With love from Perth

This bulky little parcel arrived on Friday but I only realised it yesterday.

I knew who the sender was because she asked me earlier whether I have received the gift or not. Besides, she has also asked me few weeks ago to choose a photo of ours that I like/that both of us like. She said it's my 21st so she would like to send me something special =)

I wonder what is it?

Very well bubble-wrapped by the company

Errr...okay

Tadaa!! So NICEEEE!!!! With red hearts floating inside!! And the photo is double-sided as well!! Love it so much! =D

Thanks Ling Weng for the lovely gift *hug hug* ♥ ♥ ♥

21st only comes once.

Warning: I wrote in as detail as possible for my own 'flashback reading' in future. Read at your own 'risk' =P

By the way, this is also the triple 3 (333th) post...!

On the special day of 8th September 2009....

At 12am sharp, I received the first phone call from Ling Weng and we chatted for 32mins. It was a really funny and entertaining conversation. She was trying hard to sing birthday song for me while I joked that I would like to record it, or she could record her singing and send to me via MMS...haha (LW, your OMG sounded very funny)~ We chatted about a lot of things and I kept laughing and laughing. She's so very cute and talented (to make people laugh!) =D It was a really good start for my 21st...erm, she actually argued that a 'good start' is not good enough a word to describe it as she wanted a more 'glamourous and better' descriptive term. And we both actually thought for a few seconds for a suitable term but couldn't think of any hahaha! I realised that I haven't been laughing like that for a while too. I really enjoyed the chat, thanks to her who made it so special =D

At 1.29am I received another call, but I accidentally put the caller on hold and so I panicked for a while to find out how to put the caller back on line. Luckily within 10 seconds I could hear her wishing me happy birthday...but I didn't see who the caller was nor did I recognise her voice earlier. It was when she said 'see I'm so nice call you before 12am' that I realised that it's a call from Malaysia and it's no other than Yun!!! GOSH....I was very surprised that she called me!!!! Coz I rarely receive calls from Malaysia... I told her about the actual time difference and that I was actually planning to go to bed already because I still have class the next day...she mentioned that she meant she called before 12am in Malaysia haha~ I was very happy and touched that she called =D Thank you my dear!!

Went to sleep straight away after that. Was planning to wake up at 7am then go to hospital at 7.30am. But but but...my phone rang suddenly before the alarm did, and I got up to pick the call without even looking at the caller number/name while saying 'Hello' and straining hard to open my eyes... I struggled to look up at my clock which showed 6.25am...whaattt?? Anyhow I heard the caller said something like happy birthday so I just smiled and said thank you while thinking hard and wondering who the caller was... I know it's a very familiar female voice...siapa ni so daring =P It was a few seconds later (okay, maybe loooonger than that) that I realised it's Angelene calling from UK!!! GOSH GOSH GOSH....!!! Okay this is the ironic part: I was truly 101% surprised but I was less than 100% alert myself @.@ Yet, my heart meltz...the more she talked, the more I 陶醉在她甜美可爱的声音中...I just closed my eyes and lied on the bed while enjoying the sweetest cutest voice I have ever heard (*wonder if that's what paeds rotation have done to her*)...and yes, I admit that I was super duper blur that time coz haven't got enough sleep....but I do remember that she said she wanted to call me at 12am (UK 3pm) but she had work to do so she decided to call me in the morning instead...very EARLY morning yea lady (though she said I didn't sound like I just woke up because my voice was clear)~ I didn't know why did I even ask '你为什么打来' haha totally didn't expect that she would call =D 一大清早满满甜言蜜语的unexpected morning call...the best morning call ever ^_^ Thanks darling!

Guessed what I did after the call ended... I went back to sleep!! Even though it's just 30mins before my set alarm time. Yet the 30 mins of sleep seemed like the longest 30-min sleep I have ever had, sweet nice peaceful sleep =D

Went to hospital for ward rounds in the morning. Kezia wished me happy birthday and said, 'Come to the common room at 12pm, I baked a cake.' I was like, 'WHAT? You baked a cake for me? OOHH!! Thanks!!! But....why did you tell me about the celebration? Am I supposed to act surprised when I go to the common room later?' 'No no you don't need to, I'm telling you now because you would have expected/knew it anyway. Now you gotta go invite people!' HAHAHA!! She baked a banana + walnut cake for me....Yummy =D

[haven't gotten the photos yet, otherwise can show you guys the cake & people who celebrated my birthday at the common room in hospital]

One of the nurses whom I gave some banana cake to few weeks ago gave me this bar of chocolate....such coincidence on my birthday!

