The busy city..

with li ann...in a rush...explains the bad hair...

Akram, me and Sherreen with the Opera House as the background..

Alright people, due to high demand and as promised, this is my story bout the trip i had to Sydney.

My second week of holidays were mainly spent in Sydney. I was there from Monday till Thursday. It all started when Manja actually invited me to join them on their trip to Melbourne. In the beginning it sounded really tempting as i would have been able to meet Sarah and Tania as well, but then, due to some certain circumstances and late notices, i decided to go to Sydney instead and meet up with Li Ann whom i have not met in the past...umm..5 years?

Anyway ya, so i and Akram left Canberra at 9am on Monday and reached Sydney somewhere bout 12.30pm. I then followed the orders from Jen(Li Ann's sister) and took the train from Central to Chatswood. Li Ann met me at the station and then we walked back to her place. It's a nice place i have to say, feels very Homy-it's their home after all. There was this curry-ish chicken in the fridge and we heated that up and had it for lunch...considering the fact that it was her brother, Kenny, who had cooked it, it tasted really good. We then had just talked till Jen came back. By that time, Li Ann was tired so she went to her room to take a nap. I had Jen to entertain me on the piano. OMG..this girl is SO bloody talented! All you need to tell her is the title of the song you want, and if she knows it or even, if you can just sing it to her, she'll be able to play it for you...boy, wouldn't Ms Lim be proud to have a student like that?!LOL. By then, it was dinner time, and so we decided to order pizza-Jen had printed out the most faded voucher ever!-all for the sake of saving ink!LOL. While having dinner, we watched Gilmore Girls season 1...and by the time we decided to stop, it was 4am and we were half way done with it! Mind you, initially Li Ann was so against the idea of watching that so called -dumb-show-on-mother-daugher, yet she sat through the whole way.

The next day, i met up with one of my all-time favourite nenek, Justin and his sisters. I can't recall when was the last time i met him..but i have to admit, it was really nice of him to take me on a tour around the city, although we spent, say, half the time, rushing back to that government building so that he wouldn't miss his turn to get his driver's licence translated!(He was number 70 and when we FIRST went there they were attending to number 40-something-so we decided to go for a short walk, and when we returned, it was bout 50-something,so we went out once again.On our THIRD return,it was at 65(the nenek guessed it right!) and so we hung out there till he was done before going to The Rocks) Later in the evening, we met up with Li Ann and went for a walk to China Town where Li Ann decided to grab a bite at Bread-Story, as irrelevant this may seem, when we entered the shop, the cashier was talking to her friend, saying something like, "I didn't know he was from Malaysia" and oh yeah, she had the -LAs..LOL.Anyway, we then went to watch Namesake. I reckon it was a good movie, although personally i felt that it was rather slow moving in the beginning. Li Ann and i were commenting about the movie there and then and i felt kinda bad for Justin who was sitting next to me and had to put up with our remarks. We had pop corns and coke and chocolateS...for dinner, with a rather full stomach, we had Italian. If you think that,that was the end of the day, oh boy, you're so wrong...we had more Gilmore Girls..and then,we called it a night...it was somewhere at 6am then!

I was suppose to meet up with Akram and Sherreen at 12pm but i was so exhausted and also,malas LA, so, I postponed the meeting to 6pm. I met up with Sherreen at the Queen Victoria Building and we sempat go in and take pictures while waiting for Akram who didn't know how to find his way out from Town's Hall station. After that, guided by Sherreen, we went and had dinner at the darling habour. I had McD for the first time in Australia!!!!-they don't have chilli sauce and their meat is smaller than their burgers!! After that, we went to The Rocks and then to the Opera House. The view at night was amazing...We didn't have much time though for Sherreen had to catch the 9.50pm bus..so, she and i were on a mission, to reach there on time for her to catch the bus...we were practically running....after sending her off, i went my way to Towns Hall and caught the train to Chatswood. I was suppose to meet the Wongs for hot chocolate at a nearby cafe but Li Ann being the pemalas she is, told me that to 'tapau' the hot chocs. So, when i got back, we drank our hot chocolates and had more Gilmore Girls...this time, i slept off on the couch.

I left for Central the next afternoon at bout 3.10pm to be on time to catch the 4pm bus back to Canberra. That was the end of my 4 days holiday in Sydney. A few really apparent differences between Canberra and Sydney is of course, the amount of cars on the road in both states. In Canberra it would be so difficult to see cars on the road especially at night but in Sydney, it is so difficult to not see a car on the road! Also, in Canberra it's rather ridiculous to walk around in sleeveless even during the day but in Sydney, i could wear sleeveless at night!

