i'm ba-ack.

I got back on Thursday night, but I've been lagging out for the last couple of days, so please excuse me if I haven't given you a shout since then. In fact updating this blog was one of the last things on my list, but Sunday mornings have this effect on me, like the air smells different or something, and there's just this peaceful feeling of nostalgia that makes me want to reflect on things. It's these lazy Sunday mornings that are part of what makes Perth home for me.

Anyway, if you haven't already gathered from my sappy sentimental intro, it's been a pretty packed last three or so weeks. I've experienced so, so much, in such a short period of time, that I am still trying to digest everything that has happened. I attempted to keep a diary of all my exciting adventures, but not surprisingly, for reasons already mentioned, it never made it past the first entry.

In short though, Singapore was -as a Singlishman would say- damn SHIOCK. Everyone was so nice and accommodating, and it made our stay extremely fun. I have to say though, the weather was like a wet blanket trying to smother an unsuspecting tourist (yours truly). Okay, I exaggerate. Apparently the weather was actually quite good the three days that we were there, because it had been raining or monsooning or flash flooding a few days prior to our arrival. But if there's anything I learnt about Singapore, it's that you should never judge the weather from indoors. And for a girl who always dresses for the wrong weather, it was a hard lesson learnt. In my defense though, the aircon inside the airport was about ten degrees, give or take a couple. So when I'd first landed, Mum and I adventurously took the MRT down to Orchard Road, with me looking ever so cool in my jumper, and totally not looking like the obvious, unprepared tourist. And that was fine...until we got off, made our way out of the airconditioned tunnels, and then got blasted with a hot air hadouken. Mmmmm, nice.

Hahaha, but flash-floods and hadoukens aside, the weather isn't that bad. Apologies to my s'pore friends, as I'm sure they've heard it all already- I went on about it a little longer than I intended to. But what else would you expect from a pasty asian who sets up camp in her room during summer?

Haha, anyway...it looks like I shall continue this in another post, because Dad's made breakfast. I hope it's rice noodles!

Much love to y'all from Perth :)

hiatus.

Yup. I'll be spending the next three weeks or so in Singapore and China, so lack of internet access means no enthralling reads for a while.

But before you all start clapping, I'll try to keep a journal of funtimes and goodstuff we encounter. I say this hesitantly though, knowing my track record with diaries (see first ever post - it's a miracle this blog still exists).

Anyway, so my flight's tonight, and I still have a long list of stuff to do (packing included)..

Tc& I'd better see most of you in three weeks :)

P.s. I'll give Aan a proper status update when I get back :P

chop chop kali pok.

"Some people, I tell you, just because once only, can say you became very famous writing and speaking broken English, suddenly everytime people will telephone you and ask you, can do this can do that. Like I so free like that."

An exerpt from the Singlish Oxford Dictionary Lip lent me. Honestly, this is the second time I've opened it since it was first given to me, but I thought it would be interesting to get myself acquainted with the funny mix of English and Hokkien before I go and visit them in Singapore. Two pages into reading the foreword however, my head is already spinning...ahh

-------------
Had a good weekend for the most part. Sadly, couldn't roadtrip with the guys to Busselton, but enjoyed myself nonetheless at Essi's housewarming and Bev's 21st. Had the best Korean food in Perth one night, and Japanese delights at the other :) Also spent the night tripping myself (and other unsuspecting people) over whilst wearing an oversized yukata.

Yes, I made a card too. If you look closely, the cute little characters on the front are actually bacteria and microorganisms, tied up nicely with a white ribbon, haha. (Bev's a clean-freak y'see :P)

 

----------------

Anyway, this kali pok needs to clean her room and start thinking about packing, so I'll see y'all laters :)

harry potter, dumbledore, and cat.

Post-exam celebrations~

Whipped up some cards for the November babies. Hopefully this is a welcome change to my incoherent rambling type posts.

- Zhi Xiang's 20th - 

- Caleb's 22nd -

- Brady's 22nd -

 

These cards gave me an excuse to go and visit Jackson's. It's one of my favourite pastimes: going to shops to stare at things that I can't afford. Haha, but as overpriced as their stuff is, they have a range of gorgeous paper, which I could spend hours looking at. Or at least long enough raise looks from the cashier lady..

Speaking of awesome paper..

+1 if you know where it's from!

to the both of you..

