One.Perfect.Day

OMG! Today’s event was a complete shocker and kind of funny. I was in my japanese script class when out of the blue, some random group of people came in. My French teacher was kind of like ‘???’ thinking they were some lost tourists but i noticed that one of them kept bowing and it made me think – only japanese people do that right? So it turns out they WERE Japanese university students here to observe how Japanese is taught overseas. I’m guessing they also want to become future Japanese teachers – lets hope that’s the case because i certainly don’t want the next generation of Japanese learners to have to be taught by a French, Swedish or a British person. It’s kind of humiliating to have someone from a Western background teach you an Asian language – not being rascist but just expressing the awkwardness.

Anyway, it was so cool! They just sat down at empty seats and figures that the French guy can’t distinguish between Asians.. ie, whether they are Chinese, Korean, Japanese, etc.. so we were meant to read out a diary excerpt from the textbook and one of the Japanese students happened to be sitting in the same row, therefore she was the third person to read out something from the passage. You can tell that she’s Japanese because she speaks it with their distinct accent that tells you that they are native speakers. However, like i said before, it’s not as clear as it is for Western people to distinguish because when she finished, he said ‘wow, you speak very well’ – which meant that he thought she was a student learning Japanese. The rest of the class was just laughing/giggling and i’m sorry to the French tutor if he was being sarcastic – didn’t sound like it – and that i had to put this on my blog because i fond it funny.

This just makes me so envious! I wish i could speak languages fluently! Note, i said languages. I hope that when i’m older i’ll be able to speak at least 5 different languages, hopefully one of them is Western like French of Italian or something. Being able to communicate with people around the world is very interesting, especially when you’re introduced into a new culture.

I can’t remember what the other awesome thing i was going to talk about because my mind was full of thoughts on how to describe the awesomeness of today’s japanese class.

Ps. still haven’t updated my music collection like i said i would… but you know how it goes

For close friends and family, these people would definitely know the answer. That is ‘ducks’. NOT eating ducks but liking the animal for all its cuteness and loveable character. However, after saying that, i’m going to make it clear that i’m not going to shoot someone for eating ducks – despite the fact that we are; but i’ll avoid going into that debate.

I’m pretty sure i made myself popular with my like of ducks way back in high school. Everybody almost knew me as duck girl or something. Annoying guys or girls would frequently come up to me and say ‘peking duck’ or ‘ducks are yummy’ etc.. those things humans do … rubbing in negative facts while knowing the person’s attachment to it. As a result of my duck obsession, i’ve gotten countless of duck toys and accessories for my birthday and some just out of the fact that the item is duck-related – enough to make a list out of them, which just gave me a new idea for OPD. Why not make a duck collection list? You’d be surprised how varied the items are from soap dispenser to a mini torch that quacks. All i’m missing is probably a duck toothbrush, calendar and a cd that’s full of quacking tracks?

So what exactly brought along my obsession with ducks? I’m not too sure myself. In fact, i’m not a hundred percent sure when i started liking them so much to the extent that i’d be willing to buy anything that’s duck related. Well that probably started when i started earning money – jobs aren’t really that great if you’re not saving the money. While i make a weird expression seeing pricey clothes or shoes, the expensive radar just doesn’t seem to work with my duck item buying process. It works in the opposite way. My radar goes off when there’s anything duck related available. I can stop myself from buying anymore toys, because i seriously have no room for them anywhere in the house, unless i want it to collect dust – if it came to that then i’d rather leave it in a nice dust free store.

What i like about ducks… they are cute aren’t they? Especially ducklings. They’re yellow, they’re soft and its so cute how they gather together to keep warm. Have you seen the ones at farms? They deliberately sit under the heatlights despite being squashed by other ducklings. What about when they’re swimming? They’re paddling away and when they sink their heads under water, their tail feathers are in the air… how can anything else be so cute? Ducks waddling! What a sight to see… if i ever earn enough money i’m going to have my own duck farm. I’ll breed ducks and give them away to children, making them appreciate nature’s own little children.. I’m surprised i have constrained myself from blabbing on about the cuteness of ducks because this deserves it’s own thesis and phD.