Alright, that's it...it's indeed one long entry, and i'm getting rather malas already..so, yeah..that's it...i owe my holidays to the Wong family, the nenek, Sherreen and Akram. thanks a bunch guys! The next time i go to Sydney, i must visit the beaches! oh yeah, when i was with Justin at The Circular Quay, we saw the Saphire Princess and he suggested that next time, let's all the Malaccans go on a cruise one day....so, people, till that day comes, SAVE MONEY!!!!!

Who do you blame?

I know i'm suppose to write bout my awesome trip to Sydney, but i decided to put that on hold until i get the pictures.Anyway,these days, when i turn on CNN they're talking bout the Virginia Tech massacre, then i change to BBC and yet, it's the same thing, i turn on Sky News and yes people, it's the same news, no surprise there ha?!

I KNOW that this is a tragedy..yes, i feel bad not only for the victims family but also the killer's. I mean, look, with all these 33 lives gone, someone has lost their child, another would have either lost their brother/sister and the list goes on.... I don't know if it's just ME, but i'm starting to think that they're just making a whole big deal of this matter and i reckon, it's all because it happened in The States. What if that happened in Malaysia? Would you still have people like Dr.Phil going for several interviews and would it be featured on the Larry King show? You could point out the fact that, say, when Tsunami hit Asia back in 2004(or was it 2003?), it was another tragedy which took the peoples heart and made as big of an impact as this recent massacre. The thing is, the Tsunami incident caused more than just ONE country a loss.....so, i reckon, it deserved to make the news for a few weeks.

The recent mass murder happened in The States and only in The States. I'm not saying that people of other nation should be oblivious to what's happening there, but i personally feel that parading the whole story on air for one week now, is a little too much. Is it really necessary for us to watch how they mourn the loss of their beloved ones? If i was in The States, i would have taken a very keen interest in the matter, but the thing is, i'm not, so, i don't have that much of an interest to how they are going about with the mourning.

Another thing i would like to point out is that, this is not the FIRST time for such an incident to take place in The States. If i recall, there were several times when people just walk into schools and put the bullet to someones head and there has been quite a number of politicians who have been murdered and these goes way back in time.

You would think that the government would have been smart enough to know that perhaps, if they change their laws on the rights to owning a gun, then, just maybe, people wouldn't be able to walk around freely with a gun in their hands, would they? What is so difficult about changing the law anyway?If you need to change the constitution, just come up with a referendum and i reckon, the society would agree with changing the laws on this one, for their own safety, or at least, for their children.But guess what, the other day, if i'm not mistaken i was watching CNN and the guy said that they(the big people of US) are yet to bring up the matter....and it has something to do with politics...

So, who do you blame for all these tragedies? The people with the gun or the people who allows them to have the gun?

The first week...

My two weeks holiday is finally coming to an end.Besides the fact that i have to get up early once again and rush to get the bus to uni, this also means that, i have 2 group assignments for INFS(foundation of information systems) due on the 2nd week back and one individual business assignment due the following week.

I feel like i have taken this break for granted. Initially, i thought that 2 weeks of holiday was a long time and i was thinking i could get heaps of work then, but now, well lets just put it this way, i did get some work done.

Before the holidays, i planned to go through my economics and statistics notes during the break. I am proud to say that i have indeed gone through them. Today, i decided to do my next economics tute questions, and that was when i realized that i actually couldn't do the questions without having to look at the lecture notes. I mean, if i had gone through my notes thoroughly, like what i assumed i had, i should have been able to answer the questions without having to refer back to the notes. Hence, there's absolutely NOTHING to gloat about for claiming that i have gone through the notes.

Let's do a post-mortem of my holiday, shall we?Well, hmmm...Friday, as in Good Friday..i woke up rather late that morning due to the late night i had the previous day. Frankly, Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday were spent going through my work. I had lots to catch up with. Being a morning person, i spent most of my morning going through my work and once afternoon came, it was more of leisure time and once the sun has set( that would be around 6.00pm!), i would just be too lazy to do any work as it gets colder and the bed starts to look so much more inviting than the desk!

I had made plans to meet up with Jess, Alissa and Gerogia on Tuesday to do Statistics. We were at Alissa's place from 9am to 4pm. That should have given us ample of time to complete most of the sections in Stats, but know what? we only got up to 2 pages! yup. The rest of the time, was simply spent on yakking. Before leaving back to Italy, Alissa's grandma had made pasta sauce, so we had pasta for lunch and we had the bread Georgia's dad had baked for Easter. We then went for a walk to Jess's place and had banana muffin there. That just pushed the limit.LOL. We were repleted. So, yeah, that was Tuesday.Oh yeah, people here do not know who MLTR is!! can you believe that?!

I woke up early on Wednesday because i was suppose to go for my weekly swimming with Alissa but unfortunately, Alissa woke up to find that she had lost her voice and so, swimming was canceled. Later in the afternoon, i went with Jess to Uni for our first group discussion on the INFS presentation. It's mainly about the blind using the Internet. I have to say, that first round was indeed fruitful, to me at least, it gave a better idea on what was needed to be done. We had to go back and research on the difference between a website which does not discriminate the blind and one which does.

