gosh I felt bad for the poor kids!

But in this process, I discovered my skill: Diaper Changing/Kid Minding!! Actually I think I'm better with babies, they can be easily distracted and entertained with stupid things like how huge your mouth is whereas a toddler would just run around and ignore you.

So I have a skill!! YAY

But models get $50/hr and babysitters get $15/hr... Hmmm Oh well, at least I know if I have a kid I won't freak out!

I Am Human...

Sometimes Mark tells me I think I'm wonderwoman because I like to keep myself constantly busy with work and studies and other frivolous matters which fill up my time (lest I become too complacent with too much free time and therefore waste it). But many things I do remind myself that I am merely human, and a rather blur and stupid one at times...

Stupid things done just over the past 7 days:

1) Drove my car to school, and walked home with Jerrine and completely forgetting that I'd parked it in school.

2) Spent a good 5-10 minutes searching for the cover of my blender in the different kitchen cabinets, getting all worked up, only to realise that it was already in the blender.

3) Walked right smack, hard on to our glass door... But that I blame my unbearable hunger that caused me to attempt to rush through the door to get to the fridge asap... Not one of my finest moments I must say. I think Mark was on the verge of whatsapping everyone my moment of genius

And all within 7 days, haiyoo..

What stupid things have you done??

To to to... Toowoomba!

We just got our postings for our 6 week placement in October! And I'm ecstatic to say that I've been given my first choice of completing my 6 weeks at the local hopital in Toowoomba! (Yes, there's a name funnier than Toowong). For all you non-Queenslanders/Brisbanites, Toowoomba is regional town 194km away from the city of Brisbane. Technically, it is not Brisbane. (I grappled with that fact for a while in my first year, because I thought EVERYTHING was Brisbane, yes, silly me)

I've attached a picture of the google map for the benefit of everyone so that you can get a sense of how blardy big Australia is.. Or how blardy small Singapore is.

Actually, I think this picture does an even better job. One fo the lecturers had put up a picture of a map similar to this to demonstrate the need for the development of Telerehab, which is basically the deliverying of different types of therapy via internet programmes similar to Skype. Because Australia is so vast and some the state and level of development really can differ greatly from region to region, many therapists choose to stay in Metropolitan areas such as Brisbane, Sydney and what not (I mean, who wouldn't right?) So researchers find ways to try and provide healthcare services to all the little kampungs (small small towns) out there in order to benefit as many as possible.

Toowoomba is one such kampung that has now turned into one of the bigger, more 'happening' town centres in the region. When people talk about places in Queensland, it's Brisbane, Townsville, Caines, Toowoomba etc. It's probably not massively huge, but I've heard it's pretty bustling (compared to the little swa deng  Gatton which Mark is in) I've conveniently marked Mark (haha, pun unintended) on the google maps map to show how far he is from civilisation on any given day. Poor guy only has ONE asian fried noodle stall to eat from!! (which therefore means he's now pretty chummy with the guy and can get discounts when he buys noodles and fried rice, haha.. perks of a small town).

Gosh do I digress or what? I'm just so excited, to be able to work in a (slightly) less metropolitan hospital setting, and staying in nurses quarters, which I'm clueless about. All I know is, in a month's time, I'll be of to to to to toowoombaaa!!

HEHEHE *excited mad laughter*

adios~

Terrification

I've just spent today at a one day course on 'Practical Stuttering Techniques for the School-Aged Child' organised by Pearson in the city given by J. Scott Yaruss, the co-author of the OASES forms used in evaluating the functional impacts stuttering can have on a person.

Fear, phobias and anxiety are always issues which come up whenever the topic of stuttering comes to mind. It's instinctive, even to the lay person that a stutterer does so especially when he is anxious, afraid or scared. This is completely true of course, and is often one of the key issues we as therapists must inform the client. Do not let the fear of stuttering control you, because that is exactly what makes you stutter even more.

When Dr Yaruss started on the topic on his arachnaphobia and how these children basically experience that level of anxiety all the time, I began to recall the times when I was still of a single-digit age, and when I was in a (fairly traditional) Chinese primary school. I remembered being petrified of every single Chinese language teacher before the age of 9. I would never EVER dream of asking to go to the toilet during chinese classes, and would almost always do my homework until I was Primary 3 (I think...)