CHOCOLATE wheeee~

After coming back from hospital, I received a call from Chien! After wishing me happy birthday, she asked me '你为什么没有打来问我为什么没有打电话给你' to which I found amusing =P So I explained that I just came back. Thanked her for the scarf and book which I received a few days earlier, will read the book when I have the time =)

Just before my usual dinner time Justina called me to 'invite me out for dinner'. She asked me what type of food I would like and I told her anything is fine as long as it's not Chinese or Italian. Shea Chuen and her came and picked me up at 7.15pm. It was a rainy day, it's been raining non-stop since morning. Justina said we're going to Glen Waverley but first we're going to pick Li Ping first. Okay, I thought, the others must have been waiting at the 'restaurant'....When we reached Li Ping's house, Justina was ready to call her but Shea Chuen said he would go in and call her out instead. This is when I started to sense something fishy....it was dark and raining outside but from the car windscreen I could roughly see some 'shadows' of people running in and out of the house but I didn't take that seriously. A while later Shea Chuen came into the car and said that Li Ping still needed some time to get ready because she had spilled water in her bedroom and was cleaning it up, so Rou Min (her housemate) asked all of us to go in the house and wait instead. I was quite reluctant as it was raining outside (there's still a distance to walk to her house) and I was wearing heels plus I thought it wouldn't take that long to wait for her to clean up. Anyway, I forgot what Shea Chuen said but he was determined that we should all go in. As I walked out of the car and along the road to Li Ping's house, I saw a few cars parked outside...which were my friends' cars...so immediately I knew everyone had already gathered at Li Ping's house. HAHAHA!

I was surprised that they prepared a steamboat =) WHOOOAAAA, so much fooooood!!! Everyone looked so busy in preparing the food....felt so warm and homely =D

Fresh basa & salmon

PRAWNS!

Fish cakes, fish & meat balls, seafood dumplings

And the lovely decorations!!! Love them!!

Butterflies made of two hearts each =) and there were 21 butterflies!

Balloons

My name =)

We also had desserts - birthday cake (of course) and custard with crushed biscuits and fruits, and also watermelon and honeydew =)

Refreshing

Blackforrest cake

Lastly is the prize giving ceremony! Pressies I got:

A dark blue silky blouse with black belt...love the colour!!

A black jacket...looks very yeng

A nice bag with a cute style...will use this soon!!

A scrapbook designed by Yu Wan with lots of photos and messages from others...love this (yea sentimental me I know) - more pictures of the pages in Facebook

This cute totoro came a few days later (according to Chau Wang, it's still in the plane from HK during the time of my birthday)

All in all, I really appreciate what you guys have done to make the party a success. As I have mentioned in my thank you messages, the main element is warmth and love rather than the surprise (still I was surprised by the location of the party and the steamboat). I really enjoyed the party. Thanks to Mr organiser, Mr fish cutter, Ms fruit cutters, Ms dessert preparers, Mr and Ms decoration-ers, Mr and Ms steamboat ingredient preparers, Mr and Ms soup makers, Mr and Ms eaters, Ms house owners, Mr driver, Mr and Ms dish washers and cleaners, Mr and Ms cameramen, Ms massage etc.. (find your role(s) =P)

You guys are awesome

Also thanks to those who wished me via Facebook and wrote blog posts (click to view - Siew Ting, Conney & QY, Angelene, Ling Weng).

Cards from my friends

Cards from my family

The back of the envelopes say: Love, Us & Sam (the dog); made by hand (so creative)

Am amazed by this little poem my sister wrote because it rhymes so well:

Flowers bloom everywhere,

Oh, they are all so fair;
Love is in the air,
Drifting here and there.

There's someone special to care,
With whom whose happiness I want to share;
How I wish she's here,
But she's with the koala bear!

Sinfully delicious and sweet

I had a great weekend! It all started on Friday when Mr and Mrs Tomato arrived with their black Aurion in the evening....I actually forgot how wide the seats spaces in an Aurion are even though we rented 2 of them in NZ just about 3 months ago! Anyway, it was about 5pm on Friday when they came, and it's the start of the 'kidnapping' + makan-ing trip!!

First we went to Chadstone to 'walk around and spend time before dinner' because it's still early. After about 1-1.5 hour of walking around we started to get hungry so we went to Pancake Parlour for dinner.... but we didn't eat pancakes! And I forgot to take picture of the food we ordered either @.@ There's some discount for early dinner (before 7pm) but the food portion wasn't really large (I ordered a crepe with some chips)....but it didn't matter coz we already planned to have supper after that anyway =P

Got this pic from its website...but yeah this 'ancient pancake mixer' was at display in the Pancake Parlour at Chadstone =)

Next stop was the city! Yup, we drove into the city for supper.... Conney suggested a place at Melbourne Central which sells delicious sweet crepes (different from the ones we had at Pancake Parlour).

