It's the hols :)

Mid-sem break is here! :) That means one week of so-called holidays which btw has to be spent on working on assignments and stuff. Not much of a break I would say but at least there's no school :) To start off the holidays, went to support my team on Friday for their AFL Semifinals. MCG was packed with Collingwood & Geelong fans (~100,000!) Was such an intense & exciting game but unfortunately, we lost by 5 points :( Just one more goal and Collingwood would have been on their way to the grand final this Friday. Real Sad :(

Met up with Alisa and some of the housemate's gang after the game for a crazy night at Sevens. The club was overflowing with students all on holiday. It was insane but had tons of fun :)

Spent Saturday working on our Ravioli production manual with Claudio. Our production run is set to be 2 weeks after hols. Am going to hiring Bani, Meelin, Alisa & Ann as our workers for the run tentatively. Haha. Should be really interesting to see how our workers follow our manual. It's giving us such a headache though. Urgh.

Today was fantastic. Went for the High Street Northcote Music Festival. Martin Martini was performing there :) Great set as usual and there was this fellow (bottom right) who was dancing in a real strange way. Had such a gd laugh haha.

Hot dog & beer for lunch! Drinking beer is such an Aussie culture I realise. Basically, Aussies just love to drink.

Went around to check out other bands who were performing.

Another hot dog & beer to end off the festival! :)

Caught an independent film thereafter at Lygon called 'After the Wedding'. Was pretty good! It talked about a Danish aid worker in India who had to choose between his ideals and family. Finally, met up with Bani, Claudio & Meelin at Meelin's place. She was having a bbq and unfortunately i missed that part cuz I got there late. Heard the food was great :(

And that marks the end of the weekend to the start of my hols! 8 more weeks till the next hols and good ol' Singapore!

Footy Fever

Yet another week gone!! Yikes & Yay. Yikes to exams being just ard the corner and Yay to going back to humid ol' Singapore soon! :) School & work was hectic as usual, started on my Food Chem mini project: Analysis of Natural Peanut Butter vs. Processed Peanut Butter. Interestingly enough, peanut butter is actually a rather healthy product. It is high in monounsaturated fats, fibre, protein & Vitamin B3. Can seriously consider peanut butter sandwich for my lunch box now :)

Highlight of the week was going to the Toyota AFL Finals on Saturday night with Vaughan & his parents at MCG. It was totally awesome!!! Quite an experience I must say :D

Collingwood is Vaughan's team and by default (as he puts it) is my team as well. Haha. Collingwood was playing Sydney Swans in this elimination round. Winner of the night will play on in bid to reach the grand finals.

Us in our Collingwood jersey!

Apparently, the culture of the footy in Down Under is always meat pies washed down with loads of beer..and that was what we did :)

The stadium was packed with fans draped in their teams' colours, be it the jerseys, scarves, jacket, caps etc etc. and the air was abuzz with such excitement and energy! Loads of cheering and singing and flag waving and of cause swearing and angry shouts :P

The very excited & supportive Collingwood fans! (+ one Sydney Swans fan:P)

Our team won by around 30 points btw :)

It's been a long week..

..& what a week it has been! For starters, Melbourne is starting to see nice warm sunlight with cool breeze. Spring is very very near! :) We are all enjoying the glorious sunshine and taking all chances to sit out and busk in its glory haha.

As mentioned in my previous post, we celebrated Alisa's 21st birthday on the 24th. Started off with a drinking session at my pad followed by Toff in Town for Martin Martini. It was a night filled with too much liquors, wines, beers (which made everyone Very Happy High indeed) and crazy dancing. Was a Great night! :) Happy Birthday (again) my dear!

My latest buy for the house! An extremely pretty candle holder for all my scented candles. Am very pleased with my buy haha. My pad is smelling heavenly nowadays :)

Random pics of me & Alisa at Starbucks enjoying a nice coffee after dinner with her parents. Her parents came down for her birthday, which I thought was really sweet of them :) Btw, the both of us are highly addicted to the beef noodles at this Vietnamese Restaurant along Swanston. I think I have been there a total of 4 times this week. Yikes.

