It was a sunny day alright.

Yesterday we went to Mount Dandenong and had a ride of Puffing Billy the steam train. It was fun!

Siaw Tze and I checked the time of the buses and trains the night before yesterday to confirm which bus we should take and what time. We even checked the weather forecast (you know, Melbourne weather is really weird). The first bus we should take is the 703 bus to Blackburn, then train from Blackburn to Croydon, and the 688 bus to Olinda (get down at Observatory Road). Us at halls planned to take the 703 bus from the bus stop behind Deakin Hall at around 9.30am (the bus would depart from Monash University bus loop at 9.20am, so should take around 10 minutes to reach halls). While we were walking towards the bus stop, Li Ping called me to say that she took the wrong 703 bus towards Middle Brighton (opposite direction and she's going towards Clayton) =.= so she had to get down and take the 703 bus towards Blackburn, which meant she would be late. I told her to meet us at Blackburn railway station. Just then, Calvin who got up on the bus from bus loop told us that the bus had already gone pass the Deakin Hall bus stop before we could even hail it to stop. We missed the bus! It's not because we were late to arrive at the bus stop, it's because the bus was earlier than the time stated in its timetable. Oh no, I thought. Would we be in time to catch the 688 bus (703 bus and train are frequent, but the 688 bus is not frequent)..?

Yun Ying, what are you trying to do? =P

Anyway, we took the next 703 bus (which arrived few minutes later), and was in time to catch the train from Blackburn to Croydon. Li Ping was still about 25 minutes away from Blackburn railway station so we planned to wait for her at Croydon railway station to catch the 688 bus together. We met up with Zhi Han and Ling Sing on the train (as planned). It was already around 10.20am when we reached Croydon, barely a few minutes before the 688 bus arrived (10.28am, the next 688 bus would be at 11.55am). We ran towards Bay 6 to wait for the 688 bus. Li Ping hadn't arrived; she hadn't even got on the train. She would be late. She would miss the bus! All the while we were text messaging to find out where she were and to tell her how to get to our destination. Just then, the 688 bus arrived. We were still hesitating whether to get on the bus or not, and someone shouted that the next bus would be 11am. Oh well we could wait for about 20 minutes for Li Ping to arrive then we could go together, I thought. BUT....as Ryan was shouting 'The next bus is 11.55am' - we were shocked and confused - the bus just went past us! We missed that infrequent 688 bus! Miscommunication occurred sometimes =.=

Luckily there was another 688 bus to Olinda at 11.07am, just that it would only go to only half of the way up to Mount Dandenong and we had to walk about 20 minutes or more to reach our destination (the earlier 688 bus and the 11.55am 688 bus would go all the way up instead). So we took this bus at 11.07am (again, Li Ping hadn't arrived, yet she would be in time to catch the 11.55am bus...LOL). Wow, there were so many turnings on the way up to Mount Dandenong! Thank goodness the road was not really bumpy. The bus driver was kind enough to drive us to the junction of the road near our destination - that meant we would only need to walk about 5 to 10 minutes! Yay! I felt that this was like the day trips that we went with Monash Residential Services, just that this time we organised it on our own =)

The kind bus driver dropped us at the junction, and we walked uphill towards 'Skyhigh Dandenong' with much effort. There was a platform where we could have a good view of whole Melbourne city/metropolitan. We saw Monash University! =) There was also a garden/maze, and a bistro/function room. We had lunch and coffee inside the building, while avoiding ourselves from the strong cold wind outside. Siaw Tze was telling me earlier that the sky looked dark and it might rain. 'It would be a sunny day,' I said, 'We checked the weather forecast, remember?'