Yummy... we ate lots of berries that night

That's not our last stop yet. We then drove on to and parked near Crown Casino... nope we're not there for gambling, we're there for the CAKES! YES CAKESssss

The broad selection of mouth-watering delicious looking cakes at Greco

SS while waiting for our cakes

Yeah it was quite a long wait as usual (p/s: Brat, why you like opening your mouth?)

Finally our cakes arrived... strawberry vanilla cake...

...and double chocolate cake...reaaaaallly sweeeeet

After filling our satisfied stomach, we went into the casino...to look around! That's the purpose when Conney asked me to bring my passport when we left halls earlier haha~~

We spent about 10 minutes looking for the black Aurion when we were about to go back coz we forgot where we parked the car =.= We reached Clayton around 12.30am after a traffic jam at M1 (yes first traffic jam ever in Melbourne!! =.=) But I was really happy that the night was well spent... thanks to Mr and Mrs Tomato who also belanja me the desserts =D

But the makan trip didn't end there. The next morning (Saturday), after grocery shopping at Clayton, we went to Doncaster.....to YUM CHA!!! Wahahaha finally stepped into the famous yum cha place in Melbourne - Tai Pan restaurant (I think it's the one that we Monash gang had been wanting to go since ages ago but didn't manage to, but now I finally did!!)

Haven't got the pictures from Conney yet but this is what she sent me...summarising the splendid lunch we had =D Guess how much we spent...$75!! =P Really satisfying

Thanks to my kidnappers for the great makan trip haha~ Brat kept calling me the birthday girl even though I kept denying coz it wasn't my birthday yet. But I felt honoured =P Speaking of that, I actually requested them to write me a card (我知道我脸皮厚，虽然是第一次和Brat见面可我还是在他们俩面前这样说，因为感觉好像一见如故啊) because Conney's cards for me from the past 2 years got lost in the post and I never received them at all...but they were one step ahead; they had already prepared a card for me!!! So HApPieeEee and touched =D And as Conney said, “两年来寄给你的卡都给post吞掉，[Brat added in “浪费我的邮票钱！”] 今年我就亲手交给你！” hahaha yay ^_^ Haven't opened it yet though~

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Went to Pinewood to watch the movie Up with the Monash gang on Saturday night. It's been a while since we had a gathering like this =) The movie was great, definitely a movie worthwhile watching!

On the spur of the moment

在放假的其中一天，来澳州玩的一个小学朋友来探望我。她是妍妮，是我五和六年级的同班同学。
她和一个朋友从墨尔本市搭火车和巴士来到Clayton，抵达时打了个电话给我：“淑君啊，我到了~~”
我呆住了。
啊，好久没听到人家叫我的华文名字了！
虽然不惯，但还是蛮高兴的~~
脑海里突然回想起小学时候的我们……几秒钟后回过神来才答她：“噢，你到了？好我去接你！”

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几天过后的一天下午，我一个人发闷在房间无聊地上网时接到一通电话……
莉彬：“你在做什么？”
我：“没有在做什么啊~就上网着……”
莉彬：“你有在halls啦？酱我去找你玩nah！”
一瞬间觉得很兴奋很开心，因为听到她说要来“玩”，觉得又好像回到了小孩子的时代 =P

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不久前和晓思在MSN chat。
她说了一句 “u are like little girl to me”
看到荧幕上的字，愣住一下……
没想到离开INTEC这么多年了，她对我的印象还是没改变。
原来如此啊~~ =)

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考试之前的一星期，有天半夜两点收到一封SMS，隔天早上才看到。
是琳雯发出的。
我们不常SMS，所以看到sender是她时，虽然半睡半醒还是赶紧读了信息内容。
读着读着，一份温暖涌上心头，感觉很温馨。
好喜欢 =)

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昨天第一天开学就有PBL。
同学present task时问了个问题，没人答所以我就随性很小声地说了答案。
突然间听到有人拍掌。
是我的tutor！吓到一下！
她看着我笑，我明白了--她在拍掌给予鼓励！（想象一下，她是蛮serious的consultant耶，不过对我们很好）
我感觉有点不好意思，不过还是蛮开心的~

Hoorayyyyy

OMG OMG!!!

I'm so so happy....happy happy wanna fly =D
Thank you!!! You are still the best =)


On a side note, few more hours towards the start of my one-month holiday!

Holiday in Adelaide!

I spent my second half of my Easter break in Adelaide! Flew there together with Li Ping, met old friends, made new friends as well =)

We stayed at Chien's place in the city. We arrived in Adelaide in the late morning on 15th (Wednesday) and had lunch at an Italian restaurant called Scoozi. Doreen called Chien Yen to join us for lunch...I haven't met her ever since I left INTEC!!

