The best conference I've ever had...

....was last night.

I was happily web-caming with Siew Ting and Christine via Skype, then Ling Weng sent me a message via MSN and was suggesting we chat together in a window since everyone was online (the term 'everyone' in this context = me, Ling Weng, Siew Ting, Christine, Siaw Tze, Conney). Then I thought, why not a conference call via Skype? I told my idea to Siew Ting and Christine coz they were together, then asked the rest of them to sign in Skype. I was the host. It was really fun hearing everyone's voice; Ling Weng was saying how happy she was coz it's been such a long time since all of us heard each other's voices. Conney was quiet at first, and when she first spoke, her voice made me laugh immediately. I thought her voice sounded gentle - so unlike her usual voice! Ling Weng was laughing all the time (hehe, hehehe, hehehe....hehehe). Siew Ting and Christine were signing in and out, their line there was quite bad.

The six of us had so much things to talk about. It's been a long time since we last met each other...well I met Siaw Tze, Ling Weng and Conney 3 months ago when they came to Melbourne, but not Siew Ting and Christine - I haven't met them for 10 months. TEN MONTHS! A lot of things happened within this ten month-period eh? We chat for about 2 hours, that's till 3.30am Melbourne/Tasmania time (thanks to Conney and I who sacrificed our sleeping time, see how good we treat you guys =P) I still remember how the rest went 'Oooooooohhhh' when I told them we sacrificed for them, haha...

It's been such a long time that I haven't typed their names in my blog....it's also been such a long time since ALL their names appear in one post in my blog. Siew Ting, Siaw Tze, Conney, Christine, Ling Weng...and their voices, laughter, and of course their faces...I miss them all.

Hope we can have another conference again next time! Love you all!!! *muacks muacks and hugss hugsss*

the Weekend with the MOST pics!!

28/9/2007, Friday

It's not really a sunny day. The weather was unpredictable. It was really cold, the wind kept blowing, the rain was first slightly, then raining cats and dogs, and then there was no rain again. I did not check the weather forecast earlier. Wearing my newly bought purple jacket, I felt the chilly wind blowing towards me once I stepped out of my stairway, and I at once realised that I had worn the wrong jacket out. But there was no time; Yun Ying, Ryan and Chau Wang were waiting for me at the junction, so I rushed there as quickly as possible and off we walked to the bus loop. Royal Melbourne Show, here we come!

Throughout the journey to the Showgrounds via train, I complained of stomachache which came and went and I was worried that I might not be able to fully enjoy myself there. However, things changed after we bought our tickets ($17 concession each). We met Phik Lun and Yun Ying's 2 friends there and were excited to see so many things around! Food, shows, games, prizes, stalls....it's gonna be a great day, I thought. And yes it was! =D Not to mention the fireworks display at night which we waited for!

Me and Phik Lun in front of the Shrek booth

我们的幸福摩天轮！

Cheese and wine tasting

Displays in the Expo....

琳琅满目的糕点和面包

Cakes...

Cute cake right?

Free gifts!!

Free photo and chocolate

...and also these 'hands'...

and also 2008 calendar, a map of Victoria, free sampling of yoghurt, snacks and coffee...

30/9/2007, Saturday

Went to the Tesselaar Tulips Festival and William Ricketts Sanctuary. It was a day trip organised by Monash Residential Services. And oh my the colours of the tulips really amazed me!!! It was so beautiful there and I thought that it would be better if we could spend more time at the Tulips Festival instead of the sanctuary. The William Ricketts Sancturay has a lot of statues. We went to have coffee at a cafe nearby after a walk in the sanctuary. It was superb!

Colourful....red, yellow, orange, purple, pink, white...

Me and Zhi Han in red jackets....Yu Wan was also in red jacket, the three of us should have taken picture together...

Group picture!

Another group picture

The statues in the sanctuary led us to these crazy pose....