Went down to Toff again for Martin's last gig at Toff on Friday 31st and hit Equinox with Alisa and some of her friends on Saturday. Lotsa man action, 3 smashed mugs of beer & butt flashing X2 by one of the boys (must be the drinks!) sum the night up. Crazy!

And today was spent at the very lovely St. Kilda Beach! Was great sitting by the beach, feeling the warmth of the sun on your shoulders while enjoying a nice salad and juice. Dear Alisa got herself a hat from the craft market and I met an artist whose works I totally fell in love with! The best thing was he said I could drop by his studio to take a look and perhaps do some stuff for him like stretching canvas and doing background paint for his works and in turn he'll teach me how to paint!!!!!!! How awesome is that?! Should be checking the studio out next week :)

Ended the day with a nice latte and some reading at Gloria Jeans Cafe @ Borders after Alisa went back. Ah, this is why I love Melbourne life :)

Photos!

The only way i can upload pictures now is to reduce the quality and size in Photoshop :( These are some of the backlogged photos..too tedious to do so many haha.

Yummilicious Food

Our Ravioli product label! We were going for the elegant up-market look haha.

Bani's Birthday Celebrations! (11/08/07)

Charmed Life~

I'm contented, very happy and satisfied with my current Melb life at the moment. Not that I wasn't before..haha. Been having heaps of fun during the weekends, while weekdays are always spent on Kumon & school. Getting to know more kids at Kumon..they are a real sweet bunch. A couple can be quite a handful but most of them are awfully Cute. So, work is good :) Ooh, Meelin has just joined the Kumon family too! :D School is getting along okies..our Ravioli production manual is draining the life outta us. The weekly Food Chemistry lab reports also..Bleah. Otherwise, all the courses have been real interesting. Have been going for Martin Martini's gigs pretty often recently as well, and enjoying every single one of them! I adore the band. Haha. One word: F-a-n-t-a-s-t-i-c. Saw this other band Mojo Juju playing last night at Evelyn, Brunswick St. The singer dropped his pants and started dancing with his package dangling ard! Far-out! Okay cause the lyrics of the songs goes smthing like ' without your pants...' in the chorus so he kinda just dropped it like halfway in the chorus. Friggin HILARIOUS. Was a bloody good night (not because of the pants dropping of cuz!). Music was real good and energy was high. The bar was cool as well..the concept was sorta caberet style. The bar crew were dressed in costumes and mingling with the crowd. There were even side performances by them while the bands set up. GJ: You would have loved it! Haha..yea i din't take any pictures though! :(

Coming Friday will be Alisa's birthday celebration. My pad is gonna be the Pre-drinking waterhole after which we will hit Toff In Town for Martin Martini's gig! I've been forced by Alisa to go for Justin Timberlake's concert on 5th Nov as well and have been forbidden to sell my tickets on Ebay where I can actually sell it for like 3X the price as the date draws nearer. She's paying for half my ticket price and i'm still using the word forced..which shows how much she loves JT and how i really don't give a damn abt JT. LOL. Ah wells.

Oh yes, I've painted my second painting, titled:

Above It All

:)

Hellooooo!

Well, it's been a while since I've updated..but nothing much has changed haha. Still can't upload pictures and it's getting on my nerves. Still wet and cold down here in Melbourne with a dose of sunlight for just a few days and still missing family, friends and humid ol' Singapore. National Day is coming ain't it? My dear parents actually checked themselves into Raffles Hotel last week during the final rehearsal for the parade so that they can view the fireworks. Dad is finally learning to take a break haha. Ah wells, Happy Birthday Singapore!!! :)

Anyways, check out Martin Martini and The Bone Palace Orchestra! Awesome band and live performance. Alternative music..gypsy/circus-like kinda style. Gets you moving on your feet! Hee. Martin is the lead singer/song writer. All the songs by the band are written and composed by him. Totally talented. He also happens to be Vaughan's brother haha (which explains how I got to know about this band) Yeaps, been to a couple of their gigs, even acted as door bitch for them yesterday at Revolver Upstairs, Chapel Street. Damn interesting! Haha..met all sorts of quirks and weirdos and drunkards but it was all fun!

Their album: Dream until you die.

Martin!