Thankyou.

flour or flower? same, same but different: the twins' birthday

Went to La Porchetta and San Churro's to celebrate our favourite twins' birthdays. I'm gonna keep this entry short and succinct because exams are only a week away, and I'm supposed to be cramming! *Runs in circles*

So in keeping with the spirit of summarising- of which I have been doing a lot of -I'm gonna dotpoint;
- First and foremost, I'd like to use this opportunity to raise the issue of table etiquette. There was a certain person, he-who-shall-not-be-named's arch enemy, decided it would be appropriate to procure a set of cardiovascular notes from his satchel and proceed to study. Hahaha. Imagine a ruffled-haired guy complaining about the dim lighting in the restaurant as he squints over his notes. Suffice to say, he was subject to exclusion multiple times throughout the dinner, hahaha.
- One thing about having Singaporean/Malaysian friends, is that you quite often get intense debate over the right pronunciation of words. In the past, it was aged. Age-d, or a-jed? Last night's example was flour. Flower or fla? What would you rather? The soft, flowing tones of flower, or the harsh, nasally sounds of fla? I know which one Nigella Lawson would use. Hahahah ;D
- Speaking of flowers, I made a spring themed card for the twins. Unfortunately the double-sided tape that I'd bought for $2, performed at its value, so it was continually falling apart :(.

True to my spirit of summarising, the concise dotpoints I was supposed to make in this post are not so concise.

Although I'm freaking out over how I'm going to cover 3 semesters of work over a week, I've tried to keep my ranting about it here to a minimum. So if you're reading this, and thinking how carefree the author sounds, I'm really not! :(

Ps: I'm saying my goodbyes to Aan soon.

 Nigella Lawson. "I baked these babies with flour"

monochromatic.

The sun rose early this morning.
I woke up to see my study desk being illuminated by rays of golden sunshine.
It was a depressing sight to say the least.

With exams around the corner, the past two weeks have not been great. I'm not going to go into a rant, because personally I don't enjoy reading them, but I can assure you that if I did, it would include a lot of my life is an abyss, skinny jeans, skinny jeans, and other deep&meaningful lines directed at no-one in particular. Plus I think my sentiments are already shared by most normal people in our year.

So yeah, instead I'll tell you about one of my many musings I had whilst stuck in morning traffic. The Great Moscow Circus is in town y'see. The only reason I know this is not because I'm all cultured and stuff (although not implying that going to the circus is my idea fine cultural appreciation), but rather I've been spending a good 30 minutes stationary in front of the big top everyday, for the past two weeks. And on one of these days, it occurred to me that circus life might not be such a bad life after all. You get to travel the world, you don't have to pay the bills, you're fed and showered, and moreover you'd have at least a mildly interesting blog. After a bit of researching one click google, I found that you get a bit of pocket money on top of that. $35k UD on average. With two raised eyebrows, I contemplated a career change, until I realised there was probably no place in the circus for a girl whose only claim to her name is abnormally fine dexterity over her left pinky. Hold the short jokes. Seriously though, if I had to leave med school, running away to join the glitter of the circus would definitely be the way to go.

Sigh. I guess I'll have to formulate another back-up plan for these exams.

uncle, why are you wearing my shoes?

No matter how bad the situation is, I believe everything happens for a reason, and there's always something to gain from it. So regardless of what happens now, I'm going to move on. 

Gosh. By the way I said that, you'd think I was talking about some momentous happening. But no, I was just comforting myself over the midsem exam I just had. Whilst feeling deflated, I had an extra two servings for dinner. Dad made rice noodles with button mushrooms, preserved cabbage, pork and frankfurts. Yeah..my taste buds thought it was pretty crazy. Crazy good!

I'll tell you what else was crazy. My dream last night. You may or may not have had the experience of listening to my incoherent recounts of my often wacked up dreams. If you have, I'm sorry for making you the unfortunate outlet. If you haven't, well...good for you. Anyway, so I dreamt about this old, overweight, beggar who'd stolen my beloved havaianas to wear. I distinctly remember saying to him, "Uncle, why are you wearing my shoes?". Enthralling stuff, I know. But yeah, because it was so vivid, I decided to look it up, and came up with this;

• To give to a beggar, denotes dissatisfaction with present surroundings.
• If a woman dreams about shoes, this dream is usually connected with her love life.
• If you are giving a pair of shoes away, it means that you want to get rid of a person, or that person is going to leave you soon.

I'm a bit superstitious, so despite learning from FCP not to trust .com sites, I can't help but gasp over the last dot point. Not that I have the slightest idea about who it could be. *shifty eyes*

Oh well. Sounds like interesting times.

the calm before the storm [come back study break!]

as expected, i didn't do half or even a quarter of the things i was meant to do this week.
i'm so screwed for exams.
meanwhile some things i filled my study break with...

i'm just a little bit caught in the middle.. [yan yan's 21st]

Finally, the week I'd been looking forward to since the end of mid-year holidays; study break! I've think I've managed to set myself another list of unrealistic goals over the next seven days, like learning two years worth of Normal Systems- which is probably just short of achieving world peace in my opinion.
But that aside, I kicked off my study break with a dimsum lunch at Regal's for YanYan's 21st, followed up by some good ol' karaoke. They got YanYan a coffee machine maker, which I think would be pretty handy over the next coming month...(it pains me to say).