I woke up at 8am on Thursday and made sure the house was in a good condition, as in, it was not messy and things like that. It was Economics day today and i had invited them over to have the discussion at my aunt's place(i stay with her). Jess came bout 10 past 9am and soon after Georgia turned up. Alissa had to do some last minute shopping for she was leaving to visit her grandparents the next day and so, she arrived at half past 10a. Until she arrived, we were just talking. Well, we didn't get that far anyway with economics when we decided it was time to cook lunch. I cooked them fried rice, and by the time lunch was over, there was absolutely nothing left in the wok!. A simple yet tasty meal( this is not me, self-praising, it's the feed back i got!). Danen was texting with Jess and he happened to be in the city, so we had him over for lunch as well. We then continued chatting(Jess had to leave for work) and i have to say,it's just so very interesting,listening to Danen and Georgia talk. I gain a lot from just listening to their conversations. After Danen left, we finally got to work and we actually finished chapter 6!!!- so much more productive than the Stats discussion.

I had to go back to Uni on Friday for INFS group discussion for both the assignment, as well as the presentation. We are almost done with the presentation. As for the assignment, we now roughly know what we are suppose to have for our kiosk.-that's the project, to come up with a kiosk which enables people to download music, videos and etc. We need to state the hardware and software needed and stuff like that-honestly, i can't wait to be over and done with for this subject!

Saturday and Sunday was rest day. I did get a little of economics done, but that was just it. I was getting excited for my Sydney trip.

So, yeah, that was how i practically spent my first week of holiday. I better go and get some Stats done now and will write more about my Sydney trip in my next entry. Till then....

A night out in Canberra

Yesterday, for the first time since i got here(that would be more than 2 months now), i had a late night out with friends. Jess and Alissa were going out with their friends and so, they invited me to join them (how sweet of them!) Jess was working late that night, so they picked me up at bout 11pm and we went to Dickson. It was freezing outside-13'C! We met up with Georgia and another friend of theirs, umm...i know his name starts with a D...but that's bout it...(i really do have problem with remembering names!) We then went to this bar..i think it's called Trinity. That D-guy bought each of us a drink(nice guy!) and we sat down for a chat. Somehow we started talking bout the life style in Asia. Last year, Gerogia was in Vietnam and Jess was in Japan, that D-guy is Sri Lankan and has visited Asia a lot i suppose, thus, they roughly have an idea of what living in Asia is like, from all the bargains to the bribery and the whole drama on High School Musical. Georgia then mentioned that, when she was in Vietnam, the people there had a habit of using 'think' and 'maybe' in a sentence. For example, "i think...maybe...no." and i was like, hey, i think do that a lot too. It's just an Asian thingy i suppose, whereby, we try our best to please everyone, so, if we wanna say no to someone, we try to do it, in the very best way we can, and that would perhaps mean to use 'think' and 'maybe' in the same sentence.

After Trinity, we headed for Civic and joined the whole lot of people at Academic. The rules here are relatively more rigid than the ones in Malaysia. I don't recall us(bhar, calvin,xn, and the Penang-ites) having to show our ID cards in Penang. Anyway, i had to carry my passport around-well, i had the D-guy to keep it in his pocket for safety. Back to the main story, i think Academic had reached its full capacity and so, there was a long queue. Alissa, being the eager one, cut the line and so, we didn't have to wait THAT long. After a while, Jess said she needed to get back, so we walked her back to her car and then like Alissa said,"let's walk aimlessly",we walked aimlessly and finally came to Mooseheads....We were there for just a while and then left for another club...i'm not too sure of the name, but i have to say, among all the 3 places we went to, that was the best, because they played R&B and Pop Music which we could actually sing along to. It was bout 4.45am that we finally headed back to the car. On the way, we saw a fight which never reached the climax!-like there were only pushes and holding backs...no punches and kicking-like the ones you see in bollywood movies.LOL.

It was a great night out...and oh yeah, the final bit..the bit which made our night...while walking back to the car(D-guy dropped us off) we saw this lady sleeping under her car-well, she wasn't exactly sleeping, because she answered us(good Samaritans-according to her) when we asked her if she was fine. She was tired and would have loved to sleep in the car but small problem-her bf had the keys..

Last night was simply awesome. I owe the night to Jess and Alissa mainly, for inviting me along. It's not easy being in a place where you don't know many people. Besides, i'm living off campus, so, i don't mix much with the other International students. I depend on Manja for that. Anyhow, i had a great time last night being with them and meeting their friends...they're really nice people and i'm grateful for meeting them for they make me feel welcomed...and most importantly, comfortable here.