Me and Chean Ying

Yeu Sheng and her outstretched hand

Cheng Khoon and Yeu Sheng...do they resemble the Statue of Liberty?

Ye Chia's first crazy pic! Thanks to us yeah =P

Mooncake festival in Australia..

Last Tuesday (25/9) we went to Ivie and Li Ping's housewarming party. It was a BBQ + potluck party so we made some desserts there. Yu Wan, Yun Ying, Christina and I made batik cake and trifle in the afternoon. I was happy coz it's the first time that the custard for the trifle I made thickened, which was a great success! Yun Ying said that coz we're making for friends that's why it turned out a success...haha =P Yun Ying made jelly and Christina baked chicken too, while the Deakineses made tau fu fa. Ivie came to fetch us at 8.30pm, she had to make three rounds of driving to fetch us from the halls...thanks to Ivie here =D

There were already a few people at her house. There were other kinds of food such as fried mihun (fried by Li Ping, it was a favourite among many people), fried rice (by Ivie I think, it's sweet!), pasta (by Grace, I like the sauce) and also chicken and corn for BBQ. The house was decorated with balloons. As we were very hungry, we started eating fried mihun and batik cake, chatting and enjoying ourselves while waiting for the others to arrive.

Food FoOd FOOD

Us girls

It was really fun as we played games while eating. We played Battle of the Sexes, heart attack etc.. I had a good laugh when the boys acted as Backstreet Boys because they lost in the game...it was really funny and we even took video of them!

Battle of the Sexes

When midnight came, Ivie (who was initially outside) came into the house with two cakes in her hands, each with two lit fireworks replacing candles and started singing birthday song for Li Ping. We joined in the celebration and played fireworks outside! After that we ate cake, continued eating and playing all the time...and slowly getting tired and sleepy as well. As it was Mooncake Festival, we lit some lanterns at the backyard. At around 2am Ivie fetched us back to the halls.

p/s: For more details check out Ivie's blog

Li Ping with her 2 cakes

Woohooo~!!!

Lanterns...

Yesterday night (26/9) us MISU had our own celebration of Mooncake Festival...we ate mooncakes and then played lanterns!

Mooncake mooncake



Colourful lanterns!

Traffic lights?

yum yum batik cake!

I don't know why but these few days I kept browsing through my old blog posts especially those in late 2006 (Well I only started blogging last year anyway). Reading the posts and comments brought smiles to my face, and I realise that blogging is really a good way to remember memories because I usually blog in detail. Names, time, place and what happened...all of them came fresh to my mind when I read the posts. The loveliest part is of course the comments from my dear readers. From reading my old posts, I realise how I have become...and how much fun I had last year. I realise how much I treasure my friends. I even felt touched by some special posts, written by me myself! Can't believe that I actually wrote those...such creativity. (No this is not ss-ing. It's a fact.) Sometimes I wonder whether my blogging skills has deteriorated this year...but Sheila from the International Student Support Unit said that I'm a good essay writer when she read my essay assignment. I was quite surprised when she said that. Am I?

I realise that I wrote a lot of posts about me missing my friends but recently I didn't write anything about missing friends. I guess missing friends has become a part of my life...a routine of my days here, to the extent that when I see a certain object or something or some action it'd just remind me of this friend or that friend.

Mid semester break has started. I bet it's going to be an interesting week with plans to go here and there. Yesterday morning Ryan, Adriel, Yun Ying and me went to Springvale for some grocery shopping. Yun Ying and I were shopping for ingredients to bake cake. Later in the afternoon we baked batik cake and it turned out delicious! Though its appearance may not look nice but 'don't judge a book by its cover' right? It's just so yummy! I'm glad that we have the same hobby, Yun Ying =D

I love big kitchen =P See how messy it was...but we did clean up after that

Yun Ying mixing the butter and eggs

Me stirring the mixture...mmm, chocolate!

Out came this from the oven!