Alrighty, so I'd been eagerly waiting for the occasion to use these little paper flowers I'd bought, and what better occasion than a spring birthday? I like how light and dainty this card turned out. Originally I'd planned on keeping it simple, with the flowers being the only colour against a white background. The different shades of white came later (with the ribbon, letters, spraypainting), and I think it helped tie the whole thing up quite nicely. Haha, yeah you heard me, different shades of white. I get all pedantic like this when I'm excited.

Happy Father's Day.
I'd made Dad a quick card which I might post up later..

a deep, pondering question.

A question triggered by the recent intrusion into my room [see last post], but it's a question that's been on my mind for a while now.
The fly flew away before I could take care of it. Jenny's killer instincts: 1, fly: 0. Life long problem solvered. Dad's making rice noodles. It's gonna be a good day.

shayma's and zhi's @ ninniku [post-exam!]

After a super long week from our mid-sem [expletive, expletive], we celebrated Shayma's and Zhi's birthdays at Ninniku last night. It was quite a colourful and slightly rowdy affair, with more than twenty of us hogging up their tables, but the staff were nice enough keep their grumbling to themselves and not kick us out, haha. The food was mainly korean, with some japanese and italian infusion, and I think for the most part everyone enjoyed their meals. The steampot-like thing seemed to be the hit of the night. I'm not quite sure why this has turned into a mini restaurant review, but I've just woken up and still disorientated, so consider it one of my [many] random ramblings.

Obligatory card-making talk. I didn't really have an idea in mind for either of these, so they kind of took a while to work out how I was going to decorate them. Shayma's especially, because all I could think of was put a lot of red on the card (he likes red). According to ZX, it has some indian influences...but the only one I can see is in the picture, haha. To be honest, I think I'm on the very edge of overdecorating these cards - something which I don't like doing. I much prefer decorating with the person in mind, if you get what I mean. In this case, the recipients are both very flashy guys, so I guess that doesn't matter as much hahahaa.







On a totally different note, there's a fly buzzing around in my room. Yes, winter is indeed gone, and with the start of spring, the little [not so little] thing has crawled out of its hole to disturb the illustrious [eh?] thoughts of the great Jenny. Can thoughts be illustrious? I guess they can be. But whatevs, it's certainly the last word to be describing my thoughts right now.
Excuse me whilst I have some pesty business to take care of.

pravin's 22nd [lavalamp]

Originally I was going to do a comic strip style card, and hence the high contrast of the photo. But this picture was just really cool, and needed a frame of its own. I was a bit afraid that I overdecorated it, and made it less classy with the ribbon and lame joke, but I think it turned out okay :)

Dinner was fun. I can't remember much of what was said, aside from copping an extra large serving of short jokes, but it was fun. Poor Pravin got a lava lamp when a study lamp was asked for, thanks to an amusing miscommunication :P

essle's 20th! [surprise]

ess had her big two-zero surprise dinner yesterdee~
haha at running jokes, getting lost, awkward excuses and talking in code.

i got the translucent paper idea off maddie's card for janice :)


short entry ;_; i'm buried under a mountain of homework atm..grah.

heart sunday mornings. [glo's 19th]

On a pleasantly sunny day we had Gloria's birthday lunch.
I'd gotten there about three hours early, intending to get a haircut, only to find that I had an hour to kill before they opened shop. So I decided to go for a stroll down the unusually quiet streets of Northbridge. There's something serene about watching shops opening up in the morning. For some reason I am comforted at the sight of people going through the motions of starting their daily routine. I especially like watching it in Hong Kong. Every morning after a shower I would sit, looking down and out from the hotel window. I think it was nice to savour the short quiet moments before the streets became quickly bloated with congestion. Anyway, the old lady in me digresses. I ended up meandering through James Street for a good fifteen minutes before heading back to my car to wait out the remaining 45, after bumping into some odd characters. The lunch turned out to be lovely, or at least the company was :)

qu's 21st video [art attack!]

This was done during the holidays a couple weeks back, but the lovely recipient just saw this today, and I only just got a copy of it. I realise that by consequently uploading this moments after, I have no shame. Haha no, I know how utterly embarrassing this is, and I have many other things I should be doing, but good times y'know. The talented editors of this birthday message were Maddie and Carmen.

My box fetish..

glee! squee-

I'm a bit delirious after watching the pilot episode of this. Enough to make me blog about it. It's like a twisted version of Highschool Musical, with a lot more dirt. Plus I'm a fan of Jayma Mays and her quirky roles. Looking forward to screenings in September.

Wee- back to assignmenting and pulling my first late nighter before uni.

makeshift lampshade.

