Mini-ramble

It's cold. It's dark. It's gloomy.
There.
That pretty much sums up the current weather we're having here. Actually it kinda sucks since I'm so used to sunlight, so much so that my circadian rhythm is heavily dependent on it. Hence I'm getting sleepy at hours which are far too early for my liking. Only last Sunday, I spent more than 10 hours in bed...which is so wrong as I normally spend less than 7. I suppose the upside of that is the wonderful warm and cozy feeling when it's cold outside and you're snug under your quilt with a small 'boiler' in your room.
My uncle casually mentioned that if I think this is bad, wait till June 21st when the shortest day in this part of the world will occur. Whoopee. I can't wait.
Sigh, the gloominess isn't helping in academic areas either...

I've made a new friend too. His name is coffee. I get a little help from him each morning now. It's either that or I walk around the hospital zombified for the entire morning.

I suppose that some good has come from this. My body has been slowly adjusting to the weather here - I don't flake nearly as much as I used to and my skin looks closer to normal than ever, probably from the lack of allergens here and the cool weather. Either that or I'm taking extra care of my skin.
Also getting used to the cold in general. When we had a warm spell a couple of weekends ago, somewhere around 29-30 degrees, I was positively uncomfortable. Now I wonder how badly I'll be affected when I go home to the heat, humidity and pollution.

Edit: For some reason unknown to me, my skin has been flaring up again. It doesn't make sense since I'm away from known allergens and it's been raining for the past week or so, so it can't be the dryness...unless I'm also allergic to humidity, in which case I'm just so doomed :(

~Post removed at readers' request~

2 Months On...

Kinda hard to believe but 9 weeks have since passed since we 1st started our rotations here in Adelaide. Time really does fly when you're having fun and being busy. Contrary to what Jebbrine keeps complaining about (that the people in Perth are having so much fun), I believe we're having a pretty good time here as well. I foresee an interesting 3 years ahead of us.

The past 9 weeks were routine, to say the least. I'm the weird one in the entire group as I normally wake up at 0500, either to cook or train...sometimes both(if I happen to be making a really simple dish).

Unfortunately the admin split us into M104s in surgery and the M204s in medicine. So we were basically mostly interacting with the people we already knew. But of course there were many occasions where we all had fun together.
Over these 9 weeks I believe we've all grown closer as a group...of course nowhere near what some of us were part of but everything has to start somewhere no? Jebbrine is the best example, she has seemlessly integrated into the household of Christine, Steph, Chu-Chu and Shiau Cern and it's obscenely obvious they're influencing each other.
We (very) recently celebrated passing our 1st rotation! Man it was fun! The aforementioned household is full of wacky people, more wacky than the people I used to hang out with. GG. Imagine that. If you don't believe me go visit Steph and Chu-Chu.

So yeah, I passed my 1st rotation. We were assessed in many different areas. It's so annoying that we're the 'guinea pig' batch as they introduced all new ways of assessments this year. I think it's a curse of our year. As far as I can remember(all the way back to high school), my batch was always the ones either being the last year for a certain exam or the 1st one.

They introduced this weekly online assessment, which was basically a weekly 10 MCQs, in IMHO some questions were really unfair. But as they said, it's a test run thing so it didn't bear much weight. There was also an End of Rotation assessment, which was a 50 MCQ online which was last Friday. Most of the weight came from a Ward Assessment, which basically means your team confers and decides (many different criteria) if you pass or fail.
I got my latest assessment form back (my earlier unit was handed up long ago) and looked at the comment section of the form. There, my consultant had written something.
At first glance it was complete gibberish, I couldn't understand anything he had written. Further proof that most doctors have horrible writing ('bad' is reserved for my dad, whose writing I can usually read :D sorry about that :D). Finally after half a day I finally deciphered what comment the head of my unit wrote:
"Improved with time"
....
it was either that or "diagnosed with lice"
I'm definitely inclined to go with the former.

Mamak Nite

Today there was Mamak Nite. Basically it's like a dinner gathering of Malaysians and Singaporeans. It cost $8 per entry and we were served some roti canai, and there were coupons for a plate of nasi lemak, and 2 teh tariks.
Most of us went, guess it's the craving for some Malaysian cuisine (it was quite good btw). Sat at the table together with Christine, Steph, Su Chuen, Rahul, Bryan, Leng Hui and 2 of Christine's church friends. Chris was ber-security-ing and Sheng Kai and Jebbrine gave up their places to do something at home...presumably studying.