One key experience I remember was when the class was walking down the stairs in pairs for the flag lowering ceremony at the end of the day, and our Chinese teacher told the 2 children at the front to stop walking while she caught up; but they didn't. So she reprimanded them (not too badly actually, I think she yanked the girl's ear slightly, but it sure freaked the hell outta me cos I was just behind them), and promptly told them to swap with me and my partner.

For that 2 flight of stairs, I swear I was as nervous as hell! Man I don't even get so nervous giving presentations now! Why was I so petrified? It wasn't that she was a tyrannical teacher or anything like that, I was just afraid that I wouldn't understand her when she said 'stop' in mandarin and end up overshooting and being reprimanded as being 'disobedient', when actually, I just don't understand. Thankfully, none of that happened and I got to the parade square nice, safe and without peeing myself.

Many times as children we're so petrified of adults. I knew I was afraid of all the chinese teachers because I couldn't understand shit. What ever they'd say, I probably only got half the message (and then whoever was around me would have to explain again). The fear of speaking chinese was even greater! I was just so shy with speaking mandarin actually.

When I think back now, I'm so glad I'm over that stage of being afraid of people. It's not a very good fear to have I reckon =P Lesson for today?

Make sure my kids are friggin' bilingual and don't have to go through the same horrible feeling of inadequateness as I did!

 Gaby better start on her chinese lessons soon!! (I'm going to make sure her first chinese words are 'ah yee'!

The Lack of IT

Due to the recent move and hustle and bustle of getting back to school and work, there hasn't been much time for updates. Not only that, there hasn't been any INTERNET for updates. As I probably whine and whinge about this every time I move house in Brisbane (which is 3 times so far), we have yet to have our internet connected. While this is nicely saving us about $15/week without internet, it still makes us feel like we haven't quite settled in yet. Not to mention the horrible amount of research we should  be doing for our honours projects this semester.

I honestly can't wait to really get started on my project. It's on Taurine and how it might enhance/affect word learning (yes, geek at heart.). Taurine is an amino-acid found in things like Red Bull, Formula milk and such, which is believed to enhance attention, cognition and all that sorts. I've not yet actually come across any journal article that explicitly states so though, however I have only been researching for a grand total of maybe.... half an hour?

So a quick update of life..

Life's been great =) Had a great birthday, been playing nice traditional games such as Uno Attack and Munchkins thanks to my lack of internet and technology in the house (i.e. TV). Which is good actually. televisions reduce our sociability I find. Everyone tends to just end up sitting around and nuahing when we could all be talking and interacting instead.

Not having the internet at my fingertips has also meant that I spend more time sleeping, getting 8 or more hours of sleep a day is a luxury I know will soon cease (once the internet kicks in and the assignment writing starts). So I'm gonna treasure that sleep!!

=))

I like to move it move it

Yes I've been away for loooooong.. That's because after the 20 hour flight+transit back to Brisbane, I got straight back into work at the daycare, moved out of my old place, got more busy with long days at the day care, and moved into the new place with Jerrine, which is, by the way, a lovely, warm-looking (not feeling), quaint Queenslander near school!

The new closeness to school still gets me so excited that I still squeal when we approach the house, knowing that I need not crawl up the horrible Carmody Hill or navigate through the meandering bends anymore! For those of you that aren't aware, a queenslander is basically an ang morh atap house (all the wood and stilts without the atap). The place had previously been flooded to the top of the windows, and thus received a full renovation and refurbishing, which results it a very very very professional, very shiny and reflective timber floor! The toilet is AMAZING, with self-cleaning shower screens which apparently allow you to use it without ever having soap scum/water marks!

I think both of us have never been so happy and satisfied with a house and it's providings. The owner is really a sweet old man, like the grand dad I never had really.. He's quite stern and anal about his house, but sooo helpful and friendly. If only all owners were like that

Anyways, alas I'm here writing this in the school library because

1) We have no internet, as usual.
2) I stupidly forgot to bring my keys and my housemate is out till late.
3) I even more stupidly forgot to bring my phone. so, which is the stupidestest??? ?

I suppose this means I get the chance to finally sit down and update my blog about something going on, although I am sad to not be able to put up photos. There's so much I want to talk about! Belgium, Luxembourg, Zurich and Gaby and all the other random things I so like to talk about =))

Well I guess that will have to wait! till then,

Adios!