And guess what...when Phik Lun came in the evening, she brought something similar to what we made! But ours was baked in the oven and hers was kept cool in the refridgerator...great minds think alike eh? =P

=( why :'(

The birthday cards that my college friends - namely Conney, Ling Weng and Siaw Tze - sent me more than a week ago were now 'officialy declared' LOST. I didn't know what happened to the cards. It didn't reach my mailbox in the Roberts common room. I told the MRS office earlier yesterday about my problem and they said they would check for me. Later in the afternoon a lady called my mobile.

'Sorry dear we can't seem to find your letters...'

'We even checked the South-East Flats, darling...'

'All the halls were checked my dear...'

Yeah the people working at the MRS office were nice people (look at the words they use). But what happened to MY CARDS?! Those are the first cards from them to me. I wonder what they wrote...sigh... T.T

I felt quite sad knowing that my friends intended to send me cards but I didn't receive them. THREE cards even! Three...and plus the fact that they are among my closest college friends...

It was my turn to cook dinner yesterday. I felt cheered up a little when I was making sushi for the first time. The first and second sushi rolls I made could not 'become rolls' coz I didn't know how to join the ends of the nori seaweed together. And I put a bit too much wasabi in the first two rolls...but after the two attempts, I succeeded in making the rest.

Sushi~~

Yummy! Miso soup + sushi with salmon and crab meat and carrot

Ling Sing's birthday celebration + T Rex came to Melbourne!!

T Rex arrived in Melbourne last Saturday from NSW! As she's staying at Zhi Han and Daphne's place at College Square, a few of us at Monash here went to city to have dinner with her on Saturday, with another plan to celebrate Ling Sing's birthday earlier (her birthday's today - Monday). So Nooi Hoay, Chean Ying, Ye Chia, Ryan and I went to Melbourne Central and shopped a while for Ling Sing's present while waiting for them to arrive to have dinner together. We bought her a nice green handbag...hope she likes it! Daphne took us to eat at a Korean restaurant, the food there was nice but I personally think that the Korean restaurant at Clayton is better (maybe it's the side dishes).

After dinner, we went to Lygon Street (where College Square is) to have some gelatissimo (a kind of ice cream). When we were walking to the second ice cream shop, 5 of us from Monash told the rest that we were about to leave coz it's already 10pm. It's actually part of the plan for the surprise party. Ru Xing looked very surprised; Ling Sing then said to both Chean Ying and Ru Xing, 'Wei, CY wanna go back already, don't want to hug hug a while?' (I felt kinda funny coz we were going to meet a few minutes later anyway). We then left and walked straight down the street to the nearest tram stop to catch a tram to College Square. We missed a tram by a few seconds, so we waited for another 6 minutes for the next tram. Just then, we saw Zhi Han, Ru Xing, Daphne and Ling Sing who just came out from the ice cream shop was walking towards our direction but at the opposite side of the road!! Zhi Han was on the phone talking with Ye Chia who was with us, and we were thinking of ways of how to avoid Ling Sing from seeing us (coz it's the other way to go back to Monash). We quickly walked further down before they crossed the road and just then the tram arrived. 'Arrrghhhh...we have to wait for the next tram again!' I said.

After taking the next tram to College Square, we went straight up to Zhi Han's room to gather all of us together including Amelene and Esther. We then walked to Ling Sing's room and knocked on her door. How surprised Ling Sing was when she opened the door! I asked her whether did she see us when she was taking the tram back just now, but somehow the blur girl Ling Sing didn't realise that we were just at the opposite side of the road that time! And I told Zhi Han that 'our acting skills were poor but for Ling Sing it's already good enough =P' By the way, Amelene said that I seemed taller and I answered, 'Yeah coz I'm 19 already...so grow taller la... =P'

Happy birthday, Ling Ling Sing Sing~

We sang birthday song and took pictures while eating cake, then rushed back to Melbourne Central but it's already quite late. We knew that we won't be in time for the last bus from Huntingdale station to Monash University bus loop; so we took taxi back to the halls from the station instead, reaching the halls at about 12.30am. 'Long time never come back this late already' (NH 2007).