Anyway, each table was given a question sheet, kinda like trivia with loads of weird questions ranging from where the NATO HQ is located to how many brains a stegosaurus had. Each person was also given a piece of paper to write his/her name and email for a lucky draw, Grand prizes of a USB pendrive and an IPOD shuffle....I didn't win any :(
So we discussed the trivia cases of which I contributed to one correct answer:
George Lucas named his adventure hero Indiana Jones after what?
Correct answer: His dog *grins*

So after answering all the questions Rahul, ever confident, professed that our table would win and wrote on the question sheet:
WINNING ENTRY TABLE 9

After the organisers collected the sheets, "the core church band" came up and sang a couple of songs ending with a nice version of Innuendo's Belaian Jiwa. Post performance they announced the correct answers for the trivia.
Lo and behold, to our greatest surprise our table actually won a prize!!!
It was a surprise as we kept score and were sure we didn't get so many correct *shhhh don't tell anyone*
Heh, after a little discussion we attributed the win to the fact that Rahul had written "winning entry" on the paper and the committee took it at face value :D
The prize was a couple of packs of TimTams...so no big loss to the other tables :P

Bryan as usual was bermacho-ing wearing short sleeves when everyone else was in sweaters. Near the end I asked him how he tolerates the cold, to which he replied:
"My nipples are gonna fall off"
Well, the answer was intentioned for me, but unfortunately the whole table heard it and started laughing. Then Chu-Chu(Rahul has renamed Su Chuen...isn't this great? We had a Che Chu and now we have a Chu-Chu) laughingly repeated "My nipples are gonna fall off."
So then I asked her (pretending to be shocked) "Yours too?!"
...to which the whole table started laughing again.

Oh yeah, had a mock OSCE today, especially for the IMU students. I'm happy that they're taking good care of us here :)
In case anyone was wondering, it was 4 stations : 2 histories, 1 PE and 1 data interpretation. It went well except for the data interpretation, which had an ECG and a Spirometry test result which I have never seen before in my life.
Well, we should learn about that fairly soon, no worries :)

Quotes of the Day

Intend to update this entry frequently. Well, at least as frequently as I get these 'wonderful' quotes :)

1. "I'm going to print an empty sheet of paper" - Cheok Soon, May 2006
2. "Oh look! It's Mah Jee Ken!" - Vanessa, everytime she sees me
3. "Throw at dog, dog also die" - Eve, on my Nokia 3310
4. "A hen is male, right?" - Siddharth, eating breakfast at Food Avenue, 22 May 2006
5. "Your carapace keeps you warm." - Tony, after watching X3 in a freezing GSC, 27 May 2006
6. "You are enlightened." - Chu Kin told me after I put my bag down, May 2006
7. "Uncle is a relative word...my uncle is my relative." - Chu Kin, 1 June 2006
8. "We have a buy-back policy : If you buy it don't bring it back." - The Bard's Tale, InXile Entertainment
   
9. Sign seen on a hawker stall: PENANG LOBAK : Pork RM2, Crap RM2 etc. (wouldn't wanna eat there o_O)
10. "This glue is pretty good - it's quite sticky." - Henry of VK Bookstore. (courtesy of Cheok Soon)
11. 'We serve real food. Visually fat free. 100% Skin free.' - Advert for a pie shop
12. "...you know the toils of summatives, KKB, EoS3, and although it was fun I'm afraid our journey ends here, our last battle. So lets enjoy the moment, knowing that if we walked into IMU together, we shall leave together as well. Nobody gets left behind." - Cheok Soon, on the impending EoS5. A mirror of my own thoughts and emotions of the said day
13. "We've come this far together to forge a future that is our own. The last battle is here and now. Fear not! We shall not fall! I bid you fight! Destiny awaits!" - Kah Heng on EoS5
14. "Iced tea, no coffee" - customer. After I stared blankly and uttered a "Huh?" he corrected it to "Iced Coffee, no sugar". (how the heck do you mix those two up?)
15. "I slept with Mike before." - Peter, 25 October 2006. And no it's nothing naughty. He was bunking in Mike's place in Scotland. Lol, but it just sounds so wrong!
    
16. "Evelyn - The Ultimate Duracell Rabbit" - Eve's testimonial by her friend. I LMAO at that due to the fact that it is indeed entirely correct. She just goes on and on and on...
17. "My nipples are gonna fall off" - Bryan on how cold he was on Mamak Nite 24/3/07
18. "Actuarial science is actually science" - Jevanny, circa 2002/03
19. "E-business is business without paper" - Jevanny, crica 2002/03
    

Good Memories

The 'infamous' throw


Hehehe, listen carefully to what sifu has to say


OMG!!! I'm on Youtube!!! I never knew...

Hahndorf

So yesterday Leng Hui and I decided to pay Hahndorf a visit. Jebbrine was too busy berkecoh-ing with the Village people plus they went to church so they didn't tag along. How unlucky...for them that is.
Hahndorf is, supposedly, a German town somewhere about 40 mins from the city. So it's supposed to be famous for the food, or so I heard. I could have gotten my facts wrong. After all I'm just a student who likes to eat.
Ok ok fine. So Yin Yee's parents have a chinese restaurant there. That's another reason why we went :P

Anyway the problem here is that on weekends the buses run less than weekdays so we really had to time our schedule properly. On the way out I noticed the sky was really cloudy - the kind of cloudy that if it were in Malaysia, you would expect heavy rain within the hour. Plus the fact that it was supposed to be kinda chilly according to the weather forecast. And I didn't bring my jacket along...
Seems like I'm slowly getting used to the weather (hopefully, toes and fingers crossed) cuz altho it was cold, more so when the wind was blowing hard, I weathered it without my jacket.
Woohoo!! I have gained Cold Resistance +1!!!