Nightmares

Last night was pretty epic. I woke up to loud huds on the window and thought that the world was ending. You know how you get jolted awake suddenly by noises or someone suddenly and the adrenaline just causes your stomach to churn and your muscles to just tense and function despite your mind still being in a semi-consious state? Well that's exactly how I felt last night when the storm woke the entire household up.

It wasn't just an ordinary storm, it was MASSIVE, and guess what, 

THERE WAS HAIL.

 The winds were amazingly crazy strong, and this picture from my sister's window doesn't give enough credit to the chaos and frightening tension brought by the storm. A piece of hail that fell on my mummy's toe was actually what woke her up as all our windows were wide open (It's pretty hot in Zurich now, and the nights feel very much like our Singapore nights).

So this piece of ice struck her awake and she quickly went around closing windows with my sister. It probably took me 30secs more before I woke up and realised what was going on.

 If you look closely you might notice the pattern of the rain on the road as the rhythmic winds gushed across the sky.

 I tried to take a picture of pieces of hail that fell into the balcony, but it didn't turn out too clear. Hail was actually dropping down the chimney too, but it was too dark and dusty for me to capture a shot. Plus my eyes were half closed and my brain half in dream land still.

 I'm not too sure if that white orb looking thing is hail. It might be since I don't see it on the floor now.

It took me a while to get back to sleep because of all that adrenaline and trauma, and when I did, I had the most frustrating dram (which I thus consider a nightmare because it didn't want to end). Basically I was ferrying 4 people home in my dream (this was in Brisbane of course), and after I drove almost all the way home, 1 girl told me she lived on the other side of the river, which meant I had to backtrack a whole way. The frustrating part came when I just couldn't get to the respective houses of the people to drop them off, meaning I was lost and jsut couldn't find my way. Which, in my opinion, is the most frustrating thing ever! I hate it when I get lost in real life, much more in my dream!

So bascially I woke up frustrated. Because I never got to send them home and they scolded me.

Thank goodness I have Ah Bee to lighten the days that I'm here! Honestly, motherhood is bloody tiring now that I see it up close and 24/7. Piang eh. I always thought I'd want to be a young mum, but now, I begin questioning if I'm ready to sacrifice and give up literally my whole life for someone who's just going to be a pooping, crying little monster who has her moments of cuteness and warmth. Don't get me wrong, it's not that my niece is a monster, but it's just that I never know if my kid will turn out to be one!

 We frequently try and let her self-entertain in her walker in order for everyone to get on with doing their own thing. But when she frets, she frets. I've watched the video of 'Elmo's Song' so many friggin times I think I'm going to have dreams of that soon!

 And Miss Poopy Pants doing a Poop!! She's SOOO adorable when she sits on the potty!

This was taken during one of the 'Elmos-Song-Consolation-Session' when my sister was in the shower and she was pining for her. Elmo seems to be the best substitute so far.

I'm so gonna be Gaby-sick when I leave for Brisbane!!!! =((

Amsterdam

I'm back in Zurich with the family! Feels good to be back to the familiarity (somewhat) of having dishes to wash, meals to cook and baby to sit. We came home to an awesome Bak Kut Teh meal filled not only with pork ribs but fish balls, wantons and dumplings. BAsically it was a very nice, processed meat meal which served as a good end to the holiday in Benelux!

According to the mother, Benelux refers to the country combination of Belgium, Netherlands and Luxembourg. I'll start with Netherlands, also known as Holland, also known as the underdog team that made it to the World Cup finals last year (WOOHOO). The only thing I actually remembered about them was that they had the awesomest colour combination.

Anyhows, what does a better job than pictures right? 

On the Mercedes Benz taxi from the airport to hotel. I love it that all the cabs are either BMWs or Mercs, makes me feel so rich when I'm not, haha...

 We spent the first 2 nights at Hilton (as provided by the tour), which was pretty fantastic apart from the fact that they always charge you 22 Euros for a day of internet (Retarded shits..), so I had very limited internet throughout because the tour company appears to have plenty of ties with Hilton (Darn!)

But look what they had! A PILLOW MENU!

FLUFFY!! I didn't bother to try though

 And many of you would know the association Amsterdam has with liberal laws regarding weed and prostitution. Here's a cute write up I found in the guide book provided by the hotel. Zoom in and have a read!

 The entire area outside the hotel was surrounded by sculptures and displays, here're just a few I took

The beautiful sunny sky!