I stumbled across my old study lamp in the storeroom, and as you do in the midst of cleaning, I brought it back to my room with a whole lot of other junk to play with. It worked fine, it just needed a new lampshade- which I turned a CD-holder cover into. It took me an hour to make...probably the most productive hour of these holidays..

naked lamp + cd holder lid.

does this make my bulb look big? + gift wrapping paper.

lamp is clearly excited at the prospect of getting a new shade.

et voila~ your moment to shine! bedroom lamp!

I just tried to make witty commentary with pictures of inanimate objects.
Reflection of my recent recluse lifestyle?
Sigh.

Mandurah Trip [Post exam!]

Last Saturday on the drive back from Mandurah, Aan broke down. For those of you who don't know, Aan is my beloved little red Toyota Seca. She's been serving me well these past two years, but I guess the mileage is starting to get to her now. Anyway, she couldn't have gone at a worse time, leaving us in quite a predicament. There we were, 3 girls stuck at a traffic light in woop-woop, at 11pm at night with no speck of mechanical knowledge between us. Oh yes, and naturally it was cold, windy and rainy.
Lo and behold, a mechanic truck pulls up behind us. What are the chances?

Sharon: "Uh..did you guys call a mechanic..?"

Deciding that it wasn't the time to be denying help from strangers, we had the nice guys push Aan to the side of the road and jumpstart her. All was well until Aan blew out again shortly after. We ended up calling RAC and having Essi's dad pick us up from the side of the freeway. Aan was towed away and has been in the workshop since. Apparently there's something wrong with the Welsh plug. -Blank face-

So as a result I've been cooped up at home for the past two days. It's only been two days, but already I feel so debilitated without a car. Getting lethargic today, it drove me (haha) to accompany my mum to the shops to buy washing powder.

Fifteen boxes of washing powder.

Yes, my parents love bulk buying. Anyway, I can't really complain because whilst pushing a trolley full of washing powder around, mum bought me a pair of boots, hehe.



Edit: Had my second GP visit, and it was great. I got to do a vaccination! And not all children are mean :)

Wow, it's mid-year already? [Sale Time!]

I just finished my exams so I am currently filled with excitement over the plans I have for these holidays. One of these is staying at home, updating this blog (yay! woohoo), and not catching swine flu in the eastern states. I kid, I'm so jealous of everyone fleeing Perth, leaving me nothing interesting to write about here.

Anyway, speaking of kid, we tried goat at Shawn's and David's birthday dinner at Capriccio. Goat! It tastes like beef, but looks like pork, except doesn't taste as nice as the either of them. We also had a very thoughtful discussion about the sounds that goats and lambs make. Conversations over dinner always tend to dock a few IQ points off one's intellect. I love it.

-David's 22nd-

-Shawn's 23rd-

DidYouKnow? Goats hair is good for calligraphy? I'm wondering what my paintbrushes are made of. Maybe hairs from a large squirrel. Oh, and on the paintbrush update; nail polish remover works wonders for getting out paint. Makes sense really doesn't it? Haha brain fart. But I was a bit worried that it would've totally destroyed my brush, which I'm glad to say, it didn't.

tis the season for birthdays.

Birthday goodness this weekend! Gave me an excuse to celebrate before the looming mid-year exams ;(

-Happy Birthday Mum-
So this morning I woke up and whipped up a quick little card for mumsie. Eating a v.delish bday lunch as I write this, so excuse me if I'm a little incoherent/distracted.


-Maddie's 21st digital photo frame-
Finished the last coating on the letters and finishing touches when I got back home from Ywern's last night. Forgot to wash the brush though, so the paint stuck like an ass to it when I found it this morning. Fyi, if you ever need to clean brushes, soak them in anything with alcohol. I'm using hand sanitiser at the moment, but I suspect makeup remover will work too.




-Yuewern's 19th, Lip's 22nd-
I love a sexy box.
We headed to Yuewern's after Lip's dinner last night. Guitar Hero + Singstar + Table Tennis + group of hyped up asians = Good times. 'Nuff said.
We didn't end up leaving until two? Managed to sneak into the house at the wee hour of three.
Oh yes, and the food was awesome at both parties.
Hellooo body pump :(

is wondering how many lucky stars she has left..

because i used up at least five years worth today.

~

in other news, my GP visit went quite well today. i'll maintain that i'd rather get into the gritty stuff of surgery if i was to specialise, but general practice is quite pleasant. i think i like the repertoire that you can build up with patients the most. when i was watching my GP, i could see all the stuff that we learnt in fcp materialising in front of me. in that sense, i'm really glad we get to do these visits because they reaffirm the things we're learning in fcp. anyway, i got to do a cardioexamination on a nice elderly woman, and took down a comprehensive history of another that had arthritis. nothing interesting besides that, but i'm looking forward to my next visit :)

Do-Ho Suh

He's amazing, and he's Korean (you'll be pleased to know ess).
I love how trendy, creative and provocative his work is.

-Karma-

-Paratrooper V-

-Reflection-