Okay I've no idea how come these pictures could be uploaded but those collages from Picasa can't seem to be. Hmm. Will figure this out some other day, gotta get back to my lab report for now. Cheerios!

of late..

Okay, i'm still not able to upload any of my numerous pictures of late (to the point that i stop taking pictures so often as well bleah!). I highly suspect my kind neighbour whom I have been leaching from has reached the limit to his/her broadband account (no thanks to me of course). SO, I prob have to wait till the new month before I can start to upload pics again *crosses fingers* Anyway just a short summary to what's been happening down under..

My dear girl Alisa is back form Sinagpore so have been hanging out with her quite a bit this weekend..slacking most of our time away at cafe & home. Got our hair cut by this korean dude and so now my hair is back to it's glory ala NUS times..hahaa...was getting bored with my long hair. Visited a pasta factory with Claudio for our ravioli project as well. Was a very interesting & enriching experience I must say..:) School work is also starting to pile up so I better pull up my socks..Pronto!!

Peace out.

URGH

I have no idea what's wrong with blogspot. I can't seem to upload any pics!!! :(

Friday Lunch

Had our first Food Chemistry lecture with Dr Small today. Haha. What a kooky last name :) He must be the first lecturer I have ever met so far in my entire education life who speaks oooooohhhh sooooooo slowlyyyyy. Seriously. I could doze off just waiting for him to complete one sentence. Well, on a brighter note, you will never miss out anything he says if u are actually awake :)

Anyways I need to bitch about my horrid school admin..because our timetable is so screwed up now. Well, we are required to take 3 essential modules for this semester and these 3 modules are determined by our program coordinator. And guess what...the timetable clashes for 2 of these essential modules. ??!!!?? Just how inefficient/messed up can they get? And their solution for this mess now is to drop a core and choose another elective, leaving the core for next semester. Urgh. We were all looking forward to doing that core this semester. The list of electives we can do this semester is so limited as well, and many of which can't fit into our timetable. Sigh. What a way to start the semester off. But I must say the modules we are doing this semester are very interesting. Of special mention is Food Quality Assurance with Liz Gorzyca. She rocks as a lecturer :) The practicals are gonna be so fun as well..as we are doing product assurance and the product for my group (Claudio & I) is MAP packaged ravioli. We will be making the product from scratch..starting with all the raw materials to the final packaging and recording this entire process along the way as a manual. Whee! Sounds good eh? :) Claudio and I are going to try our hand on ravioli making tomorrow before our first pract next week. Haha..and these will be stored and used on Monday night for our dinner party. Lol. Meelin and Bani are doing microwavable meatballs in some kind of sauce. Totally complementary with our ravioli :D Anyways, we tried out this Japanese restaurant at Melbourne Central today after lecture:

Food was not too bad! But it is not authentic jap food...they kinda fused it with Chinese style. Ahh..I miss the jap food at Cuppage :(

Since the last post..

Okie doks, since the last post, I have been immersing myself in some arty farty stuff and loads of shopping hee.

Friday morning was spent at the lovely State Library strolling through all the art and photos exhibitions. It was my first time inside..and I was going to see the exhibition on FAMOUS, Karin Catt Portraits there. The potraits were great, ranging from Eminem, Elton John and Keira Knightly to Bill Clinton and Dalai Lama. The interior of the library was impressive and extremely beautiful as well. Love it!! This trip to the library was totally inspiring for me haha..

Met up with Claudio after for shopping at Chadstone, the biggest shopping centre in the Southern Hemisphere! We started on our separate ways upon reaching there (to make the most of our time there lol) and met at Laurent's for a short teabreak before embarking for round 2 of shopping :)

Went back with quite a few big shopping bags! Hee..

A couple of weeks ago, Claudio and I were having a conversation about painting and arts and I mentioned I miss painting so much. It has really been a while since I last did a painting :(Claudio then got this brilliant idea that he will get me all the materials and I, shall paint a picture for his place. And so he did.

So on Saturday, after the highly inspring trip to the library which puts me in an arty mood, I got down to painting. What joy it brought me! The sunlight was streaming in through the huge window in the living room, casting a nice warm glow on the empty canvas...