On the bus heading towards Hahndorf, I took out my secret-hopefully-boredom-preventing-item-for-40-minutes-or-so (anyone wanna guess what it is?) and actually stayed awake throughout the trip. That in itself is actually an achievement since I'm so prone to sleeping in public transport. The trip itself was quite nice, kinda like heading from IMU to KKB in a bus. The scenery outside was calming, sorta like on the way to Cameron Highlands, and before long we were at Hahndorf.



















1st thing we saw there was this sign

The chalkboard at the bottom reads:
HOFBR'A'UHAUS
Traditional Bavarian Cuisine.

Heh. We were wondering how in the world
would you pronounce that.

My first impression of Hahndorf was that it was a really nice, quaint little hamlet. It's basically a one road hamlet and the shops on either side are mostly cafes/restaurants and goodie shops. It really reminded me of Cameron Highlands as it was on a hill and the scenery was very green.
As we walked more along the road we came across this shop.














As you can clearly see it's really easy
to tempt me :)

Chocolate Shop!!!
Filled with all things chocolate.
One word describes it : Heaven
The shop had all these funny quotes on
chocolate too.















See, I really wasn't kidding when I
said they sold all things chocolate.

"Death by CHESS"

Not too sure if the board is chocolate but the black and white pieces sure are.
Bad present for me cuz I'll end up eating it and well, what's a chessboard without pieces?




This was on sale too!
Hahaha, we bought one to share :)









Since it's quite impossible to make out from the pic, here's what it said on the box (word for word):

CONFECTIONER ONLY REMEDY
Keep out of reach of chocoholics

BOCHOX (R) 100g NET
--------------------------
active ingredient cocoa solids 70%
For relief from the symptoms of wrinkles and crow's feet
Warning - may cause weight gain if used incorrectly
Directions: Simply break off the desired dosage and consume. You should quickly be overcome by stress-relieveing endorphins and no longer concerned in the slightest about your wrinkles.

IMPORTANT: THIS PACKET IS PROTECTED BY A TAMPER-EVIDENT PAPER WRAP. IF SEAL HAS BEEN BROKEN SUSPECT EVERONE. BOCHOX CAN BE HABIT FORMING.

STORE BELOW 18c

NOT TO BE TAKEN seriously

70% COCOA DARK CHOCOLATE

Fantastic description. There was another 'Emergency Chocolate' too but this was by far the better one. Looked at all the available temptations and finally decided to get myself a Dark Choc Rocky Road (looks like a bunch of marshmallows covered in choc).

Post-temptation attraction, we decided to go pay Yin Yee a visit at the restaurant since I had not had my brekkie and was hungry (you might argue that I'm always hungry but that's debatable). It was really easy to notice her place as it was the only chinese restaurant in the area.
















The sign reads:

HAHNDORF CHINESE RESTAURANT
and some chinese characters which I can't read (but you already knew that)

We went in, saw Yin Yee and had a seat after which she came to ask us what we wanted to eat. We settled for something "without prawns" and "spicy". Then she invited us to go into the kitchen and meet her parents and so we did.
Turns out her parents are from Kampar but have been around, and still speak with an obvious Malaysian accent :) Plus they actually conversed among themselves in cantonese. We had an interesting chat starting off with the typical rapport building stuff. Then we moved on to stuff like landmarks they knew but aren't there anymore, eating places(they actually know where Raju's/Paandi's next to LSPJ is!)(they also know about Ng Tew Lee in Medan Selera *grins*) about places and 'politics' and finally her dad and uncle decided to cook beef wat tan hor and curry laksa for us.

I must say it was the best and most authentic Malaysian food I've ever had since coming here. At that point I told myself that I should go up every month or so for some really good food. It came with sambal and cut red chilli too! Hahaha, instant heaven.















Ahhh yes, the lovely delicious tender beef
wat tan hor.
Notice the placemats seem to be part of some scripture, the teapot and teacups.

The place even had red tanglungs. Really quite authentic.














I was a tad shocked when the curry
appeared. It was chock full with food.
I was actually concerned we might not be able to finish it, then Yin Yee said she told her dad that I "eat a lot". That's why there was so much food.
After that, I had to finish it la. I mean have to give her dad face right? It was delicious anyway.

After that really filling meal, she asked if we wanted dessert so we agreed. It seems that Hanz (one of the 4th years here - a great guy) had this theory that everyone has 2 stomachs. Yep. 1 is your normal stomach and the other is your dessert stomach. Hence everyone can always have dessert no matter how full s/he is. I so totally agreed with that. Oh, the best part is that no matter how much dessert you eat, as long as it ends up in your dessert stomach, the calories don't count! Fantastic!
Anyway, we just asked for a scoop of each of the 4 flavours - they were all heavenly.
Choc fudge, Kahlua, Baileys and Rum & raisin flavours. *drool*

That was the 1st time since coming over that I've eaten so much I couldn't move for a bit.
When we were done, the place had closed for the evening (it would re-open later) so we chatted with Yin Yee and then went for a walk to discover more about the place.