----------------------------------------------
Today (Monday) Ru Xing came to Monash University to join in a lecture in the afternoon! It's really 勇 (brave doesn't sound appropriate I think, so I choose this word) of her to come all the way from city after shopping at Bridge Road this morning, all by herself! I just gave her directions on how to come to Monash and she made it! She arrived at Monash during lunch break when all of us were sitting at the 'airport lounge' at campus centre. Chean Ying and I went to meet her at the bus loop and brought her to campus centre to have her lunch. After that, we went to the lecture on cranial nerves at South 1 Theatre. The excited Chean Ying even wanted to show her who 美女 is... =.= ‘她很美啊，ABC来的，皮肤……比你黑一点……' (CY 2007)

T Rex with her housefly-like sunglasses =P

After lecture, Yu Wan and I showed Ru Xing around the campus and halls of residence. We took many pictures...

Looks like we were in Japan!

S.H.E 紫藤花？

躺在草地上是很舒服的……

From left: me, Chean Ying, Ru Xing, Justina, Yeu Sheng, Ye Chia

p/s: I told you I'd put that title! =P Have fun in Melbourne yeah!

pek-chek-ness

I felt so pekchek now. Not because of studies, but because of the cards my friends sent me for my birthday - I haven't received them till now. Where would the cards go? Have they been put in the wrong mailbox by the postman? Haih...I remember there was once when my 3 (handphone) bill went to Howitt Hall instead of my hall (Roberts Hall). Luckily Justina's surname had the same letter T as me, or else I wouldn't have known where the bill was. Usually the office arrange letters according to halls and first alphabet of the surname, so for my letters there's usually an 'RO' for Roberts and 'T' for Tan written on the envelope by the office. Sometimes they wrote it upside down and the postman read wrongly. There's once when my friend with surname beginning with Y had his letter in my T mailbox. Imagine how they wrote it...'Y' could be intepreted wrongly as 'T'!

So what happened to my cards?? Sobs...

Part of MEDicine...

1. Suturing
I was supposed to have my suturing lesson next week but I attended this week's session on Monday afternoon. At first I wasn't sure whether or not my session was last week (Week 8), so I went to the CMHSE building and checked the group allocation list. It's stated there that my session was to be in Week 10. I happily went back home coz I hadn't read the tutorial notes on suturing that time. However, on the past Monday blur me thought that my session was to be in this week (Week 9), so I read the tutorial notes beforehand and went to CMHSE after the lecture on Monday afternoon. Suddenly it flashed across my mind that my session would be in Week 10, NOT Week 9! I felt kinda frustrated, still not believing that my session was actually to be in Week 10, I went to check at the notice board. The truth was that my session was to be in Week 10. While I was wondering whether to go back to the Halls or not, Ravind called me and asked me to join his class. 'They don't really bother which session you attend, just come..' And so I joined his class instead. Turned out that the tutor teaching style was quite different to what I had accustomed to after more than half a year here...and I actually liked her way of teaching coz it's a bit of spoon-feeding (the usual Malaysian education system...) + answering some questions. I felt that I could understand better that way. She even demonstrated how to do suturing step by step and not let us absorb the whole chunk of information at a go. Lucky me to attend that class =)

2. Dissection
On Tuesday, I went for a dissection session with my anatomy tutor and two other classmates, Ravind and Bridget. We were going to dissect the gluteal region - also known as the buttock =P It's not my first time dissecting, but it's my first time dissecting with guidance from my tutor. I was quite excited because we were allowed to use the sharp 'proper' surgical dissection scalpel, so sharp that Ravind accidentally cut his finger (we were wearing gloves!) It was fine after he applied plaster, and my tutor said that usually he would wear two layers of gloves. That somehow improved my knowledge for dissection a little, not to mention my dissection skills =D