After some hours...tadah! My first painting in Melbourne:) I'm pretty happy with it. What do you think?

Passed it to Claudio today. He seemed pleased with it :)

We had dinner with Bani as well at this hot pot place at Russell Street.

$19 per person for eat all you can. Not too bad a deal!

We opted for the Yuan Yang and the spicy soup base was really hot! Claudio was the one eating mostly from that part of the pot (and I just got news that his tummy is not reacting very well to all the spice hee).

I'm so totally stuffed now. Urgh. Anyways, school has started again and my first class would be on Wednesday. Modules this semester include Food Chemistry (sounds interesting!), Quality Assurance ( this would be a toughie) and Molecular Cell Biology.

I need to settle down into STUDY mode..

3 HDs pls!?!

Ski Trip!!!! 08/07/07 ~ 09/07/07

The final part of our celebrations..Ski Trip, Lake Mountain Alpine Ski Resort! :D

Claudio = Designated Driver, Me = Designated Navigator ( I'm well trained now!! lol), Bani & Meeline = Happy Passengers.

On our way up to mountain to resort..so pretty!!!

Yayyyyy!!!! We were all really excited!!! :)

Pity we didn't bring our cameras during the skiing..else there would be loads of funny shots! Haha. Skiing is OH SO FUN and such a good workout! All of us were aching so badly by the time we were done..but of cause partly due to all the falls we had. I fell so many dozens time, no thanks to Claudio as well. Grrrr. We had snowball fights, built a lil snowman and basically had tons of fun :) Can't wait to go for another ski trip!

We headed back to our accomodation, Allawah Cottage @ Marysville. Gorgeous place!! Came with a jaccuzi, gas fireplace, heated beds and sumptious breakfast spread. Heavenly :)

Went to visit some wineries at Yarra Valley along the way back the next day and bought a few bottles of wines back. Haha. Chandon Vineyard was especially lovely, not to mention their champagne and wines :)

Oh yes, 9th was results day as well..haha..so we went back to Meelin's place to check our results. I was totally freaked out about seeing my results :( But alas, we all did well :D I have a HD average:) Calls for a celebration eh?!

Off to Koko Black @ Chadstone we go! :)

We did some shopping as well and Claudio and I each bought ourselves a watch to commerate our first results day in Down Under. Haha.

Dinner was at Sofia, Ferntree Gully with Oliver and Gavin. Check out the pasta that was meant for 2 to share:

This winter hols has been great! :) School starts again on the 16th and it'll be back to nerd mode..then exams then finally back to humid ol' Singapore for summer break! Wheeee!

On the 7/07/07

Celebrations continued on the 7th at Carlton Hotel Pub!

We taught Bani how to play Five Ten...hahaa..

We don't know the last 2 dudes in picture. Had to take a pic of them cuz they helped us with ours. Hah. Australians....

Happy Birthday Claudio!

Celebrations for Claudio's birthday started on the 6th (actual day is on the 7th) :)

Pre-drinking at his place!

** Note the retro glasses. Theme was 60's..but he was the only one dressed for the part. Hee...Sorry Clau!

We headed to Sevens after all that wine, rum and champagne to party the rest of the night away! :)

Day 7/Last day in Melbourne

10 days with Mum and Dad went past just like that. There were moments of frustrations, exasperation, irritation...BUT plenty more of laughter, warmth, fun and love :)

Was so sad watching them enter the departure hall and disappear out of sight. Felt a momentary sense of loss and loneliness. I miss my family :(

Thank you dad and mum for taking time off to come and visit me. It meant the world to me :) See ya all soon in Dec!!!!! HUGS.

Day 7 in Melbourne

It rained for the whole day..and we spent the entire day watching Yi Tian Tu Long Ji dvds at home. Haha. We all were so hooked to the show (even my dad!). Met up with Vaughan thereafter for dinner at Jimmy Watson's @ Lygon. Great gourmet pizzas!

Was a funny night :)

Day 6 in Melbourne, Mt. Dandenong.

It's up to the mountain we go today!

Frankly, there's nothing much spectecular at Mt Dandenong except for the view of Melbourne and some quaint lil' towns along the way up. Hah.