View of a park near the restaurant.
Calming no?
Note: the sky actually was much darker than it seems in the photo.

As we walked around talking, I was looking for a German bakery. Since it's supposed to be a German town/hamlet and I heard German bread was absolutely to die for, I wanted to give it a try. It wasn't to be though as the only bakery we came across only sold the usual stuff.

Went into this shop that sold some really unique stuff like wild hibiscus in syrup (for use with champagne), a whole assortment of Beerenberg items of which Leng Hui bought a Red Wine and Garlic Mustard, very fragrant cinammon sticks and loads more which I can't remember.

Then there was this candle store which sold scented candles which could last forever - the average would be around 100 hours. I believe the largest lasted 400 or so hours. The moment I walked into the store though I was immediately reminded of the departmental stores back home where the entire floor sold perfume.

We also visited this store that sold German sausages. I had a taste of some and bought back a $5 garlic mettwurst (whatever that means, as long as it tastes good). When Leng Hui asked how long it would last, the answer was "ages" and "it just gets harder the longer you keep it". Wow.
Leng Hui got herself a garlic mettwurst too and something called a 'Bum Burner'. That basically looks like a sausage made from cili padi and dried. I had a fingernail-sized piece earlier this evening and, well, suffice to say that if one eats enough of this at one go s/he will definitely end up having a burned bum.















Somewhere up along the road we
came across this store selling funny signs.
Gotta love the Aussie humour.















Yin Yee and Leng Hui posing in front
of a fake horse and carriage.
Yin Yee claims she isn't very photogenic. I see nothing wrong. Sigh...females :P















A quaint old market wagon in
front of a cottage with lotsa flowers in the background.














A nice view of the canopy covering (almost) the entire street.















A German Sign!!!

The only words I can make out are 'Welcome' and 'Hahndorf' though.

No there were no 'one-way road' signs in German unfortunately.

Returning on the other side of the road we came across another sweet shop. Got meself a huge fudge bar for $3. Yummy!
There was also this museum of sorts where they were displaying Aussie aboriginal art which was really nice.

It was towards the end of the trip when we finally decided to get that Bochox. As you can imagine, we already bought quite a lot of stuff (read:food) and for some reason I was carrying it all. So much so that when I went to pay for the Bochox, the owner noted that I had a good day. Hahaha, it was very fruitful that's for sure!

Had to wait for the bus to get back to the city, so instead of freezing our gluteals off in the cold we took shelter inside Yin Yee's restaurant, which had conveniently re-opened by then. Well, I won't bore you with details except to say we left the restaurant with 2 packs of fried rice(delish!!) and a rather huge pack of prawn crackers ala Malaysia. Lol, for some reason her dad reminds me of my own grandfather :)















The end result of our entire day
'shopping' at Hahndorf.
The 3 bags had my Rocky Road, Leng Hui's Rocky Road and the Bochox.
Notice the white packet? 'Chilli Chocolate' drink...Leng Hui is quite adventurous.

Notice the 2 fudge bars on the lower right.
Notice the 'Bum Burner' and mettwurst.
...I'd point with a laser pointer if I could but unfortunately I can't.

There you have it. Our trip to Hahndorf was really grool. We're so planning on rocking up again sometime soon!
Note: Visit Leng Hui's blog for her version of events....well actually it's more like her album of events :)

Epiphany

Well, it's as I expected - the depression was a one day event. As I said it has happened before albeit very rarely and I still dislike the feeling alot. Thankfully it's over for now. The annoying thing is that although I know what I can do to feel better when I succumb to it, I just can't do it - more like my mind won't let me do it.

Woke up the day following the depression to discover that I was feeling better. As I was getting out of the house to go for ward rounds I looked up to see the fiery clouds of dawn. It was beautiful, the kind that really pacifies and calms the soul. Then I saw what made me feel all better:

It was 2 streaks of clouds in a 'V' shape running almost parallel to each other before merging near the horizon. The moment I saw that I was stunned by its significance. 1 streak represented me, what I am, where I am at this moment in time. The other streak represented all the things I love - family, friends, food - which incidentally are mostly back home (some in UK and NZ).
The 2 streaks were separated at first, which would indicate my current situation where I'm apart from all that I love. But as I looked further, the streaks became closer and closer and finally merged. To me it meant that this journey of mine will be a path to something good as it will, sometime in the future, reinforce and reunite me with all the things that I care about.

The moment I saw that and had that realisation, all the bad feelings vanished to be replaced by a warm glow and I was not depressed anymore - ready to face the days' challenges with my heart and head held high.

Depression

1st March 2007 - the day that marks the first time I'm feeling down since arriving here in Adelaide. Call it whatever you want, being down, having the blues or simply depressed, I'm currently there. It's a mild case though, no suicidal tendencies or random acts of violence. In fact I function normally except that I don't feel like doing anything and can't focus. As to the burning question of exactly why I'm depressed I have absolutely no idea...if I did then I could actually do something about it. At this point I'm just moping about not doing much...heck I only finished half of my lunch, much to the surprise of Jebbrine earlier today.