After finishing my cup of latte, and Nooi Hoay finished her lunch, we were about to go out of the bistro and had a walk around to take pictures. It was about 12.30pm then. Li Ping hadn't arrived. I started to get worried. She told me earlier that her mobile phone was running out of battery. In addition, there was no mobile line coverage at that area either. Would she know that we are here? What if she got lost? 'You sure that she knew the way here?' I asked Ryan who gave her directions earlier. 'Yes,' he replied. 一说曹操，曹操就到 - just then, Li Ping appeared! 'Hoooi~!!!!' We waved our hands while calling at her. ‘快点上来，我要抱你！’I said. ‘真的很佩服你，一个人过来eh! 两个小时的车程……’I said, while giving her a hug. ‘很寂寞啊！’she replied. ‘你很勇敢哦！’I smiled. Yun Ying asked her, ‘有没有想过要回头，回家就算了？’‘有啊，刚才在巴士上时就想过要回头了……’Yay, you made it! =)

We took a few pictures around the area and at Forest Walk.

=D

美女出动！=P

I saw this red tree with red branches

Looks like a real forest right?

I dunno what was Chean Ying doing

躲猫猫

Ryan 'piak' like a lizard on the big tree =P
There was also pictures which we were circling the big tree, but the pictures are not with me now

Siaw Tze 'kicked' the tree!!

While waiting for bus to Belgrave to take the Puffing Billy train, Chean Ying and Ling Sing decided to take such a 'wedding photo'

Nooi Hoay was using Chean Ying's sunglasses as a mirror to tie her hair

The last line appeared on advertisements on TV too (if you drink, then drive, you're a bloody idiot)

Puffing Billy!

Inside the train

Our hair being blown by the wind

Yeah we sat like this...legs outside the train =P

This is how we sat, looking from inside of the train

We reached Emerald (our train destination), the conductor offered to take a picture for us

Winter is here

After the Puffing Billy train ride, we decided to go back home...so we spent the next 2 hours on bus, train, and bus...then we decided to have dinner at Clayton...Korean BBQ!

Korean BBQ...yummy~!!!

The wind was really strong at night, it reached 'gale force' as checked out by Ryan earlier. Zepeng told us that it would be 100km/h even! After dinner, we stood in a circle chatting and laughing (to conserve heat) while waiting for the bus to go back to halls....people who passed by us must be looking at us strangely LOL!

Watched 3 episodes of School Rumble anime with Siaw Tze before went to sleep, haha... [edit: and finished one packet of Doritos...]

p/s: Phew, I took 2 hours to write this post...

The fate of the next trifle

Remember I said Ling Weng requested for a trifle? Well yesterday a few of us went to meet up with Ling Weng, Yi Tyeng, Yee Fang and Yijia at Melbourne Central. They were flying to NZ from Perth and transitting at Melbourne; they had 12 hours to kill before the next flight to NZ. We had a wonderful lunch at Oriental (a Chinese restaurant). It's been a long time since I last ate roast pork, roast duck and sweet BBQ pork =P I also gave them the trifle I made =)

It's been half a year since I last ate this

It's been half a year since I last met them too

Went to Victoria Market with Nooi Hoay and Cheng Khoon after that, and came back to halls as we had nothing else to do + we were tired + not enough sleep...

Good times

We've been having fun ever since exam finished.

Last Friday evening we went to watch The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian at the Village cinema in Glen Waverly. It was great. Had dinner at a Vietnamese restaurant after that.

Yesterday was really a busy day! We went grocery shopping at Brandon Park and this was what we bought...

A whole trolley of stuff =P

After grocery shopping and lunch, I waited for Li Ping to arrive - we're going to make trifle together! I planned to make 2 trifles, one for Nooi Hoay's birthday party at night and another one on Ling Weng's request. Siaw Tze and Calvin arrived few minutes later and they stayed in my room while Li Ping and I were busy in the kitchen. I used to take only 1 hour to make trifle but yesterday was 'not a trifle day' - I ran out of custard powder, and the remaining custard powder didn't turn out to be the way I wanted it to be. When I got to know that Chean Ying and Cheng Khoon were in Springvale buying Nooi Hoay's cake, I called Chean Ying and asked her to buy some custard for me - we were running out of time so I asked her to buy the ready-made custard. Li Ping was impatient to make the jelly =P But she didn't have the chance to make it because the sky was getting dark and she had to walk home. She did make some agar agar to be used in the birthday celebration later...for games =P

The trifle we made

The birthday celebration started around 10.30pm at the music room.