3. Site visit
This morning I had a hospital site visit at Caulfield General Medical Centre. Getting there by public transport took my classmates and I about one hour and we had to wake up early to catch the bus then the tram. Yu Wan and Yun Ying told me that the trifle at the cafe there was good and I was keen on trying it, but too bad that the trifle was actually on the special menu last week when they were there, not on the main menu itself. Anyway, we were very early for our visit, 45 minutes earlier to be precise. The weather was cold in the morning and I didn't feel like it's spring at all...but the flowers at the roadside were beautiful~ The site visit was fun as we got to examine patients (musculoskeletal examination of upper limb and lower limb, from what we have learnt during our clinical skills tutorials so far). Thank God that we have a classmate who drove us back to the Halls after the visit...in just 20 minutes!

4. Med Ball
No No I'm not going to the Med Ball this year. It's going to be held at the Royal Exhibition Building in Melbourne (the only place that can fits in 800+ people I heard) next Friday and I have heard that there's going to be a chocolate fountain (yummy!)....but too bad I'm not going. Reasons: (1) I don't have a dress and a pair of high heels. I don't feel like wasting my money (and lots of time to search for it!) to buy a dress and high heels in Melbourne city just to go to the ball. (2) My gang of friends are not going.

Well....we'll go next year, eh? And I'll remember to bring my dress and high heels from Malaysia this time...or just buy a new dress from Malaysia...(well who knows, maybe I'll spot a nice one in Melbourne city which is at a reasonable price...hehe)..

08/09/07...

"History repeated itself." Not exactly though, but there were some similarities.

First, the time was the same – it was nearly 12am (Malaysian time), which also means nearly 2am (Melbourne time). I was online and chatting while opening Facebook and Gmail at the same time.

At this time 365 days ago, I was also online and chatting while opening Friendster and Yahoo! Mail at the same time.

Second, the venue. This year it was at the Roberts gym. Last year, it was at the Akasia badminton court. Both venues are related to sports.

Third, the chat windows which showed up on my laptop after I came back to my room. Yie Min wished me but I wasn’t around. It also happened last year – he wished me via MSN and I wasn’t in front of the laptop too!

Okay, now, the story – to tell the truth, I was half expecting the celebration to be at midnight before the day (and half expecting it to be on the day itself). Earlier in the afternoon (7th September), after lecture, Daniel was telling me that he was fetching Yeu Sheng, Ryan, Yun Ying and Chean Ying to Clayon to buy groceries. I looked straight into Yun Ying’s eyes, she was giggling – and I knew that our minds were thinking of the same thing (me thinking they were going to buy the cake and she was thinking that they were going to buy a cake). So I purposely said, ‘I wanna go! Yerr…I wanna go!’ but nobody bothered me. (There were 5 people going and according to the law only a maximum of 5 people are allowed to travel in a car…which means there’s no more space for extra one person – ME.) Usually Chean Ying would offer her place but this time they just walked away towards the car park. Hmmmm… I thought. They certainly looked suspicious…

Night came. After dinner, I studied a bit and went online. At 11pm Cheng Khoon texted me and said that he can’t stand anymore as he’s tired and he wanted to sleep, so he wished me an early happy birthday. I thought, ‘Cannot tahan anymore? Why would he say that?’ Again, it increased my expectance of the celebration past midnight. At around 12am my phone started ringing – calls came in and messages started bombarding my phone inbox.

Time past. Chau Wang told me earlier that he wanted to make dessert and he came to take the oven tray, flour and Milo from me. He even borrowed eggs from my neighbour. He asked me to go downstairs to make the dessert together but I said no coz I was planning to sleep. So he left. At nearly 2am, suddenly there was a knock on my door. I opened the door and there stood Yu Wan with a bunch of colourful balloons in her hand. My neighbour who was standing beside her sang birthday song for me.