The International Students Centre lady (who scared us off driving here) said that it is common for your emotions to go all roller-coaster on you as this is a whole new environment and one would need to adjust to everything. And it's not only one case but seems to go in cycles.

That being said, I never thought I'd be depressed here. Homesick sure but depression? Well, I've had it before but I really don't like this feeling. And it's so annoying when you want to do something about it but can't cuz you don't really know what's causing it.

Man I wish that I could have a nice piano and all my music scores. The alternative is exercising but I don't really feel like doing that. Or just playing around with my pets...
Why is everything I need back home?

Case

CASE (21/2/07)
22 year old male presents with bilateral pitting pedal edema for the last 4 days. There is no pain or discomfort. Medial malleolus, dorsalis pedis and posterior tibialis were all not palpable.
The swelling is limited to his ankle area, his toes are spared. The only pathology seen on inspection is generalised dryness of the area with signs of recent trauma from scratching, due to chronic eczema.
He has never had such problems before. He doesn't know of anyone in his family having heart problems, liver problems or kidney problems.
Heart rate is within normal limits, BP is normal, S1 and S2 heard with no additional heart sounds or murmurs.
The patient is on antihistamines and topical corticosteroids.
The patient is mainly allergic to dust and seafood.

What is your differential/provisional diagnosis?

(Hint:He is at an unlikely age to suffer from the common causes of such edema.)

PS : Adelaide people are hereby prohibited from providing answers or clues.

ANSWER :
Patient suffered from a combination of vasodilatation due to the excessive heat and increased vascular permeability, most likely from trauma to the skin from excessive scratching of the ankle area. It is possible that a low-grade infection was also present but this was not confirmed.
The doctor advised that the patient didn't need any blood tests but would be happy to do it if the patient wanted.
The patient did not want a blood test and was advised to let time take its course and return if pain develops or he swelling remains after a couple of weeks.

The swelling regressed and disappeared within 4 days of seeing the doctor.

101 Things You've Always Wanted To Know About Me

....thanks to a certain someone I now had to find time to undertake this arduous task of coming up with 6 weird facts about yours truly. It really isn't easy, I mean who normally thinks of weird stuff about themselves? Oh well, since I'm feeling too lazy to do anything anyway...
Warning Note : Facts below may be kinda gross. I dunno since everybody's grossness levels are different. So read at your own risk.

"Each player of this game starts off by giving 6 weird things about themselves. People who get tagged need to write in a blog of their own 6 weird things as well as state the rules clearly. In the end, you need to choose 6 people to be tagged and list their names. After you do that, leave them each a comment letting them know you tagged them and to read your blog." ~So sayeth the instructions~

1. I do have eczema which can be pretty annoying. To me however, it is also an aesthetic /wadrobe problem, hence you will never see me in sleeveless and rarely in shorts. Reason being when it's bad it can look really disconcerting (even to me) and the more I cover up, the less I flake around...especially here where it's so dry. The only places where it has never occurred (thankfully) are the palms and soles.
   
2. That being said, it is to be expected that boils are a fairly common occurence with me and I find them even more annoying than the eczema. I almost always squeeze them till they burst. Yes, it's painful but I get this feeling of satisfaction from it.
3. That being said, I kinda enjoy some types of pain. Eg when my skin condition gets aggravated and is continuously itchy, I tend to put something really hot on it to 'burn' away the itch. Something really hot would include a really hot shower, a cup of boiling water or some such. I also enjoy taiji (too lazy to elaborate but those of you who know me well will know what I'm talking about).
4. There's this patch of hair on the superoposterior part of the right half of my head that has a tendency to stick up (anti-gravity) no matter how much I comb it down. It only stays down with lots of hair gel and I don't normally use that. I noticed that occurred after one of the 1st few times my mom cut my hair though...
5. I eat a lot. No that isn't an understatement. Yet it definitely doesn't look like I eat much since someone I know once told me, in reply to my telling her my weight, "where does it all go?". The people I'm here with still can't believe I eat so much...
   I have a couple of theories though. One, I have a high metabolic rate so I burn food easily. This actually has proof, as whenever I get hungry I tend to start feeling cold in a cold environment. This problem vanishes after I eat though...or at least until I get hungry again. Two, I need continuous energy to rebuild my superly damaged skin....damn I need Wolverine's healing factor....
6. That being said, I'm also allergic to tonnes of things (can you believe highlighters are included?) Got the nickname 'The Allergy Guy'. Nowhere in this world will I be free of allergens unless maybe in a hospital sterile room....or a protective bubble....or in ice
7. Ezlin spread the word around college that I look like Harry Potter, hence my college friends still sometimes call me Harry.
8. This may be somewhat surprising but I am kind of a reserved person. I have difficulty in making small talk as well.
   