This is only one thing that makes me happy. One thing that i know for sure makes me happy. Its just something simple. But a simple life does make one’s life easier. As i have promised, this is a slightly more positive entry and its an entry not long after the last one. I at least know what to write for my next entry about an amusing webCT incident – and why i could be in melb next week and why i can’t go.

On another note, i hope a special friend of mine finds happiness again from the things she loves. I hope she understands that when things happen for the worse or better, the best way to overcome it is to do the things you love and know that you always have the support of your friends and family. Time always heal the body, heart and mind. It’ll be hard but if it isn’t how will we learn about the other side of things? How do we know that sometimes we are better off without it if we don’t try and live without it? I might not be expressing myself that well with these words, as there is so much more i can say, but i just hope she gets better soon and sheds no more tears.

Ok so this is the third week back to uni, the start of semester two of my first year; hence the delay in my entries i suppose. This week has been extremely tiring. Everyday this week and probably from now, i’ve been carrying two bags to uni. I’ve went from bag, to a small backpack to another bag – nothing is going to cure my shoulders now.

Today would happen to be the worst day ever. The luggage i carried from uni to home is worse than carrying two trays of dessert to customers. Despite the fact that Thursday’s are supposedly my best days at uni, being there for only two hours starting at 10am, finishing at 12pm… i do have to carry at least 2 readers and a textbook. What was extremely horrible was i had to borrow books for my major essays for two of my subjects. Its stupendous how the change in assignments and essay procedures have changed dramatically from high school to university. In high school, you could rely on the internet for any piece of information and a textbook which anyone could understand without having to have some skillful mind to be able to interpret the author. In university, things are very different. What you are required to do is a lot more than in high school. I’m expected to read pages and pages of text by scholars who have their own language really .. and i’m suppose to be able to obtain information just from reading it. Its almost like reading three novels a night. Whats even more bad is that if you don’t understand what that person is saying, you can’t just google it and expect to find someone whose read the book and then given their own summary of it – why? because its unlikely that people would have read the article/journal/book in the first place and if they have, their summary is just a shorter form of what you were expected to read. The language is the same so you’re back to square one. I went to uni today carrying two readers and a folder with my course outlines and paper. I came back home with those and 5 other heavyass books for just ONE of my major assignments. Thankfully for the other major essay, since its a topic about the ancient world, there are electronic versions available.. though you’re still expected to read the whole book. I went to the reserve section today to see some of these books and one was just a diagram of bath houses in ancient rome – which i was NOT going to photocopy because it would’ve been a waste of paper considering how big the page was and the fact that there were pages of these images.

Another thing that made today even worse was the photocopying. University of Sydney must have the worst photocopying system. You have to load money onto your card – this is only available on two levels with one machine and you have to make sure you swipe your card on the right side. But what exactly is the right side? The Usyd SID cards have two sides, the red and the blue. The red is supposedly for ‘university’ purposes and the blue is for ‘payment’ purposes. Whats extremely annoying about this is that you can load money on both sides and they work for majority of the photocopiers – but which freakin ones?!!?!?! I found out the hard way. I had loaded money on the blue side and wanted to photocopy in the reserve area so that i didn’t have to loan the book for 2hours. But because my red side had ‘insufficient funds’, i had to walk all the way downstairs to put money on the red side of the card and photocopy there. Well ain’t life shit when you go through the trouble for nothing? Two of the photocopiers were ‘low on memory’ and couldn’t be used and people were STILL using the other ones despite hogging it for over 15 mins – how many trees do you want to kill? So guess what i had to do??? I had to borrow the book, go downstairs and use those photocopiers. After i was done i had to walk back upstairs and return the book. Now i was going to meet up with Karen for lunch before she works and after suffering with baggage and stair climbing, i realised i forgot to get the photocopied pages. You can’t imagine how frustrated i was. Repeatedly climbing up and down stairs with those books and readers…

Mondays are also my shoulder killing days. I’m seriously considering buying a backpack because mondays are filled with readers and a textbook which i have to lug around. Carrying all this weight makes me lose my appetite so i don’t even feel like eating sometimes.