Nooi Hoay was teaching Cheng Khoon to play the birthday song before the party started

The food we prepared

I found this looked like Christine Wong - coz of the shirt

Chean Ying - the organiser/planner of the party

Ryan - the 'boss' of conducting the games

The party started off not with a birthday song, but with games (suggested by Chean Ying, ideas from Sayuri's birthday party)....first, it was jelly-eating competition. The fastest pair to finish eating the jelly wins, each person has to feed his/her partner instead of eating the jelly by himself/herself. That is what actually made the game interesting - you could see all kinds of funny faces! And this is where the agar agar that Li Ping made came to use =P The second game that we played was to guess which 1 of the 4 rice balls did NOT contain wasabi - 4 contestants each round. Guess by looking at their facial expressions...and also tears =P It was really funny and fun!!! Everyone had a chance of eating the rice ball as there were 20 rice balls prepared...lucky me didn't eat wasabi at all. However, poor Nooi Hoay has to eat wasabi everytime we guess wrongly!

After games, it was the core section of the party - birthday cake! And FOOD =P

Nooi Hoay's birthday cake

She looked surprised

Next up is red eggs...why would we prepare red eggs? I would not tell the reason behind this =P

Eggy.... =P

Next....my trifle!

There was a jelly bubble in the trifle

People starting to 'dig'...

One big mouthful of trifle!

*I want some more*

*This looks yummy*

*yummy*

‘友望的鼻涕’

In a few minutes...

- The End -

My alarm clock didn't wake me up today.

My biological clock did.

I woke up at around 7.20am!

........and I slept at around 1.30am last night. Less than 6 hours of sleep =.=

I couldn't go back to sleep after lying on bed for 40 minutes, so I decided to 'wake up', watered my plants, had breakfast and now waiting to go Brandon Park for grocery shopping.

It's going to be a busy day today =D

Back to normal and crazy life

Yeah, crazy. That's what happpens when you have just finished an exam which you spent more than one week stuck in your room studying and facing books/notes everyday. But now, exam's over!

Lin drove Ryan, Yun Ying and me to Kota Raya to have dinner with Sheryl, her mom and her grandma. It was actually my first time to Kota Raya though I have heard of that place from Yu Wan earlier. First time meeting Sheryl's mom and grandma who are here on holiday.

After dinner Lin drove us around - first it was Sheryl's mom who drove Sheryl's car to go back to Lexington Gardens so we just followed her, after that we had no idea where to go to since it's already 9pm. Pub is not a choice for us, and the only 'shopping place' that's open is Kmart. But nah we didn't go there. We then decided to go sing Karaoke at Glen Waverly and even called Zepeng to ask for directions (I actually found that his voice was suddenly so soft unlike his usual voice haha), but in the end we didn't go there either. As we were halfway there when we suddenly decided not to go Glen Waverly for karaoke, we stopped by Cold Rocks which was on the way and had ice cream. Even the kiddies size was a big portion for me! >.<

We went back to halls after that as we decided to sing karaoke at Lin's room. We searched for songs from DC++ and searched for the lyrics via Google, and we sang 'freely' as though everyone else had finished their exam...haha. We spent about one hour and a half singing karaoke, then we went to music room because I wanted to play the piano. It was about 11+ pm that time! And we listened to me and Sheryl playing till it was about 12.20am. Lin fetched Sheryl back to her mom's place while the rest of us went back to our rooms.

Think the day has ended yet? Not for me! After taking a quick bath and brushing my teeth it was already coming to 1am. I didn't feel sleepy yet, in fact I was feeling so 'hyper-energetic' after all those singing and music. I started chatting with friends via MSN. Most of my friends have finished exams, now everyone's back at MSN =) The last person I chat with was Li Ping (we chatted till 4am!!) then I decided to go to bed as it was already so late (though again I didn't feel sleepy yet). After about 20 minutes lying on the bed I still couldn't sleep. I sent Li Ping a message saying that I couldn't sleep and I didn't know what to do >.<>

And guess what time I woke up this morning...10.45am! I woke up at 7.45am actually (dunno why, my biological clock is weird sometimes), and seeing that it's not even 8am yet, I continued to sleep...and wake up 3 hours later, realising that it's such a coincidence that the time I woke up has to end with a .45 mins =.=

p/s: Siaw Tze is coming tomorrow!