9. I never had acne in my life.
10. I have always been single and available (self-promo :P)
11. I don't really know how to show people that I love them :(
12. I am el-cheapo. Really. It's hard to find someone else whose level of kiamsapness can compare with mine. Ask my college friends if you don't believe me, although I'd like to think that I'm mellowing down recently :)

Hmm...guess I got carried away. I'd put down more but currently my mind is empty. Oh well, anyway I'm supposed to tag 6 other people for this but I think I'll spare myself...oh wait...I got at least 2 ie Chuks (still staying trim dude?) and William. Iona too whenever she gets the chance since I believe I'm heck of a lot free-er than she is at this moment in time. I'd love to read what weird things Chow-Chow gets up to but he doesn't seem to be very blogger-ing recently.
Oh well, whoever wants to do it and knows me just drop me a line to let me know then :P

Valentines?

February 14th 2007. Another Valentine's Day is over, and how did I spend it? Hmm..waking up at 5am to prepare my packed lunch (it was fried rice in case anyone is interested), went to TQEH, went to RAH for a lecture in the afternoon, came back, cooked a beef dish and watched House on the telly (Season 3).
Here it seems, people shower their loved ones with gifts by the dozen. Everywhere I went I saw people carrying flowers and such, couples holding hands and whispering sweet nothings into each others' ears. Me? I watched House...gee...how romantic

There's this girl - ya know, I can't find a proper description here, what do you call a female early-20s student? A girl? A woman? A lady? ...miss? anyway back to the topic...
This female colleague of mine who requested that I play the piano at the cafe to which I obliged. After all I had wanted to play a piano for ages since coming over here. So I played a few (incomplete) songs and she stood by the piano and listened and complimented me on my skills. Now as it so happened she was the only one standing by the piano and listening while the rest (ie my gang and her gang) were sitting at some table a short distance away.
After that started the part where Bryan and Jebbrine insisted that I 'mesmerized' her with my playing. -_-"
It's still going on actually. Only this morning Jebbrine asked me why don't I ask aforementioned female out for dinner, to which I raised an eyebrow and asked why I would want to when I barely even know her.
"But that's how it starts what. You go for dinner, get to know each other lor. She is single."
...or something along that line was what Jebbrine replied. Wow. I should be so thankful that my friends are trying to matchmake me...and to think I dreaded my parents doing so...geez

That aside, my physical appearance as of now is pretty much that of a snake shedding. Make that a snake undergoing permanent shedding. Maybe I should bring a vat of oil to the hospital and excuse myself every hour or so and jump into that vat...
















Happy Valentine's Day Mom and Dad, stay healthy. Happy Valentine's to Mimi, Bubbles, Goldie and all the rest back home who I will sorely miss this coming Chinese New Year.

Special mention goes to 3 people:

Kah Heng - don't give up on love :)
Eve - all the best! I have complete faith in you :)
Iona - there are many worlds but they share the same sky :)

Be excellent to each other and party on dudes!!!

Symphony Under the Stars

On this bright beautiful afternoon, we headed to Torrens River for Santos (the Australian gas supplier company) organised a "Symphony Under the Stars" event. Basically it's a prelude to the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra performances and this is free to the public. It started at 8pm but a support band had an opening act around 7ish.

So all of us, M104s and M204s had arranged to meet somewhere in the park for this. Since Jebbrine, Sheng Kai and Bryan were at IKEA getting some furniture for their new apartment, we headed there 1st. On the way there Leng Hui dropped off the Kumar and Clark she borrowed from the library in our 1st week here. So kiasu cuz she never read it anyway :P We also stopped by KFC to get dinner. OMG, I disliked KFC back home but it's worse here. It's almost completely bland, they don't have Hot and Spicy and their pedas chicken isn't.













As you can see it was quite crowded, the ice cream line was a mile long and yes we were camwhoring :P

So we headed to the park and got a place to sit and started eating. Now flies are common and annoying but today there was a really persistent wasp that kept landing on my chicken bones and nibbling on them...nearly wanted to trap it in the box and throw it away...nearly.
Saw the M204s after eating and went to join them.














Leng Hui went around to grab more pics while the rest of us just lazed around. Around this time Jebbrine texted me saying they just got home and would rock up soon. It was amazing cuz the M204s brought a whole load of stuff to eat. There was bread, butter and jam, chips, wine (which is quite cheap here).













The locals too seem to have brought their entire kitchen with them. Most brought picnic blankets and chairs but I did see many who brought tables and tablecloths and basically food enough to feed an army. Most of the locals had some sort of bubbly white drink which was probably either white wine or champagne.

After a small 'discussion' we 'decided' that the next time we headed for such an outing, we too would bergwailo too but with an Asian twist. We would bring chairs, tables, a gas tank and have a steamboat session there. Man, can't wait for that.














A closeup of the stage and the orchestra members and a whole bunch of instruments. The support band that opened the act in the afternoon had a member who played the xylophone like a demon. It was so amazingly quick playing. Impressive. Oh, and they played a nice song with a really weird name : Rotting Eating Zombies from Outer Space. No. Really. I'm not kidding.

Earlier before we left the house, I told Leng Hui to bring along a jacket cuz at that time it was warm but I predicted it would get cold when the sun went down. But did she listen? Noooo...so when it ended up cold, guess who was wearing my jacket?













LEECH!!!!! Thankfully after Jebbrine arrived, she offered Leng Hui her jacket cuz she was feeling warm (?!?!) so I got my jacket back.