‘Where did you get these balloons?’ I asked.

‘We blew it...’

‘Who are the ‘we’ you mean?’

‘Well...I’m sent here to invite you to the birthday party...each of us blew a balloon here...’ she answered.

‘Har? NOW?!’ I was quite surprised because it’s already 2am and I was preparing to go to bed.

‘Yes...faster change your clothes and come down!’

‘OK OK...where are we celebrating?’

‘At the gym...’ on hearing the word ‘gym’, I went on and said, ‘GYM???’

‘Yeah, gym. We initially planned to celebrate at the music room but those who went to the Ball just came back and it’s noisy. So we changed places.’

‘Oh...alright.’ After changing my clothes, she handed me the balloons and I followed her, while my stairway-mates who saw the balloons asked whose birthday it was; and they wished me happy birthday.

At the gym, everyone was there – Yeu Sheng, Chean Ying, Daniel, Cheng Khoon, Nooi Hoay, Calvin, Ye Chia, Shea Chuen, Justina, Ryan, Yun Ying, Chau Wang and Christina. They sang birthday song, took some pictures – there were only 8 candles on the cake by the way (the reason being there weren’t enough candles =.=) I remembered someone saying ‘Good what, 8 candles, 8 years old, means that you are still young!’ I made a wish and was about to blow the candles when my phone rang. It’s Cheah Yen. She asked, ‘What are you doing?’ It was kinda funny because you wouldn’t expect someone to call when you were about to blow the candles! Yu Wan took the phone over and told her to call me back later. Chau Wang said that his dessert was not successful and I jokingly said that I somehow expected it to be so. =P

I cut the cake and distributed to everyone. It was a marble cheese cake – it reminded me of the day that big sis suggested to buy a marble cheese cake for my mother when she and my 3 other friends went to my house at KB last year. The marble cheese cake I had was different; it seemed like there was some caramel inside. Yummy!

What followed was the ‘prize giving ceremony’. I got a big gold teddy bear, a handmade card ‘created by Deakineses’, a bottle of Ribena and two photos! Haha...never expect to get a teddy bear as my present!

I have quite a few soft toys but this is the first gold teddy bear I own! =D


The bottle is made of plastic instead of glass.

Card 'created by Deakineses'. Comment by Yeu Sheng: it looks like a combination of Deepavali and Hari Raya card coz of the candles and colours...

There’s a 3D cake inside! The quote 'The heart that loves is forever young' was the one I found from somewhere and sent it to the Deakin Sayang Group earlier this year!

The wishes they wrote in the card were funny! There were even 3 translations of Daniel’s wish (in English) at the last page of the card, Chinese translation by Yeu Sheng (揾底裤= wonderful, plus she added '本祝福语皆真心话，如有雷同，纯属巧合'), Hokkien translation by Chean Ying (lu eh hokkien bei pai wor, jin jia 9696) and Malay translation by Nooi Hoay (undang-undang yang baru digubal? Jangan harap saya akan cakap perlahan sikit sebab itu sudah menjadi kebiasaan saya =P) and Cheng Khoon, when did my name become 切西瓜 (Jessica) =.=

The party ended with a few pictures at around 3am. What I wanna say is: thank you everybody! It’s the latest birthday celebration I ever had! *hugss hugss*

p/s: Chau Wang later told me that it was all part of the plan to trick me to go downstairs when he asked me for the oven tray to make dessert. Too bad he failed; I’m so not easily tricked okay! [I told Yu Wan that I was wondering how they were planning to trick me but Yu Wan said, ‘Yeah there isn’t anything to trick about. You have to cooperate ma…’]

p/s 2: I realised another similarity on 8th September: 365 days ago I ate fries after dinner, and just now we also had fries during lunch…haha…

Also, thanks to people who wished me via sms and mms, calls, Friendster comments and messages, Facebook wall posts and gifts etc.. =D