Message to self

STUDY!!!

.....then you can do whatever you want after the exam =)

p/s: this is the 222nd post!! =D

Today is a fruitful day =)

Had formative OSCE today...though it's just a formative one, I still felt that my hands were shivering during the stations. Just natural I guess...

It's almost 4pm after OSCE. Justina and said she wanted to get coffee so I suggested the 'high-class' cafe near the Science building. I wanted to try out Bacio again =D Before heading to the cafe, I went to the post office to buy some stamps...I thought that I was speaking so fast that the lady behind the counter wanted to tell the guy who was serving me about my speed, but he stopped her =P

Justina and I met Joab while we were on the way to the cafe and he sort of complained that he has to go to uni everyday, though he has no exams and no holidays...but that's how Honours is like, he said. At the cafe, both of us had Bacio...We sat outside, chatting for almost an hour. It's a cool day, not many people were at the cafe (unlike usual times when you can see many professors and tutors around). We talked about lots of stuff...it's been a long time since I last chatted with her for so long =) One of the waiters even talked to us a while when he heard us speaking Mandarin...we were kinda surprised when he suddenly stopped doing his work and asked us where we're from. Soon it was about 5pm and it was getting really cold, so we decided to go back home.

I suddenly had the thought of going to play the piano...I had not been playing piano in the past 3 or 4 weeks. I took my music file and practised the songs on the music scores I printed. I also played some songs from memory and I realised that I tend to close my eyes while playing those songs @.@ It seemed to give me a better sense of enjoying the songs with my eyes closed...haha. Yet I didn't stay in the music room for long coz it's getting cold, and I didn't know where's the heater.

It's Cheah Yen's birthday today =) I called her after dinner but the line went off when we were chatting halfway. As usual she always made me laugh with her stories...well, happy birthday jie jie, you are 21 already...hehehe...have a blessed birthday and all the best in exams!

Chatting with my cousin now....her elder sister is getting married soon, and I want to attend the wedding!!

For Chien!

黄妙倩生日快乐！！！

(I don't have any other solo pic of you, so I chose this...don't scold me oh)

Happy birthday young lady, you are finally legal =P

It's funny that this girl called me first on her own birthday.

It actually happened this way:

I was studying when suddenly my phone rang. I found it so weird when I saw that it's her pic that appeared on my screen - I mean, why would the birthday girl call me on her own birthday? Shouldn't it be me who call her instead? Picking up the call and saying 'hello', first thing that she said was "thank you"! She thanked me for the present which I sent her =) I sent it last week and it reached Adelaide yesterday but as it was past 5pm so she only went to collect it today after class. Thank God it reached on time ^_^

I was already so surprised when she called me that I immediately said "Happy Birthday" without second thought. I told her that I would call her later because "this seems so odd, I should be the one calling you and say happy birthday"! "Alright, then I will act that I'm surprised when you call later =P" She said.

So I called her 1 hour plus later and said, "I know this is odd, but I still want to wish you happy birthday!" so yeah...the 'proper' way!

May your wishes come true dear! Miss and love ya =)

Time bomb

Angelene is going to University of Manchester.

End of August.

I wanna go back and see her before she flies.....coz I don't know when will we meet each other again.

I soon realised that I actually did not spend much time with her together.

The following facts shall surprise you readers:

1. I haven't been to her house, whereas she's been to my house so many times.
2. We never go out kai kai/shopping/watch movies/go to beach together.[though PCB beach is near to my house.]
3. We only went out yum cha once or twice, and that's not even us who planned.

On top of that, she's my best friend.

You'll think this is funny, but that's true...that's how things turn out to be.

Do I have the chance to see her before she go?

I doubt it. *haih*

We'll surely meet again, I know. It's just a matter of time. 天下无不散之筵席！=)

Yes, my dear, I shall have faith....absence makes the heart grow fonder, right? Though we'll be at different continents - few thousand kilometres away from each other, I will remember and remind myself of the message you once wrote: "I'll be your guardian angel forever..."