Su Chuen brought her jacket but wore shorts so her legs were freezing. Christine didn't bring her jacket so Rahul lent her his. What could the two of us do? It's not like we could let the girls freeze to death. So we did the gentlemanly thing - we let them have the jackets and kept ourselves warm with wine and bread and chips :)















The stage was beautifully lit at night, as this pic shows. Every now and then a whole flock of birds would circle above the stage and then fly off. The ASO played quite a number of songs. Unfortunately for me, they were mostly classical pieces and I find it hard to 'feel' the music for the most part. Anyway most of the time Rahul, Leng Hui and Jebbrine were camwhoring so I think our group was the loudest as we kept giggling and taking flash photos.

Leng Hui wanted to take a video of a performance and so asked Rahul to help her as there was a tong sampah blocking her view. Halfway through the battery died so Rahul offered to use his camera to film the rest which he did.















Their last number was one of Tchaikovsky's pieces.
Leng Hui was interested to film it and so was Rahul so he filmed it using his camera. Unfortunately for him the performance was about 15 minutes long. I noticed his hands tremor-ing a lot and he switched hands quite a bit too. Well, I don't blame him as the song was quite nice.

The piece ended with a blast of fireworks which was really nice.

Missing you

It's not easy going around town when you see so many people walking their dogs or taking them for rides in their cars.
I've seen so many different breeds already, Huskies, Papillons, Bulldogs, Pomeranians and more.

Sigh.

They look so happy, tails wagging all the way...

I miss my sisters. I miss how we would cuddle together on the nice cool floor, on the couch. I miss staring into Mimi's soulful eyes. I miss how we would understand one another with a glance and a gesture. I miss running around the garden with them. I miss the nudges by Mimi.
Most of all I miss stroking their lovely fur...

Take good care of them for me Mom and Dad. I miss you too.

Another week...

What a long week it has been. Waking up early to prepare to go to university, preparing sandwich lunches (cuz it’s so much cheaper than eating at the café there) and walking to take the bus…man it just reminds me of primary school days.

Furthermore some days we have to go back to the city for classes and presentations, and there might be something else at the hospital on that same evening. So as you can see, there’s a lotta traveling going around and it is tiring.

This week was extra hectic as we moved into the more ‘permanent’ accommodation and that itself was an extremely tiring day. Obviously we had to move all our luggage which weighed tonnes, then we went to IKEA, which is located near the airport (i.e. we had to board a bus to the city and another to IKEA) because we needed pillows, bedsheets, blankets and their respective covers. All that and we still haven’t unpacked yet. Fortunately for me, I have little luggage (comparatively that is, since my luggage was the lightest of all the 5 of us) so I managed to unpack almost everything that night.

Thankfully we finally moved into a new permanent place. One of the 1^st things I got was a humidifier. Asked Sam where I could find one and he replied that it will be very hard as it isn’t usually stocked here…I was thinking “what the heck?! This place is so bone-dry and they don’t use humidifiers?!”

Upon looking around I found the exact opposite of what I was looking for – a dehumidifier, and again I questioned the logic of wanting to make a dry place drier. Anyway, after asking around I discovered that some chemists stock it so I went to look and got one. That night was the best night I had since coming here. Honestly it’s no fun at all to wake up to so dry that it’s painful/uncomfortable to move your limbs and to open your eyes and blink simply because your skin has become so dry. Am currently using way more moisturizer than I used to back home but I suppose even that has its limits.

Oh yeah, there’s this café on the grounds of the hospital called Lizzie’s, and it has one of the best chocolate coated doughnuts I’ve ever tasted! Plus it’s huge, the miniscule doughnuts back home are nowhere in comparison.

The staff café on the 2^nd floor of the hospital on the other hand has a baby grand piano!! Mega stress relief for me on the day that I played it. Granted it has been close to a month since I last played the piano so that was wonderful.

Note to self : try to stop sleeping on buses. That unfortunately is a lot easier said than done as all this while I have been doing that – sleeping on buses and trains – so much so that is has become almost 2^nd nature to me. Reasons for wanting to stay awake? So I can read my book(s) on the bus. Also yesterday while I was dozing, the bus came to an abrupt stop and WHAM!!! My head hit the back of the seat in front.

Leng Hui went “Oh my God!” Are you ok?”

Jebbrine says she saw what happened too.

Fortunately for me it didn’t hurt in the least. And I have had some ‘training’ in this area (Eve and KKB…anyone in that car remember that incident?)

Today was fantastically HOT!!!! Not only that, the wind which I expected to cool us off was hot too. Oh man, and today is the day we normally do our shopping. It really doesn’t help that we bought all the meat and veggies, a pot, a couple of bowls, 3 large leeks (which really look like they can be used as a weapon) and the bus intervals are longer than that of weekdays. So there we were, roasting in the shade, feet melting when this group came over and I just couldn’t believe my eyes. This guy was wearing long track bottoms, an oversized shirt and a snow cap! And it was a friggin’ hot day! It’s a wonder he doesn’t get heatstroke.

Adelaide 101

Wow, a post in such a long time. Honestly I have no idea why I haven’t been posting lately. Guess it’s a mix of laziness and nothing much to blog about…unless preparations for flying off to another country and certain PS2 games are newsworthy.