Its interesting how i meet people from Sefton at psychology lectures and around the carslaw building. It makes me envious because i would see these people frequently, and possibly in the same tutes if i had picked science. In fact, i’m miserable and alone in my lectures and tutorials. I think i’ve already mentioned this but i’m too asian for the whites and too western for the asians, hence i don’t really belong. In my history classes there are no asians and the other people don’t really approach me. In my Japanese classes there are a lot of asians, but they have already formed their own mandarin/korean speaking groups. The non-asians doing  Japanese gather together as well so where do i fit it? I’m seriously finding it hard to make new friends at uni because the ones i did befriend in semester 1, aren’t doing the follow-up subjects in semester 2… hence i can’t meet them. I’m even starting to feel bad that the only people i’m meeting are people from Sefton.

There’s seriously a problem every day in my uni life. On Wednesdays i have two lectures that clash with each other. I attend one rather than the other because it is closer to my following lectures . However, the lecturer uses about 80 slides in ‘one session’ and another 80 in the next, so i can’t really keep up with her. I would attend the other one which i have a super nice tutor for, but its far and i’d have to leave early to make it for my next class; so i can’t do well in that tutor’s class which is a real shame because i don’t think i’ll ever meet another tutor whose nice and not pushy. Another negative for Wednesdays is that i have no breaks. 6 hours of classes and during my transition to my last class, i have to walk from upper campus to lower campus, once again leaving early.

I guess i can’t compain too much about my classes seeing as i have half the hours of other people but i’m seriously exhausted with this kind of life and atmosphere  in university. Perhaps i should rethink my degree and reorganise my social life.

Two words definitely sum up my life these days.. “extremely tiring”. Hopefully the next entry won’t be so negative and if i’m bothered, i’ll type up the events from Avinesh’s party on Saturday.

Edit:

Because i wasn’t happy today at all, i decided to make myself happy by buying two more duck items/accessories. I found duck earphones/earphones decorated with ducks and a duck tea infuser o_o(?) – though that was just a bonus. I was initially only planning to get the earphones. But why not reward myself for lugging around textbooks that i’m going to read for my assignments…

RIGHT SO TOTALLY HAPPY TODAY. I could finally go karaokeing with my k-poppers and sing ALL the songs we know. By know, i don’t mean lyrics, i just mean we know the name, who sings it, the album and possible some lyrics – the rest are made up. I would give you a list of songs we sang, but you can probably just pick any song from my korean music collection page and that song would have been sung by us – Me, Karen, Katherine, Anthony – does Foob/Gavin count? He didn’t even sing? Well ANYWAY. It was just GREAT~ But i should probably start off with the beginning of the day.

So after having a horrible nights sleep, i woke up early expecting to leave the house at 10am – like usual. However, also like usual, my sister likes to be selfish and take her longass time so that we were delayed by ages and didn’t leave the house until 10.40am. I was totally fuming, if our eyes were were advanced, i believed you would have seen smoke. Anyway, so because i already planned to go out with my k-poppers, i couldn’t take my aunt around city with Sandy and my sister and we ended up going our own ways at Town Hall. By the time i arrived at Ichiban – an awesome ramen shop, everybody was already sitting there and waiting for their meals, which i expected to have already arrived. What was surprising though was that not long after they were consuming their ramen, my udon came and we all finished about the same time. Ah yeah, also because of this person who took their time to get ready, i didn’t end up picking up my assignment which i was intending to do. Hopefully they won’t discard it before i pick it up.

