I'm still alive!

This is a post out of the blue.. Just like to take some time out from my monotonous study regimen to announce to the world: I'm still alive! Currently I'm halfway through my exams, and am already bored to death of studying. Here in Melbourne there is no late nite teh tarik or roti canai (those were the time in Shah Alam).. Now just being confined to my little apartment with nothing much to do except studying and feasting on unhealthy snacks like chocolates, ice-creams, jelly, tim-tams and chips...

Good news: I'm goin home in just 3 weeks! Couldn't wait..

I wanna see Zheng He again..



Or visit the China in Kuching..wonder how it would look after a year..



I wanna taste the food! Laksa, Kolo Mee, Kacang-ma, Lei Cha... couldn't wait..



(After thought) of course I miss my families and friends too... =P

A late birthday dedication to Casper too.. the guy who shared the same birthday as the great Wayne Rooney. Here's a picture of both of us way back when we are still young and innocent. Well, now we are still young, but more handsome. =) Casper is one of the nicest guy around, alwaz willing to help people. Good guy..happy birthday ghost!



Will restart my blogging after exams which is 6 Nov.. haha.. so lucky this year coz I finish the earliest. The rest will be still mired to their anxious thoughts and chained to their books then while I will be flying freey... Tata for now.

One year old! One year old!

Yeah. Without me realising it, my blog was officially one year old a few days back! It survived! Even though there are some near death experiences, the blog pulled through. Damn proud of myself. Happy birthday Thirteen! By the way, how am I supposed to celebrate my blog's very first birthday? I can't give it a cake or present..I dun wanna give it a facelift.. So I decided to do a competition: Post of the Year.

I was travelling down memory lane for the last couple of hours, shifting through all my posts in the blog. There are only around 50 of them. Most of them are ramblings and crazy midnight thoughts but I am proud of these few posts which I thought was pure inspiration. In fact I can't believe I wrote them. Haha. So I listed them as the finalist in Post of the Year. In case you never read them, the posts are:

1.The team that will win World Cup 2006
2.Life's a Pharm
3.Iron chef ala College Square
4.Snapshots of Melbourne

These are the posts that I really put in an effort to do. I felt that they are even better than KennySia's posts. So after you read them please vote-lah. Since I'm still computer-ly challenged, I can't figure out how to do a 'polling booth' so juz put it as comments. Thx.

Carry on my ramblings... Today was the unofficial last day of uni. It means my second year of study as a pharmacy student is at an end. It means that I am halfway through my undergrad degree. It means I am two years away from being a servant of Malaysia. Time really flies. I still need time to drink it all in. It seems so staggeringly unbelievable...

You know, everyday I walk for 20 mins to uni, and walk another long 20 mins back to my apartment. I once thought of counting the steps from my apartment to uni, and finally I managed to do it on Monday. The result: altogether, there are a total of 2512 steps. That means in a typical uni day, I would had taken a total of 5024 steps. In a week, that would be 25120 steps. I had 12 weeks per semester, so that is a total of 301440 steps. Till today, I had been through 4 semesters, so that equals to an astronomical 1205670 steps! 1.2 million steps taken to and from uni for the last two years! Thats quite a huge amount. Another unbelievable event.

How was my last day? Well, I was in quite a melancholic mood.. First, it is extremely hot. Second, the exam is 10 days away. Third, I got prac. Fourth, I am attending the last lecture of a professor who spent the last 44 years teaching in the uni. Wonder how he felt writing the last chapter in his thick book.. While clearing my locker, the thought struck me: how would I feel if I am in his shoes? A 44 year journey: that's easily more than half of a person's life. Will I be able to let go after all of this is over? Part of him must had died today.

To end today's post, here's the pic of the day.. just when I thought bad English is only prevalent in Malaysia... it seems that Australia is prone to the malady too. Talk about a global pandemic. Hope you can spot the mistake!

Mid-Autumn Festival

Last nite celebrated the Mid-Autumn festival in uni. I guess it's the first time ever in the college 125 year history that the festival is celebrated there.

Guess what we do there...



Eat mooncake...



Listen to stories about Chang Er...



Play games...



and of course play lantern!

Haha a typical mid-autumn festival celebration. Anyway, just like to wish everyone a Happy Mid-autumn Festival wherever you are..

Pieces of Jigsaw

On the very last day of the hols last week, I decided to do something inspirational: create a risotto dish. Risotto is an Italian rice dish made from a starchy type of rice known as Arborio rice. This labor of love took me 3 hours to finish. Here's a pic of the final product:


Mussels and mushroom risotto served with honey lemon infused chicken salad

Well, you may think why in the world such an easy-looking rice dish need 3 hours of preparation. Here's the step by step process to justify my actions:
1) Make my own chicken stock. Ingredients: whole chicken, carrots, onions, celery sticks, peppercorns, basil and sea salt. Time needed: 1hour.
2) Prepare mussels stock by cooking mussels in Chadonnay. Time needed: 45 mins (include time needed to clean mussels)
3) Prepare the rice. This is an ardous process requiring constant supervision: the rice is cooked in the chicken broth and mussel stock for over 45 mins. When the rice is tender enough, fresh mushrooms, cheese and butter is added.
4) Prepare the chicken salad with honey-lemon infusion: 20 mins.
5) Arranging the food on plate for photo: 10 mins.

The result: a gourmet dinner for three. Why the fancy word gourmet? because it is nice looking, took a long time to prepare but cannot make you feel full. Haiz. But tastes great =).

Currently, the Australian Idol is being shown on the tele here. A stark difference to Malaysian Idol is that being in the final 12 here means that you are quite a star by your own rights. Just last week the final 9 came to Melbourne for a concert and the crowd was simply enormous. Damn shouldn't had gone as all I can see is the big screen above the stage. There are just too many tall heads in front of me... one of the disadvantages of living in an Ang-mo dominant country..

Idolmania: The hordes of people in front of me.

It's October and that means exams is just around the corner. To be precise, it is just three weeks ahead. Think its high time I started revising. So I will hopefully blog less.. but I got a feeling that I will blog more coz being human, there's always a tendency to do what you are not supposed to do.. I believe that's were the term forbidden fruit taste sweetest came from ...


Study study study...

Oh ya..the mid autumn festival is just around the corner.. so I would like to wish everyone "Happy Mid-autumn festival!" and a be-earlied "Happy Birthdays" for all the October babies out there.

P/s: Haiz can't think of anything interesting to write in my blog lately.. but I guess stories about my life is interesting rite?