*Biew Chien*Chien Yen*me*Li Ping*

We toured around the city of Adelaide for the day...places we visited included Rundle Mall, University of Adelaide, University of South Australia (UniSA), the State Library, some parks (Torrens river?); and we took some pictures in front of the South Australia Museum and Parliament as well.

One of the 4 famous pigs of Rundle Mall...they even have a name each!



Hogwarts Library!! Haha it's part of the State Library =P



One of the buildings in University of Adelaide



In front of the building of UniSA that links to many other buildings

Can you see the similarity of the kind of buildings both universities have? Traditional-kinda-old architecture which Li Ping likes... (I like such buildings as well)...but Monash doesn't have buildings like that! It must be nice to be able to see these kind of buildings when you walk to uni everyday...can appreciate the architecture and have the feeling of being in an 'overseas' university =P

Parliament...come to think of it, I never take pic in front of the Parliament of Victoria

Doreen told us that Adelaide is the City of Churches...it's true because we could see many churches around the city. Yet I would like to add another name to it...city of 'statues'....because there are so many statues around too!!

Two of the many statues we took pictures with

Had dinner at a Korean restaurant then coffee/hot chocolate at Chocolate Bean. Planned to go clubbing at HQ after that but there was a long queue and we didn't wanna wait, so we went to the Skycity Casino instead. Observing people playing Blackjack and poker is interesting actually =)

The next day we went to a German village called Hahndorf. Su Fei and Kar Yee joined us!

I like the colour of autumn leaves =)

Some of the little treats we bought



Cute chocolate packagings



A good reason for not feeling guilty for eating too much chocolate =P

Had a fabulous lunch at a restaurant called Hahndorf Inn...we shared a German platter which included German sausages, jagerbraten (huge chunk of pork meat), pretzels, coleslaw and German potato salad...

Massive lunch which said 'serves 2' on the menu...2 German blokes?? haha



Li Ping, me & Su Fei...let's dig in!!



INTEC friends reunited...Doreen, Kar Yee, me, Su Fei
p/s: notice the empty plate with only bones left =P

We walked further down the street to a strawberry farm called Beerenberg. We didn't pick any strawberries....but we bought some jam and sauce there =)

Beerenberg

Took the bus back to the city after visiting Hahndorf. Chien, Doreen, Li Ping and I went to Glenelg for the beach by tram, just to spend time and take pictures there as it was still quite early for dinner. We saw 2 camels and a pony!

Another statue in Glenelg (did you realise that Glenelg can be spelt backwards as well?)



Dinner at Ajisen Ramen

Walked to Victoria Square after dinner to take pictures, we had lots of fun!

The fountain at Victoria Square



Met up with Siew Mei at Gelatissimo...haven't seen her after I left INTEC too



Doreen, Li Ping and I shared this...yummy~

3rd day...road trip to Barossa Valley. Had brunch before we went - Vietnamese beef noodles....

Special beef noodles with filter coffee makes a great brunch!

First stop, The Toy Factory, which has the world's biggest rocking horse...

We went up the rocking horse too...it's really high up there @.@ and oh it doesn't rock like a rocking horse haha



Li Ping, me, Chien, Desmond



There are sooooo many wooden colourful toys!!!

The Toy Factory also has a farm that has 'little' animals which we can feed...

Alpacas

Peacock

They have goats, kangaroo/wallaby, ducks, chickens and ponies too.

Went to the Whispering Wall after that. It's a dam actually...called Whispering Wall because what a person says at one end of the dam can be heard on the other end. Really amazing!

Huge dam

It was late afternoon so we quickly moved on to some wineries before the closing time (5pm).

We bought some wine there...



Posing with Desmond's car...it really looks like a scene in Malaysia, right?

Desmond drove us to have a look around Mawson Lakes where one of the campuses of UniSA is. Then we went to North Adelaide to have Mexican dinner =)

Nachos and tacos

Had ice cream at Dairy Bell after dinner. Then we went back to Chien's place to play cards till midnight. Someone is learning to play in casino hehehe

4th day - last day. Chien and her housemate Gin brought us to Central Market and Chinatown. After lunch at Rundle Mall, Desmond came and drove us to the airport...

Doreen was so excited and said that we should have Cocolat before we went back Melbourne



so the five of us shared this delicious chocolate



Some of the other stuff I brought back Melbourne besides wine

It was really a fun and memorable trip though we only spent 3.5 days in Adelaide. I'm glad that I met so many friends during this trip...thanks Li Ping whom I dragged along even though she didn't know anyone before this =) And also biggie thanks to Chien, Desmond and Doreen, you guys certainly made our trip to Adelaide an enjoyable one!! =D