So after Ichiban.. WE WENT TO SHOW KARAOKE – WOOOOOO!!! Yeah so i didn’t mind hiking from Town Hall to the end of Chinatown, because karaoke is all worth it. We paid for 2hrs and started searching for all the songs we know. Like i said, most of the songs we sang are on my korean music collection page. We screamed, we rapped, we sang, we made up words, we were looking at a screen that had korean but didn’t understand any of it except the english, we played the tambourine, we wished we bought water before entering the room. We did end up singing 3 english songs to get Gavin participating and motivated however, as usual, he just refuses to do so. Like Kesha and Backstreet Boys can’t get anyone singing right? When we had 10minutes left, we began to skip through the songs because we didn’t have enough time to go through our picked songs. This meant that we only sang the verse and chorus and just went straight to the next one – I’m sorry Genie and Wedding Dress that we had to do that to you. Funny thing about korean karaokes is that they have a score at the end of each song. I’d say this score is kind of rigged because the songs that we didn’t know and were mumbling/making up words to got us in the 90s, like T-ara’s ‘i go crazy because of you’ got us 99! And we didn’t even know the lyrics except for the chorus. On the otherhand, songs that we did know, like Nobody, Gee and others got us in the lower zone, but that might be because we were shouting rather than singing those songs because we knew them so well.

After karaokeing, we headed back to Chinatown and went to this place for ice-cream. Inside the store, they had a tv that was playing this TVB gameshow that was originally a 3-member cast. However, i noticed there were a few changes with the show. The cast already changed from the last season, but this time they changed it again for some reason and included a girl. The new games were balloon based but there were some old favourites still there, like the one with the ping-pong ball and the sushi/wasabi one. It was interesting to see that all the people in the restaurant were eating but were also focused on the tv, that which i hardly see in Sydney. We were laughing together and pointing/talking about the players probably all saying the same thing in another language. Anyway, i got a vanilla caramel parfait with malteasers, except i changed my ice cream to green tea and black sesame. The ice-cream was reallllly good but in the end it turned out to be a bit sweet. Next time i’m going to get my chilli fish balls.. because they are yum!

By that time it was around 3pm and Katherine had to go to work. Gavin and Anthony also had to leave early so Karen and i headed to Morning Glory – which had a 30-50% off sale! Like Omg!! But yeah, i didn’t end up buying anything since if i wanted stationery i would just go to HK. Morning Glory is selling clothes now as well and that kind of makes me worried. I love the stuff they sell at MG, but moving into fashion is just a bit strange for a stationery and notebook store. Of course following a walk in MG means Kinokuniya! We walked all the way back up to Town Hall and started to spend another hour looking at all the items selling at Kino. Kino also has really great stuff but its way expensive. I saw so many duck related things that i wanted to buy, but i had to hold myself down because it was really not worth paying that much for that item. However you might hear a change in this when i go back to Kino and end up buying what i said was expensive in this entry. I did say that i would go buy them the next time i go to Kino because i believe at least my tips from work can pay them off – i hope! This is an unbelieveably long post, now at 1000 because today was just so great that i happened to remember everything and typed it on the day it happened. So continuing on, Karen ended up spending more money and i bought a duck key cover because it was the last one there. I felt threatened – i’m sorry!! Speaking of this duck key cover just reminded me of what my sister said not long ago. She saw that i had that on the table and asks ‘what is this?’, i tell her to read the plastic covering and .. this is the strange part. She reads ‘key fun covers’ when the plastic reads ‘fun (new line), key covers’. How her brain changed to the first title really confuses me! So anyway, note to self. BUY THOSE DUCK THINGS AT KINO AND MG!!! Because they are cute and adorable and ducks are awesome.

We were planning to go karaoke again, just Karen and I after Kino, because 2 hours is just not enough, but because Karen had already spent alot, we decided not to go again and save it for maybe next time. We took the same train home and read a bit of Mx – people really do say dumb things and all the way back home.

Currently now i was talking to Anthony how he’s posts aren’t updated properly and how i’ll beat him to this entry about today. So Anthony if you’re reading this …. =PPPPPPPPP!

Anyway, good day today. I recommend karaokeing.

EDIT: OMG!!

Sorry for continuing this long entry but forgot to mention Karen and i also went to that dvd/cd store in Chinatown and got completely jealous over the signed posters that you can only buy online I want those signed posters. I’ll go back and steal them one day.