 The streets of Amsterdam are really easy to maneouver around, and almost everyone has a bicycle. You'll see in the pictures below on the crazy amount of bicycles in the city!

One of the random areas next to a park where people parked their bikes. It was like that the whole stretch

And the very economical looking car! Looks like a very very old version of the smart cars we have in Australia.

 Amsterdam is pretty much like Venice, a city surrounded by water, possibly sinking and structured around canals. The -dam in Amsterdam actually does refer to the dam that is in the area (as do many of the other cities in Holland such as Rotterdam). So of course a canal cruise was part of the tour (yawn) it was pretty cool though, cos we got to see a lot of the boat houses. I can't imagine living in a boat house for your entire life!

And guess what I had for brekkie the next day? ? RAMBUTANS!

Random shot of the grass/clouds/electrical wires as we went out to the country side

 What else is Holland famous for besides weed, prostitutes, dams and tulips? Cheese and wooden clogs of course. Typical tourist fare...

Mummy mummy look at my giant feet!!

 And this shot was hilarious! A bunch of girls walked into Maccas with heads full of curlers! Brilliant aint' it? hahahha.. I sneaked a shot.

And what's a visit to Amsterdam without going through the red light district? It truly was eye opening, not many photos of the place though, cos it's not very ncie to take pictures of the ladies at work. They basically sit in windows and do their own thing, whether it's texting, or talking on the phone etc. You really get to see all shapes and sizes and ages though.

Goods they sell

The bicycle multi-story 'carpark'!

 What did I tell you about the amount of bikes??

A nice random arty farty picture of a building 

 To be honest, I wasn't listening much to the tourguide. She had the amazing ability to lull me to sleep anytime of the day.

And that's only Day 1 of Amsterdam! Don't worry, I won't be boring you with daily summaries, just the key points in each area. blog more about the diamonds tomorrow! They were pretty amazing, and I never saw a rock so upclose before, haha..

Adios!

Waiting for my Jet Plane!

We're here at the Amsterdam Schipole (Airport) 6 hours before our 1.5 hour flight to Zurich because the tourbus could only drop us off at this time.

Oh wait, yes, I've been MIA because my mum and I have spent the last 10 days in Be-ne-lux, which apparently stands for Belgium-Netherlands-Luxembourg.

I think my ultimate favourite was Netherlands without a doubt. It's small, modern, full of weed and prostitution... Nah I'm kidding, that's not why I liked it (but weed and prostitutes were pretty obvious only in the red light districts). It's such an accessible town, small and compact. With awesome road plans. Everyone got around on bikes, I even saw people dating on bikes. Some girls were so dolled up (I suppose they were going clubbing), and they rode bikes! How cool is that?

More updates soon once I get back to my sister's place where I can sit down and enjoy uploading posts, blogging, reading journal articles... (as if).

For now, I only have 10 minutes of internet left before the airport decides to charge me 10euros per half an hour. They sure know how to make money.

As our tourguide said, the Dutch are famous for doing one thing: Making money.

"We sell sand to the people in Egypt, and ice to the people in Iceland" - my tourguide

~Adios!

The Five People You Meet in Heaven

 Once again I will be relocating in the month of July, which brings about a huge array of feelings; excitement of getting a new place to call home once again, yet the sadness of leaving a place I've already settled in and a housemate whom I've lived with for longer than anyone (apart from family) and gone through many nights of nonsense talk, heart to heart talks, baking binges, exploratory cooking sessions, and sometimes, mindless chasing around the house on wheely chairs (we never grow up).


I've always loved the book 'The Five People You Meet in Heaven' by Mitch Albom. It's one of my all time favourite books because it allows you to think back and reflect upon the people in your life without actually explicitly asking you to do so.


Here's a brief summary of the book for the people who don't know it: This guy dies right, and when he's in heaven , he meets someone who he thinks is a complete stranger. But then soon realises that this particular character and him have once crossed paths long ago, and something simple that the character had done had actually had a huge impact on his life even though he didn't realise it. And so he goes on toe meet 4 other people who have unknown to the man, actually had great influence on his life.


This makes me think, who would the 5 people I meet in heaven be? (If I would in the first place, of course).


I think Siyi (my current hosuemate) would be one of them. For one, because of her, my entire family now knows the joys of eating leek, which is something none of us ever dreamt of buying! And I now put potato chips in the fridge sometimes because they taste better chilled (go and try if you haven't, they actually do taste way better!).