So here we are in Adelaide and it’s been almost a week now. Guess we’re slowly getting used to the place after a relatively stressful first few days. Waiting for buses, running around town for groceries, uni stuff, banking, looking for accommodation, not to mention the jet lag and sun-induced tiredness (well, it affects me) is really tiring.

The weather here is weird. The sun is hot but anywhere in the shade is cool and the wind, which is really frequent, ranges from cool to downright cold. It’s also dry as heck. I’m practically shriveling up like a prune so much so it sucks quite bad. The itchiness due to allergens has given way to itchiness due to dryness :( sigh…although it is loads more comfortable here as you tend to not sweat at all.

For all the advertising about the public transport service here being better than back home, it isn’t entirely true. While it is true that the services here are pretty regular they neglect to tell you a few things. Like the fact that some buses don’t service certain routes on weekends which resulted in Leng Hui and I waiting for about 45 mins for a bus that would never arrive. During weekends the buses are rarer so there is a longer time waiting in between, sometimes up to an hour. Each bus has certain stops so although there may be like 10 stops along a certain road, the bus you’re on will only stop at maybe 3 or 4, so you really gotta get used to the routes quickly or rely heavily on the maps of the bus services.

Then again after all said and done, they are pretty efficient if you know the routes and timetables. Waiting by the side of the road for one like in M’sia doesn’t work here.

As you can see, we spent most of Saturday waiting for buses and basically running around town viewing potential accommodations...ok fine, so Leng Hui was camwhoring in the 2nd pic but we were still waiting.

Yesterday was pretty fun cuz we all went to the Glenelg beach to relax. It’s quite a nice place and really quite crowded too. The road leading to the beach was aptly named Jetty Road and it’s basically a whole row of shops on either side. Then there was this plaza like area just before the beach proper where many stalls were setup, kinda bazaar-ish.

Jebbrine, Sheng Kai, Leng Hui and I decided to go walk along the beach while Bryan decided to stay and roast.

It was a nice warm sun(later it became really hot) with almost constant cool seabreeze and cold water lapping at our ankles. The seagulls treated the place like home, even daring to attempt to steal food from some beachgoers. Many dog owners also brought their dogs to run about the beach. Every now and then a helicopter would pass overhead; supposedly they’re the Shark Patrol units. We didn’t see any fish whatsoever though.

We found a potential place to stay at just outside the city. It comes with a piano, which is a big plus point for it I must say. It’s small, fully furnished and located very near an entire row of shops ranging from food to medicine and banks. There was this Asian Grocery near there where we saw Malaysian Maggi Mee! And even stuff like funeral papers which I never expected to find here.

Our current accommodation is a temporary thing, it seems to be an old hospital which has been remodeled as a hostel. We all stay in different rooms, and my room seems to be the weirdest of them all. It's divided into 3 parts: a bedroom proper, a 'living room' that has a 1 seater sofa and a ceiling fan which spins fastest at Speed 1, and a 'laundry room' which basically is a really small room that has a shoe rack and a dirty clothes basket.

Close up of my room door. Yep, I sleep in an ex-Radiation Room! Muahahaha!!! Mutation beckons!!!

For a dear friend

Eve's birthday just passed, and since I was (still am) busy at work, I managed to wrangle a free day out of my superior and got her to visit Aquaria KLCC. Thought it'd be nice for her to go see all the (water)fish since she occasionally becomes one herself :D Actually it's cuz she hasn't been there before and I really wanted to get her to enjoy her day after all the problems she had (and probably still has but less) back in our days in IMU.
Seriously, I just hope you did enjoy yourself there Eve. Happy belated birthday!

Well, Kah Heng and Cheok Soon came along in the end - I did tell her she could invite anyone along so she told Void and he somehow got his Ipoh trip postponed and tagged along. Cheok Soon, almost perenially free, decided to tag along since he was...well...free...
Pics I/we have but with my lousy skills most of my pics came out blur. Head over to Void's blog
for more pics.
We saw so many things:



Top to bottom :

• Arapaima gigas - the largest freshwater fish in the world
• a beautiful golden arowana
• Kah Heng pretending to be afraid of the fish...looks like he was more afraid of Eve(not in the pic)
• the fugliest cap ever...wonder what Vanessa would look like wearing it...

Unfortunately those were the only pics that turned out well but we actually saw lots of other stuff too. Gargantuan turtles the size of huge boulders, the mostest humongousest catfish ever, manta rays, reef sharks, nurse sharks, giant groupers, chambered nautilus(es?), one of them ikan tanglung, horseshoe crabs, slipper crabs, hawksbill turtles were among the stuff we saw.

We even hung around for the feeding time, when 2 divers in scuba gear descended into the huge tank and fed the fish. The nurse sharks are sooooo tame, they almost seemed dog-like. So was the hawksbill. Most fish scattered when the reef sharks appeared though, we didn't see them eating anything.

We ended up in Chili's after that, with a bottomless drink each and a dish of bottomless chips. Lol, great snack that was....