I think my title already says all my thoughts on this topic. Its a good thing when couples are lovey-dovey, but how come they don’t have the decency to respect others and stop acting this way in front of family/friends? Sure we need to know whether you are completely, totally head over heels with each other but public displays of affection – especially when its overboard is not necessary.

So what exactly does lovey-dovey couple action in public include? Well kissing is one. Some actions are meant to be private unless a kiss is the only way to mend your broken relationship; the girl/guy teasing thing that makes it really awkward for people around them and can even raise goosebumps; lovey-dovey words in public.. or even worse, dirty talking in public – like really? Leave it in the room.

I can’t emphasise what an eye sore it is when people refer to themselves in third person to express their feelings of loneliness or ‘love’ to the other, especially on social networks such as msn and facebook – which all their contacts/friends can see even though they might not want to. By this i mean ‘she loves him’, ‘he misses her’, yadda yadda… Are they Caesar? Because i believe only a tyrannical dictator who wants to ‘strengthen’ Rome should have the right to use third person when speaking about themselves as an act of arrogance. Well then again, if Caesar is using  third person to display his ‘power’ – which makes him arrogant; what about those that use third person in relationships? What does that make them?

Its not lovey-dovey if they put dates on their msn screen name or if they celebrate their anniversary on their statuses, but when passing messages to each other, do they really need to post it for people to see? They could always just send a private message or leave an offline message. That wall on facebook is open to every one of your friends, so if you’re considerate, then you should keep those messages between the two of you.

So after seeing Eclipse on Saturday, i went out with Sandy on Tuesday intending to see Toy Story 3. However, despite arriving at the cinemas 2 hours early, they told us that it was full! How was that even possible? As a result, we settled for Shrek. It had some funny moments especially when Puss in Boots came on.. fatty puss! But still as adorable as ever. Before the movie we went to that cafe? across from Borders at Westfields and shared a lasagne and chocolate milkshake. Did you know you can get full with that? Even while sharing?! I’m actually quite disappointed with movies for this Winter break. Not many seem that interesting or are worth watching. The only reason why Toy Story 3, Shrek and Eclipse are on my list is because i’ve seen the prequels and hence i have this mindset to watch all the series – though that might be a waste of money.

Well ever since my aunt came over from Hong Kong i expected lots of yumcha and mahjong – which i did encounter to the point that i think i might be hearing the mahjong tile shuffling in my head at night. There was one night where my sister, Sandy and i were playing on the same table and i must admit, i can somehow play on the same table as my aunt and win more than her. Possible?  I thought not at first but now i can compete with the adults, its just a matter of whether i want to use money to play them – that i refuse. Anyway, this means that i have at least 3 things to cross of my ‘to-do’ list for these holidays despite that none of these were with my friends -.-.

I do have a few other events in mind that i intend to plan but since no one is complaining that they want to do something i guess i don’t need to plan anything… The only thing i’m happy about is that i was able to download all the albums i wanted at my cousin’s house.. to save my internet data usage which no one else is being considerate about - sorry cousins! But i doubt you guys use that much right?

Forgot to mention that i finished the 750 piece puzzle of cats. I did most of the work!!

Since i don’t want to reach 1000 words in a post, i’ll just mention it here.

During the movie Eclipse – there was the Harry Potter and the Dealthy Hallows preview. Guys, the movie is going to be in two parts. One sometime in October and the other next year in July (omg…). Since i couldn’t be bothered reading the last book i can’t tell you if it looks promising or not. But i guess i’ll end up watching it just for the same reason i watched Eclipse. However i might point out that i still haven’t watched Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix and skipped to the sixth movie (cause it was out and nearly about to end). There were also a lot of kids watching Toy Story 3. I reckon if i had a pair of 3D glasses with me, i would’ve just entered that cinema that was next door to my one. Guess i’ll start carrying 3D glasses with me too …

Harry Potter huh..