We unknowingly pick up a lot of habits and views from the people around us, absorbing this like a sponge. I'm sure many of us know how advertisers prey on the accessibility of the human mind using all their subliminal messages to get what they want from consumers who so willingly fall into their trap. And I suppose sometimes it's this malleability and adaptability which allows us all to survive in the social world. Some may call it giving in to peer pressure, others may call it the 'herd mentality' when they're trying to prove that they're all different and unique from the rest of the world. But really, I call it subconscious survival.  

Tuesday's Paper

I realised something slightly funny on my Stats paper on Tuesday. This was the exam that provided quite a number of 'firsts' for me.

1) This was the first paper since JC that I've actually had to bring in a calculator and use it for something other than simple mathematics (i.e. I had many many decimal places, but that's it)

2) I sat behind a big, hulking guy (who hadn't taken a shower I presume, since it was a cold 8am paper). Which is quite funny, because when he sat down, I suddenly realised that I've never ever sat behind a guy during an exam before.

As many of you would now, my course now proudly has 74 females and 1 male. (And I'm proud to say he's Singaporean and has surviveed!!) haha. Sometimes, I do wonder if Speech Pathology is a sexist occupation. You know how women are constantly complaining about making their way into the corporate world and how it's such a sexist world yadah yadah yadah, well, one day, I think guys are gonna speak up and complain about how Speech pathology is a sexist field and that how it's insanely difficult for them to get it.. Haha....

Yeah right.. one  day.

That'll be the day that bananas are given the status of abalone. Did you know that bananas are $12/kg here in Brisbane now due to the floods/cyclones in December and early this year? Let me put that into context, that price basically means that a single average sized banana is gonna cost you $2. $2 for a bananana????

Which is why my banana craving has never been stronger and I'm therefore asking my mum to bring in 3 or 4 bananas into the airport when I stopover in Singapore while waiting for her to join me in the airport to fly to Zurich. And I'm already dreaming about the banana kueh from Bengewang Solo...

Oooooo... nanaa,.....

Sometimes I look at the bananas the kids at the kindy have and can't help but just stare longingly at them... WAhhhh... And some of them don't even like bananas, what a waste of $2 on them! (Darn, should've grown my own bananna tree somewhere last year!)

1cm x 1cm Origami Crane

 After having spent most of Swotvac web surfing, blog surfing and peeping at the lives of others, I came to one realisation. 

I have no niche to talk about, show off or share with the world.

Sure I can play decent guitar without killing a cat, I think I can play a tune on the cello (but possibly break glass), I can write coherently and grammatically with somewhat complexly embedded sentences which require slightly higher level parsing sometimes at times, I can bake things that aren't going to kill people by hitting them, and I might be able to draw some cute cartoon-ish things on cue, I might be able to draw stupid designs on nails every once in a while

BUT...

I'm not insanely good at any of those items! 

Well, at least not insanely good enough such that it surpassess (in my opinion), 1.5 standard deviations from the mean! In other words, 

I AM AVERAGE AT EVERYTHING

So, I thought to myself. People have baking blogs with perfect little muffins, and drawing blogs (such as my secondary school friend Esther, which you have to check out), and people have blogs just about ANYTHING. So I thought maybe, just maybe, I could find such an obscure skill that no one has yet discovered... And immediately I thought..

Mini Origami!

I treasure the nimbleness of my fingers (hey, they maybe fat, but they're dexterious!) And recalled how I used to love making mini everythings when I was a kid. Mini plasticine models, tiny cows made of blu-tack, little drawings (kind of), and of course, mini origami. (well, just a couple of times). And here's the result from last night: 

Hello! So I embarked on my quest of folding an origami paper crane by a 1cm x 1cm paper. (After an afternoon dwadle preparing with the stats paper the next day). I took the liberty of

The final crane about the size of half my nail.

There it is in my by-then-sweaty palms

The process starts off easy of course, with simply quatering the size of the paper. And it's not yet so thick. This slowly gets harder (obviously) as the paper gets folded over and over and over and over.

This is probably the hardest step to get to, folding in the tiny corners to get the perfect little wings.

The end product! I think I had a harder time balancing it on my nail and actually capturing a proper macro shot of it. Days I wish I had a proper DSLR!!

So ended the 15minute fight with the paper and camera.

Adios!