Ok, so it may be a little late to realise this, but i realised today that i should blog whenever i have something to type about, otherwise i’ll just end up forgetting about it or dragging the topic on until next week – like my family feud in real life article i was going to type an essay on. Anyhow, i guess this means i’ll just have to summarise and that also means the family feud debate will be postponed again!! Wow genius at procrastinating? Not compared to a certain hostess who you can visit on my friends link page… *cough* lily.

So what did i get up to today? Well, i actually woke up early for once, despite my lack of sleep ever since sleeping rooms have been switched around - did i mention this? No i probably didn’t since i was delaying my posts. So to summarise, since my aunt has now officially arrived in Australia, and i personally woke up at 5am (slept for about an hour) to go to the airport (yay airport!) to pick her up after cleverly deciphering those airport TVs – she is now sleeping in my parent’s room. My parents also bought a new queen sized bed so there are now 2 queen sized beds in the room. Therefore my mum and my aunt are going to sleep on the same bed. The old bed is now where Sandy is currently sleeping in. Where does my dad end up sleeping? Omg.. in my room. Hence my lack of sleep the past few days – don’t blame me for being grumpy. I’m basically curled up into a ball every night with blankets covering my head to make it any close to soundproof. And so, back to today…

I had promised to take Sandy out since ages ago.. but have decided to apply it today. We walked to Merrylands station and took a bus to Parramatta to watch ECLIPSE! I’m not really a big fan of Twilight, but since i’ve read the books and watched the first two movies, might as well watch the next sequels right? I swear bus drivers these days are having worse sleeping hours than me because they are always so angry and rude! It’s like every word that comes out of their mouth ends with an exclamation mark – well i’m sorry i forgot to get my ticket but i wasn’t madly rushing into the bus without it. I’ll take some of that back because there’s this asian bus driver that i sometimes get on when i go to work. He’s polite and more talkative than the others. But that bus company seriously needs to either: arrive on time, or change their timetables (which they are doing only a few months after all bus lines have changed) so that they don’t come every HOUR which doesn’t say on the stupid bus timetable stand.

The movie? Oh well.. other than the fact that they skipped a lot of plot (like the always do anyway) it was pretty much the same as the other prequels, except probably 10x more kissing. There were some funny moments both in the cinemas and the movies. Everytime Jacob came on the screen the girls in the cinemas were squealing; in particular when he wasn’t wearing a shirt. Oh wait, there was also one guy – probably just mocking them or gay? Yeah so this line i remember from the movie was when Bella, Edward and Jacob were in the mountains hiding from the ‘newborn army’ and there’s a blizzard storm and Bella is freezing. Then Jacob comes in and Edward reads his thoughts, which is that he wants to warm Bella up by hugging her and Edward is all like “don’t touch her” and Jacob remarks “well i am hotter than you”. Sure made all the Jacob fanatics scream. It was also funny because the cinemas was advertising some popcorn combo special related to Twilight, and it was like “Pick your team” and guess what types of combo were available? I mean seriously, even some hobo could think of a better name than “Edward Combo” and “Jacob Combo” – how lame is that?

Also went out for dinner – going to leave some personal thoughts about treatment of people – but i saw my cousin who was training to become a policeman. He described some interesting practise scenarios and it was quite comedic like in your head you’re probably swearing when you have your dominant holding something when the suspect is about to pull out a gun and your dominant and isn’t available to pick up your own gun. So we went to a Malaysian/Chinese restaurant. The food wasn’t too bad but i wasn’t feeling that hungry either so can’t go into any more detail. What i can go into detail is the parking before entering the restaurant. The biggest fail parking ever. Some car was swerving right to park into a two-spot parking with a pillar on each side. There was already a car parked on the left side so that was aiming to park on the right. However, obviously they was too close on the right hand side, because that person has got new scratches/scrapes on the right hand side of their car thanks to that pillar  and their crappy parking skills. Witnessed that first-hand and heard the sounds too – ouch!

Also realised that i haven’t talked about my exams - but not going to bother with that either. This post is nearly reaching 1000 words. But thankfully i can’t remember/think of anything that i need to add… FAMILY FEUD POST NEXT TIME! Also Anne’s party? Maybe?